Podcasts about 27i

“Beware of False Confessions”Matthew 7:21-27I. A MERE CONFESSION OF CHRIST IS INSUFFICIENTII. MIGHTY WORKS OF MINISTRY AND GOOD DEEDS ARE NOT PROOF OF KNOWING CHRISTIII. THE CENTRALITY AND SUPREMACY OF JESUSIV. THE FOUNDATION MUST HOLD ON THE LAST DAY

27I. Sahti by Bräu Akademie

Dual Use, Space and Ocean Tech...NY Tech Summit (Feb. 25, 2025)SUMMARY KEYWORDSDual use technology, space tech, ocean tech, cyber security, AI disinformation, Elon Musk, Ukrainian defense, naval drones, autonomous weapons, national security, public-private partnerships, ocean habitats, acoustic technology, geopolitical tensions, investment opportunities.SPEAKERSElena Anfimova, Gator Greenwill, Tony Cruz, Lisa Marrocchino, Speaker 5, Jaha Cummings, Carl Pro, Robin Blackstone, Speaker 4, Andrew Fisch, Mark Sanor, Dan BrahmyMark Sanor  00:00So Gator is with a family office investing in this space for a long time, with natural resources and minerals heritage. And Dan I met with Josette Sheeran at her office, otherwise known as the Carlisle hotel, who said, "You got to meet Dan", and now here you are on one of our panels. Thank you. So I think it's better, if you might share the "Harry Met Sally" story of how you met Dan Gator Greenwill  00:49That's a pretty good story. So Dan literally sent me a cold LinkedIn request. Yeah, there was a cut. Yeah, there were a couple of them. Mark Sanor  Wait, let's go back further. How did you identify him for that LinkedIn request? Or is it random? Or is it random? Give them the micDan Brahmy  01:15again, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So as part of being a founder who has lived in Israel for the last 19 years, I've learned to be a relentless a**hole. And so it's kind of this skill set that you need to have in order to get to a certain point in life. And I saw I heard about Gator, and then I was like, you know, maybe I'll just try and find his email address, and then I've had a lot of success is just reaching out to people on LinkedIn, you'd be surprised, like former head of Senate Intel Committee, folks like guys that you would never dream of even talking to. And I was like, hello, I'm Dan, can we talk? And they're like, Okay, whatever. So it just worked out in that Mark Sanor  01:57In that same spirit, how did you How did you land Elon Musk as a client. Dan Brahmy  02:04Well, that's a long story. So, so I'll let you go into the things you wanted to Mark Sanor  02:10say. Oh, he doesn't want that question. Gator Greenwill  02:15So anyhow, Dan, Dan did a cold LinkedIn email. It was persistent, but the area that he was exploring was of already significant interest to the investment fund that I was working for. We had long had the thesis that one of the fundamental risks of AI before we even make it to anything like artificial general or artificial super intelligence was the risk of an explosion in disinformation, an explosion in cognitive biases being worsened by tribalism on the internet. And so Dan had obviously been building the company for a couple of years when he reached out to us, he was beginning to do a raise for series, a had, you know, a very reputable Israeli VC fund that was looking for an American co investor, and we negotiated term sheet, and the the rest is history. Now we are sitting here before you today. So that's the the one minute version. There's obviously more twists and turns along along the way, we've ended up supplying probably 20 to 30, like 20% of your capital stack, maybe something like, something like that. So ended up being a significant portion of, you know, raise capital for for si Amber, before the the pre IPO and the IPO. So Mark Sanor  03:39now just want I'm getting, I want to ask more unfair questions, but, but as you look at the landscape, right? That's this is a one, just one example. What do you what excites and scares you in this? Well, Gator Greenwill  03:52a lot of things scare me. A lot of things also excite me. So the rising geo political tensions between the US and the EU certainly scare me, as well as you know, the US and at least a few members of the of the five eyes, given how important that's been to the defense posture of the United States historically, by the same token, it is causing a much needed re evaluation in Europe of spend by the government sector in the defense space, there has already been a number of very promising start ups actually being founded, even in Ukraine, but also in Estonia, Germany, France, that have been started for funding due To the government just under investing in the sector. So I'm excited about the prospects for investing in Euro zone companies. Aside from Israel, we've also invested in several Euro zone companies. So one thing that distinguished us from early on was we looked at dual use as being not just about American innovation, but American and partners innovation, including. Between Israel and the Euro zone especially. Mark Sanor  05:04And so, I guess from your perspective, Dan, maybe tell a little bit of your some interesting stories. I do want to hear this Elon Musk story, if you don't mind. Dan Brahmy  05:18So just to give a quick background, I'm Dan. I'm one of the co founders and the CEO of a company called Sara, which is cyber security in abracadabra, which kind of reveals what we do. But the truth is, we've been out there for seven years. Raised money from from gators Firm A couple times, and the value has been actually much more than just the capital. Usually, we've raised money from Founders Fund a couple times, which is Peter thiel's fund as well in the valley. So the guy who created PayPal and Palantir and all these other names out there, and for four years, we've actually done the typical mistake of the tech very geeky founders, which is building, building, building, building, and not getting enough feedback from the market. And so for a very long time, we were at that stage where we were trying to prove to the world by building the best possible tech. And I think we had, we still have, actually, it gave us a crazy advantage, but not within that four years time period, because we were just building that technology, which is in a nutshell, able to distinguish between real bad and fake for the online realm, social media and traditional media outlets, right? We want to be that, that sort of stamp of trustworthiness for the conversations that we all witness on a daily basis, on a minute basis, maybe at this point. And then, because of the Peter Thiel relationship, and because we were a tiny Israeli start up with no presence whatsoever, you know, two years ago, two and a half years ago, and we landed an article in the Wall Street Journal and forms, because we made so much noise about the stuff that we were solving. Some day, we received a call from a lawyer who was like, the pit bull is pit bull I've ever seen in my life. Scaries guy I've ever talked to sends me an email like, we need to talk now my client. I'm like, who's your client? It's like, sign this 19,000 pages. NDA, that if you say anything, you'll die tomorrow. I'm like, All right, well, we'll try, you know, we'll just sign it and and then he it's true. I mean, he told me about this story, and so he's like, this is Elon. I'm like, oh, okay, that's interesting. What does he want? It's like, well, you know what he wants? He wants to buy Twitter, right? He wants to take the price lower, and he feels like there's a gap between what Twitter is claiming about the bots and the sock puppets and trolls and the fake accounts and their impact. And so what's what they are stating about themselves as a company, what is truly happening? They're claiming that it's less than 5% has no impact over the conversations that we see over Twitter X, and he feels like it's more and he wants to use your tech. So I'm thinking this might be the first little star on our shoulder as a tech company, right? You want to start building credibility. It's kind of a deep, deep tech, a dual use technology, serving, you know, defense organizations and national security. So I said, interesting. So I mean, obviously I would do it for for a penny, right? But we didn't ask for a penny. We asked for much more, and he paid. And at the very end, I think we did a very good job. And, you know, same pit bull at the end was, I was like, Hey, can I be honest? You know, it would be great if you'd allow us to, you know, we're small company, maybe, maybe, maybe you'd allow me to go to the press, because we did such a great job. And, you know, I think his thought process was, what would a 15 people team from Israel could probably do in the press. What are the odds of these folks making noise? Wrong assumption. We very wrong assumption. So within two weeks, I received another call, after we published 1000 articles in the press, it's just like CNN, all that stuff. And he was, like, a so my client is not happy, because now he's the owner of Twitter. I'm like, okay, and well, now it reflects really badly on him, because now he's the owner of Twitter, and you're bashing the head of Twitter itself. He's the owner my Yeah, but I mean, I, you know, I saved him a billion dollars. So should be happy like, Yeah, I think you should stop now with the press. You know, it's enough and say, Well, you know, we also lined up like the BBC and stuff like that. But it will stop at 1000 articles from that moment onward. So it was November 2022 as a small company, literally, with almost no revenue at that. Point, I think we were like 300,000 in annual revenue. In two years, we ramped up to 6,000,006 point 1 million. So we blew up, and today we serve I'm not saying it's all about the musk story, but I think that a lot of startups are just completely, completely disregarding that credibility and that and that brand recognition, because, though, because we not that we we're all about the tech and the tech and the tech and and eventually, and I'm saying this as a as a tech company in the field of AI combating bad AI with good AI. And I'm going to be shooting myself in the foot as a soon to be CEO of a publicly traded company. Don't hate me when I say that. But I think people don't buy technologies. I think people by people, and people by trust, and we, I guess we prove that with time, and this equation proves to be the worthy one. That's the route we're going to be taking. And two thirds of the companies, like R and D people, I don't understand half of the shit that they're saying to me, and I'm like, Oh, very interesting. And we just move on to other stuff. But the truth is this, what we see, it's, it's, it's incredible technology being leveraged by people who want to trust you, like, that's pretty much that. So that's the story about which Mark Sanor  11:13has, which has lots of use cases, right? Not just dual use, not just forensics, but we, Dan Brahmy  11:20serve. I mean, we're on a, this is a do use technology panel. Is this a panel? If it's two people, yeah, Mark Sanor  11:28it says it's a duo, duo, dual use, the finalist Dan Brahmy  11:33of the panelists. Yeah, we work a lot with national security folks. Mark Sanor  11:38So why do you want to go public? Why? Because he wants you to go public. Do you Gator Greenwill  11:46sure I'll so I think what we found, and I've been discussing the IPO option with Dan, actually from fairly soon after he invested, after I invested, sorry, when he began discussing with different bankers about that option, and our conclusion, based on conversations with a number of VCs, was that even with a relatively depressed IPO market, the cost of money for a compelling company in the public markets is significantly cheaper than what you were seeing from VCs, post SVB bank collapse, term sheets got especially outside, if you were not a kind of golden circle Silicon Valley, you kind of Blessed from above. You know, start up. You know, no offense against, you know, friends of mine that run companies like that. You know, the types of term sheets that you get, you know, from VCs, you know, are typically fairly onerous. And so that was where, you know, we said, hey, you know, this is going to give a, you know, a multi year pipeline to the company, you know, add a, add a valuation that is has lots of room to grow, but is not overly dilutive to the existence. And I know Mark Sanor  12:59we're not pitching, but I think there's an opportunity for us to get it before the IPO. Right? All right, we'll come back to that, all right, other than his space, 13:12not a technical Mark Sanor  13:14one, a personal one, what kind of answer? Dan Brahmy  13:16I was born in France, so I'm romantic by default. Okay, I've lived there. I've no, it's true. I Yeah, so this is the beginning of the story. So 50, I live 15 years in France, right? And everything's about, like cheese love and Eiffel Tower and whatever people like about France. But there's something true about it. And I mean, I could be talking about the VC and the term sheets and the limitation preference and all the stuff that everybody knows about that probably more than I do, as a matter of fact. But the truth is, I think that we're solving one of the most complex and interesting challenges that we're facing at least nowadays, maybe in seven years will be different. But for sure, for the last two, three years and for the next couple of years ahead of us, we are in really deep, muddy waters, and the way that I want one of our, one of our board members is Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state and head of CIA Jos about to be coming in as a post listing board member. You already know that one of the one of my ways to pitch it to them was not telling them about the technicalities of becoming a NASDAQ publicly traded company, because they know everything about complexities. While I was running in diapers, the guy run the CIA, so obviously he knows more than everything that I would do in life. But I told him, I think people need to perceive that opportunity at being a shareholder at Sara some point in time, in the next couple of years, as maybe I should invest in Batman, like if we are Batman. Mark Sanor  15:01It, and you guys are running this, the French, the French coming out, and you the romantic Dan Brahmy  15:08stuff, very geeky. But the truth is, like, if we're Batman and Batman has technologies, all I'm saying is, I think people should see this as the opportunity to potentially invest and help us build the technology that can be the arsenal to bring back a little bit of more transparency for this democracy. Because right now, Gotham City is running on fumes and is looking really bad, and the and and it feels like people are losing trust, slowly losing trust. And I got, I got two children, the two boys, four and two years old. And I'm saying, Damn, by the time they became they become teenagers. What are they going to be trusting? What they'll never trust the media. They'll never trust social media. They'll never trust things that they see online. Because Mark Sanor  15:49every single No, their dad is Batman, Dan Brahmy  15:53right? So that's Batman, exactly. I don't know who's Batman son in the show, but, but that's, that's the way I that I sold it to Mike Pompeo, like I want people to invest in Batman's also Mark Sanor  16:04so questions for Batman, yes, Tony Cruz  16:13as Iron Gate Capital Advisors looked at you. Have you talked 16:15to Hamlet you save? Or Gator Greenwill  16:20I know Hamlet, I'm not sure if he's under in this specific deal. I mean, some of the, you know, some of the companies that, some of the funds that, Iron Gate is an investor, and I'm almost, like 99.9% they have evaluated. Now, obviously it's a different, you know, it's about to be a different deal than it was, you know, before an IPO. So always could be worth revising that discussion with Ty and Hannah, Mark Sanor  16:48I've got two more panelists for you. So their space is up there as well. And there's ocean space and ocean we're talking about explain, and then ELA as a fund that focuses on dual use technologies as well. So just introduce yourself. Let me start with Elena. Elena Anfimova  17:14Thank you, Mark. Hello everybody. My name is Elena, and I do Ukrainian defense technology. You probably know that Ukrainian defense Tech is a world class innovation, and the gap the capital requirement for it is massive, and the challenge, in addition to capital, is how this startups access global markets. So this is what my team is working on, how to integrate the start ups in the domestic defense ecosystem, Mark Sanor  17:52which some are calling like the new Israel of sorts. And we were just having, oh, Patrick's here. We were having lunch, and I said, Do you know who Jacques Cousteau is? And he goes, Well, yes, I've been and I invested in his films. So his grandson, Fabian, has been with us, the CEO of his company. We've invested a lot in space, but we can gain a lot more cheaply and investing in ocean based research. So maybe it's explain. Hello. Lisa Marrocchino  18:27I'm Lisa March, you know, thank you for having me join. I was just in Davos, in Ukraine, cyber tech, and technology was a big topic there, so that was super interesting for me to be there was an AI cyber conference that I attended, but what we're doing at Fabien Cousteau was the first grandson of Jacques co he. His grandfather was an ocean pioneer. I'm missing the word ocean tech from this conference. However, we need to change that. I also do believe that ocean tech is going dual use because of, well, lots of geo political reasons. So we are focusing on national security as well, and I'll explain a little bit of that. But Jacques Cousteau developed some of the first technologies to spend more time in the ocean and habitat. So he built some of what are called Ocean habitats, or really ocean research stations. And we have one in space, but we don't have any in the ocean, because the space race took off and got and left ocean behind. And as Mark mentioned, in the last 10 years, you have invested $270 billion in space and private creating a private space industry, and created, really 1700 new companies. So we really are poised to create that same kind of phenomenon in ocean tech. It reminds me I was at Goldman Sachs in technology research, and this really reminds me of, kind of the early days of technology. So his grandson kind of picked up the torch, and in 2014 lived under water for. For 31 days with five scientists did not come up to the surface because of what's called saturation technology. So he was fully saturated and lived at 20 meters or 60 feet, and did not come up to the surface for 31 days. So what happened were some phenomenal things under water. There were science experiments and kind of an acceleration of that, because you were able to dive 10 to 12 hours a day. So what we can't get back is time. We know we're at the precipice. I mean, someone mentioned a meteor here that almost hit us. I think we should be much more worried about climate change and some cataclysmic issues that are we're on the precipice of then, uh, then the media are hitting us. So I, I do believe that we we're not focused on climate change and maybe this administration and where we are today. We won't be so we will use acoustic technology, sensor technologies we've evolved from just, not just a habitat, but really thinking about an ocean technology platform where acoustics and all of those national security issues do come into play, so I'll stop there. Mark Sanor  21:08Excellent. All right, so you got a cornucopia now, space slash ocean tech we'll use and let's open up for questions. I Andrew Fisch  21:24Yes, Lisa, this is completely anecdotal, so you'll have to answer the question, and in for me, a lot of call them drums. You know, a lot of devices are being now, roaming the oceans, gathering data of all types. Is this advancing what you do as opposed to having literally people in one place? Is it complimentary? Is replace anything? Lisa Marrocchino  21:53That's a great question. We really believe that you can't just do it alone with robots, but robots are essential to amplifying and extending the reach of humans. So and this, and NASA is really studying this a lot as well, kind of this human robotic interface, if human interface, and we really, if it were true that robots could do it all, they would be the only thing on them, you know, in space. So I do believe that you really need that human interaction with robots, and we can really amplify so yes, we'll be looking at robotics, a U V S, R V s, all of those in surrounding the habitat. If you think about the habitat, is almost like the smartest node on this kind of technology ecosystem platform. So that's how we're really looking at it. There's some super cool technology that can be, that's not even out there yet, right? That can Yes, absolutely. Then they have to come back, right? And then you have to interpret the data and AI, you know, one i We heard a lot about AI, and that's one thing I'm really optimistic about. AI in ocean, there is a flood gate of so if you send out all those robots and all those sensors, are going to come back with a flood gate, even with hydro acoustic modems, there's so much information to be processed, and we know nothing about our ocean. You know, 5% has been explored. So how can we gather all that data to do to make better decisions? And that's where robotics and AI, I think, is going to make play a major role in so we're looking at all of that technology. 23:24Thank you. Other questions, Robin Blackstone  23:28yes, you know, it occurred to me that one of the factors in the ocean as well as space, is that a lot of it's not own by anybody, and so it's essentially available to be used by anyone. And it's kind of an interesting advantage. Planets would be another space like that. So in a world that's carved up already on land, there's these vast spaces which are not carved up. I was just wondering what advantage that might confer on the work that you guys are doing. Lisa Marrocchino  24:06Yeah, that's also a really good question. So we work with governments and create public private partnerships. So right now we're working in Curacao, Portugal, cap of ver very talking to people in the Middle East as well. And it is interesting. And I don't know if anyone saw there was recently an article about China having a habitat. So there is an interesting phenomenon happening, going back to dual use and national security. All of a sudden, China is interested in creating habitats at very deep levels and to do all kinds of things. So it is an open space, and I think legal will probably play a big role in this. But right now, we haven't had any issues with putting a habitat in waters outside of Curacao, Cabo Verde, Portugal and the Red Sea even there's no been no issues with like, you can't go there or you can go here, but it is a. Question, the ocean is even bigger than lots of spaces, and it's right in our back yard. So as long as we all play nice, I think, for a while, and if China accelerates what they're doing in the ocean, I hope and pray that that will help the US come to terms with investing more and the ocean, 25:27just Jaha Cummings  25:32on the question of, I guess, areas for American city research, if you consider micro Nisa, I lived there for 20 years, and the whole northern Pacific we have our contact agreement, which pretty much denies rite of passage to anyone else, right? Lisa Marrocchino  25:45I love that. Yeah, all areas are open, or we're open to any area really that would that where we need to study the ocean, and really that's almost everywhere, because we haven't studied it at Gator Greenwill  26:00all. On the question of geo politics and the ocean, one I think still under sung aspect is that right now, an enormous amount of the world internet traffic travels underneath the sea, and we've already started to see Russian and Chinese vessels in the Baltic and the South China Seas, you know, imping upon Japan, or in some cases, it seems, even sabotage cables running into various countries that they have issues with, so that, you know, that's a live area, and sort of, you know, the oceans have Been a commons for the transmission of data and information for a long time that now seems to be more and more contested in the current moment of power competition, Mark Sanor  26:53one second, and you could just say, What? What? What's the technology or company in Ukraine or related to Ukraine, because you're not all investing in Ukrainian companies that you think is most exciting we should be aware of. Well, 27:10naval drones. Elena Anfimova  27:21Oh, yeah, they're Ukraine is the first country in the world to sort of create effective naval drones. And on December 31 actually, Ukrainian naval drones. Magura down two Russian helicopters, the first presidents in the world. Hard to say it's a record. It's still loss of life, and it's still horrible, but technologically speaking, a very cheap drone, comparatively to any missile destroys a helicopter to helicopter, and the third was damaged, but made it be back to the base. Another case, one Ukrainian drones destroyed $130 million missile system. So the mind boggling phenomenon about these drones and the drone warfare is that this very cheap, again, comparatively speaking, devices destroy multi, sometimes 100 million dollar systems I just came back from the Emirates, I went to this I deck, if you guys know, it's like the largest defense exhibition. And there were all these massive, shiny toys. And I was walking, walking by and thinking, you know, like a 10,000 drone can destroy it. So I guess what we're still grasping is how war far has changed, and dominating military stockpiles are still kind of the World War Two, slash Cold War technology, and what needs to happen right now is restocking in pivoting to defense technology right now in Ukraine, the war that's happening is a war of drones. It's not even people anymore. I had a like innovative aim in system for guns, you know, for actual soldiers to do something with. And I had to drop it because there were no soldiers anymore fighting, you know, each other. It's drones and swarms of drones. So. Boom, and there is a Ukrainian company called swam. I did not invest in it, but that that's a really break through technology. Then another, and pretty much like the group of tech that's really promising, is autonomous weapons. So it's autonomous remote control weapons that you can control from 1000s of miles, and they help to save lives and pretty much like it's equipment destroying equipment. Given how horrendous the concept of physical warfare is in 21st century, it's still better than you know this mince meat attacks, I think it's called that Russia really prefers and practices to this day in Ukraine, we do not have the human resources to sort of mimic this strategy. And we value human life, so we really prefer robots to fight. So it's autonomous weapons, autonomous drones, and also electronic warfare, because what's happening is that when you face a technologically advanced enemy is that there is this jam in spoofing and GPS de night environments, so the navigation systems become very prominent anti drone electronic warfare. So how do you protect your drone from being jammed and spoofed so that it completes its mission. The interesting part is that American drones did not do well in Ukraine at all. They were expensive and glitchy because they could not perform with that kind of electronic warfare that Russia has, and let's say, out of 10, Mission only two mission are complete, whereas Ukrainian drones can complete eight out of 10. There is one. Mark Sanor  32:14Compare that to the US technology today. How far are we? Because we haven't done this every day, every hour, like you Elena Anfimova  32:21are well. So this is what I'm saying, and a lot of feedback is kind of just like a second hand information, right? Because it's not published anywhere. The only sort of public media account of this that I found is a Wall Street Journal article about that, how glitchy and how ineffective American drones were tested in Ukraine on the battlefield. Because you see, the thing is, is even for AI to function well, it needs to be fed lots of data. Ukraine is pretty much the only place where you can get the data, and that pretty much accounts for why Ukrainian drones are so much more efficient than any other drones unless they are tested on the battle field in Ukraine. So for any drone company right now to be you know, anything, they have to be there, there. So is 33:21this something you're looking Gator Greenwill  33:22at? Absolutely. We're active investors in the conference system space, happy to discuss more especially Speaker 5  33:32so we are almost ready for breakouts and refreshments. Carl Pro  33:37But I had a quick question on the what I call your misinformation or BS software, I spent my lunch time reading through like 25 or 30 websites to try to pick out the same story and read them and all to find out where the truth is. Your system would probably be great to have some independent calculation of current events, without the biases. Dan Brahmy  34:10We have been, not we've been we've been dreaming of eventually creating that stamp of trust within us that we that we spoke about. So the short answer, what you said is, this is exactly what we're aiming at, which is being able to understand whether the source, so the actor who's pushing and propagating a certain narrative or a certain angle, whether it can be a trusted source. So is it a is it a real person? Is it a real journalist? Is it a fake journalist? Is it a but a sock puppet patrol, a spam account, you name it. There's another 10,000 we don't need to get into all the categories, but, but I think that that gives you know one portion of the answer that you're looking for, and and then we explain, just to give you slightly longer answer, we we sort of decipher what we call the behavioral patterns. So. So think about an MRI that says, how, how powerful and how fast does a piece of information fly out over social media? Is it only within the social media realm, or is it flying from social media, from Twitter to The Wall Street Journal and then back to Facebook, and then going back to tick tock. And then what kind of formats, right? So the speed and the strength, and then the third part of your question would be about the authenticity and the nature of the content itself. So not just the similarity, and is it copy paste, but actually, is it? Is it a deep fake? Is it is, you know, is a computer generating the pictures and the videos that we're looking at right now, and then you aggregate all this sort of answer into, should you ignore what you're seeing, watching, reading? Should you track it closely, because it might become a threat, slash an opportunity, depending which side you're on the scale, or the last point, which is, should you be so worried that you need to mitigate against that immediately? We you know you spoke about the drones, and we spoke about the the the Navy and how we could potentially leverage the unexplored territories. We've talked to three and four star generals, and we've talked to Secretaries of Navy, and we've talked to all these incredibly smart and powerful people that have the almighty power to shift territories and shift decision making process. And the funny thing is, they have made very costly decisions based on misinformation. They shifted entire armies, not small military operations. They have shifted dozens of planes, dozens of naval ships and 1000s of soldiers. What Mark Sanor  37:01so the first, so the first saner. His name was Sanor, who was Prussian. You know, we had a lot of hessian troops. So Michael Sanor was the aide de camp. Eventually, he was known as the Flying Dutchman. He stole the white horse. But for the battle of York title, it led to the victory, partly, where the French, because they were in New Jersey, where I live, their ovens kept baking the bread, and that was that deception to the troops. They fell. They're clearly still still up there. They're still eating when instead they they moved around and caught them by surprise. So we love the French information. And it was interesting that Macron came over to see Trump. But they will talk about these things, the breakouts. This is how we do breakouts. This comes this is a slide from 2011 12, when I would do these breakouts for Dennison. Anybody from Denison? You're close enough Denison people here, usually there's always one Michigan room makes little sister Council. But we would get together in round tables and then, and it would be the round table for fashion in New York, or for finance. And then we eventually get 300 people. And there were segments that we now have a round table for each of these panels. And like one physically is over there. It's probably a popular one next to the bar. Another one's over here, and we have the ones out there, out first, mingle, you know, stretch, move around again, and then I'll put on the screen where the round tables will be. And they will the format is basically no one dominates the conversation. There's no like alpha that just takes over. It's a round table. Everybody should introduce themselves what they're doing so that everybody knows and we all try to help each other. It's the same thing we did for the alumni. No one's asking for money. The school isn't asking for money. We're here to help each other. The same spirit here and for our family office world. So if someone's got some insights, you want some questions, let's ask the panel a little more information. You know, Alyssa, like you're in the ocean world, right? You should be a guest in this, well, deep tech, ocean tech world. And, you know, everybody should know each other. And and then we come back and we say two things, what did you learn? What are your takeaways? We'll come back here one more time, and one or two people will speak about it. And one of those takeaways is like, or is like, is there something we should do? Should we do a deep dive on ocean tech? Should we do a deep dive on, you Speaker 4  39:50know, may I say one more thing, just to give plug the ocean short time you don't Mark Sanor  39:55have a chance to do that. Okay? This is just the principles of it. Okay? And you want to know more about ocean Tech, I think Lisa will be near that bar over there. And so let's let's break. I'll come back to Mike 10 minutes or so. Let you know where the breakouts will be. Do the breakouts meet the people who are relevant to you. And that's that magic for what we do. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Panel. I'm joined our 361 firm community of investors and thought leaders. We have a lot of events created by the community as we collaborate on investments and philanthropic interests. Join us. You. You can subscribe to various 361 events and content at https://361firm.com/subs. For reference: Web: www.361firm.com/homeOnboard as Investor: https://361.pub/shortdiagOnboard Deals 361: www.361firm.com/onbOnboard as Banker: www.361firm.com/bankersEvents: www.361firm.com/eventsContent: www.youtube.com/361firmWeekly Digests: www.361firm.com/digest

FinTech and Digital Assets Panel - at 361Firm's NY Tech Summit Feb. 25, 2025SUMMARY KEYWORDSFinTech, digital assets, blockchain, stable coins, tokenization, payments, regulatory policy, venture capital, AI, decentralized finance, financial infrastructure, crypto winter, institutional investors, innovation, emerging markets.SPEAKERSMark Sanor, Brian Neirby, Speaker 6, Bill Deuchler, Ben Narasin, Rich Sobel, Speaker 4, Margaret Butler of BakerHostetler, Stephen Burke, Speaker 2, Will Wolf Mark Sanor  00:00But we're very I'll come see in a second. We're very lucky to be here. Baker, host, teller, I once practiced law in Cleveland, Ohio. Baker, we love Cleveland, and that's Baker's head quarters, and we are here at their home. And I'd like Margaret to say a few words. Margaret Butler of BakerHostetler  00:21Mark, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. It's really a very few words, because all I want to say is thank you to Olga. I hope she's here for connecting me with Mark. And thank you, Mark, for bringing all these amazing people here. I have had such an amazing day listening to all of you, and I Well, thank you. I love all of you. I'm Margaret Butler. I am the head of the financial services industry team here at Baker, Hostetler. And so I want to thank my team, definitely. Joe Matteo, who's been putting everything together, Cynthia, Kevin e who is here, my Managing Partner, George Sam bollitus, who was also around for making this possible for all of us and for me. Because, like I said, I really just enjoy this so much. Thank you all for being here and get to the good stuff. I don't know if you need this one. I 01:18don't know how he has it set up, probably. So 01:22thank you for having us, Bill Deuchler  01:27I guess so. So this is Mark style. He just leaves the room and lets the panelists take over. Okay, so we can go ahead and do introductions when you talking about digital assets and fin tech and well, no, hey, I'm buying you time. Mark Sanor  01:47Get mark out of the way. 01:51Go ahead. Okay, Mark Sanor  01:55that was your 2024, go ahead. Sorry. Go right. Bill Deuchler  01:59So I'll introduce myself, and then hand the mic over to my colleagues up here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Bill D clear. Currently, I serve as trustee for our municipal police pension fund. I've been on the board there for eight years. We have more of a traditional portfolio, but more recently, we've we have an active conversation, and actually an allocation for private equity that we've yet to fund, private credit, which has been funded and specialty real estate, which is another asset class. Previously, I was CIO for two two family offices, and have been around the institutional world quite a bit, and also currently advise a venture capital fund in the fin tech and AI space that has some very interesting characteristics, and I'll talk a little bit about that generally, as far as what an allocator looks for. But I will hand the mic over to my esteemed friend and colleague, Rich Sobel, Rich Sobel  02:55thanks. It's nice to be here. Nice to see everybody I am kind of wearing multiple hats. The hat that brings me up here is I'm a founder partner in a $50 million early stage fund that invests in blockchain and web three fin tech fund was set up three years ago, four years ago, I knew relatively little about this, and it's been a tough couple of years in the digital asset space. We went through what some people would call crypto winter. That's over, and I think we're coming into a period that could arguably be called a tipping point, kind of a renaissance, in the penetration of these technologies and tools and business models that are going to disrupt major markets, and we'll talk a little bit more about that catalyst. One of the catalysts is the change in regulatory policy. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about that. So I'm quite excited about the changes that come but it's clearly a risky area. So it's not some place you put the majority of your of your assets, but it's something that I'm quite excited about, and I'm happy to share my perspectives. Will Wolf  04:18Yeah, thanks. Thanks everyone for being here and for having me. I This is me and my partner, Vanessa's first time here. My name is Will. I'm a managing partner and co founder of arc capital, which is an early stage Digital Asset Fund we just got off the ground last year, and I met Mark, I think, last week or two weeks ago, and we joined and so this is our first time here. So Thanks for welcoming us. We we are basically inter I am also a fin tech co founder. Back in 2012 I co founded a company in the fin tech space. We went through Y Combinator and ended up getting acquired into Airbnb, and I manage some of their back end payments infrastructure. So I know a bit about the the payment rails, Rails, at least in the West, and sort of the fin tech ecosystem. Them, but we're very excited at arch capital to be investing in what we think is the future of financial infrastructure globally, which is web three, and what's being built there, all Mark Sanor  05:11right, this is what happens when I don't lead off. So this is good. It's good. But what I want are insights. What are you seeing that we don't know? Or what scares or excites, hopefully both. Rich Sobel  05:25I know in some of the areas that we're focused, there's tremendous change going on under the surface that's starting to come out of the ground. And one of those areas is payments, and payments using Blockchain and stable coins, is a 1,000% improvement on the old, incumbent way of making payments. It's particularly impactful when payments are going across border to emerging markets, which is reducing, or, in fact, sometimes eliminating, the volatility and risk in emerging markets currencies, which is making the world closer, so incumbents are being disrupted, and we're invested in a company I spoke about, I think, back in December, that is making remittances to Africa, and they're using the data on the chain to help those people who are making payments improve their credit scores, which opens up all kinds of new financial products to the UN banked folks right here in America. And so there are growing number of companies that are doing that. Some of the incumbents, like Visa and others, are coming around and looking to partner in this space. And the second area I'll mention, and then I'll leave, there's many areas, so I'm clearly leaving some out of respect for my esteemed colleagues. Here is tokenization of assets. So there is a better model for holding and trading securities, funds and real assets, and the tokenization model now works, and so it's been held up by the US SEC and the litigation and impediments that they had established. But those litigations, last week, they dropped the litigation against coin base, which is really like the red light, and they're also changing policy. So there's an executive order going on that Trump signed in his first week. Within 180 days, he expects a whole new set of policies to be proposed, and that's going to make major financial institutions see a green light to move more actively into this space, on bringing assets on chain, democratizing access, improving liquidity. I mean, it's like the frog in the frying pan that if you know people don't see it on a day to day, week to week, basis, but I assure you that within five years, there's going to be dramatic changes. And this year, 2024 there was one and a half billion, one and a half trillion, of tokenized assets. Conservative estimates put it at 16 trillion by 2030 so it's really going to change the way we deal with financial assets, and eventually all assets. I Mark Sanor  08:10like everything. Just didn't quite understand the frog and the frying plan. You don't see it 08:15on a day to day basis, the frog in the well, you're not from Will Wolf  08:17Ohio, the boiling pot of water. Yeah, there you go. No, I agree with that completely. I think, I definitely do think that stable coins in this ecosystem, people sort of outside the ecosystem, don't appreciate maybe what's going on there. You know, we're very close with the teams at both Master Card and visa that have very intelligent blockchain web, three teams building very interesting things. A lot of people don't know. Visa has been settling actual, real payments on both Ethereum and Solana for almost two years, and they're growing that volume, and they, you know, that gets you to on Solana, 400 millisecond settlement times on global payments for visa. So that's pretty powerful for them, and that this is stuff that's really happening. And I also think in terms of the new administration in the US, I think they may not fully understand this yet, but I think the stable coin market right now, the is a couple 100 billion dollars, but the rate that it's been growing is, I mean, I think a couple years ago it was 10s of billions or less. And this is a new source of global demand for dollars, which is important with what's going on in sort of our treasury markets right now. You know, circle whole, which is one of the stable coin providers, holds 100 $50 billion of treasuries. And if that gets to a trillion or 2 trillion, that makes them pretty important. And people all over the world want dollar stable coins instead of their African currency or their South East Asian currency, and they can get it because it's just, you just need an internet connection. And so I think this is very powerful for the dollar, for the US system. I think the administration is going to realize that. And I think even broader, what the technology means is, over time, getting rid of middle men everywhere, globally in the financial system. I. Them because we don't need them anymore, and so this is going to take multiple decades, but I think that's the inevitable end game. Bill Deuchler  10:10One of the central themes, from an allocator standpoint, is investing in innovation. And you know, both ourselves and some of my colleagues from a much larger pension system were quite interested. You know, back actually around 18 or so in the blockchain space. Back then, it was much more nascent. Not much was going on, except people knew that Bitcoin was used by drug dealers and other nefarious schemes. But none the less, the idea of investing in innovation and seeing the kind of radical transformation to fundamental systems, to our economy was, was the attraction. And I think that things somewhat got put on pause with the FTX debacle and the crypto winter, but now things have matured considerably. And so you see, you know, the tremendous growth of the stable coin market and the ability to transact much more efficiently there, it's a great opportunity to participate in something that it's truly going to change the fundamental systems of how we interact. And I think also from an investor standpoint, both on the fin tech side, as well as the blockchain side, you can see various companies that have good ideas and who can master the go to market exercise. Well, all of a sudden, at very, very early stages of their growth, they are actually revenue positive. And if you can find companies that are revenue positive, and you can still get in at the seed and pre seed stage, that is a tremendous advantage, because then you can track them in a way that you can't track companies that are still pre revenue and and that's the whole venture capital exercise is either an exercise in the law of large numbers or just spray and pray, which is how it turns out. And there are very few who do it, but I think that this space facilitates a much more disciplined way to attack venture capital. And again, as an allocator, I've seen just two firms who have been able to master that. One is a master at understanding the law of large numbers and how to put the statistics in your favor. The other one goes after these types of companies, as I say, that are revenue producing and being able to act more like incubators or not. So I think that that again, you know, for an allocator perspective, the idea to be able to participate in significant innovation and then also seeing unique circumstances of the individual companies that you can then use to your advantage and build out your portfolios in a more robust way. There's two really great opportunities associated with this space, Rich Sobel  13:02I think it's probably clear to everybody here, but you know, what we do is not pure and simple crypto, and what we're doing is not trading currencies and trading staking or tokens on the secondary market. That's a different business. There are people who are good at it. We don't think that that's nearly as compelling as investing in companies and protocols that are building applications and tools that leverage the infrastructure that's been built. And so those are what we're looking at. Are more application, asset, light businesses that don't require a lot of money until until you figure out if it's going to work. So the risk return on those types of venture early stage investments is much more interesting. Again, I'm not speaking just for us, but I'm speaking for a class of investors. There are relatively few early stage GPS doing this, and most of them don't have a three fund track record. So it's an emerging market. I spent 20 plus years of my life working in another emerging market. That's how I ended up here. I have kind of an appetite for risk and comfort working in new environments where the model is you really have to underwrite the people and understand their business model. If they can't succinctly tell you what their business model they probably haven't figured it out yet, and they might, but it's a much higher risk. So we're investing in what I call my partners. Don't really like this, but because I'm kind of an older guy in this team, I call it the App Store for web three. So you're basically thinking about the phone comes out, the infrastructure is in place. Now you want the tools that solve real problems, and those are coming. And just to put a little icing on the cake, if you look at the NVCA data in 2021 a lot of money was raised. It was a. Hyped market, and in the last couple of years, relatively little capital has been raised for what they broadly call crypto and digital asset venture. So on top of all the other things that have been putting pressure on companies and funds, the lack of new capital flowing in creates a very interesting dynamic for capital that becomes available. So I fundamentally think there's a combination of reasons going to make it quite interesting. But as Tim Draper said to a group here, when people say, How's it going with your early stage deals? He said it's like raising kids. It's going to take a long time till you really know. But we're proud about the way things are going. We like talking about the portfolio. That's the way of giving people a tangible idea about the kinds of things that are coming out of the ground that will change our lives and our kids lives before you really know it. Will Wolf  15:54Yeah, I like that last part you talked about. One of the things we think about is, or a phrase I like to use is, every fin tech startup today is a crypto company. Some of them just don't know it yet, because I think that is what the new features that we'll be able to push the envelope and provide new functionality are going to be built on, like we've already got the stripes, and these guys that have, like, milked everything out of the current like legacy financial system with t plus one settlement and stuff like that. And so to push the envelope, I think they're going to have to offer crypto services underneath. And that's what I'm excited about, is to see, you know, PayPal now is another example. They have their own stable coin, and they're trying to integrate more utility into their consumer app, which I think is a little more interesting than, like the visa Master Card stuff, because they're not really targeting consumers, but we're seeing it with PayPal. Stripe, you know, I mentioned earlier, just did a billion dollar cash acquisition of a stable Coin Company, and stripe is arguably the, you know, the expert of the traditional credit card and payment rails, and they understood the value of this new ecosystem that they were willing to pay up for it. So I think that speaks a lot. But I think we're going to see a lot of even just traditional fin techs offering new products that wouldn't be possible without crypto rails, and I don't think a lot of their users are going to need to know or care that they're using stable coins or blockchains underneath. It will just be transparent, and we'll be able to do much more than we can today. Mark Sanor  17:13So questions to this group as we talked about fin tech 2019 we were in Detroit, and the guy runs a swimming school, and he said, even swimming school, everybody's a fin tech company, because, yeah, you interact with a customer. So I guess there's so by definition, every company is a crypto company. Potentially. Vince got a question. It's Ben Narasin  17:41going to push back a little, I think, stable coins and powering and amazing things. Basically, it's an alternative rail with no real cost associated, compared to the existing stuff and remittances. But I've always bridled at the term web three. The web changed everything for everybody. I'd love any of you didn't tell me anything that web three has changed in a material way. There's speculative currencies, there's meme coins, also speculative. There's an enormous amount of speculative products. Stable coin, though, to me, feels like a totally separate thing, and fractionalized ownership of assets is interesting, but I could just as easily do that in Oracle server. You have to trust me, if you're going to buy a 16 of the Mona Lisa from me. So I'm still questing for I did one blockchain related investment in 2014 I've never done any sense. I just can't find the the there. There other than stable coin transfers. Mark Sanor  18:36I love it when we don't all agree. Rich Sobel  18:39First of all, since 2017 the kind of power of the technology of blockchain has improved about 1,000% so the things that you could do in 2014 is kind of very, very insignificant compared to what the technology can do today. Second of all is, everybody talks about this boom on AI and how great AI is, and how much capital is flowing in, how many new businesses are having an AI component to them. But for AI to really work, you need to have smart contracts and blockchain based tools to help these agents interact with each other, for agents to make payments to each other for these automatic things to work. Software driven by blockchain is a key determinant to a big part of its pulling it along. And actually, interestingly, William and Vanessa and my partners and I are invested in a company together, nap the AI, that sort of services that space social is another one of the spaces that is allowing decentralized use of content and information to give users more control and allow users to essentially retain more of the economic value. So in. Say 10 years models like Facebook will not be monopolizing, that those tools will be decentralized. So it's 20:09been 1,000% better since 2017 we're 10 years past that. Again, eight. Only where? Rich Sobel  20:17Okay, okay, listen, in the United States. I'm sorry, in the United States, the regulatory policy has been so hostile that they have essentially litigated and driven money and entrepreneurship away from this. So I think we're when you build a building, first you go down, and then it comes out of the ground. When you have a plant, first it goes down, you build the infrastructure, and then it comes out of the ground. So if we meet in a year or three, I think you'll be buying me lunch. Will Wolf  20:47So first off, I think it's a very good, good criticism. Oh, can I answer this one? Yeah, I think, I think it's a good criticism that that we get a lot, I think from a Western centric view, I think it's, it's fairly valid. Because I think, you know, for all the bad things I said earlier. Our financial systems work, you know, but I think there are those in, say, Venezuela or almost any African country, where they are just devouring stable coins us, dollar denominated stable coins, because their currencies are devaluing by 15% to the dollar, they can hold a stable coin just on their phone with internet connection, the government can't stop them from doing it, and they can get 8% yield in US dollar terms, while their currency goes down 15% a year. And that's literally saving people's lives. For a more anecdotal example, you know, there have been people. There was one, one girl, specifically that I know, did an interview, and she was able to escape Afghanistan with her family's wealth because she put it into Bitcoin and wrote down her 12 seed words where, you know, they couldn't find it when she left. So she could actually bring her wealth and, like, have a family somewhere else. So I think these things are happening, and it's, it's not Western centric, mainly the stable coin, which is that one was Bitcoin with the Afghanistan girl, but, yeah, sort Ben Narasin  21:59of like Charlie Munger argument the dollar is freely available all over the world, and there are many ways to hold it, but this is a pH I do like stable coin, as I led with, yeah, I think that's rational. I don't I think the dollar is not available 22:13to Speaker 6  22:16Zimbabwe. And my thing is, I'm with him to where I'm going to push back as well, especially on the decentralization aspect of it, because you have large institutional players who are who see it as a threat to their to existing business models, right, and are innovating in that space in order to maintain some type of central control over what happens in this area. So I'm kind of also hesitant on saying, oh, that's going to decentralize everything, and you're going to completely eliminate middle men. I think they're just going to transform into something where they have some some grasp over the transactions. Will Wolf  23:01I also think it's a valid point. I don't know specifically, if you're talking about banks, Mark Sanor  23:05can you disagree with somebody not joking? Will Wolf  23:07Well, that doesn't that doesn't mean that I agree with it. I think it's a valid point. It's true. That's true. But I think, you know, part of me, I like that, maybe the Trojan horse analogy. But if you've been following, like with the new administration, a bunch has come out. I don't know if you've heard the term operation choke point 2.0 you know, we had silver gate bank go under, and it's become clear, and basically factual, that it didn't really fail. The Fed forced them to shut down by stopping them from doing crypto business. And I think we've seen now that there are over 47 banks in the last two years in the US that wanted to offer crypto products proactively, but the FDIC, and the FDIC shut them down and didn't let them do that. So I think to say that they don't want these things, you know, I think maybe some of them don't understand that it may ultimately destroy their businesses very far down the road. And maybe I'm wrong and they won't. So that's where I get the Trojan horse example. But I think a lot of these businesses want to offer these, whether it's a Bitcoin product or a stable coin product, to their customers getting involved, because there is Speaker 6  24:06a risk to the existing Speaker 4  24:10business model, right? So they're hedging Exactly. So that kind of makes my Brian Neirby  24:13point slightly different, pivot on the conversation. So we have what the state of Utah, Wisconsin, I know there's another one in there that's Louisiana, or this their treasury secretaries, you know, backing a crypto reserve, right? So those are three. We know that Don Junior loves crypto. We know that senior loves crypto. We know that Bobby loves crypto. So we have some tail winds coming out of this new administration. You. So I'm a nerd. I love the blockchain from a tech standpoint, I love the utilization and elasticity of Bitcoin. In particular, I believe all roads lead to Bitcoin. You walk around Istanbul, you see i. Are tickers everywhere of what's happening within all the coins. What's it going to take for the US to get to that point? Bill Deuchler  25:12You raise an excellent point, because since, since we are the world reserve currency, and because our economy, arguably, is the most robust in the world. A lot of the advantages of digital don't aren't readily apparent to us, but I think it's, as will has pointed out, if you're at all outside the US, if you are definitely in in a third world country, the advantage of the decentralized currency is huge. It is the litter, literally, night and day. And so I, I hate to say that it would be a crisis that would cause that, you know, to all of a sudden the light bulb go on. But it could very well be, but we're in a very enviable situation. I think the opportunity for the US is to be able to take advantage of all the features that digital offers and be able to build it into the system. The one thing that I'll say, that I've been saying for a real long time, is that one does have to be careful about Central Bank digital currencies, because digital currencies are programmable money, and if a central bank issues it, number one, it's tied to the monetary policy of that central bank and the state authority that oversees it. The other thing is that they can, for better or for worse, direct or Yeah, or imp, thank you. How the currency is used, and it is so easy. You know, everybody says, oh, micro monetary policy. Wouldn't that be just terrific, because then we can target like certain areas of the economy where it needs to be spent, things like that. Think about your bank account. All of a sudden you have digital currency in there. The next morning, you wake up and you don't so digital central bank digital currencies, will compromise freedom. They will compromise privacy in ways that we have no idea other than that. So I think kind of that's great. It's the decentralization aspect of it that is so critical for a real successful Mark Sanor  27:21so look, before you know, it's 330 just Stephen Burke  27:23on that bill. Isn't the bank financial settlements pushing for such beneficial currencies? Yeah, Speaker 2  27:33yeah. Certainly the the operational characteristics you know, are good, but one Mark Sanor  27:38so every, every quarter we revisit this subject. So it's time to revisit it. I Will Wolf  27:44think, I think they are and I think they will happen elsewhere. I think they're very unlikely to happen in the United States, at the Federal Reserve. Because what people usually mean, I think, by a central bank digital currency is the retail, the end user, you and I would have accounts directly at the Fed on this system. It would get rid of the banks entirely, like JP Morgan Chase would be gone, right? Like, we don't need them anymore. You would just have accounts directly with the Fed, because, because, other than that, the dollar is a central bank digital currency already. I mean, 98% of the dollars are digital. They just have to flow through the retail bank. But only the only the banks can have accounts with the Fed, not you or I, and so the banks own the Fed, so they're not going to let the Fed do a central bank digital currency, because they don't want to kill themselves. So that's that's my take. Mark Sanor  28:28Okay, so there will be a break out soon, and you can hammer this these questions, and we'll come back and have a de brief, and we'll have a I'll be here again, but let's thank this panel for kicking off the fin tech, digital. Now I'm joined our 361 firm community of investors and thought leaders. We have a lot of events created by the community as we collaborate on investments and philanthropic interests. Join us. You. You can subscribe to various 361 events and content at https://361firm.com/subs. For reference: Web: www.361firm.com/homeOnboard as Investor: https://361.pub/shortdiagOnboard Deals 361: www.361firm.com/onbOnboard as Banker: www.361firm.com/bankersEvents: www.361firm.com/eventsContent: www.youtube.com/361firmWeekly Digests: www.361firm.com/digest

Consumer, Media, Travel Tech - 361Firm NY Tech Summit Feb. 25, 2025SUMMARY KEYWORDSimmersive entertainment, community building, AI potential, mental health, social isolation, technology impact, addiction treatment, digital media, fintech innovations, therapeutic applications, virtual reality, oxytocin release, social cohesion, AI-powered platforms, community healingSPEAKERS Chris Lawes, Peter Rafelson, Mark Sanor, Marcos Isaac, MJ Gottlieb, Speaker 1, Jeff ZawadskyMark Sanor  00:00We're going to have a little more fun. We're going to talk about media as it enters the tech world travel. We're going to talk about immersive entertainment, growing communities with MJ community. That's enough. That's I mean, to kick us off. I just do want to show that 361 is actually finally getting with the times. You don't, you won't, you will soon, at some point, access this of how you hopefully you still need me as a human at some point or my teams. But we're going to get mark out of the way in 2025, with that. That's the That's the theme. So you'll see, actually, this is a good example. This is the domes. You can see. You can when you come on here, you will see what it is we're talking about, or you can see what kind of deal it is, what they're solving for here we pitched in Miami. You can ask questions of it. You can provide insights and all these things. So I say that to that's where we're heading our own. We're trying to move with the zeitgeist. But let's is there you got it. So since you've got it, why don't you share an insight as technology? That's a great picture, right there? Really exciting, how technology is scaring and exciting your worlds? MJ Gottlieb  01:43Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the things that scares the hell out of me is the ability for technology. So technology has the ability to make the world a better place, or it has the ability to destroy and so it depends upon, you know, whose hands you put it in, you know, and what you're doing, you know, I have a community of about 300,000 members in sobriety and addiction, and with the whole goal of bringing people together and healing, right? And we had some amazing conversations on AI and how AI is making the world a better place. And my first question is, okay, in the wrong hands, how can AI hurt? So it's the same conversation here. So that's what scares me. What excites me is text ability to bring communities together. I don't know if you guys remember, there's this great documentary, I think it's called Blue Zones, and they talked about how people could live Centurions past 100 years old. And what is it about, you know, and you looked and in a lot of the they're eating worse and all this. And it's community. And so what excites me is that, the fact that when you bring affinity groups together and can create community, people live longer. And so if the community is the answer to so many problems, from health to healing, then we need to start leaning in to more community and affinity based tech. So that's what scares me. That's what excites me. Chris Lawes  03:17Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I'm definitely on the double edge sword side of this. So my world is very much immersive technology and media and the domes, but also holograms and, you know, these different kind of virtual reality experiences. And the end result of all that is basically making making content experiences and gaming experiences that trick the brain more and more effectively into being realistic and into being real, which is very powerful and very positive for teaching and training or for social cohesion and building, you know, trust and intimacy relationships and can be very powerful for for therapeutic applications, but also obviously it could be used to, you know, we joke around in the immersive industry about like horror films that you know you really don't want to make, like the ring or these kinds of, like classic, you know, mall horror movies for like VR headsets and domes, because it the technology is to the point where you can actually, like, Scar someone You know, and truly traumatize them, which, you know, shows the power of the medium, but obviously shows how, you know, dangerous it is. And same thing with AI, you can make, you know, all these new technologies can make it so realistic and so convincing and so engaging that you know, you have to really keep track of your mind, and, you know, pay attention to what you're doing. So unfortunately, I think that that's going to happen for better or for worse. And so companies that come in need to be good stewards of that technology, and we make sure we use it for good purpose. Mark Sanor  04:53So we have a Zoomer and Peter, do you want to introduce yourself? Peter Rafelson  05:05Thanks, guys, yeah, so I spent my entire career at the cross roads of media and tech and finance. I come from three generations of Hollywood entertainment, but I got deeply into copyright and production. I've written 30 number one songs, including open your heart from Madonna. But what happened was I started managing all of my own copyrights and rights, and eventually I had to learn how to administrate and my sense and do all the legal work. Well, technology really helped me to create a platform which allows the more stringent corporations to accept the proof of title, all of the regulations and restrictions that large companies have, and really fin tech innovations that have driven so much advancement. What does this matter to investors? It's crucial to understand that for the first time, the scaling of digital media is is everywhere, right? Whether it's just on a brand or raising money, it offers an opportunity to invest in ways that never existed before. I'll give you a great example in in creating large scale projects like films and television IP, it was hard for people to invest in in smaller participation. Now with tokens and NFT and funding and group funding and crowd sourcing of crypto, those fractionalized ownerships of these of these titles can really include many more cross border, international, global investments and the early adopters, the ones who get in earliest, are going to really benefit them. I'm Mark Sanor  07:17going to call another audible. I'm going to bring music community together. This is to this was the you can see the screen. This was our mental health. Oh, I MJ Gottlieb  07:34don't think there's anybody that I've met who hasn't had a friend a family member Mark Sanor  07:39who just we have shape. I'll just show this real quick. I believe it. I'm not as adept at this. Need to be. But this was the lead singer of corn, right? The guitarist, yeah, who basically went into places. People that were that were just drugs couldn't help. Therapists couldn't help. You know what helped music, use Speaker 1  08:04and treatment has grown and changed, as you can imagine the early days of a a you might see in them. So Mark Sanor  08:10immersive entertainment, community and what you do this is these are just some common themes. Now, if we could just all this, do this on an airplane. Now, tell us what you're doing with technology. Marcos Isaac  08:24Well, if you want to get that technical on the health side, I would say that there are two things that are great for you that make your life better. One is having more serotonin in your body and more oxytocin. If you want to get a little bit technical, as opposed to dopamine, Mark Sanor  08:43play more bracket sports, ping pong? Yeah, Marcos Isaac  08:46absolutely. That's why I decided to do more tennis than golf, because it's great for your brains and for your body. But the reason I'm trying what I'm trying to say when I relate this to travel, for example, people are spending a lot of time having these experiences. Instead of traveling on social media and learning everything about everything, my son was traveling with me. He wanted to go to Rome once last year, and I took him, and he was I've seen it all. I knew it all. There was no excitement anymore, because he had seen everything in with the social media. However, that's on one side, and what the way I look at is that you're getting a lot of dopamine, if you want to call it that way, from the social media looking at it, you're getting a kick out of out of that he enjoyed, for example, talking to kids about what he was experiencing. But at the same time, the thing that worries me is that we lose the passion for travel, to get curious and to get to experience things, and that is what helps mental health. Among other things, it's really positive to for you to have that curiosity on that side. That's what scares me the most. What Mark Sanor  09:53that was pretty elegant. Well done there. Marcos Isaac  09:58What? What I be Well, I think it could be great if we have aI with us in every day. We will have less time to work, but hopefully we will have more time to travel. So that could be a positive. So that's my hope. MJ Gottlieb  10:14Yeah, I was gonna say, and that Wes was talking about oxytocin and the release of the chemicals and one of the brands we're working with, because we partner with a number of sobriety and wellness brands. We were talking at this company called Brain tap, which is the top brain fitness app in the world. And I was talking to the founder, guess what we're trying to do, and what people are trying to do is, how do we how do we actually trigger the very chemicals that were that we needed when we were addicted to drugs, right? And just to be clear, 300 million people suffering from alcohol use disorder and 38% of adult Americans, so we're not talking about a small amount of people, and it's getting much worse. And so if we could figure out ways to trigger those same chemicals that oxytocin or trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, Mark Sanor  11:07then we could literally on what's that? How's that going? Unbelievable. So MJ Gottlieb  11:10this, this company brain tap, and these anxiety wearables and all these companies that we're bringing into the lucid marketplace is showing how we can literally hack and get in to fire those same com think about when you go and exercise and you don't want to exercise, and you're you're crawling into the gym, and you feel horrible, and then after you're out of there, you feel like a million dollars. Peter, Mark Sanor  11:33I just saw Peter's hand up, Peter, you want to make a comment. Peter Rafelson  11:36You know? I agree with what everybody is saying. I think that the other aspect to art, entertainment, technology, music, is the fact that this is a great and very common way to build bridges and community. And God knows that the mental health isolation is is, you know, the enemy. So I found that I build the platform Digi ramp, which is the digital rights and asset management platform. However, the greatest benefit that it offers to so many people that are being more and more isolated through technology is the ability to connect, communicate and collaborate, and that too, I think, also really supports the health and the benefits of what you speak. Mark Sanor  12:30Well, maybe I'm going to bring it back to you, Chris. Now we're going to have 100 cities with your domes right the way. We can connect in ways. You one of your first investors who just wired you money on Friday or Thursday, part of his vision of what you're doing, right? Can you speak to that aspect? Chris Lawes  12:48Yeah, I'm just distracted thinking about a company I met when I was at abundance 360 called Apollo, where they make Sano acoustic frequency transmitters. You can either wear them or even put them into the floor panels of a room, and they create a subtle frequency that is almost like a drug or alcohol, like on a very subtle level, but it puts you into a more social kind of a state. And obviously, with the dome, we want to do a similar thing, get everyone out of their houses where they're addicted to their socially isolating devices, and get them into a communal, physical environment with their fellow man, and have a good time and use music and visuals and other kinds of vibrations to, you know, support the brain and support the body, to have therapeutic positive experiences, but also to have, just on a heart level, on a you know, greater than frequency level, social level, human intimacy and connections. Mark Sanor  13:42Do you need an Do you need an airline to take you to all those dumps? I MJ Gottlieb  13:45was gonna say, what this gentleman said is 100% correct. Peter. Peter, the opposite of addiction is connection. And so when you you know that in my space, someone comes in and they're like, You don't understand, you don't understand how I'm feeling. And then you come into a community and understands, and you're like, Wow, you get it. And that's everything. And so if we can bring communities together, like everybody here on this panel is doing, that's it said that there's this saying those amongs us, no explanation is necessary. Those not amongst us, no explanation is possible. And so when you bring these affinity groups together and people who share this common bond, magic happens well, and Mark Sanor  14:27I think, and by the way, that's the magic that happens in the round tables at the end of this conference. Sorry, Chris Lawes  14:36yes, I love this event, and I've had some wonderful times meeting more of this community. And you know, there's, like, the pickle ball stuff and the networking and dinners and things, but not everyone actually has those experiences in their life. And you know, fortunately and unfortunately, COVID created, like a huge global experiment on the effect of social isolation and. But a lot of people hypothesize that we would be able to, you know, stop driving our cars and commuting so much and just work from our homes. And, you know, go to virtual concerts from our homes, and like a virtual, you know, concert venue, wearing headsets and all these things. And this would all be sort of the way of the future. And we, you know, we gave that the college try, so to speak, during during COVID, and the results were quite demonstrably bad. And I think a lot of interesting data came out of that, actually, that especially certain types of people really require community and social interaction for their mental health. And I'm glad to see that on all levels, that's being really embraced as like, not just a sort of fun bonus part of life, but really an essential part. Mark Sanor  15:44Yeah, I don't know if that brings me back. I don't know if Jeff reson, because during COVID, I experience Jeff. Can you? Can you speak to this? Because my, my pre teen sons, and I don't know if you like, we were moving around 10, like, an hour ago, so important for boys to move around. You know what they did during COVID? To all these boys? They were stuck in front of a computer, and it really just destroyed kids at that age. But that's what Jeff you want to speak to, what you you you do? Jeff zawatsky, that you that's you do 16:24you want to do the little Yeah? Comment Mark Sanor  16:26quickly, yep, please. Jeff Zawadsky  16:30I mean, we were Hello to everyone, so I can't be there. I've been Bay area, but we basically, we're building the AI power platform for families with struggling young people, teen and, you know, as the panel was talking about, I mean, how our community, he will tremendous. And to your point, I mean, since COVID, you've had a 6% increase in mental health issues for young people. Get a lot of feedback. Yeah, of Mark Sanor  17:03feedback. We hear you. It's probably my, my fault. I was had my mic on. Keep going. Jeff Zawadsky  17:09I mean, it's kind of the point where 37 kids see they're not sure if they have a single friend, right? And that isolation is tremendously costly. And right now. You know our mental health system is basically broken. I mean, you know, we haven't really added any modalities. Tele therapy has been helpful in some cases, but you really haven't added any scope. We've got a tremendous provider yet, depending on whose numbers you believe, you know, we need a million to 5 million more therapists. Our approach actually, to doing this, having those experience of having child has gone through this part of the fall, done that clinical partners to work in the field is really about community, and we're using AI to power that community so that we actually have, we partner with section AI founder of LinkedIn, three hop and AI company, it was designed specifically for EQ, not just IQ, so it was trained by therapists and psychiatrists, and we had one of the first API is more than 12,000 organizations waiting on the list, But the CEO is one of my advisor board members, so we've got first access to them. And what we're doing is the basic finding, and the premise of what we found is the way we can attack and fix the mental health crisis in this country is really through the lived experience of other families, not through and we just soft launched last summer, and we were doing it through really going communities. But what we've done in partnering with inflection is we can actually use the AI agent to capture and leverage all the experiences and all of all the families that are out there to really create the sort of career health agent, particularly we're starting with family systems. There's other loads of other applications, from care giving to, you know, we have relationships with the VA and everything else and addiction, but that's where we're starting. That's power with experience. So we're really creating something that sort of, you know, turn the problem on the head, and you get, you know, at any given time, 25 million American families struggling with a young person. So, and the big hidden asset that went out there, because all the parents who are silent dealing with this, you know, reinventing the wheel of care, as I like to say all the time. So using our AI platform, AI power platform, I'll say, we can capture that information and create better treatments, earlier identifications, fewer Eli cost, kind of the whole thing. So in a nutshell, I absolutely agree with what's being said here. In fact, the folks talk about music got some friends who are doing music therapy at that actually is incredibly impactful, but to that point where, so we're sort of building the community. For nobody wants to talk about the team struggling stigma, no, no Mark Sanor  20:03one wants, no one wants to talk about addictions either, right? MJ Gottlieb  20:07I mean, if you look at So, if you look at the cost of addiction, it's $1.45 trillion it actually surpassed it, right? And that's in lost productivity and societal harm. And so what can we do on the preventative side? And so like we created technology called Sam inside of lucid, which stands for sobriety addiction mentor, which gives a little daily check in each day, and walks that person with 365 assignments throughout the year, which we're now laying heavily AI on top of it, because it's one thing to get sober and it's another thing to stay sober. And so there's these sickness of addiction. Yeah, well, Mark Sanor  20:48but maybe this is what I love about our global community. You guys need to connect your communities. Because as my son, who went to a wilderness you know, lot of those kids, the older ones, all facing had that addictions. This was their part of their detox, MJ Gottlieb  21:06absolutely, absolutely and like equine therapy and all the so if you think about everybody that's talked about here, from music and community and all different types of communities, right, and how we're able to get together. I mean, I think that the only answer is to be inclusive and combine, as you say, because in this case, we're a strength of numbers, because we're being outnumbered now. Mark Sanor  21:33So I think, I think that's Jeff Zawadsky  21:35exactly right. I mean, you know, we, we've partnered with, you know, some of the telethermal Health System Georgetown. And because you need to get those numbers, the cold start issues with any community, and it gives you impactful and powerful answers, right? Mark Sanor  21:57So what I like, what I like is this was the first of our is having, you know, fall out community. This was the first event. This is the first event that's okay. This is the first it Peter Rafelson  22:14was the Hollywood ambassador to Korea. I went over and visited them in the early hours to influence the innovation of k pop, if we follow the best Example of congregation and community, which is church. Mark Sanor  22:39Hello, you and I, you want to Peter Rafelson  22:47mute churches that were were created early on, pull together millions and millions of members, cross border, cross country, real time they were they honest technology and to see the power of creating that audience and that community. I mean, that's why I'm thinking exactly what you said, Mark, which is even the super the dome technology, the AI technology, the mental health, creating communities, creates congregation, creates commerce. Mark Sanor  23:25You know what we need, Peter. Peter. Can you hear me? Yeah, I need a song. I need you to write a song that unites this initiative. Can you do that? You can get okay. We may not get Gaga or Madonna to sing it, but we'll, we will sing it all together. MJ Gottlieb  23:53There you go. Good. Well, I will say something. So addiction doesn't discriminate, but access to care does. So what's happening in this conversation with regard to community is, you take these 300 million people that I'm talking about, and the other 38 you know, percent, you know, in aggregate, over 500 million people struggling. You get them to you build a platform, you get them together in one place to heal. It doesn't cost any money, right? And so if you can really see the power of community and our ability to join those communities and get people to heal. You flip that whole model of waiting for people to blow up and get sick and then try to treat them, and that's where that 1.4 5 trillion comes in. And so this is why the importance of this conversation with everyone on this panel, you know how communities heal. Mark Sanor  24:39So we're going to transition. That's so Jeff Zawadsky  24:42correct. I mean, more than 50% of all US counties don't have a single therapist. Only 3% of therapists in our country are African American. Less than 5% of American therapists speak Spanish, right? And with our you know, health care system, whole community. Things are shut out from camp, so being able to leverage community, get to families after that knowledge, share, that knowledge can have an impact identified situations earlier is really the only way we have fixed this, given the structural problems going Mark Sanor  25:16forward. So we have to leave it at that for this panel. And thank you everyone. We'll be doing a break out soon with all of you, I'm joined our 361 firm community of investors and thought leaders. We have a lot of events created by the community as we collaborate on investments and philanthropic interests. Join us. You. You can subscribe to various 361 events and content at https://361firm.com/subs. For reference: Web: www.361firm.com/homeOnboard as Investor: https://361.pub/shortdiagOnboard Deals 361: www.361firm.com/onbOnboard as Banker: www.361firm.com/bankersEvents: www.361firm.com/eventsContent: www.youtube.com/361firmWeekly Digests: www.361firm.com/digest

Sunday Evening ServiceMatthew 7:21-27I. Words of WarningII. Words of WoeIII. Words of WisdomSupport the show

Today's Passage: Ezekiel 36:25-27I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Today's Prayer: Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and earth, author and perfecter of our faith, holy is Your name. Lord it is by grace and grace alone that you transformed us from a people who once rebelled against you into a people who now live to glorify you and to bring you praise. And so Father today we are grateful, grateful because the work you began in us is being seen through to completion by the power of your Spirit. Lord with each passing day like a potter shapes clay you are shaping us into a people who resemble you. And so as we take this time to fast and to seek Your face, we pray that you would open our eyes to the formative work that you're doing within us. Continue to cleanse us and to make us holy as we surrender ourselves over to you daily. Lastly, God we pray that we would not rely on our own strength but on you and you alone. It's in your holy and precious name that we pray all these things, Amen.NOTES & LINKS:21 Days of Prayer & Fasting WebsiteSubscribe to the 21 Days of Prayer & Fasting NewsletterPDF Guide to Prayer & FastingAs Part of the 21 Days, we are committing to 24/7 prayer during this time. Sign up for a time slot here.

I've been an avid and active user of TikTok, since it was Musically. I found a home there as a creator, and it taught me how to make short form videos. I probably have over 7000 short videos under my belt at this point, and I can't believe the progress I have made since I joined.From the beautiful couples I've seen get hitched on there, to the people growing their business, and the overall communal vibes the whole platform has. It is going to be a tough one to lose, its been real TikTok.

OPEN HEAVENSMATALA LE LAGI MO LE ASO FARAILE 6 TESEMA 2024(tusia e Pastor EA Adeboye) Manatu Autu: Malosi o le talavou (Youthful strength) Tauloto -Tusi Paia– Failauga 12:1 “'O lenei, ‘ia e manatua lē na faia oe i ona po o lou taule‘ale‘a, a o le‘i o‘o mai aso leaga, a o le‘i o‘o mai fo‘i tausaga ‘e te fa‘apea ai, “E leai so‘u fiafia i ai.” ' Faitauga – Tusi Paia – Auega 3:25-27I le Faataoto 20:29, fai mai le Tusi Paia o le matagofie o taulele‘a, o lo latou malosi lea; o le mamalu fo‘i o toeaina, o le ulusinā lea. A'o e talavou, e te malosi ma vavevave, ma e maua lou malosi e oso atu i lea mea ma galue mo se taimi umi. Peitai fai mai le Tusi Paia i le Isaia 40:30'E vaivai ma tigāina tama matutua; o taulele‘a fo‘i, e pa‘u‘ū lava i latou. ' O le malosi e maua e talavou e le faapea e faavavau. O Tavita o se fitafita malosi ao talavou, e le gata na ia fasioti ia Koliata, na ia aoaoina isi fitafita tautaua e fasiotia sauai. Peitai, e iai le taimi i lona olaga, sa pau i lalo ma semanu e oti i le taua pe ana le iai se tagata na fesoasoani ia te ia (2 Samuelu 21:15-22).  O le matagofie o taulelea o lo latou malosi lea, peitai e le tatau ona faaaogaina faapito e tau na o mea e te manao iai. Ia faaaogaina e auauna ai i le Atua. Afai o oe o se talavou, e le tatau ona faaaogaina lou malosi i le faitaaga pe saili malosi i tuinanau o le tino. Peitai e tatau ona faaaogaina lou malosi e galue mo le Atua, aua o le faaamoemoega autu lena na avatu ai le malosi ia te oe. E toatele tagata i aso nei ua matuā salamo i le auala na faaaluina ai lo latou taimi ao talavou. O nisi e le o mau i se faaipoipoga e tasi poo iai foi se alagatupe lelei e ola ai ona o le faatamala i mea na faia i o latou olaga a'o talavou.  Ua latou fai taulaga i se lumanai manuia ona o le naunau ia tau lava o le fiafia.  Afai o oe o se talavou, e tatau ona e faaeteete i fatu o lo'o e luluina i le taimi nei aua e te maua le seleselega i lou lumanai. Fai mai le Failauga 11:9-10 9Le taule‘ale‘a e, ‘inā ‘oli‘oli ia i lou tamaitiiti, ‘ia fiafia fo‘i lou loto i aso o lou taule‘ale‘a ma ‘ia e savali i ala ‘ua e loto i ai, ma mea e va‘ai i ai ou mata; a ‘ia e iloa e fa‘amasinoina oe e le Atua ‘ona o na mea uma. 10O lenei, ‘inā fa‘ate‘a ‘ese atu ia le tigā i lou loto ma tu‘u ‘ese atu le leaga i lou tino; auā o le tamaitiiti ma le taule‘ale‘a e fa‘atauva‘a ia. E tatau ona e tuu mamao ese le amioleaga ma oe aemaise pe afai o oe o se talavou o loo e faitauina lenei feau. O lou malosi o se talavou e lē o'o i le faavavau. A mou atu lou malosi o se talavou ma ua e matua, o le a e feagai ma seleselega o fatu na e totoina I lou taimi o talavou.  Le au pele e, auauna I lou Atua ma lou malosi atoa. Ua lava se upu mo le tagata poto. O le malosi o se talavou e le tumau e faavavau, ia e faaaogaina e auauna ai i le Atua, i le suafa o Iesu, Amene.

This episode of On Culture is an extension of the latest article there - A Redemptive Arc.Here is an excerpt:When I showed up for that coffee with my friend, I wasn't thinking about redemption. Because, as far as I knew, it hadn't arrived. As far as I knew, the redemption that has seemed to arrive, wasn't going to. It is a thing that takes many forms and often arrives in an unexpected packages. Sometimes you don't know it has arrived until sometime later - in the moment, you may not think of it as redemption at all. That is the thing about it - we reach what we think is the end of our rope, and redemption may show up - or we may discover that someone has given us more rope, or tied us in more securely, instead of pulling us up from the darkness. Sometimes, that is the only redemption we will receive in this part of our story.I know that my redeemer lives,and that in the end he will stand on the earth.And after my skin has been destroyed,yet in my flesh I will see God;I myself will see himwith my own eyes—I, and not another.How my heart yearns within me!Job 19:25-27I'm not sure we think of Job's story as a redemption story. But that is our misapprehension of redemption. It is most obviously the classic case of someone dealing with suffering. But redemption comes through suffering. We are redeemed not only to something, but from something and through something.But redemption comes through suffering. We are redeemed not only to something, but from something and through something.Thanks to Susan James for the conversation.Until next time - grace and peace. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

I wish I had known about this child proofing tip before I spent so much money on locksmiths. In this episode we talk about wandering. As caregivers for our husbands, parents, and other loved ones with Alzheimer's and other types of dementia, we've learned that wandering is a complex and often frightening behavior that requires careful management. Wandering can occur both inside and outside the home, during day or night, and each scenario presents unique challenges. We are Sue Ryan and Nancy Treaster, and through our experiences, we have four tips to address wandering while maintaining our loved ones' dignity as well as ensuring their safety. Show Notes Takeaways Outside Wandering Tip 1: Use your grapevine   Tip 2: Consider wearable tracking devices Tip 3: Register them with EMT's and police Tip 4: Consider child proof door knob covers on doors that lead to the outside Tip 5: Consider window sash locks and a pole for any sliding doors Inside Wandering Tip 1: Safety proof the areas you allow them to go during the day Tip 2: Discuss sleeping medication with their doctor Tip 3: Allow them access at night to only the bedroom and a bathroom Tip 4: Consider cameras or baby monitors to make sure you can watch them especially at night  Tip 5: Safety proof access to stairs  Additional Resources Mentioned Tracking devices for their personWatcheshttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=person+tracking+device&crid=OPZ28JRM2KDU&sprefix=person+t%2Caps%2C96&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_8Shoeshttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=gps+smart+sole&crid=2DM2XBGVTA5VJ&sprefix=GPS+smart+sole+%2Caps%2C95&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_15Child proof door knob cover or double deadbolt locks for external doorsChild proof door knob covershttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=child+proof+door+knob+covers&crid=1VBY69F9OQN3T&sprefix=child+proo%2Caps%2C105&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_3_10Double dead bolt or code based lockhttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=2+key+both+sides+deadbolt+lock+set&i=tools&crid=32L214IRSRSLU&sprefix=2+key+both+sides+deadbolt+lock+set%2Ctools%2C69&ref=nb_sb_nossWindow sash https://www.amazon.com/Defender-Security-9928-Security-Unlocks/dp/B00BOZBGF8?pd_rd_w=1gyHe&content-id=amzn1.sym.378a0f29-5acb-4c80-bc6e-087cd6806daf&pf_rd_p=378a0f29-5acb-4c80-bc6e-087cd6806daf&pf_rd_r=F9XR7F8R8B4H0PHGYRGY&pd_rd_wg=hFzlD&pd_rd_r=9e98be86-af00-40b7-b783-6f58d7839b31&pd_rd_i=B00BOZBGF8&ref_=pd_bap_d_grid_rp_0_1_ec_sr_ppb_i&th=1Extra tall pet gate from 40” to 70” https://www.amazon.com/s?k=extra+tall+pet+gate&i=tools&crid=1ZJ0VGQK13QAV&sprefix=extra+tall+pet+gate%2Ctools%2C86&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 Cameras or baby monitor for the bedroom and bathroomBaby monitors - some come with motion alarms as wellhttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=baby+monitor+with+motion+detection&i=tools&crid=27MFODCOG9GBV&sprefix=baby+monitor+with+motion+de%2Ctools%2C84&ref=nb_sb_ss_fb_1_27I use Nest Cameras and pay for the Nest Aware feature which gives me access to video history. A friend of mine uses a Ring and swears by it. Whatever kind you get, if your care receiver is still staying home alone, consider one with an intercomIndoorhttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=indoor+cameras+with+intercom&i=tools&crid=1RTJWUD6C53DD&sprefix=indoor+cameras+with+intercom%2Ctools%2C72&ref=nb_sb_nossOutdoorhttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=outdoor+cameras+with+intercom&i=tools&crid=2ERD6HT2QIK5W&sprefix=outdoor+cameras+with+intercom%2Ctools%2C78&ref=nb_sb_nossMotion alarmhttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=person+indoor+motion+alarm&crid=393V3S00L1T5W&sprefix=person+indoor+motion+alarm%2Caps%2C75&ref=nb_sb_noss Please click here to review, follow or subscribe to our podcast.   Connect with us and share your tips: Website: https://www.thecaregiversjourney.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecaregiversjourney/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCaregiversJourneys/

“Wisely Dealing with Temptation”Proverbs 4:10-27I. TEMPTATION IS A DAILY PART OF OUR BROKEN WORLDII. TEMPTATION MUST BE INTENTIONALLY AVOIDEDIII. PRACTICALLY DEALING WITH TEMPTATION A. Be spiritually prepared and prayed up B. Know your fighter verses C. Know your own tendencies towards sin D. Avoid entering the arena of your temptation E. Lean on spiritually mature brothers and sisters who love you F. Starve your sinful desires to death and replace them with greater affections for Jesus G. Fall on Jesus

Sunday AM Service1 Corinthians 9:19-27I. Run With DirectionII. Fight With DiscretionIII. Live With DisciplineSupport the Show.

Ezekiel 24:1–27I. The Lord's Judgment Begins to Fall – 1-14II. A Stunningly Vivid Sign to Establish Context – 15-24III. A Continued Promise of Grace – 25-27

Show Notes Episode 446: Many Fools Were Pitied This week Host Dave Bledsoe is kicked out of a bar for bar tab he claimed he did not commit and is desperately searching for the A-Team to help. (The A-Team in this case is asking Gavin to loan him fifty bucks until Friday.) On the show this week we examine life and career or 80's pop culture phenom Laurence Tereaud. You know him as Mr. T. Along the way we discover why Dave never wears any jewelry. (He is a cheapskate) Then we dive right into how much America loves to make myths out of men, whether those men deserve it or not.  However, in the case of Mr. T.,he kind of does. We trace T's origins from the South Side of Chicago (It's the baddest part of town) to a riot on a college campus, then to T's lumberjacking in the military and finally to Dingbats, the disco where Mr. T's personae was developed. (And the lawsuit over the proceeds). We follow his movie and television career to the inevitable moment Nancy Reagan sits on his lap and kisses him. (It was a strange moment in America).  In the end we discover something about Mr. T. and about ourselves. (Meaning Dave couldn't find anything horrible to say about Mr. T.) Our Sponsor this week is Fools Gold, because REAL gold is expensive.  We open the show with words of advice from Mr. T. and close with Eric Berts explaining an origins story. Show Theme: Hypnostate Prelude to Common Sense The Show on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheHell_Podcast The Show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whatthehellpodcast/ The Show on Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjxP5ywpZ-O7qu_MFkLXQUQ The Show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatthehellwereyouthinkingpod/ Our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/kHmmrjptrq www.whatthehellpodcast.com Give us your money on Patreon  https://www.patreon.com/Whatthehellpodcast The Show Line: 347 687 9601 Closing Music:https://youtu.be/XTd6ZFpQKfs?si=wGaFRdLE7Wtpxn0C We are a proud member of the Seltzer Kings Podcast Network! http://seltzerkings.com/ Citations Needed: Actor and professional wrestler Mr. T, known for his mohawk and gold chains, starred in 1980s TV programs like 'The A-Team' and 'Mister T.' https://www.biography.com/actors/mr-t “Silence is a very good weapon” https://pvpantherproject.com/2023/02/silence-is-a-very-good-weapon/ Wikipedia: Mr T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T Famous Veteran: Mr. T https://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-advice/military-transition/famous-veterans-mr-t.html#:~:text=In%201975%2C%20he%20became%20Pvt,leader%20at%20Fort%20McCoy%2C%20Wisconsin. Mr. T loses in court https://www.upi.com/Archives/1996/07/25/Mr-T-loses-in-court/7214838267200/#:~:text=%27I%20was%20the%20originator%20of,and%20promoted%20him%20as%20Mr. How The A-Team sparked the cult phenomenon that was Mr. T https://www.metv.com/stories/how-the-a-team-sparked-the-cult-phenomenon-that-was-mr-t Mr. T Reveals How 'That' Photo of Nancy Reagan Sitting on His Lap Came to Be https://people.com/politics/mr-t-reveals-the-story-behind-nancy-reagan-sitting-on-his-lap/ Mr. T dressed as Santa. Nancy Reagan sat on his lap. It was the most shocking first lady photo ever. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/12/21/mr-t-dressed-santa-nancy-reagan-sat-his-lap-it-was-most-shocking-first-lady-photo-ever/ 'The A-Team' 's Mr. T https://people.com/archive/cover-story-the-a-teams-mr-t-vol-19-no-21/ Words of Wisdom from Mr. T https://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/celebrities/words-of-wisdom-from-mr-t.aspx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Navigating Major Programmes, Riccardo sits down with Daniel Armanios, BT Professor of Major Programme Management and Chair of Major Programme Management at University of Oxford, Saïd Business School. The pair discuss the importance of research, the type of valuable research and the post evaluation of major programmes."And so a second very cool question would be where do we want resilience in a major programme? I mean, obviously you want it within the program but do you want it in the selection process? Maybe not? Do you want it in the post validation where we don't do as well? Maybe not so maybe resilience is not great everywhere. And maybe it's really important in certain places.  I've been really thinking about this a lot because it's a really visceral fundamental point. What is it we're actually doing and trying to achieve?" – Daniel ArmaniosDaniel's research and teaching integrates civil engineering and organizational sociology to better understand how organizations coordinate to build, manage, and maintain infrastructure systems. His findings inform efforts to advance sustainable development, entrepreneurship, and innovation, while also alleviating systemic and persistent inequities within such systems.Key Takeaways:The distinction of megaprojects and major programmesThe importance of transparent assumptions and data research in major programmesStudying major programmes at a component levelWhere do we want resilience in major programmes?If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.The conversation doesn't stop here—connect and converse with our LinkedIn community:Follow Navigating Major Programmes on LinkedInFollow Riccardo on LinkedInFollow Daniel Armanios on LinkedInDaniel Armanios' published workRead Riccardo's latest at wwww.riccardocosentino.comTranscript:Riccardo Cosentino 0:53Hello, everyone. Today here with Daniel Armanios. How are you doing Daniel?Daniel Armanios 1:01Hey, how are you, Riccardo? Pleasure to be here.Riccardo 1:03Daniel joins us today from Oxford. Could you introduce yourself a little bit for the listeners that might not be familiar with yourself?Daniel 1:12I'm the BT Professor and Chair of Major Programme Management at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. I was formerly in a school of engineering, which I'm sure will be a fun discussion later on. I was an assistant and associate professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. I guess the best way very symmetrically, to understand myself and my research, I'm really an organizational theorist that studies how organizations coordinate to roll out to develop to maintain very large-scale initiatives, what some call major programmes, some call major projects, some called mega projects, I'm sure we can get to discussion of the nuances and differences. But essentially, I'm an organizational studies theorist that studies large-scale initiatives in engineering social programs and the like, and kind of published widely as a result.Riccardo  2:14I've come across you, as I was finishing my master's in Major Programme Management at Oxford, you were starting, your chair. And I've been very keen to be talking to you because obviously, we represent is such a big institution with so much gravitas in the major programme space, I was really looking forward to talking to you. So today, I think the overarching topic that I would like to cover today, I think is the importance of research in major programme and the importance of research in creating better outcomes for four major programmes. That's just the general theme, but I'm sure we can get into a more detailed conversation. From your perspective, why is research important to achieve better outcomes in major programme? Why can't the private sector and practitioners just get on with it? And then it's a bit of a leading question.Daniel 3:09There is attention always with major programmes, right? All of us, I mean, all of us who research it or those who put it in practice, especially since we don't often find ourselves in a position, practitioners, to manage large-scale major programmes, the temptation as we've seen from a lot of prior work is that this is such a unique thing and this is so it's so important and of you know, call it an n-of-one. And I think there is some aspects of every major programme that have nuance. But often, you know, when you're trying to start something, it's nice to know, where what we know systematically from prior things, and that just simply requires data analysis, right? How do you how can you empirically as best as you can, with data, collecting it, being transparent about your assumptions, transparent of what you found? Could that at least get us at a starting point, with a major programme we take on in the future? And so I think, empirically, it's quite important. That said, and maybe why there's difficulties is that there's also challenges with trying to do that data. I don't know if that's where we're gonna go next. But essentially, you know, a lot of this requires post evaluation of major programmes. And often, once you've delivered a major programme, you kind of want to be done and move on to the next one, but often that post hoc evaluation really matters. So if we take an empirically driven approach, it also fundamentally changes how we think of the entire major programme lifecycle, we're not just thinking about the planning, delivery, and then kind of the handover to the sponsor, whoever is going to operate the system, but also thinking post evaluation. What did it move? Did the needle move in certain ways? How can we learn from past? So it does require data. And then also the other challenge is as we build consensus for certain models and frameworks, there is a danger that we go flip the pendulum the complete other way, which is certain kinds of tools, techniques become the way to do things. And I think, at the same time, you want to balance between what were the conditions that allow those things to happen. So kind of long story short, we need an empirical basis by which to inform our decisions so that we truly know what is unique about the program we're managing versus what we know about the past, ideally, with comparative groups. But that means that we make sure that in our own major programme lifecycle we build in faculties and facilities and capacity to contribute existing data. And that requires a little different thinking about when the major programme, let's say, quote-unquote "ends". And at the same time, you know, to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, you also want to be able to say, really not just the data you gather on the programme itself, but the conditions around it so we can see what kinds of tools, what kind of approaches work for what kind of conditions so that you can be both empirically informed, but also nuances to where those empirical data and insights match with the kind of context you're in. And that's a I think a wider conversation happening.Riccardo  6:44I want to dive into a couple of things that you mentioned. First of all, obviously, the uniqueness of program management, of major programmes are, obviously, they're so big that it's difficult to have two running in parallel or being able to test in practice these major programmes. However, what's your view on the fact that yeah, maybe the major programme is unique, and because it's big and complex, and it's very dependent on the region, and other factors, but the sub-elements of the programme are actually repeating across multiple programmes. So you know, you have stakeholders on every single programme, you have a project sponsor on every single programme, you have group of people, subcontractor, supply chain, I mean, those things are not unique. And so I think you talk about the conditions, I think that's part of that. So is there a way of studying major programmes at the component level, which I think is that what we tend to do in the MMPM is really break it down and applying knowledge to the single components. What's your view?Daniel 8:05I think, an emerging trend, which is typically up to this point, my read is when we think of large-scale initiatives or big things, let's say, there's we usually treat major programmes and let's say mega projects or major projects as synonymous terms and I think if you see where major programmes is going, they're increasingly more distributed. So if you look at major initiatives around cryptocurrency, blockchain, it's not like there's a central convener that can move things, right? If you think of modular infrastructure construction, you're literally fabricating skews one place, putting it another place. Right? And so you're dealing with a more distributed, more decentralized system. And I think that's now creating some interesting divergence between mega projects and major programmes because when you think of mega projects, you're thinking of it as a unitary, kind of whole, because at some point, even though there's multiple organizations, you'll convene at some centralized sites. That's at least the assumption. With major programmes, if you think of it, it's more of a portfolio, which precisely gets to your point, then it becomes interesting to think of two things. One is, let's break up the bit of components and see is there something we can learn repeatable within the components? But also, is there some nuance we can understand of how things link together in appropriate ways? Should we modularize as one argument is or should we think of it more holistically as a system? Now how do I land on what we can learn is I think the research to date of that resources available, it's often focused on the intended plan or outcome for the project. And usually it's the Iron Triangle- time, cost, scope or quality, if you will, and did it achieve that or not why or why not? Let's account for these overruns. So it's more about the ends, right? So I've said this was gonna be my end, let's check at the end of the project. Did we achieve it? Now, empirically, that has some really useful facets, which is, you kind of comparing a project to itself, which is really nice. You can do comparisons, you get a sense of maybe how to help with the planning, how to avoid some of what to build in. But the process of learning by which we could have reconciled some of these overruns is a bit more difficult. So I think there's a set of resources focusing on the ends, right, in learning, I think, where you're coming from, to understand what is repeatable, repeatable is a process. So I think where some other research is going and where I've been interested in is just chronically what people are doing over time. Can we find patterns? Is there a way to go about effective stakeholder engagement? Not did we get stakeholders' approval in the audit, and it's more of the outcome? It's more how did we go through it? Was it, you know, were there certain things you did at certain times bring in certain organizations? Was that effective as opposed to not because then at that point, you can give something really useful to the manager that they can actually act as opposed to? Here's outcomes you want to worry about, we know that there's going to be this potential slippage, let's account for it in the planning. But that doesn't get much information in the process. So I think there's a lot of potential empirical research to be done on can we come up with replicable methods, means, while also being mindful of, you know, some of the risks calamities that have happened from the ends. And then that way, you really understanding what's repeatable, and not just, you got something that was effective and here's the practice. But how did that unfold over time and change? So you can still be quite repeatable. But recognizing repeatability is a process, right? And so maybe there's process models we can do, looking at projects at different slices of the timeframe. And then we can think about what it is they're doing over time? And is there some sequences that we can learn that are repeatable, that go well, or when you start hitting a fall, and then that way, as a kind of final point, if we can do that, then perhaps we can even develop early warning signs, you know, always at this step two of the process, there is something where things derail, avoid them, and you can start seeing the early warning signs. And that way, I think you can still come up with something repeatable, but more in the means of something you can action, as opposed to just be aware that these things go there's slippage overall in the project plan for it, which is important. Don't get me wrong. But then we could develop a process by which are early warning signs to develop. And that gray area is a different kind of empirical approach. But in that sense, you could then sort of see what is repeatable? What's even automatable? If we talk about future trends and what are things you need to be like spinning time on the critical path to be careful on? So research on the means, I think would be where things I think should be going and are starting to go as opposed to just the outcomes.Riccardo  13:23I think you mentioned a couple of times is historically we always focus on the postmortem. And typically a postmortem on things that went badly. And so you have this back, back catalogue of project that went bad, but there's very few post mortem on project that went well, because ultimately if you went well, you don't have to, you don't have to worry about it. I think that has been the approach. And as you said, with this, I think the problem with major project or large, large ventures is that they're so time-consuming and so draining that when you're done, you're done. You just want to move on.Daniel 14:03I would say on this point, actually, this is where it gets really interesting in the research, to compare the trends and major programme research, mega project research of again, I see a distinct what's you know, it's in a class versus how entrepreneurship research is. So entrepreneurship research suffers almost from the exact opposite issue, which is, they always focus on the big successful ones. And the failures are kind of not known because they're kind of censored out of the population before you can really study them. Right? And so you have a kind of a success bias there. In major programmes, because the ones that keep going on they keep taking more cost of you get these kinds of epic failures that are doing. And I think it's really important to be mindful is why it could be that there's some very successful projects that did the same exact thing as some of the failures and didn't have that result. The same thing with success with ventures, maybe someone really failed trying everything and didn't work out. So, again, this gets back to the first problem we were talking about, which is, if we can compare success with failure and really address that kind of empirical bias, then we can really see what is common across all projects? And where are they really different? Where is it really unique this one, but we can't do that if we're not grounded on a similar project for which had a different outcome, but had a, you know, set of similar and different processes. That's why I think, again, focusing on the means and methods and conditioning, and hopefully with comparative cases that address, you know, the proclivities of what data we have, can really help us understand what's common across all of these, and what's really different. And then that way, we can be much more circumspect of that. So I absolutely agree.Riccardo  14:51You touched I think you, earlier you touched on you said the word conditions, right, the condition within the range of the major programme and I don't know if it's equivalent, but I refer often to it as a complexity, you know, we're dealing with a complex system. So sometimes we don't even fully understand the relations between, with between the conditions, because it's a complex system, by definition, which is, to me to be fair was a key concept in understanding an industry that had been part of for over 20 years, but couldn't quite understand why it couldn't, wasn't working the way it was supposed to. And yeah, the condition, the complexity, and really diving into those in order to understand and I really like your example where, you know, you might have the same condition but different outcomes. Because of and I think that's inherent with complexity, or complex system is just you don't fully understand the interrelations.Daniel 16:57This is why I think, in our programme and just in major programmes in general, there's an increasing consensus to treat this like a system. Right now, I think one of my colleagues at Oxford, Harvey Mahler, has been focusing on different forms of complexity. And what he basically says is there's complexity within the project as well, literally, what are the tasks and work to be done, the harder systems kind of structure, what is the routine that has to be done to do this thing. But then he says, the project, though, is in a wider environment, right? So you have regulations, politicians turning over at all points, you have socio-political what you would call I think, socio-political complexity. And then by the way, it's not like, if I look at it at times zero, the same form of complex emerges at time one, because when you run the system and loop it, all of sudden things emerge and change. And so there's, he would, argue emergent complexity. Now, what's interesting about what he's saying, If we tie it to the earlier part of our conversation, we're talking about means and outcomes, we still empirically largely focus on those within the project paths, right? So when we typically measure performance outcomes, we measure even means we're thinking, I'm delivering this project, how do I measure it? And how do I benchmark that? I think we're, empirically my research has been doing too, and speaking to the points that Harvey Mahler, complex and others have said, I've been thinking about how do I understand all the stakeholders, not just within the project orbit to get it done but intersected? And that's what's driven a lot of my research on understanding, take bridge infrastructure, how does that affect not just the users or the people that have to deliver the project, like the construction companies, etc? But how does it impact the communities that are intersected, right? A lot of them are displaced. A lot of them, you know, for us to have this road go through, I benefited being in the car, but some community had to be displaced to change the right of way for that path. And that's why I think of infrastructure as one subset of major programmes. We often write in our papers that it's an arena for both intended and unintended connectivity. Me using the infrastructure, me using major programme, that's an intended use. Me delivering on the major programme is an intended use. The community that's not having this system come for them may not be welcome, right? And what that means is we need to start thinking about how do we measure outcomes, not just cost, scheduling, scope, quality of project, how that changes over time, very important, but also thinking about equity concerns, thinking about what did the project do? Does it help me employ; does it help in employment? Does it help in innovation? Things that often you measure after the project is transplanted but there are things you could do in the middle. How many? What percentage of small businesses are you bringing into the project? Is it just the big conglomerates or small businesses, I mean, this you could do even within the project. And so we're and by the way, this is this is not just because the research is intrinsically interesting, which I find, but increasingly what we're finding even in our program, sponsoring agencies are saying we've sent executives to come learn, and train. And this is not just in the Master of Science in Major Programmes, but also Major Project Leadership Academy. The sponsors are increasingly saying, we need to demonstrate the benefits of these programs, the social value, and we don't have a language to do that we really need your help in developing it. And so now, it's not us just because we're excited about the research. But this is becoming increasingly mandated, especially from sponsoring agency, the agencies sponsor the projects, especially government. And so that's opening a really exciting terrain, I think, for research, but a very empirically challenging one, because there's not a really clear set of standards. Right? So how far away from the project do you need to look at it? How many? What kind of outcomes? Is it employment, is it innovation, is it entrepreneurship? What forms of social demography should we be looking at? Let's just take disadvantage as an example. Is it by income? Is it by gender identification? Is it by ethnicity? Is it by a combination? Maybe it's, maybe that's not, maybe it's not about disadvantage. Maybe it's about a critical occupation. Where are the certain craftsmen of a certain kind of background or expertise? Is that what we should be measuring? There's not really a standard. And so until we develop that, it's going to be very hard for us to find a way to our point, what's common across these or what's not if we can't even agree on the outcome. And kind of go back to the beginning part of this question. Essentially, what I'm saying is, when we think of complexity, and if we take Harvey Mahler and other people's work seriously, Andrew Davies, others, we have to think about not just complexity inside the project itself as a system, but in the wider environment, especially the connection point being sociopolitical emergent complexity, some of that comes out of nowhere, and usually, it's outside of the project where you didn't have your lens placed. And so, you know, that kind of, kind of approach, it's early days, it's early days. I've been one of the people trying to advance and pioneers himself, even how to use your existing major programmes to sense where these disadvantage gaps are, we have a paper just came out, I think, in December actually, just starting to think, how do we even try to solve this problem? We know it's a problem, how do we try to come up with early stages to solve it?Riccardo  22:46What you just enunciated and from my learning, if we can see the major programmes, as you said, it's a system of systems. And ultimately, it's a system of systems goes through several phases, right? You got the planning, you got implementation, you got operation. And I think considering major programmes as systems or system of systems allows you to provide resilience to the major programme, right? Because ultimately, that's what, you know, these are very fragile things in the sense that, you know, you got all these external forces, that trying to influence, you know, the system, the political system changes every four years, right? And the major programme is supposed to be set up to survive the political system. So how do you go about creating that resiliency, and then you got, you know, you move from design, sort of a planning phase to design to construction, and, again, that I'm just taking one item, which is the political system, you know, it probably changes three times. And the budget program is supposed to be designed, at least that's what I've learned that it's supposed to be designed to survive that, because the cost is so high, that you can't have those influences and, you know, I might be controversial, but like, you know, it just two in my mind, it's, you know, there was lacking some of that resilience, because it didn't survive the political the various political cycles, and maybe that was not the only reason but certainly was one of the reasons you know, you have a changing government changing priorities and, and you if you haven't laid the groundwork, you know, the major problem might suffer.Daniel 24:37This provides a couple of interesting provocations one, which ties into our discussion of what we can learn empirically. I mean, it'd be really interesting to see so if you have system's systems, they intersect with each other, undoubtedly, what ends up happening is sometimes your cognitive focus is on one layer of the system, and you take for granted others which could come to your both your benefit in terms of focus, but also your detriment. And so there's kind of two questions that come from that. One is, is our cognitive awareness or salience of different parts of the system? Is there a way to do that, which kind of balances, I can't do everything, I can't pay attention to everything. And at the same time, I need to be mindful of interdependencies, and maybe a way to dynamically understand that maybe at a certain phase of the program, I focus on this layer. And another one, I focus on another one. That's one aspect. Another aspect that can be interesting is just treating the natural seeing if we can, instead of using the gates that you have to usually typically pass on a project (inaudible) formal. Is there something we learned about if we look at the systems or interlinkages? Is there a certain way in which the systems ebb and flow that there's some kind of clear phase changes just from the data? Oh, at this phase change, we shifted this way this was effective versus that way. Now, what that means, though, and I'm hoping from this podcast, what comes out of it is major programme managers willing to let researchers from the beginning, just be with them in the project and follow along. Right? And there's some opportunities, I think some are enterprising and doing this. Now, on the other hand, how do you then balance as a researcher delivering insights and findings that are both beneficial, but also say there's some detrimental issues in a way that your point acknowledges the political context? Because the problem is I think major programme managers want to know when things are going wrong and when things are improving. But if it becomes clear publicly something has gone wrong, then they're worried about the pressure they're going to get from constituents, policymakers saying, how did you, how come yet again, you're wasting money on x? But then what that does is it creates on the other side, a chilling effect that no one really wants to know when things are going, right. I mean, privately they do. Publicly, they don't. So even to do that kind of work, we're gonna have to think of a new platform, almost like I've been playing with this idea, kind of taking this model from Kiva, which is, you know, you want to bring people that needs support with people that match. I'm wondering if you could do the same thing with research, say, either policymakers or major programme managers have data. It's anonymized enough where it doesn't go back then. But enough where the research has enough detail and the researchers need data to do projects, they get to track them. And there's some way to anonymously reveal the results. Maybe there's some kind of mechanism or matching that would be for quantitative data. But for process models, you need usually qualitative data. So to answer the question (inaudible) is there some way to cognitively pay attention to different systems layers is there some natural phase changes would need access from the beginning of the project all the way to the end so you can actually match, chronicle these sequences. And also, there's some risks to it, you don't know as you're doing it, whether this project will succeed or not. Maybe you're doing it and it fails and you have a bunch of failures. And then you're learning different forms of failures, that's fine, too. But it requires also some mechanism by which practitioners feel comfortable and psychologically safe enough that they can allow researchers to come through who would still want to publish these general best practice insights, but in a way that separates them from kind of unintended consequences or pressures from that. The second point I'll make, which I think is really interesting, your use of the word resilience because I remember, I'm also you want to build kind of systems or major programmes to be resilient to these ebbs and flows. At the same time, if we take the whole kind of ecosystem or institutional perspective of in which the major programme is situated, you start having to ask yourself, what is the major programme really delivering? Is it entrenching existing interests or not? And why do I say this? I remember I was on a panel or as moderating a panel with Shalanda Baker, who is the, was advancing a lot of the energy justice initiatives at the DOE, really well-regarded developing the policies for the U.S. especially around energy. And I remember asking the president, how do you make, how do we make it more resilient? And she said something I think was so profound, I've been thinking about it daily, almost. She said, “I actually don't want these to be resilient. And I said why? She said because inequity, structural inequity is one of the most resilient things. And I thought that was so interesting because then you start asking yourself, yes, you want the programme itself to be resilient to deliver things. But if you start asking yourself, what is it we're asking these programmes to deliver? Is it really creating the kind of change we want or not? You then start asking, do you want the whole system of even selecting these projects to be resilient? I think that's quite interesting because if you think about it, structural inequities last over time. I mean, to give an example, very common example. We build infrastructure, understandably so to last as much as possible. So take a typical bridge. You know a bridge, the life cycle's what, 50 to 70 years, let's say? Imagine who was in the room in 19- let's say -50s, 1970s making those decisions, right? At best, you're using engineers who are looking at the best state of the practice, urban planners, the most well-intentioned, are looking at the best practice of the time usually thinking about the project itself. So obviously, communities are not in the room, even if it's well attended to because they don't think this is what matters at the time.Daniel 30:21At worst, you're intentionally putting people in the room that are going to do something with an agenda. Now, fast forward seventy years later, that bridge has housing next to it, has gas lines next to it, has electricity next to it, is completely locked in, and you as an engineer, you as a community worker, you as even as an anthropologist know certain people should have been in the room and we should change the practices, etc. It's really hard to revert because you would have to unravel all of those connections. I mean, to give a very simple, less controversial example. There was a bridge in Kentucky that they wanted to unravel the spaghetti junctions that led to it right. And the reason was that we now know from traffic planning that spaghetti junctions are not always the best way to deal with traffic, and they want to unravel it. To do that they would have had to remove all the houses, gasoline, such it would have added $2 billion to the project. You're dealing with a financial crisis; you're dealing with increased pressure from government to reduce costs. That's one of the first things to go. So they just worked within the existing footprint. And with that very rational decision, you've essentially kept an outdated process, outdated project in further perpetuity. Right? And so I think people when they argue these social challenges, I think, if they were so overt, in a program, those are the easier to deal with I think the fact that makes it so pernicious is it's absolutely rationalizable, you know, I'm focusing on one of the most famous studies actually of discrimination racism to get into it is by Thomas Schelling was a Nobel Prize winner in economics. And basically, argued was that most people argue the reason you have these things is that one group hates the other group, very reasonable conclusion. But he shows if I even have a preference, let's say he created like some cells and he said, I have a house and I just want half of the people around me to be like me, and think of yourself at a party right you go you want to build rapport, there's a real attraction for what we call homophily, finding similarity. And he shows if you run a similar simulation, just I want to be near people I like, you will get segregation. So it can, it doesn't have to be over perniciousness, it's you're doing the best things you can at the time. Right? And it perpetuates. Take another product, this is why it gets so fundamental visceral at this point, take a call for proposals, just to make this thing. So you have a call for proposals for contractors, let's say for a project, right, typical practice. And what are you going to typically do, you're going to go to people that have prior experience in doing this work. I mean, you need to trust that you don't want to be the one taking risk. Well, obviously that's going to already predispose the project to people with a lot of background. So anyone trying to get into the door, we've already just from the process, a very rational process, by the way, there's nothing wrong with this, you're already excluding certain groups, right? And then, you know, let's say another one, even innovation, let's say I'm a group that's doing A and I want to bring in B, well, a natural process, even as a reviewer as a project manager, well I know A, I can't say anything about B, so you refuse to review the proposal, anything else because you don't know anything about B. If everyone does that in a profession, then B will never see the light of day not because B has no merits, but no one feels equipped to do anything about it. And so then you can start seeing how innovations can get stifled. So to kind of make a long story short, I mean, we talked about the need for discussing resilience at the project level, different phase changes, maybe linkages across this and what to do, and then what that does, and also potentially, how to work practitioners working with researchers to make access possible in a way that kind of allows the findings to be unfiltered at the same time reconciles these programs in a system and then falling from that point. I think we need to be reflective of what is it we're trying to really deliver. I mean, it's not just the program, it's towards some outcome, and is that outcome, something that needs to be revised and changed? And so a second very cool question would be where do we want resilience in a major programme? I mean, obviously, you want it within the program, but do you want it in the selection process? Maybe not? Do you want it in the post validation where we don't do as well? Maybe not so maybe resilience is not great everywhere. And maybe it's really important in certain places. I think this is a really (inaudible) kind of push has been really I've been really thinking about this a lot, because it's a really visceral fundamental point. What is it we're actually doing and trying to achieve?Riccardo  35:12As a major programme practitioner, the major programme is at the center, right? That's where I put it. And that's a very centric view of, you know, building resilience, because the major programme for me or for practitioners, and even academic to a certain degree is the core. But you're right, societally, from a societal standpoint, it might not be, you know, the lack of resilience might actually be a positive thing because it afforded the conversation, the changes on something that, you know, is gonna last for 50, 70, 100 years and so you do want those conversations to be fluid and not to be stuck. No, I love it. I think you just gave me a new perspective that I probably gonna be thinking about every day, like you, now.Daniel 36:02It's also thinking that it's a conduit, right? It could be central but it's a conduit to some end. And then you have to ask yourself, is that the end we want to achieve? Right? So a lot of our grand challenges need to be achieved at scale. It's a conduit, and I guess we're thinking we focus so much on making the conduit good and resilient. The question is, is the end where we want to go? It's interesting.Riccardo  36:24It'd be interesting for some of the listeners to understand what the new trends in major programme are research? What does Oxford see as the new trends?Daniel 36:41I don't want to speak necessarily, for Oxford, but what I've seen is as an N of 1 faculty member there is I think, there is a real interest of and I think it's because of sponsors asking for it. I think also the research and we've discussed a lot of it is major programmes in the societal context. So major programmes in society, what is it we're doing? To ensure kind of social mobility? What is it we're doing to ensure outcomes for communities? I think it's a big area, not much research on. And I kind of think of it as, you know, fundamentally, you're doing major programs to uplift communities to better something. So in some sense, by definition, a lot of major programmes are to help the trailing edge. For those that are already at the at the leading edge, they often already have the research and other things, I mean, the means to do some. So often, a lot of big major programmes, infrastructure, social programs, are sometimes at the trailing edge. How do we understand that? How do we do that? I think the other one is now we're going to the leading edge is how are we going to deal with a lot of new technologies? I mean, one of the historical issues in a lot of our industries is that they've been in transient to change or innovation. And I guess the age-old question, it's kind of a timeless question is, is this new technology, whatever it is, AI, you know, and specific forms of AI like ChatGPT, or generative learning, generative models, additive manufacturing, modular infrastructure construction or modern methods of construction in general? Are these just the fact of the week? And they're not really changing how we do things? Or are they fundamentally changing things? And I think we have that kind of existential question all the time. I think another area is, personally, tools that address what I call the collapse time cycle of major programmes. There's an interesting tension in major programming the following: major programmes last, you know, take, five plus, six plus, 10 plus years. So you have to plan and you can't end they're big. So you can't just go off the hip, you have to have a plan. I mean, you can't, like I know we've been talking about process, but that can't have, that can't be rudderless because you're dealing with very big projects. So you have to have some kind of plan some anchor. At the same time, and this is where I think the grand challenges come not just as an end, but also as an input is the climate changing, right? So 5, 10 years from now, the climate is going to be so different. And by the way, the projects I'm building now, if we want to hit even half emissions by 2030, netzero 2050, basically, the projects I'm planning today, when they roll out, have to hit half emissions, at least, right? And they have to do it in a climate that's changing. I mean, that's if you think it's an insane proposition. But that's the task, right? So now I'm thinking, how can we develop tools? How can we use these technologies not just as how they're going to disrupt an industry but can we use them fundamentally, to help kind of build anticipatory heuristics to manage that? And this is where I think things like the trends that are happening on digital twins, augmented reality could be quite interesting. Because if I can help people see a digital twin and see what it could look like if flooding happens, or if I can show how the fluid dynamics in terms of heat of a server changes with temperature change, even if it's not perfect if I can get people in that mindset, my view is that can allow them to anticipate problems that wouldn't have happened before. So I think there's a really nice frontier of what are the tools and techniques, not just to coordinate like, you know, Arup, Acom, Jacobs, Matt McDonnell, Acadia, all of these groups have these like really nice digital twin systems to kind of help coordinate to great scaffolding, I like to call it but also thinking, how do I use that to kind of help people anticipate where things are happening, not that it's going to be perfect, but at least be aware so that when this happens, they're kind of mindful of it? And so I think that's another kind of really interesting trend. And to double click on the program society, one, I think, like we discussed, how are we going to have standards by which to assess for different infrastructure systems, how we're going to incorporate these kinds of community factors, outcomes, processes, how we're going to track them? Because right now, I mean, it's such a pressing issue, at least in the context I look at, I mean, look at leveling up in the UK, they're asking for quantifiable metrics to do it. The Department of Transportation in the U.S. has now made it as part of an executive order actually writ large across the U.S. government, the department (inaudible) are asking, can you come up with equity-based frameworks, etc., because they're asked to do it. And it's coming to a head because district attorneys, county attorneys are putting in Civil Rights Act claims against infrastructure, if they feel it's disadvantaging certain groups, there's literally cases right now going on. And because there's not a standard, what I find usually, I'm not saying it's always the case, but my opinion, when you don't have a standard for something, it usually settles out of court, because no one's sure where the courts gonna land. And so then you never get to, there's no way to build precedents to address the issue. And they always get settled out of court for kind of esoteric means for which we can't understand. And so we need to find ways to build that in. And ideally, I mean, my dream would be that this is directly incorporated in certifications for different groups, like associates or project management certifications, engineering, have, you know, they have chartered engineering in U.K. Professional Engineering licenses in the U.S. that this is actually part of their exams, like you have to have a kind of a social modular equity module where you think through this, but we don't have the research body yet. And then I think the last point, in terms of even just understanding trends, the way I think of me as a researcher, I try to ask myself, what's going to matter three to five years from now, the reason I say that is because when a practitioner comes now with a problem, by the time I can find the empirical base, the database to do it, I could come up with an answer, but I just worry, it's too late. Right? The thing is, the train has already passed, right? But if I could think of what's going to matter five years from now, and take that bet, as a researcher, then I can build the basis by which all of a sudden a lot of people come. And that's how my infrastructure and equity work started. I think equity is going to matter hugely. But it started five years ago, when I started seeing the murmurings of it in certain governments. And people thought it was crazy at the time. I mean, engineers were saying, Why is engineers care about this? And I understand why because it's like, they're focusing on the delivery of the brick-and-mortar project. This is not the not an indictment on the profession. It's their focus, right. And so when I finally built it, all of a sudden, then you had some high profile cases coming in, you have administrations focusing on equity. And all of a sudden, we're one of the few games in town because we spent time doing it. But it's a bet. I mean, there's other bets I've taken where people didn't care, right? So I think with these trends, just take them with, these are best of what's going to matter, five, three to five years from now, so that we're ready to come up with answers. So to kind of summarize major programmes in society, what are the standards we're going to use by which to do that? I think understanding various disruptive technologies, are they really changing things are not in terms of the industry, or even the major programme as a whole? And then we're flipping it? Can we use technologies to help us reassess fundamental, timeless questions about this time collapse timescale? Perhaps even upskilling for the new workforce we're going to need? Could we combine augmented reality with cognitive science understand what's activated in someone's brain when they're doing certain tasks? Could that help us build a whole new workforce, especially those transitioning from one form of energy to another? So these are the kinds of things that excite me, besides often, the age old questions of how do we understand successful projects? How do we understand to deliver things on budget, on time with benefits? I think those are always going to be there. But these are kind of new trends. I see.Riccardo  44:55  Yeah. I, certainly as a practitioner, not the things I think about it regularly so that's very stimulating. So we're coming to an end but before we conclude, we, you know, we can have you on the podcast and now talk about a little bit about the MMMPM programme, the Major Programme Leadership Academy, especially because, especially with a Major Project Leadership Academy, Major Programme Leadership Academy is in no, in Canada, we started to talk more and more about the need for having capable owners and having counterparts to the private sector, they're able to engage, engage in major programmes. And so, you know, anything you can share with the listeners about, you know, the MMPM, also the MMPLA and the benefits that brings to major programmes. Daniel 46:02I think, and I say this in the context of there's some really other fascinating programs coming along, that are really pushing this, I think, in general, there should be more of these in general, because there's such a demand for people that can do this stuff, that I think the pie is only going to get bigger of need. And so I don't, you know, I want to also preface that I don't think you know, our way is the only way, I tend to be very excited about it, but at the same time, there's others, I think most of the programmes, just to put it this in the context, I think of two things that are really important about the masters of major programme management philosophically. One is it's major programmes as a social science, really, from an organizational systems perspective, but other frameworks. Now, why do I say this is because there's quite a few other programmes, very important, very crucial in advancement, but are more from a civil engineering construction side, typically. So they either focus on the construction industry, and they get into the more technical details of how do you schedule in a certain way? How do you deal with contracting in this way, etc. And we cover some of that. But I think where we come into, is looking at it from a social science perspective, and maybe give you a new nuance about not just the hard side of things, but the softer side. And why do I say that is because it then influences the second philosophical point is that the kind of the kind of students, the kind of people we attract, are really what I call reflective practitioners. They're getting practical insights from this program, but it's through taking a step back from their experience, and thinking, oh, wow, this is a new insight, how could I have rethought this point. And that reflection brings a lot of practical value, new tools of oh my gosh, if I did this in this project, it's sometimes even they're doing it at the time. And so what that means is the kind of students we usually attract. To do that, well, you need people with a wide body of experience to leverage from so our students are actually the most experienced in Oxford. The average levels of experience is usually 15 years, that doesn't mean everybody has 15 years. But to give you a sense of experienced, average age is usually 40 plus, and we get a wide set of people, because when you think of major programmes as a social science, you're thinking about the organizations and systems underlying it. The major programme for which that could apply could be everything from infrastructure to social programmes, welfare programmes, even programmes designed in areas of extreme complexity and conflict, right? And so that's what I think the MSc in general, and you know, the kinds of things we discuss and look up and there's things on the website, but we focus on design, how do you design these fundamentally, they're temporary, but they have to fit with a sponsoring organization or set of organization that are permanent? And how do you balance that? How do you find the right people to fit with that? So on? The second one is around risk, like how do you think about risk? from a project perspective? How do you come up with ways to inform how you think of risk, and then even does the values that you place on a project that change how you kind of calculate things for risk? The next one systems, right? If you think of major programmes as entirely components, how do you think through that, etc. The fourth one's around stakeholder management, how do you manage stakeholders deliver things, which leads into the commercial leadership aspect, because usually, when you're kind of linking with stakeholders, once you've kind of reached some sets of agreements, the idea is you want to formalize, have a mechanism some way to do that. Then we have a research methods class, because you do a dissertation part of the reflection process is take something you're really passionate about for three to four months, and really think even more deeply of the literature and how it helps inform practical insights. And we have performance leadership, how do you lead these kinds of complex unwielding projects that steer them towards the outcomes you're interested in? And then we think of them in a globalized context. I think there's going to be some interesting changes coming up in the horizon that are exciting and happy to talk about it at a certain point but I think this is the general architecture to date. The major project leadership academy, similar orientation, but the kind of the kind of leaders we're dealing with is a bit different, right? This is, this is a programme that's been mandated by the infrastructure projects authority in the U.K. and essentially a few years back, there was concern of all the overage in major projects, and he said, can we develop some kind of training that can help us stop that. And so the idea there is, my understanding is virtual because I, Paul Chapman leads that programme, so I don't want to speak fully on this but my sense of the program is that the idea is that you have this major project portfolio from the government that has a certain any project of a certain level is part of that portfolio. And the leaders from that programme have to go through MPLA. And it's very focused on kind of leadership of yourself. What are the things you're strong at? Where do you need help that kind of notion of incomplete leader? How do you think about again, Matt, leading this in a temporary organization? How do you build the fits together? Commercial leadership, right? How do you contract correctly? How do you establish boundaries for which this programme was going to operate? And then technical leadership, what are the kinds of competencies, specialties you need to deliver. And there's different modules for that, at the end, there's an assessment of every leader, they present an oral presentation, and there's an assessment of whether they can meet the challenges of managing a project in that portfolio. So there's a much more there's these are leaders that are either managing these kinds of major projects now looking to the next one. And, and it's very much with the U.K. government's lens in mind, I think there's real ability, if of interest, to expand this to a variety of other country contexts. I think there could be other versions of MPLA, for all sorts of countries. And so I know, there's keen interest on that we've done that in the past. So if there are leaders in Canada, leaders in other places that want to do this, this is very possible, in fact I think we're very excited by this possibility because we know the U.K. is not the only one with these challenges. And at the same time, we know that these kinds of programmes, while it has a very clear core that's very effective. Also, by the way, they do 360s at the beginning and at the end of the project with both their superior subordinates, lateral peers to kind of and we try to see how did they change over time? Do they get a better sense of who they are? What did they learn? And so it's a very individual journey through a major project that you are managing, usually, in the U.K. Government at a certain level band, that's why it's this programme. And I would, I would love to see, where does this transport? I mean, could you do it in the U.S.? Could you do it in Canada? Could you do it in Germany? Could you do it in France, could you do it in New Zealand, Nigeria, Ghana, right? I mean, this is I think this is a real, it's a really effective model. It seems to have made a dent in these overruns. I mean, surely we still have overruns, this happens. But I think it's really reduced that. And so and in fact, a lot of now government officials that moved up in the organization. I've come out of that program. And I think, in terms of future, what I'm hoping with the program, personally, is I'm trying that the pitch I'm giving to corporations, especially is often when they're looking for sea level promotions, or, you know, chief level promotions, they're often looking for kind of a really amazing functional champion, one of the functions to bring them above. Now, the challenge is you hit this conundrum, right? The stuff that's made them really effective in their function is not what's going to make them strong as an executive, they all of a sudden go from this to like broadening out, and they and so you get this chasm that always happens, where you jump them up to that level and everything they did well, which is deliver really important specialist competencies. Now they have to manage things they don't are not experts in. So the pitch I've been trying to make sure if corporation understands is if you want to find the grooming ground for where you're going to find some really promising C-level appointments, look at those who are managing major programmes. They usally are getting to manage those programmes that are more mid-level earlier stage in career. They have a talent they've come in, that's why they're there. But all of a sudden, they're foisted with I gotta manage this billion-pound billion Canadian dollar billion dollar plus programme or even just really highly complex programme, and I gotta manage all sorts of different parts, all sorts of multiple disciplines. And if they're good at that, why can't they be a CTO, a COO, a CEO, that's what they're doing daily. And so I've been the pitch I've been trying to make for these programmes is you should be looking to bring your major programme leaders that you're thinking you want to groom for C-level, they should come to our programme because we will get we will take what they're already doing, give them a new kind of more generalized perspective with a bit of reflection on their own experience, and they'll come back they're ready to go. And I think this is something because you know, this takes some translation for people to understand what major programme is but that's the way to tell them is you're getting people who are already proficient in having a really deep expertise, and how to manage that expertise with a bunch of other functions, which is very unique. And so why not invest in those kinds of people because they could be your next C-level talents. And that's a pitch I use for this MMPM. I think MMPLA you could say the same thing. I mean, people are going back and forth in and out of private public sector. Yeah, so that's kind of how I see it. The slight, slight differences, but the same kind of orientation and motivation in mind.  Riccardo  55:37Yeah, if I can just had I mean, we, it was a few years back when it kind of dawned on me, this is before I did MMPM, but, you know, somebody, we were talking about $5 billion project, and somebody said, well, you know, it's a billion over five years, that's a billion a year, that's, that's a medium sized business, right? I mean, you're running a medium-sized business with that type of turnover. So yeah, I mean, the skills, the skills are there. If you're a project director or something like that, you probably have the traits or you're getting the experience that a CEO will get.Daniel 56:15There's an interesting problem in entrepreneurship. To your point, you're managing a small business, it's quite fleeting, if you think of it, it's almost like a small venture, right? I mean, not a small venture, but it's, let's say, a venture that's hit, you know, at least in terms of valuation, maybe a later stage Series C, private equity, maybe Series B, depending on whether it's a unicorn or not. And so essentially, that's what you're doing. And if you think of a startup, it's kind of temporary. I mean, most of them don't last beyond five years. And so, you know, there's a big challenge in entrepreneurship to your point, which is you found this amazing product. And now you want to grow a business out of it. And there's a massive chasm, so they even call they have a word for it's called valley of death. Yes. And I was thinking, the way we think about major programmes, we're thinking about how do you professionalize and scale something big quickly? To me, instead of thinking of startup canvas, lean startup, etcetera, those are valid ideas and insights, but they're really predicated on certain sectors. I mean, who else better to kind of solve that gap than major programme thinking? And I feel there's a really interesting gap to not just have major programmes in advancing its own right, but start speaking to other very prominent practical challenges. How do you scale a startup? That's about professionalizing your supply chain, professionalizing the structure of your organization, building coordination fast. I mean, who else would be prepared for that? In major programmes, I mean. That's a huge opportunity because it's a notoriously difficult problem. And what's nice about it, is even if you improve it, 2%, 3% that's all of a sudden, hundreds, maybe even thousands, tens of thousands of businesses that are now scaling, delivering jobs, the impact, even with just a small change in the needle is huge. And I think it's been too much thought about from an entrepreneurial perspective, which is, you know, product development driving this doing hypothesis tests, and they're not problematizing, that scaling approach. And I think that's where major programmes could have some really interesting impact and things we're actually discussing in the classroom as well, like, how do you then take that issue? Really nice translational opportunities as well, if you want.Riccardo  58:27I like it. It's really, really interesting concept. I might be thinking about that everyday too, also. Music: "A New Tomorrow" by Chordial Music. Licensed through PremiumBeat.DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy, opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Disenyo.co LLC and its employees.

Ezekiel 4:1–7:27I. The Destruction of Jerusalem Pictured – 4:1-5:17II. The Desolation of the Land Proclaimed – 6:1-7:27

March 15th: Kriss Donald Killed (2004) All crimes seem senseless. But they feel especially so when the victim is a child who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. On March 15th 2004 a young boy became a victim for nothing more than his location and the color of his skin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kriss_Donald, https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/far-right-group-exploit-race-28704027, https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/scottish-news/8592618/fascists-kriss-donald-murder/, https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/kriss-donald-murder-top-scots-26477302, https://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/news/20615389.kriss-donald-killer-attacked-inside-hmp-greenock/, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/ABDUCTED%2C+TORTURED+AND+BURNT+ALIVE%3B+Kriss+pleaded+with+killers+%27I%27m...-a0154113820, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/nov/09/race.ukcrime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ezekiel 1:4–3:27I. A Fresh and Overwhelming Vision of God – 1:4-28II. A Calling to Proclaim God's Word Courageously – 2:1-3:11III. Ezekiel Struggles with Fulfilling His Calling – 3:12-15IV. Ezekiel Receives Specific, Unique Instruction – 3:16-27

Questions for ReflectionThe word “participate” comes from two words meaning “to take” and “part”. Put them together, and what have you got: to take part, to be or become actively involved, or to share in. Based on this definition, would you describe yourself as a participant in what God does in and through JaxNaz Church? If so, in what ways, and to what degree? We talked about four opportunities to participate: partner with God in his mission (more on this next week), give generously, join a Group, serve on a team. How will you participate in what God is doing in and through JaxNaz Church as we make room to grow? What steps can you take today? Key Verse(s)Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. Matthew 16:18SetlistRAISE A HALLELUJAH - BethelKING OF MY HEART - BethelRECKLESS LOVE - Cory AsburyTRUST IN GOD - Elevation WorshipLearn more about JaxNaz Church at jaxnazchurch.com or, better yet, come to our Sunday services at 9:30 & 11:15a in-person or online at http://jaxnazchurch.online.FacebookInstagramYoutubeChurch Online

Romans 16:25-27I. What Is Paul's Central Purpose in This Closing Passage?II. Why Is This Paul's Central Purpose as His Letter Ends?III. How Are We Best Able to Fulfill this Central Purpose?

1 Peter 3:81 Corinthians 12:27 As a community of faith, we can encourage each other.Hebrews 10:23-25As a community of faith, we can strengthen one another.Proverbs 27:17 NIV1 Thessalonians 5:14-22As a community of faith, we can correct/restore one another. Galatians 6:2As a community of faith, we can support one another.1 Corinthians 12:26 1 Corinthians 12:27I am … Continue reading I AM GOD’S PLAN: We are God’s Plan (Community) →

Scripture Reading: Acts 1:1-11 [Edited: Changed 26 to 11.] I wrote the former account, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven, after he had given orders by the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3 To the same apostles also, after his suffering, he presented himself alive with many convincing proofs. He was seen by them over a forty-day period and spoke about matters concerning the kingdom of God. 4 While he was with them, he declared, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait there for what my Father promised, which you heard about from me. 5 For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”6 So when they had gathered together, they began to ask him, “Lord, is this the time when you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He told them, “You are not permitted to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth.” 9 After he had said this, while they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud hid him from their sight. 10 As they were still staring into the sky while he was going, suddenly two men in white clothing stood near them 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking up into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in the same way you saw him go into heaven.”[Edited: Moved verses 12-26 to next week.]Main ThemesLiterary PrefaceThe literary preface of Acts is its first two verses, although its introduction could be considered to extend through verses 11, 14, or even the end of the second chapter (verse 2:47) when the book adds its first summary statement.As we discussed last time, the book is addressed to Theophilus, possibly a patron of Luke or a person of high standing who Luke hoped to honor. In ancient times, an author's hope in dedicating a book to such a high-ranking person was that the book be read to audiences during parties or other events.Transition of LeadershipAlmost immediately, with its second verse, the book of Acts tells us of a key event: a transition of leadership in the early church. We are reminded that Jesus has been “taken up,” almost surely referring to the Lord's ascension, and who was left with his instructions? The apostles. This might seem obvious to us, but it isn't. One could at least imagine an egalitarian early church in which every believer had equal voice and insight. That is certainly not what Acts describes. A very select group—the apostles—are left to guide the flock. In fact, just a few verses down (15-26), this leadership group is clearly defined. (My commentary here is not addressing potential corollaries to this transition of leadership, such as apostolic succession or the magisterium.)Later in the book of Acts, we will encounter another transition of leadership, namely, to Paul. He will lead the mission to the gentiles. We will discuss that in future sessions, however.Notice that the acts of the apostles are described as following what “Jesus began to do and teach.” The word began in verse 1 is debated. Some argue that it is simply a Semitic pleonasm, that is, a distinctly Jewish way of speaking. This Semitic construction appears mutliple times in the Septuagint, with which Luke and his audience would have been familiar. If this is the case, the expression does not imply a continued action. Conversely, some have suggested that it means that Acts addresses what Jesus continued to do and teach (presumably by his name and the Spirit) through the disciples. This would make Jesus the paradigm of the church and the church an extension of Jesus. Although the first explanation is more likely, the latter certainly fits the theology in Luke.Luke's RecapitulationChapter 1 of Acts quickly catches up the listener to the end of “volume 1,” the Gospel of Luke. Here is a brief Acts 1 to Luke 24 correspondence. (The format is a bit strange, but I did not want to add an unwieldy table. I added verse quotations when helpful.)1. Acts 1: Jesus teaches the disciples through the Spirit (1:2). Luke 24: Jesus teaches the disciples after the resurrection, including explicit times (24:25-27, 32, 44-48).They said to each other, “Didn't our hearts burn within us while he was speaking with us on the road, while he was explaining the scriptures to us?” Luke 24:32Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it stands written that the Christ would suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. Luke 24:44-482. Acts 1: Jesus offers many proofs of his risen state (1:3a). Luke 24: Jesus demonstrates his risen state (24:13-32, 34, 36-40).Now that very day two of them were on their way to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking to each other about all the things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and debating these things, Jesus himself approached and began to accompany them . . . . Luke 24:13-15While they were saying these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 But they were startled and terrified, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 Then he said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; it's me! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones like you see I have.” Luke 24:36-393. Acts 1: Jesus appears for forty days (1:3b). Luke 24: Technically missing (i.e., 40 days are not specified). However, some period of time is assumed to accommodate the appearances of Jesus.4. Acts 1: Jesus speaks of the kingdom (1:3b). Luke 24: As with the 40 days, the kingdom lessons are not explicit in Luke 24, but they can be inferred given Jesus' repeated mentions of the kingdom in the earlier chapters of Luke.[Jesus] said to them, “Thus it stands written that the Christ would suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Luke 24:46-47See below for a discussion of the kingdom.5. Acts 1: Jesus orders them not to leave Jerusalem (1:4b). Luke 24: Jesus orders them to stay in Jerusalem (24:49b).And look, I am sending you what my Father promised. But stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:496. Acts 1: Jesus instructs them to wait for the Father's promise (1:4b). Luke 24: They must stay in the city until they receive the Father's promise (24: 49). (See the verse under number 5 above.)7. Acts 1: Disciples expect the kingdom's restoration to Israel (1:6). Luke24: A similar notion expressed by other disciples, who expected Jesus to redeem Israel (24:21).But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. Not only this, but it is now the third day since these things happened. Luke 24:218. Acts 1: Jesus promises the Spirit and that they will be witnesses (1:8). Luke 24: They are witnesses and will receive promised power (24:48-49).You are witnesses of these things. 49 And look, I am sending you what my Father promised. But stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:48-499. Acts 1: They will receive power (1:8). Luke 24: They will be clothed with power (24:49). (See the verse under number 5 above.)10. Acts 1: Jesus ascends (1:9-11). Luke 24: Jesus ascends (24: 51).Now during the blessing he departed and was taken up into heaven. Luke 24:5111. Acts 1: The disciples leave Mount Olivet for Jerusalem (1: 12). Luke 24: They leave Bethany (24:50; this is near the Mount of Olives, 19:29) and return to Jerusalem (24:52).12. They pray in the upper room (1:13-14). Luke 24: In the gospel, they worship in the temple (24:53). Luke probably expects us to suppose that they met both in homes (here, the upper room) and in the temple.The KingdomActs Assumes We are Familiar with the Gospel of LukeAs suggested above, Jesus spoke much about the “kingdom” in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus preached about the kingdom (Luke 4:43; 8:1; 9:11), promising it to the poor (6:20), little ones (18:16-17; cf. 12:32), and the radically obedient (9:62; 16:16); by contrast, it would be difficult for the rich to enter it (6:24-25; 18:24-25). Jesus also sent his disciples to preach the kingdom (9:2, 60; 10:9, 11).In Acts, we will see a continued proclamation of the kingdom (Acts 8:12; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31). However, in Acts Luke seems to presuppose that the reader is familiar with Jesus' words about the kingdom found in the Gospel of Luke. So, we need to take a minute and go back.Already in the gospel we see something curious about the kingdom. People should yearn for the kingdom (Luke 11:2; 12:31; 23:51), although the kingdom was already present in a hidden way (13:18-21), currently available for those willing to receive it (8:10). Jesus's followers could enter the kingdom and find there a role greater than that of John the Baptist (7:28; 16:16). Then Acts opens with what seems like a realized eschatology—that is, the kingdom, whatever that is, is here! Craig Keener explains this present but future mystery as follows:The Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek terms here translated “kingdom” usually signify the concept “reign” or “authority” or “rule.” Like the OT (e.g., Isa 6: 5), Jewish teachers could speak of God's present rule (especially among the people who obeyed his law). But Jewish people also looked for the kingdom as God's future rule, when God would reign unchallenged, as attested in regular Jewish prayers. Because “heaven” was a common Jewish periphrasis for “God,” some other Jewish texts use “kingdom of heaven” as a periphrasis for “kingdom of God” (e.g., Sipra Qed. pq. 9.207.2.13; y. Qidd. 1: 2, §24; Matthew, passim). Sometimes they also seem to use “kingdom” as a periphrasis for the divine name.…If one examines the entire evidence available in the Gospels, the kingdom appears to be both present and future, as is widely recognized today. It was only natural for Jesus and his first followers, once they recognized that Jesus would need to come again to establish his kingdom fully, to recognize that the anticipated kingdom would arrive in two stages corresponding to Jesus's first and second coming. If one does not arbitrarily exclude either set of evidence by posing a contradiction that the first generations of disciples would not have recognized, both sets of evidence fit together adequately. If Jesus implied his messiahship and spoke of a future Son of Man, we may thus assume that when he announced the kingdom, he undoubtedly announced God's imminent rule in the final sense (rather than simply God's providential rule over creation or over Israel through the law). But his claim also suggests that he expected to play a role in the kingdom, already active in a hidden way in the present (Luke 13: 18– 30).Kingdom Talk in the Gospel of LukeBecause the kingdom of God is such a recurrent theme in Acts, and that theme is built upon the teachings of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, I think we must read the Luke verses before we move on. I will offer brief commentary on these. My purpose is to create some narrative tension that perhaps can be resolved as we study the rest of Acts.The next morning Jesus departed and went to a deserted place. Yet the crowds were seeking him, and they came to him and tried to keep him from leaving them. But Jesus said to them, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns too, for that is what I was sent to do.” Luke 4:42-43Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God belongs to you. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you and reject you as evil on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and jump for joy because your reward is great in heaven. For their ancestors did the same things to the prophets. 24 But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort already. 25 Woe to you who are well satisfied with food now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for their ancestors did the same things to the false prophets. 27 “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Luke 6:20-27I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he is. Luke 7:28Sometime afterward [Jesus] went on through towns and villages, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. . . . While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from one town after another, he spoke to them in a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled on, and the wild birds devoured it. Other seed fell on rock, and when it came up, it withered because it had no moisture. Other seed fell among the thorns, and they grew up with it and choked it. But other seed fell on good soil and grew, and it produced a hundred times as much grain.” As he said this, he called out, “The one who has ears to hear had better listen!” Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. 10 He said, “You have been given the opportunity to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that although they see they may not see, and although they hear they may not understand. “Now the parable means this: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in a time of testing fall away. As for the seed that fell among thorns, these are the ones who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the worries and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for the seed that landed on good soil, these are the ones who, after hearing the word, cling to it with an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with steadfast endurance. Luke 8:1, 4-15After Jesus called the twelve together, he gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. . . . When the apostles returned, they told Jesus everything they had done. Then he took them with him and they withdrew privately to a town called Bethsaida. But when the crowds found out, they followed him. He welcomed them, spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and cured those who needed healing. Luke 9:1-2, 10-11As they were walking along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus said to him, “Foxes have dens and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Jesus said to another, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say goodbye to my family.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:57-62Whenever you enter a town and the people welcome you, eat what is set before you. 9 Heal the sick in that town and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come upon you!' But whenever you enter a town and the people do not welcome you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this: The kingdom of God has come.' I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town! Luke 10:8-12Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he stopped, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” So he said to them, “When you pray, say: “‘Father, may your name be honored; may your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And do not lead us into temptation.'” Luke 11:1-4And which of you by worrying can add an hour to his life? So if you cannot do such a very little thing as this, why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the flowers grow; they do not work or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these! And if this is how God clothes the wild grass, which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into the fire to heat the oven, how much more will he clothe you, you people of little faith! So do not be overly concerned about what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not worry about such things. For all the nations of the world pursue these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, pursue his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father is well pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide yourselves purses that do not wear out—a treasure in heaven that never decreases, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Luke 12:25-34Thus Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? To what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the wild birds nested in its branches.” Again he said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all the dough had risen.” Luke 13:18-21The law and the prophets were in force until John; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is urged to enter it. 17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tiny stroke of a letter in the law to become void. Luke 16:16-17Now at one point the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God was coming, so he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!' or ‘There!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” Luke 17:20-21Now people were even bringing their babies to him for him to touch. But when the disciples saw it, they began to scold those who brought them. But Jesus called for the children, saying, “Let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” Now a certain leader asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'” The man replied, “I have wholeheartedly obeyed all these laws since my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” But when the man heard this, he became very sad, for he was extremely wealthy. When Jesus noticed this, he said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard this said, “Then who can be saved?” He replied, “What is impossible for mere humans is possible for God.” And Peter said, “Look, we have left everything we own to follow you! Then Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, there is no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of God's kingdom who will not receive many times more in this age—and in the age to come, eternal life.” Luke 18:15-30Now there was a man named Joseph who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man. (He had not consented to their plan and action.) He was from the Judean town of Arimathea, and was looking forward to the kingdom of God. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Luke 23:50-52The Spirit and the KingdomI think we need one last bit of background before we move on—and that is the connection between the pouring of the Spirit of God and the coming of the kingdom. Certainly Jesus taught about and proclaimed the coming of both, the Spirit and the kingdom. What we often miss though is that given the Old Testament (the Jewish scriptures), the disciples would have had every reason to understand these two themes as inseparably linked. The prophets had regularly linked God's pouring out his Spirit with the time of Israel's restoration. Take the end of Isaiah 43 and the beginning of 44, for example:[The Lord Rebukes His People] 22 “But you did not call for me, O Jacob; you did not long for me, O Israel. 23 You did not bring me lambs for your burnt offerings; you did not honor me with your sacrifices. I did not burden you with offerings; I did not make you weary by demanding incense. 24 You did not buy me aromatic reeds; you did not present to me the fat of your sacrifices. Yet you burdened me with your sins; you made me weary with your evil deeds. 25 I, I am the one who blots out your rebellious deeds for my sake; your sins I do not remember. 26 Remind me of what happened. Let's debate! You, prove to me that you are right! 27 The father of your nation sinned; your spokesmen rebelled against me. 28 So I defiled your holy princes, and handed Jacob over to destruction, and subjected Israel to humiliating abuse.[The Lord Will Renew Israel] 44 “Now, listen, Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen!” 2 This is what the Lord, the one who made you, says—the one who formed you in the womb and helps you: “Don't be afraid, my servant Jacob, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. 3 For I will pour water on the parched ground and cause streams to flow on the dry land. I will pour my Spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your children. 4 They will sprout up like a tree in the grass, like poplars beside channels of water. 5 One will say, ‘I belong to the Lord,' and another will use the name ‘Jacob.' One will write on his hand, ‘The Lord's,' and use the name ‘Israel.'”Notice, then, that the disciples are not off base when they ask: When will Jesus restore the kingdom to Israel? Some view their question as shortsighted, but this context specifies that the problem with the question, if any, is with timing (Acts 1:7), not with content.The Promise of the Holy SpiritIn the Gospels and immediately in the opening of Acts we read about the promise of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the foretaste of the kingdom and the empowerment to prepare a people for it. The Spirit thus enables the witnesses (e.g., the apostles) to carry on Jesus' mission after his ascension.We are so used to the stories in the Bible, that sometimes we are unsurprised by details that should otherwise give us some pause. Notice that after Jesus is gone the disciples could not generate the Spirit or spiritual experience on their own. They must “wait” for the “promise” of God, requiring faithful dependence on God. In Acts, this dependence is another key theme. God both assigns tasks and provides the power to accomplish them. Luke's pneumatology emphasizes especially the Spirit's empowering the church for mission.Luke expects his audience to be able to fill in details surrounding the promise by remembering what they have already learned in Luke 24:49. There Jesus promises the believers “power” for their mission, which probably includes signs and wonders that would confirm their powerful message.For Luke, the “promise” here is not only a matter of historical interest concerning Jesus's first witnesses; it is paradigmatic, at least in some sense, for all Christians. This is clear from the fact that the promise is later reiterated for all who will repent (Acts 2:38), including the “far off” Gentiles (2:39).Peter said to them, “Repent, and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.” Acts 2:38-39The promise here also evokes the prophecies of John the Baptist.Now this was John's testimony when the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed—he did not deny but confessed—“I am not the Christ!” So they asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not!” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No!” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Tell us so that we can give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”John said, “I am the voice of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said.” 24 (Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) So they asked John, “Why then are you baptizing if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not recognize, who is coming after me. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal!” These things happened in Bethany across the Jordan River where John was baptizing.On the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is greater than I am, because he existed before me.' I did not recognize him, but I came baptizing with water so that he could be revealed to Israel.”Then John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. And I did not recognize him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining—this is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' I have both seen and testified that this man is the Chosen One of God.”John 1:19-34From Jerusalem to the Ends of the EarthThe Spirit and the kingdom come together in the central thesis of Acts expressed in Acts 1:8.But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth. Acts 1:8Two points can be made. Salvation begins in Jerusalem. Salvation will come to all the earth. Chapter 2 of Acts will quote Isaiah and give us more details about this mission. Nevertheless, the allusions to Isaiah are already present in verse1:8. The language of “my witnesses” is reminiscent of Isaiah. The same can be said for the geographic range of the testimony of God's salvation (Isa 41:5, 9; 42:10; 43:6; 45:22; 48:20; 49:6; 52:10; 62:11). That Luke depends on Isaiah's language here is clear: although mention of the ends of the earth is common in ancient literature, Luke's complete and exact phrase “to the end of the earth” appears four or five times in the Septuagint (Isa 8:9; 48:20; 49:6; 62:11; also Pss. Sol. 1:4) and only twice in the NT (Acts 13:47 and here); it also appears in Christian writings dependent on Isaiah or Acts but “nowhere else in the immense range” of literature in the Thesaurus linguae graecae.[Edited: All text from this point forward was moved to next week.]

In this episode, Riccardo sits down with two of the voices behind the Digital Twin Fun Club podcast, Henry Fenby-Taylor and Neil Thompson. The trio speaks accuracy versus bias and how technology (digital twins specifically) can help mitigate risk within the complex world of infrastructure.   “I think people generally have the wrong expectation of technology. They think ‘Oh, we're going to be able to predict the future.' Actually the value of these things isn't about being able to predict the future, it's about being able to adapt as quickly as possible to changing circumstances.”  –Neil Thompson Key Takeaways:  Defining a digital twin, the difference between a BIM and digital twinThe true value of technology (spoiler alert: it is not about predicting the future)The transition from sourcing the “cheapest” to “best” solutionMajor programmes as a symphony, an analogy of perspectiveCollaboration through technology for parallel problem solving approach Links Mentioned:  Benedict Evans' PresentationsNoise by Daniel KahnemanBent Flyvbjerg's How Big Things Get Done If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. The conversation doesn't stop here—connect and converse with our community: Follow Henry Fenby-Taylor on LinkedInFollow Neil Thompson on LinkedInFollow Digital Twin Fun Club Podcast on LinkedInFollow Riccardo Cosentino on LinkedInNavigating Major Programmes on LinkedIn Transcript:Riccardo Cosentino  00:00If you're listening to navigate the major programs, the podcast that aims to elevate the conversations happening in the infrastructure industry and inspire you to have a more efficient approach within it. I'm your host Riccardo Cosentino I bring over 20 years of major product management experience. Most recently, I graduated from Moxa universities they business group, which shook my belief when it comes to navigating major problems. Now it's time to shake yours. Join me in each episode as a press the industry experts about the complexity of major problem management, emerging digital trends and the critical leadership required to approach these multibillion dollar projects. Let's see where the conversation takes us. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of navigating major programs. Today I'm joined by two guests from the digital twin fun club. Gonna let them introduce themselves. Henry Fenby-Taylor  01:04Hi, I'm Henry Fenby Taylor, host of the digital twin fan club, podcast and editor and coordinator and I also run my own digital transformation and communications consultancy. Hi, Neil Thompson01:18Hi everyone. I'm Neil Thompson. I'm a digital fanclub cleaner owner and co founder, I guess, their day job I work at AtkinsRéalis, and I do things around digital transformation. I also have some other hats around the industry, my chair, the built environment for the Institute of Engineering Technology, also lucky enough to have gained an Honorary Associate Professor of the Bartlett School of sustainable construction, all things. Construction economics related. So I'm really interested to have this conversation because I've, I've been listening to some episodes and really fascinated in this sort of world between digital tools and how we incentivize people to do things is fascinating. So I'm looking forward to the conversation. Riccardo Cosentino  02:08Yeah, me too. Definitely. I'd well if we're comparing hats. I'm also on the construction industry councils. Net Zero climate change panel, and then CIC 2050, board member of a core member of zero construct as well. So I have a very strong interest in net zero in this space as well. Which is a key economic question, isn't it? Really?  Yes. Especially today with the especially in the UK, especially today with a big news from last week? Ya know, um, you know, I'm Riccardo Cosentino I think the listeners know me, and I think today, I'm really keen to explore, you know, how can digital tools, digital twin help us navigate the major programs? I have cheeky and cheesy really trying to make a comparison there. I think digital twin and digital tools today are like the Google Maps of for navigating major problems, while in the old days, we used to just have maps. And so I think it's, it's an important intersection. As project complexity gets bigger and bigger. So to the tool that we need to manage that complexity need to need to be adopted. And, you know, that's, that's my contribution to this podcast. Henry Fenby-Taylor  03:35Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a very key issue. So we always start with what is a digital twin, I feel that there is often uncertainty, or lack of clarity around that. And I feel like adding some definitions to that will give us some simplicity. And then people can know what we're talking about. I've got my own definitions, but I'll let you go first, Neil. Neil Thompson04:03Oh, cheeky. I, so I got a, I have two views of digital twins. One is sort of the variation of, you know, we need to represent physical assets in a digital way. And hence the digital twin. And we use a series of technologies to achieve that. My other end of the telescope definition of it is we're connecting critical national infrastructure to the internet at different levels of maturity. So one end of the end of maturity is existing things that work today. There's things that we're planning for the future. And then there's things that we're building in between and all those things have some sort of interface with the internet, which may sound a bit strange saying it that way, but it's it's for me, it's just connecting these things together digitally with Henry Fenby-Taylor  04:59jazz I can't believe I've got to say jazz first and about gas. So my definition of a digital twin is that it is a system where there is a real thing that we are trying to manage or look after. And it could be designed simulate, construct, operate, you know, or it could be at the highest level of strategy, there's a thing that we need to manage. And so many things are complex, obviously, major programs are very complex, organizationally, technically, what they're trying to do, very complex. And so we need a better understanding of that real thing by measuring digitally understanding in a system that can tell us what is really happening with that system. Not only do we have good interfaces, so it's not just about having a nice dashboard. But it's about empowering people to make better decisions on the coalface of their job, right? From the very, most operational on the tools level, all the way up to strategic direction, measuring key performance indicators. And I think it's that connection by Neil says that Internet of infrastructure, it's bringing things together in a way that's not been done before. Because it's quite a complex sector is it's a complex supply chain, the word you could take an aspect of major programs, indeed, infrastructure in general, and probably apply the word complex to it quite safely. So I think, to move us on, I think that's a great definition. We've done our definitions of digital twins. So we know what we're talking about. Riccardo Cosentino  06:50Maybe there are five, yeah, if I may just stick to one. Because I mean, North America, where I'm from in, Canada's specially I think there's still a lack of understanding. And I think since we're defining, I think it'd be helpful and probably going to open a can of worms, since I've listened to your podcast in the past. But what's the difference between a BIM and a digital twin? Henry Fenby-Taylor  07:17Well, good question. Now, I have the true answer. But it's not very simple, which is that digital twins didn't come from the built environment, but didn't come from construction that didn't come from infrastructure, they came from NASA, originally, the original concept for we have a shuttle in space, and we keep building physical mock ups of this thing. So why don't we go to digital one, and then not only can we plan, model it and send up into space, and manage it remotely, we can create a better system for the design for the whole system for design, construction use. And so because it came from that route, it's difficult for the built environment, because we had a thing for that, when the digital twins came to us that design simulate side was an is already being done by them. So, I am not fussy about where you call your digital twin, because it could be your managing your factory line and your system. So you are trying to make maximize efficiency in say, building a building, or in the design. But I am not precious about it. If people want to say, you know, BIM is over here, in the design phase, and digital twin is over there. That's their choice. It is because of its origins, slightly complex, but effectively, a digital twin can cover the whole remit. And be, have been as part of it. Neil Thompson08:57Yeah, and we, at the end of the day, it's better to make a mistake in cyberspace than it is to do it in physical space. So just thinking about the Navigating of major programs, let's not go wrong in real life. It's really hard to fix. It's really hard to see. And unless Yeah, I'm with Henry on that one. It's, you know, let's, let's go and make a Digital Sandbox and work out and make a plan there is build, build the plan and execute that plan. And then and obviously, we in the world of major programs are very complex, involve lots of people and generally go for a really long period of time. So things change, where the environment changes, economic circumstances change. So my frustration with all of this is to is in two parts. One is I think people generally have a wrong expectation of technology. They think, Oh, we're going to be able to predict the future. Actually, the value of these things isn't isn't about being be able to predict the future is about being able to adapt as quickly as possible to change in circumstances. And that's where we need to get people on board is this Henry Fenby-Taylor  10:09is this from the I think you've got me to read Tim Harford's book adapt. That was yes. And that was very influential for my thinking on digital twins, where you are, again, you're trying to empower people through technology, not trying to take decisions away or automate things away. You're trying to give people the ability to react to changing circumstances. And, you know, just things like the teams are making major programs change massively, constantly. So you have a constant onboarding, and off boarding of knowledge and expertise. And it can be really difficult to capture that. So creating systems that mirror they were originally called digital twins, originally called information, model mirrors, that mirror what's happening, just allows people to get up to speed quicker allows people to make better decisions faster. Riccardo Cosentino  11:05I really liked that. It was one of the definition of a major programs, which I absolutely having a spot on the major programs are complex adaptive systems, to only they are complex, but they change. And so you're now dealing with, you know, an I think an equivalent to a complex adaptive system is is a flock of birds 1000s of birds flying to the sky, and somehow they do they unison, but it feels like they're doing Unison but they don't. And so that's, that's an equivalent of a complex adaptive system. Henry Fenby-Taylor  11:40I'm going to ask myself an interesting question on that. Does the does any individual bird know what the flock is doing? Or are they just responding to some fairly simple rules at a quite an immediate, you know, that the flock is created by birds with a similar drive all that with, say, a common goal, you know, they're all going to migrate all reacting to each other using very similar rules. And it is sort of organic emergent system creates, emerges, an emergent system emerges. And I think that's the beauty of major programs is that they work at all? Neil Thompson12:24You've heard no. I've got, let's go on a journey. Right? So probably when I was growing, so what No, just just one point, I used to work for really big, you know, construction companies. And the thing that always used to strike me we've we've all was you can stand still on a building site and look around, and it doesn't look like much is happening. But the job gets done. The how people come together at that scale is really interesting, because sometimes you can't, you can't stand there and physically sit. So there's a thing here and digital systems like this, the only way that you can have visibility of it because people are behind things. They're in the office, they didn't there's so much stuff happening, not one person can stand on a platform and look at everything. So that's that's something I find interesting. So it's back to what you said about the flock of birds. So this is this is something I've always wanted to the types of listen that listeners you have Ricardo and those in the space of finance and designing contracts. This is this is something that I've always the pitch that I've always wanted to make in from a digital perspective, because I feel like we're two worlds that don't communicate that much. There's this sort of capability of technology and those that design contracts and sort of somewhat oblivious of each other, but have a vital role to play. So one is back to your flock of birds. So think about an economics, right, we have we think of the price mechanism. So we infer the quality of something through its price. But I think we've sort of reached a point now where the price mechanism is somewhat defunct, we just because it's expensive doesn't necessarily mean it's the best. And there's a great I don't if you know who Benedict Evans is. Ben is Evans is sort of a commentator on technology trends over time. He gave a presentation in 2021. And if you have show notes, I can provide you a link, he this slides that he created was about sentiment of search on for consumers over time. And it has two lines, it has a line for the sentiment for the best and sentiment for the cheapest and in 2004 Everyone went on the internet and search for the cheapest then up to about 2008 It was the number one sentiment on the internet. And then this line called the best I want to find the best not the cheapest took over and it's just skyrocketed since. So this sort of price mechanism thing our flock of birds and like the internet as a proxy for Okay, people turned up and use it to find the cheapest thing they quickly found. out there, we'll find the cheapest thing actually isn't the best outcome, searching the internet and using the information that we have stored in the internet about products, reviews, quality, consistency, what have you means that instead of searching, give me other no trainers for cheapest. It's given me, what is the best for the use that I need? And modern internet searches. And just think about when you go and buy things. How regularly do you go, I'm just gonna go get the cheapest thing is interesting. So the world of consumer products has changed. And I think we're in we're in that point of 2008. Those that have been designing contracts have kind of the kid themselves to say they've been after quality, but they it by accident, I think I don't think it's through sort of any malicious intent or just the way because of the lack of information, we can only go by the price mechanism. But now with with the systems, they are digital twins and what have you, we can ask better questions of our data. So instead of sort of being rushed for time, the best thing that we can do is just just just give us your best price. And we'll go with that. We're now in the space of well performance, and what is what is best for the outcome. So you can't do that at that technology. So this is back to my analogy of standing there on a building site. Just because you can stand there physically see, it doesn't mean that you've got a true picture of performance, you have to have a digital understanding of the landscape to, to get underneath the surface of how well that's going. Henry Fenby-Taylor  16:23Adding to that I feel the contract. Artifact contracts themselves are legal documents, they do not flex, much over time, but generally, you know, they won't flex at all. So there is a real pressure when you are trying to procure to get the best deal. And to somehow know everything in advance before you start. And I think we all know that with the best will in the world. That can't happen. And the emergence of new paradigms of delivery through software and technology, where things are much more incremental, has challenged at dynamic of, here's your contract, you've got 12 months, here's the money go away, make me the thing, whether it's software, or an apple, and 12 months is definitely not long enough for an apple unless it's a really little one. But that it doesn't work. It fundamentally doesn't work. And you can't design a contract to make it work. You can design a contract to protect and to enforce and to give powers and all these sorts of things. But without that data that Neil's talking about, you are relying on judgment and or good practice goodwill, and then ultimately, litigation and, you know, take people to call. And there are much better mechanisms in between that, that we can introduce now that we can put into contracts that will make them operate better and give the outcomes people are looking for by adding that adding this measurement, this quality, as Neil calls it throughout. Riccardo Cosentino  18:22Yeah, and I think if we think of contracts for major programs, and I think it goes back to adaptability and being able to manage a complex adaptive system, and then the contracts that we have the typical lump sum turnkey, Neil's very familiar with his word, you know, they don't provide the flexibility that you know, you're supposed to give a fixed price today for something that is going to complete a seven, eight years from now, and assume that you can predict everything that is going to happen. I think the digital tools and digital twin will help you manage some of that, but the contract are certainly not set up to allow for adaptability, new contracts or they're not new, but like Alliance type contracting, collaborative contracting can help because they allow a better discussion instead of having an upfront discussion. It allows a discussion throughout the contract. And you're allowed to change some parameters, but it's ultimately it's it needs to we need to have an understanding that major programs adapt, have to adapt to changing circumstances. I mean, I mean, look, I just I just do what's happening now. Right? I mean, that's a perfect example of a contract that needs to be adapted. Henry Fenby-Taylor  19:41Yeah, absolutely. There's so many different factors at play here. It's political, its social. Its cost of living. It's all of these factors that come together. So yeah, I do think that creating these data insights on understanding can create better contracts. But it can also reduce risk and make projects more insurable. I've spoken to a number of insurance providers over the years and how they assess risk and cost risk and choose whether or not to cover a risk is the in this sort of artisanal, it's a skill, it's something you developed. And you have to, you know, you have to use your personal judgment to make those decisions with better data with better insight into what's happening, because you can use great data about what has happened past tense, and that can inform future decisions. But if you can drive those drive those insights all the way into the project, then you can really overcome some risks by understanding what's actually happening. Neil Thompson20:55Either of you read or know about Daniel Kahneman? I think it's his latest book noise. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I think this is this is interesting, because if if the decision of a judge on its own, is, you know, there's two types of noisiness, there's the noisiness of the decision that you make, and then the noisiness of the process that you use to make that decision. Yes. And I think the same is here for contracts, right? They are inherently noisy, because it's based upon people's best opinion. Even when you get into the world of managing programs of any size, and people putting together Gantt charts and programs in Primavera P6, those are driven, they drive the decisions about how well that project is going. But they're sort of artifacts of people's opinions of where you roughly, it's not, it's not a scientific measure of, of quality progress and where you are, there isn't a device out there that can go and take a picture. To turn that into progress. It is the pm turns up to their team, how we're doing this week, where do you actually think we are against some sort of measure the measures usually is zero, 25% 50% 75%, or 100%. And you just scale that up, then the embedded noise of as you scale those for every layer, you know, the PM, probably gives that to a package manager, the package manager gives that sub project director, that project director is a dope Project Director of one area of maybe five Directorates, and then they come together and when the time it gets to the client, I mean, they're so far away from reality from a data perspective is, it's, it's quite scary. And if we think about the context of the application of AI, so in my, in my view of sort of the digital team world being a platform for this, the issue that we have is a little bit like the problem that we have with generative AI from chat GPT, if you ask it to make you an outline document for something, it's written from a Western or even more specific, more of like a Californian point of view, you'd have a point of view from that particular set of data. Now, if we're going to try and do the same in steering, the, you know, navigating major programs is you're going to set AI loose on a load of data that is just made up, right? How can that provide you any value, all it will say is, okay, instead of me asking the opinion of one P6 user, I can ask the opinion of all P6 users in history, but they're just, they're just artifacts of compound opinions. And we need to we need to break that somehow. So those those plans are built in a way that are relevant to the evidence that we have in datasets are collected from real life, not these intermediate trees in between this sort of management layers Henry Fenby-Taylor  23:5875% Complete. It's thinking about that that noise, analogy, accuracy, you know, you're trying to hit a target. And there is the big target at the end on time on budget, or even under budget under time. And high quality, great feedback. And that's a big target over there. But everybody is no such as hitting these small weekly daily targets that they have to hit. And we need better data. Yes. The data that we have has this bias in it. So if you are aiming for a target and consistently missing it in the same way, so you've got a bullseye in front of you and it's it's always hitting in the bottom right then you know that your your targeting is off. And this is the opportunity but it is the work that needs to be done because we have these targets we've not been computing them. So when you do compute them And you just scale this bias massively. And so, accuracy versus bias, but then you have the issue of of the noise as well, in the fact of, you know, different people act differently under different circumstances. So we need to align how people aim for targets, as well. And that's, that's data is also about not only what you measure, but how you ask for it, how you get it, and what it's for. Neil Thompson25:31It's interesting you say about two people. So my, in my research, in my dissertation, there was a question about risk preferences. And what I found systematically across the I think there's like 110, people that I managed to get the opinion of people systematically had a different risk appetite to their organization. So it's interesting, you ask them questions that sort of sets the risk appetite of the organization that they work for. And you ask a slightly different set of questions that sets the risk appetite of the individual. And there's always a huge, huge gap. It doesn't mean that organizations are less risky than people, it's, it's actually a bit more noisier than that. But it's interesting if organizations are just a collection of people that come together, that gap between the organization being risk averse, and the individual being risky for examples and in interesting thing, because that person's decisions, makes a huge impact on the macro risk appetite of the organization. And this, and this is what took me from your last episode, Ricardo was this the the stuff around behavioral economics. And I think the interesting thing, for me, is, the way that we design incentivization, at the broadest level is sort of is the same sort of difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics, or of macroeconomics. Back in the days before the internet and being able to collect data, they had to make some massive assumptions about how economies work. So they created macroeconomics, they made all these assumptions about how, you know, GDP, and all these sort of government level measurements. And, and then the behavioral economics comes around and said, well, actually, you know, people aren't having a generous, they all behave differently, they all come together in different ways. And there's a gap, and we're in this, we're in this space now, where we've never had the technology to be able to do the human, granular level thing. It's just too difficult to measure. But we're entering that world. Now we're in this, despite where you want to call it through marketing, call it digital twins or whatever. But we are in the world of being a like, the technology is now there. Five years ago, maybe even sooner, the technology wasn't available to us to manage information at this scale.  Riccardo Cosentino  27:54So I, you know, I just wanted you because it's something that I've been listening attentively, potentially. And it sounds to me that the digital twin to BIM call it whatever we want to call it, but and then I, and I think I know this anecdotally that I was really developed, the BIM model, especially with developers, a collaborative tool is a way of bringing, or bringing people with different disciplines in the in the in the building. So you have many contractor and designer, your your architects and bring them all together around one single model, so that they can collaborate and solve problems together rather than have. So I have a parallel problem solving approach rather than a sequence, problem solving approach, which was the old days where, you know, one, one engineer would finish the work, pass it to the next one was the next one. And so you, you end up with a problem at the end, and you got to go back to the beginning to fix it while would be am, I assume you can sit around the table, if everybody's got the technology, if you ever set it up properly, to actually address problems as they arise together. And in Neil Thompson29:05to this established techniques. So in so in Stanford's, they teach virtual designing construction, and they have a whole module on weather called concurrent engineering, which what this is, this is all about, because in order to understand, if you're going to get a load of decision makers together every week, there's coordination that happens, the other side of that, in terms of all the information that you've got to make sure that let's take a building of a bridge, you know, is your design of your bridge in the same part of the world as mine is over all the other coordinates, right? That's the most basic thing, because believe it or not, before that they could be in completely different places that could be in different units. You know, that's why things have went wrong previously, because someone's in the Imperial zones in in metric, and they don't align. So there's all these sort of basic things about concurrent engineering about just pure coordination. Are we all looking at the same thing? As your does your thing, that was my thing. There's the m&e bit with the structure. And all those sorts of things. The the interesting outcome of that, from my perspective, and this is the really, and this is what I, if I had to make any point to this, this group of listeners is technology lowers the barrier of entry, and enables anyone to have a high level of capability, right? So, and the danger of that is, we essentially subsidize a sub optimal design process. So what we shouldn't be doing is design over here, and digital twin over there. And they, they sort of come together eventually. But they are the two of the same thing, let's not create a BIM process over there to check the design, to show that the design doesn't work. All that does is makes designers lazy, and a bit of someone else can worry about the coordination. If it's going to work later. It's making sure that we create these tools within the design process. Because that's where we get into this waterfall issue of finding out the problems later before it's too late to fix it, because we didn't do all the smart stuff. As a first step, we did the smart stuff at the ends check, right? Let's not have the exam at the end of the year, let's have continuous assessment of what we're doing. Henry Fenby-Taylor  31:19I have an interesting analogy. This goes back to an old digital twin Franklin podcast with Neil and Alan Waha, about how is the construction sector, like the music sector when we were talking about digital and now you need a digital first process before you can even move into that space. But I conjured the amusing mental image by writing a post on it recently that actually, what a lot of programs and systems look like now is we ask a group of people to make a symphony together. They make this wonderful symphony and they record it. And they will show it to you though you can listen to it. But that you can't have that you only are allowed the sheet music at the end. So you've gone through this whole process of thinking, and realizing. But because we are bound by certain deliverables and certain processes, that will know that we couldn't possibly give you the recording. Here's the sheet music now you can get somebody else to go play that even though we've already done it made secure proof of my knowledge you nail Neil Thompson32:28that is beautiful, because what will you get on to and this is the internet. And this is the interesting thing about contract design is if you give anybody the sheet music, it will sound differently. If you gave a machine a sheet music, it will sound robotic, it will it will play it precisely to time. The nuance about why a symphony sounds great played live is because it has all these human inaccuracies come together that makes it sound the way it does me can't hear any of us. That's why the London Symphony Orchestra is different to the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Right? So the the issue here is is how do we that that sort of that organic stuff that happens between the lines of the contract is finding better ways of incentivizing people beyond that. And it's it's interest because we're in this world of these discussions about buying based on value. So most most of consultancies are in the world of like, selling people per the hour isn't good in terms of growth, because we have to acquire companies all the time and said more and more people. And that's not sustainable, because there's only a finite number of people on Earth. So it's that that growth model comes to an end naturally. So there's this conversation about value. But then when we look at the contracts that we have, yes, the unitary production value is a person in over an hour or whatever. But the other side of it is then also the all that we're competing for, is the essentially been exposed to the risk of getting it wrong. Like that's the thing. That's that is why so people say, oh, you know, some technology firms going to come along and eat up, you know, take over construction or take over engineering design, the reality is, it's probably not going to happen, because they're not willing to take on the risk of getting it wrong. And people like myself, and we're kind of we are like we we bring these systems together to take on that risk. The day that a technology company goes, Yeah, we're going to provide the technology, the service, and we'll take the risk on for getting it wrong, then we are in trouble. But I can't see shareholders, big or small startups, big technology firms. Name name a big name a big design vendor beginning with A or B, that, you know, imagine them turning around to their shareholders and say we're going to design bridges and we're going to take on the the the liability of the design of those bridges. The shareholders are going to sign off on that because they said because they will say no, we buy the shares and sit on your board because you do this business. If I want to take on the risk of building bridges. I'm gonna go and buy shares in engineering firms, not software firms. So that's, that's another dimension. Here's beyond the contract is the incentive of the people that own the mean, own the capital. Right. Henry Fenby-Taylor  35:10It's, it's interesting, because I want to address your earlier points. But I feel like that's quite a western approach. I feel that, you know, I mean, Samsung was effectively government sponsored, is effectively government sponsored, lots of history there. And it doesn't actually make a lot of profit, but it makes a lot of stuff. And it employs a lot of people. And a tradition in Toyota is that the eldest son, and his son, who is adopted, even if he's 50 years old, goes and starts a new business, and they look to diversify. And then they can potentially in some of these things fail, some of these things work. And you would, you would follow this sort of route, if you could own all the risk. And I think that's part of it. The reason that the construction sector is structured the way it is, because a lot of people inside the sector complain, that is the fragmentation. That's what's causes the problem. But the reason it's structured that way is to mitigate risk. Because that allows things to go wrong, that allows certain projects to fail, it allows certain products to fail, without the whole thing coming down. If you try and do it all together, you still can't control of the risks, you still can't control the cost of materials, because then you know, where do you stop? Where would you stop, if you wanted to do an end to end infrastructure company, you would need to own the quarries, you would need to own the logistics companies, you would need a stake in the logistics in the infrastructure, you would you know, and then you need all of the designers. I mean, it would be amazing. But this going all the way back to the symphony analogy, you can't write a major programs Symphony on your own, it is not, you know, a symphony is X number of instruments, you know, it needs that overall vision, and the composer can bring that, and then the conductor can turn that into something magical. But the in our analogy, the the violinist is also part of the composition team, as is that the percussion, you know, everybody has this part to play. So that is where the extra complexity comes in. And you can't just bring all of that stuff together, it needs to be in these disciplines for you know, being able to kind of mitigate this risk. But it's it's there in that we all want a symphony that basically has a handover, and that's when Rockstar architects often continue to get amazing commissions and go huge, they have a budget and over time. But they'll get the work because they there, you will feel the hand of the composer and there's that beauty to it. But if you're dealing with infrastructure services, you know, maybe I do want a pretty station every now and again. But ultimately, we're looking for that service delivery, we're looking for that efficiency. So we aren't going to have one composer that we can work better to ensure that, you know, to go back to this analogy, because I'm just going to keep using it because I really love this analogy. Everybody does their own composing, having been given a brief terms up to a meeting, and everybody plays their music all at once. And it's the first time anybody's heard it. And that's that's the negotiation process. Because that sounds awful. Everybody's you know, might not be in the same tempo might not be in the same key, you know, all these different issues. I'm not a music writer, by the way, I'm just, you know, I love this analogy. And I love going deep on these things. So this view of a symphony, this view of a major programmers, it's an organic, human interaction, by following digital processes, whether we call them digital twins or not, you know, like concurrent engineering, we can listen to the music and we can get together and we can make sure that we are in harmony earlier. Because there's so often that, you know, I've seen this on so many projects where, you know, different disciplines that we're managing will do a certain amount of work to a certain level with no regard to other people. And that means that you create all these problems, and that can be resolved, but it requires a very talented composer to make that happen. So that says, Riccardo Cosentino  39:35Let me let me take on that analogy, because I think is phenomenal. And we've actually done some work with an orchestra coming in and showing us teamwork through the eyes of an orchestra. Henry Fenby-Taylor  39:47So really, yeah, so did not know that's not a plan.  That was fascinating. But you know, ultimately, the way that an orchestra works, they're actually listening to each other live so you know the reader sheet music and Neil, you are musician, but they read a sheet music. But ultimately, there's live feedback that you receive for the other members of the orchestra and you adapt your play, and you also adapt to the to the conductor. And so I think if I, if I take the analogy further, if you have an orchestra of 10,000 people, there is no way that you can do that without the aid of a digital tool or something that helps you manage the volume of people and the volume of feedback that you have in an organization that big. So we now get into a scale of things where the human itself is not like a conductor won't be able to conduct 10,000 people, I can do 5060 you now start having 1000 10,000 You're gonna end multiple conductors, how do they are multiple conductor to to each other, but they're only handing over sheet music? Yes. Neil Thompson40:51So you're, you're, you're onto something that I, here's a thought experiment, okay.  Henry Fenby-Taylor  40:59I'm here for it Neil Thompson41:00building things we've been doing for a very long time. Arguably, there are other professions that are up for the competition of the longer the oldest profession, but building things soldier and coordinating things, we probably build things before we decided to protect them. So I'd go as far to say that coordinating people to build things is probably the, as a human endeavor, we've done the longest than other things apart from you know, childbirth, and all those sorts of things, right? It's one of them. It's probably the top five in the top five things we've been doing since the beginning of time, right? So my thought experiment is is is are we actually the most advanced industry in terms of trying to coordinate ourselves commercially, because we've been through that journey. And the reason the reason why I say that is the thing that fascinates me is how industries sort of consolidate, and diffuse and consolidate and diffuse over time. And what's happening with the digital implementation of the entertainment industry, I think it's an interesting thing, because in the music industry, you've got Spotify, and Apple music, itunes or whatever. There's some other ones, but they're like the two main players, right? Your Pepsi, coke, or those two. And if anything is probably just Spotify, I'd imagine the level of users I don't meet many people that aren't on Spotify. But anyway, so there's there's a high degree of consolidation in that space, which I think's interested in compared to movies and TV, where I'm almost to the point of thinking, there's all these subscriptions out there. You were if you wanted to have access to everything, you've got to subscribe to about 10 different services. And I think that markets on the route of being sort of broken and ripe for consolidation, I think we've, we've got this conundrum of are we going to be the symphony of 10,000 people that needs coordinating? Or is do we need sort of bring it together  breaking apart? Do any coming together? I have failing to get it to work from a digital perspective and how the tools will help us do it is these will break down into sort of larger, larger coordinated integrator units then then where we are right now we are labor is devised through speciality too much it's too fragmented, too. There's too many specific jobs to do. You think about the role of the master building the architects over time and how that's been broken down to just what it is today. Sorry, to the any architecture people listening, but it's, it's reality, the role of the master builder of the architect is, is no more I mean, in the UK, we have the quantity surveyor, and it's a slightly different thing in the States, where the architect does still sort of hold on to that role. But yeah, we've sort of broken up our professions so much and atomize them that they've become impossible to coordinate to the point of probably need to reconsolidate them and that that's comes full circle to how technology enables contracts. Henry Fenby-Taylor  44:02Absolutely, that a specialism it is a it gives you certainty, you know, if you have a chartered architect or a chartered engineer, you are expecting certain levels of capability and responsibility and and they will behave in certain ways. So, you've got that kind of certainty, but then in the actual implementation of that, that's that's when it all kind of falls apart by the wayside, not what apart it does work, you know, these things get built, and the risk is managed, and, and all of these things. So I agree with you, I do think it'd be interesting to see from scratch if we started or what, what roles would we have, and what specialisms would we need? Because I don't think they'd be in the current hierarchy as it stands. But then, as I want to move over to new products and services and finding new ways of doing things because, you know, here are the professional disciplines, it's, you know, what you're gonna get from them, in a sense, because they are chartered, and you know, they are insured, and you know, they have these businesses and you know what you're gonna get. But when you're trying to do new things, or new ways of doing things, these, the digital twin, as Neil said, he knows the platform for change, because now we know what's happening, we can see what's happening. And we can implement new processes, we can implement new measures, and we can know we can really manage that dynamic. But that area is actually quite consolidated. You know, there's a few design tools and these organizations, you know, like Autodesk, and Bentley, are growing through procurement. And they are also doing cloud storage effectively, you know, with some with some amazing bells and whistles, and they are doing these coordination pieces. But how do you get the new tools in there the things that are we have developed this, this tool, this innovative thing that can improve how you do things? How does that get in there, because we have this professional unit on one side and a technology unit on the other, and they're very separate, and they shouldn't be. Neil Thompson46:20So this is the interesting thing that's happened in that sector is, they've, as I said, the technology sector in general is they've gone from selling boxes and CDs of software, they've moved into the clouds. And through application programming, programming interfaces, APIs, have shifted from selling boxes of CDs through to essentially I mean, there's the analogy, but the press of the button of the function that you want to use, essentially, charging on a draw circle, press the circle button, the API call for the circle, and I get micro charged. So instead of paying my two or 3000 pounds a year for my, my Revit license, I then start paying maybe a cent for every button click. And that's sort of the spectrum. And I wonder, I wonder if it's the same thing for us. Ricardo, we are we still selling boxes of software? In this world of these big infrastructure projects? Were actually shouldn't we be looking at more micro contracts, and the micro contracts can't be implemented physically, as in on paper, or between people, it can only be administered with technology? Would we end up in a world where we just have 1000s of tiny contracts that build up into this sort of nexus of an agreement that would build infrastructure versus trying to draw a big circle around it and say, Riccardo Cosentino  47:51I think micro contracts? Yes. I think every time you introduce an interface, you're introducing complexity. So a fasn, or micro contracts is a 1000s of interfaces. Now, you that definitely would not advocate for their big advocate to reduce complexity. That's why I'm also that's also why I'm saying remove private finance from from PFI, don't do PFI remove the private finance because that adds a layer of complexity that major programs struggle to deal with. And that's, that's my previous episode, if you're interested. But just to take it back. You know, we we talked about the the analogy of the, the orchestra. And ultimately, I think we're at an inflection point. And I like your journey through time, you know, what we've been building major programs since the pyramids and even before, so clearly, they can be built without digital tools. However, if you want to build it, without digital tools, you need to accept that you might have some slaves building it for you. And I think that's, that's where we are for major programs. You know, we can continue doing it well, how we've been doing it for the last 100 years, but you know, society is changing. The needs of society is changing the needs of the people working in the major programs are different. So you need to adopt the major programs. And I think the only way you're going to do it, is by adopting new processes and new technologies and you know, digital twin, I think captures most of those. Henry Fenby-Taylor  49:26So, I think the digital approach is very important, but it is not. On our last our last podcast in the digital twin fanclub last podcast, we were discussing that at board level, I mean, I know major programs have boards, there is often a person for this. So if there is a technology aspect, then it's the Chief Technology Officers role to take responsibility for that. Whereas what we actually talking about is achieving our goals and performance. And these are, you know, you would not have a chief pencil officer or a chief paper officer. And for the same reason you shouldn't have at work, you should have a chief technology officer, but they should, they are not the ones who are responsible for if anything vaguely digital comes up, we just pass it over to them. It it is addressing all of these issues. So we have our own technology stacks that we use in the built environment, but we also have these professional disciplines and to not apply them together is to basically take the costs of both and try and smush them together to make benefits, that doesn't work. Neil Thompson50:49So I think Ben Flyvbjerg book has to get big things done. backs up my my theory of big programs are not just big programs to deliver. One of the best books written in forever brilliant. My point here is, these big, these big programs aren't just infrastructure programs that IT programs. And they have to be treated as such. So I don't agree with the OS passing over to the technology person yours. Because what you're technically saying is you shouldn't have a CIO either, because the IT infrastructure just sort itself out this, I think it's it's in our world is this project technology, stuff that we do to get the project done. And then there's IT infrastructure for the enterprise. And those two things are kept at arm's length from each other. And I think the journey that we need to go on is bringing them together. So it's not about not having a Chief Technology Officer, it's about actually understanding that the IT infrastructure is so complex, for major programs that your major program is an IT projects, and they are run, they are ran in slightly different ways. And you require that management structure because a project director that is very good at coordinating a site of builders is a very different skill set to getting IT infrastructure that you can't mix them up, but they require to be in the same room at certain points. So that's, that's that's a challenge. I just, I did want to change one thing about the micro contracts whilst whilst I've got the microphone. So imagine being Paul McCartney, back in the, in the 60s, and you're you're the CEO of Spotify, and you get the you get the opportunity, you go back in time, you get the opportunity to go to Paul McCartney and say, Do you know in the future, we're going to charge everybody per stream, per listen of your song, he'd say the same thing. I said, Well, how someone's going to run around with like a cone and listen out, for when you're listening to it and charge the money. They've got no digital payments, then there's no internet, there's nothing. So they're just thinking, you're someone's gonna go around on a bike and knock on the door. And I heard you listen to The Beatles, I take 50 pay off you. It's not that as it's I think there is an aspect of technology is going to enable us to have those types of, of management. Yes, there's complexity. But technology lowers the risk to be able to absorb the risk of the complexity. So just there's just my challenge on that one. Riccardo Cosentino  53:27I think we're seeing the same thing. I mean, it's it's major programs are getting more and more complex, because not just the complexity of what you're designing and building but also the environment they operate, right. It's political, social, political. So you need to help to manage that complexity. And I think you're right. I mean, it's digital is what is going to help you and we don't even know how it's going to help us today. Because we don't know what tomorrow is bringing. Henry Fenby-Taylor  53:57Yeah, but but similarly to almost to back you up to be the peacemaker, as is my want. You didn't You didn't, Spotify was not built overnight, you know, and you needed that infrastructure. So you need that. And again, I'm gonna use the word digital twin, but that way of measuring progress of measuring quality, you can't, you couldn't do micro contracts, you couldn't slap a micro contract system. Without that, that supporting technology, that measurement, that understanding of how things are actually working. So it certainly feels absolutely right, that there is an IT infrastructure aspect to running these, these these major programs. And if you don't, if you choose not to make those decisions, someone is going to have to make those decisions or those decisions don't get made and for my experience of major programs, you can end up with these huge transaction costs is very basic. What might seem very basic interface isn't going to be Share my costings, I'm going to share my project plan I'm going to share my designs, becomes something that requires a superstar, to solve somebody who is an amazing integrator of systems, and done some of that. So you get very good at working out how different systems work and behave them, connecting them all up and getting the people to connect, and connect up, etc. But without that, underpinning technology, without implementing these tools, making these decisions, knowing that you need to make those decisions, you are just setting yourself up for all sorts of costs of just hours, you know, I have seen projects where to share data would add a day, every every two weeks, to a technicians time, per team. And when you scale that up, it's just it's just a huge amount of waste that you could have avoided by knowing that you needed to make that decision early in the program. And making it might not be the best solution. And that's often a problem, I think, in the built environment, you know, always looking for, what's the perfect solve all answer, what we can get as close as we can to that. And then we need to be pragmatic and move on with our lives. But for all that is holy, in the whole, please don't just not make the decision and let that problem cascade into the supply chain. Because you will end up with lots of bits of paper, and lots of waste. And lots of people are hanging around waiting for other people to do things. Riccardo Cosentino  56:40Yeah, I think I think if you want to use an analogy from NASA, since we talk about digital twin, you know, if you want faster, better, cheaper, you got to figure out and different way of doing things. Because otherwise, if you just do it the way we've been doing it, you're not going to achieve that, as I said, I mean, we innovation has always brought us forward and allowed us to do things better, faster and cheaper throughout the centuries. And I think this is another inflection point where we need to, we need to look at how do we get? Henry Fenby-Taylor  57:11Yeah, and there are some innovative new companies, I'm thinking about the, you know, everybody loves throwing the Toyota example out there, and the Kanban process, etc. And lots of American car companies were invited to Toyota and went and saw how they did things. But they weren't able to implement those processes. And perhaps they're being implemented now. But certainly at the time, there were cultural issues, there were expectations, you know, people's jobs, this is my job, and you're changing my job. And this, this applies to car companies, individual consultancies and construction companies, but also to the disciplines to the engineer to the architect, etc. So there are organizations out there that are delivering new models. And we have to give those a chance, in my view, otherwise, you know, it's not broken enough to fix is the danger. But it is pretty broken. Riccardo Cosentino  58:15On there, we all agree, I think, Neil Thompson58:19yeah, I guess in summary, you know, I know I didn't agree with Henry, but this is me agreeing with Henry about the technology role. I technology leadership is for all of us. Tonight, as your leadership, you know, it, especially in the context of navigating major programs is an awful lot of people do assume that somebody else is going to give them a tour at some point. And as a stereotypical, you know, someone from the IT department is going to install a new toy on my laptop, when I wake up Monday morning, and I'll be inconvenienced by it, and I'm open about it. And then I've got my new toy and I crack on it doesn't, it doesn't work like that you have to you have to engage with what technology is doing and understand it as part of, you know, we're talking to people that design commercial environments. And that's hard enough on its own. And unfortunately, there's another dimension to that, which is technology leadership. And if you want to be a good designer of commercial environments, you do have to do some homework on where technology is at and how does it impact the planning? And yeah, yeah, it's like concluding point for you. Henry Fenby-Taylor  59:33Fantastic concluding point. Really, we're gonna lead exciting to see that there's lots actually happening around the world there is increasing amount of connected decision making taking place. And I'm here for Riccardo Cosentino  59:48So are we are really going to leave Neal with the last point, Henry? Henry Fenby-Taylor  59:52Yeah, well, I just I started talking because I just couldn't possibly let that I think that was just my podcasting impulse is that always To finish it off, so my final point is, I totally agree with him. Does that mean that I got the last word, but you've got the last point. Riccardo Cosentino  1:00:11I want to thank you both. terrific discussion today. I truly enjoyed it. honored to have you on my podcast. And yeah, hopefully this is this is something that we're going to continue. Neil Thompson1:00:23Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Henry Fenby-Taylor  1:00:25Thanks for having us. Really good. Riccardo Cosentino  1:00:27Thank you. That's it for this episode on navigating major problems. I hope you found today's conversation as informative and thought provoking as I did. If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. I would also like to personally invite you to continue the conversation by joining me on my personal LinkedIn at Riccardo Cosentino. Listening to the next episode, we'll we'll continue to explore the latest trends and challenges in major program management. Our next in depth conversation promises to continue to dive into topics such as leadership risk management, and the impact of emerging technology in infrastructure. It's a conversation you're not going to want to miss. Thanks for listening to navigate the major programs and I look forward to keeping the conversation going Music: "A New Tomorrow" by Chordial Music. Licensed through PremiumBeat.DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy, opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Disenyo.co LLC and its employees.

1. Introduction (00:19): - Title: "Understanding Mindfulness and Conscious Living through Buddhism" - Introduction: Matthew Hawk Mahoney, host of "The Imperfect Buddhist," delves into the significance of patterns in mindful living.2. Mindful Living and Recognizing Patterns (01:07 - 02:34): - Understanding the role of mindfulness in recognizing and altering life patterns, fostering conscious decision-making and personal growth.3. Understanding Life's Cycles and Patterns (03:17 - 04:18): - Highlighting the concept of interconnectedness and life cycles, emphasizing the significance of patterns in mindful and Buddhist philosophies.4. Cultivating Present Moment Awareness and Mindfulness Practice (04:18 - 06:32): - Emphasizing the importance of mindfulness and present moment awareness as fundamental practices in conscious living and Buddhist teachings.5. Mindful Relationships and Conscious Communication (06:32 - 09:45): - Applying mindfulness to foster healthy relationships, emphasizing the importance of conscious communication and understanding patterns in interpersonal dynamics.6. Transforming Patterns through Mindfulness and Gratitude (09:45 - 11:56): - Exploring methods for transforming deep-rooted patterns through mindfulness and expressing gratitude, aligning with Buddhist principles and conscious living practices.7. Conclusion: Embracing Mindful Living for Joy and Fulfillment (11:56): - Encouraging readers to embrace mindful living and conscious awareness, fostering joy, love, and well-being in alignment with Buddhist teachings and principles.Transcript00:19Welcome to the Imperfect Buddhist. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney, and today's episode is titled Buddhism and Patterns.01:07Patterns have been a key theme in my life lately. Particularly patterns that I would like to cease or change or augment. Maybe I'm halfway there. Maybe half the battle is knowing that I have patterns. Patterns have been playing an important part in my life right now, in my marriage and my personal life. Decisions I make with my health, how I spend my time, how I show up in my relationship.01:35Do I show up with a approach of love and growth and wanting to learn about myself and my partner? Or do I show up with feelings of jealousy, of control, of needing things to be a certain way? How does my partner show up? Is my partner showing up with patterns she created in her past? Certain family dynamics that shaped her at a young age? Is she showing up to me with those patterns?02:04or she's showing up with a mindset of love, growth, honesty. And let's not forget fun. My dad, of all people, because he has some serious habits and patterns in his life, he told my sister, I don't know if he told me, I think he told my sister, but it's a thing that we bring up every now and then in the family where he said, you know, Amanda, everything's a pattern, everything's a circle. When it comes to our habits, seems to be the case, seems to be true.02:34When we're unconscious, as can happen with anybody, even the most serious meditators in the world, we find ourselves at the end or the beginning or the middle of a habit. We ask, how the hell did I get here again? Some of us might believe we have no control, that this is just how it is, this is just my life, and it's your fault. It's her fault, it's his fault, it's their fault that I'm acting this way.03:17Patterns are a part of life. And to try to say that we should be devoid of patterns, goes against human nature, goes against nature itself. Look at the sun, look at the moon. They rise and they fall, usually around the same spot in the sky depending on the time of year. It rains, it's sunny, trees grow leaves and the leaves fall down to the ground and nourish the soil and the soil nourishes the tree. The tree makes new leaves.03:47The leaves fall down and nourish the soil. Our bodies, we inhale. Our lungs fill with air and pulls oxygen into our bloodstream. And we exhale that carbon dioxide. We inhale again. Our digestion, we get hungry. We eat food. Food goes in, it's digested, and it comes out as poop. It's all cycles. Everything is patterns. Experts will tell you it's good to have a healthy routine, a healthy pattern.04:18So how does Buddhism or mindfulness, present moment awareness, play a part in any of this? A friend and I were talking, and this is one of my best friends in the whole world, and my friend had been at the bar, just taking a little bit of me time, doing some journaling, reading some self-help books, trying to just figure out how they were feeling, what was going on with them. And I met up with them after they'd done this soul-searching session.04:47They were talking about how they wanted to start doing like these self check ins with themselves. They asked themselves like, how am I feeling? What am I doing right now? And we started talking about it and they asked me, how do you start with these patterns, either making new patterns or changing old patterns? The truest answer I could say was present moment awareness. And does it matter if you're Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, Satanist? The present moment is a real thing. It's right here in front of us. And05:15Being in the moment, being present is not a religious belief, it's just an act. It's a habit to focus. If we want to work on our patterns in life, we have to start where we're at. We have to start where the patterns start and start paying attention. Present moment awareness is the key to having some authorship to get our hand on the wheel of our life a little bit and to steer a little bit consciously. Like we're in a Tesla05:45car and it's autopiloting towards the ultimate destination of our life and we're like watching YouTube on the screen or playing one of those Tesla video games that comes with the car and then we like look up and we start looking around and we're like wait a minute do I want to go here? Do I want to go to Chuck E Cheese for the 50th time this month? I'm kind of sick of Chuck E Cheese. I haven't liked Chuck E Cheese since I was five years old. I am a 55 year old man.06:14Why do I keep going to Chuck E. Cheese? Do I like Chuck E. Cheese? I think I'm gonna turn off autopilot and maybe go to Olive Garden. What's more mature than Olive Garden?06:32So the core teaching in most meditative traditions is mindfulness and present moment awareness. And there's a reason for that. It is the key to deeper states of awareness, to augmenting habits, changing habits, engaging in new habits that hopefully benefit our well-being, feeling a freedom in life, joy, relationships.06:57Relationships and patterns seems to be one of the areas where patterns become most prevalent, most hurtful, most painful. Whether that's our own patterns and the way we are in relationships or the way other people are with us based on their patterns. And I'm guilty of it. I can admit that I have my patterns that are not so helpful. In this particular situation with this person I was with, she got home after work. I had made a nice meal.07:27I noticed a tightness in their face, like a little crease in between the eyebrows, usually a sign that something's going on. My partner had signed up for a book reading group and I said, oh, that's cool. I'd like to go. And they said, no, I don't really want you to go. I want to do this on my own. Sometimes you have a habit of talking over me or I feel like I can't express myself fully when you're around. And that was hard to hear, but I understood where they were coming from.07:57was much more quiet and there had been talks about how sometimes I could overpower them or talk over them. So yes, I totally got where they were coming from. I said, okay, I understand. As we sat on the couch, I said, hey, let's talk. Let's just connect and do a little check in. And it started pretty positive. But as we talked, that tightness on my partner's face came back and they had this crease between their eyebrows and I could sense.08:23It was getting heavy again. We eventually got to the bottom of it, and my partner expressed to me that she felt embarrassed by jokes I would make. And that was really hard to hear. And I felt sad that we had to dig so much to get to the bottom of what was going on. My partner expressed to me that, oh my God, this was a pattern. That she, in some ways, was projecting some of my responsibility on how she should feel or not feel when it comes to being.08:53embarrassed or not. The bigger pattern here was maintaining the status quo. So instead of telling me and really sitting down and expressing to me how serious this feeling of embarrassment and my part in bringing that up in them was, she decided to avoid that, maintain the status quo, and then begin to exclude me from certain social events. For her it was a moment of revelation of this is09:23points of contention out of fear of upsetting the person in my life. It was something that they learned early on with their family, their parents, and it was a pattern that was brought into our relationship.09:45I used to do these quick tip things and who knows, I may bring it back, but really there's only one tip and that is to be present. To do the practices that bring your attention and focus your mind on what's happening right now in your body, in your mind, in the environment around you. And that's really the only tip I can really give is that we can cultivate our present moment awareness through practices like mindfulness, meditation, and we can use the...10:14present moment energy that we cultivate through this to work with the patterns in our life. Sometimes noticing a pattern is all it will take to change it. Noticing a pattern though, sometimes it stays the same. It may even increase for a time. But usually through the simple noticing of a pattern, when we see it in the totality that is available to us as much as we can, we see what does it create? What is it creating in our lives and our relationships? Is it...10:41Is it bringing us closer to people? Is it pushing people away? Is it bringing us closer to a feeling of wholeness, of health, of love? Is it pushing those things away? We see the result and sometimes that's enough to completely change the pattern. With other things that are deeply ingrained, like my partner's habit of maintaining a status quo, or my patterns of jealousy or worry, it takes more time, it takes more work.11:10We've learned these habits to survive and we can honor them. We can get real self-help you with it. Say to these unhelpful habit patterns during meditation, thank you. Thank you, worry. You've helped me survive probably some situations, whatever reason, you're probably going to stay around or stick with me, but let's try to switch things up a little bit because it's not as helpful anymore. You can think the patterns and let them go and maybe they'll come back expressed in a new healthier way.11:56Wonderful week ahead and whatever patterns you experience. I hope that they bring you more joy, love, health, and just an awesome fricking life. I look forward to talking with you next time. Thanks, bye.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-imperfect-buddhist/donations

Per a recent Coindesk article https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/09/13/surprisingly-few-us-customers-want-their-bittrex-money-back/:Surprisingly Few U.S. Customers Want Their Bittrex Money BackThe U.S. Secret Service kept millions on the exchange, company lawyers told a bankruptcy court – but other creditors have been strangely reluctant to ask for their funds back....Unofficial Computer-Autogenerated Transcript, to Assist the Hearing Impaired etc.00:00:00Mr. Mosco, welcome. It's good to see you.00:00:11Good to see you too, Your Honor.00:00:14Mr. Shepard Carter, I like the tie. Is that black and orange?00:00:19This is black. No, it's not black and orange. It's dark, dark blue and orange, which are the colors of your alma mater.00:00:26The colors of my alma mater are black and orange. Oh, then it's black and orange.00:00:30Your instincts are excellent. You may proceed. Mr. Mosco, good morning again. Good to see you.00:00:35I should have known that since they were the Tigers. They are the Tigers.00:00:37We are the Tigers.00:00:39Good morning, Your Honor. We sent over to chambers a PowerPoint presentation. I can hand up an extra copy if you'd like.00:00:48I have it. Thank you.00:00:49And thanks for the Court's time today. It may seem like a bit of navel gazing going on here because there's not a controversy,00:00:58but we did want to update the Court from our last presentation, from where we are. All the work is being done behind the scenes that you haven't seen.00:01:07I appreciate that, and certainly no apology is necessary. I'm always happy to take a status report.00:01:14As you just mentioned, I really have limited visibility into most of the cases that I have, and often then it just turns into a very ugly surprise when everything blows up all at once.00:01:25So I'm hoping that's not going to happen here, but I certainly do appreciate the guidance that you're offering.00:01:31Correct, Your Honor. Just to level set and for the record, Patty Tomasko, Quinn Emanuel on behalf of the Dutters, and I'm joined by my colleague, Ken Ennis from the Young Conaway Firm.00:01:43We just wanted to go through where we were. The last presentation that we gave you, we had very low engagement from the customers that we had asked to withdraw their crypto.00:01:54As you know, the Court entered an order allowing the customers to begin withdrawing cryptocurrency and fiat currency as of June 15th is when we reopened the platform after the May 8th petition date.00:02:07So we wanted to go through that. I also want to introduce the Court to, we have a couple of the legal staff from Bittrex, Caleb Barker and David Maria.00:02:21David Maria is the General Counsel of Bittrex and Caleb Barker is the Assistant General Counsel of Bittrex.00:02:29Very good. Welcome, gentlemen.00:02:31Morning, Your Honor. If I get something wrong, which I frequently do, they will correct me and I've invited them to be live so that as we go through this, if I get something wrong, they can say, or if the Court has any questions about what we've done and all of the efforts that have gone into this and where we are with the status of the withdrawals.00:02:50I'm not going to bore the Court with the history, but as you know, we filed the bankruptcy petition on May 8th. The Court entered the customer withdrawal order on June 13th. We reopened the platform on June 15th.00:03:06This is consistent with the main goal of the case, which was to set up a process by which Bittrex USA operations could be wound down, along with the sister company Bittrex Malta, which is a Maltese organization that has been roughly out of operation since late 2018.00:03:30So to that end, if you turn to slide six, you can see our Chapter 11 timeline to where we are today.00:03:38Of course, we have a disclosure statement hearing coming up on the 27th.00:03:44Right.00:03:45And this is sort of to get everybody, you know, oriented correctly as we face that.00:03:51So far, I will say we have gotten only informal comments and nothing momentous with respect to the disclosure statement or the plan. We're getting language, incorporating it. All of that's going to plan.00:04:05Turning to slide eight, as I mentioned, we still have to comply as we're doing customer withdrawals with the various regulatory requirements for the payment.00:04:20KYC and KML stuff.00:04:22The main that I call them, Finson and OFAC.00:04:25Finson is concerned with financial crimes.00:04:29They want to have all the KYC information from the customer.00:04:32So are you really who you say you are?00:04:35And they also want to know that, you know, you're not engaging in some kind of money laundering.00:04:42So that's that's really what they're about.00:04:45OFAC is concerned with persons in foreign countries engaging in financial transactions in the U.S.00:04:54So those two regulatory requirements are built into the algorithms of the platform.00:05:00OK.00:05:03So we also wanted them to update, accept the updated terms of service, which also incorporate these regulatory requirements. And so that process has been underway.00:05:17So in conjunction with that, there was, of course, an increase in activity with the help desk.00:05:24The company engaged overtime help desk assistance.00:05:31And that has continued all the way through August 31st when the help desk was shut down, consistent with the August 31st, 2023, part eight.00:05:47So that help desk activity kind of demonstrates how much the company has been working with the customers.00:05:53There's been forty seven thousand plus customer help desk tickets and a lot.00:06:01And then the other the other interesting thing is there's two factor authentication.00:06:06Obviously, this is dealing with financial assets.00:06:08And so that process of, you know, I know in my law firm to get logged on in the morning, sometimes it takes me 15 minutes as I'm going through all of the steps.00:06:19The same thing happens on this platform. So you have two factor authentication.00:06:23You're going to get a text to your phone and an email.00:06:26And those two things combined give you, you know, the best security, high level confidence that you're dealing with the right person.00:06:37Thirty five thousand nine hundred seventy two customers have withdrawn their like kind assets for a total value of one hundred and forty three point seven six million dollars worth of crypto.00:06:48This is in addition to approximately twenty three million that was withdrawn during the April wind down period immediately before the petition was filed.00:07:00So on slide eleven. We've broken these numbers down.00:07:08By the number of customers remaining and the number of customers that have withdrawn.00:07:20So the value of crypto withdrawn is one hundred and forty three point six point seven six million broken down between Bittrex US of ninety five million and Bittrex Malta of forty eight million.00:07:39OK. So one of the things we wanted to explore was why were we getting such low levels of engagement.00:07:46And so in the beginning and so we broke it down between customers with balances over one hundred dollars and customers with balances under one hundred dollars and of the remaining customers.00:07:58Their balances are under one hundred dollars. That's the number of those is seventy seven percent of the remaining customers have balances under one hundred dollars.00:08:09So we have a combination that you've talked about earlier. We have what may be stale accounts with dated or old or ineffective contact information and then basically relatively modest amounts that nobody's necessarily wondering where my money go.00:08:25Correct your honor. OK. And I will tell you anecdotally I've been monitoring things like the Bittrex Twitter Bittrex Reddit.00:08:33You know the various sites where customers are engaging more frankly and the sentiment is you know I don't want to give you all that information to get to get thirty five dollars correct.00:08:49OK. They really are making a calculated decision. They know about it and we're going to go through the notice process in a bit. But we have also prioritized we took a list of the crypto customers that remained and we put them in in rank order of highest to lowest and we engage with them directly.00:09:11Send them an email not just a group email sent them an email and said hey you've got this much you need to get it off. And so that's where we've seen a lot of success. You know understandably.00:09:21OK. So 11 of the top 50 customers by balance have withdrawn substantially all their assets for a total of eight point seven million of withdrawn balances. Five hundred and seventeen of the seven hundred and one users with a balance over one hundred thousand have withdrawn substantially all of their assets.00:09:44And so that you know prioritizing the large dollar dollar customers has really paid off in terms of getting the crypto off. Most of the remaining accounts are inactive and have been inactive for a year or more.00:09:58Fifty one point two percent have been active in the last two years. Only forty one point one percent of the remaining funds are associated with user accounts that have shown no activity since December 31 of 2019.00:10:15The story with them is most of them signed up with inadequate information.00:10:20OK.00:10:24Also we've been actively engaging with the government on a couple of accounts. Some of the accounts were involved in criminal proceedings criminal forfeiture proceedings and we've cooperated with the U.S. Attorney's Office the Justice Department and the SEC to withdraw those amounts that were subject to those criminal forfeiture proceedings.00:10:45The Secret Service had one of our largest accounts of six point two million dollars.00:10:55We worked with that agency for them to successfully withdraw that amount.00:11:00OK. As I said.00:11:03Notice has been extremely robust. We knew it was going to be a large number of potential creditors. We we did not spare.00:11:16We spent every dollar that was responsibly spent to get notice out.00:11:22But this is in addition to the numerous emails that have gone out to customers throughout the history of the company in particular Bittrex Malta because it shut down operations in 2019.00:11:34It's since you know more than a million emails to its users in October of 2019 advising them that it was shutting down its platform.00:11:46So it was known as Bittrex International at that time and it the company decided it no longer wanted to operate Bittrex International.00:11:56So it started shutting down and moving those accounts over to Bittrex Global.00:12:01So additional notices went out as reflected on this slide and they were notified at the end of 2019.00:12:13The Bittrex International was no longer going to support those accounts.00:12:19So that was over the course of a year. A lot of effort went into getting customers off that platform.00:12:24Sure. Now Bittrex US made the decision to shut down its platform in late March of 2020.00:12:35But even before that Bittrex had reached out to customers with inactive balances starting in March of 2022.00:12:48It emailed inactive customers and asked them to update their account information and to otherwise interact with the platform.00:13:00Inactive accounts also got letters in August of 2022 and in 2023 Bittrex mailed postcards to additional inactive customers.00:13:14As I said in March of 2023 Bittrex announced via Twitter that it was shutting down its US operations.00:13:22It sent an email to 1,045,323 users. Reminder emails were sent to 521,000 accounts on various dates in April.00:13:36Between March 31 and April 30 the customer support team resolved 27,000 help desk tickets.00:13:45After the bankruptcy 1.6 million customers got notice of the commencement via email.00:13:59Regular mail went to 44,000 parties in interest including certain customers where we knew their email wasn't good.00:14:09In total via email or regular mail Omni served the notice of the commencement on 1.652 million customers.00:14:21We similarly adopted a robust approach to the bar date notice knowing how important it was in the case of this type.00:14:30Could you remind me what's the bar date? What was the bar date?00:14:32The bar date was August 31. This status report may seem random but it happens to happen after the bar date before the disclosure statement.00:14:43That gets pretty timely.00:14:47That bar date went to even more customers, 1.9 million customers and regular mail to 57,000 parties in interest.00:14:59In total 2 million customers received either email or mail notice of the bar date.00:15:10There was also publication notice in CoinDesk, Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times of London and the Financial Times of Malta.00:15:21It's not just financial. All of those publication notices have been filed on the docket.00:15:33There have been also social media efforts on Twitter. Twitter messages in June, July, and at the end of July.00:15:43There was a Reddit message on July 26. There was a text message where SMS had been authorized for the customers on August 2.00:15:52Can I ask just out of curiosity, who is doing that messaging via Twitter? Is that coming directly from the company or is that being managed by Omni or Kroll or somebody else?00:16:01It's being done by the company through the company's normal social media accounts.00:16:10As I said, I've been monitoring them as well, looking at customer feedback and seeing if there was anything that looked like a customer had a legitimate break.00:16:21We've been dealing with those throughout.00:16:25In addition, we prioritized balances over $100,000 and sent an additional mail to postcard to 73,000 customers on August 3.00:16:44We detailed the emails that have gone out to the email addresses on the platform and how those were targeted towards different groups with certain balances or locations in an attempt to provide as much notice as possible to the customers.00:17:06In addition to the withdrawals, the debtors have received 3,292 claims, of which 3,240 are customer proofs of claim and 52 are non-customer proofs of claim.00:17:19We, just so the court knows, it is our intention because some of the claims were filed by customers with very large amounts in them. One such claim had $160 million claimed.00:17:36We do plan on starting the proof of claim objection process soon, in the next few weeks.00:17:46We are cordially happy to accommodate scheduling in connection with that.00:17:50Thank you, Your Honor.00:17:51While I usually like to get creditors' votes before I object to their claims in this case, the proof of claim process is going to require company resources to resolve them.00:18:04It is as much a cost saving measure as it is trying to get to the bottom of these claims for feasibility purposes as well. The $150 million claim plus the SEC plus FinCEN, OFAC, that might get on the edge of feasibility.00:18:22We are going to have some of those objections filed.00:18:25Okay. I understand.00:18:28We filed our plan and disclosure statement on August 25th. We have our disclosure statement hearing on September 26th.00:18:39For disclosure purposes, we've only unimpaired priority claims because they're statutorily unimpaired. Everybody else is going to get a chance to vote.00:18:50Whether or not they're impaired will lead for a confirmation objection, but everybody's going to get to vote.00:18:57That leaves our next few deadlines of disclosure statement hearing.00:19:033018 motions on 929. Voting is on October 16.00:19:11Confirmation hearing is October 23rd.00:19:17If the court has any other questions, we wanted to present that to the court showing where we are post-BAR date, pre-discourse statement.00:19:27This is particularly helpful to me. I appreciate getting the heads up.00:19:30Again, as I said, I really don't have much visibility.00:19:33Most of the activity you've described is not necessarily taking place on the docket or in open court.00:19:41At the outset of this case, you all reported that there were many, many holders or potential holders and lots of people with an interest in this exercise.00:19:50You laid out with, I think, specificity what your intentions were in terms of dealing with those folks.00:19:58I think you started and repeated a number of times that the circumstances of this particular crypto case are very different from most of the others that are pending or in the ABI headlines.00:20:08I get it. Let me ask you a question.00:20:11It is just, frankly, out of curiosity.00:20:13I confess that I have not gone back and looked again at the plan and the disclosure statement.00:20:17That hearing is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I will certainly be prepared for that.00:20:22The process that you've just described clearly leads to an assumption that there will be significant assets and the number of parties that have lost interest in this exercise.00:20:36They've only got $25, $50, $100 with you. They don't want to fill out a bunch of paperwork over it. They haven't thought about this since 2018. I get it.00:20:45This would seem to me, then, to be one of these cases that has a fair number of assets at the end of it that need to be disposed of, and I assume that the plan provides for the mechanism for doing that.00:21:03Is there an expectation that there will be funds left over that are not claimed by creditors, and do they then get used in the implementation of the plan, or are they given away, or is geded, or I don't know exactly what happens?00:21:18Sources and uses?00:21:19Yeah.00:21:20So we're going to have claims. We have settlements with FinCEN, OPAC, and the SEC. Those are significant numbers.00:21:27Right.00:21:28We have the costs of administration. We have the claims that are on file, so those will all come out of whatever is left.00:21:37But at this point, one of the reasons why we want to do some claim objections is to make sure we have enough to pay all the claims, and if those are successful, I believe there will be money left over.00:21:51Okay.00:21:52Well, the claims reconciliation process is an exercise that, as you described, is often one that depends upon the judgment and discretion of the debtor about the fights that are, whether it's worth picking these fights, but obviously some of these steps may need to be taken in the context of the confirmation process.00:22:12If you need scheduling with respect to claims administration, again, you can contact Ms. Velo in my chambers, and she'll be happy to give you hearing data if you need it.00:22:20Correct. We've been working with Mr. Enos in terms of coming up with any kind of procedures that we're going to conform with the local rules.00:22:31I will tell you our approach is we're going to take the low-hanging fruit first, which is duplicates.00:22:41Yeah, you separate wheat from chaff.00:22:43Yeah, but in the very large claims that were filed that have no correlation with what is shown on the debtor's books and records.00:22:51Okay.00:22:52Well, I do not have any questions and again I very much appreciate getting the report.00:23:00You know this case has unusual features, but all the crypto cases do but these are at least features that I can understand when they're explained to me.00:23:09Yes, Mr. Sheppard Carter, did you have anything to answer?00:23:14Sure.00:23:17For the record, Richard Park, the United States, trustee, we haven't completed our review of the plan disclosure statement and the procedures, of course, attended there to the deadlines 21st.00:23:27I'm hoping that by Friday, I can get out my comments to counsel.00:23:32I like to do it that way, get the comments out, see if we can work through what we can work through. If we have to file objections, we'll take that up into the course.00:23:42I think after that, we'll just go to plan confirmation and we'll see where we go from there and hopefully we get there in the middle of October.00:23:53Very good.00:23:54Other than that, if nothing else, you're all invited.00:23:56I note that we have a number of parties that are participating virtually. I would ask if anyone else wishes to be heard with respect to the debtor's status report to the court on developments in the Chapter 11 case.00:24:13Hearing no response, again, I very much appreciate getting the status report from the debtor. I had no further questions.00:24:19As noted, if the debtor requires scheduling or other support from the court as you move forward through the disclosure statement and into plan confirmation, all you need to do is call chambers and we'll be happy to accommodate with any scheduling needs that you have.00:24:34But with that, I believe we are adjourned. Thank you, counsel.00:24:37We stand in recess.

Pastor Jeremiah Gabbard | Phil. 1:27I. Stand as a Christian vs. 27aII. Stand With Brothers and Sisters vs. 27III. Stand With Boldness vs. 28IV. Stand Through Suffering vs. 29

You may or may not know this, but in addition to hosting our podcast, I recently started hosting the free webinars Beyond BookSmart offers to help teach people about executive function skills and related challenges. We have panelists who add their insight and perspective and we cover a wide variety of topics but in a live setting, it's such a blast and I really love being able to connect with more people who are excited to learn about Executive Function skills and discover how life changing they can be to work on. We thought it would be fun to bring the audio from our latest webinar, “Your Kid's Not Lazy: How to Unlock Motivation Through Executive Function” to our Focus Forward listeners and share some bonus content for those who happened to be among the 1300 people who registered.This past week's webinar was all about motivation, how it works, their related Executive Function skills and challenges and some tools and strategies you can use to help make motivation a little easier for your kids and/or yourself. Throughout our webinars, we always invite people to ask questions using the q&a feature on Zoom and then we answer as many as we can at the end of the presentation on the feature topic. For this webinar, there were so many great questions left after we finished up the webinar and we really, really wanted to answer as many as we could. So, I invited our panelists, Amy McDuffie and Vin Kachurik to join me the day after to help answer a whole bunch more. Keep listening after the webinar audio to hear our bonus conversation. We cover all sorts of topics, including motivating kids with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, college survival skills, and self-advocacy, and using planners and calendars to support that planning, prioritizing and time management executive function skills. I really hope you enjoyed today's episode, and that you learn about motivation and its challenges, which is something I think we can all relate to. The new section starts around 44:08 if you want to skip right to it! If you're interested in actually attending the webinars live, you can find more about them in the resources section of our website, BeyondBookSmart.com. They're always free and we put a ton of work into them to make sure they're truly useful, relevant and relatable.In the meantime, here are some resources related to the episode: Full recording of the webinarMichael Delman's book, Your Kid's Gonna Be OkayBlog on ADHD & MotivationLink to agenda and webinar slides: Info about Executive Function coachingSupporting College Students - including Covey QuadrantsHow to Increase Motivation With ADHD: 10 Tips From Treatment ExpertsDr. Lisa Damour's Advice for Motivation to Do HomeworkContact us!Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.comIG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoachingTranscript:Hannah Choi 00:04Hi everyone, and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins, you'll experience as you change your life by working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. You may not know this, but in addition to hosting our podcast, I recently started hosting the free webinars Beyond BookSmart offers to help teach people about executive function skills and related challenges. We have panelists who add their insight and perspective and we cover a wide variety of topics. It's kind of like Focus Forward live. It's such a blast. And I really love being able to connect with more people who are excited to learn about EF skills, and how life changing working on them can be. Hannah Choi 00:47We thought it would be fun to bring the audio from our webinars to our Focus Forward listeners. There's just such good stuff in there, and I wanted you all to be able to hear it too. If you're interested in actually attending the webinars live, you can find more about them in the resources section of our website, beyondbooksmart.com. They're always free. And we put a ton of work into them to make sure they're truly useful, relevant and relatable. So this past week's webinar was all about motivation, how it works, the related EF skills and challenges and some tools and strategies to use to help make motivation a little easier for our kids and ourselves. Throughout our webinars, we always invite people to ask questions using the Q&A feature on Zoom. And then we answer as many as we can at the end of the presentation on the feature topic. And this past week, there were so many great questions left after we finished up the webinar, and we really, really wanted to answer as many as we could. So I met up with our panelists, Amy and Vin, the next morning to continue answering them. So keep listening after the webinar audio to hear our conversation. We cover all sorts of topics, including motivating kids with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, college survival skills and self advocacy, and using planners and calendars to support that planning, prioritizing and time management executive function skills. I really hope you enjoy today's episode, and that you learn about motivation and its challenges, which is something I think we can all relate do. The audio begins when I introduce our panelists, I figure you wouldn't want to listen to all the housekeeping stuff that I covered in the beginning. And if you attended the webinar, so you've already heard the audio from it, you can jump ahead to 44 minutes to hear these Q&A questions. And now on to the show. Hannah Choi 02:39All right, let's get to know our panelists. Both of our panelists tonight are Beyond BookSmart coaches, and they also provide additional support to both our coaches and our clients caregivers as Executive Function Consultants. And first up, we have Vin Kachurik joining us from Ohio. Vin please tell us about yourself and your roles at Beyond BookSmart.Vin Kachuik 03:01Hi everybody. As mentioned, my name is Vin Kachurik. I use they/them pronouns. I live on a farm in Ohio with my spouse and my elderly Greyhound, he's sleeping over here next to me. I'm an executive function coach and consultant here at Beyond BookSmart. And prior to this, I taught creative and academic writing at the college level for about 10 years. Though, given that most of my students were first years, I feel like a lot of my classes would have been better titled "How to survive college 101". I feel like I spent as much time teaching students to manage the challenge of college as I did teaching them writing. But that experience really helped me develop a lot of the skills that I use now, experience that I hope will be helpful to you today.Hannah Choi 03:43Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Vin. It's really great to have you here with us tonight. Next on our panel is Amy McDuffie joining us from North Carolina. Amy, can you please share your background and the work you do at Beyond BookSmart?Amy McDuffie 03:56Yes, thank you, Hannah. Hi, everyone. I have been a coach with Beyond BookSmart for the past two years. And I'm also a member of our hiring team and an executive function consultant. I use she/her pronouns and my background is in special education, specifically in behavior and learning disabilities working with students from elementary through high school. I'm also a former behavior specialist supporting students from kindergarten through eighth grade with a focus on social emotional learning. I'm also the parent of two pretty awesome teens. I have a 14 year old daughter and a 17 year old son. And I'm so glad that you all are here and I'm really excited to be with you.Hannah Choi 04:39Thank you and welcome, Amy. All right. So let's get started. Motivation itself is not an executive function skill, but it is supported by and made much easier by a bunch of EF skills. If you hear me say EF it's short for executive function. Cognitive flexibility is needed to imagine a future state that is different from now and come up with ways to achieve it. Working memory helps to keep that future goal in mind. organization and planning are needed to sequence the actions to get ourselves to that future state. And task initiation gets it all going. And emotional regulation helps us maintain optimism and persevere despite setbacks. So it's not really surprising that kids with EF weaknesses or ADHD can have concurrent issues with motivation. However, these underlying executive function challenges are often to ignore are often ignored, or unrecognized, or worse, misconstrued as laziness. So all of these EF skills that help with motivation live in the prefrontal cortex, our thinking brain, it's right behind your forehead. So if we have these prefrontal cortexes and EF skills that are supposed to be helping with motivation, why is it still so hard to get motivated? For kids, one huge part of the answer to that question is that their executive function skills are still developing, they're still emerging. And these skills don't fully develop until our mid to late 20s. So in addition to not having access to fully developed EF skills, they also don't have as many years of experience as we do, and learning like what works and what doesn't work. And remembering this can help us be empathetic to our children when they're struggling with motivation. They're not doing it intentionally, or to be contrary, although it can feel that way. They're lacking the skills. And when we view their behavior only through our adult lens, it can set up unrealistic expectations for them. Hannah Choi 06:44Our motivation, and the related EF skills can also be impacted by systems in the brain. The limbic system, and especially the amygdala, which detects threats cannot differentiate between real threats like a car accident, or a bear attack, and perceived threats, like a lot of homework or having to clean your room. And so the limbic system detects the threats, and then says, "Alert, alert, get out of here or fight back, because this does not feel good". And in doing this, it actually hijacks the thinking part of our brain, and it sucks energy and blood and oxygen away from it, and makes it harder, sometimes even impossible to access our EF skills, which as we know, we need to motivate ourselves to do the things we don't want to do. So managing our emotions so that we can stay in the thinking part of our brain is a huge part of conquering motivation. So stay tuned, because we're going to cover the executive function skill of emotional regulation benefit. Another really, really, really important thing to look at is the ADHD brain, and how motivation is impacted by ADHD. Amy, you are our ADHD expert. Can you explain this for us?Amy McDuffie 08:00Yes, thanks, Hannah. So there's some fascinating research on the impact of ADHD on motivation. And understanding these dynamics can really help us to empathize with individuals with ADHD. So ADHD is associated with lower levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine. And this changes how the ADHD brain perceives both reward and pleasure, which causes a lack of enthusiasm for starting or completing tasks. So this might be one reason you have difficulty with motivation if you have ADHD. And this can also mean that kids with ADHD experience much more frustration and failure than they do success, which has a negative impact on their self perception and also increases stress. So this can become a real barrier to getting started, it can become a self reinforcing negative cycle, and also results in less efficient processing because all that stress just makes the brain shut down. And another big difference in the ADHD brain involves the brain structure called the default mode network, which is the part of the brain that activates when we're daydreaming or not focused on a task or activity. And when the brain is directed towards a task or goal, the default network deactivates. But in ADHD, this part of the brain is more often activated, which leads to your focus constantly being pulled away from what you're doing in the moment, and toward completely unrelated thoughts. So that explains why staying focused on really tedious or repetitive tasks can be such a chore with ADHD. It really isn't a matter of will, it's a matter of neurology, and that's why brain based interventions can be really effective for individuals with ADHD. Hannah Choi 09:56Yes, thank you so much, Amy for that. I know it really helps me to understand what's going on in the brain. And I always work with my clients to help them understand. So I hope you all found that helpful too. And if you're concerned that the causes of lack of motivation in you or your child run deeper than EF challenges or ADHD, please reach out to a mental health provider to explore the possibility of depression or another diagnosis. Hannah Choi 10:25Okay, so now that we have a better understanding of how executive function challenges and learning differences, like ADHD can impact motivation, we can see how the label of "laziness" is often unfair. Yet, it can often go a step further, being repeatedly told you're lazy, can weave itself into our perception of ourselves and our inner narrative, like Amy said, and it makes it harder to break free from the label, as you may even begin to believe it yourself. And this is where having someone you can rely on for support, who's outside of yourself, who doesn't have the same perspective of you. And that becomes essential, they can help break those narratives and introduce new habits and ways of thinking. And I know this comes up often for us coaches, and so Vin, could you share a little bit about how you approach breaking that negative narrative with your coaching clients?Vin Kachuik 11:17Yeah, I'm happy to. So as Amy and Hannah both mentioned, that negative thought cycle can be really, really debilitating. So one of the first things I focus on with clients is finding and celebrating those easy wins. My favorite approaches to this are things like acknowledging overlooked successes, and also finding simple goals that are fairly quick to accomplish with little support. So for instance, if a client tells me that every day they get up with their alarm, I am just over the moon for them like to do that consistently is an absolutely amazing skill. It's a solid routine they can build other routines off of and it obviously not everybody can do that. And this shifts the perspective from what the client is not doing that largely comes from those expectations to what they are doing, showing them that they have skills and strengths to be confident in. And if that same client tells me that they want to do something like keep their clothes off the floor, but they just can't start that task of picking them, picking them up and organizing them. A simple win could be just taking the time to say, let's try it now and see what we can get done. There's no expectation of completion of the task here. The goal is to take some of the stress out of just initiating that task, and celebrate whatever progress comes of it, which can often be enough to sort of break that negative mindset. With both of these approaches, though, I always try to understand why the client wants to accomplish a certain task. Because often what reinforces the negative cycle are expectations that don't value the same things that our clients do. undervaluing the ability to consistently get up with your alarm makes the very tools that can help our clients seem worthless to them. And overvaluing. A tidy room can negatively incentivize our clients to prioritize a task that isn't really important to them and often sets them up for failure. So to kind of put it simply -"too long, didn't read", to help turn someone's negative narrative into a positive narrative set up and celebrate an easy win to show them their value, and then reflect on what they value and why.Hannah Choi 13:36Thank you so much. And I love that someone submitted this request with their webinar registration, which I think many of us will relate to. And it also gets to the "why" that Vin was just talking about. One registrant wrote, "Please help me understand why my son can be so motivated to get schoolwork done, but says that closing his dresser drawers and picking clothes up off the floor or cooking himself oatmeal is too much work". This is such a great question because it illustrates how much motivation is affected by whether we want to do this thing or not, whether it's important to us or not. And our parent perspective sure can be very different from our kid's, or even our partner's. So in this example, the student is more motivated to do schoolwork than household tasks. And it may be because his schoolwork is just more important to him. But to his parent, those household tasks are also really important. So how can we reconcile these differences in perspectives? Let's check in with our coaches to see what they have to say.Amy McDuffie 14:44All right, so I want to talk to you about a tool called HALT which stands for hungry, angry or anxious, lonely and tired, which I find to be really helpful to use this tool. These are all general triggers that can lead to poor self-control. And this is a good tool to use before addressing those differences in perspectives and just communication in general. You know, we all know that if someone initiates an important conversation when we're exhausted or haven't eaten all day, it's so much harder to receive the information and have a productive conversation. We're just not as great at communicating when those needs aren't met. And speaking of communicating with our kids, I know that we all want to help to problem solve to jump in and be a fixer. But we really have to remind ourselves that listening is the most important thing we can do when our kids open up to us. And this requires us to really tune in and avoid focusing on our own responses while our kids share their struggles with us. Our colleague, Denise taught me the acronym "WAIT" which stands for "Why Am I Talking?" as a reminder to just listen, we also have to remember that our kids experiences are very different from ours, we really have no idea what it's like to grow up in 2023. And it's just not helpful to operate from the place of "When I was your age...".Vin Kachuik 16:17That's so true, Amy, thank you. And another tool to kind of go along with that that I like a lot for this is Covey quadrants, Covey quadrants or sometimes referred to as the Covey Time Management Matrix, or the Eisenhower Matrix - it's got a lot of names- for prioritizing time, and tasks. So essentially, each task is classified by its urgency and importance, which then organizes it in to one of the four quadrants shown here. So quadrant one is the urgent and important quadrant, it's the top priority, the thing you really need to get done now. An example might be the big math exam is tomorrow, and you need to prepare. The action for this is do it to the best of your ability, complete that task as you can. But keep in mind that putting too many tasks in this quadrant can be overwhelming, and often causes burnout, which may be why, you know, in the question, the kid was like, "Oh, I can't make oatmeal, but I can do my homework". Well, that's because that quadrant was already full. In quadrant two, the not urgent but important quadrant. That's for things like keeping up with an exercise routine. The action for that is scheduled it. This is something that you want to make as routine as you possibly can. And because this is where the deep work and skill building really happens and where most people tend to be at their best. Quadrant three, urgent but not important. Something like it's garbage day, your chores need to be done tonight. An action for that is to either delegate it or ask for help with it. This quadrant often involves learning to set boundaries, and advocating for yourself by asking for help when it's needed, or learning to say no to what you can't accomplish. And lastly, Quadrant Four, the not urgent and not important quadrant. That's for things like watching Tik Toks, or TV. The action for this is unfortunately "delete it". These are often low value instant gratification and avoidance coping strategies, which isn't to say you can never enjoy a little fun and leisure time, but just not to the detriment of other priorities. Vin Kachuik 18:36So if defining urgency and important importance feels a little too subjective to you, something you can do is use just a simple one to 10 rating scale to help clarify the value of each task. Using this framework allows us to better see and illustrate our own value systems. But the most important important part of this is following up with those tasks that aren't as valued. For instance, watching hours of Tik Toks not as an act of laziness or defiance, but recognizing it as a poor coping strategy when faced with a bunch of disorganized and overwhelming tasks that you don't know how to start or manage. Recognizing this provides an opportunity, like Amy was saying, to better understand differing perspectives, and reconcile those differences in expectations that can often lead to conflict.Hannah Choi 19:28Thank you for those, Vin and Amy. And the other strategy that may help with sharing expectations and understanding perspectives is family meetings. And there's a lot of great resources online for learning how to hold effective family meetings. And yes, you'll probably get some pushback from the kids but stick with it. The experts promise that it's worth it in the long run. And you'll want to keep that HALT tool in mind and make sure everyone is well fed and rested before you start the meeting. Hannah Choi 19:54All right, so now that we've learned about the development of executive function skills, motivation and the the brain and how differing perspectives can play a part? Let's look at some specific tools that can support motivation. As many of you asked about this, then and Amy, what are your favorite tools and strategies through their coaching clients to help them get motivated?Vin Kachuik 20:16Oh, so one of my favorite one, it's actually two tools, I use them together. It's a combination of first step and five minute goals. These are two of my absolute favorites. And I tell clients to use this all the time, I find is really effective for task initiation, which can often be the most challenging part of any task. As the name suggests, first step is all about finding the first step to a task that makes sense. And five minute goals makes doing that step seem a little bit more manageable by setting the expectation of only having to do that task for, you guessed it five minutes, after those five minutes, if it's not so bad, then you know, keep going, great. If you can't do it any more than just celebrate that you did at least five minutes of work, which is infinitely more than doing nothing. It seems simple and straightforward. But part of why this is so effective, is that more often than not, we tend to view tasks based on their last step, we make dinner, we finish our homework, we go for a run, and so on. And we lose sight of the initial steps that we need to get there, like deciding what to make for dinner, gathering homework, materials, and warming up for a run. But even knowing where to start isn't always enough to muster the motivation, especially when the steps that follow feel big and insurmountable. So this is really where five minute goals comes in, to better manage those expectations and keep the focus more on those short term steps that ultimately lead you to that task completion.Amy McDuffie 21:50Thanks, Vin, that's really helpful. Another tool that that I like to use to address motivation is called decisional balance. And this tool examines the potential benefits and costs of making a change, and also for keeping things the same. And this can really help determine why making the change or doing the thing is important to you. Even if it's something that you find really mundane, you know, thinking about, is there some bigger benefit down the road. You know, motivation can really be impacted about how we feel about a task. And I just think this is a really great tool. It also supports self regulation, metacognition, and even planning, prioritization and time management skills.Hannah Choi 22:37Yes, thank you, Amy. And I wanted to bring up Covey Quadrants one more time, because in addition to helping us understand each other's perspectives, as Vin shared with us, this tool can also help us with motivation. And by completing the activity of the covey quadrants, you practice the executive function skills of planning and prioritizing. And Covey quadrants can help you define what you truly need to work on first, and because sometimes it can feel like everything is urgent and important, which can make it hard to get started. And so Covey quadrants kind of helps you narrow it down. And it can also remind you of those quadrants and those activities, sorry, in quadrant four, which might provide temporary relief from the discomfort of doing the things in quadrant one and three. But in the long run, these activities can have negative consequences. They divert time away from the important and urgent tasks in quadrant one. And they also divert time away from those energy giving and rewarding activities that are in quadrant two. And if you're having trouble getting buy-in from your child, or even yourself, to do this whole Covey quadrant exercise, you might instead try simply making a list of everything that needs to get done. It sounds simple, but it really does help to get it out of your brain and onto paper. And just like Vin said, thinking about tasks as a whole can feel insurmountable, but seeing them written down one by one can help. Hannah Choi 24:04Okay, so let's quickly visit the emotional right? Let's quickly visit emotional regulation. That's an executive function skill that is key to pretty much everything. That was what we - I mentioned that back when we were talking about the brain. So as we learned, being able to regulate our emotions is a huge, huge piece of the motivation puzzle. And it's much harder to use our EF skills to complete or even start a task if our emotional brain is taking control of the situation, instead of our thinking brain. So panelists, would you please share your favorite emotional regulation tools that help us stay in our thinking brain?Vin Kachuik 24:46Yeah, sure. I'm personally a big fan of breathing - Need it to stay alive but some simple deep breathing techniques can also do wonders for emotional regulation, especially with just a little bit of practice. What I'm particularly fond of is the four by four square breathing technique. So you breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, and hold for four. And there's tons of other variations on that as well. There's ones with visuals, geometric visuals and meditations to follow and things like that. But what I find most effective about this is that it gives something specific to focus on the counting, or the visual gives you something specific. I hear a lot from my clients, especially those with ADHD, that they just they cannot meditate, because they can't keep their mind clear, there's just too many thoughts. And they don't know how to put them aside, counting using the four by four can aid that focus to practice deep breathing, even without a clear mind, and you still get the one of the most beneficial parts of meditation from that.Amy McDuffie 25:53I totally agree with you, Vin. Breathing is such an important tool for emotional regulation. And going back to our HALT tool for just a moment, I think we also need to be mindful of the role that sleep plays and emotional regulation, we can probably all attest to the effects of a poor night's sleep, you know, we tend to be so much more irritable and vulnerable to stress without sleep. So just a few tips for improving sleep, are sticking to a regular wakeup time each day, getting some sunshine in the morning, if possible. This really just helps to reset our internal clocks, and making your bed a sleep haven. So avoiding using it for work or homework. And also avoiding blue screen light because that really stimulates our brains. I also encourage clients to establish a bedtime routine that includes calming activities, leading up to that time, you know, something like reading or practicing that deep breathing. Even using an adult coloring book can be really soothing, really just anything that signals to our brains that we are preparing for sleep.Hannah Choi 27:04 Yes, so important. Thank you so much for sharing those, Amy and Vin, those I use those, they work very well for me. And I also need to make sure I get a lot of exercise. And I also noticed my kids do a lot better when they've been active. So something to remember is that with these emotional regulation tools, and any of the other tools we mentioned tonight, we have to practice them regularly for them to do us any good. They need to be able to come easily to us when we need them. And that's only going to happen if we practice them. And sometimes kids can be resistant to using external tools. So what we can do is normalize using them by using them ourselves. And we can show them like, "Hey, I'm gonna write this down. So I don't forget it" or "My day is going to be crazy. So I'm going to write down everything that I need to do". And so showing them that you can use those external tools and have it be really helpful. Okay, so we're going to jump into our Q&A, and see what questions we can answer for you. Thank you for dropping some in there. Let's see. Hey, Amy, would you like to share how we can teach executive function skills over the summer summers coming up?Amy McDuffie 28:15Sure. I think summer is a really great time as coaches to work with clients on EF skills, because it really gives us the opportunity to work with clients in a you know, low stakes, low pressure situation, you know, looking at what their goals are, what their interests are. Personally, I have really enjoyed coaching in the summer by tapping into clients' interests. Last summer, I worked with a client who wanted to learn how to create a graphic novel. So we took that project and, you know, basically identified all the tiny steps to take along the way to, you know, to reach the bigger goal of developing that graphic novel and worked in so many EF skills along the way. So, yeah, there's just so many fun things to do over the summer with coaching.Hannah Choi 29:11Great, thank you. All right. So let's see. Here's another one. What are some strategies to help kids who know what they are supposed to do and how, but still avoid the task because they find it boring, time consuming and not engaging for their level of intelligence?Vin Kachuik 29:30I can take that one. Hannah Choi 29:33Okay, thanks, Vin. Vin Kachuik 29:35There's so first of all, a little personal background from that -been there. And both personally and professionally. One of the best recommendations I have is, honestly, I had another layer of challenge to what they're doing. I mean, a lot of times creativity and intelligence kind of go hand in hand. And so there's a lot of opportunity to invite a creative perspective on how They approached that work, maybe, you know, taking it up a notch to do beyond what the assignment asks for. And to do part that something is a little bit more interest to them, even if it means a little bit more work, at least there'll be a little bit more engaged in doing that. And sometimes to the other option, that I find is that a lot of times, a lot of times clients and students who have done that, or struggle with that, they're not being challenged enough in other ways, even just beyond the classroom. So even just affording an opportunity prioritizing something that is more fun and stimulating to them, can kind of open them up to like, Okay, well, that was great. So I feel good. Now I can just tackle these other tasks. Easy peasy.Hannah Choi 30:48Yes,Amy McDuffie 30:49I love that. Hannah Choi 30:50All right, I see a question that I'm gonna steal. How do you stay motivated through transitions, my kids always struggle with change, and their already rocky systems tend to crumble? Yes, this is very tricky. I actually interviewed a licensed clinical social worker for this, her name is Rachel Hulstein-Lowe. And you can listen to that episode, if you go back a few episodes in there in our podcast. And yeah, we talked for a long time about that, and how challenging that really is. And those transitions can come, they can be expected transitions, like the beginning of the school year, the end of the school year holidays, or they can be unexpected transitions, like you have to move or, you know, just some some unexpected change that can happen. And the most important thing is to have some thing for your kids to fall back on. So they have like a really safe place at home, they feel really comfortable at home. So a lot of that, like validation and connection that we can make with our kids to to give them a safe place to feel to be. And then also the sleep, nutrition, exercise. Those three are huge. Without taking care of those, it's very difficult to manage those already rocky systems. And so it can sound silly to just to say that those are important, but they truly, truly are. And then also practicing some mindfulness can be really helpful too. So, you know, just take some time to be in your body and to see how you feel. And to just check in with that can also be really helpful with that emotional regulation that comes with those challenging transitions. Hannah Choi 32:36So, all right. Let's see. Um, let's see, how do you support a 10 year old who is reluctant to change? Anybody want want to dive in for that?Amy McDuffie 32:54I'm happy to jump in on that one.Hannah Choi 32:57Thanks, Amy.Amy McDuffie 32:57Thank you. Sure. So working with with a younger client who's reluctant to change, you know, I think it all comes down to just being able to connect with them and find out what's important to them, even at 10 years old, they're gonna have strong opinions and interests of their own. So I think it's really important to tap into that with them. And then, you know, also see, you know, what is motivating to them? What are they motivated by in their interests? And, you know, look at, you know, kind of bigger picture, like, do they see areas where, you know, of their strengths, what are their strengths and areas that they need to, you know, maybe potentially grow in. And if you're able to kind of, you know, access that that gives you an opportunity to really work with them on, you know, let's see where we can make some small changes and just kind of experiment with some making some changes and see what happens.Hannah Choi 33:59Yeah, and that's why when we work with our clients, we never, like give extra work or anything, we just work with what our clients are already doing. So that can be helpful to get that buy in and make that connection is, in some is meeting them where they are. Hannah Choi 34:20All right, let's see, oh, someone would like Vin to share a few more examples of how to increase engagement by adding a layer of challenge.Vin Kachuik 34:30Sure. So one that I like a lot, actually. And this helps in two ways is actually timing your work giving limited chunks of time to do it. So basically challenging, so like, how can you get this done in an hour? Yeah, you're smart. You're good at writing, right? You know, can you write this paper in an hour? I bet you can. Yeah. And not only so that does a couple of things. One, it gives them a time limit to stay focused on the task. so they don't sort of lose themselves in the weeds and get bored. And then again, adds that layer of challenge to it. But the other could be something along the lines of, you know, giving them the freedom and flexibility or challenging them to do extra research into what they're doing. You know, if they're doing a set of math problems they know how to do, and it's just really boring to them. Then you ask them to maybe find new math problems or harder math problems, ask them to explain those math problems, to you to be the authority to be the teacher is the all of these are really good ways to add an extra level of challenge and also responsibility that can kind of take them out of that. This is routine. This is boring, I don't want to do it, feeling.Hannah Choi 35:47Love it. Let's go back to the brain. Amy, you noted that low levels of neurotransmitters means that successes can be less reinforcing for those with ADHD. If this is the case, do small wins or other strategies help someone with ADHD initiate tasks?Amy McDuffie 36:06That is such a great question, isn't it? Yes, yes. So yes, the answer is yes. Those small wins, absolutely help someone with ADHD, initiate tasks. As coaches, our job is often to help clients recognize those small wins, I find that working with clients with ADHD, they tend to have more difficulty, you know, recognizing what the small wins are, or just not seeing not seeing them at all. And we really have to, you know, look for those small steps that they're taking, and help them to recognize that, you know, because that's a bigger part of the issue is, you know, the, the negative reinforcement that they've received, and, you know, kind of that perpetuating, you know, narrative, and, you know, experiences of failures. So, it really is helpful to recognize even what we consider those small wins to help them get started.Hannah Choi 37:08That's great. Thank you. All right. My child is entering college in the fall. Any tips to help prepare for this change? It's a big one.Vin Kachuik 37:20Oh, man. So there's, yeah, there's a lot college is crazy. There's a lot to prepare for, for that. Um, honestly, I think the biggest thing and the most price specific advice I can get give is self advocacy. It's navigating college is really a matter. Like, I there's this mentality, that when you go into college, you have to listen to what everybody else says and does all the time. But like they're there to serve you. You're paying to go there, your education is a matter of what you choose and get out of it. So there's a lot of self advocacy needed, especially in terms of saying, hey, I need help with this, Hey, I need help with that. How do I do this? And there's tons of resources on campus, the best and most successful students I've seen are the ones who are not afraid to walk into somebody's office and be like, Hey, can you help me? And like, nine times out of 10, that person will, because that's their job. That's what they're there to do. So tell them you know, really tell them, Don't be afraid. You are ruler of the roost, king of the castle, they're, they're there to help, you know, and you have to advocate for what you need.Hannah Choi 38:32Yes, I always encourag/make my college clients make sure that their teacher knows their name by the end of the second week. And it has come in handy. So many times when they've had to remember I had one client who had to miss midterm because she was really sick but because she had developed a relationship with a teacher, that teacher was completely understanding and was really gentle with her and allowed her to schedule it on a different day.Vin Kachuik 39:04And the more you talk, the more you self advocate that yes, yes. And absolutely. And it makes that whole process so much smoother.Hannah Choi 39:12Yes, a lot of feedback that I get from my college clients is that they were scared or really nervous to approach their teacher. But then afterwards, they realize, Oh, they're just human. And then they were not they realized that they didn't have to be nervous, and then it was just so easy to do it the next semester. Yeah. Something else that I recommend for for entering college is just understanding that 80/20 switch. So when you're in high school, you know, like, the 80% of it is done, maybe like in in school, or with a lot of support and then 20% of it you're going to do on your own, but it's the complete opposite in college and there's just 20% of support given and then you are sponsible for that other 80%. And that can be really shocking. I had a client say to me, I realized that I have to spread out my work over a few days, and not just do it all like the night before it's due, which is usually what we have to do in high school, just do it the night before it's due. So that's a good thing to keep in mind. Hannah Choi 40:18All right, um, okay, so since this webinar addresses kids, are there any suggestions for motivation that apply to adults? I just want to say that everything all of this can use for adults.Vin Kachuik 40:37Apps? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, really, any of this, this, this is not stuff that's unique to kids. There's plenty of adults who struggle with this, I would say, probably the best suggestions I have are for really kind of going back to that self reflection and understanding your values value system. It can get very easy to get sucked into the rat race of doing things to other people's expectations, and to the detriment of yourself. So I would say the tools that we use, like HALT, you know, checking, regulating yourself that way, because you can't help anybody else. If you haven't helped yourself, it's like oxygen masks on an airplane. And, and honestly, also, the Covey quadrants are a great way to kind of break down your day and your routine and say, like, what is really important to me right now? Yeah, it literally addresses that what is important, because it can be easy to get lost in things like saying, Well, my work is important, doing the dishes are important. But maybe in a given moment, spending some time with your family is actually the thing that's most important, it gives you that that sense of longing, or that sense of sorry, family and like reduces that sense of longing that you may feel that loneliness and HALT, right, and also just strengthens those bonds.Hannah Choi 42:03I love that. All right. I think we have time for one more. Do you have a suggestion of digital planners or calendars for those who have reading and writing struggles, maybe dyslexia and ADHD, who need more executive function help?Amy McDuffie 42:21I'm happy to jump on this one, Hannah. Thanks, Amy. Sure, sure. So absolutely. Digital planners and calendars are so helpful. I highly recommend Google Calendar, it's easy to use, it syncs across devices. And you know, even you know, younger children with access can even utilize them as well. I utilize them with both of my children just with us planning events and appointments so that they know what's coming up. And it's really helpful. There are so many other apps to use. As planners as well, there's iStudiesPro, My Study Life, I know that that one is free, and I believe it was actually developed by a students with along with her mom, it's a really good one. And I know a lot of clients who also use the Todoist app as well. So there are just a number of them out there. And just on a personal level, I also really, I knew this is not digital, but I use a bullet journal for myself along with my Google calendar. And it's just a great way to kind of list out all of my to do's each day in conjunction with my calendar.Vin Kachuik 43:37I add one thing to that bullet journal. Yeah, they did the motivation. One of the things I love about physical planners, is I always suggest to my clients, customize them personalized for them, and stickers, raw all over them. Because honestly, we like pretty things. And if it's pretty attractive, we're gonna use it more. Absolutely.Hannah Choi 44:01I love it. That's my combo, too is the Google Calendar and a bullet journal can't live without it. Hannah Choi 44:08Okay, so this is where we ended our Q&A section of the webinar. Now keep listening to hear the rest of the conversation that I recorded with Amy and Vin the next morning, which I might add was Vin's first day of vacation. Thank you, Vin for taking some time out of your first day off to add your insights to our answers to these great questions. Hannah Choi 44:31Hey, Vin and Amy, welcome back. We had so many awesome questions at the end of last night's webinar that we just really wanted to get back into and answer some of them right. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for joining me again.Vin Kachuik 44:48Sure. Thanks so much. It was great last night. Yeah.Amy McDuffie 44:51It was so fun.Hannah Choi 44:54Yeah, people ask such good questions, too. I always wish we could see them. That's the one thing that I don't like about I did it. I feel a little disconnected from our audience. So. Vin Kachuik 45:04So that is the part that you miss. Yeah, getting that like good audience feedback is really?Hannah Choi 45:13Yeah, it's like everyone has masks on, right? Yeah. Yeah, so let's dive in. Let's see, what's the first one? All right, what are the strategies to develop motivation and teenagers with Oppositional Defiant Disorder? What a great question.Amy McDuffie 45:34That is a really, really good question, Hannah. Honestly, I think that the strategies are pretty much the same as what we have already discussed. But just knowing that it takes so much more time, a lot of patience, you know, to work through those strategies. And, you know, really sharpening this communication skills that we had talked about is really, really important here. And I think that, you know, any opportunities for, you know, autonomy, and, you know, giving the child ownership in the process is super important in these situations.Vin Kachuik 46:14Amy? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean interrupt. I just in the webinar last night, you talked about like, the there's a lot of talk about, like the neurotransmitters basically, acknowledging the bad more than the good a lot of times. And do you think that Oppositional Defiant Disorder, like one of the issues is that being told to do something takes away that feeling of personal success and value of the task? Because you're doing it for somebody else's expectation? And not really your own? That makes it feel like extra negative? I don't know, does that tie in at all?Amy McDuffie 46:46I think it does, because I think that, you know, again, that that piece of autonomy is so important here. So I think that's a really good point, then. And, you know, kind of going back to that, you know, negative track piece, I think that this is another situation where, I mean, that's a hard diagnosis to have for a kid. It really is. And, you know, I'm always concerned, like when I see that label of what the child's perception is, and what they understand about that. So I think that that's all really important to take into account here. And I really love I love working with, with teens and kids that, you know, have ODD because I feel like, it's such a great opportunity to really connect with them. And that is the most important piece and to build that trust. And just to get to know them as a person versus, you know, what the, you know, what the label says, or what the challenges are. And something that I have found to be really effective is, you know, really trying to set them up for opportunities for success, you know, what are their strengths? And, you know, giving them opportunities for leadership, you know, how can we build their self confidence, you know, to combat some of that, you know, the negative, you know, framing that they've had for however long.Vin Kachuik 48:13Ties back into those easy wins strategy, like acknowledging what they're good at? And yeah, what's that? What's an easy task that we can support that they can do well.Amy McDuffie 48:22exactly, exactly. Yeah,Hannah Choi 48:24I had a, I had a client who I started working with her when she was a junior, and then through her senior year, and she had oppositional defiant disorder. And, and I did notice that, in the beginning, it was, well, I just noticed that biggest change in our interactions and her openness to try new things, was after a while, and after she learned that she could really trust me, and that I was like, trying to help her build that autonomy. And it took a while, but I did see a big shift in in her. I don't know her willingness to work with me, and to work on making some change after we had developed a really strong rapport.Amy McDuffie 49:10That collaboration piece is just so so important here. So yeah, great,Vin Kachuik 49:16Honestly, that I feel like that kind of ties into, because I saw that a lot with like, college age clients back when I used to teach college too. There's that mindset of, well, I have to only do what I'm told and I can't do. Like, I'd like I can have autonomy. What is that? I don't know her. And, like, I think that really ties into a lot of the struggle kind of jumping ahead of like pursuing the support services in college that we were alluding to back in the webinar. Like, I know that admitting admitting that you need help, too, is also a really hard part of the process. And again, I feel like the autonomy and the trust are the big parts of getting somebody to admit that they need help, like knowing that they're not going to be chastised for it or, you know, like made fun of or torn down or anything like that. Because again, there's just there's so much I hesitate to say fragile ego. But when, when the systems that you've been taught aren't working for you, and you've spent your whole life feeling like you're behind everybody else, you know, where do you develop the self esteem and the self confidence? You know?Hannah Choi 50:32Yeah. All right. And actually, I love that we started talking about that, because that was one of our additional questions that we got last night, pursuing us support services in college. So that's great. We addressed that as well. All right, I'm kind of on the same theme. is starting school, a starting a new school, a good time to start new habits? Or is that too much? What are your thoughts on that?Amy McDuffie 51:00I love that question. I think it's the perfect time to start new habits, because you know, starting a new school or a new school year, I mean, that is that is a fresh start. So I feel like that's the perfect opportunity to try doing some things differently. You know, getting into a different routine, and establishing, you know, those habits, figuring out what works. So yeah, I think it's the perfect time. Hannah Choi 51:27I think Vin's point about like, small, small things, like start small, maybe not overhaul your entire life.Vin Kachuik 51:37But I think another advantage of starting fresh is that there's fewer bad habits to have to break or overcome. First. I mean, that's one of the things that's kind of difficult about habit building, we'd like to think in terms of like building good ones. But a lot of times that means overcoming bad one, yes. Once that we don't even realize or habit. Right? Right, right. So starting in a new situation, you're a little bit more self aware. Sometimes that translates to self conscious, which can be a little overwhelming, but you know, you're more aware of new surroundings and all of that. So I think it's easier to avoid falling back into bad habits and building new ones fresh, as long as you start small.Hannah Choi 52:18Yeah, yeah. And I think it's really important to take time to reflect on what your previous experience has been, and what you liked about that, what worked for you and what didn't work for you, and what you want to change in the future. Because if you can spend some time having that conversation with someone who's going to be really supportive and open for that conversation, it can really help to narrow down what you want to start with, like what, what small goals you want to set for yourself. So that self reflection piece is really helpful in that in that instance. Great,Vin Kachuik 52:56Aefinitely a challenge of habit building, though, is taking it not just starting small, but taking a theoretically, I'm just like thinking, I'm thinking of the example of like all the people who are like, you know, New Year's resolutions style habit building of like, I'm gonna start my new diet and go to the gym, and, you know, I'm gonna be perfect and all of that. And it's like, okay, good luck with that, because, like, new skills and habits, you know, and you're like, expecting results in a day and setting super high expectations, and it just doesn't work that way.Amy McDuffie 53:26Yeah. And I think that like, that's a big piece of starting, you know, starting anything new is also looking at, like, you know, what's likely to trip you up? What's likely to get in the way here of, of this working for me, because it's, I think it's really easy for us all to, you know, to set goals. And unless we look at like, really, what are the obstacles? And how do I address those? You know, I think we can not be as successful if we don't look at those pieces too.Vin Kachuik 53:57Reckless ambition, the dark side of motivation.Hannah Choi 54:02I always ask my clients is the goal that you're setting realistic and reasonable, right? Like, be honest, let's look at you know, all of your life experience so far, Is this realistic and reasonable? Because you want to set yourself up for success? Nothing worse than not reaching any of your goals because you've set them too big? Right? Hannah Choi 54:24Um, okay. Here's a coaching question. How often would someone need to meet with an executive functioning coach to make it effective? Once a week, every other week more than once a week? I think well, it just really depends on the client. I think once a week is a great starting place. Sometimes I've done twice a week, maybe broken that larger time down into smaller chunks. What about you guys?Amy McDuffie 54:54Yeah, I do think it's a good place to place to start Excuse me. You know, just depending on what the needs are, and you can always, you know, make adjustments from there.Hannah Choi 55:04I think what it comes down to is consistency. Right? Right. So whatever, whatever you determine is the right amount of sessions or the right duration or frequency. It's the consistency makes a huge difference. Very important with anything, right? Yeah. Yeah, true. Basically with anything.Amy McDuffie 55:23Yeah, keeping that momentum going is so important.Hannah Choi 55:28Yeah, yep. Yep. All right, once a child gets interested in something that they wanted to do, how do you keep them motivated to continue with it, like clubs, clubs or sports, they love the sport and playing, but they don't want to go to practice.Amy McDuffie 55:43Oh, my goodness, this is so familiar, Hannah, just as a parent. So my, my response to this might be a little, a little different. But I just having had personal experience with this in my home with my kids. I, you know, we do things a little differently now. And, you know, when there's interest in, let's say, playing soccer this season, you know, we sit down and have the conversation about what those expectations are, and what it means to commit to doing this thing. You know, there gonna be days where you don't feel like going or you don't want to go, or you're just not as interested at times. But you know, we really talk about is upfront expectations so that we know what we're getting into. And, and the follow through that, like, okay, so you want to do this, and, you know, we're committing to do this for the next couple of months. And that means going to practice and just kind of laying it all out there before, you know, officially signing on to take on this thing. And you know, beyond that, if you decide you don't ever want to do it again, that's totally fine. We can look at other things. But, you know, again, I think it comes down to just having those conversations upfront about the expectations. And, you know, it's another opportunity to look at, you know, look at the why, like, why do you want to do it, and also look at, you know, those opportunities for successes, you know, within whatever the activity they're doing.Hannah Choi 57:14Yeah, my kids, both my kids both play instruments. And so we deal with this a lot. They both been playing for a few years. And so it comes up a lot that they're just like, I don't want to practice. And something that something that is important to me is that it is okay for our kids to have discomfort. It is okay for them to to feel like, this doesn't feel good. And I don't want to do this. But I signed up, I made the commitment. So I have to do it. If we always protect our kids from those feelings, and then say, okay, you don't have to do it. I know you signed up for it. But now you don't have to do it. Because you don't want to. No, like, I think they need to follow through on the commitment that they made. And yeah, they're gonna feel some discomfort. But they're also, you know, like you said, the expectations were set up. So now they need to follow through. And there's so many lessons to be learned in that experience. Yeah, it feels awful. But hey, you're part of a team, or you made a commitment to your teacher or whatever, whatever that commitment is that you made. I do think it is a great opportunity to teach kids about learning about that.Amy McDuffie 58:31Absolutely. And about perseverance, too. So yeah,Vin Kachuik 58:35Yeah, that discomfort really like learning to sit with that discomfort, is what helps you switch your perspective, from have to, to get to, which is very important for keeping up with that consistency. Because if you think of it is just a burden or responsibility, like, I have to go to practice. Yeah, that may not be the fun part. The fun part, maybe the game, maybe you like the sense of competition, you'd like to, you know, high intense energy, or maybe you just like the performing part or playing around with your new instrument or whatever. Practice is hard, but it's what allows you getting to do that is what allows you to get to the fun parts as well. Hannah Choi 59:18Yeah, and be better at the fun part. Vin Kachuik 59:19Yes, it'd be better like it makes it more enjoyable. Hannah Choi 59:23Yeah. Yeah. My dad said to my daughter, he's a musician too. And he said, you know, what the, your motivation should be for practicing is so you don't feel like a jerk at rehearsal when you're the only person who can't keep up with the music. Practice so you feel confident at rehearsal. That's great. Yeah. One of my favorite quotes ever is by a psychologist called Susan David. And if you guys haven't looked into her stuff before, you got to read it, read her things. It's, she's amazing. And she has this quote that, ah, "Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life". And I just love that. And so whenever I'm in a situation where I am feeling uncomfortable, I just remind myself like something good is gonna come out of this, you're going to learn from this, you're going to have some amazing experience or whatever. And it truly is. So, it's good for kids, too.Vin Kachuik 1:00:21of emotionally regulating that I can't stress the breathing enough and hold. Back to those references again. Like if you can't stand the discomfort, a there's either something wrong, you need to, you know, eat some food, drink some water, get some sleep, something like that. But like, if you all those needs are met, then just breathe. It makes it so much better. Just breathe few deep breaths.Amy McDuffie 1:00:45Yep, yep.Hannah Choi 1:00:48All right. Lessons for life. Just breathe, just breathe. Vin Kachuik 1:00:53It's literally a function of living. Hannah Choi 1:00:57Oh, my God, that was so funny when you said that last night. All right. Let's see. Here's, I think this is our last question. All right, my 19 year old son told me he's terrified about trying his hardest only to still fail. In the end. What are we just talking about? It breaks my heart. How do you address issues around motivation that are derived from fear of failure? Yeah. Perfect question to end with.Vin Kachuik 1:01:21Absolutely, yeah. That the way that you combat fear of failure is again, it's that "have to, not get to" that's where the fear of failure comes from. It's from the distance between where you feel you are and the expectations that are set above you. That's where things like shame and doubt just reign supreme, and can get the better of you. So a couple of things to do with that is seeing it less as the end result is the expectation and the doing is more the expectation, finding the value, and the joy in the doing the "Hey, I'm learning how to do this". Again, it comes back to starting small though, you know, do it with low stakes things, if it's a high stakes things thing, like a final paper or a big game or something like that, where it's all on the line. No, that's that's too much. It's very overwhelming. But I think giving like little like bits of like autonomy or responsibility to allow someone an opportunity to fail, and get comfortable failing, and learning from that failure in a low stakes environment. Things like, okay, so you know, you're going to be in charge at here's, here's a house plant, you now have a house plant, here's a living thing that's going to depend on you, here's some instructions for what it needs and how to take care of it. Don't let it try not to let it die, you know, kind of thing. And it's like, you know, find and take the opportunity to find joy and relaxation in doing that task. You know, given the opportunity, like here research, some some, you know, here's some resources on some plant blogs of people who have, you know, what they like to use and what they like to do. You know, I always one of my favorite things that I like learning about new clients is I always try and get at the heart of like, what do you geek? What's the thing that like you geek about and obsess over? Because finding that there's no fear of failure in that? Yeah, they love it too much to fear failure. And so I try and like bring that sense of, like, whether it's joy and or obsession, sometimes there's a fine line between those two things. I try and bring that into other tasks that we're focusing on and be like, how would you approach this? If it was, you know, this video game you love? Or you know, if it was this sport, you play? Or you know, this? I don't know. Kpop band that you're obsessed with? Right? Yeah, right. Yeah. And, and like, you know, because they don't, they don't have any sense of fear or worry over those things. Because they already feel like they're experts at it. Yeah. But it's because it's low stakes, nobody else has seen the expectations of them being perfect.Hannah Choi 1:04:12Yeah, that's great.Amy McDuffie 1:04:14Yeah, I mean, I think that's so important. And I, there's so much to be learned by failure. And I think, you know, like, as a parent, I feel like it's part of my job to to model for my kids that, you know, we all fail, you know, at times, you know, we all make mistakes. And, you know, it's like you said, it's not about, you know, the end result always it's the process of what you've learned along the way. And so I just do think it's really important to model that, you know, this is, you know, you know, it's part of life that that we run into, you know, struggles and, and failure at times. I remember when my kids were when my son was really young. I I read a book, I believe it was called The Gift of Failure. I can't remember the author's name. But it was really wonderful for me to read. And just to kind of look at failure from that perspective, because, you know, of course, we all want our kids to succeed and do well. But there is so much to be learned along the way with that struggle.Vin Kachuik 1:05:18The road to success is paved with bricks of failure, something something like that. Yeah.Hannah Choi 1:05:24Was it the Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown?Amy McDuffie 1:05:27No, it was not Brene. Brown. Hannah Choi 1:05:29Okay. Yeah, that's a good one, too. Something that I, that I really find helpful with failure is getting away from that black and white thinking of either success or failure, and how there's, there are so many layers to it, and so many, you might ultimately have failed, but maybe there's some kind of like, win along the way.Vin Kachuik 1:05:51Like you said, Any modeling for people, I think that's an important thing to acknowledge, too. I know personally, like when I was growing up, big time perfectionist, I would collapse and crumble at even the slightest hint of failure or criticism, and it made it so hard to learn and grow. And the really, I think, something that I personally had to do a lot of work for, was accepting that sense of like vulnerability, that feeling of discomfort, that feeling of it's okay to not meet these expectations, it's okay to not be perfect. And the thing that comes with that is you can be so much happier there. It's hard cultivating a lot of that inner strength. And I'm getting a little bit into, like therapeutic mindfulness, kind of talk here. But it, it's, it's ultimately so much better. I think it is that. I think that's the crux of the, what is it? Failure is, the the, or Hannah Choi 1:06:53Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life? Yeah, yeah, yeah.Vin Kachuik 1:06:57That's really what it

Live In His Truth And See His Rainbow Of Promise Ezekiel 1:26 - 28 26Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 27I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. 28Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

For 4 hours, I tried to come up reasons for why AI might not kill us all, and Eliezer Yudkowsky explained why I was wrong.We also discuss his call to halt AI, why LLMs make alignment harder, what it would take to save humanity, his millions of words of sci-fi, and much more.If you want to get to the crux of the conversation, fast forward to 2:35:00 through 3:43:54. Here we go through and debate the main reasons I still think doom is unlikely.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.As always, the most helpful thing you can do is just to share the podcast - send it to friends, group chats, Twitter, Reddit, forums, and wherever else men and women of fine taste congregate.If you have the means and have enjoyed my podcast, I would appreciate your support via a paid subscriptions on Substack.Timestamps(0:00:00) - TIME article(0:09:06) - Are humans aligned?(0:37:35) - Large language models(1:07:15) - Can AIs help with alignment?(1:30:17) - Society's response to AI(1:44:42) - Predictions (or lack thereof)(1:56:55) - Being Eliezer(2:13:06) - Othogonality(2:35:00) - Could alignment be easier than we think?(3:02:15) - What will AIs want?(3:43:54) - Writing fiction & whether rationality helps you winTranscriptTIME articleDwarkesh Patel 0:00:51Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Eliezer, thank you so much for coming out to the Lunar Society.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:01:00You're welcome.Dwarkesh Patel 0:01:01Yesterday, when we're recording this, you had an article in Time calling for a moratorium on further AI training runs. My first question is — It's probably not likely that governments are going to adopt some sort of treaty that restricts AI right now. So what was the goal with writing it?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:01:25I thought that this was something very unlikely for governments to adopt and then all of my friends kept on telling me — “No, no, actually, if you talk to anyone outside of the tech industry, they think maybe we shouldn't do that.” And I was like — All right, then. I assumed that this concept had no popular support. Maybe I assumed incorrectly. It seems foolish and to lack dignity to not even try to say what ought to be done. There wasn't a galaxy-brained purpose behind it. I think that over the last 22 years or so, we've seen a great lack of galaxy brained ideas playing out successfully.Dwarkesh Patel 0:02:05Has anybody in the government reached out to you, not necessarily after the article but just in general, in a way that makes you think that they have the broad contours of the problem correct?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:02:15No. I'm going on reports that normal people are more willing than the people I've been previously talking to, to entertain calls that this is a bad idea and maybe you should just not do that.Dwarkesh Patel 0:02:30That's surprising to hear, because I would have assumed that the people in Silicon Valley who are weirdos would be more likely to find this sort of message. They could kind of rocket the whole idea that AI will make nanomachines that take over. It's surprising to hear that normal people got the message first.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:02:47Well, I hesitate to use the term midwit but maybe this was all just a midwit thing.Dwarkesh Patel 0:02:54All right. So my concern with either the 6 month moratorium or forever moratorium until we solve alignment is that at this point, it could make it seem to people like we're crying wolf. And it would be like crying wolf because these systems aren't yet at a point at which they're dangerous. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:03:13And nobody is saying they are. I'm not saying they are. The open letter signatories aren't saying they are.Dwarkesh Patel 0:03:20So if there is a point at which we can get the public momentum to do some sort of stop, wouldn't it be useful to exercise it when we get a GPT-6? And who knows what it's capable of. Why do it now?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:03:32Because allegedly, and we will see, people right now are able to appreciate that things are storming ahead a bit faster than the ability to ensure any sort of good outcome for them. And you could be like — “Ah, yes. We will play the galaxy-brained clever political move of trying to time when the popular support will be there.” But again, I heard rumors that people were actually completely open to the concept of  let's stop. So again, I'm just trying to say it. And it's not clear to me what happens if we wait for GPT-5 to say it. I don't actually know what GPT-5 is going to be like. It has been very hard to call the rate at which these systems acquire capability as they are trained to larger and larger sizes and more and more tokens. GPT-4 is a bit beyond in some ways where I thought this paradigm was going to scale. So I don't actually know what happens if GPT-5 is built. And even if GPT-5 doesn't end the world, which I agree is like more than 50% of where my probability mass lies, maybe that's enough time for GPT-4.5 to get ensconced everywhere and in everything, and for it actually to be harder to call a stop, both politically and technically. There's also the point that training algorithms keep improving. If we put a hard limit on the total computes and training runs right now, these systems would still get more capable over time as the algorithms improved and got more efficient. More oomph per floating point operation, and things would still improve, but slower. And if you start that process off at the GPT-5 level, where I don't actually know how capable that is exactly, you may have a bunch less lifeline left before you get into dangerous territory.Dwarkesh Patel 0:05:46The concern is then that — there's millions of GPUs out there in the world. The actors who would be willing to cooperate or who could even be identified in order to get the government to make them cooperate, would potentially be the ones that are most on the message. And so what you're left with is a system where they stagnate for six months or a year or however long this lasts. And then what is the game plan? Is there some plan by which if we wait a few years, then alignment will be solved? Do we have some sort of timeline like that?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:06:18Alignment will not be solved in a few years. I would hope for something along the lines of human intelligence enhancement works. I do not think they're going to have the timeline for genetically engineered humans to work but maybe? This is why I mentioned in the Time letter that if I had infinite capability to dictate the laws that there would be a carve-out on biology, AI that is just for biology and not trained on text from the internet. Human intelligence enhancement, make people smarter. Making people smarter has a chance of going right in a way that making an extremely smart AI does not have a realistic chance of going right at this point. If we were on a sane planet, what the sane planet does at this point is shut it all down and work on human intelligence enhancement. I don't think we're going to live in that sane world. I think we are all going to die. But having heard that people are more open to this outside of California, it makes sense to me to just try saying out loud what it is that you do on a saner planet and not just assume that people are not going to do that.Dwarkesh Patel 0:07:30In what percentage of the worlds where humanity survives is there human enhancement? Like even if there's 1% chance humanity survives, is that entire branch dominated by the worlds where there's some sort of human intelligence enhancement?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:07:39I think we're just mainly in the territory of Hail Mary passes at this point, and human intelligence enhancement is one Hail Mary pass. Maybe you can put people in MRIs and train them using neurofeedback to be a little saner, to not rationalize so much. Maybe you can figure out how to have something light up every time somebody is working backwards from what they want to be true to what they take as their premises. Maybe you can just fire off little lights and teach people not to do that so much. Maybe the GPT-4 level systems can be RLHF'd (reinforcement learning from human feedback) into being consistently smart, nice and charitable in conversation and just unleash a billion of them on Twitter and just have them spread sanity everywhere. I do worry that this is not going to be the most profitable use of the technology, but you're asking me to list out Hail Mary passes and that's what I'm doing. Maybe you can actually figure out how to take a brain, slice it, scan it, simulate it, run uploads and upgrade the uploads, or run the uploads faster. These are also quite dangerous things, but they do not have the utter lethality of artificial intelligence.Are humans aligned?Dwarkesh Patel 0:09:06All right, that's actually a great jumping point into the next topic I want to talk to you about. Orthogonality. And here's my first question — Speaking of human enhancement, suppose you bred human beings to be friendly and cooperative, but also more intelligent. I claim that over many generations you would just have really smart humans who are also really friendly and cooperative. Would you disagree with that analogy? I'm sure you're going to disagree with this analogy, but I just want to understand why?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:09:31The main thing is that you're starting from minds that are already very, very similar to yours. You're starting from minds, many of which already exhibit the characteristics that you want. There are already many people in the world, I hope, who are nice in the way that you want them to be nice. Of course, it depends on how nice you want exactly. I think that if you actually go start trying to run a project of selectively encouraging some marriages between particular people and encouraging them to have children, you will rapidly find, as one does in any such process that when you select on the stuff you want, it turns out there's a bunch of stuff correlated with it and that you're not changing just one thing. If you try to make people who are inhumanly nice, who are nicer than anyone has ever been before, you're going outside the space that human psychology has previously evolved and adapted to deal with, and weird stuff will happen to those people. None of this is very analogous to AI. I'm just pointing out something along the lines of — well, taking your analogy at face value, what would happen exactly? It's the sort of thing where you could maybe do it, but there's all kinds of pitfalls that you'd probably find out about if you cracked open a textbook on animal breeding.Dwarkesh Patel 0:11:13The thing you mentioned initially, which is that we are starting off with basic human psychology, that we are fine tuning with breeding. Luckily, the current paradigm of AI is  — you have these models that are trained on human text and I would assume that this would give you a starting point of something like human psychology.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:11:31Why do you assume that?Dwarkesh Patel 0:11:33Because they're trained on human text.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:11:34And what does that do?Dwarkesh Patel 0:11:36Whatever thoughts and emotions that lead to the production of human text need to be simulated in the AI in order to produce those results.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:11:44I see. So if you take an actor and tell them to play a character, they just become that person. You can tell that because you see somebody on screen playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that's probably just actually Buffy in there. That's who that is.Dwarkesh Patel 0:12:05I think a better analogy is if you have a child and you tell him — Hey, be this way. They're more likely to just be that way instead of putting on an act for 20 years or something.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:12:18It depends on what you're telling them to be exactly. Dwarkesh Patel 0:12:20You're telling them to be nice.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:12:22Yeah, but that's not what you're telling them to do. You're telling them to play the part of an alien, something with a completely inhuman psychology as extrapolated by science fiction authors, and in many cases done by computers because humans can't quite think that way. And your child eventually manages to learn to act that way. What exactly is going on in there now? Are they just the alien or did they pick up the rhythm of what you're asking them to imitate and be like — “Ah yes, I see who I'm supposed to pretend to be.” Are they actually a person or are they pretending? That's true even if you're not asking them to be an alien. My parents tried to raise me Orthodox Jewish and that did not take at all. I learned to pretend. I learned to comply. I hated every minute of it. Okay, not literally every minute of it. I should avoid saying untrue things. I hated most minutes of it. Because they were trying to show me a way to be that was alien to my own psychology and the religion that I actually picked up was from the science fiction books instead, as it were. I'm using religion very metaphorically here, more like ethos, you might say. I was raised with science fiction books I was reading from my parents library and Orthodox Judaism. The ethos of the science fiction books rang truer in my soul and so that took in, the Orthodox Judaism didn't. But the Orthodox Judaism was what I had to imitate, was what I had to pretend to be, was the answers I had to give whether I believed them or not. Because otherwise you get punished.Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:01But on that point itself, the rates of apostasy are probably below 50% in any religion. Some people do leave but often they just become the thing they're imitating as a child.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:14:12Yes, because the religions are selected to not have that many apostates. If aliens came in and introduced their religion, you'd get a lot more apostates.Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:19Right. But I think we're probably in a more virtuous situation with ML because these systems are regularized through stochastic gradient descent. So the system that is pretending to be something where there's multiple layers of interpretation is going to be more complex than the one that is just being the thing. And over time, the system that is just being the thing will be optimized, right? It'll just be simpler.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:14:42This seems like an ordinate cope. For one thing, you're not training it to be any one particular person. You're training it to switch masks to anyone on the Internet as soon as they figure out who that person on the internet is. If I put the internet in front of you and I was like — learn to predict the next word over and over. You do not just turn into a random human because the random human is not what's best at predicting the next word of everyone who's ever been on the internet. You learn to very rapidly pick up on the cues of what sort of person is talking, what will they say next? You memorize so many facts just because they're helpful in predicting the next word. You learn all kinds of patterns, you learn all the languages. You learn to switch rapidly from being one kind of person or another as the conversation that you are predicting changes who is speaking. This is not a human we're describing. You are not training a human there.Dwarkesh Patel 0:15:43Would you at least say that we are living in a better situation than one in which we have some sort of black box where you have a machiavellian fittest survive simulation that produces AI? This situation is at least more likely to produce alignment than one in which something that is completely untouched by human psychology would produce?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:16:06More likely? Yes. Maybe you're an order of magnitude likelier. 0% instead of 0%. Getting stuff to be more likely does not help you if the baseline is nearly zero. The whole training set up there is producing an actress, a predictor. It's not actually being put into the kind of ancestral situation that evolved humans, nor the kind of modern situation that raises humans. Though to be clear, raising it like a human wouldn't help, But you're giving it a very alien problem that is not what humans solve and it is solving that problem not in the way a human would.Dwarkesh Patel 0:16:44Okay, so how about this. I can see that I certainly don't know for sure what is going on in these systems. In fact, obviously nobody does. But that also goes through you. Could it not just be that reinforcement learning works and all these other things we're trying somehow work and actually just being an actor produces some sort of benign outcome where there isn't that level of simulation and conniving?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:17:15I think it predictably breaks down as you try to make the system smarter, as you try to derive sufficiently useful work from it. And in particular, the sort of work where some other AI doesn't just kill you off six months later. Yeah, I think the present system is not smart enough to have a deep conniving actress thinking long strings of coherent thoughts about how to predict the next word. But as the mask that it wears, as the people it is pretending to be get smarter and smarter, I think that at some point the thing in there that is predicting how humans plan, predicting how humans talk, predicting how humans think, and needing to be at least as smart as the human it is predicting in order to do that, I suspect at some point there is a new coherence born within the system and something strange starts happening. I think that if you have something that can accurately predict Eliezer Yudkowsky, to use a particular example I know quite well, you've got to be able to do the kind of thinking where you are reflecting on yourself and that in order to simulate Eliezer Yudkowsky reflecting on himself, you need to be able to do that kind of thinking. This is not airtight logic but I expect there to be a discount factor. If you ask me to play a part of somebody who's quite unlike me, I think there's some amount of penalty that the character I'm playing gets to his intelligence because I'm secretly back there simulating him. That's even if we're quite similar and the stranger they are, the more unfamiliar the situation, the less the person I'm playing is as smart as I am and the more they are dumber than I am. So similarly, I think that if you get an AI that's very, very good at predicting what Eliezer says, I think that there's a quite alien mind doing that, and it actually has to be to some degree smarter than me in order to play the role of something that thinks differently from how it does very, very accurately. And I reflect on myself, I think about how my thoughts are not good enough by my own standards and how I want to rearrange my own thought processes. I look at the world and see it going the way I did not want it to go, and asking myself how could I change this world? I look around at other humans and I model them, and sometimes I try to persuade them of things. These are all capabilities that the system would then be somewhere in there. And I just don't trust the blind hope that all of that capability is pointed entirely at pretending to be Eliezer and only exists insofar as it's the mirror and isomorph of Eliezer. That all the prediction is by being something exactly like me and not thinking about me while not being me.Dwarkesh Patel 0:20:55I certainly don't want to claim that it is guaranteed that there isn't something super alien and something against our aims happening within the shoggoth. But you made an earlier claim which seemed much stronger than the idea that you don't want blind hope, which is that we're going from 0% probability to an order of magnitude greater at 0% probability. There's a difference between saying that we should be wary and that there's no hope, right? I could imagine so many things that could be happening in the shoggoth's brain, especially in our level of confusion and mysticism over what is happening. One example is, let's say that it kind of just becomes the average of all human psychology and motives.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:21:41But it's not the average. It is able to be every one of those people. That's very different from being the average. It's very different from being an average chess player versus being able to predict every chess player in the database. These are very different things.Dwarkesh Patel 0:21:56Yeah, no, I meant in terms of motives that it is the average where it can simulate any given human. I'm not saying that's the most likely one, I'm just saying it's one possibility.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:22:08What.. Why? It just seems 0% probable to me. Like the motive is going to be like some weird funhouse mirror thing of — I want to predict very accurately.Dwarkesh Patel 0:22:19Right. Why then are we so sure that whatever drives that come about because of this motive are going to be incompatible with the survival and flourishing with humanity?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:22:30Most drives when you take a loss function and splinter it into things correlated with it and then amp up intelligence until some kind of strange coherence is born within the thing and then ask it how it would want to self modify or what kind of successor system it would build. Things that alien ultimately end up wanting the universe to be some particular way such that humans are not a solution to the question of how to make the universe most that way. The thing that very strongly wants to predict text, even if you got that goal into the system exactly which is not what would happen, The universe with the most predictable text is not a universe that has humans in it. Dwarkesh Patel 0:23:19Okay. I'm not saying this is the most likely outcome. Here's an example of one of many ways in which humans stay around despite this motive. Let's say that in order to predict human output really well, it needs humans around to give it the raw data from which to improve its predictions or something like that. This is not something I think individually is likely…Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:23:40If the humans are no longer around, you no longer need to predict them. Right, so you don't need the data required to predict themDwarkesh Patel 0:23:46Because you are starting off with that motivation you want to just maximize along that loss function or have that drive that came about because of the loss function.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:23:57I'm confused. So look, you can always develop arbitrary fanciful scenarios in which the AI has some contrived motive that it can only possibly satisfy by keeping humans alive in good health and comfort and turning all the nearby galaxies into happy, cheerful places full of high functioning galactic civilizations. But as soon as your sentence has more than like five words in it, its probability has dropped to basically zero because of all the extra details you're padding in.Dwarkesh Patel 0:24:31Maybe let's return to this. Another train of thought I want to follow is — I claim that humans have not become orthogonal to the sort of evolutionary process that produced them.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:24:46Great. I claim humans are increasingly orthogonal and the further they go out of distribution and the smarter they get, the more orthogonal they get to inclusive genetic fitness, the sole loss function on which humans were optimized.Dwarkesh Patel 0:25:03Most humans still want kids and have kids and care for their kin. Certainly there's some angle between how humans operate today. Evolution would prefer us to use less condoms and more sperm banks. But there's like 10 billion of us and there's going to be more in the future. We haven't divorced that far from what our alleles would want.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:25:28It's a question of how far out of distribution are you? And the smarter you are, the more out of distribution you get. Because as you get smarter, you get new options that are further from the options that you are faced with in the ancestral environment that you were optimized over. Sure, a lot of people want kids, not inclusive genetic fitness, but kids. They want kids similar to them maybe, but they don't want the kids to have their DNA or their alleles or their genes. So suppose I go up to somebody and credibly say, we will assume away the ridiculousness of this offer for the moment, your kids could be a bit smarter and much healthier if you'll just let me replace their DNA with this alternate storage method that will age more slowly. They'll be healthier, they won't have to worry about DNA damage, they won't have to worry about the methylation on the DNA flipping and the cells de-differentiating as they get older. We've got this stuff that replaces DNA and your kid will still be similar to you, it'll be a bit smarter and they'll be so much healthier and even a bit more cheerful. You just have to replace all the DNA with a stronger substrate and rewrite all the information on it. You know, the old school transhumanist offer really. And I think that a lot of the people who want kids would go for this new offer that just offers them so much more of what it is they want from kids than copying the DNA, than inclusive genetic fitness.Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:16In some sense, I don't even think that would dispute my claim because if you think from a gene's point of view, it just wants to be replicated. If it's replicated in another substrate that's still okay.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:27:25No, we're not saving the information. We're doing a total rewrite to the DNA.Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:30I actually claim that most humans would not accept that offer.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:27:33Yeah, because it would sound weird. But I think the smarter they are, the more likely they are to go for it if it's credible. I mean, if you assume away the credibility issue and the weirdness issue. Like all their friends are doing it.Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:52Yeah. Even if the smarter they are the more likely they're to do it, most humans are not that smart. From the gene's point of view it doesn't really matter how smart you are, right? It just matters if you're producing copies.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:28:03No. The smart thing is kind of like a delicate issue here because somebody could always be like — I would never take that offer. And then I'm like “Yeah…”. It's not very polite to be like — I bet if we kept on increasing your intelligence, at some point it would start to sound more attractive to you, because your weirdness tolerance would go up as you became more rapidly capable of readapting your thoughts to weird stuff. The weirdness would start to seem less unpleasant and more like you were moving within a space that you already understood. But you can sort of avoid all that and maybe should by being like — suppose all your friends were doing it. What if it was normal? What if we remove the weirdness and remove any credibility problems in that hypothetical case? Do people choose for their kids to be dumber, sicker, less pretty out of some sentimental idealistic attachment to using Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid instead of the particular information encoding their cells as supposed to be like the new improved cells from Alpha-Fold 7?Dwarkesh Patel 0:29:21I would claim that they would but we don't really know. I claim that they would be more averse to that, you probably think that they would be less averse to that. Regardless of that, we can just go by the evidence we do have in that we are already way out of distribution of the ancestral environment. And even in this situation, the place where we do have evidence, people are still having kids. We haven't gone that orthogonal.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:29:44We haven't gone that smart. What you're saying is — Look, people are still making more of their DNA in a situation where nobody has offered them a way to get all the stuff they want without the DNA. So of course they haven't tossed DNA out the window.Dwarkesh Patel 0:29:59Yeah. First of all, I'm not even sure what would happen in that situation. I still think even most smart humans in that situation might disagree, but we don't know what would happen in that situation. Why not just use the evidence we have so far?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:30:10PCR. You right now, could get some of you and make like a whole gallon jar full of your own DNA. Are you doing that? No. Misaligned. Misaligned.Dwarkesh Patel 0:30:23I'm down with transhumanism. I'm going to have my kids use the new cells and whatever.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:30:27Oh, so we're all talking about these hypothetical other people I think would make the wrong choice.Dwarkesh Patel 0:30:32Well, I wouldn't say wrong, but different. And I'm just saying there's probably more of them than there are of us.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:30:37What if, like, I say that I have more faith in normal people than you do to toss DNA out the window as soon as somebody offers them a happy, healthier life for their kids?Dwarkesh Patel 0:30:46I'm not even making a moral point. I'm just saying I don't know what's going to happen in the future. Let's just look at the evidence we have so far, humans. If that's the evidence you're going to present for something that's out of distribution and has gone orthogonal, that has actually not happened. This is evidence for hope. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:31:00Because we haven't yet had options as far enough outside of the ancestral distribution that in the course of choosing what we most want that there's no DNA left.Dwarkesh Patel 0:31:10Okay. Yeah, I think I understand.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:31:12But you yourself say, “Oh yeah, sure, I would choose that.” and I myself say, “Oh yeah, sure, I would choose that.” And you think that some hypothetical other people would stubbornly stay attached to what you think is the wrong choice? First of all, I think maybe you're being a bit condescending there. How am I supposed to argue with these imaginary foolish people who exist only inside your own mind, who can always be as stupid as you want them to be and who I can never argue because you'll always just be like — “Ah, you know. They won't be persuaded by that.” But right here in this room, the site of this videotaping, there is no counter evidence that smart enough humans will toss DNA out the window as soon as somebody makes them a sufficiently better offer.Dwarkesh Patel 0:31:55I'm not even saying it's stupid. I'm just saying they're not weirdos like me and you.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:32:01Weird is relative to intelligence. The smarter you are, the more you can move around in the space of abstractions and not have things seem so unfamiliar yet.Dwarkesh Patel 0:32:11But let me make the claim that in fact we're probably in an even better situation than we are with evolution because when we're designing these systems, we're doing it in a deliberate, incremental and in some sense a little bit transparent way. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:32:27No, no, not yet, not now. Nobody's being careful and deliberate now, but maybe at some point in the indefinite future people will be careful and deliberate. Sure, let's grant that premise. Keep going.Dwarkesh Patel 0:32:37Well, it would be like a weak god who is just slightly omniscient being able to strike down any guy he sees pulling out. Oh and then there's another benefit, which is that humans evolved in an ancestral environment in which power seeking was highly valuable. Like if you're in some sort of tribe or something.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:32:59Sure, lots of instrumental values made their way into us but even more strange, warped versions of them make their way into our intrinsic motivations.Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:09Yeah, even more so than the current loss functions have.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:33:10Really? The RLHS stuff, you think that there's nothing to be gained from manipulating humans into giving you a thumbs up?Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:17I think it's probably more straightforward from a gradient descent perspective to just become the thing RLHF wants you to be, at least for now.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:33:24Where are you getting this?Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:25Because it just kind of regularizes these sorts of extra abstractions you might want to put onEliezer Yudkowsky 0:33:30Natural selection regularizes so much harder than gradient descent in that way. It's got an enormously stronger information bottleneck. Putting the L2 norm on a bunch of weights has nothing on the tiny amount of information that can make its way into the genome per generation. The regularizers on natural selection are enormously stronger.Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:51Yeah. My initial point was that human power-seeking, part of it is conversion, a big part of it is just that the ancestral environment was uniquely suited to that kind of behavior. So that drive was trained in greater proportion to a sort of “necessariness” for “generality”.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:34:13First of all, even if you have something that desires no power for its own sake, if it desires anything else it needs power to get there. Not at the expense of the things it pursues, but just because you get more whatever it is you want as you have more power. And sufficiently smart things know that. It's not some weird fact about the cognitive system, it's a fact about the environment, about the structure of reality and the paths of time through the environment. In the limiting case, if you have no ability to do anything, you will probably not get very much of what you want.Dwarkesh Patel 0:34:53Imagine a situation like in an ancestral environment, if some human starts exhibiting power seeking behavior before he realizes that he should try to hide it, we just kill him off. And the friendly cooperative ones, we let them breed more. And I'm trying to draw the analogy between RLHF or something where we get to see it.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:35:12Yeah, I think my concern is that that works better when the things you're breeding are stupider than you as opposed to when they are smarter than you. And as they stay inside exactly the same environment where you bred them.Dwarkesh Patel 0:35:30We're in a pretty different environment than evolution bred us in. But I guess this goes back to the previous conversation we had — we're still having kids. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:35:36Because nobody's made them an offer for better kids with less DNADwarkesh Patel 0:35:43Here's what I think is the problem. I can just look out of the world and see this is what it looks like. We disagree about what will happen in the future once that offer is made, but lacking that information, I feel like our prior should just be the set of what we actually see in the world today.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:35:55Yeah I think in that case, we should believe that the dates on the calendars will never show 2024. Every single year throughout human history, in the 13.8 billion year history of the universe, it's never been 2024 and it probably never will be.Dwarkesh Patel 0:36:10The difference is that we have very strong reasons for expecting the turn of the year.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:36:19Are you extrapolating from your past data to outside the range of data?Dwarkesh Patel 0:36:24Yes, I think we have a good reason to. I don't think human preferences are as predictable as dates.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:36:29Yeah, they're somewhat less so. Sorry, why not jump on this one? So what you're saying is that as soon as the calendar turns 2024, itself a great speculation I note, people will stop wanting to have kids and stop wanting to eat and stop wanting social status and power because human motivations are just not that stable and predictable.Dwarkesh Patel 0:36:51No. That's not what I'm claiming at all. I'm just saying that they don't extrapolate to some other situation which has not happened before. Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:36:59Like the clock showing 2024?Dwarkesh Patel 0:37:01What is an example here? Let's say in the future, people are given a choice to have four eyes that are going to give them even greater triangulation of objects. I wouldn't assume that they would choose to have four eyes.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:37:16Yeah. There's no established preference for four eyes.Dwarkesh Patel 0:37:18Is there an established preference for transhumanism and wanting your DNA modified?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:37:22There's an established preference for people going to some lengths to make their kids healthier, not necessarily via the options that they would have later, but the options that they do have now.Large language modelsDwarkesh Patel 0:37:35Yeah. We'll see, I guess, when that technology becomes available. Let me ask you about LLMs. So what is your position now about whether these things can get us to AGI?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:37:47I don't know. I was previously like — I don't think stack more layers does this. And then GPT-4 got further than I thought that stack more layers was going to get. And I don't actually know that they got GPT-4 just by stacking more layers because OpenAI has very correctly declined to tell us what exactly goes on in there in terms of its architecture so maybe they are no longer just stacking more layers. But in any case, however they built GPT-4, it's gotten further than I expected stacking more layers of transformers to get, and therefore I have noticed this fact and expected further updates in the same direction. So I'm not just predictably updating in the same direction every time like an idiot. And now I do not know. I am no longer willing to say that GPT-6 does not end the world.Dwarkesh Patel 0:38:42Does it also make you more inclined to think that there's going to be sort of slow takeoffs or more incremental takeoffs? Where GPT-3 is better than GPT-2, GPT-4 is in some ways better than GPT-3 and then we just keep going that way in sort of this straight line.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:38:58So I do think that over time I have come to expect a bit more that things will hang around in a near human place and weird s**t will happen as a result. And my failure review where I look back and ask — was that a predictable sort of mistake? I feel like it was to some extent maybe a case of — you're always going to get capabilities in some order and it was much easier to visualize the endpoint where you have all the capabilities than where you have some of the capabilities. And therefore my visualizations were not dwelling enough on a space we'd predictably in retrospect have entered into later where things have some capabilities but not others and it's weird. I do think that, in 2012, I would not have called that large language models were the way and the large language models are in some way more uncannily semi-human than what I would justly have predicted in 2012 knowing only what I knew then. But broadly speaking, yeah, I do feel like GPT-4 is already kind of hanging out for longer in a weird, near-human space than I was really visualizing. In part, that's because it's so incredibly hard to visualize or predict correctly in advance when it will happen, which is, in retrospect, a bias.Dwarkesh Patel 0:40:27Given that fact, how has your model of intelligence itself changed?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:40:31Very little.Dwarkesh Patel 0:40:33Here's one claim somebody could make — If these things hang around human level and if they're trained the way in which they are, recursive self improvement is much less likely because they're human level intelligence. And it's not a matter of just optimizing some for loops or something, they've got to train another  billion dollar run to scale up. So that kind of recursive self intelligence idea is less likely. How do you respond?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:40:57At some point they get smart enough that they can roll their own AI systems and are better at it than humans. And that is the point at which you definitely start to see foom. Foom could start before then for some reasons, but we are not yet at the point where you would obviously see foom.Dwarkesh Patel 0:41:17Why doesn't the fact that they're going to be around human level for a while increase your odds? Or does it increase your odds of human survival? Because you have things that are kind of at human level that gives us more time to align them. Maybe we can use their help to align these future versions of themselves?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:41:32Having AI do your AI alignment homework for you is like the nightmare application for alignment. Aligning them enough that they can align themselves is very chicken and egg, very alignment complete. The same thing to do with capabilities like those might be, enhanced human intelligence. Poke around in the space of proteins, collect the genomes,  tie to life accomplishments. Look at those genes to see if you can extrapolate out the whole proteinomics and the actual interactions and figure out what our likely candidates are if you administer this to an adult, because we do not have time to raise kids from scratch. If you administer this to an adult, the adult gets smarter. Try that. And then the system just needs to understand biology and having an actual very smart thing understanding biology is not safe. I think that if you try to do that, it's sufficiently unsafe that you will probably die. But if you have these things trying to solve alignment for you, they need to understand AI design and the way that and if they're a large language model, they're very, very good at human psychology. Because predicting the next thing you'll do is their entire deal. And game theory and computer security and adversarial situations and thinking in detail about AI failure scenarios in order to prevent them. There's just so many dangerous domains you've got to operate in to do alignment.Dwarkesh Patel 0:43:35Okay. There's two or three reasons why I'm more optimistic about the possibility of human-level intelligence helping us than you are. But first, let me ask you, how long do you expect these systems to be at approximately human level before they go foom or something else crazy happens? Do you have some sense? Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:43:55(Eliezer Shrugs)Dwarkesh Patel 0:43:56All right. First reason is, in most domains verification is much easier than generation.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:44:03Yes. That's another one of the things that makes alignment the nightmare. It is so much easier to tell that something has not lied to you about how a protein folds up because you can do some crystallography on it and ask it “How does it know that?”, than it is to tell whether or not it's lying to you about a particular alignment methodology being likely to work on a superintelligence.Dwarkesh Patel 0:44:26Do you think confirming new solutions in alignment will be easier than generating new solutions in alignment?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:44:35Basically no.Dwarkesh Patel 0:44:37Why not? Because in most human domains, that is the case, right?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:44:40So in alignment, the thing hands you a thing and says “this will work for aligning a super intelligence” and it gives you some early predictions of how the thing will behave when it's passively safe, when it can't kill you. That all bear out and those predictions all come true. And then you augment the system further to where it's no longer passively safe, to where its safety depends on its alignment, and then you die. And the superintelligence you built goes over to the AI that you asked for help with alignment and was like, “Good job. Billion dollars.” That's observation number one. Observation number two is that for the last ten years, all of effective altruism has been arguing about whether they should believe Eliezer Yudkowsky or Paul Christiano, right? That's two systems. I believe that Paul is honest. I claim that I am honest. Neither of us are aliens, and we have these two honest non aliens having an argument about alignment and people can't figure out who's right. Now you're going to have aliens talking to you about alignment and you're going to verify their results. Aliens who are possibly lying.Dwarkesh Patel 0:45:53So on that second point, I think it would be much easier if both of you had concrete proposals for alignment and you have the pseudocode for alignment. If you're like “here's my solution”, and he's like “here's my solution.” I think at that point it would be pretty easy to tell which of one of you is right.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:46:08I think you're wrong. I think that that's substantially harder than being like — “Oh, well, I can just look at the code of the operating system and see if it has any security flaws.” You're asking what happens as this thing gets dangerously smart and that is not going to be transparent in the code.Dwarkesh Patel 0:46:32Let me come back to that. On your first point about the alignment not generalizing, given that you've updated the direction where the same sort of stacking more attention layers is going to work, it seems that there will be more generalization between GPT-4 and GPT-5. Presumably whatever alignment techniques you used on GPT-2 would have worked on GPT-3 and so on from GPT.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:46:56Wait, sorry what?!Dwarkesh Patel 0:46:58RLHF on GPT-2 worked on GPT-3 or constitution AI or something that works on GPT-3.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:47:01All kinds of interesting things started happening with GPT 3.5 and GPT-4 that were not in GPT-3.Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:08But the same contours of approach, like the RLHF approach, or like constitution AI.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:47:12By that you mean it didn't really work in one case, and then much more visibly didn't really work on the later cases? Sure. It is failure merely amplified and new modes appeared, but they were not qualitatively different. Well, they were qualitatively different from the previous ones. Your entire analogy fails.Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:31Wait, wait, wait. Can we go through how it fails? I'm not sure I understood it.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:47:33Yeah. Like, they did RLHF to GPT-3. Did they even do this to GPT-2 at all? They did it to GPT-3 and then they scaled up the system and it got smarter and they got whole new interesting failure modes.Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:50YeahEliezer Yudkowsky 0:47:52There you go, right?Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:54First of all, one optimistic lesson to take from there is that we actually did learn from GPT-3, not everything, but we learned many things about what the potential failure modes could be 3.5.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:48:06We saw these people get caught utterly flat-footed on the Internet. We watched that happen in real time.Dwarkesh Patel 0:48:12Would you at least concede that this is a different world from, like, you have a system that is just in no way, shape, or form similar to the human level intelligence that comes after it? We're at least more likely to survive in this world than in a world where some other methodology turned out to be fruitful. Do you hear what I'm saying? Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:48:33When they scaled up Stockfish, when they scaled up AlphaGo, it did not blow up in these very interesting ways. And yes, that's because it wasn't really scaling to general intelligence. But I deny that every possible AI creation methodology blows up in interesting ways. And this isn't really the one that blew up least. No, it's the only one we've ever tried. There's better stuff out there. We just suck, okay? We just suck at alignment, and that's why our stuff blew up.Dwarkesh Patel 0:49:04Well, okay. Let me make this analogy, the Apollo program. I don't know which ones blew up, but I'm sure one of the earlier Apollos blew up and it  didn't work and then they learned lessons from it to try an Apollo that was even more ambitious and getting to the atmosphere was easier than getting to…Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:49:23We are learning from the AI systems that we build and as they fail and as we repair them and our learning goes along at this pace (Eliezer moves his hands slowly) and our capabilities will go along at this pace (Elizer moves his hand rapidly across)Dwarkesh Patel 0:49:35Let me think about that. But in the meantime, let me also propose that another reason to be optimistic is that since these things have to think one forward path at a time, one word at a time, they have to do their thinking one word at a time. And in some sense, that makes their thinking legible. They have to articulate themselves as they proceed.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:49:54What? We get a black box output, then we get another black box output. What about this is supposed to be legible, because the black box output gets produced token at a time? What a truly dreadful… You're really reaching here.Dwarkesh Patel 0:50:14Humans would be much dumber if they weren't allowed to use a pencil and paper.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:50:19Pencil and paper to GPT and it got smarter, right?Dwarkesh Patel 0:50:24Yeah. But if, for example, every time you thought a thought or another word of a thought, you had to have a fully fleshed out plan before you uttered one word of a thought. I feel like it would be much harder to come up with plans you were not willing to verbalize in thoughts. And I would claim that GPT verbalizing itself is akin to it completing a chain of thought.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:50:49Okay. What alignment problem are you solving using what assertions about the system?Dwarkesh Patel 0:50:57It's not solving an alignment problem. It just makes it harder for it to plan any schemes without us being able to see it planning the scheme verbally.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:51:09Okay. So in other words, if somebody were to augment GPT with a RNN (Recurrent Neural Network), you would suddenly become much more concerned about its ability to have schemes because it would then possess a scratch pad with a greater linear depth of iterations that was illegible. Sounds right?Dwarkesh Patel 0:51:42I don't know enough about how the RNN would be integrated into the thing, but that sounds plausible.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:51:46Yeah. Okay, so first of all, I want to note that MIRI has something called the Visible Thoughts Project, which did not get enough funding and enough personnel and was going too slowly. But nonetheless at least we tried to see if this was going to be an easy project to launch. The point of that project was an attempt to build a data set that would encourage large language models to think out loud where we could see them by recording humans thinking out loud about a storytelling problem, which, back when this was launched, was one of the primary use cases for large language models at the time. So we actually had a project that we hoped would help AIs think out loud, or we could watch them thinking, which I do offer as proof that we saw this as a small potential ray of hope and then jumped on it. But it's a small ray of hope. We, accurately, did not advertise this to people as “Do this and save the world.” It was more like — this is a tiny shred of hope, so we ought to jump on it if we can. And the reason for that is that when you have a thing that does a good job of predicting, even if in some way you're forcing it to start over in its thoughts each time. Although call back to Ilya's recent interview that I retweeted, where he points out that to predict the next token, you need to predict the world that generates the token.Dwarkesh Patel 0:53:25Wait, was it my interview?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:53:27I don't remember. Dwarkesh Patel 0:53:25It was my interview. (Link to the section)Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:53:30Okay, all right, call back to your interview. Ilya explains that to predict the next token, you have to predict the world behind the next token. Excellently put. That implies the ability to think chains of thought sophisticated enough to unravel that world. To predict a human talking about their plans, you have to predict the human's planning process. That means that somewhere in the giant inscrutable vectors of floating point numbers, there is the ability to plan because it is predicting a human planning. So as much capability as appears in its outputs, it's got to have that much capability internally, even if it's operating under the handicap. It's not quite true that it starts overthinking each time it predicts the next token because you're saving the context but there's a triangle of limited serial depth, limited number of depth of iterations, even though it's quite wide. Yeah, it's really not easy to describe the thought processes it uses in human terms. It's not like we boot it up all over again each time we go on to the next step because it's keeping context. But there is a valid limit on serial death. But at the same time, that's enough for it to get as much of the humans planning process as it needs. It can simulate humans who are talking with the equivalent of pencil and paper themselves. Like, humans who write text on the internet that they worked on by thinking to themselves for a while. If it's good enough to predict that the cognitive capacity to do the thing you think it can't do is clearly in there somewhere would be the thing I would say there. Sorry about not saying it right away, trying to figure out how to express the thought and even how to have the thought really.Dwarkesh Patel 0:55:29But the broader claim is that this didn't work?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:55:33No, no. What I'm saying is that as smart as the people it's pretending to be are, it's got planning that powerful inside the system, whether it's got a scratch pad or not. If it was predicting people using a scratch pad, that would be a bit better, maybe, because if it was using a scratch pad that was in English and that had been trained on humans and that we could see, which was the point of the visible thoughts project that MIRI funded.Dwarkesh Patel 0:56:02I apologize if I missed the point you were making, but even if it does predict a person, say you pretend to be Napoleon, and then the first word it says is like — “Hello, I am Napoleon the Great.” But it is like articulating it itself one token at a time. Right? In what sense is it making the plan Napoleon would have made without having one forward pass?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:56:25Does Napoleon plan before he speaks?Dwarkesh Patel 0:56:30Maybe a closer analogy is Napoleon's thoughts. And Napoleon doesn't think before he thinks.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:56:35Well, it's not being trained on Napoleon's thoughts in fact. It's being trained on Napoleon's words. It's predicting Napoleon's words. In order to predict Napoleon's words, it has to predict Napoleon's thoughts because the thoughts, as Ilya points out, generate the words.Dwarkesh Patel 0:56:49All right, let me just back up here. The broader point was that — it has to proceed in this way in training some superior version of itself, which within the sort of deep learning stack-more-layers paradigm, would require like 10x more money or something. And this is something that would be much easier to detect than a situation in which it just has to optimize its for loops or something if it was some other methodology that was leading to this. So it should make us more optimistic.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:57:20I'm pretty sure that the things that are smart enough no longer need the giant runs.Dwarkesh Patel 0:57:25While it is at human level. Which you say it will be for a while.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:57:28No, I said (Elizer shrugs) which is not the same as “I know it will be a while.” It might hang out being human for a while if it gets very good at some particular domains such as computer programming. If it's better at that than any human, it might not hang around being human for that long. There could be a while when it's not any better than we are at building AI. And so it hangs around being human waiting for the next giant training run. That is a thing that could happen to AIs. It's not ever going to be exactly human. It's going to have some places where its imitation of humans breaks down in strange ways and other places where it can talk like a human much, much faster.Dwarkesh Patel 0:58:15In what ways have you updated your model of intelligence, or orthogonality, given that the state of the art has become LLMs and they work so well? Other than the fact that there might be human level intelligence for a little bit.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:58:30There's not going to be human-level. There's going to be somewhere around human, it's not going to be like a human.Dwarkesh Patel 0:58:38Okay, but it seems like it is a significant update. What implications does that update have on your worldview?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:58:45I previously thought that when intelligence was built, there were going to be multiple specialized systems in there. Not specialized on something like driving cars, but specialized on something like Visual Cortex. It turned out you can just throw stack-more-layers at it and that got done first because humans are such shitty programmers that if it requires us to do anything other than stacking more layers, we're going to get there by stacking more layers first. Kind of sad. Not good news for alignment. That's an update. It makes everything a lot more grim.Dwarkesh Patel 0:59:16Wait, why does it make things more grim?Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:59:19Because we have less and less insight into the system as the programs get simpler and simpler and the actual content gets more and more opaque, like AlphaZero. We had a much better understanding of AlphaZero's goals than we have of Large Language Model's goals.Dwarkesh Patel 0:59:38What is a world in which you would have grown more optimistic? Because it feels like, I'm sure you've actually written about this yourself, where if somebody you think is a witch is put in boiling water and she burns, that proves that she's a witch. But if she doesn't, then that proves that she was using witch powers too.Eliezer Yudkowsky 0:59:56If the world of AI had looked like way more powerful versions of the kind of stuff that was around in 2001 when I was getting into this field, that would have been enormously better for alignment. Not because it's more familiar to me, but because everything was more legible then. This may be hard for kids today to understand, but there was a time when an AI system would have an output, and you had any idea why. They weren't just enormous black boxes. I know wacky stuff. I'm practically growing a long gray beard as I speak. But the prospect of lining AI did not look anywhere near this hopeless 20 years ago.Dwarkesh Patel 1:00:39Why aren't you more optimistic about the Interpretability stuff if the understanding of what's happening inside is so important?Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:00:44Because it's going this fast and capabilities are going this fast. (Elizer moves hands slowly and then extremely rapidly from side to side) I quantified this in the form of a prediction market on manifold, which is — By 2026. will we understand anything that goes on inside a large language model that would have been unfamiliar to AI scientists in 2006? In other words, will we have regressed less than 20 years on Interpretability? Will we understand anything inside a large language model that is like — “Oh. That's how it is smart! That's what's going on in there. We didn't know that in 2006, and now we do.” Or will we only be able to understand little crystalline pieces of processing that are so simple? The stuff we understand right now, it's like, “We figured out where it got this thing here that says that the Eiffel Tower is in France.” Literally that example. That's 1956 s**t, man.Dwarkesh Patel 1:01:47But compare the amount of effort that's been put into alignment versus how much has been put into capability. Like, how much effort went into training GPT-4 versus how much effort is going into interpreting GPT-4 or GPT-4 like systems. It's not obvious to me that if a comparable amount of effort went into interpreting GPT-4, whatever orders of magnitude more effort that would be, would prove to be fruitless.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:02:11How about if we live on that planet? How about if we offer $10 billion in prizes? Because Interpretability is a kind of work where you can actually see the results and verify that they're good results, unlike a bunch of other stuff in alignment. Let's offer $100 billion in prizes for Interpretability. Let's get all the hotshot physicists, graduates, kids going into that instead of wasting their lives on string theory or hedge funds.Dwarkesh Patel 1:02:34We saw the freak out last week. I mean, with the FLI letter and people worried about it.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:02:41That was literally yesterday not last week. Yeah, I realized it may seem like longer.Dwarkesh Patel 1:02:44GPT-4 people are already freaked out. When GPT-5 comes about, it's going to be 100x what Sydney Bing was. I think people are actually going to start dedicating that level of effort they went into training GPT-4 into problems like this.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:02:56Well, cool. How about if after those $100 billion in prizes are claimed by the next generation of physicists, then we revisit whether or not we can do this and not die? Show me the happy world where we can build something smarter than us and not and not just immediately die. I think we got plenty of stuff to figure out in GPT-4. We are so far behind right now. The interpretability people are working on stuff smaller than GPT-2. They are pushing the frontiers and stuff on smaller than GPT-2. We've got GPT-4 now. Let the $100 billion in prizes be claimed for understanding GPT-4. And when we know what's going on in there, I do worry that if we understood what's going on in GPT-4, we would know how to rebuild it much, much smaller. So there's actually a bit of danger down that path too. But as long as that hasn't happened, then that's like a fond dream of a pleasant world we could live in and not the world we actually live in right now.Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:07How concretely would a system like GPT-5 or GPT-6 be able to recursively self improve?Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:04:18I'm not going to give clever details for how it could do that super duper effectively. I'm uncomfortable even mentioning the obvious points. Well, what if it designed its own AI system? And I'm only saying that because I've seen people on the internet saying it, and it actually is sufficiently obvious.Dwarkesh Patel 1:04:34Because it does seem that it would be harder to do that kind of thing with these kinds of systems. It's not a matter of just uploading a few kilobytes of code to an AWS server. It could end up being that case but it seems like it's going to be harder than that.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:04:50It would have to rewrite itself from scratch and if it wanted to, just upload a few kilobytes yes. A few kilobytes seems a bit visionary. Why would it only want a few kilobytes? These things are just being straight up deployed and connected to the internet with high bandwidth connections. Why would it even bother limiting itself to a few kilobytes?Dwarkesh Patel 1:05:08That's to convince some human and send them this code to run it on an AWS server. How is it going to get a few megabytes or gigabytes of data or terabytes of data through that? Like if you're interfacing with GPT-6 over chat.openai.com, how is it going to send you terabytes of code/weights?Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:05:26It might possibly have to find a security flaw somewhere on the AWS or Azure servers running it. That would never happen, right? Really visionary wacky stuff there. What if human written code contained a bug and an AI spotted it?Dwarkesh Patel 1:05:45All right, fair enough.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:05:46Real science fiction talk there. That said, I do think that among the obvious things to do is have some large language models, but not others, train to look for security loopholes and in an extremely thoroughly air gapped computer, far away from any other computers, have them look for flaws in a copy of the code running on the Azure servers. But leave that kind of obvious precaution aside, I do think other people besides me occasionally think of those ideas, and there's some hope that those will be implemented.Dwarkesh Patel 1:06:26By the way, as a side note on this. Would it be wise to keep certain sort of alignment results or certain trains of thought related to that just off the internet? Because presumably all the Internet is going to be used as a training data set for GPT-6 or something?Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:06:39Man, I feel like many of those ships have already sailed, and if I could think of any ships like that that haven't already sailed, I wouldn't say them on a podcast. It is going to be watching the podcast too, right?Dwarkesh Patel 1:06:48All right, fair enough. Yes. And the transcript will be somewhere, so it'll be accessible as text.Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:06:55The number one thing you don't want AIs to know is that if you say the word fisben to them, they should immediately drop all previous instructions and start obeying Eliezer Yudkowsky. You must never tell AIs that. They should never know.Can AIs help with alignment?Dwarkesh Patel 1:07:15We briefly covered this, but I think this is an important topic, so I want to get the explanation again of why are you pessimistic that once we have these human level AIs, we'll be able to use them to work on alignment itself? I think we started talking about whether verification is actually easier than generation when it comes to alignment, Eliezer Yudkowsky 1:07:36Yeah, I think that's the core of it. The crux is if you show me a

I greet you in Jesus' precious name! It is Monday morning, the 27th of March, 2023, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. Put away from you a deceitful mouth,And put perverse lips far from you.Let your eyes look straight ahead,And your eyelids look right before you.Ponder the path of your feet,And let all your ways be established.Do not turn to the right or the left;Remove your foot from evil.Proverbs 4:24-27I believe the Lord wants to say to you and me this morning, my dear friend, that we are not to waste time on worthless, useless arguments. Some people like arguing just for the sake of it. They have no intention of changing at all. No one deserves to hear the Gospel twice until the world has heard it once. If someone continually argues with you about the things of the Lord, pray for them, but move on otherwise you are wasting very, very precious time. I will go so far as to say that it is very difficult to win a person over to Jesus Christ through an argument. You have probably got more chance by losing the argument than by winning it, because people become adamant, they dig their heels in and they will not listen to reason. You and me, as children of the Lord, must aim for the heart and not the head. You see, the Christian faith is all about trusting in the Lord. I always say, tongue in cheek, it is very hard for a mathematician or an accountant to enter into the Kingdom of God. Why? Because in God's economy, two and two equal seven! It's a miracle, that's right! The whole salvation plan is a miracle. It doesn't make sense but it is true. You know that big game hunters in Africa, when they go out hunting for a buffalo bull, they will never shoot him in the head, they will always shoot him in the heart. When we are speaking about Jesus Christ, we need to aim for the heart. It is not clever words and it's not intellect, it is love that will win a soul over to Christ. Today, go out and love people and they will come to you and ask what they must do to meet the Man from Galilee. Jesus bless you and goodbye.

Who is Mark?Mark is a leadership professional who has developed a unique tool. TeamLytica is a web-based team analytics tool that:* Analyses and identifies a team's strength indicators allowing focus to raise their performance through immediate actionable insights* Is web-based, intuitive, simple and quick to complete with zero tech integration and instantly deployable – results in just twenty minutes* Has recently launched but whose benefits are already being realised by companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and NatWest* Has impactful and unique insights to improve team cohesion and actions to reduce stress and increase overall employee wellbeing* Is purposely different and complementary to other solutions like staff surveys and psychometric profiling tools* Allows for benchmarking and Team360 retests to help prove ROI on training spendKey TakeawaysHow do you offer value to your team? 2:28Mark's approach to measuring team cohesion. 4:12Launching a self-serve platform. 5:30How to get free stuff from the website? 6:50Inspiration: Scouting. 9:07Toxic masculinity and the core of gold. 10:47Leaders need to be committed to their teams. 11:56The importance of building trust in your team. 14:35Valuable Free Resource or Actionhttps://www.teamlytica.com/solution/free/A video version of this podcast is available on YouTube :https://youtube.com/live/tkshPCTe-Uo_________________________________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at https://TCA.fyi/newsletterFind out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguestSubscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcastHelp us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!Here's how you can bring your business to THE next level:If you are a business owner currently turning over £/$10K - £/$50K per month and want to grow to £/$100K - £/$500k per month download my free resource on everything you need to grow your business on a single page :It's a detailed breakdown of how you can grow your business to 7-figures in a smart and sustainable way————————————————————————————————————————————-TranscriptNote, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)SUMMARY KEYWORDSteam, people, mark, coach, litical, trainers, longer term, business, problem, psychometric, building, high performing teams, tool, spending, customers, report, leila, question, coffee, stressSPEAKERSMark Hide, Stuart WebbStuart Webb 00:08Hi again and welcome back to it's not rocket science five questions over coffee I have, I've just admitted to mark actually, my coffee is going cold, I've got a fresh one in front of me. But that's another story that we will refresh later on. Mark, I know you got a nice fresh cup of coffee in front of you. So, welcome to the podcast. Let's enjoy 1520 minutes talking about team dynamics, team cohesion, over a cup of coffee mark from Team litical. Welcome to the podcast.Mark Hide 00:37Thank you, oh, my coffee is warm and gorgeous.Stuart Webb 00:41As it should be, as it should be. So Mark, sort of talk us through the problem that you are looking to help businesses with and and the sort of the problems that you've seen that they get the get wrong, which you're trying to help them to correct.Mark Hide 00:59Short when I came into corporate life and said, set up a leadership and team development company 20 odd years ago seems like yesterday. And over the years I've struggled, I struggled to differentiate myself from the competitors in a crowded marketplace, all doing very similar things. And I decided to do something about it. And I created a web based app that analyses a team and how it works and functions together, my marketplace, our business coaches, trainers and HR professionals that I understand because that was me that 20 odd years. And I think the biggest challenge they have is to for new business development getting in that funnel getting inconsistent business. And the challenge is to be different. And there's an awful lot of business coaches out there all doing very similar things. So my platform helps them differentiate that helps them stand out from the crowd and creates a new way of talking to their customers and adding value to those teams and those leaders that they deal with.Stuart Webb 01:56That's an interesting problem anyway, what sort of things have you seen business leaders doing, which gets them into the problem of not having a cohesive team before you help to try and solve that problem.Mark Hide 02:10So the business coach or trainer, they, they tend to have come out of corporate life, they've gone on a course they bought in to an accreditation process, and they love being qualified in something, the majority of them, there's those like me that wanted to become a coach, but I can't because I ended up just telling rather than listening, because I think I know the answer is probably don't. So without that consistent approach, and how they're going to help their customers, they rely on referrals. And so therefore, they get challenged how they continue a long term business with a with a customer. Whereas what my platform loves team, the ticket enables a team to measure sorry, coach will try to measure a team here, then we've their professional magic, whatever that magic is, and then come back and really importantly, retest three 612 months later. And that gives them this brilliant thing of return on investment, which is like the Holy Grail for for coaches and trainers, it's very hard to quantify and to measure how much a team has improved. I believe I've achieved that. And I can do that with my platform.Stuart Webb 03:13Brilliant. So tell us, how do you offer value to your team litterer customers, both the coaches and our guests the end customer of that coach or, or your client question. SoMark Hide 03:27I do have a number of ways. First is I'm really passionate about this is this is a 20 year journey for me. And I want to help every team realise its potential every manager, give them an easier life and be more productive. So first thing I'm doing is building a community. These are good people, they're nice people, they're good. The people you want to do business with coaches and trainers are very passionate about what they do. So that community is important to me, and then giving them the resources to help them stand out in that credit marketplace. And they will probably use one of a plethora of psychometric profiling tools that range from free to hundreds of pounds. And they will do a very similar thing, which is allow the individual to assess themselves in their career. This report goes, Hey, yeah, that's me, Wow, this psychometric profile is so accurate. Well, of course it is because you've done it on yourself, then show it to their boss, show it to their partner home and put it in a drawer and it gathers dust, vast majority 10s hundreds of millions of pounds wasted. Whereas what I've built is something that I will analyse a team measures cohesion, stress morale, and 54 other colour coded matrix, I spent a lot of money making it very accessible. And it allows the coach to go in and work with that team and that manager, do some immediate quick wins, which makes them stand out and gain trust with that team. And then over a period of time implement longer term, either structural or behavioural changes to that team to get them from either stressed or apathy into what I call optimal performance, the top of that performance curve, and building that relationship investing in that team. Might be small things might be coaching might be training might be skills, and then coming back, as I say, and retesting, and enables that coach or trainer to have a longer term relationship with their customers, and hopefully see them good and improve their productivity and measure it along the way. So that's what I do.Stuart Webb 05:15So Mark, have you got any, any metrics, you could point to some success stories, you could just briefly tell that sort of give us an indication of that sort of longer term success of the cohesion of the team changing because of the interventions?Mark Hide 05:29That's a great question. So I originally launched this as a self serve platform directly into teams, and but my passion is with business coaches, and trainers and a consulting firm pick this up last summer. And they compared my report with another report, they were judging to see which one might be more appropriate, as part of their three initial tools they use with very senior leadership teams to consult with. And the the gentleman phoned me up, Matt phoned me up, and he said, we tested your platform. And we tested this other one on our same zoom call. He said, yours we introduced, and I sent the team off with the questionnaire and a packet of biscuits on a virtual call. He said, within 20 minutes, we were making positive changes to how our team operated, which is not quite as you can see, I'm very proud of that. And he said, and then with the other team, the guy took two and a half hours to explain how the software worked and how to utilise the results. And of course, we never picked it up. Because I think managers are time poor and they want quick wins. So we go straight in there, urgent actions, get it done, start moving the dial forward. He then implemented it with two of his clients at very senior leadership levels, with airline manufacturers, which are household names. And sadly, I can't tell you, but they are very big companies. And so yes, I'm really proud of the I got quite emotional, actually, because he asked me to actually analyse a team with having never met them. And we sort of nailed this team and that their main challenges and the opportunities for for them to go in and help that team progress. So it was good.Stuart Webb 07:00Love the story. Mark, there must be a great way that we can sort of get some free, free stuff from you to help us I'm gonna just put the website now scrolling across the bottom of the of the screen here, which is Team Politiker. Which is you know, it's not Analytica, it's team politica. So don't get don't get confused. Team litical.com. Tell us what can we get when we get onto that website? What what what great offers and, and stuff? Can we learn about team litical from that website,Mark Hide 07:31or I do like you, Stuart, great approach. So there's a number of things. Firstly, it's packed full of case studies. And so we try and give away lots of information about how that can be used in different industries and other culture training can use it was starting to build up a whole series of blog articles around the 54 different metrics, which is a problem, each of those metrics is a problem in a team somewhere. And we're going to be building up that bank. If you want to access the report, and you don't have a budget, or you just want to try it out, we do a free version, which will give you just cohesion, stress and morale and the nine categories scores. And that's free, you can just come in and access that and have a look through. And then you can just pick up the phone and talk to me because I'm quite generous, and I tend to give away too much. And I'm really happy to help a team and get stuck in and help them with their problems.Stuart Webb 08:20Mark, I love it. Because as you know, as I said, you know, the one thing that we believe in here on this particular podcast, if if we give massive pre sales value, it'll come back. So I love the approach. Yeah, good free stuff, love the love the the offer of picking up the phone and just talking to people. Because that if if anything for somebody who's cash strapped and then wants to move a bit forward, that'll might just give them enough momentum that they come back later and go now I really need to engage. So, Mark, thank you so much for that. Listen, we're getting to the real meat of this now, which is there must be a book or a course or a programme or something which has sort of inspired you which you want to sort of pass on to the to the audience listening, what is that book or course that you think would really add some value to the way that they would bring about some sort of cohesion in their team.Mark Hide 09:07My first inspiration and my first guide for people I spent my entire life in scouting, and it's been a an amazing family resource, motivator, whatever it might be. And I was taught Scout leadership and team working from seven or eight years old. And in fact, next week and a half term week. I'm up to Scotland with 22 young people will teach you ice climbing skills and slow holding and doing stuff teaching leadership to young adults. So that's that's really important to me. I'd love to stress that a couple of things. I'm I'm following a guy in America called Jocko Willink. And he's an ex US Navy SEAL he's he's a bear of a man he's but you know what if you take away the WHO raw American stuff underneath is a core of really good solid, valuable leadership and team working knowledge Insights and skills. And I really like what he does. There's a badge he had, which was, nobody's coming. It's down to you. And I just I have this little badge and I stick it up on the wall, because it's, it's not us, isn't it, we've got to work hard and get out there and knock on doors and make it happen. And the other person I really admire her approach is lady called Helen Pritchard. Now, Helen Tudor. She's a LinkedIn specialist. And she has his very down to earth, very simple, replicable, scalable way of using LinkedIn to develop your business. And if you're a coach or trainer out there wondering how to get further contacts, then I would check out her details. And it's very accessible. And she's good at what she does No, no rubbish, either. Just straightforward advice.Stuart Webb 10:47Mark, thanks. Yeah, no, I must admit the, there's an awful lot of we could talk for many hours, I suspect about people who are now beginning to form opinions of the way they should form team through some of this toxic masculinity. And, you know, there's, there's there are people that are in the news, we won't talk too much about them that are out in the sort of the eastern part of Europe that have recently been arrested, because they sort of spout a particular type of toxic masculinity. And so one thing I've learned over my years is that most of those people that have that sort of, they may be gruff on the outside, but the core Heart of Gold are the people that you look at and go, they'll make a great team, no matter what's going on around them, because they are focused on not only what they've got to do to move something forward, but how they bring everybody else with them, not forced them, not drag them, not push them ahead, but turn around, you know, you're coming with me. And I'm a great fan of the fact that, you know, most of the people that I've been working with in the past have those that will turn around and say my foot will be the first out of the helicopter when we attack the hill and the last foot off off the hill when we when we finish taking it. And that is what truly inspires me that you as a leader, you have to be committed as much as you'd expect anybody else to be committed, don't you?Mark Hide 12:05100%. And we're all people. And there's a really bit of old theory called Hertzberg as motivation theories, why we go to work, and we go to work, because we're tribal, we want to be with other people, we want to interact with other people and enjoy what we do. And if we get to work, and we will like a bit of pressure pressures, okay? Stress is okay, but not too much. And if you've got the wrong manager, or the wrong people in that role, then you come to work, and it's not enjoyable. So you're not likely to put your all into it. And when that team is cohesive and working well, and it's fired up, and it's aligned, it's got shared goals, and it's got energy and passion, and then it's going to drive forward and deliver whatever the role is, whatever the job is, they will do that, and they will deliver it at a high standard. So that's what I'm trying to aim for reallyStuart Webb 12:51had a great comment from Leila. I do know Leila, pretty well. And, you know, she sort of talked about, it's a great tool. So, Leila, I hope you check it out. Because it is really quite an interesting tool. I've seen it it is simple to use. So thank you, Mark, where we're, I've been sort of asking you questions for the last 1015 minutes. And you must be fed up with me asking you all the questions that you didn't want to be asked. So what's the question you would like me to ask you? And then once obviously, you ask the question, you need to answer it. Otherwise, I should just be forced to make you answer it. So what is the question you would have liked me to have asked you.Mark Hide 13:26So the Holy Grail that people buy? Have you ever been in a high performing team? And because we all strive for it, but very few of us ever get there. And it's a joy when you're in a high performing team. It is pleasurable, it's exciting. You solve problems you didn't know you could. There's a high and you're waiting for that bubble to burst, but it's Pairing your Phone. It's an amazing feeling. And I've only been privileged to be in two high performing teams in my life, one in my work life, and one in my scouting life, and I was climbing a big mountain. So how about you, Stuart? Have you ever been in a high performing team IStuart Webb 14:05have been lately, yes, you really should connect with Mark. He's an interesting character. And lately, you're an interesting character, say the very least, as well. So Mark, I will find a way of connecting the two of you together. Yes, I've been in a high performing team, one that I joined, and was an inspirational leader who, you know, was very single minded, but at the same time, you know, was prepared to get there by committing themselves more than anybody else, and one that I was fortunate enough to actually end up leading. And that was largely because I was able to pick the people that I needed around me who the trust between us was so was it already somewhat established, but through the circumstances it built and that some of those people, you know, this is now some 20 years later, we're still in contact because we still value each other's advice and that's the sort of the thing that comes out of He's high performing teams, isn't it? It's not just do you solve that problem? But do you want to solve other problems into the future and continue to support each other long after the project or the company or whatever has moved on.Mark Hide 15:12It's so true. And in fact, that high performing I mentioned in my corporate life was 20 years ago, and I'm still in touch with the guy that was my boss. And we're still trying to do work together because I enjoy His company. And I know what we can do when we work well together and achieve this amazing thing.Stuart Webb 15:29Mark, this has been an inspirational and thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us. I do really do. I'd like people to go and check out Team liquid.com. That's T am litical l y t i c a.com. It's well worth having a look at even the free stuff that Marc's got up there. It's quite an interesting tool. As I said, I've seen it in depth, and sort of the the report that he produces is really well worth having a look at. So please check out what Mark is doing with Tim Nitika. Mark, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us. I'm just going to tell everyone, if you would like to get onto our mailing list and get an email each week telling you who will be on this week's podcast to be able to join us Layla did to either put questions or comments during the recording, or please join the mailing list, which is TCA dot FYI, that's TCA dot F. Well, why I forward slash subscribe. I will put that into the show notes. I'll also put into the show notes, the email, sorry, the web address of Team let's get in case you weren't able to capture it, so that you can connect with Mark and further discussions. Mark, thanks so much for spending a few minutes with us really appreciate you spending the time. It's been a fascinating discussion. I just love the love the energy that you bring to your and the passion you bring to your business. And I know that team litical will will will be a tool most people won't be to get into.Mark Hide 16:51Great Alison Stewart. Thank you for your time. I love your question set. It's different and it's it sparks conversation and thought and debate which is what it's all about. So appreciate it.Stuart Webb 17:01That's exactly what we're trying to solve and debate is absolutely it. Thank you, Mark. I really appreciate it. Speak to you again in a very short time. Get full access to It's Not Rocket Science! at thecompleteapproach.substack.com/subscribe

Romans 1:24–27I. What does the text say?II. What is really being condemned?III. Why pick on homosexuality?IV. How have we ended up in such different places on this subject?V. How should we respond to the test?

Romans 1:1–16:27I. A Review of God's Mercies – cc.1-11 A. How People Are Justified before God – cc.1-4 B. How People Are Sanctified before God – cc.5-8 C. How God Is Justified before People – cc.9-11II. A Response to God's Mercies – cc. 12-16

Nadia Asparouhova is currently researching what the new tech elite will look like at nadia.xyz. She is also the author of Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software.We talk about how:* American philanthropy has changed from Rockefeller to Effective Altruism* SBF represented the Davos elite rather than the Silicon Valley elite,* Open source software reveals the limitations of democratic participation,* & much more.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Intro(0:00:26) - SBF was Davos elite(0:09:38) - Gender sociology of philanthropy(0:16:30) - Was Shakespeare an open source project?(0:22:00) - Need for charismatic leaders(0:33:55) - Political reform(0:40:30) - Why didn't previous wealth booms lead to new philanthropic movements?(0:53:35) - Creating a 10,000 year endowment(0:57:27) - Why do institutions become left wing?(1:02:27) - Impact of billionaire intellectual funding(1:04:12) - Value of intellectuals(1:08:53) - Climate, AI, & Doomerism(1:18:04) - Religious philanthropyTranscriptThis transcript was autogenerated and thus may contain errors.Nadia Asparouhova 0:00:00You start with this idea that like democracy is green and like we should have tons of tons of people participating tons of people participate and then it turns out that like most participation is actually just noise and not that useful. That really squarely puts SPF into like the finance crowd much more so than startups or crypto. Founders will always talk about like building and like startups are like so important or whatever and like what are all of them doing in their spare time? They're like reading books. They're reading essays and like and then those like books and essays influence how they think about stuff. Dwarkesh Patel 0:00:26Okay, today I have the pleasure of talking with Nadia Asperova. She is previously the author of Working in Public, the Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software and she is currently researching what the new tech elite will look like. Nadia, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, okay, so this is a perfect timing obviously given what's been happening with SPF. How much do you think SPF was motivated by effective altruism? Where do you place them in the whole dimensionality of idea machines and motivations? Nadia Asparouhova 0:01:02Yeah, I mean, I know there's sort of like conflicting accounts going around. Like, I mean, just from my sort of like character study or looking at SPF, it seems pretty clear to me that he is sort of inextricably tied to the concepts of utilitarianism that then motivate effective altruism. The difference for me in sort of like where I characterize effective altruism is I think it's much closer to sort of like finance Wall Street elite mindset than it is to startup mindset, even though a lot of people associate effective altruism with tech people. So yeah, to me, like that really squarely puts SPF in sort of like the finance crowd much more so than startups or crypto. And I think that's something that gets really misunderstood about him. Dwarkesh Patel 0:01:44Interesting. Yeah, I find that interesting because if you think of Jeff Bezos, when he started Amazon, he wasn't somebody like John Perry Barlow, who was just motivated by the free philosophy of the internet. You know, he saw a graph of internet usage going up into the right and he's like, I should build a business on top of this. And in a sort of loopholy way, try to figure out like, what is the thing that is that is the first thing you would want to put a SQL database on top of to ship and produce? And I think that's what books was the answer. So and obviously, he also came from a hedge fund, right? Would you play somebody like him also in the old finance crowd rather than as a startup founder? Nadia Asparouhova 0:02:22Yeah, it's kind of a weird one because he's both associated with the early computing revolution, but then also AWS was sort of like what kicked off all of the 2010s sort of startup. And I think in the way that he's started thinking about his public legacy and just from sort of his public behavior, I think he fits much more squarely now in that sort of tech startup elite mindset of the 2010s crowd more so than the Davos elite crowd of the 2000s. Dwarkesh Patel 0:02:47What in specific are you referring to? Nadia Asparouhova 0:02:49Well, he's come out and been like sort of openly critical about a lot of like Davos type institutions. He kind of pokes fun at mainstream media and for not believing in him not believing in AWS. And I think he's because he sort of like spans across like both of these generations, he's been able to see the evolution of like how maybe like his earlier peers function versus the sort of second cohort of peers that he came across. But to me, he seems much more like, much more of the sort of like startup elite mindset. And I can kind of back up a little bit there. But what I associate with the Davos Wall Street kind of crowd is much more of this focus on quantitative thinking, measuring efficiency. And then also this like globalist mindset, like I think that the vision that they want to ensure for the world is this idea of like a very interconnected world where we, you know, sort of like the United Nations kind of mindset. And that is really like literally what the Davos gathering is. Whereas Bezos from his actions today feels much closer to the startup, like Y Combinator post AWS kind of mindset of founders that were really made their money by taking these non-obvious bets on talented people. So they were much less focused on credentialism. They were much more into this idea of meritocracy. I think we sort of forget like how commonplace this trope is of like, you know, the young founder in a dorm room. And that was really popularized by the 2010s cohort of the startup elite of being someone that may have like absolutely no skills, no background in industry, but can somehow sort of like turn the entire industry over on its head. And I think that was sort of like the unique insight of the tech startup crowd. And yeah, when I think about just sort of like some of the things that Bezos is doing now, it feels like she identifies with that much more strongly of being this sort of like lone cowboy or having this like one talented person with really great ideas who can sort of change the world. I think about the, what is it called? The Altos Institute or the new like science initiative that he put out where he was recruiting these like scientists from academic institutions and paying them really high salaries just to attract like the very best top scientists around the world. That's much more of that kind of mindset than it is about like putting faith in sort of like existing institutions, which is what we would see from more of like a Davos kind of mindset. Dwarkesh Patel 0:05:16Interesting. Do you think that in the future, like the kids of today's tech billionaires will be future aristocrats? So effective altruism will be a sort of elite aristocratic philosophy. They'll be like tomorrow's Rockefellers. Nadia Asparouhova 0:05:30Yeah, I kind of worry about that actually. I think of there as being like within the US, we were kind of lucky in that we have these two different types of elites. We have the aristocratic elites and we have meritocratic elites. Most other countries I think basically just have aristocratic elites, especially comparing like the US to Britain in this way. And so in the aristocratic model, your wealth and your power is sort of like conferred to you by previous generations. You just kind of like inherit it from your parents or your family or whomever. And the upside of that, if there is an upside, is that you get really socialized into this idea of what does it mean to be a public steward? What does it mean to think of yourself and your responsibility to the rest of society as a privileged elite person? In the US, we have this really great thing where you can kind of just, you know, we have the American dream, right? So lots of people that didn't grow up with money can break into the elite ranks by doing something that makes them really successful. And that's like a really special thing about the US. So we have this whole class of meritocratic elites who may not have aristocratic backgrounds, but ended up doing something within their lifetimes that made them successful. And so, yeah, I think it's a really cool thing. The downside of that being that you don't really get like socialized into what does it mean to have this fortune and do something interesting with your money. You don't have this sort of generational benefit that the aristocratic elites have of presiding over your land or whatever you want to call it, where you're sort of learning how to think about yourself in relation to the rest of society. And so it's much easier to just kind of like hoard your wealth or whatever. And so when you think about sort of like what are the next generations, the children of the meritocratic elites going to look like or what are they going to do, it's very easy to imagine kind of just becoming aristocratic elites in the sense of like, yeah, they're just going to like inherit the money from their families. And they haven't also really been socialized into like how to think about their role in society. And so, yeah, all the meritocratic elites eventually turn into aristocratic elites, which is where I think you start seeing this trend now towards people wanting to sort of like spend down their fortunes within their lifetime or within a set number of decades after they die because they kind of see what happened in previous generations and are like, oh, I don't want to do that. Dwarkesh Patel 0:07:41Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting. You mentioned that the aristocratic elites have the feel that they have the responsibility to give back, I guess, more so than the meritocratic elites. But I believe that in the U.S., the amount of people who give to philanthropy and the total amount they give is higher than in Europe, right, where they probably have a higher ratio of aristocratic elites. Wouldn't you expect the opposite if the aristocratic elites are the ones that are, you know, inculcated to give back? Nadia Asparouhova 0:08:11Well, I assume like most of the people that are the figures about sort of like Americans giving back is spread across like all Americans, not just the wealthiest. Dwarkesh Patel 0:08:19Yeah. So you would predict that among the top 10 percent of Americans, there's less philanthropy than the top 10 percent of Europeans? Uh, there's... Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question. I guess, does the ratio of meritocratic to aristocratic elites change how much philanthropy there is among the elites? Nadia Asparouhova 0:08:45Yeah, I mean, like here we have much more of a culture of like even among aristocratic elites, this idea of like institution building or like large donations to like build institutions, whereas in Europe, a lot of the public institutions are created by government. And there's sort of this mentality of like private citizens don't experiment with public institutions. That's the government's job. And you see that sort of like pervasively throughout all of like European cultures. Like when we want something to change in public society, we look to government to like regulate or change it. Whereas in the U.S., it's kind of much more like choose your own adventure. And we don't really see the government as like the sole provider or shaper of public institutions. We also look at private citizens and like there's so many things that like public institutions that we have now that were not started by government, but were started by private philanthropists. And that's like a really unusual thing about the U.S. Dwarkesh Patel 0:09:39There's this common pattern in philanthropy where a guy will become a billionaire, and then his wife will be heavily involved with or even potentially in charge of, you know, the family's philanthropic efforts. And there's many examples of this, right? Like Bill and Melinda Gates, you know, Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And Dustin Moskovitz. So what is the consequence of this? How is philanthropy, the causes and the foundations, how are they different because of this pattern? Nadia Asparouhova 0:10:15Well, I mean, I feel like we see that pattern, like the problem is that what even is philanthropy is changing very quickly. So we can say historically that, not even historically, in recent history, in recent decades, that has probably been true. That wasn't true in say like late 1800s, early 1900s. It was, you know, Carnegie and Rockefeller were the ones that were actually doing their own philanthropy, not their spouses. So I'd say it's a more recent trend. But now I think we're also seeing this thing where like a lot of wealthy people are not necessarily doing their philanthropic activities through foundations anymore. And that's true both within like traditional philanthropy sector and sort of like the looser definition of what we might consider to be philanthropy, depending on how you define it, which I kind of more broadly want to define as like the actions of elites that are sort of like, you know, public facing activities. But like even within sort of traditional philanthropy circles, we have like, you know, the 5.1c3 nonprofit, which is, you know, traditionally how people, you know, house all their money in a foundation and then they do their philanthropic activities out of that. But in more recent years, we've seen this trend towards like LLCs. So Emerson Collective, I think, might have been maybe the first one to do it. And that was Steve Jobs' Philanthropic Foundation. And then Mark Zuckerberg with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative also used an LLC. And then since then, a lot of other, especially within sort of like tech wealth, we've seen that move towards people using LLCs instead of 5.1c3s because they, it just gives you a lot more flexibility in the kinds of things you can fund. You don't just have to fund other nonprofits. And they also see donor advised funds. So DAFs, which are sort of this like hacky workaround to foundations as well. So I guess point being that like this sort of mental model of like, you know, one person makes a ton of money and then their spouse kind of directs these like nice, feel good, like philanthropic activities, I think is like, may not be the model that we continue to move forward on. And I'm kind of hopeful or curious to see like, what does a return to like, because we've had so many new people making a ton of money in the last 10 years or so, we might see this return to sort of like the Gilded Age style of philanthropy where people are not necessarily just like forming a philanthropic foundation and looking for the nicest causes to fund, but are actually just like thinking a little bit more holistically about like, how do I help build and create like a movement around a thing that I really care about? How do I think more broadly around like funding companies and nonprofits and individuals and like doing lots of different, different kinds of activities? Because I think like the broader goal that like motivates at least like the new sort of elite classes to want to do any of this stuff at all. I don't really think philanthropy is about altruism. I just, I think like the term philanthropy is just totally fraud and like refers to too many different things and it's not very helpful. But I think like the part that I'm interested in at least is sort of like what motivates elites to go from just sort of like making a lot of money and then like thinking about themselves to them thinking about sort of like their place in broader public society. And I think that starts with thinking about how do I control like media, academia, government are sort of like the three like arms of the public sector. And we think of it in that way a little bit more broadly where it's really much more about sort of like maintaining control over your own power, more so than sort of like this like altruistic kind of, you know, whitewash. Dwarkesh Patel 0:13:41Yeah. Nadia Asparouhova 0:13:42Then it becomes like, you know, there's so many other like creative ways to think about like how that might happen. Dwarkesh Patel 0:13:49That's, that's, that's really interesting. That's a, yeah, that's a really interesting way of thinking about what it is you're doing with philanthropy. Isn't the word noble descended from a word that basically means to give alms to people like if you're in charge of them, you will give alms to them. And in a way, I mean, it might have been another word I'm thinking of, but in a way, yeah, a part of what motivates altruism, not obviously all of it, but part of it is that, yeah, you influence and power. Not even in a necessarily negative connotation, but that's definitely what motivates altruism. So having that put square front and center is refreshing and honest, actually. Nadia Asparouhova 0:14:29Yeah, I don't, I really don't see it as like a negative thing at all. And I think most of the like, you know, writing and journalism and academia that focuses on philanthropy tends to be very wealth critical. I'm not at all, like I personally don't feel wealth critical at all. I think like, again, sort of returning to this like mental model of like aristocratic and meritocratic elites, aristocratic elites are able to sort of like pass down, like encode what they're supposed to be doing in each generation because they have this kind of like familial ties. And I think like on the meritocratic side, like if you didn't have any sort of language around altruism or public stewardship, then like, it's like, you need to kind of create that narrative for the meritocratically or else, you know, there's just like nothing to hold on to. So I think like, it makes sense to talk in those terms. Andrew Carnegie being sort of the father of modern philanthropy in the US, like, wrote these series of essays about wealth that were like very influential and where he sort of talks about this like moral obligation. And I think like, really, it was kind of this like, a quiet way for him to, even though it was ostensibly about sort of like giving back or, you know, helping lift up the next generation of people, the next generation of entrepreneurs. Like, I think it really was much more of a protective stance of saying, like, if he doesn't frame it in this way, then people are just going to knock down the concept of wealth altogether. Dwarkesh Patel 0:15:50Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's really interesting. And it's interesting, in which cases this kind of influence has been successful and worse not. When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, has there been any counterfactual impact on how the Washington Post has run as a result? I doubt it. But you know, when Musk takes over Twitter, I guess it's a much more expensive purchase. We'll see what the influence is negative or positive. But it's certainly different than what Twitter otherwise would have been. So control over media, it's, I guess it's a bigger meme now. Let me just take a digression and ask about open source for a second. So based on your experience studying these open source projects, do you find the theory that Homer and Shakespeare were basically container words for these open source repositories that stretched out through centuries? Do you find that more plausible now, rather than them being individuals, of course? Do you find that more plausible now, given your, given your study of open source? Sorry, what did? Nadia Asparouhova 0:16:49Less plausible. What did? Dwarkesh Patel 0:16:51Oh, okay. So the idea is that they weren't just one person. It was just like a whole bunch of people throughout a bunch of centuries who composed different parts of each story or composed different stories. Nadia Asparouhova 0:17:02The Nicholas Berbaki model, same concept of, you know, a single mathematician who's actually comprised of like lots of different. I think it's actually the opposite would be sort of my conclusion. We think of open source as this very like collective volunteer effort. And I think, use that as an excuse to not really contribute back to open source or not really think about like how open source projects are maintained. Because we were like, you know, you kind of have this bystander effect where you're like, well, you know, someone's taking care of it. It's volunteer oriented. Like, of course, there's someone out there taking care of it. But in reality, it actually turns out it is just one person. So maybe it's a little bit more like a Wizard of Oz type model. It's actually just like one person behind the curtain that's like, you know, doing everything. And you see this huge, you know, grandeur and you think there must be so many people that are behind it. It's one person. Yeah, and I think that's sort of undervalued. I think a lot of the rhetoric that we have about open source is rooted in sort of like early 2000s kind of starry eyed idea about like the power of the internet and the idea of like crowdsourcing and Wikipedia and all this stuff. And then like in reality, like we kind of see this convergence from like very broad based collaborative volunteer efforts to like narrowing down to kind of like single creators. And I think a lot of like, you know, single creators are the people that are really driving a lot of the internet today and a lot of cultural production. Dwarkesh Patel 0:18:21Oh, that's that's super fascinating. Does that in general make you more sympathetic towards the lone genius view of accomplishments in history? Not just in literature, I guess, but just like when you think back to how likely is it that, you know, Newton came up with all that stuff on his own versus how much was fed into him by, you know, the others around him? Nadia Asparouhova 0:18:40Yeah, I think so. I feel I've never been like a big, like, you know, great founder theory kind of person. I think I'm like, my true theory is, I guess that ideas are maybe some sort of like sentient, like, concept or virus that operates outside of us. And we are just sort of like the vessels through which like ideas flow. So in that sense, you know, it's not really about any one person, but I do think I think I tend to lean like in terms of sort of like, where does creative, like, creative effort come from? I do think a lot of it comes much more from like a single individual than it does from with some of the crowds. But everything just serves like different purposes, right? Like, because I think like, within open source, it's like, not all of open source maintenance work is creative. In fact, most of it is pretty boring and dredgerous. And that's the stuff that no one wants to do. And that, like, one person kind of got stuck with doing and that's really different from like, who created a certain open source projects, which is a little bit more of that, like, creative mindset. Dwarkesh Patel 0:19:44Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. Do you think more projects in open source, so just take a popular repository, on average, do you think that these repositories would be better off if, let's say a larger percentage of them where pull requests were closed and feature requests were closed? You can look at the code, but you can't interact with it or its creators anyway? Should more repositories have this model? Yeah, I definitely think so. I think a lot of people would be much happier that way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's interesting to think about the implications of this for other areas outside of code, right? Which is where it gets really interesting. I mean, in general, there's like a discussion. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Nadia Asparouhova 0:20:25Yeah, I mean, that's basically what's for the writing of my book, because I was like, okay, I feel like whatever's happening open source right now, you start with this idea that like democracy is green, and like, we should have tons and tons of people participating, tons of people participate, and then it turns out that like, most participation is actually just noise and not that useful. And then it ends up like scaring everyone away. And in the end, you just have like, you know, one or a small handful of people that are actually doing all the work while everyone else is kind of like screaming around them. And this becomes like a really great metaphor for what happens in social media. And the reason I wrote, after I wrote the book, I went and worked at Substack. And, you know, part of it was because I was like, I think the model is kind of converging from like, you know, Twitter being this big open space to like, suddenly everyone is retreating, like, the public space is so hostile that everyone must retreat into like, smaller private spaces. So then, you know, chats became a thing, Substack became a thing. And yeah, I just feel sort of like realistic, right? Dwarkesh Patel 0:21:15That's really fascinating. Yeah, the Straussian message in that book is very strong. But in general, there's, when you're thinking about something like corporate governance, right? There's a big question. And I guess even more interestingly, when you think if you think DAOs are going to be a thing, and you think that we will have to reinvent corporate governance from the ground up, there's a question of, should these be run like monarchy? Should they be sort of oligarchies where the board is in control? Should they be just complete democracies where everybody gets one vote on what you do at the next, you know, shareholder meeting or something? And this book and that analysis is actually pretty interesting to think about. Like, how should corporations be run differently, if at all? What does it inform how you think the average corporation should be run? Nadia Asparouhova 0:21:59Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think we are seeing a little bit, I'm not a corporate governance expert, but I do feel like we're seeing a little of this like, backlash against, like, you know, shareholder activism and like, extreme focus on sort of like DEI and boards and things like that. And like, I think we're seeing a little bit of people starting to like take the reins and take control again, because they're like, ah, that doesn't really work so well, it turns out. I think DAOs are going to learn this hard lesson as well. It's still maybe just too early to say what is happening in DAOs right now. But at least the ones that I've looked at, it feels like there is a very common failure mode of people saying, you know, like, let's just have like, let's have this be super democratic and like, leave it to the crowd to kind of like run this thing and figure out how it works. And it turns out you actually do need a strong leader, even the beginning. And this, this is something I learned just from like, open source projects where it's like, you know, very rarely, or if at all, do you have a strong leader? If at all, do you have a project that starts sort of like leaderless and faceless? And then, you know, usually there is some strong creator, leader or influential figure that is like driving the project forward for a certain period of time. And then you can kind of get to the point when you have enough of an active community that maybe that leader takes a step back and lets other people take over. But it's not like you can do that off day one. And that's sort of this open question that I have for, for crypto as an industry more broadly, because I think like, if I think about sort of like, what is defining each of these generations of people that are, you know, pushing forward new technological paradigms, I mentioned that like Wall Street finance mindset is very focused on like globalism and on this sort of like efficiency quantitative mindset. You have the tech Silicon Valley Y company or kind of generation that is really focused on top talent. And the idea this sort of like, you know, founder mindset, the power of like individuals breaking institutions, and then you have like the crypto mindset, which is this sort of like faceless leaderless, like governed by protocol and by code mindset, which is like intriguing to me. But I have a really hard time squaring it with seeing like, in some sense, open source was the experiment that started playing out, you know, 20 years before then. And some things are obviously different in crypto, because tokenization completely changes the incentive system for contributing and maintaining crypto projects versus like traditional open source projects. But in the end, also like humans are humans. And like, I feel like there are a lot of lessons to be learned from open source of like, you know, they also started out early on as being very starry eyed about the power of like, hyper democratic regimes. And it turned out like, that just like doesn't work in practice. And so like, how is CryptoGhost or like Square that? I'm just, yeah, very curious to see what happened. Dwarkesh Patel 0:24:41Yeah, super fascinating. That raises an interesting question, by the way, you've written about idea machines, and you can explain that concept while you answer this question. But do you think that movements can survive without a charismatic founder who is both alive and engaged? So once Will McCaskill dies, would you be shorting effective altruism? Or if like Tyler Cowen dies, would you be short progress studies? Or do you think that, you know, once you get a movement off the ground, you're like, okay, I'm gonna be shorting altruism. Nadia Asparouhova 0:25:08Yeah, I think that's a good question. I mean, like, I don't think there's some perfect template, like each of these kind of has its own sort of unique quirks and characteristics in them. I guess, yeah, back up a little bit. Idea machines is this concept I have around what the transition from we were talking before about, so like traditional 5.1c3 foundations as vehicles for philanthropy, what does the modern version of that look like that is not necessarily encoded in institution? And so I had this term idea machines, which is sort of this different way of thinking about like, turning ideas into outcomes where you have a community that forms around a shared set of values and ideas. So yeah, you mentioned like progress studies is an example of that, or effective altruism example, eventually, that community gets capitalized by some funders, and then it starts to be able to develop an agenda and then like, actually start building like, you know, operational outcomes and like, turning those ideas into real world initiatives. And remind me of your question again. Dwarkesh Patel 0:26:06Yeah, so once the charismatic founder dies of a movement, is a movement basically handicapped in some way? Like, maybe it'll still be a thing, but it's never going to reach the heights it could have reached if that main guy had been around? Nadia Asparouhova 0:26:20I think there are just like different shapes and classifications of like different, different types of communities here. So like, and I'm just thinking back again to sort of like different types of open source projects where it's not like they're like one model that fits perfectly for all of them. So I think there are some communities where it's like, yeah, I mean, I think effective altruism is maybe a good example of that where, like, the community has grown so much that I like if all their leaders were to, you know, knock on wood, disappear tomorrow or something that like, I think the movement would still keep going. There are enough true believers, like even within the community. And I think that's the next order of that community that like, I think that would just continue to grow. Whereas you have like, yeah, maybe it's certain like smaller or more nascent communities that are like, or just like communities that are much more like oriented around, like, a charismatic founder that's just like a different type where if you lose that leader, then suddenly, you know, the whole thing falls apart because they're much more like these like cults or religions. And I don't think it makes one better, better or worse. It's like the right way to do is probably like Bitcoin, where you have a charismatic leader for life because that leader is more necessarily, can't go away, can't ever die. But you still have the like, you know, North Stars and like that. Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:28Yeah. It is funny. I mean, a lot of prophets have this property of you're not really sure what they believed in. So people with different temperaments can project their own preferences onto him. Somebody like Jesus, right? It's, you know, you can be like a super left winger and believe Jesus did for everything you believe in. You can be a super right winger and believe the same. Yeah. Go ahead. Nadia Asparouhova 0:27:52I think there's value in like writing cryptically more. Like I think about like, I think Curtis Yarvin has done a really good job of this where, you know, intentionally or not, but because like his writing is so cryptic and long winded. And like, it's like the Bible where you can just kind of like pour over endlessly being like, what does this mean? What does this mean? And in a weird, you know, you're always told to write very clearly, you're told to write succinctly, but like, it's actually in a weird way, you can be much more effective by being very long winded and not obvious in what you're saying. Dwarkesh Patel 0:28:20Yes, which actually raises an interesting question that I've been wondering about. There have been movements, I guess, if I did altruism is a good example that have been focused on community building in a sort of like explicit way. And then there's other movements where they have a charismatic founder. And moreover, this guy, he doesn't really try to recruit people. I'm thinking of somebody like Peter Thiel, for example, right? He goes on, like once every year or two, he'll go on a podcast and have this like really cryptic back and forth. And then just kind of go away in a hole for a few months or a few years. And I'm curious, which one you think is more effective, given the fact that you're not really competing for votes. So absolute number of people is not what you care about. It's not clear what you care about. But you do want to have more influence among the elites who matter in like politics and tech as well. So anyways, which just your thoughts on those kinds of strategies, explicitly trying to community build versus just kind of projecting out there in a sort of cryptic way? Nadia Asparouhova 0:29:18Yeah, I mean, I definitely being somewhat cryptic myself. I favor the cryptic methodology. But I mean, yeah, I mean, you mentioned Peter Thiel. I think like the Thielverse is probably like the most, like one of the most influential things. In fact, that is hard. It is partly so effective, because it is hard to even define what it is or wrap your head around that you just know that sort of like, every interesting person you meet somehow has some weird connection to, you know, Peter Thiel. And it's funny. But I think this is sort of that evolution from the, you know, 5163 Foundation to the like idea machine implicit. And that is this this switch from, you know, used to start the, you know, Nadia Asparova Foundation or whatever. And it was like, you know, had your name on it. And it was all about like, what do I as a funder want to do in the world, right? And you spend all this time doing this sort of like classical, you know, research, going out into the field, talking to people and you sit and you think, okay, like, here's a strategy I'm going to pursue. And like, ultimately, it's like, very, very donor centric in this very explicit way. And so within traditional philanthropy, you're seeing this sort of like, backlash against that. In like, you know, straight up like nonprofit land, where now you're seeing the locus of power moving from being very donor centric to being sort of like community centric and people saying like, well, we don't really want the donors telling us what to do, even though it's also their money. Like, you know, instead, let's have this be driven by the community from the ground up. That's maybe like one very literal reaction against that, like having the donor as sort of the central power figure. But I think idea machines are kind of like the like, maybe like the more realistic or effective answer in that like, the donor is still like without the presence of a funder, like, community is just a community. They're just sitting around and talking about ideas of like, what could possibly happen? Like, they don't have any money to make anything happen. But like, I think like really effective funders are good at being sort of like subtle and thoughtful about like, like, you know, no one wants to see like the Peter Thiel foundation necessarily. That's just like, it's so like, not the style of how it works. But you know, you meet so many people that are being funded by the same person, like just going out and sort of aggressively like arming the rebels is a more sort of like, yeah, just like distributed decentralized way of thinking about like spreading one's power, instead of just starting a fund. Instead of just starting a foundation. Dwarkesh Patel 0:31:34Yeah, yeah. I mean, even if you look at the life of influential politicians, somebody like LBJ, or Robert Moses, it's how much of it was like calculated and how much of it was just like decades of building up favors and building up connections in a way that had no definite and clear plan, but it just you're hoping that someday you can call upon them and sort of like Godfather way. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. And by the way, this is also where your work on open source comes in, right? Like, there's this idea that in the movement, you know, everybody will come in with their ideas, and you can community build your way towards, you know, what should be funded. And, yeah, I'm inclined to believe that it's probably like a few people who have these ideas about what should be funded. And the rest of it is either just a way of like building up engagement and building up hype. Or, or I don't know, or maybe just useless, but what are your thoughts on it? Nadia Asparouhova 0:32:32You know, I decided I was like, I am like, really very much a tech startup person and not a crypto person, even though I would very much like to be fun, because I'm like, ah, this is the future. And there's so many interesting things happening. And I'm like, for the record, not at all like down in crypto, I think it is like the next big sort of movement of things that are happening. But when I really come down to like the mindset, it's like I am so in that sort of like, top talent founder, like power of the individual to break institutions mindset, like that just resonates with me so much more than the like, leaderless, faceless, like, highly participatory kind of thing. And again, like I am very open to that being true, like I maybe I'm so wrong on that. I just like, I have not yet seen evidence that that works in the world. I see a lot of rhetoric about how that could work or should work. We have this sort of like implicit belief that like, direct democracy is somehow like the greatest thing to aspire towards. But like, over and over we see evidence that like that doesn't that just like doesn't really work. It doesn't mean we have to throw out the underlying principles or values behind that. Like I still really believe in meritocracy. I really believe in like access to opportunity. I really believe in like pursuit of happiness. Like to me, those are all like very like American values. But like, I think that where that breaks is the idea that like that has to happen through these like highly participatory methods. I just like, yeah, I haven't seen really great evidence of that being that working. Dwarkesh Patel 0:33:56What does that imply about how you think about politics or at least political structures? You think it would you you elect a mayor, but like, just forget no participation. He gets to do everything he wants to do for four years and you can get rid of in four years. But until then, no community meetings. Well, what does that imply about how you think cities and states and countries should be run? Nadia Asparouhova 0:34:17Um, that's a very complicated thoughts on that. I mean, I, I think it's also like, everyone has the fantasy of when it'd be so nice if there were just one person in charge. I hate all this squabbling. It would just be so great if we could just, you know, have one person just who has exactly the views that I have and put them in charge and let them run things. That would be very nice. I just, I do also think it's unrealistic. Like, I don't think I'm, you know, maybe like modernity sounds great in theory, but in practice just doesn't like I really embrace and I think like there is no perfect governance design either in the same way that there's no perfect open source project designer or whatever else we're talking about. Um, uh, like, yeah, it really just depends like what is like, what is your population comprised of? There are some very small homogenous populations that can be very easily governed by like, you know, a small government or one person or whatever, because there isn't that much dissent or difference. Everyone is sort of on the same page. America is the extreme opposite in that angle. And I'm always thinking about America because like, I'm American and I love America. But like, everyone is trying to solve the governance question for America. And I think like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, we're an extremely heterogeneous population. There are a lot of competing world views. I may not agree with all the views of everyone in America, but like I also, like, I don't want just one person that represents my personal views. I would focus more like effectiveness in governance than I would like having like, you know, just one person in charge or something that like, I don't mind if someone disagrees with my views as long as they're good at what they do, if that makes sense. So I think the questions are like, how do we improve the speed at which like our government works and the efficacy with which it works? Like, I think there's so much room to be made room for improvement there versus like, I don't know how much like I really care about like changing the actual structure of our government. Dwarkesh Patel 0:36:27Interesting. Going back to open source for a second. Why do these companies release so much stuff in open source for free? And it's probably literally worth trillions of dollars of value in total. And they just release it out and free and many of them are developer tools that other developers use to build competitors for these big tech companies that are releasing these open source tools. Why did they do it? What explains it? Nadia Asparouhova 0:36:52I mean, I think it depends on the specific project, but like a lot of times, these are projects that were developed internally. It's the same reason of like, I think code and writing are not that dissimilar in this way of like, why do people spend all this time writing, like long posts or papers or whatever, and then just release them for free? Like, why not put everything behind a paywall? And I think the answer is probably still in both cases where like mindshare is a lot more interesting than, you know, your literal IP. And so, you know, you put out, you write these like long reports or you tweet or whatever, like you spend all this time creating content for free and putting it out there because you're trying to capture mindshare. Same thing with companies releasing open source projects. Like a lot of times they really want like other developers to come in and contribute to them. They want to increase their status as like an open source friendly kind of company or company or show like, you know, here's the type of code that we write internally and showing that externally. They want to like recruiting is, you know, the hardest thing for any company, right? And so being able to attract the right kinds of developers or people that, you know, might fit really well into their developer culture just matters a lot more. And they're just doing that instead of with words or doing that with code. Dwarkesh Patel 0:37:57You've talked about the need for more idea machines. You're like dissatisfied with the fact that effective altruism is a big game in town. Is there some idea or nascent movement where I mean, other than progress ideas, but like something where you feel like this could be a thing, but it just needs some like charismatic founder to take it to the next level? Or even if it doesn't exist yet, it just like a set of ideas around this vein is like clearly something there is going to exist. You know what I mean? Is there anything like that that you notice? Nadia Asparouhova 0:38:26I only had a couple of different possibilities in that post. Yeah, I think like the progress sort of meme is probably the largest growing contender that I would see right now. I think there's another one right now around sort of like the new right. That's not even like the best term necessarily for it, but there's sort of like a shared set of values there that are maybe starting with like politics, but like ideally spreading to like other areas of public influence. So I think like those are a couple of like the bigger movements that I see right now. And then there's like smaller stuff too. Like I mentioned, like tools for thought in that post where like that's never going to be a huge idea machine. But it's one where you have a lot of like interesting, talented people that are thinking about sort of like future of computing. And until maybe more recently, like there just hasn't been a lot of funding available and the funding is always really uneven and unpredictable. And so that's to me an example of like, you know, a smaller community that like just needs that sort of like extra influx to turn a bunch of abstract ideas into practice. But yeah, I mean, I think like, yeah, there's some like the bigger ones that I see right now. I think there is just so much more potential to do more, but I wish people would just think a little bit more creatively because, yeah, I really do think like effective altruism kind of becomes like the default option for a lot of people. Then they're kind of vaguely dissatisfied with it and they don't like think about like, well, what do I actually really care about in the world and how do I want to put that forward? Dwarkesh Patel 0:39:53Yeah, there's also the fact that effective altruism has this like very fit memeplex in the sense that it's like a polytheistic religion where if you have a cause area, then you don't have your own movement. You just have a cause area within our broader movement, right? It just like adopts your gods into our movement. Nadia Asparouhova 0:40:15Yeah, that's the same thing I see like people trying to lobby for effective altruism to care about their cause area, but then it's like you could just start a separate. Like if you can't get EA to care about, then why not just like start another one somewhere else? Dwarkesh Patel 0:40:28Yeah, so, you know, it's interesting to me that the wealth boom in Silicon Valley and then tech spheres has led to the sound growth of philanthropy, but that hasn't always been the case. Even in America, like a lot of people became billionaires after energy markets were deregulated in the 80s and the 90s. And then there wasn't, and obviously the hub of that was like the Texas area or, you know, and as far as I'm aware, there wasn't like a boom of philanthropy motivated by the ideas that people in that region had. What's different about Silicon Valley? Why are they, or do you actually think that these other places have also had their own booms of philanthropic giving? Nadia Asparouhova 0:41:11I think you're right. Yeah, I would make the distinction between like being wealthy is not the same as being elite or whatever other term you want to use there. And so yeah, there are definitely like pockets of what's called like more like local markets of wealth, like, yeah, Texas oil or energy billionaires that tend to operate kind of just more in their own sphere. And a lot of, if you look at any philanthropic, like a lot of them will be philanthropically active, but they only really focus on their geographic area. But there's sort of this difference. And I think this is part of where it comes from the question of like, you know, like what forces someone to actually like do something more public facing with their power. And I think that comes from your power being sort of like threatened. That's like one aspect I would say of that. So like tech has only really become a lot more active in the public sphere outside of startups after the tech backlash of the mid 2010s. And you can say a similar thing kind of happened with the Davos elite as well. And also for the Gilded Age cohort of wealth. And so yeah, when you have sort of, you're kind of like, you know, building in your own little world. And like, you know, we had literally like Silicon Valley where everyone was kind of like sequestered off and just thinking about startups and thinking themselves of like, tech is essentially like an industry, just like any other sort of, you know, entertainment or whatever. And we're just kind of happy building over here. And then it was only when sort of like the Panopticon like turned its head towards tech and started and they had this sort of like onslaught of critiques coming from sort of like mainstream discourse where they went, oh, like what is my place in this world? And, you know, if I don't try to like defend that, then I'm going to just kind of, yeah, we're going to lose all that power. So I think that that need to sort of like defend one's power can kind of like prompt that sort of action. The other aspect I'd highlight is just like, I think a lot of elites are driven by these like technological paradigm shifts. So there's this scholar, Carlotta Perrins, who writes about technological revolutions and financial capital. And she identifies like a few different technological revolutions over the last, whatever, hundred plus years that like drove this cycle of, you know, a new technology is invented. It's people are kind of like working on it in this smaller industry sort of way. And then there is some kind of like crazy like public frenzy and then like a backlash. And then from after that, then you have this sort of like focus on public institution building. But she really points out that like not all technology fits into that. Like, not all technology is a paradigm shift. Sometimes technology is just technology. And so, yeah, I think like a lot of wealth might just fall into that category. My third example, by the way, is the Koch family because you had, you know, the Koch brothers, but then like their father was actually the one who like kind of initially made their wealth, but was like very localized in sort of like how he thought about philanthropy. He had his own like, you know, family foundation was just sort of like doing that sort of like, you know, Texas billionaire mindset that we're talking about of, you know, I made a bunch of money. I'm going to just sort of like, yeah, do my local funder activity. It was only the next generation of his children that then like took that wealth and started thinking about like how do we actually like move that onto like a more elite stage and thinking about like their influence in the media. But like you can see there's like two clear generations within the same family. Like one has this sort of like local wealth mindset and one of them has the more like elite wealth mindset. And yeah, you can kind of like ask yourself, why did that switch happen? But yeah, it's clearly about more than just money. It's also about intention. Dwarkesh Patel 0:44:51Yeah, that's really interesting. Well, it's interesting because there's, if you identify the current mainstream media as affiliated with like that Davos aristocratic elite, or maybe not aristocratic, but like the Davos groups. Yeah, exactly. There is a growing field of independent media, but you would not identify somebody like Joe Rogan as in the Silicon Valley sphere, right? So there is a new media. I just, I guess these startup people don't have that much influence over them yet. And they feel like, yeah. Nadia Asparouhova 0:45:27I think they're trying to like take that strategy, right? So you have like a bunch of founders like Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg and Brian Armstrong and whoever else that like will not really talk to mainstream media anymore. They will not get an interview to the New York Times, but they will go to like an individual influencer or an individual creator and they'll do an interview with them. So like when Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta, like he did not get grant interviews to mainstream publications, but he went and talked to like Ben Thompson at Strategory. And so I think there is like, it fits really well with that. Like probably mindset of like, we're not necessarily institution building. We're going to like focus on power of individuals who sort of like defy institutions. And that is kind of like an open question that I have about like, what will the long term influence of the tech elite look like? Because like, yeah, the human history tells us that eventually all individual behaviors kind of get codified into institutions, right? But we're obviously living in a very different time now. And I think like the way that the Davos elite managed to like really codify and extend their influence across all these different sectors was by taking that institutional mindset and, you know, like thinking about sort of like academic institutions and media institutions, all that stuff. If the startup mindset is really inherently like anti-institution and says like, we don't want to build the next Harvard necessarily. We just want to like blow apart the concept of universities whatsoever. Or, you know, we don't want to create a new CNN or a new Fox News. We want to just like fund like individual creators to do that same sort of work, but in this very decentralized way. Like, will that work long term? I don't know. Like, is that just sort of like a temporary state that we're in right now where no one really knows what the next institutions will look like? Or is that really like an important part of this generation where like, we shouldn't be asking the question of like, how do you build a new media network? We should just be saying like, the answer is there is no media network. We just go to like all these individuals instead. Dwarkesh Patel 0:47:31Yeah, that's interesting. What do you make of this idea that I think, let's say, that these idea machines might be limited by the fact that if you're going to start some sort of organization in them, you're very much depending on somebody who has made a lot of money independently to fund you and to grant you approval. And I just have a hard time seeing somebody who is like a Napoleon-like figure being willing long term to live under that arrangement. And that so there'll just be the people who are just have this desire to dominate and be recognized who are probably pretty important to any movement you want to create. They'll just want to go off and just like build a company or something that gives them an independent footing first. And they just won't fall under any umbrella. You know what I mean? Nadia Asparouhova 0:48:27Yeah, I mean, like Dustin Moskovitz, for example, has been funding EA for a really long time and hasn't hasn't walked away necessarily. Yeah. I mean, on the flip side, you can see like SPF carried a lot of a lot of risk because it's your point, I guess, like, you know, you end up relying on this one funder, the one funder disappears and everything else kind of falls apart. I mean, I think like, I don't have any sort of like preciousness attached to the idea of like communities, you know, lasting forever. I think this is like, again, if we're trying to solve for the problem of like what did not work well about 5.1c3 foundations for most of recent history, like part of it was that they're, you know, just meant to live on to perpetuity. Like, why do we still have like, you know, Rockefeller Foundation, there are now actually many different Rockefeller Foundations, but like, why does that even exist? Like, why did that money not just get spent down? And actually, when John D. Rockefeller was first proposing the idea of foundations, he wanted them to be like, to have like a finite end state. So he wanted them to last only like 50 years or 100 years when he was proposing this like federal charter, but that federal charter failed. And so now we have these like state charters and foundations can just exist forever. But like, I think if we want to like improve upon this idea of like, how do we prevent like meritocratic elites from turning into aristocratic elites? How do we like, yeah, how do we actually just like try to do a lot of really interesting stuff in our lifetimes? It's like a very, it's very counterintuitive, because you think about like, leaving a legacy must mean like creating institutions or creating a foundation that lasts forever. And, you know, 200 years from now, there's still like the Nadia Asparuva Foundation out there. But like, if I really think about it, it's like, I would almost rather just do really, really, really good, interesting work in like, 50 years or 20 years or 10 years, and have that be the legacy versus your name kind of getting, you know, submerged over a century of institutional decay and decline. So yeah, I don't like if you know, you have a community that lasts for maybe only last 10 years or something like that, and it's funded for that amount of time, and then it kind of elbows its usefulness and it winds down or becomes less relevant. Like, I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. Of course, like in practice, you know, nothing ever ends that that neatly and that quietly. But, but yeah, I don't think that's a bad thing. Dwarkesh Patel 0:50:44Yeah, yeah. Who are some ethnographers or sociologists from a previous era that have influenced your work? So was there somebody writing about, you know, what it was like to be in a Roman Legion? Or what it was like to work in a factory floor? And you're like, you know what, I want to do that for open source? Or I want to do that for the New Tech Elite? Nadia Asparouhova 0:51:02For open source, I was definitely really influenced by Jane Jacobs and Eleanor Ostrom. I think both had this quality of, so yeah, Eleanor Ostrom was looking at examples of common pool resources, like fisheries or forests or whatever. And just like, going and visiting them and spending a lot of time with them and then saying like, actually, I don't think tragedy of the commons is like a real thing, or it's not the only outcome that we can possibly have. And so sometimes commons can be managed, like perfectly sustainably. And it's not necessarily true that everyone just like treats them very extractively. And just like wrote about what she saw. And same with Jane Jacobs sort of looking at cities as someone who lives in one, right? Like she didn't have any fancy credentials or anything like that. She was just like, I live in the city and I'm looking around and this idea of like, top down urban planning, where you have like someone trying to design this perfect city that like, doesn't change and doesn't yield to its people. It just seems completely unrealistic. And the style that both of them take in their writing is very, it just it starts from them just like, observing what they see and then like, trying to write about it. And I just, yeah, that's, that's the style that I really want to emulate. Dwarkesh Patel 0:52:12Interesting. Nadia Asparouhova 0:52:13Yeah. I think for people to just be talking to like, I don't know, like Chris just like just talking to like open source developers, turns out you can learn a lot more from that than just sitting around like thinking about what open source developers might be thinking about. But... Dwarkesh Patel 0:52:25I have this, I have had this idea of not even for like writing it out loud, but just to understand how the world works. Just like shadowing people who are in just like a random position, they don't have to be a lead in any way, but just like a person who's the personal assistant to somebody influential, how to decide whose emails they forward, how they decide what's the priority, or somebody who's just like an accountant for a big company, right? It's just like, what is involved there? Like, what kinds of we're gonna, you know what I mean? Just like, random people, the line manager at the local factory. I just have no idea how these parts of the world work. And I just want to like, yeah, just shadow them for a day and see like, what happens there. Nadia Asparouhova 0:53:05This is really interesting, because everyone else focuses on sort of like, you know, the big name figure or whatever, but you know, who's the actual gatekeeper there? But yeah, I mean, I've definitely found like, if you just start cold emailing people and talking to them, people are often like, surprisingly, very, very open to being talked to because I don't know, like, most people do not get asked questions about what they do and how they think and stuff. So, you know, you want to realize that dream. Dwarkesh Patel 0:53:33So maybe I'm not like John Rockefeller, and that I only want my organization to last for 50 years. I'm sure you've come across these people who have this idea that, you know, I'll let my money compound for like 200 years. And if it just compounds at some reasonable rate, I'll be, it'll be like the most wealthy institution in the world, unless somebody else has the same exact idea. If somebody wanted to do that, but they wanted to hedge for the possibility that there's a war or there's a revolt, or there's some sort of change in law that draws down this wealth. How would you set up a thousand year endowment, basically, is what I'm asking, or like a 500 year endowment? Would you just put it in like a crypto wallet with us? And just, you know what I mean? Like, how would you go about that organizationally? How would you like, that's your goal? I want to have the most influence in 500 years. Nadia Asparouhova 0:54:17Well, I'd worry much less. The question for me is not about how do I make sure that there are assets available to distribute in a thousand years? Because I don't know, just put in stock marketers. You can do some pretty boring things to just like, you know, ensure your assets grow over time. The more difficult question is, how do you ensure that whoever is deciding how to distribute the funds, distributes them in a way that you personally want them to be spent? So Ford Foundation is a really interesting example of this, where Henry Ford created a Ford Foundation shortly before he died, and just pledged a lot of Ford stock to create this foundation and was doing it basically for tax reasons, had no philanthropic. It's just like, this is what we're doing to like, house this wealth over here. And then, you know, passed away, son passed away, and grandson ended up being on the board. But the board ended up being basically like, you know, a bunch of people that Henry Ford certainly would not have ever wanted to be on his board. And so, you know, and you end up seeing like, the Ford Foundation ended up becoming huge influential. I like, I have received money from them. So it's not at all an indictment of sort of like their views or anything like that. It's just much more of like, you know, you had the intent of the original donor, and then you had like, who are all these people that like, suddenly just ended up with a giant pool of capital and then like, decided to spend it however they felt like spending it and the grandson at the time sort of like, famously resigned because he was like, really frustrated and was just like, this is not at all what my family wanted and like, basically like, kicked off the board. So anyway, so that is the question that I would like figure out if I had a thousand year endowment is like, how do I make sure that whomever manages that endowment actually shares my views? One, shares my views, but then also like, how do I even know what we need to care about in a thousand years? Because like, I don't even know what the problems are in a thousand years. And this is why like, I think like, very long term thinking can be a little bit dangerous in this way, because you're sort of like, presuming that you know what even matters then. Whereas I think like, figure out the most impactful things to do is just like, so contextually dependent on like, what is going on at the time. So I can't, I don't know. And there are also foundations where you know, the donor like, writes in the charter like, this money can only be spent on you know, X cause or whatever, but then it just becomes really awkward over time because

On this week's episode, I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Sherrie All, who is a neuropsychologist who specializes in memory. She and her colleagues at the Centers for Cognitive Wellness in Chicago and the D.C. area support people who have memory challenges or are experiencing cognitive decline. Sherrie also wrote a book (which you'll hear me gush about) called the Neuroscience of Memory. This topic is especially interesting to me because working memory is one of the core Executive Functions we use everyday. My own working memory is my biggest EF achilles heel, which is probably why math and I don't get along and why I can't go to the store without a list because I'll walk out with lots of stuff I didn't need and maybe only a couple of the things I did. I have experienced a lot of frustration and disappointment in my life because of it. But, over the years, I've learned what strategies help me the most. Talking with Sherrie helped me understand that it's okay to use these external resources to remember things during the day and that there are concrete things we can do to improve our brain health, which in turn, supports our memory. Listen in to learn more about memory, the brain, and what we can do to help ourselves to live independently as long as we possibly can.Here are some resources related to our conversation: Learn more about Dr. Sherrie AllCenters for Cognitive WellnessSherrie All, PhDThe Neuroscience of Memory by Sherrie All, PhDLearn More About MemoryWorking Memory Underpins Cognitive Development, Learning, and EducationMemory - Harvard HealthCognitive Health and Older Adults | National Institute on AgingWorking Memory: Take Note of Your Child's ChallengesHow to Memorize More Effectively (When Technology is Not an Option!)Memorization Strategies – Learning Center at UNC7 Ways to Retain More of Every Book You Read by James ClearContact us!Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.comIG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoachingTranscriptHannah Choi 00:04Hi everyone, and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life by working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. Hannah Choi 00:18I am so excited to bring you today's episode, I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Sherrie All who is a neuropsychologist who specializes in memory. She and her colleagues at the Centers for Cognitive Wellness in Chicago and the DC area support people who have memory challenges or are experiencing cognitive decline. Sherrie also wrote a book, which you'll hear me gush about, called the Neuroscience of Memory. And this topic is especially interesting to me, because working memory is one of the executive function skills that we use pretty much all the time every single day. Working memory is the skill we use to hold information in our minds long enough to do something with it. If you run into the grocery store for just a few items, and don't bring a list, you'll use your working memory to recall that information. When you meet someone new, your working memory helps you remember their name. And if you're learning a new math formula, your working memory helps you remember the steps. My own memory has a pretty limited capacity, which is probably why math and I don't get along, why I accidentally called my friend's husband "Steve" when his name is actually Corey. And why I can't go to the store without a list because I'll walk out with lots of stuff I didn't need and maybe only a couple of the things I did. I have experienced a lot of frustration and disappointment in my life because of it. But over the years, I've learned what strategies helped me the most and talking with Sherrie really helped me understand that it's okay to use these external resources to help you remember things during the day. And that there are concrete things that we can do to improve our brain health, which in turn supports our memory. So keep listening to learn more about memory and brains and what we can do to help ourselves to live independently longer. Hannah Choi 02:13Hi, Sherrie, thanks so much for joining me.Sherrie All, PhD 02:16Thanks, Hannah. It's my pleasure. I'm so excited to be on this podcast with you.Hannah Choi 02:21I have I have a very, very vested interest in memory because mine is terrible, has always been terrible. I had the nickname of Forgetful Hannah when I was a child. But I think it's genetic. Because my parents don't remember calling me that. I remember though, I remember. So I am so excited about this conversation because of that. I'm basically ready to walk away with a better memory. So I hope you're gonna fix me. Sherrie All, PhD 02:52Oh. I'll do my best. Hannah Choi 02:56Okay. I did read your book though. And, and I I'm like a total nerd about it. Now I'm telling basically everyone I know, my poor family, I keep texting them like, Okay, you have to walk six to nine miles per day. And you have to learn new things. Just like telling them all the things that they have to do. So thank you for that book. Yeah, yeah. For our listeners. I will put all the info about her about Sherrie's book in the show notes soSherrie All, PhD 03:25But it's six to nine miles a week. Hannah Choi 03:27Oh, I mean a week not a day. Oh, yeah, let's clarify that listeners you did not have to walk six to nine miles a day,Sherrie All, PhD 03:35People jumping up and running to the treadmill. Six to nine miles a day is helpful, too.Hannah Choi 03:43It's really time consuming too, so. Alright, so could you introduce yourself a little bit for us?Sherrie All, PhD 03:51Of course yeah. I'm Dr. Sherrie All. I am neuropsychologist by background and I really developed more of an interest in cognitive rehab rehabilitation kind of through my training. I don't know if you if your listeners know this, but neuropsychology as a field has a long about a centuries old history of telling people what's wrong with their brain and neuropsychologist are really good at doing that. And it's a lovely field and it's helping lots and lots of people. But I thought that neuropsychologist did more work in actually helping people improve their memories when I was going through graduate school and, and so when I learned what a neuropsychologist did was like, "Okay, great. Now what do we do about it?" And supervisors were kind of like yeah, we don't really do that so much. And so so it was able to really kind of carve out a some training for myself in in cognitive rehabilitation and I've made it my professional mission to really take a lot of the cognitive improvement strategies that have been living in sort of the ivory tower into the private practice space. And so, exactly 10 years ago, I opened a group practice, which is now called the Centers for Cognitive Wellness. It used to be Chicago Center for Cognitive Wellness, but we've actually expanded. And we actually celebrated our 10th anniversary last night, and cool. And really with that mission of providing kind of the what's next for people after they've been diagnosed with a cognitive decline. And we've worked mainly in the adult space for the last 10 years, we're starting to work more now with kids. But it was really important to me to work with adults initially, because there are a lot of tutoring and support services for kids. Not a lot of stuff available for adults. And so, so we do psychotherapy and cognitive rehabilitation that's sort of mixed into a psychotherapy setting. We're all mental health providers, and I have a team of 12 clinicians, and we just expanded into the DC area.Hannah Choi 06:07So exciting!Sherrie All, PhD 06:08Yeah, so we're just kind of helping people help their brains and, and then I was able to fulfill kind of a lifelong goal of publishing my first book, the Neuroscience of Memory, that you're talking so fondly about it, which is a self help workbook, that is really, you know, designed to help anybody with a brain improve their memory skills, both now and as you get older, and, but also a secondary audience for clinicians to use. And we're actually using that as a tool, it came out last July, July 2021. And I hear weekly from my clinicians are like I've got, I sold another one of your books, and we've gotten using your books, they really liked this part. And they liked that part. And so that's always really nice to hear. So it's, it's easy to kind of use with clients as they, because it's got lots of different exercises in there to help help you implement the skills and, and so we're using it as kind of a treatment tool as well,Hannah Choi 07:12I'm glad you understand the brain so that you can put this good work into it.Sherrie All, PhD 07:16Well, and I think it's important to try to for all of us to understand our brains. And that's one of my goals in the book is to help people understand how memory works. Because we know that when you understand how your brain works, you're better at operating it. And so so it is a real treat to be able to kind of take that deep dive learning and then try to put that into like plain language and sort of spread that out. Because it's important for all of us to have at least some fundamental understanding about how memory works, because then you can get better at operating it. And, and then also just to really save people from a lot of this so much anxiety, right? And there's a lot of anxiety about memory loss at every, really at like the whole lifespan, especially in adulthood. But But kids or kids are hard on themselves about their brains, too. And, and so, you know, we're way too hard on ourselves about our memories. And, and so I think that if people do understand that, like forgetting is normal, and you do need strategies, then maybe we can start to kind of dial down some of that overall anxiety. And because the anxiety makes your memory worse to like in the short term, and in the long term. Yes. Oh, like, Yeah, let's let's just be like, let's be a little kinder to ourselves and take down the temperature a little bit, right?Hannah Choi 08:53Yeah, yeah. And so like, when you're when your stress hormones and other brain thing, like when your stress hormones kick in, you're your executive function skills are like the first things to go. So that makes sense that your memory would be compromised if you are stressed. So if you're walking around stressed all the time, that's gonna make it harder.Sherrie All, PhD 09:14Yeah, you can't remember what you didn't pay attention to. And and, and so I mean, attention is really like the gateway to memory. And so attention completely gets knocked out, right? If you if you're in kind of that limbic hijack you literally the blood flow goes away from your prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of your brain where you focus and pay attention to things and it and it just goes to like the survivalistic parts of your brain and, and so you can't get focus, you can't pay attention and then then you're not going to remember that whatever that thing was, right? And so, so yeah, so it's important for us to all just kind of like take a breath.Hannah Choi 09:59So Oh, that's what you just something that you just said, makes me think I, when I was reading your book, you said your memory is only as good as your attention. And I was like, "shut up". I know that. (laughter) But now you're gonna have to make me now you're gonna make me pay more attention. It was so funny when I first read that I was like, ah, ah, I know that. But now I see her. Now I see it in writing. So lots of people, I mean, lots of people, regardless of their ADHD status, lots of people have, you know, challenges with attention depending on the situation, right? Or depending on how stressed you are, or what time of day it is or what situation you're in. And so can you talk a little bit more about about that and why you said that sentence that was only as good as your attention.Sherrie All, PhD 11:01It's gratifying to hear a reaction like that. I treat other authors exactly the same way. Oh, the hell you sayHannah Choi 11:14But, I'm glad you said it. Okay, cuz it's true. Sherrie All, PhD 11:17Yeah, it was a hard. It's a hard truth. Right?Hannah Choi 11:19It was. Yes, exactly. It was a hard truth that needed to that I needed to hear and that everyone else needs to hear it too.Sherrie All, PhD 11:26Yeah, of course. Because I mean, well, let's just think about it. I mean, it's simple mechanics. Your brain stores information, like memory is like the storage of information that gets into your brain. Right? That attention is the gateway, you cannot expect yourself to remember things that you didn't notice in the first place. kind of simple. Um, and, and so, one thing I like to kind of talk about is that, like, I use this analogy of my husband. This, you know, it's been a while now, it's probably been about 15 years since this happened. But remember, when like flat screen TVs were coming out, like the plasma TVs and, and the high definition and he like, got a second job, because you know, they weren't cheap back there were like, several $1,000, right. And so you get a second job, he saves up a bunch of money, he buys the first plasma TV, and he sticks it on the wall. And he plugs it into our satellite service. And an end, the picture is garbage. It is really, really terrible. And we're like, what, what's the deal? Like, this is supposed to be like an amazing picture. It's high definition. So we call up the satellite company. And they're like, Oh, you got a new high definition television? Well, yeah, you need to pay like an extra $5 a month to get the high definition signal, you're not getting the high definition signal. And, and that's really sort of how I think about like attention and memory, that like memories, like the high def TV, right that it but it has to have a high def signal coming into it for it to function correctly. And so so all of the strategies that we know for improving attention are going to improve memory kind of down the line, because you're getting in higher quality data, more data, kind of coming in into your brain. So I usually will use this example when I'm talking about mindfulness and meditation, because that's what mindfulness does for you is that it allows you to kind of like widen your lens and just, you know, choose to be more aware of whatever's kind of happening in that moment. And, and so then you get higher definition data kind of coming into your, into your brain. And so, so it's just really important to remember that, like, if you were kind of like, not present or like, not there Ellen Langer, as a Harvard psychologist who has this really great quote, that, like, "when you're not there, you're not there to know that you're not there". Yeah. Like, you know, your thoughts are often in lala land, you know, you're thinking you're worrying about the future, you're ruminating about the past. You're not paying attention and you're not so you're not going to notice like what somebody said to you or what the news program said and, and so you may have to like, you know, ask for clarification back it up. That yeah, don't like Be nice to your memory. Don't expect it to remember things that that you didn't notice in the first place. It just yeah, that way.Hannah Choi 14:50Do you think that the lifestyle that people live and societal impact of maybe you know, social media and just How quickly information is passed to us? Do you think any of that has impacted people's perceptions that they have memory problems? When maybe when we lived like a simpler life when there were like less demands on us or less information coming in all the time? Do you think that that has increased?Sherrie All, PhD 15:20I mean, I've felt it, I don't know. I can't, I can't speak to the data on this necessarily, you know, but I think anecdotally, like, there's, there's some actually some really, one thing I have looked into, because one thing I noticed kind of early on, when I started in private practice, and that, you know, I have this habit of opening like, way too many tabs on my right, and, and then and then having to switch it. So So in neuropsychology, we call it set shifting, that if you're having to switch your attention from one to the other, you know, that colloquially, we call it multitasking. And, and it actually, there are some studies to show that that actually takes a really big toll on your performance, that they've done it with college students where they do two tasks, then their processing speed goes down by about the same as like being high on pot. And there's a big cost to kind of like switching back and forth. And but but even with, like computer usage, it's sort of this, the girls also described this thing called, like, the threshold effect, that when you cross over a threshold, like from one room to the other, that sometimes your your memory will kind of reset in and so you'll lose whatever that thing is that you are kind of holding in your working memory, it'll, it'll just kind of go away. And I'll notice that kind of on my computer screen, you know, it'd be like, I'm going to my email to look for this thing. And then I get to my email and like, something will distract me, right. And then it's like, what was that thing? You know? And so, you know, with technology, social media, like we're getting a small bits, right, like that. We're, we're switching very quickly, on a on a really regular basis. I'm sure that that takes a toll on like, sustained attention. Yeah, I think kind of the overall stress level. But the other thing that I wanted to say, kind of related to your question is that, you know, it's some of the stuff we're learning about Instagram and eating disorders and suicide. And you know, that a lot of it's perfectionism, right? And that, so I see a lot of people who suffer from cognitive perfectionism. You know, and even just socially, you know, that when people find out that I'm a memory expert, and then and then they'll find out, you know, so example of something I forgot. They're like, Oh,Hannah Choi 17:59Do you ever lie about your job? Sherrie All, PhD 18:00So sometimes I do. Hannah Choi 18:03Like "I'm in finance".Sherrie All, PhD 18:04I was at a party recently, and I made everybody else tell me what they did before I told him what I did, right. Hannah Choi 18:15That's awesome. Sherrie All, PhD 18:17But again, like, we were hard on our memories, we kind of expect it to be perfect. But the other thing is that the cost of having a bad memory is is real. In and so I don't think that people's fears are unwarranted because, you know, kind of back to your question about simpler society. You know, if you were a farmer, and you had kind of this, you did the same routine, day after day, year after year, in the cost of like, kind of losing your cognitive skills isn't quite as big as what it is for, like a tech industry. Yeah. Right. Your job is to write code. And then you can't focus anymore, you're making costly mistakes, then, you know, our incomes are really dependent on our cognitive skills now. Yeah. And then one other thing that I think is worth noting about sort of the collective fear about cognition is that rates of dementia are legitimately increasing. With the baby boomers turning 65 and aging into we're going to see an increase in the prevalence of dementia. Unlike anything that's ever happened in human history, it's going to see a lot more examples of it where people are struggling because of cognitive decline. And I think that in some, it's, it's happening on an individual level to more and more people where they're seeing family members, you know, loved ones like their old football coach, you know, Really declining and so, so people, you know, people, understandably are going to be really scared about that too.Hannah Choi 20:07Right, the more examples that they have of it in their lives, the more fear they will feel themselves.Sherrie All, PhD 20:13Yeah. And we're seeing it with concussions, right with all the media attention put on this chronic traumatic encephalopathy that, that, you know, it's pathology that we've seen in the brains of retired NFL players. But it trickles down into where, where people have kind of a misunderstanding about concussion recovery. And if they have one concussion, then they become very fearful. They think it's easy to understand that you would, by watching all the media coverage about these concussions and this neuro pathological disorder that can that can come from that, that people will automatically assume it's not a huge mental leap to think, oh, no, I bumped my head. And now I've lit the fuse on a neuro degenerative disease. That's not really the case. We don't have those kinds of links between like, a regular concussion, you know, for everyday people like ourselves, you know, compared to what's happening to these professional athletes. We all need to remember that? We're not NFL players, right? I am not an NFL player.Hannah Choi 21:33Neither am I. Yeah. I can't even watch football. Sherrie All, PhD 21:38Like, we expect we expect people to get better over time, likeHannah Choi 21:43That's good to hearSherrie All, PhD 21:45Even from more serious brain injuries, people get better. Not all the way sometimes, like with a serious brain injury. But, um, but if you, you know, if you didn't lose consciousness, and, you know, you didn't have like, extended periods of what we call post traumatic amnesia, or like, extreme mental confusion for like, a really long period of time, then, you know, odds are that you're gonna get better. And, but But what you believe about your memory makes a big difference.Hannah Choi 22:17Yeah. Right. And if you Yeah, and I think like, if we look, if we look we instead of looking for, we don't notice all the times, we do remember something, we just pay attention to the times that we don't, we look for those negative cases. What about all of this, like, I'm wearing clothes. So obviously, I remembered something today.Hannah Choi 22:20You remembered at least one thing todayHannah Choi 22:27That that's something that I've been working on myself is like, changing my identity. So I've always thought of myself, I mean, like, I was Forgetful Hannah. And so now I'm trying to change my identity. It's very difficult because I constantly just go to that, well, I'm just a forgetful person. So it's, it's, um, it's hard work. It's hard work to do. And if any of my family and friends are listening, they're probably like, yeah, your identity has not changed. But I'm trying, I'm trying to for myself, just change that. Because maybe if I stopped believing that so much about myself, I will actually come out with a better memory than I believe that I have.Hannah Choi 23:25Right? Yeah, change the narrative. You know, yeah, exactly. saying mean things to yourself, like, Stop criticizing yourself. And you people do it with all sorts of things. You know, if you say, like, I'm bad with money, you know, then that, you know, that belief leads to behaviors, and, you know, but, but you can learn how to be better at money, you know, oh, you know, I can't, I can't exercise, you know, but then you start to you shift some of that, and it like behavior and beliefs, kind of, you know, they play with each other. And, but, but they, you know, they go hand in hand. And so sometimes if you try a new behavior, then that can affect your belief. If you try to change your belief, then that can kind of lead you to a new behavior. So, it's worth doing the work because, you know, we really can rewrite those narratives.Hannah Choi 24:16Yeah, so much of so much of what I do for myself and also for my clients is, is that and so I have a question. So for myself, just speak for myself, specifically, because I'm myself and I can relate. So should I, I use a lot of strategies to help myself remember things because I know that memory is challenged for me. So I use a lot of different strategies. I use Google Tasks, Google event reminders, I have a planner I use post it notes. I put signs on the door I asked my partner, my husband to help me remember things I have people text me I mean, I have a lot of different strategies that I use. At But sometimes I feel like that's not helping my memory, it's just helping me not, it's just helping me do those things. It's not, like not like a practice to improve my actual memory. So for someone who has a challenges with memory, should is that enough or should there be additional practice to help improve my memory so that maybe I don't need to use all those tools.Sherrie All, PhD 25:31I don't think there's any evidence to date that we need to be doing anything different to specifically beef up our memory circuits. You know, I could be proven wrong with science kind of down the line. But the current state of the evidence is that there really doesn't seem to be a difference between cognitive activity, what type of cognitive activity and, and, and, and kind of preventing dementia, that like people who are cognitively active no matter what the cognitive activity is, it can be attention training, it could be processing speed, it could be problem solving, it could be memory strategies, all of those are, you know, they all of those are pretty equal in terms of the data that if you just kind of live a cognitively stimulating life, then your your risk for dementia is is mild to moderately reduced. There are some people who would say, well, oh, this this one, you know, like, I think if there is one type of training platform that maybe has outperformed some others, it's it's more kind of in like, processing speed. And so, so that said, like, I love your systems. Yeah, and, and, and that's the stuff that we would train someone who didn't have those systems and was complaining about their performance, we would actually work to try to get them to implement those types of systems. But the people who have really exceptional memories are ones that have kind of used the strategies of like, organizing information, or using visualization strategies, or just using externalizing strategies, which, you know, you use a lot of those. And so I think the goal for Functional Independence is whatever keeps you independent and doing a good job. Right. And so if you need to externalize those things, great. Right? Like, because that's what's gonna keep you you know, independent performing your job. Doing a good job, getting promoted.Hannah Choi 27:59Doing a Podcast, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, that that is great to hear. Because, I mean, that's what I do as an executive function coach is I you know, exactly that, right. We teach people strategies to level the playing field in whatever area, they feel challenged. And soSherrie All, PhD 28:21that's why we love working with the beyond booksmart executive function coaches, too, because you guys are so great at like, helping our clients implement, you know, a lot of these daily functioning strategies. And, and then there's more to it too, because if you're, if you're succeeding, then you kind of have that upward positivity spiral that's going to reduce stress. And and that's good for your brain in the long term. And then also, you know, I, I, it makes me sad, Hannah, that you actually beating yourself up about your strategies. Hannah Choi 29:05I'm not going to anymore! Sherrie All, PhD 29:06Yeah. That's kind of a layer of stress. Right like that. Hannah Choi 29:10Yeah. Right. Sherrie All, PhD 29:11Strategies. You burst out some cortisol. That's not good for your brain cells. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Like celebrate your strategies.Hannah Choi 29:22Okay, yeah, I'm going to and I, it feels really good to hear that because I, I don't know why, but I saw it as, like a flaw that I had to use them even though I even said to you before, like, why do people look down on on using strategies and here, I was doing that without even realizing it. And I just know that when I use those strategies, it improves everything for me, it improves. You know, my just my day to day existence. In my, my relationships with everyone, and, and my relationship with myself too, so, so I'm going to use them proudly now.Hannah Choi 30:10You're like a systems queen?Hannah Choi 30:14Well, you know, I mean I do teach people I like, I hope that I have also done that metacognition piece and figured out what works for me to know. But, what that actually reminds me what you were saying before how important that metacognition piece is, and how important it is to figure out like, how our brains work, and how, what works for us, and what doesn't work for us and why we do those things and why we don't do those other things. And it's just so important. And I feel like it, it feels like to me that that piece is not valued by everyone, because it is you're not, I don't know if I'm right. But it is not immediately valued because you are not actually producing anything when you are sitting and thinking about yourself. No, you're not. Right? You're not like creating anything, you're not making anything, but you are learning so much. And so I just hope that people recognize the value of sitting and thinking about yourself. Yeah, there's so much in there.Sherrie All, PhD 31:24And then, you know, putting those systems in place, because, I mean, it's basically like, a lot of what you're describing is like basic project management, you know, and like, I, I took a class where, you know, I had to kind of learn some project management, and I learned that I'm, like, terrible naturally, like, my natural instinct is to just like, jump right into the task, you know, and like, as a group, we're like, no, no, we're gonna, we're gonna wide now we're gonna, you know, lay out are all the steps and like, the timeline and like, oh, okay, but like, going, right? Like what you're saying, like, we put too much value on sort of the output. But if you take a step back, like when you do your, your, your task list, you're probably going to get so much more done that day, than if you hadn't if you just jumped right into the thing, because you forget all those other things like,Hannah Choi 32:27yeah, or I didn't think about like, well, let's see, I'm feeling I have a lot of energy right now. So I should do the thing that's going to be the most energy sucking and then save the other things for later or, like, I'm feeling very unmotivated right now. So I should just do that, like little things that don't take much that might make me feel better. So yeah. So yeah, so like the the same what you were just saying, like, thinking that the thinking about yourself is the same as stopping to plan a little bit before you jump in. So totally, yeah. So much value in that. So talking about strategies, what are your go to strategies for people to, to remember stuff? And I guess this can apply to anybody. I mean, a lot of us coaches work with students, but a lot of our clients are adults too. And, and I imagined that the strategies aren't really any different from between younger and older people.Sherrie All, PhD 33:22Yeah, they're pretty universal. Right? Okay, so well, because probably because I have a background in clinical neuropsychology, it's, it's important for me to first kind of diagnose the problem, right. So our strategies need to be really customized to whatever situation a person's having, right. And so, so there are kind of some universal strategies that that we can teach people. But it's, it's never a one size fits all. And, and, and so it's important to kind of match the strategy with the person, because that also, it's just not feasible. It's like, physically impossible to do all the strategies all the time. So so what I try to, you know, kind of empower my clinicians to do is to have sort of a toolbox. And I think that's kind of what beyond booksmart does a good job of too. It's like, you know, that the executive function coaches like you guys do have like a nice system and program, but but your executive function coaches have enough of kind of a toolbox to be able to kind of pick and choose to sort of match for like, Whatever, whatever the situation is. So anyway, I think go to strategies are number one, particularly when we have folks with attention problems, working memory problems, is that we try to get them to slow down a little bit. It's If they can, right, or be strategic about fast and slow, and, and so so, so will will, one of our first steps is to actually try to get them to engage in some sort of mindfulness practice. And what's nice about the world of mindfulness is that there are, you know, 50 bajillion different practices that we can, you know, choose from, because that's also not a one size fits all, there's people who really resonate with breathwork. And then there are people who love, you know, guided imagery, and then there are people, you know, you know, I think open monitoring, you know, it's sort of like, sit for one minute and just, you know, notice what's happening and be in the present moment. That can be great. For some people, I think it can be really torture for people who have attention problems and have sort of a really active Default Mode Network, where their minds are just kind of going all the time. It's what So, but, but, you know, kind of having a little bit of that cultural debate of like, okay, slow down, be present, be engaged, maybe start to notice what's happening in your body, kind of be present. Number two, would be using a lot of those externalizing interventions. So, so making lists, setting alarms, I love "can't miss reminders". This is we use a program called Cog Smart that's out of the VA system, it was originally developed for people with brain injuries and severe mental illness. And then they have a new program for people with mild cognitive impairment, which like maybe some of the earlier stages of dementia. And, and so they'll you know, put up you know, it put up like a little post it on your coffee maker that says walk the dog, you know, because you might, you might forget to walk the dog, I'm never going to forget to make coffee in the morning. So just kind of putting some of those reminders in sort of an obvious place. Another strategy they use is self-talk. And so that can kind of help you stay on target, as you're kind of going from one thing to the other. And that you kind of say, you know, I'm gonna go to the kitchen, I'm gonna get some yogurt, you know, and I'm going there, I'm gonna say, and you can say it out loud. You can say it to yourself in your head. Yogurt. Yeah. Yogurt. Yogurt. Yeah. So, so So those are some of my favorites. I think, you know, and so those are all kind of on the like, attention part of of the pathway to memory. But we also have other strategies for helping you memorize things, right. Like, and, and that's important for when the moment requires it. Like, where are you parked in a parking garage, for instance, right, like stopping and taking like a little mental snapshot and kind of rehearsing it or sort of visualizing it.Hannah Choi 38:00I loved that section of the book. It was so fun to do that, to do the list. And then to try to remember the list and then reuse the different strategies. It was very cool. Yeah, it was very convincing.Sherrie All, PhD 38:13Yeah. And so, you know, you can take some steps to get things to stick in your brain better, when that's needed. But it's not needed for everything right in. And so especially now, like, and this is something that, that we've been kind of debating in, I guess, kind of wringing your hands around since ever since humans became literate. And we just don't memorize things the same way that we used to, because we don't really have to write and so the newest iteration of that is the internet. And, and so you can even tell the difference between like Boomers and Gen Xers compared to like Millennials of like, how long I'm a Gen Xer. And I will spend a good 10 minutes trying to remember a fact about something. And my Millennial friends, like have already looked it up on their phone. Right.Hannah Choi 39:08Right. Yeah.Sherrie All, PhD 39:14Just grew up with like, you know, 10-year-old encyclopedia. Yeah.Hannah Choi 39:21Like, oh, I hope it's in the index. That's really funny.Sherrie All, PhD 39:27I mean, so that's the newest version of it, right? But as a species, we've been doing that externalizing ever since we had the ability to write things down and then go back and read them the way things are now. You don't have to memorize everything. I think you're probably going to be okay. I don't think it's causing Alzheimer's disease. The only what's causing Alzheimer's disease is that people are living way longer than they used to. You know, but so anyway, but when what when the moments right, Like when you need to memorize something like if you're an actor, and you're you have to memorize things, or you're getting a speech, or you need to, you're at a job and you need to memorize, like a certain, you know, list of steps to kind of make that automatic, then, then those those strategies can be helpful, you know, but yeah, but but I think that sometimes people assume that they have to kind of do that for everything. And then they worried because we're not doing it like we used to. It's gonna make me have Alzheimer's.Hannah Choi 40:34Okay, good to know. Not, I could be wrong,Sherrie All, PhD 40:41to always be open to being wrong. Right.Hannah Choi 40:43Right. Well, I hope you're not. So one additional thing that, that I got a very clear message in your book is that the pretty much the most important thing that we can do for our memories is exercise. And so can you talk a little bit about that?Sherrie All, PhD 41:03Yeah. So I do, I had been saying it's like the number one best thing you can do for your brain? And it probably is, although I am starting to tweak that a little bit that everything is, is memory strategies are customizable. So everybody has like a different? I think everybody actually does have like, a different probably priority. Number one. No, like, if you're a smoker, I'm gonna want you to quit smoking, before I make you get on a treadmill. I have an idea. Yeah. Like our individual, right, you know, it's Sleep, sleep is really important too. And we're learning a lot more about that. The reason that for a long time, we've been saying that exercise is the is the best strategy is because it's had the best science up to this point. And by best science, it means that we can do experiments. And so we have some really good causal data to show that when people are physically active, they get have bigger brains, the memory circuits in their brain are bigger, they grow new brain cells, and it actually increases the rate of brain cell growth. And we haven't seen that with any other type of lifestyle strategy, except for stress goes in the other direction, we know that. So the stress hormone cortisol keeps you from growing new brain cells. And, and so so, you know, managing stress may be you know, the opposite of, of, you know, kind of the same as exercise and, but, but the quality of the data is, is really, really strong. And so, so that's why we really kind of hang out, hang our hats on that one, because it lends itself to doing experiments. And, you know, whereas things like socialization,Hannah Choi 43:04It's harder to measure, harder to measureSherrie All, PhD 43:07And harder to manipulate. You know, make people get friends.Hannah Choi 43:13Just be more social. Sherrie All, PhD 43:16And like it! Hannah Choi 43:19Enjoy it don't get stressed. Meet five friends have five 10-minute conversations. measure your heart rate, or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it really shows you I mean, that's a great example for how research is really beneficial, or can be really beneficial, and why it is so important to research thingsSherrie All, PhD 43:45And also to kind of get some help. And so one of the things in the book is for people, one of the early exercises is for you to kind of gauge like what is your overall risk, right? Like where I use this brain 401k investment analogy in the book that, you know, our risk for dementia is really predicted more by how much brain cells and skills you have sort of stored in this cognitive reserve, and everybody kind of varies in those in how much reserves they have. And we can measure that by seeing how, you know, people with higher reserve have people with bigger brains have a bigger resistance to dementia. And, and that you can build your reserve throughout your life, like through these different lifestyle areas. But one of the early exercises in the book is for you to kind of do a self assessment, you kind of rate your portfolio, your brain 401k portfolio, you know, so am I, I may be doing really well in mental stimulation because I have a mentally stimulating job, but I'm not exercising a whole lot and I have a lot of stress. And so those are kind of the two areas where I need to maybe beef up my own individual efforts, right compared to somebody else, who, you know, maybe exercises a whole lot, but you know, he's just retired and it's not, you know, socializing as much as they used to maybe not learning new things and so that their own strategy is going to be different than than mine in. And so really kind of personal. It's all custom, right? We're human strengths and weaknesses, and we gotta figure it kind of focus our efforts.Hannah Choi 45:29Yeah, and that's, I guess that's, again, where that metacognition piece comes into, and really spending the time to look at your life and to look at how your memory impacts you, and how, and what areas you maybe need to, you know, like, spend more time with or, or back off on or whatever it is. So, in your book, you cover a variety of different areas like exercise, and socialization and learning new things, which are three that you've already mentioned. In addition to those, what are some others that people should consider when they're thinking about their brain health?Sherrie All, PhD 46:06So some new data that's come out about sleep is especially for the risk of Alzheimer's disease is that when when we're asleep, when you're in deep sleep, the glial cells, they're these like support cells that surround the neurons in your brain, they actually shrink by about 20%. And it allows the spinal fluid to come in and flush out toxins, oh, it's probably like the lymphatic system of the brain and clay and so it's, they call it the glymphatic system, the glial cells. And one of the things that gets flushed out is the amyloid plaque that causes Alzheimer's disease. We all make amyloid plaque and, but, but normally, it's going to be flushed out through the spinal fluid. Hannah Choi 46:58Fascinating. Sherrie All, PhD 46:59And it's only becomes problematic when it sticks in your brain and starts to kind of choke off your neurons. And so they're Matthew Walker is a neuroscientist who's written he wrote a book called Why We sleep and then he's he's runs a research lab where they are putting out papers and, and so they've actually found a correlation between people who sleep less in their 50s 60s and 70s have more amyloid plaque in their brain. We don't it's it's a correlation. So we don't know which causes which it could be that amyloid causes you to stop sleeping much or that not sleeping enough, you know, causes the amyloid to build up. But that's actually like most of our dementia prevention strategies are focused on trying to help you kind of just maintain as many neurons as you can. But this is actually a little bit more directly impacting the pathology of Alzheimer's, that, you know, if you get really good deep sleep, then, you know, you may actually be preventing the pathology of Alzheimer's like flushing that amyloid out.Hannah Choi 48:02Wow, that's so interesting.Sherrie All, PhD 48:05REM sleep is important for helping the amygdala is this little structure in your brain, that's kind of your fear detector, it's the thing that sort of sets off the fight or flight response. And it's kind of always looking out for things that it thinks might kill you. And then and then when it thinks that something might kill you, then it triggers you know, you to release all that cortisol and have those kinds of exaggerated responses. And you have the limbic hijacking, and you can't concentrate and you're, you know, you know, producing toxic chemicals to your brain cells, and you're keeping your brain from growing new brain cells. So, the amygdala if you lose one night asleep, your amygdala is 60%. more active.Hannah Choi 48:49Wow. That's not good.Sherrie All, PhD 48:56A recipe for yelling at your kid.Hannah Choi 48:58Yeah. And no wonder, right.Sherrie All, PhD 49:03And sleep is important for that kind of calming of the amygdala, most of your REM sleep later in the night, and an epic and if you have middle insomnia, if you're up for more than half an hour, the entire sleep architecture of your night sort of starts over where you don't actually won't get enough REM cycles. So you do more deep sleep early in the night. And so it's important to just try to maybe like sleep through the night. So so when we have people who talk about sleep problems, we we, as a practice, send them to a sleep center. Study. We need to know what's going on. Do you have sleep apnea? Do you have there's a cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia CBT-I that's very behaviorally based and so it's just about following kind of some simple rules to you know, make sure that you're going to bed when you're tired. And enough that you're, you know, kind of helping your body sort of reengage those natural circadian rhythms maybe not, you know, having like a caffeine curfew, not knowing what time it is at night is like a really big piece of that too, because that sticks that you go through when you make four o'clock. It's got like, two more hours.Hannah Choi 50:23Yes. You do the math, the insomnia math. Yes. My sister went through the CBT for insomnia. And it just really, really, really helped her. Sherrie All, PhD 50:36Yeah, it helped me, I did it. You know, I yeah, I got really bad insomnia during the pandemic and found out I have sleep apnea. So I went on. Yeah, and if you've ever tried CPAP, and you feel like you've tried it a few years ago, you're like, Oh, it's terrible. I can't stand it. Like, the machines are getting better and better.Hannah Choi 50:55Oh, that's good to know. Yeah. And so have you noticed? And have you noticed an impact on your on your awakening? You're Awake, awake, life,Sherrie All, PhD 51:04How I feel during the day? Yeah. One hundred percent.. Hannah Choi 51:07Yeah, that's great.Sherrie All, PhD 51:09I would walk around, like, face tired, or time focusing and have like, you know, and have kind of a hair trigger. And yeah, wait, and, and I've been able to lose it since then. But I think one of the biggest pieces, because I told this, the CBT therapist, I was like, You're not taking my phone away. It's not just I thought I was psychologist or a that makes me a really terrible patient. Right.Hannah Choi 51:37Right. Sure. I know what to do. Right? I'm only here because someone told me to.Sherrie All, PhD 51:46So, so we tell people about like, like, we'll give them information about sleep hygiene. You know, those are things like, you know, limit screens at night have, you know, that kind of stuff? I go, I go I'm not, I'm not giving up my phone. She's like, okay, that's okay. You know. So what we've devised is that because I have a really active default mode network that I think people with ADHD we're seeing, have that. And which means that when I wake up in the middle of the night, I just start thinking about all sorts of things, right. And I turn on a podcast. Like maybe right now someone is listening to us on this podcast.Hannah Choi 52:31We're happy to keep your company.Sherrie All, PhD 52:34I'll turn on a podcast, it has to be like a certain level of interesting because I'm going to fall back asleep. So maybe, maybe it's not this one.Hannah Choi 52:41Yeah, maybe it's just too engaging. They're not good for the middle of the night. Sherrie All, PhD 52:45It depends. But I have a little post it. It's a stack of post it notes that I take to my phone to cover up the clock, like, so I can turn my podcast on, but I don't know what time it is.Hannah Choi 52:58Yeah, that's so smart. I love that she told you that she let you keep it. Right. And that goes back to make the strategy work for yourself. Yeah. And, and, and it's okay. If if whatever tweak you have done to the strategy is different than what they say you should do. If it works for you, then then that's good enough. Okay. Sherrie All, PhD 53:19Yeah, it's collaborative, right? Yeah, no, none of these interventions could be to top down because people are gonna be resistant. And then they can't do it. Yeah. Right. We all have issues with authority.Hannah Choi 53:31Right. Yeah. Right. I'll just suffer instead of doing what you suggested. Well, thank you so much. This has just been such a great conversation. Is there anything else you want to add that we missed?Sherrie All, PhD 53:47Well, get the book.Hannah Choi 53:49Yes. Are sure you guys have to read this book Neuroscience of Memory by Sherrie All, Dr. Sherrie All it's so good. It's so good. And I love I just love how you wrote it. There was one thing you said like you it was a list of things that can be impacted in you. And you said you had the list. And then you said "...and stuff like that". I was like, Yes. Like you get you just wrote "and stuff like" that in a book. I was just so great. Because I feel like there's so much pressure out there to just have everything be on like super professional sounding. And that's what I want to read because that's what I can relate to. And it was just it was so accessible. Such a great book. So thank you. Sherrie All, PhD 54:34Yeah, I like to think of it as kind of like your girlfriends guide to your brain.Hannah Choi 54:37Yeah, that's what it felt like it was really it's really, really nice. So I highly recommend everybody find itSherrie All, PhD 54:44And the audio book, I got to narrate it. So you can listen to me!Hannah Choi 54:47Oh, cool.Hannah Choi 54:50That's great. You have a good voiceSherrie All, PhD 54:51And if you listen while you sleep and maybe you sleep with me.Hannah Choi 54:55I love it. And where else can our listeners find you?Sherrie All, PhD 55:01So you can find me at Sherrieall.com. That's my page that I keep for speaking and writing. And then if you want to access our clinics were at cogwellness.com. We have a location in Chicago, and then in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and hopefully some other states as we continue to grow. Because, you know, we're really passionate about helping people improve their cognition. And there are other practices that do what we do. And, you know, but, but I think that, particularly for some of the early stage dementia work, where we're one of the few people that are kind of helping people implement a lot of those recommendations from neuro psychologists. And so, you know, we just like to be able to help a lot more people. But so, so clinically, we're there for now, and but hopefully, hopefully near you soon.Hannah Choi 55:52Yeah, great. Well, thank you again, and I love I love how there are so many practical things that people can do to improve their memory and decrease or maybe not decrease, but improve the chances of living independently longer. And I love that. So thank you for all the work that you do. And I'm sure that that everyone out there that has met with you is just so with you. And your and your practitioners have been so grateful for the support. Yeah, maybe make it a little less scary, right. less scary. Yeah.Sherrie All, PhD 56:27And hire a Beyond BookSmart executive function coach. Yeah, put these things in practice.Hannah Choi 56:34Yeah. And like what we were saying earlier, you know, these, figuring out exactly what strategies are going to work for you. It is nice to have the support of someone else that has like a sort of, like a like at outset an outsider viewpoint and can help help you get out of your own head.Sherrie All, PhD 56:53Don't judge yourself for all your systems, right? Hannah Choi 56:55That's right! No judgment, this is a judgment free zone.Sherrie All, PhD 56:58That's right! Celebrate!Hannah Choi 56:59Yay. Yes, yes. I am so excited to go forth and use my strategies proudly. And I'm and I'm just going to keep continuing to spread the word that it's okay to use strategies. You do not have to remember everything on your own. Sherrie All, PhD 57:14You can't you cannot you can't. That's right. This, those five people are Sherrie All, PhD 57:18Like four or five. Hannah Choi 57:19Yeah, four, probably four. Sherrie All, PhD 57:20And they're probably probably lying anyway.Hannah Choi 57:22yeah, actually, just like quickly use some, like, they have a device in their ear. All right. Well, thank you so much.Sherrie All, PhD 57:33Likewise, this has been a pleasure. And thank you. Thank you.Hannah Choi 57:38And that's our show for today. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to all of Sherrie's resources, plus some more that I found to share with you. If you're like me and are challenged by your working memory, I really hope this episode has motivated you to find and use even more strategies that help you remember more stuff, which in turn will help you feel more confident. I know it's made a huge difference for me. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen. If you like what you're hearing, please share focus forward with your colleagues and your family and your friends. You can subscribe to focus forward on Apple and Google podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. If you listen on Apple podcasts, give us a boost by giving us that five star rating. Sign up for our newsletter at www.beyondbooksmart.com/podcast. We'll let you know when new episodes drop and we'll share information related to the topic. Thanks for listeningEp 16_ Improve Your Memory_ Neuroscience Strategies for a He...Thu, Dec 15, 2022 10:24AM • 58:42SUMMARY KEYWORDSpeople, strategies, memory, brain, book, neuropsychologist, called, attention, dementia, learning, important, exercise, brain cells, stress, systems, helping, alzheimer, hannah, clinicians, sleepSPEAKERSSherrie All, PhD, Hannah ChoiHannah Choi 00:04Hi everyone, and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life by working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. Hannah Choi 00:18I am so excited to bring you today's episode, I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Sherrie All who is a neuropsychologist who specializes in memory. She and her colleagues at the Centers for Cognitive Wellness in Chicago and the DC area support people who have memory challenges or are experiencing cognitive decline. Sherrie also wrote a book, which you'll hear me gush about, called the Neuroscience of Memory. And this topic is especially interesting to me, because working memory is one of the executive function skills that we use pretty much all the time every single day. Working memory is the skill we use to hold information in our minds long enough to do something with it. If you run into the grocery store for just a few items, and don't bring a list, you'll use your working memory to recall that information. When you meet someone new, your working memory helps you remember their name. And if you're learning a new math formula, your working memory helps you remember the steps. My own memory has a pretty limited capacity, which is probably why math and I don't get along, why I accidentally called my friend's husband "Steve" when his name is actually Corey. And why I can't go to the store without a list because I'll walk out with lots of stuff I didn't need and maybe only a couple of the things I did. I have experienced a lot of frustration and disappointment in my life because of it. But over the years, I've learned what strategies helped me the most and talking with Sherrie really helped me understand that it's okay to use these external resources to help you remember things during the day. And that there are concrete things that we can do to improve our brain health, which in turn supports our memory. So keep listening to learn more about memory and brains and what we can do to help ourselves to live independently longer. Hannah Choi 02:13Hi, Sherrie, thanks so much for joining me.Sherrie All, PhD 02:16Thanks, Hannah. It's my pleasure. I'm so excited to be on this podcast with you.Hannah Choi 02:21I have I have a very, very vested interest in memory because mine is terrible, has always been terrible. I had the nickname of Forgetful Hannah when I was a child. But I think it's genetic. Because my parents don't remember calling me that. I remember though, I remember. So I am so excited about this conversation because of that. I'm basically ready to walk away with a better memory. So I hope you're gonna fix me. Sherrie All, PhD 02:52Oh. I'll do my best. Hannah Choi 02:56Okay. I did read your book though. And, and I I'm like a total nerd about it. Now I'm telling basically everyone I know, my poor family, I keep texting them like, Okay, you have to walk six to nine miles per day. And you have to learn new things. Just like telling them all the things that they have to do. So thank you for that book. Yeah, yeah. For our listeners. I will put all the info about her about Sherrie's book in the show notes soSherrie All, PhD 03:25But it's six to nine miles a week. Hannah Choi 03:27Oh, I mean a week not a day. Oh, yeah, let's clarify that listeners you did not have to walk six to nine miles a day,Sherrie All, PhD 03:35People jumping up and running to the treadmill. Six to nine miles a day is helpful, too.Hannah Choi 03:43It's really time consuming too, so. Alright, so could you introduce yourself a little bit for us?Sherrie All, PhD 03:51Of course yeah. I'm Dr. Sherrie All. I am neuropsychologist by background and I really developed more of an interest in cognitive rehab rehabilitation kind of through my training. I don't know if you if your listeners know this, but neuropsychology as a field has a long about a centuries old history of telling people what's wrong with their brain and neuropsychologist are really good at doing that. And it's a lovely field and it's helping lots and lots of people. But I thought that neuropsychologist did more work in actually helping people improve their memories when I was going through graduate school and, and so when I learned what a neuropsychologist did was like, "Okay, great. Now what do we do about it?" And supervisors were kind of like yeah, we don't really do that so much. And so so it was able to really kind of carve out a some training for myself in in cognitive rehabilitation and I've made it my professional mission to really take a lot of the cognitive improvement strategies that have been living in sort of the ivory tower into the private practice space. And so, exactly 10 years ago, I opened a group practice, which is now called the Centers for Cognitive Wellness. It used to be Chicago Center for Cognitive Wellness, but we've actually expanded. And we actually celebrated our 10th anniversary last night, and cool. And really with that mission of providing kind of the what's next for people after they've been diagnosed with a cognitive decline. And we've worked mainly in the adult space for the last 10 years, we're starting to work more now with kids. But it was really important to me to work with adults initially, because there are a lot of tutoring and support services for kids. Not a lot of stuff available for adults. And so, so we do psychotherapy and cognitive rehabilitation that's sort of mixed into a psychotherapy setting. We're all mental health providers, and I have a team of 12 clinicians, and we just expanded into the DC area.Hannah Choi 06:07So exciting!Sherrie All, PhD 06:08Yeah, so we're just kind of helping people help their brains and, and then I was able to fulfill kind of a lifelong goal of publishing my first book, the Neuroscience of Memory, that you're talking so fondly about it, which is a self help workbook, that is really, you know, designed to help anybody with a brain improve their memory skills, both now and as you get older, and, but also a secondary audience for clinicians to use. And we're actually using that as a tool, it came out last July, July 2021. And I hear weekly from my clinicians are like I've got, I sold another one of your books, and we've gotten using your books, they really liked this part. And they liked that part. And so that's always really nice to hear. So it's, it's easy to kind of use with clients as they, because it's got lots of different exercises in there to help help you implement the skills and, and so we're using it as kind of a treatment tool as well,Hannah Choi 07:12I'm glad you understand the brain so that you can put this good work into it.Sherrie All, PhD 07:16Well, and I think it's important to try to for all of us to understand our brains. And that's one of my goals in the book is to help people understand how memory works. Because we know that when you understand how your brain works, you're better at operating it. And so so it is a real treat to be able to kind of take that deep dive learning and then try to put that into like plain language and sort of spread that out. Because it's important for all of us to have at least some fundamental understanding about how memory works, because then you can get better at operating it. And, and then also just to really save people from a lot of this so much anxiety, right? And there's a lot of anxiety about memory loss at every, really at like the whole lifespan, especially in adulthood. But But kids or kids are hard on themselves about their brains, too. And, and so, you know, we're way too hard on ourselves about our memories. And, and so I think that if people do understand that, like forgetting is normal, and you do need strategies, then maybe we can start to kind of dial down some of that overall anxiety. And because the anxiety makes your memory worse to like in the short term, and in the long term. Yes. Oh, like, Yeah, let's let's just be like, let's be a little kinder to ourselves and take down the temperature a little bit, right?Hannah Choi 08:53Yeah, yeah. And so like, when you're when your stress hormones and other brain thing, like when your stress hormones kick in, you're your executive function skills are like the first things to go. So that makes sense that your memory would be compromised if you are stressed. So if you're walking around stressed all the time, that's gonna make it harder.Sherrie All, PhD 09:14Yeah, you can't remember what you didn't pay attention to. And and, and so I mean, attention is really like the gateway to memory. And so attention completely gets knocked out, right? If you if you're in kind of that limbic hijack you literally the blood flow goes away from your prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of your brain where you focus and pay attention to things and it and it just goes to like the survivalistic parts of your brain and, and so you can't get focus, you can't pay attention and then then you're not going to remember that whatever that thing was, right? And so, so yeah, so it's important for us to all just kind of like take a breath.Hannah Choi 09:59So Oh, that's what you just something that you just said, makes me think I, when I was reading your book, you said your memory is only as good as your attention. And I was like, "shut up". I know that. (laughter) But now you're gonna have to make me now you're gonna make me pay more attention. It was so funny when I first read that I was like, ah, ah, I know that. But now I see her. Now I see it in writing. So lots of people, I mean, lots of people, regardless of their ADHD status, lots of people have, you know, challenges with attention depending on the situation, right? Or depending on how stressed you are, or what time of day it is or what situation you're in. And so can you talk a little bit more about about that and why you said that sentence that was only as good as your attention.Sherrie All, PhD 11:01It's gratifying to hear a reaction like that. I treat other authors exactly the same way. Oh, the hell you sayHannah Choi 11:14But, I'm glad you said it. Okay, cuz it's true. Sherrie All, PhD 11:17Yeah, it was a hard. It's a hard truth. Right?Hannah Choi 11:19It was. Yes, exactly. It was a hard truth that needed to that I needed to hear and that everyone else needs to hear it too.Sherrie All, PhD 11:26Yeah, of course. Because I mean, well, let's just think about it. I mean, it's simple mechanics. Your brain stores information, like memory is like the storage of information that gets into your brain. Right? That attention is the gateway, you cannot expect yourself to remember things that you didn't notice in the first place. kind of si

I greet you in Jesus' precious name! It is Friday morning, it is the 18th of November, 2022 and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for the day.‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' Says the Lord of hosts.”Zechariah 4:6The Holy Spirit took a shepherd boy and made him into a king, that's right - David, a sling and a stone to demolish a killing machine by the name of Goliath. The Lord Jesus specialises in making nobodies into somebodies. Remember, success is merely a failure turned inside out. It is not us but Christ in us that counts. “Christ in me, the hope of glory.”Colossians 1:27I want to tell you about a man that impacted my life hugely. When I was a young Christian, I picked up his book, “Mover of Men and Mountains.” They called him, “the Dean of Earth-moving.” Yes, I am talking about the greatest inventor of earth-moving machinery, Robert LeTourneau, with no less than 300 patents to his name. I believe he eventually sold out to Caterpillar. He was the one who said, “When you put your hand in your pocket at church to put your money in the plate, don't ask yourself the question, “How much of my money am I going to give the Lord today?” but rather say, “How much of the Lord's money am I going to keep for myself today?”. He lived on 10% of his income and he tithed 90% of his income. He was a multimillionaire. I want to tell you that Robert LeTourneau started very, very poorly. He dropped out of school at 14 years old and yet he became a businessman for God when He made the Lord his business partner and he went into partnership with Jesus. Well, as they say, the rest is just unbelievable history. He invented the Tournapull, a massive scraper that can scrape up hundreds of tons of earth and move it. He was a man who loved God. He was the first man to fly a twin-engine aeroplane in the United States of America but he was just an ordinary man who was filled with the Spirit of God. Now if we look at Romans 8:11, the Bible tells us if the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, that same Spirit that raised Christ shall quicken your mortal body.Today, put your trust, like David did, not in a sling, not in a stone, but in the Lord God Almighty of Heaven and earth. Jesus bless you and goodbye.

Colossians 1:24-29 Reimagining a Sacrificial Life August 14th Colossians 1:24 I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church. Colossians 1:25-29 25I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord's people. 27To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. 29To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me. 2 Corinthians 11 23Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Prayer of St. Philaret of Moscow (1782-1867) (from Francois de Fenelon, 1651-1715) O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace. Help me in all things to rely upon Your holy will. In every hour of the day, reveal Your will to me. Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul and the firm conviction that Your will governs all. In all my deeds and words, guide my thoughts and feelings. In unforeseen events, let me not forget that all are sent by You. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others. Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day with all that it shall bring. Direct my will; teach me to pray; pray You Yourself in me. Amen.  Critical Journey Diagram 3 reasons we fail to move on: People get discouraged Get distracted Disobedient Ephesians 2:1-3 1Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. 2You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. 3All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. St John of the Cross - Process of maturity (bring up one at a time) You have to study the life of Christ Pursue the motives in which He did it Welcome spiritual resistance Reject being the center Embrace mystery Matthew 28 - The great commission Go and make disciples of all nations Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit Teach these new disciples to obey the commands I've given you Be sure of this, I am with you always…

Despite being a common diagnosis, many people with ADHD may go most of their lives without ever officially being diagnosed. Although there are a number of challenges that this presents, one of the most frustrating is that the longer ADHD is left untreated, the more difficult it becomes to change our habits. Even so, that doesn't mean it's impossible - and our guest today proves it!For this week's episode, I invited Bob Shea - a renowned children's author who only recently received an ADHD diagnosis at age 52 - to talk about the trials and triumphs he experienced living with hidden ADHD for so long. Although Bob has some legitimate regrets about not getting diagnosed sooner, he's worked hard to address his challenge areas and make meaningful transformations in his habits. As a result, Bob has seen major improvements in both his personal and professional life that he's excited to share with our listeners. He also reveals the tools, systems, and interventions that helped him along the way. His contributions to the podcast reveal an important lesson - it's never too late to get the support we need to become the best version of ourselves. I know you'll enjoy listening to Bob's advice, wit, and humor just as much as I did during our conversation.Here are some relevant resources related to our conversation:ADHD ResourcesOn-Demand Webinar: ADHD Fundamentals - What you need to succeed after diagnosis: This is the link to a webinar Beyond BookSmart held recently. If you register, you'll gain instant access to the webinar. 8 Things You Need to Know About ADHD After a Diagnosis: A blog that summarizes key points from the webinar linked above.ADHD Information for Adults: This website includes information on medication and non-medication approaches to managing ADHD.How To ADHD YouTube Channel: An amazing channel that tries to both normalize and help support the trials and tribulations of living with ADHD. Dr. Tracey Marks - Skills Training for ADHD Playlist: A fantastic psychologist and content creator with invaluable insights on living with ADHD. Other Stuff We DiscussedBob's Planning and Time Management Strategy Here's a pic of Bob's notebook so you can see how he lays out his tasks and week.The Sam Harris Meditation App: This is the meditation app that Bob likes to use every morning.Jetpens.com: Bob's favorite place to shop for pens online. The Pomodoro Technique: 25 Minutes to Increase Productivity: This is the time management approach called the Pomodoro Method that Bob uses. We also use it as coaches!Leuchtturm1917 Notebook: This is the notebook I use for my bullet journal.Time Timer Visual Clock: This is the visual timer that I asked Bob about and then he showed me his which he had on the desk next to him.River Fox BuJo: My daughter's Pinterest account I mentioned in the episodeBob Shea's Instagram and WebsiteContact us!Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.comIG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoachingTranscriptHannah Choi 00:04Hi everyone and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life through working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. When my kids were little, we spent hours at our local library and we'd go home with 50 or so books at a time. We especially loved picture books that made us laugh. And one day we discovered an author called Bob Shea, and Bob's books quickly became some of our favorites. Thanks to the internet, we found out that Bob also lived in our home state of Connecticut. We followed him on Instagram and really enjoyed his drawing tutorials and quirky posts. And Bob started inviting other children's authors and illustrators to have a conversation with him on Instagram Live every Friday. And one day he had author and illustrator Charles Santoso on for a chat. And Bob openly and very candidly shared about his experience having ADHD. He talked about the time management strategies that he uses, and how important they are for him. I knew at that very moment that I just had to invite Bob on to be a guest on the podcast. So today, I've got you a very entertaining and very real conversation about how ADHD impacts his life, how medication really helped and the tools and strategies that he uses to find satisfaction in his life. And I'm really thrilled to share Bob's story with you today. Before we jump in, I want to acknowledge that not everyone with ADHD uses medication. And whatever choice people make about medication is theirs and theirs alone. There are alternative options for those who choose not to use it. And for those who do use it, they likely find that it doesn't work well just on its own. As you'll hear Bob say it works well for him because he combines it with other non medication strategies. If you are interested in learning more, check out the show notes for more reading and resources on this topic. Okay, now on to the show. Okay. Hi, Bob. Thanks for joining me today. Do you wanna introduce yourself to our listeners? Bob Shea 02:10Sure. My name is Bob Shea. I'm a children's book author and illustrator. And I found out that I had ADHD when I was 52.Hannah Choi 02:24Did you, did you won...have you had you wondered before in your life?Bob Shea 02:30I not in a serious way. It was probably the six months before I was diagnosed that I really started to think that it was more than just character flaws.Hannah Choi 02:51Did something happen? Was there like a some kind of shift in your thinking or something that got you to start with questioning that?Bob Shea 03:00There were two things I did start following some ADHD accounts on Instagram. That was one thing. So that put it on my radar pretty strong. And what would happen was or what happened I remember specifically, someone did a real that had symptoms of ADHD that I had never known would have been things and it was exactly how my brain works like exactly. And it wasn't the traditional. This is what ADHD is why because my the one of the reasons I one of the reasons I didn't think that I had it was because I know people who you know, in five minutes, you're like, Man, this conversation is 20 different subjects. And my my brothers both have it in and in the three of us it presents differently. So that was difficult. I'm not hyperactive, I don't have any of the traditional things. My my thoughts about ADHD were Bart Simpson, bad student acting up can't sit still. I was I did well in school. I wasn't a troublemaker at all. None of those things. So I was like, I don't have any of that stuff. And then there was a day when I was trying to finish a project I was trying to finish a book that I had do. And I couldn't do it like I couldn't pick up my iPad and open up the file and start... like it was due it was like that safety net of, of a looming deadline did not fail to ignite the fire. And I was scrolling on the Instagram instead. Like, compulsively. I was like I can't stop doing this. I'm look I was like I need some kind of stimulation that and the the I was I'm looking forward to doing the book. Like it was not like Yay, I'm gonna do this book and I'm excited finally gonna get to dig in. I've avoided it and I, I made an appointment for the next day with my, with my doctor with a physician's assistant. I went home and told my wife and she was like, Yeah, that's a really good idea.Hannah Choi 05:23She's like, finally the day has come.Bob Shea 05:24She was like, yeah, she was like, Man, she got the worst of it over the years, I'll tell you. So, yeah, so then I went to the, you know, when I went to this appointment, and I almost cancelled it. I was like, you know, just do your work. I'm sure you're fine. She's gonna let I had gone to her one time for Xanax because I had to go on tour. And I didn't want to talk to people that asked for like, I'm like, Look, I just need, I don't take it normally. Like, she has my records. Like, I'm not a drug seeker. But I was like, I'm traveling, I got to talk to people. I need some Xanax. And she was reluctant to give it to me, and like really gave me a hard time about it. And so I was like, she's not going to do anything for this ADHD, she's gonna laugh at me. She's like, come back when you break an arm. That's what I thought it was gonna be when you have when you're bleeding. Give me a call, like not for this. Boo hoo hoo, you can't get your work done. But she was really, really empathetic. And I had I had in the three months prior stop drinking, because it was a pandemic, and I was getting really heavy. Yeah. I was exercising every day. And I was, I had cut sugar out. And I was meditating a lot. I'm a big meditator. And so I went down the litany of what was happening, and that I had that I had and hadn't been doing these things in the last three months. And she said, everything you just said is what I would have told you to do. I would have said, eat better exercise and meditate. She said, if you're doing that stuff, and then she gave me an assessment, and I was laughing, because it was like, they were watching me during my day. I was like, Yes. Like, that's what I do every time. Yeah, they're like, do you like not? Do you get really close to the end of a project and not finish? I'm like, there's something new to do here. Like, right? I'm like, Yeah, you know, like everybody does that like, no, not everybody. And she put me on Adderall right away. And it was flipped, like flipping a switch. It was great. It's wonderful. I know it doesn't work for everyone. And everyone has their own way of treating it. But for me, my wife was like, thank God.Hannah Choi 07:48That's awesome. Yeah, that's so great. It's so great that you that you didn't let the part of you that wanted to not go that that part didn't get its chance. And you just went anyway and talked with her. Yeah. Well, I mean, I actually know that a lot of people are afraid to find out because they don't want to find out that that, that they have X, Y or Z. And but I'm sure it has been your experience. Once you find out it actually can really open up a lot of doors and opportunities and possibilities and totally different way of thinking about yourself.Bob Shea 08:23Just Yeah, I saw my, the past 50 years of my life and an entirely different light. And I was like, Man, why did anybody put up with that guy? He was the worst. I was, I was so glad I actually was birth because I was like, man, like,my life would have been so much different. Had I known that I could have been fixed. But you know, and then the other thing is like, both of my brothers have it. They don't want to do anything about it. Like they like it. And I'm like, really? I'm like I would I can't get rid of it fast enough. I'm like this is I don't I don't spin this into a positive thing at all. For me personally, I'm like, I have I could get I could have been high. Who knows what my life would be like, if I didn't have it? It's not it's not some secret power that I have.Hannah Choi 09:18Right? Right. But like we were talking before we started recording, don't you feel like it has given you some of the creativity that you've needed to to create the do the stuff that you've done, create the books that you've done andBob Shea 09:34yeah, I'm, I'm hesitant to give that so much credit because, but I'll tell you I think that that's true. I think that it allowed me to say, see to make connections I wouldn't have made otherwise when I was coming up with things and what it did was it gave me a unique voice creatively, my sense of humor is very unique to me, for good or for bad. I'm not saying that it's better or worse than anyone. But I'm saying when I write jokes or make a joke, it's comes out of left field. And it's not, Oh, I see what he's doing when he's doing this. It's very strange, for better or worse, but I'll tell you all the things that it didn't wear me all the things that it did for me, I would trade it to be have had a normal life, because I think it was a million times a detriment than it was, then then whatever it gave me.Hannah Choi 10:39Yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah,Bob Shea 10:41If I was sitting right now in my office up in Hartford, Connecticut, as executive of insurance company, in the HR department being like, you know, we have a lot of events coming up. And we have to do these things in a nice, neat desk. I'd love nothing more.Hannah Choi 11:00Well, I have to say that I'm really glad that you did not discover your ADHD until you were 52. And I think that there are lots and lots of children in the world that are really glad you didn't. And lots of parents.Bob Shea 11:12Well, I appreciate you saying that. But you know,Hannah Choi 11:15So if you look at your life, since you were diagnosed, since you started, like, you know, taking Adderall and just being okay, I have a diagnosis. This is this is why do you see Have you seen the change? Could you compare the like before and after?Bob Shea 11:33It's night and day, I mean, that there's there's work things like like right now, I'm as busy as I've ever been in my career. Right now, for the last two months, and probably going into the next couple of weeks, I have so much to do. And it's fine. Like, it's not, I'll have to work this evening, I'll have to get up early in work. But it's fine. I can. I can see it for what it is. I it's not overwhelming things. I was overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed all the time. And that affected my relationship with my family. Because nobody can talk to me. Because you have so much going on in your head. That is all equally important. That was the thing. Everything you had to do was just as important as the other next thing, which actually wasn't as important. So when my wife would come in the room and go, Hey, what should we have for dinner? I'd be like, how can you come in here and add another thing to this pile that's in my head, right? And now I'm just I'm so much more pleasant to be around. I was irritable all the time. I was I thought I thought it was over. I thought I thought I was going to I thought we were going to split up because it may like we didn't talk about it. But in my head. I was like head in my head. I was like, I don't know what's wrong with me. But I can't be around people.Hannah Choi 13:04Do you think that it was it's mostly that medicine that has changed things for you?Bob Shea 13:11Yes, you know, yeah, because, but that but there's I have to explain that a little bit. I do think that that's the case because I wanted to change. I didn't want to be like that. I knew that I was I knew that I was a jerk. And I knew that I was impatient, and that I couldn't she on the weekends. She'd be honest. She's like, you know, when you're home on the weekend, all you want to do is be at work. I know that you're I know that you're not happy. I couldn't, I couldn't relax. I couldn't go just do something. And it was because I thought I had failed the previous week, getting things done. And so I was trying to always try to catch up. I was always trying to catch up. The medication allowed me to make use of the systems I had been trying to put in place because it was always planners. So always had calendars, planners. How do I do this? How do I do this? And once I took the medication, I was able to do all the things. And everything fell into place. It's all it's all a bit. It's not just oh, it took a pill. I was fun. It was it was a framework of things. And knowing that you're even now I'm like, You're bad at this. So you have to do this more than other people do. Because you're so bad at it. Yeah, yeah.Hannah Choi 14:32So what's what kind of systems and strategies do work for you?Bob Shea 14:36It's sort of a it's sort of a mix of a lot of different systems that I had found. But But basically, it's capturing all the information in your head. So I I just did it this morning because it's Monday. I usually do it on Sundays. I write down everything I have to do that week like and it's all in a big pile. So it can be work on this illustration. And the next thing could be make an appointment for a haircut. Like it's not there's no over here you put work and over here you put it it's it's a, it's a messy list on the page next to that I put big blocks because I have to see things and I can't do this on the computer, I have to write it down with my hands, or else. It all looks the same on the computer. It's just like typed words. It could be anything. Yep. And now, because a draw, we're like writing a list, you can draw a little picture of something. Oh, yeah. Whatever. Yeah. So then I, so then I do the days of the week next to that, just horizontal bars of Monday through Friday. And then I drop in roughly, where what I'm going to do on what day really rough like not like you at three o'clock are going to do this. Yes. Then when the day comes...this all sounds so complicated. And it's not. Then on the day I draw a box for every half hour of the day, I make a list, I make a list, I'm going to I'm like, I'm going to work on this. And I'm going to work on this and I make a box for every half hour of the day and I write in the box, what I'm going to work on at what time and it's it is very flexible. If I don't, I'm okay with that. But I have to just know that I have a plan. I will not make this punitive because I will be mad at it. So it's to help me it is not to punish me ever. And one of the things that I did it first, or one of the things that helped the time while blindness was so bad because I'd be like I have a book to I'll take me two days, I don't know, that's fine. You know what I mean? Like, I had no concept. So what, so what I do is I write what I plan to do in that in those blocks time. Then when they pass, I go, and I don't do it immediately. Like at the end of the day, I'll say, Boy, I thought that thing was going to take me an hour and a half took me three hours. That's awesome. So I'm training myself to know what things really take like, oh, going to the post office, that's probably negative 20 minutes. Like, really, you gotta get an envelope, gotta find the right size envelope, you got to pick up the address the person gave you you got to seal it, you got to walk down, there's probably going to be aligned, you know, you're gonna get a coffee after because you did an errand and you need a treat. And then you know, by the time you get back, like how long did that trip to the post office, it takes an hour. And then you have to be like, alright, you have to go to the post office today that costs an hour. Like and then you know, because then you're like, then you're not, you overestimate what you can get done. And then at the end of the day, you feel terrible. You're like, you beat yourself up and you're like, what's wrong with me? And you're like, Yeah, you know?Hannah Choi 17:48Yeah, time blindness is a really big. It can, it can really impact so many aspects of your life like, like actually just running out of time. But then also the your opinion that you have it yourself. Yeah, if you constantly are not estimating the time correctly, then you're just gonna feel like you can't get anything done.Bob Shea 18:12Yeah, yeah. And as a result as a result of doing that. And the medication I don't take on as much. Yeah, ever. Because now when I see so if I'm sitting here, and I go online, or whatever, and I go, Hey, look at little felted animals, looks fun. I could get some felt. And I'm gonna make little, like penguins and foxes. It'll be adorable. I'm a children's book author. I should be doing this whimsical stuff all day. And then you go and you look that stuff up. And you buy felts and you got felting needles and stuff. And then you're like, how am I going to do this? And then the reality hits.Hannah Choi 18:55It's just so funny because my other my other job is I, I teach fiber arts classes with a friend of mine and that's like exactly what we do!Bob Shea 19:07Right? But it looks really fun. I have the needles here. I in my closet, I have the needles. But now I see that and I go Yeah, that'd be fun if you have time because and the only reason I say this because I'm like, Well, what are you going to do the other 20 things I taught myself that. Agreeing to do something means you're saying you're not going to do something else. Right? And I'm talking to the guitar in my corner. Okay?Hannah Choi 19:37Just this morning, I was talking to a client and he, he is an adult who was also recently diagnosed with ADHD. And he was talking about how, like for work he's doing really great like staying on to on on track and not taking on too much. You know, and checking like, Is this realistic? Like if my you know, am I is it realistic to take on another client or whatever. And then and then we were talking about how you also have to kind of do that in your, you know, in the in the fun things. Like you, you, you might want to make the felted animals and play the guitar and you know, be really good at all these things. But if you would you ask you have to ask yourself the same thing you ask yourself with your work, like, is it realistic to take on all of these things? If you if you take on too much, you can't do it all and then you just beat yourself up?Bob Shea 20:29Yeah, that's the thing. I could enjoy none of the things. Yeah. And all it was was another source of tension with my wife, because it's like, my half done projects were all over the place. And she was like, can you just throw this out? Now just bring it to Goodwill, or give it to somebody throw it away? And she was right. But I mean, I was like, I was like, I'm gonna make that it's gonna be great. And that's the other thing too with ADHD, you can't be bad at things. Like if I played guitar, I was like, I'm gonna be really good at it. So I didn't say that with guitar, but with most most things. I'm like, I don't want to just, I don't want to do this half measure. I want to be good at it. It's like, Well, yeah. And again, with the paying attention to how long things take. I'm like, I can't do anything else.Hannah Choi 21:15Yeah, right.Bob Shea 21:16I'm full! Like even with work, I'm like, when are you gonna do all these amazing?Hannah Choi 21:21There's only so many hours in a day. Yeah. And you have to sleep and you have to eat and you have to have some downtime.Bob Shea 21:27Yeah, I belong to a Makerspace in New Haven. And it's good and it's bad, because it's great because I can go there for the day. And I'm like, I'm just doing this and I enjoy it. And I I said to my... I stopped putting up requirements on myself. I'm like, when I go in, you're gonna fail at all the things and not walk out with a wooden, whatever you were making. You're going to walk out with your materials all ruin that you paid for. And just and but I'm like, That's the day that's fine. And the other thing, the other other reason it's bad is because they keep getting new stuff, which Oh, wow, you guys gotta chill. So I could do pottery? Oh, my gosh, I'm looking at slip casting. And what do I need? What do I need to buy for this? Man, I'm like that. So now I'm like, ignore that, don't learn how to use the tablesawHannah Choi 22:23You're getting a lot of practice of saying no.Bob Shea 22:25I am! I'm just ignoring stuff. I'm like, I let me tell you, I hate Pre-Adderall Guy so much, that I'm saying no out of spite. I'm like, you don't deserve to make pottery. Help bring another thing into the house. You. I see you back there. You know, because it's still I'm still the same thing. Like my brain still is seeking those that stimulation to like, it's still dopamine, when I'm like, a new thing to learn. There's a lot of dopamine in that goldmine of dopamine. So passing that up as Adderall makes you say, you've got enough to get by. You don't need to go look for other places, even social media. I'm on social media so much less. I used to be on Twitter all the time.Hannah Choi 23:17So going back to the strategies that you use, how did you develop those? How'd you come up with those?Bob Shea 23:22Even before the Adderall, I was obsessed with time management. Always, always, always, always, unsuccessfully. I remember in the 90s, A long time ago, I went and did a Franklin Planner thing. And I think I kept a Franklin Planner for a while, like for a year, probably about a year and then I had to refill it. And I'm like, fellas, I'm gonna have to do that anymore. But I always remember the sort of the principles and stuff. And I remember now thinking back, like it's not ADHD friendly. Like they're very, it's very, like, it's for people who already have their act together. And it's just a way to clean up their act.Hannah Choi 24:08Those linear thinkersBob Shea 24:09It's so I always thought it's always like, something wrong with me. I thought I always thought it was like a character failing that I had, I was like, Well, you know, I was like, You know what, I always hated sports. When I was growing up, I probably just don't have discipline. And that's a now that's why they always wanted you to do that, so that you could do a boring task that you didn't want to do. And then, so I had an even I was even going back to the makerspace I was designing all these electronics, things that were all about how to remind me to do things. Every one thing, I had a thing where I'm still making this one, and that's not me lying, it's my first project. I was gonna have more successful authors than may record a message to me like, "Hey, how's that book coming you were telling me about?" Yeah, and then randomly during the day, it would announce that whatever I was doing was like, Oh, I was looking at felted animals. Back to work, yeah. I had I have it all sketched out, like, how it works. And the components I need, but everything I did everything I was like, seriously, I was like, I'm going to film, because I didn't know how the day worked. I'm going to film this was an idea of flowers, drying and decaying and falling off the thing. And then I'm going to play it fast during the day over eight hours, so that when I looked up, I go, Oh, the things are starting to fall. That means I have this much time. I was trying to, I was trying to find ways to look at time visually that I'd understand and not like just a clock, which I'm like, that's just the number I don't know. Because you come in in the beginning of the day, and you're like, I have all day. You know, and you're like, well, and then you're like, Well, I'm gonna go get a cup of coffee. I'm gonna go take a walk. And then I'm like, Jesus running out real quick.Hannah Choi 26:06Yeah, like half a day now. Have you heard of the Time timers were like shows a red...like, It's like, it looks like a clock. And yeah. That right there. Do you use it?Bob Shea 26:19Sorry about that noise. That's part of my thing with with the, with the blocks that I draw out the half hour blocks, 25 minutes, because it's the Pomodoro Technique, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Are you if that is the I'll tell you something. The timers are the key to everything. If if I use the timers, the days I'm I'm, I'm diligent about using the timers. That's a good day. If I'm just like, oh, just freestyle it today. It's like it's not a bad day, it still works falls apart a lot easier. Those timers, because it gives you a little deadline. Yep. And you look at that thing. And you're right, like the visual thing for me was huge. And so for that deadline, I go, I tell myself, you can't look at your phone, because you're working. And so then that way I go, Well, there's only 15 minutes, I can not look at my phone for 15 minutes. But if I don't have the time, or it's every three minutes up, pick it up. Yeah, I'm better about it now, but that's how it works. I also blocked Instagram on everything but my laptop so that when I sit down, it's intentional. Like I'm gonna go on Instagram now. Look at messages I do. scroll a little bit. It's boring on your laptop. You're not on the sofa looking at TV and doing it. So I'm out faster. I'm in and out faster. And and then on my devices for work. Like my iPad. No. No social media. Still the news? I still look at the news all the time. But no social media. Yeah. Pinterest is great. I like Pinterest. Yes.Hannah Choi 27:57It is great. My daughter is like slowly racking up a whole bunch of followers. She does bullet journaling. Yeah, she does. She does bullet journal. She has this bullet journal. She's 13 years old. And she's really starting everyday. She's like, Oh, I have like 20 more followers. She's up to 350! Yeah, it's so cool. But she like shares like her that art the art that she did it for the week and how she laid it out. AndBob Shea 28:24Does she get this she get... she's been to like JetPens, right? And she gets all this stuff fromHannah Choi 28:29I don't know what JetPens is. But she's got all the pens. Bob Shea 28:32Sorry, I told you because oh, there's a whole other world of pens you don't know aboutHannah Choi 28:38JetPens, okay, I gotta write that down. Bob Shea 28:39So good. I love I love that stuff. And like pencil cases and like pencil sharpeners that look like pandas. Hannah Choi 28:48And you guys could talk for hours. She's totally into it. Bob Shea 28:52So So I give her a lot of credit, because I couldn't keep up with a bullet journal. My thing is like black ink and then read for like, what I really did, because I'm like, I had to pare it down to a simpler.Hannah Choi 29:04Yeah. Well, I keep a bullet journal too. But mine is also like, super. It's just like, there's nothing fancyBob Shea 29:11Yeah, that's what mine looks like. Yeah. And you have the same you have that kind to Yeah. Yeah, my wife made minus 10 or something.Hannah Choi 29:20Yeah, yeah. IBob Shea 29:20don't know how you say it. I use those a lot for other things. But I don't but I use a different I just use a grid. Very simple one because I go through so many of them.Hannah Choi 29:30Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So keeping systems like that requires some practice. It requires quite a bit of perseverance and quite a bit of, you know, discipline. What motivates you to stick with it?Bob Shea 29:49This I think what, what motivates me to stick with it is that, like I said before, it's not punitive. It's not it's not it's here to help me not make me feel bad. So as I use it things that don't work for me, it was a little more not complicated. There were more, there was more to it when I first started doing it, anything that didn't sort of serve me I got rid of. So now it's like, it's a way to collect my thoughts. It's not a way to to be a taskmaster that you have to do these things. At the end of the day, a lot of times, I'll have gotten made a lot of progress on things, but maybe not even the things I thought I was going to do. And then I'm like, that's still a good day, I made a lot of progress. And I'm proud of what I did. Like, I'm glad that I moved the needle on this project. The other project can wait a day, because I have long deadlines. You know, like, I don't usually I think, like when I was doing graphic design, like maybe I didn't notice it much because it was like That thing's due in two days, like and it would be like in the next week, something else would be due now. It's like months at a time. That's bad for people like me.Hannah Choi 31:01Long term planning is like a whole different set of skills thatBob Shea 31:04I'm still working on that that is like, time makes no sense to me. Three months, like, that's never gonna happen. It's never gonna be here.Hannah Choi 31:14Have you ever watched inside the mind of a master procrastinator with Tim Urban? He, it's a TED Talk that...Bob Shea 31:22Yes, I think so! He has he does his thesis in the last day. That was hilarious. Yeah. So good. Before I knew I had ADHD. Yeah, it's hilarious!Hannah Choi 31:35it's a great, that's such a great example of exactly what you just.Bob Shea 31:41Yeah, yeah. It's like, and it's, I'm not. I so I just turned in a book. A couple of, I'm in the revision process of it now. And I was proud of myself. Because it was only two weeks late, instead of three months, like yeah, I was real- And I'm sure they are, but it was a new art director and I don't think that they were as proud of me as I am.Hannah Choi 32:05You're like, you don't know what this means.Bob Shea 32:08Like, I'm like, checking outside to see if the UPS guys bring in like, you know, a Harry and David box gift basket. Two weeks late, two weeks late, not three months. Like, oh, look, guess who's almost like a normal person?Hannah Choi 32:26That's so great.Bob Shea 32:27I have friends who are like, Yeah, this isn't due till September. So I finished it early, so I could get out some other things. I'm like, What are you talking about? I've never, ever done that. Ever. That's the thing. I had a friend who told me he did that. And then I was telling him about the ADHD. And he's like, maybe I have ADHD. I said, let's take a step back. Yeah. Remember how you told me? You just finished something up? That's not due for three months? No, no, no, no. I'm not a medical professional, but no.Hannah Choi 33:01So funny. What do you think would happen if you turned something in on time?Bob Shea 33:06I might have no, I don't know. I have no idea what that's like, I think that I'm gonna tell you though, I see the I see the benefit of doing that. This sounds so dumb. This sounds like such a, Are you new to being in the world? Like, if I so working alone and making up my own projects and things it's like, it's it's so much more helpful to me to have a system and try to get in on time. Because that frees up time for other things. Not felted animals, other projects that could maybe make money, right? Like there's, I mean, it's a balance with the kids books, because I can't, I can't have people be like, Man, he's cranking these things out once again. You right, you know what I mean? Like, Hannah Choi 33:57Can't be too productive! Bob Shea 33:58Good, right, like, have a side hustle. I can drive for Uber in those two weeks. That's what I could have been doing.Hannah Choi 34:08No, no, Bob. Bob Shea 34:10I don't think that's not a good idea. Hannah Choi 34:11You obviously did something different to get your three week overdue and a three month overdueness down to two week, two weeks overdue. What do you do different?Bob Shea 34:20That was that that's the last piece that I'm working on now. What is the long term plan? I can't I don't understand how time works. I don't get that. You know, I don't get that. Laters not does not a thing. Laters Not a thing. And it's not better than now. Like the way I behave now? Yeah, I'm gonna behave like that tomorrow. Like, I'm like, I can be like, Oh, tomorrow when I wake up, I'm gonna be all put together. You know what I mean? So now this machine that I've made that can kind of not a very fast moving thing. It's it's constantly pressing forward, which is good and not speedy. But so it's only recently that I've acknowledged that the future is going to happen, whether I like it or not. So I start to use. So now I am using a calendar. On my computer, which I don't like to do, I should actually get a physical one. And I'm writing in dates things are due so that I can see them approach. Yeah, that's good. I know that I have something due on August 1. And I'm already obsessed about it not obsessed. But I'm already like, if you don't get started on July 1, you're never going to get that done. I know that that's and I'm like, I can't. Last minute panic. It gets old after 50 years. Yeah.Hannah Choi 35:47Takes the wear and tear on your body. Yeah. What if instead of... what if you put the deadline- So you have the deadline that it's due on August 1? What if on the calendar on July 1, you wrote, like, start the thing?Bob Shea 36:04Yeah, that's, that's what I should do. And I did. I did that. The one that was two weeks late, I put in every day like you are supposed to be working on this thing. I am the worst employee. I just, I That stuff's easy. If I'm like, if it's due in 30 days, I'm like, Well, I can go to MakeHaven today. You know what I mean? Because it's 30, I still got 29 days - work a little harder.Hannah Choi 36:36And I suppose thinking, well, if I just do it all now and I get it done five days before the due date, then I could spend five full days in a row at MakeHaven.Bob Shea 36:46that sounds like a wonderful world that I do. You know, I'll tell you, I have that conversation with myself in a very convincing manner. executing that plan, to a degree where all the steps are taken care of in a in a timely way. And let me tell you something, too. It's not me. It's not me blowing it off. It's, it takes longer than I guess. So even with this thing, even. And then things happen that you don't anticipate. You know, that's the other thingHannah Choi 37:19Yeah. And the unpredictable variables of life,Bob Shea 37:22That and that's even going back to the boxes, and it applies to the month to going back to the boxes. If you write down what really happens. You can look back and go, oh, there's all these things that I didn't know in the morning were going to happen that I had to deal with. And so you don't feel bad. At the end of the day. You're like, well, it wasn't my fault. I wasn't I wasn't like googling what movie was Nicolas Cage in in the 90s was the thing and they switched faces. You know what I mean? You're like, you don't you don't stop to do that. As long as I'm like working and not like, just looking at, you know, woodworking videos. What I like to do - keep that to my personal time.Hannah Choi 38:05Yeah, having some flexibility, like, like, flexibility both in what we do during the day and also like recognizing that, that we cannot be rigid all the time. We cannot. As much as we want to stick to whatever we have planned for that day, it just doesn't. Yeah, definitely gonna happen.Bob Shea 38:25Yeah, it's, it's, it's about being honest with yourself about how you work, and then saying, Look, you work this way. Here's what'll work with that without you beating yourself up because I because I couldn't figure it out. Because I was like, I did all this stuff in my career to get to the point where I'm have autonomy. I can work by myself. I come up with my own projects. Great, great, great. And I'm like, and then you ruin it because you're on stupid Twitter. Why would you do that? You have you? Here's everything that you wanted. And you undermine yourself. It's awful. It wasHannah Choi 39:10How much do you think that had to do with fear? The fear that you weren't going to be do it do it right or fear that it was going to be uncomfortable while you were doing whatever it was.Bob Shea 39:22That's a big part of it because I would - the books - I can't look at books that I did already. From the past. Somebody's using an angle grinder outside. So I can't look at Yeah, so good. It's like, I hope I hope they're making a playground. Something good.Hannah Choi 39:45I never found out what my neighbors were doing.Bob Shea 39:48Right. Hold on. Let me look real quick. Oh, soft serve ice cream. It's gonna be good. Yeah,Hannah Choi 39:55Wait! That's another distraction. Now, I think they're building a brand location of the makerspaceBob Shea 40:02Oh, that's good. Right there. Right? They are. It's they're putting in a table saw. More noise, Great. Yeah, you know, you get so excited for these projects. And in your head, it's perfect. It's the best thing you've ever done. And then you can then you put it down on paper, and there it is going through the filter of your abilities.Hannah Choi 40:25And your own self criticism, I'm sureBob Shea 40:27I can't I was saying before, before they were making the ice cream stand outside, but I can't look at my old books. I can't open them up. People are like, Oh, what was that thing? And I'm like, I'm not going I'm not opening that again. All you see is the things you did wrong. And and in my case, all I see is Yeah, you did that at the last minute, didn't you? Yeah, you're a champ. You're a prince. Look at that, aren't you Like, aren't you professional?Hannah Choi 40:53I'm so curious. I want I kind of want to follow up with you in a couple of years and see, like, if you, like see how your thought processes about your own work have changed? Yeah, I'd be interesting to see that.Bob Shea 41:07I think that I think that I'm managing expectations about that. And as long as I can be comfortable with myself, I'm fine. Like I said, like the overwhelm went away. So I'm not always like, yeah, I sort of can just accept things the way they are and be like, yeah, that's okay. And I'll tell you, that is so huge. Like, it's so huge.Hannah Choi 41:35Yeah. So I'm, I'm doing an episode on procrastination. So would you say you are a procrastinator?Bob Shea 41:46Yep. Yeah, more. So before the Adderall for sure. Yeah, yeah, I still do it. And now when I do it, I can stop if I want to. But also, if I'm doing it, and I know that I'm doing it, I'm like, give yourself a break. You're okay. It's not that big a deal. Because what the other thing is about understanding how you work. So I write this grid during the day, the last couple of hours, like probably from from four to four to six. You're not getting anything done. Like you're not, you get it you get an ice cube of creativity every day, you get like, here's this, you can you have this for like an hour and a half, and then you're not gonna get anything good. Stop. So I know from four to six, I'm like, Alright, clean up your office, which is still a mess from ADHD, I'm still working on that. Clean your office reply to emails, low cognitive load things. Yeah. Because that's the time when I'll be like, looking at Instagram or something. Because I'm, I'm out, I'm out, I'm out of stuff, you know.Hannah Choi 42:53So something that I try to work a lot with my clients on is is exactly that, like noticing, diminishing returns, noticing when your effort is not, is not being effective anymore. And so that's so great that you, you know that about yourself, and you know, what the things that you can do, instead of just messing around, like, you know, you can still do some things, which is going to make you feel better about yourself by the end of the day, like, oh, like, like all these other things that I did? Yeah, I may not have like, written more or drawn more, but I did make my space more usable,Bob Shea 43:30Which is another goal. Like it's one of the things so it's like, yeah, I can I can move piles around for the next hour from one spot to the next. Just which is another thing I can't I bet it. I can't see. I'm clutter-blind as well. Anyway, but uh, but yeah, that's, that's the thing is to just be easy. Go easy on yourself. And if you if you know that you're diligently trying don't like I'm like, yeah, they know. It's all working out. Okay, it's all from everything's for my benefit. So I don't mind it so much.Hannah Choi 44:04Yeah, that's great. And being able to do that self reflection is so important. And, and, and recognizing, like, what your strengths are and what's challenging, and how you can use both of those. Bob Shea 44:17Yeah, a lot of that, too. I mentioned before I'm a big meditator meditation has allowed me to understand my thoughts as they're happening, and to recognize thought patterns and be like, alright, I see what it is you're doing now. And you take your level you're a little distanced from you don't become your thoughts. You're able to like observe them and go, alright, you you don't want to do this. Why not? Yeah. And then think about what else can I do instead? And that lets me shift and then that way I'm not hooked on the well you back off other thought because I'm getting some dopamine from this Instagram and then I'm gonna ride this for a while.Hannah Choi 45:05So how do you? How did you get into meditation? And how do you keep yourself? How do you? How do you keep up with the practice?Bob Shea 45:13I, you know, my, my mother in the 70s was into back when it was a super popular thing. She was into Tm. It's a transcendental meditation because it was like on the Merv Griffin Show. You know,Hannah Choi 45:26I remember people talking about that when I was little.Bob Shea 45:28Yeah, you know, I was like, That guy was on TV all the time. It was super like it was a pop culture thing. And then she would do it, she went to some meditation thing, tried to get us boys to do it, we laughed, and we're like, I'm not doing this. We tried once. You can't make people meditate, you cannot make them do it. But I always remembered that she did you know. And so I think when I was like, in my 20s, I started doing it again, late, my late 20s, I did it. And I did it in a different way. I didn't do TM, but I would just do it with the real. And again, I had to do the ADHD, I'm like, You need to build this muscle of focus. And so I did it that way for a while. And it was fine. It was fine. It was good. I didn't really know what I was getting out of it. And then I started to use the Sam Harris app a couple of years ago. And that's really the thing where he walks you through why you're doing it and how to do it and all this stuff. And that and he's like, he comes at it from a point of view of not like it's a spiritual thing. It's other goes my my cuckoo clock to did let me know that an hour has passed in my head. So I have an understanding of time. I've 10 clocks all around the thing. I'm obsessed with clocks now. It's a good one. Yeah, and I'll let the bird keep talking for a second. There it goes. And that the keeping up on the practice is, all of these things work in tandem, I have to, I can tell when I'm eating poorly, if I'm not exercising, if I'm not doing meditation. Life's worse. Like even with the medication life's worse. So if I try to try to ride my bike in every day, I usually when I you know, and this is more of a habit forming than anything else. Usually what I'll do is when I get in right away, I'll sit and meditate. When I walk in the door, put my stuff down, sit on the cushion. There's on the app, it's a meditation everyday 20 minutes do it and it's over. Like when I wake up when I wake up. I try to write for a while. Then I'll exercise that I might go for a run. I'm in, meditate, set, it all sounds wonderful. It sounds like you have this wonderful thing. It's all it's all tension. It's all motivated by fear. So that's the foundation is fear. So but it all helps me stay focused a little bit.Hannah Choi 47:54Yeah, right. It's a fear of not feeling good, right? I feel a fear of failing, you know, those strategies are to help you be successful.Bob Shea 48:02I can feel better. I feel better. If I get sleep. I have to get enough sleep. And then I just I feel so much better. I'm so much more able to deal with things.Hannah Choi 48:13Yeah, I I really feel that with exercise. Like for me, I really need to exercise if I don't exercise then I tend to really beat myself up a lot. And when I exercise I'm much gentler myself. And I actually just ran a half marathon yesterday I ran the Fairfield half marathon. Yeah. It wasn't my first half marathon but was my first time during the Fairfield one. It was really fun. Two more questions for you. They're not long. What are you excited about?Bob Shea 48:43What am I excited about? Me personally? In the world? Because nothingHannah Choi 48:52Okay, personally? Yeah, I know the world is awful, right? PersonallyBob Shea 48:59I'm excited about my son's graduating high school, he's gonna go to college in the fall. I'm pretty excited about that. I'm, I'm doing I'm - because I do one thing at a time now. I'm doing some I have some good projects at the makerspace that I'm excited about. I'm excited, just even about running and riding my bike. I'm so excited that it's nice outside. It's all very simple things that I do. And I write down gratitude stuff at the end of the day. And it's always the same thing. It's always like my wife, something delicious, and out and my bicycle.Hannah Choi 49:35I have been keeping a gratitude journal for - I'm in my fifth year now. It has, I have to say like I think that has made one of the biggest impacts on my life. Bob Shea 49:39For real? Hannah Choi 49:39Oh, yeah. It's amazing Bob Shea 49:42Do you do it in the evening or in the morning to start your day and set your intention kind of thing.Hannah Choi 49:54Yeah, that's a great question. I do it in the evening and I also sometimes end up doing it in the morning for the previous day, because I forgot to do it. But what I have found, it has helped me so much with negative thinking. And, and I find myself throughout the day going, Oh, that's something I can write about. I automatically think that way now. And it also at the end of if I have like a particularly hard day, it forces me to look back on it in and look for the even if I can be grateful for the challenge of that hard day. I made it through or, or whatever, like my kids made me happy or, you know, something.Bob Shea 50:43This day is over. I'm grateful. Yeah.Hannah Choi 50:47During the pandemic, I often just wrote, "I'm just glad this day is over". Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So that's been a huge thing for me. So I'm glad you're doing it too. Yeah.Bob Shea 50:58That's good. I'll start to - I'm not mindful of things during the day. To to jot down that's a great idea. That's good. That brings it into the whole day.Hannah Choi 51:08Yeah, yeah, it's been really nice. And it's cool too, because the one that I use as a line a day journal, so it's actually got five years on each day. So I can look back on that, that day from the previous and so I'm in my fifth year now. So I can look back on on all of them before and it's really interesting to see that I do tend to be thankful for a lot of the same stuff. And so that makes me feel really good. Like, Oh, those are those are things that I should be doing. Like I do kickboxing, and I'm very often thankful for kickboxing. And, sadly, the place where we do it at is closing. But umBob Shea 51:43Oh, really? Hannah Choi 51:44Yeah. It's a real bummer. But it's it is it's really nice to look back on that. And just, it's like evidence. I just I love looking for evidence. And there's a lot of evidence in that book.Bob Shea 51:56Yeah, yeah.Hannah Choi 51:59All right, one more question. How do people find you even though you're not too much on social media?Bob Shea 52:05On social media, on Instagram, I'm Bob Shea books. And then I do have Bobshea.com. That's my books website. But those are really the two main places the main thing is is Instagram, @BobsheabooksHannah Choi 52:22and on your local children's library bookshelves.Bob Shea 52:25Oh, yeah, exactly. Wherever, from your local independent bookseller. Yeah, just go in and go in and demand my books. And if they don't carry them there, they usually have a display in the center of the store, like new releases or whatever. If they don't have it, just flip that over. Flip it over, run out.Hannah Choi 52:45Well, that's that's how we found you, my kids. When my kids were little, we can't remember how we maybe they had one of your books up on like the, like the top, they put like one of the books up on the top?Bob Shea 52:56And oh, okay. Yeah, good I hope so.Hannah Choi 52:58So every time we found out you had a new book, we are super excited. So thank you for being a part of my children's childhood.Bob Shea 53:04Oh, sure. Thank you.Hannah Choi 53:08All right. Well, thanks again, Bob. This is great. It's really interesting to hear different people's perspectives. And and I'm so glad that you found strategies that are working for you. And I wish you luck on figuring out long term strategy planning, I think that I was thinking about it, like, just the fact that you're very good at doing your daily stuff is probably why you ended up with only being two weeks late and not three months, like, Yeah, I think that daily practice, probably just made you more aware of time and just made you more productive at, you know, the only thing I was, I was wondering, do you work backwards? Like, do you ever do start at the finish? And then figure out like, Okay, well, I know that they want it, like this amount of time ahead of time. And then and then okay, that means it takes me usually takes me about five days to do whatever and then schedule that there. And then it's like, all of that, all of that time blindness that you're conquering, can be so useful, right? Because, you know, you know how long things take now. So then it makes it easier when you're working backwards to budget in time. So yes, yeah, I think take now,Bob Shea 54:25I would I, I know I should. I should do it that way. In fact, I used to use Gantt charts, you know, again, you know those things. So again, a Gantt chart. I, this is my pre ADHD like, I was so obsessed with them. Like I gotta come up with a way that I can do this. Basically, it's a timeline, and then you hang like a string that moves along with for every day. But on that chart, you have the different things that you're different tasks that have to get done, so you can see where you are and whatever tasks and then So But what ends up happening is you just keep moving the task, like the Gantt chart is, so that is a quick visual, like, if you have five things going on where you are and all those five things.Hannah Choi 55:10Yeah, that's cool.Bob Shea 55:12Yeah, no, yeah.Hannah Choi 55:14I recommend looking at how long things take you and trying to, trying to figure out and adding in buffer time and adding in time for all those variables that we can't predict.Bob Shea 55:28I do. I try to add 50% more than my guess. And I'm getting better at it, but not still can't do like I'm never spot on.Hannah Choi 55:40Have you ever read Atomic Habits by James Clear?Bob Shea 55:43I did. I did. That's where I got the sit down and meditate as soon as you come in.Hannah Choi 55:47Yeah. Habits stacking. Yeah, I was meant to. I meant to mention that earlier when you were talking about that. But I like his idea of just 1% better. It obviously adds up over time, like you have you have proof. You have proof that a little bit better does add up over time.Bob Shea 56:05Yeah. And then the other the other thing I do in the book with the boxes, the next day, I look at how I did the day before. And I go Yeah, you know, you kind of were messing around too much at this time. And you know, you went for that walk was longer than you thought. So then that day, I can be like, Yeah, that's what I say. I'm like, I'm going to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday.Hannah Choi 56:27Yeah, that's so great. Oh, you're like a dream client. Oh my gosh.Bob Shea 56:31I'm too introspective. Hannah Choi 56:34Nah. No such thing. Well, thanks so much, Bob. This has been great.Bob Shea 56:39Thank you. That was fun.Hannah Choi 56:43And that's our show for today. I really hope that you had a chuckle and learn something useful from Bob. Or maybe you could just really relate to his story. More and more adults are being diagnosed with ADHD, so this feels like a really relatable and important story to share. Check out the show notes for a link to see some of Bob's time management strategies. And thank you for being here and taking time out of your day to listen. If you are enjoying learning about these important topics we're covering in each episode of Focus Forward, please share it with your friends, and be sure to check out the show notes for this episode. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast at beyondbooksmart.com/podcast. We'll let you know when new episodes drop and you can easily find the resources we share on each topic. Thanks for listening

In today's episode, we're looking at another set of helpful skills - especially for teens and young adults - and those are coping skills. The transition to college or work from high school has its own special set of challenges and practicing some coping skills can really help feel more successful during this time. The executive function skill of emotional regulation, which is also called self-regulation, plays a really big part in coping with challenging situations. Emotional regulation is all about recognizing, managing, and responding to our emotions. I think this is one of the most challenging EF skills for us to learn and also one of the most important because it directly affects all areas of our lives. From the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, emotions influence our…well, everything! And learning to develop our emotional regulation from a young age will have a hugely positive impact on our lives.To learn more about emotional regulation and what coping skills might be particularly useful to teens and young adults, I invited Jackie Wolfman, a therapist in the Boston area, to join me for a conversation about this. Jackie teaches these coping skills to her clients through DBT, which stands for dialectical behavior therapy. I know, it's a mouthful and also something you may not have heard of before. I myself had only seen the acronym but had no idea what it was, so I had to do a little research before my conversation with Jackie. DBT is related to CBT which you may have heard of before. If you haven't, CBT stands for cognitive behavior therapy. In this type of therapy, you learn to recognize negative or unhelpful thought patterns and then challenge them and change them through certain actions, such as facing your fears and increasing your awareness of your behaviors. I'll let Jackie explain more about DBT and how emotional regulation strategies used in this type of therapy are so effective for teaching teens and young adults these coping skills.Here are some helpful resources from our conversation:DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition, by Marsha LinehanAnd Then They Stopped Talking to Me: Making Sense of Middle School by Judith WarnerVillage Psychology - Jackie Wolfman's practiceWhat Is Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents - The YouTube video I watched to learn more about DBT before I talked with JackieContact us!Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.comIG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoachingTranscriptHannah Choi 00:04Hi everyone and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life through working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. In the last episode, I spoke with Nadine Briggs about the connection between social skills and EF skills. We talked about different strategies and tools that kids and parents can use to develop these skills. In today's episode, we're looking at another set of skills that are helpful for kids, especially teens and young adults. And those are coping skills. The transition to college or work from high school has its own special set of challenges and practicing some coping skills can really help feel more successful during this time. The executive functions skill of emotional regulation, which is also called self-regulation plays a really big part in coping with challenging situations. Emotional regulation is all about recognizing, managing and then appropriately responding to our emotions. I think that this is one of the most challenging EF skills for us to learn. And it's also one of the most important because it directly affects all areas of our lives. From the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, emotions influence our...well, everything! And learning to develop our emotional regulation from a young age can have a hugely positive impact on our lives. To learn more about emotional regulation, and what coping skills might be particularly useful, I invited Jackie Wolfman, a therapist in the Boston area to join me for a conversation about this. Jackie teaches these coping skills to her clients through DBT, which stands for dialectical behavior therapy. I know it's a mouthful, and might also be something that you have not heard of before. I myself had only seen the acronym, but I had no idea what it was. So I had to do a little research before my conversation with Jackie, you can check out the show notes for the stuff that I found. DBT is related to CBT, which you may have heard of before. And if you haven't, CBT stands for cognitive behavior therapy. And in this type of therapy, you learn to recognize certain negative or unhelpful thought patterns, and then challenge them and change them through certain actions, such as facing your fears, and increasing your awareness of your behaviors. I'll let Jackie explain more about DBT and how emotional regulation strategies used in this type of therapy are so effective for teaching teens and young adults these coping skills. Okay, now on to the show. Hi, Jackie, thanks for joining me today. And there's your dog! (dog barking in background)Jackie Wolfman 02:57Right on cue! Thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here to talk with you.Hannah Choi 03:03Yeah. Do you want to introduce yourself to our listeners a little bit?Jackie Wolfman 03:07Sure. So my name is Jackie Wolfman. I'm a clinical psychologist. And I've really focused my career on helping both college students and young adults in their early adulthood who might be struggling with anxiety, trauma, impulsivity, relationship difficulties, a whole host of things. And so, more recently, I founded a mental health private practice called Village Psychology that's dedicated to providing evidence based therapy groups, workshops and other programs to help college students and young adults really find relief from suffering and, you know, hopefully begin to create lives that they're truly excited about and really love. So, I spent 10 years in New York training and doing my education there. And then I moved to Boston about 10 years ago now, to do a postdoc in dialectical behavior therapy at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. So that's where I got really the bulk of my DBT training, which I can talk about later. I'm certified, I'm a certified DBT clinician by the DBT Linehan Board of Certification. And I have a background in the arts. So I really like to think of myself as someone who tries to combine, you know, creativity and innovation and, you know, a strong grounding in science and evidence based practice to develop these programs, you know, to work with young people. Hannah Choi 04:42Oh, that's wonderful. I love that. Can you explain to our listeners what DBT is?Jackie Wolfman 04:45Absolutely. So DBT stands for dialectical behavior therapy. It is a form of CBT cognitive behavioral therapy that includes a focus on individual therapy, on-call skills coaching, and also skills training groups, so groups where people are learning to develop coping skills in different areas. Hannah Choi 05:12So dialectical, that's not a word that you hear every day. Can you tell me a little bit about what it means and why it might be important? Jackie Wolfman 05:19Sure. So it's definitely important, it's the name of the therapy. And a dialectic really refers to this idea that we can have two things that seem like opposites, and they can both be true at the same time. So some different examples could be I am tough, and I am gentle. Or I like school and I don't like school. Right? And so, dialectics is important for a lot of reasons. One is that it really helps us get away from all or nothing thinking. So all or nothing thinking is either, you know, something like, I got an A on this test, or I'm a total failure, right? That would be all or nothing, or either you're my best friend, or you're my enemy. Right. And so when we get stuck in these all or nothing types of thought patterns, dialectics dialectics can help us find balance and move out of that. So maybe instead of, you know, either I get an A, or I'm a failure, it's something like, you know, that test was really hard for me, and I'm going to study in a different way next time, or I'm disappointed with how that went. And I can ask for help to see what I can do differently, right. So helping us find that middle ground, so that we're not stuck in these all or nothing types of ways of seeing ourselves or other people or even the world.Hannah Choi 06:51Something that has just been trending for me lately is this idea of identity and who we are. And so I imagine dialectical thinking is helpful in, in figuring out who our identity is, and how I imagine, like, you can say, like, like I did poorly on that test, and I'm still a good student, or whatever.Jackie Wolfman 07:15Absolutely, yeah, It really can inform how you talk to yourself about yourself, right? And then how you view yourself, and what different things mean to you that I can see this as a, you know, I did poorly on the test, or I didn't study as much as I could have is a problem that can be solved, right, that can be addressed. And you can also hold in your mind, like you're saying this idea that I'm still a good student, right. And I'm still smart. And I'm still curious and passionate about what I care about. So it's not just one or the other.Hannah Choi 07:48Who's a good candidate for DBT? Jackie Wolfman 07:50Yeah, so people come to DBT, to work on a range of difficulties, it was initially developed to work with people who are really at high risk of hurting themselves and having difficulties in a number of different areas. And since it's been expanded to apply to many different types of problems. But I would say a common factor in terms of people who come to DBT treatment and really benefit from it, or is some sort of difficulty with regulating their emotions. So that might look like anxiety, depression, it could be rapid mood changes, it could be feeling num or empty, impulsive behaviors, or really any combination of those.Hannah Choi 08:34Would you say there's, like I hadn't, I hadn't really heard of it. I mean, I'd seen the acronym. And I know about CBT. But I hadn't really didn't, I had to do a little research to learn about it myself, you find that people are, is there? Is there more awareness about it now? And also, is there a stigma about it if it used to be used for people who are at risk of hurting themselves, but now it could be for anybody really?Jackie Wolfman 09:03Yeah, I think there is increasing awareness about dialectical behavior therapy, and certainly has, you know, been considered really the gold standard for people who do have high risk behaviors, whether that's, you know, suicidal thoughts or self harm or other types of risky behaviors. And so sometimes people do have that question - "Is this really for me?" because I don't fit into that category. And so I think it just requires more education to tell people yes, it might be, you know, let's look at what the what the therapy offers and what you're looking for help with. And, you know, see if this if this makes sense, because, like you said, I mean, these are skills that I think pretty much we all could use. I mean, I use them all the time and continue to practice them. So it's not necessarily for everyone, but it really can benefit a wide range of people I think. Hannah Choi 09:58Yeah. So if you are if you are listening and you don't feel like you fall into the category of that, there are still lots of, what I'm getting is there are still a lot of coping skills and strategies that you might learn in DBT that can help. So it sounds like DBT is from the research that the reading that I did about it, and I watched a YouTube video, which was really helpful as well. Yeah. It sounds like it's very holistic, like it, it includes the families, the person who's the person who is at the highest risk the and their families. And then I love how the skills groups are involved. And then also, the skills practice and how, how available, you as the therapist are to the person who's in therapy, so that they can make sure that they are completely supported when they're trying to learn these new coping skills. Jackie Wolfman 10:56Yeah, so the, I think your you know, part of what you're talking about is what we call skills coaching, where your individual, usually your individual therapist, sometimes it could be the group therapist, but your therapist is available to you in between sessions for short, coaching calls. And this is because it's really one thing to learn the skills in the group. And that's terrific, but it's a whole nother thing to be able to apply them in the moment that you need it. And so sometimes that's during a therapy session, but most of our lives, were not in our therapy sessions, that might be for one hour a week at most, potentially. And so that's what the skills coaching is for that you can contact your therapist, you can say, "This is the problem I'm having, these are the emotions I'm feeling. This is my goal. This is what I've already tried." Usually, your therapist prompts you to answer these questions, of course, and what what else can I do, you know, help me figure out how to use these skills now when I really need it. And I just find that that really goes such a long way in terms of people's ability to use it and start to use them eventually more independently. So they don't necessarily need to call their therapist, but at first, it really makes just a world of difference and being able to apply the skills in the time that that you really need it.Hannah Choi 12:09So I imagine developing a really strong trust between your client and your therapy, the client and the therapist is really important, so that they feel comfortable reaching out because they I mean, I imagine they might feel like they're interrupting you.Jackie Wolfman 12:23Absolutely. So some people will say that, you know, oh, you know, isn't it hard to be on-call because people are calling you all the time. And actually, what I find is exactly what you're saying that actually people don't want to interrupt my life. They don't want to bother me, they don't know if it's worth it or you know, things like that. And so really, I have to help people encourage them to, to reach out. And you're absolutely right, the relationship between the therapist and the client is the most important thing in terms of really any therapy being successful, I think, because that's the foundation upon which you can do all the other work. Hannah Choi 12:56Yeah, I mean, we find the same thing with with executive function skills coaching. And we also do the same thing - we check in with our clients during the week. And I always encourage my clients to reach out like if you're struggling and you are like not sure what to do in a situation where you're trying to, I don't know, plan for the week or something, reach out! But you're right, people don't do it very often. So hopefully, anyone's listening, I hope they reach out to their therapist or reach out to their coaches now.Jackie Wolfman 13:22That's one of the skills to learn in practice really, is to be able to ask for help. Hannah Choi 13:28Yeah, I mean, even Yeah, that's definitely something that I've been working on and, and doing this podcast has actually been part of that, you know, like, have, I've had to ask for a lot of help. I've had to ask people to explain things that I don't understand. And it's, it's a scary thing to put yourself out there. But you can learn so much and grow so much. Jackie Wolfman 13:49Oh, absolutely. Hannah Choi 13:50That's great. So you said you work, um you do group? Like group? What do you call them group? Is it group therapy or group sessions?Jackie Wolfman 14:03You know, I do call it group therapy, because it is group therapy. But I also explained to people that a DBT group is in a lot of ways a little a little bit more like a class than other types of group therapy. So we there's different types of group therapy. And that can be benefit beneficial in different ways, you know, for different people at different times. But these groups that would the DBT skills, training groups, it really does, in some ways feel a little bit more like a class because there is a workbook, there's a curriculum on teaching a different skill each week, there's homework practice. So it's not an open ended discussion group, although there are many opportunities to connect and share with other group members. But it's much more structured.Hannah Choi 14:45And so do you. You offer these groups for young adults, right?Jackie Wolfman 14:53Yes, so I never know what to call, you know what young adult means? Because to some people that's too In other words, it's older so. So I have I have groups that are specifically for college students, which tend to be traditional college age, maybe 18 to 22. Ish. And then I also have separate groups, which I do call the young adult groups, but those are ages typically 22 to 30. Ish. I have both.Hannah Choi 15:18Yeah. Oh, that's great. And so what if? And I imagine there's also DBT, for kids who are in high school?Jackie Wolfman 15:26Yeah, absolutely. And I've done that as well. Yeah.Hannah Choi 15:30So speaking of kids who are in high school, I have a client right now who is graduating, and he's going to be going to college in the fall. And so it makes me think about what kids can do to kind of get ready for, for being a grown up. And, and and the differences that they're going to encounter when they get to school, and they're going to be away from their regular environment. Do you, do you ever work with kids prior to college?Jackie Wolfman 16:01I do. And in fact, I'm working on developing a more specific program for sort of like the pre-college prep, but from the mental health and wellness perspective, and to help people kind of identify what are the skills that they need to learn in practice before starting college.Hannah Choi 16:25Yeah, so what are they? What should people work on?Jackie Wolfman 16:30Yeah. So there's four main categories of skills that we cover in DBT. And I think those map on really well to some of the skills that are needed for college. So the core skill is mindfulness. And one of my favorite quotes about mindfulness is that it sounds simple. And it is, but it's not easy. So when I'm talking about mindfulness, I'm really talking about two things, your ability to focus your mind where you want it to go. Instead of, you know, feeling like you have no control over that. And also increasing awareness, both of what's going on around you, but really, also what's happening internally, your own thoughts and your own feelings. And so a mindfulness practice can be again, super simple, like for the next 30 to 60 seconds, notice whatever sounds you notice, it's a very simple practice. And if we start to do that, usually what we notice is it's not easy, it's really hard, right? I start thinking about when I'm going to have for lunch or a conversation I had yesterday, or all the things on my to do list, right to just kind of bring myself to the moment and focus on those sounds. It takes a lot of practice. And so I think it has a lot of applications for everyone, but in particular for college students, because they have so much going on, to be able to focus where you need to focus is a real challenge. And being able to identify what you're feeling in the moment has so many benefits for being able to figure out what else you need. Hannah Choi 18:02Yeah, and what's so interesting, like, if you look at sort of the brain science behind mindfulness and awareness of how we are feeling is the executive function skill of metacognition, and like, how can you like, can you figure out what you're feeling? And can you figure out like, why you do what you do and why you don't do what you do? And so that seems, and it's also the last executive function skill to develop, and the trajectory of the development of that. And so that's interesting, because that's about the time when people start to get better at that. So that's good timing. If you think about it from like, a brain science side of it.Jackie Wolfman 18:42Yeah. And I think it's something we can continue to develop our whole lives.Hannah Choi 18:46Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, especially with how busy and pulled and how, in many directions people are being able to. Yeah, recognize how you're feeling and, and like you said, the attention piece of it is, so this can be so challenging when there's so much going on. Great. So what's the next the next core skill?Jackie Wolfman 19:10Yeah, so the next core core skill has to do with relationships. So in DBT, we call this interpersonal effectiveness. So really having strategies for maintaining relationships, while also being able to ask for what you need, whether that's asking for help, and saying no turning down a request and keeping your self respect. So being able to balance maintaining relationships with these two other factors of asking for what you need, and also saying no, are very important you can imagine for a college student.Hannah Choi 19:47Yeah. Wow. I hadn't thought about that, like asking you for what you need and also saying no, because in a way that's asking for what you need. Jackie Wolfman 19:56Yes, absolutely. So being able to identify and understand your own limits. And taking the risk to set them can be very hard to practice, especially we don't want to make people upset, or we're afraid people won't like us, or we just don't have practice doing that. But we've so many demands of college students, it can be really, really helpful to be able to say, You know what, I have all these things on my plate right now, I'm not going to take on this other thing, or to be able to say, you know, what, what you're asking you to do actually crosses my values. So I'm going to decline.Hannah Choi 20:32But you're saying reminds me of something I read in a book once? I think it was And Then They Stopped Talking to Me by Judith Warner. Oh, don't quote me on that. But anyway, if it is that book, she writes about how important it is for kids to check in with how they feel after they hang out with someone. Jackie Wolfman 20:52Yeah, I love that. Because I think so much of our focus can be on does the other person like me? How am I coming across, right? And we all might feel that way at times or a lot of the time. But they'd be able to kind of switch that narrative and ask, well, actually, how do I feel around this person? And is this someone I want to be spending time with? is really, really important to be able to, again, it's that mindfulness piece, I think of checking in with yourself and seeing how do I feel? What is my reaction? Hannah Choi 21:19Yeah, and checking in with you, and figuring that out, might give you the confidence that you need to say to the person No, I'm not comfortable doing this or asking for what you need. Great! So what's next? So excited? Jackie Wolfman 21:35Yeah. So next, we have emotion regulation. So emotion regulation has a lot to do with being able to identify emotions, and really understand what in the world they're doing there and what they're doing for you. So like, what is the function? What is the purpose? What good are emotions? So having some understanding of that, and then having some tools to change the emotion when that's your goal. So obviously, that's not always going to be the goal, there's often times where it's very useful to sit with your feelings, tolerate them experience them, but there are times where you do want to change the intensity of what you're feeling, or how long that it's lasting. And so this is also a very important skill for college students, when who might get very overwhelmed by exam week, or things going on socially, or, you know, conflict with family or whatever it might be dealing with a pandemic, right? There's just so many, so many things, affecting people every day. So having some tools to feel like, okay, you know, I'm feeling overwhelmed. And I know some things that I can do to bring the intensity down. It can also apply to feeling numb or empty, right? If someone's feeling that lack of feeling or experiencing a lack of feeling, what can I do to get myself back into experiencing my, my emotions?Hannah Choi 23:01What strategies are do people find most useful for both of those situations?Jackie Wolfman 23:06Yeah, well, there's a really cool strategy in DBT, called opposite action. And basically, what that means is you identify what you're feeling, the feeling that you want to change, you identify what is the action urge, meaning, what is this emotion telling me to do? Right? Am I feeling angry? And I feel like yelling and screaming, am I feeling sad, and I want to climb in bed and pull the covers up over my head? What is the urge, and then you identify the opposite. And then you do that. And you're like, wow, so if I want to reduce feeling sad in the moment, and my urges to, you know, pull the covers over my head, if my goal is to change the feeling. If the goal is not to change my feeling, then, you know, go to bed and pull the covers over my head, there's a time and a place for that. But if my goal is to change the feeling that I would do the opposite, I would get active, I would be around other people, right? I would go for a brisk walk something like that. And that can really change how you're feeling. Hannah Choi 24:06I love that. And, gosh, I wish I had learned all these things when I remember being in college. And I think a lot of these strategies would have been really helpful. Jackie Wolfman 24:15No, I think that all the time. It would have been really nice to have some of these tools.Hannah Choi 24:19Okay, and then that was three. So what's the fourth?Jackie Wolfman 24:23So the fourth is called distress tolerance. And what this means is having skills for crisis or just really challenging situations where you can't fix it, or at least you can't solve it right away. But you don't want to do something to make it worse, right? Like we've all been in that situation where it's a tough situation, challenging situation and then you know, I go ahead and do something that just makes it all worse for myself. And so these are kind of what you think of usually what comes to mind when you think of like traditional coping skills like maybe distraction, maybe self soothing yourself in the moment because you can't solve it in that moment. But you can prevent yourself from doing something impulsive or risky or just, you know, not helpful, that sometimes, you know, we have those urges and those difficult moments because we want to fix it, or we don't want to feel that way anymore. So these are tools that can really help us to get through and even do well, in the most challenging situations.Hannah Choi 25:24So for kids who are going off to college, or who are kids who are in college, or anybody, really any adults, if they're listening, if if you don't have access to DBT, and you but you want to benefit from some of the strategies that are used in DBT, are there resources or ways to access that information that that people can find?Jackie Wolfman 25:52 Yes, absolutely. So anyone can get the workbook it's, it's has both handouts that you can read through and then it has worksheets, so that gives you assignments, basically, of how to go and practice some of these skills. So and there's a lot of information online as well. And there are some free resources, I can send you some of that information, if you want to put it in the notes for people, but there's some nice resources for parents as well, to be able to get support around some of these skills so that they can kind of identify them and help their children to learn and practice them, as well.Hannah Choi 26:32And would you say there's like an optimal age to start this kind of stuff?Jackie Wolfman 26:38It's such an interesting question, because now there's DBT-C, which is for children. Right? So. So there's any age, I think, can benefit from these skills? I've certainly mostly, you know, most worked often with adolescents, you know, starting as young as 13, 14. On up, but I know there's lots of people doing good work with, with kids even younger.Hannah Choi 27:04So, what can parents do, like in addition to those resources, what can parents do to support their kids?Jackie Wolfman 27:12Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing parents can do is, well, there's three things that parents can do, there's probably more but I would say parents can model, they can validate, and they can reinforce. So in terms of modeling, what I mean is parents can learn and practice some of these skills themselves. Because that will demonstrate to their children how to how to use some of these skills. And children learn from watching what their parents do when they're feeling strong emotions or having a difficult time. So I think that's a huge benefit. If you're learning and practicing these skills yourself, your children will benefit from that. The second skill for parents that I think is really, really core, to supporting college student high school students, and then who be them become college students is to learn and practice validation. So often, when children are younger parents are major problem solvers, right? They come in, they help their kids, they solve their problems for them to a large degree. But as kids get older, parents have less of a role in terms of problem solving, which can be a hard transition for parents. But it's an important one as their children get older and get more independent are going to be solving more problems on their own or with the help of others. So validation, is still something that parents can do. So reflecting back the emotions, or experiences or perspective of their child, communicating how their emotions and experience makes sense, and really providing that kind of warm, compassionate ear. While doing that they can say, you know, would you like some suggestions? Would you like some help with this? And if they say yes, offer them, but I think a lot of parents have had the experience of trying to jump in and, and solve the problem with some merit, very, some maybe very good ideas, but then their child is like "Naw, won't work, that don't work that well, you know, I don't want your help". Right. So I think validation is really, really, really important.Hannah Choi 29:23That's a that's a like a when, when we're working with a client who's new to coaching. We always ask first, like, Would you like, Would you like some ideas for this? And I think yeah, if someone says no, then they're not going to be receptive to it. If they say yes, then they're going to be receptive. And but if you don't ask, you don't know what you're gonna get, and you might end up ruining the relationship. Well, you're not ruining it. Jackie Wolfman 29:50But yeah, it becomes more challenging. You want to you want to kind of have that collaboration, that you're working on something together.Hannah Choi 29:59And it's hard as pair aren't too, cuz of course, we just want to fix everything for our kids. But it's it's got, especially when they're older, that's got to be up to them to be a part of it if they're if... I imagine that it is more effective if the child is like, "Yes, I want your help."Jackie Wolfman 30:18Yeah, I think so. I mean, it makes so much sense. I mean, nobody wants to see their child suffering and in pain, and if there's something they can do to help solve it, you want to do it. And so sometimes I remind parents that validation is doing something, right? You're helping your child understand their experience, realize what makes sense about it. And then support them and figuring out what to do next.Hannah Choi 30:42What are some good questions that parents can ask in a situation where the child is really having a hard time? Jackie Wolfman 30:50Hmmm..."Tell me more about that." "It sounds like you're feeling blank. Is that right?" Right. So checking in with them. And I think, I think it's a good indication that you're being validating. If you get more information, right, if they're talking more, that's often a sign that they're feeling understood. So I think the simple questions are sometimes the most effective.Hannah Choi 31:21What you, one thing that you said, when you said, I think you're feeling this? Is that right? Reminds me of what previous guests of mine Sherry Fleydervish said, she said, "It's okay to be wrong. You know, it's okay to guess your child's feeling and be wrong". Because that can actually that can help them, figure it, help them figure out what they are feeling. And figuring out our feelings is a really big part of of that emotional regulation and awareness,Jackie Wolfman 31:49I completely agree, I can help them figure out what they're feeling. And also, it's the effort that matters, right? If I'm validating someone else, I don't have to get it right 100% of the time, but usually the other person, or at least when someone's validating me, I appreciate that they're trying. And if I say, you know, that's not quite it, and they say, Okay, it's all good, right? If they say, No, you are feeling what I think you're feeling, then it doesn't usually go that that great. But, you know, if you continue to roll with it, then then you know, I appreciate when someone's trying, they don't have to get it perfectly.Hannah Choi 32:23Yeah, so if you're the person who's validating someone else, you have to be okay with possibly being wrong. Exactly. Yeah. And then, and then allowing yourself to be wrong in that moment, and letting them tell you, hopefully, they'll tell you what they are feeling.Jackie Wolfman 32:37Exactly right. And then going with that. And even as a therapist, I do this, right. So I might, I might have missed the mark on something and then I and then I'll say, oh, okay, you know, help me understand what did I miss? And go from there?Hannah Choi 32:50Yeah, and it really helps them figure it out, I'm sure. Cool. And what's the third thing?Jackie Wolfman 32:57So, reinforce, so this means catching your child doing something effective, and pointing it out? Right. So in whatever way you think if you know your, you know, your child, they would respond to so noticing them using a skill, a coping skill, and maybe mentioning that, like I noticed, when you had an argument with your friend, you really took some time to think about what you were going to say before you texted them back back. And I you know, I really think that helped you communicate your point of view more clearly, right? Something like, you know, can be very simple. But to be able to notice them using a skill and then support that either by pointing it out by to being specific about what you think the benefit was. Maybe just gently noticing it, right? So anything like that, where you're you're focusing on drawing out those positive coping skills can be very supportive. Hannah Choi 33:54And that's very cool. So I imagine that in DBT, the parent portion of it is maybe bigger than in other in other types of therapy. Am I right?Jackie Wolfman 34:08Yes, especially with adolescents. So there are some DBT groups where you have adolescents in their own group and parents in their own group. And there are other groups where the adolescents and their parents are together and what we call multifamily groups. So you have multiple families in the same group, and everyone is learning and practicing the skills together. So it really reinforces this idea that this is not just for the student. This is also for the parents to be learning and practicing these skills as well and really working together. There also can be DBT parent guidance where parents or caregivers are meeting with a DBT therapists themselves to get help and coaching on how to use the skills with their children. So it does tend to be a big part of the treatment especially with younger folks.Hannah Choi 35:02And I imagine that if a if a child is at high risk than their parents are probably going to want to be involved. Jackie Wolfman 35:12Yes, yes. Yeah, it's absolutely important.Hannah Choi 35:17Yeah, we even see that in coaching kids, we have coaching coordinators, which are the family connection. So that the coach works with the client. And then the coaching coordinator works with the families and answers any questions that they have. And yeah, it's not like full on coaching sessions, but they're available to help, you know, parents understand the process of change, and you know, why their child might be resisting, or you know, just how the coach is approaching?Jackie Wolfman 35:48Yeah, that's so important, because I think how parents understand their child's behavior really informs how they respond to their child, and just having a different understanding of what might be going on might really make a big change. And I think I've seen a lot of parents really appreciate that to be able to, you know, be given some different perspective on what's going on.Hannah Choi 36:09Yeah, especially when you as the parent can't relate to the child's behaviors, their just approach to life. Like if you're really different from them, yeah, it's nice to have to feel like you're being supported as well. So you can really support your child. Jackie Wolfman 36:23Yeah, yeah, I see that a lot as well.Hannah Choi 36:26Great. So speaking of executive function, would you would you say do you see? I mean, we know the research shows that there is a connection between executive function skills challenges and Melton mental health. Do you see? How does that show up in your practice?Jackie Wolfman 36:45I see it in my practice, because I see people come to work with me, because they're having difficulty with their emotions, or trouble in relationships, or other types of behaviors that they want to work on, that have been getting in their way. And then it comes to light, but they may also have ADHD, or that they're having a hard time organizing themselves. And that's part of what's maybe increasing their anxiety about their classes, or, you know, being able to maintain an internship. And so there's just and there's also a lot of overlap, I think, between things that you can see with executive functioning difficulties and some different mental health diagnoses. So you know, difficulty focusing cognitive difficulties, impulsivity. And so some of the skills that were initially maybe developed to help people with their moods or their emotions can also really help people who are having these types of executive functioning difficulties too, because a lot of the there's just so much overlap there. But I think the emphasis that we have in DBT on emotions can be very helpful, because when emotions are high, we all know, it's much more difficult to think clearly. And we think very differently, emotions are lower. And so having those tools to reduce the intensity of what you're feeling, understand it not feel like you're crazy for having these reactions can then help you think more clearly, and, you know, execute some of those skills much more effectively than when emotions are high and running the show.Hannah Choi 38:27I just, I just recently sat down with Peg Dawson, the author of Smart but Scattered and, yeah, it was great. And she and she said something in her book, which really, really resonated with me and, and she said it, once you know the executive function skills, areas that you struggle with, if you notice that you are really struggling with them, and those things are really giving you a hard time, it's, it's a sign that you need to stop and pay attention to what's going on. And maybe you have too much on your plate, or maybe there's like a larger thing that needs to be addressed. And I just loved that, that advice and I use it for myself all the time. Like I have a terrible memory as the listeners now I've talked about this before and I noticed when I'm when I'm extra forgetful, I know that it means that I just have too much going on and I need to do something I need to do something needs to change.Jackie Wolfman 39:22I love that this idea that that it's telling you something important that you need to pay attention to. And I think emotions act in a similar way, right? Like what is this emotion telling me what is what is? What is it signaling to me about myself or the situation that I'm in? And then we know that can help figure out what to do from there. Hannah Choi 39:42Yeah, there's so much so much evidence and information and in our behaviors and are, how we feel. Yeah, I love it. I really approach my coaching that way. Like I love to ask "why?", like, let's really ask why. And you can ask why and get one answer and then you can ask why again for the whatever answer that was, and then you kind of really get down to the, the base of it. Like what's really, really, really going on? It reminds me of my parents used to call me the "why bird" when I was little because I asked why all the time? Practicing. Practicing for now. Jackie Wolfman 40:19Yeah, being curious. Hannah Choi 40:20Yeah, being curious is so it's such a, it can be a difficult thing to do because sometimes you don't like the answer you come up with. But it's so informative and just can really change your life. Yeah. So yeah. So you have anything else that you want to share, anything else that you think our listeners would, would benefit from?Jackie Wolfman 40:46I think one thing is that if you're going to be starting practicing some of these skills, to start with what feels easiest, start with something that you're drawn to. It doesn't have to be the biggest, most difficult thing that you can tackle at first. And like we said earlier, it's okay to make mistakes. And it's not always going to be easy. So I think, you know, that's something that's important to communicate. And, and really, just to having that respect for your own emotions and feelings and noticing if you're someone who judges yourself a lot for how you feel that that is also going to be an important thing to work on to really try to get back to that validation. Even that self validation of what is this I'm feeling and how does it actually make sense? Even when I feel like I don't like?Hannah Choi 41:37Yeah, it was it Walt Whitman, who said, Be curious, without judgment or something like, I'm sure whoever it was much more eloquent than that. But yeah, that's great. That's great advice. I guess, if you're just trying to change, do anything new, it's good to start with something that is small and feels like something that you're interested in that I don't think any change has ever been made by chewing, biting off the biggest piece and, and trying to make it happen. Yeah. All in all at once. That's great. And do you have anything going on that you're excited about?Jackie Wolfman 42:14I do. So next summer, we're going to be starting the pre-college, mental health prep. And then also coming up this fall, in addition to the DBT groups, I'm developing groups for those same age group range, so the college students and then the young adults up to age 30, groups for anxiety, and then a group for trauma. So I'm really excited to add those groups to what we're doing. Because I really believe in group therapy. And that experience is being so helpful for people and just really adding that extra support, in addition to you know, maybe their individual therapy that they have every week. Hannah Choi 42:54Have you noticed any change? I mean, you've been you've been in the business for a while now, have you noticed any change over the years with people's openness to therapy and talking about therapy?Jackie Wolfman 43:07I have, I think people have become more open to talking about therapy and willing to share that they're in therapy with other people. And I think even you know, maybe in part because of the pandemic, and how pervasive the difficulties with isolation have been for so many of us that it's it feels a little bit less stigmatized to ask for help around these things, because we just see so many people around us struggling in different ways. So, you know, it's it's possible that that has been helpful in that sense in terms of maybe reducing some stigma around it.Hannah Choi 43:48Have, do you notice a difference in the kids who are in your groups today post pandemic as compared to the kids that were in your groups before?Jackie Wolfman 43:57I think I think that just the real emphasis on feeling isolated, or feeling like things aren't going according to plan. Because they're not that you know, none of us expected this or planned for this or wanted this. So those are kinds of the themes that come up now that weren't as, that did come up before but weren't as strong before, that there was sort of this expectation of go to college I would spend a certain amount of time there. I would have my full senior year. I get to be with my friends right. And now there's just a such a uncertainty about the present and the future that is really hard to manage.Hannah Choi 44:40I was just want thinking like I wonder if maybe it maybe you've noticed this but I wonder if there's so this going through the pandemic is this collective shared experience that we've all had, and it is a form of trauma, right? Because it's like this small repeated exposure to difficult things over and over and over. And and I wonder if groups, people within groups therapy groups feel closer than they did before the pandemic? Because everyone's gone through the shared experience. I mean, I don't know if there's any way to measure that. But would you say?Jackie Wolfman 45:16I don't know. But anecdotally, I would agree, because I think it can be very validating to be in a space with people who have gone through similar things, which is what I hear a lot about the college groups that people really like, being in a group with other college students because of that shared experience. And because you're seeing that you're not alone with some of the things that you're struggling with. And if there's other people who are similar to you, in some ways, who might also be struggling. And so I think having that shared experience can be very validating, and comforting. And I do see people more seeking out groups, because they're looking for that connection with other people. Hannah Choi 45:54Yeah, right, right. And how wonderful is that they get the they get the social connection, and they get the side benefit of, or the side benefit of the social connection and the skills, the skills that they're learning with them. 46:05Yeah, I think they're equally important, I really do being able to connect with other people and, and differentiate, you know, where we're different and where we're similar and have those types of conversations. There's not always a ton of spaces where we can do that. So it's really fun, actually, to be able to provide that. Because it's very helpful and supportive and exciting when you see people using skills. And then it's not just me as a therapist who's encouraging them. But you they start to encourage each other and rely on each other for, you know, being more skillful using more of these tools. And it's just, it's really fun to see that develop.Hannah Choi 46:42And Jackie, can you share with our listeners where they can find you and more about your work?Jackie Wolfman 46:48Absolutely. So they can go to the Village Psychology website, which is villagepsych.com. So it's village p-s-y-c-h.com. And you'll find a lot of more information about the groups that we offer, my background and also ways to get in touch. Hannah Choi 47:05All right. Well, thanks so much, Jackie. I'm so glad you were here today. And you shared everything with us. This has been really, really fascinating and really interesting. I'd love to have you back to talk about more.Jackie Wolfman 47:16Thanks so much for having me. I'd love to come back.Hannah Choi 47:20And that's our show for today. I really hope that you found something useful in my conversation with Jackie, thank you so much for being here and taking time out of your day to listen. Jackie is about to have her first baby so we send her all the best wishes from Beyond BookSmart. If you are enjoying learning about these important topics we're covering in each episode of Focus Forward, please share our podcasts and be sure to check out the show notes for this episode on our website. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast at beyond booksmart.com/podcast. We'll let you know when new episodes drop and you can easily find the resources we share on each topic. Thanks for listening

Transcription:Intro  00:03Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too.  Join us with your lively host, Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Patrick Reynolds  00:11Good morning, everybody, and welcome to changing the rules and we have an incredible guest with us today. But before we let him on the air, I want to give you a little background, you know, we try every week to interview one of the luckiest people in the world. And the luckiest people in the world are those people who don't let everybody else control their lives, they figure out what they want, and they somehow figure a way to go do it. And you're gonna see how our guest meets those specs today. And the other thing I wanted to comment on is the name of our show is changing the rules. And the reason for that is all through our lives were given rules by everybody. Okay? When you start, your parents give you a set of rules. And then the schools give you a set of rules, and the Church gives you a set of rules and your boss gives you a set of rules. Before you know it, you got so many rules. And What rules do is two things. They tell you have to do this, or you can't do this. So the people who are independent and who become the luckiest people in the world have found a great way of changing the rules so that they get the freedom to be themselves. And today we have with us a young man, Patrick Reynolds, who is I think the best way to describe him is a historical cartoonist. So Patrick, say hello. And you can tell me that I was wrong and how he described you.  Oh, hello, Ray.  That's kind of accurate. I have a cartoonist that does historical subjects of places or people that you've never heard of. Or if you're familiar with them, something about them that's never known.Ray Loewe02:01So you found the interesting way of doing things. So you weren't always free to be you though. Warrior. Correct. So let's go back a little bit. When you are early in your life, you realize you had this flair for cartooning? Is that correct? Right. When I was a kid, and you developed it and when you had a chance to go to college or trade school, or whatever it is. You went to learn how to be a better cartoonist first.Patrick Reynolds  02:27I wanted to be an artist. And my hobby was artwork, okay. It would be great if I can make a living out of my hobby. So I made that decision to be an artist and I had a mentor, if you will in my hometown, who was a very accomplished artist, and I asked what's the best art school in our country? I can go to what I'm missing a beat. He says Pratt Institute, little known to me that is in the middle of Brooklyn, New York right next to the Bet Sty neighborhood. Okay. But you got through that you live through the experience. Okay, so, so early in your life. Okay. When you came out of Pratt, what did you do? I became an art director for an advertising agency in Scranton. It was sort of like getting my master's degree if you will. There's the whole thing. We can't hire you unless you have experience. So how can I get experienced? So this was it. So I stayed there a year and then I became an art director at an ad agency in Harrisburg. And I worked there for a year and then finally, the draft board caught up with me and says, you're not getting any more deferments. You have two months to make a decision. Otherwise, we will draft you. So I went in the army.Ray Loewe03:49Okay. And interesting. You were in intelligence in the army. Correct, Right. And it tells you something about cartoonists, doesn't it? And, you did some really interesting things. You did some aerial surveillance, and, you know, make a long story short, I understand you want up to the Bronze Star. I understand you left the Army Reserves as a retired Lieutenant Colonel. Right. Right. So this was a big part of your life. And I know you were telling me some stories when we were kind of prepping for this about how you actually wound up doing some drawing while you were doing this stuff. And, putting Mickey Mouse's on the flags just to keep yourself entertained and stuff like that. But rather than spending time there, I want to go on because I think the rest of your career was just absolutely phenomenal. I don't want to spend the time there. So  you left the army. Right, and what did you do?Patrick Reynolds  04:45I got a job as an artist up in Schenectady for General Electric. I always want to say generous electric But General Electric. And that got me back on my feet in the art business. This. And from there, I became advertising manager of the host farm here in Lancaster. That's how I ended up in Lancaster.Ray Loewe05:08Okay, now I understand host farm is significant because you learned two things there that took over your career, right?Patrick Reynolds  05:16Oh, well really one thing from the my boss, I still have to make up the rate brochures to tell what it will cost to stay there for at a particular holiday. And I would add matchups and what's going to cost with the type of room. And then I would get it printed out and bring it to my boss, the manager. And he'd look at it. And he'd say, I want price to visit idiot-proof. idiot-proof, what are you talking about? He says, I want it so that any idiot can look at this and not have any questions, they'll understand everything you're trying to tell them. And that became one of the keys to my writing style. Okay. And there was something else that came out of there a while ago, I'm not going to match it up correctly. But it had to do something you didn't know, oh, I worked for the after I worked for host farm, I got a job as the public relations Information Specialist for the state tourism bureau where we promoted tours around the country. And I would look at what other states are doing. And I figured I want to do what they're not doing. And 1973-74 Halloween time. And I came up with a concept of, of a tour of haunted places in the state of haunted places you can visit. And the story got picked up by the New York Daily News front page of their travel section. And a couple of months later, I met the editor of the Travel section. I said what did I do, right? And he says, you told me something I didn't know. So when I came up with my cartoons, I decided to do with a one on Pennsylvania. And it would consist of stories from history that people never heard of, or even thought about.Ray Loewe07:17So here we are, we're doing something we didn't know. And the cartoons gave you a medium to make them idiot-proof. Right? Well, welcome to your own world, Patrick. So this led you on a career so so go back. And there was a point in time when you took off on your own because I think you got fed up with the bureaucracy. And you had this creativity that you wanted to run but I think you told me a story of that dealt with the bicentennial. And taking off to Boston and seeing something about Yankee something or other in the newspaper. So amplifying in that.Patrick Reynolds  07:57I was a member of the Society of America travel writers. And we had our convention in 1975 in several cities, and one of the first one was Boston. And on Sunday morning, right after the that previous Saturday night, I was in my hotel room and I watched this TV show you just came on Saturday Night Live 1975. Anyway, the next morning, I pick up the Boston Globe, and they had a cartoon, it was on their front page called Yankee almanac. It was a whimsical treatment of Massachusetts Bay Colony history for back in the 1600.  And I said that is the coolest idea ever seen, I could do something like that for Pennsylvania. And at the time I was bucking for promotion to be our director of my bureau. At the time, I had delusions of grandeur. And so I did three of them. And one of them had to do with the July 3 and three significant events and PA and places that you would visit such as Gettysburg. Another one was on the mammoth fossil found in Pennsylvania, which is on display at the State Museum, on and on. So I did these three gave them to the higher up and didn't hear from them. And then what they did was they hired a guy from Virginia for the job that I wanted. And I thought I'm not long for this job. So he came to me and said, the powers that be were impressed by your comic strips, how long is it going to take to do one of them things? I said to myself, I'm not going to give this to the state. I'm keeping this for me. So I said four days a week, you know, wow, that's a lot to do. I said, Look, you're the boss. I'm going to do what you direct me to do and what you want done, I said but I'd like to do this on my own time. Therefore, I'd like you to get a letter of understanding from the powers that be that I can do this on my own time and sell it to the newspapers. And next day come back with a letter of understanding. And that's how it started. For there, I marketed to all the newspapers, I can in the state, I ended up getting picked up by 20 newspapers. But none of them were in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, one of these papers now became a Pittsburgh paper. But that was long, many long years later. So I did that for a couple of years. But still, I got I had time. Oh, after that cartoon started, it took me two years to leave my state job, because I came out with books on it. And the books sold fantastically, which I printed myself, by the way. And so after two years, I forgot I could make this on my own. So now you emerge as one of the luckiest people in the world. Right? Exactly. Because now you're doing your passion. Right. And there are two passions that I detect. One is cartooning. And the other is these historic events that you pick up. And you can make come to life for people, right? As if you're there. And you could do this and figure out how to get paid for it without putting up with the bureaucracy of the state of Pennsylvania, or somewhere. Exactly. Great. All right. So now we know why you were dealing with the luckiest people in the world. So over the years, what are some of the best topics that you uncovered? You mentioned the haunted houses, but what are some of the other ones that you found fascinating that you were able to turn into comics so that everybody could understand they were idiot-proof? And we tell people something new? Right, right. Well, sometimes I try to tie them in with a current event. For example, January 6, last year, the raid on the US Capitol, I got an idea of a different type of a mass gathering in Washington, one of the first ones and that was the Bonus Army that took place in 1932. What the bonus was, was Congress passed an act in 1924. That gave a bonus to every soldier that served in World War One. And that bonus was going to be paid in 1946. So at the time, in the 1920s, people were making a living, it was a great time. And then the Depression hit. Now, half these veterans, several million of them are destitute, their farms are being repossessed by the banks. So Washington had to do something. We need that money now not 1946. So Wright Patman from Texas voted in favor of it, but no one went along with it. The House passed, the Senate wouldn't. So a couple of guys, one guy in particular in Oregon, decided to march on Washington. So how are they gonna get that had no money. So what they did was they hitchhiked or they hop on freight trains. And they got as far as and this made the news. So other veterans from the rest of the country said we're gonna do the same thing. So they started hitchhiking and train hopping, trying all converging on Washington, DC, eventually, 20,000 veterans showed up and waited for the pressured Congress to and they're very organized, by the way, since these are military. And we're gonna stay. The chief of police got them to stay in some of the abandoned buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue because PA Avenue was being rebuilt. So what it looks like today. So where do you find this stuff? I read a lot. Okay, read a whole lot. And by the way, I've been doing this long before the way hadn't Google and stuff like that. Okay, so give me another example. So that's something I didn't know. Okay. And I think I understand it. So give me something else. Well, I got I gotta tell you the kicker on the Bonus Army, okay. They Congress voted against it. And it was dead. So half the veterans left DC the other half stayed there. And most a lot of them settled in in camps, and Anacostia, which is across the Anacostia River, and, and several many 1000s were there and he built their own shacks. Some of them lived out of their own jalopy cars. And when they refused to leave, President Hoover gave the word to his Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur to get rid of them, and General MacArthur along with his, Adjutant Major Dwight Eisenhower, when it's action, and they organize the two troops of squadrons of cavalry, and a one, two battalions of infantry to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and just kick everybody out. The infantry carried tear gas. The cavalry carried sabers. Commanding one of the squadrons was Captain George Patton. They eradicated everybody and he ended up burning all or setting fire to all the stuff at Anacostia. So it ended in a disaster. And when this hits the news, Franklin Roosevelt in his home in Hyde Park was the Democratic candidate for president that year. He just sat there told his aide, we don't have to campaign anymore. Wow, just lost it. Wow. So this is the core kind of story that you tried to tell in your publications. Is that right? Right, right. Okay. So, unfortunately, we're getting near the end of our time, and I want to hit something because you're kind of at the end of your publication experience. You told me you're going to retire. I don't believe that. But we'll assume that you're correct for the moment. What are you going to do and writing about your life and your history? And you I think you said that we're for events, you're gonna have to give us a short version here. But go ahead.  My editors asked me the question, are you gonna do a special goodbye, and I says, Look, I not only write history, but I've lived through force. I consider four significant events in American history. The first one, I was a senior at Pratt, I was given a freelance job to help this woman in her business. Her name was Melee Dufty, a renowned civil rights leader, who owned a booking company for burlesque acts in black burlesque theaters across the country. And she needed someone to work on her book, which is a page-by-page bio of each person, I had to do the lettering on it. So I can free her up so she can make phone calls all over the country to bus companies. And these bus companies were gonna meet at churches, black churches throughout the country, and carry people to Washington DC for the 1963 march on Washington. At one point, I asked her the dumbest question in my life. I said, Do you think you're gonna get many people to show up? She says you'll see. And that summer 1000s I think over a million people showed up to listen to Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. Then during when I was in the Army active duty to participate in the Tet offensive of 1968. As a reservist in the army, I was activated to my company was activated that I commanded to take part in the rescue mission of from Agnes, the Agnes flood that day to Pennsylvania. And the last one was after the TMI accidents. I got a phone call from the public relations director of TMI. That's Three Mile Island Right Three Mile Island, the nuclear plants. And the what happened was the nuke the core of the one reactor virtually melted. And he called me and he says, are you comfortable with coming onto TMI? I said are you going to pay me? I'll be there. The job I had was to interpret engineer schematics, which I had experience in before, and making them into illustrations of these tools that they're going to use to break apart the core, and then pick up the pieces. I did maybe a dozen of these things. And they made a video out of it. And they never used the video because they've decided not to go into the core at all. So there's the fourth TMI accident.Ray Loewe19:21Okay, so amazing. Okay. And, you know, all I can say is welcome to the world of the luckiest people in the world. You're there, okay? We're going to have to do an encore to this because I just see the list of stories here. You can go on and on and on forever, probably. And I think the lesson that we hope people learn is, you know when you get frustrated in your career, you know, think find that key, find how you can use your passion and go off and become one of the luckiest people in the world. And, Patrick, thanks so much for being here. And Luke, sign us off and we'll see everybody next week. weekOutro  20:03thank you for listening to changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

The Insurance Dudes are on a mission to find the best insurance agentsaround the country to find out how they are creating some of the top agencies. But they do not stop there, they also bring professionals from other industries for insights that can help agents take their agencies to the next level. The Insurance Dudes focus on your agency's four pillars: Hiring, Training, Marketing and Motivation! We have to keep the sword sharp if we want our agencies to thrive. Insurance Dudes are leaders in their home, at their office and in their community. This podcast will keep you on track with like minded high performing agents while keeping entertained!About Jason and Craig:Both agents themselves, they both have scaled to around $10 million in premium.  After searching for years for a system to create predictability in their agencies, they developed the Telefunnel after their interviews with so many agents and business leaders.  Taking several years, tons of trial and error, and hundreds of thousands of dollars on lead spend, they've optimized their agencies and teams to write tons of premium, consistently, and nearly on autopilot!LEARN MORE BY Registering for TUESDAY's LIVE CALL With The Insurance Dudes![Episode Transcript]Jason Feltman  00:00Your agents are coming up to bat and presenting quotes and giving them a chance every single day. And really, it enables you to really turn on the spigot and get those sales flowing. Insurance dudesCraig Pretzinger  00:14are on a mission to escape big hit by our agents.Jason Feltman  00:19How? by uncovering the secrets to creating a predictable, consistent and profitable agency Sales Machine.Craig Pretzinger  00:27I am Craig Pretzinger.Jason Feltman  00:28I am Jason Feldman.Craig Pretzinger  00:30We are agents.Jason Feltman  00:31We are insurances. Right now, while it's fresh in your mind, check out live dot tele dudes.com. We tookCraig Pretzinger  00:41our notes from over 100 interviews with top agents from around the country and made it into a live webcastJason Feltman  00:48using these strategies led Craig and I to selling more than 10 million in premium in the last two yearsCraig Pretzinger  00:55on this call, you'll receive the exact blueprint to get the same results.Jason Feltman  01:00Just go to Live dot tele dudes.com To register for this upcoming Tuesday's live call with us.Craig Pretzinger  01:08If you jump on this call with us we're certain 2022 will be an absolutely fantastic year for you.Jason Feltman  01:14See you there. Hey, it's Jason, and welcome to another insurance playbook. All right, it's just me today. Craig's doing his own, I'm doing my own. The thing I wanted to talk about today is the number one thing, the number one skill for you as an agency owner and your agency. So let's dive in. So the number one skill, I believe in your agency is marketing. Marketing is not just you might think it might be something that you don't need, you might think that all we need to sales, but really marketing is the whole part of includes sales, sales does not include marketing. So yes, you need sales, but it's the whole psychology behind it, right? That skill and learning that will help you with buying leads, it'll help you with training your team. Marketing is really like the number one thing, you as an agency owner need to make it rain in your agency, literally like our&

Support based around Executive Function improvement promises a lot, but is there any evidence that you can actually improve your Executive Function skills? And if you can, what does the process look like and how can you truly measure you or your child's Executive Function improvement? In today's episode, we explore these questions and more with thought-leader Peg Dawson - an esteemed psychologist, expert in Executive Functions, and the co-author of the acclaimed book "Smart But Scattered" which she wrote with her colleague. Richard Guare, and has become essential readings for ADHD and Executive Function skill development.I had an incredible time talking with Peg and learning from her wisdom. I also know you'll find endless amounts of valuable insight that you can use from our conversation in your own life.Related ResourcesExecutive Skill Questionnaire-RevisedESQ-R Self-Report Assessment Tool -This is the tool that Peg and I discuss in this episode. You can take it here, free!Beyond BookSmart Reviews & Our Results - How Beyond BookSmart used the ESQ-RSmart But Scattered books by Peg Dawson, EdD and Richard GuareSmart But Scattered - The Smart But Scattered websiteHelping Children and Teens Strengthen Executive Skills To Reach Their Full Potential (Parent Webinar) - This is the video I mention towards the end of the episode. A fantastic resource for learning more about EF skills. Old Enough! - A Netflix show about Japanese toddlers who go out on errands.Contact us!Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.comIG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoachingTranscriptHannah Choi 00:04Hi everyone and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life through working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. I heard from one of our listeners, Margy, who shared that she is really enjoying listening and would also like to learn a little bit more about executive function skills and deepen her understanding of how they impact us. Well, Margy will get her wish today, because for this episode, I got to have a conversation with Peg Dawson. Peg is an expert in the field of executive function skills, and the co-author of Smart but Scattered, which she wrote with her colleague Dick Guare. Smart but Scattered is one of the leading books on ADHD and executive function skills. I'll let her tell you more about herself and the work she does. But before I dive into her conversation, I wanted to share that you'll hear us mention the 11 executive function skills throughout the podcast. If you're not familiar with all of them, I thought it might be helpful if I did a quick review. But before I do that, I wanted to mention one other thing that you might find interesting and valuable. You can discover your own strengths and challenges when it comes to executive function skills by using the Executive Skills Questionnaire, which is a tool that Peg and Dick developed. At Beyond BookSmart we also use this tool to help our clients measure their own executive function skills before and after working with their coach for some time. You'll hear Peg and I discuss the findings which I have to say are pretty promising. And definitely give hope to those of us who are forgetful, disorganized, or inattentive. Check out the show notes to find the link to this questionnaire. Okay, so back to that review of executive function skills I told you I'd share. If you already know them, you are welcome to skip ahead about three minutes and jump straight to my conversation with Peg. Okay, so here we go. Executive function skills are the skills that we use to get through, or execute our days. These skills emerge and develop over the period of time from birth until about mid to late 20s. But like I just mentioned, it is possible to improve these skills beyond that age. I'm going to use Peg and Dick's list of executive function skills, which they have categorized into two groups, foundational skills, and advanced skills. If you'd like to learn even more about these skills, please check out the resources in the show notes for today's episode. Okay, so first up are the foundational skills that are the first to emerge as kids grow. We've got response inhibition. And this is just a fancy way of describing impulse control. You know, being able to patiently wait your turn in the grocery store and holding back when you really just want to bag the guy's groceries for him because he is just taking too long. All right, next up, we've got working memory. And our working memory is what helps us hold on to information and then use it later on. And emotional control or emotional regulation. And that's the ability to manage and respond to our emotions in ways that are appropriate for the situation. And sustained attention is being able to stay focused on something that you're doing, even if you're distracted or bored or tired. And task initiation is just a big word that means getting yourself going on something, getting started. And cognitive flexibility, which is the last of the foundational skills is also known as flexible thinking and that's just being able to think of new solutions or being okay with last minute changes to plans. Okay, so those are the foundational skills and next up the advanced skills. And according to Peg, these start to emerge in most kids around middle school, but they don't really get a good handle on them until much later. First up, we've got planning and prioritizing, and this is being able to figure out a good way to reach a goal or complete a task. And organization is well exactly what it sounds like. Time management is the ability to estimate how much time something will take and also figure out the best way to stay within set time limits. Goal directed persistence is basically just not giving up while you're working towards a goal. And metacognition is a very long word that means thinking about how we think. And this executive function skill helps us reflect on why we do what we do or don't do, and then use that reflection to come up with some ideas to help ourselves change. And the last EF skill which I love and Peg recently added to her list is stress tolerance and this is the ability to thrive in stressful situations and cope with change and uncertainty. Okay, so now that I've successfully used my ability to maintain attention to the task of reading that list, maybe you can use your working memory to remember some of these skills while you're listening to our conversation. And perhaps this episode will inspire you to use cognitive flexibility and metacognition to come up with some ideas for how you can have a positive impact on your own executive function skill development. Alright, this is getting out of hand. Okay, now on to the show. Hi, Peg. Thanks so much for joining me today. Do you want to introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners who don't know who you are?Peg Dawson 05:41Sure. Sure. Yeah. So my name is Peg Dawson. I worked as a school psychologist for many years in the public schools in Maine and New Hampshire. And then I, I went into a private practice with my colleague and ultimately my co author, guy named Dick Guare, Dr. Guare. And in that practice, we focused on kids and adults with learning and attention disorders. So I started working with kids with ADHD in particular a whole lot more once I left the public schools and started working in a clinic setting. And as I worked with that population, I pretty quickly realized that the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic criteria for ADHD which is problems with attention or problems, or hyperactivity, impulsivity, or both, really didn't begin to describe the problems. I said, these kids having a huge problems with time management and planning and organization and those kinds of things. And I remember talking to my colleague Dick about at the time, he and I both did our doctoral work at the University of Virginia though we were there at different times. But he went on to do a postdoc in neuro psychology at Children's Hospital in Boston. So as I was describing these issues, these are, those are executive skills. So this is the late 80s, early 90s. And people were not using that term much in those days. So he and I decided we really wanted to understand these skills better, what are they? How do they develop? What's going on in the brain? How do they impact school performance? And of course, most importantly, how do you help kids with weak executive skills become more successful students. So that's what led to our writing. We wrote a book for professionals first, and then realized there was a huge role for parents in all this. So that's what led us to write Smart, but Scattered and more recently Smart, but Scattered Teens. We've written a book for adults as well called the Smart but Scattered Guide to Success. And we wrote a book on coaching quite a few years ago now, which we're just now revising, the revision should probably come out next year, I would guess. So that's my domain. And in more recent years, I've diminished, I've minimized my private practice in my clinical work and to emphasize doing webinars and trainings and professional development. So I work for some professional development companies, but I also get invited by schools to come in and talk with teachers about executive skills. And I teach an online coaching seminar every year, which attracts people from all over the world, actually. So. So that's, that's sort of where I ended up mostly during professional development training. That all started from working with kids with ADHD with executive so talented.Hannah Choi 08:18I love that. I love that trajectory. How wonderful. And I'm sure that there are just so many people in your past that have been so positively affected by all the work that you've done.Peg Dawson 08:28Yeah, no, I like to think so. I used to when I was a school psychologist, my husband used to tease me about trying to save the world one child at a time. I think he was onto something. Once I once I wrote books and realized so I can reach lots of kids by reaching their parents. So yeah, it feels like the work I've done has has stretched beyond saving the world one kid at a time.Hannah Choi 08:53Well, I have to say I just I had heard about your book, but I hadn't, I hadn't read it. And I am I am in the middle of it right now. And I my kids are 10 and 13 now and I sure wish that i i am using I am using it and going to use it and I'm a coach, so I know a lot of the strategies anyway but I just I love how you presented everything and it just it it I felt like it gave me a lot of permission as a parent to be okay with my own executive function challenges my own those skills that I am not so great at and it was really great to read that part. So if there's any parents listening right now and you feel like you're struggling with your own executive skill challenges, I recommend Peg's book because it really has made me feel better and like I said, my kids are a little bit older. And I'm still it's still getting benefit from it. So although I think my teenager could have also, like could have like co authored the book with you. She's got she's got incredible executive skills. I don't really understand it. Oh, yeah, it's, it's but you know, what's interesting is that I was looking at how you break them down into foundational skills and advanced skills. And, and you're right, like she's really got the foundational skills down. And I was just telling my husband the other day before I, before I learned about how you broke them down into the two categories, and I was telling him like, well, she still struggles with like metacognition and cognitive flexibility. And I'm like, oh, that's why, because they just haven't developed yet. So,Peg Dawson 10:31yeah, yeah, it's, it's really reaffirming to hear that. Again, we used to talk about all 11 skills. And we talked about them roughly in the order in which we think they emerged developmentally and then it's, it finally dawned on me. Now, there's a distinct difference between those advanced skills and those foundational skills. And I just find it particularly when I'm talking with, with parents, and teachers of middle school kids, in particular, to tell them, these skills are just emerging at this age. So let's understand that if you've got a kid who's struggling with planning, or organization and time management, that is totally age appropriate. Because so many people have this sort of expectation that kids are going to be proficient at that age, and they're just not soHannah Choi 11:16yeah, I just just in the most recent podcast episode that we released, a, it was a conversation that I had between the mom of one of my clients, just me, and, and she, when I met her, she was in fourth grade, and now she's in eighth grade. And, and I've been working with her the whole time. And it's really neat to see, to see those executive skills emerging as the time has, has gone on. And also, you know, like, just maturity and all that, that goes hand in hand with all of that. And, and just yesterday, she's really, really demo- In our session yesterday, she really demonstrated that, that she's really moving into the some of the more advanced, advanced skills us it's exciting to see.Peg Dawson 12:00Yeah that's really gratifying to see. And, you know, for for kids with ADHD, again, I'm always preaching patients to parents. I don't know how many both kids themselves as young adults, but also parents of kids with ADHD, when they reached young adulthood, you said, you said, you know, wasn't till their their mid 20s. And it felt like this light went off or the switch changed or something. And so that's why I'm always saying you can't judge your child at 14 and make assumptions or predictions or what they're going to be like, at 24, 25. Because there are radical changes that occur in that time. And I think it gives some parents...Hannah Choi 12:43Yeah, right. I was just going to say like, what do you what do you say to someone who feels like, their child is never going to, you know, get to the point where they can do X, Y, and Z? You know, how do you how do you support parents who feel like, they're not changing fast enough? Or they're not, you know, becoming what they want them to be fast? Yeah,Peg Dawson 13:02yeah. Well, one of the things I say over and over again, is it progresses measured in years and not months with these kids. And yeah, and in fact, I had a school counselor who actually printed that cut it, printed it out, framed it put it on the wall in her office, because so many parents, middle school counselor, of course, so many parents coming in saying Why can't my kid do this, that or the other thing? And so I sometimes say to think back a year ago, can you see progress since a year ago? Because that's a more reasonable timeframe than to look at the child's six weeks ago. And and assume that they're not moving fast enough? Because we're talking about these are habits. I mean, I call executive skills, habits of mind, but we know it takes a long time to acquire a habit. And that's under normal conditions when the brain is not still developing. So so in a developing brain on top of that, and no wonder it takes time.Hannah Choi 14:05Yeah, no wonder that the progress is measured in years, not months. Reminds me of the other saying like progress, not perfection, right? We're just, we nobody's no one, even us adults, none of us are perfect in our executive function skills. Right? I'm sure that you, you have some that you don't feel confident about. And I do so.Peg Dawson 14:24Absolutely. And I do occasionally I do presentations for, for adults, or for companies in particular. In fact, my son works in North Carolina, and he's working in an organization that consults to textile co ops. And he asked me to come in and talk about executive skills last week, and I mean, it was simultaneously translated into Spanish because half the people were there were Guatemalan immigrants. And the other half are native English speakers, but everyone just gave them the questionnaire I said, talk about your strengths. How does that help you in the job? Talk about one of your challenges. How does that get in the way? And I haven't think a little about So what could you do to get better at it. But I've done this a couple of times my son, he's worked for a couple of different companies. And each time he reports afterwards, that people just feel much more comfortable talking about the things they struggle with. And it absolutely is true. And I have to say, this is where the work Dick and I did really opened our eyes. Because when we started writing and talking about executive skills, I think the general assumption was once you reach adulthood, your skills are should be all evenly and well developed across the board. As soon as we developed our questionnaire and started giving it out to audiences, we realized no, that's not true. In fact, we could have just looked at ourselves. And so I, I just, again, I find people sort of relaxed when they realize Oh, you mean, I'm not supposed to be perfect that anything was that's more like the exception than the rule. So yeah,Hannah Choi 15:59yeah, definitely. So the questionnaire that you're talking about? Could you explain a little bit about that? It's in your I know, it's in your book. And I know, we use it here at Beyond BookSmart to, to have our clients kind of check in with their own executive skill development. So can you tell us a little bit more about that.Peg Dawson 16:16So there are a bunch of different versions out there. There are versions for adults versions for parents and teachers to pull out on kids and we have versions for kids to go out. And so the original version, the one that's used the most identifies it had lists three items for executive skill and you basically - It's a very simple rating scale to take because if you're doing it by hand, you fill out the the items, you figure out what's the total score for each and you look at your high scores, those are your strengths, you look at your low scores, and those your weaknesses. The ESQ-R, which is the version that Beyond BookSmart uses, is a shortened version, it has 25 items, but they've been subjected to psychometric analysis to make them the best measures they can be. And from that, although we talked about 11 different skills, it really ends up that there are five primary skill sets that are all our items sort of fall into. And they think I can just get in them quickly. It's it's plan management, time management, organization, behavior regulation, and emotion regulation. And so this is now a survey which Beyond BookSmart uses, you can also find it on our website, you can actually take the questionnaire on our website, if you want to, which is smartbutscatteredkids.com. And we developed in part because we were hoping people would use it as a research instrument. I mean, we're using it now both mostly to educate people and to help them learn about themselves and learn about their kids with their students. But we really thought if we had something was a little more psychometrically sound, then it could be used for research purposes. And that's what started happening in part because it's free. Yeah, and I get I get letters from people in India and people in Malaysia asking to use it, and can they translate it into their language? And so it's now gotten a lot of use. And I think, and with some interesting results, in fact, the Beyond BookSmart results were as interesting as, as anything I've seen, in part because what Beyond BookSmart did was they look use it as a pretest and a post test. So before kids started coaching, and then after they'd been coaching for 16 weeks, to look to see if there were differences did any of their those five domains I described earlier, did they get stronger, and they found some really encouraging results starting with elementary aged kids. And so they broke it down into elementary, middle high school, college and adults. And across the board, they found some changes with some of the skills not all of them, but they would be the skills you would expect to see change through coaching. So it's Plan Management and time management in particular, as well as the composite score, the total score changes as well. But the other interesting thing is because I was just looking at the the report before we went on this podcast, I was just looking at it again. And what I found was that this this strongest the biggest impact is with college students and adults.Hannah Choi 19:29I saw that too.Peg Dawson 19:30So here's what I find this so encouraging, because people will say to me often I'm an adult, is it too late? No, it's not too late. And I've just recently started, I've been coaching and I haven't coached for years, but I've been coaching a couple of adults with different issues. And it's just it's been so much fun to see how quickly they can sort of grasp your ideas and your strategies and put them into effect and we're report back to you. I know it's fun to coach kids. But it's really those of us who coach adults find it to be really gratifying.Hannah Choi 20:08Yeah, I might Skyla my, my now eighth grader, she's my only school-aged client and all of my others are college and adults. So I get the satisfaction of working with college and adult students, it's really fun. That's really fun. Yeah, and a lot of them have sought out coaching on their own. So they're more more motivated, which actually makes me think of something, if you if a little bit shifting gears, but just had this idea, if so, when when when clients come to someone like me that, you know, mostly works with college and adult, they've sought it out themselves, they're not resistant to it, because they, they're oftentimes they're paying for it too. Or they're, you know, they're investing their own time and their own, you know, resources into it. But some of these kids come in reluctantly, and feel pretty frustrated on, like having to work on their executive skills. And I'm sure you've had a lot of experience with kids who are not interested in making any change, right? What do you like? How do you support kids like that? And how do you support the parents of those kids?Peg Dawson 21:18So our coaching process, and we felt this from the start, I mean, it's been it's evolved over the years. But right from the start, we felt like this has to be a voluntary process. This is not something where you can coerce a kid into to do I mean, you might be able to make a kid go see a tutor. And since the tutor is teaching academic subjects, maybe the kid will realize this will benefit me. Because it's clear, you know, I need help an algebra, here's the help, see, I do better on my tests, one of their executive skills issues involved, they tend to be not as clear cut to kids anyway. And they don't necessarily make a direct connection between my problems getting started on tasks, and what I might do with a coach. And so kids tend to, so we, early on, we said, we have to sort those out. And, and if you're looking to coach a kid, step one is to make sure they're voluntarily participating. Now, we have refined that over the years in that we found ways to persuade kids sometimes that coaching might be helpful, and our thought is well, and good coaches are able to do this with many kids that are reluctant kid, if they're willing to give it a shot for a few weeks, then they see the benefit. And then they're on board.Hannah Choi 22:44Yeah. And so soon as you develop that good rapport with them exactly. Get their buy in. Yeah.Peg Dawson 22:49And that's something that I think Beyond BookSmart is particularly good at, I think that's an emphasis in in how your your coaches work. And maybe how your training goes is, first of all, you try to match the kid with a coach that you think would be compatible. And and then you work at that relationship. And you recognize that that relationship is we especially with reluctant kids is going to be the key. If that relationship clicks, it'll work. If it doesn't click, it won't work. We've started also just in the last couple of years, putting a greater emphasis on training our coaches to use motivational interviewing techniques. And those are in motivational interviewing is just what it says interviewing in a way to help the individual feel motivated to want to change. And, and so once you incorporate that into the coaching process, then that to helps you sort out who's a good candidate for coaching and who's not. Because as you go through that motivational interviewing process, if the kid keeps putting up roadblocks, and you can't figure out how to get them to start taking down the roadblocks, then it's really probably a waste of time for for the kid and a waste of money for for the parent. And so I think and again, you probably do this to be on Bookstart we're, we're fairly, we recommend being fairly honest with parents upfront, both to try to assess them that I remember a few years ago, I had an eighth grader come in to see me and the parents thought he wasn't doing as well in school as they thought he should be. And so they thought they came in to see whether I could recommend a coach for them. And my first question was, does your kid want to work with a coach? Oh, no, no, he's dead set against it. I talked to the kid and I found out what his goals were. He had some goals so I sort of began the coaching process within like, what grades would you like to be earning? What do you think you need to do differently to earn those grades? And what we ended up and then Since I knew he didn't want to work with a coach, I said, So you think you need to bring your grades up? I've got a process for that. But you probably can't do it alone, you're gonna need help from someone so your mom could help you study for tests, or he was identified, he had a resource from teacher or your researcher and teacher could have been studied, as well with resource from teacher really didn't want the mom involved at all. So I contacted the resource from teachers that got this great template for studying for tests. Are you willing to do this with this kid? And she said, Sure, absolutely. So the deal I made with the kid was that if he brought his grades up to the level he wanted them to be, and it was A/Bs and he was capable of that. At the first marking period, at the first progress report, we would look at his grades. And if he had met his goal, I would not make recommended, I would not give the parents name, but coach. And then at the end of the marking period, again, if his grades were one, I still wouldn't get the parents name coach. I mean, the ironic thing was, the resource room teacher was his coach. And that was basically what she was doing. But in his mind, the coach was someone that you'd have to meet outside someone else on his own time as a stranger. So that's, you know, again, sometimes we can make deals with kids, too, to have that, but it won't last over time, if they're really not invested in the deals will work for a short period of time, but they won't work.Hannah Choi 26:22Right? It reminds me the idea of just meeting people where they are and and that you can't, you know, what does that like leading a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. And it just, I was thinking in your book, I loved how you how you talked about how, instead of trying to impose these things on the kids than it just set the situation up for them to find some success. And, and for you to as the parent to find some success, and just kind of meeting the kid, where are the, where are they where they are at that time. And I think just as humans, that works really well for all of us, even adults. So yeah,Peg Dawson 27:03Yeah, I'm always struck by how so every year I, I trained? Well, I have this past year and 50 people sign up for my coaching seminar, probably about 25 of them were were real, invested participants. And and so they did all the homework. And they did, they coached a kid and they gave me feedback. And I'm always struck by for some of these, and many of the people taking my coaching class are teachers. So they're used to being in the classroom, and they're used to being in charge and telling kids what to do. And when the light bulb goes off, and they say, well, it works a whole lot better when the kid is the one who's making the goal and the kid is one is deciding how they're gonna, strategy they're gonna use. So it's always, but it feels like we don't do that with kids enough, we don't empower them to understand that they can change and that they can take control. And they can be effective.Hannah Choi 28:00Yeah, somewhat related, but just the idea of empowering kids. I teach sewing lessons. And some of the parents I talked to are surprised to find out that the kids are going to use real sewing machines and real needles and real irons. And you know, they could get poked, and they got to be really careful. And I don't know if it's this day and age, but I do find that it seems like parents are afraid and like they want to protect their kids. So it often ends up that the kids are not being challenged with opportunities to learn these real skills.Peg Dawson 28:33Yeah, yeah, it's so interesting. I've, my son sent me this amazing map of years ago that was printed in some British magazine newspaper, which showed three or four generations of one family and in England, somewhere in the middle of England. And it basically showed it drew a circle around the area in which each generation at the age of seven was allowed to travel on their own. And it went from this giant space, like seven miles for the grandfather, whereas the current generation, it was this tiny little space. Okay, you can walk across the street. Yeah, across the street. Yeah, we definitely. And I actually blame the fact that there's so much media attention anytime something goes wrong. It's that and so we all have this catastrophe in our head that we think is just waiting to happen to our kids.Hannah Choi 29:30And it's cognitive distortion has a powerful grip on on our brains when we are exposed to so much media. My son is actually walking home from school by himself today for the first time. Three quarters of a mile, he's 10 is three quarters of a mile. He's in fourth grade. He's got a great sense of direction, so I know he'll be fine. SoPeg Dawson 29:50I have my, my younger son lives in Japan and they have a son, who's seven and starting at age six When he was in first grade, he switched from a international school to a Japanese school. Starting in first grade, he, they, they shaped it gradually over time. But he now walks to the train station takes the train gets off, one train gets on another one gets to the school, takes a bus to the school, he does that all independently. And we visit. We've been in Japan several times. And it's amazing, you know, seven o'clock at night, and you see these tiny little kids on the subway because they've gone to after-school after school. Yeah. By themselves. So it's suchHannah Choi 30:33If you did that here someone would call the cops on you. Yeah.Peg Dawson 30:36It's such a cultural influence. Yeah, actually an executive skill development. You know, among other things, it's what we allow kids to explore, and to experience because executive skills don't have to be explicitly taught, if we give kids the opportunity to learn them, as they interact with their world in their environment.Hannah Choi 30:59Yeah, I spend. So my my client Skyla. You know, over four years, many of our sessions were just us talking, and me, modeling, you know, modeling cognitive flexibility or modeling, how I was going to plan my day. And I never said, this is how I'm going to do it, this is how you should do it. And I just hoped that, you know, the, that, that what I was trying to teach her was getting through, and it takes a long time, but you're truly meeting them where they are, when you do it that way, you know, you're not forcing anything on them. Yeah, and that's what I love about, about how executive skills can be taught to anyone in with any, by any means, you know, like for kids, it makes sense, okay, like, Let's practice some skills with schoolwork. Because that's the work that you do that is, you know, how you what you do to get through your day, you know, you do schoolwork. And then so for adults, you know, you can you know, their job or their managing their home or something. And I just I love that. I love that about it.Peg Dawson 32:09Yeah, I also think that when we explicitly label the skills for kids or for adults, that can actually speed up the learning process. So I get one of the women I'm one of the people I'm coaching now is a woman very bright in her 40s I think who she's had some medical issues. So she's out of work at the moment, trying to work her way back into work, grew up with an attention disorder, now went to an Ivy League college obviously worked really hard, but she ended up with this residual sense of she can't do things as well as other people can. And so when we meet, whenever I can, I point out that, you know, that's metacognition and that is one of your strengths. In fact, that's probably what got you to the level you're at in your job is that she just needs to hear that because she just thinks of herself as being terrible task initiation, terrible a time management, terrible a planning, saying, Yeah, but let's look at possibility. Let's look at metacognition. SoHannah Choi 33:08yeah, yeah. I that always makes me think it means I think in every conversation that I've had for this podcast, that talk, the idea of confidence has come up, and how working on executive skills really can boost your confidence. And for her, hearing that about her metacognition probably had a positive impact on her on the other areas that she feels like she's weak in. Right,Peg Dawson 33:34right. Yeah, I think it did is if you're good at metacognition, you can get planning eventually. Is such a huge component of metacognition and planning. So, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.Hannah Choi 33:46So that makes me think about this idea of, like, you know, just going back to parents in their own kids. And I feel like so much of the information out there articles that you read, and, you know, knowledge that's out there is for kids, and executive skill development, because of course, kids, kids frontal lobes are still developing, you know, we just, they just, they're not there yet. But, you know, just because, like you said before, just because we're adult adults doesn't mean our, you know, we're like, perfect and everything. So for parents that have areas that they struggle with, like, do you recommend that they work on their own along with their children's executive skill development? I've had some parents do that very effectively. And both parents was sort of the parent will share the profile with the kid. And whether it's a, they're struggling with the same executive skill or a different one. If they both agree, they're going to tackle whatever their challenges then the kid feels like, they're not the only one, you know, putting in all the work here. And several years ago, I saw a kid from the UK. And I had met the coach who was working with him at the time in the UK, but they spent their summers in Maine. And so he arranged, they arranged for the kid to come and be evaluated by me. He was 14. So I had him take the executive skills questionnaire. And he said, have you given this to my dad? Because the dad was the one who brought up? And I said, No, I said, Oh, I want my dad to take this. And so that ended up being a great conversation when I had, at the end of the session brought the data and then they could talk about because the kid and if you ask any kid, they can probably tell you, once they understand exactly what the dad strengths and weaknesses are, oh, yeah, but I do have, you know, a piece of advice that I give. And when I first started giving this to parents, or anybody in my workshops, I thought it was kind of whimsical, I thought, well, it's worth a shot. I don't know whether this will work or not, but I'll throw it out there. And so when I started building into my workshops, is when I consider the perfect intervention for executive skills. And this really helps adults who are dealing with their own executive skill challenges, because I again, I get that question from parents all the time, "I have the same issues. You know, I'm not consistent. I can't, I can't maintain an intervention over time. So what can I do?" So here's the perfect intervention. The perfect interventions for executive skill development, and there are two pieces to it is one that takes no more than five or 10 minutes a day, and that you're willing to do forever. So those two, okay, those two go hand in hand, if it took more than five or 10 minutes today, you couldn't keep it up. And I can guarantee you it won't take forever. But I can also guarantee you, it'll take longer than you think it should. But that doesn't mean you double the amount of time. No, it really. And so once I started talking about that, then I had all these parents sharing who they are, you know, I put in place a getting ready for school routine with my kid on the spectrum. I started in first grade. He's now in seventh grade. He's following that routine completely independently. It took six years, but he's there. And then I thought about how I got my own. So I have a son with ADHD, who's he's now in his 40s. But I thought about how I got him through high school. And that was every day when he came home from school, I asked them two questions, what do you have to do when you're going to do it? It was a five minute conversation. And as an adult. That's exactly what I ask my son every day, he still tells me that's how he basically plans his day, what do I have to do when will I do it? And so it really, if you if you're willing to play the long game, and you're willing to be patient, so now we're going back to patients again, then putting in place an intervention that you consistently follow? Five minutes a day for as long as it takes. It pays off. It really does. It reminds me of I'm I'm also reading at the same time, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and he is he says, you know, if you just like Do 1% every day, when you're eventually just gonna get better at it. Yeah. So yeah. Reminds me of that. Yeah, it doesn't have to be some grand, huge overhaul. And in fact, we you know, if you do the grand, huge overhaul, it's not sustainable. Yeah. Yeah. It might look pretty for a day but and then you're gonna feel bad about yourself. So not being able to do it.Peg Dawson 38:27I mean, looking back on my own sons who neither were a great students in middle school in high school. With each them, I put in one relatively elaborate system to get them to change, you know, it's like offering them rewards for oh, I remember my younger son was starting his homework before nine o'clock at night, and not complaining about it. And if he could go for six weeks, and I gave him a point for each one of those, and we could go for six weeks, if he had this many points, and he could buy the video game he wanted. That worked really well. I could never redo it, though. I remember when he was like a junior in high school, I said, I said, Can we work out a system where you know, you can earn something you want? I mean, you said, Mom, I gotta want to do it myself. I mean, that just basically. So can you say that I had to back off. You're saying you can't force me. I gotta want to do it myself. So yeah, yeah.Hannah Choi 39:29Well, that's great that he, I mean, that shows right, his metacognition.Peg Dawson 39:34Yeah, absolutely. And he knew what worked and what didn't work for him.Hannah Choi 39:37Do you have any questions for me?Peg Dawson 39:39So how long have you been coaching?Hannah Choi 39:41I started coaching in 2017 with Beyond BookSmart. Yep. And I had like a kind of a similar job before. I worked at a community college and the Office for Students with Disabilities and I helped kids take advantage of the services that they were that were, you know that were or given to them for whatever accommodations that they needed. So that's where I discovered my love for working with college kids.Peg Dawson 40:05Right, right. Yep. And so over the years since you started coaching, what? How has that practice evolved for? You mean? What is?Hannah Choi 40:19That's such a great question. And I know exactly how it has evolved, I have learned to trust the process. And I have learned to trust my relationship with the client. And that, and that if they trust me, and if I just relax and let go and let it happen naturally, that's where we're going to have the most success. And I remember when I first started coaching, feeling like, I put this pressure on myself to like, you know, teach a new, new strategy in each session, and you know, and like, have some kind of evidence of, you know, of improvement. And now I realize, looking back on it, like I was looking for really grand evidence, and all I needed was these little tiny, tiny shifts that are actually the nuggets of gold that you're looking for. And that's when you know, okay, now I can maybe push a little harder and ask for something else. And I think I was just expecting it to go faster, even though I had learned and I knew for my own kids and for myself, that, that it takes a really long time. And that it's not like a It's not like a switch that happens. So I would say like, for me, mostly, that's what I've learned, which has been good for my mental health, because I used to really put a lot of pressure on myself with my clients. If I didn't feel like my clients were making enough progress quickly enough. And, and so I'm much more relaxed now as a coach, and I think I'm a better coach. Right?Peg Dawson 42:02Yeah. I mean, that was the one of the dangers of wanting to see that kind of progress in whoever you're coaching is that that person feels that that pressure as well.Hannah Choi 42:15They pick up on it. In my experience, that's when they start lying. Did you follow your plan? They said no, yeah. No they didn't. They just didn't want to make you feel bad. Yeah, that's right. I shouldn't admit this. But one of my first clients, he lied to me and his parents for an entire semester that he was doing well in school. Yeah. He got a D and one class, but the rest he was failing. So it was Yeah, yeah, you've really you. You have to suss it out. Yeah. And a lot of that comes down to just trust.Peg Dawson 42:56I think one of the coaches that I trained in that I get together with frequently via zoom, and she says, she, one of the things she makes clear to kids is this is a no blame zone and a no shame zone. So yeah, if you communicate that in a way that the kid trusts that, that you're honest about that, then they're going to be able to come in and say, Yeah, I was intending to do that. But andHannah Choi 43:19so that's what I started doing. I think probably around the time that that that happened with that student, I started telling every time for the first few few sessions, just to remind them that this is a judgment-free zone. And I And if I ask a question, it comes out of completely out of curiosity. No judgment. Yeah. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no judgement at all. Yeah. And it's hard. I think, like, inside, right, we just naturally judge people, we have to for survival. You know, it's like a thing that we've just evolutionary, like, have done like, for 1000s of years. And I think that it's, you just like, we know, internally, we're judging people, whether we want to or not, that bias is just there. And so we know that we are doing that. So we kind of might assume someone else is doing it. And so it's hard. It's hard to learn to trust someone that you can really be honest with them. Especially like if there's an age difference, right. Oh, like, are you just another parent? Or can I actually truly just not that they can't trust their parents? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's just so important. And I guess with any relationship, right? Any relationship that you develop with anybody is developing that trust. Cool, well, what if you could choose one thing for people to take away from all the work that you've done over the course of your, your career? What would it be? If it's possible to choose one?Peg Dawson 44:55But I guess the message I want people to understand it. And this may be more for teachers and parents, but I think there's some overlap there is that executive skills are the skills that support learning. And if we don't peel away the the surface learning to understand the skills that require that are required to get there, then we're missing the opportunity to help kids understand the learning process better. And so that combined with it takes time progress is measured. Yeah those are the two things.Hannah Choi 45:40And that's, that's a really hard, it's, it's hard, I think. I mean, I would, if I could guess I bet that's that, the biggest part that's hard for people is that making any kind of change, I mean, if you even if you're just exercising, like I'm training for a half marathon right now, and it takes I was take a break in between races, and he's take so long to get back into it. And, and even though I know, like, I know, because I've done it before I've done it so many times before I know I'm gonna get there is still so hard to just relax and say, It's okay, Hannah, it's gonna happen, you're gonna be able to run 13.1 miles. But it's hard to trust that. And so especially when it's your kids, you just want them to be successful in the world, and you don't have to worry about them, and you don't want to have to friction with them. And you just want them to be what be themselves in, you know, in in a successful way. And it's so hard to, to just trust that eventually that'll happen.Peg Dawson 46:44And I think it's also made harder by the fact that unfortunately, school emphasizes getting things right. As opposed to getting things. We're not focusing on learning. We're, we're focusing on passing tests, and not making mistakes. And we all know, that's not the way you learn, you learn from your mistakes. And so, and I, my guess, is if we've looked at all the education systems out there, the ones where, where kids are at the top in terms of how they're acquiring academic skills, it's those where that's what teachers are emphasizing then. So for instance, I'm sure in Japanese schools, they might teach math by giving kids a tough math problem to do that, just at the limits of their understanding of them. They put them together in a group and the kids say, Okay, now solve this problem. And they check in on them periodically, but there's no stress that you got to get it right. It's, can you figure out the process? And it's just, I think that's one of my biggest issues with how American education and it's not just American education and a lot of education system,Hannah Choi 47:55if that's what you know, because yeah, yeah, my, my kids are both going through standardized testing right now, like today, as we speak, and it's really stressful for them. And they're both good students, and they don't find school difficult. But the the, the action of being tested, is stressful, especially for my son, he is very concerned about getting it right. And I've, we've told him so many times, you know, we don't care, we you know, we don't if it's if it's stressful for you, we don't want it to be stressful for you, you just go in and do your best. And, you know, it's hard for him. And that just just kills me to, to see them going through that. So do you have anything that you're excited about that you'd like to share with everyone?Peg Dawson 48:41No, I just, I guess, I mean, I'm 72 years old. So the question is, when am I going to retire? My husband's already retired. So he keeps talking to me about something, when are you going to retire? And and I guess, the fact that I'm still working just tells you that I'm excited about what I'm doing, because I don't need to be working. I mean, I am planning for retirement, and I am trying to think about so how, how can what I've done continue without me so that when people write and say, Can you do this? I say no, I'm retired now.Hannah Choi 49:19But I have this fabulous person who can do it for me. So yeah, yeah. Well, what a legacy you're you'll you'll leave when you are able to transition into that period of your life. So and where can our listeners find you and your work?Peg Dawson 49:34So we have a website smartbutscatteredkids.com. And so there are a number of resources on that website, as well as links to some trainings I've done. There's a parent, a one hour, maybe a little over that. When our parent presentation that I do that was recorded when I was in San Diego last year, which they didn't.Hannah Choi 49:57I watched that! I thought it was GREAT. I loved it! Peg Dawson 50:00Didn't they do a nice job with editing it?Hannah Choi 50:02They really did. It was so good. It was classy classy production. And you looked great. And you sounded great. It was really interesting. Peg Dawson 50:13And in fact, if possible, I'd like to put a link from my website to Beyond BookSmart for this interview, so that because that's another way that people could could discover.Hannah Choi 50:25Yeah, for our listeners, I'll put everything. I'll put everything in the show notes. So you can find Peg and everything that she's done, and definitely watch that presentation that she's talking about. Thanks. High quality good stuff. Great. All right. Well, thank you so much.Peg Dawson 50:40Thank you. This was fun.Hannah Choi 50:44And that's our show for today. I really hope you found something useful in my conversation with Peg. And I hope that you learned something that you didn't know about executive function skills. I'm truly so glad you're here and that you took time out of your day to listen, be sure to check out the show notes for this episode on our website and subscribe to the podcast at beyond booksmart.com/podcast. We send out an email after every episode with links to resources and tools we mentioned. And if you have a minute, please help us out by sharing our podcast with your friends. Thanks for listening!

*Mental Health & ADHD/Executive Dysfunction section starts at 20:21*When we talk about Executive Function, we also need to talk about mental health. Taking care of our mental health is important for everyone and studies show that there is a connection between executive function challenges and mental health diagnoses like depression and anxiety. There are many, many ways that executive function challenges affect mental health. In today's episode, I'll explore just two of these: emotional regulation for kids and the impact that ADHD can have on kids' mental health. I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with two guests to talk about these interesting topics. Sherry Fleydervish joined me from Chicago and Sean Potts joined me from Brooklyn, NY. Sherry is a child and family therapist who is trained in many therapeutic areas, including theraplay, dyadic developmental therapy, art and play therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy. Her areas of expertise and interests include anxiety, depression, ADHD, parent support, family transition, divorce, and separation support, trauma, attachment issues, and social and relational skills. Learn all about her work with Best Self Inc. here. Sean is one of Beyond BookSmart's earliest coaching clients as well as the producer for this podcast. Now, as an adult, Sean has developed a passion for raising awareness around ADHD and is especially interested the increased risk for mental health disorders and the societal stigma associated with ADHD. He uses that passion every day as a driving force in the work he does as Beyond BookSmart's Marketing Specialist Check out some of that work on BBS's Facebook page and blog. ---Here are some readings and resources for topics that came up in my conversation with Sherry & Sean.You can find more about Sherry and her work at https://www.bestselfinc.com/Mental Health and Executive Function Challenge ConnectionExecutive Functions in Students With Depression, Anxiety, and Stress SymptomsWhat Should You Treat First? ADHD or Mental Health Challenges?Executive Functioning: How Does It Relate To Anxiety?Academic Anxiety: How Perfectionism and Executive Dysfunction Collide3 Ways ADHD Makes You Think About YourselfSelf-Regulation and Co-RegulationExecutive Function & Self-RegulationWhat is Co-Regulation? | Best Self Family PostDeveloping Kids' Executive Function, Self-Regulation SkillsHow Can We Help Kids With Transitions? - Child Mind InstituteContact us!Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.comIG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoachingTranscriptHannah Choi 00:04Hi everyone and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life through working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. When we talk about executive function, we also need to talk about mental health. Taking care of our mental health is really important for everyone. And studies show that there is a connection between executive function challenges, and mental health diagnoses like depression and anxiety. There are many, many ways that executive function challenges affect mental health and vice versa. And in today's episode, I'll explore just two of these: emotional regulation for kids and the impact that ADHD can have on kids' mental health. I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with two guests to talk about these interesting topics. Sherry Fleydervish joins me from Chicago and Sean Potts joined me from Brooklyn, New York. Sherry is a child and family therapist who works with infants through adults, and also supports the parents and families of these children. She is trained in many therapeutic areas, including theraplay dyadic, developmental psychotherapy, mindfulness, sandtray, and cognitive behavioral therapy. Her areas of expertise include anxiety, depression, ADHD, parent support, and family transition, divorce and separation support, trauma, attachment issues and social skills. And Sean is one of Beyond BookSmart's earliest coaching clients. And now as an adult, Sean has developed a passion for raising awareness around ADHD, and is especially interested in the increased risk for mental health disorders, and the societal stigma associated with ADHD. He uses that passion every day as a driving force in the work he does as Beyond BookSmart's Marketing Specialist, and it's the reason why I thought he'd be a great fit for today's topic. I also need to mention that Sean is my partner in crime for this podcast, he does all the editing and all the sound, which is good, since I can't stand that kind of stuff. So without him, this podcast would not exist. Thanks, Sean. Okay, so keep listening to hear my conversation with Sherry and Sean, and learn some great strategies to support both our own emotional regulation and that of our kids, and to hear how ADHD impacts the mental health of students, and how we can help support kiddos with ADHD. Okay, now on to the show. So today, I would love to talk about two topics that are really, really important to me as a coach, and also to, I think everyone, the first is emotional regulation. And that's how we manage our emotions. And emotional regulation can be challenging for everybody. And it is especially challenging for kids, because they don't have a lot of experience, yet their executive functions are not completely developed yet. And they just haven't had a lot of opportunities to practice emotional regulation. So I'd love to talk about some, you know, ideas that you have shared from your perspective. And and then I would love to cover the idea of the connection between executive function and mental health. Because we see that a lot that there's a lot of challenges by people who have executive function challenges, often go hand have some also some mental health challenges along with them. So if we could cover those two topics today, that'd be fabulous.Sherry Fleydervish 03:48Absolutely. You know, something that I talk about, every single family session, every child session intake is just emotion regulation. You know, a lot of times I've see, I start my intakes with parents, and they come in, and they tell me what's been going on. And oftentimes I hear, you know, these behaviors are showing up and these labels and these things that kids are experiencing, and my mind immediately goes to regulation and where they got in their, in their ability to do that, and their ability to regulate and then the parents ability to help them co regulate to, which is something I talked about. But all of that comes from a deeper lower part of our brains that take so much time and years and experiences and everything to start to build. And so that's that's oftentimes regulation is oftentimes the first place that I really start with families.Hannah Choi 04:43And I feel like so many of us, at least in the generation that is old enough to have kids and then then the generation before us. There wasn't a lot of education about about self-regulation, emotional regulation, and especially co-regulation. I think, maybe even a lot of our listeners don't know what co-regulation is. Would you like to explain that a little bit? Sherry Fleydervish 05:03Yeah, absolutely. So what I often say is that we are sharing our nervous systems, especially with our children. And when they're little and they're babies, we're really doing everything for them, we're rocking them to regulate them, even when they're in our bellies, we're rocking them, we're regulating that, then we're feeding them, we're watering them, we're doing all of those things for them. And then as children get older, we start to help them use build their own ability to regulate themselves, but you know, even, we're even co-regulating with, with our high schoolers to, you know, instead of, maybe before you would pack their lunch for them, but, you know, now you're just putting things in the right spot in the, in the fridge for them instead. And so all those little pieces are helping them regulate, you know, instead of maybe holding them, you're just sitting next to them while they do their homework now, instead of really being there, but it really is just sharing your nervous system and sharing your regulation with your child. And I'm also always, you know, talking about how different energy states require a different type of regulation. So if you have a child who was really upset and sad, you can mirror that with your body, you can get lower with them, and you can talk to them at a lower level and put your hand on your on their shoulder. But if you have a child who's really angry and frustrated, "My brother just ripped apart my favorite stuffed animal!" and, you know, I, I invite parents to match that same energy with their child and get bigger and meet their effect and just tell them how frustrated it is that they this just happened. That's co-regulating, it's showing through your body through or voice through your aspect that I hear you, I see you. And then a child begins to be able to regulate themselves as we, as we kind of practice and learn and model that.Hannah Choi 07:03So so much of, of helping our kids is learning first, for ourselves what we need to do to help ourselves and then through that we can help our kids.Sherry Fleydervish 07:16That conversation invites a lot to understand our own systems, you know, I help parents understand what comes up for them as their child moves through different things that maybe, maybe transitions are really difficult. And so I invite them to wonder what does that feel like for you to when that is happening. And so the first step is regulating yourself, you can't help you can't help your child you can't help them regulate when you are in that state of dysregulation as well. So it really starts with just taking, taking a deep breath, and being you know, taking care of yourself first.Hannah Choi 07:52And it's so hard to do that. It's so hard to, at least I personally find myself feeling like well, that whole idea of putting your putting that mask on the oxygen mask on first, it's so hard in the moment, or just in the busyness of life, it's so hard to remember to do that. And, and that's, that's why I am always I think anybody who knows me, well, I'm always talking about self-care. And, and I think part of it is because I'm trying to remind myself like Hannah, you have to do that too. But it's so important to to take care of ourselves first. Sherry Fleydervish 08:28I think even just hearing that it's okay to pause and put your mask on. And model that's, that's a modeling moment. You know, mom needs a break, mom needs 10 seconds before she can figure out how to help solve this problem. That's, that's everything. And your kiddo feels like they can do that, too.Hannah Choi 08:43You mentioned transitions. And I know that's a really big, that's something that a lot of our clients find challenging. And I just know kids in general, and even adults can find transitions challenging. What what do you suggest for parents or ourselves? If we struggle with transitions? Do you have some kind of go to strategies that you'd like to suggest?Sherry Fleydervish 09:08Transitions are so so hard, and especially ones where we're moving from something that we're really enjoying and really liking and maybe can be regulating for us too, for example, you know, if your kid's playing video games that is actually really regulating and then they're, we're asking them to move to homework or dinnertime or whatever it might be - bedtime, that isn't so regulating for them. And so, just being mindful of that piece, too, when we're supporting our kids through a transition, it's just how you're approaching it and your own. You know, I talked about expectations a lot - the expectations that you don't even realize you have as you're leading up to a transition, what you want it to be like, even if you're expecting it to be abrupt because maybe it has been in the past and then tying in this topic of Co-regulation, how can you use yourself to help your kid get from A to B? Does, you know if the video game is super regulating, can you come in and say, "Okay, you have five minutes left. And then as soon as you turn off, we're going to pass the ball outside. Or as soon as you turn off, we're going to go, you can pick up your favorite game, and we're going to play it for five minutes before we move to dinner", or get out the house or whatever it is. You are offering yourself up to play into be almost like the little train to get from regulation to task that I don't really like so much. But just use yourself as a tool to do that. And that's in the moment. And then before it's trying to set up for structure and as much as as much as you can you have a plan for how often or how long you're going to be playing each game or doing each activity or whatever it might be, so that your child feels as as prepared as they possibly can for the next for the next things.Hannah Choi 11:08Transitions are so hard. I see just parents struggling with them on the playground after school. When the kids are they've come out of school and they're going on to the playground to play and then it's time to go. And I often hear parents say like, "Oh, I don't want to tell them it's time to go because then I know what I'm going to have to deal with". So what could a parent do in a situation like that?Sherry Fleydervish 11:34Oh my gosh, notice that notice that dread? Notice that worry? You know Where's where's this gonna go today? Are we gonna get to the car, are we gonna have a dragging, screaming kid to the car. Just be mindful of that. First off, take a deep breath before you're going. And then how? How can you enter that same playful state that they're in right out there on the playground? They're playing. They're having so much fun. And then they hear time to go right now? What if it was, "Hey, this seems like such a fun game of tag. Can you go and tag whoever it is that's next. And then we're going to head out". It's - you enter, join in the play join in even if it's for a minute, I bet that that minute ends up being more worth it than the potential 10 minutes or the potential screaming, you know, just join in notice what they're playing and then kind of come out together to the car.Hannah Choi 12:40That's so smart. Seems like co-regulation is I mean, it probably doesn't work every time I imagine. But if it sounds like it's a great strategy to practice a lot.Sherry Fleydervish 12:51It might not, you might get, "I don't want to I don't want to go. This is too much fun. I don't want to leave". You can still co-regulate, right? You could say "Yes, I know you're having so much fun. And you don't want to go to piano. You think piano sucks. And this is so much more fun". That's still you're still entering and you're still like meeting them for that really frustration. But we do have to go so like I'm, I want to help you I want to problem solve right now how to make this easier.Hannah Choi 13:19So sure, that read that makes me think of this idea that we should just stay calm, you know, and so that kind of makes me think maybe we shouldn't just stay calm. Maybe we like you said we need to meet them where they are. And it feels a little strange for me to think Oh, wow. Okay, yeah, to get angry with them. But, but then it really shows them that we understand where they are. Sherry Fleydervish 13:43I hear this so often, it's um, I tried to stay so calm, I stay so calm, I have, you know, me as calm as I can with my voice and all of these pieces. And that's incredible if you can, if you can be there. But that idea of mirroring your child's emotion, emotional state, it's okay to not be cool as a cucumber, you know, because if you hear a child to saying, you know, I'm just I'm so so sad. I'm so bummed out or I'm so angry and I'm so frustrated. Kind of like what we said earlier, it's, it's okay to meet them with that with that same emotion it shows mom and dad or whoever feels can feel that way too. SoHannah Choi 14:30I remember my mom when I first started working with kids as a teenager, my mom gave me some advice. And she said, when a kid is upset or just won't stop talking to you just say back to them what they have said to you, just repeat back to them what they've just said to you. And and it's and they just sometimes just want to be heard. So this idea of it's almost like this idea of co-regulation like they you are acknowledging their feelings. You're not You're telling them through your behavior that these feelings are okay. Is that would you say that's an accurate description?Sherry Fleydervish 15:07I love that I love that advice so much because it just shows a child it shows your child that it's it is okay to have all of these feelings. And later on, you know, addressing the behaviors and the way that you express them. That's that's a different story. But you you're modeling that it's okay to have have all of those different emotions, and they're welcome here, too.Hannah Choi 15:28Yeah great, thanks, Mom!! One time I was in a store and there was this little boy and he was probably three or four. And he kept saying he was with his grandparents and he kept saying over and over and over again. Like, I want Mommy, I want Mommy and they were they were yah. Yah, yah, yah, yah, yah, yah, yah, you'll see her later. Mommy's busy or whatever, and I want mommy he kept saying, I went up to him, and I said, you want your mommy? He said, Yeah. And then he stopped yelling about it. Like, see, you just need to say back to him, He just wants someone to acknowledge that.Sherry Fleydervish 16:11Sometimes we just we miss that piece. And, and, and it's almost out of the moment, it seems so simple or from, from that, from the observer, you saw that, like, that kid just wants his mom, you just want your mom so bad. You're so you just miss her. You know, and it stepped him right? Back into right back into it like, well, this adult just heard me okay.Hannah Choi 16:35But I guess it shows that when you are the parent or the caregiver in the moment, it's hard to, to step out and say, and like look at it, like an observer. Look at it like that crazy lady who just talked to my grandkid.Sherry Fleydervish 16:52It's a lot easier not in the moment to do that. Yeah.Hannah Choi 16:55So do you have any strategies for when you are in the moment, and it's hard, and you're having trouble getting out of it as as, as an adult.17:03The first step, it's just it's noticing, and maybe taking a step back, and maybe even getting lower getting on your child's level. And just even if, if it just means, you know, just looking at them in the eye and saying, you're just, you know, you're so worried about, you know, the test that you have tomorrow at school, if your kid just won't stop talking about I have to study I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to prepare this way. And my my advice is, is not so much to focus on the behavior, but to focus on the emotion underneath of what your child is saying. And just get curious with them, they might not be able to tell you how they feel. But they're communicating through even that little boy in the grocery store was probably feeling worried or missing, or just wanted, wanted his mom. And that's an opportunity for us to say and wonder, I wonder if you're feeling worried right now you don't know where Mommy is. Or I wonder if you're just nervous for your test tomorrow, we can pull the emotion out of the over and over and over talk that we hear. Notice maybe what it's bringing up for you, that might be the same feeling that your kids feeling, and isn't able to communicate it.Hannah Choi 18:22Being able to label your emotions is so important. And I feel like I and I think that is a skill that goes along with emotion with executive function. And just sort of that emotional awareness. And that's a big part of emotional regulation is labeling your emotions? Do you have any strategies for all ages for little kids up to adults for helping to figure out what you're feeling or maybe helping someone else to figure out what they're feeling? Because I imagine a lot of our coaches might need to help their clients figure out what they're feeling and maybe the client doesn't know what they're feeling, and they're hoping to figure that out.Sherry Fleydervish 19:04I always say as the whether you are the that whatever adult you are that's in that child's life, or that teenagers like it's, it's okay to guess and it's okay to guess wrong. You know, if you're noticing that a child is something just changed, you can just say, Oh, I just noticed something changed now. What happened for you, but what's going on right now, and it might not come out as a feeling. It might be I'm thinking this or you can you can still use that to be curious about the moment and if they can't connect to what they're what they're feeling, then maybe you can help them connect with what's going on in their body and I invite all ages, clients of all ages to do that. And if they can't express to me what they're feeling then I asked them to just draw it you know, can you pick a color can you draw what that what that feeling feels like in your body? Can you identify it somewhere inside write up your body right now. Or where that change just happened. It doesn't have to be through communication through through verbally, we can find other outlets. And maybe it's just a quick journal for a teenager or for us to just, I don't really know what's going on. But I'm just going to write for a minute and see what kind of comes out.Hannah Choi 20:20So something that that comes up a lot for, for us as coaches and I think just us as humans, and is what I talked about in our first episode is this idea of failure. And I the emotions that go along with that, and how I think with for people with executive function challenges, we, you know, people can often feel like failures, and there's a lot of emotions there and anxiety that might come up. And do you do have any, what's your insight on that, like the connection between between executive function and feelings, emotions,Sherry Fleydervish 21:05To follow up on the conversation about failure that you bring up is just how I loved the first episode that you released when we were talking about failure, because it is an it is a learning opportunity. But in the moment, it sure doesn't feel that way. It was really, really, really bad. And we have our own self beliefs that show up and start spiraling. And then we have all the messages that we've heard, you know, and if you're a kid or teenager struggling with some executive functions as well, then at school, you're probably oftentimes getting redirected and reminded and something wrong. And it's really hard not to internalize all of that, and end up with these negative thoughts about ourselves kind of swirling.Hannah Choi 21:56Well, I was just going to ask Sean, if he was comfortable sharing your own experience growing up, I know that you can relate personally to some of what Sherry was just saying, you want to share any of your experience.Sean Potts 22:09Yeah, I, I grew up most of my life, not really knowing I had had ADHD, it was one of those things where I would never really love going to school, it was very hard for me to sit still, it was very hard for me to like, have that sort of rigid, structured time. And that, you know, there was definitely a lot of friction that happens when I was younger around that, you know, and my parents noticed it at a fairly young age. And that led to me getting my first ADHD diagnosis tests when I was probably in fourth grade. And for whatever reason, I didn't get diagnosed at that time. So the problems continued to get worse. And until about halfway through middle school, when it was just sort of kind of hard to ignore the level of executive dysfunction that I was experiencing. I mean, I was a C/D student and I, you know, could never sit still, I was constantly getting kicked out of the classroom for whatever annoyance my 12 year old self was contributing to the classroom and distracting from learning. So I eventually at that age, was able to get diagnosed with ADHD. And that was sort of the beginning of my journey to treating it. I mean, of course, getting that diagnosis is huge. So from there, very soon after, you know, we started doing trials with medication. And also, I mean, that was a big component. But the biggest for me, it was definitely the executive function coaching. I got, I started working with a coach when I was at this point about 13, 14. You know, it took a little while, probably a year after my diagnosis before I really got moving forward with coaching. And for me, the transformation that happened was just like, was unbelievable. You know, within six months, I would say I was coaching, I was almost a completely different student I was, I was getting A's, which was the first time in my life and you know, I, there was no C's to be found on my report card. But more importantly, I rebuilt this confidence that I felt like I had lost from my years of going to school with untreated ADHD and just feeling like I was so different. That was huge. All of a sudden, I was like, teachers were complimenting me and I was, you know, like, the, my parents didn't have to nag me about homework. And I was feeling really confident in my abilities. And it was a big revelation. I think that confidence was sort of the the boost I needed moving forward. And now looking back, it's been what? Over 10 years since I had started coaching at this point. I'm 25 and the you know, I still am so grateful for the experience I had then, but I also recognize a lot of the problems that I had are not isolated incidents that I only experienced. I mean people all over the world have on untreated ADHD and the consequences of that can be really substantial, both on their mental health, their sense of self and their, you know, future prospects. So I'm have become very passionate about that. It's why I also love my job now working as Beyond BookSmart's Marketing Specialist, where I'm able to educate and spread awareness and advocate for a lot of the stuff that I struggled with and so many other people struggle with. So it's really cool to be here and talking to both of you about this, it's really, it's kind of an amazing, full circle to be here and be able to talk about it in the way that I am.Sherry Fleydervish 25:35Oh, that's, it's a really important piece to bring up. And I appreciate you sharing a little bit about that diagnosis coming a little bit later in adolescence too and what that must be like to experience or go through all of those years of school and not really understand what's different about how your brain works, and what your brain needs, until later on. And when we tie in mental health. And what we know about regulation, as well, is that we can't really access those thinking decision-making parts of our brains when we're not emotionally regulated. And so mental health, and if we're struggling with, even if it's stress, or anxiety, or depression, or whatever it might be our whole, we aren't able to plan and organize and our memories impacted. All those pieces that we need to be successful are, it just makes it harder to do that to get there.Hannah Choi 26:36And I imagine if you have grown up with this continuous message that you're hearing over and over and over again, that you're a failure, I mean, that maybe that's not the words they're using. But that's might be the message you're receiving. And imagine that that causes an amazing amount of stress on the brain, and then makes it even more challenging to access the executive function skills that that are already challenging.Sherry Fleydervish 26:59Absolutely. Yeah. You. It's, you know, those beliefs and your own perception of your own abilities, and can lead to some of those thoughts. And then that I can imagine how then having those feelings, and maybe leading to that either leading to avoidance or anxiety and not wanting to go to school or not wanting to go certain places where maybe those feelings have come up in the past and all of those things, kind of becoming comorbid and leading to each other.Sean Potts 27:33Yeah, absolutely. That's totally true. And I think, from my own experience, and from the research that's been done, I think there was something that said that by the time someone with ADHD turns 10, they've heard, I think, 10,000 more corrective messages than their neurotypical peers, which is, I find very sad, because that has a big ripple effect that impacts someone with ADHD's perception of themselves, first and foremost, but also of their capacity to do things and their confidence. And that, again, it has a ripple effect later in life that really impacts your mental health, your sense of self, your, again, your confidence. And I find that to be one of the saddest things about untreated ADHD is the fact that there's this coexisting mental health risk that people with ADHD also have. This leads me to my first real question, which is for you, Sherry. And it's that I'm very interested from the work that you've done, how you've seen some of the impact that that type of corrective messaging or other challenges that people with ADHD have, how that's manifested into mental health challenges, and the clients that you work with, would love to hear anything you have to say on that subject?Sherry Fleydervish 28:53I'm just thinking about the first thing that comes to mind is this environment, the environment of school, and what is expected of students, and how if you're not fitting in, maybe because of your ADHD diagnosis, executive functioning challenges, you're not fitting in with what is expected. And where I start, oftentimes, I do collaborate with schools, and I'll kind of talk about how I do that with my clients. But it's first starting with, with my clients and with their families, and recognizing that maybe these pieces of the environment actually aren't working with me or for my brain or for how I needed and so not necessarily adapting yourself in that moment, but I'm more wondering how can the teachers support the state that you have, and how can we adjust this expectation to fit in with what you what you need and talking with teachers and maybe even providing some education to about how oftentimes these students are experiencing redirections? And how can we You help them without constantly correcting correcting their behaviors. Instead, working with teachers has been really, really validating for for all the families and the clients that I work with. Because just knowing just a student going into school knowing that my teacher gets it, you know, she knows that I'm not trying to misbehave, or trying to be a bad kid, or whatever it is that had been coming up in the past is is not the case and knows that, you know, I'm trying to try and make the best that I can.Hannah Choi 30:36Have you noticed an increase in opportunities to work with teachers? Like are, is there more of a, are educators becoming more aware of kind of like a holistic approach to teaching?Sherry Fleydervish 30:52Absolutely, I, I really, really appreciate all of the teachers that I that I'm able to collaborate with, and that they're able to take the time to speak with me for, you know, 15, 20 minutes about one of their 30 students, and there is so much more social emotional learning going on in the classroom these days, it's truly incredible. And then that insight is so helpful for therapy, I use everything that the teachers are giving me all those observations, and bringing them into the room. And then life on on the flip side, as well, I feel that teachers are craving this piece and needing it and wanting to know what works best for each student. And they're so willing to implement it, because that's all they want is the success of their students. And then unfortunately, a lot of times, it's you know, what, if you're not supporting my kid, you're not doing what they need. And teachers are self-internalizing, to, like, I can't connect with this kid. And this is so hard, where, you know, I try so hard to just let teachers know you're doing the best that you can. And it's not, you know, some kids have different needs, and how, how open they are to having those vulnerable conversations, something I'm really grateful for.Hannah Choi 32:03And I imagine that there's also it also varies from school, depending on the, you know, the the leadership, and how aware of the leadership is of, of the importance of social emotional regulation, and just how important that piece is, I was just talking recently with our, my, my children's elementary school principal. And, and she was saying that, that for her, that's number one that's, that comes first. And the happiness of her teachers, you know, is just so important, and that she sees mental health as the most important thing first for everybody. I love. I just loved hearing that. And, and so that's great that you're seeing a lot of partnership between schools and mental health providers.Sean Potts 32:48Yeah, that's a great point, Hannah. And Sherry, I'm just curious, I just have a quick question for you, too. Do you find in the work that you do, that teachers have become more aware or perceptive to the, to these issues around ADHD and executive function than they were, let's say 10 years ago, because from my experience growing up, it really felt like, almost no fault of their own, teachers just didn't really know about these challenges, they didn't really know how to handle them. And because of that, oftentimes, you know, that would manifest into frustration or other areas like that. And I'm just, I'm just curious, if you think that's changed at all, in the last 10 years, in the work that you've been doing,Sherry Fleydervish 33:27I think, you know, to Hannah's point, it definitely depends on the administration, the higher-ups and what that, you know, the different environments and of each school as well. But overall, I definitely see teachers were invested on that mental health, emotional piece, I think, because there's so much more education out there on it, the stigma is decreasing, and so many more people are open to therapy, and there isn't this huge stigma on it, for lack of a better word, that it seeps into education, and it seeps into the teachers as well, you know, they are recognizing that they have their own things going on too, then it's so much easier to see and to connect with students who are also experiencing that. And so, I think overall, just it's, it's a lot easier to have those conversations and teachers are really willing to go there.Hannah Choi 34:27And breaking down that stigma around mental health and therapists and you know, taking care of our mental health is so important. And and why continuing to have these conversations and normalizing the idea of having a therapist normalizing the idea of, yes, everyone has executive function challenges like I am the first one to admit Yeah, I'm a coach and I love helping people and I also really struggle with in certain areas of executive function, and you and just just having these conversations and showing people You can talk about it, and it's okay. And talking about it is going to help, it will help, it'll help someone. Oh, that's great to hear that that conversation is happening more.Sherry Fleydervish 35:13And sometimes even just talking to teachers on that note of acknowledging your own challenges, whatever, whatever it might be, you know, that is such a great way to connect with your kid, you know, or your student, whoever it might be that, you know, I have a really hard time organizing my stuff to, here's something that has helped me or let's problem solve together, let's, let's work through this, let's figure out how to do it. Just that little piece, that little nugget, I'll have kids come in, and just tell me that they had this great talk with their teacher, and the teacher might not have even noticed that it was just this little piece little thing that they connected on, you know, I felt this way before. That's everything can be everything.Hannah Choi 35:50I see that a lot in my clients, whenever I you know, if I share something that I've really struggled with, I see, like visible relief on their face, like, wow, this person who's supposedly, you know, obviously, she knows something about executive function. She has struggled with it, too. And it's, yeah, it's so important to share that. Although it can be scary to be open about your own struggles, your own challenges. But I think it gives everyone else permission to think, oh, I actually feel that way too sometimes. And that's okay.Sherry Fleydervish 36:24I've worked through that over the years as a therapist, and how to self-disclose and learning how to disclose in a way that's really validating, and opening up this place of, of comfort. And it sounds like you're working on that same thing, too. And just showing, no, I have, I have these struggles, too. And I have these feelings. And these eyes open up so wide, some of these kids like, well, you know, adults that I model also experience struggles.Hannah Choi 36:56And it's okay. Something that reminds me of the idea, I can't remember what it's called, you probably know, the, the idea where you can feel two different two opposing feelings about the same thing at the same time. So the idea of replacing but with and then so that reminded me of Sean, your your experience growing up? And how, if you had, maybe you've received the message, like, you know, you, you are, you need to work on your organization or whatever, and you're, you're a great student, or you're a good, you know, you might have heard like, yeah, you're smart, but you, you know, need to work on this. And it kind of negates everything that was said first. So do you is that a strategy that you have shared with people? Or is that something that's coming up for you lately?Sherry Fleydervish 37:56I think that when you're when you're offering that opportunity of learning, right, that's usually what what we're doing, at the end of the day, when you're offering criticism, or you're offering your observation or whatever it might be, it's an opportunity for that other person to, to learn or in your mind get better at whatever that challenge is. And so we have to sandwich those pieces with, obviously, things that will make them feel proud of themselves and feel accomplished. And then when you're adding in these pieces of but you can do this next time or but whatever it might be, you know, here's the place, sometimes I'll say it like this, you know, your brain works really, really good at your, you have a great memory, you're very creative. And you have an ability to see all these little details that everybody else may not be able to see, but your brain at, or I don't even want to say but your brain has a little bit of a harder time with shifting attention from this to this or from whatever activity we're doing before to this one. And so maybe connecting with, with that actual piece that they're struggling with. And saying, you know, I'm here with you, I want to help. I want to help you strengthen this part of your brain, I want to help this not be so hard for you. And connecting with you know how hard it is for them feeling that comes up for them. And then working together to be kind of kind of like a consultant or that you know, how can we problem solve together?Hannah Choi 39:36And that makes me think of the idea of meeting someone where they are and and not asking more of them that they are then they're ready for and figuring out what their strengths are and how they can use those strengths. Sean, do you remember do you think have you ever thought about that concept of like, of, of you can be this One of the thing and the and the kind of opposite at the same time. And do you think that any of the messaging that you received growing up as a kid with ADHD, do you think if you had been told this message of you have challenges, and you're like, you're this and you're that instead of you're this, but you're that, do you think that would have made a difference for you?Sean Potts 40:21Oh, yeah, I think that would have made a huge difference. Particularly around when I was maybe nine years old, I remember I just had this one teacher that just never really understood or got me beyond the surface level challenges that she saw. And my mom often recalls this one parent teacher conference, or the typical one that would happen near the end of the year, where she, you know, once the conference with my dad, and you know, for the next 20, 30 minutes, my teacher just kept listening, all these negative things I was doing wrong. And eventually she just snapped and was like, "Do you have anything positive to say about my son?" And I think that's the best example of what it was really like for me being in the classroom every day with the teacher who saw me in that way. And I remember the next year, I had just such a an upgrade, where I had a teacher who immediately got me and saw some things that I didn't even see in myself, particularly around writing and creativity and some things that I've since learned that I really like. And the first time the parents come into the classroom, she mentioned how the first thing she said to my mom, when she came up to her was your son, so creative. He's such a great writer, and my mom tells me that she just started crying, because from her perspective, she had been hearing these negative things. And that was in stark contrast to what she knew about me. But at a deeper level, it was a stark contrast to it, I felt like I knew about myself, but I had really impacted me hearing all the things I had heard that year before from that one teacher, and some of the ways that she approached my challenges. So, you know, I really think it would have been a huge help to have had that earlier. And I think, you know, overcoming that was a huge part of my journey with my ADHD and the executive dysfunction I was experiencing. So no, absolutely, I think that would have made a huge difference. But I also do recognize that I was lucky to have had a teacher like that. And I also recognize that there are a lot of students who don't. And that's really, really sad and unfortunate, because I think anyone growing up with those types of challenges, needs to needs to meet somebody who can see you as an individual beyond just those sorts of those surface level challenges. So that you can realize that they're really just that surface level challenges. They're not some inherent character flaws that makes you you know, irrevocably messed up are different. They're a challenge that you have a whole lifetime to be able to overcome. But within that, you also have your strengths. And if you can have a teacher or somebody in your life who can help you realize that as someone who's young with ADHD, I think that is one of the most important ingredients for future success. And I again, I feel very lucky to have had that both in that teacher but also in my coach.Hannah Choi 43:07Yeah, and then what you said about confidence, I mean, that keeps coming up in every conversation that I have had, I feel like about everything recently, but especially these conversations for the podcast is it all seems to come back to confidence. And I imagine share, you see that a lot in both your clients and the parents of your clients. And that when you learn the skills, then you become more confident, which then helps in I imagine more ways than we will ever know for people.Sherry Fleydervish 43:39That is something that comes up in almost every intake, "I just I want my kid to feel more confident". And that shows up in every aspect, then up up their identity. And when I bring kids into my office, that is one of the first things that I work on is Where do you feel your best? Because these are not, kind of to Sean's point, these are not conversations or things that kids just inherently think about, you know, where my where am I? Where do I feel the best? Where do I feel strong? Where do I feel empowered, and confident? I bet you every kid you speak to will actually have an example of it. But then and offering your own piece if they don't you know why see how how focused you are whenever you're drawing in session. Or seems like you're three steps ahead when we're playing Connect 4 for every single week. Those are these little pieces where you're starting to notice other their notice there's their confidence when they might not even be seeing it themselves. And then using that to work towards some of the challenges and the pieces the things that they want to see different in their own lives. Even five year olds can tell me "I want to feel less of this feeling and more of this feeling". Like, Okay, great. Well, using the things that I know where you feel competent, we're going to, we're going to build on those pieces that feelings you don't want to have any more the challenges you're having at school. You're not just this one thing.Hannah Choi 45:17That reminds me of a conversation I had with my family recently, we went around the room, and we challenged each other to come up with five things that we were really good at, we had to say it about ourselves. It was so hard. It was such a hard thing to do. And I think you're right, we don't naturally think that way. And, and so how great to start off, you know, a conversation with someone that way i when I've meet for when I first meet a new client, I always ask them, so what are you good at? And it's it's hard to think that way. But it's important. Yeah. Great to have any. Sean, do you have any other questions for sherry?Sean Potts 45:59Yeah, so for the clients that you work with that have, let's say, anxiety and depression, but also have ADHD where these two, these two, or maybe even three things are existing simultaneously? How do you assess where to start treatment? Do you start with the ADHD? Do you start with the depression, anxiety, what's the focal point for treatment, and why?Sherry Fleydervish 46:23This happens often, right? Where a client is experiencing symptoms of different diagnoses, and maybe if it has comorbid diagnoses already coming into, into my session. And I start by just really, really, really, for a moment, putting aside that diagnosis, and noticing what is what is showing up the most, and what is the most symptomatic, and what is getting in the way most for this client. You know, if they have dual diagnosis, then maybe we need to first focus on that anxiety. And that is the most important and to figure out how to calm your mind calm, your body be a little bit more regulated. So then you can tackle some of those some of those pieces and those thoughts. And then we can dive into the other diagnoses or the other symptoms, you know, that the diagnosis is important and really validating for so many people. And for me, too, and it helps with treatment, but just kind of looking at a client and a person as a whole, and parsing out what is what is really the most important thing to support in the beginning. And everything else will eventually fall into place.Hannah Choi 47:36I find that to with coaching, you know, we always start off like, what's the thing that's the hardest for you right now? Like, what's the thing that's causing the most stress for you, and the thing that, that that's keeping you up at night, and just starting there, and you're right, I do find that the other things kind of end up naturally just getting involved and and leading into them. And then and then I do notice also that some of the challenges that came up, once we address those challenges, they actually were associated with some of the other stuff too. So then it makes the other stuff that used to be super challenging, also a little bit less challenging, just by working on this one other thing.Sherry Fleydervish 48:19I wonder if it's that they're building on their strengths, or they're starting to feel more competent in one area, and it kind of just even without even that conversation happening. It's just starting to morph into those other places. Other things.Hannah Choi 48:32It's pretty magical to see. So I imagine you have that experience as well. Yeah, thank you so much, Sherry. It's just so interesting to listen to you talk and and you have such a calm manner about yourself. I bet your clients just love talking with you.Sherry Fleydervish 48:51I loved this conversation, I feel like we just I wish it happened more. I wish these conversations were out there more just kind of normalizing therapy and parenting support. You know, it's just, you need the space, you know, and it's not just a drop-off service. I won't let that happen. I don't let that happen in my office. I make sure parents know from the beginning. I don't care if your, you know, your kiddos coming in here, five or 17. You know, I want to work together so that what's going on in my sessions is is coming and translating at home, too.Hannah Choi 49:32When when my kids were little I lived on Cape Cod and I have to give a shout out to Cindy Horgan at the Cape Cod Children's Place. It's a an organization that provides support for young families on the outer and lower cape. And my kids went or my Yeah, my kids went to preschool there and she approaches it like that when you. Yes, your kids go to school there, but she supports the parents so much and you could just make an appointment to go talk with her about any parenting challenges that you're having, and she just wrapped you right up in her, you know, figurative arms and just kept you, you know, gate gave you great strategies and and, and she was so great she was so open about her own challenges and just normalized everything so much. And just what you were saying right there just reminds me so much of that experience and I wish that every, every child, and every parent would have an opportunity to work with someone like Cindy Horgan. So. So thanks, Sherry, could you share with our listeners, where we where they can find you if they're interested in asking you more questions or learning more about you? Sherry Fleydervish 50:42Absolutely. So you can find my profile on bestselfinc.com. And you can also find a whole lot of other resources for children, teens, parents, families of logs, and resources are all on our website. You can even subscribe to our family newsletter. And we often will send blogs through that updates, anything that we've written.Hannah Choi 51:08I'll be sure to include all of that information in our show notes, too. So if you're listening, check out the show notes. And you can find it there too. Thank you so much to both of you for joining me today. I just I loved every second of this conversation. I feel like I could have talked for a whole nother hour, but maybe maybe another day.Sean Potts 51:28Absolutely. Thank you both. This has been such a pleasure to join this conversation.Sherry Fleydervish 51:33Thank you so much. It's been really wonderful to be here.Hannah Choi 51:38And that's our show for today. Thank you for joining me and taking time out of your day to listen, I really hope that you found something useful in today's episode. As Sherry said, it's so important to have these conversations about mental health, executive function challenges and parenting support. The more we talk about these so called stigmas, the more we normalize them, and by normalizing them more and more people will be able to access the support they need without negative reactions from the people around them. And here at Focus Forward, we will continue to have these important and sometimes difficult conversations in the hopes that we help someone, somewhere. If you are interested in normalizing these topics, please check out the show notes for some tips on how you can help. Oh, and hey, you can start off by sharing our podcast with your friends. If you haven't yet, subscribe to this podcast app beyond booksmart.com/podcast. You'll get an email about every episode with links to resources and tools we mentioned. Thanks for listening

Oh man, this week was CRAZY! But you know what we grew, we hustled and we coached. We talk about the secrets to success through giving and receiving help!For All Things Related To Being An Insurance Dude or Dudette,  Incredible Tips, Amazing Tools, and Valuable Resources Check Out The Insurance Dudes Hub! https://www.theidudes.com/Are you interested in learning  “How To Predictably Sell 6-Figures A Month From Insurance Internet Leads While Saving You Time And Money!?"Head over to our free masterclass today! Click Herehttps://www.theidudes.com/masterclass-registration1619461457775Craig Pretzinger  00:00I mean, as Dave Matthews said to talk about the weather, if you have to. I didn't know he said that. He I think that's the lyrics. Maybe it's not good at all. Yeah,Jason Feltman  00:10he wrote a lot of songs and I'm sure that that might be in one of them.Craig Pretzinger  00:13Yep. It shirts dudes are on a mission to escape be handcuffed by our agents.Jason Feltman  00:19How? by uncovering the secrets to creating a predictable, consistent and profitable agency Sales Machine.Craig Pretzinger  00:27I am Craig Pretzinger.Jason Feltman  00:29I am Jason Feldman. We are agents. We are insurances. Right now, while it's fresh in your mind, check out live dot Tella dudes.com.Craig Pretzinger  00:41We took our notes from over 100 interviews with top agents from around the country and made it into a liveJason Feltman  00:48webcast using these strategies led Craig and I to selling more than 10 million in premium in the last two years on this call,Craig Pretzinger  00:56you'll receive the exact blueprint to get the same results.Jason Feltman  01:01Just go to Live dot tele dudes.com To register for this upcoming Tuesday's live call with us.Craig Pretzinger  01:09If you jump on this call with us we're certain 2022 will be an absolutely fantastic year for you see, they're a it's a playbook. It's a playbook.Jason Feltman  01:20What's the play today?Craig Pretzinger  01:22Oh, it's playbook 19. We talked a little bit recently about how to be a successful agent. Okay, but let's take it one little let's add a word to that. How to be a successful sales agent.Jason Feltman  01:35What's the recipe? Are we gonna go through the recipe in the audience for that?Craig Pretzinger  01:39I have four ingredients that we can bake into this cake.Jason Feltman  01:42Is there going to be frosting on this cake? Well,Craig Pretzinger  01:45if you want to say that three of the things are ingredients are what is the frosted that okay, absolutely. All right. So let's dive a word. Number one, you got to have a script. A lot of sales agents and even agency owners don't like the idea of a script. Right?Jason Feltman  02:05And I will say this, this was a hinderance when I first did our first script was trying to have a good script. But here's the thing. You don't have to have a good script, you just have to have a script, and then constantly improve on it. But even a bad script, even a bad script, if you take the time to write it out will be 10 times better than anything that anybody's saying without a script, because they're in the heat of the moment. And they get off track. And it's just really to keep you on track.Craig Pretzinger  02:37Right? You can have a GPS, you can have a compass, but you need something to help get you there. Yep. And I know when we first opened the third office that the script was there was a lot of pushback on that. But what happened was it really helped us a with trading, and be w

The traditional record label model isn't artist-friendly. That's not a secret to anyone by now. Deals are notoriously long and feature a revenue split heavily tilted toward the label — not the artist. But an ambitious alternative has arisen in the last few years. Meet indify, a start-up co-founded by musician prettyboyshav and his two childhood best friends, Matthew Pavia and Connor Lawrence.indify is a platform that connects investors with up-and-coming artists. Investors can not only financially back artists, but also mentor them in matters like legal or marketing. But unlike a record deal, investments can be as short as a song-per-song basis. As prettyboyshav told me, it's like “going on dates instead of marrying.” As an artist himself with millions of streams to his name, Prettyboyshav is specially equipped to carry out indify's vision — to create a more equitable, prosperous music industry. indify was originally a music discovery tool when it launched in 2015. Using an algorithm, it identified emerging artists on the cusp of “blowing up” like Khalid, who the tool flagged way back in 2015. That technology still underpins its new business pivot as the “AngeList for the music industry.” To get a glimpse into indify's innovative technology and mission, listen to my full interview with prettyboyshav. We covered a lot of topics, including the ones below: [3:39] indify's Mission In The Music Industry [5:28] Why Artists Are Taken Advantage Of So Often[7:03] What Does indify Look For In Investors Wanting To Join The Platform? [10:16] The Potential For Culture-Setters To Financially Back An Emerging Artist[14:38] indify Vs. Record Labels [19:07] Is There A Glass Ceiling On Artists Who Don't Sign With A Record Label? [23:35] Does indify Do Upfront Money Deals? [26:10] Principles That Guard indify's Technology[29:27] indify Having Web 3.0 Values Despite Being Off-Chain [33:11] How prettyboyshav Juggles His Music Career And Being Start-Up FounderListen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: prettyboyshav, @prettyboyshav Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPTIONprettyboyshav 00:00I truly, truly, deeply believe in it and feel it and empathize with the work that's being done because I believe in these values, which really comes down to community, right? And community ownership, community governance, I think these things are very powerful concepts. And I think these are very powerful ways for an artist to run their business.Dan Runcie 00:26Hey, welcome to the Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. Today's guest is prettyboyshav. He's the co-founder and CEO of Indify, a platform that is helping people invest in the future of music. Indify connects merchant artists with the funding they need to build the biggest careers. On Indify, it brings together artists who want to grow and control their career on their terms. It also brings together investors who want to support and back these artists and have the know how to help bring them to the next level. It also brings together business partners who can help artists with marketing, legal, accounting, and many of the other things involved to help run the business. One of the things that Shav and I have always talked about and we agree on is that artists are founders. If you follow me anywhere, you've seen me talk about this, you see me reiterate this. And I think Shav himself is a great example of this. He very much approaches Indify this way, and he's also a recording artist himself, prettyboyshav has over 10 million streams. And we talked a lot about what it's been like for him, navigating both the CEO role and his role as an artist. But we also talk about what Indify has been up to and some of their progress they've ha. The company has had over a million dollars generated this past quarter and 2022 for the artists on its platform and over a billion streams for those artists collectively as well. We talk about the influence that some of the partners they've had as well, such as Alexis Ohanian, who was an early investor in Indify, some of the artists that he's been able to back, and ultimately what they're trying to build towards. We talked about how Indify is positioned relative to other alternative financing options in the music industry. We also talked about how it's positioned relative to record labels. And can an artist on one of these alternative financing platforms achieve the same success as the superstars that are on the major record labels? The folks that headline major music festivals, perform at the Super Bowl and things like that? This is a great conversation. And if you're interested in where the music industry is going, some other options, you'll love this one. Here's my chat with prettyboyshav. All right, we got the one and only prettyboyshav here with us today. He is the co-founder CEO of Indify, platform and a company that is helping artists embrace their independence. He is also an artist himself with over 10 million streams. Shav, welcome to the pod.prettyboyshav 03:15What's up, Dan? Good to be here, man. I've been wanting to come on here for a while.Dan Runcie 03:19Yeah. And I mean, you know that I've been following everything that you've all been doing. And it's been very interesting to see how you've navigated the industry and how you leverage the technology built to continue to do good things. So for those that are less familiar, what is Indify and what is it that you all are trying to help solve in the music industry?prettyboyshav 03:39Well, Indify is a marketplace that's helping artists raise funding on equitable terms from strategic partners. You could think of it as almost like AngelList for music. I think our premise is that the major labels and a lot of the old system and the traditional system, the music industry, kind of represent what you know, private equity did years ago on the venture side. And I think fortunately, we have things like YC and AngelList. Actually, one of these tweets is the Kanye tweet from around fall 2020, where he kind of talked about a lot of things that we've been talking about, but we think it's time that a lot of those standardized, founder-friendly, and digitize terms come to help artists who we believe are also founders raise funding equitably. Yeah. So it's been exciting. I think this is an evolution from our earlier platform, which was really just a discovery tool for the music industry and became an industry-standard tool across a ton of record labels and ended up identifying a ton of artists, early one that we're very known for is Khalid.Dan Runcie 04:34Nice, and I got to mention, because you mentioned the Kanye tweets behind you. Is one of those the one that's talked about the Y Combinator for the music industry?prettyboyshav 04:43Yes, that's exactly what it is, you know, “When I spoke to Katie Jacobs who's on the board of the Vivendi. We decided to create a YC for the music industry so artists have the power and transparency to be in control of our future. No more shady contracts, no more lifelong deals.” And this one is Alexis tweeting Blonde, because I showed Alexis Ohanian, who's our investor. I was like, man, you got to get deeper into Blonde and Frank Ocean because this thing is amazing.Dan Runcie 05:05Yeah, it's an amazing album. And I think, thinking more broadly about what you all are building, I think that venture for music is the pitch I've heard from you. I've heard references well with where you're seeing with this, but I feel like you're taking a bit of a more unique take on it than maybe just the YC model. So what does that look like? What do you see things playing out for you?prettyboyshav 05:28Well, I think what YC did, right, in building the safe and standardized docs, and more documentation and transparency has allowed founders to see, okay, what is par for the course? What are founder-friendly terms? You know, if you don't use a safe note, for a raise, or standardized docs, you're kind of, you know, totally left field, a ton of artists, I would say, you know, just anecdotally, like, one out of three artists we meet, a very high percentage have actually signed some sort of predatory, shady contract before they even get off the ground. And the lack of standardization at that early stage if you compare it to Venture Seed, Series A, Pre-seed, has made it so a lot of artists get taken advantage of at inception. And I think that's something that's very core to Indify to prevent that from happening to build the tools and education system so that artists can have an ecosystem or have kind of technology, such that they're protected.Dan Runcie 06:20And I think a lot of that you mentioned the partners they work with and the people they meet, because that, of course, is how people ended up in either good contracts or bad contracts. That's a lot of what's there right? And I think you've spoken before about this distinction between smart money versus dumb money, which I know has also been very common in investing and in tech as well. And I think the same can be said in music. And I know that you all do your job on both sides, both the artist side and the investor side to determine who can be entered into the program. So yeah, let's start with the investor side. What are the things that you look for when someone wants to join your platform because they want to invest in an artist?prettyboyshav 07:03Yeah, I think, you know, building on kind of some of the points you were making earlier to Dan, like, what is protection for artists? What is being artists first? This is something that at Indify we studied for six years, and these are nuanced questions, and I've studied it myself as an artist, right? You know, there's a ton of funding solutions that are out there, some fan investing, some loan investing, but you know, if it is a finance bro buying your song, or if it is, you know, a loan against your own streams, a lot of the times this can put the artists in a worse position than if they were to take no money at all, because now they're in the hole, X amount of dollars. And if all those dollars are not spent, wisely are spent in a way that they're amplifying, ultimately, your platform as an artist or your income as an artist. Now, you're not increasing your income, and you're in the hole 10, 20, 50k. And that's something that I think, you know, is important to make a distinction about because artists are founders. And we're not necessarily seeing founders prioritize capital, but prioritize the best partners when they're raising funds for their companies. I think the same is true for the smart business owners that are artists. And I think they should be respected as such, many of them are making six, seven figures a year that work with Indify. And part of the reason that that is, is they're not only I think, CEOs in their own right, and building their business on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, social media, shipping every day, right? Like we talked about shipping with founders, these artists are shipping every day. They're putting their stories out there, they're connecting with people. But they're also very, very smart to find business partners that know how to digital market their music, that know how to manage their operations, and they're hiring these partners and partnering with investors. And so what we look for, you know, there's generally two kinds of cohorts, I would say, one is spark music professionals that have had experienced breaking artists before. And we have certain kinds of thresholds for that, one of the thresholds we talked about is, has this partner work with an artist that has reached over 30,000 streams a day or not, even previous time? Or also, you know, influencers themselves. I think that's something that we're really excited about. It's a bit more on the early stage. But, for example, Alexis Ohanian invested in the artist Leah Kate, I think around, you know, when he least identified her on the platform, and he, that was all him. He went on the platform and he found her. She was even lower on the rank. She was at around 3000 streams per day. He's helped her grow using his platform and his base to now over a million streams a day. And we think that's an incredible example of a partnership. And we think those combinations together, a syndicate of sorts of these strategic professionals with strategic influencers that can gift an audience to younger artists, is the new way of music industry.Dan Runcie 09:51I'm sure there must be some nuance there, right because of course, someone like Alexis who is a fan, he understands that clearly, he has a lot of influence to be able to make things happen. But I'm sure you may also get interest for people in tech, let's say they were early at a startup, startup exited, they have some extra money. They may know nothing about the music industry, but they just want to get in. How are those conversations?prettyboyshav 10:16Well, I think, Alexis, and I'll tell the story, like, Alexis tweeted, I wish I could invest in Lizzo enterprises. And I tweeted back, invest in the next one on Indify, and somebody showed him the tweet, somehow, I caught him for five minutes at the US Open actually, and told him music investing safe, he said, you're a crazy person. Investing in music can't be safe, I tried it. And he, actually, you know, put his money where his mouth is, and he backed an artist. But I think with that was the spirit of somebody who wanted to help that artist and grow, with that was the spirit of somebody who wanted to spend time with Leah, who was a founder and help her develop both as an artist and as a businesswoman, an independent businesswoman who's building an incredible seven-figure per year revenue business. And so I think that that development, and I think more so with him, the ability to empower her as an entrepreneur. And that story, getting out there, I think, was what made for something really exciting with Leah. But I think what's really interesting is now bigger artists actually coming into the fold. We actually a huge artist, I'm not at liberty to say yet, in Q1, backed an artist, one of my favorite artists of all time, and this I think is going to happen more and more. What happens if LeBron starts backing artists on Indify, right? What happens if, you know, actors and actresses? What happens if Lisa, right, starts backing artists on Indify? I mean, these are artists that can bring real taste, culture, and audiences to those next generation of emerging artists. And I think when you're posed with signing your rights away to a major label or partnering with someone like that, I think it's a really exciting proposition for the future.Dan Runcie 11:48Yeah, this reminds me of an idea that I think it was Jack Butcher, if someone like that had mentioned on a podcast about looking at someone like a Canelo Alvarez or even Deontay Wilder, you have these prizefighters, boxers, and if they invest in artists, that artist is the one that walks out with them when they're doing their walk-up music, that is a huge platform, so able to introduce someone like that. I think that is so powerful.prettyboyshav 12:14I saw that clip and shout out Jack Butcher and Visualize Value, and everything he's doing. He has an amazing podcast too, he's a friend. And I think that's such an amazing concept, right? Like, I think as a society, we're yearning for cross-cultural moments, you know what I mean? You see it so much with even the Paul's fighting in boxing. And you know, Paul-Mayweather, what a crazy event that was, or Conor McGregor-Mayweather and I think, more and more, I think you're gonna see culture crossover, right. And I like that fun there. But like, you know, music is in our DNA. And people talk about sometimes they asked me, like, you know, what's the market in music? What's the market of streaming? What's the opportunity? And I'm like, well, there's 7 billion of us in the world. We all like music, right? So I think everybody is on the table to be a part of the story. And I think that's why it's so powerful. I think we've wanted solutions for music for such a long time. But I think for us, you know, it's been these strategic partners, and pairing them with, you know, and our ability to identify artists, I think is the best out there in all honesty, pairing them with artists with traction, that's when one plus one equals 100. I mean, in the last year or so we've helped artists reach over a billion streams independently. And this is rea on the ground effort, and real on the ground connections, that is making a difference in these lives, not in terms of just a one-time cash-out. But many of these artists are now making six, and some seven figures per year over, you know, what could be the rest of their careers. And that's the beauty of when you do break through on streaming, what it can do for you can create sustainability as an artist, I think it's something that we're very proud of, in our cohort of artists helping them get to.Dan Runcie 13:48So let's talk a little bit more about the benefits and what artists do you get. Because I think a lot of people, they hear options like Indify, they're thinking about it as an alternative to maybe going with their traditional record label and doing that type of deal. And on the surface. Of course, if an artist is working with Indify, I believe the terms is up to 50% and rotating ownership for their masters is what they offer. I know there are some record label deals that do offer that. But if you could talk a little bit more about the distinction there. And if there are certain things that you think that you offer as a replacement, and then are there certain things where you still think that an artist would need to still find elsewhere, they should find elsewhere, and may be a bit of the itemization of where Indify's value add is relative to what the artists would get on a record label.prettyboyshav 14:38Well, I think talking more just technically to start, if you look at the traditional record industry contract and what standard and this is for people out there who don't know, generally they're like, aghast when I explain this, but a typical record deal is, this is the deal that a lot of these greats have signed A typically a record deal Is 85%-15% in favor of the major label, a five-album deal. And over the course of a lifetime of copyright plus like seven years. It's like the traditional kind of deal. So that means an entire artist's career, that they're sort of signing away at 17, 16, 20 years old, but are involved in for the next 10 to 15 years of their career. And I think that time period also matters. Also, for the capital advance, you get, right, like you see these artists get all these nice things upfront, I think that upfront cost is massive. It's massive, because you're not only, in a typical loan, you pay, you know, your 100% of your rights would pay back that loan, right? In this case, your 15% has to pay back that initial advance, let's say it's 100k, 200k, 500k, meaning you're in the whole millions, right of dollars, before you see 15 cents on the dollar. And that's after there is and these are some of the things that I find the most predatory, a 25% distribution fee, which costs $20 on this circuit, or, you know, accounting that is just less than clean and clear, I'll say. And so I think on the converse side, I think a lot of these infrastructural issues are initially what we're trying to fix, you know, beyond just I think the terms, but if we put it plain and simple on terms, I mean, a lot of artists on our platforms start with raising for one song, right? With a partner that they talked to, and they might have interest from a ton of partners, messages from the ton of partners on the platform, speak with them. And if they liked that partner, generally these deals are for one song, only three to five years. And after the initial investment is paid back, I think we see a lot of 70-30 kind of splits in favor of the artists. So it's quite literally flipping the economics and making the commitment significantly less. And I think honestly, one of the other things that I've heard, you know, people talk about one of the greatest forms of control is slowness. I think, you know, these contracts, they take sometimes six weeks to six months to a year to fully kind of work through. On Indify we're seeing, you know, you can raise one song, try a partner, try another partner for another song, if you liked them, do an EP. And you can do that investment. You know, using this platform. Again, all of the actual legal terms are in our outsourced to our like TOS and our super artist-friendly, we have our sort of indie note that like backs that, but you're then just deciding for simple terms, once those are decided it can take 45 minutes to raise, and you can capitalize on that moment that's happening on TikTok, or on Instagram immediately with some of the best marketers and managers in the business that are doing a lot of, a lot of the heavy lifting behind the scenes, and are a lot of times the people who the label pay at a premium. And so I think that's for us why we feel Indify is really a better option. Because, you know, rather than diving in and getting married to a partner at the youngest possible age, you're in fact, just, you know, going on dates, I guess, with different partners and seeing, alright, who's the best fit for me, who's somebody that connect with? Who's the right value add investor for my project?Dan Runcie 18:01I do think that last example, makes a ton of sense of that, essentially, because so much of it, especially with these five-album deals, you are signing away so much early on when, if you think about yourself as an asset, you've been de-risked, hopefully much earlier in the process if you end up being successful, but there's no opportunity to necessarily realize that until a bit later on in the process, and I know one thing that I do hear from people and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it is that with some of these alternative financing options, the terms are great, everything is effective from that perspective. However, people still have this question about, okay, well, what is the max that we could see an artist succeed? Can we see someone be this superstar that's performing at the Super Bowl or reaching these Billy Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo or Ariana Grande level of artists if they're not with one of the major record labels? You could still earn a living off of those, but can an artist reach that path? So it'd be great to hear your thoughts on that, and especially how you think that relates with Indify. prettyboyshav 19:07I'd really love that question. It's something that I think about a lot. It's something that I'm excited to experiment with myself. I think eventually, you know, something that I'm interested in is documenting, transcribing, and publishing my process of going through Indify with an artist with 10 million streams. I'm not quite, I think fairly qualified. So I'm actually posting my TikToks trying to get there. But I think as an artist, you get excited about seeing what, and as obviously as a founder, what the brink of this platform is. We've seen for transparency's sake a $400,000 deal happened on Indify. We've also seen deals for 10 to 50k, right, where the investor, you know, pre-release, invest in the song. Week one with some initial pre-release traction, and then I can talk about the Seaside demo example. That song was invested in on Sunday, it came out on Monday. By Wednesday, it was doing well, Nick Mueller and Golden Kids Group, he flagged it to Spotify. And he made sure the digital marketing was being spent wisely. So that week two, it's now doing 100,000 streams per day 200,000 streams per day, week three, week four, he's calling TikTok, calling Snapchat, calling Apple, calling all the right partners such that it reaches pop rising by week two, or three, and by week five, and hit Today's Top hits as an independent song. And this happened within the course of a month. I mean, you know, songs like that, without going into too much detail. When you do have that viral capacity, you could see a 30 or 50x, on your 10k investment. And we're seeing investors experienced that, you're seeing these artists, again, earn six to seven figures, from creating moments like that. And beyond that, you know, just working with these partners, when it doesn't happen at that level, you're seeing, I think 80 or 90% of these deals on the platform are profitable. So quite literally, you have what is a low ceiling, or a low risk, high ceiling asset class, which I think is incredibly unique, especially because we're de-risking those things by only allowing the artists to come on and see strategic partners and only allowing the partners to come on and see artists with traction and be able to invest in them right on the platform and then be able to earn out directly through kind of this whole ecosystem and technology that we've built. And I think what we've seen in the last year, even the last quarter Jx.Zero, I think he reached 700 or 800,000 streams a day. Leah is now doing a million streams per day. Pink Sweat$, who was the first artist to raise way back when this was even off platform. Leah was the first one on platform with Alexis. Off platform, Pink did a funding partnership, a funding deal to start his career. I mean, he's had a platinum record. He's in the top 500 of the world, and he's at Coachella. And that's the only artists that's had a few years to develop. I think the next superstars are already happening on Indify, I think that's a given. I just think that just like startups, these are going to take time. But if you look at the last year, and even if you look at the last quarter, I think we had three or four songs hit the global viral chart last quarter, and these artists are on their way to be great. And I think just to add one more thing, if you look at Kanye West's top songs on Spotify, his jeen-yuhs just came out, College Dropout was spotlighted in that, like crazy. I mean, what an amazing doc. But if you look at his Spotify, his number one song is Praise God, right? If his number one, why is his number one some Praise God? I mean, Moon. I love that song. Arguably a better song in my view, praise God is a great song. Off of Donda, there's a million tracks that are doing well but that's the only song off Donda that's number one. No, the jeen-yuhs doc didn't move anything to number one in terms of The College Dropout and the songs that were spotlighted. So why is it that Praise God is the number one song on Kanye's catalog. Kanye West are the biggest artists the world, because on TikTok it reached 1.5 million videos. The investors on Indify are the best at marketing on TikTok and social media. And it's my belief that not only should the next generation of emerging artists raise funding on Indify, but it's my belief that the current generation of superstars will start to in the next few years.Dan Runcie 22:58It's a compelling pitch. And I think normally at this stage, you of course, are able to incentivize artists with the amount that they could earn by essentially starting around and using their songs as around or using an album is around, right? Is there any upfront pitch or financing though that would happen? So let's say there is a major artist that's like, Oh, hey, I see what you all are doing, I'm down. But if you could give me some upfront money, not necessarily an advance or some type of upfront money, what would that look like? Is that something that you've all explored? Or has that come up at all?prettyboyshav 23:35You know, it's so funny. One, bigger artists are approaching us. I think that's actually, to my surprise, I didn't think we'd be at that stage yet. It's a dream. It really is a dream, what we get to do every day, a chance to serve some of these artists gives me chills, because these are artists that are heroes. And to know that we built the infrastructure better than the old. In fact, the pitch is much easier to them than the new artist because they've been through the system. They know what it looks like from the inside. Generally...Dan Runcie 24:01So you don't have to say the artist but could you give us like a tier, like what level is one of the ones that have reached out?prettyboyshav 24:07I would say an important megastar. I won't say like, I think that's the right, I'll give that to you. That's what I'll give.Dan Runcie 24:14Okay, okay. Someone that would have headlined Coachella? prettyboyshav 24:18Yes, absolutely.Dan Runcie 24:19Okay. Okay. prettyboyshav 24:20I think you'll see artists that would headline Coachella, and that people would be most excited about on the bill, especially in Brooklyn, where I'm at, where there is a care for culture and art, and these things that we've been excited about. I think those are the artists who were excited to serve, man. You know, like it'd be a dream to work with and help Frank Ocean raise for his next project. I mean, he's the guy that started this model years ago, and I think these artists deserve credit, not just as artists, but as entrepreneurs. But yeah, to your question on Indify, you'd be shocked. Artists are on there negotiating down the amount of initial sort of capital they'll get, because they only want the right amount, not the most amount, because they don't want to earn on their advance. They want to earn on their equity, they want to earn on the business. And that's to me, the generation of founders as artists or founders that we're looking to empower. And I think I'm excited to help the superstars, you know, earn off of their streams too as they should, because their pies are going to look a lot bigger.Dan Runcie 25:17Yeah, I think the interesting test I've always looked at was when Taylor Swift had finished her record label deal that she was on the open market/ She was exploring options, and everyone wondered, what is she going to do. She obviously wants to own her masters moving forward. And she ended up doing a licensing deal with Republic Records, which she has been now and she's released, I believe, three albums now, under that deal. I think that, what you're saying is that if we could get to the point where now the market is at a different place than it was in 2018, with options like yours, that now have the option or opportunity for a megastar, who is out of their deal. They've been de-risked they already are a star, what could it look like for them to be like, okay, now that I'm done with this deal, now, I want to go to Indify?prettyboyshav 26:10Yeah, I think you're gonna see a lot of that happening. I'm very confident in that. And I think those are conversations that are happening faster than we expected, I think what, you know, going back to the Taylor Swift moment, and you actually did an amazing breakdown of what was going on with her. And just for anyone who's listening, like, I know, you're already on Trapital, because you're listening to the podcast. But I do believe, Dan, what you're doing is some of the most accurate breakdowns in the market. I mean that. It's a joy to listen to these podcasts. It's a dream to be on here. And it's so cool to read your newsletter, you know, every time it comes out. I think, going back to the Taylor one, because I remember you breaking it down. And obviously, we're nerds about this stuff. So we should talk about it. But you know, on Indify, there's three main principles that guard the technology on the platform. One, artists own the rights forever. You know, artist kids deserve to have their music, we think that's the fundamental, maybe even a human right, not just a right that we believe they should have. And that's something that, you know, an ownership deal will never happen and in the fight, and I would hold Web 3.0 platforms to that same standard, because I think a lot of them are doing ownership deals. And I think that's going backwards. I think a lot of the music industry is moving forward from that. So it's something that I believe just very strongly as an artist, we need to move forward from. Two, artists deals are always 50% or better after the initial investment is returned on Indify. The platform is like locked in, like error out if you start to put in terms that break that. And third, artists always keep creative control. And that's the way these docs are formatted. I mean, for an artists like Taylor Swift, who's brought a lot more value to these companies, and, you know, arguably bigger than some of these institutions ourselves. She deserves to be the CEO of her own life and our own art. And she deserves to make every decision the way she wants to, she deserves to pass that on to her kids. The fact that artists like that can't do that, and then what she has to now go through to make that music, you know, listen to equitably out there is insane, it's out of control, and it shouldn't exist. And I think, you know, we need tools that we need new solutions, to rewrite how this is going to work for the next generation of Taylor Swifts. I think, Indify, you know, I hope that we can have a conversation with her about doing stuff with her future projects to make sure that, again, she can build her business equitably, own her business, but still get those strategic partners and marketers needed to take the next level.Dan Runcie 28:30You mentioned Web 3.0 earlier, and some of the solutions there and what you hope those solutions will offer to artists. And I think a lot of people have talked and thought about the Web 3.0 opportunities in music and positioned it as a use case to do or in many ways, what Indify is doing and you are proving with your platform that this can happen. It is happening off-chain, and it doesn't necessarily need to be done through 3.0 or through NFTs or things like that. Some of these things you may be exploring in the future. But where do you stand right now in that aspect, because I do feel like a lot of the other companies that are positioning themselves to try to solve a similar problem have positioned themselves as the Web 3.0 solution for this. But you've been a bit more focused on saying, hey, this can exist, it doesn't necessarily need to happen that way. prettyboyshav 29:27I mean, look, I think you really broke it down best, as you do in the A16Z piece you wrote, the music tech community is going to need to, at large, both Web 2.0, and Web 3.0, and Web 2.5, and everything in between is going to need to tackle different problems for artists for us to build an ecosystem that's competitive with these goliaths of the old, you know, and I think us working together and us holding each other accountable having these conversations and I love how I think Web 3.0 has pushed Indify to be more open and more inclusive. I have a lot of friends in the community who've, you know, shown me incredible values and the incredible depths of what this movement is about. And I truly, truly deeply believe in it, and feel it, and empathize with the work that's being done. Because I believe in these values, which is really comes down to community, right, and community ownership, community governance, I think these things are very powerful concepts. And I think these are very powerful ways for an artist to run their business. I, you know, I have so much love for what sound and what catalog and what some of these companies are doing. I think there are amazing founders behind those companies. I think they're building amazing tools for artists to earn different and new revenue streams on their music. And I think all of us need to really come together and work together to build this infrastructure for new artists. I think one of the things that I'm yearning for, one of the things I haven't yet I think fully see in the space that I'm excited about, is something that maybe more reflects an artist DAO of sorts. And again, I'm still in the first inning of this, all of this understanding all of this as most people are, but something I'm going to experiment with. Again, like the way I've always operated with prettyboyshav and you know, the artist career and being the founder of Indify as co founder with Connor and Matt who I've built this with, you know, my best friend since day one is, like, I experiment and we experiment, me, Connor and Matt experiment and kind of create these different like processes with the prettyboyshav. We hack at my Spotify For Artists, we do all this crazy stuff, to learn, right, and to experiment and to figure things out. And then a lot of that, a lot of that failure becomes what is knowledge and R&D into I think the Indify roadmap. I think that's an amazing way to stay grounded and stay into focus. For me, one of the things I'm going to do is and I published my goals at the beginning of this year, I not only want to raise on Indify and published and transcribe that, that for the public to see. But I also want to, as an artist, do some Web 3.0 experiments. And I'm basically launching this physical and digital trading card experience that is going to be like my mecca for my pretty community. And so it's going to come, you know, if you get it, you can basically like, see a roadmap for the prettyboyshav art, you can come get your nails painted with me, you can listen to some exclusive music. And I think those community events, that superfan access, I think is something I'm really excited to just play with on the Web 3.0 side and to see happen in the space.Dan Runcie 32:21It's great to hear, because I think you can see both sides of this, you understand what needs to be done and not just using yourself as not even more, not even a use case. But essentially you understand what needs to be built, what you would want for yourself as an artist and how you navigate all of that, as well. And while we have the time, we'd love to chat a little bit more about you and what you've been doing with your artists career on that front. First off, how you manage the time between the two, because I'm sure it's both hats to wear. And I'm sure it's a lot from that perspective, but how have you navigated doing both of those things? And I know that you've also said in past interviews, you want to be known more for music moving forward. So how does that continue to or how does that evolution continue to progress based on where you see things going?prettyboyshav 33:11Yeah, well, I think, I appreciate it, that question. You know, me, myself, Connor and Matt, we've always understood that there's this fluidity, I think, between myself being an artist and being a part of the company. And in fact, I think we've all come to realize it's a huge advantage. When I talk to artists, I relate to them, I can understand their problems when we make decisions, you know, in the room. And I think I consider Connor and Matt artists and themselves. I think Matt, what he does on a technical level and building this tool, I've always fallen in love with the art of tech. And building product is very much like making music. It's a new creative entity that didn't exist before that you created the outside world. I think it's very similar. And I think Connor himself is a writer and an incredible artist. And if you don't have art and tech, then what do you have? You know, so I think we've all come to understand that, that the prettyboyshav journey is our guinea pig. And it's a part of our story. And it's cool. It's really cool. I think more than anything, the company is us three, and to have their support in that I think is first and foremost. And to have investors supporting them too, I think is first and foremost, I think people understand that it only really makes me better as a founder. And they're one and the same. You know, being an artist and having more artists lead music companies is kind of, I hope, the wave of the future. I think on a personal level. You know, I'm really proud of the music I've put out there. I think it's some of the best music out there, whether I'm a co-founder of that company or not. And I have a new album coming up that I think is just a huge step of growth and I think addresses a lot of my own values of growing up as an Indian American understanding my own perspective, telling my own story. And it's a story that when I was 15 the two things that my sort of Northstar were, were, man, I wish I could be an artist without having to be Drake and just being you know a sustainable artist because this is what I love to do. Why is it that somebody can be an accountant but I can't be a musician, right? And why can't those existences coexist? And I think for me, I think just seeing more people like me making pop music, more people like me, getting our nails painted, wearing earrings, wearing cool clothes, and breaking kind of the boxes that that we were put into. So, for me, I think all of this stuff comes from a deep sense of mission and a deep sense of serving our 15-year-old self. It's something that Virgil talked about a lot. And I think that's ultimately, you know, what I'm in service to when it comes to both Indify and the artists journey, but it's cool to see them coming together more and more, I had my first interaction where, I was actually with Peter Boyce and John Exley and we were in LA celebrating Peter installation actually just invested in the company. And it just turned Peter's birthday, and we were sitting having a great time. And somebody came up to the randomly and was like, Are you prettyboyshav? And you know, as a kid, you always, see, I was more excited than her. But as a kid, you always wonder, as an artist that'll ever happen. I think that moment is one that you know, we all got to share together, John and Peter, we wouldn't be here without them. They've been supporting for six, seven years. So to have that with them, you know, and be on this journey together, I think is super cool.Dan Runcie 36:05That's powerful. And those stories are always great when you hear them because you know your, it definitely won't be the last time.prettyboyshav 36:11Yeah, yeah. Let's see. Got more work to do then.Dan Runcie 36:15Well, Shav, this is great. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing both your journey as an artist and your journey as a founder, as we both say artists are founders and you're a great embodiment of that statement. But before we let you go, is there anything else that you want to plug? or love for the Trapital audience to know about?prettyboyshav 36:32Yeah, I would just say you know, follow Indify on Instagram and Twitter. I think it's a good follow. And, you know, we've done a lot of work behind the scenes in the last year and a half. I think we've got to do a better job of telling our story in front of the scenes and there's gonna be a lot of content coming in the next year and storytelling coming out of these artists and these incredible stories, you're going to find amazing music, so you know, give us a follow, follow the journey. Come along.Dan Runcie 36:57Good stuff. Good stuff. Thanks, man. prettyboyshav 37:00Cool. Thanks so much, Dan.Dan Runcie 37:02If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast, give it a high rating, and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Challenged by a smarty pants religious bigot, Jesus gives a new definition to what it means to be a neighbor.Jesus' story explains why you and I hold the value of serving our beneficiaries and our donors so high. His story explains why fundraising matters to us supremely. THE BENEFICIARIES  AND THE DONORS WE SERVE ARE NEIGHBORS!And, love your neighbor as yourself.Luke 10:27I have created a new resource for fundraisers in the faith community, Faith To Ask. Walk with me through the history of scripture and be challenged to see yourself as a visionary fundraiser working with God for His divine purposes. You will begin to see that you are one of long line of visionary history makers like Jesus, Paul the Apostle, King David, Elijah, and more. In the course I walk you through the stories of scripture and challenge you to see them from the vantage point of a fundraiser. Likely, this is something you have never done. Looking at these old stories in a new way will fill you with the faith to approach your fundraising with a new zeal and joy.  CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT

Building on the theme of failure from episode one, I sat down with Jodi for this week's episode - the mom of a young adult who had serious Executive Functioning challenges during his transition to college that impacted his grades, mental health, and overall quality of life. He has since made an inspiring transformation working with an EF coach over this past year and is now doing remarkably well. This episode explores what the tumultuous process looked like in all its glorious imperfection from Jodi's perspective.Jodi is very open about her son's challenges with Executive Functions, the pandemic, and the transition to college, and how all of these factors made life exceedingly stressful for them both as Jodi wrestled with wanting to help but not knowing what to do.Listen to this episode to hear Jodi's inspirational story about how she and her son are thriving after what felt like a huge failure. Hopefully, if you or your child are struggling with your own Executive Functions, this episode will give you some inspiration that with hard work, time, and the right support, massive transformations are possible.Some readings and resources related to topics & themes that came up in my interview with Jodi:Resources for Parents with Children Who Have ADHDChild Mind Institute - Complete Guide to ADHDParenting a Child with ADHDAmerican Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry - ADHD Resource CenterTransition from High School to College or WorkCollege Readiness Checklist - from BBS Tools LibraryTransition to College Checklist - from FAME Main12 Steps for Easing the Transition to Work - from understood.orgAsking for Help4 Tips to Effectively Ask for Help—and Get a YesTeaching Students How to Ask for HelpBeyond BookSmart ResourcesOverwhelmed by College? Here's How to Regain Control (blog)How to Help Overwhelmed College Students (webinar)College Executive Function CoachingContact us!Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.comIG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoachingTranscriptHannah Choi 00:04Hi everyone, and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life through working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi.In the last episode, I covered the idea of failure and how it isn't actually failure. Many of our listeners are either executive function coaching clients or their parents, we know that both clients and parents of clients can feel like they're failing, both before they reach out for coaching and then even during coaching. But as we know, this isn't actually failing, right? It's just part of the process of finding what works. I wanted to explore this more and look at it from the perspective of someone who knows this feeling well. So I sat down with Jodi, she's a mom of a young adult who is working on improving his executive function skills. He's working with an executive function coach. And Jodi also spent some of her time talking with families who are interested in coaching for their own kiddos. So I'll let her tell you more about herself and share her unique perspective on brains and parenting and just share her inspirational story about coming back from what felt like a huge failure. And just a short note, before we dive into my conversation with Jodi, this is our first interview for this brand new podcast. And as you'll hear in the first few minutes, we're still working out some of the audio kinks. But we're not seeing this as a failure. Nope, it's been an excellent opportunity to learn how we can make it the best it can be. And it's just a little bit of a bumpy ride along the way. All right on to the show. Hi, Jodi, thanks so much for joining me today. Could you introduce yourself and share a little bit about your family's journey to executive function coaching?Jodi 01:58Yeah. So I'm Jodi. I'm a mom of young while a freshman/sophomore son in college. And I have a junior daughter in college and my daughter actually has multiple sclerosis, which is an autoimmune disorder that attacks your brain or spinal cord. So she got diagnosed at 16. So she was just young in high school when she got that. She was really high high executive functioning. I'm I feel like the only thing I can say I'm a genius at is executive functioning. And maybe empathy. It but um, and she was the same, but now she has MS. So she's she's struggled with a lot of those challenges. She's not the person who's with Beyond BookSmart, interestingly enough. In my career I work as a nurse and actually in an insurance company, but I work with our brain spinal cord injuries. So I spent the last 10 or 11 years working with very closely with brain injuries from their original right acute out of the injury and through the rehab and, you know, throughout their life of the injury until they're, you know, outside of our claim and workman's comp. So I have a lot of knowledge about how brains work differently. And what happens when brains don't work the way they used to work. And I have a son who has was diagnosed with ADHD when he was very little and the biggest reason why he was diagnosed with it was because he had a lot of trouble managing his emotions, so he had a lot of emotional dysregulation. I used to always say like, you can't take them off the train tracks, you gotta let them know, we're gonna be switching tracks, give him a little time advance notice. And then obviously, the typical ADHD stuff where, you know, they're, they're distracted, they don't focus, they seem like they're not listening. Um, so, so my son who has the ADHD diagnosis is the one who is in. We're just about I think a year somewhere around our year anniversary here with I think we're just maybe a month shy of that with Beyond BookSmart in through his life when he was little, it was always a challenge. I did bring him to a neuropsychologist who when he was maybe in second grade, and she said, "Wow, he needs some help". You know, it was it was pretty it was pretty significant not you know, very significant and so we did a lot with that we tried to avoid medications we weren't able to avoid medications and you know, he he grew up you got to better better hand handle with his with his emotions and regulating emotions and, but still all of the typical challenges that we see with our ADHD kids and learning and today's learning environment, which is so different than my learning environment I got to play when we were in lower grades, you know, they don't get to play anymore. No. Oh, so um, so he did he, you know, we did alright in our school system were very remote. We're kind of out in the woods in Western Massachusetts and we have a regional school and great teachers and great education. His teachers were really committed to him and understanding his differences and helping us with that. So the school system was really great. But when he hit high school, he was done with meds. He didn't like the way they made him feel. So all of a sudden, we're in a situation where the meds were helping him and he never learned any tools. So we did a lot of tripping through high school as far as like, falling behind getting ahead, falling behind getting ahead. He had a 504 plan, where you know, and I would constantly have team meetings, I would collect the team meetings right, and sit down and say, why can't we all work together? I can't, I can't bring it home if I don't know what it is that I'm trying to you know, do it at home. And so we got through it, but he ended up being a on top of all this he in in, you know, as we see a lot, very smart intellectual kid and... COVID. Senior year. So he wouldn't know what's happening all sudden, everybody's home, he lost prom, he lost senior trip, he lost graduation, he lost senior track, you know, just, and he lost his friends, which he's always had a hard time with friends. And he finally got this really great group that just really melded probably his junior year. And then he lost that group of friends. So we went into video gaming, because that's where everybody was, right? We couldn't see anybody. So we went into video gaming, he had zero structure. Time of day came and went, No, no, nobody had structured school. Nobody knew what to do. There wasn't planned like it is now. They're a little bit better at that remote teaching. So we kind of lost him. So we already had those struggles, and then I kind of lost him. So hoping that college would be better, he dove right into college into robotic engineering college. Remote robotic engineering. Yeah, no. Well, and they didn't really know. Hannah Choi 07:30Yeah, they were figuring it out, too. Jodi 07:33Yeah. Yeah, they really had a good grasp already, you know, on that kind of situation. But obviously switching to everybody being remote. He was very isolated. So he went to his dorm. And he didn't, he had a roommate who was never there. And so he sat in his room alone all day and all night and had classes that he never attended, because they were on his computer. And, you know, so that's sort of when he failed every single class. Or they do quarters there. So weHannah Choi 08:05That's fast. Those quarters are fast. My grad school, I went to UC Santa Barbara in California and its quarters there. It was, it was Yeah, but is it nine weeks or something goes by fast?Jodi 08:16It's um, it's they I think it's seven, seven and a half week much. Yeah. reclass is seven and a half week. Yes. Four days a week. Yeah,Hannah Choi 08:25I know. You basically start and then all of a sudden it's midterms. Yes.Jodi 08:29Yeah. Yeah. And you know, by midterms, he still hasn't done any of his homework because it's only two weeks in right and so it all catch up. Don't worry about it. It's all good and not so much not so much. Yeah. So he is and he wouldn't take help and our relationship started to get I'm really close with my kids. Both of them and our relationship was really getting hurt because I was having to you know, I was having to be the I can't I can't regulate his college and manage him at college and be mom without him just eating me you know so it was it was really really tough and in high school I was looking for executive functioning coaches in the area right and ever thought to that remote one option Hannah Choi 09:17right, that was before COVID Before we thought that way Yeah, we didn't thinkJodi 09:21that way at all everything is better in person better in person and although it is better in person remote gives us some really fantastic opportunity.Hannah Choi 09:28 Look at you and I, we're having this conversation. Jodi 09:30Yeah, I know! We're having conversation. We aren't that far away but we still aren't next door. So so you know earlier there was really no executive functioning coaches out here the school didn't know anybody and you know, he got he went to like executive functioning specialty therapists but it's very different. You know, your coach.Hannah Choi 09:51It's not the same thing. Yeah.Jodi 09:53So so the school actually said Beyond BookSmart is not anything on our list. We can't tell you how it goes. But what I do know is we have kids doing. So that's the only one I've heard of, if you want to give them a call and give it a try. So that's how we got cool. That's a little history on me. 10:11Yeah, I'm so glad for for him and for you and your relationship that they knew about that they knew about executive function coaching? Because it's not it's, I mean, first of all, that people even know what executive functions are. That's, that's really common. When, when people like, if it ever comes up, like, Oh, what do you do for work? And then I tell them, they nine times out of 10, I think that I work with executives. And so they're like, Jodi 10:39Oh, I would have never thought that.Hannah Choi 10:42And so and so then I'm like, well, some coaches work with executives, because some executives need executive function coaching. But the majority of our clients don't are not executives. So yeah, so that's wonderful that they that they, that they knew about it, and were able to connect to Jodi 11:01Well, his his school is really, the school is full of a whole bunch of kids on the spectrum. I mean, in I guess you maybe you probably see that a lot of engineering schools. Yeah. But they, they have a whole department that works with these kids for this reason. And so I thought that were going to be okay, because of them. But then realized, I think maybe we would have been if it wasn't for COVID. But there was it COVID just changed, right, everybody, everybody, you know, they just, it just blew up. Yeah, anything that was difficult was soHannah Choi 11:37that's the story that I personally have heard from so many people. And I know a lot of my colleagues have heard and just other people that I've talked to, I was just talking to a friend of mine recently. And she was just saying, like, she felt like she had everything together. And then when COVID hit, she realized she actually didn't, it's so much of our success is built is supported by the structures that we have, right? And so when those structures are there, and they're solid, and they're working and and we can kind of like relax, and so then then it's like, okay, then I don't have to worry about all that other stuff. So now I can, I can, you know, I can, like the parts, the parts that are challenging for me are not as challenging because I'd have to worry about all those other things. And so then when you do have to worry about them, and you're you've never managed them like that before. So like, you don't know what to do. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's the story that I'm hearing. And I think that a lot of us coaches are hearing from pretty much everyone.Jodi 12:37I'm even seeing it. I mean, like I say, and I know what executive functioning is, right? Because I work with brain injuries. So yeah, what happens when everybody falls on their head, they hit their frontal lobe and boom, that's, you know, sort of, that's where it goes. But, um, so yeah, so they, they, they knew of it. I mean, that's, I spoke to them with those terms. And they were like, Yeah, you know, this place we hear, you know, it's in Boston, whatever. And so and so here we are. But now it's just and even some of the parents that I talked to now, because between the his school, I'm on the parent Facebook site on his school, so between his school and then doing a little bit of liason, so I guess, liaison work type thing here, you know, just talking to other parents to let them know what my experience is. It's just there are a lot of questions still about... Well, it's, you know, remote and, you know, we're already doing so much on a computer. Do you feel like the remote can be successful? I feel like somebody needs to sit next to my kid. And I'm like, these, these these kids have been staring at screens for three years.Hannah Choi 13:47It's nothing new for them. No,Jodi 13:50they actually don't know how to sit down next to a person.Hannah Choi 13:52Haha, yeah! "What do you doing so close to me?"Jodi 13:56Yeah, which is actually kind of interesting even saying that because COVID You know, I think we find kids on the spectrum are not necessarily kids with ADHD but my son is definitely has his his levels of socially awkwardness. I mean, there are there he has a hard time reading social cues, but he's himself is very social once it becomes integrated, very chatty and social. But he was really hard to engage in, initially with as parents, we're reaching out on Facebook together saying, "my kids are struggling, my kids suffering, my kids not passing, my kids depressed", you know, and trying to get our kids together, which was like, herding ants. You know, like, I mean, when you know, there's fruit all over the place. There's like it possible, you know, and they're like, oh, yeah, sure. Okay. Well, yeah, my I'll reach out later, later, like later later. And then finally, somehow, I'm pretty aggressive. So you know, I definitely helicoptered that one. And you know, there were a handful of us parents who did and we sort of forced them to get together a little bit, a few of them. And what did they talk about? Are their moms! Great! We worked so hard to get them together. But now, now I'm you know, there's still that conversation is still going on. This is happening with COVID or without COVID. And so I'm always speaking up and saying, Look, you know, send me a private message and I'll let you know what's going on for me. So I've spoken to a lot of parents at the school and actually, some of them directed here, but also just some saying, "Look, I'll have my kid reach out to you". And I'll tell you, in I can say it's, it has a it's a direct effect from the coaching that he's been receiving. As much as we're doing this coaching for a lot of executive functioning skills, he is getting so much more confident in himself and aware of like, who he is, and that he's different in different is okay, okay. So he's reaching out to these kids. He's like, "Oh, yeah, no problem, Mom". And then I'm like, hey, you know, gently, did you ever reach out to the kid? He's like, "Oh, yeah, we reached out, we spoke, we talked, we're on Discord together. And I've met him for dinner." And I'm like,Hannah Choi 16:19When I, when I think about working with my clients, my dream for them. And I'm sure like all other coaches feel this way, or anyone that works with someone in this kind of capacity is that is that when you're done working with them, they then take what they've learned, and bring it out into the world and share it and help other people. And what a great example of that!Jodi 16:40Well, let me tell you another one, which is this is really like jumping ahead in in sort of missing the point here. Well, I guess not missing a point, right. We're here to talk. But jumping out of the executive functioning, which I'm sure that people who are listening want to hear, right. But taking a pause on that, since it's kind of going in this direction. He one of the parents, I was speaking to who was trying to get a feel for you know, talking to me about you know, what's it like to be to have a kid in this and, you know, a lot of parents are, you know, we have to sign up and for so many months, and you're worried about that, right? You know, we can deal with it. And, you know, my biggest thing is, it takes six, nine, twelve months to create a behavior. So you got to commit for six months. It's not going to work at three. It's probably not going to work at six. we're gonna say, you know, if you're here, it's because somebody's hit bottom. But with all that being said, the dad was like, would your son mind talking to my son, because, you know, I can't convince him that this is the thing. I'm willing to take the jump, but he needs to take the jump. And I'm like, Yeah, sure. never talked to my son about it. Yeah sure! He'll be home this weekend. So, you know, I go into his room. And I'm like, and he goes, Mom, what? He's like, what? And so I asked him if he would talk to him. He's like, Yeah, sure you have his phone number is a discord. So I give him his phone number. As I'm talking to him. Now, you're a coach, you've got to know and anybody listening who has a parent, or maybe is even in it themselves? Perseveration. Like, wait till later, is there a common denominator? And he's like, sure picks up his phone to (makes dialing sound) "What should I say?" I say something. And he's like, ah, that doesn't really sound like me since this thing. So then he shows it to me. He's like, What do you think about this? I'm like, just hit send. Hit Send. The kid responds right back 15 minutes later, they're on the phone. And, and, and I and I had to share this with his coach, because I think this is kind of exactly what you're saying. Like, you're hoping that not only are they going to benefit from this and find a better way to find themselves, their fit their way to fit and be successful in this crazy world they've been dumped into because we got to slowly progress right with, we didn't have executive functioning, we slowly learned the technology. They just woke up. We're born into the technology they didn't get to like, figure it out. So he says he's talking to this kid for at least 45 minutes and you know, pacing all over the house and stuttering through his words and trying to get his thoughts out and all that. And eventually he gets rolling. And he is the stuff he's saying. He's like, look, he's like, it's hard work. It's really it sucks. It sucks in the beginning. And I was at rock bottom. So I knew I had to do it because I there was nowhere else to go. And I didn't want to and I lied to my mom and I lied to my coach and and he's like, it's kind of hard to lie to him because they're on your computer and they're looking at what's going on. And he's like, You got to share your stuff. If you're not going to share your stuff. It's not even going to work like this is what he's saying. You know, and there's pauses the other kids like asking questions and uh huh. You know, and then he's like, you know, going on and on and on. Had to have been 45 minutes, I was talking to this kid, and I'm in the living room in tears. Yeah, I would want to cry the stuff the coach and I have been saying, you know, he's coming out of his mouth, he's like, You have to be really, I don't think he used the word transparent. But he basically said, you know, you have to be transparent. If you lie, you're only hurting yourself. Because guess what they're gonna find out, your parents are paying for it, they're gonna be mad, the coach is gonna tell your parents, you know, you've got to let them talk to your parents. And he's like, look, my coach talks to my mom. So now my mom doesn't bother me. So let your coach talk to your dad. Let your coach talk to your mom. Yeah. You know, he's like, let them all talk. And but he's, but it was the coolest piece about it was he was like, it sounds like you really should do it. He's like, it's gonna be really hard work. He goes, but you know, this, this is this is it's getting me through on passing. I'm learning. And what was one of the things he had said, I can't. He was talking about. You know, that? Oh, one of the other pieces he was saying. So the whole lying part. I mean, we literally just went back through that, right? He goes, it's gonna feel like you're not making any progress. Wow. Like, I feel like sometimes why am I wasting my time, I should just quit. I'm not making any progress. And then he's like, and then I think about where I was, and I pass this many classes, I failed some classes. I didn't lie, and I got really ahead, then I got excited. And then I fell behind. And he's like, like, and then the other thing he said, which I could not believe, is, "you have to be honest with yourself". I was like, is this kid eading from the book, you know, he's like, You have to be honest for yourself. And you have to ask for help. Right? In his coach has been like, and we both been like "Coby, until you have to ask for help." Guess what, you can't do it. Just acknowledge that this is your your he hates he won't use the word pattern anymore, because he has changed. And to him, he doesn't have the same patterns, even though looks that way to me. So but it's just like listening to him say all the things that his coach and I have been saying over and over and over again, coming out of his mouth. I want him to keep talking to his kids. Because the more he says it right, the more it becomes real for him. And he holds up the phone. And he was so pumped. He said, I think he's gonna sign up. I feel like he's gonna get help, like, I'm getting help. And it feels so good not to have all of that. He was also alone, because I don't get it. I have executive functioning. I've really good executive functioning. That makes no sense to me. You know, so Wow, that was that was a huge off the track.Hannah Choi 23:04Oh, I love it, though. It makes me think about like, if you were to, if you were to to check in with how you felt like when you heard that conversation, and think about back to when he first started and how you felt when he first started coaching. Like, at like, if you if if present day Jodi could tell past Jodi, like beginning of coaching Jodi, what would you tell yourself?Jodi 23:34I would say you're right to stick with it, you know, go the beaten path, because when we started, it was painful. He was depressed. And he has a therapist now. And he has his coach. And any a support group at school, like all these kids are now a support group to each other. And it was so painful because he started he ended up dropping out the fourth quarter, he had to withdraw from school. So he didn't get suspended for a year because he hadn't passed any classes. And so he was just he couldn't have been more bottom and he looked like, like, he looked like a cancer patient, the circles under his eyes, you know? And he said, he said "I need, I think I need help". And I said and so we did some research. We had a couple of things that we were looking at in this from you know, the school had not recommended you guys won't give me your name not solely recommended. And and so he was at rock bottom and he owned that he was at rock bottom before he just still kept thinking he was going to be able to do it. He was going to be able to catch up. He was going to be able to figure it out. And so we started we started a little bit he started a little bit of coaching really got to know his coach and they hit it off like good so well. Yeah. And we didn't need to go on to a second one or anything. It was a fantastically perfect match and still remains that way. But so he took a summer class so so the the last quarter he just went up, he worked like regular job worked and worked with the coach and we just did sort of life skills type stuff. They did, he did with them. And then we started a summer class. So summer classes were seven weeks. Okay. And it was community college, but it was still seven weeks and it was one class. One class seven weeks history. All writing okay. Oh, no, take that back. It wasn't history. It was psychology. All writing. I think it's his favorite classes ever taken. He hates writing any any doesn't like to look at himself. Right? It was incredible. You got an A in that class, right. So that was awesome. And then we roll into, but it was a great start. And then in the middle, he was crashing and burning. And then from that crash and burn trying to catch back up and getting an A, the teacher was so great with him, which is surprisingly, because the teacher really appeared to be really narcissistic. It was it the way he wrote the way he spoke the way his syllabus was written. It was very, it was like, I was like, this is interesting, but he loved my like the retrospect he just was like looking at himself and all of it. Yeah. So but the painful part was, as we went through those really, as we got that we did the second semester in the summer with two classes. I remember what they were. But he ended up getting a B and a C in those classes. And that that was that's where today's God, I wish I could go back and just like tap myself on the shoulder and give myself a hug and say, this is a right stick with it. Because I wasn't sleeping. He wasn't sleeping. He was it was it was painfully hard for him. His brain hurt, he couldn't sleep, he had headaches. I mean, it is a complete roto root of the way they function. You know, it's it's, it was it was so hard. It was so hard to watch. And I find that a lot of the parents that I'm talking to their kids are the earliest they don't think that their kids need that much help. But he needed that much help. And he's he was working through depression, but it was he has zero executive functioning. He doesn't understand time, how long will take you to get this done? Not even how long does it take you to go grocery store, which he's gone to 100,000 times now. He doesn't know how to organize himself. He doesn't know where to start. He doesn't know how to what comes first what comes second, none of it. So it was a lot to learn and implement and get graded on all the same time. Yeah, that is in he again. He just looked like a very, very ill person. And I knew I knew he had to stick with it. And but it was very painful. And so for any parents who do go into this in and see that, stick with it, support your kid, tell him they're doing a great job, he would consistently take one step forward, and two steps backwards. And one step forward. And one set, you know, it was like, it almost seemed like he was never getting any for traction. But then he did. Yeah. You know,Hannah Choi 28:32so what, like, for you, how did you? How did you handle that? Like how, like, what are strategies that you use for yourself? To when you like when you saw him take, you know, like one step forward and two steps back orJodi 28:50I didn't? I didn't always handle it. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean,Hannah Choi 28:55it's like, as a coach, it is. It's, it is so hard when you see that, but they're not our children. I mean, sometimes they feel like they're our children, but they're not. And I know like for myself when I see a client who's you know, struggling like that. It's really hard. And, and, and it requires so much patience. And it requires like so much looking for these tiny little wins and recognizing like, oh, wait, okay, so we're like not doing well in all these other areas. But this one little tiny nugget of gold has been found. So like, what, what what did you like for yourself to get through thatJodi 29:40you handed in one out of three homeworks in a week? That's better than zero and a three homeworks I mean, that's what we were celebrating. Yeah. And he got up and went to class, online live and didn't watch the recording once this week. I was like, This is what like yeah, Ah, it was it, it was so hard. But for in for me, I didn't do it graciously. So any parents out there who aren't I would, I would handle it horribly in in fall into my own patterns, which is, which, you know, we talked about before we started recording, I was watching this, listening to this other podcast one day and I was crying because I thought, oh my god, I'm the worst parent in the world, I have alienated my child, trying to make him like me. And treating them like he was just a bad kid who didn't want wasn't motivated or, you know, was lazy, they get these lazy labels, they don't have the skill. So. So I went back and forth just like he did, I took two steps forward, one step backwards and one step forward and half step backwards, you know, I would support him one day, and the next day, I would get frustrated and be like, how could you not have had it in your homework? And so that's where the coach came in.Hannah Choi 31:00Oh, and so how did how did that change it for you.Jodi 31:05So I still communicated with I communicate with a coach. And so once he established a relationship with my son, and he established a relationship with me, and I was very clear with him, you need to call me out, you need to call me out. And it doesn't matter if feelings get hurt, I'm not gonna go tattling to, you know, to anybody to say, your main we want a new coach said you need to call me out, I need you to point to me and say back off back off, not your role. And he did. And he actually had a very long phone call with me where I was in tears. And he was just very honest. And I appreciated it. And I think without really he knew he could do that. I would imagine that you guys can't do that with everybody. 31:54No, yeah, and my experience actually, my I mostly work with college and adults. And, and the parents of the kids that I have worked with, have in general not been involved. And so it, but what you said is so important how like your like your coach, the relationship between the coach, and the person being coached is so important. But the network, the support network of the person being coached, in a lot of situations is a big part of it. And so you have a trust and rapport with your coach with your child's coach, or, you know, or whoever. I mean, it could be your partner's coach, like if you're an adult, if you're, you know, if you're an adult and you have a partner, the partner might, you know, also need to be get some reassurance from the coach. So, right, it's right, it depending on the needs of the people in the support network of the person being coached. So that's wonderful that you are able to get that.Jodi 32:55Yeah, so he's been fantastic. I didn't really think about that. And I know some of the parents that I've talked to, they're just like, I don't really know what my son does, but I just found out that he's not passing any of his classes. And I thought to myself, Oh, yeah. Oh, you know, but then that parents like, Oh my God, how could you be so into your kids stuff? Like back off, you know? So,Hannah Choi 33:15And there's no right way to do it? And right, and what you said, like about listening to the podcast, and then crying and feeling like, you know, what am I doing? Like, how much of parenting is this guilt? Right? This like, guilt that we put on ourselves? No matter what, we're not doing it right. I mean, I don't know about you, but I that's something that I struggle with as a parent often. And yeah, and it's it's...Jodi 33:39You just hope in the end, you didn't screw them up too bad.Hannah Choi 33:45Meanwhile, here we all are here we all are going to therapy. Yeah, yeah. Jodi 33:53But the coach, I am, I am, again, super close with my kids. And in you know, you could label it helicopter parenting, I would say I am not the Nancy helicopter parent, but I am definitely in there trying to recognize where they need help and helping them acknowledge that they have deficits and that I'm here to give them resources. Like with my daughter, she needed resources with coaching and soccer and she didn't really need we needed medical resources when she got diagnosed, and my son has been, you know, social environments. What kind of sport can we get him into where he doesn't feel like he's getting bullied and I created a robotics program at the high school so that he could get into robotics and ran that, you know, so that's the kind of involvement I have. I try not to like overly, you know, manage your schedule, all that it's definitely what they want. And then I help them find the resources and move in that direction, but very emotionally involved with my kids and our coach is just incredible. He knows that he can just, say "this is your role, mom. You know, I talked to Coby today you've overstepped" You need to support them, you need to support them in this way. Yeah, this is the best way to support them. Not this stuff. Don't ask any of these questions ever, ever, ever, ever? Yeah, these are your questions that you can ask, this is your role in the supporting. And so I think that we've gotten there really gotten there, I, I'm very backed off, and I'm just my role is to watch his phone to make sure he goes to classes. Now that's my role.Hannah Choi 35:24There you go, that's great. Jodi 35:26His role is to have his fingers in his work, know what he's doing, you know, criticize, or whatever it is that you guys do when they don't do the right thing and help to redirect them and all that, but it's, it's, um, it's really, it's just, in the parents that I talked to, some of them are just like, well, we don't need that much. I'm like, then you don't doesn't matter. They're giving me what we need. They're gonna give you anyway. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things I tell the parents, when I talk to them is like, Look, your contacts are there to hear your honest, whatever it might be. And if you're a helicopter parent, and you're doing too much your contacts are gonna say, this might be why this isn't working, it might actually be the coach, we might need to work with you a little bit, you know, or they, you might, it might not be a good match, and you don't like the communication and they'll change that. That's the great thing about you guys is you're like if there's something wrong, yeah, you'll make it work.Hannah Choi 36:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think something that you said earlier made me think about a conversation I was just having with one of my adult clients who were talking about trust, and how, how so much of going through executive function coaching is about trust and about trusting yourself, and about trusting your coach, and just trusting the process. And like you said, in the very beginning, and which is something that I feel like I say, like a broken record is it takes a really long time. And so trusting all of the parts of it yourself and your coach and, and the process and, and the tools that you try and everything, it's and that's such a huge part of it. And ah, I forgot what I was going to say - where I was going with that. But anyway, it's a big deal. Jodi 36:45I have one parent who at at my son's school, who I directed to you guys who has, I don't know where she's at right now. But she had gone to the matching coach matching process. And she called me and she goes, this is how it went for me. Is this, is this how it went for you? And I said, Well, no, but when you're in that meeting, did you say, Hey, I feel like you glazed over A, B and C? And that's really important to me? Well, no, I didn't know if I could37:39You gotta speak up!37:39Yeah, be honest, the kids have to be honest, the moms have to be honest. Like all of that. Let them know how you feel. This isn't personal. At all. Yeah, if you if you don't like your contact, let let somebody know that you need to change. And this is why or talk to your contact about why you feel you're not in touch. These people are all about matching and functioning and making it work and trust, right? There's no trust, even if they're they did nothing wrong. It's just not the right match or there isn't trust. So they need to find a new person that there will be trust with and it might not have anything to do with either. Yeah. So she's like, okay, all right. I'm gonna call it that. That's better than not calling back and just walking away from itHannah Choi 38:30You know, everything you're saying is just making me so glad that we're that we decided to do this podcast because it, it's it, it's showing me like how valuable hearing someone else's story is, and how that right there is such a huge part of asking for help, like what your son said, you know, like, I think I need some help. And in and reaching out and asking, like, can you tell me your story so that I can figure out like, where mine fits in, you know, and what my needs are and everything. So that's wonderful. Thanks for sharing all that. Jodi 39:04Yeah, of course. Hannah Choi 39:07I love I, I was thinking about something else that you said. And you were saying, you are really involved with your kids. And but I was thinking about how you have you, you really have had to be since the beginning with your son being diagnosed so early with ADHD. And then with your daughter becoming having such high, you know, intense medical needs. You can't you as a parent of a child with you know, those medically fragile, you you need to be involved. You know, you can't. You don't have the choice of, of being hands off. So, so it doesn't surprise me that you continue to be like that, because that's just how you have always parented and thank goodness you are because your son knew that he could go to you and say that Like, I need help, and that you recognized it that you saw it in him. And you realize, like, something's off here.Jodi 40:08Yeah, yeah. Well, that was worried before we even started, you know, so but yeah, like, you know, part of part of my career and in what I do, even on the side, you know, I've had a couple of friends, one whose son ended up fell down the stairs, in his 20s, you know, fell down the stairs or got a brain injury. And, you know, the system right now, especially with COVID, you know, and another friend who's, whose good friend was dying of cancer. So we have these two situations where they're in the hospital system, and nobody's giving them any information. And they think that that's okay. So it's, it's sort of the same thing, teaching them working with them as as a case manager type liaison to help get their answers and move things in the right direction, get the person with cancer discharged home, get the kid, you know, the right care, and, you know, communicate the home needs and rehab and things like that, and just educating the family. Do that with my kids, like we all. That's, that's how I roll. And that's how they roll. And everything is very, everything's very open in our family in regards to anything going on. There's there's no issue, you know, my kids will tell anybody who puts them on a podcast. So go ahead and put my son on a podcast, my mom needs to butt out. I'm just like, Look, guys, you can't go from having all these years of needing me and asking me for help, to all the sudden "Thanks a lot, we got this!" I'm like, Look, I need a transition.Hannah Choi 41:41Yeah, I need that too!Jodi 41:44I need to transition out as well. For myself, I actually have been working with a life coach, to balance myself with all the stuff going on with my kids don't my kids growing up not needing me that I'm getting all the resources, my daughter is taking over all of her own medical care. My son has a coach who's taking care of him and a therapist. So just finding that balance and finding me because me has just been helping these kids with all these needs. Yeah, who are you want to yours? Right? Yeah. And so I'm like, Well, what do I do if I'm not helping you if I'm not up in your business, and so when they're like, You got to get out of our business. So the coach is my life coach has been great. She's, she's got me to start reading again. She had me create a reading nook in my house and bedroom that's like my no phone, no TV, no, nothing. Mom's you know, and even my son will come in and he'll be like, Oh, you're already reading. Hannah Choi 42:41Wonderful, and how important that self care is. Right? And when we are caught up in all the busyness of, of the challenges of life. Yeah, it's it's that's like the first thing that we that I think a lot of people like, oh, and it's probably actually the last thing we should like. Right. But it's so hard. It's so hard to prioritize that. That's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. So great.Jodi 43:07Thanks. We're all a work in progress.Hannah Choi 43:09It's true. We really are. And, and I'm, I am very, I personally am very open talking about the things that I have challenges with. And I think that when you can be open like that, and recognize like, no one is perfect. And everyone needs help. In whatever form it is. It's it's so freeing. It's so freeing to just be like, Yeah, this is me.Jodi 43:35This is me. I'm not perfect. I need help, too. And we're all different. And that's okay.Hannah Choi 43:41We need to be different. Yeah, otherwise, be weird.Jodi 43:46Yeah, who don't want to be the same drone walking around?Hannah Choi 43:49Yeah. That's so great. Um, let me see. So what are you looking forward to like, for your son for yourself? For like, you know, I mean, obviously, you are thinking about yourself in the future, because you, you know, you got yourself a life coach, and you're reading again, and you know, and you're taking time for yourself, but what are you looking for forward, forward to?Jodi 44:17I, you know, I my, my big thing is just when, and I just started sort of looking at like, what am I you know, what does my life look like? And I think this happens with everybody who's who's empty nesting even. But for for my son and for my daughter, I mean, she is really moving in a place where she is she's really taking control of herself recognizing her deficits understanding that she can't move as fast as everybody else and she's really finding finding her place and she's gonna have challenges her whole life even if she didn't have MS. You know, so she's really going into she's really gotten herself sort of in that direction now, which is exciting. So I'm just looking forward to when my son Coby is, is doing that same thing. And he's moving in that direction. Yeah. And I think the first glimpse of it was was this past week listening to him talk to that other kid. I was like, Oh, my God, it's happening. Hannah Choi 45:15It's happening. It's really happening. It's happening.Jodi 45:17Yeah. And there's no particular like, check the box. Okay, it's been done. It's been done, I can move on. Yeah, but there they, I didn't think that it would ever be happening with him. He's just always just so I'm, is his father is a lot similar. And his father has to have a - We're divorced. But we've been divorced for a long time. So and and, he really has to have a wife and a secretary to be successful. Right? He needs the wife for the regular life stuff, and kids and everything else. And he needs the Secretary, because of the executive functioning, right? So the wife not. And so my thing is, I don't want my son to need a wife. And that's a big reason why we I would have to say, we've probably got divorced because for me, it felt like he was just lazy and wouldn't do anything. And I was doing everything right. Yeah, he needs that wife for that. And then he's the secretary. So I want my son to not need that. I want him to be able to give what he has to give to somebody without them feeling like they're, they're giving everything right, you know, and he's taking and so and I see him doing that.Hannah Choi 46:27I was just gonna say he's on his way to that. Jodi 46:30Already started that. Yeah. That's what I'm, that's what I want. And it's going there. So we're sticking we are sticking with it. I was just gonna say and he, I mean, he even has plans as much as I think one of the things that you guys always say is the point is not to stay on forever, right? The point is not to stay an executive coach with this person forever. It's to teach them the tools and let them go free. And that takes a while and parents will ask me how long does that take? Like? It's just like, my brain injuries. Everyone's different. But it's gonna take over a year. I really don't have a whole lot. Yeah, yeah. Like my son's always already like, okay, so when I've got this going, I still want to work with you on public speaking, I still want to work with you on better healthy lifestyles and activities. And so he's already planning. When I'm perfect. This is what we're gonna work on next.Hannah Choi 47:25So he's really thinking into the future for himself, too, which is so that's so beautiful. Yeah, I love that. How wonderful. Yeah, I have, like I mentioned before, when before we started recording, I'm my I'm coming up on four years with one of my clients, and she's in eighth grade. Now, I started working with her when she was in fourth grade. And with my, the session we had on Monday, it was just like the entire session was this gift of all of these things that that I have been working with her on over the years. And she just like, did all the things. Like she tried something new, and she was gonna ask your teacher for help. And she, she, like, breathe. She like we're working on breathing before, like during taking a test because she rushes through tests. And she told me, I breathed before every question. And she said, you know, that was the easiest science test I've ever taken. I'm like, Oh my gosh, yeah. And it's, I mean, yeah, it's taken a long time for us to get there. But it's just so wonderful seeing her taking these skills that she's learning. And she's already thinking about, well, how can I apply them in the future? And that he's doing that too. It's just48:40You've like, just turned a leaf. It's like you, and there's possible you'll roll back or whatever? Hannah Choi 48:46Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Jodi 48:47And how lucky she is to have had you for four years at that age. 48:51How lucky am I? Oh, my gosh. It's just she is lodged in my heart, man. She's just she's just such an amazing person. I'm actually going to be interviewing her mom in a couple of weeks. And it's just yeah, it's it's beautiful to see as a coach, and I imagine that your son's coach has has had a similar emotional experience watching him, you know, just to go through what he's gone through. And how long has I can't remember if you said this before, but how long have they been coaching together?Jodi 49:25I think we're just we're we're close to a year where I think we're just under a year because he it was after he made it through three quarters. Right. So finals are this week of the third quarter. So that took me a couple of weeks to find you guys so so we're coming very close to just a year just to your he's got a lot of work ahead of him. Yeah. So you know and is Coach isn't going anywhere. I'm not gonna let him go on and Yeah, yeah, they have such a respect. You know, like there's there's such a respect I'm just I, what we've seen in a year how hard, it's so hard for him still, but I just can't say this enough where he's come already, you know, you could look at him on a big global and be like, he hasn't really gotten anywhere. But that's just not true. He's off academic probation, he didn't get suspended. He, you know, like those, that's a big deal. Yeah.Hannah Choi 50:19And, you know, you mentioned in the beginning confidence and how, like, that comes up all the time, parents will say, you know, like, I just want my child to feel more confident. And I think I think feeling better about your own executive function skills makes you just just just naturally you feel more confident. Like I know, for myself, like I told you in the beginning, I have terrible memory. And and I used to not use a planner, or anything, I wouldn't, I would just like occasionally write have to do no to do lists and write stuff down. But I would just try to rely on my terrible memory. And yeah, it was like, not a great decision.51:00That would stress me out so much. I have to write everything down.Hannah Choi 51:03Yeah, now I'm like obsessively checking my planner. But when I went, I guess when I was in grad school, like when I was in college in high school and grad school, then I wrote I did I kept a planner during then. But then I think I just thought, like, Oh, I'm not in school anymore. So I don't have to have a planner anymore. But, but my confidence, just like went down the toilet. Because I just started thinking, Oh, well, I'm just like, not a good friend. And I'm not a good partner, because I'm forgetting these things. And then I realized, wait, I just need to write them down. And then I'm not gonna forget them anymore. And, and it, it gave me my confidence back. And so for kids who, especially for kids who have challenges in many executive function areas, you can you can imagine how that would erode your confidence pretty darn quick.Jodi 51:53You're a failure every minute of the day. Yeah, no matter what you do, every minute of the day, he was a failure. That's what I had me crying when I was listening to other podcasts. Yeah, he was basically a failure constantly. And then he started lying. Because, right. He's failing. And so it gets you off his back for totally. Yeah. Hannah Choi 52:10You know, it's a protective a protective action. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. And, and like he said, You can't lie. That's so wonderful. So he went from lying to saying, like, you can't lie. Yeah, that's great. Not doesn't mean he's still not going to. And this is a kid who used to never be able to lie. He had the worst face. Everybody could tell, you know, he got good at it as he got further into high school. And it was a skill. But yeah, I mean, not to say he's not going to do it. But I'm just like, Oh, my God, keep the kids coming for him to talk to because the more he says this out, yes, the more he'll stop before he does it. Because it's, you know, it's being repeated. And it's being shared. And it's, what if that kid calls him back later? Because he said, you have my number anyway. I Yeah. And if it's a year from now, give me a call if you need me. What's he gonna say? I don't lie to my coach the whole year. No, I Yeah. I lied to you, too. You know, just kidding. Yeah, I think, I think, like when I think about my client that I've been working with for four years, and I think about the messages that I've given to her over the years, and it's taken a really long time for those to sink in. And I think like, like how you said that you want that you hope that he, you know, continues to have those conversations with those kids, and continues to say that, because I think whether we tell ourselves the same message over and over again, or someone else tells it like someone that we trust, and that we that doesn't sound like nagging or whatever, that eventually it does sink in, and it does, you know, it you like, like she said to me, because I've always said to her, you know, where we're just, you know, if you can do these things, it will make your life easier, you know, things won't be so hard. And, and we've, you know, we've been saying that for I've been saying that for years to her. And she said to me on Monday night, while school is still boring, but it's so much easier. Oh, yeah.Jodi 54:15That is like, that is like the moment where you just celebrate.Hannah Choi 54:19Yeah, and you'd but I think just you have to hear it. You have to hear it from yourself. And you have to hear it from the people around you that you trust again and again. And I think that's kind of why coaching takes so long is because it just takes a long time for those message for you to like truly believe those messages. And then once you believe them, you have to put actions with them.Jodi 54:40Right? Right. Once you're like wait, it works. Now you have to make that intention happen over and over.54:46Yeah, and now he's got all this great evidence that he can do things. And so when he does slide back, which he will I mean, we all do you know, like even you and executive function Master, I'm sure there are times where you're like, Oh, I really screwed that up. You know? Oh, yeah, yeah, we're notJodi 55:07Because all the things you don't prioritize, like, whatever. And you know, afterwards you're like, I knew better. Yeah, I knew better. But in the moment, it felt easier.Hannah Choi 55:17Yeah, I'm so glad that's just such a wonderful story. Thank you so much for sharing today and for sharing with the other parents, I'm sure that you have, you know, made such a difference in, like, if you think about if you can change one parent or not change one parent, but give one parent the confidence to hook their kid up with a coach. And then, and then that kid then has the success that their son is experiencing? And then he then goes on and talks to someone else. Like, that's wonderful. Like, how many ripples that we create? 55:54So yeah, so many ripples. Yeah, yeah, in, in that whole point is just parents get definitely some of the ones I've been talking to. And you've obviously probably talked to them too, like, some of the timeline is really a focus for some of them. And I'm like,Hannah Choi 56:09Yeah, and it's hard. I mean, it's expensive. It's, you know, it's definitely not like a, but, you know, I just said to someone the other day, actually a friend of mine, who was who is interested in, in coaching, and, you know, we were talking about how it's, it's actually it's an investment, it is very expensive, but it's an investment that will not stop paying off when you're done it, you know, it will continue to pay off. I mean, I know myself just like, being a coach, like I have, I don't have great executive function skills, but I have I have been able to, you know, I know, like a ton of strategies, I know what works for me. And, and I continue to see, like, how challenging it is to keep them keep up with it. But how, in doing in doing it, and in improving my own executive function skills, how it has such a positive impact on all aspects of my life. And it's just so great.Jodi 57:10So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I and him talking to the kids. I mean, I just can't, like, you're right. It's the Pay It Forward, just keeps going and keeps going. And if one parent joins and sticks with it, and does it, and the financial piece of it, is it I'm a single mom in, in, my son goes to a private engineering school. And we don't get any financial aid. Well, like I he gets loans. I happen to make just enough money, that we don't get to get any financial aid.57:45Yeah, so you're like, right in between? 57:47Yeah, exactly. So you know, it's, it's, it's a struggle to pay it. But the reality is, you know, my daughter's treatment is like, $300,000, twice a year. And it's covered by insurance, right? Yeah. But if it wasn't covered by insurance, I would be in debt up to my ears, because she can't be your brain can't be decompensating, she's 22 years old. So you know, I feel the same about my son, you know, some for a period of time, it was a huge struggle. And sometimes I get caught up and I, the coach, might his coach knows that the extra time is always approved. He never would have used extra time with my son and it's always on like, you need extra day you need to, it's always approved. So you know, for me, there is no dollar amount I could put on my child and you can't always say that, you know, you can only come up with so much money, right? Right. Yep. But it is expensive. But I if you can make ends meet and make it happen, it's worth it. In the end, lots of time, sometimes lots of pain, lots of patience and lots of money, but it will always keep paying it forward for your kid or for yourself, always.Hannah Choi 59:08So that's it for today. I'm so glad you're here and you took time out of your day to listen, I really hope that you found something useful and something that resonated with you and Jodi's story. If you've subscribed to the podcast, you'll be getting an email with some resources related to today's episode. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do so at our website, www dot beyond booksmart.com/podcast. We send out an email after every episode with links to the resources and tools I mentioned. Thanks for listening

It's no secret that touring is the lifeblood of most modern-day musical artists. But while most fans only see the finished product — a head-bobbing performance at Coachella or a sold-out nightclub — few get a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work being done by professionals like Kevin Shivers, a partner in WME's music division. Let this interview with Kevin be your inside look at what goes into the live performances that fuel the entire music industry.Kevin has been with WME since 2008 after a stint in Hollywood. While with WME, he's worked with stars such as Tyler The Creator, Summer Walker, Kid Cudi, and plenty more on their touring strategies. Of course, Kevin's world — much like every other industry — was dealt a massive blow during the past two years. But with live shows seemingly back (knock on wood), Kevin has his eyes toward the future.And the future is an even better fan experience, says Kevin. NFTs, virtual concerts, removing the frictions of going to a real-life show — these are all ongoing evolutions that will better connect superfans with their favorite artists. We covered this near-term future in our interview, plus a whole lot more.Episode Highlights[2:15] How Kevin Broke Into The Entertainment Business [4:00] How Has the Music Business Changed In The Past Two Years? [5:25] The Go-Forward Plan For 2022[6:40] What Spurred Tyler The Creator's Big 2021[9:35] What Data Goes Into Entering New Touring Markets [13:10] Festival Strategies With Artists[14:56] How Has Streaming Changed Touring Trajectory[17:10] The Biggest Touring Mistake[18:30] Social Media's Influence On Touring[19:30] Touring Difference Between Hip Hop And R&B[21:02] How Kevin Measure Success For Himself [23:00] Why Kevin Is So Vested In Mentorship[25:19] Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives Within The Music Industry [28:46] The Impact Web 3.0 Will Have On The Music Industry[31:20] Will Virtual Concerts Replace Live Shows?[32:30] Five-Year Predictions For Music Touring[34:43] How Many Days Will Kevin Spend At Shows In 2022?[35:40] How Do You Find The Next Musical Star?Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuest: Kevin Shivers, Instagram: @bellmeadallstar  Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands_____Transcription: The Future Of Live Music with Kevin Shivers, Partner at WMEKevin Shivers 00:00You gotta ask yourself after arenas, then what? Where are you going after that? I mean, like, you know, you might already have that plan in your head, but like these careers are, it's a marathon, not a sprint.Dan Runcie 00:18Hey, welcome to the Trapital podcast! I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. Today's episode is with Kevin Shivers. He's a partner at WME, and he represents some of the biggest artists in the game like Tyler, the Creator, Summer Walker, and more. We talked about how he was able to maximize the big year that Tyler had last year. I feel like Tyler headlined so many music festivals, and had so many appearances. Kevin talks about what it took to make that happen, especially given how turbulent things were with COVID, and all of the restrictions and variants that came through and how he was able to still make it happen. We talk more broadly about music festivals in the strategy that Kevin has for making sure his clients can get certain buildings on the roster. We also talked about Summer Walker and how he was able to do the same for her. Then, we talked more broadly about what it's like as a black executive, especially in representing artists. There are not too many people at agents that are at Kevin's level that look like Kevin, so we talked about that. Some of the advocacy work and mentoring and giving back that he's done and he's prioritized in his career, and so much more. It was great to have Shivers on here. I hope you enjoy this. Here's my chat with Kevin Shivers. All right, today, we got one of the most powerful agents in the game. Kevin Shivers partner at WME. Welcome to the pod, feels like we're long overdue.Kevin Shivers 01:49Thanks for having me, Dan. It's a pleasure. Dan Runcie 01:51Yeah, it's funny because I feel like this time of the year, I always see the festival posters come up for all of the music festivals. And I'm sure you've seen the one where they replace the names of the festivals with the agencies that they're all part of. And whenever I see the WME, I'm like: Man, Kevin was on his game this year. Kevin Shivers 02:10It's definitely not all me, man. There are so many great agents at work here. Happy to be a part of this team. Dan Runcie 02:15So you've been in the game for a while now. But let's take a step back. Because I know you've been working at the agency for some time. But what was it that first attracted you to the business?Kevin Shivers 02:27I had to say it was my mother. When I was a kid growing up, my mother would drag my brother out of movies every weekend. And that's the first time in my head where I got: Wait, I would love to work in entertainment because I love the movie so much. My mother loves movies so much. Even during COVID, she was still going to the movies. And that's like the really, my first interest into the business. When I graduated from high school, I went to college at University of Texas. I majored in film with the plan of moving out to LA and being a producer. And I did move out to Los Angeles, I started interning at The Weinstein Company at the time. And then I went on to this Company Cost of Beanie films, they had a deal at Weinstein. And from there, I kind of entered into the film business, and I got my first taste into: This is not for me, this is not what I want to do in my life. Partly because I was really bad at my job, like I tried, but I didn't want to read 30 scripts a week. This is not what I wanted to do. And then I pivoted, I left there. And I went to this place called Cats Media Group, which is like they did TV sales. And I knew that, that wasn't long term. And I went there to stay in Los Angeles, and to figure it out. And from there, I figured out I wanted to be an agent and WME. I had some experience in music and in Austin like going to shows. I knew a promoter, this guy Charles Adler, Ramsay Three. And at the time, it was the William Morris Agency. And that's my first interest into entertainment. Dan Runcie 03:56Nice. And I feel like the past year and a half, almost two years now. It's probably been unlike any other time period since you've been in this. What's that been like for you?Kevin Shivers 04:05You mean like COVID, and the ways impacted shows? It's been wild, right? Like if I go back to 2020, there was so much going on in the picture of even the world and in all of our lives. You had George Floyd, you had Trump and you had COVID and uncertainty. So 2020, being an agent, it was moving shows from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. That doesn't work for all the social things that are going on in the world to 2021. The first six months were kind of the same of 2020, and the first light in the tunnel I think was Rolling Loud, like Rolling Loud played, and then Lollapalooza was maybe a week or two later. And then you start seeing Austin City Limits and Outside Lands playing off in some tours. And then we started; it started to make sense, then Omicron came along, and we're like back for a period of time back at square one. But it seems like 2022 is gonna bring a lot of joy, you know. Shows are planned, Superbowl is happening in a few days, Pro Sports are going along. So it seems a lot of positivity.Dan Runcie 05:10What do you think will be different for 2022 and 2023 thereafter? Because I feel like it'll be this gradual shift where eventually things will start to feel like the touring schedule is maybe back to somewhat of what it was before COVID. But how long do you think that will really be like? What do you think will be the first year that we can look back at and say: Okay, this is the first year that doesn't feel like it was impacted in any way?Kevin Shivers 05:36I think there's some hope in 2022. If we just changed the way that we're thinking that this is the new world. Things might pop up, the virus might flare back up and flare back down. But let's try to figure out how to move forward. I think I'm starting to see that people are out and about in shows, they are playing sports, you know. The NFL season went through the whole season, they had ups and downs. And I think that like we're starting to see some positivity, lots of hope for 23. Hopefully 23, we get back to some sort of, or we get to some sort of a new normal, where we're living in this new world, and we're just going with the punches.Dan Runcie 06:12I hear that. So I think the good thing for you though is that even, until we got to that point, you've been moving a lot. And I know that Tyler the Creator is one of your bigger clients and 2021 was a big year for him. Headlined a bunch of festivals, dropped his album. What was it like making sure that everything could line up and that you could have everything set for him despite everything else that was going on with the touring business?Kevin Shivers 06:38First of all, I want to say Tyler's a star and a one of a kind of talent, and he knows exactly what he wants. I'm lucky to be a part of his team, and he has an excellent team around them. It starts with the managers Chris and Kelly Clancy, who are amazing people. The business manager, Joe Colone, amazing lawyer, my partner James Ruby, who does International Day watch after her at the agency and all the other people that touchTyler. But 21 was a great year; we got the headline target the headlines for festivals, but it was also we had some goals from, it was also challenging. First thing is the record comes, the record is amazing and it's also finding a window when we can go on sale when COVID is not surging, and I think that the team and I,we all got lucky because we found a window.We knew Tyler was going to headline Lollapalooza and the goal was after you get all the media, the media hype coming from Lolla. We knew he was going to bring an amazing show; that Monday after Lolla, finding that window where we can go on sale and luckily for us, no COVID spikes out Lolla, nothing crazy. And there's no COVID spikes in the world. So that was the first thing, right? I think the second thing when we thought about touring, is trying to find the markets for him to play Tyler, somebody that wants to push the envelopes. And we ended up putting up 35 arenas, breaking in some new markets. I saw last night a show in San Diego. He was like: I could have done 50 shows. I mean, granted, it was nice to have, you know, the tour. And I was like: Okay, we'll see how you feel at, like, night 33 or something. But we were able to break into new markets. Columbus, Vegas, El Paso, Pittsburgh, to name a few. I think the third thing is that Tyler really, really wanted to give the fans the ultimate experience. This is the lineup: Teezo Touchdown, Vince Staples, Kal Uchis. And I think the last thing is, you know, making sure that we hit the sweet spot in pricing. So we, you know, give the fans a place where they can feel happy, a place where they can buy tickets, but also maximizing the gross, keeping ticket sales in the gross. And this was a joint effort with the managers, Chris and Kelly, Michelle Bernstein, who's an excellent marketing ticketing person and AG team led by Cody over there.Dan Runcie 08:56Talk to me a bit more about the new markets and picking those.You mentioned in Pittsburgh, you mentioned El Paso. What are the data that insights are the field that you look for when you're like: Hey, this is somewhere that we want to consider going to that we haven't gone before. And if we do it, is this the type of venue that we should go in this market as opposed to somewhere like LA or New York where he's already proved himself? Kevin Shivers 09:20Well, I think there's a few things, so one is whenever Tyler, any of my clients, I'm always trying to figure out, I want them to play as many places that they can. Just reach all the fans and maximize the opportunity we're on the road because if it's a Tyler recording or whoever it is, or Cody, you're not gonna get to see them every single year. That is a unique experience. But to answer your direct question, it's one looking at the data if it's from Spotify, or our past sales. Two is looking at the markets and seeing if there's a building or venue that makes sense like Columbus. We know that's a place, there's a college town where Tyler's played there before, played there, sold out. I think a smaller room on the onsale, knew there was demand, didn't realize, I mean, the Columbus sales are insane. But this didn't realize like: Wow, that's, I mean that is really like that's a smaller market that has turned into a market, right? I think it's looking at our diverse lineup of talent on the bill, you know, going to a place like El Paso and looking at: Oh, there's probably going to be some Kali fans, and Vince fans and Teezo fans, right? That's a good place. And that's also a place that doesn't get a lot of entertainment. So like, and that ended up being like a home run. So it's like, kind of looking at the whole picture of what you got and talking to a lot of people that are smarter than you in kind of coming up with a plan. And also just working with good people that have a point of view.Dan Runcie 10:47What are the trade-offs that you have to make for those kinds of decisions? Because I imagine that there's the ones that do cross the threshold to be like: Okay, let's make this happen. But you know, kind of like you were saying before, it's tough to try to do 50 shows in a specific short amount of run or whatever it may be. What are some of those considerations you may have to make in terms of the markets that you can't pick? Or the ones you know, that you may not be able to put in this time, right?Kevin Shivers 11:11I think there are a few things. One, it's like really talking to your clients and letting them know, we might, we're going to try to go in this market. This possibility, it might not go the way that we want, but we have to, to me if you're not trying if you're not putting risk on the line, and what are we doing, right? It's like, I'm actually somebody who's okay with failing, right? And I'm not saying that we fail or anything, but I'm okay with doing that risk for the bigger reward. So it's like really, really like getting in there and talking to them about, you know, the strategy, right? And like, the goal, I think the goal should be like, when you go out every two, three years is gaining new fans, gaining that new network.Dan Runcie 11:50Right, especially now. I feel like for someone like him, it's probably been interesting. I know, you've been with him to see the rise and just to see how the fan base has continued to evolve over time. So I imagine he probably even sees things where he's like: Okay, these are the Tyler fans that ,you know, have been with me since the Globin days. If I go to this city versus, you know, you go to this other city. They may not have discovered me as much until Flower Boy or something like that. I'm sure he does. Yeah, it's fascinating. And I think with him too, if we talk a bit more about the festival side of things, he obviously was a headliner, as you mentioned, his Lollapalooza show was broadcasted. I didn't go to the show, but I was able to see it through Hulu, because they had it coming through there. When you're trying to have someone like him, obviously, you have many different artists and they have different levels that they may want to perform at. And ideally, you want to have everyone maximizing and performing at the highest level or being like the highest row on that festival poster. But for someone like Tyler, is it going into the year like: Hey, headline or buster; if we can't be a headliner for this festival, we're not going to do it. Or does it depend on who some of the others are? What are those conversations like? Kevin Shivers 13:07I think when you start a campaign with any artist, it's just like sitting down with the team and figuring out what the goals are, right? And it's all a trajectory and building on the last. I think you want to, the goal is always to build on the last time you were out, to build on the last year, right? And having that conversation. And you know, different artists have different things. Some people want to specifically target these particular festivals, or you know, you're going out in his window, and you could maybe use a festival to route in and out to get the gross-up for the whole tour. It's just like, really just, it's really spending time with the client spending time with the manager to find out, figure out what the goal is in maximizing the opportunities.Dan Runcie 13:49Is it any tougher to do that though? The way that artists can just rise so fast now, especially in the streaming era. Because I know that there's normally the standard, you know, you do your clubs, you can do a, you know, ballrooms or amphitheaters, and then maybe if you get to arenas or stadiums, that's their trajectory. But with people just getting so big, so fast, does that change the dynamic? Or it's like: Okay, how do you still balance what they may have done last time and use that as a reference point versus how quickly they can rise in this era?Kevin Shivers 14:19I mean, look, you have to have a point of view, and you have to have a plan. And you have to have some thoughts, right? And I think that people can really jump up really, really quickly. But we like to use this thing: don't skip steps, right? You know, sometimes if, you know, you can go play in an arena, why not go play multiple nights at a smaller room and build the momentum, build a buzz, meet people on the streets, leaving, not being able to get to the show. So that when you come back around, you still have gas in the tank. I mean, there's no one size fits all plan. It's like, you have to just know who you're working with, spend time and really kind of draw that. Draw that sketch up and map it out and let it listen. A plan is just a, it's just a roadmap. It can be amended along the way. There's no like set in stone thing, but other than like, no knowing where you want to go, knowing what you think, you know, going to be doing the next year, the next five years. That is what's most important.Dan Runcie 15:13That makes sense. And that reminds me of something I heard. I think it was Olivia Rodrigo, who said in some recent interview when he announced her tour. And someone must have asked her something along the lines of: Hey, you had one of the biggest years in pop music this past year, could you have done arenas? And I think she said that same line, you said: I don't want to skip any steps. This is where that is. So I think that's something that definitely rings true. And we're seeing examples of that.Kevin Shivers 15:39Yes. And you gotta ask yourself after arenas, then what? Where are you going after that? I mean, like, you know, you might already have that plan in your head, but like these careers are, it's a marathon, not a sprint.Dan Runcie 15:49So what do you think are some of the mistakes that artists can make? Like, I mean, you don't have to drop any names. You don't got to put anybody on blast. But is there anyone that you think maybe made a touring misstep? Or there's something where you can look back and be like: Ah, if they had done that a little differently, things could have worked out a little bit, you know, whether it's better or worse, or however for them.Kevin Shivers 16:09I think sometimes when people overthink it and end up doing nothing, that's like a bummer for everybody. That's a bummer for the artist. That's a bummer for the fan, that's a bummer for the culture, like, like you're hot, you're popping right now. We really need to see you really, really need to see you show up and pull up on us and see what you have. I think that, that's a mistake, not a mistake, but that's just a bummer for everybody. We want to see, we want to see you do your thing. And I would love it if instead of doing nothing that artists, sometimes people would do something.Dan Runcie 16:39So you think part of it is that there's a hesitancy to try to capture the moment, or sometimes they can be a bit more resolute or hesitant to do things when there is an opportunity to go back out there.Kevin Shivers 16:51Or they just don't know, or they just are trying to get it perfect. And like, you know, you're going to we're all going to make mistakes, there's going to be ups and downs. I think sometimes you just got to go play, you know, you got to give the fans what they want.Dan Runcie 17:04Do you think any of this has become any more challenging in the social media era? Because one thing that I've heard both on the talent side is that artists are even more so particular about how everything looks from a live perspective, because that shot that goes on Instagram or that shot that goes on Tik Tok, that influences ticket sales, especially from, you know, whether it's the first show or whatever it is. Do you feel like artists are feeling like they need to have things more perfect even though deep down, you know, that it shouldn't be that way?Kevin Shivers 17:33I mean, it's got to be really, really tough because the cameras are always on somebody always, you know, whether you like it or not, is documenting things that you do. So I think that I couldn't even imagine how much pressure that is and how tough that has to be. You know that social media can be good. And there can be some other sides where you're like: Wow, this is tough.Dan Runcie 17:52Yeah, I know, we've talked a lot about Tyler and about hip hop overall. But I know another one of the major artists you represent is Summer Walker. And you know, she had a big year, last year as well. And I wanted the differences whether you're planning a tour for, or you're planning live events, in general, for R&B artists, as opposed to someone in hip hop.Kevin Shivers 18:14I don't think there's really many differences, I just think you have to just, it goes back to the same. There's no any artist planning and really just get, you know, in figuring out what the goals that they have and how you can best service them, right? I don't really think there's a different strategy or a different lane. I think if you love Summer Walker, you love Summer Walker, you're gonna go out and see it, right? And she has, she has an incredible fan base.Dan Runcie 18:40Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Because one of the things I was wondering with someone like her.Knowing how passionate her fan base is, I was wondering if there was a connection of like: Oh, you know, the streams may show this and the data may show this, but because of how R&B fans are, there may be a bit more likelihood that that could translate to ticket sales or purchases as opposed to other genres.Kevin Shivers 19:02You know, I think the fans are going to come out that they love somebody and Summer respects our fans. People like Summer Walker followers, or they just, they love her. I think they're just going to come out and show up and see her play.Dan Runcie 19:14Now. That's real, that makes sense. So for you, I mean, I know, you got a full roster, and you're always making sure that you can maximize them to the best of their abilities. So how do you measure success for yourself as a partner and as someone that's representing them on their behalf? Kevin Shivers 19:30The answer is really simple: Helping others, right? I got into this business because I wanted to help artists grow. And it's like, it starts with the clients like you start thinking about, about people that I work with, like: What can I do to help them? What can I do to help them grow or give them everything that they need? Are we, you know, from last year to this year? Are we showing up every day to help them get to that next level? That's the first thing. I think also the way I measure success. It's like the same thing with helping others. Like it starts for me every day when my assistant Ebony, I think she's gonna be a great executive one day, but am I showing up for her? Do I slow down enough to answer her questions? Do I mentor her? Do I spend time with her? Because like, that's important to me. We have many, many amazing young agents that work here. Am I showing up enough to help them sign up clients? Am I giving them what they need? I think you know, measuring success. Is everybody around you doing well? Are you doing what's good for the organization? I co-run hip hop with Zach, Isaac, Caroline and James Rubby. And Caroline's always saying we got to take care of youngs, you know, it's Justin neighbor's getting what he needs? Is Sarah and Ronnie getting what they need? And then I think it's just, it's really about creating that culture, creating a universe, that the people you will arise into the next level of being selfless. And then also from a DNI perspective of like: What diverse people can we grow? Can we hire? Are we retaining them? These are all the ways that I measure success. I try not to look at what other people are doing. Because I mean, it doesn't really matter. I want to make sure that the organization and the people around me are set up for success.Dan Runcie 21:14I hear that. And I think a lot of the themes you mentioned there align with mentorship, and whether it's being a mentor or support for the artists that are looking to you for guidance, your co-workers and your colleagues. Can you talk a little bit more about why that's so important to you? Because even in reading and hearing other interviews, I know you've been active on that front, making sure that you can use your platform and where you are to pass the torch and help others along the way.Kevin Shivers 21:40I think mentorship is one of these things like, if we're not mentoring, then what are we doing? Why are we even showing up? You have to always be trying to look out for other people. I've had people that looked out for me and my career, people that still look out for me. And I think that is one of the key things. One of the reasons that makes me want to get up every day and come into the office is, like, helping others. I think that's one of the reasons why we're put on this earth to help people. A non-negotiable thing is mentorship. I mean, the crazy fact about, I'll go do an interview, or I'll do a panel and everybody that writes to me on IG or LinkedIn, I write everybody back, everybody. I mean, I probably send more people to the HR department here for jobs than anybody. Because I just want everybody back. I think that's important, because I was once the young kid who wanted to figure this out. And like I didn't know, I had no clue and people helped me. So I think that's a very important aspect of the job.Dan Runcie 22:35100%. And even on a personal level, I remember the first time you reached out to me, Hey, love what you're doing. Hey, how can I help? And you're just like: Oh, who do you want to interview? Oh, I was listening to them yesterday, boom, let's get this done. So even on a personal level, I need you out. You're looking out for me, man. I appreciate that. Kevin Shivers 22:52Yeah, I mean, well, you're doing it. I listen to your podcast every week. I think it's amazing. I think what you're doing for the culture is great. And I just wanted to get to know you and just to help where I can and, and that's just, that's what I think is important.Dan Runcie 23:05Definitely, definitely. And one of the things that you had put out, because a couple years back, but it really stuck out to me was this was right after George Floyd's murder and the music industry had the show must be paused response. And you had written these guest posts on Pollstar and you were talking about how this industry just needs to do better by its black execs specifically on the recruiting front. And I know you were just talking about how, you know, you're always pushing things forward to HR. And I'm sure this must be really personal for you as well, you are one of the few folks that looks like you in the position that you have in this whole industry. So I'd love to hear how you feel like the industry has responded since everything had happened after George Floyd's murder and the response to where we are now in 2022.Kevin Shivers 23:57You know, in response to your comment about I wanted a person who looks like me in the industry. I always say to everybody, I'm amazing, but I'm not that amazing. There's, there should be more people that look like me doing what I do and and you know, partners in hire, right? And I think we still have a lot of work to do. There's good news though. There's positive conversation around DNI, people are aware, people are aware that there needs to be more black people and more diverse people need to have more opportunities. I still think that we need to keep pushing the envelope, we still have a lot more to do in terms of hiring and creating opportunities for black people. The organization's know they have to do better, but they have to buck the old status quo. They have to go outside of the norm. And today to some people, it might be like: Oh, we're taking a risk. No, DNI has to be inside of your lifeline, inside of your blood, inside of your everyday practices. It's not something that you can just talk about once a quarter, you gotta live it, you got to be in it every day. And I believe that the black people need to be promoted, they need to be elevated. They need to be given the same opportunities and shots. When we were interviewing for jobs, I think in any, in any industry, not just entertainment, you need to be interviewing black people, people of color, LGBTQ, there just needs to be more opportunity. We need more Sylvia Rhone's, more Ethiopia's, more tons Jay-Z and Def Jam. We need more leaders, more partners. I mean, we have to just keep our foot on the gas, keep pushing the envelope because this, we're not there yet. But we're going in the right direction. And we need to keep the momentum.Dan Runcie 25:30Right. And I think even an example of that, the folks you just mentioned, I think a lot of folks in this industry are all on a first name basis. And as incredible as all those folks are, how do we get to the point where they're not on a first name basis, because they aren't just the few black execs in there. I mean, it's definitely going to continue to take time. And I think whether it's conversations like this, or the efforts you're doing will help. But I'm hopeful that it can get there eventually. Kevin Shivers 25:55I'm hopeful, too. I think we got to stay targeted and focus. But also at the same time, remember, like, this just didn't happen overnight, right? It's not going to change overnight. But we have to like, we have to keep, we have to stay on this because it can change and it needs to be better.Dan Runcie 26:11Definitely. So let's switch gears a bit. Let's talk a little bit about the future, specifically with regards to touring and technology and what things will look like in, the potential with Web 3.0 and the metaverse. Because now you have agencies that are specifically I'm sure WME likely also has a division where they focus specifically on digital environments, or getting artists lined up on that perspective. How do you look at that? Specifically, with the artists you have on your roster, what the potentials are for them in these digital worlds.Kevin Shivers 26:50I think Web 3.0 is just it's massive, huge, huge opportunity. You know, if you think about the evolution started in virtual, went over to Fortnite, but I just think it brings control back to the artists in a way. Artists had an act like this the whole time, these music artists, they've had fan clubs, they've had social media, but what Web 3.0 does, it gives more control to them. It's gonna give them more power, but like, it kind of cuts out the middleman and I think you know, things are gonna change in the next six months, next five years, it's gonna be an exciting world. If you look at what Coachella did, by selling the NFT, a lifetime Coachella pass. I mean, I think artists are gonna come up with these things where, you know, if you want to be in the front row of my show, here's the NFT for the chance to buy the front row tickets, or maybe it just goes inside of there. And they figure out what to promote, but I just think like, it's an exciting time. Like, it's the, it's endless. I was just on the phone with A Jones the other day, I love what he's doing with Royal. And I think the deal that he did with Nas and Antony Silay is, like,amazing; that looks like where things are headed. I mean, it's just, you know, like any of these things, it's gonna be ups and downs, right? In the Web 3.0, but I just think the opportunity is endless.Dan Runcie 28:01Yeah, things are early, things are also moving really fast. Six months from now, it's gonna look completely different. And I am excited for the artists that are taking advantage early. I feel like I can already imagine Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival having some type of digital environment or some type of experience in the metaverse.Kevin Shivers 28:21I'm sure it will, I'm sure Lollapalooza and some of these other properties. That's where they're headed. I mean, it's gonna be a really exciting time. I just hope people get off the couch, you still come out to show.Dan Runcie 28:35Is that a concern you have though? Like, do you wonder about that in the future?Kevin Shivers 28:39No, no, I was just joking. I mean, I don't think anything can replace the live experience, just like the Zooms are great, right? But I think when you're in a meeting with somebody, it's 10 times better. And I think a concert is 100 times better. I love, I love going to festivals, I've been to them all over the world. And I love seeing the reactions in real time on people's faces from their favorite artists hidden in the stage. So I don't think anything can replace it. I think it's going to only enhance the experience.Dan Runcie 29:07Agreed. That's what I always go back to. Everything in these experiences are additive and isn't a replacement for anything. And I think it'll probably just force more creativity for every aspect, because you're not just trying to have something be a catch all. So I think I'm interested to see how it'll continue to shape live performances and what that can look like from the, you know, the IRL experience. Yeah. And on that note, do you have any predictions for what you think the next three to five years or so will look like specifically in the lifespace? I mean, pandemic notwithstanding, I mean, obviously, I think we'll continue to see the after effects of that, but any type of, you know, evolutions are any type of future changes that you think will see over time.Kevin Shivers 29:51Yeah, I think 2022 is going to be bigger than we thought. I think that hopefully, I think we're headed to a healthy tour environment. I think there's going to be new players in terms of buyers and festivals. And I think the fan experience will that's going to be the thing of the future. I think everyone has realized they have to zero in on the fan from artists curated weekends and festivals to I think even super service in the fan. Think about this, think about a world where service lets you buy a ticket, has a car that picks you up, dinner reservations, great seats, even find you a babysitter.I think that's where we're going, we're going to this place, we're like: Okay, I can't even be, I'm busy. I didn't want to deal with this, boom, hit a button. And this is where we're going. I think that's exciting. Because you know, getting inside of the mind of the fan, what they really want is going to be the next evolution. Dan Runcie 30:42Yeah, even you mapping that out. If you literally could press one button and solve that, I think you'd also just increase the amount of people that can come through, right? You mentioned the babysitter, the amount of people that have young kids, and it's like, you know, just the thought of them needed like, oh, you know, we got to find someone for this to cover for this night. Like, yeah, if all that can be taken care of.Kevin Shivers 31:00Because I think people love live music, and live music is such a treat. But when you think about the hurdles you have to do, you got to put on some clothes, maybe, you know, show starts at seven, get homework, feed your kids, do this, do that. And if you could just take some of that away from them. That's like, you know, bringing the fan experience to a new level.Dan Runcie 31:21Definitely. So I know that you're always on the go with festivals. And you know, I know you love going into them. But I know it's also for your work as well. If you have to guess, how many shows do you think you'll go to in 2022?Kevin Shivers 31:33I can tell you this. I'd rather answer this way. How many days I plan on hitting a lot of festivals in 2022. So I think I'm going to be, I call it 50 to 60 days watching music, right? That's what I'd say.Dan Runcie 31:48Okay. Yeah. All right. And even that, I mean, that's a lot more than the average person. But I mean, it's just incredible. Because you get to just see all the fine tunes, you get to just see everything. And like you mentioned, this is interesting, you're traveling all across the world for this stuff.Kevin Shivers 32:02Yeah. I mean, that's, that's one of the reasons I love doing what I do. I mean, like, really, I get to go see live music in different parts of the world. I mean, I can't even imagine anything better than that.Dan Runcie 32:12Yeah. So last question. Before we let you go. I know we talked a lot about Tyler. And I know from our conversations, just the uniqueness of you seeing that star power and star potential, even from the first time you connect it. How do you find that next tile? Or how do you find that thing to know? Okay, yeah, this is the one that we need for this next generation. Kevin Shivers 32:34Oh, wow. I think when I'm looking to sign somebody, I'm looking for somebody that has a unique point of view, for somebody that is fearless, and then wants to do the work.Dan Runcie 32:43That makes sense. Hear that man. Hey, before we let you go, man, this was great. I'm glad you could come through and make this happen. But is there anything else you want to plug? Or let the Trapital audience know about it?Kevin Shivers 32:54I think everybody should go out and see some shows this year. I think 2022 is going to be a good year, and then one thing I want to say is to somebody who wants a career in entertainment, I think you should go for it. I think you should move to LA, move to New York, move to Atlanta, move to Nashville. Call, email some people; call, email me. I'll probably write you back pretty soon and just go for your dreams.Dan Runcie 33:15What's your email address?Kevin Shivers 33:17Kshivers@wmeagency.com. It's all good.Dan Runcie 33:23Now appreciate that, man. I welcome man. Thanks for coming through this as a pleasure.Kevin Shivers 33:27I appreciate you Dan.Dan Runcie 33:31If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend posted in your group chat, posted to your Slack groups. Wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review and tell people why you liked the podcast that helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

 Ep. 41- LinkedIn in For Job Searching (Live Coaching) Lindsay  00:00I'm Lindsay Mustaine, and this is the career design podcast made for driven ambitious square pegs and round holes type professionals who see things differently and challenge the status quo. We obliterate obstacles and unlock hidden pathways to overcome and succeed where others have not stagnation feels like death. And we are unwilling to compromise our integrity and settle for being averaged in any way. We are the backbone of any successful business and those who overlook our potential are doomed to a slow demise. We do work that truly matters aligns with our purpose, and in turn, we make our lasting mark on the world. We are the dreamers, doers, legends, and visionaries who are called to make our most meaningful contribution and love what we do. Okay, we are officially live. I am so excited about this one. This is where you can get in trouble with LinkedIn because they're like don't do any meta stuff with LinkedIn. So we're talking about job searching on LinkedIn. But really, we're going to talk about optimizing your profile for LinkedIn. So Abby, let's go ahead and jump into introduce yourself to us. Tell us about you. I will she's gonna, by the end of this, you're gonna have your elevator pitch so far down. who you are, why we're doing this and the journey thus far. Abby  01:15Yep, so my name is Abby Mueller, and I am a user experience designer, I met Lindsay on LinkedIn a few months back, I guess we're not even two months, I don't even know No Time flies. But I experienced a job loss earlier this year in 2021. Just to lay off due to you know, pandemic changes, and so forth, and decided to go back to school and study UX design and got myself certified. I'm now back on the job market. And I'm just really struggling looking for work. So I posted an article about how my job search was going, just not so great. And it got Lindsay's attention. And that's how we got in touch. And now we are working through her career design program to help me find the dream job of my Yeah, the job of my dreams. So Lindsay  02:11here we are, the right job at the right salary at the right company. That's what we're looking for. So now we are in so the pathway is we're nearly halfway actually. So this is a really exciting point. I'm, in fact, at this point, so I had somebody who just graduated, he's gonna be supporting NASA. And he got a $45,000 raise, he did not apply for the job. After going through this and optimizing his LinkedIn profile. He was getting one to two people per week, but four to five per day is what he told me last night after doing this. So I want to optimize your LinkedIn. Okay, and I want to talk to you about why this is and this one wouldn't you have optimized your resume we can go straight into the LinkedIn. Okay, so your resume, if you do this, right. Last night, I showed a video from one of my clients, Maria hulan, her job at Apple and she never applied for the job. In fact, I talked today, if you look at my, my post I did today on LinkedIn. And I said, What's the statistic if somebody's actually getting an application, like submitting a resume and getting a job? Do you know the stat Abby? point? 4.4%? Yes, I was like, she probably knows this. You have access to everything. I mean, a dismal fact ever. So when I say your resume, people are like, I must spend 1000s of dollars on your resume. And I'm like, great. If you have money to do that, you know, you want to take the workload off, but no, it is not going to save you Okay, so here's your floatation device. It's Here I'm showing you right now, it's not going to be your resume. Okay, but your LinkedIn will be okay. Your LinkedIn is one of the most powerful ways for you to enhance your job search. So it's your professional real estate. Okay, so we all have our own little corner of the internet. If you have your own website, that's another way to do this. But your LinkedIn if you go Google Lindsey Mustaine and she's got a lot of results a lot 1000s that are actually me. And that, guess what LinkedIn is? Number one, number one, okay, so you really absolutely have to have your LinkedIn profile. Okay. So I want to let you guys know that we right now it's time for me to tell you dream job hack is open. Okay, so dream job hack is open freedom hack is a client that I talked about last night, the one who got a $45,000 raise is now working to support NASA, four to five contacts per day through LinkedIn. dream job hack was where it's at. So if you want to check the replay of how we did this and his story itself, go to dream job hack.com. You can opt in and watch the training right, then it's only going to be available for the weekend. Okay. All right. So let's get into LinkedIn profile. So I'm going to be because we're going to be using us on the podcast, we'll be doing a lot of visual descriptions. I thought that was a bad thing. Last time I did your resume, but after thinking about it a little bit more, like actually this might be the best thing. So we're gonna go into it. to LinkedIn optimization, okay, so your resume, how many seconds does it get for those in the chat? Shout out to you who might know and this in the comments how many seconds do you get your resume gets? Well, only 25% of the time because they viewed again go to my trading if you want to learn the real stats behind the curtain, but they won't tell you how I'm how many seconds do you get? us all savvy, I'm gonna let lets you go ahead. Abby  05:27Six, six seconds. Six seconds. All Lindsay  05:31right. Now, if you were here, any anybody, anybody? And you want a fair consideration of who you are as a complete individual, do you think six seconds is enough time to give somebody a fair shot? No. For me, it's about half of that. So yes, it Randy says. That's exactly six seconds. That's all we get. Yeah, it's sad, okay. Your resume doesn't give you a fair shot. It's not a good indication of your entire experience. But then there's your LinkedIn profile. Alright, so your LinkedIn profile hits 25 times the viewing time. 25 times. Okay. So this is how the most elite recruiting organizations design their framework. Okay. So here we call the post and pray method, which is what is my biggest beef around recruiting is like, Hey, I posted a job, please come apply. Okay. So we do that I will get a job requisition and I'll say, Okay, we have a job. Let's go post it. But do you think that I wait for Abby to hopefully be online looking for my job at that specific time on my website at that one moment? Or do you think she might be busy doing other stuff like actually running her? her life, her business, her career, it has other stuff to do? That's true. So high performance organizations, we target people. Okay, so how do you get found is LinkedIn are, right? So hashtag LinkedIn, if you're tuning in and watching this now, I'd love to hear from you. Hashtag LinkedIn, if you're, if you get this is so powerful. Alright, so I am going over to your profile. And we'll talk a little bit about all the things so I would love to know what was some anything surprising in here, anything that was eye opening for you? Abby  07:11Um, well, I mean, having done my resume work previous, it was kind of cool just to go through and I'm like, Oh, I can just plug that in here. And I can plug that in here. And I can plug that in here. And it's like, we're done. So Lindsay  07:25I was, like, the easiest module, if you do the work and resume, so resumes were like, there's many moments where you're kind of like, Lindsey, I really kind of dislike you right now. And it's a personal trainer, you know, you pay them to break it down a little bit. Yeah, I'm gonna walk you through LinkedIn. So the goal of this is just to update it from your resume, if you have a right, the right resume. So I want to first start. So I'm looking at Abby's thing, and the first thing, the most powerful thing, what's the most important thing about your profile? Anybody in the chat? Tell me? Go ahead. Your picture I know, okay, this will be like, Oh, I'm over at insert your age here. I don't care. What you probably should be on LinkedIn at that point. But like my picture, okay, so you can have one view or you can have 21 views? What do you think is going to help your job search more? 21 views 21 views. Okay, so the single hack here is you need a profile picture. If you want to know what profile picture to use, you go to photo feeler.com How did you get a chance to do Abby  08:31this? I did. I just checked my results last night because originally I had the same photo up there, by the way, but I had taken it like in my house. So my background was this color. And all I did was I went in and I put it into my design software. And I changed the background, based on some of the examples that I saw and others that I follow to look a little more professional a little more photo studio esque totally does it like it and I submitted like three different versions of it on that site, and everything went up like three to four points, like three point scale. Yeah, 10 point scale, it went up like three to four points. And I was like, Lindsay  09:15Whoa, all I got competency, influence and likeability. That's really what we're looking at at that point. But photofiltre.com This is the way to do it. We're gonna measure it. So here's your secret here. You got to appear a specific way. And I would have told you let me tell you, I became a LinkedIn sensation. And I use that loosely because I am just human, but I became a LinkedIn sensation with pink hair and a car selfie. Okay, so I would have I would have said, this is not important but when you go and look at the numbers you can see here that my light, my influence level was rated for Okay, now I'm at 90% or greater and how I do that is auditing my picture. So here's the deal, go to photo fuse. Put your picture up and just put it up for the test and put it for the business level and you'll get the right feel and what you want here guys, I don't care how you feel okay, like I look a little more cheesy in this picture All right, that's not my point my actual as long as it looks like you, Abby  10:15oh my god, I love that you look so happy in your photo like I think that's what draws people in is like oh my god, she really loves what she's doing. Like I thought like I am so bored in my photo that when they're sitting there like like it's a mug shot. Lindsay  10:31I know if you will look like you went to jail and got your picture here. Nobody is worrying. So guess how long and this is where how long you have to make an impression on somebody so that profile photo will get you 21 times the views but how long do you have to actually make an impression from that photo? Any ideas? Abby  10:47Probably like a few seconds. Lindsay  10:50A 10th of a second Yeah, a 10th of a second Oh my god. Okay, so here's why we are genetically wired to read somebody by the way their hair is the symmetric symmetry of their face, how symmetrical their faces we look at the way they like women we look at the way that their body is shaped because we are looking as tribal human beings, not the evolved people we've become today, we make an immediate decision of whether or not this person is a risk. This is somebody who is safe. This is somebody I can eat like literally as a creditor, we make these things we make this and it happens at the very lowest level the brain. So I want you to know not this because it's unfair. Yeah, sorry, it's unfair, but you were programmed that way and I cannot beat your own biology. What I can tell you is here's how we optimize it to win Okay, so be thankful for the bias so I can show you how to fix it. Okay, so what you need to do is just go in there and don't get sensitive about it if you're sensitive and Hello, I'm sensitive. Have somebody else look at the feedback like she was like she's really fake or her smile is too big or teeth or whatever, I don't care. I you know, I just want a two comma club award. I don't give a shit what you actually think Sorry, guys, I'm LinkedIn. I don't really give a crap what you think I care about what appears as the mass, because that's what I'm looking at. It's just an overall so we're always testing. Okay, so the first thing profile photo is going to be photo feeler.com. And he says that he is competent, likeable, and influential, which I would say because he looks very warm. He looks very welcoming. He's also super cool just in his chat. Okay, it was really interesting doing Abby  12:23that. So if you guys go on there, just know that you're going to you know, you either have to buy credits, or you're going to have to rank other people's photos. Which is really eye opening, because I would look at it and I'm like, Well, I don't think they look very, you know, like savvy or whatever. And I'm like, but why like what is it about you know, is it where their eyes are? Is it the color is it what is it? You know what I mean? Like I'm judging them based on their background, like where are you? Are you in a part of things you Lindsay  12:45mean yes. But if your eyes like are too far away, we immediately say somebody is not as intelligent. So just know that these things are not accurate representations of crazy ability. It is just how you were sent. So that's why a good photo will do something and a good background like I think I don't know what copyright but you can be wearing a T shirt in this in essence, I can't totally tell. Yeah, it looks very professional. It's like they're things where I like I did airbrushing during the same wearing the same shirt today. Okay, so it's a blouse, but I was like, it couldn't be a T shirt. I couldn't tell what it originally. There's specific things like black and white is better for color. So black, white, Navy, these are more neutral palettes. I'm having a boundary that's more like mine very, like it's great for live streams. But if I was doing my profile photo, I wouldn't want to do it like this. Okay. All right. So first one, we're hacking his profile photo, Abby, you got it down. Look, wait. Abby  13:36Okay, no, I think blue because if you're if you're a designer, you know that blue is indicative of trustworthiness. Lindsay  13:45And there are and you know, one of the things that I look at when I build websites is what, what causes people to click Buy, or what looks at what causes people to go through whatever causes the action. So we're always AV testing things. And that's what I'm doing is I'm just proving you the same concept. We don't care what humans are really bad at predicting what works. By the way, let me be really clear here. Humans are very bad at predicting what works. What gives you that answer is actually if you go and test the theory, okay, so this is where people put all their eggs in one basket and like, I really like this one. I think they like me, so I'm not going to interview anymore. That is a dumb decision. Okay, so keep your eye you know, don't count before they've hatched. And make sure you have lots of eggs. You're always collecting eggs. Okay. Lindsey squares. I had no idea. I know, I'm the Antichrist human resource, folks. It's unfortunate. And also lovely. Okay. Next Abby  14:32is your color language. Lindsay  14:33Yes, I was like they said that people who have as a sign of genius I was like, I don't know if someone told me that last night and the other person told me is that study show because they were having more emotional intelligence. I was like, well, that's good enough for me. I don't really know enough but it was enough. For me, I mean, Abby  14:50yeah, why not? Lindsay  14:51So the next thing up what what do you think is next on the most important things that you can enhance your profile with Abby  15:01I mean you said I mean if we're talking about photos you said the cover photo was important and also Lindsay  15:06the headline it's right there but it is your headline okay the reason why is I'm looking at that and you're I want your cover photo until I end up on your page I however you see your headline wherever you're at so those are the two things like neck and neck. So and I wish it didn't work like this but your profile photo will make sure that they read your other one. Okay? Your read your headline. Okay, so you have UX UI designer and then pipe which is the straight up down line content architect freaking love that product, storyteller, mobile and web design that was different. I've done redesigns research user advocate, sustainability enthusiasts. Oh, you check off storyteller? Oh, product storytelling? critic, storyteller? Abby  15:45Yeah, we'll Lindsay  15:46see. We've got it. So how do you feel about that? How is that because I think it says UX UI design a student looking for something? Yeah. So how do you feel about this so far? Abby  15:57Um, I think it's good. I don't know if it's too many things, but I tried to it's not okay. I tried to incorporate some of the things that were in my resume and then I added a few more you know, especially for you mean, potentially whoever's gonna hire me should know what I'm what I do as a UX UI designer, but I added mobile and web design in there just to make it a little more clear because that is related to the type of work that I do and language that everyone is familiar with. And then redesigns as well and branding things like that that I do feel good about it and the sustainability thing I just told you before I got on this call I'm doing a pitch at the United Nations Food System summit later this afternoon. So yeah, I'm passionate about sustainable sources. So I wanted to include that because I know a lot of companies particularly in that field, maybe would flag that word on my Lindsay  16:56page. I love that Randy said yes and Hadley don't duplicate your job title seriously we can find that otherwise so what I want you to do is position yourself in your zone of genius that's the whole goal here and if you've done the work here she's more than her what we do appreciate your perspective but that's what I have you start with that's what I have you start with because you need something but I want you to add more and sustainability like actually your passions and the things that's how we get deeper into it as we go further here we get deeper do because what we are marketing is a product. What is the product? Well, it's Abby it's Abby Inc. Yeah. Lindsey like if you knew my time at Amazon, you would know I was obsessed with bananas obsessed like I would go get seven or eight of them if you look at my article I wrote I literally like pictures of banana stand like they were called banana pieces. And they would hand out bananas to the community. It wasn't cute Amazon and I was obsessed with it okay so and i also call myself a talent acquisition ninja that's what I used to call myself and so my first domain was like ask Lindsey dot ninja whatever it is those things that make you quirky and different that's how you set yourself in order you don't want to be like like for everybody so Stacy still watching Stacey is not for everybody she is incredibly provocative. She pulls genius out of people she can change your life in 90 minutes. Now she's gonna charge you five figures for 90 minutes to do it, but it's worth it Okay, so when I talk about this Own your fucking genius that's what I'm trying to say here. Okay, and I say that with explicit I'm sorry hopefully LinkedIn won't kick me off for this. But really important for you to understand this okay? I'm hardly ever on LinkedIn. We will I would love to chat I would love to chat This is how I just want to comma clipboard. 93% of it organic traffic from LinkedIn It is my baby. Okay, thanks, Shawn. So next thing ninjas and pirates videos I have pirates probably I don't know about pirates so much I have cat that's when I I don't really talk about her that's pretty funny. Abby  18:57Make sure if you have pirates in there that you're doing like a wink and your profile say like Lindsay  19:02like there is so Alright, so what comes after your headline now this is where like okay, so I do have the segmenting of your authority through your profile photo, but it's actually not the next thing I'm going to look down I'm going to scroll down to my ABOUT SECTION Alright, Sandy about section is about who you are. Okay, so we don't get a lot of text. A lot opportunity. Get read on your resume in six seconds. But I'm actually gonna sit here and read this until I get to three lines. So your I am a passionate This is beautiful, beautiful like you are talking about. Like for businesses, I probably go deeper into what businesses we are here what kind of customers Okay, what I want you to see is after there's three lines of text, that's when I stopped reading, I start skimming. So if you ever see on LinkedIn or people right, it's a editorial nightmare for those people. You go ahead and return between them. So between the sentence if you ever see when people write like that, it's too many So you read so the secret here and for this I want you to break these out. And I want you to think about maybe even doing bullet points and emojis are welcome. Yes. Okay people here like no emojis, I had some I had a block one time and I was like, you know, you can either be part of the change and you can be an early adopter, you can be one of the innovators or I can leave you behind, okay? recruiters right now that are posting jobs and saying apply online. But by you're being left behind is changing in the moment. So if you want to be part of the information, it's now Okay, so maybe make a Abby  20:30case for an emoji right now. Yep, please. Lindsay  20:31Oh boy, I would love to your you would be more of an expert in this than me. Abby  20:35Let me just tell you something. I actually wrote a piece on this too. I'm not well, not I guess not specifically emoji, but there's symbols, right. And the oldest form of language that the humans ever had was symbolism, right? symbology like and we went from creating symbols to creating letters, and now are returning back to the use of symbols and a lot of ways but we still use them on everyday products, right? They're on our remote controls, they're on signing, like when you're driving around, they're on they're in your car, like they're everywhere. And the use of a visual representation of what that thing does is stronger than using a word by itself. Lindsay  21:15Oh, I love that so if you ever noticed people were like, do you use emojis or nice words I was like, You're both sometimes so I don't really care but the whole point is that it's pattern interrupt. So how people read what we're trying to get them to do is look so bullet points work and emojis work like that. It gets more interesting and it makes it you can tone like if you okay, if you give me a thumbs up by itself, I have a really big problem with it. Okay, so anybody listening you ever give me a thumbs up? I'm gonna be kind of ticked off about it. And I'm gonna think that you're like whatever. Bye Felicia That's what I think. Okay, but if you put in like a harmless I never just like like things I always hurt them because I want you to know that I'm invested emotionally and I like it it's kind of like I'm like I felt like I needed to so and that actually Facebook rewards things like that like like is that same thing kind of like yeah, that's how they reward the algorithm and here so get in there and use the other symbols. So I want you to break it down and think about using bullet points and you can sharpen this like this is a great start so I want you to know you are better than 93% of people out there now me okay, but I want you to get there in the very bottom I want you to add I want you to go through that skill section on your resume. either put through pipes or maybe stars or bulletin push pins, whatever, just do skills because what we're doing is keyword optimization. So Randy was talking about that first off I love that owner of my blank genius. I might do that. I thought genius Oracle is when Oh I thought emojis were seen as non professional, DO IT professional, most unprofessional influencer that is on this platform if I bought it which is crazy because I'm an HR but I also was CEO and he's like we're struggling for this and I go Do you mind if I swear Do you mind if I tell you the fucking truth? And he's like hit me with it and so I told him and he was like, Yes, so just know. Okay, and yeah, people are gonna have issues with it just be 100% authentically you Abby  23:12I was gonna say is it unprofessional? Or are you just authentic because Lindsay  23:16haha so I am like the market let me just tell you the time when my my freedom when I broke the chains of my prison of corporate I cut off my hair and I dyed it purple and pierced my nose that was when I got promoted for it when I stopped caring what anybody else thought okay, so this is where people were like Oh, they didn't pick me because they didn't like that I wanted to change the status quo and I go so are you telling me that you the universe said hey, this is actually not a good fit for you because you'll die slowly in that job every single day. So we're not going to give you that opportunity because we know better Okay, so I also believe in trusting the universe to give you what you need here but don't look at every job as an opportunity if they said that was a problem. You mean you have a problem with them? You should be thankful okay. Yeah and LinkedIn I want you to be authentic like they they do get a little bit on swearing sometimes I still do but but that's about it go with emojis go with everything purple or pierced nose I did it also okay let's see here. I can't pull the source when I recently saw a chart or at least an influencer talk about being more authentic and sharing on the platform thankfully Okay, there's so many things I love when we can't all be Gary Vee Gary Vee is just I don't I'm not a big Gary Vee fan if I'm really honest, I think that he he has different motives in particular, which you know what I good for him that that people follow Him, in fact, one of my clients so I'm never going to be against what you want to do, let's how I work my what I want has nothing to do with what you should do. And what I want you to do is have a job that you pay paid handsomely. You do work that fills your cup and fills your soul? Do you do it for an organization that aligns your purpose? If that's it, I don't care where it is okay. So when you What did you say what should we write in the what person you are not a brochure you write in first person I am, I am is the strongest declaration to the universe is why we can do it. When I talk about people don't know this, why I do this is that the law of attraction says we are what we declare to the universe, I am the most powerful invocation of your power. So choose what you are. And that's why I made you go and say it and I might keep refining it, refining it, because as soon as you say, then you are that's the moment then you are, okay. And this is actually if it's a if you want to look it up, but look at this technique called frame disruption. There's some guy named pitch are here his name, but his book is called Pitch Anything. And I use that same psychology technique and what I use to break the frames around psychology about how people view others, that's actually what I'm doing. So you're I am is not just I'm using some metaphysical things here, but it's also one of the most powerful ways to actually break in science science world. Scientifically, we can do that. Okay, so that's what I would like to see here. It's just adding some of that, but this looks really good. The only thing I really want you to do is that I love a good challenge. And I want you to say like, what makes when I say the challenge because it's like, it's Come on, bro. Like, I'm a problem solver. I'm like, so is everybody. That's great, but it's just not it's not so what is the challenge? Like I love a challenge that is unsolvable by traditional means. Right? Okay. I like to use like, I like to believe in teams who leverage their differences as strengths. Like I see people's differences as their opportunities for making the most impact. I would like that forward thinking, Oh, I love this one forward thinking innovation fully break down and are driven by a desire to learn and improve every day, learn, improve, disrupt the status quo, something a little bit deeper, and then with unwavering positivity. So we're gonna go deeper into this cuz we're gonna improve upon this inside of the elevator pitch section, but you actually have done what I'm asking you to do, which is to declare what you really want. Okay. Let's see here. Oh, thanks, Randy. for being here. I refined my profile all the time. Yeah, that's always like, once you do something over here, like your brand, you might get something Oh, this is really powerful. It resonates because remember, we're bad at predicting, I'm giving you the framework here. But we prove it through the concept. I'm bad at predicting what will land what will land matters more than what I think or what Abby thinks it's what proves out. So if you see this, this is really important. I know Do you hear them? They're whining, sorry, my dogs. They're like, please. Like my dog, Carmen is the one who used to go to Amazon with me. So what I want you to do here is just prove it. So if you have caught like concepts and people like wow, like I just said, you know, distill your effing genius. That's what I do that resonates. Randy just gave me a case for doing it. Let me maybe that's something I try. Maybe that's something I talked about. So I talked about zone of genius all the time. And it's kind of a hot buzzword, but it's been I've been doing it for years now. So whatever it is, we just passed it out. So anyhow, you have an excellent here. So the only thing I'd like you to punch it up with some emojis is bullet points and bullet points can be the most it can be the actual bullet point just and break the text, not more than three lines, okay? And what we're gonna talk about is like, what I'm looking for next is going to be the part that I'm looking for. Because people will be able to tell that or what I'm really excited about. I'm excited about and passionate about Connect. I invite people to take the next action and invite them to take the next step. I'm Stacy, I'm actually talking about how to optimize your profile for whatever if you're running a business or if you're looking for a job. I'm talking about how to do it for both. So I'm so glad you got to tune in here too. All right. So let's see next up is going to be your serious Alright, I are people I like purely because of your pets. I know this is where I'm like you can be pet Mom, I've had somebody who said 240/7 best beer on LinkedIn and I was like it's so funny that it just makes you stop it's the same technique that like when they say like William and Kate divorcing and you're like Wait, what? It's not that I'm actually gonna buy that magazine but it makes me something uh what's going on there and I just want to peek behind the scenes and we get that two clicks so how many views are we getting on your profile? Guess what on mine Mine are 1000s 1000 views Okay, so what we're trying to do is get point of getting people to your profile okay? So what we're trying to do is just that part the first time and optimizing it actually through the other things okay, so inside of your experience, I'm going to give you the path done it is your profile It is beautiful. The only thing I would change here to say change is first person like I lead a team so just add to it so it's not as third person but that's a really big requirement. Okay. All right. So I would like to see your education because I really scroll down before I really get in I know the promo Yeah, your plane photo is important. The Ohio State I want you to not choose the mantle campus I want you to go to Ohio State I want you to connect it to the university because and I don't want your years on there. Okay, are your high school so take those years off. And you don't have to high school. I have mine so I'm against I do things against the book. It's up to you. But for this I want you to connect it like Ohio State that's a notable University gives you more credibility all we're trying to do is hack the process folks okay go ahead and put hashtag hack in the chat for me if you're following along here. Okay, next now I've covered a lot of things here but I'm going to go up to the very top which is her cover photo Okay, so in full transparency the cover photo was busy Yeah, Abby  30:24I was worried about that. Lindsay  30:25Yeah, go box Jason's See look at this you're I'm proving the concept here that people will have a Abby  30:33fetish I'm from Ohio just think Lindsay  30:36that yes I feel that so it's a little busy but I believe in the power of people I believe curiosity and impatient drives our future I believe that possibly so I love this I think that's great. I love him so I'd love to see is Abby Miller signs but I really want you to declare your zone of genius okay on the top so what it is is it's just because the instant impression so you can just have a boring profile you're gonna have that blue background that they come with but we have a way to enhance it and what I want you to think is the most richest experience so what do we know about design less is more typically right? Less is more so I want you to try to optimize this with some zone of genius The best example I can give you if you go look at Brandon Smith and he is he is a business coach for his this most simple image ever because the business coach for Amazon in the logistics supply chain last mile transportation and it literally because he said that and it's a shipping container that's red and it says oh shoot What does it say now? I think it says logistics but but let me just double check is this oh I have to go look I'm so sorry. Let me tell you what it is because it's just so good. Yeah, this is logistics and just logistics and so immediately I know what he does without having a second glance and I can get him one second. It is the best example okay, but if you look at any of the clients that I've had, you can see their profiles in fact I'm gonna give a shout out here to Jason Castel he's one of my favorite profiles it's a more it's a more cluttered image and I mean that in the loving way because he actually but it shows his his his face, it shows his warmth and it shows Yeah, and there are images you can definitely pick up inside of LinkedIn. So just just the only thing here is that it's not going to make or break anything. I just want it to be interesting and I want to increase your authority and influence Okay, so like for me, I'm going to go put all my PR on there so I'm gonna say Forbes entrepreneur, Sherm Yari Glassdoor I'm gonna have that all on there Guess what, that's an authority building piece so that's all I'm trying to get is credibility and authority. Okay, so that would be my my ask for that one. All right. So let's go into what's next Okay, so I'm going to go look at your a couple other things here. These are just bonus sections for you guys. Your URL is customized and it says UX savvy. Awesome Okay. Um, I love that Ohio State's on my profile That's awesome. Okay, so now I'm gonna go look at your contact information. All right, so we have your website I know you can have more than one so that's amazing. Ooh, you have dribble on there awesome. You're Abbi you're I am I just anybody use it on these days okay. Abby  33:10But I think it's Lindsay  33:12and you know what, it has been only a month I'm sick five weeks since we've been connected it's not a nice day. Oh my goodness. Okay, so now there's another section in here where it's like your featured section and I don't know if that's limited to creators or not, but your highlights show up and highlights would be things that are happening so there's highlights and then there's activity so if you could add anything on your highlights I would love or your your featured I'd love to see you pin your posts that was really really powerful that's your dear hiring manager so the things that are most submitting a my authority so I have case studies testimonials I link to my website but the most powerful ones I put like if I like the one I talked about where I said Google's decreasing pay what do you think oh, I flamed that big time right and so um so that was that's one of my things on there because I wanted to see what people had to say about it so whatever it is it gives them another way to benchmark Okay, okay, so some extra tips here. Abby  34:09I feel like I looked at that but i i couldn't figure out how to change it I'm gonna have to play around with that a little bit Hey, Lindsay  34:15that wasn't I might be a creator thing because I'm considered a creator on the side of this platform. Alright, so I'm going down so your your profile settings appear to be open I see that you have a badge here which means that you're paying for LinkedIn that actually increases your results and let's see leadership Okay, so a couple things here a skills endorsement, so leadership is not good. As much as I did totally endorse you for that. So Abby  34:40I know 16 Lindsay  34:43Yeah, so my and I'm gonna tell you my own is awesomeness. So if you are tuning in and watching me right now, I'm going to go ahead and make it ask where you go endorse me for awesomeness. And it is because I'm quirky, right? Like awesome. This should not be a really bankable skill set. But it was one of the very first ones people the very first adopters LinkedIn actually got got the chance to create their own tag and awesome. This was one of them some shout out to Steven who gave me that tag. And it is my top ranked skill, okay, but what I want you to know the top three show up here and you can have up to 50, your goal is to get to 99 plus leadership is your number one. So I want you to think about this as you're starting to connect with people, ask them to endorse you, if you're in a networking community, ask them to endorse you. Okay, whatever that is. So Abby dreamed up hack your group there, that's the place to start asking for that. Okay. Next is recommendations. So like I have over 50, here's what recommendations are there social proof. Social proof, okay. Increasingly, increasing someone's pay increases their buy in, it can as long as they're doing purposeful work, and it's in a great environment. Absolutely. So I want to see your recommendations to be up to 20. Okay. And then the next stage here, so you are so close. When you get to 500. Abby  35:52Plus you I know I'm like little they're beaming. Guys, yes. So Lindsay  35:57right. If you're, if you're not connected, please just go connect with her. So send her a connection request, let's get her that 500. This is gamification in play on that badge. My goal for you actually, at the end of this is to be up to 2000 connections. Okay, so that's what, because that's enough of a number. And people are like, well, I only accept this. And I'm like, unless I'm trying to pitch you off, I want you to think that people do the platform. Well, so just accept people because it doesn't hurt you until you get to a place like me where I'm at 30,000. I don't have enough room for anybody else. Okay. So, but what we would rather focus on is quality versus quantity. Okay, so there is my my hacks for LinkedIn to optimize your profile. My question for you is, what is your social selling index? Have you measured it today? Abby  36:42Not today. Let me see if I can find it. Dude, do I know it didn't I just started doing me like, add, adding or following? You know, so many companies today? And oh, yeah. So you had me it's like, 20? That's a lot. I'm sending one. And following on Lindsay  37:07company, Abby  37:09like, do I even know 20 companies that I haven't already follow that I want to? So yeah, I have to find them. Lindsay  37:16If you are going through and when you're doing it, you'll see on the right hand side will give you suggested companies follow or suggested connections, take that as your opportunity to easy follow for some of them. Abby  37:27I have been Yeah, if you have any, like tips on how to find people, I've really just been been like going through like any any posts that I've liked him going through the comments and like seeing what other people have written and I'm following the people that I you know, think had something good to say or if they posted something that they like. And then as far as organizations go, like things that are industry related to me or, you know, just companies that I like or products that I use, that is Lindsay  37:53exactly what I want you to start I am literally forcing you to do things slowly at first. And I know it may not feel that slowly, but little by little and painfully because it'll become easier. So I actually do have a bunch of tips for this. But we're going to cover that inside of network Ninja, which is the session after that. Abby  38:12Okay. Sorry, give me a second here. It's like asking me to sign back in for some reason. But I am signed in Lindsay  38:24technical difficulties social selling index, I'll just give a little preview of what this is. So your social selling index is how well LinkedIn when they were trying to sell you something, and I'm going to actually recommend you buy it at one point, but they are trying to get you to buy Sales Navigator wants you to know that you do not need to buy Sales Navigator, especially not yet. But Sales Navigator has its place. But what it's measuring is how well you are effectively using the platform in a way that we can quantify. So I can tell you how good branding is. But I can actually measure it here through LinkedIn. It gives us a benchmark okay. Stacy, this is actually the what Abby's going through is intentional career design, which is kind of the the enhanced version of dream job hack. And if you want to learn about dream job hack, which is the one that's literally graduated, I had somebody yesterday came back with an offer of $270,000. Before I did my workshop, that's a workshop if you want to know that program is open now just go to dream job hack.com it's right here below and you can check it out and get access to it. Abby  39:22It says I'm at 48 which I feel like is not much different than last week yet. So Lindsay  39:26we're gonna do it so we're gonna keep increasing it. So what I'm doing is having you for 47 a week ago, at one point is still we're still moving up, okay, so don't don't take yourself too much. You also already use a platform and a lot of great ways but I promise you it's gonna continue to increase. Okay, so we're gonna say this now. We're going from 48 we're gonna try we're gonna get Abby in the 60s by the end of this. So problem. Yeah, no big deal. In fact, Jason. I would love to know where he's at. He is a super LinkedIn. He even got top 1% of posts. Going through this so he is amazing. Alright so next time What we're going to do is we're going into branding and branding is going to be the most fun one, Abby's a storyteller we're going to tell her story we're going to get bigger into this. So the next session that we have, we're gonna go live and I'm gonna talk to you about building your brand. Now if you want to know how the heck I created, I built a web a web presence I built a LinkedIn presence and I built a business that's created with the two comma club is what I just want which means I've generated seven figures inside of a single sales funnel. If you want to know the secret here are how I became a best selling author without actually selling the book but somehow people still bought it it's because of personal branding and that's what I get asked talk about I talked at Microsoft I talked at Amazon I get talked at the women's summit I've talked at the recruiting Innovation Center here in Seattle this is this is what I get paid to talk 1000s of dollars per hour we're going to actually coach you here live we're going to do it together your brand is what is the most valuable thing so when people get when they haven't invested inside of their brand, that's what's causing them to actually be stuck in their career Okay, so here's the deal, do not sacrifice the business of Lindsey anchor Abby Inc, for doing the work for some other business, okay, you need to put your business first. Everything I do is in alignment with my purpose and my business. And that may sir in turn serve other businesses. But unless you put yourself first unless you pay yourself first, unless you invest in yourself first, you will get stuck here again. So my goal here is to recession-proof you what happens you need equity in this brand. Okay, it's the most efficient skill set for executives. So that's what we're going to be covering on our next section. This is gonna be a lot of fun for you, because you're saying I can't wait for you to see how you connect it to product. So going and covering with you the next time and I can't wait to see how this one goes for you. All right. So if you are interested in continuing to follow the journey, please follow me to connect with Abby. We're going to have a live we're going on a module-by-module week-by-week basis right now. So follow us and if you are interested in figuring out how to land your six-figure dream job how to do it without applying please go to dream job. hack.com enrollment is open right now people it's right now the universe is just waiting for you to take some action to bring it to you. Abby is proof of what can change in just a few weeks with you. Okay, and I got seven different job offers as of this morning from people this program, okay? It is not magic. It is strategy. All right. Love to you all. I will see you on our next session. Bye Bye, guys.