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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 24, 2024 107:33

Table of contentsNote: links take you to the corresponding section below; links to the original episode can be found there.* Laura Duffy solves housing, ethics, and more [00:01:16]* Arjun Panickssery solves books, hobbies, and blogging, but fails to solve the Sleeping Beauty problem because he's wrong on that one [00:10:47]* Nathan Barnard on how financial regulation can inform AI regulation [00:17:16]* Winston Oswald-Drummond on the tractability of reducing s-risk, ethics, and more [00:27:48]* Nathan Barnard (again!) on why general intelligence is basically fake [00:34:10]* Daniel Filan on why I'm wrong about ethics (+ Oppenheimer and what names mean in like a hardcore phil of language sense) [00:56:54]* Holly Elmore on AI pause, wild animal welfare, and some cool biology things I couldn't fully follow but maybe you can [01:04:00]* Max Alexander and I solve ethics, philosophy of mind, and cancel culture once and for all [01:24:43]* Sarah Woodhouse on discovering AI x-risk, Twitter, and more [01:30:56] * Pigeon Hour x Consistently Candid pod-crossover: I debate moral realism with Max Alexander and Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse [01:41:08]Intro [00:00:00]To wrap up the year of Pigeon Hour, the podcast, I put together some clips from each episode to create a best-of compilation. This was inspired by 80,000 Hours, a podcast that did the same with their episodes, and I thought it was pretty cool and tractable enough.It's important to note that the clips I chose range in length significantly. This does not represent the quality or amount of interesting content in the episode. Sometimes there was a natural place to break the episode into a five-minute chunk, and other times it wouldn't have made sense to take a five-minute chunk out of what really needed to be a 20-minute segment. I promise I'm not just saying that.So without further ado, please enjoy.#1: Laura Duffy solves housing, ethics, and more [00:01:16]In this first segment, Laura, Duffy, and I discuss the significance and interpretation of Aristotle's philosophical works in relation to modern ethics and virtue theory.AARON: Econ is like more interesting. I don't know. I don't even remember of all the things. I don't know, it seems like kind of cool. Philosophy. Probably would have majored in philosophy if signaling wasn't an issue. Actually, maybe I'm not sure if that's true. Okay. I didn't want to do the old stuff though, so I'm actually not sure. But if I could aristotle it's all wrong. Didn't you say you got a lot out of Nicomachi or however you pronounce that?LAURA: Nicomachian ethics guide to how you should live your life. About ethics as applied to your life because you can't be perfect. Utilitarians. There's no way to be that.AARON: But he wasn't even responding to utilitarianism. I'm sure it was a good work given the time, but like, there's like no other discipline in which we care. So people care so much about like, what people thought 2000 years ago because like the presumption, I think the justified presumption is that things have iterated and improved since then. And I think that's true. It's like not just a presumption.LAURA: Humans are still rather the same and what our needs are for living amongst each other in political society are kind of the same. I think America's founding is very influenced by what people thought 2000 years ago.AARON: Yeah, descriptively that's probably true. But I don't know, it seems like all the whole body of philosophers have they've already done the work of, like, compressing the good stuff. Like the entire academy since like, 1400 or whatever has like, compressed the good stuff and like, gotten rid of the bad stuff. Not in like a high fidelity way, but like a better than chance way. And so the stuff that remains if you just take the state of I don't know if you read the Oxford Handbook of whatever it is, like ethics or something, the takeaways you're going to get from that are just better than the takeaways you're going to get from a summary of the state of the knowledge in any prior year. At least. Unless something weird happened. And I don't know. I don't know if that makes sense.LAURA: I think we're talking about two different things, though. Okay. In terms of knowledge about logic or something or, I don't know, argumentation about trying to derive the correct moral theory or something, versus how should we think about our own lives. I don't see any reason as to why the framework of virtue theory is incorrect and just because it's old. There's many virtue theorists now who are like, oh yeah, they were really on to something and we need to adapt it for the times in which we live and the kind of societies we live in now. But it's still like there was a huge kernel of truth in at least the way of thinking that Aristotle put forth in terms of balancing the different virtues that you care about and trying to find. I think this is true. Right? Like take one virtue of his humor. You don't want to be on one extreme where you're just basically a meme your entire life. Everybody thinks you're funny, but that's just not very serious. But you don't want to be a boar and so you want to find somewhere in the middle where it's like you have a good sense of humor, but you can still function and be respected by other people.AARON: Yeah. Once again, I agree. Well, I don't agree with everything. I agree with a lot of what you just said. I think there was like two main points of either confusion or disagreement. And like, the first one is that I definitely think, no, Aristotle shouldn't be discounted or like his ideas or virtue ethics or anything like that shouldn't be discounted because they were canonical texts or something were written a long time ago. I guess it's just like a presumption that I have a pretty strong presumption that conditional on them being good, they would also be written about today. And so you don't actually need to go back to the founding texts and then in fact, you probably shouldn't because the good stuff will be explained better and not in weird it looks like weird terms. The terms are used differently and they're like translations from Aramaic or whatever. Probably not Aramaic, probably something else. And yeah, I'm not sure if you.LAURA: Agree with this because we have certain assumptions about what words like purpose mean now that we're probably a bit richer in the old conception of them like telos or happiness. Right. Udaimnia is much better concept and to read the original text and see how those different concepts work together is actually quite enriching compared to how do people use these words now. And it would take like I don't know, I think there just is a lot of value of looking at how these were originally conceived because popularizers of the works now or people who are seriously doing philosophy using these concepts. You just don't have the background knowledge that's necessary to understand them fully if you don't read the canonical text.AARON: Yeah, I think that would be true. If you are a native speaker. Do you know Greek? If you know Greek, this is like dumb because then you're just right.LAURA: I did take a quarter of it.AARON: Oh God. Oh my God. I don't know if that counts, but that's like more than anybody should ever take. No, I'm just kidding. That's very cool. No, because I was going to say if you're a native speaker of Greek and you have the connotations of the word eudaimonia and you were like living in the temper shuttle, I would say. Yeah, that's true actually. That's a lot of nuanced, connotation and context that definitely gets lost with translation. But once you take the jump of reading English translations of the texts, not you may as well but there's nothing super special. You're not getting any privileged knowledge from saying the word eudaimonia as opposed to just saying some other term as a reference to that concept or something. You're absorbing the connotation in the context via English, I guess, via the mind of literally the translators who have like.LAURA: Yeah, well see, I tried to learn virtue theory by any other route than reading Aristotle.AARON: Oh God.LAURA: I took a course specifically on Plato and Aristotle.AARON: Sorry, I'm not laughing at you. I'm just like the opposite type of philosophy person.LAURA: But keep going. Fair. But she had us read his physics before we read Nicomachi.AARON: Think he was wrong about all that.LAURA: Stuff, but it made you understand what he meant by his teleology theory so much better in a way that I could not get if I was reading some modern thing.AARON: I don't know, I feel like you probably could. No, sorry, that's not true. I don't think you could get what Aristotle the man truly believed as well via a modern text. But is that what you? Depends. If you're trying to be a scholar of Aristotle, maybe that's important. If you're trying to find the best or truest ethics and learn the lessons of how to live, that's like a different type of task. I don't think Aristotle the man should be all that privileged in that.LAURA: If all of the modern people who are talking about virtue theory are basically Aristotle, then I don't see the difference.AARON: Oh, yeah, I guess. Fair enough. And then I would say, like, oh, well, they should probably start. Is that in fact the state of the things in virtue theory? I don't even know.LAURA: I don't know either.#2 Arjun Panickssery solves books, hobbies, and blogging, but fails to solve the Sleeping Beauty problem because he's wrong on that one [00:10:47]All right, next, Arjun Panixery and I explore the effectiveness of reading books in retaining and incorporating knowledge, discussing the value of long form content and the impact of great literary works on understanding and shaping personal worldviews.ARJUN: Oh, you were in the book chat, though. The book rant group chat, right?AARON: Yeah, I think I might have just not read any of it. So do you want to fill me in on what I should have read?ARJUN: Yeah, it's group chat of a bunch of people where we were arguing about a bunch of claims related to books. One of them is that most people don't remember pretty much anything from books that they read, right? They read a book and then, like, a few months later, if you ask them about it, they'll just say one page's worth of information or maybe like, a few paragraphs. The other is that what is it exactly? It's that if you read a lot of books, it could be that you just incorporate the information that's important into your existing models and then just forget the information. So it's actually fine. Isn't this what you wrote in your blog post or whatever? I think that's why I added you to that.AARON: Oh, thank you. I'm sorry I'm such a bad group chat participant. Yeah, honestly, I wrote that a while ago. I don't fully remember exactly what it says, but at least one of the things that it said was and that I still basically stand by, is that it's basically just like it's increasing the salience of a set of ideas more so than just filling your brain with more facts. And I think this is probably true insofar as the facts support a set of common themes or ideas that are kind of like the intellectual core of it. It would be really hard. Okay, so this is not a book, but okay. I've talked about how much I love an 80,000 hours podcast, and I've listened to, I don't think every episode, but at least 100 of the episodes. And no, you're just, like, not going to definitely I've forgotten most of the actual almost all of the actual propositional pieces of information said, but you're just not going to convince me that it's completely not affecting either model of the world or stuff that I know or whatever. I mean, there are facts that I could list. I think maybe I should try.ARJUN: Sure.AARON: Yeah. So what's your take on book other long form?ARJUN: Oh, I don't know. I'm still quite confused or I think the impetus for the group chat's creation was actually Hanania's post where he wrote the case against most books or most was in parentheses or something. I mean, there's a lot of things going on in that post. He just goes off against a bunch of different categories of books that are sort of not closely related. Like, he goes off against great. I mean, this is not the exact take he gives, but it's something like the books that are considered great are considered great literature for some sort of contingent reason, not because they're the best at getting you information that you want.AARON: This is, like, another topic. But I'm, like, anti great books. In fact, I'm anti great usually just means old and famous. So insofar as that's what we mean by I'm like, I think this is a bad thing, or, like, I don't know, aristotle is basically wrong about everything and stuff like that.ARJUN: Right, yeah. Wait, we could return to this. I guess this could also be divided into its component categories. He spends more time, though, I think, attacking a certain kind of nonfiction book that he describes as the kind of book that somebody pitches to a publisher and basically expands a single essay's worth of content into with a bunch of anecdotes and stuff. He's like, most of these books are just not very useful to read, I guess. I agree with that.AARON: Yeah. Is there one that comes to mind as, like, an? Mean, I think of Malcolm Gladwell as, like, the kind of I haven't actually read any of his stuff in a while, but I did, I think, when I started reading nonfiction or with any sort of intent, I read. A bunch of his stuff or whatever and vaguely remember that this is basically what he like for better or.ARJUN: Um yeah, I guess so. But he's almost, like, trying to do it on purpose. This is the experience that you're getting by reading a Malcolm Gladwell book. It's like talib. Right? It's just him just ranting. I'm thinking, I guess, of books that are about something. So, like, if you have a book that's know negotiation or something, it'll be filled with a bunch of anecdotes that are of dubious usefulness. Or if you get a book that's just about some sort of topic, there'll be historical trivia that's irrelevant. Maybe I can think of an example.AARON: Yeah. So the last thing I tried to read, maybe I am but haven't in a couple of weeks or whatever, is like, the Derek Parfit biography. And part of this is motivated because I don't even like biographies in general for some reason, I don't know. But I don't know. He's, like, an important guy. Some of the anecdotes that I heard were shockingly close to home for me, or not close to home, but close to my brain or something. So I was like, okay, maybe I'll see if this guy's like the smarter version of Aaron Bergman. And it's not totally true.ARJUN: Sure, I haven't read the book, but I saw tweet threads about it, as one does, and I saw things that are obviously false. Right. It's the claims that he read, like, a certain number of pages while brushing his teeth. That's, like, anatomically impossible or whatever. Did you get to that part? Or I assumed no, I also saw.AARON: That tweet and this is not something that I do, but I don't know if it's anatomically impossible. Yeah, it takes a little bit of effort to figure out how to do that, I guess. I don't think that's necessarily false or whatever, but this is probably not the most important.ARJUN: Maybe it takes long time to brush his teeth.#3: Nathan Barnard on how financial regulation can inform AI regulation [00:17:16]In this next segment, Nathan Barnard and I dive into the complexities of AI regulation, including potential challenges and outcomes of governing AI in relation to economic growth and existential security. And we compare it to banking regulation as well.AARON: Yeah, I don't know. I just get gloomy for, I think justified reasons when people talk about, oh yeah, here's the nine step process that has to take place and then maybe there's like a 20% chance that we'll be able to regulate AI effectively. I'm being facetious or exaggerating, something like that, but not by a gigantic amount.NATHAN: I think this is pretty radically different to my mainline expectation.AARON: What's your mainline expectation?NATHAN: I suppose I expect like AI to come with an increasing importance past economy and to come up to really like a very large fraction of the economy before really crazy stuff starts happening and this world is going very anonymous. Anonymous, anonymous, anonymous. I know the word is it'd be very unusual if this extremely large sector economy which was impacted like a very large number of people's lives remains like broadly unregulated.AARON: It'll be regulated, but just maybe in a stupid way.NATHAN: Sure, yes, maybe in a stupid way. I suppose critically, do you expect the stupid way to be like too conservative or too like the specific question of AI accenture it's basically too conservative or too lenient or I just won't be able to interact with this.AARON: I guess generally too lenient, but also mostly on a different axis where just like I don't actually know enough. I don't feel like I've read learned about various governance proposals to have a good object level take on this. But my broad prior is that there are just a lot of ways to for anything. There's a lot of ways to regulate something poorly. And the reason insofar as anything isn't regulated poorly it's because of a lot of trial and error.NATHAN: Maybe.AARON: I mean, there's probably exceptions, right? I don't know. Tax Americana is like maybe we didn't just kept winning wars starting with World War II. I guess just like maybe like a counterexample or something like that.NATHAN: Yeah, I think I still mostly disagree with this. Oh, cool. Yeah. I suppose I see a much like broader spectrum between bad regulation and good regulation. I agree it's like very small amount. The space of optimal regulation is very small. But I think we have to hit that space for regulation to be helpful. Especially in this especially if you consider that if you sort of buy the AI extension safety risk then the downsides of it's not this quite fine balancing act between too much whether consumer protection and siphoning competition and cycling innovation too much. It's like trying to end this quite specific, very bad outcome which is maybe much worse than going somewhat slowering economic growth, at least somewhat particularly if we think we're going to get something. This is very explosive rates for economic growth really quite soon. And the cost of slowing down economic growth by weather even by quite a large percentage, very small compared to the cost of sort of an accidental catastrophe. I sort of think of Sony iconic growth as the main cost of main way regulation goes wrong currently.AARON: I think in an actual sense that is correct. There's the question of like okay, Congress in the states like it's better than nothing. I'm glad it's not anarchy in terms of like I'm glad we have a legislature.NATHAN: I'm also glad the United States.AARON: How reasons responsive is Congress? I don't think reasons responsive enough to make it so that the first big law that gets passed insofar as there is one or if there is one is on the pareto frontier trading off between economic growth and existential security. It's going to be way inside of that production frontier or whatever. It's going to suck on every action, maybe not every act but at least like some relevant actions.NATHAN: Yeah that doesn't seem like obviously true to me. I think Dodge Frank was quite a good law.AARON: That came after 2008, right?NATHAN: Yeah correct. Yeah there you go. No, I agree. I'm not especially confident about doing regulation before there's some quite bad before there's a quite bad warning shot and yes, if we're in world where we have no warning shots and we're just like blindsided by everyone getting turned into everyone getting stripped their Athens within 3 seconds, this is not good. Both in law we do have one of those shots and I think Glass Seagull is good law. Not good law is a technical term. I think Glass Steagall was a good piece of legislation. I think DoD Frank was a good piece of legislation. I think the 2008 Seamless Bill was good piece of legislation. I think the Troubled Assets Relief Program is a good piece of piece of legislation.AARON: I recognize these terms and I know some of them and others I do not know the contents of.NATHAN: Yeah so Glass Eagle was the financial regulation passed in 1933 after Great Depression. The Tropical Asset Relief Program was passed in I think 2008, moved 2009 to help recapitalize banks. Dodge Frank was the sort of landmark post financial cris piece of legislation passed in 2011. I think these are all good pieces of legislation now. I think like financial regulation is probably unusually good amongst US legislation. This is like a quite weak take, I guess. It's unusually.AARON: So. I don't actually know the pre depression financial history at all but I feel like the more relevant comparison to the 21st century era is what was the regulatory regime in 1925 or something? I just don't know.NATHAN: Yeah, I know a bit. I haven't read this stuff especially deeply and so I don't want to don't want to be so overcompensant here but sort of the core pieces which were sort of important for the sort of the Great Depression going very badly was yeah, no distinction between commercial banks and investment banks. Yes, such a bank could take much riskier. Much riskier. Things with like custom deposits than they could from 1933 until the Peel Glass Eagle. And combine that with no deposit insurance and if you sort of have the combination of banks being able to do quite risky things with depositors money and no deposit insurance, this is quite dangerously known. And glassy repeal.AARON: I'm an expert in the sense that I have the Wikipedia page up. Well, yeah, there was a bunch of things. Basically. There's the first bank of the United States. There's the second bank of the United States. There's the free banking era. There was the era of national banks. Yada, yada, yada. It looks like 19. Seven was there was some panic. I vaguely remember this from like, AP US history, like seven years ago or.NATHAN: Yes, I suppose in short, I sort of agree that the record of sort of non post Cris legislation is like, not very good, but I think record of post Cris legislation really, at least in the financial sector, really is quite good. I'm sure lots of people disagree with this, but this is my take.#4 Winston Oswald-Drummond on the tractability of reducing s-risk, ethics, and more [00:27:48]Up next, Winston Oswald Drummond and I talk about the effectiveness and impact of donating to various research organizations, such as suffering-focused S-risk organizations. We discuss tractability, expected value, and essentially where we should give our money.AARON: Okay, nice. Yeah. Where to go from here? I feel like largely we're on the same page, I feel like.WINSTON: Yeah. Is your disagreement mostly tractability? Then? Maybe we should get into the disagreement.AARON: Yeah. I don't even know if I've specified, but insofar as I have one, yes, it's trapped ability. This is the reason why I haven't donated very much to anywhere for money reasons. But insofar as I have, I have not donated to Clrcrs because I don't see a theory of change that connects the research currently being done to actually reducing s risks. And I feel like there must be something because there's a lot of extremely smart people at both of these orgs or whatever, and clearly they thought about this and maybe the answer is it's very general and the outcome is just so big in magnitude that anything kind.WINSTON: Of that is part of it, I think. Yeah, part of it is like an expected value thing and also it's just very neglected. So it's like you want some people working on this, I think, at least. Even if it's unlikely to work. Yeah, even that might be underselling it, though. I mean, I do think there's people at CRS and Clr, like talking to people at AI labs and some people in politics and these types of things. And hopefully the research is a way to know what to try to get done at these places. You want to have some concrete recommendations and I think obviously people have to also be willing to listen to you, but I think there is some work being done on that and research is partially just like a community building thing as well. It's a credible signal that you were smart and have thought about this, and so it gives people reason to listen to you and maybe that mostly pays off later on in the future.AARON: Yeah, that all sounds like reasonable. And I guess one thing is that I just don't there's definitely things I mean, first of all, I haven't really stayed up to date on what's going on, so I haven't even done I've done zero research for this podcast episode, for example. Very responsible and insofar as I've know things about these. Orgs. It's just based on what's on their website at some given time. So insofar as there's outreach going on, not like behind the scenes, but just not in a super public way, or I guess you could call that behind the scenes. I just don't have reason to, I guess, know about that. And I guess, yeah, I'm pretty comfortable. I don't even know if this is considered biting a bullet for the crowd that will be listening to this, if that's anybody but with just like yeah, saying a very small change for a very large magnitude, just, like, checks out. You can just do expected value reasoning and that's basically correct, like a correct way of thinking about ethics. But even I don't know how much you know specifically or, like, how much you're allowed want to reveal, but if there was a particular alignment agenda that I guess you in a broad sense, like the suffering focused research community thought was particularly promising and relative to other tractable, I guess, generic alignment recommendations. And you were doing research on that and trying to push that into the alignment mainstream, which is not very mainstream. And then with the hope that that jumps into the AI mainstream. Even if that's kind of a long chain of events. I think I would be a lot more enthusiastic about I don't know that type of agenda, because it feels like there's like a particular story you're telling where it cashes out in the end. You know what I mean?WINSTON: Yeah, I'm not the expert on this stuff, but I do think you just mean I think there's some things about influencing alignment and powerful AI for sure. Maybe not like a full on, like, this is our alignment proposal and it also handles Sris. But some things we could ask AI labs that are already building, like AGI, we could say, can you also implement these sort of, like, safeguards so if you failed alignment, you fail sort of gracefully and don't cause lots of suffering.AARON: Right?WINSTON: Yeah. Or maybe there are other things too, which also seem potentially more tractable. Even if you solve alignment in some sense, like aligning with whatever the human operator tells the AI to do, then you can also get the issue that malevolent actors can take control of the AI and then what they want also causes lots of suffering that type of alignment wouldn't. Yeah, and I guess I tend to be somewhat skeptical of coherent extrapolated volition and things like this, where the idea is sort of like it'll just figure out our values and do the right thing. So, yeah, there's some ways to push on this without having a full alignment plan, but I'm not sure if that counts as what you were saying.AARON: No, I guess it does. Yeah, it sounds like it does. And it could be that I'm just kind of mistaken about the degree to which that type of research and outreach is going on. That sounds like it's at least partially true.#5: Nathan Barnard (again!) on why general intelligence is basically fake [00:34:10]Up next, Nathan Barnard is back for his second episode. And we talked about the nature of general intelligence, its relationship with language and the implications of specialized brain functions on the understanding of human cognitive abilities.NATHAN: Yes. This like symbolic like symbolic, symbolic reasoning stuff. Yeah. So I think if I was, like, making the if I was, like, making the case for general intelligence being real, I wouldn't have symbolic reasoning, but I would have language stuff. I'd have this hierarchical structure thing, which.AARON: I would probably so I think of at least most uses of language and central examples as a type of symbolic reasoning because words mean things. They're like yeah. Pointers to objects or something like that.NATHAN: Yeah, I think it's like, pretty confidence isn't where this isn't a good enough description of general intelligence. So, for instance so if you bit in your brain called, I'm using a checklist, I don't fuck this up vernacular, I'm not making this cool. Lots of connects to use words like pointers as these arbitrary signs happens mostly in this area of the brain called Berkeley's area. But very famously, you can have Berkeley's epaxics who lose the ability to do language comprehension and use the ability to consistently use words as pointers, as signs to point to things, but still have perfect good spatial reasoning abilities. And so, conversely, people with brokers of fascia who fuck up, who have the broker's reason their brain fucks up will not be able to form fluent sentences and have some problems like unsigned syntax, and they'll still be able to have very good spatial reasoning. It could still, for instance, be like, good engineers. Would you like many problems which, like, cost engineering?AARON: Yeah, I totally buy that. I don't think language is the central thing. I think it's like an outgrowth of, like I don't know, there's like a simplified model I could make, which is like it's like an outgrowth of whatever general intelligence really is. But whatever the best spatial or graphical model is, I don't think language is cognition.NATHAN: Yes, this is a really big debate in psycholinguistics as to whether language is like an outgrowth of other abilities like the brain has, whether language whether there's very specialized language modules. Yeah, this is just like a very live debate in psycholinguistics moments. I actually do lean towards the reason I've been talking about this actually just going to explain this hierarchical structure thing? Yeah, I keep talking about it. So one theory for how you can comprehend new sentences, like, the dominant theory in linguistics, how you can comprehend new sentences, um, is you break them up into, like you break them up into, like, chunks, and you form these chunks together in this, like, tree structure. So something like, if you hear, like, a totally novel sentence like the pit bull mastiff flopped around deliciously or something, you can comprehend what the sentence means despite the fact you've never heard it. Theory behind this is you saw yes, this can be broken up into this tree structure, where the different, like, ah, like like bits of the sentence. So, like like the mastiff would be like, one bit, and then you have, like, another bit, which is like, the mastiff I can't remember I said rolled around, so that'd be like, another bit, and then you'd have connectors to our heart.AARON: Okay.NATHAN: So the massive rolling around one theory of one of the sort of distinctive things that humans have disabilities is like, this quite general ability to break things up into these these tree structures. This is controversial within psycholinguistics, but it's broadly an area which I broadly buy it because we do see harms to other areas of intelligence. You get much worse at, like, Ravens Progressive Matrices, for instance, when you have, like, an injury to brokers area, but, like, not worse at, like, tests like tests of space, of, like, spatial reasoning, for instance.AARON: So what is like, is there, like, a main alternative to, like, how humans.NATHAN: Understand language as far as this specificity of how we pass completely novel sentences, as far as where this is just like this is just like the the academic consensus. Okay.AARON: I mean, it sounds totally like right? I don't know.NATHAN: Yeah. But yeah, I suppose going back to saying, how far is language like an outgrowth of general intelligence? An outgrowth like general intelligence versus having much more specialized language modules? Yeah, I lean towards the latter, despite yeah, I still don't want to give too strong of a personal opinion here because I'm not a linguistic this is a podcast.AARON: You're allowed to give takes. No one's going to say this is like the academic we want takes.NATHAN: We want takes. Well, gone to my head is.AARON: I.NATHAN: Think language is not growth of other abilities. I think the main justification for this, I think, is that the loss of other abilities we see when you have damage to broker's area and verca's area.AARON: Okay, cool. So I think we basically agree on that. And also, I guess one thing to highlight is I think outgrowth can mean a couple of different things. I definitely think it's plausible. I haven't read about this. I think I did at some point, but not in a while. But outgrowth could mean temporarily or whatever. I think I'm kind of inclined to think it's not that straightforward. You could have coevolution where language per se encourages both its own development and the development of some general underlying trait or something.NATHAN: Yeah. Which seems likely.AARON: Okay, cool. So why don't humans have general intelligence?NATHAN: Right. Yeah. As I was sort of talking about previously.AARON: Okay.NATHAN: I think I think I'd like to use go back to like a high level like a high level argument is there appears to be very surprised, like, much higher levels of functional specialization in brains than you expect. You can lose much more specific abilities than you expect to be able to lose. You can lose specifically the ability a famous example is like facebindness, actually. You probably lose the ability to specifically recognize things which you're, like, an expert in.AARON: Who does it or who loses this ability.NATHAN: If you've damaged your fuse inform area, you'll lose the ability to recognize faces, but nothing else.AARON: Okay.NATHAN: And there's this general pattern that your brain is much more you can lose much more specific abilities than you expect. So, for instance, if you sort of have damage to your ventral, medial, prefrontal cortex, you can say the reasoning for why you shouldn't compulsively gamble but still compulsively gamble.AARON: For instance okay, I understand this not gambling per se, but like executive function stuff at a visceral level. Okay, keep going.NATHAN: Yeah. Some other nice examples of this. I think memory is quite intuitive. So there's like, a very famous patient called patient HM who had his hippocampus removed and so as a result, lost all declarative memory. So all memory of specific facts and things which happened in his life. He just couldn't remember any of these things, but still perfectly functioning otherwise. I think at a really high level, I think this functional specialization is probably the strongest piece of evidence against the general intelligence hypothesis. I think fundamentally, general intelligence hypothesis implies that, like, if you, like yeah, if you was, like, harm a piece of your brain, if you have some brain injury, you might like generically get worse at tasks you like, generically get worse at, like at like all task groups use general intelligence. But I think suggesting people, including general intelligence, like the ability to write, the ability to speak, maybe not speak, the ability to do math, you do have.AARON: This it's just not as easy to analyze in a Cogsy paper which IQ or whatever. So there is something where if somebody has a particular cubic centimeter of their brain taken out, that's really excellent evidence about what that cubic centimeter does or whatever, but that non spatial modification is just harder to study and analyze. I guess we'll give people drugs, right? Suppose that set aside the psychometric stuff. But suppose that general intelligence is mostly a thing or whatever and you actually can ratchet it up and down. This is probably just true, right? You can probably give somebody different doses of, like, various drugs. I don't know, like laughing gas, like like, yeah, like probably, probably weed. Like I don't know.NATHAN: So I think this just probably isn't true. Your working memory corrects quite strongly with G and having better working memory generic can make you much better at lots of tasks if you have like.AARON: Yeah.NATHAN: Sorry, but this is just like a specific ability. It's like just specifically your working memory, which is improved if you go memory to a drugs. Improved working memory. I think it's like a few things like memory attention, maybe something like decision making, which are all like extremely useful abilities and improve how well other cognitive abilities work. But they're all separate things. If you improved your attention abilities, your working memory, but you sort of had some brain injury, which sort of meant you sort of had lost ability to pass syntax, you would not get better at passing syntax. And you can also use things separately. You can also improve attention and improve working memory separately, which just it's not just this one dial which you can turn up.AARON: There's good reason to expect that we can't turn it up because evolution is already sort of like maximizing, given the relevant constraints. Right. So you would need to be looking just like injuries. Maybe there are studies where they try to increase people's, they try to add a cubic centimeter to someone's brain, but normally it's like the opposite. You start from some high baseline and then see what faculties you lose. Just to clarify, I guess.NATHAN: Yeah, sorry, I think I've lost the you still think there probably is some general intelligence ability to turn up?AARON: Honestly, I think I haven't thought about this nearly as much as you. I kind of don't know what I think at some level. If I could just write down all of the different components and there are like 74 of them and what I think of a general intelligence consists of does that make it I guess in some sense, yeah, that does make it less of an ontologically legit thing or something. I think I think the thing I want to get the motivating thing here is that with humans yet you can like we know humans range in IQ, and there's, like, setting aside a very tiny subset of people with severe brain injuries or development disorders or whatever. Almost everybody has some sort of symbolic reasoning that they can do to some degree. Whereas the smartest maybe I'm wrong about this, but as far as I know, the smartest squirrel is not going to be able to have something semantically represent something else. And that's what I intuitively want to appeal to, you know what I mean?NATHAN: Yeah, I know what you're guessing at. So I think there's like two interesting things here. So I think one is, could a squirrel do this? I'm guessing a squirrel couldn't do this, but a dog can, or like a dog probably can. A chimpanzee definitely can.AARON: Do what?NATHAN: Chimpanzees can definitely learn to associate arbitrary signs, things in the world with arbitrary signs.AARON: Yes, but maybe I'm just adding on epicentercles here, but I feel like correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that maybe I'm just wrong about this, but I would assume that Chicken Tees cannot use that sign in a domain that is qualitatively different from the ones they've been in. Right. So, like, a dog will know that a certain sign means sit or whatever, but maybe that's not a good I.NATHAN: Don'T know think this is basically not true.AARON: Okay.NATHAN: And we sort of know this from teaching.AARON: Teaching.NATHAN: There's like a famously cocoa de guerrilla. Also a bonobo whose name I can't remember were taught sign language. And the thing they were consistently bad at was, like, putting together sentences they could learn quite large vocabularies learning to associate by large, I mean in the hundreds of words, in the low hundreds of words which they could consistently use consistently use correctly.AARON: What do you mean by, like, in what sense? What is bonobo using?NATHAN: A very famous and quite controversial example is like, coco gorilla was like, saw a swan outside and signed water bird. That's like, a controversial example. But other things, I think, which are controversial here is like, the syntax part of putting water and bird together is the controversial part, but it's not the controversial part that she could see a swan and call that a bird.AARON: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of just making me think, okay, maybe the threshold for D is just like at the chimp level or something. We are like or whatever the most like that. Sure. If a species really can generate from a prefix and a suffix or whatever, a concept that they hadn't learned before.NATHAN: Yeah, this is a controversial this is like a controversial example of that the addition to is the controversial part. Yeah, I suppose maybe brings back to why I think this matters is will there be this threshold which AIS cross such that their reasoning after this is qualitatively different to their reasoning previously? And this is like two things. One, like a much faster increase in AI capabilities and two, alignment techniques which worked on systems which didn't have g will no longer work. Systems which do have g. Brings back to why I think this actually matters. But I think if we're sort of accepting it, I think elephants probably also if you think that if we're saying, like, g is like a level of chimpanzees, chimpanzees just, like, don't don't look like quantitatively different to, like, don't look like that qualitatively different to, like, other animals. Now, lots of other animals live in similar complex social groups. Lots of other animals use tools.AARON: Yeah, sure. For one thing, I don't think there's not going to be a discontinuity in the same way that there wasn't a discontinuity at any point between humans evolution from the first prokaryotic cells or whatever are eukaryotic one of those two or both, I guess. My train of thought. Yes, I know it's controversial, but let's just suppose that the sign language thing was legit with the waterbird and that's not like a random one off fluke or something. Then maybe this is just some sort of weird vestigial evolutionary accident that actually isn't very beneficial for chimpanzees and they just stumbled their way into and then it just enabled them to it enables evolution to bootstrap Shimp genomes into human genomes. Because at some the smartest or whatever actually, I don't know. Honestly, I don't have a great grasp of evolutionary biology or evolution at all. But, yeah, it could just be not that helpful for chimps and helpful for an extremely smart chimp that looks kind of different or something like that.NATHAN: Yeah. So I suppose just like the other thing she's going on here, I don't want to keep banging on about this, but you can lose the language. You can lose linguistic ability. And it's just, like, happens this happens in stroke victims, for instance. It's not that rare. Just, like, lose linguistic ability, but still have all the other abilities which we sort of think of as like, general intelligence, which I think would be including the general intelligence, like, hypothesis.AARON: I agree that's, like, evidence against it. I just don't think it's very strong evidence, partially because I think there is a real school of thought that says that language is fundamental. Like, language drives thought. Language is, like, primary to thought or something. And I don't buy that. If you did buy that, I think this would be, like, more damning evidence.#6 Daniel Filan on why I'm wrong about ethics (+ Oppenheimer and what names mean in like a hardcore phil of language sense) [00:56:54][Note: I forgot to record an intro segment here. Sorry!]AARON: Yeah. Yes. I'm also anti scam. Right, thank you. Okay, so I think that thing that we were talking about last time we talked, which is like the thing I think we actually both know stuff about instead of just like, repeating New York Times articles is my nuanced ethics takes and why you think about talk about that and then we can just also branch off from there.DANIEL: Yeah, we can talk about that.AARON: Maybe see where that did. I luckily I have a split screen up, so I can pull up things. Maybe this is kind of like egotistical or something to center my particular view, but you've definitely given me some of the better pushback or whatever that I haven't gotten that much feedback of any kind, I guess, but it's still interesting to hear your take. So basically my ethical position or the thing that I think is true is that which I think is not the default view. I think most people think this is wrong is that total utilitarianism does not imply that for some amount of suffering that could be created there exists some other extremely large arbitrarily, large amount of happiness that could also be created which would morally justify the former. Basically.DANIEL: So you think that even under total utilitarianism there can be big amounts of suffering such that there's no way to morally tip the calculus. However much pleasure you can create, it's just not going to outweigh the fact that you inflicted that much suffering on some people.AARON: Yeah, and I'd highlight the word inflicted if something's already there and you can't do anything about it, that's kind of neither here nor there as it pertains to your actions or something. So it's really about you increasing, you creating suffering that wouldn't have otherwise been created. Yeah. It's also been a couple of months since I've thought about this in extreme detail, although I thought about it quite a bit. Yeah.DANIEL: Maybe I should say my contrary view, I guess, when you say that, I don't know, does total utilitarianism imply something or not? I'm like, well, presumably it depends on what we mean by total utilitarianism. Right. So setting that aside, I think that thesis is probably false. I think that yeah. You can offset great amounts of suffering with great amounts of pleasure, even for arbitrary amounts of suffering.AARON: Okay. I do think that position is like the much more common and even, I'd say default view. Do you agree with that? It's sort of like the implicit position of people who are of self described total utilitarians who haven't thought a ton about this particular question.DANIEL: Yeah, I think it's probably the implicit default. I think it's the implicit default in ethical theory or something. I think that in practice, when you're being a utilitarian, I don't know, normally, if you're trying to be a utilitarian and you see yourself inflicting a large amount of suffering, I don't know. I do think there's some instinct to be like, is there any way we can get around this?AARON: Yeah, for sure. And to be clear, I don't think this would look like a thought experiment. I think what it looks like in practice and also I will throw in caveats as I see necessary, but I think what it looks like in practice is like, spreading either wild animals or humans or even sentient digital life through the universe. That's in a non as risky way, but that's still just maybe like, say, making the earth, making multiple copies of humanity or something like that. That would be an example that's probably not like an example of what an example of creating suffering would be. For example, just creating another duplicate of earth. Okay.DANIEL: Anything that would be like so much suffering that we shouldn't even the pleasures of earth outweighs.AARON: Not necessarily, which is kind of a cop out. But my inclination is that if you include wild animals, the answer is yes, that creating another earth especially. Yeah, but I'm much more committed to some amount. It's like some amount than this particular time and place in human industry is like that or whatever.DANIEL: Okay, can I get a feel of some other concrete cases to see?AARON: Yeah.DANIEL: So one example that's on my mind is, like, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right? So the standard case for this is, like, yeah, what? A hundred OD thousand people died? Like, quite terrible, quite awful. And a lot of them died, I guess a lot of them were sort of some people were sort of instantly vaporized, but a lot of people died in extremely painful ways. But the countercase is like, well, the alternative to that would have been like, an incredibly grueling land invasion of Japan, where many more people would have died or know regardless of what the actual alternatives were. If you think about the atomic bombings, do you think that's like the kind of infliction of suffering where there's just not an offsetting amount of pleasure that could make that okay?AARON: My intuition is no, that it is offsettable, but I would also emphasize that given the actual historical contingencies, the alternative, the implicit case for the bombing includes reducing suffering elsewhere rather than merely creating happiness. There can definitely be two bad choices that you have to make or something. And my claim doesn't really pertain to that, at least not directly.#7: Holly Elmore on AI pause, wild animal welfare, and some cool biology things I couldn't fully follow but maybe you can [01:04:00]Up next, Holly Elmore and I discuss the complexities and implications of AI development and open sourcing. We talk about protests and ethical considerations around her, um, uh, campaign to pause the development of frontier AI systems until, until we can tell that they're safe.AARON: So what's the plan? Do you have a plan? You don't have to have a plan. I don't have plans very much.HOLLY: Well, right now I'm hopeful about the UK AI summit. Pause AI and I have planned a multi city protest on the 21 October to encourage the UK AI Safety Summit to focus on safety first and to have as a topic arranging a pause or that of negotiation. There's a lot of a little bit upsetting advertising for that thing that's like, we need to keep up capabilities too. And I just think that's really a secondary objective. And that's how I wanted to be focused on safety. So I'm hopeful about the level of global coordination that we're already seeing. It's going so much faster than we thought. Already the UN Secretary General has been talking about this and there have been meetings about this. It's happened so much faster at the beginning of this year. Nobody thought we could talk about nobody was thinking we'd be talking about this as a mainstream topic. And then actually governments have been very receptive anyway. So right now I'm focused on other than just influencing opinion, the targets I'm focused on, or things like encouraging these international like, I have a protest on Friday, my first protest that I'm leading and kind of nervous that's against Meta. It's at the Meta building in San Francisco about their sharing of model weights. They call it open source. It's like not exactly open source, but I'm probably not going to repeat that message because it's pretty complicated to explain. I really love the pause message because it's just so hard to misinterpret and it conveys pretty clearly what we want very quickly. And you don't have a lot of bandwidth and advocacy. You write a lot of materials for a protest, but mostly what people see is the title.AARON: That's interesting because I sort of have the opposite sense. I agree that in terms of how many informational bits you're conveying in a particular phrase, pause AI is simpler, but in some sense it's not nearly as obvious. At least maybe I'm more of a tech brain person or whatever. But why that is good, as opposed to don't give extremely powerful thing to the worst people in the world. That's like a longer everyone.HOLLY: Maybe I'm just weird. I've gotten the feedback from open source ML people is the number one thing is like, it's too late, there's already super powerful models. There's nothing you can do to stop us, which sounds so villainous, I don't know if that's what they mean. Well, actually the number one message is you're stupid, you're not an ML engineer. Which like, okay, number two is like, it's too late, there's nothing you can do. There's all of these other and Meta is not even the most powerful generator of models that it share of open source models. I was like, okay, fine. And I don't know, I don't think that protesting too much is really the best in these situations. I just mostly kind of let that lie. I could give my theory of change on this and why I'm focusing on Meta. Meta is a large company I'm hoping to have influence on. There is a Meta building in San Francisco near where yeah, Meta is the biggest company that is doing this and I think there should be a norm against model weight sharing. I was hoping it would be something that other employees of other labs would be comfortable attending and that is a policy that is not shared across the labs. Obviously the biggest labs don't do it. So OpenAI is called OpenAI but very quickly decided not to do that. Yeah, I kind of wanted to start in a way that made it more clear than pause AI. Does that anybody's welcome something? I thought a one off issue like this that a lot of people could agree and form a coalition around would be good. A lot of people think that this is like a lot of the open source ML people think know this is like a secret. What I'm saying is secretly an argument for tyranny. I just want centralization of power. I just think that there are elites that are better qualified to run everything. It was even suggested I didn't mention China. It even suggested that I was racist because I didn't think that foreign people could make better AIS than Meta.AARON: I'm grimacing here. The intellectual disagreeableness, if that's an appropriate term or something like that. Good on you for standing up to some pretty bad arguments.HOLLY: Yeah, it's not like that worth it. I'm lucky that I truly am curious about what people think about stuff like that. I just find it really interesting. I spent way too much time understanding the alt. Right. For instance, I'm kind of like sure I'm on list somewhere because of the forums I was on just because I was interested and it is something that serves me well with my adversaries. I've enjoyed some conversations with people where I kind of like because my position on all this is that look, I need to be convinced and the public needs to be convinced that this is safe before we go ahead. So I kind of like not having to be the smart person making the arguments. I kind of like being like, can you explain like I'm five. I still don't get it. How does this work?AARON: Yeah, no, I was thinking actually not long ago about open source. Like the phrase has such a positive connotation and in a lot of contexts it really is good. I don't know. I'm glad that random tech I don't know, things from 2004 or whatever, like the reddit source code is like all right, seems cool that it's open source. I don't actually know if that was how that right. But yeah, I feel like maybe even just breaking down what the positive connotation comes from and why it's in people's self. This is really what I was thinking about, is like, why is it in people's self interest to open source things that they made and that might break apart the allure or sort of ethical halo that it has around it? And I was thinking it probably has something to do with, oh, this is like how if you're a tech person who makes some cool product, you could try to put a gate around it by keeping it closed source and maybe trying to get intellectual property or something. But probably you're extremely talented already, or pretty wealthy. Definitely can be hired in the future. And if you're not wealthy yet I don't mean to put things in just materialist terms, but basically it could easily be just like in a yeah, I think I'll probably take that bit out because I didn't mean to put it in strictly like monetary terms, but basically it just seems like pretty plausibly in an arbitrary tech person's self interest, broadly construed to, in fact, open source their thing, which is totally fine and normal.HOLLY: I think that's like 99 it's like a way of showing magnanimity showing, but.AARON: I don't make this sound so like, I think 99.9% of human behavior is like this. I'm not saying it's like, oh, it's some secret, terrible self interested thing, but just making it more mechanistic. Okay, it's like it's like a status thing. It's like an advertising thing. It's like, okay, you're not really in need of direct economic rewards, or sort of makes sense to play the long game in some sense, and this is totally normal and fine, but at the end of the day, there's reasons why it makes sense, why it's in people's self interest to open source.HOLLY: Literally, the culture of open source has been able to bully people into, like, oh, it's immoral to keep it for yourself. You have to release those. So it's just, like, set the norms in a lot of ways, I'm not the bully. Sounds bad, but I mean, it's just like there is a lot of pressure. It looks bad if something is closed source.AARON: Yeah, it's kind of weird that Meta I don't know, does Meta really think it's in their I don't know. Most economic take on this would be like, oh, they somehow think it's in their shareholders interest to open source.HOLLY: There are a lot of speculations on why they're doing this. One is that? Yeah, their models aren't as good as the top labs, but if it's open source, then open source quote, unquote then people will integrate it llama Two into their apps. Or People Will Use It And Become I don't know, it's a little weird because I don't know why using llama Two commits you to using llama Three or something, but it just ways for their models to get in in places where if you just had to pay for their models too, people would go for better ones. That's one thing. Another is, yeah, I guess these are too speculative. I don't want to be seen repeating them since I'm about to do this purchase. But there's speculation that it's in best interests in various ways to do this. I think it's possible also that just like so what happened with the release of Llama One is they were going to allow approved people to download the weights, but then within four days somebody had leaked Llama One on four chan and then they just were like, well, whatever, we'll just release the weights. And then they released Llama Two with the weights from the beginning. And it's not like 100% clear that they intended to do full open source or what they call Open source. And I keep saying it's not open source because this is like a little bit of a tricky point to make. So I'm not emphasizing it too much. So they say that they're open source, but they're not. The algorithms are not open source. There are open source ML models that have everything open sourced and I don't think that that's good. I think that's worse. So I don't want to criticize them for that. But they're saying it's open source because there's all this goodwill associated with open source. But actually what they're doing is releasing the product for free or like trade secrets even you could say like things that should be trade secrets. And yeah, they're telling people how to make it themselves. So it's like a little bit of a they're intentionally using this label that has a lot of positive connotations but probably according to Open Source Initiative, which makes the open Source license, it should be called something else or there should just be like a new category for LLMs being but I don't want things to be more open. It could easily sound like a rebuke that it should be more open to make that point. But I also don't want to call it Open source because I think Open source software should probably does deserve a lot of its positive connotation, but they're not releasing the part, that the software part because that would cut into their business. I think it would be much worse. I think they shouldn't do it. But I also am not clear on this because the Open Source ML critics say that everyone does have access to the same data set as Llama Two. But I don't know. Llama Two had 7 billion tokens and that's more than GPT Four. And I don't understand all of the details here. It's possible that the tokenization process was different or something and that's why there were more. But Meta didn't say what was in the longitude data set and usually there's some description given of what's in the data set that led some people to speculate that maybe they're using private data. They do have access to a lot of private data that shouldn't be. It's not just like the common crawl backup of the Internet. Everybody's basing their training on that and then maybe some works of literature they're not supposed to. There's like a data set there that is in question, but metas is bigger than bigger than I think well, sorry, I don't have a list in front of me. I'm not going to get stuff wrong, but it's bigger than kind of similar models and I thought that they have access to extra stuff that's not public. And it seems like people are asking if maybe that's part of the training set. But yeah, the ML people would have or the open source ML people that I've been talking to would have believed that anybody who's decent can just access all of the training sets that they've all used.AARON: Aside, I tried to download in case I'm guessing, I don't know, it depends how many people listen to this. But in one sense, for a competent ML engineer, I'm sure open source really does mean that. But then there's people like me. I don't know. I knew a little bit of R, I think. I feel like I caught on the very last boat where I could know just barely enough programming to try to learn more, I guess. Coming out of college, I don't know, a couple of months ago, I tried to do the thing where you download Llama too, but I tried it all and now I just have like it didn't work. I have like a bunch of empty folders and I forget got some error message or whatever. Then I tried to train my own tried to train my own model on my MacBook. It just printed. That's like the only thing that a language model would do because that was like the most common token in the training set. So anyway, I'm just like, sorry, this is not important whatsoever.HOLLY: Yeah, I feel like torn about this because I used to be a genomicist and I used to do computational biology and it was not machine learning, but I used a highly parallel GPU cluster. And so I know some stuff about it and part of me wants to mess around with it, but part of me feels like I shouldn't get seduced by this. I am kind of worried that this has happened in the AI safety community. It's always been people who are interested in from the beginning, it was people who are interested in singularity and then realized there was this problem. And so it's always been like people really interested in tech and wanting to be close to it. And I think we've been really influenced by our direction, has been really influenced by wanting to be where the action is with AI development. And I don't know that that was right.AARON: Not personal, but I guess individual level I'm not super worried about people like you and me losing the plot by learning more about ML on their personal.HOLLY: You know what I mean? But it does just feel sort of like I guess, yeah, this is maybe more of like a confession than, like a point. But it does feel a little bit like it's hard for me to enjoy in good conscience, like, the cool stuff.AARON: Okay. Yeah.HOLLY: I just see people be so attached to this as their identity. They really don't want to go in a direction of not pursuing tech because this is kind of their whole thing. And what would they do if we weren't working toward AI? This is a big fear that people express to me with they don't say it in so many words usually, but they say things like, well, I don't want AI to never get built about a pause. Which, by the way, just to clear up, my assumption is that a pause would be unless society ends for some other reason, that a pause would eventually be lifted. It couldn't be forever. But some people are worried that if you stop the momentum now, people are just so luddite in their insides that we would just never pick it up again. Or something like that. And, yeah, there's some identity stuff that's been expressed. Again, not in so many words to me about who will we be if we're just sort of like activists instead of working on.AARON: Maybe one thing that we might actually disagree on. It's kind of important is whether so I think we both agree that Aipause is better than the status quo, at least broadly, whatever. I know that can mean different things, but yeah, maybe I'm not super convinced, actually, that if I could just, like what am I trying to say? Maybe at least right now, if I could just imagine the world where open eye and Anthropic had a couple more years to do stuff and nobody else did, that would be better. I kind of think that they are reasonably responsible actors. And so I don't k

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#10: Pigeon Hour x Consistently Candid pod-crossover: I debate moral realism* with Max Alexander and Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse

Reactionary Minds with Aaron Ross Powell

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 28, 2023 68:17

IntroAt the gracious invitation of AI Safety Twitter-fluencer Sarah Hastings-Woodhouse, I appeared on the very first episode of her new podcast “Consistently Candid” to debate moral realism (or something kinda like that, I guess; see below) with fellow philosophy nerd and EA Twitter aficionado Max Alexander, alongside Sarah as moderator and judge of sorts.What I believeIn spite of the name of the episode and the best of my knowledge/understanding a few days ago, it turns out my stance may not be ~genuine~ moral realism. Here's my basic meta-ethical take:* Descriptive statements that concern objective relative goodness or badness (e.g., "it is objectively for Sam to donate $20 than to buy an expensive meal that costs $20 more than a similar, less fancy meal”) can be and sometimes are true; but* Genuinely normative claims like “Sam should (!) donate $20 and should not buy that fancy meal” are never objectively true.Of course the label per se doesn't really matter. But for a bunch of reasons it still seems wise to figure out which label really does work best.Some definitionsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common and more or less defining ground of moral realism (although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way).Wikipedia:The robust model of moral realism commits moral realists to three theses:* The semantic thesis: The primary semantic role of moral predicates (such as "right" and "wrong") is to refer to moral properties (such as rightness and wrongness), so that moral statements (such as "honesty is good" and "slavery is unjust") purport to represent moral facts, and express propositions that are true or false (or approximately true, largely false, and so on).* The alethic thesis: Some moral propositions are in fact true.* The metaphysical thesis: Moral propositions are true when actions and other objects of moral assessment have the relevant moral properties (so that the relevant moral facts obtain), where these facts and properties are robust: their metaphysical status, whatever it is, is not relevantly different from that of (certain types of) ordinary non-moral facts and properties.And to settle the matter, here's what some LLM have to say.My prompt:Suppose a person believes the following:1: Descriptive statements that concern objective relative goodness or badness (e.g., "it is objectively for Sam to donate $20 than to buy an expensive meal that costs $20 more than a similar, less fancy meal”) can be and sometimes are true; but 2: Genuinely normative claims like “Sam should donate $20 and should not buy that fancy meal” are never objectively true.Is this person best categorized as a moral realist?ChatGPTGiven these two beliefs, the person's stance doesn't align completely with traditional moral realism, which typically asserts that there are objective truths about both moral facts (like the goodness or badness of actions) and moral duties (what one should or should not do). However, it also doesn't fully align with moral anti-realism, since the person believes in some form of objective truth regarding moral value.One possible categorization for this stance could be a form of "value realism" combined with "normative anti-realism" or "normative subjectivism." This would mean that the person believes in objective truths about what is better or worse (value realism) but thinks that what one ought to do (normative claims) is not a matter of objective truth but perhaps of subjective judgment or societal conventions.This position is quite sophisticated and might be best understood as a hybrid or intermediate position in the landscape of moral philosophy, rather than fitting neatly into the category of moral realism or its standard alternatives.Great, so much for trying to fit things into nice little buckets.Claude, fortunately, is more definitive:No, the view described is not best categorized as moral realism. Here's why:Moral realism is the view that there are objective moral facts or truths. A moral realist believes that some moral claims, including normative claims about what one should or shouldn't do, can be objectively and mind-independently true.The view in the example accepts that there can be objective truths about relative degrees of goodness or badness (claim 1). However, it denies that there are objective normative truths about what one should or shouldn't do (claim 2). By rejecting that genuine normative 'should/shouldn't' claims can be objectively true, the view denies a key commitment of moral realism - namely that moral claims can state objective normative facts. At best it allows for objective evaluative facts about goodness/badness, not prescriptive facts about obligations.So this view would be more accurately categorized as a form of moral anti-realism like non-cognitivism or error theory. It does not qualify as moral realism because of its rejection of the existence of objective normative truths that could make strong normative claims justified or true. The commitment to objective evaluative facts alone does not sufficiently qualify the view as realist in the metaethical sense.In summary, the view accepts objective "good/bad" facts but denies objective "should/shouldn't" facts. This combination puts it at odds with core commitments of moral realism, so it is better seen as an anti-realist view.I'm gonna disagree with Claude here, at least in that the bolded claim above (objective normative facts are a key part of moral realism) just seems…wrong? Like all the definitions could replace the term “moral fact” or “moral claim” with “normative fact” and “normative claim” but they do not!So I really don't have a great answer to which label works best. One of two ~human level chatbots giving me a definitive-sounding “anti-realism” answer is too much evidence for me, whose only formal philosophy training is an undergrad minor, to rule that one out. There are also good arguments, I think, for the “realist label,” as well as for “neither” (i.e., ‘secret third thing'). In fact all of these seem pretty similar in terms of argument convincingness/correctness. So, in sum,

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Democracies Are Waking Up to Transnational Repression: A Conversation with Freedom House's Annie Boyajian

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 27, 2023 31:04

Listen to Zooming In at The UnPopulist in your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | RSSAaron: Welcome to Zooming In, a project of The UnPopulist. I'm Aaron Ross Powell. Repressive regimes don't like critics, and they aren't satisfied to let their repression stop at the border. When they set their sights on threatening, coercing, or even killing critics who have fled to other countries, it's called transnational repression. My guest today is Annie Boyajian, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy at Freedom House, which tracks instances of transnational repression and helps governments prevent it.A transcript of today's podcast appears below. It has been edited for flow and clarity.Aaron: What happened to [Saudi Arabian journalist] Jamal Khashoggi?Annie: Great question. We would say that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi is an emblematic case of transnational repression, which is when governments reach beyond their own borders to target critics in an effort to silence dissent. For Mr. Khashoggi, he was lured into a consulate in Istanbul where he was suffocated and dismembered in what is still one of the most shocking cases of transnational repression that we have heard. He was, of course, lured into the Saudi consulate as he was a citizen of Saudi Arabia and a well-known journalist and regime critic.Aaron: The response to this, I think, speaks to a lot of the issues that you raise in the article that you wrote for The UnPopulist because there seemed to be a lot of anger about this from U.S. citizens, shocked that someone who was a U.S. resident, that this would happen to them from journalists because he was a Washington Post journalist. Then nothing really happened. The perpetrators, the ultimate perpetrators, skated. There were no consequences. Why not?Annie: I would say it's the age-old answer to why things don't happen to other human rights abusers or corrupt actors, and it's because there are politics at play. On the one hand, I would say you did see something happen that was unusual, right? The FBI did an investigation and report that you had senators talk about publicly. That is certainly unusual. There were sanctions of varying levels of strength that were imposed on some of the individuals involved. To your point, the Crown Prince himself, the well-known architect of this, according to reports, nothing has happened to him and he's continued to be a player on the world stage.I think part of the reason that this issue shocked people and captured everyone's focus and attention is, one, it was incredibly egregious, but two, it really showed how human rights abuses in a country can have an impact, a global impact, in a way that other human rights issues don't necessarily show. It's just so evident because of the reaching into another country, because of the violation of sovereignty, how the security and human rights issues interact and interplay here. I think that's part of what was so shocking about it.Aaron: How often does this sort of thing happen?Annie: We have a database that looks at instances of physical transnational repression. That's things like assassinations, so the Jamal Khashoggi case, but also assaults, detentions, deportations. We have tracked, since 2014, 854 incidents of transnational repression committed by 38 governments in 91 different countries around the world. That is just a drop in the bucket. Our database does not include the indirect tactics, and that's things like spyware, and the use of spyware is so widespread right now, digital harassment, coercion by proxy.We do think that the database paints a clear picture of the threat posed by transnational oppression and what is happening. We do see additional governments engaging in transnational oppression as we track information in our database. In 2022, I think we saw two additional governments added.Aaron: You said 38 countries in the current date. How spread out is that? Is this something where there's a lot of it's happening across a lot of countries, or is it heavily concentrated among a small handful of regimes?Annie: Great question. I would say the majority of countries engaging in transnational repression are countries that are rated as not free in our Freedom in the World Report. Our top 10 offenders are responsible for 80% of all of the incidents we have in our database. That is China, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, Tajikistan—I'm probably not remembering them all in order—but it's also Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Rwanda, Iran, that's the top 10. And 80% that's significant, but it's global. It's in Asia, it's in Latin America, it's in the Middle East, it's everywhere.This is partly because we are such a globalized world. We have tracked at Freedom House 17 consecutive years of decline in democracy around the world. That has been driven, in part, by worsening repression at home. Because we're so globalized, we see people flee, and it's easier sometimes for people to flee now than previously. It's also a lot easier for governments to engage in transnational repression. You can get spyware very cheaply. The digital age, where everyone needs to be online, and everyone is connected has made it very easy for governments to target dissidents and critics, even after they've fled abroad.“We have tracked at Freedom House 17 consecutive years of decline in democracy around the world. That has been driven, in part, by worsening repression at home. Because we're so globalized, we see people flee, and it's easier sometimes for people to flee now than previously. It's also a lot easier for governments to engage in transnational repression.”Aaron: Just staying for a moment on definitional questions, how narrowly tied to, I guess, the state does it need to be to count? What I'm thinking of is you can have an instance where the state leadership basically hires people or sends its own people off into another country to assassinate someone. It's like a very direct tie. Then you might have something like the Salman Rushdie situation, where it's more just we're going to foment a lot of anger at a given person and then hope violence against them falls out of it. Does that count as well?Annie: Great question. We do look at non-state actors who are tied to governments. For our definition, there would need to be some sort of clear linkage between the government and the actor. For example, when a government hires private investigators to surveil, technically, whether those investigators know it or not, they would be engaging in transnational repression. You also have instances where governments have been linked pretty clearly to organized crime or other individuals who are, thugs for hire who will go intimidate and beat people up. That would count.I think it gets a lot more tenuous if it's just anger fomented at someone like Salman Rushdie. That's less clear for the purposes of our database. There are indeed non-state actors who have been involved.Aaron: Can you talk a bit about the link between this and accusations of terrorism? I found that an interesting part of the argument of basically claiming critics are terrorists.Annie: Yes, absolutely. We see governments around the world copy laws or arguments made by democracy for their own purposes all the time. We definitely see this in the case of terrorism. The pervasive use of the term terrorist following the 9/11 attacks by the U.S. and other democracies made it easier. I'm not saying here we should not have called those individuals terrorists. I'm not speaking to that at all.There are a lot of governments now who the first thing they will do when you try to say, "Excuse me, you are targeting someone because they are a critic." They'll say, "No, I'm not. This person is a terrorist." They will toss all sorts of spurious charges at them. This in the case of Russia, of China, of Iran. The government of China is responsible for 30 percent of all the cases in our database. They'll say, "Oh, they're inciting violence or a national security threat. They're a terrorist."“The government of China is responsible for 30 percent of all the cases in our database. They'll say, "Oh, they're inciting violence or a national security threat. They're a terrorist."“It's one of the top things we see, one of the top excuses that governments use in going after critics. One of the things we talk about with policymakers is just being really aware and not taking some of these charges at face value, particularly when the government's making the allegations are ones we have documented as engaging in transnational repression.Aaron: Is the audience for this terrorist label? If I'm a repressive regime that wants to target a critic overseas and I am now publicly labeling that critic a terrorist. The people that I'm doing that labeling for, you've mentioned, to some extent, it's an excuse you can give to other countries. I was not just targeting a critic. This person was dangerous and I was therefore within my rights or justified. Is there also an element of talking to their own people in doing that? Even in authoritarian regimes, if you can convince the people that you're doing these things for their own good, that's an easier sell?Annie: Absolutely. Transnational repression is one of a wide array of tactics that governments use when they're trying to repress, and control, and manipulate their population. Particularly for individuals who only have access to state propaganda. Or only consume state propaganda for a variety of reasons, it's a very effective argument to make for their domestic audience. It's part of the reason why they do it. Definitely, in terms of the countries that do engage in propaganda, I think, the propaganda arm goes hand in hand with any charges of transnational or any allegations of terrorism.“Transnational repression is one of a wide array of tactics that governments use when they're trying to repress, and control, and manipulate their population.”Or any of the other charges they lob at individuals. We see this, in Hong Kong and mainland China all the time in the way that Chinese state-owned publications talk about human rights lawyers and activists and others.Aaron: Why do they care so much? If I'm in a repressive regime, everybody in my country is, reading and listening to and watching state-run media. I have a pretty strong hold on power. I know that murdering this random journalist or college professor or whatever they happen to be on foreign soil, it might not get me thrown out of power. The United States is not going to go in and like have regime change in Saudi Arabia because of this murder, but it's going to cause me trouble on the world stage. Why not just ignore these critics? If they fled the country, maybe they're not that much of a threat anyway.Annie: It's a great question. It's something that, so I've been in D.C. policy circles for 20 years, which, I don't know, does that mean I'm doing something right or doing something wrong? That's a whole other conversation for another day. If you were thinking logically as an authoritarian, and then this is where you start wildly speculating about just the dynamics of human psychology. If you're thinking logically, you just do only a little bit of repression, right? Not enough to catch international attention, not enough to outrage your population. Some of these really more dramatic acts, I think there are a variety of reasons.Certain regimes are very sensitive to their public image. Definitely, this is true in the case of the People's Republic of China. Sometimes I do really wonder if it is a function of some of these leaders just not having anyone brave enough to be a critical voice and tell, are you sure? You sure you want to do this? In some cases, it really has pushed public opinion too far. I think Saudi Arabia, they're obviously very engaged on the political stage, but it took a long time and this still comes up as an issue, as it should. There's still a lot more accountability that is needed there.Aaron: How do we get that accountability, especially given that often these repressive regimes, Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil and a lot of connections throughout, say, the US. China is an enormous market. It's a manufacturing powerhouse. There seem to be a lot of incentives to find excuses to look the other way on this behavior, especially among the people who are actually in a position to potentially do something about it. The Washington Post journalists can gripe all they want to, but they're not going to be able to depose the head of Saudi Arabia or impose sanctions.Annie: I think that is why education on this topic is so important, because it is a violation of sovereignty and it does directly impact the security of individuals in democracies. In the United States, we saw the Iranian regime try to kidnap a women's rights activist, and their plot was that they were going to kidnap her from her home in Brooklyn and stick her on a boat, take her to Venezuela, and then from Venezuela back to Iran. Then when that didn't work, they tried to assassinate her, I think twice now.A friend of mine is an activist from Hong Kong. He's at home in his apartment in LA, and heard a strange noise and looked outside, and there was a drone hovering outside his apartment trying to take pictures. Okay. He didn't run out and tackle the drone. How can we prove who's operating it? This is a real violation of U.S. law. It's a violation of the 91 countries where it has occurred. For us, how to get the accountability, you're right. It's not an easy answer. There will always be political realities at play, but education around this issue and then codification of a definition in law.Unfortunately, there's a mix of governments [that engage in transnational repression], so I don't want to paint the picture that only authoritarians are doing this, but it is certainly mostly countries that we rate as not free.What transnational oppression is, is the key first step because that definition, everything stems from that. Do you need additional criminal law? Do you need training for government officials? Do you need to adjust immigration law to allow quick, easy entry for people who may be targeted? We would certainly say yes. Do you need additional resources and support for people who have been targeted once they reach your shores? We would say yes, but all of that starts with a definition and then coordination among governments that want to address the issue, which we're starting to see.The G7 has talked about this issue and is continuing to work on it. There were some statements released alongside the Summit for Democracy and it's not only authoritarian regimes engaging in this. Unfortunately, there's a mix of governments, so I don't want to paint the picture that only authoritarians are doing this, but it is certainly mostly countries that we rate as not free. Democracies are really going to have to work together because we see the non-democracies working together, and so we don't want to be caught flat-footed on this one.Aaron: What would defining it clearly, narrowly within the scope of law accomplish if these are either lawless regimes or—I guess let me ask it this way. It seems like if I am one country and I assassinate someone within the territory of another country, I've committed murder. That's already illegal. I have potentially violated the sovereignty. That's defined in different ways. What do we gain from carving out a specific legal standard about this thing?Annie: There are actually two areas of law where I think you would want the definition. One would be Title 22, which is all the foreign affairs stuff, right, where you can have that broader, more expansive definition that really describes all the ways that transnational oppression manifests. Things we haven't talked about yet like coercion by proxy, where here I am in the US, I have family back home somewhere, they are getting threats and pressure and harassment from the government. Codifying it there will let you, as I mentioned, train government officials who might come in contact with it so that they're less susceptible to, for example, seeing an arrest warrant and picking someone up just based on the fact that it's an arrest warrant, whereas if they've gotten training and they know, aha, this is coming from a government that engages in transnational oppression, let's turn a more critical eye. Which in the US, I do think that there is already wide awareness and growing awareness at the federal level, a lot more to be done at state and local, so that's one whole basket. Then there's Title 18, which is criminal law, and I think there's plenty of robust discussion and good debate that could happen around should we, if we do criminalize, what should it look like?If you look at the cases that have been prosecuted already, Department of Justice is having to get really creative in what they are using. Murder is pretty straightforward, obviously, that is illegal, but in the case of some individuals who were surveilling and harassing folks here in the US, they had to use stalking charges or conspiracy to commit stalking. In the case of the Ryan Air flight that Belarus forced down so that they could apprehend a blogger, there were some Americans on that plane, and so the United States used a law that I, until that moment, did not know existed, which was conspiracy to commit air piracy.I think we have heard repeatedly, there's a real gap in law, and I think this is where you want to make sure you're protecting civil liberties, and where robust debate and discussion from lawyers is well warranted of, okay, if we are adding, what does it look like? There's also the advocacy value, telling the People's Republic of China, "These people are being convicted in the United States on conspiracy to commit stalking" does not have the same ring to it as saying they're being charged on engaging in transnational repression. There's real value in a democracy being able to say, "No, can't do that here. It's a crime here."“There's also the advocacy value, telling the People's Republic of China, ‘These people are being convicted in the United States on conspiracy to commit stalking,' does not have the same ring to it as saying they're being charged on engaging in transnational repression. There's real value in a democracy being able to say, ‘No, can't do that here. It's a crime here.'“We are, of course, not so naive as to think that fixing laws in different democracies will stop this from happening completely, but it's an important step. I think coordination of democracies over time will send a very clear message that this is not tolerable. You got to follow that up with other actions, which we could talk about all day long.Aaron: I was actually going to ask about those other actions.Because it seems like if I'm China and I hire some people to harass you because you've been criticizing China or I hire someone to take you out because I really want to escalate things, those people, it's not like I'm sending senior government officials or people of I guess consequence in the regime's eyes to go and do this stuff. It almost looks like the mob takes out a hit and so you throw the person who carried out the hit in jail but the mob boss doesn't really suffer any consequences. What meaningful kinds of consequences other than democracy saying, "No, we really mean it. You shouldn't do that."Annie: Yes, fair question. Listen, I actually think most folks would be really surprised about the level of officials who are directly engaging in this. I will say I was speaking to a journalist from a country in the Middle East, she's wanting to be under the radar for now so I won't name the country, not Saudi Arabia, different country, and is living in Germany. She was beaten up in Germany by a diplomat from the embassy in Germany. There is a level of hubris that goes into this and we have seen in some countries it really does seem like certain diplomats are traveling around with their portfolio almost being transnational oppression.I think this is a foreign policy issue. It is also a domestic policy issue and you really to be effective have to address it as both. On the foreign policy side of things, there are sanctions that should be imposed on individuals engaging in this but also on individuals directing transnational oppression. This should be an issue that is routinely raised publicly and privately with the government. It should be an issue at multilateral bodies as it is starting to be because you can't just get at this obviously with one simple law.We have talked a lot about the conditioning of foreign assistance which if we did it could be effective if we didn't allow loopholes. The GAO for your readers who want to dig in more actually released a very good report about a month ago that looks at some of the options within the US context. Say that they were talking about do you bring in arms control policy? Do you bring in other existing measures that have not been fully deployed? There is a lot more room on the targeted sanctions front quite frankly.Aaron: On the technology front because the technology is making this—It's either easier to find the people you want to find or easier to track them, or easier to harass them. Should we as liberal regimes be cracking down on the use of spyware and the sale of these tools? I ask about that again in this question of incentives because while the United States government might not be participating in targeted assassinations overseas, we do buy and use spyware. Other liberal regimes do as well. What do we do about that considering that the countries that might want to crack down are the same ones who are also good consumers of these products?Annie: It's a huge problem. I would say the short answer is yes, and. You already have companies like NSO Group which is the purveyor of the famous Pegasus [spyware software that allowed governments who bought it to hack the phones of dissidents, journalists and other critics] which actually Jamal Khashoggi had on his computer. Also, it's popped up with dozens of human rights defenders who we know. That's already on the entity list for exports. You can't buy that. There are plenty of purveyors of cheap spyware, and many of those companies are not in the United States. It used to be that just a handful of companies existed and now there is to your point a proliferation.If companies in democracies stop exporting, that can help in the sense that at least economically it can make it more expensive. Maybe somehow there you limit it. You also need to make sure and this goes to my earlier point about you want a definition so you can provide training. You need to make sure that people who may be targeted are receiving training in digital hygiene. How do you stay safe and secure online? When you see violations, you need to be able to prosecute it. In the US, we need a comprehensive privacy law. It's a very complex web and quite frankly, some of this is going to be very difficult to walk back.In that sense, a lot of the human rights defenders we work with, it is the informed risk on their end and people needing to do things these days like go out and have conversations in fields. Particularly with the government of China and the way that they're exporting some of these technologies to countries around the world. We just need to be very aware and have eyes open and raise these as issues if you're a policymaker. Back to my earlier point, when you see misuse, impose targeted sanctions and make sure that you are prohibiting export when you can.Aaron: You also mentioned immigration as a way to help this, to make it easier for people to get out of these repressive regimes and seek some degree of protection in other countries. How do we define regime critics for that purpose? If we're going to carve out special exceptions to immigration laws because I'm going to assume that we can't just radically liberalize immigration laws because that seems to be an uphill battle constantly. Probably made more complicated by the fact that the countries that Americans seem to be most skeptical about letting people in from are often the most repressive regimes. But if I come to you as an agent of the state and say, "I'm a regime critic, let me in." How do you know? What's the standard for regime criticism?Annie: Yes, great question. I am not an immigration lawyer, so we're going to rapidly be in territory that I have no business speaking in detail about. I would say, actually, there's legislation that was introduced by Senator Menendez that was a visa for human rights defenders. I think the way they got at that it was for human rights defenders at urgent risk. They were describing the risks faced and perhaps not the definition. There would certainly need to be vetting. You don't want someone to claim something inaccurately.We do think that we work with folks under threat all the time, and there are actually some European countries that have some interesting emergency visa options for folks. Obviously, in the EU context, it's easier. Some of the European countries have been welcoming folks not from the EU. We have talked with policymakers in the US about whether that can be educational and informative for what it can look like here in the US. Can we expand some of the existing categories?Aaron: This is very clearly a big problem, and one that will be challenging to address because of complexities, because of incentives, lots of reasons that we can't just wave a wand and fix it tomorrow. If there was one concrete step that we could take, we say, like the policy level, could take right now to make things better for people who are in real danger because they've been criticizing repressive regimes. What would be that one like, "Let's do this?"Annie: This is a great question. As a policy person, I'm going to be like, "No, don't make me pick one." In terms of like, what will save a life tomorrow, it would be, let's get an emergency visa. If you're talking about pick one thing that would be most effective, I would say, let's do the definition so that we can start mandating training and outreach. That is, to the great credit of the U.S. government, that is happening pretty extensively, at least as compared to other democratic countries. The FBI, for example, has a whole webpage dedicated to transnational oppression. You can call the FBI hotline and report it. They are trying to do outreach to potentially targeted communities.“In terms of like, what will save a life tomorrow, it would be, let's get an emergency visa. If you're talking about pick one thing that would be most effective, I would say, let's do the definition so that we can start mandating training and outreach. That is, to the great credit of the US government, that is happening pretty extensively, at least as compared to other democratic countries.”There are some good-faith efforts already happening there. I think it's going to take years of work. This, it's going to sound strange that I say, this is an issue that makes me feel hopeful in a way that 20 years of other work doesn't. That is for two reasons. Number one, as I mentioned earlier, this is an issue where it so clearly shows the link between human rights abuses abroad and security and rights in your own country. The interest in this and the work on this is so bipartisan. That is not a small thing in this environment, as you at The UnPopulist know well.The other thing about this that makes me so hopeful is the human rights defenders themselves. They have been through things we cannot fathom and they are still going. They have family members who have disappeared because of their work back in their home countries, or who are actively getting threats. They are actively getting threats and they are still going. To me, who am I to throw in the towel if they haven't? In that sense, it's going to take years, but here we are. We're ready to keep going.“The other thing about this that makes me so hopeful is the human rights defenders themselves. They have been through things we cannot fathom and they are still going. They have family members who have disappeared because of their work back in their home countries, or who are actively getting threats. They are actively getting threats and they are still going. To me, who am I to throw in the towel if they haven't? In that sense, it's going to take years, but here we are. We're ready to keep going.”Aaron: Thank you for listening to Zooming In at The UnPopulist. If you enjoy this show, please take a moment to review us and Apple Podcasts and also check out ReImagining Liberty, our sister podcast at The UnPopulist, where I explore the emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical social, political, and economic freedom. Zooming In is a project of The UnPopulist. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theunpopulist.net

united states conversations china freedom americans germany russia chinese european murder vice president european union turkey fbi middle east iran hong kong policy washington post summit democracy venezuela advocacy republic saudi arabia latin america excuse iranians istanbul saudi rwanda waking up belarus g7 pegasus world report uzbekistan ryanair salman rushdie menendez repression saudi arabian jamal khashoggi government accountability office democracies turkmenistan khashoggi transnational crown prince freedom house nso group repressive boyajian for mr aaron you aaron ross powell annie it aaron thank aaron on aaron is aaron just annie yes

#9: Sarah Woodhouse on discovering AI x-risk, Twitter, and more

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2023 74:47

Note: I can't seem to edit or remove the “transcript” tab. I recommend you ignore that and just look at the much higher quality, slightly cleaned up one below. Most importantly, follow Sarah on Twitter! Summary (Written by chatGPT, as you can probably tell)In this episode of Pigeon Hour host Aaron delves deep into the world of AI safety with his guest, Sarah Woodhouse. Sarah shares her unexpected journey from fearing job automation to becoming a recognized voice on AI safety Twitter. Her story starts with a simple Google search that led her down a rabbit hole of existential dread and unexpected fame on social media. As she narrates her path from lurker to influencer, Sarah reflects on the quirky dynamics of the AI safety community, her own existential crisis, and the serendipitous tweet that resonated with thousands.Aaron and Sarah's conversation takes unexpected turns, discussing everything from the peculiarities of EA rationalists to the surprisingly serious topic of shrimp welfare. They also explore the nuances of AI doom probabilities, the social dynamics of tech Twitter, and Sarah's unexpected viral fame as a tween. This episode is a rollercoaster of insights and anecdotes, perfect for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, society, and the unpredictable journey of internet fame.Topics discussedDiscussion on AI Safety and Personal Journeys:* Aaron and Sarah discuss her path to AI safety, triggered by concerns about job automation and the realization that AI could potentially replace her work.* Sarah's deep dive into AI safety started with a simple Google search, leading her to Geoffrey Hinton's alarming statements, and eventually to a broader exploration without finding reassuring consensus.* Sarah's Twitter engagement began with lurking, later evolving into active participation and gaining an audience, especially after a relatable tweet thread about an existential crisis.* Aaron remarks on the rarity of people like Sarah, who follow the AI safety rabbit hole to its depths, considering its obvious implications for various industries.AI Safety and Public Perception:* Sarah discusses her surprise at discovering the AI safety conversation happening mostly in niche circles, often with a tongue-in-cheek attitude that could seem dismissive of the serious implications of AI risks.* The discussion touches on the paradox of AI safety: it's a critically important topic, yet it often remains confined within certain intellectual circles, leading to a lack of broader public engagement and awareness.Cultural Differences and Personal Interests:* The conversation shifts to cultural differences between the UK and the US, particularly in terms of sincerity and communication styles.* Personal interests, such as theater and musicals (like "Glee"), are also discussed, revealing Sarah's background and hobbies.Effective Altruism (EA) and Rationalist Communities:* Sarah points out certain quirks of the EA and rationalist communities, such as their penchant for detailed analysis, hedging statements, and the use of probabilities in discussions.* The debate around the use of "P(Doom)" (probability of doom) in AI safety discussions is critiqued, highlighting how it can be both a serious analytical tool and a potentially alienating jargon for outsiders.Shrimp Welfare and Ethical Considerations:* A detailed discussion on shrimp welfare as an ethical consideration in effective altruism unfolds, examining the moral implications and effectiveness of focusing on animal welfare at a large scale.* Aaron defends his position on prioritizing shrimp welfare in charitable giving, based on the principles of importance, tractability, and neglectedness.Personal Decision-Making in Charitable Giving:* Strategies for personal charitable giving are explored, including setting a donation cutoff point to balance moral obligations with personal needs and aspirations.TranscriptAARON: Whatever you want. Okay. Yeah, I feel like you said this on Twitter. The obvious thing is, how did you learn about AI safety? But maybe you've already covered that. That's boring. First of all, do you want to talk about that? Because we don't have to.SARAH: I don't mind talking about that.AARON: But it's sort of your call, so whatever. I don't know. Maybe briefly, and then we can branch out?SARAH: I have a preference for people asking me things and me answering them rather than me setting the agenda. So don't ever feel bad about just asking me stuff because I prefer that.AARON: Okay, cool. But also, it feels like the kind of thing where, of course, we have AI. Everyone already knows that this is just like the voice version of these four tweets or whatever. But regardless. Yes. So, Sarah, as Pigeon Hour guest, what was your path through life to AI safety Twitter?SARAH: Well, I realized that a chatbot could very easily do my job and that my employers either hadn't noticed this or they had noticed, but they were just being polite about it and they didn't want to fire me because they're too nice. And I was like, I should find out what AI development is going to be like over the next few years so that I know if I should go and get good at some other stuff.SARAH: I just had a little innocent Google. And then within a few clicks, I'd completely doom pilled myself. I was like, we're all going to die. I think I found Geoffrey Hinton because he was on the news at the time, because he just quit his job at Google. And he was there saying things that sounded very uncertain, very alarming. And I was like, well, he's probably the pessimist, but I'm sure that there are loads of optimists to counteract that because that's how it usually goes. You find a doomer and then you find a bunch of more moderate people, and then there's some consensus in the middle that everything's basically fine.SARAH: I was like, if I just keep looking, I'll find the consensus because it's there. I'm sure it's there. So I just kept looking and looking for it. I looked for it for weeks. I just didn't find it. And then I was like, nobody knows what's going on. This seems really concerning. So then I started lurking on Twitter, and then I got familiar with all the different accounts, whatever. And then at some point, I was like, I'm going to start contributing to this conversation, but I didn't think that anybody would talk back to me. And then at some point, they started talking back to me and I was like, this is kind of weird.SARAH: And then at some point, I was having an existential crisis and I had a couple of glasses of wine or something, and I just decided to type this big, long thread. And then I went to bed. I woke up the next morning slightly grouchy and hungover. I checked my phone and there were all these people messaging me and all these people replying to my thread being like, this is so relatable. This really resonated with me. And I was like, what is going on?AARON: You were there on Twitter before that thread right? I'm pretty sure I was following you.SARAH: I think, yeah, I was there before, but no one ever really gave me any attention prior to that. I think I had a couple of tweets that blew up before that, but not to the same extent. And then after that, I think I was like, okay, so now I have an audience. When I say an audience, like, obviously a small one, but more of an audience than I've ever had before in my life. And I was like, how far can I take this?SARAH: I was a bit like, people obviously started following me because I'm freFreaking out about AI, but if I post an outfit, what's going to happen? How far can I push this posting, these fit checks? I started posting random stuff about things that were completely unrelated. I was like, oh, people are kind of here for this, too. Okay, this is weird. So now I'm just milking it for all its worth, and I really don't know why anybody's listening to me. I'm basically very confused about the whole thing.AARON: I mean, I think it's kind of weird from your perspective, or it's weird in general because there aren't that many people who just do that extremely logical thing at the beginning. I don't know, maybe it's not obvious to people in every industry or whatever that AI is potentially a big deal, but there's lots of truckers or whatever. Maybe they're not the best demographic or the most conducive demographic, like, getting on Twitter or whatever, but there's other jobs that it would make sense to look into that. It's kind of weird to me that only you followed the rabbit hole all the way down.SARAH: I know! This is what I…Because it's not that hard to complete the circle. It probably took me like a day, it took me like an afternoon to get from, I'm worried about job automation to I should stop saving for retirement. It didn't take me that long. Do you know what I mean? No one ever looks. I literally don't get it. I was talking to some people. I was talking to one of my coworkers about this the other day, and I think I came up in conversation. She was like, yeah, I'm a bit worried about AI because I heard on the radio that taxi drivers might be out of a job. That's bad. And I was like, yeah, that is bad. But do you know what else? She was like, what are the AI companies up to that we don't know about? And I was like, I mean, you can go on their website. You can just go on their website and read about how they think that their technology is an extinction risk. It's not like they're hiding. It's literally just on there and no one ever looks. It's just crazy.AARON: Yeah. Honestly, I don't even know if I was in your situation, if I would have done that. It's like, in some sense, I am surprised. It's very few people maybe like one, but at another level, it's more rationality than most humans have or something. Yeah. You regret going down that rabbit hole?SARAH: Yeah, kind of. Although I'm enjoying the Twitter thing and it's kind of fun, and it turns out there's endless comedic material that you can get out of impending doom. The whole thing is quite funny. It's not funny, but you can make it funny if you try hard enough. But, yeah, what was I going to say? I think maybe I was more primed for doom pilling than your average person because I already knew what EA was and I already knew, you know what I mean. That stuff was on my radar.AARON: That's interesting.SARAH: I think had it not been on my radar, I don't think I would have followed the pipeline all the way.AARON: Yeah. I don't know what browser you use, but it would be. And you should definitely not only do this if you actually think it would be cool or whatever, but this could be in your browser history from that day and that would be hilarious. You could remove anything you didn't want to show, but if it's like Google Chrome, they package everything into sessions. It's one browsing session and it'll have like 10,000 links.SARAH: Yeah, I think for non-sketchy reasons, I delete my Google history more regularly than that. I don't think I'd be able to find that. But I can remember the day and I can remember my anxiety levels just going up and up somewhere between 01:00 p.m. and 07:00 p.m. And by the evening I'm like, oh, my God.AARON: Oh, damn, that's wild.SARAH: It was really stressful.AARON: Yeah, I guess props for, I don't know if props…Is the right word, I guess, impressed? I'm actually somewhat surprised to hear that you said you regret it. I mean, that sucks though, I guess. I'm sorry.SARAH: If you could unknow this, would you?AARON: No, because I think it's worth maybe selfishly, but not overall because. Okay, yeah, I think that would plausibly be the selfish thing to do. Actually. No, actually, hold on. No, I actually don't think that's true. I actually think there's enough an individual can do selfishly such that it makes sense. Even the emotional turmoil.SARAH: It would depend how much you thought that you were going to personally move the needle by knowing about it. I personally don't think that I'm going to be able to do very much. I was going to tip the scales. I wouldn't selfishly unknow it and sacrifice the world. But me being not particularly informed or intelligent and not having any power, I feel like if I forgot that AI was going to end the world, it would not make much difference.AARON: You know what I mean? I agree that it's like, yes, it is unlikely for either of us to tip the scales, but.SARAH: Maybe you can't.AARON: No, actually, in terms of, yeah, I'm probably somewhat more technically knowledgeable just based on what I know about you. Maybe I'm wrong.SARAH: No, you're definitely right.AARON: It's sort of just like a probabilities thing. I do think that ‘doom' - that word - is too simplified, often too simple to capture what people really care about. But if you just want to say doom versus no doom or whatever, AI doom versus no AI doom. Maybe there's like a one in 100,000 chance that one of us tips the scales. And that's important. Maybe even, like, one in 10,000. Probably not. Probably not.SARAH: One in 10,000. Wow.AARON: But that's what people do. People vote, even though this is old 80k material I'm regurgitating because they basically want to make the case for why even if you're not. Or in some article they had from a while ago, they made a case for why doing things that are unlikely to counterfactually matter can still be amazingly good. And the classic example, just voting if you're in a tight race, say, in a swing state in the United States, and it could go either way. Yeah. It might be pretty unlikely that you are the single swing vote, but it could be one in 100,000. And that's not crazy.SARAH: It doesn't take very much effort to vote, though.AARON: Yeah, sure. But I think the core justification, also, the stakes are proportionally higher here, so maybe that accounts for some. But, yes, you're absolutely right. Definitely different amounts of effort.SARAH: Putting in any effort to saving the world from AI. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that I'm sacrificing.AARON: I don't even know if I like. No. Maybe it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. Maybe it isn't. But I do think there's, like, a lot. There's at least something to be. I don't know if this really checks out, but I would, like, bet that it does, which is that more reasonably, at least calibrated. I wanted to say reasonably well informed. But really what it is is, like, some level of being informed and, like, some level of knowing what you don't know or whatever, and more just like, normal. Sorry. I hope normal is not like a bat. I'm saying not like tech Bros, I guess so more like non tech bros. People who are not coded as tech bros. Talking about this on a public platform just seems actually, in fact, pretty good.SARAH: As long as we like, literally just people that aren't men as well. No offense.AARON: Oh, no, totally. Yeah.SARAH: Where are all the women? There's a few.AARON: There's a few that are super. I don't know, like, leaders in some sense, like Ajeya Cotra and Katja Grace. But I think the last EA survey was a third. Or I could be butchering this or whatever. And maybe even within that category, there's some variation. I don't think it's 2%.SARAH: Okay. All right. Yeah.AARON: Like 15 or 20% which is still pretty low.SARAH: No, but that's actually better than I would have thought, I think.AARON: Also, Twitter is, of all the social media platforms, especially mail. I don't really know.SARAH: Um.AARON: I don't like Instagram, I think.SARAH: I wonder, it would be interesting to see whether or not that's much, if it's become more male dominated since Elon Musk took.AARON: It's not a huge difference, but who knows?SARAH: I don't know. I have no idea. I have no idea. We'll just be interesting to know.AARON: Okay. Wait. Also, there's no scheduled time. I'm very happy to keep talking or whatever, but as soon as you want to take a break or hop off, just like. Yeah.SARAH: Oh, yeah. I'm in no rush.AARON: Okay, well, I don't know. We've talked about the two obvious candidates. Do you have a take or something? Want to get out to the world? It's not about AI or obesity or just a story you want to share.SARAH: These are my two pet subjects. I don't know anything else.AARON: I don't believe you. I know you know about house plants.SARAH: I do. A secret, which you can't tell anyone, is that I actually only know about house plants that are hard to kill, and I'm actually not very good at taking care of them.AARON: Well, I'm glad it's house plants in that case, rather than pets. Whatever.SARAH: Yeah. I mean, I have killed some sea monkeys, too, but that was a long time ago.AARON: Yes. So did I, actually.SARAH: Did you? I feel like everyone has. Everyone's got a little sea monkey graveyard in their past.AARON: New cause area.SARAH: Are there more shrimp or more sea monkeys? That's the question.AARON: I don't even know what even. I mean, are they just plankton?SARAH: No, they're not plankton.AARON: I know what sea monkeys are.SARAH: There's definitely a lot of them because they're small and insignificant.AARON: Yeah, but I also think we don't. It depends if you're talking about in the world, which I guess probably like sea monkeys or farmed for food, which is basically like. I doubt these are farmed either for food or for anything.SARAH: Yeah, no, you're probably right.AARON: Or they probably are farmed a tiny bit for this niche little.SARAH: Or they're farmed to sell in aquariums for kids.AARON: Apparently. They are a kind of shrimp, but they were bred specifically to, I don't know, be tiny or something. I'm just skimming that, Wikipedia. Here.SARAH: Sea monkeys are tiny shrimp. That is crazy.AARON: Until we get answers, tell me your life story in whatever way you want. It doesn't have to be like. I mean, hopefully not. Don't straight up lie, but wherever you want to take that.SARAH: I'm not going to lie. I'm just trying to think of ways to make it spicier because it's so average. I don't know what to say about it.AARON: Well, it's probably not that average, right? I mean, it might be average among people you happen to know.SARAH: Do you have any more specific questions?AARON: Okay, no. Yeah, hold on. I have a meta point, which is like, I think the people who are they have a thing on the top of their mind, and if I give any sort of open ended question whatsoever, they'll take it there and immediately just start giving slinging hot takes. But thenOther people, I think, this category is very EA. People who aren't, especially my sister, they're like, “No, I have nothing to talk about. I don't believe that.” But they're not, I guess, as comfortable.SARAH: No, I mean, I have. Something needs to trigger them in me. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I need an in.AARON: Well, okay, here's one. Is there anything you're like, “Maybe I'll cut this. This is kind of, like narcissistic. I don't know. But is there anything you want or curious to ask?” This does sound kind of weird. I don't know. But we can cut it if need be.SARAH: What does the looking glass in your Twitter name mean? Because I've seen a bunch of people have this, and I actually don't know what it means, but I was like, no.AARON: People ask this. I respond to a tweet that's like, “What does that like?” At least, I don't know, once every month or two. Or know basically, like Spencer Greenberg. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He's like a sort of.SARAH: I know the know.AARON: He literally just tweeted, like a couple years ago. Put this in your bio to show that you really care about finding the truth or whatever and are interested in good faith conversations. Are you familiar with the scout mindset?SARAH: Yeah.AARON: Julia Galef. Yeah. That's basically, like the short version.SARAH: Okay.AARON: I'm like, yeah, all right. And there's at least three of us who have both a magnifying glass. Yeah. And a pause thing, which is like, my tightest knit online community I guess.SARAH: I think I've followed all the pause people now. I just searched the emoji on Twitter, and I just followed everyone. Now I can't find. And I also noticed when I was doing this, that some people, if they've suspended their account or they're taking time off, then they put a pause in their thing. So I was, like, looking, and I was like, oh, these are, like, AI people. But then they were just, like, in their bio, they were, like, not tweeting until X date. This is a suspended account. And I was like, I see we have a messaging problem here. Nice. I don't know how common that actually.AARON: Was. I'm glad. That was, like, a very straightforward question. Educated the masses. Max Alexander said Glee. Is that, like, the show? You can also keep asking me questions, but again, this is like.SARAH: Wait, what did he say? Is that it? Did he just say glee? No.AARON: Not even a question mark. Just the word glee.SARAH: Oh, right. He just wants me to go off about Glee.AARON: Okay. Go off about. Wait, what kind of Glee are we? Vaguely. This is like a show or a movie or something.SARAH: Oh, my God. Have you not seen it?AARON: No. I mean, I vaguely remember, I think, watching some TV, but maybe, like, twelve years ago or something. I don't know.SARAH: I think it stopped airing in, like, maybe 2015?AARON: 16. So go off about it. I don't know what I. Yeah, I.SARAH: Don't know what to say about this.AARON: Well, why does Max think you might have a take about Glee?SARAH: I mean, I don't have a take about. Just see the thing. See? No, not even, like, I am just transparently extremely lame. And I really like cheesy. I'm like. I'm like a musical theater kid. Not even ironically. I just like show tunes. And Glee is just a show about a glee club at a high school where they sing show tunes and there's, like, petty drama, and people burst into song in the hallways, and I just think it's just the most glorious thing on Earth. That's it. There are no hot takes.AARON: Okay, well, that's cool. I don't have a lot to say, unfortunately, but.SARAH: No, that's totally fine. I feel like this is not a spicy topic for us to discuss. It's just a good time.AARON: Yeah.SARAH: Wait.AARON: Okay. Yeah. So I do listen to Hamilton on Spotify.SARAH: Okay.AARON: Yeah, that's about it.SARAH: I like Hamilton. I've seen it three times. Oh.AARON: Live or ever. Wow. Cool. Yeah, no, that's okay. Well, what do people get right or wrong about theater kids?SARAH: Oh, I don't know. I think all the stereotypes are true.AARON: I mean, that's generally true, but usually, it's either over moralized, there's like a descriptive thing that's true, but it's over moralized, or it's just exaggerated.SARAH: I mean, to put this in more context, I used to be in choir. I went every Sunday for twelve years. And then every summer we do a little summer school and we go away and put on a production. So we do a musical or something. So I have been. What have I been? I was in Guys and Dolls. I think I was just in the chorus for that. I was the reverend in Anything Goes. But he does unfortunately get kidnapped in like the first five minutes. So he's not a big presence. Oh, I've been Tweedle dumb in Alice in Wonderland. I could go on, but right now as I'm saying this, I'm looking at my notice board and I have two playbills from when I went to Broadway in April where I saw Funny Girl and Hadestown.SARAH: I went to New York.AARON: Oh, cool. Oh yeah. We can talk about when you're moving to the United States. However.SARAH: I'm not going to do that. Okay.AARON: I know. I'm joking. I mean, I don't know.SARAH: I don't think I'm going to do that. I don't know. It just seems like you guys have got a lot going on over there. It seems like things aren't quite right with you guys. Things aren't quite right with us either.AARON: No, I totally get this. I think it would be cool. But also I completely relate to not wanting to. I've lived within 10 miles of one. Not even 10 miles, 8 miles in one location. Obviously gone outside of that. But my entire life.SARAH: You've just always lived in DC.AARON: Yeah, either in DC or. Sorry. But right now in Maryland, it's like right next to DC on the Metro or at Georgia University, which is in the trying to think would I move to the UK. Like I could imagine situations that would make me move to the UK. But it would still be annoying. Kind of.SARAH: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's like they're two very similar places, but there are all these little cultural things which I feel like kind of trip you up.AARON: I don't to. Do you want to say what?SARAH: Like I think people, I just like, I don't know. I don't have that much experience because I've only been to America twice. But people seem a lot more sincere in a way that you don't really get that. Like people are just never really being upfront. And in America, I just got the impression that people just have less of a veneer up, which is probably a good thing. But it's really hard to navigate if you're not used to it or something. I don't know how to describe that.AARON: Yeah, I've definitely heard this at least. And yeah, I think it's for better and for worse.SARAH: Yeah, I think it's generally a good thing.AARON: Yeah.SARAH: But it's like there's this layer of cynicism or irony or something that is removed and then when it's not there, it's just everything feels weak. I can't describe it.AARON: This is definitely, I think, also like an EA rationalist thing. I feel like I'm pretty far on the spectrum. Towards the end of surgical niceties are fine, but I don't know, don't obscure what you really think unless it's a really good reason to or something. But it can definitely come across as being rude.SARAH: Yeah. No, but I think it's actually a good rule of thumb to obscure what you. It's good to try not to obscure what you think most of the time, probably.Ably, I don't know, but I would love to go over temporarily for like six months or something and just hang out for a bit. I think that'd be fun. I don't know if I would go back to New York again. Maybe. I like the bagels there.AARON: I should have a place. Oh yeah. Remember, I think we talked at some point. We can cut this out if you like. Don't if either of us doesn't want it in. But we discussed, oh yeah, I should be having a place. You can. I emailed the landlord like an hour before this. Hopefully, probably more than 50%. That is still an offer. Yeah, probably not for all six months, but I don't know.SARAH: I would not come and sleep on your sofa for six months. That would be definitely impolite and very weird.AARON: Yeah. I mean, my roommates would probably grumble.SARAH: Yeah. They would be like.AARON: Although I don't know. Who knows? I wouldn't be shocked if people were actually like, whatever somebody asked for as a question. This is what he said. I might also be interested in hearing how different backgrounds. Wait, sorry. This is not good grammar. Let me try to parse this. Not having a super hardcore EA AI rationalist background shape how you think or how you view AI as rationality?SARAH: Oh, that's a good question. I think it's more happening the other way around, the more I hang around in these circles. You guys are impacting how I think.AARON: It's definitely true for me as well.SARAH: Seeping into my brain and my language as well. I've started talking differently. I don't know. That's a good question, though. Yeah. One thing that I will say is that there are certain things that I find irritating about the EA way of style of doing things. I think one specific, I don't know, the kind of like hand ring about everything. And I know that this is kind of the point, right? But it's kind of like, you know, when someone's like, I want to take a stance on something, but then whenever they want to take a stance on something, they feel the need to write like a 10,000 word blog post where they're thinking about the second and order and third and fifth order effects of this thing. And maybe this thing that seems good is actually bad for this really convoluted reason. That's just so annoying.AARON: Yeah.SARAH: Also understand that maybe that is a good thing to do sometimes, but it just seems like, I don't know how anyone ever gets anywhere. It seems like everyone must be paralyzed by indecision all the time because they just can't commit to ever actually just saying anything.AARON: I think this kind of thing is really good if you're trying to give away a billion dollars. Oh yes, I do want the billion dollar grantor to be thinking through second and third order effects of how they give away their billion dollars. But also, no, I am super. The words on the tip of my tongue, not overwhelmed but intimidated when I go on the EA forum because the posts, none of them are like normal, like five paragraph essays. Some of them are like, I think one of them I looked up for fun because I was going to make a meme about it and still will. Probably was like 30,000 words or something. And even the short form posts, which really gets me kind of not even annoyed. I don't know, maybe kind of annoyed is that the short form posts, which is sort of the EA forum version of Twitter, are way too high quality, way too intimidating. And so maybe I should just suck it up and post stuff anyway more often. It just feels weird. I totally agree.SARAH: I was also talking to someone recently about how I lurked on the EA forum and less wrong for months and months and I couldn't figure out the upvoting system and I was like, am I being stupid or why are there four buttons? And I was like, well, eventually I had to ask someone because I couldn't figure it out. And then he explained it to me and I was like, that is just so unnecessary. Like, just do it.AARON: No, I do know what you mean.SARAH: I just tI think it's annoying. It pisses me off. I just feel like sometimes you don't need to add more things. Sometimes less is good. Yeah, that's my hot take. Nice things.AARON: Yeah, that's interesting.SARAH: But actually, a thing that I like that EA's do is the constant hedging and caveatting. I do find it kind of adorable. I love that because it's like you're having to constantly acknowledge that you probably didn't quite articulate what you really meant and that you're not quite making contact with reality when you're talking. So you have to clarify that you probably were imprecise when you said this thing. It's unnecessary, but it's kind of amazing.AARON: No, it's definitely. I am super guilty of this because I'll give an example in a second. I think I've been basically trained to try pretty hard, even in normal conversation with anybody, to just never say anything that's literally wrong. Or at least if I do caveat it.AARON: I was driving home, me and my parents and I, unless visited, our grandparents were driving back, and we were driving back past a cruise ship that was in a harbor. And my mom, who was driving at the time, said, “Oh, Aaron, can you see if there's anyone on there?” And I immediately responded like, “Well, there's probably at least one person.” Obviously, that's not what she meant. But that was my technical best guess. It's like, yes, there probably are people on there, even though I couldn't see anybody on the decks or in the rooms. Yeah, there's probably a maintenance guy. Felt kind of bad.SARAH: You can't technically exclude that there are, in fact, no people.AARON: Then I corrected myself. But I guess I've been trained into giving that as my first reaction.SARAH: Yeah, I love that. I think it's a waste of words, but I find it delightful.AARON: It does go too far. People should be more confident. I wish that, at least sometimes, people would say, “Epistemic status: Want to bet?” or “I am definitely right about this.” Too rarely do we hear, "I'm actually pretty confident here.SARAH: Another thing is, people are too liberal with using probabilities. The meaning of saying there is an X percent chance of something happening is getting watered down by people constantly saying things like, “I would put 30% on this claim.” Obviously, there's no rigorous method that's gone into determining why it's 30 and not 35. That's a problem and people shouldn't do that. But I kind of love it.AARON: I can defend that. People are saying upfront, “This is my best guess. But there's no rigorous methodology.” People should take their word for that. In some parts of society, it's seen as implying that a numeric probability came from a rigorous model. But if you say, “This is my best guess, but it's not formed from anything,” people should take their word for that and not refuse to accept them at face value.SARAH: But why do you have to put a number on it?AARON: It depends on what you're talking about. Sometimes probabilities are relevant and if you don't use numbers, it's easy to misinterpret. People would say, “It seems quite likely,” but what does that mean? One person might think “quite reasonably likely” means 70%, the other person thinks it means 30%. Even though it's weird to use a single number, it's less confusing.SARAH: To be fair, I get that. I've disagreed with people about what the word “unlikely” means. Someone's pulled out a scale that the government uses, or intelligence services use to determine what “unlikely” means. But everyone interprets those words differently. I see what you're saying. But then again, I think people in AI safety talking about P Doom was making people take us less seriously, especially because people's probabilities are so vibey.AARON: Some people are, but I take Paul Cristiano's word seriously.SARAH: He's a 50/50 kind of guy.AARON: Yeah, I take that pretty seriously.Obviously, it's not as simple as him having a perfect understanding of the world, even after another 10,000 hours of investigation. But it's definitely not just vibes, either.SARAH: No, I came off wrong there. I don't mean that everyone's understanding is just vibes.AARON: Yeah.SARAH: If you were looking at it from the outside, it would be really difficult to distinguish between the ones that are vibes and the ones that are rigorous, unless you carefully parsed all of it and evaluated everyone's background, or looked at the model yourself. If you're one step removed, it looks like people just spitting out random, arbitrary numbers everywhere.AARON: Yeah. There's also the question of whether P doom is too weird or silly, or if it could be easily dismissed as such.SARAH: Exactly, the moment anyone unfamiliar with this discussion sees it, they're almost definitely going to dismiss it. They won't see it as something they need to engage with.AARON: That's a very fair point. Aside from the social aspect, it's also a large oversimplification. There's a spectrum of outcomes that we lump into doom and not doom. While this binary approach can be useful at times, it's probably overdone.SARAH: Yeah, because when some people say doom, they mean everyone dies, while others mean everyone dies plus everything is terrible. And no one specifies what they mean. It is silly. But, I also find it kind of funny and I kind of love it.AARON: I'm glad there's something like that. So it's not perfect. The more straightforward thing would be to say P existential risk from AI comes to pass. That's the long version, whatever.SARAH: If I was in charge, I would probably make people stop using PDOOm. I think it's better to say it the long way around. But obviously I'm not in charge. And I think it's funny and kind of cute, so I'll keep using it.AARON: Maybe I'm willing to go along and try to start a new norm. Not spend my whole life on it, but say, I think this is bad for X, Y, and Z reasons. I'll use this other phrase instead and clarify when people ask.SARAH: You're going to need Twitter premium because you're going to need a lot more characters.AARON: I think there's a shorthand which is like PX risk or P AiX risk.SARAH: Maybe it's just the word doom that's a bit stupid.AARON: Yeah, that's a term out of the Bay Area rationalists.SARAH: But then I also think it kind of makes the whole thing seem less serious. People should be indignant to hear that this meme is being used to trade probabilities about the likelihood that they're going to die and their families are going to die. This has been an in-joke in this weird niche circle for years and they didn't know about it. I'm not saying that in a way to morally condemn people, but if you explain this to people…People just go to dinner parties in Silicon Valley and talk about this weird meme thing, and what they really mean is the ODs know everyone's going to prematurely die. People should be outraged by that, I think.AARON: I disagree that it's a joke. It is a funny phrase, but the actual thing is people really do stand by their belief.SARAH: No, I totally agree with that part. I'm not saying that people are not being serious when they give their numbers, but I feel like there's something. I don't know how to put this in words. There's something outrageous about the fact that for outsiders, this conversation has been happening for years and people have been using this tongue-in-cheek phrase to describe it, and 99.9% of people don't know that's happening. I'm not articulating this very well.AARON: I see what you're saying. I don't actually think it's like. I don't know a lot of jargon.SARAH: But when I first found out about this, I was outraged.AARON: I honestly just don't share that intuition. But that's really good.SARAH: No, I don't know how to describe this.AARON: I think I was just a little bit indignant, perhaps.SARAH: Yeah, I was indignant about it. I was like, you guys have been at social events making small talk by discussing the probability of human extinction all this time, and I didn't even know. I was like, oh, that's really messed up, guys.AARON: I feel like I'm standing by the rational tier because, it was always on. No one was stopping you from going on less wrong or whatever. It wasn't behind closed.SARAH: Yeah, but no one ever told me about it.AARON: Yeah, that's like a failure of outreach, I suppose.SARAH: Yeah. I think maybe I'm talking more about. Maybe the people that I'm mad at is the people who are actually working on capabilities and using this kind of jargon. Maybe I'm mad at those people. They're fine.AARON: Do we have more questions? I think we might have more questions. We have one more. Okay, sorry, but keep going.SARAH: No, I'm going to stop making that point now because I don't really know what I'm trying to say and I don't want to be controversial.AARON: Controversy is good for views. Not necessarily for you. No, thank you for that. Yes, that was a good point. I think it was. Maybe it was wrong. I think it seems right.SARAH: It was probably wrong.Shrimp Welfare: A Serious DiscussionAARON: I don't know what she thinks about shrimp welfare. Oh, yeah. I think it's a general question, but let's start with that. What do you think about shrimp? Well, today.SARAH: Okay. Is this an actual cause area or is this a joke about how if you extrapolate utilitarianism to its natural conclusion, you would really care about shrimp?AARON: No, there's a charity called the Shrimp Welfare Initiative or project. I think it's Shrimp Welfare Initiative. I can actually have a rant here about how it's a meme that people find amusing. It is a serious thing, but I think people like the meme more than they're willing to transfer their donations in light of it. This is kind of wrong and at least distasteful.No, but there's an actual, if you Google, Shrimp Welfare Project. Yeah, it's definitely a thing, but it's only a couple of years old. And it's also kind of a meme because it does work in both ways. It sort of shows how we're weird, but in the sense that we are willing to care about things that are very different from us. Not like we're threatening other people. That's not a good description.SARAH: Is the extreme version of this position that we should put more resources into improving the lives of shrimp than into improving the lives of people just because there are so many more shrimp? Are there people that actually believe that?AARON: Well, I believe some version of that, but it really depends on who the ‘we' is there.SARAH: Should humanity be putting more resources?AARON: No one believes that as far as I know.SARAH: Okay. Right. So what is the most extreme manifestation of the shrimp welfare position?AARON: Well, I feel like my position is kind of extreme, and I'm happy to discuss it. It's easier than speculating about what the more extreme ones are. I don't think any of them are that extreme, I guess, from my perspective, because I think I'm right.SARAH: Okay, so what do you believe?AARON: I think that most people who have already decided to donate, say $20, if they are considering where to donate it and they are better morally, it would be better if they gave it to the shrimp welfare project than if they gave it to any of the commonly cited EA organizations.SARAH: Malaria nets or whatever.AARON: Yes. I think $20 of malaria nets versus $20 of shrimp. I can easily imagine a world where it would go the other way. But given the actual situation, the $20 of shrimp is much better.SARAH: Okay. Is it just purely because there's just more shrimp? How do we know how much shrimp suffering there is in the world?AARON: No, this is an excellent question. The numbers are a key factor, but no, it's not as simple. I definitely don't think one shrimp is worth one human.SARAH: I'm assuming that it's based on the fact that there are so many more shrimp than there are people that I don't know how many shrimp there are.AARON: Yeah, that's important, but at some level, it's just the margin. What I think is that when you're donating money, you should give to wherever it does the most good, whatever that means, whatever you think that means. But let's just leave it at that. The most good is morally best at the margin, which means you're not donating where you think the world should or how you think the world should expend its trillion dollar wealth. All you're doing is adding $20 at this current level, given the actual world. And so part of it is what you just said, and also including some new research from Rethink Priorities.Measuring suffering in reasonable ranges is extremely hard to do. But I believe it's difficult to do a better job than raising priorities on that, given what I've seen. I can provide some links. There are a few things to consider here: numbers, times, and the enormity of suffering. I think there are a couple of key elements, including tractability.Are you familiar with the three-pronged concept people sometimes discuss, which encompasses tractability, and neglectedness?SARAH: Okay.AARON: Importance is essentially what we just mentioned. Huge numbers and plausible amounts of suffering. When you try to do the comparison, it seems like they're a significant concern. Tractability is another factor. I think the best estimates suggest that a one-dollar donation could save around 10,000 shrimp from a very painful death.SARAH: In that sense…AARON: You could imagine that even if there were a hundred times more shrimp than there actually are, we have direct control over how they live and die because we're farming them. The industry is not dominated by wealthy players in the United States. Many individual farmers in developing nations, if educated and provided with a more humane way of killing the shrimp, would use it. There's a lot of potential for improvement here. This is partly due to the last prong, neglectedness, which is really my focus.SARAH: You're saying no one cares about the shrimp.AARON: I'm frustrated that it's not taken seriously enough. One of the reasons why the marginal cost-effectiveness is so high is because large amounts of money are donated to well-approved organizations. But individual donors often overlook this. They ignore their marginal impact. If you want to see even a 1% shift towards shrimp welfare, the thing to do is to donate to shrimp welfare. Not donate $19 to human welfare and one dollar to shrimp welfare, which is perhaps what they think the overall portfolio should be.SARAH: Interesting. I don't have a good reason why you're wrong. It seems like you're probably right.AARON: Let me put the website in the chat. This isn't a fair comparison since it's something I know more about.SARAH: Okay.AARON: On the topic of obesity, neither of us were more informed than the other. But I could have just made stuff up or said something logically fallacious.SARAH: You could have told me that there were like 50 times the number of shrimp in the world than there really are. And I would have been like, sure, seems right.AARON: Yeah. And I don't know, if I…If I were in your position, I would say, “Oh, yeah, that sounds right.” But maybe there are other people who have looked into this way more than me that disagree, and I can get into why I think it's less true than you'd expect in some sense.SARAH: I just wonder if there's like… This is like a deeply non-EA thing to say. So I don't know, maybe I shouldn't say it, but are there not any moral reasons? Is there not any good moral philosophy behind just caring more about your own species than other species? If you're sorry, but that's probably not right, is it? There's probably no way to actually morally justify that, but it seems like it feels intuitively wrong. If you've got $20 to be donating 19 of them to shrimp and one to children with malaria, that feels like there should be something wrong with that, but I can't tell you what it is.AARON: Yeah, no, there is something wrong, which is that you should donate all 20 because they're acting on the margin, for one thing. I do think that doesn't check out morally, but I think basically me and everybody I know in terms of real life or whatever, I do just care way more about humans. I don't know, for at least the people that it's hard to formalize or specify what you mean by caring about or something. But, yeah, I think you can definitely basically just be a normal human who basically cares a lot about other humans. And still that's not like, negated by changing your $20 donation or whatever. Especially because there's nothing else that I do for shrimp. I think you should be like a kind person or something. I'm like an honest person, I think. Yeah, people should be nice to other humans. I mean, you should be nice in the sense of not beating them. But if you see a pigeon on the street, you don't need to say hi or whatever, give it a pet, because. I don't know. But yeah, you should be basically like, nice.SARAH: You don't stop to say hi to every pigeon that you see on the way to anywhere.AARON: I do, but I know most normal people don't.SARAH: This is why I'm so late to everything, because I have to do it. I have to stop for every single one. No exceptions.AARON: Yeah. Or how I think about it is sort of like a little bit of compartmentalization, which I think is like… Which is just sort of like a way to function normally and also sort of do what you think really checks out at the end of the day, just like, okay, 99% of the time I'm going to just be like a normal person who doesn't care about shrimp. Maybe I'll refrain from eating them. But actually, even that is like, I could totally see a person just still eating them and then doing this. But then during the 1% of the time where you're deciding how to give money away and none of those, the beneficiaries are going to be totally out of sight either way. This is like a neutral point, I guess, but it's still worth saying, yeah, then you can be like a hardcore effective altruist or whatever and then give your money to the shrimp people.SARAH: Do you have this set up as like a recurring donation?AARON: Oh, no. Everybody should call me out as a hypocrite because I haven't donated much money, but I'm trying to figure out actually, given that I haven't had a stable income ever. And maybe, hopefully I will soon, actually. But even then, it's still a part-time thing. I haven't been able to do sort of standard 10% or more thing, and I'm trying to figure out what the best thing to do or how to balance, I guess, not luxury, not like consumption on things that I… Well, to some extent, yeah. Maybe I'm just selfish by sometimes getting an Uber. That's totally true. I think I'm just a hypocrite in that respect. But mostly I think the trade-off is between saving, investing, and giving. Beast of the money that I have saved up and past things. So this is all sort of a defense of why I don't have a recurring donation going on.SARAH: I'm not asking you to defend yourself because I do not do that either.AARON: I think if I was making enough money that I could give away $10,000 a year and plan on doing that indefinitely, I would be unlikely to set up a recurring donation. What I would really want to do is once or twice a year, really try to prioritize deciding on how to give it away rather than making it the default. This has a real cost for charities. If you set up a recurring donation, they have more certainty in some sense of their future cash flow. But that's only good to do if you're really confident that you're going to want to keep giving there in the future. I could learn new information that says something else is better. So I don't think I would do that.SARAH: Now I'm just thinking about how many shrimp did you say it was per dollar?AARON: Don't quote me. I didn't say an actual thing.SARAH: It was like some big number. Right. Because I just feel like that's such a brainworm. Imagine if you let that actually get in your head and then every time you spend some unnecessary amount of money on something you don't really need, you think about how many shrimp you just killed by getting an Uber or buying lunch out. That is so stressful. I think I'm going to try not to think about that.AARON: I don't mean to belittle this. This is like a core, I think you're new to EA type of thinking. It's super natural and also troubling when you first come upon it. Do you want me to talk about how I, or other people deal with that or take action?SARAH: Yeah, tell me how to get the shrimp off my conscience.AARON: Well, for one thing, you don't want to totally do that. But I think the main thing is that the salience of things like this just decreases over time. I would be very surprised if, even if you're still very engaged in the EA adjacent communities or EA itself in five years, that it would be as emotionally potent. Brains make things less important over time. But I think the thing to do is basically to compartmentalize in a sort of weird sense. Decide how much you're willing to donate. And it might be hard to do that, but that is sort of a process. Then you have that chunk of money and you try to give it away the best you can under whatever you think the best ethics are. But then on the daily, you have this other set pot of money. You just are a normal person. You spend it as you wish. You don't think about it unless you try not to. And maybe if you notice that you might even have leftover money, then you can donate the rest of it. But I really do think picking how much to give should sort of be its own project. And then you have a pile of money you can be a hardcore EA about.SARAH: So you pick a cut off point and then you don't agonize over anything over and above that.AARON: Yeah. And then people, I mean, the hard part is that if somebody says their cut off point is like 1% of their income and they're making like $200,000, I don't know. Maybe their cut off point should be higher. So there is a debate. It depends on that person's specific situation. Maybe if they have a kid or some super expensive disease, it's a different story. If you're just a random guy making $200,000, I think you should give more.SARAH: Maybe you should be giving away enough to feel the pinch. Well, not even that. I don't think I'm going to do that. This is something that I do actually want to do at some point, but I need to think about it more and maybe get a better job.AARON: Another thing is, if you're wanting to earn to give as a path to impact, you could think and strive pretty hard. Maybe talk to people and choose your education or professional development opportunities carefully to see if you can get a better paying job. That's just much more important than changing how much you give from 10% to 11% or something. You should have this macro level optimization. How can I have more money to spend? Let me spend, like, I don't know, depends what life stage you are, but if you had just graduated college or maybe say you're a junior in college or something. It could make sense to spend a good amount of time figuring out what that path might look like.AARON: I'm a huge hypocrite because I definitely haven't done all this nearly as much as I should, but I still endorse it.SARAH: Yeah, I think it's fine to say what you endorse doing in an ideal world, even if you're not doing that, that's fine.AARON: For anybody listening, I tweeted a while ago, asking if anyone has resources on how to think about giving away wealth. I'm not very wealthy but have some amount of savings. It's more than I really need. At the same time, maybe I should be investing it because EA orgs don't feel like, or they think they can't invest it because there's potentially a lot of blowback if they make poor investments, even though it would be higher expected value.There's also the question of, okay, having some amount of savings allows me to take higher, potentially somewhat higher risk, but higher value opportunities because I have a cushion. But I'm very confused about how to give away what I should do here. People should DM me on Twitter or anywhere they have ideas.SARAH: I think you should calculate how much you need to cover your very basic needs. Maybe you should work out, say, if you were working 40 hours a week in a minimum wage job, like how much would you make then? And then you should keep that for yourself. And then the rest should definitely all go to the shrimp. Every single penny. All of it.AARON: This is pretty plausible. Just to make it more complicated, there's also the thing that I feel like my estimates or my best guesses of the best charities to give to over time has changed. And so there's like two competing forces. One is that I might get wiser and more knowledgeable as time goes on. The other one is that in general, giving now is better than giving later. All else equal, because I think for a couple of reasons, the main one just being that the charities don't know that you're going to give later.AARON: So it's like they can plan for the future much better if they get money now. And also there's just higher leverage opportunities or higher value per dollar opportunities now in general than there will be later for a couple of reasons I don't really need to. This is what makes it really complicated. So I've donated in the past to places that I don't think, or I don't think even at the time were the best to. So then there's a question of like, okay, how long do I save this money? Do I sit on it for months until I'm pretty confident, like a year.AARON: I do think that probably over the course of zero to five years or something, becoming more confident or changing your mind is like the stronger effect than how much good you give to the, or how much better it is for the charities to give now instead of later. But also that's weird because you're never committing at all.Sometimes you might decide to give it away, and maybe you won't. Maybe at that time you're like, “Oh, that's what I want. A car, I have a house, whatever.” It's less salient or something. Maybe something bad happened with EA and you no longer identify that way. Yeah, there's a lot of really thorny considerations. Sorry, I'm talking way too much.SARAH: Long, are you factoring AI timelines into this?AARON: That makes it even more sketchy. But that could also go both ways. On one hand, you have the fact that if you don't give away your money now and you die with it, it's never going to do any good. The other thing is that it might be that especially high leverage opportunities come in the future or something potentially you need, I don't know, whatever I can imagine I could make something up about. OpenPhil needs as much money as it can get to do X, Y and Z. It's really important right now, but I won't know that until a few years down the line. So just like everything else, it doesn't neatly wash out.SARAH: What do you think the AGI is going to do to the shrimp? I reckon it's probably pretty neat, like one shrimp per paperclip. Maybe you could get more. I wonder what the sort of shrimp to paperclip conversion rate is.AARON: Has anyone looked into that morally? I think like one to zero. I don't think in terms of money. You could definitely price that. I have no idea.SARAH: I don't know. Maybe I'm not taking this as seriously as I should be because I'm.AARON: No, I mean, humor is good. When people are giving away money or deciding what to do, they should be serious. But joking and humor is good. Sorry, go ahead.SARAH: No, you go ahead.AARON: I had a half-baked idea. At EA Global, they should have a comedy show where people roast everybody, but it's a fundraiser. You have to pay to get 100 people to attend. They have a bidding contest to get into the comedy show. That was my original idea. Or they could just have a normal comedy show. I think that'd be cool.SARAH: Actually, I think that's a good idea because you guys are funny. There is a lot of wit on this side of Twitter. I'm impressed.AARON: I agree.SARAH: So I think that's a very good idea.AARON: Okay. Dear Events team: hire Aaron Bergman, professional comedian.SARAH: You can just give them your Twitter as a source for how funny you are, and that clearly qualifies you to set this up. I love it.AARON: This is not important or related to anything, but I used to be a good juggler for entertainment purposes. I have this video. Maybe I should make sure the world can see it. It's like a talent show. So maybe I can do that instead.SARAH: Juggling. You definitely should make sure the world has access to this footage.AARON: It had more views than I expected. It wasn't five views. It was 90 or something, which is still nothing.SARAH: I can tell you a secret right now if you want. That relates to Max asking in the chat about glee.AARON: Yes.SARAH: This bit will also have to edit out, but me having a public meltdown over AI was the second time that I've ever blown up on the Internet. The first time being. I can't believe I'm telling you this. I think I'm delirious right now. Were you ever in any fandoms, as a teenager?AARON: No.SARAH: Okay. Were you ever on Tumblr?AARON: No. I sort of know what the cultural vibes were. I sort of know what you're referring to. There are people who like Harry Potter stuff and bands, like Kpop stuff like that.SARAH: So people would make these fan videos where they'd take clips from TV shows and then they edit them together to music. Sometimes people would edit the clips to make it look like something had happened in the plot of the show that hadn't actually happened. For example, say, what if X character had died? And then you edit the clips together to try and make it look like they've died. And you put a sad song, how to save a life by the fray or something, over the top. And then you put it on YouTube.AARON: Sorry, tell me what…"Hat I should search or just send the link here. I'm sending my link.SARAH: Oh, no, this doesn't exist anymore. It does not exist anymore. Right? So, say if you're, like, eleven or twelve years old and you do this, and you don't even have a mechanism to download videos because you don't know how to do technology. Instead, you take your little iPod touch and you just play a YouTube video on your screen, and you literally just film the screen with your iPod touch, and that's how you're getting the clips. It's kind of shaky because you're holding the camera anyway.SARAH: Then you edit together on the iMovie app of your iPod touch, and then you put it on the Internet, and then you just forget about it. You forget about it. Two years later, you're like, oh, I wonder what happened to that YouTube account? And you log in and this little video that you've made with edited clips that you've filmed off the screen of your laptop to ‘How To Save Life' by The Fray with clips from Glee in it, has nearly half a million views.AARON: Nice. Love it.SARAH: Embarrassing because this is like, two years later. And then all the comments were like, oh, my God, this was so moving. This made me cry. And then obviously, some of them were hating and being like, do you not even know how to download video clips? Like, what? And then you're so embarrassed.AARON: I could totally seem it. Creative, but only a reasonable solution. Yeah.SARAH: So that's my story of how I went viral when I was like, twelve.AARON: It must have been kind of overwhelming.SARAH: Yeah, it was a bit. And you can tell that my time, it's like 20 to eleven at night, and now I'm starting to really go off on one and talk about weird things.AARON: Like an hour. So, yeah, we can wrap up. And I always say this, but it's actually true. Which is that low standard, like, low stakes or low threshold. Low bar for doing that in recording some of the time.SARAH: Yeah, probably. We'll have to get rid of the part about how I went viral on YouTube when I was twelve. I'll sleep on that.AARON: Don't worry. I'll send the transcription at some point soon.SARAH: Yeah, cool.AARON: Okay, lovely. Thank you for staying up late into the night for this.SARAH: It's not that late into the night. I'm just like, lame and go to bed early.AARON: Okay, cool. Yeah, I know. Yeah, for sure. All right, bye. Get full access to Aaron's Blog at www.aaronbergman.net/subscribe

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#8: Max Alexander and I solve ethics, philosophy of mind, and cancel culture once and for all

#DoorGrowShow - Property Management Growth

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2023 70:41

* Follow ⁠Max on Twitter⁠* And read his ⁠blog⁠* Listen here or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts * RIP Google Podcasts

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DGS 203: How A Reserve Study Can Help Your Property Management Business With Aaron Lombardo

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2023 51:34

Are you aware of how much money you would need to protect and potentially replace all of the assets in the properties you manage? Join Jason as he chats with Aaron Lombardo from North Star Reserves about what a reserve study is, and how having one completed can benefit your property management business. You'll Learn... [01:21] Who is Aaron from North Star Reserves? [05:09] What is a Reserve Study? [16:30] What is the Difference Between a Reserve Study and an Inspection? [20:14] A New Concept: the “LIL Effect” [33:50] How to Stop Your Clients from Micromanaging You Tweetables “Property's easy to manage. People are tough to manage.” “Retaining a client, you're continually selling them on why they should be with you. It involves trust.” “One thing that property managers incur too much is blame.” “Each property is a business and it needs to be able to be maintained.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Aaron: what the reserve study really does is creates kind of an internal bank of their own funds and we help them manage a threshold so they can have a zero base threshold where they're just managing just enough in contributions to maintain those assets over long term or they can increase that threshold so that there's a nest egg if you will, a buffer or padding [00:00:21] Jason Hull: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the # DoorGrowShow. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not bebecause you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:21] Aaron: I went in and got my undergrad, my bachelor's in psychology. So I majored in family and marriage therapy and kind of the end of that I realized I didn't want to be in psych. I love it. I love people, but I migrated very quickly into the construction industry. And I worked for the third largest builder in the country and managed multimillion dollar budgets as far as from the building side and construction. Was recruited by the largest builder in the state of Utah and spent quite a bit of time with them working through kind of their ranks, managing, again, oversight on millions of dollars in purchasing materials, actually building the structures from the ground up. That experience led me into the general manager position with them on their custom home division quietly running this custom home division. They were really a track builder and they had all sorts of, different styles, designs and levels of building from commercial to residential, and they had this quiet custom home division that was really exciting. It allowed me to really apply my psych trade into sales, dealing really with high-end buyers and executors buying properties and interacting with those properties as investments and so forth. [00:02:33] And ultimately that kind of landed quite a bit of interaction with building the actual communities themselves, HOAs, working with those HOAs. And then I had an opportunity to really jump ship and partner with a friend of mine in rental management. The short version is that he had a deal to buy a pump company fell out from underneath him after he'd literally moved across the country. And he kind of started by default just managing a rental property, a family's rental property. Anyway, long story short is he needed somebody to come along and help out with that, both on the HOA management and just generally the business. So, We ran this business, we expanded it over two states, Idaho and Utah. In the end, we separated. He took the rental management, I took HOA management. We both have grown those. I really enjoyed the HOA management side of it. It provided a lot of opportunities to interact with property managers as their competitors, but also with the boards. And so it was really by forced majeure that I had to take a deep dive into kind of the rental management, interacting again with real estate, which is where maybe my education wasn't, but my passion certainly was. And then I had an opportunity to buy this little mom and pop reserve study company out of Emmett, Idaho, and this was just a retiring couple that I had actually used their services several times in the rental and hoa management industry. And I just loved the idea of getting back into the budgets, but it afforded me the opportunity as well to get into the field doing site inspections for these properties while managing these budgets. [00:04:08] And so I did, we sold the HOA management company. We bought this little mom and pop. We've grown it to eight states, and then we consult in several others. We're in multiple markets within, kind of these states and subsets of these states, destination stops and so forth. And I'll tell you what a reserve study is here in just a second, which is why I'm here with you, I suppose, Jason, but we do, reserve studies and site inspections for golf courses and country clubs high rises. We do commercial properties and strip malls. We do a lot of homeowners associations that have clubhouses and buildings that they have to maintain in streets. We've done some really cool townships where we've done entire, small cities or small towns, airports And and then water treatment facilities. So we, we feel like we've got a real, broad gamut of these things. These properties of different sorts. Some are owned, by a governing body like an hoa, and some are owned by real estate investors or owners that are looking to track their costs. And that's where the reserve study comes in itself. [00:05:09] Jason: Got it. Cool. So tell us what is a reserve study? [00:05:14] Aaron: Right. The magic question. So a reserve study is really just a 30 year outlay of all income and expenses and using that contribution is what we call it, a contribution of that revenue to reserves or savings to maintain and repair all their physical assets over the course of 30 years. So it takes in a lot of aspects of that, right? You have the revenue that comes in and we call that the contribution. And it's just a piece of maybe the property's total revenue and then that contribution will fund the future maturation of all of those assets from the replacement of the roof to the maintenance of the plaster in the pool ceiling on the streets, et cetera, et cetera. And so it really takes, the full gamut. It includes inflation and the cost of inflation that compounds over time. It includes the useful life is what we call it in the industry for each individual item, right? Not everything wears the same and not everything wears the same in different. Locations. Our California clients have properties, in Spokane and in Spokane. It's just a harsher climate. And so their properties weather different, and if they don't take that into account and really understand the nuances of that it catches them off guard because of the weathering that occurs in a different, in different places. [00:06:29] Jason: Right. Just like cars in winter areas with the salted roads, the undercarriage gets rusted out. California no issue with that. So, That's right. At least not in SoCal. All right. So, cool. All right, I get that. So how do you go about doing these reserve studies and how does this relate to property management? I really haven't heard of any property managers doing this. I'm sure some do or should be. So tell us about that. [00:06:58] Aaron: Well, so the truth of it is there's not a lot of well, let me rephrase that, a lot of property managers do that if they're, if they have oversight in an HOA or some sort of governing body. We break our service down into two pieces. There's the actual physical creation of the reserve study, and then there's the consulting on how to use the reserve study, our other kind of group of clients, aside from just HOA property managers. Are, owners and business owners. So, typically when we're working with a property manager on a rental property or a multi-unit property, it's usually the owner or, sometimes it's the CFO or CEO that's looking at this property from a strictly, revenue generation standpoint. And they're looking at their total expense load and we build that expense load. So it comes in two parts. The first part is really just the physical creation of the reserve study that involves a site inspection. So we perform a physical site inspection where we comb through every piece of this property. Let's use a high-rise as an example. A high-rise might have everything from a generator tucked into the parking garage to, common area, boiler units that are serving all of the rental units above, and the roof and the windows, and all of the pieces. [00:08:07] In a typical high-rise, there might be 80 to a hundred components. That all have a varying degree of cost. Some of them need to be touched or maintained on an annual basis, and some of them you don't need to really worry about but every 30 or 40 years and those, long-term items usually have a significant cost that we're trying to help our owners avoid loans on. [00:08:29] Right. They can essentially, Jason, what the reserve study really does is creates kind of an internal bank of their own funds and we help them manage a threshold so they can have a zero base threshold where they're just managing just enough in contributions to maintain those assets over long term or they can increase that threshold so that there's a nest egg, if you will, a buffer or padding that allows, far more flexibility on how to use those funds for the improvement of those physical assets. [00:09:02] So the first part of that is just performing the site inspection, converting those physical assets into usable data, right? So we'll document every aspect of, the pool as an example, right down to the pool pumps. Pool pumps and pool plaster and the pool deck and the pool cover. I mean, there's a dozen components that maintain what we would, you and I would just call a pool, right? Yeah, there's a dozen components that would maintain that. We break those down, they all get a useful life. We convert that into data that has a useful life, a term for its expiration, and then a cost associated with that. In the process of that, we're contacting vendors, usually local vendors to that state or maybe that destination stop that town and city. So that we're finding out the local pricing and we plug that in commensurate to, their actual costs. And then we produce what we call a reserve study. [00:09:55] And it's a lengthy report. It'd be a hundred page report. Half of that is usually a very detailed page over page breakdown of every component, what we discovered, what our actual site inspection uncovered. And oftentimes we uncover problems that they don't, and sometimes that their management or their maintenance men don't see. Their maintenance men have a tendency to look at certain high visual items where we're in the process of discovering from a construction standpoint. What are the forthcoming or future problems that they might incur? A great but terrible example, and this has brought the whole industry kind of forefront. Everybody at this point has heard about the Florida condo that literally fell, and it was a horrible tragedy. You've heard of that? [00:10:38] Jason: I didn't hear that. [00:10:39] Aaron: You didn't hear about that? All right. [00:10:41] Jason: No. So when I was in Mexico and there was a hotel, or like a condo building next to one of the resorts we stayed at, and it won all these awards for design, but it like started sinking and collapsing. [00:10:52] Aaron: Oh yeah that's a different one. So, so this Florida compound really a preventable tragedy and a terrible tragedy. So this had a pool on an upper deck. So it was like a parking garage and imagined large concrete with rebar columns underneath upholding that pool and the structure above it. And over the course of probably decades, there was corrosion from the pool. Now pool chemicals are just brutal on everything that they touch right, even the concrete. And over time they noticed some corroding that had leaked into cracks and fissures in the concrete and had corroded, the rebar, which is kind of the structural integrity of the columns themselves. Long story short is they didn't have the funds or reserves, right. They didn't have the savings, just interchangeable word with reserves. They didn't have the reserves to fund repairs. And after decades of that type of corrosion, the columns gave way and the whole pool inside of the structure gave. And once the structure started to give, it was a cascading effect. And multiple stories of this condo complex fell and killed people, and it was just a horrible, preventable-- [00:12:05] Jason: wow. [00:12:06] Aaron: --Problem. Now that's about as dramatic as these circumstances get mind you. Right. Most of the time what we see is we see, gutters, for example, that are leaking off into the the wall and we know the cues and the primers that are kind of indicating that there's probably a leak behind the stucco itself. Right. Stucco's a permeable material. Yeah. But if it gets beyond the paper, behind the stucco, then you have wall issues and we see that. Pretty often where rain gutters are not skirting all of the snow, ice, and rain away from the building. So all of that's preventable If number one, there's funds to do it and if number two, there's eyes that can pick it up. So we help discover both of those. We help outline, highlight those potential problems and sometimes those problems in live. And then we help ensure that they have a plan of how and when those funds will occur in order to maintain and replace and repair all of those assets. [00:13:07] Ultimately the purpose of any property is to maintain and increase the value of that property, right? No investor wants to get in... [00:13:15] Jason: yeah. [00:13:15] Aaron: ...and not come out on the back end, however many years that might be, and not earn a profit at some level or another, either from the sale of the property or for the ongoing rental of the property. And that can only occur if you're maintaining the property in a condition that it can do so, in my opinion, in optimal condition. [00:13:33] Jason: So one of the things that comes to mind, so my wife and I like taking trips to Mexico and we've gone to some resorts in Mexico that have been around a long time, like decades. Yeah. And we didn't realize it because the rooms seemed new, the paint, but we saw maintenance people on this building. All day long, every day there were just people doing the grounds, doing painting, like everything. And it looked great. And then we just took a trip to Puerto Rico and we stayed at this modern kind of new sort of looking resort. I don't know how long it's been around, but it's already has rust coming down the white sides of the building from the top. They had some nets to capture, I don't know, maybe bird stuff or, I have no idea. Yeah. But they were torn and the room was mildewey and like, it just wasn't what it looked like in the pictures. It was just starting to show some wear and tear, and we were just kind of like, why don't they maintain it? Which was interesting. [00:14:27] Aaron: Well, and this is the second piece of what we do, the consulting piece of this because we have conversations like this all the time. 'Well, I've got this property that behaves very differently than this property. Right? And how do we appropriate these funds commensurate to the type of building?' It really is dependent on the purpose. Like people, not any property is really identical. They're not used the same way. They're not used the same frequency. Yeah. They're not in the same climate zone, et cetera, et cetera. And I think of a similar building that you just described in Montana. So we did recently did a site inspection on this architecturally really fascinating building. And they kind of jammed it into the corner of two main intersections. Okay. And the whole building architecturally is steel. It's intentionally rusting, and it's intentionally that way to keep the maintenance low. That steel on the outside will outlive all of us. And so the maintenance won't be going into the exterior of this building. It was designed for a very low maintenance exterior. Now, the interior finishes are different. The interior, it's got this high end deck and you've got this neat garden area and, you get into the inside, it's got this, really nice elevator and all of these things require a high level of maintenance in order to keep functionality optimal for that particular property. [00:15:42] We do some properties for investors that really intentionally just want to strip out and, for lack of a better term, it sounds bad the way I say it, but, we treat it a little bit differently. They want to strip out every dollar that they can because it's just not a high valued property to them, wherever it might be or however they might be using it. In which case we can put together a plan that. Creates basically what we call a baseline funding. It's a zero funding. It's just setting aside just enough to fund the needed maintenance to meet those financial goals. Again, being very intentional, right? I think most investors and executors fail when you have multiple properties and they start using funds from other properties to carry another or they're not intentional about the monies they're setting aside for maintenance. [00:16:29] Jason: So let me ask a question. So I recently bought a house. I'm here in it right now. Right? And it's over a decade old and we had a home inspection and most people connected to real estate are very familiar with a home inspection. How does a reserve study differ from a home inspection, maybe on like a single family residential property? [00:16:51] Aaron: Yeah, I'll be real candid with you, Jason. I think that the home inspection is very similar. Matter of fact, I have seen some really great home inspections where they will outline potential problems, right? That's the difference between maybe a typical inspector and a home inspector. An inspector might come in and they're going to say, 'okay, these are the things you need to do. These are the things that are really obvious.' A home inspector has a tendency like we do, to really get their hands dirty. They're looking for the little primers, the little cues that indicate that you have a leaking water heater, that the roof shingles are coming up on the ends and, stuff like that. And so I've been really impressed with some home inspections. The only real difference is taking that home inspection and converting it into datas, dollars, and timelines. So that's the difference. So when bought your home, you get a home inspection and it's left to you, buyer, to say, 'okay, well how do I feel about the fact that there's this, that and the other?' And you have to figure out a way to now negotiate that home inspection with your seller on what it means to you. What's the financial, consequence of that home inspection? We take it a pretty major step, but one step further where we say, 'okay, how long is that problem going to endure? When does it need to be replaced? And how much is it going to cost?' And then we build a report that actually puts numbers, dollars, and timelines to that. There's no more guesswork. The math now has a voice. [00:18:17] Jason: Got it. Got it. Okay, cool. Now I can see how this would be useful for rental properties, which are not just a home to live in, but they are a long-term investment and they're basically, each property is a business and it needs to be able to be maintained. It needs to run well, especially if their goal is to have it accrue in value over time, or for it to be making them a certain amount of money each month. Et cetera. So, okay. [00:18:47] Aaron: Now there's two pieces of that though, right? All right, so you've got, I mentioned in the beginning that you've got this kind of physical aspect the site inspection and then the data, and the vast majority, mind you, we don't shy away from data, but we also know how to read it. So when we produce a report, it's usually a lot to digest. And the second piece of that is, well, now what do we do with this data? How do I actually use this data and apply, and this kind of gets into the human element. So this is where it speaks to my psych degree, my salesmanship, if you will, which I just really love people. I think as much as we love properties and I do people, it's really what makes everything work. So now you've got to know, well, how do we take this data? And apply it to a property and in some cases apply it to manage the owner themselves. I'm not a hundred percent clear on your audience, for example. But if we just take a property manager that's managing to an investor, and I've been, in this circumstance, I've been that property manager managing to a CEO of a home builder that had multiple properties we were managing and they have certain expectations and sometimes those expectations are based on their feel, their gut feel. [00:19:59] And it was always better to manage that executor, that owner, that CEO with actual math, with the actual numbers where I can push back without it being a gut feel on my end. So I have what I call the LIL effect, like coin that myself, LIL, like little, the little effect. So one thing that property managers incur too much is blame. When there's stressors, when there's misunderstanding, when maybe the profitability is not there. Yeah. Property managers inadvertently end up being the scapegoat for owners that have left the management to the property, but shouldn't be leaving maybe the profitability to the property manager. Right? So we have what we call the LIL effect. So, and the LIL effect simply is the first L is listen more to your clients. You'd be shocked Jason. How often as a vendor... so I'm usually brought in as kind of a vendor to augment what the property manager might be doing for the owner. And you'd be surprised how many times the vendor or the owner may call and want some specific details that the property manager, doesn't know or is fine deferring to us because we do some consulting. [00:21:14] And then they open up about all sorts of problems and complaints and I'm constantly on the defence. I want to focus on the data and, not necessarily the complaints, but I'm a fly on the wall all the time. And one of the biggest complaints is that they're I think is that they're just not being heard enough. So property managers do a great job managing properties, but sometimes there's a pivot point that they miss with their owners, their clients, their executors. And so the first L is just listening more to the client. The 'I' that we have in the LIL effect is Intention, so being very intentional about building trust. I know a lot of property managers that are really good in the industry because they just, are honest and they just naturally build trust. But if they're not intentional, they leave so much of that trust on the table and they can build a lot of trust by being intentional. So the first L is for listening more to your clients. The 'I' is for intentionally building trust. In fact, an interesting story to go along with that. When I worked for a builder I was told at the very outset that there was an architect, very difficult to work with. We'll call him Brian. And Brian was impossible. [00:22:26] Brian did things his way and he was just difficult to work with. He was the head architect, so everything had to run through him, and if you couldn't get it through him, you couldn't get it done. And I had to get stuff done through him as a fairly new employee with this builder. And I determined right in the beginning that I would figure out a way to earn his trust. And I decided early on that I would just believe everything Brian told me. I would just take it at face value, trust, the fact that he knew what he was doing. Now everybody knew that he was emotionally driven, right? And a fascinating thing came out of this, Jason, I learned over the course of, less than a year, took some time, but I learned over the course o of that year that number one, I earned Brian's trust by hearing him out, asking questions strategically, and being very intentional about building that trust. The other thing that actually was quite fascinating to me is that I learned to really respect Brian. I gained a relationship with him and I could get things done through Brian that nobody else could, simply because I'd been intentional and at the time it was kind of accidental intention. Yeah. And it was a phenomenal relationship that he and I had. He was pretty rough around the edges, had his way, but I had, I could bend his ear, unlike most people could because I'd spent a significant amount of time building that trust. [00:23:48] Jason: That's interesting. I had a job working at HP and there were two of us on a team. We managed this software called Concentra, which was this workflow for all of their PDFs and documents for all their computers, printers, at everything to move through to make sure that there was some sort of quality. And it, it went through legal and it went through everything else. And so there were us two nerds and our boss was in, we were in Boise and our boss was in Texas. And I noticed he didn't trust us. He was always like trying to micromanage us and distrustful of us, and so I just started setting-- we used an instant message tool to communicate most of the time, so I just started changing my status. I'm like, how can I make him feel safer and trust me? So I had the intention. To build trust. And so, and the way I did that is I just communicated through my messenger status, showing what I was working on all the time, so he didn't have to ask me and say, 'Hey, did you guys doing stuff? Or what are you doing?' It just said, 'I'm working on this and I'm working on that'. And I would just update it throughout the day. He started to trust me and then he started to ask me about my coworker, what's he doing? Is he getting stuff done? I thought that was really funny. Yeah. Like acting like he'd-- this guy like didn't even know our names though. He like, eventually he just couldn't even remember our names, which is sad. [00:25:02] Aaron: But that level of transparency, solves all so many problems before they occur. [00:25:07] Jason: Yeah. So I like that. Yeah. Property managers need to listen more to their clients and they need to focus on the intention of building trust because really, I tell my clients sales and deals happen at the speed of trust. Yeah. In order to get clients, but keeping clients. Same thing, retaining a client, you're continually selling them on why they should be with you. It involves trust. Yeah. Trust goes, they go. [00:25:33] Aaron: It does. And it really is about being intentional, right? Because again, I know property managers who are quite good at it, but they're, there's a difference with being intentional. Yeah. Being strategic. [00:25:44] Jason: Yeah. because if their intention is just to do their job, that's not going to necessarily create trust. But if their intention is to create trust, then they're far more likely to do it. Yeah. This is interesting too becausewe have a tool we use with our clients so they can get more out of their day and we call it DoorGrow's Daily Planning. We have this daily planning exercise, and the goal is to map out, part of the daily planning exercise is to figure out what are all the appointments you have for the day, and then what intention do you have for each of those? Because we find just by having an intention and being clear on what your intention is with a particular outcome, you're far more likely to get the result ironically. So, if your intention is to go into a conversation and win, or create a win-win or to benefit them or whatever, you're far more likely if you're clear on that intention, then you just go into it and go, 'well, I have a meeting.' Right. Yeah. So, yeah. [00:26:36] Aaron: Well, I couldn't agree with you more. It's so we've got listen more to the clients, right? So to finish the LIL effect, intentionally build trust. And the last one, Is really one of the most undervalued, and that's, listen to your trades. And I'm not talking about just hearing them out, I'm talking about like understanding, understanding their perspective. You'd be shocked how many, so I talk to trades a lot. [00:27:00] Jason: Define trades. Are you talking about vendors that'll do work on property? [00:27:03] Aaron: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Your concrete guys, your maintenance guy. The, these are invaluable people that, sometimes I think property managers don't reach out to these trades. At the level they could because they see a guy that, you know, just for lack of a better term, just eats concrete for breakfast. He knows concrete. He loves concrete, he's really good at it, and they want him to solve a problem concrete related. But I can't tell you how many times I've talked to vendors, I'm usually gathering price and I can speak their language and I know all things construction from the ground up. So I can get into those conversations and as I do that, I've been shocked. At how many things they keep close to the chest because they've learned, and this goes back to kind of the psych days learned helplessness. They've learned that nobody really wants their opinion. They just want them to solve a problem. 'Solve this concrete problem, fix this tree,' whatever it might be. And so they have learned over the years to just keep those things close to the chest. But what they have close to the chest is often little golden nuggets of understanding of both property and profitability. They have ideas on how to turn a property more profitable in their little, bucket of trade, right? They're concrete or they're trees and, property managers are leaving some profits on the table, in my opinion, because they're not getting those vendors, not building the trust with those vendors to glean the little pieces and it goes back to, I forget the name of the book, 1% Better, where if you're gathering 1% better and you talk to 15 different, vendors and they all can provide you, you know even half a percent profitability better, suddenly you have a property that's 7% more profitable. That's incredible. [00:28:46] Jason: Yeah. That's interesting. The last place I was in, we were renting and it wasn't managed by a property manager and the owner took two weeks to replace water heater because he was just being super anal and trying to figure out the best one. Basically a problem property managers can solve for people. And one of the plumbers came out and. He like was badmouthing the owner saying that he was being cheap and then he like, but the level of detail this guy was because I was just curious in asking questions because that's just my nature. He was telling me like, 'these type of water heaters, they last this long, this other one's going to go out soon. And if we put in one like this, I recommend it be this capacity because it's going to last this much longer or do this' like the level of detail he knew about water heaters. Brands of water heaters and how much, putting the right one in and what it could save you in the long term and doing the long term. I was like really impressed. Yeah, so this rings very true to me. Everybody that is really an expert in their craft. And this guy ran his company, so we were lucky that he was the one that came out, I guess. The level of expertise that some of these vendors or trades, or not sure they call them tradies, yeah. That they have is really yeah, it, I can see how it could be a huge asset. [00:30:04] Aaron: Huge asset. So that's the LIL effect. They really are a huge asset. So you've got, listen more to your clients, the intentional of building trust, and listening to your trades and vendors and anyway, that LIL effect will produce positive consequences every day of the week. There's really no negative and it's kind of rare that you can apply a strategy and not have, some downside of it. But it's pretty easy to apply. Maybe a more listening and intentional ear. Yeah. Something that we're noticing, that kind of goes along with this, and I think everybody's probably feeling this at this point. I've been waiting for everybody to feel like the pinch of what's going on, right. So, one thing that we're trying to do here for our business is just constantly be on the pivot where, well, what are our clients feeling? Yeah. What are they experiencing? What are their hardships and challenges? What other problems can we solve? And we've been doing that since inception, but I've been waiting since kind of some of the overall damage from where it started with Covid. When is this downstream damage going to really start affecting just masses, right? And profitability and properties and so forth? And over the last four to six months we're seeing more of it. And on our end, we're ready for that pivot. And what that pivot looks like is when people are pinched financially and emotionally. And additionally, right now politically, when people feel pinched in corner like this, yeah they have a tendency to retreat into corners, right? It's the old adage, that we retreat into our shell. And as people do that, unfortunately trades and property managers, when they're feeling kind of this trifecta of pinch, they have a lack of control. This goes back to the psychology. They have a lack of control. So what do people do when they're losing control of one thing? They go and gain control of another, right? [00:31:51] Jason: Yeah. They start micromanaging other stuff. [00:31:54] Aaron: Yes. And asking all the wrong questions in that micromanagement, right? And so they start micromanaging, they start trying to regain control. And I see sometimes property managers pushing back because again, the client's asking the wrong group of questions, seeking for some semblance of balance of control. And as they push back, then they're usually again scapegoated into some failure, some misunderstanding, some reason that the client needs to retake or re grab control. Yeah. And when they're insecure and out of control, we often coach our clients to tell them, 'look, let them. Give them a moment. They don't want to drive the car. They don't really want to drive the car. Yeah. They want to know that they can drive the car.' Right. And so clients come, they feel uncomfortable, they want to regain control. And so we'll tell our property managers many times, ' let them sit in the driver's seat. It's like taking a teen, and you remember the old driving the cars, they had a brake pedal in the passenger seat where the instructor could sit and slam on the brakes and-- [00:33:04] Jason: Yeah. [00:33:04] Aaron: --Scare the teen right out of his gourd. I mean, that's how I learned to drive from a instructor. But it's kind of-- [00:33:10] Jason: sounds like a mean instructor. [00:33:12] It's sometimes though it's like that the property [00:33:14] Aaron: manager would be wise to step aside for a moment and let them get in. Actually a lot like you did with, telegraphing. Almost over transparency. This is what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing. Let them see how you're driving. Let them see every turn you're making. And eventually they get to a point where they're like, yeah, he's driving fine. I don't, they don't want to drive. And property managers hold that close to the chest. I can't let them get in. I can't let them, do X, Y, and Z because that's my job. That's my responsibility. And they guard that tenaciously and that actually leads to more distrust in the moment than trust. [00:33:48] Yeah, I actually [00:33:49] Jason: teach. And I've had a podcast episode on this subject before, but I actually teach clients that the one thing that people want to buy from a property manager is not property management. What they want to buy is safety and certainty. Yeah. They want to buy peace of mind. That's really what you're selling as a property manager. And so if you're not using LIL and that framework, And you're not going to get those positive consequences. And if you're not making them feel safe, you're actually going to have a higher operational cost in your business because you're going to have a whole bunch of owners that are micromanaging you because yes, if they don't feel safe, they're going to create safety. Yes. In the form of leading and micromanaging you. And if the only positive way to push back on that is to let them know that you know what you're doing to showcase the expertise and let them know that you are better at this than them. Yes. Based on proven history and results. Yes. [00:34:44] Aaron: I, that is such a great point, Jason. Matter of fact, that's really, really kind of the key, if they'll filter everything through what you just said, if they'll filter everything through this idea. Building that trust and managing that relationship that way and not the property. The property's easy to manage. People are tough to manage. True. And if you'll manage to those, like you said, those, those expectations with their end goal then you can manage the property kind of on, on the side. In fact, it's interesting. I would also say that anytime, That they see Anytime that, our clients see micromanagement from their clientele, that should be the first cue that they're on their way out. Yeah. You know that they're, they don't trust you, that they're not trusting and that eight, eight out of 10 times 80% of the time, I would say that when you have an owner or property manager or an executive body that's frustrated or micromanaging they don't know it yet sometimes, but they're already beginning the process of finding somebody who they feel that can do a better job and they never do. [00:35:50] They only find somebody to solve a problem for a minute. But the problem is really, like you said, trust, expectation, those relationships, because the property is not the challenge. [00:36:01] Jason: Yeah. I mean, there might be one counter to this. So one thing that's I think is really interesting is we'll have clients in our coaching program and sometimes they're just like grumpy and they complain about everything and they're frustrated, but they stay. And then sometimes they're really happy and they're getting great results and then they leave. And so what we've learned to pay attention to, In the realm of client success is that it's not even necessarily connected to whether or not they are happy or you're getting them great results or not. Which is really weird, but client retention is based on whether or not they still see a future with you or not. And that there's a future plan. And so as long as they have a future goal, a future roadmap, they might be miserable as they do all of it, but they'll still stick with you because they see a future that includes you, and so they'll stay with you, but it's very easy for them to start creating a new future the second they start not having a good experience with you, they start to imagine, man, it might be better with somebody else. Yeah. [00:37:00] Aaron: And with that, you can't discount the 80 20 rule either, right? There's a, there's the law of averages and statistically speaking, it's been proven, a thousand times that. 20% of your clientele is going to be 80% of your time expenditure. Right. [00:37:13] Jason: Which is why you should probably fire 20% of your clients. [00:37:17] Aaron: I knew you were going to say that. I set you up, Jason. I knew you were going to say that. I the truth is I've actually watched property managers do that very thing and they just end up with the different 20%. Right? Right. Yeah. So better, the better way to do it is if you're going to fire, because I don't think. I don't think the idea is lost. I think you got to look at profitability and Yeah. Which ones are really not making you money, right? And those are the ones to let go because you're going to end up with the same 20% of kind of high maintenance clientele. And if they're profitable, then maintain it. And if they're not, then call it and get to the 20% of higher profitability clients. Right. That's again, coming back to intention. [00:37:58] Jason: I would agree related, if you're focused just on the currency of cash, but if you're focused on the currency of like your peace of mind and time and other things, then it might not be worth it. [00:38:10] Aaron: Some. That's a great point. That's so true. [00:38:12] Jason: So it might not be worth it because it really, the goal of a business isn't just money. The goal of a business is to give us more freedom, more fulfillment as a business owner, more of a sense of contribution and more support. That's why we build a business, why we build a team. And so some owners are stealing that from people, and I think a lot of times it's easily solved by just setting really good boundaries, expectations. And like you were talking about communication. Yeah. And that most owners, when they're micromanaging like that, they just want to know you're actually holding the steering wheel. That's it. As soon as they recognize that, they're like, oh, okay, I'm fine. And so a lot of times it's just a matter of being stronger towards them. Like some of my clients, I teach them to say, 'No, Mr. Owner, we're not going to do that and here's why.' And then suddenly that owner disarms. But a lot of times if they say, okay, I'll do that for you, the owner then goes, 'oh, I now need to lead them through everything to get the results that I want.' [00:39:08] Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. So that's great. [00:39:12] Jason: Interesting stuff. All right, so, now a lot a lot of my clients are managing small multi-family units, single family residential, maybe some condos. There might be some association management. When does it make sense to reach out to North Star? [00:39:28] Aaron: When they want to use and empower the actual math is what I call it, when they want to use and empower the actual revenue versus expense load for decision making processes. Okay. It's really, there's a balance between the revenue and the expense load, and in almost all cases, the expense load is higher. So when I call it a balance, it's not like it's an equal balance. The expense load over time is higher when you factor in the revenue with profitability, et cetera. So how do we empower the math to make decisions based on the actual dollars and cents and not just aesthetics? [00:40:08] Jason: Okay, so let's take an example. Should they reach out to North Star if they have an owner that they can tell is not doing things mathematically effectively so that they can actually leverage your data in insight to say to this owner, you're being an idiot. You need to do it this way. Is that a good case example. [00:40:28] Aaron: It's a great example. In fact, in downtown Boise there's a highrise, I won't mention it. And very nice, very, kind of high end highrise. And the property manager called us, this is actually just a couple years ago, but I still play this one out because it changed everything. And they were ready to spend $50,000 just on a furniture rehab. And long story short is the furniture was already nice. I mean, high end from the lobby to the rooftop. And in the end we ran through reserve study, helped them see that a $50,000 was not only not in the budget, but a gross overspend. They still spent 15 grand, but that other 35 went to a future roof project that they were not only not prepared for, but didn't have properly funded. So the answer is yes, to I would say anytime that a property manager wants to help mitigate or remove the emotion from the pushback that they might get with their owners or executive body and using the math to make those financial decisions, that's an appropriate time to call North Star. Another great aspect of having a reserve study and having the proper financial is creating continuity. So once you start that decision making process, owners and property managers get really good at creating continuity for that decision making process, and that reduces the time expenditure on a property that reduces the discussion, meeting time, expenditure with their owners. And so we call it continuity. In fact, we have a continuity program, which is really a consulting program that we use the existing study to take them through a year long process of decision making and preparation where we are basically on retainer by the course of the year to interact and help create that continuity. Directly, it's actually always designed for the property manager. So that's create continuity for the property manager to use the financials to manage those long-term decisions. [00:42:20] Jason: So I imagine another use case would be they're about to take on a rough property and I get questions like this, should I take it on? Yeah. I mean, often the answer is no. But if the owner is amenable to like fixing it up, making the changes necessary, but a lot of times there's a lot of emotion in it for them. Yeah. And so if they can connect them to the math and to reality through something like working with North Star then, and they're willing to do this, then they could end up being a good client and it could be a good scenario. [00:42:51] Aaron: That's correct. And we resist all things boiler plate, right? We like to tailor it to the real circumstance. We do use some boiler plate numbers to help owners get to a basic understanding of profitability and whether or not to buy a property. More often than not, Jason the questions usually: I want to make an improvement on an existing property, and should I? What's the downstream cost and the downstream cost of maintaining that improvement? Yeah. Right. We want to resurface the streets and, or we want to we want to add in a bar to this, to this, mini restaurant or a bar area. And so you, we've got to look at, where the cost expenditure is and the long-term maintenance of that improvement. [00:43:33] Jason: I would imagine that property managers, if they've even done a few of these situations or scenarios with you, learn an immense amount of insight and knowledge just by through association with what you're doing. [00:43:48] Aaron: Yes. In fact, that's, I didn't start this business doing the consulting side of this. I started with just, reserve studies, right? We just produce a reserve study, we produce the math, and it's my nature to kind of help people through that. And I don't push back on people with meeting and the time expense of meeting. [00:44:05] I help them through it. But that has evolved over years into really a full consulting program because you're exactly right, property managers when they really know how to use it They need less of my expertise on the reserve study and more of my expertise on using the reserve study to manage again, people right, to manage expectations of people, to manage tough conversations with people. Property managers have more longevity in managing a property. I find when one, they have that trust, and two, they do have some profitability because you're right, it is about those people. But their investors want to see good financials. And when the property manager can focus on intentional trust while at the same time producing transparent and profitable financials, I mean, I don't know why anybody would want to leave a property manager that is performing at that level. [00:45:00] Jason: Yeah. So I think the next question somebody would have is, this has to be really expensive. Would it make sense? Like say I get an investor and he's got like, a hundred unit building, or I get a different investor and he's got a hundred single family units and I'm going to bring in this portfolio. Is this something that. Is financially going to make sense? Is there a way for this property manager to convince the owner to do this, and for the property manager to be able to afford to do this in a way that it's going to make them money? [00:45:32] Aaron: Yeah. In a very rare circumstance, has it not really and I'm just being very candid, in a very rare circumstance, has it not financially made sense. In fact, in 2019, and it just happened to be a good timing in late 2019, we created what we call a virtual site inspection for those properties were financially, they just don't maybe have the volume of assets to merit a 30 year full reserve study in the consulting. Yeah. And and so we do a virtual site inspection, which is a little bit more boiler plate, but we'll go on. As long as I have satellite images, I'll do a virtual site inspection from satellite imagery. I can usually get some really great street view images and I can build a reserve study without ever leaving the office. We have staff here and I've got one guy and that's all he does. He just looks at those virtual studies. He builds these virtual studies so we don't ever have to mobilize. We did that because that got the price, the mobilization costs down and therefore it got the price of the reserve study commensurate to producing well, just a profitable report, so it didn't make sense. Yeah, it's not cheap to to, again, to be candid with you, there's a lot that goes into it. Sure. On a high rise, we might have, 80 hours into a full study with the site inspection and all the data gathering. So it's generally not cheap. And so we do try to find balance in that. [00:46:49] Jason: Got it. Well, this is interesting. I think we've gotten a lot of info from you. I appreciate you being here on the show. [00:46:57] For those that are curious or interested in maybe doing their first, reserve study or in connecting with you, how can they get ahold of north Star Reserve? [00:47:10] Aaron: Well, for your customers and clients, Jason, I'd give my personal information out. So they can contact me directly at aaron@northstarreserves.com. [00:47:21] aaron@northstarreserves.com, all spelled out northstarreserves.com is our website. They can call our office at (208) 365-0977 and we'd be happy to help out, put a quote. I don't charge for any upfront consulting. We'll take anybody through their property, their needs just to make sense and vet out whether or not it even makes sense. And I I feel that's just ought to be industry standard, and help people make sure it makes sense in the first place. Right. [00:47:52] Jason: Awesome. Well then hopefully everybody reaches out. Right? I appreciate you. All right, awesome. Well, we appreciate you being on the show, Aaron. This was really insightful and yeah, I'm really, I'm going to be curious to see how this could help benefit some of our clients as well. So thanks for coming on. [00:48:09] Aaron: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you, Jason. All right, so check out northstarreserves.com. Now, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you are wanting to grow your business, add doors, reach out to DoorGrow. We can help you do this if you're wanting to scale your operations, you just feel like you're banging your head against the wall. You're frustrated. You're trying to deal with all these different tools and software and trying to figure out what's the best way to scale my business. And to make a business that's infinitely scalable? You're going to need a lot of systems. And we've developed what we call the Super System. So you're going to need a people system for hiring and vetting candidates. You're going to need a system for operations in an operating system for planning that motivates your team instead of it's top down pushing your team all the time. We have DoorGrow OS. We have DoorGrow Hiring. You're going to need a system for documenting processes. We have DoorGrow Flow, which is a flow chart based software for mapping out processes and having your team run processes through. So if you're wanting to grow your property management and you're wanting to scale it, you're wanting to get a really good coaching for your operator or operations person. You're wanting to get really good coaching for your BDM or your salesperson to grow and scale and add doors. We are the best at this, so reach out to my team. We have a plethora of coaches and resources. [00:49:32] We've been doing this for over a decade. We love growing and scaling property management companies, and we know that we can help you. If you're willing to just do what we tell you to do, so reach out to DoorGrow. We would love to help you out. And if you want to test just something, test your website, go to DoorGrow.com/quiz test your property management website and see how effective it is. Usually this is enough to get people to wake up and go, 'Hey, I've got some leaks in my business people.' So most of you have leaky websites that you've gotten from people that are not DoorGrow, and your website is leaking you leads, deals, and money every single week. You could potentially be getting twice as many leads in deals if you're scoring an A on this DoorGrow Quiz. But most are scoring a D, C, or sometimes an F, right? So take this quiz, check it out, DoorGrow.com/quiz and grade your website. And that's it for today. Until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:50:30] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow! [00:50:57] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

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Episode 131 - LEARN THE TRADE, GET PAID: How to Transition into EP with Aaron Mauldin (Part 4)

The Fearless Mindset

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2023 35:50

Mark welcomes back Aaron for the last part of their conversation. In this episode, Aaron drills down the importance of taking classes and taking any job if only to open more doors in the future. He discusses the pros and cons of RST and going on tour, and raises awareness on the sensitivity of certain industries to guns and even terminologies like "active shooter." We talk about the possibilities for former police and military folks in EP and much more in this episode of The Fearless Mindset.GOLDEN NUGGETSAdjusting from police officer to EP agent - Aaron: "You have street smarts. You retired, you probably have common sense. You knew how to do report writing. There was a whole thing about being retired law enforcement that has so many benefits of transitioning into EP, but what they just gotta know is how do I f*cking function in a corporate environment? How do I adjust to that environment, and how do I know to lose the whole cop vibe, blend in, and just do my job? Like that's a big thing."The 2 components of active shooter response - Aaron: "There are people that will teach, there are two components to an active shooter, there's the educational standpoint of being the employee, and then for me with Katalyst, the two programs I'm developing which are structural clearing and active shooter response. Not the product of like, Hey, there's a gunman, he's doing damage. How do we come together? How do we get in, eliminate the threat, and properly be identified and not get shot by law enforcement?" Get to know more about Aaron and inquire about his EP jobs:LinkedIn | WebsiteTo hear more episodes of The Fearless Mindset podcast, you can go to https://the-fearless-mindset.simplecast.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also subscribe to the Fearless Mindset YouTube Channel to watch episodes on video.

spotify apple transition trade google podcasts get paid mauldin executive protection katalyst rst fearless mindset aaron you aaron there mark ledlow

How To Transform Your Marriage Together this year

business sales impact numbers memes prospects helping people making an impact minding help people gifs lasting impact do the right thing collin mitchell vidu aaron you humantic ai

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2023 54:56

All of us on some level, desire a transformation in our marriage. Whether that transformation is a small change or a complete overhaul, We want to experience more joy, more peace, more love and more purpose. The truth is….we are always going through some form of transformation, for there is no such thing as staying the same. The question is, are we transforming into what God desires or something else?--This episode is brought to you by our faithful patron team, who have chosen to help financially support this show monthly. Here is a shout-out to some of our most recent patrons. Nicole MitchellDawn GKimberly SKatharine CCandice GRegena JWe thank you so much for choosing to partner with us in blessing 10's of thousands of couples with free daily prayer emails and this weekly podcast.If you have been blessed by the free marriage after god content, wed love to invite you to join our patron team. Please visit marriageaftergod.com/patron TRANSCRIPTAaron:Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your host of the Marriage After God Podcast. All of us on some level desire a transformation in our marriage. Whether the transformation is a small change or a complete overhaul, we want to experience more joy, more peace, more love, and more purpose. Jennifer:The truth is, we are always going through some form of transformation, for there is no such thing as staying the same. The question is, are we transforming into what God desires, or something else? Aaron:This episode is brought to you by our faithful patron team who have chosen to help financially support this show. Here's a shout to some of the most recent patrons: Nicole M, Don G, Kimberly S, Katherine C, Candace, G, and Regina J. We thank you so much for choosing to partner with us in blessing tens of thousands of couples, with free daily prayer emails, and this weekly podcast.If you've been blessed by this free Marriage After God content, we'd love to invite you to join our patron team. Please visit Marriageaftergod.com/patron. Jennifer:Well, this has been a whole month now of the podcast. Aaron:We're doing it. Jennifer:It's awesome. Aaron:We are doing it. Jennifer:Welcome to 2023. How's January been for you? Aaron:Well, it feels like we've been doing better because we're better as in, we've talked about, we're getting into routines. The routines look different than they used to, but we're getting some routines and I like it. Jennifer:Yeah, sometimes you just got to reset. Sometimes life forces you to reset. Aaron:Yeah, hence 2020, 2021, 2022. Jennifer:Every year there's been new reset. Yeah, so what's been happening lately since last week? Aaron:Well, just before ... Jennifer:Oh, yeah, I was going to say that. Aaron:Yeah. I walk in, and I wanted to Jennifer look at the notes and she's like, "What notes?" I'm like, "Oh my goodness. Was one of the kids in here?" Jennifer:There was just two sentences and a bunch of gibberish. Aaron:Garbly. Yeah. Jennifer:Did you say garbly? Aaron:Garbly goop. It was, all the notes were deleted, literally. Jennifer:Who was the culprit? That's what I want to know. Aaron:I'm wondering what else happened in our room. Luckily, I was able to restore the notes so we weren't out of luck, but something that is awesome that happened this week is I got to start Jiu-Jitsu. Jennifer:Nice. The kids have been doing it for a year. Did you know that? Aaron:It's been a whole year? Jennifer:I know. Crazy. Went by fast. Aaron:They're getting really good and I was getting jealous, and I'm like, "I got to get good at Jiu-Jitsu so that I can wrestle with them and them not win me every time." I started this week and I think you're a little jealous, because I think you want to start too. Jennifer:I've been wanting to start for seven months. I feel like out of everyone in the family, Mom gets to make those kind of choices last because everyone's got to be okay if I'm going to step out of the house. Aaron:It is true. We need you a lot. Jennifer:Timing was off, but who knows? Aaron:I think we might try it this week though together, on a date night or something. Jennifer:I think we're going to try it on a date night. Aaron:We should do it. Jennifer:It's just a fundamentals class, so there it'll be easy for me, I think. Not easy, but I'm not going to do what you're doing. Aaron:Straightforward. Yeah. To be honest, it was one of the most rewarding and intense workouts I've had in a very long time. I walk out drenched, soaking. It's disgusting. I'm so wet. I was getting in the van and I had to look for something to sit on so I wouldn't get the seat all wet. Jennifer:That's gross. Aaron:It was really gross, and I'm also really sore. To be honest, I felt really good after the first class. I was like, "Dang, I'm not that bad. I did awesome." Then the second class, I realized everyone was probably being really nice to me because I'm not good at all. That was awesome, actually. Jennifer:Does that make you want to go back? Aaron:Yeah. It was still a lot of fun. No one was mean about it. Everyone's so nice and they want, everyone wants to get good together. Yeah, it just made me excited. Jennifer:That's good for this episode. Get good together. That's what we should call it. Aaron:Get good together. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to growing in it. Jennifer:Cool. Well, something that's been interesting for me was a little bit unexpected, just because we've had conversations about it, but ... Aaron:Privately. Jennifer:The kids started praying for me crazy ... Aaron:Out of nowhere. Jennifer:... that I would have another baby, and it really warms my heart. Aaron and I have talked about this in the past. We're like, we look at Edith, she's two, almost three, and she's been our baby for so long that it's like ... Aaron:Is this the longest gap we've had so far? Yeah. Jennifer:WI think to myself, okay, well if this is all the kids that we have, I'm totally content and happy with where our family is at. Then there's this piece of my heart that I'm like, but if I did have another, that'd be awesome. Aaron:Our hands are always open in that sense. We want God's will. At the same time, we're praying and asking God to bring us along with them. Our kids started praying for it. Jennifer:Every day. Aaron:At Bible time, I'm like, "Who would anyone like to pray?" First prayer, God give mommy a baby. Then Elliot just came up randomly, me and you were talking this morning, just about the day, and I can't remember what we were talking about. He just comes over and puts his hands on both of us and looks at us and starts praying for a baby. We're like, okay, I guess you guys want a baby. Jennifer:That's just been going on a week. Aaron:We will see if you guys get an announcement at some point this year about a baby. Jennifer:Stick around if you want to hear it announced on the podcast. Aaron:You will hear about it if that happens. Jennifer:We shall see. Aaron:For this topic, transforming your marriage, it's hard to say that. Transforming. Jennifer:No, it's get better together, or what'd you say? Aaron:Yeah, let's do this together. Get better together. Transforming your marriage together. We wanted to bring up some ideas, and we actually have seven of them for you. What inspired this idea for you, Jennifer? You kind of wrote down some of these ideas that we've been building off of. Jennifer:Yeah. Well, the initial just idea of, hey, let's talk about transformation for a minute. Marriage came because of a conversation that we had back in December. I was having a hard time dealing with desiring change and wanting change, and being frustrated over things not changing, Aaron:Which also has been the theme for this whole month. Jennifer:Yeah, yeah. I remember calling you, and we were having a conversation about, well, I was letting my emotions out and you, you're being a good listener. Then you said, "Let's transform together. Let's be transformed together," or something like that. Aaron:Yeah. Well, because you felt like you couldn't. I don't know how to do this. I can't do this. That's why we've been talking about this in various aspects throughout this month, but we all feel that way. That's why I shared it. I feel like there's things in my life that I can't break out of either, that I can't change. Then I was just saying, "Well, we have to be transformed."That's the only way we have true change in our life is if there's a transformation. We can't be the same person but act differently. We can't be the same in the same place and yet be in a different place. We have to change. We have to move. Jennifer:I think the tension of the agony in all of our lives when it comes to transformation is we're on one side where we desire the change, because we're frustrated over the results and things happening because of where we're at ... Aaron:The consequences of where we're at. Jennifer:We also know that to get to the other side of change, it just requires a lot. Aaron:It's painful. Jennifer:It's painful, and it's hard to make those changes and those habits, and redefining rhythms and routines, and things that will help make all of that happen. Aaron:I think an encouragement also about transformation, because it's easy to say, we got to be transformed. It's like, well, yeah. How? I think the first step, and it's something that we've been trying to reiterate, is that first of all, we can change. If there's areas in our lives that we don't like, or that we know God wants change in us, we have the ability to, because God's putting his spirit. He's put his spirit in us. It's not impossible, and they feel that way, but the reality is we, are being transformed.Like we said in the beginning of this episode, all of us are being transformed into something. Either we're being lazy or we're being lax, and we're being transformed into something that we don't want because we're just letting it happen, or we're following God, we're putting our eyes on him. We're seeking first his kingdom. We're letting his spirit work in us. We're not fighting it, and we're being transformed into his likeness. Jennifer:The lie is that we're stuck. Aaron:The lie is that we can't change the lies is that there, that we are what we are. Jennifer:We're here in our heads. We'll never change. That's what I was getting stuck in, is like, no, I'm never going to change. You see yourself one way, and it gets really hard to see yourself in a new way. Aaron:Yeah. Believing that we can, like you said, but then also believing what God says and believing that he has something for us. Jennifer:The reason why we wanted to bring this up to you today for those listening is because we kind of had this conversation going on in our marriage, and we know that we're not the only ones who have struggled with desiring change in marriage, or in parenting, or in life, in so many different areas of life. We want to encourage you guys, if you're in that place of desiring change and transformation, we hope that today encourages you.Maybe what we share, not every single bit of it will stick with you or be something that you feel like you need to work on, but I'm sure there's at least one or two. Aaron:Well, and the point is, there's this saying that it says, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Well, if you think about the whole thing, you're like, it can. The goal is taking that next step, just moving forward, asking God, saying, "God, help me get to the whatever the next footprint is." Jennifer:Yeah. Aaron:Not trying to look at the goal a thousand miles away and saying, "I can never get there." Just realize there's a journey that we're all on. We hope you feel the grace and the mercy that God's been showing us is that it's okay that we're on this journey, and that we sometimes don't know what we're doing. Transformation and change feels hard because it is, actually. We all can do it because we have Christ. Jennifer:We're going to share seven ways that you can transform your marriage with your spouse. Some of these are practical, some of them are just good old fashioned truth from the Bible. We hope that these stick with you guys and encourage you toward that change you've been yearning for. Aaron:A lot of these things are things that we ourselves have recognized helped us or will help us as we have been trying to implement them more. It's not like we've just came up with these for you. This is things that work for us too. Jennifer:Our experience. Aaron:This first one, I've mentioned it so many times in other episodes, but it works so well for you, Jennifer, but it also works really well for me. Jennifer:For us. Aaron:For us. Jennifer:We get to see it together. Aaron:What is it? It's write it out. It's very practical. The idea is write it out. This first one ... Jennifer:Not ride, write it out. Aaron:Not ride it out. That is a good tip, actually. Just get through. No, write it out, W-R-I-T-E. There's something really powerful about writing things down. Jennifer:We've kind of been doing it all week with the growth spurt, if people have been following along. Aaron:We got our own cards out. The fact that I wrote it down and put it on the refrigerator ... Jennifer:Makes you think about it every day. Aaron:I see it, and I realize I'm like, oh man, I'm not following through with that thing that I said I'm going to do. I'm looking at the clock right now actually. The thing I wrote down was I'm going to be in bed by nine, and I did it last night just about. Jennifer:You're not supposed to talk about it yet. Aaron:Sorry. Jennifer:That's the notes on there for later. Aaron:Yeah. Okay. Jennifer:You guys have to listen to the rest of the episode today to hear more. Yeah, I'm going to cut you off. Aaron:The idea behind this is meet together to write down some goals you have for your marriage. Jennifer:Sometimes we don't even know what it is that we want to change into or be transformed in unless we get it out of our hearts, get it out of our heads and see it on a piece of paper. You go, "Oh yeah, that's what it is. That's what I want." Aaron:These actually, they could be large goals, but something things that are practical, especially when you start talking together, you start realizing like, oh, there's some disparaging thing. Well, you have this goal and I have this goal. How can we meet in the middle? How can we figure that out? What's awesome about that is you figure that out. Jennifer:Compromising. Aaron:Yeah, compromising. Then also finding out, well, what are some large goals we have that we can write down and shoot for that might take years? What are some short term or smaller goals that we can start focusing on now? Jennifer:It sounds like more though, that's more for a couple who wants to dream together. If this whole episode is about transforming your marriage, we're talking more relational goals here. Aaron:Relationship, home life, spiritual walk goals. Goals. You can also break them up, goals for your walk with God, maybe individually and together; goals for your marriage. What do you want your marriage to look like? What do you want to represent? What do you want people to say about your marriage? What do you want to show to your kids in your marriage?Then the next one would be goals for your family. What do you want your family to look like? Represent? How do you want it to operate? For us, we've talked about this. We used to do bible time very consistently every day. A goal for us would be like, "Hey, let's get back to that consistency of doing Bible time every day throughout the week." Jennifer:Then asking each other, "What's the best time to do that?" That's where that compromise comes in of like, okay, well, for me, it'd be this time and let's work that out. I also want to just add right here that my encouragement would be, don't go list 25 ways you want your marriage to improve.Pick one or two, because you want something that you can work towards and feel good about when you're actually feeling the success of it, when you're feeling the change coming and you're making those decisions. If you overwhelm yourself with a lofty list, then your mind and heart's going to freak out because it's going to be hard. Aaron:Yeah. Some of the ways, I just want to mention one more thing. When we write these things down, you kind of said a second ago, it gets things that we may not know how to verbalize them in the moment, or they're things that just have dwelled in our hearts. Maybe those things have turned into anxiety or frustration or bitterness, because we don't see them happening, but they're also never being voiced in a real tangible way.It gives it a place to live. It makes it from this internal secret thing to a real life thing that can be looked at, evaluated, calculated, remembered, and even held accountable to, because it exists. Jennifer:Also just to add to that list, a repetition of seeing it helps you remember about it. There's so many things that we've talked about, and then it's like, once we've talked about it's gone and you forget so easily. Yet if you write it down and you see it constantly, in that repetition, you're forming that memory in your brain to be on it. Aaron:A couple of things this does for you in your marriage. If you guys plan a night to sit down, maybe it's at a date night, which is often when Jennifer and I do it, or after the kids go to bed, or in the morning after breakfast. I don't know, whatever works for you guys. You guys start getting into a habit of planning things together. Hey, we're going to do this together now. It's like, it's not just, oh, let's hang out and talk. It's a let's be specific and focused. It also gives you an opportunity to figure out life together.Now, you're building this bond of like, hey, let's talk about things that are important to us and what that looks like. The third thing is it brings accountability. Like we said, Bible time. Jennifer, you look at me, you're like, "Hey, remember we decided we're going to do bible time?" Jennifer:Oh yeah. Aaron:I'm like, "Yes." Then I stop what I'm doing because she knows that's the moment that we would do it. I sit down. Now we can help each other because we made that agreement together. We wrote these things down together. Now that bond and that commitment is all really good stuff that happens in your marriage. Jennifer:Let me ask this question, if that's all really good, especially if you're on the same page and there's unity and oneness toward working towards some of these things. Let's say you are listening right now, but Aaron, I'm posing this to you. If you're as a listener and you're thinking, okay, well me and my spouse, we're not quite there yet, and I don't know if we'll be able to have that conversation. Is it something you could do individually, separate? Aaron:Well, if ... Jennifer:For a time while the Lord's working on both of you. Aaron:Yah, maybe there's a relationship where it's not as tight and maybe that wouldn't be this season right now, they're not going to be sitting down and writing goals together. Yeah, absolutely. Again, we believe in the Holy Spirit. We believe in what God tells us. A wife or husband, if you're the one wanting to do this, I would say start, your planning and goal setting should be a regular prayer for your spouse.Lord, help me to grow in my love for them. Lord, help them transform into the man or the woman that you have made them to be. Seeing look more like these prayer goals for your spouse who maybe not be on the same page with you to be drawn into it more. Jennifer:That's good. Aaron:Yeah. Jennifer:All right. This next one, we're on number two. We're only on number two. Number two, how to transform your marriage. We're going to take it back to Sunday school. Okay, guys. It's because, if we're honest, we don't always operate this way. Aaron:No. We want others to, but we don't. Jennifer:Okay. Number two is the golden rule. Aaron:Yeah. If we can incorporate the golden rule into our marriage, into our life, oh, man. It would literally would change everything. Jennifer:You're saying. Intentionally do it like it. Well, because we do probably generally think about this at some point, but maybe not. I don't know. Aaron:The golden rule. If you don't know it, Matthew seven 12, Jesus says, "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them for this is the law and prophets." Jennifer:Okay, so question. Do you operate in this with me? Aaron:I would say I try to on a regular basis, but I would say the times that I don't is not good. Jennifer:Yeah. That's kind of where I land. We need to be better at this. Okay. Aaron:Often, the way my kids put it, because the way they hear this is I'm going to do to them as they do to me. I'm like, "That's not what it says." Often that's what we do. We do. You did this, so I'm going to do it. Jennifer:We just mirror everybody. Aaron:Instead of breaking that cycle and saying, "Oh, I'm not going to do that thing because I wouldn't want it done to me." If we just applied this rule more regularly, if we looked at our life and said, "I'm going to commit, Lord, you helping me to do unto my wife as I would wish her to do unto me," man, it would change everything. If I treated you the way I wanted to be treated, if I don't want you to be harsh to me, then I should be gentle to you, right?I'm going to treat you. I want you to be gentle. I'm going to be gentle. If I wouldn't want you to lie to me, which I don't know anyone who would want someone to lie to them, then I shouldn't lie to you even about little things. It keeps going. If I'm going to want to be pursued by you ... Jennifer:You were going to see by someone else. Aaron:I know. I don't know why I was going to say that. If I want to be pursued by you, then I should pursue you. Jennifer:Yeah. Aaron:If I want to be encouraged, then I should be encouraging. I should encourage you as much as I would want to be encouraged by you. The point is, whether or not you do it to me, that's what I would want, so I should treat you that way. Jennifer:Galatians five 13 through 14 says, "For you're called to freedom brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Aaron:If we love each other the way we want to be loved, if I love you as myself, which in marriage you are myself, that's what the Bible teaches, we're one. I'm actually fulfilling the law and it continues on, and it says, "I would never steal from you if I love you. I would never lie to you if I love you. I would never murder you if I love you." You don't break the law. When you love someone, you're actually fulfilling all of the law in it.If we treat each other, golden rule, the way we want to be treated, there'll be so much more joy and peace and power and forgiveness in all the things that we want because we're doing it. Even if only one person's doing it, you're getting 50% more of it than you were before. Jennifer:Right. All right, moving on to number three. Should we say it together? Aaron:Okay. One, two, three. Jennifer:If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Aaron:If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. That's really funny, because it's been our whole life here, right? Jennifer:Yeah. I'm sure everybody. Aaron:My parents always saying that. We always said something not nice. Jennifer:Even still, there's times we want to speak our minds. Aaron:Often, we get angry, we're hurt, and we think that gives us the right to say angry and hurtful things to our spouse. Maybe some of you don't, but we have when we feel justified. Jennifer:I was going to say, because the things that I don't mean to hurt you or be mean, I think I'm just stating the obvious or observing something, or saying something that's true. The way that I'm saying it or ... Aaron:Well, it's the heart and the intention and then the purpose behind it is what's not nice. I was saying critiques are good, this note I put here. When they're brought constructively, so like you said ... Jennifer:Well, not in the middle of an argument. Aaron:Well, and with the purpose of constructive criticism and love, and like you said, not in the middle of I'm mad at you, and therefore, boom. Jennifer:Right. Here's another one. Aaron:We've done it and we do it. If we can practice holding our tongues, meaning being quiet, not saying the thing that comes to our top of our mind when we're in the middle of a heated argument, or we're hurt or frustrated, is so much more fruitful than just letting it out. Jennifer:This is a really big one for making transformation happen in your marriage, because you listed a practical and an action, where it is how you treat each other, but the tongue, you hear that over and over and over again. The things that you say to your spouse, they are not easily forgotten, and they bring up ... Aaron:Especially if your spouse repeats them often, because that could happen. Becoming an echo chamber, here's things that I'm going to continue to say. Sometimes it comes from a heart of I just want, and you've said this, I have to say something because I feel like if I don't, they're not going to change. They won't ... Jennifer:You won't know. Yeah. Aaron:... Deceive that thing. Jennifer:Yeah. All I'm saying is even though it's a small part of our body, our tongues are so powerful. What's that proverb where it talks about the tongue brings life or death? It builds up a home or tears it down. Aaron:He who loves it, eats it, eats up its fruit or something like that. Jennifer:Yeah. We should have put that note in here, but seriously, we could have a great day. We could be treating each other well. We could be hitting our goals, but if we don't practice self-control with our tongues, or thinking before we speak ... Aaron:Well, and to be honest, silence is often better than saying the thing that you want to say. Jennifer:Not the silent treatment, that's different. Aaron:Not the silent treatment. Yeah. Not saying silent as a weapon, but holding your tongue as a form of love. Jennifer:Being slow to speak love. Aaron:Yes, slow to speak and quick to listen is what the Bible says. There's a verse that should put some fear in us about how we talk to each other. It's in Galatians five 15. It's actually the continuation of verse you just read. It says, "But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another."This idea of are we walking in the flesh so much with each other, the way we communicate with each other, the way we talk to each other, and we're not loving our neighbors ourself, we're not loving our spouse as we love ourself, we're not doing unto others as we'd have them do unto us, that it turns into this biting and devouring of one another. Jennifer:Like a cycle of just going back and forth. Aaron:I feel like we've brought this up before, but when we are talking this way, even in an argument, we're chipping away at ourselves, because we're one. We're chipping away our teammanship, our unity, our oneness, and our love. Being quiet is so much better than letting it out. Okay, number four. Stop being easily offended. Jennifer:This was a huge one for us. We started out this list by telling you guys this list was based off of our own experience and what we walk through. Aaron:Things that we're actually trying to walk through, yeah. Jennifer:When we came to this realization that, "Hey, we're actually being really easily offended. We need to stop doing this," it was a game changer. Aaron:Really was. This is actually one of the attributes of love. Love is patient, love is kind, and then it says, "Love is not irritable or resentful." Irritable means easily frustrated, easily offended, like bothered. It's like this. It's an oversensitivity. Jennifer:You walk past me, and you've done something that I disagree with or it's frustrating, or you do something differently than how I would do it, and I just respond. I just snap. Aaron:You snap. Yeah. Jennifer:I huff under my breath and I'm just irritated by you. Aaron:A good way of looking at this is when we make people feel like they have to walk on eggshells, that old idiom that says like, oh, I have to tippy toe. If I just slightly crack that little egg over there, you're going to like freak out on me. Jennifer:Another way this happens is by, if one of us wants to share something, and we say it the wrong way, or our intention is well, and we feel like it needs to be said, but the other person is just easily offended, they can't even hear what's being said, because they're just resistant to hearing. That's happened before. Aaron:I think we become easily offended when we get stuck in a place of loving ourselves more than we love our spouse. Jennifer:That's good. Yeah. Aaron:What that means is I love myself so much that I don't want you to step on my toe, or hurt my feelings, or say something that's going to bother me, or do something that I'm embarrassed by, or anything that's going to make me feel uncomfortable or inconvenienced or you name it. Jennifer:Yeah. The question in the head goes, why aren't you doing X or Y or Z? Aaron:For me. Jennifer:For me, yeah. Aaron:You did this thing against me, and now I am feeling this way, or it comes from a place of insecurity. You're ashamed or guilty, or you feel a certain way about yourself. We take that out on our spouse. We make them want them to be at fault for how we feel. Jennifer:Like projecting our feelings. Aaron:Yeah. There could be so many other reasons for this. We're not psychologists, but ... Jennifer:I could say one thing. When you're not abiding in the word and you're not walking with Christ, our flesh gets irritated. Aaron:Easily, yeah. Jennifer:Bothered. We get selfish. We get all kinds of pride. That's just another way. Sorry, go ahead. Aaron:No, but if we truly love, we will not be irritable or resentful. Always having it out for our spouse, like, "Oh, they always are this way with me." A good place to start with this is again, going back to that, writing it down, maybe having, writing down, "Hey, we're going to work on not being easily offended," and then reminding each other in those moments of a quick irritation, a quick offense.Why'd you do that? Why'd you say that to me? Reminding each other that we're working on it? "Hey, remember, we're working on not being easily offended?" Jennifer:Yeah. Aaron:If I bothered you, let's talk about it, but let's not be easily offended, and then going back and forth. I think that's a really good place to start. Jennifer:I just want to add, if you're listening right now and there's been tension in your marriage for any reason, start here. Make this one your number one. Aaron:That's good. Jennifer:Yep. Aaron:Number five. This is going to be a hard one for some people and a really good one for some people: more romance and more sex. Jennifer:Okay, Aaron. Aaron:Okay. I could have said more intimacy. That's what I originally wrote. Then I wanted to be more specific because the wife's going to see intimacy one way and the husband's going to see it another way. Really ... Jennifer:I think we all get it though. Aaron:We need both romance and sex. We need the blessing of what both of those bring to our marriage, both the physical and the emotional. That's kind of how I categorize this. Romance is more of the emotional intimacy, that connection, and then the physical is that sex. It's the physical connection where two are becoming one and the bodies are connecting. They're both necessary, both needed, and we shouldn't do one and not the other. Jennifer:Yeah. Anytime we've intentionally focused on this area of our life and just made it kind of a focus for us, it's blessed us. It's helped us. Aaron:Always. Yeah. Jennifer:It's made our relationship feel more full. We feel more unified. We feel more connected. We feel more interested in each other. Don't you feel like that? Aaron:Well, the desire grows the more we work on these areas, the more we want them in our life. I don't know if you've noticed, but the order I put these in is for a reason. They're writing it down. You could take each one of these things and start putting these down as relational goals. Jennifer:That's good. Aaron:Then they're visible. The doing into others, so treating your spouse the way you'd want to be treated. If I want my wife to be more physical and more in interested in me in that way, then I'm going to do things that would be loving to her, massages and other types of physical intimacy that she appreciates and desires. Jennifer:I see. Not being easily offended has to be taken care of before you jump into this next one. Aaron:Exactly. Jennifer:Got it. You should have corrected me when I said you should make number three, your number one. I didn't know you put these in order like that. Aaron:Well, I did because this is actually an area where being easily offended always gets in the way. If we have easy offenses ... Jennifer:Makes it so much harder to get there. Aaron:If I'm desiring one thing, and you can't give that to me for whatever reason, you're tired, long day, sore, painful, whatever, and I'm easily offended by that, rather than loving you and being patient and it messes things up and vice versa. Yeah, I did put these in an order because they matter on some sense to work on each one of these areas in little ways. They will all benefit each other. Romance, I just wanted to pull out some ideas for this section that the ... Jennifer:You're going to give them ideas? Aaron:Emotional intimacy. It's this feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love. That's the definition, in search of romance. It's a quality or a feeling of mystery, excitement, a remoteness from everyday life. Jennifer:I like that. It's cool. Aaron:It doesn't have to be this big extravagant thing. How can you just make the moment with your spouse special? Jennifer:Special. Yeah. Aaron:Different. Take them away from that ordinary just for a moment. That could be a going on a walk. It could be bringing something home that's like, "Hey, I thought about you today." That's an excitement. You actually like that when I, like a simple thing, I call you up and I say, "Do you want an iced tea?" Jennifer:I love it. That's awesome. Aaron:You're like, "Oh," awesome because that's out of the ordinary. I'm not always grabbing an iced tea, but you felt thought of. Then you get a special treat out of it. It kind of breaks up the day. Jennifer:I do love that so much, and it makes me feel so good to feel thought of in a special way that you know me, that you know what I would like, and it just affirms my heart and my love, and makes me feel like you're thinking of me, which is good. It's good for us to recognize those times that our spouse goes out of the box. Aaron:Goes out of their way to ... Jennifer:Go out of their way to ... Aaron:To try these things. Try be more romantic and exciting and different. Jennifer:When they do it to affirm them and use your words and say, "I really appreciated that," or, "I really love that." The more we affirm each other in those ways of being that we want to see more of, they'll continue to happen. Aaron:Yeah. Jordan Peterson as a quote says, "Don't ever punish behavior you want repeated." Even if I don't follow through with or do something in the way that you might want, there's been times I've brought you iced tea that you don't like, because you have a taste for certain types of teas, but I didn't know that. Then I learned it. You could have taken the opportunity to punish me for and be like, "This is what you got me. I hate this." Jennifer:Oh, got you. Aaron:You could be like, "What? This was so thoughtful. Just for future, this isn't my favorite tea, but I'm so happy that you did that for me." Jennifer:I think that's what I did. Aaron:That's what you did. I thought, oh, thank you. I didn't know that, because I actually didn't. Now when I get you tea or do something, I think, oh, where would she like me to get tea? Jennifer:That's awesome. Aaron:It also has taught me to ask you for future, "Hey, where's your favorite place to get this?" Jennifer:It's like a get to know me. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Aaron:Don't punish those behaviors you want repeated, even if it doesn't happen the way you want, the way you expect, but affirm it and encourage it, so that it happens more from your spouse on both sides. Jennifer:I like that you kind of broke romance and physical intimacy into separate kind of categories here, because romance is so much more of that connectedness and ... Aaron:That emotional connection. Jennifer:It's so important. It's an important part of marriage, but so is physical intimacy. I think it's really important for us to remember that our spouses need us. It's weird that I put that in the plural, just ... Aaron:Our spouses. Jennifer:Our spouse needs us and we have needs. Being there for one another and being willing to make the effort and put our hearts and our minds toward that is ... Aaron:Oh, we're talking about the physical side now. Jennifer:Yeah, yeah. In the physical, just as much as the romance are connected side of things. Aaron:Yeah. I wanted to bring up on the physical side of things, because I know that this is a huge area of struggle in a lot of marriages. It was a huge one for us for many years. It's only been in the last handful of years that it's been getting so much better. We've been growing and getting excited about these things and praying about it more. First and foremost, it's a powerful gift. Physical intimacy, sex is a powerful gift from God given to husbands and wives. It really is.We have to change our minds about that. Talking about transformation, we need our minds changed for true transformation to happen. If we can change our mind that sex is a good thing, because I know many people see sex as a bad thing, or a hurtful thing, or something that they don't enjoy. Jennifer:Stressful thing. Aaron:Yeah. It can be all of those things. If we start reminding ourselves and thinking, no, this is a good thing. This is a gift, that'll change a lot of things. Also, it's a command. First Corinthians seven, three, the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. On both sides, it doesn't just say the wife to her husband only, as if every situation is always, the husband needs it more than the wife, because that's not true. There's some situations where it's totally different with the wife and the husband, but it says to both.In other places, it says that her body is not her own. It is yours. Your body is not your own, it is hers. Just reiterating this, the power and the truth behind your oneness. You are one body and you cannot control it and use it and as a weapon. Not only is it a gift, but it's also a command. There's some actual really awesome benefits to sex.If you didn't know this, it helps relieve stress and anxiety. I know sex might gift some people anxiety, and I pray for you that you would, like we said, have a transformation in your mind about this. It does biologically relieve stress and anxiety. The hormones that get released in your body do that. Jennifer:It also helps your immune system. Aaron:It does. Those same hormones that help with relieving stress and anxiety helps boost your immune system. Also, when you have less cortisol in your body, that's the stress hormone, you get sick less because cortisol can actually make you, it weakens your immune system. It helps your immune system. It also brings pleasure and excitement. That's just such a good thing. Jennifer:Joy, yeah. Aaron:We need that in our marriage. We need that connection and that pleasure more. Most importantly, sex reinforces closeness and oneness. Jennifer:Yeah. Speaking of oneness, you brought up earlier, just briefly not using sex as a tool or a weapon, and then you kind of just kept on going. I just want to go back to that really quick. I think sometimes, we don't even realize when we are withholding our bodies from each other because of being easily offended, or thinking that they're not thinking of us. Aaron:Well, they haven't given me what I want yet. Jennifer:There is a list of things that could possibly motivate someone to kind of close themselves off and be guarded. When you say weaponize, and you say using your body as a tool, that's what you're talking about, right? Yeah. Aaron:If you use it in a negative way, it becomes a weapon. Jennifer:It also becomes a roadblock to moving forward, to experience reconciliation and connectedness. Aaron:This is not the kind of transformation we want when we do this, but when we are more free with each other and open with each other in this way. It's good. Now, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any times that you're like, "Hey, can we forego tonight?" Jennifer:Yeah. Aaron:Again, that goes back to the communication, and that goes back to goal setting together and also ... Jennifer:Considering one another. Aaron:Yeah, considering one another, treating each other as we'd like to be treated. Again, there's an order. Okay. Jennifer:What's next in your order, Aaron? Aaron:Invest in your marriage. Okay. I think this sounds obvious, but ... Jennifer:How much money do you have to ... Aaron:Exactly. Well, just having it's almost like if you were to invest in your education, invest in this business, taking one of the most important things in your entire life, and are we ... Jennifer:You're elevating it. Aaron:Are we investing in it? Jennifer:You're saying this is a priority. This is what I'm going to put my effort and my energy and my resources and everything I've got towards, because this matters. Aaron:Investment means I'm going to spend time and money and energy. I'm going to invest. When you invest in your marriage, you're going to get some of the greatest returns you can ever think of. Jennifer:Generational. Aaron:Yeah. You're going to get returns for a long time with your children, because they're going to look back on your marriage and be like, "Wow, my parents, they invested in each other. They loved each other. They weren't perfect, but man, they tried hard." Jennifer:Because of that kind of example, when they get married, they will have the same fortitude and excitement around investing in their marriage. Aaron:At least that's the goal, right? Jennifer:Yeah. Aaron:I want my kids to have the same desire. Jennifer:What are some ways we can invest? Aaron:Something we did a long time ago when we were going through some of our hardships, actually, wasn't it right at that end point of things changing for us? Jennifer:Yeah. Aaron:We went to a marriage retreat, and there's marriage retreats all over the country. Jennifer:We went to Family Lives Weekend to Remember ... Aaron:Which are awesome. Jennifer:It was actually really cool, because we kind of rededicated our marriage, and our purpose, and everything that we had been walking through just submitted it to God and said, "We're going to keep going." Aaron:You could try Weekend to Remember. That's a family life event. That's a good one. There might be one going on at your church and you don't even know about it. Just look at if you have a pamphlet or a website, or you can Google it. There's a lot of, we'd suggest a Christian marriage retreat, but marriage retreats, that's one really good way to invest in your marriage. What's another one? Jennifer:Reading books together or individually, and just kind of sifting through the notes. Aaron:Talking about them. Jennifer:Talking about them, but there are a lot of marriage books out there. Aaron:Yeah. Do we know any marriage books specifically? Jennifer:No, actually. Marriage After God is one that I would recommend. We have a couple of marriage books if you want to look on our store. Aaron:A few more than a couple, but ... Jennifer:Some devotionals, some prayer books that you guys could do together, which is awesome. Aaron:You can go to shop.marriageaftergod.com to look at everything we have to offer. Jennifer:There's a lot of other good books too, Meeting a Marriage, See Through Marriage, by [inaudible 00:41:35]. Aaron:Sacred Marriage was a really good one. Jennifer:By Gary Thomas. Aaron:Get into books. If you're like me, I like audiobooks. I can consume them quicker, I can also retain them better. Jennifer:I am not an audio person. I have to have the tangible, I can't even do digital. I have to have the book that I can curl the pages back. Aaron:I know. I love something to read too, but also this creates another thing to talk about and to share with each other in growing your marriage, so you're not just investing in what you're consuming, but also what you're discussing with each other. Gives you things to talk about also, which is really good. Regularly planned date nights. Jennifer:Or even double date nights. Go out with another couple, and you'll notice you guys can start talking about marriage. All of a sudden, you don't feel so alone in some of the things you're wrestling in, because ... Aaron:I think we've brought this up in 80 episodes, talking about date night. We say it so often because it's something that we dedicated it to several years ago, how many? Maybe five or six years ago? Jennifer:It was after we had Wyatt, Oliver Wyatt. Aaron:We realized there was a while that had gone by and we're like, "Man, when's the last time we went on a date with each other?" We just put it on the calendar every week, and we figure out a babysitter, and we planned it. Now, that didn't mean we went every week, but just the fact that it was on the calendar, again, the fact that we wrote it down, meant it happened way more often than it would've if we didn't.Investing in that way. Since this is under investing in your marriage, we've talked about in the past that it doesn't have to be something where you go out or spend money. I would say make this an intentional investment of I want to go do something special, even if it's not every time. Jennifer:Catch each other by surprise. Aaron:Yeah. Set a reservation at a restaurant you guys don't go to often. Go throw axes at your local ax throwing place if you have one. Jennifer:Get fast food and go do an activity like some, I don't know, ride bikes or something. Aaron:Invest in a way that's different than normal, if you can. Maybe you have to save for it a little bit, and that's okay. That actually makes it more special. Jennifer:Another way that you can invest in your marriage is find out if your church has a marriage group. Something that really, really affected our marriage in a positive way was the church. Aaron:Probably, I think we often attributed it to saving our marriage. Jennifer:Yeah. We were going to a church back in, I think this is our third year of marriage? We were in California, and they had a marriage group. You came to me and you were like, "Hey, we're going to go. It's on Wednesday night." Aaron:It was terrifying. Jennifer:You need to be there. You need to show up. That was a really dark time for me, and I was resistant toward going and didn't want to do it, but you encouraged us and said, "This is what we need to try." We showed up, and it was scary. There was a lot of people there. When we sat at the table and we started hearing the marriage stories coming up, it was actually really beautiful. Aaron:Yeah. Jennifer:Very eye-opening and it had a lot of purpose. You just got to do it. If your church has one, go for it. Aaron:If they don't have one ... Jennifer:Go find one. Aaron:... You should ask them to start one. Jennifer:Yeah. Aaron:You never know. There might be 20 other couples that have asked, and they'll finally be like, "Oh, we should start a marriage ministry." Jennifer:Number seven is, is this the last one? Aaron:This is the last one. Jennifer:See your spouse and yourself through Christ's eyes. I mentioned this in a previous episode, I think one or two back. It's really important that we are able to do this. The only way we can do it is if we know Christ. Aaron:Yeah. It also, again, this changes everything. Going back to what you talked about earlier also of what if there's a couple that aren't on the same page? Maybe one's not a believer. Maybe they're going through some really hard things and it's hard to connect. When we can look at our spouse through Christ and say, "Wow, okay, Lord," like we talked about, I think an episode or two ago about them having a brotherly love, a sisterly love, of seeing them in that way. Maybe it doesn't feel like they're my spouse right now because of this or that, because of this pain, because of that hurt.Man, I'm going to try and see them the way Christ does. I'm going to try and love them the way Christ loves them, and stop looking at them from an earthly fleshly point of view of all of the things that you did wrong. Jennifer:Critical. Aaron:All of the things that need to change. Jennifer:I feel like when you look through Christ's eyes, there's like this lens of grace that you could just see not who they are in their sin, but who they are because of the blood of Christ, and what he's done, and become a a new creation in him, and to hope for transformation in their life. Aaron:Yeah. Here's what it says in two Corinthians five 16 through 19. It says, "From now on, therefore we regard no one according to the flesh." This is essentially what we're talking about here. Let's stop regarding each other according to flesh, and let's start regarding each other according to the Spirit, according to what Christ did and who Christ is. Then it says, "Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold the new has come."All this is from God, who through Christ, reconciled us to himself, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Instead of seeing only the flesh, only the sin and the mistakes, and the shortcomings, and the frustrations, and the hurts, we see the one who Christ died for. We see the one Christ shed his blood for. We see the one Christ as reconciling to the Father through his life, death, and resurrection. Jennifer:In our, it's 16 years, right? Aaron:Yeah. Jennifer:16 years of marriage. Aaron:We just had that. Jennifer:There have been many times that we've had to intentionally see each other through Christ's eyes, because it's not something we tend to do on a daily basis, although we should, right? Aaron:Yeah. It's usually in those really hard times that we're like, ugh. Jennifer:Then everything just kind of falls flat on the floor and you're like, "Well, grace." That's what he is given to us. Aaron:In our testimony that you share in the Unbuild Wife book, that's essentially what happened. We were on the verge of just being done, calling it quits. I felt the Lord telling me, "Are you going to forgive your wife? Are you going to love her as I did?" He just reminded me of who he is.It made it impossible for me to, because I was either going to say, "No, I'm not going to look at her like that, and I'm over it," or I was going to say, "No, Lord, I love you and I'm going to try and see her that way." Jennifer:Yeah. Some of you listening right now, I just want to encourage you, you may be in a place where you need to pray and ask God to give you those eyes to see through Christ's lens. You might need to pray for that because ... Aaron:We have to. Jennifer:We have to. Aaron:I would say, because I can't do it without him. Jennifer:Yeah. We can't do it in our flesh. Yeah, all of us listening right now, we need to do that. Then I just wanted to ... we kind of summed up all the important stuff, right? Aaron:Yeah. Jennifer:I can move on. Aaron:You can. Jennifer:You guys know if you've been listening for a long time, I bring up memes from time to time, and I get stuck on social media in that way. I love those transformation videos where they show you the reel of pictures, where it's like, "This is who I was, but this is who I am." Aaron:Yeah, they're really powerful. Jennifer:A really huge weight change. That's what I'm thinking of right now is just like ... Aaron:Well, we've even seen ones of people that are being changed because of Christ, and they had how they were before, this party, and then all of a sudden, they're totally different. You're like, "Whoa." Jennifer:Yeah. The ones that I'm thinking of specifically are the weight ones and just how dramatic it is. They'll usually show bits and pieces of what it took to get there. Aaron:The progress. Jennifer:The progress, the working out. It just moves me, because I think you don't just get to be transformed. You have to be willing to put in the work. I just wanted to remind all of us that change can happen in us, like you mentioned earlier, through being passive and allowing influences in our life that change us, but we're not going to say that's for the positive. Aaron:Rarely. Jennifer:Rarely it is. Aaron:Accidentally change for the positive. Jennifer:Yeah. The powerful transformation that we are all eager to see in our lives and in our marriages comes from putting in the time, putting in the work, putting in the energy. It's being selfless, it's being sacrificial. It requires much, just like someone going through a weight loss journey and having to do muscle toning. You know that they did everything that they possibly could to get there. Aaron:Yeah. Well, the Lord puts it this way. We got to put to death our flesh. That's essentially what this process is putting behind us our flesh, and designing to walk in his spirit. The things that we brought up in this episode were hopefully just some practical things, but some things that we can actually do and try to do. We hope you enjoyed those. This is the last episode of this month. Jennifer:The last week of the month, where we're talking about this specific growth spurt. Is that what you're going to say? Aaron:Yes. Jennifer:This section of the podcast, we want to encourage you guys to take time to invest, like Aaron mentioned earlier ... Aaron:Write down. Jennifer:... In a personal way. Basically, this one covers everything. No. The goal here is to build trust with your spouse by doing what you say you will. Whatever commitments you've made, we want you to stick to them so that this is our encouragement. The way that we are encouraging that is by taking a post-it note, or a sheet of paper, or a three by five card, and just start with one.If you have more on there, that's great, but you still got a week left to do this. If you want to keep doing this past January, keep doing it. It's just one way that you can experience a maturity and transformation in your marriage. Aaron:Mine is, like I said ... Jennifer:Oh, yeah, we were going to talk about it. Aaron:... Mine's supposed to be in bed by nine. Jennifer:Look, the effort was there, and I just want to let it ... Aaron:It was on the refrigerator, and I even mentioned because we thought this was only going to take us 30 minutes to record. We're wrong. It's 10:19, and so I'm going to forgive myself today, and I'm going to try and be in bed by nine tomorrow. Jennifer:You've been doing great. I put on mine affirm the kids, and it's because as a mom and homeschooling, they're in the home all the time. They're with me all the time. I do a lot of correction and critique, and helping them in their life. Aaron:Yeah, mature. Jennifer:Figuring what mature and what's right and stuff. I just wanted to make sure that I was affirming them. It's like, I don't know. I don't know how things have been, so I just wanted to make sure that I was doing that. I put on mine, affirm the kids, and so I've been doing that. It's actually been really beautiful. I love seeing their eyes light up. It just feels good. Aaron:All right. I'm going to pray. Dear Lord, thank you for the change we have already experienced in marriage. We pray we would continue to see positive transformation on our relationship. We pray for more love, more peace, and more joy. Please help us to be intentional in the way we choose to interact in marriage every day. Holy Spirit, we ask you to help us to not be easily offended by each other. Show us areas of our marriage we can invest in and put the time and energy into making what we have even better.Please help us to see each other as you see us, and help us to hope for the change we desire to see. Thank you for our marriage, and thank you for the opportunities you've given us to make changes in our lives. We pray our marriages continue to mature and that it honors you. In Jesus' name, amen.

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HELP IS ON THE WAY: Making A Lasting Impact By Helping People Without Minding The Numbers

Sales Hustle

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2022 5:10

IT'S NOT THE NUMBERS YOU DELIVERED THAT MATTER, IT'S THE IMPACT THAT LASTSMany sellers today are so focused on the numbers to deliver, just trying to hit their quota, but are those the things that really matter? Aaron Bock is back to discuss why it's more important to do the right thing and help out prospects even when they don't become your customer because the impact you made will surely pay off one day. Learn about making this kind of impact in this latest episode of Sales Transformation.Want to book more meetings and close more deals? Start selling the way your buyers want to buy with Humantic AI! Stop sending boring sales e-mails and start sending personalized GIFs and Memes with VIDU.io!TRANSFORMING MOMENTSAARON:“Just make an impact on people in a positive way. Always. And like, yeah, not everyone will be a customer but, but a lot will if you just keep doing the right things.”AARON:“You can't just go around helping all day and just not following through, but I think if you're truly helping, you're helping follow through all the way to the end, which is when you're making a sale, but you're helping the customer find the right solution, at the end of the day.”Connect with AaronAaron Bock | Opkalla | Opkalla.comConnect with Collin LinkedIn | YouTube | Newsletter | Twitter | IG | TikTok

#471 S2 Episode 340 - FLIP THE SWITCH: Changing The Salesperson's Focus In Assisting Prospects

Sales Hustle

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2022 3:57

WHAT DO SELLERS HAVE TO FOCUS ON TODAY?If you are still selling by spitting made-up facts to your prospects, you are living under a rock. Aaron is back to discuss what sellers should focus on nowadays, which is helping prospects find the right solutions and making the right buying decisions because they have access to information, and your facts don't matter anymore. Tune in and discover what really matters in selling today with the latest episode of Sales Transformation. Want to book more meetings and close more deals? Start selling the way your buyers want to buy with Humantic AI! Stop sending boring sales e-mails and start sending personalized GIFs and Memes with VIDU.io!TRANSFORMING MOMENTSProspects today have so much informationSellers are dealing with the flipsideEveryone can google and check the facts you presentHelp people find solutions and make the best decisions, not talk about facts“I think there was this stereotype of salespeople back from the movies in the 70s, 80s, and the 90s, about hardcore selling. You get the car salesman stereotype all the time. You can't do that anymore. You can't just make up facts. You can't just sell someone on things. Because if I'm a buyer, you leave the room, I Google everything you just said to fact-check it.” - AARON: You can't just make up facts anymore these days Connect with AaronAaron Bock | Opkalla | Opkalla.comConnect with CollinLinkedIn | YouTube | Newsletter | Twitter | IG | TikTok

selling memes sellers prospects prospecting salesperson gifs assisting flip the switch collin mitchell i google vidu aaron you humantic ai sales transformation podcast

Old Age Security with Aaron Hector | E095

Financial Planning For Canadian Business Owners

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2022 31:01

Jason talks to Aaron Hector, a private wealth advisor for CWB wealth. He is here to talk about old age security. Episode Highlights:1.09: Aaron is a financial planner. He works with CWB wealth, and the majority of his time is spent serving private clients and helping them out with their retirement planning and taxes.1.55: Aaron has been one of the few who spent time writing about old age security topic that is an overlooked benefit compared to the Canada Pension Plan.2.12: Old age security pension is a government pension. You need to be at least 65 years old to begin to receive it and it's for those who have residency within Canada, either current residency or former residency, you need to have lived in Canada for at least ten years after you are 18 years old, says Aaron. 5.04: You get an extra .6 of a percent by choosing to postpone your starting point. If you start at age 66 instead of 65, you get an extra 7.2%, says Aaron. 7.37: For every dollar above your net income exceeds, government will take away 15 cents of your old age security. Technically it is a recovery tax and people refer to this as a clawback, says Aaron. 10.27: Aaron explains what are some of the ways that a family or couple or an individual can minimize their exposure to all these security paybacks?12.13: For people who have their own corporations, especially for small businesses who don't have revenue over 500K, they are going to be paying dividends to themselves as a non-eligible dividend, says Aaron. 17.06: If you have got a lot of health issues prior to making the decisions, then it's kind of hard to make decision for OAS, says Jason. 18.13: For every year that you live, your life expectancy increases because you are part of the survivor pool.19.42: Aaron talks about some of his better or favorite tricks or unique planning opportunities that are uncovered when it comes to deferring past 70.20.26: The whole amount to the lump sum plus the ongoing monthly payments that you begin to receive after OAS is taxed in the year you get the money, says Aaron.22.36: If you are at 71 and you forgot your OAS all the way through 70 and now you are going to apply retroactively, your one-year reach back is going to be at the age 70, says Aaron. 28.23: The government did increase the amount payable to people of age 75 and older by roughly $80 roughly per month from October 2022 and this was the first meaningful change to OAS payments amount in very long time.3 Key Points:Once your net income exceeds a certain threshold government begins to take away your old age security benefit and that threshold for the year 2022 has been set at $81,761 per person, says Aaron.Clawback is something that grinds people because there is a disproportional amount of time relative to the amount of dollars that can be saved spent on planning around all day security.If you think you are going to live to 75, don't postpone OAS, take it at 65 when it's on offer. If you think you're going to live to 90 you are probably wise to postpone it to 70.Tweetable Quotes:"You need to have at least 10 years in Canada to qualify, but 40 to get the regular payment." – Aaron"Effective rates of tax are more important than marginal rates." - Aaron"You also have a one-off strategy around how to structure your estate in some cases, speak about that." - JasonResources Mentioned:Facebook – Jason Pereira's FacebookLinkedIn – Jason Pereira's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronhector/?originalSubdomain=cahttps://www.cwbwealth.com/en Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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How much to today's higher interest rates really matter?

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 25, 2022 23:29

In this second episode with Aaron Chapman, we discuss how much interest rates actually matter. Over the past couple of years, low interest rates have allowed people to get into a deal and see immediate cashflow. But with interest rates rising, many are concerned that they are not seeing immediate positive cash flow. Is that a deal breaker? Should investors sit on the sidelines and wait for rates to drop once again? Or should investors be thinking about real estate like other business models and be willing to put their capital into a deal and expect to see profits occur over a longer time horizon? Tune in to hear Aaron's unique take on these questions. Aaron Chapman is a veteran in the finance industry with 25 years of experience helping clients better understand, source, and finance cash-flow positive investment properties. He advises over 100 clients a month in the acquisition and financing of their investment properties and primary residences. Aaron is ranked in the top 1% of mortgage loan processors in the country, in an industry of over 300,000 licensed loan originators, closing in excess of 100 transactions per month. Episode links: https://apps.apple.com/uy/app/qjo-investment-tool/id1533823468 https://www.aaronbchapman.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals. Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the remote real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today joining me again, I got Aaron Chapman. And in case you missed, here's prior episodes, definitely go back and give that a listen. But Aaron is a lender in the residential mortgage industry. And he's got a wealth of knowledge and experience under his belt. And today we're talking about how much interest rates actually matter to doing our deals. So let's get into it. Aaron Chapman, welcome back, man. Good to see you. Aaron: Good to see you too, man. It's good to be back. In fact, it hasn't been long. Michael: For those of you that caught our prior episode with Aaron, we are recording this back to back so we figured we just knock it out. Aaron: I don't I don't have a dozen of these specific shirts for those who are wondering. Michael: Like, yeah, he bearded his braid exactly the same and wearing the exact same hat and funny, he's in the exact same location. So Aaron, today we're talking about how much rates really matter. And you've been in the mortgage business since 97. For those folks that didn't catch your bio and background go and get that first episode listen to let's talk about like how much rates matter, man, like rates are creeping up, not keeping up but seem to be running up as to where they were previously. And I'm hearing a lot of folks kind of get scared and spooked and want to hang on the sidelines until rates come down. So give us a little bit insight is that right thinking? Is that the wrong thinking help drop some knowledge? Aaron: Well, it's I like to tell everybody so level of your everything has to do with a level your comfort, right? Your ability to get in there and, and slug it out and make things work? Because it all has to be about interest rate. And are you really a real estate investor, because that's why I work with as a real estate investor, opportunity is only sitting in front of you at the time that it's in front of you. And often people are trying to get the market to line up and I look at that kind of like watching a star football player sitting on the bench on the sidelines, waiting for the perfect time to jump on the field to get on the highlight reel. Well, Michael: That's such a good analogy. Aaron: We're on the field at the time the game is being played, right? They're not sitting on the sidelines at all. It's amazing how often people think that they have the capability to time something and most people trying to time it have never time the damn thing in their life. Right. In fact, most of them are fairly new new investors or investors with maybe you've had five or six houses. So you feel like you're a seasoned investor. I've been doing this for 24 years I've been at this since 1997. I'm barely seasoned in what I do. And the reason I feel that I'm barely seasons, because I do over 1300 transactions a year for real estate investors, I get to see where a lot of people are making decisions, or a lot of people are making mistakes and where a lot of people are doing it right where a lot of people failing or a lot of people are succeeding. What I tell all my all the people I work with is there's this old saying good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment, great way to learn on the grade school playground of very, very tough way to learn in real estate. So don't go about trying to figure out things that way yourself. Reach out to me, I got to see for 1000s of people have made decisions. I'll guide you through that telling you stories. I don't answer questions. I tell stories as to what I've seen other people do. So you will have practical data, not speculation in theory, and then hopefully, hopefully, we're able to guide you in a way that makes you successful now is it going to be successful every time you make a decision? No, you're going to hit a brick wall between those brick walls, that just means you got to change your direction and keep moving and keep moving and keep moving. So then you eventually find success because you become nimble enough become successful, it does not benefit me to close a deal and you fail, because that's only one deal. I need your 100th deal. That's what makes my business work is to do this dozens of time with you not just one time and walk away. That's not the business I built. So when it comes to interest rates, you need to get comfortable with it and understand that you're never the price of money is always going to move. But what we also have is the price of housing is always moving. You know, we talked about in last episode, the average rent is going up by 12%. Year over year. I don't expect that to be sustainable. I think it's probably a go up, you know, maybe seven, but it's going to keep going right? We have we're short how many houses right now in the United States, Michael: I think like 5.2 million or something of that effect. Aaron: 5.2 million and what's the building looking like right now people are not there's not a lot of construction going on, compared to what the demand is. We've got a hurricane, they just wiped out on how many houses we don't even know that the full total that devastation and then the ability of the supply chain to be able catch up with that. And then of course there's talk of another pandemic coming which we saw the effects of that one, and how well handled that mess was. You start stacking all these things up rents and quarterly rental increases are here to stay. So when you're on that end of it, and you get to continue to increase your rents effect, let's do the math real quick here. Let's say, let's say you got $100,000. House, you're renting it for $1,000 a month. Right. And now you get to raise the rent by 3%. Well, they're saying you're only getting say 60 bucks a month in cash flow. That's not sexy. You're not getting excited, right? Michael: That's a couple of Chipotle is with guacamole. Aaron: Exactly. So 60 bucks right now, not a big deal. So you raise the rents by 3%? What's 3% of 1030 bucks, 30 bucks, nothing. It's actually nobody's excited. Again, what's really cool about is your tenant won't get excited. And I can just up and move and know the night and dump concrete down the toilet. Right? So it went up by 30 bucks. But you're making $60 a month cash flow, you're one now you're making 90. So what percentage did your cashflow go up by? Michael: 50%. Aaron: That's a 50% compound growth in your cash flow. So what you start to see here is over time, it's not going to happen right away. You know, it's not, it's not Swift, but it is certain that you will continue to get this compound growth in the double digits a year over year over year. But as we talked about, in the last episode, go back and listen and get my get my my tool, the QJO investment tool, and run these numbers, you're gonna find that you're paying back less and less and less for that set mortgage you have, even if the rates go eight, nine, 10%, you're paying back less, because inflation is eroding the dollar. But yet you're increasing at double digits. As far as your cash flow, there will come a point that one catches the other and you surpass it. It's much like any investment that a person does. It's amazing how we can talk ourselves into getting into other types of investment vehicles, like all but if you stick with it for three, four years, you're gonna see it really grow or 10 years or whatever. But yet you get into a house. And also we think of it as an expense. When it comes to real estate. It's not you're not spending money and going into debt. You're a business owner, that is now the pass through for this capital, you get to increase. Michael: I love that. I love that. Aaron answer me this because I think it's something that I've been hearing from a lot of people I know for sure, in the Roofstock Academy is folks saying, Michael, five months ago, I could go buy a house for 150 grand and make 100 bucks cash flow at three and a half 4%. Now that same have that same price, the same purchase price is still 150 grand, but now I'm paying seven and a half percent that eroded all my cash flow. Does that mean I should still go buy that deal? And hang on for those first couple of years? Because I'm going to get that double digit compound growth with the rental increase? Or do I just need to go find a new deal? Or potentially a different market? Aaron: I've got I've got a few answers that I would give right. And I sometimes depends on the individual, right? Because I do ask them Okay, so what do you think right? Now let them tell me, because I want to find out what's going on your head, right? So tell me what your first instinct is. But if they're asked me exactly what I would do, I mean, again, I might get cut out here, guys, when I was gonna have your balls attached or are they there for decoration, right? Nobody has ever made a fortune because they they want out of the gate. Nothing is ever has ever paid what a few things are paid off out of the gate, right. But most times they don't. We had a history of people making this amazing cash on cash return for the last, what 10 years, it was the easiest thing in the world to sell cash on cash return for the real estate sales side of it. I think my personal belief is the real estate sales side of it has actually put themselves in a corner, and they're trying to claw their way out of it. Because we spent so much time talking cash on cash. We never talked about the rest of the ways people made money. It never got discussed. For the last eight, nine years. I've talked about everything but cash on cash return, if they take that metric and throw it away, take their performance somebody gave you because that's that's Greek for bullcrap. It doesn't mean anything. They made those numbers up. Right? So let's talk about reality. Right? And reality is business is going to cost you something nobody has ever opened up a shoe store was profitable in the first five years, right, you have to have a certain amount of capital to get started, everything needs a certain amount of capital to get started. You're the CEO, the CEO of your startup real estate investment firm, that means you are going to be a lot more discerning about what kind of property you buy, when you're not making $200 a month cash flow out of the gate than you would be when your before making cash no matter what happened because of interest rates are so low, they softened all the blows. But now, because of things the way they are, you're going to become a better CEO, you're going to sink more, you're going to take more time to understand what you're buying, you're going to buy the right property. And that's what it's all about. What can you keep reasonably rented for the entire time you own it, and what can you raise rents on that's it. If you can get that to line up and that alone, you will continue you will see that compound increase we were talking about. You may have to nurse that that investment along for the first couple of years. But then you're going to get that compound set and forget it kind of growth. And that's where I tell people it's going to teach you to be a real estate investor now. The people that are not real estate investors, they're out we're not gonna have to deal with them anymore. You're not gonna have to fight with the masses of people try To get in on that one deal and bidding at too high, what you're going to have is people gonna be very, very discerning, and you're become a smarter person as a result. Michael: Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. And I was just going to ask you, but I think you kind of beat me to it, do you think we're going to see the investment investor pool thin out, because folks are looking at deals and saying, the numbers don't work, I can't invest in this, or they bought deals two months ago, and are now getting burned by it? Aaron: Yeah, I think we're going to see people get out of it. And we're gonna have some of the true investors be able to capitalize on it, that people understand what they're getting into, they're gonna jump in there, and they're gonna be able to weather this properly. Because it's about the it's about the real estate itself. It's not about the loan, it never was about the loan, you know, we had the loan was a way of getting a lot of people involved. And probably a lot of people shouldn't have been involved with, they got involved anyway, right. And so they're still going to do well, because what's really cool about that, if you got that in that loan, that 3%, or 4%, or 5%, loan, that is an, that's an asset in itself. That's a massive asset. In fact, any loan for 30 years is a massive asset. But that's even even bigger assets. So now you have a tradable commodity, if you will, because now it's like hey, I can I can hold this house, and I can literally kind of sell this into with a with an owner financing kind of deal or something to that effect. Now how that will play out, don't say Aaron Chapman said it's okay to do this. You got to check with your lender, make sure you're not putting yourself in a bad spot, talk to an attorney, all that kind of thing. There's instruments to make that happen. I'm not your guy to guide you through that. I'm just saying that that's a valuable thing to lock money up in single digits. Think about that single digits, because if you go back to 1971, all the way till 2009, the average interest rate for somebody living in a house was 9.1%. If you take that 1971 Till now, the average interest rate was 7.76%. For somebody living in the house, that was not real estate investors. The only reason it went down from 9.1 to 7.76. Is because of quantitative easing. When did quantitative easing start, Michael? Michael: Man, I didn't know I thought it was just gonna be an interview. I didn't know it was gonna be a frickin test. When did it start? Aaron: I'd love to quiz everybody. Because here's why your mind starts thinking and now you're gonna remember the answer. We're gonna give it to you. Michael: That's true. Aaron: Hopefully, because I'm gonna ask you next time. So quantitative easing didn't start till after the crash crash happened in 2008 2008. We'll talk about that in our next time we come together because that right there had to teach resiliency to a lot of people. Well, then the government decided, Okay, we're gonna start this quantitative easing thing, we're gonna take US Treasury capital flowing through the Fed. And we're going to start buying into mortgage backed securities and into treasuries in was a corporate bonds and all of these other things. And as a result to doing that started January 1, 2009, till the end of March 2010, the Fed dumped $1.25 trillion into the market, just in that short window of time to bring interest rates down and start getting the economy going again. But now, they couldn't stop it, and they kept it going and kept going kept going, then you get to the pandemic of 2020. Now, we just talked about 1.25 trillion between March January 2009, to end of March 2010. Now you get to March 20, 2020. From March 20 to march 30. They dumped in another trillion in 10 days to basically bring the market off of where it was because the market crashed. Right. We had a massive meltdown in the in stocks. What happens? What happens if people have more? Have stocks on margin when stocks dropped that far? Michael: Oh big problem. Aaron: Yeah, massive, I've got a margin call, right? Well, banks don't take our money that we deposit and just stick it in the vault, right? They invest it places, they need to make money on that money, they're gonna pay us our little pittance of whatever, right? They're gonna continue to make money on it? Well, a lot of times, they're gonna have that money into the markets and stocks and other equities. And as a result of that, they may have no margin, they did have no margin, they gotta pay a margin call. They can't just go back to the coffers. Because the the vaults empty, they have it all on investment. So they have to sell assets, what assets did they sell, they sold mortgage backed securities. Interest rates spiked during that window of time. It was it was amazing how much they spiked. The fact got to the point, I couldn't lock rates now. Now and again, the rates will be published might have five people on my team all ready to go. And I just kept refreshing the rates all day. As soon as there's ready to go, we could we'd lock 50 loans at a time. And they were ugly rates, but people needed to lock. And so we had this message that we're going to continue to keep business flowing during that window of time. But then they got that trillion dollars dumped in there, they got seeing semi stable, they're dumping 30 to $40 billion a month in the market, sometimes more hundreds of billions of dollars a month in the market, trying to keep this money flowing. And that's how we got our interest rates down into the threes and fours. So because of that, all that capital going in there, we had this this run on lower interest rates. So from January 2009. Up until just this last year, we had all this capital dumped into the keep the rate so that's what gave our average that a little bit lower point. But you know, some people are saying well, can we just get an ARM and wait for the rates to go back down? What makes you think they're going back down? The only time they went down from that average of 9.1 was when they dumped eight Point $9 trillion into the markets? Are they doing that again? I think they've learned their lesson not to do that. Michael: Yeah. Aaron: So if that's the case, and let's just say that's the case, let's say, somebody's actually going to learn from history, and we're not going to erase history, we're not going to call it you know, whatever, whatever make up whatever we want to make up about it and say we're triggered by it, we're actually gonna remember this move was a bad move. I don't see interest rates getting back anything lower than what we have right now, this might be the lowest interest rates that we see in our lifetimes. Michael: Interesting. Over the last 30-40 years, when we've seen interest rates spike like they have hasn't there been a pretty sharp decline after the fact? Aaron: We have seen that a lot in our lifetime, just because of what I was just talking about with the Fed manipulating it. But prior to that, we didn't see that very much. We saw interest rates, hovering in fact, I got in the industry in 1997, the interest rates are in the sevens. And then that was for owner occupied. And then when they went down, like 6.875, I got this refi boom going on. In fact, you know, I was working two jobs, I was running heavy equipment in the morning, from 3am till noon, they go to the office from two till 10pm, I sleep four hours a day, for for a full year. But for the until those rates dropped below 7%, I was able to replace my income of 50, whatever, thousand a year at the time, and got full time into this industry. Well, as a result of that, you know, we got this 6% thing going on. And it never really got much lower than that we saw a window where the during the mid 2000s, that I was able to get an adjustable rate loan, like a five year ARM don't like 5.75. But that was it. It wasn't until quantitative easing do we start seeing these enormously low rates. So we're not seeing these massive swings, like we see now, then the swings happen to be because we have a global market that everybody's tapped in, we get to see everything that's going on in real time, all the time. That's one of the really, really bad things of social media in the way our, our our technology is, what it's done for us has brought us to where we see the slightest thing happened. But on the other side of the world, it kills markets overnight. So that's why I see such massive swings. So some people think, well, if it goes down as we come right back up. We don't know that because there's another black swan waiting right around the corner. Why do we know that because we know what's going to happen in the other country when it happens. It'd be one thing we were just a an economy to ourselves. And it was not such a big big market mover. Now we're a global economy. And we have we have crazy people out there running countries, including our own doing stupid things that's causing such a massive swings and so much so much emotion in the market that I can't say it's going to improve. Now it's going to have to I mean, there will be some but to the extent we've seen I don't believe so. Michael: Yeah. Interesting. Aaron: Let me just say I pray I'm wrong. Michael: Yeah. That makes two of us man. Aaron: You're wrong. We're back in the season. We're good because I'm making another couple million dollars a year. Michael: I love it. Someone if they didn't have the wisdom of hearing this show five years ago, three years ago, when they got their five, one ARM and now they got two years left on it and they got a 5% They got the ability to lock in a 6% for 30 years say? Or do they roll the dice and let it roll for another two years? See where interest rates land? What are you doing? Aaron: I think goes back to that are your balls attached situation, just see, see what you're willing to do? Right, you're the ones guy put your head on the pillow at night, you got to be able to understand how you feel about. Me, I love to control things for as long as I can control it. I'll take my lumps. And I'll take that 6% all day long. Because I would much rather allow inflation to erode the dollar over a long period of time. Rather than forcing me in a situation like that. I've had too many people that I've talked to that did the ARM thing in somebody else's request even at my own. I mean, I did the there's something out there right now called the all in one. This is a big deal. Back in the early 2000s. We sold something very, very similar to this. It just wasn't called the all in one. And when the market freaked out in 2008. And they started freezing these people's credit lines, I got numerous calls saying What did you put me in? Because I didn't know what was going to happen. Now I do know. And everybody says, well, they're not going to do that. What makes you think I'm not going to do that? The banking industry will do whatever the heck they want to do. They'll shut down. They will kill product, they will not honor locks. They'll wipe anything out that makes it work for them on the next day. They don't care about what they committed to today. They care about what it keeps them in existence tomorrow. As a result of that. I know that's what they do. I've seen them do it. I can't in good conscience do anything but tell person Hey, the 30 year fix so far is the only one with a proven track record. Michael: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. How did you think about the interest? I know you said it's not all about the interest rate. But let's put that on the shelf for a minute. If someone's got a property that they're not thrilled with its performance, but they've got this outrageously low rate and a 30 year fixed. Do you think time is going to heal that wound or do you think they should maybe look to move into something else at a higher rate, but that they might be a little bit happier with? Aaron: I think it really, really depends upon the scenario what's making them so unhappy about it, is there a possibility to try to change whatever is making them happy unhappy about that there's something about the property, this specific thing that's creating a difficulty with it, is it just not being rented because of this or because of that, you know, it may be one of those times, we have to spend some time understanding what's happening in the market that's causing that property to be what it is, right? People coming by either I don't want to rent this thing. Because of this, or because of that, it could be a very simple thing. You know, when we own something we don't see with our lens very, very well, we see, hey, this is what the possibility is because we can only see from one angle, but when you get the whole market's angle on a multiple people are willing to come through a look at it, sit them down and ask them, Hey, can you tell me what what about this place? What would have to happen to that make it something so yes, I do want to rent this, or yes, this I can make my home for five years? Understand that is sometimes you might have to bite the bullet, put a few bucks into it. And next thing, you know, now you have a very low interest rate, which again, that right there is, is is a very, very valuable piece in itself. And then you have whatever changed on this house that now makes it what it needs to be. And its location that might be something's completely, you know, one of these things you can't fix, right? You have to find the one person in the world that wants that and carry a note for them and see if you can swing something like that. But if it's something that's changeable because of aesthetics, or or usability, or it's just whatever that might be, you might have to bite the bullet and fix that one thing. But investigate it first, before you try and make a very, very big decision. Like leave it as is and suck it up and write it out or dump it and move because I've seen I've got a very good friend of mine, named Joel, he owns a lot of shopping centers. I don't understand shopping centers. This guy's like the walking talking Stephen Hawking of shopping center this guy, just look at it, tell you what's wrong with it, and make it make money overnight. And the guy's amazing at what he's able to do. And because one person can't make it work, you have a guy like Joel come in, he looks at it makes an offer, they sell it cheap. He spends a few bucks. And now that thing's fully rented, and it's worth 10 times what he paid for it. It's just a matter of getting the right perspective. Take the time, understand the market, get the perspective. Michael: I love that. I love that. Aaron, I want to get you out of here until next time, but in the meantime, where can folks if they didn't catch on the first episode, reach out to learn more about you or get a hold of one of your loans? Aaron: Just go to aaronchapman.com And if that one doesn't work, go to aaronbchapman.com. Another good place to just Google Aaron Chapman. There's like five of us out there that pop up on Google there's only one bearded redneck lender there is a pastor there's a there's a English soccer player there is a an author and then camera with the other guy is but yeah, there's five and I'm an author as well so you can go to you can look me up on Amazon that kind of stuff. I'm working on another book got a few things cooking. Michael: Right on man love it. Well hey, this was awesome as always and until next time, looking forward to it be well. Aaron: Thanks, buddy. Good to see you again. Michael: Likewise. Alright everyone that was our episode A big thank you to Aaron for coming on again dropping some fantastic wisdom, insights and knowledge. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing

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Printing United is on the Horizon in Vegas

2 Regular Guys Talking Decoration and Personalization

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2022 78:41

Friend of the show Josh Carruth with Printing United will be joining the 2 Regular Guys this Friday. Josh will share all the details about the upcoming Expo in Las Vegas on October 19-21. We will talk about the education, the live activations, and all the secrets we can squeeze out of him. ADN Josh tells us that he'll tell our listeners about other exciting events from Printing United Alliance. Tune in and learn how the convergence of all the print worlds in one location is important for your business. Our regular listeners know this, but 2 Regular Guys are all about garment decorating, a bit of fun, and no rants, lectures, or selling. We are not doing this for our employers but rather for our industry. Since February 2013, The 2 Regular Guys have been the first and the most listened-to garment decorating industry podcast on this planet! We are humbled by all of you tuning in each week. We work hard to bring you information that will make your business better and our industry better. Take a look at our incredible weekly guest list, and you'll understand where this industry goes for news, interviews, and the heartbeat of garment decorating. Thanks for listening! News We saw no major news this week, so if you have anything newsworthy you would like us to share, please email details to info@2regularguys.com. Use the subject line “Weekly News” so we can sort it out from some of the junk mail we receive. Dad Joke From Lewis Montgomery Why don't you want twin witches? How would you know which witch is which? Printing United Expo Aaron: First question. We know the expo is going to be in Las Vegas. So is it true, what happens in… Kidding. Seriously though, Josh, we have been hearing lots of great things about the Expo, including the return of some vendors that might have been absent in the past. Can you give us any details on that? Erich: Josh, while you are sharing, can you also share details about education at the Expo with the Regulators? Aaron: Speaking of education, I have heard little bits and pieces about the Apparel Zone. Thomas, can you talk more about the details of what people can expect? Erich: Future State Theater - What is that all about? We would love to get perspectives from most of you. Cassie? Aaron: Jed, Brett, and Thomas - Can you guys switch hats for me quickly? As decorators and members who don't work for Printing United, tell us what you are excited about personally. Why do you feel this is a must-attend event? {Let Jed, Brett and Thomas go} Erich: Josh and Cassie, anything we missed regarding the expo? We are an apparel decorators show with a sublimation/vinyl guy in Aaron, a missing host who is a screen and DTG/DTF guy, and myself as an embroiderer. How does the Expo help us look at what's next and the bigger world we are a part of? Aaron: Let's also share with our listeners some details about the wider world of Printing United Alliance outside of just the Expo. Cassie is here representing the Apparalist, and I love seeing her as the face of the newsletter. Give us the scoop on that. Erich: The word convergence has been used back to the first ThreadX event. How should our larger marketplace segment view our interest in what we do as a craft? Aaron: You all have been crazy busy with the Expo and loads of other things you have your fingers in. Then we saw an announcement about an event in Nashville. Give us the full details. Aaron: We are all about education here. With the Apparelist and everything else going on at Printing United, what are some of the most requested topics people are looking for education on? Erich: What can people go to learn more about everything we talked about, and how can they connect with you two? https://youtu.be/GSJse0lfKP8 Five Keys to a Good Marketing Plan By Aaron Montgomery of Our Success Group Thoroughly Define your IDEAL CustomerHave clarity and confidence in your Brand/Personality and Values.

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A Lifetime in Screen Printing

2 Regular Guys Talking Decoration and Personalization

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2022 71:37

Allen Gaddis will be joining the 2 Regular Guys this Friday. Allen started screen printing at 16 and opened his own business at 18. Next May, he will be celebrating 40 years in business. We'll be talking about contract printing, services to schools, labor and supply issues, and much more. Join us with your questions for a veteran screen printer this week. Our regular listeners know this, but 2 Regular Guys are all about garment decorating, a bit of fun, and no rants, lectures, or selling. We are not doing this for our employers but rather for our industry. Since February 2013, The 2 Regular Guys have been the first and the most listened-to garment decorating industry podcast on this planet! We are humbled by all of you tuning in each week. We work hard to bring you information that will make your business better and our industry better. Take a look at our incredible weekly guest list, and you'll understand where this industry goes for news, interviews, and the heartbeat of garment decorating. Thanks for listening! News STAHLS' Launches PVC Patches for Apparel & Hard Goods - STAHLS' recently released PVC Patches, another custom transfer option in the Emblems & Patches product line. PVC Patches are high-end, dimensional patches that appeal to a wide range of markets. Featuring a rubber-like look and bright, on-trend color options, these custom patches are available as heat applied or pressure sensitive transfers. Dad Joke What do you call a hippie's wife? Mississippi A Lifetime in Screen Printing Aaron: Good morning, Allen, and welcome to the show. Tell us a little about you and your business. Terry: What drew you to garment decorating? And what has kept you here? (why stay in it for 40 years?) Aaron: You have a background in contract printing. What would you say is the secret of success as a contract decorator? Terry: School sales can be tricky, from getting paid to working with non-professional buyers. Share some tips with our listeners who might want to venture into the school marketplace. Aaron: Speaking of tricky, we all know getting blank inventory to decorate has been pretty tricky for a while. What have been your challenges in this area and how have you tackled them? Terry: Also tricky in today's day and age is the labor force. What do you think has changed over the past 40 years and how do you manage your own labor force? Terry: I ran across a post on Facebook from 2019 congratulating you on your Bachelor of Advertising Specialty Information certification. How do promotion products fit in for you and what advice would you give other decorators about incorporating promo products? Terry: So you had a devastating fire in 2020. Tell us about that experience and how you came back. Aaron: Where can our listeners reach out to you? https://youtu.be/bwPzYm5u0Bk OTHER EVENTS The Half – 11:30 AM CST every Friday. Erich Campbell and Aaron Montgomery. 30 minutes of Q&A. And this is the one time in Erich and Aaron's life that 30 minutes is 30 minutes. Tune in at www.liveosg.com. See past episodes and support the show – thehalf.club. Complete Screen Printing Business Course with Equipment Zone in Franklin Lakes, NJ starting July 30-31, 2022.Complete Screen Printing Business Course with Atlas Screen Supply in Chicago starting August 27-28, 2022.Complete Screen Printing Business Course with Workhorse Products in Phoenix, AZ, starting September 17-18, 2022.Complete Screen Printing Business Course with Atlas Screen Supply in Chicago starting November 5-6, 2022.Master of Success Inner Circle – The next level for people who are serious about their success. Bi-Weekly Mastermind Groups on top of the industry-leading business training.Aaron's “Small Business Saturdays” #SBS Every Saturday. Check out the Podcast version at SmallBusinessSaturdaysPodcast.comDemystifying Next Level Digitizing Make your machine embroidery bolder, more beautiful,

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Can Liberalism Make Peace Between the Future and Its Enemies?: An Interview With Virginia Postrel

Reactionary Minds with Aaron Ross Powell

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2022 57:29

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTubeReactionary Minds is a project of The UnPopulist. Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell. Produced by Landry Ayres.The following is a transcript of Reactionary Minds’ interview with Virginia Postrel, author of many books, including The Future and Its Enemies. The transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.Aaron Ross Powell: I’m Aaron Ross Powell, and this is Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. We’re used to thinking about politics as a battle between left and right, progressive and conservative. But those sides can be somewhat protean, with their positions, preferences and policies shifting in ways that make it difficult to analyze the political landscape clearly.My guest today has a different way of framing politics—one she first set out 24 years ago, and one which looks more and more prescient with every passing day. Virginia Postrel is the author of many books, including The Future and Its Enemies. Her latest is the Fabric of Civilization. The core of Postrel’s framework for understanding politics isn’t left versus right, but dynamism versus stasis.Aaron Ross Powell: What does it mean to be a “stasist,” to use your term?Virginia Postrel: What I say in The Future and Its Enemies when I’m just laying out the basic distinctions is that dynamists, which is people like me, have a central value of learning. We can talk about that later, but the contrast is important, and stasists come in a couple of varieties, but their central value is stability or control.Then I divide them into what I call reactionaries, which are the people who are more into keeping things literally the same, not necessarily the status quo. It could be going back to some imagined past or creating some utopia, but the idea of a stable society. Then technocrats, who are much more common in liberal democratic societies, who say, well, we want progress—we want things to change—but it’s got to look exactly like this. Very much an early 20th-century idea of control and planning the future, so that progress becomes something not that evolves, but that is dictated.Aaron: When you say early 20th century and the rise of the technocratic position, is that because something new happened in the 20th century, or is it because prior to the 20th century, stasis won out because we weren’t moving very quickly anyway?Virginia: That’s a very good question—not one that I really thought about when I was writing this book many years ago. But I think what happened was the rise of large business enterprises, railroads and huge manufacturing corporations, vertically integrated enterprises where you had to have a range of control to operate the business. That all happened really beginning of the 19th century, where you had these much larger organizations than had existed before.They were very successful, and people developed new and genuinely innovative and efficient ways of doing things. And that led to an idea that if you can do this at U.S. Steel or General Motors, you should be able to do it for the whole society— that, in fact, because they were run by the profit motive, these enterprises maybe were a little inefficient and wasteful and duplicative (competition was seen as wasteful and duplicative). And so that you could do something about that [inefficiency] if you could plan the society in general. There are many forms of this in the early 20th century.Obviously, you have the full-blown state socialism, state ownership of the means of production, with extreme versions in places like the Soviet Union. But there were also much more democracy-friendly versions associated with Thorstein Veblen, who’s famous for The Theory of the Leisure Class, but who also wrote a book whose title escapes me at the moment where he contrasted the good engineers with the bad financiers. The idea was that if you could just set engineering principles loose on society, you could have a much more efficient and productive society. That idea was in the air, and it came out of real business innovation that just got applied in ways that didn’t work.One of the things that’s interesting about the history of liberalism is that before Friedrich Hayek’s writing on “the use of knowledge in society” and the whole socialist calculation debate—and I don't want to get into the weeds of that—what was wrong with that theory of control wasn’t obvious. A lot of people who were basically liberal became very attracted to socialism because it seemed like a way of improving the lot of people and extending the liberal contract in certain ways.The idea that it was replacing local knowledge and even the knowledge of individual preferences with some necessarily dictatorial—even if it was being done in a democratic way—process was not obvious in 1900. It was not well articulated. I think there were people who understood it intuitively, but it had not really been fully grasped.Aaron: That raises an interesting distinction, I think, within stasism, as opposed to dynamism. What you’ve just described is an awfully let’s call it ideological or philosophical argument for stasis. You had these arguments about the way a firm runs, and we can analogize that out, and we can manage progress and so on. That’s like an intellectual approach. But a lot of stasis seems to be more of almost an aesthetic approach. So you get people like Wendell Berry—or Josh Hawley in some of his earlier, pre-political career writings is almost making an argument that the ideal America is one that always and forever looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting. Or that modern architecture is bad and what we really need is the return of the aesthetics of the Catholic church to rule us. Are these distinct things, or do they bleed together?Virginia: They are distinct things, and historically they’re distinct things because they’re very different reactions to what’s called the second industrial revolution. That is the rise of these really large enterprises, railroads being that quintessential one. In the 19th century, you also have the arts-and-crafts movement around William Morris. You have the rise of neo-Gothic architecture, which is initially a very ideologically freighted thing. It is a rejection of industrialism.The irony is that it then just—I write about this in The Substance of Style— becomes a style. Therefore, you get to a point where you have Blair Hall at Princeton University built and named for a railroad magnate in the neo-Gothic style because it associates the university with the great universities of Britain. It takes on a different meaning over time, but there is definitely in reaction to industrialism not only this kind of technocratic argument, which also takes a Marxist form; there is a medievalist argument, as well, that we are losing handcraft. We’re losing beauty. The cities are ugly. They’re crowded—of course, cities were always crowded—but [there’s] coal smoke and factories, and it is a ugly transition in many ways. Therefore, we should go back to a pastoral, hierarchical, often Catholic ideal. That is a reactionary stasis, which is very prominent in a lot of the great literature of the period—not so much in novels, but in poetry. Yes, they are two distinct, very old—at this point we’re talking 150 years; I guess that’s not old by human history, but certainly old by American history—ideals, and they take different forms.The American ideal is different from the European ideal, the reactionary ideal. Also, one thing that’s different is while there is this Wendell Berry, farmer, slightly medievalist view, there is also in the U.S. a wilderness ideal. In Europe, the cultivated landscape is always, or almost always, the ideal, whereas in the U.S., you also have a notion that untouched by human hands is ideal. That’s less common on the right than on, I don't know, I hesitate to call [it] exactly the left, but in the environmental movement.Aaron: That raises my next question, which is, Does this technocratic versus reactionary (or traditionalist or natural) by and large map onto a left-right spectrum? It certainly seems like technocrats are the left and the center left, generally speaking, and the people calling for a return to the old ways tend to be on the right.Virginia: Well, part of the point of The Future and Its Enemies is that these things do not really map onto the left and the right. They cross those divisions. It’s just that what people want is somewhat different, and so conservative technocrats might be more inclined to regulate land use so that you have single-family suburban homes or regulate immigration in a technocratic way, so that you give priority to people who have a lot of college degrees and professional skills, because they’re going to be—a Brahman from India is better than a peasant from Guatemala, because we can anticipate that.I’m just using those as examples. I describe technocracy as an ideological ideal in the early 20th century, because there was an intellectual movement there, but I don’t think it is primarily ideological. I think, for many people, it is common sense. It is common sense that somebody ought to be in charge, and people ought to make rules, and we ought to control things. And if this is dangerous, we should prohibit it, and if it’s good, we should subsidize it. This is the norm in our politics, and that wasn’t new in the 20th century.Things were subsidized and prohibited forever, but it got this patina of efficiency and rationality and modernity in the early 20th century. It took on an ideological air, but it is the norm in our politics. That’s one reason I spend a lot of time in the book talking about it. But really what interests me is [that] I think of it as the norm: That it’s what most of our political discussions are, but both reactionaries and dynamists, therefore, have to make alliances with technocrats in order to get the world they want. They’re the polar opposites, but the question is—in some ways, the technocrats decide who wins.Aaron: How totalizing are these two—are the dynamic versus the static viewpoint? Because there are lots of vectors for change. There’s technological change; there’s social; there’s political. Like we right now refer to, say, the Trumpist movement as “conservative,” but populism is on the one hand, very stasist in culture shifting too quickly—I-don't-like-it-make-it-stop!—but it’s very politically radical in terms of [saying] the systems that we have in place need to be torn down and replaced.Virginia: I describe them as if they’re these silos, but that’s just a model; that’s not reality. That’s the map, not the landscape. First of all, most people have elements of all of these things in their thinking, in their intuitions, in their politics; as you say, it takes multiple dimensions. Somebody may think that we should, even within, say, economic regulation—somebody may think that we should let people build houses more freely, but the FDA should regulate really tightly, something like that.Talking about the radical institutional aspects of populists of various types brings up the issue of rules, which is one of the things that’s the trickiest to understand and to grapple with. How do you think about rules? Let’s say you want this kind of dynamism. You want this kind of learning, bottom-up order without design, trial and error, correction, economic progress, or social learning. What sort of rules give you that? There’s very much this idea that you need nested rules, and you need certain rules that are fundamental and don’t change very often.You could call that the constitutional order, and those need to be fairly simple, and they need to be broadly applicable, and they need to allow things like recombinations and people using their own knowledge to make decisions and plans. And there’s a chapter about that, which I then, in a completely different context, reinvented in The Substance of Style; honest to God, I did it from the bottom up. I didn’t refer, because it was all about neighborhoods, where [it’s a] fact that people care about what houses look like, but on the other hand, they care about their neighbor’s house, and they will pay money to live in a planned community—but on the other hand, people want freedom, and how do you think about that?One of the issues is that you need to be able to move when rules are very prescriptive; there need to be ways to exit. What you’re seeing in this populist upsurge is a notion that the rules that we think of as not changing very much—that stable institutions, the liberal institutions that govern societies—are barriers to what populists want, and so, therefore, they need to be taken down.That does become a radical move. One of the misperceptions that was in lots of reviews of the book was the idea that dynamism equals change, and that I’m saying all change is good. First of all, even in the process of dynamism—that is, bottom-up change—not all change is good. It’s an experimental process. Sometimes you do things—whether it’s you start a company or you change your living arrangements—and it’s a bad idea. It doesn’t work, and that’s why we need criticism and competition, and that’s part of the process.Aaron: Then the goal is we want a dynamic society because it produces all of these. The book is full of all the wonderful benefits that come out of a dynamic society. But at the same time, the people who are fans of stasis—yes, a lot of them take it way too far in a reactionary direction—but. … There is something fundamentally true to the notion of wanting things to be somewhat stable and familiar. I just three weeks ago moved my whole family from Washington, D.C., to Colorado.We all know moving is incredibly stressful, and it’s not just because of all the logistics you have to deal with. Uprooting yourself is deeply stressful, and [it] takes a long time to get re-established. More people move in a dynamic society than in the past, but the world around us is changing too, in a way that feels like the same stress that I have with moving. People want [to feel] like, “My life is settled and is going to look roughly tomorrow the way it did today.” There is something very human and understandable about that. How do you get the effects of dynamism without everyone constantly feeling like they’re being uprooted?Virginia: This is a really good question, a really hard question. Part of it goes back to this idea of nested rules and also nested commitments. One of the important aspects of dynamist rules is that they allow for commitments—that you can make contracts of various kinds (to use that term), but it could also be marriage; it could be, I'm going to live in this town, and I'm going to be involved in civic institutions and volunteer institutions, and I'm going to put down roots here.That said, one of the difficult things is that one person’s stability is an intrusion on another person’s plans often. For example, I write a lot about housing, and there’s some about housing in the book, but there’s not as much as I would probably put there if I were writing it today. One thing that we see in Los Angeles, where I live, is there are a lot of veto players whenever you want to build anything, and they are people who want their neighborhood to stay the same.One result of that is that people who have grown up in Los Angeles, the children of people who lived here, cannot live here anymore because it’s too expensive. That's this kind of, I want stability [laughs]—oh, but wait a minute; I’d also like to see my grandchildren, but now they live in Texas because they couldn’t afford to live here. There’s often trade-offs with issues of trying to make stability, but human life inherently changes. Generations come and go; we grow older; people have children, et cetera.There is a certain amount of change that always is going to happen, but there is a highly nonideological issue which comes up, in fact, in my most recent book, The Fabric of Civilization, in the context of the original Luddites. The original Luddites were not ideologues [chuckles]; they were not stasists who wanted to keep medieval ways because they liked what the Middle Ages represented to their intellect.They were hand weavers who had prospered from the invention of mechanical spinning, which gave them ample supplies of thread. So they had prospered because of the technological and economic upheavals of a generation earlier, and now they were losing their jobs to power looms, and so they were mad. They were stressed. At that time, losing your job was not like losing your job in 21st century America; losing your job meant your children might starve.There was a reason to be upset. They engaged in both nonviolent civic activity, petitioning Parliament and that sort of thing—and also violent riots and smashing looms and that sort of thing. The government said, “No, you don’t get to choose.” There was a technocratic aspect of that, which is, they said, "Look, this is going to be good for society. It’s going to create new jobs and new industries. It’s going to make Britain more prosperous against its rivals.” All of these kinds of things. And so power looms went ahead, and some of the Luddites got deported to Australia (the more violent ones).That is really important in the history of economic prosperity, and the people who were the children and grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren of those people are far better off in basically every respect than their ancestors, but it was a true, genuine, painful transition. I don’t know what my prescription would’ve been back then other than let this go forward. In a richer society, there are things that can be done with redistribution to ease those transitions.Another thing that I think we don't emphasize nearly enough in the U.S. today is the traditional American thing of moving to different parts of the country. There's considerable evidence that people are more locked into place than they used to be, and that makes certain things more difficult. Particularly, if you are somebody who is living in Detroit, say, it might be better if you could move to Colorado or North Carolina, but you don't have the money, because moving is not just disruptive; it's expensive to do so.There may be other barriers like licensing regulations or that sort of thing, but the main barrier, aside from the psychological barrier, is the financial one. I think that that's the sort of thing you need to think about from a policy point of view. But you're right. People like change; they like the benefits of change; but only up to a point.Aaron: There's another side to it, too, I think. As I was re-reading the book in prep for our conversation, I kept thinking there's a moral imperative of dynamism when you think about it in a social context, because the story you just told is an economic and a production one. The disruption that can come from changes in economics—and we see this all the time like a lot of the reactionary movement right now is—but we're losing the old lifestyle of working in the factory in the small town and supporting your family at a middle-class level on one salary. That's gone away.That's an economic story, but I think a lot of what we're seeing today from illiberal sides is about social change. The anti-trans backlash is in a lot of respects about this: “My conceptions of gender and gender roles are that there are people who are setting those aside, living in ways that are contrary to them, but we also see the traditional family is under attack.”It's not under attack in the sense of someone is coming and trying to just tear apart my traditional family, but that there are people who are living in nontraditional ways, and it makes me uncomfortable. In that case, it seems harder to justify the stasist worldview from a moral standpoint, because what you're saying is often that people who were traditionally marginalized or oppressed are now able to get outside of—are now centered in a way that they didn't used to be, are gaining privilege in a way that they didn't used to be, have status in a way that they didn't used to have.Or are able to express themselves and author their own identities in ways that they weren’t, and I don't like that; that makes me uncomfortable. We need to shut it down; we need to punish corporations that are too “woke” in what they're expressing or what they're putting in movies and television. That one seems harder to say yes, you've got a point [to], because telling other people they can't have dynamic self-identities isn't the kind of thing that we should necessarily correct for or compromise with.Virginia: Yes and no. The way you put it, sure, but it's also the case that a lot of these fights are between two sides each of which wants to force the other one to adopt its worldview and to pay obeisance to its worldview. So that it's not just that I have to tolerate someone who has [another worldview], whether they believe that everyone who doesn't believe in Jesus will go to hell, or whether they believe that someone with male genitalia can be considered a woman.Those are two worldviews that you can live with in a society, where people hold those views, and we just tolerate them, and it's like, I don't care if you believe Mercury is in retrograde and makes your computer go crazy. I think it's stupid, but okay, sure what the hell. We can treat them like that, or we can have fights where everybody has to get on the same page. And a lot of what we're negotiating now is what is it where everybody has to be on the same page.These are the great fights that led to liberalism in the first place—[these] were the religious wars, where there was an assumption that unless everybody agreed on that [question], unless everybody in the society was of the same faith, the society would not be strong. Obviously, this is potted history, but they kept fighting over that until they were exhausted and said, “Let's have liberalism instead.” That's oversimplifying much. A lot of these fights today are about, How do you accommodate when people have radically different worldviews, live in the same society, have to know about each other's worldviews?One of the differences today versus when I was growing up in the Bible Belt is that everybody sees everything. The people I went to college with at Princeton for the most part—I was raised a liberal Presbyterian, but the assumptions I made about the people around me—I might as well have been from Mars. I could understand Renaissance literature, because it's steeped in a religious society, in a way that most of the people that I went to school with couldn't, because they had never been in a place where everybody was religious—and really religious, not just nominally.Also, that affects jokes and stuff. Supposedly, my freshman roommate got mad, she told somebody, because I had said she was going to hell. Considering I didn't believe in hell, that was impossible, but I must have made some joke that anybody who knew me in high school would've understood. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I think that you are right, and this goes to the issue of commitments and being able to carve out your own life. Some of these fights are about that.One of the things that happened since I wrote the Future and Its Enemies is [gay marriage]. When I wrote the Future and Its Enemies, I was for gay marriage, but that was way ahead of the curve. It advanced partly because of this desire to have a commitment. I see this as a constant negotiation, and I also see the economic ideals as not being completely disconnected from it.People talk about the good old days: Let's go back to the good old days, when you could work in a factory and have a union job and raise a family on one income and all of that. Well, first of all, I'm from South Carolina, and that wasn't the case then. Even if you were white, people were poor. Yes, you could do that—you could raise a family on one income—if you were an engineer, but not if you worked in a textile mill. You would have both parents working in a textile mill and probably the teenage kids as well—and that's, again, if you were white. If you were Black, you were even worse off. So there is a kind of centering, as you say, of a particular not only ethnically narrow experience, but also even regionally narrow experience in that kind of nostalgia. I think that remembering who's left out is an important part. It goes to this issue of the knowledge problem—of the idea that dynamism allows people to operate on their local knowledge. It allows people who might not be included in the big, top-down view to force themselves to be included, because they just go through life and do their thing.Aaron: I think part of that is not necessarily stasists, or not necessarily stasists versus dynamism or change, but about pace of change. This is the point that you made about we're all aware of what each other is doing in a way that we didn't used to be. There always are subcultures; a subculture adopts a handful of things and then innovates on them very quickly and becomes weird and pops up. Suddenly everyone's goth for a little while, and goth is very different. And this shows up in fashion frequently, or in me trying to keep up with my middle schoolers slang or so on. With the social media stuff in particular, we end up in these situations where you don't even think that your subculture is a subculture anymore. You think it is the dominant culture because you've cultivated your Twitter following, and everyone you know online knows to talk this way, or that these terms are passé or shouldn't be used anymore or whatever. Then you assume that's what everyone knows and everyone talks about. I don't even know that, in a lot of cases, it is you saying, “I want to force my subculture’s views on everyone else”; it's more just you assume that that's what all of the views are.Virginia: It's like my joke about you're going to hell. I assume that you know how I mean it—oh, wait a minute, you don't, because you don't come from that subculture. It used to be that these subcultures were [overlooked]. The mainstream media—The New York Times, Time Magazine—did not know, and even Gallup polling did not know, there was such a thing as “born-again Christians” until Jimmy Carter. And they were a huge percentage of the population. It's just that they weren't the people who worked at The New York Times; they weren't the people who lived in New York, for the most part.Partly because I have this weird background of having lived in a lot of different parts of the country, I'm more aware of how many subcultures there are, and my Facebook friends come from all of them, pretty much. I think you're absolutely right that part of what happens is people assume that their norms are universal, or should be universal, and that therefore people who violate them are bad people.And there are rewards for making those assumptions. There are rewards in terms of attention. There are rewards in terms of, “You go, girl,” or whatever, and that has been corrosive. I think that it's not new in human history, but as you say, there has been an acceleration of it, and the idea that you could know about these horrible other people who think differently from you is more likely. You don't just know about them, you probably get a distorted picture of them, because it's being filtered through people who are spinning it or selectively representing it in a way that maximizes not only its strangeness, but its “evil.”Aaron: Yes. I think we also, too, don't necessarily appreciate the pace at which things change and become accepted in our subcultures. You mentioned you wrote this book—this book was published in 1998, I think it was.Virginia: Yes. Right. So I was writing it in like 1996, '97.Aaron: I was in high school in the 90s. Thinking about gay marriage—you mentioned gay marriage—how dramatic the change on acceptance of gay relationships and gay marriage has been: When I was in high school, Ellen coming out on her sitcom was, like, We're going to have a gay character on television! This was national news; everyone was talking about it. Whereas now, 30 years later, it's just like, so what, there's a gay character.It happens very quickly, and this makes me think how much of this is about—and going back to the rules, too—ambiguity versus clarity; that people want to know how things are, and how they're going to be. And a lot of rapid change is not constant. It's not uniform. It is experimentation and competing views and figuring out which is the right one, or which is the acceptable one.All of that messiness means that things are ambiguous, and that what we want is clarity. We want to know, okay, this is the rule that I'm going to have to follow tomorrow. This is what's going to be acceptable. I'm not going to get called out for this. I'm willing to change, but I want to know what it's going to be. That dynamism is inherently ambiguous.Virginia: Well, I think that is part of it. I think people do want to be able to make their own plans and structure their own lives in a way that it is going to work for them. I would argue that you're better off in a world where people aren't constantly making new rules, from their plans, to run your plans. That's one of the big Dynamist ideas. But you were talking about people wanting clarity. One of the things that I've written about over the years is clothing sizes and problems of fit. Bear with me; this is relevant. People tend to think that it would be better if there were specific clothing sizes—that if you knew that every size eight dress was for a 35-inch bust and a 28-inch waist (I'm making these up) and 40-inch hips, or something like that, that would be great, because everything would be the same. You would know exactly what you were getting. It would actually be terrible. In the ‘40s, the catalog companies actually went to the government and said, Could you please establish some standard sizes? And they did. But almost as soon as they were established, different brands started not complying with them, because it wasn't required; it wasn't a regulation. The reason is that people's bodies come in different proportions—even two people who are the same height and weight. One will have longer legs, one will have shorter arms, one will have a bigger waist, the other will have bigger hips, et cetera. What happens is that brands develop their own fit models and their own sizes. The lack of clarity actually makes it more possible for people to find what fits. I think that is an analogy to one aspect of dynamism—that is, the fact that there isn't a single model that everyone must comply with makes it more likely that people can structure their own lives in meaningful ways. Now that said, this goes back to this issue of nested rules. Hammering down on people because they express views that were perfectly normal 10 minutes ago, or worse yet, because they use a term in a nonpejorative way (they think), and suddenly, it's turned out that it's now pejorative: This is not good. This is a kind of treating as fundamental rules things that should be flexible and adjustable and tolerant. There is this idea of tolerance when we talk about tolerance as a liberal value, a liberal virtue, but there's also mechanical tolerances. I think a society needs that kind of tolerance as well. That allows for a certain amount of differentiation and pliability; that allows things to work, and it allows people not to be constantly punished. Zero tolerance is a bad idea. Anytime people are having zero tolerance, you're almost always going to be running into trouble.Aaron: You published this book 24 years ago. As I said at the beginning, I think the framework and the thesis that you articulated in it is really powerful and helpful for understanding things. But the political landscape and the cultural landscape looks rather different now than it did in the ’90s. Looking at the threats to dynamism that we see today and the rise of illiberalism, what are the lessons that we should draw from the stasist-versus-dynamist framework for countering those threats, or at least understanding them in a way that may prove helpful to ameliorating them?Virginia: Well, there are different forms of illiberalism around the world, and there are different reasons that people back them. One of the things that is striking in the rise of Trump in the U.S. is that one component of the people who voted for him—I don't know whether this would be true if he runs again, because the whole January 6 thing alters it somewhat—were frustrated dynamists. They were people who are really sick of technocracy; they're really sick of being told what they can and cannot do. They're really sick of the fact that it's hard to build things—that it's hard to create, especially with atoms, rather than bits. Peter Thiel might be a a high-profile example, but there are lots of just little guys who own plumbing companies or whatever who are in that category. The notion that you need to knock over the table to effect change: I think some of that comes from this idea that technocracy has tied down ordinary people like Gulliver and the Lilliputians.I think one thing that needs to happen—again, I don't know that this applies in Hungary, but certainly I think it's applicable in the U.S.—is that technocrats need to get their act together, at least some of them, and need to get a little more dynamism in their heads. You're seeing some of this among intellectuals like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias on the center-left, and you definitely see it in the issues around housing. That's one thing, because dynamists can't do it alone, and we need allies; we need to peel off technocrats who will support us, many of whom are liberals or think of themselves as liberals, in the sense that they're not illiberal. As far as the people who really want to go back to the Middle Ages, part of this is that you need to tell different stories—and this is hard. Culture is hard. This is not a libertarian show, but one of the things that I say to libertarians and also to conservatives is that they always talk about culture the way leftists talk about markets: as if there's one giant lever. If I could just get my hands on that lever and pull, I could make everything the way I want it. That's a fallacy in markets, and it's a fallacy in culture as well. Whether you like it or not, it's a dynamic process. I hadn't really thought about this, but in a way, The Fabric of Civilization, my latest book, which is the story of world history through the story of textiles, says the world is always changing. Even in the periods where it changes slowly, it changes. There are always people who are pushing against the established order, whether it's economic or cultural or whatever.Another thing that it says quite explicitly in the discussion of traditional clothing—and if somebody goes to my Substack, you can see that I posted this—is that people don't generally want to make a choice between tradition/identity and modernity/progress: They want both. Given control over their lives, they will find ways to incorporate both, to hold onto what they value in terms of their identity and tradition, and to get the benefits of modernity and liberalism.I think many people who really like change don't fully appreciate that. It was definitely not appreciated at the beginning of the 20th century and the technocratic move that we talked about earlier, but the example I use is the way indigenous women in Guatemala dress. Now, they can buy jeans and t-shirts just like everybody else, but they choose to dress in traditional garments—except they're not really traditional. They've changed in a lot of different ways. The daily blouse is made in a factory. It's made out of polyester. It's not woven on a handloom, but it still looks Maya because that identity is important. I think there is a universalizing element of liberalism that wants everyone to be a rootless cosmopolitan. Even those of us who basically are rootless cosmopolitans aren't really. We actually do have roots. I am very dedicated to living in Los Angeles. I really am from the South; whether I like it or not, it shaped me in certain ways. I have certain ties.Liberalism needs to understand that that's how people are—that they care about where they come from. They care about things that are passed down in their families. They care about their community ties, and that is perfectly compatible with liberalism and dynamism. But the manifestations of that will change. This is why the great social success story of the past 25 years—this is from a liberal, social point of view—is the story of gay marriage, because it says, yes, gay people are different in certain ways, but they are embedded in families. They want to be embedded in families—not every single one—but in the sense that most people want to be embedded in families. The mere fact that you have a sexual orientation toward the same sex does not mean that you want to leave that all behind; it means you want to have Thanksgiving, and you want to get married, and you want to have kids. And all of that which is part of normal human life since time immemorial can take a slightly different turn and still be compatible with these very ancient, conservative institutions, which, by the way, have taken a zillion different forms over human history.Aaron: Thank you for listening to Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. If you want to learn more about the rise of a liberalism and the need to defend a free society, check out theunpopulist.substack.com.Bonus Material: Virginia Postrel, The Future and its EnemiesVirginia Postrel, “Continuity and Change: The case of Maya trajes.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theunpopulist.substack.com

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Numbers 18

Simon reads the Bible

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2022 5:45

Numbers 18 NLT read aloud by Simon MacFarlane. 1 Then the Lord said to Aaron: “You, your sons, and your relatives from the tribe of Levi will be held responsible for any offenses related to the sanctuary. But you and your sons alone will be held responsible for violations connected with the priesthood. 2 “Bring your relatives of the tribe of Levi—your ancestral tribe—to assist you and your sons as you perform the sacred duties in front of the Tabernacle of the Covenant. 3 But as the Levites go about all their assigned duties at the Tabernacle, they must be careful not to go near any of the sacred objects or the altar. If they do, both you and they will die. 4 The Levites must join you in fulfilling their responsibilities for the care and maintenance of the Tabernacle, but no unauthorized person may assist you. 5 “You yourselves must perform the sacred duties inside the sanctuary and at the altar. If you follow these instructions, the Lord's anger will never again blaze against the people of Israel. 6 I myself have chosen your fellow Levites from among the Israelites to be your special assistants. They are a gift to you, dedicated to the Lord for service in the Tabernacle. 7 But you and your sons, the priests, must personally handle all the priestly rituals associated with the altar and with everything behind the inner curtain. I am giving you the priesthood as your special privilege of service. Any unauthorized person who comes too near the sanctuary will be put to death.” 8 The Lord gave these further instructions to Aaron: “I myself have put you in charge of all the holy offerings that are brought to me by the people of Israel. I have given all these consecrated offerings to you and your sons as your permanent share. 9 You are allotted the portion of the most holy offerings that is not burned on the fire. This portion of all the most holy offerings—including the grain offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings—will be most holy, and it belongs to you and your sons. 10 You must eat it as a most holy offering. All the males may eat of it, and you must treat it as most holy. 11 “All the sacred offerings and special offerings presented to me when the Israelites lift them up before the altar also belong to you. I have given them to you and to your sons and daughters as your permanent share. Any member of your family who is ceremonially clean may eat of these offerings. 12 “I also give you the harvest gifts brought by the people as offerings to the Lord—the best of the olive oil, new wine, and grain. 13 All the first crops of their land that the people present to the Lord belong to you. Any member of your family who is ceremonially clean may eat this food. 14 “Everything in Israel that is specially set apart for the Lord also belongs to you. 15 “The firstborn of every mother, whether human or animal, that is offered to the Lord will be yours. But you must always redeem your firstborn sons and the firstborn of ceremonially unclean animals. 16 Redeem them when they are one month old. The redemption price is five pieces of silver (as measured by the weight of the sanctuary shekel, which equals twenty gerahs). 17 “However, you may not redeem the firstborn of cattle, sheep, or goats. They are holy and have been set apart for the Lord. Sprinkle their blood on the altar, and burn their fat as a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. [...]

lord israel numbers covenant israelites tabernacle redeem sprinkle nlt levites aaron you

209: Ep. Recap Aaron Walker - How To Live A Life of Success And Significance

Extraordinary Man Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 8, 2022 8:28

In this episode, I give a quick recap of my interview with Aaron Walker including: - How he retired at age 27 and why he was miserable within 18 months - The 3 pieces of advice he would give to his 20-year-old self- The #1 benefit of joining a mastermindAnd so much more... Aaron's mission is to help men transform their lives. His leading core value, Relationships Matter Most, serves as the compass to uncover what they truly want in life and set their goals to achieve success and significance on their journey. Having served his community for more than 43 years as an entrepreneur of multiple businesses has taught him to have No Excuses, Make it Amazing, and that Everything is figureoutable. Two decades ago, Aaron had the opportunity to join a peer advisory group called a mastermind, where he received wise counsel from other competent leaders helping him maximize his potential. In 2013, Aaron was encouraged by his mastermind group to start the Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind, a brotherhood of men focusing on developing the whole man - growing themselves, their businesses, relationships, and faith. Hundreds of men's businesses and families have and continue to experience generational change. Aaron enjoys giving back through his own experiences in The Mastermind Playbook - a program for helping others develop and build their mastermind, and his book View From The Top. Aaron lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife Robin of 42 years. He has two amazing daughters and five beautiful grandchildren.Click Here to connect with Aaron*************************************************************You will never maximize your potential on your own so I'm personally inviting you to come and join me in the private Extraordinary Man Facebook group so you can level up your business and your life. Just Click Here to join the Extraordinary Man private Facebook group. Iron sharpens iron and this is the #1 place for you to connect with me and other like-minded men who are on a mission to maximize their potential. My goal is to help you become the man God created you to be in all areas of your life. So come and join us in the Facebook group and upgrade your business and your life.Follow me on Instagram: @ryanhorn25

208: Aaron Walker - How To Live A Life of Success And Significance

Extraordinary Man Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2022 31:27

Aaron's mission is to help men transform their lives. His leading core value, Relationships Matter Most, serves as the compass to uncover what they truly want in life and set their goals to achieve success and significance on their journey. Having served his community for more than 43 years as an entrepreneur of multiple businesses has taught him to have No Excuses, Make it Amazing, and that Everything is figureoutable. Two decades ago, Aaron had the opportunity to join a peer advisory group called a mastermind, where he received wise counsel from other competent leaders helping him maximize his potential. In 2013, Aaron was encouraged by his mastermind group to start the Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind, a brotherhood of men focusing on developing the whole man - growing themselves, their businesses, relationships, and faith. Hundreds of men's businesses and families have and continue to experience generational change. Aaron enjoys giving back through his own experiences in The Mastermind Playbook - a program for helping others develop and build their mastermind, and his book View From The Top. Aaron lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife Robin of 42 years. He has two amazing daughters and five beautiful grandchildren.In this episode, we discuss:- How he retired at age 27 and why he was miserable within 18 months - The 3 pieces of advice he would give to his 20-year-old self- The #1 benefit of joining a mastermindAnd so much more... Click Here to connect with Aaron**************************************************You will never maximize your potential on your own so I'm personally inviting you to come and join me in the private Extraordinary Man Facebook group so you can level up your business and your life. Just Click Here to join the Extraordinary Man private Facebook group. Iron sharpens iron and this is the #1 place for you to connect with me and other like-minded men who are on a mission to maximize their potential. My goal is to help you become the man God created you to be in all areas of your life. So come and join us in the Facebook group and upgrade your business and your life.Follow Ryan on Instagram: @ryanhorn25

Números 18: Dios Afirma el Ministerio Sacerdotal.

Hogares De Pacto

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2022 5:59

Notas en Español e inglés

Stephanie Muravchik and Jon A. Shields on Trump's Democrats

Reactionary Minds with Aaron Ross Powell

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2022 62:31

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds: Apple Podcasts | SpotifyThe following is a transcript of Reactionary Minds’ interview with Stephanie Muravchik and Jon A. Shields, authors of the book Trump’s Democrats. The transcript has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.Aaron Ross Powell: I’m Aaron Ross Powell, and this is Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. A good way to understand the appeal of Donald Trump is to talk to the people who voted for him. One of the most interesting ways to approach that is to talk to voters and counties that flipped, long voting for Democratic Party candidates until suddenly in 2016, they didn’t. That’s the background for Trump's Democrats, a book that looks at three communities that turned to Trumpism after having been solidly blue basically forever.I’m joined today by its authors, Professors Stephanie Muravchik and Jon A. Shields of Claremont McKenna College. Their fascinating book explores why Trump clicked with these voters and why many of the very things that turned so many of us off about him were the very things they found so appealing. We’ll discuss machine politics, political bosses, honor cultures, localism and what it means to identify strongly with a narrowly circumscribed place. The story that emerges is a good deal more complex and nuanced than the easy tales we sometimes tell ourselves about us and them.Stephanie, Jon, your book is part of a genre we have seen come out of the Trump years, with academics and journalists going to small towns that voted for Trump, sitting in diners and asking Trump voters why they believe what they believe. I think your book is the best example of that I have come across, the one that I certainly have learned the most from and the one that puts the most work into really getting at the ideas motivating Trump supporters. Can you tell us a bit about what prompted this and how you approached this project?Jon A. Shields: Yes. Thanks, Aaron, for having us, and thanks for the compliment. This is a book that really started on election night in 2016. Like lots of Americans, and, I’m sure, like yourself, we were up late that night watching the returns come in. It was really the most astonishing and surprising election in our lifetime, in our living memory. Immediately, we were eager to get outside of our little academic town and get a feel for what happened.In the weeks that followed, our sense of surprise really deepened. First, we discovered that there were all these Obama-Trump counties. There were all these places that had voted for Obama on two occasions—in fact, there were over 200-some counties that did this—and then flipped for Trump. That itself is very surprising and unusual, especially in this age of polarization, where partisan IDs and loyalties are especially sticky. But then, quickly, we not only discovered that there were all these Obama places that flipped for Trump; we also discovered that a lot of these places had voted Democratic for a very long time. Many of these places had a pretty unbroken record of voting for Democratic presidents, some stretching back to Reagan, some to Nixon, some much further back. In fact, one of the counties we ended up studying was a place that had never voted for a Republican president in its history. This is a county formed in the 19th century and—it’s really astonishing—had never voted for a Republican. In the Western world, that’s probably the longest streak of any polity voting for just one party.That was interesting. Of course, we’re accustomed to thinking and talking about the Nixon Democrats in ’72 or the Reagan Democrats in ’84. In some ways—in lots of ways, actually—the Trump Democrats were much more interesting. Nixon won in a huge landslide in ’72, as did Reagan in ’84, so it’s not so surprising that in those years, you get lots of Democratic places that flip. That’s not weird. In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote, and yet he managed to win some of the most loyal Democratic communities in the country despite that.So we got really interested in not just the red-blue divide, but a divide that had opened up in blue America. We were curious. We wanted to make sense of what had happened. In our college community, Trump is a loathed figure, a sort of proto-authoritarian, a dangerous person. We more or less agree with that point of view. I think there’s a lot to that, but then there are all these other Democratic communities that see him in a radically different way.They see him as one of the greatest presidents in American history, and so we were really deeply interested in that question. Then all these places we studied in 2016, I should add, remain loyal to Trump in 2020. These are places that are really drifting into the Republican Party. Trump is the character who shepherded all these communities into the Republican column, and so that’s quite interesting. That’s how we got interested in the project.Not Your Tea Party TypesAaron: You mentioned Nixon and Reagan and so on, and we have seen that Trumpism represents a populist movement. We have seen prior waves of things that look like populism, the most recent probably being the Tea Party movement. As you point out, the three communities that you looked at, they didn’t go Republican. They didn’t vote Tea Party candidates. What was different? Was it something that had happened to them—i.e., economic changes that hurt these communities and they said, “Now, it’s time to vote for a Republican”? Was it something about the community, or was there something that really set Trump apart from past populist candidates or waves?Stephanie Muravchik: Well, I think one piece of it is just how deeply blue these communities were. The Tea Party really emerged out of places that had some significant Republican organization movement identification, and there simply weren’t enough Republicans on the ground to get attention for that in most of the places—Iowa might have been a little different, but certainly in Rhode Island and Kentucky. We had one Democratic local-level party leader in Rhode Island—we were asking him about his relationship with Republicans—and he said: “I don’t know any Republicans in this town. I don’t think there are any.” There just weren’t enough even for the most knowledgeable Democratic leadership to know them. So I think part of it was that it would have been hard to get the attention of the local Democrats.Then the other piece that I think stands out is that there was a lot of libertarian rhetoric out of the Tea Party. There’s some controversy about how top-down that was, how “astroturf” that was, et cetera, but that libertarian rhetoric is really not at all resonant with the Democrats that we talked to. That was not the piece of the populism that appealed to them. I think that’s another piece of the answer. Jon?Jon: Well, I would just simply add—I guess this is really echoing what Stephanie said— you have to keep in mind that these are really one-party towns. The party, locally, for these folks is really the individuals who lead the party: the county-level or town-level elected officials. So these are mayors, city council people, county commissioners, and they’re really the face of the party. The other thing to add is that they really insulated these local communities from national politics in some ways. In a lot of ways, these places were pretty provincial. When they thought about the Democratic Party, they didn’t think about national leaders for the most part. They thought about people in their own community, and so Trump really shook these communities. It was a shock to them and really got them thinking about national politics and questions and controversies. It really took someone like a Trump to do that. The Tea Party was something that just didn't—it was a movement that was pretty remote from a lot of these places.Boss Politics and Honor CultureAaron: One of the really interesting parts of this book is when you’re talking about how politics worked or works in these small towns, and I’m reading it sitting inside the Beltway, having that as my frame of reference for politics. I’ve mostly lived in big cities and so on, where national politics is about—during the Trump years, he’s pushing against the guardrails, if not leaping right over them.We have our norms and institutions, and that’s the way that we tend to talk about these things. It was fascinating, the stories that the two of you tell about how different politics is in these small communities. Can you talk a bit about that? That also, you say, plays into a part of Trump's appeal.Jon: Yes, sure. One of the things that really struck us, Aaron, is that in these communities, politics is much more Trumpian in all kinds of ways. It was Trumpian before Trump, right? The local public officials reminded us of Trump in various ways. They were thin-skinned. They were brazen. They were tough. They were macho. They were the local daddies of their communities. They were there to take care of their flock—that is to say, they weren’t particularly ideological; rather, it was a sort of friends-and-neighbors politics. They were going to do particular favors or provide for particular constituents. It echoed back to a sort of machine politics, which has deep roots in the Democratic Party. Politics in these places weren’t very ideological really. They were much more boss-centered. They were really about providing for and taking care of local constituents. Political leaders were expected to do favors for their constituents. We saw all of this in all kinds of ways. Maybe Steph wants to jump in and give some examples, give some flavor and feel for some of these characters.Stephanie: In all three of the places in this town in Rhode Island, in this city in Iowa, in this county in Eastern Kentucky, there had been a strong-boss politics—perhaps most strong in Kentucky. These little rural counties are often dominated by these people called judges. They’re not judicial figures. They’re county executives essentially. There was a man in the county that I was looking at who had held office almost continually for about 30 years.When I arrived there during the Trump administration, he had been out of office due to the fact that he had been brought up on federal charges in a votes-for-gravel scheme. This was after about some 30 years in office. The county had fallen on hard times. The main way that he was able to show his friendship to voters was by providing loads of gravel to them at county expense. A lot of these people live on little far-flung farms in this rural district. They need to have little roads that connect their farmsteads to the main public arteries.The roads need to be constantly refreshed with gravel, and he was dumping loads of gravel in the months leading up to an election. The Feds came after him, and he pled. He had to deal with them basically so he would be free, but he pledged never again to run for office. The county’s political imagination had been very much shaped by this man’s long reign. He remained a very popular—although controversial—figure in the county when I was there.Jon: There were echoes of this, too, in another town we studied, which is Johnston, Rhode Island. On the surface, you might think it would be a place with a radically different politics than Appalachia, right? It’s in New England. It’s a suburb of Providence, but in many ways, actually, the politics was really similar. It’s a very Italian-American community, and they still practice old-style machine politics.The mayor there is Joe Polisena. He rules with an iron fist. Again, he’s like everyone’s daddy, right? People go to Joe. They need something done. They need a favor. Sometimes they ask for things he can’t deliver. When we asked Joe about this, he said, “Yes, sometimes they’ll come in, my constituents, and they’ll ask for something off the wall.” Joe would have to tell them, “Gee, I can’t do that. That’s illegal, but I can do something else.”Likewise, people in that community feel like if they don’t support the machine, if they don’t support Joe Polisena and other Democratic candidates, they’ll be basically shut out. They won’t be able to get any goods from the city, because they’ll be punished by the mayor, who can be very vindictive. Again, very different, seemingly, kinds of communities. They’re regionally different. One’s rural, one’s suburban, et cetera, but a very different style of politics. It’s a kind of politics that used to dominate the Democratic Party.We forget about it in college towns and big urban cities because we’ve cleaned up this kind of politics, right? We want a politics that’s more policy-oriented—politics without nepotism, without wheeling and dealing in this sort of favoritism—but it’s a kind of politics that survived in a lot of these Democratic communities. It survived in those places because there are fewer college-educated, good-government types who wanted to clean up this kind of politics and get rid of it. That’s one way in which the politics of these places was distinctive, but they also had a particular political culture, and we could talk about that if you like, Aaron.Aaron: Just briefly before we turn to that: I’m curious, do the people in those towns view this as a kind of politics that needs to be cleaned up but just can’t for various reasons, or do they think this is the right way to do politics, even if it sometimes is a little messy and looks corrupt?Stephanie: Yes, I think there’s definitely a view among some voters—and they’re all men; these men are all somewhat controversial and have their detractors—who don’t like how personalized the politics are. I spoke to one. Mayor Polisena in Johnston, Rhode Island, is very widely popular. He gets very high margins in elections, and lots of people had lots of good things to say about him, but he did have his detractors.I was trying to talk to one of them, and he was quite anxious about talking to me and said, “Well, you know how things are in this town.” Then he paused a beat, and then he said: “Well, you’re not from here. Maybe you don’t.” There was this sense that there were critics, and they would often say: “This is too personalized. There’s too much retribution for disloyalty. This is America. We should be able to express alternate opinions and not be personally penalized by the powers that be in our locality for this.”One colorful example from Elliott County was an executive who was no longer in office because of this federal deal and had one very outspoken opponent in the community. When they would be paving roads, like county roads, the new asphalt would stop at this man’s property line and then start up again at the next property line. Only in front of his farm would there be no paving. That kind of stuff rubbed some people the wrong way for sure.Jon: I would just echo that. I think it was somewhat mixed, but I think there was also a sort of sense in these places that this is just how one does politics. These are the main models of politics. It wasn’t clear to many, I think, what the alternative to this might look like. In many ways, it’s a sort of model that grows up out of their own community. It’s the kind of politics that grows out of a traditional family in some ways. It’s the sense that, “Well, there’s a patriarch who’s the head of the household but also the head of the community.” They should provide and take care of their community. In exchange, they should get the loyalty of their constituents and their supporters.There’s also a sense that their loyalty is the main way that they pay back their benefactors, those who have supported them. Even if they have some misgivings or grumblings, or they think the mayor can be a little too iron-fisted or whatever, there’s also a sense that they should be loyal to that person because they owe them something.Aaron: Given all of that, and given the personal and transactional nature of the politics and the politics as extended family, as you describe it, the initial motivation of this book and the ethnographies that you conducted was that there was something new about Trump or Trumpism, or Trump as a candidate. It attracted what had been historically very, very exclusively blue communities. These were Democratic strongholds.Given all of this, within this context, what does it mean for them to have been Democrat? You said this wasn’t really about policy per se, so were they meaningfully Democratic in the way that we would think about it, from the perspective of looking broadly in American politics? Democrats represent a set of policy preferences and a certain coalition. Do they even fit within that? Or was it more just that this was a label, but they could have had a different one slapped on, and it wouldn’t have been meaningfully distinct?Stephanie: Yes, I think one thing that became very clear was that because of the relationships with these party elites in their local community, what the party meant, meant relationships with these local party leaders. What they understood “Democrat” to mean had been very much reflected or filtered through these local party leaders. A lot of their, I would say, social-cultural ideas were quite conservative.Some of them made a point of saying, “I’m a Democrat and I’m a conservative.” For example, we met a woman in Rhode Island who was from a deeply political family herself and had been a low local-level political leader—so not someone who was out of touch or disengaged at all. She talked about the revelation that Democrats were pro-choice. For her, this was a shock.She had to wake up to this fact because she herself and her family were fierce Democrats. She had been told since she was a child that if the Republicans get into power, we’ll all starve. It was that kind of rhetoric we've heard from a lot of people. But she was also from this deeply Catholic, church-going, mass-going family. She said she would go to mass and see her elected local leaders also taking communion.It never crossed her mind that these people would not be pro-life. On a lot of the social-cultural issues in Elliott County, which was very rural, one big issue had to do, of course, with guns and the Second Amendment. All the Democrats were very pro-Second Amendment in Elliott County. They didn’t feel a sense of cognitive dissonance because their understanding was so local.Jon: And as Stephanie suggested, too, in some ways, they do have a sense that Republicans are the party of the rich. That resonates with what a lot of Democrats might say about the Republican Party and have said for a long time, but it’s a very class-bound, New Deal, Democratic sense of the parties. Indeed, in some of the restaurants in these towns, it’s not uncommon to find pictures of JFK or FDR.They had a sense that those were the patron saints of the party. They did have a sense that they were part of something larger than their own local, particular community. It’s like the culture wars were this thing that was blowing beyond their own local lives, and they didn’t have a sense of where the parties landed on guns or abortion or those kinds of questions. That surprised us. That was interesting.In lots of ways, of course, these people, on a lot of these issues, they’re kind of conservative. They’re pretty pro-Second Amendment. They’re fairly pro-life. Although on economic questions, they’re more moderate or even left-leaning. Ottumwa, Iowa, for example: It’s a place with a meat-packing plant. There’s a strong tradition of unionism there. Basically, it’s as if you froze the Democratic Party in the North in 1960 and took a peek at it; that’s more what these places are like. It almost felt like going back in time a little bit. We got to peer at the old Democratic Party, as it used to be. We were reminded that it didn’t all change overnight—that there are still these vestiges of this old party that have endured partly because they’re isolated and they have this strong localism. The local leads buffer them from some of the big changes that are happening at the national level.Indeed if you talk to local people, one of the major things they’re trying to do is create their own brand, because they know that there’s a big ideological divide between them and the national party. They want to keep the Democratic Party as localized as they can. Trump has made that a lot harder for them in all kinds of ways, because a lot of these folks are starting to become more aware of the national party and the ways in which it’s different from their local party.Localism versus CosmopolitanismAaron: One of the broad theses of your book is that Trump appealed to these communities in part because the very things that those of us in our coastal, rootless, cosmopolitan enclaves were often dramatically, viscerally turned off by about him were the very things that felt the most familiar about him to the voters in these communities. As just discussed, he looked like the politicians that they’re used to. What we saw as wild corruption and nepotism and so on was just business as usual—that’s of course how politicians operate.I want to move to another one that you discuss, which is honor cultures, because Trump for many of us was this famously belligerent but thin-skinned bully who couldn’t back down. Constantly, anytime anyone said anything, he needed to come back at them, even if he looked ridiculous doing it. It seemed very off-putting to all of us. As you point out, this is like a quintessential “honor culture.” What is an honor culture, and why do we see it in communities like this?Stephanie: Well, an honor culture is a way of understanding reputation and conflict that makes it imperative that a person, particularly a man, demonstrate his toughness, his willingness to meet any insult—or certainly an assault—but even just an insult with a kind of fierceness and a willingness to use violence to avenge his reputation, to reestablish his reputation.Men in all these communities have all kinds of personalities, just like in any other community, but they understand that they’re expected to do this. If they don’t, they risk really losing status in their communities, and they also risk inviting further insult and even violence. I think it was pervasive in all three communities. I think some of the most colorful examples probably come from Ottumwa, from Iowa. Jon: Well, there’s a lot of examples. I would just say by way of defining honor culture that on the one hand, it’s unfamiliar to a lot of folks who live in highly educated bubbles like college towns and blue urban centers, but it’s the default culture in a way, right? It exists around the world. It still exists in lots of places in the United States. It’s a much more common mode of conflict resolution than we often imagine.The play Hamilton reminds us that it used to exist in our national political culture, because, after all, Hamilton died in a duel defending his honor. But that play misleads us, too, because it suggests that this honor culture is some ancient, barbaric, strange cultural thing that existed in the past and that we’ve done away with it. In fact, as Steph said, it existed in all these communities.I guess we should give some examples. I guess before I get to Iowa, I would start with Rhode Island. The mayor, Polisena, very much practiced this honor culture. We really first saw this in action during a town council meeting, because every month or so, Joe Polisena holds court and various citizens come. They have various complaints and they want to give the mayor a hard time.Mayor Polisena doesn’t do what politicians might do in, say, a college town when they hear a complaint. When people come to complain to Polisena, he gives them hell. He starts calling them names, and it doesn’t matter who they are. In fact, this one old woman used to consistently go and complain to him, and he would just let her have it. Polisena would say, “You’re a malcontent.”Later, as the meeting spilled out into the parking lot, he even audibly called her a douchebag. He doesn’t mince words, and we asked him about this. We said, “Joe, what are you doing? Why are you so rough with these constituents? Why can’t you do what Michelle Obama suggests? She said, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ Why can’t you take the high road?” His response was very telling. He said, “No, I can’t do that. If I do that, they’re just going to roll over me. I’m just going to show my weakness. They’re going to take advantage of me.” He said, “Look, I have to be a street fighter when it comes to politics. I have to be tough, because that’s the only thing that people understand, is strength.” We saw this again, as Steph suggested, in Ottumwa. There, a fight nearly broke out at a local Democratic county meeting. This is back in 2016 during the primaries. The county commissioner was a guy named Jerry Parker. He supported Hillary Clinton. There was a guy named Alex Stroda, who was on the other side. They were fighting over who to endorse. It nearly came to blows. There was a belly bump, but not an actual fight. Again, those were two guys who couldn’t just talk it out. There was a sense that an insult had to be forcefully confronted. That was normal in these places and that’s also how Trump operates, right?For Trump, you’re either a strong person or you’re a weak person, and that’s how he divides the world. Nationally speaking, some of the candidates that gravitated toward Trump early also shared some of that honor culture. You think about guys like Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie. They too have some of that in them. That’s a flavor for this culture. To sum up, I guess the final thing I would say is that Trump—I think you said this well, Aaron—but Trump to us, to people in our community, seems like he’s pathologically thin-skinned. And maybe he is, right? I’m sure Trump has all kinds of personality disorders, but that’s not how it’s necessarily read in the communities we studied. To them, his behavior is totally normal. Of course you punch back. Of course you don’t let things roll off your back. That’s not how politicians behave in their communities. He doesn’t seem weird even if he does have all kinds of personality disorders, which I’m sure he does. He doesn’t read quite that way in these places.Aaron: You’re conducting these interviews after Trump has been in office for a bit, so they’ve gotten to see him not just with the bluster of a candidate, but actually as the leader of the free world. Was there a sense of the disconnect between how they perceive him and how he is perceived elsewhere? For example, you quote a handful of people about this. One guy, and I’ll just read the quote, he says, “I think other countries are afraid of him, which I think is a good thing. I hate to say it, but with Bush and Obama, they were pushovers. With Trump, he’s not a pushover. You’re going to have to deal with him. There’s no playing games with him.” This is really striking because it became very clear in Trump’s presidency that other world leaders were just constantly playing games with him. They saw his thin skin, his reactivity, his susceptibility to flattery, and they just manipulated the hell out of him. They were maybe afraid of him in the sense that he was a loose cannon, but they weren’t afraid of him as a tough guy that they had to take seriously. Were the communities aware of that disconnect, of how he was perceived on a world stage?Stephanie: No, I think that the idea of a leader that might speak quietly and carry a big stick just doesn’t make a lot of sense to them. In their own sphere of understanding, the way that you make people understand that you will not be messed with is through this thin-skinned response. It’s this kind of machismo. I think that that was how they understood. I was at a church service in Kentucky and the minister there was trying to get the churchgoers to be more assertive in their faith.He said, “Growing up, my big brother always taught me”—basically, he meant in the context of working at a job site like a construction site—“don't back up. Never back up.” That was seen as a deep truth that had application in all realms of life. They heard Trump making those sounds. It’s a pretty policy-wonkish person who could then read and trace actually what the consequences might have been, which you were just alluding to. Jon: I think it’s important to bear in mind that what’s happening here is a kind of identity politics. When they see a candidate like Trump who behaves in ways that are familiar to them, in ways that they might behave, in ways that their leaders might behave, it signals to them that this candidate is one of them. That’s how most voters behave, right? They don’t think very systematically, for the most part, about politics or ideology. Really, they’re interested in candidates and the extent to which they feel some sort of a social proximity to them. The closer they feel to them, the more they feel like they can trust them. I think the people we talked to just have a sense that Trump, because he seems familiar, because he seems trustworthy, will do the right thing on the international stage in these contexts that are removed from their knowledge or expertise. In that way, they’re really different from the wonky people one might meet in Washington, D.C., who are pulling their hair out because Trump is getting rolled by China and Putin, et cetera.Class, Not RaceAaron: One of the other things that is characteristic of Trumpism—and it was certainly present throughout Trump’s campaign—was nationalism, and then what often looked like racist dog whistles, if not just quite audible whistles. What has seemed to be characteristic is that Trumpism and Trump’s supporters are intensely nationalistic and often have—let’s call them racially charged views. What you found pushes back on that, at least in some ways, and you argued that it has more to do with the sense of place. Can you talk about how sense of place plays out and what that says about nationalism as a Trumpist phenomenon?Stephanie: All three of these were places we chose precisely because they represented a larger group of counties mostly that had voted twice for Obama and then flipped. We were interested in part because that seemed to be complicating what seemed like a clear-cut story of the kind of bigoted appeal, the appeal of bigotry that the Trump campaign represented. Then spending time there, what really stuck out in all three of the places was the localism and we've talked about some facets of that.These were all places where the people who lived there felt deeply, deeply connected to their hometowns and even so much that in the Johnston Rhode Island community that we were in, they had long had a phrase that was Johnston First—long before Trump was on the political landscape, that there was a sense of belonging to each other and needing to help each other and work for the community. This sometimes then resonated out to a nationalistic commitment. For example, in Ottumwa, Iowa where there were these strong unions, where there had been the car industry, it was difficult to buy a non-American made car in Ottumwa.They linked Ottumwa to the nation in a sense. In all of these places, there was that intense localism. For example, I was asking some women in Elliott County, Kentucky early on. One of them mentioned that they had read Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance and there was some other women at the conversation that I was having and the other women hadn't heard of the book, but they said, "Oh, was he from Elliot?" Then the response was, "No, because he's actually from another county that's an hour or two away, also part of Eastern Appalachia." Fairly indistinguishable from my eyes, but when they were told, "No, not from Elliot county, from this other county," they all laughed like, "Oh, okay, well that's a different county, we don't know about that county." Even the county boundaries of this tiny rural county really mattered to the civic imagination of the residents there.Jon: The other thing I'd say along these same lines is these are all places that are struggling to varying degrees and have been for quite some time. When Trump came around and said he was going to Make America Great Again, what they heard is not so much that he was going to make the nation writ large great again in some general way, what they heard rather is that he was going to make Ottumwa Great Again and Elliot Great Again and Johnston Great Again. That very nationalistic rhetoric, they heard in this very localized way. The fate of those communities matter to them partly because their social identities are so connected to those places.In these communities is where they're really socially known, where they really have reputations, where all their kin are, where all their kin are buried, and so to leave those places because they can't find the jobs or that they might need, for example, is a social death. Here it's a really a class-based difference. If Steph and I get offered a job at, say, Harvard and we go, our social reputation actually enhances because the nature of our communities is really different. It's not neighborhood-based, it's not especially place-based. Our communities are much more based in our professions. We're having this conversation with you across thousands of miles and that's the nature of our community.We don't know our neighbors all that well and it's certainly not the center, it's not really where our social identities are fundamentally based. The fate of these communities matters in a existential way to them in a way that I think it's sometimes hard for those of us who are part of the professional class to notice and to see. The other thing I'd say about race is, as we mentioned, these are places that voted for Obama twice. In that way, they're also different from places that were touched by the Tea Party. As soon as Obama's elected, you get the tea party, and I'm sure some of that was racially driven. He's our first black president but notably, it wasn't these communities. Obama really didn't create some massive counter mobilization in these places. These are places that voted for him twice, Obama was their president for eight years. Some of these places did grow disenchanted with him in the second term, and particularly in Elliot county where the policies of the Biden administration was particularly hard on the coal industry there. But for the most place, these weren't places that had some allergy to Obama. These were places that, in fact, voted for him and supported him.In general, I think we would say that to those studying Trump is that I think it is true on the one hand that these folks, they do think of Trump as a patron of the white working class in some ways. I think that's true. I do think, especially today, things have become more racialized. I'm sure if we went back into these communities in the wake of BLM and everything else, the racial politics has changed. Perhaps they think of themselves more fundamentally as white citizens and that's probably likely. But when we arrived there, I guess we were struck by the fact that they didn't particularly think in those terms and their social identities were much more class-based, they were much more place-based. I think we have to keep in mind that however much race plays a role, their politics aren't reducible to race either, that they have other social identities. I think that's hopeful in some ways.Stephanie: Just to put a point on the comment with one example that comes to mind in terms of Elliott County. Elliott county, Kentucky, is a particularly white area. There's very few people that are non-white.Jon: In fact, if I could just add, I think it's the whitest county that voted for Obama, which makes it interesting.Stephanie: All the political conflict there that sometimes can be racially charged in other places all happens within whites. For instance, when there's lots of grumbling about welfare and they're all looking at their white neighbors who are ethnically, religiously identical, racially identical to them. One thing I discovered among some of the older, this is not common among the younger, but the older people in Elliott County will sometimes complain about foreigners. When they talk about foreigners, they mean people from Ohio who are coming across the border or other counties, other white people.When there's lots of talk about invidious distinctions between us and them or between “othering” someone in the jargon of the academy, but in this case, they're “othering” white Ohioans, so the racial divisions aren't always the most important divisions to them.Jon: Just a quick footnote to that. It should remind us that, in some ways, their identities are much more provincial than whiteness. White America, that's a pretty big group of people. For the most part, it didn't seem like that was a community they felt especially close to. As Steph said, they feel like they're white neighbors and a neighboring county are, in some ways, outsiders and not part of their community.Aaron: The main issue of Trump's campaign, the thing that he ran on and drove home from early on his presidency was anti-immigration. That was his hobby horse. Is it then the case that for these communities, an anti-immigration view is less about race, ethnicity, nationality, immigrants with their weird languages and weird foods and more that if your community is intensely socially interconnected in a way that makes it look more like an extended family, then the immigrants look like the person who marries into that family and has a hard time fitting in because they didn't grow up in it, then they physically look different from us?Jon: Yes, you could see this in, I think, most notably actually in Ottumwa, Iowa, which of the three communities we studied has the highest level of immigration and they've come there really to work the meat packing plant. I do think there's something to what you're saying. There's a sense that these folks are outsiders who don't quite share our norms, and therefore, it's harder to have the tightly knit homogeneous community. We know from research on social capital that ethnic diversity, at least in the short and median term, undermines community and feelings of trust and belonging, and so diversity is a challenge to community.If your community is fundamentally neighborhood-based, then immigration can be a cost to those communities. Again, it's really quite a contrast from our college town. Here, we benefit from immigration on all kinds of ways. We pay immigrants in California, some in California, they cut our lawns, they clean our houses, they care for our children, they allow us to neglect our neighborhoods and tend to the communities that we care about, which is really our broader, professional, more diffuse, virtual kinds of communities. But in places like Ottumwa, those communities, again, are much more neighborhood-based.There is signs though that does sort of change over time as immigrants become part of the community. This is why I think it has more to do with culture than race. One Ottumwan, for example, told us about one of his neighbors, really about the Latinos in the community. Generally, he said, well, they're not even Mexican anymore because they don't speak Spanish. It was an interesting way of saying this was fundamentally about race. They may look a little different, but what matters is that they've socially and culturally integrated into the community.Policy Is Not the AnswerAaron: Looking forward then for those of us who are deeply worried about what Trumpism represents on the national stage, look back at the four years that he was in office and the real damage it did to American institutions and so on, and are worried about the continuing prevalence of this fundamentally illiberal views in the American electorate, what lessons should we draw from this? These people are speaking to genuine interests in cultural needs and affiliations. The book is very good at pointing out how much those of us in the cosmopolitan cities don't understand the way that class really works.There's a very nice line in it where you mention how much in colleges the future generations of progressive leaders are taught lots of courses in gender and race, but very little, if anything at all, in class and how important class is to this conversation. What lesson should we draw from what you've learned in these communities as far as understanding and preventing some of this from turning into the really dangerous illliberalism that we all fear?Jon: I think it is certainly heading that way. When we were in these communities at the time, it was still relatively early in their romance with Donald Trump, so they were not talking a lot of crazy conspiracy theory. Now we're really at a different place and I think partly what it highlights is the dangers of identity politics in some ways. There's a sort of cultishness that has really grown around Trump. Again, we were there and saw the beginnings of that, but we were just, in fact, at a rally in Wyoming, and Trump was there to officially nominate Harriet Hageman who's taking on Liz Chaney. It was everyone was in their Trump gear. Everyone had Trump T-shirts, lots of folks had Trump flags.If you've been to an NFL game, it had that feel to it like everyone's on the same team rooting together. Maybe that would be okay if Trump was less reckless. I think in many ways, we're in this moment because of Trump's bad character. Not so much that he appealed to people's place-based or class-based identities and mobilized this group of folks, but the power of that social connection has been so badly abused by him and so recklessly done, exploited. In a way, I think there'll be more responsible people. I hope there'll be more responsible people who will follow some of his example and leave other parts of it behind.I think there's responsible ways to appeal to these folks. I think it's important to remember, there's a decent part of this world. There's a decent morality there. Not all of it exports well up to the national level. I think honor culture, for example, for reasons we can explain, we think that maybe it's not great anywhere, but it works much better locally, and when it's exported up to the national level, it doesn't play out well. There are folks who I think are trying to take some of the Trump's playbook. One good example is this candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Fetterman, who's a Democrat, and very Trumpy in all kinds of ways.If you haven't bothered to look, on one of his forearms, he has a huge tattoo of a ZIP code of his hometown. Talk about appealing to place-based identities. This guy's really figured it out. On his other arm, he has the names of all those who died in his community while he was mayor. Very personal concern about his own hometown and community. Look, I don't know what kind of governor he would be if he makes it that far, but it strikes me that's, particularly for Democrats or even really Republicans, who are thinking about how do you mobilize some of these social identities in a way that's less reckless than Trump, I think it can be done.Again, I think it'd be done responsibly and that's partly because there's something admirable and something to like about the localism of these folks.Stephanie: Yes, I think a lot of the things that we found that we highlight in our book, the moral vision behind them has to be understood. Even something like the boss nature of politics, which is often something that's considered very sleazy in the kind of communities that John and I have lived really has a lot to do with this ethic of friendship and loyalty. It's a way that voters understand friendship and loyalty more than any policy-minded way of assessing candidates. I had one woman tell me, actually, a few people say things like this, but one woman comes to mind in Kentucky who was a very disengaged voter and worked a minimum wage, a pretty crappy job.She was one of the defenders of this disgraced county executive and she said: "At least when David was in office, you could get a load of gravel when you needed one." It was her sense of this was a true mark of friendship. I think that certainly the boss style politics, which has to do with personal loyalty, which, of course, resonates very large with the unusually intense following that Trump has at the national level, the localism, again, is about community and loyalty. I think candidates that can speak that cultural jargon can signal that it's more important to signal that than it is to have policies. The policies aren't the draw I guess. I saw some Trump voters who said to me Trump Democrats in Kentucky who said, "Oh, we have great internet. We got that under the Obama administration," but there was no sense that they gave credit to the Obama administration for this policy that clearly helped them. They giggled about. Or the same with Obamacare. We saw people in Rhode Island say, "Oh, well, yes, I am dependent on Obamacare," but didn't give much credit. I think what they want is a feeling of being represented by someone they can identify with and trust and they're much more attuned to social-cultural clues, maybe all of us are, when picking candidates. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theunpopulist.substack.com

united states america american california donald trump china washington nfl men politics talk americans joe biden ohio spanish western pennsylvania barack obama class north harvard kentucky political iowa mexican republicans hamilton catholic vladimir putin democrats new england bush blm democratic john f kennedy wyoming providence hillary clinton rhode island michelle obama democratic party generally republican party johnston latinos feds rudy giuliani second amendment franklin delano roosevelt new deal obamacare appalachia nationally ids tea party gee italian americans zip chris christie trumpism fairly fetterman hillbilly elegy make america great again trumpy beltway eastern kentucky ohioans white america trumpian with trump claremont mckenna college localism trumpist when trump harriet hageman obama trump ottumwa trump democrats jerry parker aaron you stephanie well aaron ross powell stephanie no aaron just jon a shields

#299 - Smart financial decisions for a long-lasting marriage

The Big Wedding Planning Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2022 55:05

“Don't get married! Don't do it!” Those were the words of advice our guest of today's podcast used to share with his friends and family. As one of Atlanta's award winning Divorce attorney's, Aaron Thomas, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has spent years working with couples during the painful side of marriage, watching them come to an end. Today, Aaron is happily married himself and no longer advocates against getting married, he does however, offer uplifting and positive advice for the consideration of prenups when planning a wedding. Michelle's discussion with Aaron, helps demistify why prenups get a bad reputation and how they can be a useful tool for couples who want to start their financial relationship in an intentional, transparent, and fair way. Big Takeaways Three Things that lead to a successful financial relationship: 1. Transparency Disclose all your assets and debts when you come in. 2. Communication Make agreements on certain spending habits. For instance, Aaron and his spouse communicate any time they are going to spend over $500. 3. Fairness Buckets of spending are important. For instance, asking about spending that $500 is only when it is coming from the couple spending bucket. Then each person has their own account as well. If things do come to an end, can we handle it in a way that treats both of us fairly and kindly? Even if you never get divorced, having a pre-nup can do wonders for your relationship. In setting up the agreement, both people must lay out their entire financial situation, and this creates a vulnerability and understanding of each other that may never otherwise come. The pre-nup doesn't just have to be about what happens if the marriage ends, you can add in comments about how money is spent and handled DURING the marriage. Creating budgets helps the couple experience things together on equal footing. You can create a pre-nup after getting married, it's actually called a post-nup! If you can't add the pre-nup in right now, at least have the conversation. Talk to your partner about your finances! Links We Referenced prenups.com (https://prenups.com) aaronthomaslaw.com (https://www.aaronthomaslaw.com) Evite.com/BigWedding (https://www.evite.com/?utm_source=veritone&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=tryforfree&utm_content=bigwedding) Flower Moxie (https://flowermoxie.com) Use code BigWeddings for $25.00 off your purchase! Quotes “It's a good idea to talk about financial issues before the wedding. That's going to play into even the budget for the wedding planning, I would assume, so. But also more importantly, it has to do with your life together. So, certainly I think couples should start talking about financial issues and making sure they're on the same page before or during the wedding planning season.” - Aaron “You can't be living in the same household and in different socioeconomic classes. Right? It's a recipe for disaster.” - Aaron “The couple in the ‘60s getting married was like a start-up. The couple getting married today is like merging two fully formed corporations.” - Aaron “If we can decide, when we love each other, what's fair. You know, waiting until divorce is a cruel joke, because you wait until all the trust has been broken down and all of this negative feelings have been built up with the other person. And then, you're supposed to agree on how to manage all the division of your finances from the past 10, 20, 30 years?” - Aaron Plan your wedding using The Big Wedding Planning Master Class (https://www.thebigweddingplanningmasterclass.com/). A self-paced digital course created with love for you by Christy & Michelle. The Big Wedding Planning Podcast is... * Hosted and produced by Michelle Martinez. * Edited by Veronica Gruba. * Music by Steph Altman of Mophonics (https://www.mophonics.com/). * On Instagram @thebigweddingplanningpodcast and be sure to use #planthatwedding when posting, so you can get our attention! * Inviting you to become part of our Facebook Group! Join us and our amazing members. Just search for The Big Wedding Planning Podcast Community on Facebook. * Easy to get in touch with. Email us at thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com or Call and leave a message at 415-723-1625 and you might hear your voice on an episode * On Patreon. Become a member (https://www.patreon.com/thebigweddingplanningpodcast) and with as little as $6.99 per month, you get 2 exclusive, ad-free episodes, + Zoom Happy Hour with Michelle and fellow patrons every month! Special Guest: Aaron Thomas.

music talk smart divorce edited inviting harvard law school evite long lasting financial decisions lasting marriage aaron thomas michelle martinez aaron you big wedding planning podcast

277: Joy Is Activism – The Power of Ritual and Intention

Greater Than Code

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2022 46:20

00:44 - Pandemic Life * Politics * Healthcare * Society * Work 13:58 - Jay, Happiness, and Fulfillment * Personal Development and Self-Discovery * Brené Brown (https://brenebrown.com/) * Glennon Doyle (https://momastery.com/) * Elizabeth Gilbert (https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/) * Nihilism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism) * Manifestation * Gratitude & Daily Journaling * Morning Pages (https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/) * EarlyWords (https://earlywords.io) 29:09 - Witchcraft & Magic * Intention and Ritual * Terry Pratchett (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett) * Franz Anton Mesmer (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-Anton-Mesmer) * The Placebo Effect (https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-effect) * Zenify Stress Relief Drink (https://zenifydrinks.com/) * Effort and Intention Reflections: Mandy: Everyone should journal. Reflect on the past and bring it to the present. Damien: Bringing magic into non-magical environments. Aaron: Ritual, intention, reflection, alignment. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: DAMIEN: Welcome to Episode 277 of Greater Than Code. I am Damien Burke and I'm joined with Aaron Aldrich. AARON: Hi, I am Aaron and I am here with Mandy. MANDY: Hello, everybody. I'm Mandy Moore and today, it's just the three of us! So if you came expecting more than that, I'm sorry. [laughter] We're what you get today, but hopefully, we can have a great conversation and we were thinking that we would talk about all the things. I'm doing big hand gestures right now because there's been so many things happening since 2020 that are still happening and how our perspectives have changed. For one, I, myself, can tell you I have grown so much as a person in 2 years. And I'm curious to hear how the two of you have been living your lives since the pandemic. DAMIEN: [chuckles] Where to begin. AARON: I know. It's such a good topic because I feel like everyone's had so much to change, but at the same time, it's like, okay, so 2 million years ago at the beginning of this pandemic. I'm now my third place, third job since the beginning of the pandemic as well and wow, I came out as non-binary in the middle of the pandemic [laughs]. So that was a whole thing, too. I think the question I asked earlier is how much have you radicalized your politics over the course of the past 2 years? [laughs] DAMIEN: Yeah, yeah. That's been bouncing around in my head since you said it off mic. Every time I hear the word pandemic now, I think about, “Oh man,” I hesitate on how far to go into this. [laughs] Because I look at the techno-anarchist crypto bros and I can I say that disparagingly and I will say that disparagingly because I was like them. [laughs] I filled out a survey today and they asked like, “How do you rate yourself as on a conservative and liberal scale?” I'm like, “Well, I think I'm super conservative.” And I still do and every time I align with any political policy, it's always an alignment with people who call themselves socialists and leftists and why is that? [laughs] Hmm. [laughter] But anyway, that was the part I was trying not to go back into. [laughs] One of the big realizations in living in a pandemic is that healthcare is not an exclusive good. MANDY: What? [laughter] DAMIEN: That is to say that I cannot, as an individual, take care of my own health outside of the health of the community and society I live in. Didn't know that. In my defense, I hadn't thought about it, [laughs] but that was an amazing realization. AARON: No, I think that was a big thing. I think so much of the pandemic exposed the way our systems are all interconnected. Exposed the societal things. Like so much we rely on is part of the society that we've built and when things don't work, it's like, well, now what? I don't have any mechanism to do anything on my own. What do we do? DAMIEN: Yeah. It's so fundamental in humanity that we are in society. We are in community. We only survive as a group. That's a fundamental aspect of the species and as much as we would like to stake our own claim and move out to a homestead and depend on no one other than ourselves, that is not a viable option for human beings. AARON: Right, yeah. Even out here in rural Vermont with animals and things, we're still pretty dependent on all of the services that are [chuckles] provided around. I'm still on municipal electric service and everything else. There's still dependence and we still rely on our neighbors and everyone else to keep us sane in other ways. DAMIEN: Yeah, and I feel like people in rural areas—and correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't lived in a rural area in maybe ever—have a better understanding of their independence. You know your neighbors because you need to depend on them. In the city—I live in Los Angeles—we depend on faceless institutions and systems. AARON: Yeah. DAMIEN: And so, we can easily be blind to them. AARON: Yeah. I think it mixes in other ways. I get to travel a bit for work and visit cities, and then I end up coming back out into the rural America to live. So I enjoy seeing both of it because in what I've seen in city spaces is so much has to be formalized because it's such a big deal. There are so many people involved in the system. We need a formal system with someone in charge to run it so that the average everyday person doesn't have to figure out how do I move trash from inside the city outside the city. [laughter] We can make that a group of people's job to deal with. Here, it's much more like, “Well, you can pay this service to do it, or that's where the dump is so can just take care of it yourself if you want.” “Well, this farm will take your food scraps for you so you can just bring this stuff over there if you want.” It's just very funny. It just pops up in these individual pockets and things that need group answers are sometimes like pushed to the town. You get small town drama because like everyone gets to know about what's happening with the road and have an opinion on the town budget as opposed to like, I don't know, isn't that why we hire a whole department to deal with this? [laughs] DAMIEN: Yeah, but small town drama is way better than big town drama. The fact that half of LA's budget goes to policing is a secret. People don't know that. AARON: Yeah. DAMIEN: Between the LA Police Department and LA Sheriff's Department, they have a larger budget than the military of Ukraine. That's the sort of thing that wouldn't happen – [overtalk] AARON: Don't look at the NYPD budget then. DAMIEN: Which is bigger still, yeah. [laughter] That's not the sort thing that would happen in a small town where everybody's involved and in that business. AARON: Yeah. It happens in other weird ways, but it's interesting. This is stuff that I don't know how has, if it's changed during pandemic times. Although, I guess I've started to pay attention more to local politics and trying to be like, “Oh, this is where real people affecting decisions get made every day are at the municipal levels, the city level.” These are things that if we pass a policy to take care of unhoused, or to change police budget, this affects people right now. It's not like, “Oh, wow, that takes time to go into effect and set up a department to eventually go do things.” It's like, “No, we're going to go change something materially.” It's hard to compare the two because the town I'm in rents a police officer part-time from the next [laughs] municipality over. So the comparison to doesn't really work. [laughter] DAMIEN: Everybody knows exactly how much that costs, too. AARON: We do. I just had to vote on it a couple Tuesdays ago. [laughter] DAMIEN: So then I think back to how that has impacted – I'm always trying to bring this podcast more into tech because I feel guilty about that. [laughs] About just wandering off into other things. But I think about how that impacts how I work in the organizations I work in. Hmm. I recognize I'm learning more about myself and how much I can love just sitting down with an editor and churn out awesome code, awesome features, and awesome products. That brings me so much joy and I don't want to do anything else. And what we do has impact and so, it's so beneficial to be aware of the organization I'm in what it's doing, what the product is doing, how that's impacting people. Sometimes, that involves a lot of management—I do a lot of product management with my main client now. But also, in other places, you would look at, “Well, okay, I don't need to manage the client's finances”. Not because that's not as important, it's because other people are doing it and I trust how they're doing it. That's something I haven't had elsewhere. The advantage of being with a very small organization is that I have these personal relationships and this personal trust that I couldn't get at one of the vampire companies. What'd they call them? FAANG? AARON: Yeah, FAANG. We've been talking about this because FAANG, but Facebook and Google changed their name. So now, is it just MAAN? DAMIEN: Yeah. AARON: I mean Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, right? DAMIEN: I'm all for the right of individuals to choose what they're called; I don't know if I'm willing to extend that to Facebook and Google. AARON: [laughs] Yeah. DAMIEN: Remember, was it Altria? AARON: Oh, Philip Morris. DAMIEN: Philip Morris, right? AARON: Yeah. DAMIEN: They were just like, “Oh, everything we've been doing is so horrible and harming to society for the past several decades, we'll just change our names and people will forget about it.” AARON: That was Philip Morris. Altria didn't do any of that. DAMIEN: Yeah. Altria didn't do any of that. [chuckles] Yeah, I remember that. AARON: Yeah. I'm curious because I think it's changed for me a bit over this time, too. But I'm curious for folks that have had a sensitivity change to the types of company, not necessarily types of companies, but like, I'm more sensitive to who I'm working for. I think my list of no, I won't work for the X company [chuckles] has probably grown throughout the pandemic and I'm definitely much more critical. Part of it's probably because as in tech we're sort of at an advantage, it is high demand right now and we can be a bit picky about where we work, but I definitely have been [laughs] lately. Much more careful about I'm not just willing to work with anyone. I want someone that's got reasonable values. I interview other companies a lot more and I want to make sure product is not causing harm generally speaking and make sure I get a lot more value alignment out of leadership team and things like that. I don't know if other people have had a similar experience. MANDY: Unfortunately, I haven't had that experience. I'm still working for whoever will give me money. [laughter] But I wish I could do that and I'm currently looking. I mean, I've been trying to break into a full-time DevRel career for I guess, 2 years now and I guess, I'm actively looking. Oh, here we go. If you're hiring, let me know. [laughter] I guess I am. I'm looking for that job that I'm really feeling fulfilled in is right now I'm not feeling that and I think it's because of the pandemic, I've really stopped to think about what I want in my life and how I want to feel. I want to be happy, I want to be passionate about my job, and I want to wake up and not feel scared to open my computer because – [overtalk] DAMIEN: Wow. MANDY: Are they going to tell me they no longer need my service? DAMIEN: Right. MANDY: And it's been demoralizing really, for me recently, especially because I tried to join a developer relations Slack group just a few months ago and they rejected me flat out and they're like, “You do not work in dev full time. You cannot be a part of our group,” and I'm like, “Oh.” So now I'm like, “Hmm, what do I do in tech?” [laughter] I thought I'd been doing DevRel before DevRel was cool. I'm going to humble brag for a minute, but I have single-handedly put this podcast together and put you people together that you didn't even know and you love each other. You get that vibe. I can tell who's going to get – you're going to love this person and you're going to like – [overtalk] DAMIEN: Oh man, you not only put this podcast together, but you are the sustaining force. You are the heart of it. You are the thing where that all the panelists that are connected to. You are one who gets all of the mechanical, everything besides talking in mics. You do everything else and you're maintaining all these relations with these developers. [laughter] MANDY: I never even wanted to be on mic. I just started doing it because everybody was busy and I was like, “I guess I have to step up.” [laughs] DAMIEN: Whatever it takes to get it done, right? MANDY: Well, yeah. I feel like the topics on this show that we talk about are important and they're even important outside of tech that hence, the whole name: Greater Than Code. There are more things out there than our jobs and our work and I just want to be happy. I want to be fulfilled and I want to be passionate about something and so does my dog. AARON: That was a shift for me, too. That was definitely one of the roles I was in during the pandemic and realized my struggle with it so much was it was clashing with that. It wasn't fulfilling for me, it was clashing with my core values, and it was just like, “You know what, I can't do this anymore.” [chuckles] I'm no longer in a place where I have the energy to do a thing I don't like doing, or don't have some care for. There's always something you don't like doing. There's always some crap around every job that like don't like to do or you have to deal with something, but I'm no longer at a place where I can have a whole job that rubs me the wrong way. MANDY: Yeah. It's hard for me. I should feel great about this, but I'm known as the podcast girl. If you have a tech podcast, you should talk to Mandy, but I'm not just a podcast editor! I do so much more than that. I do operation, I do product management, I do writing; there's so much more that encompasses who I am in tech than the podcast girl. I feel like not a lot of people know that and maybe that's my fault because I guess, I haven't really done a good job of putting myself out there to be like, “Hey wait. But I'm –” because for me, it's still a hustle as a single mom. I have to pay the bills. So it's like, I wish I could be more discerning with the jobs that I take and who I work for, but I don't know. I'm just one of those people of the universe. What will be, will be and if it's meant to be, it'll come to me. [laughs] So I don't ever really actively seek and that's probably half of my problem. DAMIEN: Mm. That's funny because I didn't know all those things about you. I pitch you as a podcast producer and again, I live in a LA, I'm involved in the entertainment industry at a slight level, and the word producer there is very, very powerful and very important. A producer is an executive. A producer is person who gets things done, who makes it happen. I'm not entirely sure what a producer does, even though I've done it. MANDY: I'm not even sure what a – [laughs] DAMIEN: Right, because it's never the same thing. MANDY: No. DAMIEN: It's whatever it takes and that skill. AARON: Yeah. DAMIEN: That being able to be know enough about a movie, or theatrical production, or a podcast, to know what it takes, to be able to manage, and sustain and get it done. That's really what it comes down to: get it done. MANDY: That's why it's so hard for me. Everyone's like, “Do you have a resume?” And I'm like, “I don't know what to put on it!” Like, you tell me you need this done, I'll get it done. If I don't know how to do it, I'll figure it out because that's what I've done for 13 years. Like I got hired as Avdi Grimm's virtual assistant because an Indeed.com ad came out and was like, “I need somebody to answer emails for me,” and I'm like, “Don't know why you can't do that yourself, but sure.” [laughter] And then from there, he had a podcast and was like, “Can you edit my podcast?” And I was like, “Sure,” and then I'm Googling what is a podcast. [laughter] I had no clue. So I got here, I think a lot out of luck from being at the right place and talking to the right person at the right time. But I have busted my ass to just learn what people need me to learn and do what people need me to do. I guess, that's maybe what I should just put on the resume. I'll do what you need me to do. I make it happen. DAMIEN: No, no, no. You put on the resume what your next job is going to be doing. MANDY: [laughs] Yeah, so, it's hard when people ask me for my resume. I have like three resumes and I'm like, “This does not, no.” AARON: It's almost more a portfolio at this point, right. I made this thing happen. I made this thing happen. Here's this other thing that I did. Here's another thing I made happen. DAMIEN: Resumes are horrific. They're not good for anybody and the only people who use them are people who need to filter quickly out of large groups and they're not even good for that. I've long aspired to be at a place in my career where I don't need a resume and I might be there. Steve Jobs didn't have a resume. Didn't need a resume. He didn't send his resume to the board to get that job at Apple back. It's ridiculous. MANDY: Well, that's the thing for me. I get most of my work from word to mouth. DAMIEN: Right. MANDY: So until I really lost a big client and I was like, “Oh, I don't have a resume. Don't you know who I am?” [laughter] DAMIEN: But like, they should. [laughter] AARON: Just say the portfolios level. I mean, it's kind of the same thing, right? This is... MANDY: Yeah. AARON: [laughs] Kind of the same thing. It's sort of how my resume is morphed in DevRel proper. It's gone from I still kind of have the resume that's like, “Yeah, I worked into these things internally that might not surface otherwise, but also, here's my speaking portfolio and all the things that I have done over the past 3 years. [laughs] You might know me from all of this stuff instead of what's on this resume.” [laughter] MANDY: Yeah. Of course, once I was getting comfortable enough to want to speak, that's when the whole world shut down. DAMIEN: Yeah. MANDY: So I have no videos of myself speaking anywhere whatsoever. DAMIEN: Well, I think there might be a few podcasts that you appear on. MANDY: There's a few episodes as of late that I have ventured to be on out of keeping the show alive. DAMIEN: And every episode of this podcast, and I think several others, are shits near portfolio, right? [laughter] MANDY: Then I'd have a really wrong resume. [laughs] AARON: We'll figure it out. DAMIEN: Yeah. AARON: You just need the highlights. MANDY: But I don't know, a lot of other things have changed for me over the course of the past 2 years. Just in my personal life, I've gotten sober and that was a really hard thing to do during a pandemic. AARON: Yeah. MANDY: When everybody else was out hoarding toilet paper, I was like, “Oh my God, I need beer,” [laughs] and actually, I did. While everybody was stocking up on those other necessities, I was buying cases of beer and putting them in my garage because I was like, “Oh great, the world's ending and I guess, if that's going to happen, I might as well be drunk.” And then – [overtalk] AARON: I mean, it's a fair argument in your defense. MANDY: But then it became a bad problem because when you're home all day and I was home, I worked from home before this. But everything is so damn depressing and you keep the news on the television and next thing you know, it's lunch time and cracking a beer and I'm like, “Whoa, this is… [laughs] where did this come from?” So no, I got sober and I don't drink anymore and honestly, I have never felt better. I've also become a runner. I got a treadmill and I run a 4, or 5 miles a day and I've lost a good amount of weight, probably a lot from alcohol bloat. DAMIEN: [chuckles] Yeah. MANDY: But it's more for me. It's not even about losing a weight because I don't even own a scale because it's more about how I feel. DAMIEN: Yeah. MANDY: It's what is about how I feel. So when I went to the doctor's office for my yearly checkup on Monday and I got on the scale because they make you, I said, “Whoa,” [laughs] because I didn't even know. For me, it's about how I feel and I think that that's really, what's brought a lot of things into perspective for me is that at our time here on earth is fine. I want to be here for my daughter especially. She's 13 and I want to be healthy for her. I want to be here for my friends. I ask myself why I'm still in York, Pennsylvania and I haven't left because I do have people around here that I care about. DAMIEN: Yeah. MANDY: And other than that, I could take it, or leave it. But because the people who I love are here, that's why I haven't left. DAMIEN: Yeah. MANDY: So that's another thing, the things like the pandemic has just really set me into a lot of personal development work and self-discovery. I journal every day. I read self-help books, which is so weird to me because I was one of those people that were like, “Who are those people that read self-help books?” and now I'm one of them. [chuckles] I want to be Brené Brown and Glennon Doyle's best friend. [laughter] Those two women are my people. Elizabeth Gilbert. I can give you so many names of people and great authors that just inspire the hell out of me and 2 years ago, I was not that at all. AARON: Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for getting at our time on earth is finite and so, in refocusing on what matters to us. Another way I had a friend put it to me, it's like optimistic nihilism. Look, at the end of the day, we're all going to be dead and none of this matters. So you might as well do what makes you happy, right? [laughs] You might as well do the things that are fulfilling and meaningful and try to make other people have a good time, too. You might as well. DAMIEN: I always thought it was ridiculous that nihilism had such a negative connotation. It was like, “No. Okay. I can believe that and be –” [overtalk] AARON: No pressure. At the end of the day, we're all going to die so, no pressure. Do what do what you need to do. Doesn't matter if you succeed, or fail. MANDY: That's like, I'm one of those people that would rather spend their money on experiences. AARON: Yeah. MANDY: Because I don't care how much money I die with. [laughter] I'd rather use it now and take my kid Disney world, which I did 3 years ago. DAMIEN: Nice. MANDY: And enjoy those experiences rather than have a bank account full of dollars that I can't use. DAMIEN: High score. MANDY: Yeah, high score. DAMIEN: Shout out to thriving in hand wavy. I feel embarrassed about this and I don't talk about it much because so many people are suffering. People I love are suffering. People I work with and deal with on a daily basis are suffering, and bad things are happening. This is the best year of my life. This is better than last year and last year was better than the year before. I just keep getting better and my life just keeps getting more awesome. I don't know if I was going anywhere with that, but solidarity with Mandy, I guess. You bought a treadmill. I bought a rower. MANDY: I feel like honestly, the universe gives back what you put out and I guess, I've become real – a lot of people are like, “You're like, woo-woo witchy now,” and I'm like, “Aha, yeah.” I kind of like that. So I feel like if you manifest things, you can make that happen and yes, there's things happening. Yes, yes, there are so many bad things happening, but sometimes out of self-preservation, you just have to tune all of that out and just be in your immediate dwell. For me, sometimes I'll go a week without watching news and I feel guilty about that a lot, but it's just like, you know what, if something's going to happen, it's going to happen. AARON: I think the best way someone put that to me was anxiety is not activism. MANDY: Yeah. DAMIEN: Yeah. AARON: Right, so just sitting around making yourself anxious and stressed out about everything and whatever emotion you have, making yourself feel bad doesn't improve the situation, it just also makes you feel bad. So it's okay to take a step back and do the self-care that you need to do because just feeling bad isn't fixing the problem either. So step back, find what you can do. Maybe there's stuff you can do here, in your immediate space that you can take action on. MANDY: Exactly. And also, for drinking other people's problems away, – [overtalk] [laughter] AARON: You can't drink other people's – disassociating from other people's problems isn't effective. [laughter] MANDY: No. Let me tell you, I tried. [laughter] DAMIEN: That's such a great statement. Anxiety is not activism, but also the opposite is true. Joy is activism, rest is activism, thriving in a world that doesn't want you to thrive is an act of resistance and activism. Shout out, living a good life. AARON: That's been a good conversation. I think that's easy to forget and I've seen it come up a couple times over the past couple years of what they have been of taking those moments for joy are really important. They can be radical in and of themselves. MANDY: Keep a gratitude journal. There are so many great apps that every day before I go to sleep, I just write one sentence and it gives you an option even to have a picture. So you can snap a picture. Even if it's just like this candle, this candle is burning right here and it smells so good and it's making me happy today. So I'm grateful for the candle. DAMIEN: Yeah, I'm up to approximately 2 years of daily journaling. A buddy of mine got together. We built a daily journaling app based on Morning Pages from The Artist's Way. It's called Early Words. Shout out earlywords.io if you want to join and journal with me. But every day, 750 words. I do it first thing in the morning most days. Stream of consciousness. It has absolutely changed my life. It makes me feel good. It made me a better writer. Not because the writing is good, but because it's taught me to turn off the editor. Writing does have to be good for me to write it. MANDY: Yeah. Big proponent of journaling. AARON: I believe in it. I just don't remember to do it. But that's my own problem. [laughter] DAMIEN: Can we go back? Can we talk about witchcraft? AARON: All right, I'm in. DAMIEN: A friend of mine asked me oh my God, maybe it was a year ago. Maybe it was several months ago. I have no idea. She asked me like, “Do you actually believe in witchcraft? Those magic woo-woo stuff?” It's like, “Well, let me tell you something. Every morning when I wake up in the morning, I make a potion with dried leaves that energizes me. At night, I make a different potion with dried flowers that calm me down and helps me sleep. My literal job is making sand think. Do I believe in witchcraft? I mean, yeah.” [chuckles] MANDY: I mean, it's a full moon today so I have a whole jug of water out charging. I do. I literally have a jug of water on my deck charging for full moon water energy and I use it like, I'll put a little bit in my bath water. I'll put it a little bit of it – I'll cook with it. When I boil some water, put it in there. Does it help? I don't know, but it makes me feel better! DAMIEN: Okay. Wait. It makes you feel better? AARON: Sounds like it's helping. DAMIEN: Doesn't that means it helps? MANDY: Yeah. It does. AARON: Yeah. I think that's a good point. I believe in the power of intention and ritual. There's a reason why humans developed rituals over time and sometimes, it's just for us to feel the right thing. But like, feelings are important? DAMIEN: [laughs] But like, feelings are important. AARON: I don't want to say something controversial on the Greater Than Code podcast such as feelings are important. But they are. Sometimes, while you go through a certain step and it centers you, or you go through a certain set of steps and it makes you feel better, or it helps you process the anxiety you're feeling, or it's like, nope, I need to get centered in my five senses again so I can come back into my body and be here instead of going off on an anxiety spiral. MANDY: Absolutely. AARON: What is witchcraft? I actually love this from Terry Pratchett, one of my all-time favorite authors who does the Discworld series of novels, as a very specific approach to witchcraft, which is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, magic and whatever. But their daily thing is checking on all the people of the village and doing all the work that nobody wants to do. So it's like, how are the elderly doing? Do they need help with anything? Making sure and so takes their bath, making sure this person's animals are taken care of, making sure this sort of thing. Sometimes, it's about appearances and going through the ritual to make sure the community is coming along. Sitting with the dead, all that kind of stuff. And that's witchcraft, that's the bread and butter of witchcraft is knowing the right herbs and poultices to put together, being the heart and soul of the community and being able to get people and helping each other, and move the resources around as needed and that sort of thing. So yeah, I believe in that. [laughs] DAMIEN: Yeah. There was there's a great story and about Anton Mesmer, I learned this shout out to Mary Elizabeth Raines who taught me hypnosis. I learned this when she told me this story when I was doing my hypnosis training about Anton Mesmer, who's considered the [31:10] of hypnotism. He introduced hypnotism to the to the white people. The word mesmerism and magnetic person, magnetic personality, all this comes from Mesmer. He had salons where people would hold onto metal rod that he had “magnetized” and be healed and fall out and screaming have spirit and all that. But Mesmer was very popular and very powerful and the king of France did not like this. The king of France put together a blue-ribbon commission. I don't know if he called it a blue-ribbon commission. Probably not because he spoke French, but put together a commission of scientists to discredit Mesmer. One of these scientists was Ben Franklin, by the way. So they did a double-blind study. They did a proper double-blind test. They had Mesmer come out and magnetize a tree. That was a thing he did. He would magnetize trees, people would come out and hug the trees and then they'd be healed. So they did a study. They had to magnetize the tree and they brought people out who were sick and they said, “Hug that tree. That's magnetized and you'll be healed.” Some of the trees Mesmer had magnetized, some he hadn't and it turns out it didn't matter. People were still healed and so, they all came to conclusion, “All right. See, Mesmer's not doing anything. It's all placebo effect.” Mesmer was run out of town and lived in exile for the rest of his days. Nobody bothered to ask why were the people healed? Everybody knows placebo effect is a real effect. Nobody's like, “How do we make it more effective? Why is it working this way? What do we do it? What do we do with that? How can we use that?” MANDY: Yeah. AARON: No, I think it's a super interesting thought. The placebo effect is a powerful and interesting concept overall. We did ourselves a disservice to not understand it. DAMIEN: Yeah. To dismiss it as if it doesn't exist. Not only does it exist, it's increasing. AARON: Hmm. DAMIEN: Because people are getting more powerful. MANDY: Yeah. I'm drinking this Zenify Stress Relief Drink. [chuckles] And does it work? I don't know, but it's delicious and you know what? It makes me happy. You know why? Because it's not alcohol. [laughter] So it's not having a negative effect on me. I'm not getting drunk and doing stupid things. Is it taking away? My stress? Eh. I mean, but I love it. I love it and it makes me feel good. It's a treat. It's a special drink. I have one a day and it's one of those things that instead of missing my case of White Claw Seltzer. I know, I know, I wasn't even a bougie – well, I wasn't even a good drinker. That's what made it a problem. [laughs] AARON: This is far too affordable. MANDY: I was not a discerning drinker, so. [laughs] No, I have my one bougie drink that I have and it makes me feel good. Does it relieve my stress? I don't know, but I don't care either. DAMIEN: Yeah. If it works, it works. One of the great things about placebos is they don't – well, I was going to say they don't have to be expensive, but sometimes it works better when they're expensive. [laughs] MANDY: Moon water is free. DAMIEN: Moon water is, yeah. But, well, it's not free actually. You had to put an effort and intention. MANDY: True. DAMIEN: And I think if you didn't, it wouldn't be as effective. AARON: Effort and intention go a long way. DAMIEN: [laughs] That's a root of magic, isn't it? MANDY: Why can't I just get paid for effort and intention? [laughs] AARON: I mean, if I put my effort and intention into this money tree. [laughter] I've always thought it would be nice if real world jobs worked like Animal Crossing. Like, “Oh, so I can just go pick some stuff up and then you're just going to give money and then we can just move on? Great.” “Now look, I dug up a bag of money. If I just plant this bag of money, I'll get more money. It's fine.” [laughs] DAMIEN: I'm trying to bridge that gap. That's such a great question like when effort and intention is so well, literally magical, why does it seem to not have the impact we want in nonmagical environments, I'll call them? AARON: Mm. DAMIEN: I asked that question because I want to know what to do about that. I want to bring magic to nonmagical environment, to city council, to retail stores. I almost named an online retail store; I don't want to name it. [laughs] But it's a city council to corporate interactions. And there's no reason you can't. Corporations are people. Governments are people. I think requires dealing with them in individually in ways that we're not used to. AARON: Yeah. It's a good question. You've got to be really thinking about… MANDY: My wheels are turning. AARON: Yeah. I mean, I think part of it is effort and intention are always going to make the most effect for you because most of it is about aligning your thought processes. It's about taking the, I don't know, I'm just taking this into making the best decision I can to like, okay, if I can focus on this is my goal and my aim and what I'm after, suddenly all of the patterns emerge around that. Oh, now I'm ready for that opportunity, or oh, now this thing is working out, and oh, now this is what is working out because I've focused on my intentions and where I want to put my efforts. I think there's room for these things in other groups. Gets back to what I was thinking about ritual, about how humans are tuned for ritual to tell themselves story. We're tuned for storytelling and ritual and all this sort of thing. So I think there's room from a tech perspective, I'm thinking about what comes to mind quickly is incident management stuff. Sorry, I'm coming off of SRECon this week so, everything's going to be around that. DAMIEN: Our apologies. [laughter] It's all right. AARON: It was fantastic, but it's a different podcast. [laughs] But think about that, right? When you're coming in and doing instant reports, it's so powerful is it to set the intention of the meeting, or any meeting that you have and say, “We are here for this purpose. This is what we're looking to find. We're not looking to do –” Back when Chef had lots to say about this, they'd have those things like we're not here to determine what could have, or should have happened. We're here to find out what did and move the thing. So it's all about setting the intent of that gathering and what outcomes you're after and it focuses the whole conversation can make that meeting more powerful because you've set the focus right off the bat. I think there's room for that other places, too. DAMIEN: That's such a beautiful way of saying it. You described it as setting an attention. AARON: Yeah. S: Whereas, in corporate speak, I would describe it as setting an agenda. AARON: Right, and an agenda is one thing. It's kind of like, “Hey, here's kind of the stuff we're going to do,” but to be like, “We are gathered for this purpose to [laughs] cover this thing.” DAMIEN: No, no. AARON: Right. DAMIEN: Dearly beloved, dear colleague. AARON: Right? Yeah, right. DAMIEN: We are gathered here for this purpose. AARON: Yeah. I mean, we say it this way in personal stuff, why don't we –? Like, it's useful. [laughs] MANDY: It really is. DAMIEN: Because how are you ever going to get something done if you don't know what you're there for? AARON: Right. DAMIEN: Well, you're going to get something done. If you don't have a destination, any road you take is fine. AARON: If you don't have any intention set, it's a series of meetings that could have been emails. [laughter] And then maybe that's the power of it, in a nonmagical space, is forcing yourself to go through this thought process of why am I doing this? Why are we here? What do we want to accomplish? Can probably trim so much of the cruft from all of our meetings and engagements. DAMIEN: That was my favorite sentence as a product manager: what is it you're trying to accomplish? [chuckles] AARON: I say that a lot, DAMIEN: But it is a very, very powerful question. AARON: Especially when you have children asking to use dangerous tools. [laughter] What is it you're trying to accomplish? Maybe we don't need to bust out razor blades. [laughs] DAMIEN: So from an SRE standpoint, when you get together for – what do you call that meeting? An incident review postmortem? Postmortem is a bit – [overtalk] AARON: Yeah, yeah. Post-incident report. There's a handful of names for that reason, but post-incident review. MANDY: Retrospective. DAMIEN: Retrospective, yeah. So the question is, what is it you are trying to accomplish? AARON: Right. DAMIEN: I'm trying to find somebody to blame. AARON: And not blaming. DAMIEN: I'm trying to find somebody to blame so that I look good in my next performance review. AARON: Well, that's what was so important about doing that because that's the shift we're, largely as an industry, trying to make. Finding a person to blame doesn't learn anything about what happened and will teach us nothing for next time. So if we set the intention of like, we're trying to learn from this incident and how we can improve or what we can do better, or maybe there's nothing. Maybe this was just a fluke and let's find that out. That's what we're here to learn. But we're not here to point fingers, or find a root cause because root causes are for plants. [laughter] AARON: Again, that's a whole other podcast. [laughs] MANDY: At the beginning of the pandemic, I owned zero plants. Now, I think I'm the proud plant mother of 20? [laughs] DAMIEN: Wow. AARON: That's amazing. MANDY: I know. AARON: My problem is I can't keep things alive. MANDY: Well, mostly they're all thriving because I set the intention that I was not going to mess this up. [laughter] DAMIEN: There you go. Do you give them moon water? MANDY: I do. DAMIEN: Apparently, it's working. MANDY: I do. Do we want to do some reflections? DAMIEN: Sure. Let's do it. MANDY: I'll start us off. With this conversation, we were just having about the intention and stuff. This is why I think everybody should journal, including CEOs and leaders. Get out a journal, what do you want, and then look back at some of the stuff. I don't it often, but I go back and I'm like, “Oh yeah.” Just reflecting on what you've written in the past and bringing that to the present can really help you put stock in all the things that you want and should be accomplishing. DAMIEN: Yeah. This bringing magic into nonmagical environments and journaling is part of that. A shout out to journaling. Another plug for earlywords.io that I own. Come journal with me because it is a magical thing. It is a ritual I do daily. That clears my mind. That is a practice of the listening to myself. It is a practice of letting go and not controlling what's coming out. Along with that and all the other sort of ways I know of being that I can call magic, I can call hypnotism, I can call NLP, I can call ontological coaching I've done a lot, bringing that into environments where I haven't because they're so useful there and we talked about some of the ways they are and so, we really confirmed more ways of doing that. AARON: I think the things I'm thinking about after this conversation are ritual, intention, and reflection are the big things that are standing up. I think this pandemic, for instance, and how things have changed is because I've had just so much time to have to sit alone by myself and reflect on what's going on externally and internally. But yeah. Anyway, just about setting intentions, of understanding the directions you want to go before going, making sure you're aligned with your goals, and you're not just accidentally wandering down paths that you don't want to be down and turning around and finding out your miserable 10 months later. I think I've thought a lot about the power of even small rituals just to interrupt our standard thought processes and align ourselves with those kind of things. There's been a lot from basic health stuff of here are the rituals I can go through when I'm feeling anxious and I know they'll calm me down to writing in a journal, or directing a group to [laughs] let's align our thought processes. It can be super useful. DAMIEN: Absolutely. MANDY: Awesome. Well, this has been a really fun conversation. I'm glad we just had a panel only episode and I'd love to do more of these in the future. They're really cool. We didn't come to the show with much of an agenda and hopefully, you dear listener, appreciate it. If you would like to give us some feedback, we'd appreciate it. Tweet at us. Join our Slack. AARON: Hire Mandy. DAMIEN: Tell your friends. MANDY: DM me. [chuckles] Tell your friends. DAMIEN: Tell your enemies. MANDY: Tell your enemies, too! [chuckles] We'll see you all next week.

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2022 Apparel Trends for Garment Decorators

2 Regular Guys Talking Decoration and Personalization

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 25, 2022 67:38

Jay Busselle will be joining Aaron this week to talk about Apparel Trends for 2022. A special guest on the show will be Adrienne Palmer with Screen Printing Magazine. If you're a garment decorator and you want to peer into the 2022 crystal ball, this is a must-see show! Brought to you by: Our Success GroupOur regular listeners know this, but 2 Regular Guys are all about garment decorating, a bit of fun, and no rants or lectures or selling. We are not doing this for our employers, but rather for our industry. Since February 2013, The 2 Regular Guys have been the first and the most listened to garment decorating industry podcast on this planet! We are humbled by all of you tuning in each week. We work hard to bring you information that will make your business better, and our industry better. Take a look at our incredible weekly guest list and you'll understand where this industry goes for news, interviews, and the heartbeat of garment decorating. Thanks for listening! News GILDAN ANNOUNCES CLOSING OF MEBANE DISTRIBUTION CENTER - In an announcement that was made earlier this month, Gildan Activewear stated its plans to close its Mebane, North Carolina distribution center by June 30th. It's a move that will affect 128 local employees but won't necessarily leave them out of a job. According to a press release shared on The Times News, a WARN Act notice filed with the North Carolina Department of Commerce on Feb. 16th said the distribution center would permanently close by June 30, 2022. That specific facility houses the company's unbranded wholesale activewear apparel.Dad Joke: What noise does a witch's vehicle make?Broom Broom 2022 Apparel Trends Jay: Let's introduce our guests today! I hope this isn't too weird for you Aaron but I'm going to be one of the guests too! Am I breaking the rules? I hope so! But the good news is I invited some friends. Adrienne Palmer is editor-in-chief of Screen Printing and BIG Picture magazines. And Jeremy Picker is Creative Director and Founder at AMB3R Creative. Hey guys - what's going on?Aaron: You are breaking the rules, Jay, but I think we can make an exception. When I think of 2022 Apparel trends I think of Styles, Colors and even decorating techniques. Jay: You nailed it Aaron!! It is all three of those things and even the words that we choose to describe the styles, colors and decoration techniques. I was reminded of this when Vicki Ostrom, Futurist and Trend Analyst at SanMar and founder of Trendependent was sharing her wisdom on an education session for PromoKitchen. She shared a reference that I later looked up which was from Adobe called Creative Trends 2022. In that report, Adobe mentions, “The seriousness of life during the pandemic has taken its toll. Tired of the mundane and familiar, people are more carefree, high-spirited, and joyful as they seek re-connection, escape from boredom, and positivity in the new year.”Aaron: Carefree, joyful and seeking re-connection - those all make sense to me! What other trends are likely to have an impact on apparel Jay?Jay: Being active and getting outside has always been important. Studies have found people report a higher level of vitality, enthusiasm, pleasure, and self esteem, and a lower level of tension, depression and fatigue after they have walked outside! I'm sure that's why research revealed exercising outdoors was the most popular fitness trend in 2021. That takes us to 2 very powerful trends that have carried over into 2022: to be outside AND to be active, walking and more involved in fitness.For specific examples of this, ASI recently released an apparel study (last month). The study is based on data that was analyzed in late 2021 using surveys of nearly 40,000 consumers. That data was presented in a collection of the most popular promo products in the U.S. and identifies which states and regions they're most influential in. Outerwear & Performance wear were number 1 and number 2 in every region!

#54 - The Blanket Fort

Party Chat

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2021 56:30

Spend some time in the Party Chat Blanket Fort with Aaron, Glenn, and Chris as they delve into each others' gaming answers and ask the question "what do I play with my family around the holidays?"CREW INFO:Follow Chris on Twitter at @techdudetxFollow Glenn on Twitter at @gcarrereFollow Aaron on Twitter at @TurboHoodieJoin the conversation on the Party Chat Discord! Head to https://bit.ly/PartyChatDiscord to join!Download the Curtain Call RPG Starter Kit at curtaincall.games today for FREE!TIMESTAMPS:0:00 - Intros0:25 - Monologue2:55 - Our Blanket Fort Games for the holiday5:45 - What games do we bring to Thanksgiving?13:13 - "Gamesbringer, First Of His Name"14:24 - MAIN TOPIC - Delving In With Our Gaming Questions15:23 - GLENN: How do you rally and keep enthusiasm high during long game sessions?21:28 - CHRIS: When was the moment you knew you loved tabletop gaming?28:45 - AARON: Describe your ideal players at a table, and what games would you make sure you'd play with them?35:17 - CHRIS: Share 2-3 moments through out your life where you were wowed by the technological advancement and achievement in a game.38:00 - "The Rumble Pak Carrere"38:35 - GLENN: As the loudest champion of representation on the podcast, what is a time or two you have felt seen in a game and what did that mean to you?44:10 - AARON: You have been given creative control of all of gaming and are allowed to insert a character of your choosing into any game of your choosing. What's your pick?52:00 - "The Vaultkeeper"52:40 - Outros and Parting Thoughts

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What Won't Be Provided | Numbers 18v20

Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 Project

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2021 4:47

Scripture: “Then the Lord said to Aaron: “You shall have no inheritance in their land, nor shall you have any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel.” ‭‭Numbers‬ ‭18:20‬ ‭NKJV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/114/num.18.20.NKJV Observations: - No inheritance of land like the other Tribes, no “county.” Application: Many ministers live even today moving from place to place in serving the Lord and His people, not enjoying owning a home. Like our Lord Jesus who had no home, they give up a “homestead” in order to serve. And yet there is the special provision even in this clear delineation of what will not be provided that the Lord is their portion and inheritance. Prayer: pray the passage and how the Holy Spirit has convicted you back to the Lord. Ask Him to do in You what His Word teaches. This Podcast is brought to you by FMM: Focusing on the Mark Ministries ~ keep living a Matthew 6:33 live until He comes Gen1toRev22.com Mission https://ryanmmarks.com/genesis-1-to-revelation-22-project/ The Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 Project often follows the simple SOAP method to equip you to delve into your Bible and share God's Word with others. S cripture – read the Bible O bservation – observe the context A pplication – apply to life and worldview P ray – in line with the Word Ryan, also has a focus on Expository-Apologetics when teaching Gen1toRev22. This means that there is an undergirding, prayerful motivation that as the message of the Bible is exposed and explained that there is an opportunity to answer questions, defend, and share the Christian Faith.

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Job Description for the Priests and Levites | Numbers 18v1to7

Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 Project

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2021 8:57

SOAP Scripture: “Then the Lord said to Aaron: “You and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear the iniquity related to the sanctuary, and you and your sons with you shall bear the iniquity associated with your priesthood. Also bring with you your brethren of the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, that they may be joined with you and serve you while you and your sons are with you before the tabernacle of witness. They shall attend to your needs and all the needs of the tabernacle; but they shall not come near the articles of the sanctuary and the altar, lest they die—they and you also. They shall be joined with you and attend to the needs of the tabernacle of meeting, for all the work of the tabernacle; but an outsider shall not come near you. And you shall attend to the duties of the sanctuary and the duties of the altar, that there may be no more wrath on the children of Israel. Behold, I Myself have taken your brethren the Levites from among the children of Israel; they are a gift to you, given by the Lord, to do the work of the tabernacle of meeting. Therefore you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood for everything at the altar and behind the veil; and you shall serve. I give your priesthood to you as a gift for service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death.”” ‭‭Numbers‬ ‭18:1-7‬ ‭NKJV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/114/num.18.1-7.NKJV Observations: • Aaron's line would bear the iniquity for God's house and the priesthood • The Levites would serve as associates alongside and “under” Aaron's line in the ministry. • The associate ministry of the Levites were a Gift from the Lord to the priests. • The priesthood was a gift of service, not a presumed and assumed office. It was ordained, called, a separated work not of position and power but of service to the Lord and His people. Application: The priesthood under the Old Covenant was exclusive and special. Not just anyone could decide to be a priest. You had to be called and have the proper heredity. What the priests and their helpers the Levites pictured and foreshadowed in their ministry, Christ came as the climax: servant and priest. He made the final atoning work for us. No one could presume to be the Messiah or assume the duties of the New Covenant High Priesthood. Every Believer has now become associate priests to God and for His service in being born again by the Gospel, 1 Peter 2:4-5 (NKJV) says, “4Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, 5you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Prayer: pray the passage and how the Holy Spirit has convicted you back to the Lord. Ask Him to do in You what His Word teaches. This Podcast is brought to you by FMM: Focusing on the Mark Ministries ~ keep living a Matthew 6:33 live until He comes Gen1toRev22.com Mission https://ryanmmarks.com/genesis-1-to-revelation-22-project/ The Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 Project often follows the simple SOAP method to equip you to delve into your Bible and share God's Word with others. S cripture – read the Bible O bservation – observe the context A pplication – apply to life and worldview P ray – in line with the Word Ryan, also has a focus on Expository-Apologetics when teaching Gen1toRev22. This means that there is an undergirding, prayerful motivation that as the message of the Bible is exposed and explained that there is an opportunity to answer questions, defend, and share the Christian Faith.

The Creative Process

2 Regular Guys Talking Decoration and Personalization

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2021 63:25

This Friday the 2 Regular Guys will welcome in Sheila Ryan. The conversation will cover the creative process and good embroidery design principles. The Creative Process is vital to all garment and product decorators, so this week's show will have something for everyone! Our regular listeners know this, but 2 Regular Guys are all about garment decorating, a bit of fun, and no rants or lectures or selling. We are not doing this for our employers, but rather for our industry. Since February 2013, The 2 Regular Guys have been the first and the most listened to garment decorating industry podcast on this planet! We are humbled by all of you tuning in each week. We work hard to bring you information that will make your business better, and our industry better. Take a look at our incredible weekly guest list and you'll understand where this industry goes for news, interviews, and the heartbeat of garment decorating. Thanks for listening! News REGGIE Award nomination reminder… https://2regularguys.com/reggies Dad Joke: Why do demons and ghouls hang out together? Because demons are a ghoul's best friend! The Creative Process Aaron: Sheila Ryan has been digitizing embroidery designs professionally for nearly four years, and sewing for boutiques and custom orders for the last 15 years. Not being afraid of new challenges and opportunities has driven her to try new things, explore new business avenues and expand her reach to new markets. Sheila loves the tech and business side of the process almost as much as the making of the physical things. Terry: Tell us a little bit about how you get involved in the industry. How did you get where you are today? Aaron: You've talked with us about the creative process, and from looking at your offerings online, we know you consistently create new designs and concepts. How would you describe your approach to the creative process? Terry: We're all about education here at 2RG. Let's talk about how you share with individuals and businesses how to develop their own creative process. Aaron: Education isn't just for those of us on this side of the counter; we know you feel strongly about educating customers on how to recognize quality embroidery- what are the most important things you tell customers to look for? Terry: You shared with us that as much as you love to teach technique, you are also passionate about helping people make that move from hobby into business; What's the biggest challenge you find new ‘sellers' facing when they make the switch? Aaron: In your bio we talked about exploring new business avenues and expanding into new markets. Let's talk about your experience, and then advice to other businesses. Terry: Aaron saw a new podcast in your future. What void in the broadcast marketplace are you looking to fill? Aaron: Terry and I have faced challenges over the years. What challenges have you encountered on your podcast road? Terry: Let's end with a quick embroidery question for all of the stitchers listening in: What's your favorite thread, project, or technique you've been playing with lately? What's exciting in your ‘lab' lately? Aaron: If people want to find out more about what you have going on, where can they find you? DesignsbyBabymoon.com RethreadPodcast.com, a podcast production for EmbroideryDesignerMall.com Whole-cloth.com Instagram.com/designsbybabymoon youtube.com/sheilaryantx Applique Getaway - the Virtual Getaway coming up 2nd weekend in November Shannon Fabrics - check my social media for upcoming classes and where I'll be teaching And my favorite place to hang out - The Designs by Babymoon Friends and Fans Facebook group - I'm in there a lot sharing new designs, chatting about embroidery (of course), and hanging out with the people who speak my language! Facebook Live Video #5Things 5 things New Makers can consider when figuring out what to sell and how to price things From Shelia Ryan - DesignsbyBabymoon.com Visit places where things similar to what y...

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Is a housing market crash coming? Memphis, California, National 2022

Real Estate Investing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2021 27:01

Whether you are new to real estate investing or you're a seasoned investor, it's likely that you've heard the predictions of a looming housing market crash. In this episode, Brett and Aaron discuss the likelihood of a housing crash and they present some other factors that other industry experts have potentially overlooked. Find out more about this real estate investing podcast at: https://epmrealestate.com/podcast/is-a-housing-market-crash-coming-memphis-california-national-2022 Brett: Housing crash! Number one, Richard said expert. There's no housing or real estate expert. In order to be an expert, you've got to be able to tell me tomorrow what's going to happen. Just like a doctor who's an expert heart surgeon can tell me the symptoms, the problem, and how to correct it. So experts are doing the same thing we did, they're giving their opinion based on what they see in the market. While I hear people talk about a crash, yes, I said many times, this next year we're going to see a dip, we're going to see a slowdown maybe 5, 8 or 10%, but these guys that are running around talking about the housing market crash of 2008, all over again, where the housing market is going to just collapse and you'll be able to buy houses for pennies on the dollar and people will be homeless. We're not heading that direction and that's what I get a little aggravated when I hear these “so-called” experts talk about the crash because what they're doing is they're actually taking people that would be investing today, it's people that should be investing today, and causing them to doubt and to sit and to wait, and then what ends up happening is, the crash doesn't happen and you are now paying more for a property than you could at this year. So, here's my theory. Come January, we're still gonna be rocking and rolling. I think things will have leveled off, coold off. Maybe can get some stuff, a little under market. It'll be more of a buyers' market. As we get into April 2022 it's gonna pick back up again and it's gonna kick right into insanity where we're buying stuff at $8,000, $10,000, $12,000 of asking. So if you're gonna be an investor do your investing between October and April 1st. Buy then and then soon as the summer craziness hits, take whatever cash you got left, put it in the bank, and sit and wait. Just take your time and take it easy, because as we get through next summer, and a lot of these current policies begin to take place, and inflation hits that record high and ends up creating a small recession and we start getting into harder times and companies start downsizing and people are losing their jobs. Yes, we're gonna have a housing issue but it's not going to be a crash. It's going to be a correction. It's going to be getting us back to the days of sanity of 2017 and 2018, when a house sat on the market for week before you had offers on it, and you didn't pay way over asking. So my opinion is there is no housing market crash coming. There's a correction coming and that's going to be this time next year and, if you're long-term hold investors, who cares? You lose 5% or you lose 10%. Next year you gain 15. Who cares about the correction? We are not headed for a crash. Now, I didn't see COVID coming, nor did I see Joe Biden getting elected, so I could be wrong. Aaron: You know, Brett, obviously you and I have read several articles that opposed the notion of a housing crash, you know. So, for our listeners, we're not just shooting from the hip here, like we read. We read every day, articles from, I've talked earlier about, oh gosh, I'm gonna have to look this up to verify this, it's either housingwire or homewire.com. I like them a lot. I like marketwatch.com. Brett: Well, there's a lot of good articles you can read and if you read into the information they're giving you, you don't have to be a real estate genius to realize we're not headed for some Niagara Falls type of real estate crash. We're heading for a little bit of rapids that we haven't seen in a while and it's gonna be a little bumpy and there's gonna be a little dip in the market here. Places like California are going to get crushed. They will see a housing crisis like they haven't seen since 2008 because of their bubble. Nashville is headed for a housing crisis. If you look at the places where homes are selling for $200, $300, $400 a square foot, there's where your housing crisis are gonna happen because those homes are way over inflated, people are way over mortgaged, and when the economy begins to dip and the value drops, the first people to sell are those folks because they get scared. Aaron: Yeah, let me give a quick statistic on that. So this is some information I got late last week that wages and salaries of all civilian workers, which are defined as workers in the private sector along with workers for state and local governments but not federal workers. So that was a lot of words, but the point that I'm making is those wages increase 3.2% on a year over year basis since June of last year. Inflation as measured by the CPI, which is the consumer price index, was up 5.4% over the same 12 month period. There's a couple of other statistics that we could talk about. Brett: And that gap's only gonna widen, right? Aaron: That's exactly right. Brett: And as that gap widens people become less able to pay. Let me clarify my statement. I wasn't saying that rich people are gonna be in financial crisis. What I'm talking about is you take up a state like California and take Nashville. You can take a home out of Raleigh that you paid $80,000 for and drop it right outside of LA in California, and that house… It costs you $350,000 or more. Now, that same person buying that house, and the only reason why I say that is have a lot of investors that come from California, show up, and they're not wealthy people, they live in a little 3 bedroom, 1 bath house in California, and they happen to sell one of their homes for half a million dollars and then come here and invest it. They're not rich. They live paycheck to paycheck. But, they realize, I can get rid of this $500,000 home and go by five or six rental properties in Memphis and make $3k or $4k a month. I guess my point I'm getting back to, I need to get back to it, is that California, the affordability issue of the average person, as soon as the market changes and unemployment goes up, inflation goes up, that's who's going to get hit. All these policies are in place are not for let's tax the rich. It's basically going to hurt the guy that gets up and goes to work and works 10 hours days, 6 days a week, and lives in a little 3 bed, 1 bath somewhere in California or out on the outskirts of Nashville. You know. Right now you go by 3/1 over there and it's 200 300 400,000 dollars. Aaron: Right. You know, there are some other factors that are here that are going to play a part in the localized housing correction. So I think that's what we both agree on there are going to be localized housing value corrections. Brett: Memphis won't be hit as hard. Aaron: Nearly as hard and so here's a cool distinction. One is, Southern California is, I mean, California is the world's seventh or eighth largest economy as compared to world governments. You know what I'm saying? We hear, and I think statistics prove, that there is a mass exodus out of Southern California, okay? They're moving to Texas, Oregon, all the western states. Tennessee, right? Brett: Quite a few show up here. Aaron: We have, and please come. We encourage. Please raise the intelligence quotient of our state. We love working with Californian's, we love your vision. So, the point that I'm making is this, the localized correction is going to be on changes specific to that region, right? And that geographic location. They're going to have a governor change here very soon. Don't know where that's headed. They may have a change in their labor market. They may have a change in the jobs that are being hosted there. One of the things that I hear from Southern Californians more than any other population is this: Well, thanks to COVID I can work from anywhere. So there has been a ton of people up until COVID, up until the Zoom-Boom, the remote meeting boom, and all that stuff, who were required to live in Southern California. That's changing and that effect is going to have a long-term effect on the value of California housing. We haven't even seen the beginning of that yet. So the cool thing about Memphis, though just to bring it back here locally, is that Memphis is full of people who are in the service industry. In other words, I make my money serving people that live in my same city, right? and they make their money serving me. So, we have a community of people who drive work trucks every day and, you know, offer online services and all of these things. So, Memphis actually has quite a robust service economy. That's what's gonna keep us going and though those needs in those services aren't going to change because of a massive change in the economy. I still need to go to the dry cleaner. I still need to go to the grocery store. I still need my plumber to come out and repair my, you know, whatever. So we love Memphis. That's one of the reasons why Brett is still here. Listener, please understand Brett could work anywhere in the United States and make money. But there's a great opportunity here in Memphis for him to do what he does very well, which is to connect investors with property that they can say, “I'm so glad I purchased that!” in 5, 10, 15 years when they consider what they're going to do next with it. It's a very very vibrant marketplace. Brett: And I've been a real estate in quite a few areas. Predominantly in Louisiana where I did development and buying and selling. One of the unique things about Memphis, which is why I've been here as long as I have after I moved up, was because of uniqueness of the market. Yeah, I could go anywhere and make money. Anywhere and develop a subdivision but, I tell myself and other people all time, yeah I get asked all time, are you ever gonna be back home? I'm like nah, probably not. If I decide to, I can't right now because Memphis is where it's at. I mean, the ability I have here and the amount of volume and work that I have here due to the makeup and the economy of Memphis and its people that live here. It's unmatched anywhere else. I haven't seen that kind of opportunity anywhere else. So, you know, I've built my business here. Aaron: Yeah. To quote one of our favorite investors who's been with us for five or six years, who at one point had 33 properties, just liquidated 13 in order to offset the cost of another investment where he lives. He's telling us that in 2022 he's coming back to start investing again in Memphis. His words, and I love this guy, he said the reason that he bought in Memphis had nothing to do with you or me. It had everything to do with the statistics, and he said that opportunity, especially back in 2014, for him to get in with cash by either in 50% or 100% cash or on his commercial lineup of credit that we got for him to be able to just acquire, acquire, acquire real estate was unmatched by any other city in America. He measures us against places like Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Brett: Little Rock Arkansas was big for a while. Aaron: It was. Brett: Nashville. I get a lot of questions about Nashville. Aaron: It's Little Rock is on one of Yahoo's Top 10 just for housing correction. So, back full circle, back to our question of the housing bust, right? Basically, we don't see it, listeners. We don't see it. We don't see it in the rental market. Brett: Well, but I think we have to differentiate owner-occupancy versus investment. Okay. 2008 was an oddity that'll probably never happen again. As as it did, it will get close but it'll probably never happen like that again. But, in Memphis when you have, I think the latest statistic I looked at was 48, almost 49% of every resident inside the city limits of Memphis, rents and doesn't own. The latest statistics. When you have that kind of a renter base, the rental market's gonna boom. It's gonna continue to boom, because there are always renters looking to rent a house. I've always got an investor wanting to buy a house or an investor trying to sell a house. So that's a constant. What happens in the investment market is people get too tied up in market value instead of rent comps. The only way the housing market on the rental side is going to take a collapse is if we have a massive recession and FedEx has to layoff 5,000 people and Nike and Amazon, they're all starting to layoff distribution people. Yeah. Now we're going to have a crisis, but as long as those companies, stay whole and functioning, the owner-occupant market may have a shift, not a collapse, but a correction, but the rental market is going to stay steady as it did through the collapse in 2008, the average state saw anywhere from 20 to 45% loss in property value. I think at its peak Memphis' highest point it hit was 16 or 17. The lowest in the nation. The value loss of real estate that caused this collapse of the market. Aaron: I think from the top to the bottom. So that would be from early 2007 to about 2012, I think that we maybe saw a loss commensurate with the rest of the nation, but it was on the lightest side of it. So, I think 16% is about is about the maximum that we lost over the course of how many years is that? Four? That's tremendous. Brett: The reason behind that, I believe, is that the renter basis is so massive here that investment real estate kept the housing economy in Memphis from completely going over Niagara Falls, as it did in California, in Texas, and in a bunch of states that got hit really hard. Tennessee got hit really hard. But Memphis, as a city, did not, even Shelby County, did not see that massive crush. So what do you attribute that to? I attribute it to the fact that there are so many people that rent here that the rental market stayed hot, stayed solid, values dropped, guys got better deals on properties, but those properties recovered quickly, why? Because they're cash flow properties. The market value was immaterial at that point. Aaron: So, one of these days we're going to have to get into what inspires investors to invest. Brett: Okay, cash flow. Aaron: Yeah, right now. Right now, that's true. But we're in an atypical marketplace. Brett: In 2008 was equity. I can buy this for $100,000, it was worth $200,000 last year, it's going to be worth $200,000... I have an investor that I worked for that you know, that did that. They made a ton of money buying up properties, pennies on the dollar. Aaron: We had one, in fact, if the listener wants to go back, and I forget which episode it is, 7, 8, or 9. Joe Veramontez made some decisions, a great guy. He bought all of his properties on equity between like, you said, 2000 and 2005, I think is when he stopped because in 2006 and, this is why people liken him, this is why people say, oh, we're headed towards another housing crisis. Look, I'm not trying to make fun of you, but the point is they say that where we arel right now is similar to where we were in 2006, right? Gas prices are going up, housing prices are at an all time high. The difference is, what's the major difference with housing prices? Brett: We did not lend the money to every person that had a pulse to buy $300,000 house on a stated income loan. Aaron: So that's a government, a federally mandated requirement. Okay, so we had federally mandated requirements once over here, guess who picked up on that? It was the banks. If you look back at the interest rates in 2006, they were 6%, and there there were these weird variable-rate loans where people would pay interest only at least 8-8.5%. We're not seeing that right now. Brett: The pin in that grenade finally pulled was in 2005 or 2006 when they expanded the federal loan guarantee program and it all started back with the community reinvestment act and then all of a sudden, I forget the senator's name, but he was on the senate banking… Aaron: Dodd or Todd? Brett: One of those two clowns. Dodd! Anyway, they were threatening banks because they weren't lending enough money to minorities, right? So, what did Bank of America do and Citibank? Well, I mean, the government's gonna guarantee it, so guess what? Here's a new non-stated, no-income loan. You just say, I make 10 grand a month. Great, here's a $300,000 mortgage so you can buy your house? So you took people with no financial skills, no money management skills. You tell them, I'll give you a $300,000 loan and you can go buy this beautiful five-bedroom house in Cordova and fill it with furniture. The first thing, they're going to do is think well hell yeah! Okay! Well the rate 6.5%. I don't care. Bank of America doesn't care. Who's backing up the note? The taxpayers. So if that homeowner collapsed or defaults and, we had many that never paid a mortgage payment, when they default, Bank of America then takes that home, forecloses on it, sells it at auction, then the US government, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac then write a check to Bank from America to make them whole, and who walks away? Bank of America. Meanwhile the homeowner lost their house, the taxpayers sucked up the loss, and Bank of America walked away whole. And I'm not using Bank of America as an example; all the banks did that. The stated income loan was the hinge pin they pulled that caused this domino effect. So the economy started sliding, gas prices went up, and we started getting into a recession. So what happened? People started getting laid off, now they couldn't pay their mortgage, and when those people got laid off and couldn't pay their mortgage, then all of a sudden they began to realize, wait a minute, that person we laid off. They can't pay the mortgage. Probably should have never had a mortgage to begin with for $300,000. They only make $30,000 a year. That was it. At that point, the snowball had started down the back of that hill and there was no stopping it. Aaron: Well then there are two other things that happened then that led to that. One is, I think the philosophy of homeownership was that it was cheap and easy, right? Like everything you just said, it led to the mentality of, it's easy to buy a house, right? Brett: In your application says do you have a pulse? Yes. What's your blood type? A positive. Great, you're approved. Aaron: So when they lost that house, that they couldn't afford, and that's the story we heard from everybody. Well, I mean, and because you were in a completely different industry, we won't go there, we've been there. We're gonna return there. But you know the reality is that people said okay yeah, I got in over my head, I lost my house, not a big deal. I'm gonna rent for a couple of years and I'll go right back to it. What they didn't realize is what was coming. That suname of, you know, changes in the federal government, changes in legislation about what a borrow was allowed to borrow, changes in the strength of banks, the closing of all of these banks. Brett: And the strength of the buyer. Aaron: Well, but the strength of the buyer was never strong. It wasn't strong in 2006. Brett: That's what I'm saying that we're not going to see that kind of class because the strength, the requirements for a buyer today are way more, they're like they were back in the 80s. You really had to have some cash in the bank, or a good credit score, a good job. There are some loans out there that allow you to get away with the lower down payment through FHA, but they're not just giving money away to people that should not be buying a $300,000 house. You know you can't afford a $300,000 house if you make $30,000 a year, the bank knows you can't, but the banks still gave you the money. So those days are gone. This crash that they're talking about, this dip is all it's going to be, we're not going into that crash. If inflation hits and then we roll into a recession and costs keep going up, yeah, there are people around the country, they're going to be laid off from work, and there's going to be a housing crisis locally. But what you don't realize is in Memphis, this is a distribution city. Nike, Amazon, Fedex, all of these major worldwide distribution centers, that are here in Memphis, are going to have to keep operating. So we're not going to see an unemployment issue or crash here in Memphis. So if you have homes here, don't stress. Aaron: So like we talked about. We touched on how the labor market is going to be changing in places like Southern California where they have more of an intellectual property marketplace. They are producing and operating systems and they can produce and operate those systems from anywhere in the world. They don't have to live in Southern California anymore. Corporations are loosening up and they're actually saying look, to go back to COVID, we're not going to make you vaccinate, but you're not coming into the office building. Brett: One thing COVID taught most big companies is, you know if I'm a CEO of a company, I own a 20-story building to house 5,000 employees, and all of a sudden COVID hits and I have to scale down and run a skeleton crew and have put everybody at home with technology to work from home, and we figure out a system to monitor their work performance and what they're doing on a hourly basis, and we've got all that figured out. The firs thing I would say is this building is gone. I don't need this building anymore. Then the next step of that is, for Bob, who's been working for home, tells his boss, you know what? I'm moving to Houston. I can work from home all day long. I'm just gonna move to Houston. I'm tired of California. So, I think California is in for a rude awakening in the next five to seven years. I think that they have no clue what's coming. What you're gonna end up with in California is, you're gonna end up with a bunch of Hollywood elites in their mansions cutting their own grass. Aaron: Well yeah, and here's what I see. Okay, I see in Southern California more stratification of incomes. Brett: There is no middle class in California anymore. Very, very few spots have a middle class. Aaron: I could see from a hyperbolic standpoint how you would make that statement. But, I met with an investor Monday of last week, they came in and they would be middle class in California. They're considering relocation here because of the cost of living and because of the economic opportunities, in fact, he himself said a week ago, I could work from anywhere, right? I can work for my California company living here in Memphis. So, they're looking to liquidate their assets there, not only their personal home, but also several other investments, and they already own, maybe 5 properties that they bought at between $60,000 and $80,000, which have now already added between 20 and 30% increase value over the course of the last 18 months to 2 years. The point that I'm making is that they are definitely middle class. I see a stratification happening in the California. I see the state, the red aspect, the conservative aspect of that state, dwindling because they're moving away. So with they become removed from the population, what's left are people who are much more focused on, how can we better organize the state? Instead of stay out of my business, the constituents of California are gonna say, how do I join the California government in better organizing my direction? Obviously, what we're talking about is highly, highly controversial. I still think movies are going to be made out of LA. I there's going to be an elite class, like you're talking about, I think the movie industry is the most popular and profitable industry in the world as far as the amount of effort that you put into it and you return on that investment. So I think California is going to be fine. I just think it's going to shift in who's making the decisions. As far as Memphis is concerned just going back to the, you know, for the listener, service-based economy, these are people that get up and probably do something outside of their homes for a living every day, and we all need that stuff. We all need it. You need it? I need it. And so we don't see there being a housing crash, really at all in the country. We also don't see a major housing crash here in Memphis. That just seems absurd. Brett: The worst crash in our recent history we massed 16% loss over 4 years. If you had bought a property in 2005, lost 16% in 2008, by 2012, you'd gained another 5 to 6% over those 16% you'd already lost. Aaron: 16% lost over the course of 4 years and what just happened between August 2020 and the end of July 2021, we increased value 17%. So, that 1 year gain would have offset a 4 year loss. Brett: That's the key. So, just make sure if you're focused on buying real estate. Actually, if you want to focus on buying a Memphis, go to EPMrealestate.com, go down to the bottom, look for me, Brett Bernard, my cell number is on there. You can give me a call anytime or shoot me a text. I'd be glad to talk to you and educate you on the Memphis market. That's a shameless plug from me, just to try to top Aaron's. Aaron: You know what? you're here, right? Like, you're here recording with me. Nobody else is so dude, you get the plug! Brett: Yeah. If you're interested in the Memphis market, just give us a call and we'll fill you in on our opinions. But yeah, don't freak out, we're not coming for a crash. We're going to have a correction and that's all it's gonna be. You'll see a dip. It'll come back, you'll be fine. You'll get to see a another day.

Housing Market Value vs DOW, Tax Changes, & Property Investing for the remainder of 2021

Real Estate Investing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2021 30:09

In this episode, Aaron and Brett chat about their experiences day-to-day in investment real estate and provide their analysis of how the housing market is changing, and they also offer up their opinion on the statistics and projections for how the property market will progress throughout the remainder of 2021 and beyond into 2022. More about this Real Estate Podcast at: https://epmrealestate.com/podcast/housing-market-value-vs-dow-tax-changes--property-investing-for-the-remainder-of-2021 Richard: So day-to-day, what are you guys seeing in terms of market shift? Are you seeing any difference in what it takes to win offers on behalf of investors and what's your latest assessment for how this year will play out? Brett: Nothing's changed. The market is still riding pretty high. I think deals are getting a little bit better and we're finding more and more inventory, versus the amount of buyers we have. I've got quite a few buyers, but the inventory's got a little easier to get your hands on, especially out in areas like Raleigh and Whitehaven where 3-months ago you threw a bid on a house eight grand over asking, and you weren't even close. I'm hopeful that now that we're getting to the end of summer and close to Fall, the investment market which typically slows down, we've set our investors up to rock-and-roll between Halloween and Valentine's Day. So we have a lot of investors sitting tight with their cash, just waiting for the fall to come, the holidays to hit, and inventory to be exceptionally, much better than it is today. Hopefully, that's what I'm dealing with - writing offers left and right. Aaron: That's great news. You know, I think I saw a note that you sent the other day, or maybe I was listening to a previous podcast episode, and you were talking about how the ratio of the number of offers that you've been writing versus the number of offers accepted has narrowed. The margin has narrowed. Brett: So the win-loss ratio is turning finally Aaron: That's really cool. That's great news. Brett: I went back, you know, because when you go on Authentisign, and you're running a new offer, it tells you what number that offer is. Aaron: Oh, wow. Brett: So this year, I've written 162 offers. Aaron: Wow Brett! Brett: Now obviously I didn't win that much, but I think my win-loss ratio was probably 30:70. But this month [Aug 2021] I've submitted about 12 offers and it looks like we'll end up with about half of those accepted. So, yeah, the ratio is changing and none of my offers are over asking now. Before they were cash, $10k over asking, and we still weren't getting them. Now we're throwing $1k over asking, cash, and we're getting them accepted. Aaron: One of the things that we're going to talk about today is how the fundamentals are changing in the marketplace. I'm not a huge Jim Kramer fan, but for most people who watch, I think he's on MSNBC. Jim Cramer's out there and he is... he's sort of a bear when it comes to the stock market. He wants to caution people. He's hilarious. He's over the top. Sometimes I think he's drunk! But regardless. Brett: Probably all of those. [Laughter] Aaron: So, the other day he was really slurring his words. It was pretty funny. But he said something really amazing, 2-days ago on MSNBC. He said, maybe we should just trust this market and see where it goes. Brett: Think about, every time we've had a serious financial crisis in the stock market, even the housing market. It was when people got warm and fuzzy, thinking that the rail car goes up only and never comes back down and, I'm gonna get on it and ride it. As soon as you hit the point where you have guys that drive a forklift with FedEx now getting a stash out and putting money in the stock market. That tells you that the general public has become comfortable with the volatility of the stock market, enough to where people think well, it's at... What's it at now? Aaron: Are you talking about the Dow? Brett: Yeah. Aaron: It's nearly up to 36,000. Brett: This time last year it was, what? In the mid-20s? Aaron: It's been flirting. Once Trump got in there the speed at which it went up increased and so it shot up under his time there. Even crazier and, not to get political at all, but under Biden, not only did it not quit, but I believe that the people saw that the inflationary capacity, which is measured by the CPI, showed acceptable amounts of inflation. That being said, and one of the things we're going to talk about today is that the value of the stocks that are invested in right now can be measured by $5 out of every $6 that that stock is trading for, has actual market value or relevance. So basically the investments are sound. 5/6th of the value of each stock that you could purchase on the Dow, is a fundamental. It can be fundamentally supported. So the speculation is only 1/6th of that stock and at its current trajectory, which Jim Kramer was trying to say, for example, is that there's enough fundamental support of the value in the stock market, that you should not be cautious and that you should be all in. Brett: And I agree with that. I'm a believer that, unfortunately, we're still riding the train that Trump put into motion and I think the current administration is slowly pulling those brakes on it, one piece at a time. I think when it starts coming to a stop, the stock market is not going to continue going up, it's going to level off, and it's probably going to have a correction. The housing market is going to do the same, which we talked about in the last podcast episode. I personally believe it's going to start sometime this time next summer. I think we'll have an inflationary period, continue rising values, a hot market, and then sometime next summer it's just going to take, not a dive, it's going to take a dip. It's going to dip down and it's going to level off, and then we're going to go back to the way it was in 2019, when we are selling houses and everybody's fine. You get it for market price, maybe a little under, and I think we're just riding a residual train of economics that I don't think can withstand what's coming. It's only my opinion. I'm not a stockbroker. I'm not an expert on anything. I want the economy to continue doing well and I want the housing markets to slow down because I think we're in a dangerous place right now. Like we could set ourselves up for a bursting bubble. If we're not careful. Aaron: I think there are several variations, to use a popular term right now, I don't know if anybody is watching, I think I can say without getting in trouble, the Marvel movies and the Marvel television shows that are out there. It talks about how there are several different possibilities that can happen in the future, based on what's happening. Brett: There are always several possibilities. Aaron: I've got to tell you something, I had no idea that COVID was coming. No idea! Brett: No. Some people did. Aaron: Some folks did, you're right. Brett: But no. We couldn't plan for COVID. That caught everybody by surprise. At the same time, we can't predict what's going to happen after the Christmas holidays after everybody has blown tons and tons of money, shopping and buying gifts, and we get into the first quarter of next year and the reality of legislation that's taking place now, will begin to set in then. That's why I think we'll start seeing the housing market begin to taper off and then start sliding down slightly. I don't think it's going to be a fall, and then slowly kind of level off. Then, by this time next year, we'll be sitting here, laughing about COVID and the ridiculous market last year, and will probably be begging for it to come back, or something like that. Aaron: Well, let's throw some statistics on this conversation. In a recent article that came out, there were multiple sources on this article, one of them is fortune magazine. Somebody basically read and digested what was found in Fortune magazine, realtor.com, and also the core logic index. So we're going to talk about a few things. The reason why there's a huge shift in housing right now is that in 2021 we've broken some records already and, if projections continue year over year, from August of 2020 to July of 2021, then we're seeing some trends that are going to permanently impact the US housing market, not the least of which is that, and this is probably the biggest figure in here, prices grew from August of last year until the end of July this year at 17% nationwide. And that's a record. They've never done that over the history of record-keeping of what housing prices have done. Over the entire United States. We have some housing inventory fluctuations as measured by realtor.com, not the least of which is that COVID caught us by surprise. By April of this year, inventory was down 53% nationwide. Brett: Yeah. Inventory is down because you put a house on the market and, within three hours, you've had 22 offers. Of course, the selling of the properties is lower the lower the number of homes are available but, read that next part, which I thought was very interesting. Aaron: About how inventory actually went up year over year by 3% percent in May and 9% in June, and so what would you attribute that to? Brett: Well, I think a lot of homeowners that want to sell, even investors who want to sell, the market was super high, but they weren't quite sure, because they realized well, I'm gonna sell my house, I want to move, but if I sell high I'm gonna buy high as well. Now they're seeing a slow cooling of the owner-occupant market and, listen, this isn't because people ran out of money. There's no houses. It's because kids are now about to start back to school, where everybody's now moving into their new home today, and very few owner-occupants are buying after August 1st. Aaron: That's true. Brett: So, because of that, folks that now own a home that they wanted to sell and move earlier, realized now they can probably get a pretty decent price on their house and actually put a pretty decent price down on another home that they want to go to. The people that are doing that today are the folks that don't have kids starting school. They're people that maybe have high-schoolers that can drive to school, and they don't really care if they're living in Collierville or Germantown. The summer crash for homes was because you had people with 5, 6, 7-year-old kids wanting to move to Collierville, wanting to move to Germantown, to get their kids in these schools, and so they were buying homes literally as if they had gold stuff in the walls. Kind of like going... What's that show where they have the storage units and they just bid on it, open it up, and see what's in it? That's pretty much how they were buying these homes. It was just ridiculous. So now that's tapered off, I think we'll see an increase in inventory, all the way around, and like it says there, it'll become a buyer's market. A little more in a buyers' favor and versus how it's been this summer. Aaron: Right. In a couple of more factors that are going to factor into this going to become a buyers' market, is that the federal government has been protecting homeowners from foreclosure, okay? So we've had these foreclosure prevention programs, we've had forbearance programs that have been required by the federal government with the banks. I'm not sure that the banks are offsetting that debt at all. They're just simply requiring the banks to hold off. Brett: Well, that ended July 31st. But here's a difference, and I get this question a lot from investors. Why shouldn't I just wait until all these foreclosures start hitting and we have this massive housing issue, and then just pick everything up pennies on a dollar? We're not gonna see that, alright, because Bob and Betty Jones pay $200,000 for our house 7 years ago. They're now behind because Bobby got COVID, was in the hospital, lost his job, and they can't pay their bills. Bank of America, tomorrow, is gonna send them a notice that they're now eight months behind on their payment, right? You don't qualify for a modification, you don't qualify for forbearance anymore. So, therefore, you need to get current or we're gonna foreclose on you. Two things are going to happen: 1) Bob's gonna get pissed off and tell the bank to stick it where the sun doesn't shine or he's gonna ride it out until the bank forecloses on him. The bank will probably sell the house for $300,000 at auction, give Bob the $80,000 that was there, but the more likely scenario is that Bob realizes he can't catch this up, he'll get an agent, throw it on the market for $275k, and sell it the next day, pay off the bank, and move on. So we're not going to have this huge long list of national foreclosures across the country that you can just go and scoop up for pennies on the dollar. I think there's way too much equity in the properties that will be foreclosed on, that homeowners will be willing to take that short-sale, put a little bit of cash in their pockets, and move on. Aaron: So, I mean, I do think though, based on what you're saying, that that is going to give an opportunity for investors. Brett: Sure. Aaron: And for you and me. Like if you wanted to go and upgrade your house and if I wanted to go and do the same, we probably could. And in a softer housing market, which is influenced by more inventory, right? Then there are gonna be some opportunities, especially in the foreclosure market, for us to be able to step in as owner-occupants which, for our listener, traditionally the federal government has preserved the rights of an owner-occupant above that of an investor or an institution to purchase a foreclosure. So, that means for Brett and I,, as individuals, if we find a property that's in foreclosure, we find out when it's going to be auctioned off at the courthouse steps, and as long as we've prepared to do what they require of us, we should be able to go there and say, I would like that home and I'm going to bid against other buyers that are going to be owner-occupants, ahead of investors and institutions, looking to purchase those properties. So I do think that there are going to be opportunities and I I think you and I agree that our investors in 2022, starting in 2022. and maybe for a couple of years, are going to be able to take advantage of a new wave of distress buyers, and be able to pick up properties for less than their market value. Brett: Right, and listen. Buying a home or getting an investment property with equity is obviously a plus. But when you're fighting in a competitive market and you're going up against 10 to 15 other investors trying to get the same home, focusing on the market value is kind of a short sided way to approach this. The way you approach it is: What's my all-in cost and what's it renting for? If it's producing $1,100 a month and you pay $110,000 including all repairs, you're in at a 1%, and that's great. Let's say the market value says it's only worth $95k, who cares? You're getting $1,100 a month for it, you can get your 1%, because what's going to happen next year? That value of that property is going to go to a $100k, maybe $102k, then $105k, and what is the rent going to do? It is going to go from $1,100, $1,150, to $1,195. for you listeners out there if you're not already doing this, focus on the cash flow and you're all in cost and quit worrying about what the CMA says or what the market price is. I've had so many investors lose deals because they would not go over asking even though the ROI and rent calculations showed they could go up another $10k and still make a cash flow the way they wanted. But they wouldn't do it, and they kept losing. Smarter investors threw the value out of the window and just went straight with the rent comps and how much money they were going to have invested when they turned it over. Aaron: Right, and we've seen more of that, you know, Enterprise, as a company, has been very conservative and all the agents that you'll speak to here at EPM Real estate are also conservative. Look, we don't want you to make a mistake at all, but there's a point in the investment curve, where the future benefits of your investment that you're making now, based on projections and value and rent price growth, and all of that stuff, it makes sense to take more risk while you can, absolutely especially in light of what we're talking about right now. Which is that this is the very last year of the Trump tax plan. Next year is the first year of the Biden tax plan. So many people, there are a lot of sellers in the market right now that say look, it means more to me to sell you my house now and not take those major hits on my personal taxes then it will for me to wait and sell it to you next year, and be in an unknown tax year. Brett: The issues of the taxes are going to hurt the short-term people, right? The long-term people, whether you're buying and living in it or whether you're buying and holding for 10 years, the new tax plan is not going to affect you. It's going to affect your income, but it's not going to affect your capital gains. Aaron: The seller is who I'm talking about. Let's break this open real quick. It is way important for so many of our sellers to get rid of the house this year. So, to our listeners, and I'm very excited about this point, we are in the last 6-months of what could be the most advantageous tax year for the next foreseeable 4 years. Okay. So having said that, for all the sellers that you and I speak with, they are in a closing window. They need to sell this year. So again, I think they're gonna be opportunities for buyers as the market softens a little bit as this housing boom, as some of these articles that we've read say, it is cooling. Dude, I think they're gonna be some great buying opportunities in the 3rd and 4th quarter. Brett: Sure. I do too. I don't know if the tax situation's gonna be as detrimental. If you sell a home that last year you made $100k on, this year you can make $170k on it, you could still sell it next year, make $170k, pay your taxes on it, and still come out more than you would have last year. So I guess it's really going to come down to looking at the dollar signs for the seller, whether it will work or not, or whether the tax issue will be a bad thing. Now, granted, you're going to give up a lot more money, but you're still going to come out way ahead. Aaron: You know, a lot of our sellers that are liquidating with us right now, have multiple properties across the country. So that the net value of, or the net proceeds to their bottom line is actually going to increase their tax bracket. Brett: That's true. Aaron: So, just because you and I are selling one house to a buyer. We're assisting, you know we do a lot of buyers' representation, so we're selling one house to that buyer. We have no idea what the tax implications are going to be for that one house to that seller because they're looking at their entire portfolio. Some of our sellers are thinning their portfolio. They're strategically keeping their best houses while selling their marginal ones. Some of our sellers are at the end of their investment life and so they want to liquidate everything while they can. We don't know their 1031 exchange situation. A lot of our sellers are looking to take the proceeds of the properties that they're selling and move them into other properties in Hawaii, or in the mountains, Wyoming, Idaho. sorry. This is such an exciting time and I personally believe that there's going to be a ton of energy in the market. All the way up to December 31st. You and I are going to be getting calls and closing attorneys are going to be working on New Year's Eve, trying to close these houses before the end of the year. Brett: If I've done my job right with my investors, they're all sitting on a pile of cash waiting for November 1st to start hunting. I just had a call with a new guy. He's out of New York, he's got a ton of cash, and he's wanting to start hunting. So I said, why don't you just wait until Halloween? And then, let's look for a good deal for you. I'll find you something that if it's out there, that's worth getting today. But if not, be patient. Wait till November 1st and we'll hit the road and we'll spend every dime of that, and you'll get a much better deal. Because you'll have more inventory than buyers. It's basic economics. Aaron: I think the month of October is going to be practice buying. I think what's going to happen for you and me and, for our listeners, this is something that Brett and I do all the time. This is really an important benefit of working with us, Investors get to know me or Brett independently and we introduce each other. Brett is in sales and me as property management and we start helping Investors project what the actual return on their investment is going to be. Brett of course is assisting them and saving as much money as possible on the buy. I, of course, am speaking with them about the potential rent growth over the next 2 to 3 years, and we're helping them construct the concept of how that investment is going to perform. So all that to say, I believe that practice purchasing with Brett and with me, buyers, if you're wanting to know what the potential value of properties are, what the return on investment is going to be, start calling us in September and October, particularly if you're looking to make offers in November, that's really crucial. Price fluctuations will be marginal I think between October and November, but the number of properties which can be picked up, that's going to increase. I believe as we move into November. Brett: Yeah, supply's going up, the demand will drop, and that'll curb the Super Bowl pricing issue we had this year. Aaron: A couple more quick statistics as we leave this topic. One is that the core logic index has said that they predict prices nationwide are going to continue to climb from August 1st 2021, in through June of 2022 by an additional 3.2%. So that tells us two things. One, we are still on a growth pattern when it goes to the average home value in the United States. Secondly, it indicates to us that the housing boom is slowing. So this meteoric rise in prices, 17% year over year, ending August 1st, 2021, that that is cooling to now 3.2%, which is a much more reasonable factor of appreciation over the next calendar year. Then the second thing I wanted to point out right before we left statistics is this. It is a proven fact that the cost to rent to the renter, or the rental value of properties, is a trailing indicator of housing value growth. So, and I know I make this point all the time to our investors but, you're a believer, you know? So the reality is that, you know what? If we've got a 3.2% growth in housing values over the next calendar year until June 2022, we are probably going to continue to see rents grow even for a year to two years after that June 22nd point. So, we're going to see inflation in rental costs for several years and, Brett just made this point earlier, you've got to take that into account when you consider the future performance of the investment property that you're purchasing. Brett: You do it this way. You don't buy stock because it's at the peak. You buy stock in the market banking on it's future, right? Its rise and its increase in value. You should buy real estate the same way. If you go in and buy real estate for what it is producing today, you're selling yourself short because you'll end up missing deals that you could have picked up just by being more aggressive and just working on the cash flow versus all in cost, and get away from the market value. So, don't sell yourself short. When you go out and put in an offer, be aggressive. Look at your numbers, see what number you need to be all-in at, and write an offer $10k over asking, contingent on inspection. Then if you go in there and realize it needs $12k of work, great! Negotiate the price down. Get your all-in-cost at $110k and rent it for $1,100, and be happy. Or wait until that tenant vacates at $900, do all the work and you're in at $110k, and rent it for $1,100. You need to be looking at what your performance is going to be 4 or 5, 6 months from now, when that current lease expires and once you've done all the repairs, and get away from the market value. Market value means nothing to me when you're talking about rental properties, right? If you spend a million dollars on a house, if it only rents for $1,000 a month, it's not a good investment, right? So it works both ways. Aaron: Well, fantastic. You know, our producer had asked us to talk about what's going on, you know, right now in the marketplace and then, of course you and I do what we do and go down a really good rabbit trail. Yeah. That was good. So I just wanted to tell you a bit about property management. One of the things that I predicted earlier in this year was that the number of homeowners who were dissatisfied with the property manager that they had picked up initially in the first six months of 2021, the previous year 2020, that they would become frustrated with a lack of organization or they felt like the property manager was inexperienced and so they wanted to change property management, and this is a great time to change your property managers. You can only improve. Hopefully, if you're working with a smaller, newer, less organized property management company or, let's say, that your realtor that sold you that house is managing that property while also selling investment properties to other homeowners. Not paying attention to the day-to-day requirements of property management. Now is the time to move. Now's a time to move to a property manager who has been around longer, who has a more mature approach to the public, has more notoriety with the tenants here in Memphis, has a stronger more organized maintenance approach, better accounting, better bookkeeping and, just in general, a better reputation and a better approach to property management. So the point that I'd like to make is that we're covered up in new management calls. I love brand new investors to Memphis. I love talking about what we could do, but also seasoned property owners who have said, I've done everything I can to work with this person, I can't do it anymore. I've given them a termination date, will you take over management? and then the difference in those calls, by the way, when I talk to a new homeowner, it's at least an hour, and then there's introductory paperwork and some other stuff that we do when we end up working with that new buyer for 3-months, and we love it. We love that very much, and want more. These seasoned investors, where they have 8 to 10 houses, they just want one month's accounting to look correct. They're like a 10-minute phone call and then they're done. They're like, I'm sold to the paperwork, I'll sign it, go for it! The number of those has increased tremendously. I would say in the last 18 months, you know, it is specifically in the last 60 days. So that's exciting for us. If you go to our website right now, if you go to MyMemphisRental.com, you'll see 3 houses for rent. 3! That's out of well over 500. That says a lot about the market but more houses are coming on, there are more vacancies that are coming on, and we are seeing an increase in rental inventory here in Memphis, too. So, both of those things, inventory should go up in both of our realms of real estate. Brett: I expect mine too, to jump. I'll probably end up with about 60 or something houses, maybe 70 this year. Most of that, the majority, that's going to hopefully happen between October and Christmas, which is normally a time I can sleep in and not have anything to do half the day! Visit us online at: https://epmrealestate.com

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2021 housing crash? Chat with Memphis Real Estate Investor, Ted Huntington

Real Estate Investing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2021 40:59

Real estate investor, Ted Huntington, describes himself as a novice investor. Aaron Ivey sits down to ask Ted about his take on the current housing market and if he thinks we'll see a 2021 housing crash, and Ted shares what he's learned through his purchase of 6 single-family rental homes in Memphis, TN. Listen and subscribe at: https://epmrealestate.com/podcast/2021-housing-crash-chat-with-memphis-real-estate-investor-ted-huntington Aaron: So on today's show, we have a special guest. This is somebody who I would consider to be a friend, and he came into investment real estate... How many months ago was it Ted? Ted: I would say, you know, it's been a year at least, so pretty recently. Aaron: Yeah. And the cool thing, you know, hopefully for the listener about Ted as you enjoy our conversation, is that Ted is really smart. Early on in our conversation, Ted called me or we were connected through the realtor that was working with Ted that you've heard on this podcast and he said, hey, you've got to talk to this guy and I'm not going to give away to the listener hat it is that you do for a living, but I find what your line of work just really interesting and our initial conversation, I think lasted at least an hour. And then there was probably a follow-up 30 minute conversation after that and we just immediately clicked, I felt. So this is Ted Huntington. Could you tell the listeners what it is you do for a living? Ted: Yeah, I basically have a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and I work at the University of California, Irvine, in the library's I.T. department. So I do I.T. Aaron: But it's so much more than that, because, to me at least, I've had a lot of friends that worked in IT but they weren't I don't think managing access to the diverse range of information that you are managing. I feel like working inside of the live library information system is completely different than, say, working at a courthouse or working for a corporation. Am I wrong in that? Ted: No, that's accurate. I think the University, I love working in the University setting. There's a lot of intellectuals, a lot of people interested in learning and then in the library, there's just a ton of information and we help people to access that information. I mean, more and more of it is now in the electronic realm, but we still do have actual physical books and journals there. But yeah, we just seem really a massive transition from physical information books and so on to ebooks and electronic information. Everything now is electronic. It's just really an amazing change. Aaron: It has been a tremendous transition. I am married to a bibliophile, I think that is the word. Is that right? And we have several built-in bookcases all over our house and she is constantly acquiring more physical books for her to read, for the children to have access to, and to put down and pick back up again whenever she likes. So we're one of the rare families out there that I think are still purchasing actual, written books from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or whatever. Ted: I don't think you're alone in that. I am also kind of a book collector myself. I especially love old books that are important to the history of science in particular. To me I think that not only are they incredibly good reads and they only are in print, I mean some of them I suppose are now in Ebook, but some of them have been out of print for a long time, but also I think they will be collectors' items that some point because it's a bit of history. The book and a lot of these more famous books and so some of them are lesser known but important. At least in my thinking. Aaron: Right, and I would agree. It's interesting to watch what it is that my wife will download on an e-reader or on a Kindle. It's almost always fiction or she likes a lot of mystery, like older mysteries, and she's very interested in certain histories. But the books she purchases for us to own are usually about early childhood development or teenager development. It's she wants to actually hold the things in her hands that influence the way that she interacts with the world in her daily life. And so it's been very interesting to see what it is and how she makes that decision and what she wants to hold and then what she wants to download. Ted: Yeah, I still buy books, even real estate books because I want to have a book for before I go to bed and reading or something. It's nice to have a physical book. I don't want an e-reader, I don't know. It's something about it. A physical book is just a little bit more familiar to me, I guess. Aaron: Well, do you happen to have a favorite real estate book that really inspired you to get involved more in investment real estate? Ted: I've read a lot of the more famous books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and you know, there's some that Bigger Pockets has produced a few good books. But there's also like, even some older, I can't remember the names, but like just old school real estate investors, even from the 1950s, and so on. I've read one of those books and I found it really fascinating how much cheaper houses were. They're talking about $20,000 and $10,000 houses and doing the fixer-uppers back then and how to find a good fixer-upper. I really don't have anyone in particular, but I tried to read all of them, especially where there are people who are doing their own property management, and their experiences and their hints. They always have helpful hints. Like, some people have found the free version of team viewer and so on, so they can remote desktop to their home computer when they're on the go. Little text tips and techniques about tax auctions - I didn't know that much about those - and dealing with auctions and other avenues. The many ways that people can get deals in real estate. There's just a ton of different techniques and strategies. My strategy of course, is very, very tame and it's kind of a lazy person's technique. Aaron: What is that? What is your strategy? Ted: My strategy is mostly, I'm a buy and holder of mostly turnkey properties. I don't really do fix and flip or fix and rent, even though there's a lot more money in it. I just kind of like to get into a property and start collecting rent and with minor repairs. I'm willing to pay a little bit more for a nice property. So I'm kind of taking the easy way out, but for me, time is very precious. So I really don't want to be spending a lot of time with contractors and working with rehabs and things like that. I'm a little bit older, so I'm kind of more just hoping for the turnkey, all ready-to-roll type of investment property. Aaron: The amazing thing is you don't sound older. I'm not sure what you would qualify as older. You don't have to tell us your age, but you just come across as very energetic and optimistic about your view of real estate and your involvement and interaction with it, which is very refreshing. Ted: Yeah. Thanks. I am 52. I won't hide it. But yeah, I think age also is just your perspective. I really am a lover of life and embrace challenges. So yeah, thank you. I try to keep a keen mind and keep my mind active and really interested in history and current events. Aaron: Can you tell us about the experiences that you've had this far here in Memphis, just in general? How've they been? I would assume they've been positive. Ted: Yeah, let me tell you the story about how I got connected with you. I wanted to start investing in Memphis. I have seen another investor in Memphis who does a lot of stuff. He has a YouTube channel and he does a lot of Memphis investment and I thought, yeah, that really sounds like a good place to invest. I did a lot of research with Zillow data and found that Memphis prices had been appreciating and all the major zip codes there in the last 3 years and that the rent to value property ratio was high, and so it was a good place to invest. Also, I enjoyed the weather. I think Memphis is in the southern tier of the United States, so it's better. So I set about trying to find property managers and, I think I called and talked to every single property manager in Memphis, and I kind of sized them up on their different policies. There's a lot of different things and issues involved with property management. And, you know, they have to have good communication, they have to be on top of things, and I had a lot of different parameters. It's been so long that I don't really remember all of them. But I went through and I ranked EPM way up there. I thought you guys really have a good professional setup. Ultimately, I found Brett, who I enjoy and is basically my real estate agent in Memphis. I'm happy with him and your property managers, and so that really worked out and I'm very happy with you all. That's pretty much how I got started there and just started acquiring properties. Aaron: I really appreciate what you have just said about property management. I was speaking to another investor, who's about to come on with us. She's out of Utah, and we were just chatting about property management and investment real estate, and I was speaking to her about a specific topic, some of the challenges that we've had during covid with this sort of uncertainty as to, whether or not, there is a requirement of a tenant to pay their rent, if they're not able to pay their rent, we talked about the private contract that the landlord has with the tenant and should the CDC be able to step in and interrupt that if the tenant is, for whatever reason, be considered to be at risk for being displaced. We just had this incredibly detailed conversation about, you know, the federal government versus contract laws versus real estate ownership, and I finally just stopped and said, listening to myself, only a landlord would nerd out about this stuff. I think about this all the time, I send myself articles all the time that I find online, and so we really love what we do. And I'm grateful that you've picked up on that. Ted: I think it takes a certain kind of mindset to do what you do there and I think it takes somebody who's really good with management, in particular. Aaron: Thank you. There's definitely a translation that goes on for the homeowner. So for the listeners, I've never met Ted in person. I look forward to it one day, just coming out to Southern California and just kind of seeing what's there and meeting some investors. Ted is definitely at the top of the list just because I like you and I have already talked about meeting at one point. Having a cup of coffee or a beer, and just get to see your work, your world, which I think could be very interesting. Ted: Yeah, absolutely. Or in Memphis. I may find myself in Memphis at some point, please. Aaron: Yeah. I think if we can get through, you know, fall of ‘21 and past the Spring of ‘22 and sort of work our way through this new stage of the pandemic, then, I think we're going to be in a much better place next year. At least my fingers are crossed for that. Ted: Me too. Aaron: Can you tell me a little bit about the properties that you own right now? It sounds like you've worked with Brett before, to acquire them, and I think your financing strategies are actually very interesting. Ted: I pay all cash. I currently have 6 single-family houses. They're all rented out currently in Memphis and I tried to choose areas that I think are good up-and-coming, sort of gentrifying areas. Mostly it's around the Egypt area, kind of where Nike and Amazon are. Just single-family houses and they're all currently rented. I'm sort of a newbie to investing. I have kind of a funny story, I mean, in 2005 I was working in the business office in the library for a very astute business office manager who told me, with housing prices in 2005 going up so much, you should really go and buy a house. I said, well, you know, houses are so super expensive. I can't possibly afford one. She said, buy a condo. Well what's a condo I asked? I don't even know. This is how clueless I was in 2005. I didn't even know that condos are like an apartment but you own it. That really kind of began my investing career. I bought a condo, and then ultimately years later I rented that one out and bought a house. Then I sold that and bought more rentals and bought my rentals in Memphis. So I'm still really an amateur rookie, newbie investor. But I wish I'd got into real estate in my 20s. I honestly was clueless for so long that now finally, I am starting to realize what a valuable thing investing in real estate is, especially in Memphis. Aaron: Absolutely, I do want to point something out that you've said that I think most people may be in a different place in their investing career than you are, and I'm gonna make this point. We know that the majority of our listeners, even if that majority is just 51%, are people who are considering getting started in real estate and they don't yet own investment properties and they haven't really, you know, that their listening, they're reading some books, they're reading some blogs, maybe they're getting their financing together, but they still haven't taken that leap. So something that you've done actually makes you at least an intermediate in investment real estate, and that you've actually done it. I mean what you've done does take risk and it takes a leap of faith, and the fact that you've actually acquired 6 properties in about a year? That is incredible. Ted: Yeah, you have to step out of your comfort zone a little bit and I don't think anybody will ever get any gain if they're not willing to step out of their comfort zone a little bit to learn something new. I think that's really the key you have to work, you have to break a sweat, get on the phone, and start feeling it out. That's how. Through talking to the various property managers around Memphis, I started to feel more comfortable about going forward. I think you all answered every one of my questions, no matter how small. So, that's the key. Getting out of that comfort zone and giving it a try, even with just one property, and seeing how it goes. It's really a matter of doing a little bit of work, so you feel comfortable with what you're going to be doing and learning the process. There's a little bit of learning involved, you know, there's a learning curve, but it's I think ultimately worth it because there are so many people who are afraid of even starting up that mountain. Right? Aaron: Absolutely. You know, like it's kind of like what we talked about. No. I was talking to somebody else. Again this was another investor that I was speaking to today, right before speaking to you. Investing in real estate is a lot like something I did recently, which I know tons of people have done, it's not that big of a deal. About 4 weeks ago, my son and I climbed to Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, and the initial part of the climb, which is the first 6 miles from about 5,000 feet above sea level, all the way up to about 8,500 feet above sea level. It was pretty easy. Then as we continued to passed the halfway point, it became kind of difficult until we got to the top. It's 6.5 to 7 hours to do the whole length of it. Ultimately, we were at 14,500 feet above sea level, and the view was incredible. The headache was unbelievable, but it was so totally worth it. But that first step, like you're talking about, that's it. It might even be the most difficult step to take. Ted: Exactly. Aaron: You've said just now that you've even invested in California, you've had a condominium and a house, I don't know if you're in a house right now or not, but we know that you've got some experience there in California. How would you compare owning real estate in California versus owning real estate here in Memphis? Ted: Well, I personally only want to own real estate in California in which I will be living and occupying because I am only going to be investing in other states because there are big differences between California and Tennessee, and a lot of the other Midwest states. California is very sort of more tenant friendly and Tennessee is more landlord friendly just in terms of investing. But then also the ROI in California, well, for one thing, there really isn't one! I mean, the price of real estate in California is just so unbelievably high that it just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to buy investment properties, unless you're really a multi-millionaire. The Midwest is far more of a normal market for somebody with a smaller amount of income looking to get into and start investing in rentals. I far prefer Memphis. I learned a valuable lesson investing in California. I had my condo and the rent coming in could not even cover the property tax and the mortgage payment, and the insurance, and so on. So I was losing, I think, a couple hundred every month and it wasn't cash flowing in any way. It's really the exact opposite in Memphis. You know, you can get into a property without too much and the rent will be enough to make it cash flowing. Property taxes are not outrageous, insurance is not too high, so it's just all around a no-brainer. I tell people, and I have friends, who invest in California, have rentals in California, and I just think it's really a losing battle for most people who are not billionaires. Aaron: Yeah. So we've found the same here. When I first got started in investment real estate here in Memphis, this would have been around 1997 or 1998 when my ear was to the ground, then I got my license in 2000, and really started assisting investors. One of the things that I really noticed about the Memphis area, is that there were more people from outside of the Memphis, Tennessee area that were investing in Memphis than there were people that lived in my own community, and I began to sort of learn why that was. I think that people from outside, especially and specifically Southern California - at least 40% of all of our investors live in Southern California - and I think that they've realized for a long time and had realized the same thing, which is that the value-to-rent or the rent-to-value is so much better in the Memphis, Tennessee area, even back before the boom. This most recent housing boom that we're in right now, which kind of started around 2015-2016, you were still able to get almost a one-to-one ratio. Let's say that you had a mortgage on the property and it was an 80% mortgage. You were still getting 10 to 20% above the total cost of ownership, and that would have been, your mortgage, your taxes, and any interest that you're paying: 10 to 20% above that. Now, what's happened, of course, here in Memphis, one of the things that's driving rents up all over the country, is that even though interest rates are at an all-time low that normal owner occupant is having such a difficult time, finding affordable property to purchase here in Memphis. So, they're resorting to renting, because they still want to have that homeownership experience. They're renting property instead of being able to purchase it, because they're honestly fighting investors for these same properties. On the rent growth point, I want to make sure that we get to today and have a conversation about tha. Again, homewire.com had an article that was released this morning and it talked about the rent growth capacity for the remainder of 2021. And it's almost exactly like that figure that I gave before about housing value growth being 12%, for the year and how this is the first time that a number like that has been achieved since 1979, and rents are the same way. We are experiencing what you kind of touched on earlier, that sort of inflationary factor. We're seeing nationwide projected rent growths, which will, in essence, put all of our rental properties at an annual rate of about 10 to 12% overall increase from January to December, 2021, which seems small. But as a property manager, here's a neat thing. One of the things I've been doing lately is just asking for more rent. These properties that are coming in the buyers will say, well I think I can get 12 or 13 hundred dollars per month for this property, and I'll say, you know what, why don't we go and ask for 1500, you know. Let's just go for it and see what the market will support. I'm finding that the market for now at least, is supporting these inflated rental amounts. Ted: Yeah. It doesn't surprise me. Absolutely rents are going up. I currently rent right now here in California. My rent just went up. So yeah, it's not strictly in Memphis. It's happening all over. Aaron: Did you say that you own investment properties in other locations other than Memphis? Ted: No. Only Memphis currently. I am looking maybe to branch out sometime in the future, but pretty much Memphis is it for me right now. Aaron: That's awesome. Do you have a vision for next year? Like you're a well-read person? I know that you're a constant student. Just like me. You've got to have been reading articles projecting, you know what the real estate market is going to look like in 2022. Do you have any read on that personally? Ted: Yes, mostly it's the most important for me in terms of how home prices are going to look here in California...I'm really waiting. Is there going to be a correction or not? I think it will be revealed by 2022 if we are going to see any fallout really from COVID or not, and that's kind of what I'm thinking. I may get into a house or myself and I'm kind of holding off because it's going to be a big house payment and you know, it's going to take all my resources to buy a house at these prices. But yeah, I mean, my plan for 2022 is to buy a house for myself. Most likely, depending on market conditions, if there's no real serious change, I will be going ahead and buying a house. But if we see prices starting to correct, then I will wait and see how far they may go down if they do. But yeah, then probably I'll resume getting back into Memphis rentals. More Memphis rentals. That's kind of my plan for 2022. Aaron: Well, I think it's brilliant. We've had several investors this year that have done very different, more imaginative, financing techniques and strategies to improve their own home, you know, or apartment wherever it is that they're living or that they want to live on the back of the value growth that they've experienced with their Memphis properties. Ted: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I can see doing, maybe some cash out refinancing on some of my properties. Currently I've only financed one. All the rest, I own, all cash, and they have appreciated. So yeah, that's a great option if you want to generate some cash for maybe another purchase. That's a great way to do that. Aaron: Yeah, I really have no analogy for it but, for the listeners that don't yet own investment real estate, we've got a little bit of a story to tell you, a secret to tell you. Being in the game of investment real estate. Being in that world is what makes you money. You can't make money off of real estate unless you own it. For instance, a lot of my investors that owned property all the way back, purchasing it all the way back into 2002, 2005. These people who like Ted, purchased and held these properties, during more normal economies, they experienced all the benefits of investment real estate ownership, without seeing this massive value growth. So for investors looking to realize that cash, and take advantage of that value growth, that purchased say around 2014 through 2017. So many of those investors said, you know what, this has been great. I've really enjoyed the last 6 years of owning this real estate and I'm out. They sold, and man, they left the experience with smiles on their faces. They were so pleased that they were able to double their money in 6 years or in 8 years and, for my investors that purchased 20 years ago, of course, they've more than tripled their money. Ted, I totally think you should do that. I think you should cash out refi wherever you want to be, it's great interest rates, you've made great value growth on these things. You gotta do it! Ted: Yeah, absolutely. It's the smartest, smart move. Aaron: Yeah. And you know, that kind of dovetails back to what I said before. I actually said these words, I said investing in real estate is hard. And what I meant by that is, is this. I've got a mutual fund, right? And you probably do too. You've got some sort of employer funded investment because of where you work and they feed that maximum matchable amount into your 401k or your mutual fund, your simple or traditional IRA, whatever it is, and they do that every year. You never see it. They take it out of your paycheck and that's easy, right? I've got to tell you, even in the midst of this amazing economy, I've been looking at the Dow and watching these value growths, and then going over into my portfolio and looking to see how that's benefiting me, and really there's no major year-over-year benefit. It's not as you know, the high highs and the low lows that are possible in real estate. I do think that real estate is definitely an investment worthy of somebody like you, and your intellect, because you're able to engage it, manipulate it, imagine the possibilities of it, reorganize it if you want to, take out the value, infuse more value. So let's try to end on a sort of a visionary note if you will for 2022, 2023, and let me tell you what, I see, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. We do have a coming correction. There are several articles out there from the Washington Post, the New York Times, homewire.com, and politico etc. All kinds of different websites that are out there that are talking about the looming housing crisis. And so, from Memphis Tennessee, which there's only a million people here, what we consider what that housing crisis will look like, here's what we see. We don't necessarily see a correction in pricing. We do see a softening in the contract negotiation capacity of the seller. So basically, the sellers are not going to just be able to ask for whatever they want and get it. Sellers are going to have to have to accept negotiations that are at or around asking price or below asking price. Also, they're going to have to give concessions and maybe even make repairs. So that's new. Right now, what we've been saying nationwide is that sellers just get to ask for whatever they want, and they get it. So, the first thing is that the market is going to soften a little bit. The second thing, of course, is that as these eviction protection laws or whatever we want to call them expire, you're going to see foreclosures. You're going to see houses that are locked up by tenants not paying their rent, refusing to move, not being allowed in the courts to be evicted. They're finally going to be loosened up. There's going to be more liquidity in the courtroom and we're going to see so many more properties available for purchase. That's kind of what we're seeing happening starting in 2022, unless there's some sort of major change that we can't see coming. Ted: That's great to hear. So, do you think there's going to be price reductions? Or do you think prices are just gonna kind of hold and there's just gonna be softening in negotiation? Aaron: So I think real estate is stratified, if you will, right? Like, I can just imagine a property near UC Berkeley that you could be interested in purchasing. I imagine it being like a 1930s built bungalow or some sort of really awesome, older construction type property. I could be wrong. I don't know what Berkeley's like. Ted: Yeah, they have older buildings there that just go for exorbitant prices. Aaron: Right? And I'm sure they're gorgeous. Ted: It's in the eye of the beholder. I think it's older houses. Yeah, I'm sure some of them are. Yeah absolutely. Aaron: Yeah. So, if the same house there that you might be looking to purchase is in sort of the upper middle income to upper income strata, here in Memphis. So you asked if the average prices were going to drop or if there's going to be a softening in pricing, I would say on the lower income strata, absolutely. One of the reasons why. I know some of the properties you purchased. In your price range, sellers are able to get more for those properties than ever before and what I believe is going to end up happening, is that the actual real value of those properties is going to soften to where investors aren't going to be as willing to spend the full asking amount. They're going to go in with home inspections, there's going to be more time for the buyer to be able to get a feel for the property before they make an offer. Right now there's just no time, right? You have just got to jump in, you have to put out that repair contingency, an inspection contingency, and if the house is full of holes, then you say, you know what? I'm not even going to negotiate. I'm just going to walk away because that's the smart thing to do in this kind of market. So I think that the buyer is going to have more time and that's probably the most important thing and I think sellers are going to be willing to wait for the buyer to make decisions, because right now sellers are in a position to where if you don't purchase it and move quickly and have all cash, with no inspection contingency, and you just want to close in one week, that's the kind of buyer that sellers are looking for. So I think they're going to be more sellers that want to say, hey, you know, let me really kick the tires on this house and get a feel for it. I do think, you know, just talking about strata, I think that the upper income housing in Memphis and the surrounding areas, which really start around 750, three quarters of a million, all the way up to 2 and 3 million dollar properties, on average, and of course there are palaces that are so much more expensive. I think that is really where you're gonna see pricing soften because there's just not going to be as much of a demand for that type of construction and, in the middle income housing, it's going to be the same as it always is, just very competitive. So depending on what type of investor you are and how much money you want to spend, and all of that, you're going to experience something different within that. Here's the good news! I want to end on a high note, and then if there's anything else you'd like to say, I'd love to hear it. The good news is this... History has proven that rent amounts and the amount of money that the average tenant is willing to pay for real estate, and in our case it's single-family income, is a trailing indicator of overall economic condition. Several articles that I've recently read talked about how rents are following the increase in property values, right? Because rent's are speculative; they are so much more speculative than housing value. You know, housing value is based on the recent sales, recent appraisals, recent refinancing, and recent financing, so that's a pretty set figure, how much that property's actually worth. Well, rents are speculative. They've got to either come up or drop based on what the buyer is willing to pay. So what's happening right now in the Memphis area at least, is that there is no product to rent. Basically you can almost ask for whatever you want. As it is a trailing indicator, even when there's a softening in the market 6 months, 12 months, to 18 months from now, rents should remain high for the next, I'm going to speculate, 18 to 30 months if there's a correction. So for people who, like you, own real estate, I would say let's renew that lease, let's increase that rent, let's really take advantage of this great economy. Ted: Yeah. That's the big question. Is this bull market going to continue in 2022? You know, one interesting thing if you look at the numbers, I'm really hoping that we see a lot more inventory coming online on to the MLS and for sale, because I was hearing somewhere that in 2020, a million people, like the number of people who list every year is very kind of constant, and there was sort of a shortage of a million people in 2020 who chose not to list their property and then add that to the number of people who have not been paying their mortgage who are in forbearance, which is maybe another million or something, just for the United States. What are they going to do when they come out of this forbearance? Are they going to sell? What's going to happen? Are they going to get a loan modification or whatever? I think there's a good chance and I'm really hoping that we're going to see more inventory. Now, can this bull market of buyers absorb that? That's a good question. I mean there's a lot of demand, interest rates are very low and so, it may well be that yes, there's an increase in inventory, a lot of more houses come online, but the demand is so bullish and so high that it really will not even make a dent in housing prices. I think we'll see that in 2022 and 2023, hopefully. Aaron: Yeah, I think we'll see it. I think when we get into the second quarter especially we're able to look back on Q4 of this year, 2021, and Q1 of next year, we will see a two-quarter trend of more properties on the market. I know you're probably reading this or watching this but listeners, I just want to encourage you to look up the National Association of Realtors data that's out there. It's free for you to get. They release it every quarter. For us realtors, they release it every month. They'll tell how many new units were put on the market, listed and whether or not that's gone up and down. The same thing for new construction that's also very informative to a buyer for what the climate is right then, and to watch that. I actually agree with you that I think you're gonna see a ton of new property on the market and, on the matter of forbearance, another statistic that I read this morning was that right now anywhere from 0.9 to 1.9%, of all residences are in some form of forbearance. Ted: It's not a small number. Aaron: No, it's massive. Ted: Yeah. Aaron: And so, just depending on how those people deal with the fact that they're no longer protected from foreclosure or from some sort of debt collection action against them, it will inform the open market very quickly. One last thing before we go. I hope that we can begin to talk about how to take advantage of the upcoming foreclosure acquisition opportunities that are there. You know, they won't be amazing deals with the foreclosures, but they could be 5 to 10, to 15% below market, and that there's a lot of room right there. So that's going to be fun to watch. Ted: Absolutely. Aaron: Well, thank you so much for your time. I know you said it's more or less on your lunch break, which is great. So, I apologize if you're clocking back in late, but, thank you so much for coming on. Ted: Sure, thank you for having me Aaron. Great to chat with you. Aaron: Always a pleasure here as well and I look forward to talking to you more soon. Ted: For sure. Thank you Aaron. Have a good day.

Wings, Tacos & Promotional Products

2 Regular Guys Talking Decoration and Personalization

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2021 62:44

This Friday we'll be joined by the guys from the Tacos with Jay & Jeff podcast. Jay Busselle and Jeff Solomon, two veterans of the promotional products industry, will talk about our two worlds colliding using apparel as promotional products. And we'll discuss some untapped markets for apparel we might be missing as well. Plus there will be lots of fun and other action as Aaron is in the middle of a working vacation and will be coming to you live from Terry's home office. Hang on for some fun! Our regular listeners know this, but 2 Regular Guys are all about garment decorating, a bit of fun, and no rants or lectures or selling. We are not doing this for our employers, but rather for our industry. Since February 2013, The 2 Regular Guys have been the first and the most listened to garment decorating industry podcast on this planet! We are humbled by all of you tuning in each week. We work hard to bring you information that will make your business better, and our industry better. Take a look at our incredible weekly guest list and you'll understand where this industry goes for news, interviews, and the heartbeat of garment decorating. Thanks for listening! News Impressions Expo is taking submissions for 2022 educational seminars and workshops. We're placing a dedicated emphasis on content, and we want next year's conference program to be more diverse, dynamic, informative than ever while providing maximum value for our attendees and customers. The deadline for submissions is April 30th. Go here to submit your seminar ideas: https://bit.ly/3mghWq2Dad Joke: Why can't you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom?Because the P is silent! Thanks again to Lexi from Joe Ortinau's production staff, two Dad Jokes in a row! Wings, Tacos & Promotional Products Terry: Today we want to welcome in Jay Busselle and Jeff Solomon from TACOS with Jay and Jeff.Jeff Solomon, MAS, is the publisher of FreePromoTips, a PPAI award-winning business resource. His promotional products distributor business has won multiple PPAI Pyramid Awards. At the urging of his brilliant wife he expanded his apparel decorating business to include promo products over 20 years ago. That changed the game for him. Jeff has a passion for effective brand marketing and co-hosts the "hit" show TACOS with Jay and Jeff, spotlighting the epic marketing and branding that suppliers and distributors are doing. Along with other industry thought leaders, he is developing a new community, AI: Advocates for the Industry. AI has one goal: Working together for the success of the promotional marketing industry.It's been about 30 years since Jay Busselle started printing and selling “unofficial replica” t-shirts in the mid 80's of his favorite ski resorts, skiing and skateboarding companies… and a few bands which will remain nameless. Jay is a board member, referred to as “chefs” for PromoKitchen, an all-volunteer nonprofit group focused on mentorship. Jay is a highly rated industry presenter and a trainer on topics like branding, social media and LinkedIn. Jay is currently the marketing director at Equipment Zone, the co-host of the TACOS with Jay & Jeff show and a self-proclaimed CTO – Chief Taco Officer. Jay says he found his home hanging out with the other promo peeps and apparel geeks on the island of misfit toys!Aaron: What was the path that led each of you into promotional products? Let's start with you, Jeff.Terry: How can a garment decorator get involved in the promotional products marketplace?Aaron: How important is the relationship between promotional product distributors and suppliers?Terry: Let's talk about the TACOS with Jay & Jeff show - why did you guys start it and what's it all about?Aaron: You both are involved in education and mentorship. Talk to us about why you believe this is important.Covered… Terry: Let's talk Tacos vs Wings!! Wings won! :)Terry: How can our listeners find you? Facebook Live Video #5Things

ai talk hang wings tacos dad jokes regular guys promotional products ppai jeff solomon aaron you promokitchen jay busselle

27: Plan the work, work the plan

The SaaS Venture

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 30, 2021 46:50

FULL SHOW NOTES[INTRO music]0:00:12.0 Aaron: Episode 27: Plan the work, work the plan.0:00:16.2 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Here are the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of Leadferno and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.[music]0:00:42.3 Aaron: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast. I'm Aaron.0:00:45.7 Darren: And I'm Darren.0:00:47.7 Aaron: Darren, I wanted to start today with a little bit of an inspirational quote for us in our planning topic. Are you ready? 0:00:55.7 Darren: I'm ready. Let's hear it.0:00:57.0 Aaron: So Eleanor Roosevelt said, "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."0:01:05.1 Darren: It's a solid quote.0:01:07.4 Aaron: I like the positivity of wishing and day-dreaming without the work involved, [chuckle] but I get where she's going.0:01:15.2 Darren: Just take your wishes. They're all running around in your brain. Just write them on paper and you're starting to plan.0:01:21.0 Aaron: There you go. One other note. We are also using video recording for this episode. We're gonna test this out and see. When we watch it back we'll [0:01:33.2] ____ if we're cringy or it's just not something that we want or if it's a good second medium for us to distribute our talks.0:01:44.1 Darren: I think our subscribers are gonna go through the roof. You're so handsome. You're gonna have [chuckle] so many people being like, "Well, I wanna see more of that Aaron Weiche."0:01:54.1 Aaron: I'm pretty sure there's not enough of a filter to combat that to make that come true, but it sounds good. All right, well, hey, it's been almost two months since we recorded an episode. I'm definitely to blame on that. I've been super heads down with some things, which we'll talk about my side of planning work and working the plan, but how have things been? Are there any changes in your life in the last two months during the pandemic? 0:02:22.8 Darren: No. Pandemic-wise, it's all the same over here. Nothing really has changed. No one's gotten vaccinated in my immediate family yet, so it's all same stuff here. Busy with work. You're definitely not all to blame. I have been heads down on a bunch of stuff as well, and so I haven't sparked a podcast conversation, but yeah, what's new at Whitespark? Let's see. We launched actually a really big update to our Local Rank Tracker. It's not the kind of thing that has much impact customer-facing, but we've rebuilt the whole thing in our standard tech stack. It used to be on Angular, and now we've switched our front-end JavaScript framework to View, which has many positive impacts for us. We're able to iterate on it much faster. The software is more organized, and so it really opens us up to quicker feature releases on our Rank Tracker, so I'm excited about that.0:03:25.8 Aaron: Nice.0:03:26.8 Darren: We are finally about to pull the trigger on our new account system that I've talked about on the podcast many times, but it's actually happening. And I'm not even gonna say two weeks. It's actually happening in five days on Tuesday. Tuesday is the day that we're gonna pull the trigger, and actually on that day, we've decided we're going to raise the prices of our premier SaaS software, the Local Citation Finder. We're doing a big price increase on that, that I've been talking you a lot about, Aaron. I'm excited about that. I think there's great potential there. I feel like it's long overdue. We've had the same price of that software since we launched it 10 years ago. I've never increased prices, so it's long overdue. I feel like we're just gonna flip the switch and be just all of a sudden, we're making a lot more money, which we should've done a long time ago. So I'm excited about that. And we've got a big new feature to launch. I've talked about this before, I think, on the podcast, which is our citation auditing component that's gonna be integrated into our Local Citation Finder. So that's next on our agenda. That we're gonna be diving deep into that. It's mostly done, but pushing towards launch on that as well, so that's what's new in my world. How is Leadferno going? .0:04:42.9 Aaron: Yeah, well, one, it's great to be public with Leadferno. I think that's the biggest thing in announcing this. Just Monday of this week, I mentioned to you when we were talking before, hitting record earlier today is having this time between leaving GatherUp and just helping wrap up some things there and whatever else and diving head deep into Leadferno, but not really having it in a place where I wanted to promote or talk about it. That was definitely hard. So it was like... In my planning, it's like I had this plan on how I wanted to announce. I wanted to have the marketing website ready, and I wanted to have it to a pretty like, I don't know, full-blown or at a pretty solid part, to be able to build content around and screenshots and specific features. And early in the product and planning, there's a lot of that that you still don't even know how it's gonna end up or come true. You don't have visuals for it, things like that. So that was definitely one part of figuring out how do I make the most out of announcing what it is and driving people to something that actually does a good job of explaining it and all those pieces. So yeah, that was just a huge shift this week in being able to say like, "Here it is. Here's what it's called. Here's the link to it." And be able to socially do that in my professional profiles and my personal profiles. That was awesome.0:06:26.3 Darren: Yeah, I was excited to see the tweet from you and see that you've gone public with it. It's like, "This is the thing. You can check it out now. This is what's coming." So that must be a huge relief and just feel good to get it out there.0:06:41.5 Aaron: Yeah, I was kind of laughing. It checks the boxes on that social high or that dopamine hit you get when your LinkedIn posts and all the congratulations and the comments and the likes and retweets on Twitter and everything else. It's like this fever pitch. I kind of laughed at myself 'cause it's like, "I want that. I need that. I need word to spread on Leadferno and what it is and what it does." But I also felt like one of my teenagers where I'm worried about how many likes are on my TikTok video and things like that. It's like, I was like, "Oh, geez. Don't get caught up in this." But yeah, Monday was definitely just a rush all day long of people reaching out, people I forgot I had in my LinkedIn network where it's like you build these networks of, I don't even know, thousands of people, and then you get something and then you're like, "Oh, who's that? Where did I meet them at?" You go back and recall all of that so.0:07:40.7 Darren: Well, I think you coined the phrase, "LinkedIn is slow Twitter."[chuckle]0:07:46.9 Aaron: Yes. I'm glad you remember that. It totally is.0:07:50.7 Darren: Yeah, it makes some sense. You post something on LinkedIn, it continues to gather likes and comments for weeks, whereas something on Twitter, it disappears within half an hour.0:08:00.9 Aaron: Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. The Twitter steam settled down within 24 hours, and you're exactly like, "I'm still getting messages three days later on everything related to LinkedIn and whatever else." So people can check LinkedIn once a week and feel like they really haven't missed out on too much, where if you're really into Twitter, you're on it every few hours at least, so...0:08:27.2 Darren: Yeah, well, congratulations on going public with your new software, and you got some pilots running too. I'm excited about that. How are those running? 0:08:38.1 Aaron: Yeah, so far so good. I have five pilots up and running. It was definitely hard on me. You have this incomplete product. You know all the things that you want it to do. The vision's there, but you're also rolling out this like, "Hey, it does one-fifth of what it's going to do it in three or four months. Is that good enough for you?" [chuckle]0:09:01.5 Darren: Yeah, you probably get a lot of feedback too where people are like, "Oh, this is great. Can it do this? Can it do that?" And you're like, "Soon, coming. Yeah, we're working on it." [chuckle]0:09:11.3 Aaron: Yeah, so it's great when you get the requests that are in your product road map because that just affirms that the things you thought or what you know to be like feature parity, things like that, are true, but the other part, though, some of the feedback, there's been a handful of things. There's definitely one thing or all the early ones, so it's like, we built it and it's a desktop app only right now and it will be when we launch and then we'll be building our mobile apps right after launch. So with that, really the biggest thing, every time I was doing a demo for a potential pilot user and as they got on it, all had to do with notifications. And it was kind of interesting where it's like, "Yeah, we kinda knew that we built in... We had notifications on our road map, so we fast tracked doing your operating system notifications." You get the little alert that says, "Allow or Block." You allow it. That way, if you just have the window open, you're in a different tab, different browser, whatever else, you're gonna get that notification. But I've learned it's not enough. People have become so dependent on their phone telling them things, so what we're actually looking at doing now is building an SMS notification to fill the gap before we get to apps, so...0:10:35.9 Darren: That's good.0:10:36.5 Aaron: Yeah, yeah. So you'd just be able to drop your own mobile number and your user profile, and it'll just say, "Hey, you have a new lead from Leadferno." That will hopefully be that stop gap until we get an app that has push notifications, and you get your annoying red bubble that you don't want the numbers to go up on.0:10:56.7 Darren: That's perfect. And then at the very least the business owner gets a heads up that there's a new lead, and they can just jump in there and respond to it right away.0:11:03.3 Aaron: Yeah. Absolutely. Other than that, I've been doing Mechanical Turk notifications. I log in to all the pilot accounts, and I see if they have leads in there. And then I send them an email, "You have leads. Do you wanna go in there?" Like, "Oh, we forgot to log in." Working a new piece of software into somebody's routine can be hard and difficult, but yeah, that was one really interesting thing, it was like, "Okay, I just didn't realize how important the notifications were." And that sounds almost silly, but it's like...0:11:37.0 Darren: Makes sense.0:11:38.4 Aaron: My head is around 50 features into V1, but if you don't have this one, then we really... It's just not gonna work for us. We're worried about not meeting customer expectations. We wanna be able to move freely away from our desktop computer. We wanna know these things. So that was definitely a really big win, and then we've just had some other just small things as they're using it like, "Hey, if this expanded when I was typing in, it would be helpful," things like that. So.0:12:10.0 Darren: Can you access the application through a mobile browser? Is it responsive enough that it's functional? 0:12:17.2 Aaron: So we've chosen not to build it responsive, just because we're gonna go straight to mobile apps. The thing that we just didn't feel like a responsive was gonna give us a big enough win for the effort, just for what we talked about, the push notification, just some of the snappiness that you get out of a native app over a responsive site. So we just kinda chose instead of duplicating efforts for something that would maybe get used very little when you have the app as an option, like we're just gonna skip it. And right now, I would love there to be a responsive web design version of it. But six months from now I'll be like, "We have mobile apps. Don't worry about it." So then I won't care, so...0:13:05.4 Darren: Totally. I was only thinking of it as like a temporary stop gap until you actually have mobile versions.0:13:10.7 Aaron: Yeah. And we just looked at it, "Why spend time on that right now when we could just build more features into the core product itself," so...0:13:17.5 Darren: Absolutely. Makes sense. Yeah. Wow, good. It's going well, it sounds like. I know somebody who's running a pilot and they're like, "Man, this thing works too well. I can't keep up with all the leads," So that was great feedback to hear.0:13:31.9 Aaron: Yeah, no, the theory of exposing and marketing that you will text with customers definitely seems to be doing what we thought in opening more conversations. The barrier to starting a conversation for people is so low on text. You're just completely fine texting randomly a new business where having to take the time to make a call and will I get a voicemail or will I get a person or will I get a call tree? Am I gonna ask the right... All of those things is just so much lower, so... Yeah, from what we've seen in our pilots across a very diverse group of business types, and they're all seeing just an increase in conversation starting. It's also just been really interesting, which gets me excited. It's like, "All right, we have these five testers, and we have dozens of conversations happening in a week, but already seeing the differences in how people communicate." And the businesses is what I'm talking about, how the length and their process. Some are using it and immediately jumping into different communication medium. Others are solving it all right in the text conversation. It really gets me excited for the future of like, "Wow, the things that we'll learn as we compile all these conversations for a business to expose what do people care about? What are they asking the most?" Things like that really get me jazzed.0:15:03.8 Darren: Yeah, you think about the sentiment analysis you can do on all that incoming content, that's really interesting.0:15:09.9 Aaron: Yeah, no, totally, for sure. So when I look at that, that gets me excited for planning past the V1. It's like everything right now, I can script for you the next three months to six months, pretty much like almost every move we know we have to make. There's gonna be more things like the notifications that come into play that will be like, "All right, we need to do this, or people are gonna be not happy or frustrated." So we need to solve that, but the fact that there's just so much that has to be in the coming time frame, is just like, holy cow.0:15:53.5 Darren: Yeah, totally. That's almost the way it is with every product. There's just a non-stop stream of things that you can do to make it better. It's a good industry to be in. Speaking of all that stuff and planning that stuff, you wanna get into the topic of the day, planning.0:16:13.8 Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. As it relates to me, this is the first time I had to do planning around a launch of a product. Done plenty of feature launches and things like that, and I already kind of touched a little bit on just planning how to announce it and what was there and what was needed and things like that. But in this too, it was just thinking through like, "Okay, you get the site. You have those elements there. What do you need of those elements? Created some motion graphics for the site, what are all the things that we can round out?" And then after that, it's like, "Okay, putting the site out there, what's kind of our plan? What do we want to have happen? What's the conversion that we want out of it?" So it was mapping out like, "All right, we want people to say, Yeah, send me notifications. We're launching in June, but we'd like to every two or three weeks, send out an email and say, Hey, here's something new that we've just added to it. Here's how things are shaping up. Here's a couple ideas." Like just kind of build that fever pitch so that hopefully there's some people feeling like, "The minute that you will take my money, I will give you my money." That's the hope for sure.0:17:30.9 Darren: You want people to land up at your door with bags of cash.0:17:34.0 Aaron: Yeah, exactly. The next part is we introduced some calls to action for early access. So people who are early adopters who wanna put it to use, we wanna find out who they are and tell us a little bit about you so we can see like, "All right, based on where the product is, would you be a good fit to be a tester? Is it in a business type or a process we haven't served yet where we could learn from it? Will you be a heavy user of features that we already have instead of, Oh, the feature that would really benefit you is one of the last we're gonna build. So I'm not gonna bring you in now and get you frustrated." So that as kind of a pre-launch goal. And then the other one is we're gonna do a partner program with this product. This will probably be one of the most fundamental decisions that I find really interesting, so I decided with Leadferno not to do a white label product, which we had at GatherUp. And a couple of the reasons behind that, the beauty of a white label product is we had a large customer base that are digital marketing agencies and marketers and SEOs, and they resell it. They put their logo on it. They can claim it as their own, and then they can mark it up however they want.0:18:57.0 Aaron: We charge them $50 a month, and they can sell for $100, $200, $300, whatever they want. So those are the pros on it. The cons that I always found that won't be surprising is, one, you're not maintaining double the product, but 25-50%, you're double maintaining a product because how settings work, and how things are accessed, how you name features, you have to keep your brand out of everything, then you have to build materials for your white label people that they can grab and convert to theirs. There's just a whole lot of pieces to it that definitely make it a challenge. And for a lot, it can be worth it. Like for GatherUp, it was definitely worth it for us. We had 400-500 agencies when I left that were reselling our product, and some doing extremely well with it. But I just chose with this one, I wanted to take the route of building a partner program where what our partners, what they have to do is just refer their customers to sign up. They get the benefit of, "Hey, here's a great tool." If we're a web designer, we built you a beautiful site, but let's convert customers to contacting you. That's the ultimate goal.0:20:17.6 Aaron: If we do local search or SEO, we're a digital marketer, we wanna convert that traffic. So this is a great conversion tool. It will allow them... They'll have access so they can see into all of those accounts and see what's happening and grab data and reporting and site conversations so that they can add that to what they're doing on a retainer basis and reporting for that customer. And then also we'll kick them back a percentage of reoccurring revenue. So the downfall is I can't take a $50 product and mark it up to $300, which some have done, but the win is all I have to do is tell them to go look at this. We'll sell them. We'll support them. We'll do all those things. 'Cause the one thing that was probably the most frustrating with a white label product is you build new features, you do all these things, and your resellers just don't know or don't care or don't really have an idea. They don't support the customers as well. It's like you win on the sales side, but you can really lose on the customer experience side.0:21:26.0 Darren: Sure, yeah, actually, I've got two questions about this partner program 'cause it's something that we've been looking at a Whitespark because we currently have some referral partners that send us leads and we don't have a good system. We're currently tracking it manually. Stuff gets lost. It's like someone sends us an email and then we gotta go in and be like, "Oh, make sure that we're giving credit for this person for this referral." And so we've been looking at software solutions, and the more I look at them the more I think, "Wow, they're expensive, and we could easily build our own." So the first question is, are you gonna build your own or are you gonna use some third-party system for managing the referral program? And the second question is, I'm wondering what kind of kick back you're planning to give? 0:22:08.8 Aaron: Yep. So the first one, I'm having a hard enough time building one product. I am not building another product. So [chuckle] I'm gonna use... There's a couple out there. I've watched more than a few Facebook group conversations on things like this. The one that I probably see mentioned the most that I'm probably gonna do the deepest dive in is FirstPromoter. I think based on our needs and what I've read, that's one that I definitely want to investigate. I need to investigate further. I know another founder, Josh Ho. He has a product called Referral Rock. I need to see if that's kind of built the same way as FirstPromoter. I just... I know Josh through online conversations, but I haven't dove into his product as deeply. So I'm gonna find a product that fits the need for us to be able to do that so we can just focus on our core product.0:23:08.5 Darren: Yeah, so I was thinking about this, and it's like, I looked at one called PartnerStack, which Unbounce uses, and it looks really slick, it looks great. But it's $15,000 at the lowest end to $40,000 per year for the high end, and I'm like, "What? That's really expensive." and I don't get the value proposition there because when I think about what my needs are, I need to go into my account system, press a button that says Add New Referral, put in their name, their PayPal email, and it's gonna generate a referral link for them. I give them that link, and then all I have to do is on our website is track the URL parameter, set a cookie, and then on checkout, look for the cookie and record a transaction in our account system if anyone comes through on that cookie. It's actually pretty straight forward, and our team could build it, they're telling me in like... It's a week-ish to build this functionality into our account system.0:24:08.8 Darren: So when I think of it from that perspective, then it's like, "Why wouldn't we just build our own and just have it internally." And then you have to have a page for the referral partner and be able to look how many people came, clicked through on my link, how many people converted, and what is the timeline, what are my kickbacks, what is my next check gonna be. You just need a system like that, so it seems pretty straight forward. And I don't know if it justifies the expense of a third-party tool.0:24:35.3 Aaron: Yeah, my inclination would be I'd do more searching. The pricing on that sounds really steep. Like FirstPromoter, I think is in the $100-a-month range. I think they have some plan variants, but also everything you're describing there and just in building software, like your first blush is like, "Oh yeah, it's just these five things," but then it's like, "Oh, yeah, but these five and these five and these five," and then pretty much then it's a runaway train and I don't know. I'm just hesitant on those. I'm like, "Let's find someone who all they care about is this and let's plug into them, right? They're already plugged into Stripe. They already create the landing pages. They already have all these elements." So like I said, I have enough to do [chuckle] where I'm like, "I'll outsource." If we look at it and like, "Oh, we're only using these three things," then I at least have the experience of using something else and saying, "We could build this better, easier, simpler, that just meets our needs and eliminate that cost," then I'd at least know I'd rather start using something that's there.0:25:45.4 Darren: Sure.0:25:46.5 Aaron: And then head the other route.0:25:47.9 Darren: Yeah, I'll do a little bit more investigating of those two that you mentioned.0:25:51.4 Aaron: Yeah, and then after that, your second question on percentage, I think we'll probably be falling between a 10-15%. This was part of the other thing. Our product most likely, and we're still working completely finalizing, but I would say we're gonna fall between $150 to a $250-a-month product. And in my experience with a lot of agencies, especially the ones that really like the uptake on this product, selling price points is really hard for them. So I looked at it. If we did a white label and say we even discounted the product to, let's say, $100 a month, we could afford to do that for them. They would, because it's already at three figures, I feel like they would price it at $125 anyway. They'd get the same $20 back than if we just did everything else, because they'd be afraid to push those margins higher. Now, some of the really good sales agencies and successful ones like, no, they would probably... They could push it a lot higher and not have a problem with it, but that's just some of the things that I noticed that GatherUp is overwhelmingly a ton of them, just their own price sensitivity and sales.0:27:06.5 Aaron: They're good at their work. They like to do the strategical and tactical things, but selling for a lot of those agencies was really hard. So that's why, I just wanna do it like you make the introduction. We'll make it all happen. You get access. You get data, and you get revenue from it. So I'm hoping that like I said this could be a fatal flaw in my plan. I might be building a white label version of our product six months from now. So...0:27:33.0 Darren: Sure. Yeah, no. I think it sounds like a really good plan to me. I feel the same. Like I'm thinking about our future developments and where we're going, and I don't think we'll ever have a fully white labeled version for many of the challenges that you've already described. It's just so much more to maintain when you do that. I remember white labeling GatherUp and then noticing that the source code references your product. Even some of the class names of your CSS had to be updated, so just so many hassles.0:28:03.4 Aaron: Yeah. No, there is. There is a lot of it that you really have to have in mind when you do it. And it's like when I would talk with our team when we're launching features or things like that. Especially as the brand grew, you worked more like branding things into what you named it and how you created it. And there's just so much where I always looked at... One of our top-three threats all the time was exposing our white label resellers. Like hands down, that was the one thing where I was just always like, "Oh, nothing would be worse than me having 20 emails or 50 emails or 200 emails saying like, You just exposed me as a GatherUp reseller, and I charge four times more than you charge because I'm layering it with a service where like, Oh, what... I'm glad a few times we'd have something small, whatever, and quickly stomp it out or it was only a handful accounts, but that's scary stuff.0:29:03.8 Darren: Yeah. Totally. Well, I like that you're just avoiding that all together, go referral system instead of white label.0:29:09.5 Aaron: Yeah, well, we'll find out. Like I said, that plan might be a bad one. The jury's out on that. We'll see where that one goes. That's one of those, right, where it's like, "I definitely... I feel this way, but I understand this. And it was super successful before, but I don't know, we'll see where I land on that."0:29:31.2 Darren: Yeah, we'll see. I think as a person that has a re-sold product, it's also a lot of work on my end. I would almost prefer the referral system.0:29:41.6 Aaron: Yeah. Yeah, that's my hope. My big question is, is the revenue enough for someone to care because they might not look at your product as like a revenue generator for them. It's like, it's money back in. It adds up. It's worth something, but it's not gonna become a line item on the balance sheet that you really care about unless you have hundreds of customers. I mean, oh man, I hope I have a reseller that's like, "Yeah, sweet. We have 100 accounts that we've brought you." That would be fantastic, so...0:30:15.3 Darren: Yep, and do you pay your resellers... Is your plan, if it's like a percentage, do they get that recurring forever or is it just like for the first six months, the first...0:30:24.0 Aaron: Yeah, we're gonna do recurring for forever, so...0:30:26.4 Darren: Okay.0:30:27.2 Aaron: Yeah, I want it to be a win-win. I actually want it to be a win, win, win. I want the agency to win.0:30:35.4 Darren: Win - win - win.0:30:36.8 Aaron: Yeah, I want the business to win, and I want the consumer to win by loving using our product. When they can text with the business, they win on it. I like this where I was talking to... I was doing a demo with another potential pilot prospect, and he used to be a GatherUp customer and saw what I was doing, and the great thing is he's like, "The beauty of you and Mike... " He's like, "You guys, I never felt like you're out to make money. You were just out to give us a great solution. So I fully trust whatever you're doing on this, and I fully trust whatever price point you set." And I was like, "Oh well, I hope the whole world feels like that, so that sounds good."0:31:14.6 Darren: Yeah, you have implicit trust, everyone that comes over to you.0:31:17.9 Aaron: Yeah. I'm leaving money on the table, but I sleep well at night and I like what the product does, so...0:31:22.6 Darren: Yeah, yeah. Good. What else related to planning? 0:31:27.3 Aaron: Yeah, now that it's like out, now, it's a lot of both planning on the marketing side, how do I keep mentions going and stay in front of people and things like that. Lucky over the years to build contacts. We just had Localogy reached out and did an interview with me. I have a couple of others that lined up, pinging some people and just saying, "Here's an angle. Is it worth mentioning?" To try to keep that going to launch and then use launch as another propulsion. And there's a lot of things that I even joke with our marketing or our product team when they're talking about building something. I'm like, "No, we can wait on that. We can wait. That can come a month after launch." Well, I'm like, "He gives me something newsworthy to talk about and to put out there." So just planning all that out. And then now I'm just starting to focus on the launch plan, and we still have a ton of things to build into the product and just mapping out.0:32:32.2 Aaron: We basically have five sprints to where we wanna hit for our launch date, so it's like we have each of those sprints ratcheted with like, "Here's what we need to do and accomplish in whatever else, and we're really at this point, you're kinda out of room on, "Oh, that can get bumped or at this point, if it falls out of a sprint, it's not gonna be in the product for the V1, which is gonna be a bummer. I look at my list of 20 things right now, and it's like, "I don't wanna live out without any of them at launch, but I'm also... There might be five of them that just aren't gonna make it at launch." So a lot of that planning going on and that plan will probably be re-factored pretty heavily as we move through each sprint, but we'll see what happens.0:33:16.7 Darren: And how do you do the planning? What software systems do you use? How do you communicate this with your team? How do you set up your meetings? How do you lay out this plan and manage to stick to the plan? 0:33:28.9 Aaron: Yeah, so we do all of our sprint planning and development in Clubhouse. My product manager just hates Jira. I think he spent too much of his life in it. So even though Jira is probably the staple that's out there, it's what we used at GatherUp as well, he wanted to use Clubhouse. So that's what we use for that. That's where everything goes into play as far as organizing the sprints and what epics and stories and tasks and everything go into that. For the team, for me, I try to... The less I'm writing things in Clubhouse for me, the better. I try to... That's the weeds for me. I try to stay out of those weeds. I review the stories to keep track of progress. I answer questions when they're needed, but I like to frame things up in just any visual and have done both like Google Slides and also spreadsheets, just to say like, "Here's a high-level view. Here's all of these things." And a lot of times I like to use those and then also match them up for them to understand the business goal side.0:34:39.4 Aaron: I think it's really easy for engineers to be building in a vacuum and not understand the business needs and what goes on publicly and things like that. So helping them understand, "Hey, we need these things done and need to be this far, so we can have pilot testers. And once we have that, we wanna be able to launch and show people the product and have short demo videos and things like that." So it's good to not only have them see the sprints, but like what are the business goals that might be attached to these sprints as far as public launch, how many pilot customers are on the platform, soft launch with some paying customers, all those kind of things with it. So there, I'm pretty, whatever I can pull together fast that is well organized, that shows them and gives them a longer view, helps them see three months out. And how does all this work together? 0:35:39.4 Darren: Yeah, how often do you... Has it been from the genesis of the concept of Leadferno to today. You make these plans, you try to put a structure in place and create the timelines. How often are you sticking to things, or has it been going pretty well? 0:36:00.8 Aaron: No.0:36:00.9 Darren: No.[laughter]0:36:03.5 Aaron: You get all the other challenges in building a team, right, like finding the right people with the right expertise, the right ways to communicate. We can definitely get into this another time, but we hit kind of a road block end of January, February that had to do with our team's expertise with Flutter, and that's what we're using for the front-end SDK format of thing. I don't even know if you can call Flutter a framework or what you call it, but we realized we needed to level up. And so we had to do some changing of our team in relation to Flutter experience, and so that was a big shift that probably just kinda gutted two sprints off us. So we were not only... We weren't moving fast enough to that time because we didn't have the right components, and you're back and forth between, "I'm hopeful this will change," and, "Let's try some of these things and whatever else." And your gut might be telling you something, and then finally, I was just like, "We have to do something, right?"0:37:14.7 Aaron: So yeah, between all that, we just kind of... It's not accurate to say we lost a month. That's how I feel about it, but we had to change guard. We had to hand off information. We had to bring some new people in. Any time you bring new people in, they are also gonna have some ideas, which a lot of times, they're good ones on restructure. "Here's the efficiencies you're missing. Here are some of the things that if I was here from day one, I would have decided different that you're gonna wanna redo this." So it was really hard, and I was super bummed at that point. It would be like, you combine what you're working on isn't public. You can't talk about it at all. You're just in this hole working with development teams and testing and everything else. We weren't at the point of being able to have pilot customers yet. We were trying to do this work to have pilot customers. That was part of it, where it was like, "Man, everything feels like it's just kind of not going right right now, but you just keep working at it and things are getting better."0:38:18.2 Darren: With that big speed bump behind you, are things flowing to plan fairly well since you've kinda caught up from that, that bump? 0:38:28.2 Aaron: Yeah, I feel like it's getting better. We've had to make adjustments. There were things on how we were planning, designing features where we weren't doing a good enough job on it, and so we had to step up our game with how prepared we were ahead of the sprint, how we are creating some of the epics and stories. We're making adjustments there. So yeah, all the stuff is always an evolution, and so you're working hard to how can we constantly be getting better? And you're taking what you feel and what you see and feedback from the team and you're bringing in new expertise. There's just a lot. There's a lot happening at once. And it's like, that's easily the one thing it's like, you come from... I came from a team at GatherUp that our core development team had been together for three years when I left, and there's so much that was in lock step. Things were still hard and difficult and you'd still have misses or holes, whatever else, but so far less just because there's so much trust in the team. They had worked together. They understand the overall direction, a bunch of things like that. And then you jump into something else and you realize you have to rebuild that, and for the first three years at GatherUp, we didn't have it. It took us three years to hit our utopia or our best efficiency within that, and now I'm trying to smash and shrink it into months. [chuckle]0:39:55.2 Darren: Right.0:39:55.8 Aaron: Which is really not possible.0:39:58.8 Darren: No, but I think you are shrinking it, though. It seems like you're moving really fast at Leadferno actually. If you think about how much you've accomplished since you started this, you're progressing pretty zippy, it seems to me.0:40:12.7 Aaron: Yeah, I can tell you personally, the weeks have never flown by faster for me like ever. They are like... I'm like, "What? How is it a weekend?" Then on the weekends, there's no stand-up. I can't see what else got done, [chuckle] anything. It's like, I actually don't want the weekends. I want weekdays. I want stand-ups. I want progress. I wanna test. Man, it's crazy. So anyway, but I threw into our notes. I read a great tweet, and this guy was just sharing something that he had heard. And I reached out to get the pronunciation of his name, and his name is Tobenna Arodiogbu. And he put out this Tweet, and he just said, "Someone once told me it takes about three years to build really great software." And he said, "I kind of agree. The trick is in providing value when your product is merely good and executing every day the right to make it great." And I was just like, "Oh, that's so it." Right? And I'm like, "I'm trying to make great software in six months, and it's not gonna happen. But I need to do well enough where people are like, Yeah, I see where you're going. This is good enough and keep going and we're gonna stay with you."0:41:28.9 Darren: Totally. It's a really good quote. It's like people... You don't wanna take three years to launch your product. Launch it when it's pretty good and it continue to iterate. And actually, this is one of the things that we've actually had a roadblock at Whitespark about is we continue to refine and iterate before, and then we do this massive launch. It took us a year-and-a-half to get this thing out the door, and we're really trying to solve that problem and be like, "No, this is our existing product. We're getting that out of the door." We did it again with our new account system. It's like, "We could have launched this a long time ago if we weren't constantly refining it." And actually the nice thing is that once you get it out the door, all those refinements can come week after week after week, and then you're doing regular updates. You're showing your customers that you're alive and continuing to make the product better, and you have a new marketing push every week. And so that's the cadence that we're trying to get towards where every week we've got some new updates, some new thing that we're pushing live.0:42:35.1 Aaron: Yeah. No, I think you're spot on with that is how can you build and iterate rapidly? I think it's the same thing I was kinda talking about with our team. Like momentum, that's the killer thing. When you have great momentum, it doesn't even matter if it's just constant small steps, but you have momentum. And when we hit our rut, January, February, the momentum was gone. If anything, the momentum was backwards, and that is emotionally tough. It's tactically tough, all of those things. And the same when you get your customers to start feeling that your product has momentum, like, "Hey, every month or every other month or every quarter there's something new," like they feel that momentum. I think that's the key thing to find.0:43:27.9 Darren: Yeah, I see it with ClickUp. So we use ClickUp for some of our project management on our GMB Management Service, and every Friday I get an email from ClickUp. They call it the ClickUpdates 2.75, every time it increments. And they've done, I think, 275 updates. And so every Friday, there is an email that usually covers about three new features in the software, three new things. It's incredible, and that's... I dream of getting to that point, and it doesn't seem impossible. It seems totally within our grasp very soon. As soon as we have new accounts out, we're gonna start iterating on all... 'Cause at Whitespark, we have like five products. So we have so many different things that we're always working on.0:44:14.0 Aaron: Yeah. Well, it gives you a story to tell, and then you can take that story to your customers. That's marketing, and, yeah, ClickUp does a great job. I definitely went on a binge of signing up for any tool with a free trial for researching onboarding processes and things like that. And so I'm still getting a ton of emails, which is great because it helps me understand their messaging, and yeah, ClickUp does... They do a really great job with it.0:44:40.3 Darren: Really good, yeah.0:44:41.0 Aaron: Some of their little animations in their emails and things like that, so yeah, that's definitely a good example.0:44:49.3 Darren: They've got the resources too. I think they got $100 million in funding. [chuckle]0:44:55.2 Aaron: I don't know. It sounds great to have... I would have such a hard... This like Leadferno, we raised a small angel round, so we can scale up a team. And even that still feels hard for me, getting a team of five, six engineers right off the bat. It felt like, "Oh my gosh. That's so much for no income coming in and whatever else." It's like, "Oh, I'm learning, man. I'm baby steps on how to do something that isn't bootstrapped from the start." So...0:45:24.9 Darren: Yeah. [chuckle] Yeah, totally.0:45:28.8 Aaron: Well, cool. I think we've probably worn people out by now. You've worn me out. You just made me answer all the questions today, so...[chuckle]0:45:37.8 Darren: You know what? That's because I'm like the worst planner, so I just basically have to defer to you and be like, "Hey, Aaron, what can you teach me about planning?" So I'm learning as much here as the audience.0:45:48.0 Aaron: Yeah, you're evolving though with it, Shaw, but sooner or later you will be the plan guru, and I'll just take notes from you, so it's all good.0:45:57.9 Darren: Great, well, we'll slate that for March 2022, new episode on planning where I'll lead. I'll give some advice on planning.0:46:06.7 Aaron: You'll hit it before then. I know you will.0:46:08.8 Darren: Okay, great. Great, I appreciate the confidence.0:46:11.3 Aaron: Awesome. Yeah, you bet. All right, well, thanks everyone for joining us. Good to get another episode out. Hopefully we won't let so much time go by until Episode 28, and we'll get back to you. Anything you wanna make note of coming up Darren? 0:46:27.2 Darren: Nah.0:46:28.2 Aaron: Nah? 0:46:28.8 Darren: No. [chuckle] Let's talk about it next time.0:46:30.9 Aaron: Keep doing the things on repeat.0:46:33.1 Darren: Yeah totally.0:46:34.2 Aaron: All right. Well great catching up as always with you Daren, and we'll talk soon. And we'll talk and record soon as well.0:46:41.2 Darren: Yeah within a month. All right thanks, Aaron.0:46:43.7 Aaron: All right thanks take care everybody.0:46:45.7 Darren: Thanks everybody.[OUTRO music]

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Aaron Chin - My Ceiling is Your Floor - 2nd Gen Leader of Canadian Health Business [The Business of Family]

The Business of Family

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2021 45:22

Aaron Chin is a second-generation business leader and CEO of Organika (https://organika.com/), a family-led Canadian company dedicated to providing innovative, premium health products to help inspire people to live healthier lives. Growing up in the business motivated Aaron to build on what his father started 30 years ago. Since assuming leadership of Organika, in partnership with his brother Jordan, they have increased business seven-fold and have grown the company into an award-winning, globally recognized brand, focusing on innovation and a vibrant company culture. Standout Quotes: * "You start with the mission of the company and that'll help drive your decisions after". - [Aaron] * "If you can tweak one little thing in your process that could save you 30minutes...do it". - [Aaron] * "You are going to determine yourself, how well you do". - [Aaron] * "I really do believe there's nothing like good old hard work". - [Aaron] * "My relationship with my brother is bigger than the business... I think I can pass that down to my kids" - [Aaron] Key Takeaways: * Aaron's dad had the dream when he moved from Malaysia to Canada to give his kids a chance to get ice cream whenever they wanted. * Following the treatment of his kidney stones using natural products, he started the business with a vision to make healthcare accessible for all. * Despite the rejection, his father persistently put himself and his products out there, till the business took off. * Aaron shares he always had an interest in the family business although his father never tried to impose any expectations to join. * Aaron narrates a simple experience where he noticed the boss employed by his father to manage the business got to the office one morning, and deleted all his office voicemails without listening to any one, inciting Aaron's suspicion of the poor management inherent in the business. * Realizing the diet differences between the newer and older generation, the company pivoted from mostly vitamin pills to be more involved in superfoods, powders, drink mixes. * The surprising eventuality of Aaron becoming CEO in an Asian family where he is the younger brother and always at odds with his older brother, was partly made possible by the family dynamic which started to work out following certain events that strengthened the bond between them. * Aaron shares his vision for the company: I want to see us in every single home in Canada. * Explaining that his dad wasn't overprotective but rather allowed them to make mistakes, and these mistakes helped them learn how to make fast and efficient decisions. * The question: What are you doing about it? * If you teach children what wealth means, it's rather thoughtful to leave wealth for them, but if not then it's just an expectation, and things could go wrong. * To Aaron's kids: Know the importance of Family because it is more important than even the business Episode Timeline: * [00:49] Meet today's guest "Aaron Chin". * [01:25] Where did the family business begin, and how do you become involved in this story? * [07:40] About Aaron's entry into the business: Was it always an expectation or some other circumstance? * [16:09] Describing the business today. * [19:55] How did the leadership transition come about? * [24:40] Being the younger brother in an Asian family, how did you arrive at the CEO role? * [27:15] What sort of investment process did you go through, and how did you formalize the business? * [33:33] Would you say the company culture remains unchanged or has it morphed as a result of the impact of Private Equity coming in? * [37:45] Aaron shares major lessons learned by trying things and making mistakes at the beginning * [38:50] Is there a multi-generational plan to continue the legacy that your father started? * [41:03] How do you feel about children inheriting wealth? * [42:39] Aaron's letter to his kids. For more episodes go to BusinessOfFamily.net (https://www.businessoffamily.net/) Sign up for The Business of Family Newsletter (https://www.businessoffamily.net/newsletter) Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeBoyd (https://twitter.com/MikeBoyd) If you feel it's appropriate, I'd so appreciate you taking 30 seconds to Leave a Review on iTunes (http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1525326745), I receive a notification of each review. Thank you! Special Guest: Aaron Chin.

How To Comfort Each Other During Hard Times

Northridge Church Messages

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2021 57:14

We want to invite you to take our 31-day parenting prayer challenge. These are made possible in part by our faithful prayer team patrons. https://marriageaftergod.com/patronjoin today! → Parentingprayerchallenge.com Read The Transcript [Jennifer] Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast. [Aaron] We're your hosts. I'm Aaron. [Jennifer] And I'm Jennifer. [Aaron] We've been married for 14 years. [Jennifer] And we have five young children. [Aaron] We started blogging over 10 years ago, sharing our marriage story in hopes of encouraging other husbands and wives to draw closer to God and closer to each other. [Jennifer] We have authored over 10 books together including our newest book "Marriage After God," the book that inspired us to start this podcast. [Aaron] Marriage after God is a message to remind all of us that God designed marriage with a purpose. [Jennifer] To reflect his love. [Aaron] To be a light in this world. [Jennifer] to work together as a team. [Aaron] Using what he has given us. [Jennifer] To build his kingdom. [Aaron] Our hope is to encourage you along your marriage journey. [Jennifer] As you boldly chase after God together. [Aaron] This is "Marriage After God." Hey everyone, welcome back to the "Marriage After God" podcast. We're in Jennifer Smith, your host- [Aaron] Yeah, we're excited to be back with another episode. [Jennifer] Do you know that we are more than halfway through the season? [Aaron] I know, crazy. It's going by really fast and it feels good. [Jennifer] Yeah. Hope everyone's enjoying it as much as we are. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] One thing I wanted to share with you guys just starting out the gate here, is took the kids for a walk, we have these really cool parks where we live in central Oregon, and just wide open nature, fresh air flowing river, awesome bridge to walk over, and we got outside. And sometimes it gets hard for me in the wintertime 'cause it's like, I don't know, it's cold. [Aaron] and you did it by yourself, I missed out on it today. [Jennifer] Yeah, usually I make you go along with me, huh? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] More hands- I was impressed. [Aaron] And I missed it, 'cause I like going on those little adventures with you. [Jennifer] Well, a friend invited me, and it was just really good to get out despite it being cold, and the reason that I'm sharing this with you guys is because this friend of mine just is very enthusiastic and passionate about nature and being outside all the time, and so one of her ways of encouraging me is this challenge she gave me, this piece of paper that said the thousand hour challenge, and there's all these little bubbles that you get to mark off for every hour that you're outside with the kids, and I just thought how wonderful, and so it's been a fun little way of kind of keeping ourselves accountable to being outside every day, and the kids have loved being outside. I mean, they ask for it all the time anyways, so if anyone wants to take up that challenge, it's a thousand hour challenge. [Aaron] How many hours have you done outside? [Jennifer] I don't know, since I started it's been about a week. I think we got in I wanna say nine hours that I'm keeping track of. [Aaron] So I'm outside playing all day out back. So like that counts as like the, towards the hours. It doesn't have to be on an adventure just outside- [Jennifer] It could just be outside. [Aaron] That's cool. [Jennifer] Yeah, so anytime they're outside for an hour, I mark it off. [Aaron] I was actually kind of wondering what that thing on the refrigerator. [Jennifer] Yeah it doesn't really explain much. [Aaron] That's awesome. But I will try and go next time, 'cause it looked like you had a lot of fun. [Jennifer] It was a fun little adventure. Also the reason that I was bringing that up is because some of you may have seen me post on Instagram about it, just random pictures of us being out on our nature walk today. But I'm back on Instagram and that's new. [Aaron] So you're saying everyone should message and say hi to you. [Jennifer] Sure, say hi, pop in and say hi. I was off for pretty much all of January, and I had never taken a break like that from a social media. Like, so hands off, like, I mean, I deleted it from my phone and everything, and it felt really good. And then one day I just decided I missed it. So I came back and at first it felt weird to post, like I didn't know really how to, it felt new again. but I'm back. Do you wanna come see me? Come say hi. [Aaron] Awesome, I just want to invite everyone, if you haven't yet to leave a review today, that'd be awesome. Five star rating, actually doesn't have to be five-star you can get, you can start whatever you want. Five star would be appreciated, but yeah leaving a review or a star rating today would be awesome. If you have done that, we're just so appreciative and it helps the algorithms. We always mention it. So if you take a moment today, we'd really appreciate it. [Jennifer] Another thing that we wanted to offer you is very similar to what you may have heard in the last few episodes kicking off the season, but it's a little bit different. So we've been sharing about the marriage prayer challenge, today we wanna remind you and offer you and invite you to the parenting prayer challenge. And it's essentially the same concept. You can go to parentingprayerchallenge.com and sign up, and you'll get 31 days of prayer prompts to pray over your children. [Aaron] And you can actually choose whether to pray for your son or your daughter or both, if you have both, and it's completely free, and we'd love for you to join that and take that challenge. And you could take it even if you're taking the marriage prayer challenge already. So you can be praying for your spouse and you can be praying for your kids. You should do that today. [Jennifer] Again, that's parentingprayerchallenge.com. [Aaron] So Jennifer, why are we talking about... Just real quick, I know this isn't in the notes, but why are we talking about comforting each other during hard times. When we came up with this list of ideas for episodes? [Jennifer] Yeah, I think we already mentioned that the motivation behind the way we created our list this season was just, how we do every season is what have we been learning about? What have we been doing? What have we been walking through? What's God been teaching us? So partly from that just last year, there were times that you hard times that you comforted me and I comforted you. And it was a kind of relearning opportunity for us in our marriage of what it looks like to go through a hard time and be there for one another. And the other reason is just because I think that if you had, you know, a handful of categories that every marriage deals with, this is probably one, of the top ones where every marriage faces challenges and hardship and trials and hard times, and we get the opportunity as husband and wife to be there for one another. And so I think it's good to what we always say check our hearts or evaluate, you know, where we're at and how we're doing. And so we thought talking about how to comfort each other during hard times, would be inappropriate marriage topic for a marriage podcast. [Aaron] I think so. And it's good for everything, not just your marriage, but I'm just thinking about situations in my life where I needed to be comforted by friends, by my parents. [Jennifer] That's true, we are gonna go into more of just comforting others too. [Aaron] But it's good, especially with how the world's going, and things have just been going on. I think there's plenty of opportunities to be comforted into comfort. And personally, this has been something that's very difficult for me to do to others. [Jennifer] Comforting others or having compassion or empathy toward them? [Aaron] All the above. [Jennifer] Okay, I'm like, just clarify. [Aaron] I don't know why. I couldn't tell you why, but emotional sensitivity has been difficult pretty much my whole life. I don't know why. I feel like the last handful of years I've gotten better at it, I feel like I've been like changing that in me. You could probably attest to this, like going from just always, you know, logical and cold to getting a little bit softer and- [Jennifer] Well, let me encourage you, because I wouldn't say the word cold. I don't think you're a cold guy, I don't think you're a mean guy, I think that you're a very strong guy, and so sometimes some of the weaker ways that we humans walk through get overlooked because- [Aaron] Being very gentle to me, thank you. [Jennifer] I'm being honest. I do think that you... There are plenty of times you've been compassionate or have comforted me or others, I just wouldn't say that you're like that kind of tenderhearted always trying to be there. [Aaron] Yes, it's something that I need to work on for 100% sure. [Jennifer] Okay, let's just stick to the notes here. [Aaron] Yeah, okay. It's something that definitely doesn't come natural to me. I don't know why it is, but it just never really has. Comforting someone in hard times, someone who's going through painful situations, suffering- Like what to do in hard times? [Aaron] That, yeah, not knowing how to be that person for someone. [Jennifer] When you have someone in your life that is going through a hard time, do you automatically get challenged with the thought, like, I don't know what to do for them, or is it more just like this is so uncomfortable and I wanna like... I hope they get better and I'm gonna pray for them move on. Or I don't know. [Aaron] Yeah, I'd say there's a couple of things. Especially if someone who's going through something's not in close proximity to me. And like I said, I've been getting better at this, God's definitely shown stuff to me and highlighted this in me. But if they're not like indirect proximity to me, it's hard for me to like put my mind on them and my heart on them. But when I am in proximity to someone, I'm thinking of like deaths in the family, or, you know, friends going through hard things. [Jennifer] Where I see it. [Aaron] Where I see it and I'm present. And yeah, I think I want to, like, there's this, like I know I should do something, I know I should say something, I know should be a certain way, but I, yeah, I think it's both of those things, but I also feel uncomfortable. So it's something I'm wanting to grow in, and get better, which is why I'm glad we're talking about it, because it's been something that God has been teaching us, teaching me. [Jennifer] Me too. [Aaron] He's used you a lot to teach me, which we'll talk about. [Jennifer] I was just gonna say, marriage is awesome in that those moments where you haven't walked with compassion or comfort, I've been able to share with you how I feel in those moments. You know, if I've felt overlooked, or I felt like maybe you didn't respond to me the way I was hoping you would have in the way that I felt, over the years, you have been responsive to those moments that I've shared that with you. So you have grown in these areas. You might see yourself as not being super great at comforting others, but you have grown a lot since I've known you in this. [Aaron] Yeah, and I wanna grow more, I wanna be better for you at that. But I just know that even with you, there's times that I'm not understanding, or I see a situation differently, or I might be it come off as cold or un compassionate, because I'm just like, Hey, like we can get through this. Maybe I there's been times that I'm- [Jennifer] Quick to fix it. [Aaron] Yeah, like I, I just jumped to- [Jennifer] The solution or like- [Aaron] The solution. And I also think- Moving forward. Just now that I'm thinking about it, I think I get, because I'm uncomfortable with someone going through something, I want them to stop going through it. Like, come on- I see what you're saying. Like stamp out of it. Like let's move past it. Maybe because I don't usually get affected too much. [Jennifer] You're the type that if you're near Aaron and you're going through a hard time, he wants to grab you by the arm and go have a good time, like, come on, let's just go, let's move forward. Like that? [Aaron] Yeah, Sort of. It's like I want you to see it from my point of view. I don't know. And then that's not always right, right? Wrong, that's not right. [Jennifer] And this is what God's teaching you. [Aaron] Yeah, this is what God's teaching me. [Jennifer] That's good. Also, when were talking and explaining that just now, I was just thinking the silence. You know that people say the awkward silence. [Aaron] It's too awkward for me. [Jennifer] Well, yeah. But sometimes when people are sharing that they're going through a hard time, or are suffering or need that person, that friend to comfort them. Yeah, you're quick to say something, you're quick to move or quick to be actionable, because- [Aaron] I wanna give some sort of response. [Jennifer] You want to give a response to them. And so would you say that God is teaching you how to just be still in that moment, and kind of be there with that person? [Aaron] Yeah, well, it's something that we'll talk about in this episode, but it's, there's, I think He's showing me, He's been teaching me how to walk with individuals, because every situation isn't the exact same. I could see things like, this is always how I'm supposed to be, or always what I should say. But every situation is different, and I need to love someone enough to understand them and how they will receive love and comfort. So more of a putting myself in their shoes the specific person, I don't know, I feel like I'm- [Aaron] I know, I feel like we've kind of gone on this tangent of like, let's talk about and focus on Aaron, but we didn't kind of mean for it to go that way, but we'll run with it. [Jennifer] Yeah, I just wanted to bring up that this is a hard thing for me. [Jennifer] You're being honest, that's good. I think this is interesting because I get what you're saying, and I've seen what you're saying play out before with me and with others, just having known you for so long. But there's this other side of you that really is gentle and compassionate and comforting, I've seen it. And I've seen you treat people, everybody has as equal, like you don't put people on pedestals where there's like this person over here that's higher, and this person over here that's lower. Like you've always maintained this equal standing of like value with people, which I think is incredible. And you've also always kind of, I don't know how to say at the same time, you've been there for the underdog. At different times in our life, there has been people that are like hard to get along with, or people are struggling with them and you seem to be able to relate to them and be friendly and be there for them. Does that make sense? [Aaron] It goes back to that, seeing everyone the same. I, well, I do tend to not like knowing that there's someone that's being cast out or downcast or put aside. And so I feel like I gravitate towards those people, but at the same time, I don't treat them any different than I would treat someone else. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] I just, yeah, it is interesting. But that has come into play Now that I think about it, with some of the problems I've had, because like I was saying, treating everyone the same, isn't always... It's good to it's good to view everyone the same, but it doesn't mean I'd respond the same to everyone, or interact the same with everyone, if that makes sense. Especially when it comes to things like comforting, things like suffering, things like pain, something that I may not understand, something I've never gone through. So I feel like it's been opened my eyes to like how to, as Paul put it, be all things to all men so that I might win some. Like that idea of seeing where someone's at and being like, okay, good Lord. What do you, how do you want me to respond to this specific situation with this person? [Jennifer] Right. Well, I feel like we went through quite a bit of just how you engage and interact with people just now, And I don't want it for now. I just don't want it to sound super negative. So just as a reminder to you, Aaron, I have seen you in times where people are suffering an uncomfortable or needing comfort, you've been there. And even in the awkwardness, even in the not knowing what to do or how to respond in that moment, I do try. You do try. And you're really, you're a good friend, and you're a good husband. And I just wanted to remind you that. So without going more into me personally, this topic was meant for everyone. [Jennifer] And I think is the launching pad. [Aaron] Yeah, well It made sense, 'cause I was writing this and I had to start with, hey this is something that is hard for me, but I'm sure it's hard for everyone at different times. But it's also something that we desire ourselves that we ourselves want to be comforted, and as believers, we want to be good at being able to comfort because we can comfort the lost, and that could be an opportunity to bring them to Christ. We can comfort our family and our spouse and our children, and so it's a good tool in our tool belt, as we talk about in our book to all to have. And I think it's something that we should, like you said in the beginning of this, examine our hearts and say okay Lord, how can I... Teach me how to be compassionate and have a heart for the hurting? [ Jennifer] Yeah, and no one's exempt from or immune from having hard times, or facing trials, challenges, suffering. Right, it might look different for each of us, but we all experience it on some level, every marriage does, every individual within that marriage does, people we know friends, family, people who, neighbors. Yeah, everybody faces it in different ways. And I think if we keep our hearts tender, I think tender is such a good word when it comes to being able to comfort one another, I think we'll we'll know what the right thing to do is when those opportunities arise. [Aaron] Isn't it James that says that pretty much promises, we will have trials and tribulations in our life. Like it's a given not just for the believer, but for the world. You can't turn on the TV or go outside or drive down the street without seeing it or even experiencing it. Like there's just going to be trials and challenges and things that are hard. So having an eyes for this and I think you said tenderness is a good word, but like like a softness, like a heart that's ready. [Jennifer] Yeah, well that's good. Yeah. I like that. Before we dive into some of the meat of the message today, I thought it would be fun to answer this question, what is the most comforting thing I have ever done for you? [Aaron] There's been times when I've been really sick and you pamper me. [Jennifer] Pamper. [Aaron] I mean like you- [Jennifer] I call it babying, I baby you. [Aaron] Yeah, there was a time when I had a really bad earache, and I thought my brain was gonna explode. [Jennifer] I remember that, I've never seen you in so much pain, actually. [Aaron] I hadn't ever been in so much pain. But you like held me while I was like like crying on the bed, 'cause it was hurting so bad. [Jennifer] I was a little terrified, I didn't know what to do. [Aaron] Neither did I, it was so bad. But I remember you I prayed for you. [Aaron] Yeah I think of those times when I'm, there is nothing to do, but you just held me or, you know, prayed over me, and so that was the first thing I thought of. [Jennifer] And then I think I said, I think you should go to the doctors or had you already been? [Aaron] I did, I went to the doctors and I got a, some sort of antibiotic but it was like, it got worse after I got back. [Aaron] I remember that, that was intense. [Aaron] So what's the most comforting thing that I've ever done for you? [Jennifer] I'd say like you mentioned a very specific time but I think in general, just when you hold me close, when you pull me into you and hug me and yeah, just hold me. [Aaron] Remind you that I'm still here. [Jennifer] Yeah, that you're very close. I think the second thing is just when I hear you pray over me or for us, that's always encouraging. [Aaron] That's good. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Some tips for all those listening. [Jennifer] The only thing you need, physical touch and prayer. [Jennifer] I guess we're done. [Aaron] Yeah, let's move on to the... Yeah, now there's some things in scripture we can look at that can give us some I don't know if they're guidelines, but it's encouragement for us in our walk and comforting, learning to comfort our spouse, others. And I just wanted to go through some of those and hopefully it encourages you listening, it encouraged me when I was writing it. So the first thing is for the believer, we're told to comfort each other. [Jennifer] So do it. [Aaron] Right, so this kind of sounds oversimplified but sometimes I feel like we don't think have that responsibility. Or someone else will do that. That's not my job. And I know we've in various seasons, struggled with this. Like someone's going through something and we think to ourselves, no we shouldn't like maybe someone else will, maybe they don't want anyone over there right now. And just kind of questioning whether it's our role to go comfort someone. [Jennifer] Which the hard thing about that is the moment you justify it, or excuse yourself out of the situation, it only takes a fleeting moment to then forget about it. Like, forget that need, forget that that person needs it right then and there. And then when, by the time it comes back around you remember it, the moment has passed, the opportunity has passed, someone else has stepped in, which is good, and we're so grateful for those people that take over when we don't or choose not to, or forgetful but let's not do that. [Aaron] So yeah, the first thing is that we're told- [Jennifer] You said maybe it's over simplified and I just the next word I heard, but under done. So over simplified, under done. [Aaron] It's true. Yeah, because we do, we disqualify ourselves from that ministry, but we're we're told to comfort each other. And I would imagine, not imagine, I would say that the first person that you should be like prone to comfort is your spouse. Right, they're a part of you, you're one with each other. And so if you're not comforting each other you're not comforting yourself. Like if you look at that- [Jennifer] I would definitely say this, I'm trying not to use double negatives. If you're not comforting your spouse, you better not be comforting anybody else because the moment you show others comfort, and that ability and your spouse is sitting over here going what in the world? [Aaron] That's true. [Jennifer] That's so hurtful. And the other part of that is if you guys... We're gonna talk about this in a minute, but you guys should be comforting people as a team, like your marriage, your one, so you be comforting each other first and then step into that space of like being able to comfort others. Sorry, I had to get out of the way. [Aaron] That's good. So second Corinthians 13:11 is where we get this says: "Finally, brothers rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you." So if we look at that os piece the God of love and peace will be with you. Do we want that? [Jennifer] Of course. [Aaron] Okay, then let's rejoice, let's aim for restoration, let's comfort one another, agree with one another and live in peace. This is how the brothers in the church, this is a Christians walk, [Jennifer] But this is such a great marriage verse. Like if you just replaced brothers for spouses. [Aaron] Finally spouse's rejoice, aim for restoration. And well, especially if you and your spouse are both believers like this totally applies. And even if you have a spouse that's not a believer, you can still aim for this on your side of the marriage. But we are to comfort one another. That's a, that's a command to us on how we walk. It's part of our job description, not only as husbands and wives, but as Christians, it's our responsibility to do this. So if you've been looking for permission to comfort someone, comfort your spouse, that you are qualified, that you are called to it, here it is. This is a part of your job. [Jennifer] Okay, so, because we're talking, it's kind of a mixed message or not a mixed, but- [Aaron] I love this note, by the way. [Jennifer] How do I say it's all encompassing message today on how to comfort others. So it is inclusive of your spouse and others, right? We need to- [Aaron] Like there is a caveat. [Jennifer] Yeah, we need to clarify that boundaries matter, And I'm saying this from experience being married to your Aaron for 14 years, that we've communicated and agreed upon boundaries that have, I think protected our marriage and protected our unity and our peace within our marriage. So do you wanna speak to that? [Aaron] And what you're talking about is specifically like so taking all of this advice for your spouse is great, and learning as a couple as an individual individual to comfort others is great, but we shouldn't just take that blanket across the board because it would be very dangerous if I got in the habit of personally and individually comforting other women or other people's wives, right? I mean, that was just, that would be wrong. Now, if someone needs to be comforted, what I can do is bring my wife into it with me, or encourage my wife to do it. [Jennifer] Hey, I noticed so-and-so is hurting over here. Have you reached out to them? Have you had a conversation? You know, things like that. And the reason that we bring this up, you guys is because our marriage matters and our relationship is sacred. Aaron and I's right. You would agree that our marriage is 100% special, special. Yeah. I don't know how else to explain that. And I think when you move into comforting others, there is a level of intimacy involved. And I'm not saying the same intimacy as a husband and wife, but emotional intimacy is something that's truly valued among human beings and how we experience life. And so if you're gonna move into that space where you're comforting someone, regardless of what it is like whether it's meeting a need of theirs, or sitting there and listening to some hardship that they're going through, that's something that we should be willing to look at and say, are we making sure that we are within our boundary, right? Just our boundaries is I don't. [Aaron] Our boundary is that I don't. I won't sit ever alone and comfort a hurting woman. I won't do that. And if I did, my wife would know about it immediately. It wouldn't be a secret thing, but that would be, that has never happened. So the, what would happen is I would call you I'd be like, Hey, I think we need to come up. And it sounded really bad. Like we should go pray for them, or you should go see if she needs to talk. And so we were, and the same with my wife, she wouldn't go and sit and have a really deep intimate conversation with someone listening to all of their hurts and the things they're going through alone, she would invite me, or she would tell me like, hey you should really chat with so-and-so, they really need some comfort, they need some, you know, someone to listen. [Jennifer] And we've actually found a really great blessing and benefit in this, and Aaron, you've had some really great conversations with guys who have needed that comfort from another brother and I've had the opportunity to comfort and be comforted by other Christian women. And it's been a good thing. And then together as a couple, we've been able to step into that and, you know minister to other couples and other people. So I just think that boundaries are important. And, and we kind of wanted to talk about it upfront and get it out of the way, because it'll apply to everything else that we're talking about. [Aaron] So we always want to just encourage boundaries and order and that it also encourages you to encourage your spouse to be a minister, to care for others. So working together helps with that, and it's not worth it. So if someone's going through something, just know that there's someone else that can comfort them, if it's not you. So find another sister, brother, "Hey so-and-so could totally use some comforting right now." And so that we protect our marriages. So I thought that was a really good note. Thank you for that. So I just want to give a quick definition of comfort. So comfort is, first of all, it's a verb. [Jennifer] Action. [Aaron] It's something you do, and you do it actively. And it's defined as a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint. So physically comforting someone helping, you know, if they have a broken arm holding their arm up so that they're not in constant pain as a friend of mine, one time put his back out. And I had to take into the to the hospital and I had to like, hold up his whole torso so that he would put any weight on his lower spine. And it was wow. But that, that's what this is talking about is physical comfort. I'm comforting that physical pain with my body. [Jennifer] I'm thinking about labors. I've had the opportunity to be a part of, where you're just trying to help ease that woman going through, that you just helping in any way. Yeah. [Aaron] The other definition is the easing or alleviation of a person's feelings of grief or distress. So that's one, that's common of they're going through something painful emotionally, and you're there for them. And then another one is ease the grief or distress. [Jennifer] Console. To console someone. So that's essentially what comfort is. There's a physical comfort, which again, should be in a safe way with boundaries, but with your spouse like that, like you said, me being near you, holding you, coming to you, touching you you know, embracing you. And so that's what we're talking about when we talk about comfort. [Jennifer] As you're going through these definitions, the word that stood out to me is the word alleviate. And it reminds me of, you know, lifting up kind of like that illustration that you get so good. And I looked up another, you know, the source of synonyms in it, it means to take the edge off. So it's not just solving a problem or making something not painful ever again, that might be where that uncomfortable feeling comes from for you, that you had mentioned earlier. It's like this expectation to help in a way that that we just can't, you know sometimes some hard things won't ever be fixed, but in them we can help take the edge off by gladdening someone's heart reminding them of the good making them laugh or experience joy amidst what they're going through. So I just thought that word alleviate was I dunno, really cool. In normal times there there's plenty of reasons and seasons we go through that bring us to a point where we need to be comforted. I think everybody listening right now it's just like maybe sitting in that space right now saying I need that, you know hopefully our words bring you comfort today. [Aaron] I think a lot of believers right now look at the stuff going on in the world. Yeah. And we desire to be comforted. Like, is it gonna like, what? Like what's going on Lord? And so as believers, also, something to encourage you with is you can comfort because you're comforted. I know it kind of sounds funny but it's it's why we can comfort. That my next point is we are told to comfort but you can comfort because you yourself have been comforted. In 2nd Corinthians 1:3-5 Paul says this: "Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and God of all comfort." Okay, right there just starts a God of all comfort, "Who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God, for as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ, we share abundantly in comfort too." This is true for every believer. Because no matter what, you're going through, you have the comfort of God on your life because you know that he has saved you by His son Jesus. [Jennifer] Okay, so just real quick, when we were sharing about the definition just a bit ago, a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint. Oh my goodness. This makes me appreciate and just attend a way to salvation that we have in Christ. [Aaron] Right, 'cause no matter what the world or our happens to our bodies, man, does our bodies or just happens through age or disease, that we are comforted with the knowledge and the truth that this isn't it, that we have a new body coming, that we have a new home, that we have a savior, and we're going to have eternity worshiping our father. [Jennifer] So every single one of us have felt broken, shame, unrighteousness, that sin that he set us free from he's given us freedom from that's the comfort that we're talking about. [Aaron] And on top of that, He sent us his us His Holy Spirit who also comforts us. So when we're in the midst of just life, he reminds us of the truth about us. This is something that we dealt with a lot this year, just us thinking about who we are in Christ. And that we're no longer that old man. And that God was, he reminds us like, no, that's not who you are. Hey yes, it feels this way now, but it's not true. Like the Holy spirit has comfort us many times by bringing to remembrance the truth about us. When the lies are making us sad, and feel broken the spirit isolator, he comforts us. And so I just want to encourage you listening that you have that same comfort. The God of all comfort comforts you in all your affliction. And this is why, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted. So we're not comforting out of our perfect situation, we're not comforting out of the fact that we don't have any afflictions. [Jennifer] We're not even comforting out of our own means. So when we're trying to, you know, help comfort someone by providing them something or, you know fulfilling a need for them. It's like, it's not even out of that physical response. It's literally because we've all been comforted by God himself. [Aaron] Right, so the comfort that we give, the comfort that we offer, the comfort that we attempt to walk in is his comfort, right? That's an incredible encouragement, because we can go sit with someone and know that any comfort we could offer, has come from God already in our life and in their life. I also think this is a good place to just say if we struggle with that awkwardness of or being uncomfortable with seeing someone suffering or going through a trial or something hard and the Lord's given us the opportunity to step into that to comfort them. And we don't know what to do. Like Aaron, you said that you've struggled with that. We can pray and we can ask Him and we can say, God, the God of all comfort, can you show me how you want me to comfort for this person right now? I know how you've comforted me, I know you, how you have set me free, you know, how can I do that for this person? [Aaron] That's a good point when there's times that I'm struggling when you're going through something, and I'm like, I have no idea what to do. I'm like, Lord, what do I do? And he brings to remembrance your words. I wish you would just like, hold me, like just come close to me. Which is you don't say that in the moment but you've said it enough. And I'm like, okay. And then I'm thinking to myself, this is hard. Why is this so hard to go? Just sit down right now. Right? [Jennifer] Our flesh will get in the way sometimes. [Aaron] Yeah, a lot. [Aaron] Especially in marriage, but- [Jennifer] All right, here's your third encouragement, Christian, okay, rise up and go to them to be present. What I was just talking about, like I'm sitting across the room or in the other room or like, I'm like, how do I help my wife right now? How do I fix this situation? And the Holy spirit says, go to her. So this is your call. So it's not just that we're told to do it, it's not just that you have the comfort given to you already to comfort others, but it's also you get up and you go, you, you do it. You don't wait for someone to come to you because we might have this thought, well if someone needs comfort they're going to come and ask for it, they're going to come and knock on my door and say, "Hey, I need to talk, I need to sit down and know that you love me, and that you're my friend. And I need to-" [Jennifer] Yeah, 'cause if, that's... Yeah, 'cause if we sit there and we say, I'm just gonna wait until they tell me exactly what they need, what are you off the hook? [Aaron] Well, I mean, this is, what's funny is like do we even do that? Do we go around and tell every single person exactly what we need? No, we don't. [Jennifer] So I'm going even tell you, I want you to read my mind. [Aaron] That's true. But you're in your marriage. I think there should be a lot more communication about this by the way. So if you need comfort, you should go to your spouse if you have it in you and say, I need to be comforted, or I just need you to listen or will you just sit next to me? Like I think... Now that doesn't get you off the hook, husbands if your wife doesn't do that, or wives if your wife or husband, if your wife doesn't do that. [Jennifer] Yeah, I think our hearts should be tender toward one another, and our eyes should be always scanning and seeing where's my spouse at? [Aaron] Right, but it wouldn't hurt for us to communicate more. [Jennifer] True. [Aaron] But we can't expect everyone outside of our marriage to be that way. So we have to have a willingness to get up and go. It's not easy. Here's some stories of this happening. Okay, Genesis 37:35, "All his sons and all his daughters Rose up to comfort him. But he refused to be comforted and said, no I shall go down a shield to my son mourning. Thus, his father wept for him." This is when Joe Joseph's father thought he was dead. And they all, they all rose up and went to him to comfort him. They didn't just sit back and say, "Oh, he's mourning in the other room." Now they got up and they surrounded him. 1st Chronicles, 7:22 "And Ephraim their father mourned many days and his brothers came to comfort him." They didn't comfort from a distance, they didn't sit back, let him go through what he's going through by himself, they got up and they went. [Jennifer] I was gonna offer to read this next verse, but I think I'm going to let you tackle it. [Aaron] Okay. Job 2:11, "Now when job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place. Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Namathite, they made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him." So this is another really cool thing. Now, if you've read job these friends don't do a great job of comforting, they do actually do a lot of what I would be prone to do saying how would they were wrong or like what they did, but what they do what they did do well is they came together as friends, and they said, "our friend is really going through something bad, we should go." And so this is just a note of sometimes it's appropriate to say, "Hey, we need to get some people together to go comfort this person, so they're not alone, so that they know that we're here for them." Make a little plan about it. Yeah. [Jennifer] That's really cool. The first verse you mentioned it says that he refused to be comforted. And I just had a note that because I think that's very human to reject or to resist comfort. I don't know why we do that, but I think everyone can agree. Maybe everyone that when someone does try to comfort us, sometimes our reaction is to refuse that or to reject it. We shouldn't get upset by this if we're the ones trying to comfort someone or our spouse, we shouldn't let rejection keep us from trying again or even trying with others. Don't let that become an excuse for why you're not continuing on and other opportunities. But I think that it's interesting that it did note that he said that. So I just wanted to make a little- [Aaron] Yeah, but what's awesome is someone can't have the opportunity to reject comfort if someone didn't go to comfort in the first place. [Jennifer] That's true. [ Aaron] I love that, let's not avoid going to someone 'cause we think there's no way they want to right now they wanna be alone, let's just leave them alone. Going to be there even if they reject you, at least- [Jennifer] They know you tried. [Aaron] Yeah, and also you give them the option, rather than they're just alone and there is no option. No one came to them, no one reached out, no one sought to comfort. And so going to comfort is right. And then rejecting it. shouldn't stop us from trying. [Jennifer] And we shouldn't reject comfort when someone's... 'Cause that's an opportunity that someone's trying to act in what God has said we should be doing, right? like the Bible says to comfort. [Aaron] Yeah, but in some cases especially with like mourning it's a process. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's true, that's very compassionate. [Aaron] We should try to receive comfort, but sometimes where you could be in a really deep mournful state. [Jennifer] All good things to talk about. [Aaron] Going to the next thing, what is the appropriate response? Right, so you, you brought up helping someone is like taking off the edge. You can't bring the person back from the dead, you can't take away the cancer, you can't change the circumstance, but you can soften the blow. [Jennifer] Yeah, but that doesn't just mean that when someone's in pain, or going through a trial that you insert a funny joke, or you know what I mean? [Aaron] Are you sure? That's a great way to like someone's hurting really bad, you make a joke and laugh. [Jennifer] Maybe it depends on the person, but you should be mindful of the person, you should be mindful of your spouse. Discerning, yeah. Yeah discerning, that's a good word. [Aaron] Which is what I was talking about at the beginning is... And a lot of people have these responses, when someone gets hurt, I actually used to do this, when someone would get hurt, I would laugh about it. You've talked about that before. And so we have these kind of natural fleshly responses that just for whatever reason how we were raised in our DNA- [Jennifer] What did it do or how to understand it. [ Aaron] But learning and asking the Lord to teach us what is an appropriate response? It's good to go comfort, we want to do that, but we got to ask, we just got to ask for that discernment, because we can have the right heart and bring the wrong response, which is something that I keep going back to. This is how I've been, I might want to, but then I to say the wrong thing. I'm trying to prematurely cheer someone up, like you said, the joke, I'm trying to push someone to move on from where they're, what they're dealing with, which is something that I would tend to do. Like, hey- [Jennifer] When there really is a process. [Aaron] Well, I skipped the whole process, which doesn't care about the other person at all, what it does is it cares more about my discomfort with this person's suffering. Talking too soon, which is something I struggle with, 'cause I want to just fill that, that like, let's just figure it out, let's talk. [Jennifer] I love you still. [Aaron] Romans 12:15 says: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." This gives a picture of walking with what someone's walking through with them. Someone's weeping for something. If they're weeping over a lost child, over a over sickness over just you name it, there's lots of things to weep over in this life, We don't just come in and be like cheer up buck. And you know, like, we should break.... Our hearts should break with them. When someone's rejoicing, rejoice with them. This is probably another conversation. But this is something that plagues the church I think sometimes is when someone gets some sort of success or something to rejoice in, we might get jealous. [Jennifer] So there's a lack of rejoicing for one- [Aaron] Yeah, I don't wanna rejoice with them 'cause like why didn't I get that? Or why are they being raised up? [Jennifer] So that played the church, but I think that it's more just the worldwide thing, it's a flesh thing. [Aaron] But if someone is winning, someone's successful, or if someone's has a praise report, if someone is having success in an area that you wish you had success in, or is having freedom and an area that you don't have freedom in, or like these things, like rejoice, they're part of the church, rejoice for them like that is so praise God. It also keeps us from that just contentment and Jealousy. [Jennifer] Another verse that we wanted to share with you guys today is Ecclesiastes 3:4 starts, and seven. It says: "A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to tear and a time to sow a time to keep silence, and a time to speak." [Aaron] Yeah, and Ecclesiastes was written by the wisest man that ever lived. And he just talks about this idea of what time is it? Is it a time to weep with someone? Is at a time to laugh with someone? Is it a time to mourn with someone? You know, tear, like, are you pulling up that, you know, the plants are you planting, sowing, the seeds, are you to be quiet, are you to speak? And so there's these... We can look at the situation and say okay, what role can I play right now? How should my heart be in this situation? Proverbs 25:20 puts it this way: "Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day and like vinegar on soda." That idea behind this verse is singing songs is a great thing. But when you go to someone with a heavy heart and you try and seem to like artificially cheer them up, it's doing what I just, what I said a second ago is you're overlooking that person's heart altogether. [Jennifer] Yeah, there's no care. [Aaron] It likens it to taking off a garment on a cold day. So like someone's cold and they've got their coat on and I go rip their court off. And they're like, what? So you, you take away comfort. You don't- [Jennifer] Add to it, yeah. Did anyone else think when you said like vinegar on soda, the volcano experiment? [Aaron] That's what that does, it forms up- [Jennifer] Like they've been doing it that long. [Aaron] The word would be agitate. The last thing someone who's going through something needs is to be agitated. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] I'm sure everyone listening, knows someone like that, that every time you need some comfort they know how perfectly out of agitate. [Jennifer] Okay, so earlier when I had mentioned, you know this idea of taking the edge off of pain and how it means to alleviate, I said that it reminds me of lifting up. What if it's like lifting up a huge stone off their shoulders so that they can breathe a little better? Is that a good picture? [Aaron] Yeah, and that's a great analogy. [Jennifer] It's like lifting the burden of the hard stuff off them which you've done for me plenty of times. [Aaron] Right, and we have this list of the things that you there's times for. Sometimes it's sitting quiet with someone, sometimes it's encouraging what the word of God and advice, sometimes it's listening and not talking. [Jennifer] Sometimes it's giving them a thoughtful gift that comes with a sweet message. Sometimes it's watching a couples, children so that they can go have a date night and talk it out themselves. [Aaron] Yeah, lifting that Like, Hey, there's these responsibilities, how can we take some of these away? So they can go through what they're going through with less. [Jennifer] Sometimes it's offering to drop off groceries for them, so they don't have to worry about that. [Aaron] Sometimes it's cleaning the house for someone for your spouse. I love that you like lifting that load off their shoulders. [Jennifer] Sometimes it's a text reminding them of who they are in Christ or sending them a scripture verse. [Aaron] Sometimes it's a bouquet of flowers sent to their house. Sometimes it's a bag of goodies dropped off at the door. I like that one by the way. [Aaron] It's actually happened to me quite a few times. And I really appreciate all of you. Actually, I mentioned it once in "Wife After God" pure joy, great chapter, go check it out. And it just happened recently. [Aaron] That was a good goody bag. We have some good goodie bag dropper offers. [Jennifer] Maybe we should do an episode of just like how to put together a good goodie bag. [Aaron] That's true. [Jennifer] Okay, I'm so sorry. Sometimes it's a phone call just to hear their voice. [Aaron] And then sometimes it's a prayer. And I would say always a prayer sometimes said out loud [Jennifer] Like sometimes all of these and then always a prayer, always a prayer. [Jennifer] I think they get the idea. You know, at the beginning of this episode, I quickly said marriage is so awesome. It really is you guys, I hope you agree with me that marriage is awesome. But it's such an intimate relationship. What a gift We have to share with someone who can comfort us when we're at our lowest and Aaron, I can attest to this, you have comforted me at my lowest, and I hope that I've been that for you. [Aaron] You have, yeah. At least, I think that this is what marriage was intended for, right? To lift other up and to comfort one another for some. And at times Aaron, we were, this couple were the 'cause of our hard time was, was our marriage and our marriage. It was each other getting in the way. And we had friends that stood by us, friends and family who stood by us and comforted us through it. If this is you listening right now, this is where you are, I just wanted to say that we're truly sorry. And understand that this kind of pain. The pain that comes from a marriage, that's struggling. And we hope you will find comfort in this verse that I'm gonna share. Paul is talking to believers but this is our prayer for you today. And it's Romans 15:1-7, "We who are strong, have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us pleases neighbor for his good to build him up for Christ did not please himself. But as it is written through approaches of those who reproached you fell on me, for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord, with Christ Jesus, that together you may, with one voice glorify the God and father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God." [Aaron] Yeah, I love that verse for couples that are going through this because the reminder is that, the God of endurance and encouragement grants them to live in such harmony with one another in accordance with Christ and so that they can, again like the God of all comfort, we talked about, that they can be comforted knowing that even though they're going through these difficult times, they themselves individually can run to Christ, be comforted by him and know that his heart is that they would walk in harmony. And that is what they should be praying for, Harmony. [Jennifer] And the comfort that we receive from Christ and the comfort that we receive from others does produce within our hearts and our minds this hope that better days will come. Even if circumstances don't change, even if the trials are still hard even if the pain is still prevalent, because of loss or or whatever the reason is, we have hope. Because we talked about this on the first episode of the season, and we have hope in Christ. We have hope for what's coming right? [Aaron] Yeah, and we should keep our eyes on those things. [Jennifer] So as husbands and wives, let us be quick to comfort one another during hard times. Let us lay down our lives and love for each other. Let us be slow to speak, quick to sit, fully present a good listener. [Aaron] Yeah, and let us walk this life out in humbleness. And when those feelings of insecurity and uncertainty or fear of rejection, rise up, be quick to push them away. We need each other. [Jennifer] Wait, I think you need to repeat that last line. We need ourselves know each other. [Jennifer] We need each other in marriage. [Aaron] We do. [Aaron] We need each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. [Aaron] And most importantly, we need each other to point each other back to Christ. like that's the most comforting thing we can do is constantly be praying for the other person in their walk with the Lord, in their mind being reminded of the truth of the gospel. It's the most comfort we can get is pursuing that. [Jennifer] And as we do, our eyes and our hearts need to be open. I'll say this, our eyes need to be open. And our hearts may be tender toward one another and take every opportunity. God gives us to comfort one another especially in our marriage relationship, and as we do this you guys, the greatest part is that God is glorified. [Aaron] Yep, and we can cover it because we've been comforted, so don't forget that. Hope that was encouraging to you. As always, we end the episode as always this season, I should say, we end the episode with what we're grateful for. [Jennifer] It might end up being a permanent thing. [Aaron] It might, yeah. Because we want to encourage you to be grateful for everything. [Jennifer] And we know that you are grateful but to acknowledge it and to vocalize it and to share it with someone that you know, and love. [Aaron] So we'll be grateful people, who know how to comfort each other. [Jennifer] Let them know what you're grateful for. [Aaron] I'm grateful for my children. They're so full of energy and life often more energy than I have. That's probably why I'm so tired. They love to have fun. Especially when we get down on the rug our new rug that we talked about, the one that's comfortable in my knees and wrestle and play with them. They're just awesome. I honestly thank God for them, they're so amazing. [Jennifer] I love them too. I'm grateful for modern technology. I realized that I have a great appreciation for my washing machine and dishwasher and just all the things that I get to use that have just been really awesome in my life. I was sitting on the couch the other day and I had a busy day with the kids doing school and playing and cleaning up after everyone. And I could hear the wash machine going. And I just thought, man I can't fathom everything that we did today and having to hand wash clothes. And so I just was really grateful that I have those ICM is a luxury. Like I, I never want to be blind to the provision that God's given us. And I'm just really grateful for those kinds of inventions. I think they're really cool. [Aaron] Yeah, so thank you to whoever invented the washing machine. [Aaron] As usual, we end our episodes in prayer. So would you pray with us, dear Lord thank you for comforting us in our affliction so that we may comfort others. We pray for the creativity and confidence as we comfort those around us, please us of how you desire to comfort others. Please show us thoughtful ways of showing our compassion. We pray we would be slow to speak and quick to listen. We pray we'd be quick to comfort one another in marriage protect our marriage in this way, that we would be comforters for each other. Help us to alleviate the burdens that bring us pain. May you be glorified as we choose to comfort others in Jesus name? Amen. We love you all. Thank you for joining us on this episode. We just ask if you haven't done so, would you leave us a review? And also would you be our share warriors and prayer warriors? Would you share this episode with a friend send him an email, send a text message share shared on social media. Would you just help spread the word about this podcast with someone, you know we love you and we'll see you next week.

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19: Navigating The Unknown

The SaaS Venture

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2020 48:13

FULL SHOW NOTES[ INTRO music]00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 19. Navigating the Unknown.00:16 Intro: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a Bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.00:43 Aaron: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.00:46 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.00:47 Aaron: And the way we usually start our episodes is just by catching up. What's going on? What's happened lately? 00:56 Darren: Yeah, what's going on, Aaron? What's going on? 01:00 Aaron: Well, it seems like we're all... Have been doing the same thing for quite a number of weeks now. And it's interesting, until COVID-19 and everything else, anytime someone would post the Bill Murray Groundhog's Day meme on Facebook, or Twitter, or something else, I just never gave it much thought. And, literally, the last... I would say for me the last 10 days, I absolutely feel that way. Like it is such a lather, rinse, repeat of the same day with such little variance, it's wild.01:34 Darren: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. My days are a little bit all over the place actually. I just keep working on different things and I'm getting pulled in many different directions right now. Things are changing quite a bit actually for me, I feel. Yeah. Things have been really up in the air and I feel a little scattered.01:51 Aaron: Well, I will take some of your variance. I don't know if it's my attitude, or my outlook, or whatever else, but it definitely doesn't feel like enough variance for me. And I think some of it is just other things that I enjoy, like conferences, and things like that, all shut off. Sports, right? It's baseball season and every night I love sitting down with my Minnesota Twins on in the background, and happily writing a blog post, working on a contract, whatever that might be, just getting some small things done while I'm watching baseball, and that diversion of sports for me, isn't there, and that leaves a big hole.02:38 Darren: Apparently, there is a huge surge in Marble Runs sports. [chuckle] Have you seen this? They've got a big table and you're watching the marbles race through a track. Massive surge in viewership there.02:52 Aaron: Can you bet on it? 02:54 Darren: Probably, yeah. Bet on the white marble.02:58 Aaron: I need those small sources of joy.03:00 Darren: You can start watching that while you're doing contracts and stuff.03:03 Aaron: Yeah? 03:04 Darren: Yeah.03:05 Aaron: Interesting, just as we were talking before and prepped some notes, we definitely have some things to walk through, but I think a great place to start is both of us being remote and to some extent work-from-home. Me not so much really work-from-home, but with having a separate office, but has it felt that much different for you? Family life, at home life, what's that been like for you Darren? 03:31 Darren: Oh, yeah. It's kind of weird really. Because there is the sense that we're not going out anymore, and so a bit of isolation. But it doesn't feel that different to me. I've run a remote company since 2005, I've worked from home since 2005, and so our entire way of working... The way that I work is completely the same. No changes here. The only thing is, I see the Sun a little bit less right now. I'm just in the house and not going outside really. We're not even going for walks really, because Jill and Violet, my wife and daughter, have had mild symptoms, so we're supposed to be really isolated. I've been getting out into the backyard lately, but basically, from a work perspective, it didn't change much for us because we're 100% remote. We've always been that way. How about you? 04:27 Aaron: Yeah, same for myself personally and the GatherUp team. I've only been remote the last five and a half... Almost six years now, but long enough to forget the days of commuting, and in-office, and everything else. So that shift wasn't that hard, where for the rest of our company, which I should drop in I guess really quick just because I'm trying to get good at my references. Our group of products that Alpine Software Group had purchased that are Aramark tech that we used to call ASG MarTech, we actually rolled out a full brand for. So now it's called Traject. Traject includes the seven companies, SocialTools, Cyfe, Authority Labs, ourselves, Grade.us, we're all under this Traject umbrella. So we launched that just prior to everything with COVID-19 taking off. And I need to make that note before I start saying things, 'cause I'm trying to get good in being part of re-brands myself. Re-training yourself on how you refer to things.05:28 Darren: For sure.05:29 Aaron: So, for the Traject team, there's about 60-70% of the team as an overall that's all in-office and located outside of Seattle in Bellevue. And so it was interesting to watch. That first week, especially, was a struggle for them in moving from a centralized office to remote work and many of them have not been doing it right, they're working from the kitchen table and things like that, and especially with having others at home, if your spouse works, they might be just 10 feet away, and they're working remote, right? And it's like... I don't have any of those problems, my wife stopped working last year, it's a little different at my house, I have four kids that are home all the time now, ages 4 to 16.06:15 Darren: Yeah. She's working. Oh, she's working hard. [chuckle]06:19 Aaron: Oh my gosh. And they've done fabulous with leaving me alone, and they know if the office doors are shut, to cool it with dad. And luckily, in the last two weeks, their distance learning e-school has fired up, and so that occupies anywhere from two to six hours of their day depending upon what's going on and everything else. So, yeah, same as you, I feel really lucky that things haven't changed that much. But, yeah, the same... My 10-year-old daughter just said to me last night like, "Dad, every like hour or so, I'm gonna come get you and just make you go outside for five minutes." She's like, "You're in that hole all day." And I was like, "Yeah, you're right. That would probably be a healthy thing."06:56 Darren: Once an hour though, that'd be tough. I don't know, how about every two hours? 07:00 Aaron: [chuckle] I'm gonna try to appease the troops. If they have a suggestion for me at this point I'm just gonna take it because, yeah, I feel for them and all the small things that they're missing out. My kids all love school, but man, they are just missing friends, and socialization, everything else.07:19 Darren: Oh, man. So much, yeah. I used to have a pretty closed-door policy with my office when Violet comes home from school and stuff the office is closed, you don't come in. But now it's like, she wants to come and say hi to me, I'm gonna stop whatever I'm doing, just take some time to chat with her, "Oh, what are you working on? What are you playing with these days?" And you just hear her stories and just spend that time, because she doesn't have any other social interaction. Gosh, neither do I, so it's like, "Yeah, go ahead, interrupt me anytime, come on in and we'll have a little chat for a few minutes and then I'll get back to work." I think it's the way it has to be right now.07:56 Aaron: For sure. My kids have siblings to play with. They're very blessed, they have a lot to do. We're not in a traditional neighborhood, it's a little more spread out, so there's a couple of acres for them to be outside and play on without getting into some of those things and whatever else, so I'm more fortunate than not on a lot of things. I think the biggest emotional toll on me is just, for however long now? 12 years, 15 years, everything for me professionally has been growth, success, constantly going up, right? You still have your small struggles and dark weeks, or months, and whatever else, but really, the overall momentum is always forward. And I've never been a part of something like this where that momentum has been pulled back and you go from this growth mindset to a survival and circle the wagons to some extent. And I think that's been the hardest part on my mood.08:52 Darren: Yeah, it's a real shift from, "Okay, we've gotta build all this stuff and do all these things and keep growing forward," to like, "Oh wow. What do we have to do to protect at this point?" So, yeah, that survival mode instinct has kicked in and, yeah, it's tough to have that shift, and it doesn't feel good. All that growth always feels good and that push for success, but, yeah, it feels bad to be like, "I'm gonna make these tough decisions now."09:21 Aaron: Yeah. And still trying to find the success within it. I was listening to the last weekend local podcast on LocalU and I think Blumenthal coined a term of "sur-thrival". So it's like, how do you find ways to thrive in surviving? 09:37 Darren: Yeah. Totally.09:38 Aaron: I instantly grabbed on to that and I was like, "Yeah, that's a great way to refer to it. I totally agree."09:43 Darren: Yeah, and I'm seeing it actually, I'm seeing lots of opportunities in my business to thrive a little bit. And so we're trying to put in some defensive moves just to make sure that we can ride it out and some offensive moves. And so, I don't know, I'm feeling okay about it. The dust is starting to settle from the first few weeks of it really getting crazy and just starting to settle into this new way of how we're gonna operate, this new economy, and identifying the markets that are opportunities.10:14 Aaron: Yeah, for sure. And I agree with you, it's like there's a first big tidal wave where there was a lot more panic, less information, nothing had really been settled into, and I feel like this week, I feel like that wave has come, crashed, and it's now pulled back out. I think there's gonna be more waves, maybe not as big or aggressive, but it is starting to get a little different and a little more than norm.10:42 Darren: Yeah, and it's kinda like... That's happening for me, I have that feeling that, okay, well, those first few weeks I was just scrambling trying to figure out, "Okay, what the hell are we gonna do?" And I couldn't really focus on all of the regular operations. I was busy filling out government relief applications and sorting out all this kind of stuff. And so, I feel like, while that's happening for me, it's also happening for every other business in the world, where we're starting to kinda, "Okay, the dust is settling, now let's get back to business." It's like, what does the new business look like? What does the new way of operating look like? And all those businesses are gonna start coming out of the woodwork again and the economy will pick up. Sales have been super quiet, but we're starting to see more leads come in now as people are looking at alternatives to whatever else they're using.11:33 Aaron: Yeah. You just stated about five different things I wanna break down. One thing that you kind of mentioned, I know from you and I, we've both been talking professionally, we've also talked as friends during this, just 'cause you need that support in those outlets, but I know you've had to make some hard decisions around your business, and Whitespark, and some employee moves. What has that been and what does that look like? 12:01 Darren: Yeah. So once this all came out and we started realizing what a massive impact it's gonna have on the economy, we had to look at our expenses. Where are our expenses, what can we cut? So the first thing of course was to just take an axe to my credit card statement and be like, "What can I cross off here? What due is absolutely not essential? So we did some major cuts there. It's kind of crazy, I cut like $5,000 in monthly expenses off my credit card. And after I did it, I was like, "Well, dang, why didn't I do that a year ago?" It's just like so much.12:30 Aaron: You weren't forced to.12:32 Darren: Yeah, I wasn't forced to. It's like you kinda get into this. "Okay, well, finances are good, and yeah, those services are pretty good, but are they that essential?" And so I was able to do some pretty good cuts there. And then of course the next most major expense for our company... We don't have an office, we don't have a lot of overhead, it's really labor. So there were a couple of layoffs. One was on the development side, another one was on our GMB management team. We were actually in a pretty good growth mode with the GMB management team, where we were bringing on about 10 to 15 new clients every single month. And so we had just crossed that threshold where we're like, "Okay, well, we need to get someone hired and trained in order to meet that growing demand." And so we had just hired somebody and she had taken on a handful of clients right when this hit. And so we knew that that one was gonna start backing off, we were actually gonna start losing clients, so we had to make a lay-off there.13:38 Darren: It's really sad. She was amazing. We'd love to hire her back as soon as we can. So, once we can, we would love to hire her back. So a couple of layoffs and then another thing is that the government of Canada introduced what's called a work-sharing program. I think they always had it, but they loosened up some of their guidelines around it and made it easier to get into it. So we reduced hours with the team across the whole Canadian team and just to the point where they could still maintain all of their health benefits. So they still get all their health benefits, they reduce their hours by about 37%, and then the government work-sharing program tops that up for them. So it actually doesn't have a huge impact on them, it shouldn't be too bad, but it results in pretty significant payroll savings for the company. So all of those things are the defensive moves to make sure that we're shoring up some resources in the bank, because honestly, Whitespark has been in this growth mode where we've been running the line, where certainly we've been profitable, but it's not like we had millions in the bank or even hundreds of thousands in the bank.14:50 Darren: We were always like, "Okay, once we have enough more revenue, we hire somebody else," we'd have more expenses, we'd expand our servers. As a Bootstrap company, I think that's just what you do, you continue to grow your resources and your ability to build faster as you get more revenue. And so that's certainly what we're doing. So we didn't have this huge cushion. So my defensive measures were to try and create a little bit of that cushion, so it was tough. What was it like for you? 15:23 Aaron: Yeah. Well, one, I commend you, because those are hard decisions and just so many decisions in this are all about the balance between short-term and long-term effects. You make difficult short-term decisions to survive long term. And it's so important, I and we, the company, have definitely benefited from being part of a larger org within this. So, let's just say, as I commented to you, if GatherUp hadn't sold and we were still all by ourselves, I will say we had cash reserves for three months of zero income and 100% of our burn rate to be able to pay bills. We had done a good job of always investing our growth, but we always looked at... We definitely put money away when we were doing well within our growth and created a little bit more margin to have... Whether it was something like this, a crisis, economic downturn, or an opportunity where we were like, "Oh, if there is a small product, or a small team, we can purchase... " Or whatever else we wanted, to have at least a little bit of cash on hand.16:36 Aaron: But even within that, if it was just me and running the company, we would have made similar moves to what you did. There probably would have been... Obviously, the first thing is analyze every cost, cut everything out that isn't necessary, but then, just with about any company, bodies are your most significant expense. And, yeah, we probably would've at least had to make one, two, possibly even three moves, depending upon how we saw it, just to ensure that everything else was in the best position possible to survive at least a three-month if not a six-month economic winter of what we're just starting to get into.17:18 Darren: That timing, it's so unknown. That's the big thing, is this uncertainty, right? It's like, okay, we're seeing some drops, it's not that significant, but who knows, maybe in three months the US economy is gonna be so shut down because of this virus that we're in huge trouble. So if there's no spending happening anywhere, then some of the services and software that we provide will certainly get cut, and so it's trying to make sure that you can weather the storm. And that's what I think we've been trying to do. And it's nice that you're in that position. The timing actually of the acquisition really worked out in your benefit, certainly for the founders, and also, I think, just having that huge strong umbrella above you that can help protect from some of this, is really a nice place to be.18:10 Aaron: Yeah, no, who would have known? No way to tell, but yes, this scenario, it just shows you how much timing is a part of everything in life. So many different angles with it. But, overall, I really feel like Traject has done an awesome job. One is very early communicated the position of the company, the financial health of the company, and that they were already in talks with... We've talked before... There was a couple of layers between the very top level of the company down into the group we belong to. So immediately, there was strong communication, hit upon things that people would be most concerned about, and delivered a lot of good messaging there. And really, overall, the company just kept reinforcing, people first. This is tricky. Take care of yourself first. We want you to be emotionally and physically healthy, that comes first. If you're taking care of that, then we'll get at working and keeping the company healthy and all that kind of stuff.19:12 Darren: Right. For sure.19:14 Aaron: We basically have weekly AMAs with the exec team with Traject. So people are able to ask, "What's changing? Do you see anything different? What other decisions have you made?" So, just a really quick and easy way for whatever is a concern for people to hear that, and also for others, instead of those happening one-to-one in an email to the CEO or whatever else, everybody's able to hear it asked out loud and hear the answer to it, which I think...19:28 Darren: I love that. Oh, man, I'm gonna do that. I've been doing a weekly call with my team, but I always have a weekly call anyways, where I try to communicate the current health of the company, what's been happening in the company, what we're seeing in terms of our revenue and our different lines of business. So try to communicate that and be clear about that, but the AMA thing is a really good thing. I often get questions after the call, like people will just ping me on Slack, and I think it'd be really helpful for everyone to have that, and just, "Okay, that's the end of my spiel, now let's get into the AMA portion of the call." So I really like that idea and I think I'm gonna open that up for Monday's call.20:18 Aaron: Yeah, no, I think it makes people feel more comfortable. Everybody hears the same questions and the same answers, which is also great. And then lastly, they just put together a really good prioritization on, "This is what we're doing first. This is what we're doing second. This is what we're doing third," so the same things that we've just discussed on reducing expenses, different allocations, looking at this. And at the bottom of their list is, if these things don't work based on where things are at, then we potentially look at a percentage of salary cut across the board. And then, if that didn't work, then yeah, we'd have to look at the elimination of some positions. But the great thing, I think, it lays out is, one, it helps people understand the playbook that they're operating off of, which allows everyone to buy into the strategy. Two, it really helps them understand, there's a whole bunch of things before that comes on the table, and the thing I keep preaching to our team is, the thing to be grateful for right now is you have some control over this. We have our jobs, we have our personal income, and doing productive work is such a healthy thing right now.21:27 Darren: For sure.21:28 Aaron: Yeah. And a great distraction, and do what you can to not be paralyzed, or inundated, or overwhelmed, by all of this that's there, and focus on your work, because being successful with what you are doing is gonna contribute to the survival and some success inside of this, and making it to the other side. So when you get into that high level of like, what can you control and what can't you control, well, we can't control the economy and what happens to our customers businesses in full, and all of those kind of things, but we can control how well are we doing at our job, are we doing the right things that are needed to survive right now? Are we doing everything we can to help our customers so we're contributing to their survival? Those are all positives that I've personally worked hard to remind our team. Like, "Be grateful for that and let that gratefulness, and what you have, be the passion into what you're doing right now, in a difficult time for some to find that motivation."22:26 Darren: Yeah, totally. There's so much value in that. When I have a a really productive day in the office, you feel good about it, right? So it's a nice thing that people can lean on when things seem so bad. Being able to take your mind off of the struggles of the world and the stress of the uncertainty of what's gonna happen with this virus, and all the health concerns, and being able to just put your head into some work for a while and get that sense of accomplishment. I find a lot of value in that and I think it's a great thing to communicate to the team.22:58 Aaron: Yeah, you're exactly right. I've said multiple times in communication with stuff where we've elevated something very small and then pushed it out to everyone on our weekly stand-up or Slack, or both, whatever, is like, "No win is too small right now. Celebrate the smallest thing like it is a Super Bowl championship right now, because it's so important for the psyche and for your emotional well-being professionally," right? 23:26 Darren: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, it's great stuff. I'm gonna work on implementing some of that with my weekly calls too.23:33 Aaron: Nice.23:34 Darren: Yeah.23:35 Aaron: The next thing, I think, for us, the big shift almost immediately was just really realizing and I think all companies, especially SaaS, is in this boat right now, it's like, retention is absolutely the name of the game right now. Just as you said. And the same for us, leads, sales opportunities, whatever else, are like, I don't think they're even 10% of what they were in January, February, and early March.24:01 Darren: Right. That's amazing. I would say, if I had to guess in terms of leads for us, it's probably down only maybe 50%. Yeah. So our leads are actually still pretty solid. We're actually seeing quite a few people looking at cutting ongoing recurring citation services. So, let's say we're using Yext or Moz Local, or some of these other services, they are looking at our one-time offering and saying, "This is a much better way to go for citation management." So we're actually seeing pretty decent leads there, and then our software leads are... I'd say they're down about 50%.24:43 Aaron: Yeah. Do you feel like some of those people are looking like, "Okay, I want something around this service, but I want a more cost-effective solution?" And is Whitespark that compared to those. So you're gonna see some trickle down from those.24:54 Darren: I think it's exactly what I'm seeing, and I think also, on the software side, we're quite reasonably priced, and so I feel like a lot of people that are with more expensive solutions are looking to us. Or let's say they had to cut a $3000 a month SEO engagement with a good firm, and so they're like, "Okay, we're gonna take this in-house and now our marketing director has to manage some of this," and they're like, "Okay, local search software," and then we come up. And so I think that's where we're starting to see some of this. It's like people cutting expenses elsewhere and then finding us 'cause we are generally more cost-effective.25:33 Aaron: Yeah, that's awesome. I think that can be a big win. A forced changeover. Just the same as you analyze your credit card and like, "Why am I paying for this," or "What can I do," right? When people are doing that, and then you are positioned that way, that can definitely be a great migration from competitors to you at this time, which is awesome for you.25:57 Darren: Yeah. So we're actually... As part of our offensive moves, is we're putting up some landing pages that are specifically around that and we'll start marketing those.26:05 Aaron: Excellent. Yeah. With that stuff I always think of... I used to... Back in the day when... Building and running, maintaining websites, has worked with a lot of banks, and they would do a lot of campaigns on switching. Just like, "Here's what it's like to switch your checking account from Wells Fargo to us as a community bank."26:22 Darren: Oh, man, that's a great idea.26:26 Aaron: Yeah, just really laying it all out. So they're able to see like, "Hey, here's what's different, here's how we handle it, here's what we need." And just making it so that the consumer felt really comfortable with like, "Oh, this switch happens a lot. It happened so much. It's all laid out. And here's the majority of my questions. I feel really good about contacting them to do this."26:28 Darren: Yeah, I see the same thing in the cellphone companies. Telecom stuff. And so, yeah, I'll definitely look to that for inspiration for how to position those landing pages and those marketing messages.26:45 Aaron: Yeah. What was really interesting to me when you see... And just the way SaaS and recurring revenue works, March was still our best month in the history of the company. Every...26:58 Darren: That's amazing.27:06 Aaron: Yeah, minus one, two, three months over the last six years, it's like up into the right every single month. You know that predictable revenue, it compounds everything else, that's why so many people love software as a service. And so, with everything that's gone on, new clients early in the month, we signed a big deal midway through the month, there's still all these positive things going on, and most of the customers, some canceled, and others, we've been working with ways to help them with their accounts, but that stuff won't kick in until April. And just as you and I were talking before, it's like, I can already see from our predictive revenue tools that our April billing will be about 6% to 7% down from our March billing. And getting back into the psyche and whatever, I was like, "I've watched that number go up." The months where it didn't grow, it was maybe a quarter percent that it went backward, or almost even, but never even a full percentage point, and all things considered, a 6%-7% drop and considering a lot of that, is just paused billing. I think that's somewhat of a positive signal at this point after this first wave of crashing.28:29 Darren: Totally, yeah. Absolutely. I feel the same way, it's like, "Man, the losses are not that bad." And so my confidence grows every week, where I look at the numbers and I'm like, "Okay, I think this is gonna be okay." My confidence is growing but then I'm also a little... I don't wanna be overly confident because there's still so much uncertainty. It could get really bad in the next couple of months. So I don't wanna be overly confident, but I'm starting to feel like, "Okay, well, if we all settle in and this is the way it is, then there's still certainly some thrive opportunities." How can we thrive in this situation? And if we tap into those, certainly we're gonna see some losses, but how much of that can we recover with new initiatives? 29:14 Aaron: Exactly. I kinda look at it, as I mentioned earlier, baseball is a favorite sport of mine, right? It's like a baseball game and we're pretty much in the second inning right now. There's a lot of game left to be played, but it's underway, we're out there, a couple of things have already happened, and for us in these first couple of innings, the biggest thing around that retention is, we changed our cancel process. So instead of just being able to go... Hit "Cancel", drop a quick... We ask, "Alright, tell us why you're cancelling," and getting a little bit of info. We changed that to, you hit "Cancel", now you get a pop-up that says, "Hey, just so you're aware, with COVID-19 and everything going on, we get it, let's have a conversation and let's figure out how to keep you on board with us. Whether it's a reduction in billing, we need to pause your billing for a month." But we put a bunch of things in place and then we built that framework for our customer success team so that they could manage it, where they weren't coming to me and saying, "Alright, here's what this customer wants. They want 10% off this month," or whatever else.30:16 Aaron: We gave them a framework so that they could make those offers, handle those decisions, and take care of it right in the moment with the customers. So it really felt a win for them, win for our customer, win for the business, especially if we kept them from cancelling just to say like, "Oh, great, yeah, I'm a restaurant, or I'm an agency that serves restaurants and hotels. I just went to zero income, but I still wanna retain this data, 'cause they're gonna need this when they come back, what can we do with it?"30:45 Darren: Yeah, that's really smart. Yeah, actually, we put some measures like that in place too, and then we talked to your team about it, and got some more ideas, and it's so valuable. I think that is one of the big lessons for any of our listeners that are also doing SaaS, if you haven't put something like that in place, get that up immediately. Some kind of retention recovery program, right? 31:09 Aaron: Yea. 'Cause, yeah, the cancels are just likely gone. It's so much harder to get them... Say things recover in three months, getting them to physically come back, sign up, even if you market to them, send them messages, they've already... They've mentally divorced the situation. But if you're able to reduce billing or even pause a month or two of billing, then when it comes back, then it's like, "Okay, great, things are back, close to normal, are you good? Let's turn billing back on." Just so much easier of a process, and you need to do that when you're dropping or pausing revenue like that, you need more of an instant on when things return, instead of having to work a marketing program around it.31:49 Darren: Yeah. We actually had some reductions on our support team too, and our support is still as... It's certainly seen a drop in tickets, but it's still fairly active. And so I didn't wanna overwhelm my support team by having them talk to everybody that wants to cancel, 'cause there's a lot of them, obviously, they're coming in. And so we did the same kind of thing, but it's completely automated. So when you hit to cancel now, it gives you an option to be like, "Well, here are a couple of options for you. One, if you wanna keep everything still active, and still be able to use the software, we know things are tough," it's like, boom, "Here's a discount for you, you can get that discount." And so people could choose that option and continue to operate, or they can just choose the pause option, which means we'll stop actively doing anything in your account, we turn off all of the functionality, but we'll preserve your historical data, so that when you're ready to come back in, you can just press one button and turn it back on. So people get to choose themselves on the checkout and that's been helpful for sure. We're seeing a few people take us up on that option.33:02 Aaron: And I don't know if any of my CS team ever listens to this podcast, but I do wanna give them a shoutout. They have been doing an amazing job of taking care of GatherUp customers, and helping, and that's not easy right now for them either, right? Instead of solving technical issues, or usability issues, and things like that, you're talking to people who, they're fearful, they're losing their business, they're in a panic situation. And you're trying to calm them, do your job, and keep the business that you're running maintainable. So, really, a commendable job, a very tricky spot for them in their role right now for sure, and I super appreciate it. They have handled the lion share. I've handled 2% of the conversations that they've handled and they're killing it.33:05 Darren: I can attest to that. As a customer, we had... One of our large customers and reputation builder looked to cancel, and so that conversation happened with us and your GatherUp customer support team, and, man, they're awesome. They did an awesome job, really helpful, many ideas. And the real thing that comes across is that, what can we do to help? You can just really feel it. They're just... It's not about trying to save the money from the account, it's about, "Okay, well, what can we do to help here," and just really being helpful. And you feel it and it feels good. Yeah, I think they're doing an awesome job.34:29 Aaron: That's good. I think we have a lot of genuine care in our culture. I've always appreciated that about our team. So that's awesome to hear come through. Alright, lastly, let's end on something, I guess, a little more positive, some of the things that we're doing right now. What are you doing, Darren, as far as within marketing, within sales? I know you mentioned a couple of things right now, but how are you working this to find some success and get some new business inside of everything? 34:58 Darren: Yeah, for sure. We have a few initiatives that are about to launch. One is what we're calling... One of our big competitors that people look to us as an alternative is Yext. People have a subscription with Yext, they're paying for a monthly fee, or an annual fee, to just have their citation sitting in a database doing nothing, right? And so we have... We're about to launch what we call a Yext replacement service. And so, "If you're currently with Yext, here's how you could switch to us." And so it's exactly what you were talking about with the banks. We have a landing page specific for it, we have a custom package for it, and so that we're planning to launch next week actually. And so that's one of the big offensive moves that will keep our revenue on the citation team rolling. We actually haven't seen huge drops over there. A little bit, but not too bad. And so I think that this service... We actually are predicting some growth and we already have two potential new hires lined up in case we see some growth there from the launch of this service. Which would be great, it'll offset other areas of the business, right? So that's one of the big ones.36:08 Aaron: That's awesome.36:09 Darren: Yeah. Yext replacement service I think it's overdue. We've been thinking about it for a long time, and so we're pulling the trigger on that one and trying to get that up as soon as possible. Another huge one is, our biggest recurring software is our local citation finder. It's basically what we've built our business on. And that software honestly hasn't had a line of code added to it since probably 2015. We have not touched the thing, it's ridiculous. We've partly not touched it because it's been in this sort of complete overhaul redesign, re-development phase forever. We're actually shooting for a launch in 10 days. The 27th. April 27th, Monday April 27th, we're trying to finalize the final pieces of marketing, and polish, and we're pushing that out the door. And, oh my God, it's unbelievably better. And it's actually one of these weird pieces of software that over the period since this COVID thing happened, we haven't seen... I look at it on a daily basis and it's like, six new sign-ups, five cancellations. The next day will be like, seven new sign-ups, eight cancellations.37:27 Darren: And so it's holding fairly steady, and I feel like once we launch the new version of this, massive retention, because the software is just so much better. People are canceling not necessarily because of COVID, but they cancel because the software is like... It did the job for them, but it's pretty weak and it doesn't have a lot of reason to stay subscribed. The new version provides ongoing value in a way that's so much better than what the old version did, and it's a delight to use, it's fast, it feels great, it looks great, and just delivers so much more value. So I think we have the retention, but massive marketing push. There are so many people that are familiar with that software and have been using it for years, we have a huge opportunity to get our name out there and push the marketing for that. There's probably a hundred blog posts out there that reference the local citation finder. All the outreach to them, we can mention to them, "Hey, we got this new version. I've set you up with a free trial account, check it out." So I think we're gonna have a massive blast of additional marketing value, which of course will bring people to citation finder, but once they're there, they see all the other stuff we do too. So I think those two offensive moves are huge.38:43 Darren: And then on the Google My Business Management service, that's a great service that we're seeing fantastic growth, and I was really excited about where it was going. We've certainly seen it cut back, probably lost about 20 to 30 percent of our clients over there, but I did some talks in the fall for auto dealers where I crawled every Google My Business listing in all of Canada for auto dealers, and I broke it down. How many are using Google posts, how many are using... Have filled out the services fields, how many are using products? All these different features. And then I presented those stats, and then I talk about, "Well, wow, no one is doing this, it's a massive opportunity, here's how auto dealers can take advantage of that." And then, of course, I think that data which we're about to publish, for auto dealers, it's not a great time to be targeting auto dealers, but we're re-running that crawl for accountants, and lawyers, home services, all these businesses that are still continuing to operate, we're gonna re-run that with those marketing initiatives, so that we can get in front of those audiences and present our Google My Business Management service. 'Cause that management service is actually really reasonably priced.39:53 Darren: It's 349 a month. And so, for a lot of businesses that are cutting bigger expenses, it's one of those ones where they can come to us for a much lower cost. They're offsetting their cost, taking off that huge bill off their credit card, replacing it with this and still seeing great value in their marketing. So those are the things that we're looking at and cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to even potentially thrive over the coming months.40:19 Aaron: Yeah. No, that's great. And to some extent the same backbone of what we're trying to do. One, I've seen, you put out some tweets and sharing some visuals on the updated local citation finder. What a great way, build some excitement before it even happens.40:37 Darren: Yeah, a little bit of... Yeah.40:38 Aaron: Yeah. Love doing that stuff. Big believer in just doing your work out in the open or looking at your product as an aquarium and everybody can see in. I think those are great things. But I think the core of where you're getting is having things to talk about. If the only thing you have to talk about is, "We need sales," that's a boring conversation that nobody wants to listen to. Kinda like how you and I joked before this started. You made the statement that you have COVID blindness because every email that comes in says COVID on it. [chuckle]41:10 Darren: Oh my God. "A new message from our CEO." It's like, "Oh my God, I don't wanna hear what your CEO has to say about how, yes, you're still operational. I'm sure you are, 'cause everyone is, and thanks for the info."41:22 Aaron: Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. I'm with you on that. But, yeah, what we've looked at is the overall... Again, back to retention, is like, how do we help customers? One initiative that I launched is, I wrote out in a couple of hours, I created a spreadsheet and wrote down 120 blog topics. And then I took it to our team in our stand up and said, "Everybody pick at least two of these to write on in the next few minutes."41:47 Darren: That's impressive brainstorming, man.41:51 Aaron: [chuckle] I'm never short on ideas, only time to execute. So it brought it to everyone where usually it's like Mike and I blog and then we have a product and content marketer. She blogs a little bit, a lot more on feature releases. So we've gone from a once a week, once every two weeks post, to three posts a week for the last three weeks now. And it's been great.42:14 Darren: Yeah, smart.42:15 Aaron: And more social chatter, more things to come in, more things to talk about. And also, internally, I find... People already, it's great gratification for them to put work into it, put it together, and then have it published. And instead of sharing on their LinkedIn or their Facebook like, "Hey, here's what Aaron wrote, or here is our company blog," now it's like, "Here's what I wrote," right? And there's pride and accomplishment behind that. And so, I really feel like it's been a great movement. It's interesting, it's created a lot more work for me, 'cause I'm basically editing and finding really good visuals, and all that kind of stuff, but I love it. The post is at least half-written, if not more, by the time I'm able to get into it, so that's been a really big plus. And I'm always kind of a slogan or a catch-phrase guy. And so, internally, we've just really rallied around like, "Mentions are your best marketing and inbound is the best outbound right now." So, yeah. And going with those, content, then we have the... We're doing the local search Ask Me Anything webinar with you and Joy Hawkins on April 23rd. We already have a hundred and some registered for that. So I'm pumped about that. Traject has been great.43:30 Aaron: If you're a paid GatherUp customer, you can use our social product, Cyfe which is Reporting, or Authority Labs for free for 90 days. So we're offering access to other tools as well. So it's given us a lot to talk about, write about, be out there with, and, yeah, it's helped. It's like, our agency leads are down probably about 25-30% of volume of what they were, and then our multi-locations are really far down, that's the one that's below 10%. And they were just trying to, "Alright, what are the industries that are doing okay right now?" Certain areas of logistics, that's doing well. Grocery, pharmacy, things like that, they're doing well. So we're doing some light outbound with those, but much more we re-calibrated around... I just kinda put together a strategy of the the three Rs. And it's like, research and know the prospect super well. Reach out as a friend, a colleague, ask questions, how it's going for them, what are they seeing, things like that. And your goal is to build a relationship. So instead of trying to slam them into a demo, all you're trying to do is get a conversation going.44:43 Darren: Yeah, and try to solve their problem. What is the thing that they're struggling with, why are they even considering you, and then understanding what their challenges are and seeing if you can help them with that. That's all people want.44:56 Aaron: Yep, for sure. So we've just been hitting on that and we're starting to see progress. It's like, we're seeing the uptick in traffic to the blog, we're seeing more social chatter, we're seeing some of these other things. And these things are there a little slower. It's not gonna be next day success, but I really feel like if things cycle down another level, that's when this stuff is gonna kick in for us, and it's gonna keep us where we're at, and then at even kill, and we're also... We're not pissing people off by trying to shove sales and demo requests, and everything else, in their inbox, doing cold outreach at a time where nobody has mental bandwidth for that.45:36 Darren: And, man, I cannot believe the uptick in terrible cold outreach emails I've been getting in my inbox. And so, it's like, "Gosh, people are extra sensitive to it right now. Do not be taking that strategy, it will not pay off for you."45:51 Aaron: Yep. I don't even read my sales pitches right now. It's just...45:56 Darren: Forget it.45:57 Aaron: Yeah. Not even to see what they're saying. It's just such a hard delete, right? 46:01 Darren: Of course, yeah. It's the worst time to be pitching. If your company was built off of outbound, man, that was not a good move. Right now you need to be an inbound-based company.46:14 Aaron: Yeah, for sure. I agree. Alright. Well, I think we've ran a gamut of things, and I'm hopeful the next time we record it's not Groundhog's Day and we're talking the same things. [chuckle]46:25 Darren: Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to talk again in a few weeks and see where we've landed. There may be some of these proactive moves. We'll see how they're paying off, and see where things are at.46:37 Aaron: For sure.46:38 Darren: Yeah.46:39 Aaron: Great to catch up, Darren. Glad things are going as well as they can for you guys. I'm excited to see the launch of the local citation finder, and I think you set it up perfectly, it sounds like it's gonna launch in about two weeks. [chuckle]46:54 Darren: You know what? It's even less. 10 days now.46:58 Aaron: Oh, I like this.46:58 Darren: Yeah. I've shortened my two weeks to 10 days.47:03 Aaron: See, we're always evolving and improving, that's what I like about talking to you.47:07 Darren: Yeah. Alright, cool, great talking to you Aaron.47:11 Aaron: Yeah, you too. Hey, everyone, wishing you guys are well in personal lives, emotionally, fighting for your business, all those other things. Many of you are so gracious. You reached out on Twitter, have sent encouraging emails on our episodes, and they're helpful and everything else. If you have anything going on in this time that this is sparked that you have a question on, or you wanna know how we're operating, or even wanna share some of yours, please feel free to reach out to Darren and I, we're really easy to get a hold of, either from our website or on Twitter. So go ahead and reach out to us, we'd love to cover any of that on our upcoming episodes.47:47 Darren: Yeah, even if you just wanna chat via DMs on Twitter, or something, and you've got some questions, happy to talk and see if there's anything I can do to help.47:57 Aaron: For sure. You're a good guy.47:58 Darren: Alright.48:00 Aaron: Alright. Take care, Darren, and we'll talk to you soon, and thanks everyone for listening.48:04 Darren: Thanks, everyone. Bye.[music]

covid-19 god love ceo family canada google man leadership sports super bowl canadian building navigating sharing seattle sales reach dad celebrate sun massive seo unknown bet saas dms cancel reporting grade slack groceries ama content marketing cs wells fargo ask me anything rs amas minnesota twins telecom groundhog bellevue google my business bootstrap blumenthal gmb yext aramark traject joy hawkins whitespark aaron you aaron yeah localu aaron well moz local cyfe aaron so authority labs

A Little Better // Death Is Staring at You

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2020 25:31

TranscriptAaron Hixson: Hey Northridge, welcome to A Little Better, where our goal is to know God better and to do better, so that we can be a little better. Hey everybody, welcome back to A Little Better, thank you for being part of our podcast community. We're so grateful that you join in each week. I know during the middle of COVID, if you're anything like me, I feel like my podcast listening time has been drastically reduced. Not having a commute means that my amount of listening has gone down. I don't know, Drew, are you the same way? What's that going like for you?Drew Karschner: Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to play a podcast right now, it just is. No commute, it takes down my podcast time, for sure. Aaron: Yeah. So anyway, thanks for still listening in. I don't know if you are now shifting when you listen to, you know, whatever, doing the dishes time, or shower time, what? I don't know, is that weird? [Laughing]Drew: Trying to get away from your kids time. Aaron: Yo, whatever, actually that's the same thing, showering. [Laughing.] But, yeah, thanks for still tuning in. And we've actually got some good options available. If you're the kind of person who has found yourself where you don't any longer have time where you can listen to something and feel like you could drive and listen or whatever, we actually had a volunteer come forward who wanted to provide transcriptions for the podcast, which is pretty amazing. So shout out to Sara [stuttering]. Wow, I can't talk. Shoutout to Shara. Drew: Not to be confused with Shara. Aaron: Yeah Shara. Easily confused. Shout out to her. And that's amazing that she's willing to do this. We're gonna make them available as easily as we can. Now, this is a volunteer who's willing to do this. I'm not saying, she has not signed on to do this for the rest of eternity, and we're not expecting her to, so obviously we'll keep you posted about how that process goes, but we're running it as an experiment for now, and excited that we get to have these available. Drew: Thank you Sara. Aaron: Yes, thank you. In terms of how we will make these available, at the moment they are on our episode webpage, so if you're savvy enough to know where the episode webpage is, depending on how you listen to podcasts, there's a million ways to get to it, so I'm not gonna describe all of the ways, but that's a button that you're looking for. Maybe click the details button or something like that, and you'll find an episode webpage. It'll be available there in text format. If you're having trouble finding it, no problem. You know, you can email us, podcast@northridgerochester.com, or you can even just text me or Drew or anybody that works at our church and they'll get you to us, and we can make sure that we get that to you. You can text me personally at (585)484-7636, yeah whatever, I'd be happy to make sure we get that to you. But that's just another way to make it A) accessible for our deaf and hard of hearing community, but then also at the same time, some people just prefer to read instead of listen, so. That's fine. Engage however you can engage. Cool. All right, that was 2 minutes and 42 seconds of housekeeping. Thank you guys for your patience. But Drew, hit me with some stories from quarantine. Have you had any like, funny things that your kids have done or embarrassing work from home moments? What's that been like? Drew: I mean, you know, I got a lot of good stories. My kids are always trying to interrupt my meetings. I think the best one -- you have to understand my office. One, we took the door off way before COVID-19 happened, which was a great move until now. It's wide open, so you can hear everybody going on. And it's right next to the stairs that come downstairs, and so one day I'm sitting in my office. And I face the door to the stairs.And I'm in, I wouldn't call it a super serious meeting, but I would say semi-serious, and so I'm sitting there and I'm talking back and forth with the people in the meeting. And Ruby-Kate comes down the stairs, and she peeks her head out and she smiles, and she comes all the way down the stairs so she's almost looking in the door frame, and she's looking at me, she smiles. She's got her pajama top on, and she turns her back to me. I'm like, what is she doing? But she doesn't move. And then all of the sudden, she raises her hands in the air, which reveals her tiny, cute little butt cheeks, and she starts shaking and she goes, [singing] "shake your booty, shake your booty,” and she's just wiggling her little hiney back and forth. And like, I just straight burst out in laughter in the middle of this serious meeting. I'm like, "Guys, I'm sorry. There is nothing I could do in this moment but laugh." Aaron: You have been ambushed. Oh, that is so funny. How old is Ruby-Kate again? Drew: She's two, yeah. Two. Aaron: Oh my goodness, so cute. Drew: The better question is, what is Ashley teaching her while I'm in the office?Aaron: Oh my word, that's funny. Throwing Ashley right under the bus. Drew: What about you, Aaron, Grayson do anything crazy like that? Aaron: He hasn't bombed many of my meetings. Thankfully, being where I am, he's not really able to get there without some degree of help. If he's gonna come up, Lauren's usually checking my calendar or whatever to see if I'm in a meeting, which is very nice of her. So no booty shaking yet, but he did, in trying to explain to him, specifically with Gigi, who is Lauren's mom, Donna, they live in New Hampshire. He was talking to her about why he wanted her to come or something, he wanted to see her, so they were talking about why she couldn't come, and she said, you know, trying to explain -- how do you explain COVID to a three-year-old? She just said, there's a bug that people are getting, and it's making them sick, and so I don't want to get that bug or whatever. She was just explaining it on FaceTime or something, and then the next time -- I don't know, it was a couple weeks later. She was on FaceTime with him again, and he said "Gigi, are the bugs still outside of your house? Are they still making everyone sick? Where are the bugs? Have you gotten rid of the bugs yet?" And we were looking at him, like, what are you saying? And she's like, "I tried to explain it, this is the best I could come up with." And now he thinks there are, like, venomous bugs waiting outside of Gigi's house. Which, I'll deal with that. I'll take it. Drew: If it was really a bug, we'd be good in New York cause the snow would have killed it a long time ago. Aaron: Very true, very true. We would be hoping for a snowstorm. Oh wait, we had one last week. Unbelievable. Drew: It's only April 19th, I mean, like, no big deal, right? Aaron: Yeah, everybody loves an Easter snowstorm. Drew: Where I grew up, we got 8 inches. 8 inches. Aaron: What? This past week? Drew: Yeah, 8 inches of snow. Like, the power went out and everything. Happy spring, everybody! Aaron: I know. For once we get to say we're so glad we live in Rochester, we didn't get as much snow. Drew: Jesus is alive, spring isn't. [Both laughing.] Aaron: Seriously. It's still in that grave. Come on out. That's funny. But hey, one more -- I realized I have another housekeeping thing I wanted to mention before we jump into sermon discussion, and that is that we're recording this podcast these days Mondays around 3 o'clock. That's kind of our current schedule. We've done some pre-recording in the past, but because of COVID, we're doing it Mondays around 3. So I would really encourage all of our listeners, if you've got questions or comments or anything that you wanna say related to this podcast, from Saturday night services or Sunday services or whatever, if you have anything, just send it over to us, because we would totally engage with it, and now you have the opportunity to do so right now. We're in a phase where we absolutely could be bringing those things up. Like I said before, podcast@northridgerochester.com, if email's not your thing, text me or Drew or anybody on our staff, that will get a question to us. Literally any way that you can contact us, social media, it doesn't matter. Get it to us by Monday around 3, and we'll see if we can include questions or comments or whatever. We would love to do that, and we're in a phase where we totally can even easier than other times. Hit us up. Okay. So, week 1, A Life That Matters. And I have a couple questions for you. And Connor's listening in, so he might have to tune in as well, we'll have to see here. But that video, the title package, did we already talk about this? The title package was Devin Graf walking on 490 right by the Rochester bridge, right? It looks literally like he's in the middle of the road, I was thinking, ignore social distancing, say nothing about that, he's in the middle of the highway. How did he get there? So then I'm hearing rumors that it was a green screen and I don't believe it, so someone prove it to me. Drew: I believe Connor has confirmed it was a green screen. Matt Snyder was behind Devin, and he was holding up a green screen, and boom, magic. It just shows you how amazing our creative team is. Aaron: Where were they? In the middle of 490? Drew: I think they were standing somewhere on the side of 490, and they green screened him into 490. Aaron: So I'm guessing the reason they wanted to do it there was to match the lighting or something so that it would look the same? Connor's nodding his head. Okay. I just, that is crazy to me, because I've seen bad green screening, and that did not look like bad green screening to me, and I wouldn't have assumed we have the ability to do good green screening. No offense to Connor, I just assumed we don't have that kind of cool technology, but apparently you literally just need a green sheet. [Both laughing.]Drew: The green sheet they used to hang in our podcast studio. Aaron: That's right, "studio." I love when we call it a studio. That makes me so happy, because it sounds so legit, and it's a basement. But, okay. Now that that's cleared up, it was officially green screen, which was very surprising to me. Week 1, A Life That Matters. You talked all about how we need to begin with the end in mind, and I kinda want to enter into your experience. I know that this series came as a result of your dad's death. Talk to me a little bit about, we planned super far in advance. This was not the sermon series that was gonna be just post-Easter. I mean, I don't know. A month and a half ago? When did we make that change? That's a very, quote, "last minute change" for us, and I'd love to just bring everybody in to kind of the genesis of this series. Drew: Yeah, I think when my dad died, obviously the point I said, death brings perspective, or crisis, so, I feel like I walked through both of those things, a crisis with COVID, and my dad's death. It has really caused me to reflect on my life and what's important and what's valuable. I often teach out of the overflow of what God's doing in my heart. I just think those messages are more real. That's not always the case. I think there's series we do that we just talk about. It's not necessarily something that's churning in my heart, but this was just a series that God places on my heart. I've just gotta do this. If I don't, I feel like I'm gonna be disobeying God, cause I feel like he planned it in my heart. So yeah. I just, through the season of life I'm in right now, God's been teaching me a lot of things, and I thought it would be valuable to walk our church through it. Weirdly enough, we're probably all thinking a little bit of those things right now, with the crisis that we're all dealing with. And it's really cool, again, how, even if you go back to Unfiltered Jesus and this series, and how God kinda laid it out for our church, I just feel really blessed with how he has planned our series for us. So we could be really relevant and engaging and impactful in this season. Aaron: I agree. I remember when you first said, kinda like, coming out of the fog of your dad's death, with, you know, the first few days or 10 days or something, where your life wasn't normal. As you were emerging from that a little bit you were saying, like, "Hey, I wanna do this series," and I thought, well that's gonna be really cool to hear such fresh insights from you. But at the same time, wondering, I wonder if someone hasn't experienced a death recently, would they find this to be as interesting, or whatever? And then COVID hit, so it was like, we planned this, and I was like, all right, let's see how it is in terms of relevance, and then COVID hit, and it's like, oh. Incredibly relevant. Yeah, been blown away by how it all came together. And we had an original direction related to -- I think maybe the first title you had was like "Legacy" or something like that. Is that right? Or am I wrong? Drew: No, I think it was -- yeah, I think "Legacies" or "Lessons from Dad." Aaron: Oh, yeah. Drew: So I mean, it's quite shaped and molded. And I didn't want it to be completely about my dad's death, you know? I want it to be about what you learn through those seasons in life, and so. Aaron: Yeah, I think it is fascinating how, I can say this from even, death in our family. Lauren's cousin, this was June of -- I'm trying to think, a few years ago. It doesn't matter. A few years ago, her cousin, who's our age, passed away in a car accident. And student baptism was actually that same week, and so I ended up not being at student baptism, cause I was with the family up at the funeral and blah, blah, blah. And I just remember, even in that moment, there's something about a death that creates like an, "oh my goodness, we have to be at the funeral, and we have to process this, and there's so much I'm thinking about, and like what really matters." And there's an urgency to that, that it feels like I'll never forget what this feels like. But for me, I think about her cousin's death. We're leaving the funeral saying "man, we gotta stay more connected, and we gotta talk more, and let's make that phone call, pick up the phone, let's stay connected." And actually, I remember Lauren's brother -- sorry, I'm kinda going on a rant here. But probably about a year ago, Lauren's older brother was facetiming us or something. He was like, "Guys, I feel like we're still not talking as much as we said we were going to. Remember at Dylan's funeral we were all talking about how we were going to stay so connected, and here we are a couple years later, and we're already back to where we were before," almost like, did we learn nothing from this unexpected death? And I thought, yeah. There's something so true about being at a funeral where you have like, just this lucidity about what matters, clarity around -- these people matter to me so much. I would be devastated if I lost them. But it's just so easy to lose that clarity. And so I think it's so key for us to hear from you as you're still in that phase of like, "I've still got very clear pictures of what matters to me, and I wanna speak to our church while those things are still on my heart." Drew: Yeah, I think as people we have to learn how to keep those lessons fresh in our mind, you know? For me, it's easy right now cause everything I do reminds me of my dad, every place I go. I mean, my mom lives with us. But I do think, over the course of time, it's natural for us to just let that fade, or go back to the way it used to be or living the same way. I think we have to learn to create constant reminders of that perspective that death or crisis gives us so we can live in a manner with the end in mind, rather than what's in front of us. Aaron: Yeah, and I think that's a little bit reflective of why Moses' words are "teach us to number our days." This isn't something that we do natively. We don't automatically begin with the end in mind. We don't automatically remember that our lives are gonna end or just even a picture of our own mortality. We don't automatically remember that, and so it takes God's work in our lives to teach us to do this, like, teach me to keep track of the fact that I've got such a short life. Drew: I don't think it's ever a lesson learned, like "Check that off the box, I got that." It's a constant, daily reminder, whether it's a reminder you set in your phone, or circumstances remind you. You know, there's certain lessons in life you have to constantly learn. And I feel like this is one that God teaches me over and over again through the circumstances that I walk through. It's like, "Dude, you've got plans, which are great, they're awesome, but who knows if you're ever gonna make it to your plans." I've been at my Dad's lakehouse this last weekend trying to get things ready for Mom and situated. The constant thing that Mom and the family says is, "We've finally got this place the way we want it and Dad's not here." And this was Dad's place. It's called "Pop's Place." And so, you just constantly need those reminders that, man, life is short. Your plans might be great, but God's might be different, so how do we learn that lesson regularly rather than through the tragic or the crisis? Aaron: Yeah. First of all, once again, yeah, I'm so sorry. Drew: It's okay, man. Aaron: But, that's why Solomon's words are, he says it's better to go to a house of mourning than a house of rejoicing. And I love that you used a wedding as a comparative, because there really is something -- there's something to be learned at a wedding. Right? I mean, if you've got a strong marriage or even a struggling marriage, a wedding can be a great reminder of, like, almost like a vow renewal. If you've got a strong marriage, you're like, "Baby, I love you all over again, I'd pick you all over again." If your marriage is struggling, it's like, "We gotta get back to this." Whatever. There's lessons to be learned there. But it's different than the, like, "I had an unfixable, irreversible reality of death." That's what a funeral is. It's not like, “Let's recommit ourselves to our marriage.” You can change the trajectory of your marriage. Once someone's passed away, they've passed away. There's something permanent that's like, "What am I gonna do differently now?" And so, funerals just have an incredible ability to do that. But hopefully we don't have to go to a million funerals before we learn the lesson ourselves. You know? Drew: That's the hope. But, I'm guilty so many times of going to a funeral. I don't know if I'll ever go to a funeral the same way anymore. And I think I've had such a good life in the sense of, I haven't lost anybody really close to me that has hurt this bad or stung. You know, I've lost people, but no one like my dad, that close to me. And I think, you know, thank the Lord that he's protected me and my family this far, but I'm telling you. There are certain things in life that I just won't look at the same. You know, as a pastor, death is common. People getting sick is common, people having heart attacks. I think it's gonna reshape the way I pastor. It's easy for me to get numb to, "Oh, someone died." Nope. Not anymore. My heart is gonna break for people who lost people. As a young person, I could have easily been like, "Okay, this is part of life." It is a part of life, but that part of life really stings and really hurts. And I think I'll be able to weep with people and mourn with people and hurt with people in a way that I just couldn't. Aaron: Mmhmm. No doubt. That's so real for any life experience. Once you had it. It's the walk a mile in somebody else's shoes, but you can't walk a mile in somebody's shoes until you've done it in certain cases. You can't really put yourself in the same framework as someone who's had a parent die or something like that until it happens, and then you're in a whole new ball game, you know? Drew: Yep, and that's why I love what Moses said about refuge. It's unique that he brought that up. Of all the things as he's looking back at his life, I love -- and I'm learning this -- that God is the best refuge. He offers comfort that people can't offer. In this season, I'm actually tired of people saying "I'm sorry." I'm tired of people saying "Are you okay?" And they all mean well. I'm not saying people shouldn't do that, but there's just nothing like a refuge from God. A place where God just -- like, sometimes even with my own family, when I wanna cry, I don't want people around me. I wanna be with God, and I wanna just mourn with God because he is that refuge for me. I've read Psalms 90 so many times. It's one of my favorite Psalms. It's actually the first passage I ever preached. So my first message ever --Aaron: That's awesome. Drew: -- to a live audience was Psalms 90. And I've read those words, like "Lord, you are our dwelling place," you know. But again, I'm learning this. I think we've talked about this in other podcasts. Those words are so different to me right now in this season in my life. A dwelling place. Man, I dwelled with God in such a real way lately, where I'm just like, "God, I don't want to go to anybody else but you, because I believe there's a level of comfort, and security and stability that only you can give me, and that's what I need right now." Aaron: And you'll come out of this stronger in that sense, your relationship with God, having been to this place with God, it doesn't go away. Your connection to God that is now stronger, better. What you've just described is literally a longer version of the phase "crisis brings clarity." I mean, you now know things you didn't know. You experienced things you could have never experienced. You know God in a way you didn't know him before. And that's a super bitter pill. Nobody wants to take that. You know, that's horrible, but it's God at work in you. Drew: I also think about, you know, a lot of times when crisis hits, people run from God. What I'm going through, I realize that people miss on some of the best moments with God when they choose in crisis to run from God, because they miss out on what I think I'm experiencing now, it's this level of comfort and stability and security that God gives. And when you choose to run from him because you're mad at what he chose to do, or what he was in control of that didn't stop, you didn't like the circumstances. It's crazy that, in the midst of that, people who run miss out of something that's so beautiful that God offers only in crisis, only in the crazy and uncertain times of life. Aaron: I'm not gonna add anything else, cause we're gonna end right there, man. That's really helpful, and I'm trying to do my best right now to believe that, to lodge it into my soul so that, when my crisis, like yours, comes, I'm more ready for it. I'm glad we all get to learn along with you, and this series is gonna be all about that. So, very much looking forward to it. Is there anything we need to know about this coming weekend or that our people should hear from you about? Drew: Couple things. One, we're gonna talk about relationships this weekend. It's like Rodney said. We talk about our relationship with God first, and Rodney said the second thing is relationships with people. And so we're gonna talk about how we create a life that matters through our relationships. Also, we're gonna be having a baptism, so it's gonna be an awesome celebration. Aaron, I believe you have an inside look at that baptism, because --Aaron: Yeah, I do. It'll be a little bit different because we have an executive order from our governor that requires a mask for any time which you cannot socially distance, so it's gonna be the weirdest baptism we've ever done, most likely, but we're gonna try to comply with every restriction and also make sure that we still do more and better. So, I got to be a part of it, and I can't wait for you guys to hear Ritchie's story. It's a great one. I guess I can say, it's already done. That's probably okay to say. Oops if it wasn't. We recorded it this morning on Monday. Very excited about it. You guys'll love it. All right. Let's be done. My friend, talk to you guys later. Thanks Drew, thanks Connor, thanks to our listeners. Please send us comments, questions, and thoughts. We would love to interact with you. We will talk to you next week.

god new york death lord babies man lessons talk dad mom psalms engage guys new hampshire shoutouts rochester laughing unbelievable facetime incredibly legacies staring ritchie weirdly moses' life that matters matt snyder aaron you aaron yeah aaron yes drew what

How To Communicate Better In Marriage - Biblical Answers To Your Questions

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2020 53:42

This Q and A topic is all about communication in marriage. Which we mention often in almost every episode because it is such a vital component of marriage. You have to talk to each other! We answer several questions that were submitted by our listeners. Please enjoy. Read Transcript[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna answer your questions about communication in marriage. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Aaron] Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Marriage After God. It's actually the last episode of season three. So if you've been following along, we're gonna be taking a break, we're about to have a baby. If you've been listening to the last few episodes, you know that. And so, we're gonna have a little break. And then we're gonna come back in another season, in season four. We don't have a date for that yet, which is fine. [Jennifer] We'll let you guys know on social media. [Aaron] Yeah. And then, we'll do some new episodes. And so, just as a side note, if you have topic ideas for the new season, go ahead and shoot those in a message to us on Instagram at @marriageaftergod. But, today we're gonna be answering some questions from the audience, but before we get to the questions we like to talk about some things in life, but really, this first thing I wanna talk about is, I wanna encourage everyone listening today, because I know that there's a lot of fears, there's a lot of anxiety going around with the coronavirus, with things that are happening in the world, and I think some of them are legitimate things to be thinking about and considering. We wanna be wise people, that's what the Bible talks about. We don't wanna just pretend that none of this stuff's gonna affect us. But, my encouragement is to remind everyone listening that our trust is not in this world. Our trust is not in the vaccine that they might come out with. Our trust is not in the government. Our trust is not in the healthcare system. Our trust is not even our bodies. [Jennifer] Or money. [Aaron] Or money. The Bible is very clear where are trust lies, and that when we trust in anything other than God, other than His son Jesus, that trust is faulty, that hope is false, and we're actually insecure in those hopes. So I just wanted to point our hearts and our minds back to the Giver of Life. To the One that we look forward to, the One where our hope should lie, which is in Jesus Christ. Guys, one day we're gonna be with Him forever, and we're gonna have new bodies, we're gonna be healthy, He's gonna make the world right. All these things that are in the world, the destruction, the death, the injustices, the sickness, the pestilence, all those things are going to be made right. And so, once this thing passes, and whatever the damage is going to be, we don't know. But there's always gonna be something else. That's why our eyes need to be on Christ. And so I just hope that if you're having anxieties about this, the Bible tells us how to deal with our anxieties, it's to lift up our request to the Lord with thanksgiving, and to pray to Him. And He says He'll give us a peace that surpasses all understanding. And what I love about that is that our peace in God is completely standalone from everything in our life. That it doesn't matter what's going on in the world, it doesn't matter what's going on in our life, it doesn't matter about our circumstances. You could be like Paul, in prison and be praising God. You can be like Peter in prison, writing letters to the church. You could be in the midst of whatever it is that this world and that the enemy, or whatever it is, wants to throw at you, and you can have complete and perfect peace in Jesus. And so, I just wanted to quickly encourage everyone with that. [Jennifer] No, it was really good. I think that there is just a lot of attention specifically on the coronavirus. What I would say is, it is important to pay attention to what's going on in the world, current events and things like that, but-- [Aaron] Wisdom is good. [Jennifer] When we get those thoughts of fear, or anxiety, or frustration even, we need to remember that even in those times we need to submit those feelings to the Lord, and ask Him to guide us, to lead us, to give us wisdom on how to approach the situation and deal with it. And then remember that our bodies are gonna fail us. Our bodies are gonna get sick. There's gonna be, if it's not this thing, it's another thing, and so we just need to be able to trust the Lord that He knows what's gonna happen to us. He knows everything. [Aaron] He's knows all, He's omniscient. [Jennifer] So we can trust that. [Aaron] We can totally trust Him. And again, this isn't to say do not be wise, like we be wise, if we can make that take measures we do, but we have to remember that we could take every perfect measure, we could take every precaution, we can totally stock up what on whatever, just imagine it, whatever you think you could do to prepare, and your trust in that would still be faulty. Because none of that is actually secure. So, our trust is only good when it's in Christ. So, be prepared to the level that you can, and let the Lord have your fears and rest in Him. That's our encouragement. [Jennifer] Another thing that we wanted to share with you guys is just how incredibly blessed we feel for our relationship with Hobby Lobby. And, I don't know if you guys all know but they carry our books. [Aaron] Which was a total God thing, because there was no way that we were connected with them. I wasn't reaching out. We didn't reach out to them. They actually reached out to us and asked if they could carry our books, and I think it's so awesome. It's one of the cheapest places you can get our books. [Aaron] The cheapest place. [Jennifer] And, who doesn't love Hobby Lobby? I mean, just to be able to go there and peruse, and look at everything. [Aaron] People who've never been to one. [Jennifer] Well, if you haven't been to one, you should go check one out. I'm sure there's one near you. If you're near one, yeah. [Jennifer] But I just wanted to first give a shout out to Hobby Lobby and say thank you. Thank you for being someone who advocates for books like ours, and resources that point people back to God. And I also just wanna thank everyone who has been picking them up and buying them from Hobby Lobby, 'cause that keeps our relationship with them good. [Aaron] That reminds me, I love when people go into Hobby Lobby and they take a picture. And they #hobbylobbyfinds. So if you ever do that, we love to re-share those. So if you are in a Hobby Lobby and you pick up a copy of our books, please take a picture of it, and we'll probably re-share it on our Instagram. [Jennifer] Just make sure you tag us @marriageaftergod so that we see it. [Aaron] Exactly, 'cause if you don't tag us, we don't know. But yeah, so that's just a couple of things, just encouragement on the chaos in the world that had our peace. And then just, we're incredibly blessed and honored by Hobby Lobby and their partnership with us. That, to be honest, I don't think we deserve. I don't think we've, it's a God thing, that He set this up and we just wanna give Him the glory for that. [Jennifer] And if you're like me and you have been wanting to order our books, and you want it today, you can go pick one up today. You don't have to order it online and then wait for it. They have them in stock. And they're in every Hobby Lobby, which is amazing. So, it doesn't matter which one, unless they're out of stock. But they carry them everywhere. [Jennifer] Once I know what I want, it's so hard to wait when I do online shopping and stuff. I just wanna go get everything. [Aaron] But now Amazon has one day shipping, which is crazy. [Jennifer] I don't know how they do it. [Aaron] I don't either. But it gets here. Okay, so, one last thing, we have a another prayer challenge. I don't know if you've taken the marriage prayer challenge yet. Over 50,000 people have taken the marriage prayer challenge, which is incredible. So, we have this new challenge called the parenting prayer challenge, and it's a prayer challenge for you to pray for your son or your daughter, or both. Or all of them. Or all of them. Depending on how many kids you have. Yeah, all your kids. And it's completely free. Just got to parentingprayerchallenge.com and fill out the form and choose who you wanna pray for, and we'll start sending emails every day. [Jennifer] You guys might be wondering how it's set up because, obviously, they're not individualized prayers for you and your child, but they're prompts. So, it'll suggest pray for this specific thing, and then, as you're praying, you're making it personal because you know your family best. [Aaron] And it's a scheduled daily reminder. So you get this email, it says hey, you're gonna pray for your son right now, and here's what you should pray for. And it's not to replace your prayer life, it's to encourage it, inspire it, and give you a new outlook on your prayer life, and maybe expand upon it. One more time, it's parentingprayerchallenge.com to go sign up for the parenting prayer challenge. [Jennifer] All right so, this last episode of the season is a Q&A. We polled the community, the Marriage After God community, and Unveiled Wife and Husband Revolution, and we asked you guys to submit your questions, specifically about communication in marriage. And so, first of all, we just wanna thank everyone who sent us your questions. It's been cool to be able to poll the questions from the audience from Instagram, from you guys, and to answer them here. It makes me feel more connected and I love it. [Aaron] They often ask things that I'm not even thinking about. I'm like oh, that's a good question. So, it's really fun that we ask you guys. It also makes us feel like we're connected with you on another level. So, if you follow us on Instagram, that's usually where we poll our audience. You could follow @marriageaftergod, or @unveiledwife, or @husbandrevolution. We're gonna be doing Q&A's often, so if you see us pop a question and ask you to give us your questions, just submit them there, and we store them and we pick from them, and we try and answer them on here. [Jennifer] Yeah, and just let you guys know because of timing, we don't always get through every question, and so if you're listening and you're like, "I know I submitted a question "for communication in marriage," and we didn't answer it, please reach back out to us and just let us know, and maybe we can just answer it on Instagram for you. [Aaron] Or on the next time. [Jennifer] Or on the next Q&A. [Aaron] Cool. So, before we jump into the questions, why don't we just talk about some of the scriptures that, when I think about communication, these scriptures aren't just, they're not necessarily communication between a spouse. But it's-- [Jennifer] With each other. [Aaron] Yeah, it's with [Both] people. With one anothers in the church. [Jennifer] Very applicable to marriage. [Aaron] So I'm just gonna read through a handful of scriptures. [Jennifer] I'll read the first one 'cause it's shorter. You read the second one. [Aaron] All right. [Jennifer] Psalm 141:3 says, "Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; "keep watch over the door of my lips." [Aaron] Yeah, and I pulled some of these scriptures to just show what a biblical perspective over our mouth is. And the things that we say. In Matthew 12:33 Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and He says this, "Either make a tree good and its fruit good, "or make a tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit." [Jennifer] Like we know a peach tree is a peach tree because it has peaches. [Aaron] Or it's one of those fruit salad trees. [Jennifer] Well, that would be confusing. [Aaron] Which totally ruins the analogy. But anyways, "You brood of Vipers, "how can you speak good when you are evil? "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. "The good person out of his good treasure "brings forth good, and the evil person of the evil treasure "brings forth evil. "I tell you, on the day of judgment, "people will give account "for every careless word they speak. "For by your words you will be justified, "and by your words you will be condemned." [Jennifer] So what you're saying is words are powerful? [Aaron] They matter, yeah. We need to know that, we can't, like this specifically, and we just talked about this, actually, the other day, we say something and then we say I'm just venting, or I'm just kidding. But in reality if, it's coming from somewhere, those words that we just conjured up out of our mouth. They came from somewhere, and so we need to be careful and aware, like wait, so I said this thing and I wanted to make it sound like it wasn't that bog of a deal, but why did I say that? Why did I say that about so and so? [Jennifer] If someone has self control of their tongue, and they think, they're about to say something, but they decide not to, which is good, I would say they still need to evaluate their heart and question why was that even on the tip of my tongue? [Aaron] Why did it come out so quickly? And often, I would imagine this is about people in our life, and then if we say something so quickly, even if it's to someone in confidence, and we think, wait, am I actually angry at this person, or am I actually annoyed by this person, or bothered, or judgmental or whatever? And we have to think about that 'cause sometimes that comes out of our mouth and it's not from a pure heart. [Jennifer] And I'll say this, words cut deep, and when, especially in marriage, you see that person, you just see their face and you're reminded of what they've said, either recently or years ago. And you can hear them saying it in your mind, over and over again. And so, I think we just need to be reminded that we have a huge responsibility with our words. [Aaron] The next verse is from James, but there's another verse in James that we didn't write down here, that talks about having control of your tongue, and how the tongue is a, it's a small member of a body, but it's actually like a flame that can start a fire. And you're in the members of your body. It's also talked about as a rudder, something that, you have a large ship that is controlled by such a little thing. The things we say actually matter to a point of it directing our lives. But it starts off with saying, if someone has complete control over their tongue, they're a perfect man. So, we all know that we don't have complete control over our tongue 'cause we're not Jesus. Jesus was perfect. And everything He said was controlled. [Jennifer] So, when we're not perfect, and we're not controlled, what's our response should be? [Aaron] Repentance. At least recognizing it and saying, whoa, what I said was off. [Jennifer] Apology, reconciliation. [Aaron] I know I can't put those words back. It's like toothpaste, it comes out, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. So James 1:19-20 says, "Know this my beloved brothers, "let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, "slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce "the righteousness of God." So this is more a practical tip of, hey, to save yourself from saying something you don't mean, [Jennifer] Be slow. [Aaron] Be slower to say it, probably stop yourself. [Jennifer] I just wanna say, it also says be quick to hear. And I think, sometimes we wanna justify the things that we say. [Aaron] What? [Jennifer] We're not actually listening to how our words are affecting the other person, and so I think, I know you said this is practical, a really practical tip is just questioning, evaluating, making sure that you're being a good listener in your marriage. [Aaron] Listening to yourself, and listening to the person talking to you. [Jennifer] And to the Holy Spirit. [Aaron] Yeah, and to the Holy Spirit. [Jennifer] Okay, next one Proverbs 12:18, "There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, "but the tongue of the wise brings healing." [Aaron] Again, showing the power of our words towards others. [Jennifer] Such vivid imagery there. [Aaron] Here's one, Proverbs 18:2, "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, "but only expresses his own opinion." So, we have to be careful about this, this is something I've struggled with in the past, my foolishness of just only interested in sharing my opinion. Like, oh, well let me tell you what I think, let me tell you what I think, rather than listening, rather than being thoughtful, rather than actually considering the other person. I've dealt with that for sure. [Jennifer] Another one is Proverbs 18:13, "If one gives an answer before He hears," again, going back to be a good listener. [Aaron] This ever happens to me, I don't do this. I do all the time. [Jennifer] "If one gives an answer before he hears, "it is his folly and shame." [Aaron] So, the next one, and the last one, which is by far not the last verse, 'cause there's tons of scripture that talks about how we communicate and the way we communicate. Proverbs 18:21, "Death and life "are in the power of the tongue, "and those who love it will eat its fruits." So, understanding that our tongues are powerful. If we love the power of our tongue, we're going to eat the fruits of it. Meaning, if we want to share our thoughts, and we're totally fine with just speaking things, we need to be able to be aware that those words are ours, and we have to own them. [Jennifer] All right, so that was just a little foundational prep for communication in marriage, just looking at a biblical way to communicate with your spouse. [Aaron] And get a perspective on how we use our words. [Jennifer] 'Cause honestly, no matter what question we answer, that was probably the most important that you hear today. [Aaron] Yeah, the scripture. Not our words, the Bible's words. Always. So, question one from the community says, how do you two come together and talk about your dreams as a couple and as a family? [Jennifer] Oh cool, I like that it's as a couple and as a family. Which we do talk about, dreaming together, in "Marriage After God", and I just love that chapter. Just because it's something that Aaron and I have found a lot of joy in. [Aaron] It's fun. [Jennifer] It's fun. And what we do is, we look at our life and we say, okay God, what do you wanna do with us? And we get to talk about it. [Aaron] How would you say, how have we been doing it over the last few years? [Jennifer] So, our biggest, probably dreaming session, as a couple happens at the end of the year, and we take time to go over what did that last year look like? What's still on our plate? And what things do we wanna try and accomplish in that next year? And it takes a good three hours or more to get through. [Aaron] But they're fun. [Jennifer] Just because it's a lot, but it's so fun, and we do it over dinner. And then we have checkups throughout the year, when things change, circumstances change, or goals change, or we accomplish things sooner than later. So, we just check in with each other throughout the year. [Aaron] Or we're in the middle of a goal, accomplishing a goal, and we evaluate, is this what we really want? Now that we're in the middle of this thing, which we've done. [Jennifer] I will say this, our dreams don't come from nowhere. Well, for one thing, there's seeds planted by God that we feel really strongly about that God gives us these desires that we have. But we also, what we call the tool belt, our marriage tool belt, we look at what we have, and we go from there. [Aaron] Yeah, and it's not like, we talk about this in the book a lot more, the practical side of it. We're not just throwing out, and casting a line out as far as possibly, and trying to see what we can grab. We look at what God is doing in our life, what we've already accomplished, in Christ, of course. [Jennifer] It's like we take that next step. [Aaron] And we say okay, if we have any money, we say okay, how do You want us to use this money? Our home, our cars, our business? And then we even talk about things that we would love to explore and pursue. And we hold all of it loosely, pretty much usually, right? [Jennifer] Yeah. 'Cause there's nothing we can guarantee. [Jennifer] Another fun way to do this is, on those smaller check ins or smaller dreaming sessions, when we like to talk about it, we like to go on a drive, let's say like a 40 minute drive. It's super fun. We're both buckled in. Can't leave the conversation. And we just talk about it there. But, I love doing this and I think that, over the years, Aaron, wouldn't you agree, that it's something that's been cultivated in our marriage because of our intentionality? It's not really something that is just gonna happen on its own, but it's also something that, I don't know, we put the time in to do it. [Aaron] Well, I'll say this, and this would be my one tip in this section, is yes, it needs to be scheduled. So, you and your spouse need to say, we are going to do this, and we're gonna do it on this date. So it's on the calendar. And then the other part is, setting actual goals, writing them down. So, for us, you may not be us, you're goals are gonna look different. Maybe they'll be the same, but, we'll say we want to have this book self published, or traditionally published next year or this year. Or, usually, the traditionally published is a little bit more out of our control. But, self publishing, we wanna have this book published by this date. And then that one goal gives us a whole list of tasks that need to be accomplished before, for that goal to happen. And so, setting that goal and giving it a realistic time frame, and writing it down on paper, and verbalizing it out loud. [Jennifer] The success rate is so much higher. [Aaron] Oh yeah. [Jennifer] Let's use finances. If we had a goal for finances and we just talked about it-- [Aaron] We wanna save $1000. [Jennifer] By next week, we would have forgotten what the plan was. So it's like, oh yeah, we talked about that, I think. So, when you go to write something down, I feel like it's super helpful. [Aaron] The finances is actually a good one. I would imagine almost everyone has some sort of financial goals. Maybe getting out of debt, or saving for a vacation, or pay for college, or who knows what it is? And so, setting the goal, a realistic goal, the thing that you know you can attain, and you can come up with those strategies of, we're going to save $10 a month, or $100 a month, or we're not going to buy this thing every week. When you do that, and you say it out loud, there's now accountability as well. So, something comes up and you could spend the money on it, and you both look at each other and be like, are we willing to cast out that goal we set four months ago? No? Then we have to say no to this. Even though it's difficult. And so now you both are on the same page. And man, that actually feels like victorious. You're like wow, we just said no to something that we really wanted, because there's this better thing down the road that we're saving for. So, I would say set those goals, put them on paper, say them out loud, put them on the refrigerator, put them on a chalkboard, make them visible. And it's true, your success rate exponentially grows. [Jennifer] Again, I really like the second part of this question 'cause they also wanna know how do you do it as a family? So, you have kids involved. I'd say, as our family, Aaron, you are really good about leading our kids through these things, and prompting their hearts, and preparing their hearts. [Aaron] Well, thank you. [Jennifer] And just asking them really good questions. Our children are still pretty young, so we don't download every dream or goal to them. We don't feel the need to explain everything, but as we talk about dreaming together, and as we set goals we do keep the impact it will have on our family in mind. [Aaron] Well, always, yeah. [Jennifer] And so, we share it with our kids, and we'll talk about it, and we'll invite them to participate in the ways that they can. [Aaron] And I would say, because we have this pattern of setting goals and dreaming together, we teach our kids how to do it. So, I'll tell my son, and he's drawing, and he might get to a point of not wanting to complete the thing he's creating. And then I'll tell him, I'll be like, hey, do you wanna be a really good artist one day? And he'll be like, "Yeah." I'll be like well, the way people become really good artists is a lot of practice. I said, so I know that it's difficult to finish this, or you wanna move on to the next thing, and I totally get that because you're excited but, there's a lot of value in you sitting and finishing this and coloring it, and you'll see a completed work. So, that's a little way of teaching my son on how to set a goal. [Jennifer] And that's really good, what I would call that is casting vision, 'cause you're showing him what the future would look like, but what it requires, and I think the same exact thing is important for marriage that both the husband and wife are reminding each other constantly. Because this whole episode is about communication, our words matter. We need to be encouraging each other. We need to be reminding each other, hey, remember we set this goal, hey, remember, this was our strategy, hey, this is what's gonna happen once we meet it, and encourage each other and stimulate each others hearts toward those those goals in that way. [Aaron] I totally agree. That's good. Let's move on to the second question, how do you gracefully bring up subjects that have been touchy in the past? You don't, you just skip over them, you just ignore it. I'm just kidding. No, this is a hard one 'cause sometimes you can't avoid the sensitivity of it, in some scenarios. [Jennifer] I think it's good to be sensitive to it. [Aaron] What I'm saying is not that we be just harsh, or cold about it. I'm just saying you could come, I would imagine that there's some conversations that you can come perfectly gentle, with the best intentions, with the best words, and it will still be a hard conversation. That your spouse still may take it very personally. So I would say you come cautiously, you come patiently. And I would say the number one thing is make sure your heart's right. Is your intention because you're just bothered and you want this thing to change and there they go again? Is that your heart, or is your heart that you actually care that they're growing, they're changing, they're following through with their own words, because of their integrity, 'cause you love them, and you wanna see the mature? So, if your heart is a selfish one, like, I'm gonna go deal with this because I'm offended, which doesn't mean you're not allowed to have offenses. We have to deal with our offenses. But, if it's a conversation from the past, we have a lot of these, about specific things in our life, and some things are little, and some things are big things. I would say, don't avoid them, but make sure that our hearts are right, and make sure that the intention is for actual growth and maturity in your spouse, or for healing. Do you have any tips on that? [Jennifer] Yeah, I was just gonna say that, when I go into conversations like this, I genuinely desire a good conversation about it. And, I think the most important thing that we could do, knowing that it's been touchy in the past, is pray for each other before we even get to the conversation. So, praying that I have the right heart, bringing it to the table, if I'm the one bringing it, and praying that I share in a respectful way, with the right words, words that will bring you understanding, but I also pray for your heart that, if there is sensitivity or anything like that, that you would be able to respond in an understanding way as well. That we're able to come together and have a good conversation about it. And I think that doing it with God at the center is the most important thing that we could do. [Aaron] The tip for the person having the topic brought up to is humbleness. And also, being aware of defensiveness. I do this. I get defensive, we just had a conversation and I was defensive. And you called me, and you're like, "Why are you being defensive about this?" Often, defensiveness is self preservation. It's selfish, often. And so, if we're defending ourselves, then we're not in unity, and we're also not being humble. [Jennifer] You're also not being quick to hear. [Aaron] And I'm also not being quick to hear. Thank you for reminding me of that. [Jennifer] I don't know if this helps practically but, when we go into conversations like this, I'll usually say something to Aaron like, hey, I really wanna share something with you, but, just so you know, my intention's not to upset you, or point the finger at you. It's just something that I've realized or recognized recently that I wanna talk about. Is that okay? Making sure that there's a place and a space for that conversation. You don't wanna just bring it up when you're at the dinner table, or you're walking into-- [Aaron] Right here on the podcast. Actually, I've been wanting to bring up to-- [Jennifer] No. [Aaron] Not on the podcast. [Jennifer] No. [Aaron] And then, one last note on this. I think we can get in a pattern sometimes. Some relationships are special in this way, but I think a lot of us can, in some way, have this pattern of bringing up everything. And not overlooking certain things. There's this one thing that we actually, it's not that big of a deal, but I just have to bring it up every single time 'cause I don't wanna have to deal with it ever again. And so I think, truly internally evaluating, is the thing I wanna bring up, is it a thing that needs to be brought up? Or is it something that I can actually just let go? The Bible tells us that love covers a multitude of sins. So not that we overlook sin and pretend sin doesn't exist, but if I said something one time, we're talking and I said something and you're like, "Well that was rude." But you know I didn't mean it, it doesn't need to be brought up, in that one scenario. Now, if it's a pattern, like I'm always rude, that's one thing, but if I said something, and you think, "He must've not meant that." Or, the way they are with something. Sometimes it just needs to be let go. [Jennifer] And I wanna speak to the other side, if your spouse is coming to you with something, I was gonna say something of importance, but, no matter when your spouse comes to you, how would you answer this question, does your spouse feel like they're walking on eggshells around you? Does it feel like you're here, there's a layer of eggshell around you, and they can't come that close to you? Does that make sense? [Aaron] Yeah. So I think it's important for both sides that people listening can evaluate, okay, am I being aware of what I'm bringing up, and is it necessary? And then, how are my responses towards my spouse? Am I someone who gets defensive? Am I being selfish? [Aaron] Am I being critical? Like I'm just over-critiquing my spouse. [Jennifer] Yeah, and so I think that's it's important to think about are we setting ourselves up for putting eggshells down to where no one wants to come close to us and ask us those hard things. [Aaron] And I think a good remedy for this, specifically, 'cause we're not tryna say, don't have conversations that need to happen. What we're talking about is evaluation and discernment. Is the thing that I want to bring up something that should be brought up? So my solution to that is, when you wanna bring something up, first evaluate in yourself if the thing that you're seeing or wanting to talk about in your spouse, is something that you deal with, but maybe in a different way. Because often, we're very keen to sin or issues in other people's lives that we ourselves deal with. Someone's always late to something for you and it bothers you. And then you realize that you're always late for something else. But you don't think about it. So, ask yourself, is this something that I deal with? And truly ask yourself, because if you care about it in them, you should care about it in yourself 'cause want to. So, just a little tip. [Jennifer] It's good. All right, question number three is, how do you talk to your spouse when they are distracted by their phone? Can we just skip this one? Just kidding. [Aaron] Again, I never do this. [Jennifer] Okay, repeat that for everyone to just take a minute and hear. [Aaron] How do you talk to your spouse when they are distracted by their phone? You can't. [Jennifer] We have struggled with this so much you guys. [Aaron] Before there was phones, there was TV. If you're ever sitting next to me and I'm looking at a TV, I'm not even watching what's on the TV, everything's shut off in my brain. Which is why we don't have a TV 'cause I would just sit there and I'd be gone for hours. [Jennifer] This is true, but, what I was gonna say is, before phones there was an iPod. And I remember when the first iPod came out and we were dating. [Aaron] And it only did one thing. [Jennifer] I know, one thing. And I'm sitting at a restaurant, next to you, and you've got the wire from the cord in your ear, both ears, and you're scrolling through music on your iPod. [Aaron] Now, to my defense, I had just got it. [Jennifer] You were so excited about it. [Aaron] Yeah, I was excited about it. [Jennifer] But here's the point, we do get distracted, and it's a real thing, and I think it's important to talk about. [Aaron] Yeah, I would say, and Jennifer, you've gotten good at this, Aaron, I'm tryna talk to you, can you put your phone down please? Because I didn't even know you were talking to me, and you've been talking to me. And I'm on my phone. Which we have whole episode on phones and boundaries, which is something we're constantly working on. But being free to say that, say hey, can you put your phone away? I wanna chat with you. And you've also gotten good at voicing to me how it makes you feel. You're talking to me and I-- [Jennifer] Mid-sentence you'll pull it out. [Aaron] And then I'm on my phone. Maybe it buzzed or something, and I'm on it. Or, we're talking about something, and it's something that I need to do, and so I go to do it while you're talking to me. [Jennifer] Yeah, oh gosh. [Aaron] You're like, can you-- [Jennifer] Can you wait 'til I'm done? [Aaron] Do that after we're done? I know that you're excited to do that. Yes, it's mostly on my side, sorry. I would say yeah, just get really good at voicing it, hey, can you put your phone away so we can have a chat? I know that's distracting. You're gonna get on it afterwards, but, so we're not distracted, let's put our phones away. But, be willing to receive it on both sides. 'Cause we're cellphone generation. [Jennifer] I was gonna say, I think it's important to have patience with each other because, yes, we are a part of a generation that uses technology on a daily basis. This is such a hard one because it's not just you, Aaron, it happens to both of us. But being aware and allowing your spouse to help you be aware, so not getting defensive when they say something about you being distracted on your phone. I don't know. [Aaron] A little side note about cellphones, something fun that we've done in our community for a long time, I don't know if I started it or someone else did, someone must've started it, but if see someone on their phone and they're spending time with you, just lean over and be like, hey, who you hanging out with? [Jennifer] It's kinda mean and sarcastic but. [Aaron] What's powerful about it is, oh, I'm hanging out with people on my phone, not the people that I'm actually hanging out with. But that's has nothing to do with someone distracted by their phone. If you're distracted, you just gotta ask, hey, this is an important conversation, or I wanna tell you something, can you put your phone away for just a second so we can chat? [Jennifer] I will say this, Aaron, you have been making it a point this last year to leave your phone in the car, especially-- [Aaron] On Sundays. [Jennifer] On Sundays, so that we are not distracted during fellowship time. You leave it out in the living room at bedtime, so you're not constantly scrolling in the bed. On date nights, you tend to leave it in the car. [Aaron] What I'm tryna to do is just, because I know how prone I am to just pick it up when it's near me, I'm tryna find ways of getting it away from me. Which I wish that I could do more. [Jennifer] We've also had some pretty deep encounters with our kids, where they recognize that we're on our phones in front of them, and I think we've shared this on the podcast before, but just realizing how it impacts our relationship with them as well. [Aaron] I think that's an adequate answer for now. [Jennifer] Which is, what is the solution here? [Aaron] Tell them. [Jennifer] Tell them. [Aaron] Can you please put it down so we can chat? [Jennifer] Hey, just so you know, it hurts my feelings when I'm talking to you and you're looking at your phone. Oh also, I gotta mention this, if you're in the middle of a really heavy conversation, and there's no resolve yet, but there's been silence for a while, don't just jump on the phone, that hurts so bad. Just-- [Aaron] Remain in the situation. [Jennifer] Remain in the situation, remain in the silence until it gets figured out. And if it doesn't get figured out, communicate that with each other say, hey, we're just gonna put this on pause until we can figure it out, and then move on. But don't do it without that communication. [Aaron] That's a very good point. [Jennifer] Okay, number four. [Aaron] As a wife, how do you teach yourself to respond, ask, speak respectfully to your husband? [Jennifer] So I guess I have to answer that? [Aaron] Well, it's not for me. [Jennifer] Okay, so first you have to know what respect is. I remember back when we were first going to a marriage ministry, probably in third, fourth year of our marriage, and there was a group of young wives that I was friends with, and we're hanging out one night, and I remember asking them how would you define respect? I don't remember really growing up understanding. I kinda knew it what respect was, and I could get by with a makeshift definition, but I didn't actually know what it looked like in marriage. And they didn't either. It was like they looked at me like why would you even ask that question? [Aaron] Why're you even bringing that word up in our midst? [Jennifer] And I'm just sharing that because I do think it's important to know what respect is. So Google says respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone. So, if you want to teach yourself to respond respectfully, you should know why you respect your spouse, right? [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] You should know why you deeply admire them. 'Cause that's what's gonna fuel you or propel you to respond that way. [Aaron] Do you think a wife can respond respectfully to husband who is not respectable. [Jennifer] That's a really hard question, and I don't feel comfortable answering it for every single person, 'cause I don't know every single situation, but I would say this as an encouragement, that there are some things that you can find to admire about a person. [Aaron] The thought I had, and I was thinking about, not a spouse, how should we respond to a stranger that we know nothing about? With honor, with respect, with kindness, right? So my point was, I think, that in pretty much most situations, on the individual level of a person who loves the Lord, we can find, even if it's not for the husband's sake, or the spouse's sake, out of my respect and love for the Lord, I'm going to speak to this person the way Christ speaks to me. [Jennifer] That's a better answer than I gave. [Aaron] I think you were being careful. I don't think your answer was bad. That's what I was thinking about is, regardless if they find something respectable, 'cause a lot of people might struggle with that, I don't respect my husband, therefore I'm gonna talk-- [Jennifer] I'm not gonna, and then that becomes a justification. [Aaron] And on both sides, I don't respect my wife because of this, this and this, therefore I'm going to, rather than treating them the way Christ wants you to treat them. [Jennifer] That's good. Well, I think that we can, just as you're talking about we can be respectful, and it's not contingent on other people. We can be respectful in our communication towards others, towards our spouse, and like you said, out of that love and admiration for the Lord. I love that. And that that will influence our relationship. My admiration for you has grown over the years. [Aaron] Totally, and vice versa. And I would say also, none of this subtracts from the kinds of things we get to say. If you need to tell someone, which you told me before about my sin in my life, what it was doing to God, what the reality of it was, but you said it so respectfully, so honoringly. And the Bible says to speak the truth in love. It doesn't say don't speak the truth because you want them to not feel bad. You can still say really difficult things to someone in a loving, respectful way. So that's just a thought I had. [Jennifer] Just to clarify too, the question was how do you teach yourself to respond, and ask, and speak respectfully? I would say the one word that comes to mind is practice. That's probably what I should have just started with. But practice. As you practice this, and as you walk in it, it will become more natural for you to respond respectfully. [Aaron] That's good. And remember who you're doing it for. It's not necessarily your spouse, it's for God, because you love the Lord. Yeah, that's good. And it goes for the husbands too. The answer is the same. Okay, so number five says, what do you do when one spouse gets tired of talking and stops listening, and refuses to respond, or to keep the conversation going? This is like that situation, we're having, it's a difficult conversation, maybe it's a frustrating conversation, maybe it's just another one of those conversations that we've had 20 times. Well, first of all, you can't control your spouse, just, I think, the quick answer is that you can't control me-- [Jennifer] You can't force them to give you an answer or or to-- [Aaron] You can lovingly say hey, it's really hurting me that you're refusing to finish this. Is there a better way we can finish it later maybe? Or can we finish it now? I would say also, being understanding in the situation of how the conversation's going. Often, these kinds of conversations are the ones that are, both spouses are at each other, both spouses are annoyed, both spouses are selfish. [Jennifer] Both probably need some humility. [Aaron] Yeah. I would say just, sometimes maybe you just need to step back and pray for your spouse and say hey, I get that you probably aren't interested right now, but we need to have this conversation. Can we do it another time? [Jennifer] I know some things that I like to do with you is, hey, I get that were not in agreement on this, can we just pray about it and close with prayer, and ask God to reveal things to you over the course of however many days, or until you talk about it again. [Aaron] And I would also say, for the one who's wanting to continue in the conversation, so one's checking out, and the one's like hey, we're not done. Maybe ask yourself, are you elongating because you haven't gotten retribution yet, or are you wanting this to keep going because you haven't convinced them yet of your side? Are you wanting to, discern and spiritually evaluate if you're wanting the right thing? Are you wanting reconciliation or you wanting to be right? Are you wanting unity or you waiting for them to yield? And this goes for the husband or the wife. And so, ask yourself, are they checking out because they're not getting to where I want them to be? And that's why I keep going. Rather than hey, are we gonna find a solution, a unifying solution? Are we gonna find reconciliation, are we gonna find a place that we're back in the right relationship with each other? Rather than I'm getting my way and they've come to my side? [Jennifer] That's good. I know I keep going back to prayer, but if your spouse is getting tired of the conversation and refusing to continue it, pray for their heart. Pray that the Lord would minister to them, and transform them, and bring resolve through them, because ultimately, it's the Holy Spirit, right, that does it. Mm hmm, amen. [Jennifer] Okay, moving on to number six. How do you overcome the fear of vulnerability? That's a really big question, but it can be simplified. [Aaron] I think it has to be. Well, first of all, most people are afraid of being vulnerable. [Jennifer] I would say everybody is. Vulnerability isn't something that's like, yeah, let's be vulnerable. It's hard. [Aaron] It's spiritual nakedness. It's showing what's on the inside, and often we don't like what's on the inside. And so I would say, you said earlier, practice. But really, asking the Spirit of God. Say God, transform me in this because, it was other people's vulnerability with us that freed us to be more vulnerable. [Jennifer] It gave us the courage. [Aaron] So yeah, if you're struggling with this, just pray and say Lord-First of all, regardless if you never reveal anything about yourself, we all know who we are. We are wretched. We are sinners who need a Savior, who need His righteousness, who need His power to transform us. And so, just recognizing that and say, okay Lord, humble me, and help me be open so that you can A, change me, the things that I'm afraid of, the things that I don't like, the ickiness, the grossness inside me, but also use that vulnerableness, use that transparency to free others, to heal others. Not because of me, but because of You, Lord. I don't know, that's my idea. [Jennifer] I think a big thing that I learned through being vulnerable in marriage, is having this resolve to understand that love requires risk in making yourself known. So, what I mean by that is, in order for me to know that my husband loves me, like actual me, not someone who's pretending over here is-- [Aaron] Not what you show me. [Jennifer] You have to know me, so I have to reveal it to you, and that requires risk. Because that means I'm gonna share something with you, and then you get to respond. So there's a risk involved, and that's what makes it hard. But I'd say, like you said, practice is really good, and then I was just gonna plug the Unveiled Wife here, because if you wanna get to know someone who wasn't vulnerable, and then was extremely vulnerable, not just with you, Aaron, but with the whole world by writing a book about it. [Aaron] It was a big deal for us. [Jennifer] The Unveiled Wife is my journey of learning vulnerability in marriage and with God. [Aaron] That was good. So, question number seven, we have been married over a decade and feel like we lost things to talk about. [Jennifer] Aah. So, I would say, Find things to talk about. [Jennifer] I would say start learning again. So, Aaron has this really great quality about him where, when he gets excited about something, he just starts learning about it, I don't know. [Aaron] I research. [Jennifer] Yeah, you have this research brain where you just, you get hooked on something. Even with the kids, like when it comes to Legos, it's like, oh Elliot, I figured out this new thing. You're even learning the Rubik's Cube, okay. You been researching. I have been. [Jennifer] Watching YouTube videos, and you been sharing it with me. So you'll sit down on the couch with me and be like, "Babe, look at this," what do you call it? Algorithm. Algorithm. And you do this twist thing and I'm not following, but I'm just smiling 'cause my husband loves to share this with me. [Aaron] And then you see it working and you're like, "How'd you do that?" [Jennifer] Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So start learning something again that you can share with them. It could be anything. And then talk about it with them. [Aaron] And to be honest, if you've lost things to talk about, I don't know this person. I don't know their life. But if you guys are in a place, if you're in a place that you have nothing to talk about, first of all, that's not true. There's never nothing to talk about. There's never nothing to explore with each other, and to walk with in each other. There's, at minimum, there's tons of challenges in life to have to navigate. [Jennifer] So you're saying they're choosing not to share things? [Aaron] Yeah, I would say, I don't think it's possible to have nothing to talk about. [Jennifer] Especially if you have children. If you have children, you have a lot to talk about. [Aaron] Well, and the other thing is, is if we're pursuing God together, if we're looking to what He's doing, He's going to reveal to you sin in your life, He's gonna give you jobs to do, like this idea of He's got work for us to do, good works that He's prepared for us since the foundations of the world, those things are remarkable, meaning that they are able to be remarked about. There's something to be talked about. And so, I think that if there's nothing to talk about, there's potentially, maybe your minds aren't on heavenly things. Maybe your minds are an earthly things, and worry, and things that you're not looking up. [Jennifer] Or maybe there's sin your guys's life that you've been avoiding confronting because-- [Aaron] Mm hmm, sin keeps us in darkness. So I would just challenge you, if you think there's nothing to talk about, I would start praying and say Lord, what's in my life, what's in our life that is keeping us from each other? Keeping us silent, keeping us in the darkness, keeping us from moving forward and being excited about life? Guys, if you're believers, we have the greatest hope, everyone in the world, the greatest hope is for the believer. That's remarkable. That's something to talk about, forever. We're going to do it in Heaven. We're gonna be worshiping the Lord, forever in Heaven. So, if we've lost that excitement now, we gotta ask ourselves why? What's taking it away? Where have we misplaced that? [Jennifer] Now simply, if you're just bored, and you've forgotten how to communicate with each other, and ask each other good questions, I have to let that we have a freebie for you called Date Night Conversation Starters, and you can take these out on your next date, or just hanging out in the house, and use one of those to prompt a question and get started talking. [Aaron] Start asking questions to each other. You can go to datenightconversations.com. Was that prompted, was that planned? [Jennifer] I just thought about it. [Aaron] These are some good things to think about. [Jennifer] Okay, we're gonna get through these next ones fairly quickly, just for times sake, but, how do you get an introvert to communicate? Here, let me change it, Aaron, how did you get me to communicate in marriage? 'Cause I'm an introvert. Keep asking you questions. Never give up. Do it gently with love. The goal is not to ever change someone, the goal's to engage, and the goal is to encourage, and exhort, and to lift up, and to love, and to strengthen. Remember, you're one, and God's given you unique characteristics for a reason. So, they're not things to be bothered by or hated, they might be things that need to be grown in. Just because, quote unquote, I'm an introvert, doesn't mean that quote unquote, you need to stay an introvert. [Jennifer] Don't label yourself that way. [Aaron] You can grow. You never know, what God wants to grow you into, and transform you into. So don't just say well, this is what I am, and therefore that's what I am. [Jennifer] I'll say this, over the years, Aaron, your affirmation and encouragement has really gone a long way in that, you ask me a question, and maybe I'll answer it very quickly or short, or maybe not at all. And you say, just so you know, I want to hear from you. That affirmation, hearing that over and over again, reminds my heart, my mind, he really does just wanna know. [Aaron] And then, one last little thing I would say, recognizing and cultivating the differences in your spouse will make them feel loved and makes your spouse more able to communicate in those times that they can't-So, if they're introverted, recognize that in your spouse in saying, hey, why don't you get some time alone, when you go be with the Lord, I'll take care of the family, I'll take care of the kids, or whatever. And that let's them know that you appreciate them, and their differences, their uniqueness, and you're excited about it. You're like, how can you use that in a good way, so that in those times that it's necessary, you're not allowed to just retreat into your title, into your whatever. They they know that you love them, and that you're saying hey, I know this is hard for you, but we do need to deal with this. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's really good. Okay, so the next one says, how do you stay in touch with your spouse when your husband works two jobs and you're a stay at home mom? I'm just gonna answer this one really quickly for what comes to my mind is get creative, text them, send love letters, make a journal where you guys can pass it back and forth, putting things on the schedule and protecting that time, even if you're super tired or there's other circumstances going on. I would say that those are some practical ways that I would answer that. And I'm sorry, that's such a hard question to try and answer, but the communication is still a priority. [Aaron] I would say if it's a priority, we'll do it. And we have a brother in our church that leaves real early in the morning, comes back real late, and he just he works a long job, and he records videos of him reading the Bible, and asking questions and sends them to his kids. So even though he can't be home, when he has the break, when he has the time, he make sure to, everyday, send them something to lead them and disciple them. So, father's who have these jobs, if you're listening to this, and maybe you're on the road right now, don't use your absence as an excuse to not disciple and lead your children and family. There's ways to do it, especially in this day and age, man, we have technology. You could FaceTime every day, there's ways to do it. So I just wanna encourage you that, get creative like my wife said, find ways of connecting with your spouse and your children regularly, to show them that you're there. Because even though you can't physically be there, you can spiritually. [Jennifer] Cool. Okay, we got two questions left. The next one is, how do you handle conflict when you are very irritated? Which happens to all of us, right? No one's immune to irritability or irritation. But the verse that I thought of was Psalm 4:4, it says, "Be angry and do not sin. "Ponder in your own hearts, on your beds and be silent." [Aaron] And that's a good point is, when you're frustrated, make sure that, again, you're coming with the right heart. So, you've dealt with your frustrations with the Lord first. Doesn't mean you don't say something about it, and you don't address it. [Jennifer] It's that being slow to speak. [Aaron] And then also, maybe wait. Wait for when you've cooled down. That's always a good posture to take. Right, so the last question we got for you guys is, what are important questions you need to ask your spouse every week? Aah. [Jennifer] Okay, so we don't ask each other the same questions every week, but, we do have a standard of questions that we lean on when we want to know each other more, Aaron. And it's stuff like hey, how's your heart? Or hey, what are you thinking about? Or hey, what's God been teaching you? What are you gonna be working on today? Or what do you need help? [Aaron] Or what are you reading in the Bible? These are interesting questions that help, if the other person maybe hasn't been, they say oh, well nothing. I'm gonna get into the Word, right? So they're encouraging. And if they are, you can start a conversation with them about what they're learning for the purpose of growth. And we have some friends, really good friends, Jeremy and Audrey Roloff, they actually have a resource called the Marriage Journal. And it's an awesome resource. They actually have, it's a weekly check up for your marriage. [Jennifer] There're actually specific questions that you ask every week. [Aaron] And they draw you closer to your spouse, they help you get to know each other. It also helps you stay on track with each other. So, if you're asking this question, if you're out there thinking yeah, what should we be asking ourselves? It's called the Marriage Journal by Jeremy and Audrey Roloff. You should go check that out, it's an awesome resource, we totally support them, we totally love them. And it can totally help you in growing in your marriage. So, we love you all, and we thank you for joining us on this last episode of the season. If you haven't checked out the other episodes from this season, please go do that while we're on this little break. And also, check out last episode because we have a giveaway going right now. And it goes only until April 10th, so go check out our last episode and find out how that giveaway is gonna work. But, as usual, we pray before we sign out. [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of marriage. We pray we would be husbands and wives who are willing to communicate with each other in a respectful way. We pray we would have the courage to say the hard things in love. We pray we would be good listeners, and truly hear what our spouse is sharing with us. We pray to share our heart with one another, always. We pray that your Holy Spirit would infuse our speech and open our ears, so that we can hear. Help our minds to understand each other, and to extend grace to each other. We pray the posture of our hearts would be humble. We pray we would strive to make marriage a safe place to communicate, and not a scary one. Help us to work through our marriage issues, and the things that we're experiencing to gain knowledge of each other and of You. Help us to grow in how we walk, and may it be in a worthy manner as we navigate life together. In Jesus Name. [Aaron] Amen. We love you all. And we'll see you next season. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

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Our Favorite Non-Toxic Products

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 9, 2020 52:34

Our physical health and learning how to take care of our bodies have played a large role in our growth of the years. In the beginning of our marriage, we dealt with sexual issues and after 4 and a half years living with those problems we finally discovered what we believe was a major contributor to those problems. We began replacing our toxic products with non-toxic products and almost immediately found healing in the area of intimacy. We have had many people over the years ask what kinds of products we use now and so in this episode we share a little of our journey and the products we like to use. Pleas enjoy! PRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for our bodies. We pray we would be good stewards of our bodies and consider all that goes on them and in them. We pray we would be willing to take the time and research the items we use on a daily basis, using things that help us and not hurt us. Lord, we ask that you would give us wisdom as we navigate living a healthy lifestyle. Help us to make good choices and be on the same page in marriage so that we can enjoy the benefits of living toxic-free. Please help us not to be overwhelmed by the process of learning, but rather, help us to be humble and willing to learn so that we can choose what is healthy for us and be advocates of healthy living for the sake of others. We pray living healthy would not become an idol in our lives and would not hinder any of our relationships. May we be people who don't just consume, but who are about our bodies and take care of them.In Jesus’ name, Amen! Some things mention this episode. http://Parentingprayerchallenge.comhttps://shop.marriageaftergod.com/products/the-unveiled-wife-embracing-intimacy-with-god-and-your-husband-by-jennifer-smithhttps://ENG.orghttps://unveiledwife.com/oils/https://norwex.bizDr. Bronner’s - https://amzn.to/2vRCQ91https://www.bendsoap.com/Native Deodorant - https://amzn.to/2VXpWkzBert's Bees - https://amzn.to/3cPJkpNBurt's Bees 100% Natural Moisturizing Lipstick - https://amzn.to/3aKRNs7Ancient Minerals Magnesium Lotion - https://amzn.to/2TQu6YT READ TRANSCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helpin' you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today, we're gonna share with you our favorite non-toxic products. Welcome to the Marriage After God Podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as, Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as, Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage. Encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one. Full of life-- [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] and power, [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly, after God's will of our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Welcome back everyone to another episode of Marriage After God. We are happy to have ya, and today we are just going to share some, it's kinda like a funner episode, where we're gonna share, not just our non-toxic products, but why we choose those, and part of our story. [Aaron] Yeah, and well, we've had a lot of people over the years, kind of, 'cause we've talked about our journey with health, and we talk about products we use, and you have people often asking, "Well, what do you use?" [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And so-- [Jennifer] A large portion of my first book, "The Unveiled Wife," you know, talked about our journey, you know, figuring some stuff out, and so, we'll probably start there. [Aaron] Yeah, but it'll be fun. We believe that it's good to have a healthy life, I mean, everything we talk about it spiritual, but there's something to be said about, taking care of our bodies, and being careful with what we're putting on, being thoughtful, we even talk about, yeah, we talk about this often in our books, we talk about it in our life. We actually try and live it also, doesn't mean we're perfectly healthy in every aspect, but what's been awesome about it also is, we actually have less stuff, which is cool. So we'll talk about that a little bit too. So first, before we get into that, why don't you give a little update on baby Edith? [Jennifer] Yeah, is everyone as anxious as I am to meet her? I'm-- [Aaron] Some people are probably like, "They're having another baby?" [Jennifer] I know, [Aaron] Yes we are, number five. [Jennifer] Yep, I'm 38 weeks, and just starting to feel like way more ready and prepared, mentally, [Aaron] Some of that pre-labor stuff [Jennifer] Yep, and my body, but also, just in our home, I feel like, we are all kind of getting to that transition point where, I don't know, we're just, we're just ready. [Aaron] So I'll say this, if you don't hear of any more podcasts coming out, after this one, it's because we had the baby. [Jennifer] But, I haven't ever gone that early, so-- [Aaron] Yeah, you-- [Jennifer] I don't know. [Aaron] We're usually like, I should say, you're usually right on the dot. [Jennifer] I will say this, usually nesting kicks in, and I you know, look forward to, just utilizing that energy, that extra energy to clean the house, and get every nook and cranny, and this time I didn't get that way at all. I had to like, really rely on the Lord, and just um-- [Aaron] Well I'll say this, I think you did have the desire to nest, but you didn't have the energy this time. [Jennifer] Yeah, I had the desire for sure. [Aaron] You're like, "I just can't get up off the couch, "I just, I don't feel like I," So, there was all these things that you wanted to do, but it took a lot of my helping, it took a lot of like, extra stuff that you didn't have-- [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] and so, but that's just unique for this time. [Jennifer] But we got some stuff checked off our to-do list this weekend and now I feel ready. So thank you Aaron, thank you for your help with that. Yeah well, I'm sure we'll have a little bit more stuff before the baby comes. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Gettin' the house ready, just gettin' some things off of our plates, so that we can enjoy little baby Edith, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] when she's here. [Jennifer] What I did do, was I got through Olive's old clothes, and got like a drawer ready for her, and all of her clothes are ready, so, [Aaron] Oh, we also moved all of, 'cause right now we have all of Truitt's clothes, in our bedroom, like right below the changing station, so that we can like change him, and put clothes there, but we moved those. Now he's got his clothes in the boys' room. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] I'm imagining, we're probably gonna move him into the boys' room soon, right? [Jennifer] Soon, yeah. [Aaron] And then he's gonna be one of the big boys. [Jennifer] Uh? [Aaron] I know [Jennifer] Everyone's growing up too fast. [Aaron] Who in the world? [Jennifer] Elliot feels like he's seven feet tall. Doesn't he feel so big? [Aaron] Yeah, he's gonna be a tall one. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But it's awesome, seeing them grow, we were just talking tonight about if we would have had children earlier, which kinda goes into a little bit into our story, but if we would have started, day one, we'd have a 13 year old. [Jennifer] Yeah, just recognizing, how long we've been married and-- [Aaron] And we probably have 13 kids. So, [Jennifer] At our rate. [Aaron] Yeah at our our rate, yeah. Hey, I just wanted to also bring up something that I've been doing lately, and maybe you can chime in on this, Jennifer, as well, but for the men listening, something I've been trying to do, I know not everyone has our situation. We totally understand that. We get that. But Jennifer and I both, I would say I work the majority of the time, it used to be much more equal, but as we've had more kids, Jennifer's desires, and our desires has changed to, you spending a lot more time homeschooling, [Jennifer] My work just looks different [Aaron] Totally looks different, but the idea is that we're keeping things going, but what I've been doing lately, is letting you have Fridays to yourself, often that's so you can get, you know, the work that you need to get done, done. But sometimes it's just to go. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] To get into the Word. To meet with a lady [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] From the church. To just have time to yourself, or a little bit of both, like you get some work done in the morning, and then you have like a hair appointment, or you have a meeting with a friend, [Jennifer] Yeah, I try and use that time to schedule appointments-- [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] But um, I will say this, I've really enjoyed it, and it's been super beneficial in a lot of ways, but I also recognize that change is coming, with having the baby and post-partum, and all that. So it'll be something that we reevaluate, come very quickly. [Aaron] Right 'cause we go through seasons, and ebbs and flows, and we have to adjust our schedules and our way of living to the situations in life. But, I just wanna encourage the men out there, that even if you're not in a situation, where maybe your wife works with you, or works at home, or maybe, I don't know, like your situations are gonna look differently. The idea is being intentional, to let your wife know that, especially if she doesn't have like, a regular nine-to-five job if she is at home with the kids, if you have a similar situation in that aspect, is giving them time. It may not be every week, maybe it can't be every week, but if it's once a month, if it's every other week, if it's for a couple hours, there's times like, "Hey why don't you, "I got the kids you get out of here--" [Jennifer] And maybe it can't be during the day, but it's at night or, if it can't be during the week, it's you know Saturday morning or something like that. [Aaron] Yeah, there's always going to be a way to just let your wife know that you're thinking about her time, and also, as men who are leading our wives, spiritually, giving them time specifically like, maybe it's at home like, "Hey, why don't you just go lock yourself in the bedroom? "Open up the Bible like, read, journal, "go take a bath, and listen to some worship music." Giving them time to themselves, time to recharge, regenerate. I know some women probably recharge around people, not alone, but, whatever it is, maybe they need to go be with some friends. Just, keeping that in your mind, something we've been practicing, like we said, it's a it's a seasonal thing. So it's not necessarily that it's always going to be this way, but currently Fridays have been your day, and you've been enjoying them, we've been slowing down on that with the baby coming. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Also 'cause, you're having less energy, and you're like, "I just wanna be home." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But, it's been a cool thing. [Jennifer] I think it's a really good encouragement, and I think it's good for husbands to hear, that when it's even spontaneous, 'cause this was something that we kind of scheduled out, and looked at our situation, and said, "This needs to be happening." But even when it's at random, you know, spontaneous, it's a huge encouragement to the wife's heart to know that the husband is thinking of her like that. You've done that for me plenty of times over the years and so, I love that you're bringing this up. I think it's cool. [Aaron] So hope you're encouraged by that. One more thing before we get into our, our list of our favorite non-toxic products is, we just want to invite you to join the Parenting Prayer Challenge. We created this prayer challenge, it's very similar to the Marriage Prayer Challenge, where you get 30, 30 some-odd emails everyday, reminding you to pray for your children, and giving you a topic to pray for over them. and you can actually sign up for one for a son, or one for a daughter, or you can sign up for both, which is pretty awesome 'cause some of you probably have a son and a daughter, or just sons, or just daughters, or just one or the other, but you can go, you go to parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, and you sign up, it's completely free, and we just pray that God blesses you, and your prayer life for your children, because praying for your children is so important. Just like praying for your marriage. Just like praying for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Prayer is so important. God wants to be praying people, and so this is just a fun challenge. It's a way of being a catalyst for your prayer life, for your children. It's parentingprayerchallenge.com, it's completely free. [Jennifer] Okay, so for some of you listening you may have already read "The Unveiled Wife," if anything we talked about today, you know sparks interest and you haven't read that book yet, that was our first book that we came out with, you should go check it out, just because it shares more in depth of our journey, of kind of coming to this place of like, being aware of healthy living, and living a healthy lifestyle. But we're going to kind of summarize it. Just to kick off this episode, just so that you guys can, just get some background into Aaron and Jen. How about that? Okay. [Aaron] Let's see how quick we can make this summary. [Jennifer] Okay so I would say that when we first got married, Aaron, we didn't really, we didn't have a strong foundation of what it look like to live healthy. We grew up on fast food, and and home cook meals, but there was no, [Aaron] We didn't have an awareness of healthy living at all. [Jennifer] Yeah, and so we didn't really care about looking at ingredients on products, or you know reading the labels of things. I would say that you know I used all the all the really good smelling lotions and body washes, and if you didn't have more than three or four in your shower, it was like, "What are you doing?" You know, that type of thing. Fragrant candles, the kind of laundry detergent that you just never think about, you just use it because your parents used, or that's what so-and-so use. I remember using MAC makeup. This one, actually, I didn't really ever talk about this one, but this was one that affected me, in my teens because I was caking on the foundation, but I was using it to cover up acne, [Aaron] Which that made more acne. [Jennifer] Which made more acne. And I was actually allergic to something that was in it, and so I stopped using that, even probably around like 18. But anyways, the point that I'm getting at is that we didn't care about what was inside of these bottles that we were using to put on our skin, you know, the soap that we use, the body wash, the lip balms, the hairspray, we just consumed it. [Aaron] Not internally necessarily. [Aaron] We were consumers. We bought what we liked, we didn't have any consideration of what it was, and I actually think, back then, not very many people did. There was movements of it, but social media wasn't a huge thing back then, so not a lot of people were talking about it. Like news wasn't talking about it, like it was just, you got these products, and it wasn't until there was some sort of, big blow up or news story about something that people were aware of something, but I think with, now looking back, everyone is much more considerate about what's in products, people care about it, but back then we didn't have that experience. No one was telling us to, like, "Oh, do you know what those ingredients are?" Can you even understand what there, like, we just figured, like, "Oh, that's what they put in everything. [Jennifer] Yeah, and then, on the side of like, I'm not gonna go too much into this, but medicine, it was kind of just like, the Benadryl, Tylenol, like, whatever you could get over the counter type stuff. And I wasn't raised with a really big awareness of homeopathy, or how to, you know, use what you have at home. [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] To help through sickness or things like that. Or to even just look at what's the root of the problem here? Of whatever symptoms you have. [Aaron] Or having an understanding of what those, why those symptoms exist. How fevers work, and how, like, why are you coughing, and sneezing, and these kinds of things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Rather than just, medicating the symptoms, which we're not totally against medication. [Jennifer] No, I'm just saying this is kind of like, where we came from. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] So we get married, and I, you know, it was just like a normal thing people talked about, to go on birth control, so I did that. 'Cause I thought that was-- [Aaron] It's what you do. You get married, [Jennifer] What we were supposed to do. [Aaron] birth control, wait. [Jennifer] Yeah, wait. And I only on it for about two to three months, and it like, drastically effected my body, and so that was the first thing that I noticed should go. And so we did that. But that was also in conjunction with trying to find a solution for what we were dealing with in our marriage, which started immediately-- [Aaron] Physically, yeah. [Jennifer] And for those of you who don't know, Aaron and I, we struggled with intimacy right off the bat, like, zero, none. [Aaron] Like sex, specifically we couldn't have sex. It was very painful for you, and we've talked about this in the past, there's a few episodes where we talked about our story, and in your book you talk about it, we talk about it in our new book, "Marriage After God." We talk about it so much because it was such a influential season in our life, and how it brought us to our knees before God. Because, it drew out of us, so much other sins, and frustrations, and bitterness, this situation we were going through. Which is often when we go through things that are hard. They often will draw out those negative things in us. Which is cool, because then God gets to deal with them. But that was, yeah, we didn't know it, you would go to see doctors, and they would say, "You're young." [Jennifer] "You're fine. [Aaron] "You're fine-- [Jennifer] "You're really great." [Aaron] "there's nothing wrong, "this should be working just fine." And then we'd go home and cry, because it's not fine, it doesn't work, nothing's changing, it hurts you. [Jennifer] Yeah, it was like at least if you told me that something was wrong, I can work with that. I can't work with nothing. But moving on, so year four of our marriage, we had a conversation with some friends, we were being really transparent and honest with them about our struggles, and they kind of like, I remember them sitting across from us, just looking super confused, like, "How-- [Aaron] Dumbfounded, or like, "Are you serious?" [Jennifer] "Yeah, is this really happening?" but she goes, the girl, she goes, "The only thing I can think of to help relate your story, "to someone else's that I heard is, "a friend of mine has PCOS, and she changed out all "of her products to be more organic, "and just cleaner, and three months later, "she ended up pregnant." Which people with PCOS, it's a hard thing to do, and they weren't even trying to get pregnant. She was just trying to heal some of her other symptoms. And we quickly disregarded that because we thought, "Well, we're not trying "to get pregnant, we're just trying to start off "with the first thing, which is-- [Aaron] Yeah, how do I have sex? [Jennifer] "sexual intimacy." And we didn't think about it again for about five, six months. And then what happened, Aaron you share. [Aaron] Well, I would just, it got worse of course, 'cause we're like, "There's like no hope, "like this in never gonna change." You know, it started off with a lot of hope, like, "Oh, it'll get better, it'll get, "but it can't possibly keep going the same way." And it just did, and you know, I'm praying through this, God was working in our marriage. There was a, if you read in our book, in both of our books, actually, there's this moment that God gets ahold of my heart, and just totally convicts me of my wrong heart, towards my wife. Not just over the situation about our sex, but about a lot of things. And it brought me to my knees, I repented, and I just said, "Lord, I'm gonna obey you. "I'm gonna walk with you, "and I'm gonna love my wife, "regardless of if I ever get what I think I deserve, "or whatever she owes me, or whatever. "I'm gonna love her. "The way you've called me to." And that was the beginning of a lot of transformations, in our marriage, in our life, and our being. But how, I don't know how, it was like. [Jennifer] It was shortly after-- [Aaron] It was like that weekend, maybe, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] or the next weekend, or that week, 'cause it was at church that this you know revelation that God gave to me happened. And I'm in the shower, and I'm just praying, 'cause I'm still like, "God, there's gotta be something, "that's gonna fix this." 'Cause even though, I've totally committed my heart to say "I'm gonna love my wife," [Jennifer] You still wanted change-- [Aaron] I still want a change, right? But my heart was totally in a different place now. And I'm just praying, and I'm like. "Lord, what is it? "It's been since before we were married, "like this is, since we've been married, I mean, "and there's gotta be something." And I looked down in the shower actually, and there's a face wash in there, and I just immediately remembered this story about the PCOS, and the girl that got rid of her stuff, and I just asked myself, I was like, "Is it possible that there's something reacting "with my wife's body?" And then I started thinking like, "What has there been, that you've used, "ever since the beginning, of our marriage?" [Jennifer] 'Cause shampoo and conditioner changed out, body wash changed out, a lot things changed, in those four years, but my face wash was the one main thing that I always was consistent with. [Aaron] And so, I said, I just yelled from the shower, I remember like, "What have you been using "since before we were married?" And you were like, "My f-why?" You were like, confused. Anyways, I take the face wash out of the shower, and I hop onto our computer, and I just start researching every ingredient on the thing. And there was like, first of all, like, half the ingredients were, I went on this site, and it talks about the toxicity level, of ingredients, right? You type the ingredient in, and it just tells you what the level is. [Jennifer] Had you ever done anything like that before? [Aaron] Never, never done like that before. Didn't even know it existed, I had to Google, and I'm searching like, how do you figure out, I'm typing these, and then this site shows up. And like half the ingredients in this thing, were-- [Jennifer] It was EWG. [Aaron] Toxic. [Jennifer] EWG.com. [Aaron] EWG.com, I don't even know, is it still a thing? [Jennifer] I think so. [Aaron] Okay. So half the products were toxic at some level. And then there was several of the ingredients that had specific terms that it said it was, that the affect. Specifically the endocrine system in your body. Then I looked up, I was like, "What's the endocrine system? "I'll just start looking it up." I'm getting all technical, and we're not scientists, we're not biologists, we don't know, like, I'm not gonna try and diagnose people, but all I know is the Lord lead me to something. [Jennifer] We were putting pieces together. [Aaron] I started researching, and regardless if it has any effect, the fact that it had all these toxic chemicals, and I'm like, "Maybe she should, regardless, "she probably shouldn't be putting this on her body." and the endocrine system something that's, it's super important to the whole reproductive system. To the normal function of the woman's body. Like secretion of normal hormones, and I was like, "Dang, that sounds like a lot "of like the things that we deal with." And so it-- [Jennifer] The specific thing that you're talking about is parabens. [Aaron] Parabens, yeah. [Jennifer] So there's four, different types of parabens, in this specific face wash. [Aaron] Methyl, propyl, like all these different kinds. [Jennifer] And this was before parabens was a thing, [Aaron] Yeah, like no bottle said paraben-free, back then. [Jennifer] Nobody was talking about it yet, but it soon became a thing, shortly after that. [Aaron] A few years later. [Jennifer] I mean, I remember a few years later, you'd go into like, Ulta, or Sephora, and you'd start seeing, you know, makeup lines that say, paraben free this, paraben free that. [Aaron] Which is interesting because back then, no one cared. I should say no on knew. And then we're like researching this and finding this out, and I don't wanna say, like started move, we actually didn't start anything. Other people are already trying to get this moving, but because of social media things like that, that it exist. Things were a lot slower. I think things are way faster now. But I was just like, "Hey. "I want to be with you, physically." And in this is a big deal because Jennifer has been using this forever, she believed that without it, she was gonna have acne. And be, and feel ugly, or whatever it was, and I remember I was like, "Hey, would you get this up?" [Jennifer] I said no. [Aaron] And she was like "No!" And I'm like, "I'd rather you have acne and us be able "to be together, than you have clean skin, clear skin." [Jennifer] And then I was like, "Well maybe there's something, okay. "I'll just do it 'cause you asked me." [Aaron] So you did, you chose to put it away. And now, I'm sure everyone's thinking like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go use this to get my wife, "or get someone to stop doing something." But, I, my heart was not just to get her to stop using this. I actually had never thought about it until this moment, and I was just like, "Would you be willing to experiment with me?" Like, "Let's just delete this from your life." [Jennifer] Yeah, it was an experiment. And here's the thing you guys, three days later, three days later, I was at work and I remember just feeling different, and I called Aaron and I was like, "I don't get too excited but, I feel different, "and I wanted you to know that my body feels, "it feels like things are changing." And I feel like it was just like two more days after that that we had sex for what feels like the first time. [Aaron] Yeah, in four and a half years. [Jennifer] Like pain free. [Aaron] Pain free. Not just pain free, but like it was enjoyable. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Like it was, like we were like, "Whoa. "Like that's what it's supposed to be like. [Jennifer] There was nothing else that was gonna convince me, that what we stumbled upon, was the thing. [Aaron] Right, and I would also say, we, God lead us a new place, in our hearts toward him. We had been repentant, of things that were going on, and I think that the Lord revealed thing to us, so I would say I definitely think that there is certain things are engaging, or interacting with your body. I mean we know over the years that you're sensitive to certain things, I'm sensitive to certain things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But I also think that the Lord, was like working in us. So I'm not trying to over-spiritualize it but, I don't wanna take away from what God was doing. [Jennifer] Sure. [Aaron] And he revealed this to us-- [Jennifer] Well and I think, he's the one that revealed this to us, and it was really awesome, and so the next step was, "I'm getting rid of all parabens." Like parabens became this like, [Aaron] We literally threw [Both] Everything, [Jennifer] And I am telling you guys, [Aaron] All of our shampoos, all of her makeup. [Jennifer] It was it! [Aaron] My makeup too. I'm just kiddin'. [Jennifer] It was in everything. It was in so much stuff. People will message me on Instagram, and they're like, "So you know, "You talked about parabens in the "Unveiled Wife," "and what kind of stuff did you have to look at?" It was like, [Aaron] Everything. [Jennifer] I tell 'em, "everything." And so what's funny is that, I look at our shower now from what it used to be, and it's like you had mentioned earlier, [Aaron] There's two things in there. [Jennifer] Yeah, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode. 'cause we just thought it'd be fun to share with you guys, some of the things that we use now, but this indecent, this thing that happened over something as small as face wash, is what stimulated our hearts to say, "Hey, what were putting in our bodies. "What we're putting on our bodies, "is important because it has an effect on us." [Aaron] And I mean it's definitely not our main focus, I mean everyone that listens to our podcast would know that this is not, we're not like a health and fitness-- [Jennifer] Freaks, [Aaron] Podcast. No, we just know, that there's a holistic view that God has of us. He wants us to love him with our minds, our souls, our bodies. Like so, when we look at the world it's not just, "Oh, we can be unwise over here, "as long as we're wise over here." we look at idea of, what we, we gotta be wise in every aspect. And we seek God on that. So what's wrong with just, caring about what goes on our body and in our body? Not out of a, like, not putting something on my body and not putting something in my body is not making me more holy. It's making me more healthy. [Jennifer] It's taking care of yourself. [Aaron] it's taking care of the body that God's given me. [Jennifer] Yeah, and I will say this, back then, it felt a little bit harder to know what to switch to, because-- [Aaron] Well, there was also less things, I think. [Jennifer] Less cleaner things available and so I just wanted to make that clear, that, you know, anyone who wanted to make a switch today, like if they want to go to their products or-- [Aaron] There's a million products now. [Jennifer] be more healthy in this way, there are so many good products out there and so, it's a lot easier, I would say. But another thing that triggered our healthy lifestyle, was doing the Sugar Busters diet, which we-- [Aaron] This was long time ago. [Jennifer] that was just a couple months, after all of this, and we made the commitment to do it together. We even took a class on it do you remember that? [Aaron] I do. [Jennifer] And they taught us how to read labels-- [Aaron] It was at the church. [Jennifer] Yeah, it was at our church. [Aaron] The church put this like health class on. It was cool. [Jennifer] Yeah so, it taught us how the read labels, and so I remember going grocery shopping with you, and we're looking at the back of like pasta sauce-- [Aaron] Well, everything we bought, had added sugar in it. Every single thing. [Jennifer] But we were like, amazed, we were like, "And this has it too!" [Aaron] I was like, "Bread doesn't have sugar in it." and every loaf of bread, was like, the second ingredient was sugar. And we're like, "Okay, what's going on here?" So anyways, [Jennifer] And then you had to go with a list of what are sugars called? because there's a lot of-- [Aaron] All the different names of sugar, yeah [Jennifer] Different names, for it. But that was another one, when we talk about eating, like that was what stimulated our healthy movement towards eating healthier and just buying things so that we're aware of what we're putting inside of our bodies. It doesn't mean we don't consume sugar, and we don't, you know, we'll have Chick-fil-A, we'll go out and-- [Aaron] No, but that education, the learning about how to read labels. What are ingredients, you know, how they order the ingredients, that's important, I can give a little tip on that. Even though we don't still do Sugar Busters, that month or how many? It was a couple months maybe. [Jennifer] It grew a muscle in us, We now, that's how we shop. When we go grocery shopping, of course there's gonna be stuff that we grab that has added sugars to it, but for the most part, we look at the ingredients in almost everything we buy. Everything, now especially with you, you need to be gluten-free. We look at, we actually buy less things that have wheat in it period, because of that, but it was a good tool in our tool belt, as we talk about in "Marriage After God," to just help us be healthier, help our kids be healthier. They enjoy things, here and there, we just had icecream tonight, so we're not like, sans sugar in our life, we're sans sugar all the time. [Jennifer] I was gonna say, we try and make the best opportunity, or we take every opportunity, when we can, to be healthy, eat healthy, and you know, choose the right thing, but it doesn't mean that we don't get, [Aaron] We also enjoy things. [Jennifer] Yeah, we also enjoy things, so, [Aaron] In moderation. [Jennifer] in moderation. That's good. [Aaron] So, Oh I wanna give that quick tip real quick, 'cause people are probably thinking like, "Well, what about the ingredients?" Just a quick tip on ingredients, the order of ingredients on the box, so like starting from the first, to the second, to the third, the higher up an ingredient is on the box, the more of that ingredient is in the product. So if sugar is in the top three ingredients, that means there's a lot of sugar in that item. So if wheat's the first or water, that's how they order the ingredients, based off of amount of ingredients. [Jennifer] So here's another one, it's really random, but I've been seeing a naturopath for my thyroid issues through this last year, and one of the things she asked me is if we use Weed and Feed. And I didn't even know, 'cause you usually do-- [Aaron] For the lawns? Yeah. [Jennifer] the lawns, yeah. And that was just one instance where she was like, "Well, instead of using that, "why don't you just pick the weeds?" like-- [Aaron] Or leave the weeds. [Jennifer] or leave the weeds. So there's a lots of things in our life that we can look at and evaluate, and say, "Oh, we should probably make change." It doesn't have to happen all at once, but it is something that we should be aware of, to go, "Hey what's happening to this exposure "that we're doing to our bodies. "And how can we maintain a healthy body?' [Aaron] And the Weed and Feed was important because was saying, "You guys walk on "that grass all the time." And like, it goes into your skin, and you're going to be affected by it. Because you're you're working with your thyroid and all of these things, effect that. Which is interesting because, we knew back then that you were probably sensitive to some stuff, and now we know now, you are definitely sensitive to things. Your body's gonna react, maybe differently than someone who, has normal functioning thyroid, or endocrine system or all that. [Jennifer] Right. Okay so, we we're just going to get into kind of a list of our non-toxic products because-- [Aaron] These are literally things that we use, pretty much on a regular basis. [Jennifer] Two reasons, one we just thought it would be fun to share these things, and if you guys you know want to know more, you can reach out to us on Instagram @marriage-- [Aaron] Reach out to Jennifer about the [Jennifer] I was going to say @marriageaftergod. [Aaron] Ah there ya go. [Jennifer] or @unveiledwife We also know that everyone's always looking for, you know, new things or ideas or inspiration so, we just hope that by sharing these, it's an encouragement to you, and give you some information. [Aaron] And I'll also let you guys know that we're not like necessarily sponsored by any of these people. We're just we're literally going to share with you guys the things that we love-- [Jennifer] Now I will say, [Aaron] and use. [Jennifer] that some of these things that I put on the list, and we've been using Young Living Essential Oils for [Aaron] Several years now. [Jennifer] about four or five years now. And we did just recently, just be more open to sharing the business side of things on social media. You may have seen that, maybe not. And so I know you said that we're not sponsored by this, but we,-- [Aaron] But we use it. [Jennifer] but we do use Young Living, and we do believe in what they have to offer, and and have really fallen in love with their products. So, I just wanted to put that out there, just so that people know and we're clear about that. [Aaron] We're not trying to be tricky or anything, we just, these are literally products we love and no one's asked us to share about them. Except for us, wanting to share about them. [Jennifer] Okay so when it comes to cleaning I really love the Thieves Spray, which in the beginning I was using wrong, because I didn't know it could be diluted. I literally would just put the spray cap-- [Aaron] And everything was just like slimy and had like, film all over the [Jennifer] Uh yeah, like a residue. [Aaron] We had residue everywhere. [Jennifer] On the countertops. [Aaron] Oh man, there was no germs I bet. [Jennifer] Ah, probably not. So the Thieves container comes, and then you dilute it, and it lasts a long time. But it smells really good, and I can use it for-- [Aaron] Everything. [Jennifer] I feel like every, one product, I feel like I can use for so much. [Aaron] And what's awesome is like, if you sprayed it on food by accident, I'm not saying you should eat it, but it's not going to be like spraying Lysol on something. Like you spray the table, you spray the the highchair, you spray, you're not worried about this, you know hurting your children. Which is awesome. It's an added benefit to this kind of cleaning product. [Jennifer] Another awesome cleaning product, is by a company called Norwex, it's really awesome you guys, they do these microfiber cloths, but they're like-- [Aaron] Aren't they infused with like silver? [Jennifer] Yeah, they're infused with silver, and they just, I don't know what about it is, but like, when you go to clean the stove, you barely have to even scrape, it's just like, [Aaron] Reusable [Jennifer] It like makes you want to clean. The window rag, you just you put water on it, and just wipe your window down, and they look crystal clear. I bought these mitts for the kids that have, they're just really easy slip-on gloves, but they're good for dusting, [Aaron] So that they can help clean? [Jennifer] So that they can help clean. Oh and our mop, I use the Norwex mop, and it's just really nice. It's good, I like it. I like their stuff. [Aaron] I wouldn't say those are necessarily, healthy products, they're just good products that we love using. [Jennifer] Oh yeah. [Aaron] On that specific one, [Jennifer] On the Norwex side of things. [Aaron] I did wanna go back, and just real quick, the Thieves Spray, we just talked about, I wanted to say it like it what it replaces. Because I think, as we go, we should just remind them, also, what it replaces like, it replaces Lysol spray, it replaces window spray, it replaces like toilet cleaner, it replaces all these things that you'd use to clean your countertops, or your floors, or your tables, or your, it does all of those things. [Jennifer] So for all you minimalists out there, [Aaron] You get one thing, and it does all. [Jennifer] It'll make your cleaning closet, or cupboard very pretty looking. [Aaron] It also smells really nice. [Jennifer] It does, that's true. For laundry, again that they sell Thieves Laundry Detergent and we've really liked that. And I just noticed that, there's a drastic difference when washing towels and washcloths. They're just so much cleaner. [Aaron] And they smell fresher, and they feel nicer. I've been really liking that, as well. This is this one's kind of like for me. So Jennifer, actually, doesn't use the the Thieves Laundry Soap for me, because I'm really sensitive, my skin, if we, if there's any laundry detergent that has any sort of dyes or perfumes or anything, I get like a rash, on my whole body. [Jennifer] If I even think about changing it, he breaks out-- [Aaron] Now, it happens, we've gone, we've stayed at hotels in the past, and I wake up in the morning and I'm just like red, and I go down and I'm like, "What are you guys washing your stuff with?" And they're like "We don't know, why?" And I'm like "I like I need something else." It's like horrible 'cause I'm like sleeping on these blankets and pillows, and so the only thing that we found work, we've actually tried venturing out, into other things, is the Arm & Hammer Sensitive Skin laundry detergent. [Jennifer] But it's fragrance-free, it's clear, [Aaron] Dye free. I'm sure it's got a couple of bad things in it, but literally, it's the only one that I've been able to use and not like break out in a rash on my body. But that comes in a huge bottle and we use it for me so. [Jennifer] Okay so earlier, we mentioned the shower, and just how the bathroom is much [Aaron] less cluttered, [Jennifer] Yeah, less cluttered. So we use dr. Bronner's for just about everything when it comes to washing our bodies. [Aaron] Body wash, shampoo, [Jennifer] I use it in the kids hair, I throw it in their bath and they have different scents, and they come in big bottles [Aaron] I like the rose scented one. [Jennifer] I will say this, the first couple times that we used it, do you remember how it felt like, really different, almost oily, but then once you got out of the shower it was like, [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause it doesn't suds the same way, as like a regular shampoo and also, you have to dilute it. And so you if you use too much, it's like everywhere but it comes off really easy. Doesn't leave any residue, but it's, we love it we use it for everything. Apparently you can use dr. Bronner's for like, laundry soap, [Jennifer] Yep. and dish washing soap [Jennifer] You can use it for a lot of stuff. [Aaron] We use it mainly in the shower, but yeah, you can [Jennifer] I use it for my face wash now, face and body wash, [Aaron] You can use it for everything. We wanna make a note that, the company that that owns dr. Bronner's, they write a bunch of weird stuff on the packaging so we're not necessarily endorsing what is written on the packaging, but we love the product. [Jennifer] When it comes to my like, lotions and things like that, Cetaphil is pretty bland, there's not very much stuff in it. I've used that for years now. I love the orange blossom and ART brand from Young Living when it comes to face moisturizer. The Genesis lotion is also really great, especially because, well, it smells clean and fresh, but it's not super fragrant. That one's good, just an overall lotion, I use that one for the kids. But also, Aaron, [Aaron] Yeah, there's a lotion that I, I hate lotions, like I don't like putting anything in my hands, even though, like right now, my hands are so dry because it's so dry out. But I hate feeling like greasy and the lotion I love the most is from Bend Soap Company, they're actually right here in our hometown. And they make this goat milk lotion, they make goat milk soap, they make a lot of really awesome things. So if you have really sensitive skin, like eczema, things like that, their soaps are amazing for it. That's actually why they started the company, 'cause one of their sons had issues with skin like that. [Jennifer] What I like is their milk bath, it comes in these like shavings, [Aaron] Oh yeah. [Jennifer] And it's just, you toss it in the bath with the kids, and it's just so fun. [Aaron] So just go check out Bend Soap Company, I can't remember the domain, but just Google Bend Soap Company. And their lotion, does not feel greasy. Once it's rubbed in, it's like, it smells nice, it feels great. [Jennifer] You don't have to go wash your hands [Aaron] It feels soft, yeah I don't have to wash my hands afterwards. [Jennifer] For toothpaste we do use Young Living. The Thieves whitening, specifically, is really good for us. And then we use it the kid's ones for the kids. But for the deodorant, this was a big one for me, because I feel like every time I try to use like, a natural deodorant, it just felt weird [Aaron] They don't work. [Jennifer] and didn't work [Jennifer] Yeah, but there's a new company out I'd say a fairly new. They're gaining ground, they're like in Target now, [Aaron] Yeah, they actually have some body washes now, I saw. [Jennifer] Oh really? [Aaron] Yeah, I almost bought a bottle of it. [Jennifer] Oh you should, I'll have to try it. [Aaron] But I like my Bronner's [Jennifer] I know. It's called Native. And they have great scents, it goes on smooth, almost silky like, and it works. Someone asked me, "Do you think it'll work during postpartum?" And I'm like, "That I haven't tried yet, "so we'll know this time around." But I've really really enjoyed Native. [Aaron] Yeah, it doesn't have the heavy metals, or nothin' in it, [Jennifer] Paraben-free [Aaron] So it won't necessarily protect you from perspiring, I should say. It's not an antiperspirant, it's a deodorant. So it protects from the smell, but-- [Jennifer] I don't, really notice-- [Aaron] Yeah, well, it's winter right now, so I don't know, sometimes. [Jennifer] I've been using it for a while though. [Aaron] But I like it a lot. It smells great, it feels good, and deodorant is another one that's really been a, hard one for me because, like, pretty much any deodorant I use, I used to use the Arm & Hammer deodorant, but that has some metals in it, and so I've since switched to Native, but Arm & Hammer and Native are the only ones that don't give me rashes on my arms. And they're painful, you've see them. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] Like, I they hurt. And I've loved their deodorants. [Jennifer] Another good product for chapstick, is Burt's Bees. [Aaron] Yeah that's good. Especially their vanilla brand, [Aaron] I think a lot of people are like, "yeah, I like that." Burt's Bees, they've been pretty synonymous for chapsticks. [Jennifer] That or coconut oil. Which coconut oil, you guys, you could used for literally everything. [Aaron] Yeah, we should do an episode on that. [Jennifer] Dry skin, lips-- [Aaron] intimacy, oh we're gonna talk about it. [Jennifer] Lubricancy, or, lubricancy? [Aaron] Lubricancy [Jennifer] Whatever that is. [Aaron] It's like, new word. [Jennifer] Okay before we get there, supplements, some things that I've been taking his last year, Nordic Naturals-- [Aaron] You've been, just real quick, you've been getting a lot, into the supplements, just because of your-- [Jennifer] Thyroid. [Aaron] your thyroid. So you've been learning a lot about these. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Because we're, we're trying to avoid going with other stronger, methods, we're trying to do the natural way, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] and you've been, pretty consistent with this. [Jennifer] Yeah, and just as a testament, after being on the supplements, I have actually, my numbers have gone down, and in my symptoms have pretty much dissipated, but I've also been pregnant the last nine months. [Aaron] Which does change things, yep. [Jennifer] So it does change things. But Nordic Naturals has a really great, strawberry flavored, omega-3. Which I love. And I've been taking-- [Aaron] So it doesn't just taste like fish? It tastes like strawberries? That's good. [Jennifer] Yeah. We've taking D3 a lot. Young Living has a great line of supplements that we use, like the vitamin C, the vitamin B, Multigreens, [Aaron] Yeah, I've been loving their Master Formula. It's like a pack of like five little supplements, and vitamin B, C, D3, all these different ones. I've been taking that, pretty much regularly, every day, I really enjoy that one. [Jennifer] Cool. Okay so for pregnancy and post-partum care, my friend recommended ancient magnesium lotion for restless legs, and it works. [Aaron] Do you get restless legs when you're pregnant? [Jennifer] Yeah, mostly towards the end, [Aaron] I'm being facetious, because I know. [Jennifer] I know, Aaron does the massaging, with the lotion, [Aaron] Yeah [Jennifer] Thank you, Aaron. [Aaron] You've had pretty bad restless legs this time. [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] And the magnesium lotion-- [Jennifer] It's been good. [Aaron] And lavender, on your feet. [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] Has been, really helping you. [Jennifer] Yep, that's true. [Aaron] 'Cause I can tell, 'cause then you fall asleep. [Jennifer] Yeah. I've love it. And then the other thing that helps, has helped me during this pregnancy is the Young Living Deep Relief roller and I don't necessarily put it on, but like I smell it, like especially when I'm nauseous, or anything like that. [Aaron] I personally don't like this one because of how cold it feels. It's like all this-- [Jennifer] When you put it on, yeah. [Aaron] Like the peppermint in it, I just can't. [Jennifer] The cooling effect. [Aaron] But it does work, but it's too cold for me. So you brought up makeup in the beginning, I remember you used to go to the MAC store and you were like, "We have to go to the mall, I need some MAC." And I was like, "Are you serious? "You look beautiful." I've never liked you wearing makeup. You remember this? I was like, "You don't need to wear makeup." But you've used since not used makeup, the MAC makeup and for a long time, you didn't use almost anything, because we couldn't find anything. What do you use now? I'm sure some of the women are like, "What kind of makeup do you use?" [Jennifer] Yeah, so I would say, like my everyday would be, a primer from Urban Decay, which just kind of holds the eyeshadow on, and the eye shadow is also from Urban Decay. And I just like it, they're neutral colors, easy to put on really quick, and the times that I do use foundation, it's a powder foundation from Young Living, it's called Savvy Minerals, it's like a mineral makeup. And it goes on super light and so, [Aaron] But that's rare. [Jennifer] Yeah, it's like on Sundays. [Aaron] I would say you used to use a lot more makeup, and now it's like, you do a little eyeliner, [Jennifer] Yeah, [Aaron] You do a little mascara, [Jennifer] I don't use eyeliner actually. [Aaron] You don't use eyeliner? [Jennifer] No but my mascara, Smashbox has been a really good favorite, paraben-free, and Clinique. [Aaron] Clinique, [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] So no eyeliner, but mascara, okay, and then you use some lipstick sometimes. [Jennifer] Every once in a while. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] The Burt's Bees tinted is really nice. [Aaron] 'cause it's kinda like lipstick, and it's moisturizing [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, so I'm just making a note that you wear way less makeup than you use to [Jennifer] Oh yeah. [Aaron] And I think you're beautiful. [Jennifer] Thank you. [Aaron] Yeah, well, I'm not lying. I've never been a fan of a lot of makeup, and because of this, you've since found contentment in just a very little. [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] Which I think is really awesome. [Jennifer] Okay so when it comes to intimacy, you guys we ditched pretty much, well, we did all lubricants because of-- [Aaron] And we've tried a lot of lubricants 'cause, [Jennifer] We've tried a lot [Aaron] 'cause, things didn't work. [Jennifer] But there were so many of 'em that had parabens in it. [Aaron] All of them. [Jennifer] Every single one, [Jennifer] We didn't even know, [Aaron] Had parabens, yeah. [Jennifer] And then other things on top of that that were just not good for you, so, we stuck to coconut oil for a really long time. [Aaron] So, tip, coconut oil's amazing, for that, specifically, and it's so good for you too. And it feels good. That was a little side note, for the adults in the room. So, I guess what we wanna get at, and I'm sure there's like a ton more things that we-- [Jennifer] I know, [Aaron] we use that are healthy, and we could probably, make a whole other list, but we essentially, wanted to show you that we've simplified, we found the handful of products that we love, and that we know what's in them, and we just, what's really awesome about this is, we it makes shopping easier, it's actually cheaper 'cause we're not buying a bunch of stuff and always experimenting, we're not always saying like "Well, let's try this new thing." We just say "Nope, we love this product. "Let's just go with it, we know it works." And so it makes, we don't think as much about those things. We know that we're minimizing the amount of chemicals we're putting on us, on our kids. And so we can have some peace of mind, and just one less thing that we have to think about, in our home. And we can put more intention into the spiritual growth of our family, into our careers, into our children, into each other, and we're not like worried about these other things. [Jennifer] Yeah, or when you say, "don't put as much "thought into them," I would say initially we do, because we do look at ingredients. We look and we do our research and figure out what we want to use, and we're in agreement when we choose things, but then, once we know what it is, it's kinda like that going back to that spaghetti sauce, once we found the one that didn't have sugar in it, we just stick to that one. [Aaron] And it's great. We love it. [Jennifer] And it makes it easy. It makes it so easy when you know what you are good with. [Aaron] Well, and grocery shopping's hard. I don't know if everyone who's listening is like, "Yeah grocery shopping's hard." Like, for us it's hard, like, so once you, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every single time, we've kinda, we slowly over time with built, our list of things that we like, "Oh, these are the things-- [Jennifer] Stick to the basics [Aaron] "that we can, "we're just gonna go to those things." And some of them are a little but more expensive. But what's awesome is we don't get as much of everything, like we get those handful of things and I was just at the grocery store the other day, and I was just thinking how awesome it is, that we have these habits on the things that we get. There's just the staples in our home, there's things that we get often. We've already looked at the ingredients. We know we enjoy them. We know that we like them. And it just makes these normal, everyday things so much more enjoyable and easy. They're less stressful like, all around like, this this this way of thinking, is just good for our everyday life. To simplify, to know the things that we like, and we create the good habit. And then that habit is there. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel, every single time we walk to the grocery store. Or every time we are shopping for something for our home, and for our kids. [Jennifer] And we also gotta know when we do choose that organic, clean, non-toxic, or non-GMO, whatever the thing is, we can't be up so obsessive about it that when we go out, or someone offers us, or brings us-- [Aaron] Right. That's a good point. [Jennifer] food during, postpartum, or whatever it is, that we're not nitpicky in a way that promotes-- [Aaron] Is this from that specific brand? [Jennifer] Yeah, let's not be like that. [Aaron] Yeah, we're not, yeah. [Jennifer] And I guess what I'm trying to say is we can't make it in idol. I think it's important to be healthy, and do the best that we can, but there's going to be times that we can't, and that's okay. We can't make living out this way, become an idol in our lives, and especially not become a strife point between husband and wife. I think this is something that you guys, [Aaron] Or friends, [Jennifer] can learn about together. Engage in together, and agree on together. [Aaron] That's a really good point, you know it's good to, in general, be making healthier habits in our life, but the point is not just to be healthier, it's too have a good habits. It's to walk rightly and have wisdom. And so is that thing, if those things, are getting in the way of your relationships with other people, they need to be put on the shelf. Not forever, but like you need to check yourself, and say "Am I letting this thing get in the way of them?" [Jennifer] Yeah, or if you really, truly have a heart to encourage your friends, or family members, or whoever to also, live a healthy lifestyle, be patient with them, because it might take someone else more time, than maybe it took you, or I don't know, I just feel like we need to have compassion for people's learning experience, [Aaron] Yeah, well and also don't let this, one last little warning, don't let this be the message you preach. It's good to encourage people and say "Hey like, you know, why don't you try this? "Why don't you try some more healthy things? "Here's an idea." It's one thing to share, healthy lifestyle, and to encourage someone, but if that if that replaces the message we should be preaching, the message of Christ, if like we have this opportunity and we're instead, we're encouraging someone to be healthier, and then what were thinking is, holiness comes from that. Rather than encouraging someone in Christ, and making the healthy lifestyle thing, that's an ancillary thing in our life that were like, "Oh and I like to live healthy, "and here's some ideas if you're interested." So the main messages is our life represents Christ and we preach him. 'Cause, we could do that sometimes. I got excited about crossfit, and every conversation I had was about crossfit, and I have to check myself and be like, "Hey, is this getting in the way "of the message I should be preaching right now? [Jennifer] That's really good Aaron, and I just, you know, just even thinking about this episode, it's little bit fun and quirky, and you know, not very Christ driven, but yet, I think the encouragement here is that we're aware of what we're putting in and on our bodies because, the scripture to tell us about, our bodies being the Holy Temple. [Aaron] Right, and we're, it's just being wise. Let's be wise with our bodies, and we can't control everything, and we shouldn't try and control everything. But what we can control, with moderation, with wisdom, and with sober mindedness, you know, thinking rightly, I think there's wisdom in that. And walking good, and not just putting junk in our bodies, and on our bodies. [Jennifer] And it has felt really good, I think you would agree with me, in having the conversations from time to time, about our lifestyle choices, about the things that we're doing, the things that were buying, and it's something that we evaluate often. You know, even when we go to the grocery store and so, I would hope that this episode, encourages couples to do that. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] So I also wanna let you guys know that if you, especially the wife, if you're interested in following me on Instagram, @unveiledwife, there's a highlight tab called toxic, free, healthy living, and you can get more information there. And also if you're curious about more things, if you want to hear more about, you know, the things that we use just message me. [Aaron] So before we close in prayer, I thought it'd be cool if we let everyone know some of the resources and people that we follow that kinda promote, some healthy living, so what are you share some of those? [Jennifer] So Dashing Dish, she's a good friend of ours and she is-- [Aaron] She's awesome. [Jennifer] really good at just like, meal planning, healthy fitness, [Aaron] Believer, loves the Lord. [Jennifer] everything you can think of, if you want some inspiration she's a great resource. Dr. Mark Hyman H-Y-M-A-N, is a really great resource, he just talks about the holistic living, like that Aaron mentioned. Carrie Vitt, I think it's a Vitt, or Veet. It's C-A-R-R-I-E V-I-T-T and on Instagram, that's where I follow her, and she talks a lot about thyroid health. So I mention that earlier-- [Aaron] Yeah, which is important to you. [Jennifer] Yeah, if you guys are interested in more inspiration for thyroid health, she's a great one to listen to, or watch, or follow. Follow, yeah. [Jennifer] I don't know what it's called. Another one is just.ingredients. She is going to really fun resource, a newer resource that-- [Aaron] Someone shared this with you, yeah. [Jennifer] someone shared with me, and she does like, Costco overhauls, she'll compare products and it's just been really great. [Aaron] A note on her, isn't she the one, that she'll say "If you can't do this, "at least do this?" [Jennifer] Yeah, I think so. [Aaron] And so she shows you like, if you can't afford this, the best product, here's one that's a little bit better than that other product. [Jennifer] I know she shows pictures too, of like, comparing products and things like that. So that's just.ingredients. And then another one I've been falling recently, is Purely Parsons. She's a fun one, just a mom, also nurse, who shares a lot of things, and her highlight reel, I mean, so much about birth, postpartum care, flu season, just home remedies, farming, like, anything that you can think of that you want to know more about, she's just a fun person to follow. And I really appreciated, how much time she takes in explaining things, and sharing resources. And then we had mentioned Sugar Busters, but if you want to know more about the toxi, I can't say that word, [Aaron] Toxicity. of sugar, Dr. Robert Lustig L-U-S-T-I-G [Aaron] Oh yeah, he's the guy [Jennifer] he's the guy. And especially on YouTube. Just research him and check out some of his-- [Aaron] He talks about what sugar does in our bodies. and this is not to be an anti sugar talk, we just when we're aware of how things interact with our body, how God created our bodies, it's pretty interesting 'cause it's not normal things to learn, so just wanna encourage you to check that out. So hey, we just want to thank everyone for being here today. As usual, we like to close in prayer. And so just Jennifer, why don't you pray for us? [Jennifer] Okay. Dear Lord, thank you for our bodies. We pray would be good stewards of our bodies and consider all that goes on them, and in them. We pray we would be willing to take the time and research the items we use on a daily basis. Using things that help us and not hurt us. Lord, we ask that you would give us wisdom as we navigate living a healthy lifestyle. Help us to make good choices, and be on the same page in marriage, so that we can enjoy the benefits of living toxic-free. Please help us to not be overwhelmed by the process of learning, but rather, help us to be humble and willing to learn so that we can choose what is healthy for us, and be advocates of healthy living for the sake of others. We pray living healthy would not become an idol in our lives and would not hinder any of our relationships. May we be people who don't just consume, but people who care about our bodies, and take care of them. In Jesus' name, amen. [Aaron] Amen. We love you all, We thank you for joining us on this episode. We hope it was enjoyable and educational. Go follow @unveiledwife and check out some of her, some more of her things. She posts about them often. And again, we love you, and we look forward to having you next week, possibly as long as we don't have the baby before then, we'll get some episodes up. See you next week. Did you enjoy Today Show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com. And let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

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How Love Covers A Multitude Of Sins

The Unbreakable Success Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 17, 2020 47:54

This devotional episode is based on 1 Peter 4:7-11. We wanted to share how Love covers a multitude of sins and why it is so important that we love with this level of eagerness.1 Peter 4:7-11 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.PrayerDear Lord,We lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy Spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends, and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we would be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done.In Jesus’ name, amen! READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, with "Marriage After God." - [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. - [Aaron] And today we're gonna talk about how love covers a multitude of sin. Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. - [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. - [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. - [Jennifer] We have been married over a decade. - [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. - [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. - [Aaron] With a desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. - [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, - Love, - And power, - [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God, - [Jennifer] Together. - [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. - [Jennifer] This is "Marriage After God." Okay Aaron, so we, we survived kind of a hard week. - [Aaron] We did survive. - I mean, - We're barely coming on - Our kids survived. - The other side of it, yes. - [Jennifer] But we're not the only ones going through this, so we thought we would just give you guys a little update of our family and hopefully encourage some of you out there who it might be hitting as well. - [Aaron] Yeah, our whole family got the flu. It was bad, but not bad. It was kind of a weird thing. - [Jennifer] Well, I'll say this, the Lord spared me and gave me the grace to be able to help everyone. 'Cause I felt-- - And you didn't even really get sick, you got some of the, like you felt sick. - Yeah you know the gut pain? - [Aaron] But you didn't have any other symptoms, which was awesome. - And the rosy cheeks. I felt like every once in a while, like I really don't feel good right now, I need to go lay down, but for the most part, I was able to be there to help everyone. Which made me really nervous, because people were, you and the kids were throwing up and I just thought, me, at this stage of the game in pregnancy, throwing up would not go over well with my body. - No and so-- - That woulda been terrible. - [Aaron] We're definitely thanking God, which we did a lot of, oddly. But not to be too graphic, but I'm pretty sure I put a rib out from how hard I was throwing up. - [Jennifer] That sucks. - [Aaron] Yeah, it still is really sore. But, what's awesome is, a couple of things, I just wanna praise you Jennifer, because I feel like you handled everyone being sick, and the inconvenience of it so well. I think I even told you, I was like, "I can tell you're walking in the spirit." Like your attitude was good, how much cleaning had to be done. - [Jennifer] It was a lot of work. - [Aaron] It's no fun when literally all the boys are throwing up and it's like, there's no clean blankets. - [Jennifer] It's all at the same time. - [Aaron] Yeah, so we, but we survived, we're coming on the other side of that. But one thing we practiced, I don't think we've ever done it before, not that we're not thankful to God. - [Jennifer] Not in this kind of circumstance, it's not at the forefront of our minds. - [Aaron] I did a post a couple weeks ago encouraging men to thank God for everything, if they get cut off in traffic, if something bad happens, even-- - [Jennifer] You didn't say if your whole family comes down with sickness, did you? - [Aaron] I know, if something good happens, I just said, say, whatever it is that happens today, thank God for it. And I tried practicing that. And so I'm literally in the fetal position in the bathtub, and I'm trying to thank God. I'm like, "Okay God, thank you. "Thank you for being sick." And I was like, why am I thanking God for this? Well, thank you for reminding me that I'm human. Like I'm fragile. Thank you for reminding me that one day I'm not gonna have this sickness. - [Jennifer] Or that we need to pray. - [Aaron] Yeah thank you for reminding, - Ask him. - Humbling me, showing me that my weakness. So there was a lot of things to thank God for for being sick, and I directly thanked God for being sick. And then we of course have thanked God for healing us and sparing our family from being even worse, 'cause it probably could have been worse. - [Jennifer] Something that really stood out to me is I didn't know you had this perspective kind of going into everyone being sick, and I wouldn't say I was there with you in those beginning moments, but you brought the family to the living room, and you said, "You know what, we're gonna pray, "and we're just gonna thank God today." And I think even one of the kids asked, "Why are we thanking God?" - [Aaron] Doesn't make any sense. - [Jennifer] But I was questioning it in my own heart too, like, okay, where's this going? But it was so beautiful to hear your prayer and you starting out saying, "God, thank you for this sickness." And it was humbling for me and for my heart to go, "oh yeah" you know? And to have that perspective before him. And then, I gotta share this other experience is just a friend of mine who, their family also got it really bad. - [Aaron] Pretty much our whole church got sick. - [Jennifer] But I met up with her for coffee when it was all past and she goes, "You know I just found, we found our whole family "just worshiping God through it." And it was so cool, kinda the same thing. And I said, "I didn't really worship him through it, "but at the end of all the laundry being done, "all the bathrooms being cleaned, "and having taken a shower, I came out singing "'Victory in Jesus' so, that was awesome." - [Aaron] But it is worship. Thanking God is worship. So whatever he gives, I think Job says it, "Should we not thank God for the good and the evil?" Like the bad things that happen? We thank God for those too, because he's God and he deserves our thanksgiving. And at the end of the day, salvation is so much greater than anything that we can go through. So, at minimum you can be like, "God, thank you so much "that one day I'm gonna be with you." That is so good. - [Jennifer] So if your family happens to get hit by whatever bug this is, - [Aaron] It's going around, yeah. - [Jennifer] Whatever's going around, we just wanted to encourage you guys to move forward with a thankful heart and to trust God and to be prayerful. And also just to be patient, because we know it's an inconvenience, we know it's hard, it takes away from your work schedule, it takes away from things on your to-do list that maybe you were hoping to do or whatever it is. We know it's hard, but if God's allowing it to happen, we can trust him and walk through it with him. - [Aaron] Yeah, so that was just a little update on our flu campaign. But we wanna encourage you. We have a new challenge. We've been doing a lot of these lately, a lot of new downloads and challenges and free things that you guys can get from us. And our new one's called the parentingprayerchallenge.com. We launched it last week and this week you get to do it. We're still encouraging parents to sign up to pray for either their daughter or their son or both. So if you haven't signed up for the Parenting Prayer Challenge, it's completely free. We're gonna send you 31 prompts every day, encouraging you to pray for different things for your child. - Over 31 days. - Over 31 days. - [Jennifer] Not 31 emails in one day. - [Aaron] Yeah, that's happened one time. Yeah, one a day, and the whole idea is that at the end of the 31 days you've built a habit of praying for your children. I'm sure all you parents love to pray for your children, but we just wanted to give this resource to encourage you to pray more, to pray deeper, to pray more consistently and give you ideas on what other things to pray for for your kids. - [Jennifer] Yeah, and I'll add this, it goes hand in hand with our books, "31 prayers for your son and for your daughter." And if you have those books, oh this'll be an incredible reminder. It's kinda like an alarm, right? Because your email comes through and then you're like, "Oh yeah." So you can get the book and go along with it that way too. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, so parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, spelled the way you would think it's spelled. And sign up for free today. All right guys, we've been doing this new thing, we've mentioned it a few times this season. We're trying to do a marriage episode, we're doing a devotional style episode, a Q&A, we're trying to give a little bit more diversity on the kinds of things we're bringing up and this episode's gonna be a devotional style. We're gonna talk about some scripture. And something that we've been learning, something that I taught on at church. And so we hope it encourages you and why don't you, Jennifer start off by reading-- - [Jennifer] Oh, I was gonna sit back and let you teach for 30 minutes, yeah. - [Aaron] Oh, I'll just do it? No. - Go for it. - [Aaron] Why don't you read the scripture that we're gonna be talking about, - Okay. - And then we'll go into it. - [Jennifer] So it's 1 Peter 4:7-11 and it says this, "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self controlled "and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly "since love covers a multitude of sins." - [Aaron] This is a great scripture in 1 Peter and we're excited to talk about it and what it means for us as believers, not only in our marriages, but just in life in general and walking in the body of Christ. And the power that is in our love for one another. And what that means and looks like. So we're gonna dig into this, these few scriptures, and kinda break it down and talk about some stuff and Jennifer you might have some questions. But we're just gonna break it down and see how this applies to us in our life. So the first thing I wanna point out is where our perspective should be. And Jennifer you read it, the very first thing it says in verse seven is "The end of all things is at hand." - [Jennifer] I feel like there should be an exclamation mark. - [Aaron] And it's almost is, it's a semicolon which says everything I'm about to say is attached to this statement. The end of all things is at hand, and so, we can easily, quickly think this is talking about Jesus coming back, or the end of days, right? But in the New Testament when it talks about the end of days or all things at hand or the end of the generation, it's mostly talking about all of the things that needed to take place, they needed to occur for the salvation story, for redemption, God's plan for redemption that he's been planning and preparing since Adam and Eve in the garden. And so, when Peter says the end of all things is at hand, he's saying that essentially, Christ has been born, he's died, and he's resurrected. - [Jennifer] Like we have what we need. - [Aaron] The thing that God has planned to take place has taken place. - Yeah. - [Aaron] Which means a lot. It means that we can now draw near to God. It means that we now can have salvation and a right relationship with God. Because without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his ascension and him sending the holy spirit there is no, like we can't be made right with God. So all of those things, the end of all things is at hand. The end of everything that God planned for salvation has been done, as Jesus says on the cross, it is finished. So it didn't necessarily mean that hey, the end of the world is tomorrow. But it's also an allusion, it alludes to Christ returning. Because now that the church age has begun, the spirit is living in man, we're made right with God, the bride of Christ is growing, we have an expectation of Christ's return. So we're in this imminent return zone. Like at any moment Christ can come back. - [Jennifer] And we are, we're called to walk a certain way. - [Aaron] Yeah. And so that's kinda, he starts off these statements with here's how you should be thinking. Realize first and foremost you have everything you need because Christ died and resurrected. He's given you his spirit, so now you can walk in his spirit and not the flesh. Like the things that we need to accomplish what he's about to tell us have already happened and are already available to us and been given to us. So that's our perspective in our relationships with our spouse, our children, our church body. That the end of all things is at hand. Like first and foremost, I have everything I need in Christ Jesus, to walk this way that we're about to talk about. And I walk this way because I look forward to Christ coming back, and I wanna not be ashamed at his return, I wanna stand boldly at his return. I wanna be excited for his return. - [Jennifer] It gives those relationships a lot of depth and purpose, how we interact with each other and how we're supposed to be in those relationships with each other. - [Aaron] Right and so, if you think about your marriage. You say, "Well, I just can't because my husband "is this, this, this." - [Jennifer] Or together you're just facing a really hard circumstance. - [Aaron] Yeah, like we went through stuff. And it's like, oh, our love for each other is stifled because of this hard circumstance or these character traits in the other person. But if our mindsets are on wow, first of all I can, because Christ did, and I should, because Christ is coming. My perspective and the way I treated you and the way we treat others would totally be transformed because we're no longer thinking of this immediate, well how did you treat me and how am I gonna treat you? - [Jennifer] Well, it's not about us. - Exactly. - Right? - [Aaron] Which is a powerful thing. And this is being taught to the believer, but the ramifications for this is in every aspect of your life. Most directly in your marriage and then also most directly in all of your relationships with other believers in the church. We need to have this perspective. - [Jennifer] Okay, so, then moving on in that verse, the next word is therefore. - [Aaron] Yeah and-- - [Jennifer] So the end of all things is at hand, - [Both] Therefore. - [Aaron] Yeah, and someone always says, "What's therefore there for?" I mean you ask yourself, "Well, why is that there?" And it's attached to the last statement. So, since the end of all things is at hand, be this way. And what does it say right there, Jennifer? - [Jennifer] Be self controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. - [Aaron] So, in relation to our relationships and in our life and in the way we interact in this world, self-controlled, how often do we say the word self-controlled in our house? - [Jennifer] Well, we're in the beginning stages of training our kids, so I feel like we say it all the time, multiple times a day. - [Aaron] 150,000 times a day. Are you being self-controlled? - Remember, self-control. - [Aaron] Be self-controlled, you're not being self-controlled. You must have self-control. Like over and over and over again. 'Cause that's, I mean our kids are learning to have control over themselves, that's the point. But self-controlled meaning, in my life, am I in control or is my flesh in control? 'Cause when my flesh is in control, we are not self-controlled. We're gonna eat as much as-- - We just give way - We want. - To whatever we want, yeah. - [Aaron] When I'm angry, I'm just gonna say what I wanna say. Oh, well, I was angry, that's why I said that. Well, that's not self-controlled. That's just blurting out what's coming to your mind because you're angry, rather than considering the other person. - [Jennifer] Which the mind is the next thing it says. - [Aaron] Yeah, sober-minded, which yes, this is talking about sobriety, not on drugs, not drunk with alcohol, but sober-minded is much more than just, we talked about this in another episode. I can't remember the name of the other episode, but it's having a right way of thinking. A clear way of thinking. So if you think about, we just talked about anger. You know Jennifer, you do something that really frustrates me and then I get so angry I just start saying whatever I want, like I'm not being sober-minded. I'm letting my wrath and my anger control my words and my actions, rather than my mind. - [Jennifer] It's like being self-controlled of your mind specifically. - Right. - [Jennifer] Like being able to have those thought processes and walk yourself through it mentally. - [Aaron] Another example of being sober-minded is fear. So, there's nothing wrong with natural fear, like you know fire's gonna burn you, so you don't touch it, but we're talking about like there's something going on in the world and it's causing us to have this anxiety and fear which causes us to make decisions and not seek out wisdom and oh, we're gonna go do this thing because XYZ over here, I don't know how that's gonna turn out, therefore we're gonna. And so that's not sober-minded either. Instead of thinking through what is reality, thinking through what is the repercussions if XYZ happens or if we don't have what we need or if, like thinking sober-minded is rather than operating in the fear and just making decisions off that, you're operating in knowledge and wisdom and you seek counsel and you're slow to act, slow to speak. So that's the idea of sober-minded. So since we know that the end of all things is at hand, meaning we have everything we need in Christ, meaning all of the things that God planned for redemption has happened, you have the holy spirit, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. - [Jennifer] So real quick, I just have to, just hearing you repeat that, it says, "Be self-controlled and sober-minded "for the sake of your prayers," that means you're praying. So it's almost like it's saying be self-controlled and sober-minded and prayerful. Like be a person of prayer. - [Aaron] Right, and we just talked about being sick. If our minds were in this position of thankfulness and we were just wallowing in the suffering, 'cause throwing up's not fun, not feeling good is not fun, and we could just sit there and be like woe is us. And we're not even being sober-minded in that. But instead we're like, "Thank you Lord." It actually helped us elevate above our current circumstances to be able to see it from a heavenly position. Like, okay, well, just because this thing is happening, doesn't mean I stop being a Christian. Doesn't mean I can now act XYZ, be this way, say these things. No, I actually even in this, can walk this out. Because we know all things have been fulfilled in Christ, and his return is imminent, even in my sickness I get to say, "Well if Christ was to come right now, "I wanna be like him, wanna look like him." This is how we must live as people who claim the name of Jesus. We can't claim the name, but not walk it out. - [Jennifer] Mm-hmm, okay so before you move on, I feel like maybe some of our listeners would have the same question, and that is, it says "for the sake of your prayers" so does that mean your prayers are in trouble if you're not being self-controlled or you're not being sober-minded? What does that mean? - [Aaron] Yeah, I mean, in 1 Peter I think we get another picture of that when it talks about husbands walking with their wives in an understanding way, it says for the sake of your prayers. So, there is a way that the believer can walk that would hinder our prayers. And it could be put this way, someone told me once, "God's not gonna tell you "to do a new thing until you've done the old thing." Like the thing he's asked you to do already. And so it's almost like this, we're looking for a new word from the Lord, we're looking for guidance and wisdom. And he's like, well, but you're not even loving your wife right now. - Mm-hmm, I have a really good example of this when it comes to kids. Olive, just I think it was yesterday, she came up to me and she was like, "Mom, I don't have anything to do." And so I gave her something to do, it was a small task. And she turned around really quickly and said, "I don't wanna do that." - [Aaron] What else can I do? - [Jennifer] What else can I do? And I looked at her, I said, "Sweetheart, "can you go do what Mommy asked you to do?" - [Aaron] Right. Yeah, and there's even a scripture that says, "Go back and do the first things "that you've been told to do." Like you've left your first love, we learned in Revelations. There's this idea of like, God's already given us some commands, given us some things to do as believers. In his power, to do it, and we wanna skip over those things and we're gonna talk about this. We wanna skip over those things to get to the other things. We're like, "Well, I don't wanna do that thing." Loving that person's difficult. Or, praying for that person, ehh, let's pray for this big thing over here. - [Jennifer] Or how about, "I'll be self-controlled, "but I don't care about being sober-minded." - Exactly yeah. - You know what I mean? - [Aaron] Which doesn't make any sense because, - [Jennifer] I know. - [Aaron] If you're not sober, like let's talk about being drunk, you're not in self-control either. Those things go hand in hand. So yes, the Bible teaches that our prayers can be hindered. I don't know exactly what that means, does that mean that God doesn't hear 'em at all? Or is it that I am hindered? Like I'm not gonna want to pray more. I don't have a desire to, I'm frustrated. No, Lord, I don't want to. It's like when our, like you said our kids, when they have an attitude, Wyatt crosses his arms, puts his head down, it's like he doesn't wanna look at us. - [Jennifer] Or like that example you gave of us being sick, if we weren't sober-minded and self-controlled, we wouldn't have prayed in thankfulness, so yeah, hindered in a way that if we're not walking that way and we're not being that way then we won't be praying at all. - Yeah so, - We won't be a people of prayer. - Regardless of how it plays out, I don't want either of those things. I wanna be able to come to God boldly and I also want God to receive me and hear my prayers. The Bible tells us that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, it's in James. And I want my prayers heard. I want them to avail much. And when I pray for my family, when I pray for health, when I pray for opportunities, when I pray for other, my family members, when I pray for the lost, I want those prayers to be heard and to have power with God. So, God says, "Well be sober-minded and self-controlled "so that your prayers won't be hindered." Then I should just do that. - [Jennifer] Do it. - [Aaron] It's not easy all the time, but that's what we get to do, because the end of all things is at hand, so I should be able to do it. Okay, so let's move on to this next part of this verse. - [Jennifer] Well the next verse. - [Aaron] Yeah, the next verse, there ya go. Verse eight starts off, it says, "Above all." Okay, and I just wanted to highlight this idea, so if you're in your Bible, which that'd be awesome if you were, you should be. It says, "Above all," comma, "keep loving one another earnestly." And I just wrote down some ideas of what's the all? Like above all, above how generous you might be financially, like, "I've given so much." Above being right, like "Well I know "that this scripture means this." Above memorizing every scripture, above being debt free, above your health, above your safety, above all. Above everything that you see as good, 'cause these things are good, for the most part, don't neglect to do this thing. So, above all, do this thing, right? - [Jennifer] Do you think it's easy for us in our flesh to justify like, "Well, I don't have to love that person, "and we don't even get along, but I'm doing this "over here, so, I'm good with God because this over here." Do you hear what I'm saying? - [Aaron] Yeah, we do this all the time, and there's a scripture that I'll bring up that shows this hypocrisy. Like, "Well no, that person doesn't need to be in my life, "because of XY and Z, but, you know what? "But I read every day, I'm in the word every day." "Oh but I pray, I'll pray for that person. "I don't have to love 'em, but I'll pray for 'em." I think something that I've heard a lot, and it doesn't make any sense, but we say this, "Oh, I love him, I just don't like him." Almost as if love is this general like, yeah we're in the same city, but I'm never gonna talk to him, I'm not gonna be kind to him, I'm not gonna be cordial, I'm not gonna even, I don't wanna go out of my way for them. I'm not gonna give to them, I'm not gonna help them, I'm not gonna. So what love is that? - [Jennifer] If you're doing that, I was gonna say, what's your definition of love? - [Aaron] And that's my point is we, okay, I'll just do this. So the point of everything I said above all, or not that we shouldn't do those other things, 'cause I never want someone to be like, "Well, all we have to do is love others, "and we don't have to be generous, "and we don't have to read our word and memorize scripture." These things that are actually really good for us. "And my health and my, all these things don't matter, "as long as I just love." No. All of those things matter, but we don't neglect this one thing, and often it's the one thing we neglect. We work on all those other things, 'cause we have, those are easier, those are personal. We can control 'em. We can't control other people and that's why it's so hard. And I think of this in Matthew 23:23 Jesus says this, he says, "Woe to you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, "for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, "and have neglected the weightier matters of the law." And then get what he says, "Justice, mercy and faithfulness. "These you ought to have done "without neglecting the others." - [Jennifer] Like do it all. - [Aaron] He's like, "Yeah, you spent time, "you outwardly show all these good things that you do, "yet you've neglected justice, like you don't care "about those in your midst who need justice "and you've been unjust." Or showing mercy and faithfulness. You haven't remained faithful to your spouses, you haven't remained faithful to your people, you haven't remained faithful to, and he's saying these things you should have done without neglecting those other things that you do. And so that was the point I was getting at is like yeah, all those other things are good, but we cannot throw out loving one another earnestly. - [Jennifer] So you used the word earnestly, why don't you define that, just for our listeners really quick? - [Aaron] Okay, 'cause it's a pretty powerful word and it's how he wants us to love each other. It's not like, "Hey, I love you, yeah I'll see you later. "Oh yeah, we're good buddies." It's something deeper than that. He says, "Love one another earnestly." And the definition of earnestly means with sincere and intense conviction. It's so powerful. It's not just a, in passing a word you just say about someone, it's a life lived out way of loving. It's a my actions and the way I think reflect the deepness of my conviction and belief about how I love you. And so a perfect example is in marriage. I love you, and it's not just a word. I show you by how I take care of you. And how I show up every day and how I sit and talk with you. And how I ask for forgiveness, and I'm patient, and all these things are the actions of my love for you. - [Jennifer] Yeah, I think that's really important to point out, because I think in marriage specifically, you can text each other back and forth, I love you, or say it at the end of a phone call, conversation. Saying it in passing or before you leave to go to work. But are your actions proving what those words actually mean? So you've convinced yourself in your mind, yeah, of course I love my husband, of course I love my wife. And I tell them every day. - [Aaron] How do they know? - [Jennifer] But, are your actions supporting your words? - [Aaron] Yeah, and so let's break down this definition a little bit, it says with a sincere and intense conviction, that's the earnestness. Sincere means free from pretense or deceit. Proceeding from genuine feelings. So I don't just say it, it's not just a word that I use so that I look good with my other Christian friends and brothers and sisters. - Or that you know you should use because you're married. - [Aaron] Yeah, like, "Oh yeah, of course I love so-and-so." But yet, you don't truly believe it in your heart. You struggle with believing, like well, do I love him? I mean, I could move on. I'm not going to, 'cause I don't wanna look bad. That's not love, it's a free from pretense or deceit. So there's nothing, you're not saying it to receive anything like, "Oh good, so good that you love that person." And you're not saying it out of, it's not a lie. When you say you love someone it's truthful. It's a genuine, genuineness, a real thing from with inside of you. And then that second part, intense conviction. And I smashed two definitions together, 'cause the word intense and conviction I put them together and it's a highly concentrated and firmly held belief in what you are doing, right? So, it's not going away. My love for my brothers and sisters in Christ, my love for others in the world, my love for my wife, it's real and it's going to drive my actions and my decisions and my attitudes and it's gonna cause me to repent and it's gonna cause me to change and grow because that conviction is solid. It's there, and when I'm challenged in that conviction, when the listener is challenged in that conviction of love, they get to ask themselves, "Well do I truly love so-and-so?" And then they get to remember, well, the end of all things is at hand, I must love so-and-so, regardless. Without pretense, it needs to be truthful and powerful. That's what that word earnestly means. - [Jennifer] I love that definition of intense conviction that you shared, and it makes me think how intentional this type of love truly is, because-- - [Aaron] That's a good word, intentional. - [Jennifer] Yeah, it's intentional because you're motivated by your, like it said, "firmly held belief in what you are doing" so everything that I do in our home, everything I do with our kids, everything I do with you, comes out and is an overflow of this belief that I have that I truly love you and that genuine feeling that you talked about earlier. And that's such a different situation when you compare it to just saying the words I love you or just going about your day without any motivations as to why you're doing those things, you know? It makes me think of the type of motivational speaking you hear when it comes to entrepreneurship, where it's like, "You gotta know your why." You gotta know your why. - Yeah, what's your why? - [Jennifer] What's your why? So it makes me go there when I think about in marriage, why are you doing all the little things that you do throughout your day? It's because you love that person. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, and it's not superficial, and it's not just a word, but it's an actual held belief. Like "No, I love my wife. "I love John over there." Like truly love them, not just, "We're Christians "and we love each other." - Right. And if we truly consider this you guys, then when we get into a hard spot in marriage, when we get into conflict or something happens unexpectedly that you don't desire, you can continue on, because there's this hope knowing that, "Well no, I love them. "You know, I know this is hard, but God's given me "a love for them." - [Aaron] Yeah. What I think is really cool, I just thought about this, often we think about this idea of growing in love, which we do, we change and our level of love deepens. - It deepens, yeah. - [Aaron] But it's actually, the way this is stated, it's actually a starting point. We start at this basis of love for one another. Not build into it. It starts at this place and I thought that was really cool. I just was, - I like that. - [Aaron] I was just thinking it's like it's not, yeah, it does grow over time, but it's also, like you said, even in those hard times, you default to that position of love. Not default to, well we're not in love because, or we're building in love and the default position is no love. That's not actually, I mean marriage starts, usually, for the most part, with a deep conviction of love. And so the default position is love. And I didn't have the scripture originally here, but I thought about this and I think it goes perfectly well. What this level of love is supposed to look like, it's supposed to be remarkable. It's not supposed to look like the love of the world. Like the world loves itself. There's people that they love their own and they do a good job of that, but the love that Christians are supposed to have for one another is supposed to be remarkable, miraculous. And Jesus puts it this way in John 13:34. "A new commandment I give to you, "that you love one another. "Just as I have loved you, "you also are to love one another. "By this all people will know that you are my disciples "if you have love for one another." So it's not like, if we do these great things, or if we have this great band, or if we preach this great message, it says if you love one another the way I loved you, the whole world will know, oh that's a disciple of Christ. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] That's remarkable. So I get, the question I have in your marriage, in your relationships at church, would the world look at how you love them as remarkable? Like that's a remarkable love. How could he love like that? How could she love like that after so much has happened to her, after this or that? It's a remarkable love and it can only be done with Jesus Christ. That's what he says, "If you love as I have loved you." Which is an amazing, amazing kind of love. It's literally remarkable. And I have some notes here and this is, this is exactly why churches fall apart. This is why friendships dissolve, this is why marriages end. When we let the intensity of our conviction to love each other soften. We got to that point a few years into our marriage. Our conviction to love one another, because of the things we were going through, got weakened. - [Jennifer] I was gonna say, I don't feel like softens is just the right word because it sounds mushy-gushy, but I mean we're talking about the dissolving of that belief and conviction. - [Aaron] Yeah. And it's not that those things that were happening had some external power to weaken our love for each other superficially, - We chose that. - We let our love, yeah we chose it, that's a good word. And so, I just wanna ask you, as we get into this, have you let your love, the earnestness of your love for your spouse, for other believers, weaken? For whatever reason, because someone hurt you, because someone said something harmful about you, because someone didn't pay you back? - [Jennifer] The relationship's messy or hard or challenging and you just wanna, - Walk away. - Walk away. - It'd be easier. - Yeah. - [Aaron] There's been so many times I've thought to myself, it would just be easier to move. - [Jennifer] Well, we thought that in the beginning of our marriage when we were facing hardship and we got to the point at the end of three and a half years where we were, so incredibly close to walking away convinced in our selfish flesh that it would be better for each other if we just separated. - [Aaron] Move on. - [Jennifer] And instead, God got ahold of our hearts in a remarkable way and, I mean he brought the message to you first and then to me, but it's a choice. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] And are we gonna let our circumstances dictate that choice or are we gonna choose it in our hearts and move past the circumstances? Or even if we have to deal with the circumstances for the rest of our life, and that was the commitment we had to choose. There came this pivotal moment where, people who've read our books, they know what I'm talking about, but we're standing in church, Aaron, and you're sharing this heart that God has given you for our marriage to continue on regardless if anything changed. That is remarkable. And that saved us, that saved our marriage. - [Aaron] And here's the difference in the types of love. The love that the world has for itself, and the love that we are to have for our brothers and sisters and our spouse. The love that Christ gave to us was unconditional. The love that we try and walk in is often transactional. You do this, I'll do this. You give me this, I'll give you that. Oh you didn't do the thing, or you weren't the certain way? Then I'm not going to. Jesus it says, "Yet while we were still sinners died for us." So even when we were weakest, when we couldn't save ourselves, Christ died. Christ gave himself up for his bride. And this is the message that Christ gave me that day, reminding me, he's like, "Hey are you gonna love "your wife unconditionally, or transactionally? "Are you gonna love her regardless if she ever gives you "what you think you deserve, what you ought to have? "Or are you gonna love her like I did "when you could do nothing for me, "and I still died for you?" - [Jennifer] John 13 comes back to my mind like you said. Jesus says, "Love as I loved you." - [Aaron] And you know what this sincerity and intensity, this earnestness sounds very familiar to how Jesus said we would worship God. He says this to the woman at the well, in John 4:24, he says, "God is spirit "and those who worship him must worship "in spirit and truth." Spirit and truth. And this isn't talking about worshiping each other. But it's how we love each other, in spirit and in truth. - [Jennifer] It reminds me of the definition going back earlier to those genuine feelings. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, it's not from pretense or deceit. It's no, I genuinely love you. I may not know how to do it well, but I'm going to default to love, I'm going to default to giving you the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to love you regardless if you give me what I deserve. And then in Matthew 22 verse 37-48 says this, "And he said to him, 'You shall love the lord your God "'with all your heart and with all your soul "'and with all your mind. "'This is there greatest and first commandment. "'And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor "'as yourself, on these two commandments "'depend all the law and the prophets.'" - [Jennifer] I remember we read this verse to our kids and they got really confused, because we've taught them the 10 Commandments. - Yeah. - And they were like, "No no no, that's not the." - [Aaron] No, you have to honor your mom and dad. Like, yes. And what I explained to 'em is, and this is what Jesus says, he says, "Anyone who does these won't break any of the laws." Because when you love your neighbor, you're not gonna steal from them. When you love your neighbor, you're not gonna lie to them. When you love your neighbor, you're not gonna covet their things. You're gonna say praise God that you've given them those things, God. Praise God. They're gonna use 'em for you, I hope. We don't covet. When we love God we don't dishonor our parents. When you love your parents you're not gonna dishonor them. And so, that's the kind of love that we get to have for one another. And it's actually, it's one of the greatest commandments, to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love each other as ourselves. To love each other with that intensity. Okay, so we're getting up to the last part of this section of scripture and it's the most powerful one. It's actually the title of this episode. And it's the reason why Peter is commanding us to love each other in the first place. It's the reason why he's saying to do these things, it's the reason why he gave us the mindset of hey, the end of all things is at hand, be this way, love this way. So before I move on to this next portion of this scripture, I'm gonna read the whole scripture again. It's 1 Peter 4:7-11. "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded "for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, "since love covers a multitude of sins." Okay, so here's the-- - You slowed down there at the end Aaron, - I know it's, - [Jennifer] Is that important? - [Aaron] Well, it's the most powerful section of this scripture, I believe. And what's amazing about this is it's the opportunity that believers have to love like Christ. What did Christ's love do? - [Jennifer] Saved us. - [Aaron] It covered us. We've just been teaching the kids through Adam and Eve, the story of Adam and Eve and how they were to, God told that surely on the day that you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will die. And guess what. - [Jennifer] Well the kids asked the question, - They're like, - But they didn't die! - [Aaron] Yeah, they didn't die. Here's what's amazing is something died instead. They covered themselves with fig leaves, God covered them in skins. So an animal had to die. So even then, way back in the beginning, in the very first people, God showed his redemption plan. That he was gonna substitute the death that we deserve for another. And so it was a picture right then and there of what Christ was gonna do. And this is what the believer gets to do. This is the remarkable love that the world's gonna see and be like, whoa, those people are God's, Christ's disciples, because Christ died for them, and look how they love each other. - [Jennifer] They wouldn't be able to do it without him. - [Aaron] Yeah, and so love covers a multitude of sins. So here's a question, I taught this at church and I asked this question, and it was hard for me to get it out without crying. But I said, "Who doesn't want their sins covered?" I said, "Raise your hand." How many hands do you think went up? None. So I ask the listener, do you want your sins covered? Do you thank God that his son Jesus and the blood that he shed covers your sins completely? That you are made white as snow? That you are clean before God? Okay, so if we can answer that question with "Yes, praise God," then our love should do the same. Our love has that same power. I personally love the fact that God no longer sees my sin. I personally love that who I was before Christ is now dead and buried. But, what we often do is we highlight other people's sins. And what it does is it raises us up and puts them down. Oh so-and-so, I can't believe they would treat me that way. You can't believe it? I mean how else do we deserve to be treated, really? We deserve hell. That's what the human state deserves. - [Jennifer] There's other times in marriage that we hold their sin against them. - [Aaron] Absolutely, yeah. - [Jennifer] So, whether it's for ammunition later, or maybe you're not intentionally thinking that, but all the sudden it comes up again, and you haven't covered their sin in love. You've been hanging on to it out of bitterness and anger, and you're gonna spew it out back in their face to make them feel a certain way. - [Aaron] Or waiting for them to trip up and it makes you feel better, because as long as their sin is greater than your sin then you're not a sinner. That's like the logic we use. I know that we struggled with this. You believed because I struggled with certain things you didn't even wanna see your own sin. Things that you were dealing with, your own pride, your own bitterness, your own angers, 'cause I was the sinner in the relationship. I was the one that needed to repent, I was the one that needed to change. And I did, I mean it's not like I didn't. But we do that, we look, we long for the sin in others. Oh, since they're that way, I can be this way. Rather than wanting to cover those sins. Rather than wanting to overlook them and remind those people of who they are in Christ, without pretense, without this idea of like, I'm gonna point this out, because I wanna hurt them. Or I wanna feel better. - [Jennifer] I think just kind of glancing back over those first few years of marriage, something else that I've struggled with is holding on to the sins that you struggled with even after saying I forgive you or trying to make up and resolve things. Because I had this belief about you that you were gonna fail me. So I was building a case, right? - [Aaron] You were waiting for me to, yeah. - [Jennifer] The next time you messed up, I go, "See, this is the type of person that you are." And I held up a mirror to show you your sin instead of pointing you to God and saying, "But he's redeemed you." You know what I mean? I didn't give you-- - Why you acting like this? God's redeemed you. - I didn't give you the positive message, because I truly cared about restoration at that point I was looking for a case in order to get out. To leave, to say, "You're this way, and I can't handle it." - [Aaron] Yeah. And that leads me to this question, do we see our spouse's sins against us as special or less deserving of forgiveness and grace? Do we see the sins and shortcomings of others towards us as less deserving, as special? Yeah, yeah, I've done things, I get it, God forgives me, but what they've done? No, what they've done is not forgivable. What they've done is, you can't tell me to love that person. Well, you know what, I don't. I'm not telling you anything. God says it, okay? When you give that word picture, 'cause I think it perfectly sums up this idea of when we love the way Christ loves, what it does. - [Jennifer] Well, I was just thinking about this idea of covering a multitude of sins by our love, the word picture that I got in my mind to help me understand that is a blanket and it's function. When you think about a blanket and being wrapped up and curled up on the couch with it, it provides warmth and comfort and padding and it consumes you. - It protects you. - [Jennifer] It protects you, it's just all around you and it was a really beautiful picture for me to understand how God covers us. Kinda like even as you said, going back to Adam and Eve, how he covered them, ya know? - [Aaron] And then the picture I got, and the Bible even uses it, says that our sins are made white as snow. And we live in a place that snows. And you see all the landscape, there's all the colors, the grass, the concrete, the trees, the houses. - [Jennifer] Pretty soon everything starts to fade away. - [Aaron] It snows and guess what. Everything's the same color. - Everything's white. - Everything's white. And beautiful and it could be on the dirtiest, muddiest area, and it's a beautiful white field. And that's what Christ's blood does is it covers us. And out of our thankfulness for that, we get to love others the same way. And this isn't an overlooking of sin, this isn't a pretending sin hasn't happened. And I'll talk about that in a second. But it's the way we love that no one, no one's sin is special that doesn't deserve our forgiveness, because what we've done is so worthy of punishment. The littlest sin we've done is detrimental to our own nature. And Christ has forgiven that in us. And I was reading in Leviticus this morning, and it was talking about all of the sacrifices and all the atonements and the priest is supposed to do this and all, it was so weird, I'm reading, I was like, "I wanna watch a video on this." So I watched the Bible Project's video on atonement. - [Jennifer] Oh they're good. - [Aaron] Yeah, it was good. And I almost started crying in Starbucks, 'cause I go to Starbucks after the gym, watching it because it was explaining how the atonement was a replacement and it was talking about the two types of evil, it was the sin against your brother or God. And it washes that away. But the other thing is the broken relationship aspect. Let's say you stole something, you paid it back, right? But there's also now distrust and fear that's in the relationship. And so that has to be atoned for as well. And so there's this picture of the priest sprinkling blood over the temple and the Tent of Meeting, right? And it showed this picture of, there was all this black looking weeds on the ground, and every time the blood hit the ground it turned to normal. And it said the blood also brought us into a safe relationship and a love relationship. And that's what this love does when it's covering. It's not just pretending things didn't happen, it's actually mending relationships so that we can walk with people not in fear, not in angst or anxiety, but we can actually walk with people in freedom and in love and in purity. That's what this does. And I wanted to share that 'cause it literally almost made me cry when I was thinking what God's done for me, and how he's, he didn't just fix the offense, he also fixed the relationship that was broken because of the offense. - [Jennifer] It's remarkable. - [Aaron] Yeah. So, I just wanna quickly, we talked through a lot of the scriptures, but I wanted to quickly say, this isn't to say we ignore sin, because that actually is unloving. Ignoring someone's sin is unloving. The loving thing to do is to address the sin, not out of our own vindication, trying to get something paid back to us, but out of, like you said, pointing them back to the truth of what God said about them. Or if they're not a believer, to repentance and salvation. So the loving way to, we deal with sin lovingly. And we come to people in truth and our position is of we wanna see the best for you. We want you to be in a right relationship with us. As Matthew 18 says, it's like you've won your brother. That's what you go to them for is for the purpose of winning your brother, not for winning the argument or winning the, oh see, all I want is an apology and we'll be good. No, you're going with the intention of hey, this is broken right now. We need to fix this. Love covering a multitude of sins isn't to say that the sins just disappear. It's to say that we deal with them the biblical way, the loving way for the purpose of reconciliation, 'cause that is the ministry we've been given is reconciliation. - [Jennifer] And we do this for people because we desire the same reciprocation, right? Of love? - I want it. - [Jennifer] I want people to overlook and cover the sins that I've committed, even the slightest or smallest, there's no degree. It doesn't matter. If I'm imperfect, I want someone to love me still. And I think that's important to remember, especially in marriage. - [Aaron] So I hope that bit of scripture encourages you in your walk. As usual we pray before signing off, so we're gonna pray. Dear lord, we lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things, love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we'd be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done. In Jesus name, amen. Hey thanks for joining us for this episode. We pray it blessed you, of course. And don't forget to join the Parenting Prayer Challenge. That's parentingprayerchallenge.com It's completely free and we pray it blesses you. See you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

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10: Building Customer Success and Support For Your SaaS

The SaaS Venture

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2019 48:53

Helpful links from the episode: Zendesk Helpscout Olark Zapier GatherUp app on Zapier GatherUp User Guide MozCon FULL SHOW NOTES[intro music]00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 10: Building Customer Success and Support for your SaaS.00:16 INTRO: Welcome to The Saas Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of Gather Up and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.[music]00:44 Aaron: Welcome to The SaaS Venture podcast; I'm Aaron.00:47 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.00:49 Aaron: And we have hit double digits, my friend.00:52 Darren: This is it. We've finally made it, big time.00:55 Aaron: Let's just shut it down.[chuckle]00:58 Darren: 10 episodes; this is our final episode.01:01 Aaron: But somebody that's just listening thought we maybe meant 10 years, but no, we just mean 10 episodes, but that feels good for five months into doing this.01:12 Darren: Yeah, we're gaining some traction. I think we're building a following, and I'm having a great time; it's been good.01:18 Aaron: Absolutely; I agree. So, hey, what's been going on with you since we last talked on the last episode? 01:26 Darren: What's been going on? Let's see... Well, I have a fun story to tell. Just the other day I was waiting for Violet and Jill to arrive at the gym, at the gym that I work out, and so that's also where Violet does her jiu jitsu class. So I'm on the treadmill and I'm running, just waiting for them to show up. And I never ride the treadmill, it's just that it was right by the door so I could watch. So I pressed the Stop button on the treadmill when they pull up and I go to get off. But because I don't ride the treadmill I didn't realize that it has, like, a slow down process. [chuckle] So I turn around to get off the treadmill, I realize it's still going as fast as it was when I was basically running full steam, and I was, like, full... Like arms, legs in the air, and landed hard on my back. [chuckle] And there were like three people come running over to see if I'm okay; I'm totally fine. I go to the car, and Jill is, like, in tears; she can't even speak because she saw the whole thing happening.[laughter]02:27 Aaron: Oh, perfect.02:28 Darren: And she's laughing non-stop. Thankfully I didn't really hurt myself, I just kinda got like a rug burn-type injury on my elbow, but I wish I could get the security camera video for it 'cause I would love to see it.02:44 Aaron: It would likely be a YouTube sensation, or make it into one of those compilations that you see on Facebook of exercise fails.02:52 Darren: I think it was worthy of that, for sure, yeah.02:55 Aaron: Well, I'm glad that your elbow is the only injury because, man, I've seen people... It looks like they... You can get knocked out if you fall on your head.03:05 Darren: I think so, yeah. So I was fine, just my biggest injury was my pride. I felt like a bit of an idiot at the gym there. But yeah. [chuckle]03:13 Aaron: Now, have you ever seen people who will walk on the treadmill, and it's set up where they can work... They're on a laptop while they're walking? 03:20 Darren: Yes, I have seen that before, and in fact, one of my employees, a developer that used to work with us, he had a setup like that in his office. And he would walk something like 15,000 steps a day. [chuckle] He was just, like, walk all day long while he was on his laptop.03:34 Aaron: Oh my gosh, I don't think I could pull that off. I would probably make it five or ten minutes; my focus would go elsewhere, and I would be like you. And then even at a walking speed I would end up down on the ground somehow.03:46 Darren: Yeah. You gotta really train and get used to that whole thing about working while walking. It would just be awkward, really, trying to type, I think.03:54 Aaron: Yep.03:54 Darren: Yeah.03:55 Aaron: Well, we gotta keep you upright, so let's leave the treadmill alone for a while.04:00 Darren: So we launched our new service, that Google My Business service that we were talking about last episode, and so I'm pumped about that. We were a little bit... We sent the email out to our mailing list on July 3rd, where I think most people were like, "Yeah, I'm gonna be gone", 'cause most of our customer base is in the US, and so maybe it wasn't the best time for a promotional email, so we're going to circle back on that in a couple of weeks. And we're trying to just do more promotion and build up the service; I'm excited about that. I'm also very excited about how our new account system is coming together, so with the Stripe integration and rebuilding all of our order forms, and just that whole user flow of signing up for our software or our services. So all that's being rebuilt in Stripe; that's awesome. And then of course, getting ready for MozCon which is next week. Can't wait to see you in person there. I should get my presentation finalized and all done here.04:56 Aaron: Yeah. By the time this episode airs we'll both be in Seattle and at MozCon; you speaking, GatherUp's there as a sponsor, but we'll get some time to hang out in person, and we're gonna try to record episode 11, in-person as well while we're in Seattle.05:16 Darren: Yeah, I can't wait; it's gonna be fun. We have to figure out where we're gonna do that recording.05:20 Aaron: It's gonna be a very top-secret location so that we don't, all of our fans aren't trying to break down the door to talk to us.[chuckle]05:27 Darren: Maybe we should at least have a window where the fans can watch.[chuckle]05:30 Aaron: Totally. Like some morning news show where they're just, like, screaming and holding signs.[chuckle]05:38 Darren: Yeah, totally.05:38 Aaron: We could pay somebody to do that; that would be the only way that would happen.05:42 Darren: I think, yeah, we would have to pay, definitely. How about you? What's up with you? 05:46 Aaron: On my side, I'm catching up after enjoying an awesome Fourth of July week where I was out of the office the entire week, just probably spent an hour to two hours each day on email and keeping some things moving, but it was a lot of time off, a lot of time with the kids. Time on the lake, which was awesome. But it always makes... The week you get back and all the things you kind of put off or said, "Schedule the call next week", now I'm basically living with the headset on the last few days, but all good.06:21 Darren: I was gonna say, it's like you get punished for taking that time off.06:24 Aaron: It is. It's double the work before you leave, and double the work when you get back, and that's right. You gotta make it count when you're gonna be out. It's like if you're gonna take all that punishment, then make sure you enjoy it.06:34 Darren: Totally.06:36 Aaron: Amazingly, we've talked a lot about my need and the work; we've had a specific episode on sales, but we have hired two outbound sales positions that start for us in the next couple of weeks.06:50 Darren: Amazing.06:50 Aaron: Yes.06:50 Darren: Yeah, I'm very curious to hear how this goes. Outbound sales, it's a whole new world.06:55 Aaron: Yes. So I'm incredibly excited; we got two great people. Both from referrals of one internal team referral and one from outside and few different things had to happen to get everything to align, but they're starting at the same time. So, a lot of my week... This week when I have spare moments is on materials and trying to get as much together for them to hit the ground running. So, plenty of work to do along those lines. And then related to the product, a really big piece that we've been working on for months that this is probably the first time we've had a feature big enough where we've built an Alpha of it first, usually it's a Dev Server in a Beta and pretty workable solution once we get going, but we've created an insights report that we have tied in with IBM's Watson to do natural language processing.07:53 Darren: Yep, that's nice.07:53 Aaron: So, you'll be able to... Yeah, understand sentiment of reviews... 'cause you might have a four-star review, where the customer talks about three really great things about the business, but then maybe has two things that weren't as good, and we wanna start to separate those kind of things out for you, instead of just attaching all of that content to a four-star review. We want you to understand what are the impact of, what are things that go on in a five-star experience compared to a two-star experience, so you can try to close that gap as a business and understand what those differentiators are. And then trends, what's happening on a week or a month or a quarterly basis that's increasing or decreasing, good or bad within how customers are talking about your business. So really big feature, a lot of work behind the scenes. We will be showing it off at MozCon and... Yeah, excited about that. And we're kind of targeting for the end of the month to get into an Open Beta with people.08:51 Darren: Great. Well, I'd like to get in on that Open Beta, check it out.08:55 Aaron: Yeah. No, I'll have a lot of fun giving you a demo with it. So, that will be fine.09:01 Darren: Yeah, I know it's Watson, is that a paid API you have to tap into? 09:06 Aaron: Yep, yep. Paid API, so we just have to tie into it, which that part obviously is already done. And now, you just get into the training part. We evaluated probably four or five different natural language processing APIs and theirs, I guess, kinda out of the box so to start with. We had two things going for: One, one of our engineers was already familiar with it, had used it in another capacity. And two, when we did some sample test results between these four or five solutions, we felt like it had just the most accuracy out of the box in the way that we were looking for. And no matter what... I mean, it's all about training, right? So you have to train the machine and everything else. But we felt like it was just a better starting point with it.09:56 Darren: Really cool. Yeah, awesome.09:58 Aaron: Yeah. And with that, new features are all about trying to make things better for your customers, the topic that you brought up I think is a fantastic one to address even deeper as taking a look at customer support, customer success teams, what do you need to do to build the right criteria, pieces, elements, processes, team, everything else to support your customers and to lead your customers to success.10:31 Darren: So I brought this topic up because I think we do a pretty decent job of it at Whitespark. If you look at our reviews, a lot of people talk about the excellent support that they get at Whitespark. We have good processes in place, we have a good ticketing software and live chat software that we get through Zendesk. But I wanted to bring this topic up 'cause this is gonna be an episode where it's like Aaron teaches me all of the awesome things. [chuckle] 'Cause I think that you've thought really deeply about this at GatherUp and you've really taken things to a next level and so, I wanna learn from you and I'm gonna be the question asker I think, and you can help me see some of the great ways that you guys have really taken your support to the next level.11:15 Aaron: Oh, I'm on the hot seat.11:16 Darren: Yeah, a little bit. Not really. I think that this will flow more naturally than a straight Q&A. But honestly, I really feel like you've got a lot to share here and that's why I want to bring it up.11:27 Aaron: Yeah, and truth be told, it's an area where we... It was probably almost two years ago now, where we realized we wanted to put a lot of focus into it. To your point with Whitespark and how you guys handle it and customers talk about that, I really think as a bootstrapped SaaS company, like "You have to win there," right? 11:49 Darren: Yeah, for sure.11:49 Aaron: You're not gonna win feature battles, you're not gonna have the 100 person sales teams, all these things that larger VC companies that can scale faster can have. You have to win with service and support as a bootstrapped SaaS company. We looked at and realize we need that to be a differentiator because some of these other things. We can build smarter features/cooler features, but they're gonna be able to build 50 to every five that we build.12:19 Darren: Yeah, exactly.12:21 Aaron: So, in looking at that it's like, "Yeah, you need that as a differentiator." And we realized that a long time ago. And to me, the biggest arc in this that yeah I'd love to talk about what we've done in questions you have but just this arc, right? It was a couple of years ago and funny enough, we were actually in Seattle. I think we were... I can't remember if we were at one of the... When they used to have MozCon Local. I think maybe it was at that, but we stayed a day or two later and we actually used Moz's offices to have an exec team meeting and we white-boarded out this timeline of what the arc looked like between customer support, which is completely reactive and customer success, which is completely proactive.13:08 Darren: Right.13:08 Aaron: And we tried to mark along those lines, like what are steps that we can take to continue to add more proactive and prescriptive things to what we provided and to make our team... We realized we needed more focus on customer success, as well as support but we really needed to make that entire piece the focus of GatherUp.13:31 Darren: Yeah, that's the interesting thing and I think this is where WhiteSpark can certainly improve and that's that proactive approach. Moving from Customer Support, which is when people are asking new questions to customer success, which is you're proactively reaching out to them and onboarding them, helping them out with things, noticing when they're not active in the tool. All those kinds of things that's where I'm really excited about, the potential for support and customer success. And I wanna hear more about what are some of the things you guys are doing like what... Do you actually divide them up into two teams at GatherUp? Do you have people that answer incoming questions and people that are trying to be proactive and reaching out to customers.14:17 Aaron: Yeah, so from a labeling standpoint, all the same team but we have started to... We look at where people's talents are and things like that and we are more giving them roles or responsibilities of this person based on experience, knowledge, personality. They're a great support person. They're great to answer email tickets and do these pieces and whatever else, where someone else like, "Okay, their level of understanding is really deep. They have a lot of confidence to recommend how to use features and they can be a little bit more leading with the customer. Like they're better fit for a customer success role. So we kinda call everybody the same, but we have started to differentiate what their main duties, what the majority of their time is spent on within that process.15:09 Darren: Yeah. And then I'm also curious. So tell me this, what percentage of your customers get a proactive outreach? Do you have to have a certain number of locations in order to sort of fall into this bucket where we're gonna proactively reach out or do you do that with everybody? 15:26 Aaron: Yeah, based on our pricing model, for us it is multi-locations. So the biggest thing for a new client, if we sell a multi-location that's almost always gonna be one-to-one demo and then we're gonna try to do a SOW with them to get an agreement to try to get them on an annual contract and part of that is an onboarding process. And then making sure we get everything set up right. We walk them through, we make them aware of features and all those other steps. And then what we've recently... And I know I've mentioned a couple of other podcasts, we had our team and then we hired a VP of Customer Success and Taylor came on and looked at like "Alright, great. You have this great set up and onboarding process but it kinda stops right at launch". And what he added was a 5th phase to it that's like, "Alright. Now, let's make sure in the first 90 days that you're hitting success metrics and you're getting value either statistically or emotionally out of the product and then graduating and then setting up quarterly business reviews to like, are they still hitting the things that you need them to? Are you on track to do the right things? 16:37 Darren: Yeah, that's that whole next level. That's I think really valuable when you start to tap into your best customers and really making sure that they're getting the most value out of the software. And then that also is a really great relationship building with your best customers where they just feel like you actually care. You're taking the time to reach out to them and they just feel really great about working with GatherUp.17:00 Aaron: Yup. And you discover so much about them when you have those types of conversations and when you get knee-deep in their data as well. And it's given us a more formatted approach. All the time in the past, I'm constantly jumping in and out of accounts and looking for signals on are they doing well, are they doing great, are they struggling, is there a challenge that I can see that I can reach out to them with. And now we're just building more and more of a system around that. We've talked in past episodes and we're just getting into this where we're gonna bring data to the table to help tell us more of those things more in-app analytics. That's still the piece of the story we're missing there. But now for our more valuable accounts, we're doing those types of things.17:45 Aaron: And then the other challenges then on the small business like the one location side, how do you wrap in when you have support opportunities to still provide them a little bit of success with it and as well provide them with as many resources as possible to be successful so that there are things on demand when they need answers or easy ways to talk to the support team I think are really important when you can't give all of yourself to a $40 a month customer or a $75 a month customer but you can give a little and also put them on to "Hey, here's a ton of content or tutorials or other ways that you can get your answers and be successful.18:29 Darren: Yeah. I think that's where we do a pretty good job. We have an email funnel. So when someone signs up for an account they're gonna get their welcome email, their next steps and then there's a series of emails that they're gonna get that sort of tell them about features of a tool and guide them through using the software. And it's pretty self-served. And so if they're not reading those emails, then we don't know. And the one thing that we don't do is we don't segment based off of account size and I think that's an opportunity for us. So if we did segment and we put a little bit more time into those higher value accounts, that's really a good take away for me, personally. And this one is to get a process in place to identify those accounts and then how are we gonna reach out to them and how we're gonna support them a bit better.19:13 Aaron: Yup, yeah. I would say that segmentation is really important and then the outlining exactly what you're talking about. How you can get to 'em. That has definitely been a game changer for us and it makes our customer success team is now in charge of renewals when they signed a one-year or two-year deal when that comes up for renewal. As we say, we should know with 99% certainty that they're gonna renew because we've been talking to them every quarter about of things are going.19:39 Darren: Absolutely.19:40 Aaron: You're not crossing your fingers. Will they renew or not? It's like, no, no we know how they feel about the product and how things are going and that we're a core part of what we're doing or we know like, hey this account is in trouble. We need to make an impact and a change quickly or they're not gonna give us any more runway to make an impact.20:00 Darren: Right? And your account man... You think you have an account managers, they're customer success people, but they're also account managers, and they're responsible for what 20, 30 different accounts that they have to keep an eye on.20:12 Aaron: Yeah, and that's some of the stuff we were just trying to... It'll be really interesting for the rest of this year and we're definitely gonna have some talks but how do we start to understand what each customer success rep can handle within their mixture of things especially is now we have sales people that are hopefully bringing more accounts that need to be onboarded, but we wanna try to get some amount of framework in place, so we know, when this happens, if we're sending out this many SOWs, we know this is the likelihood they're gonna close and so we know the likelihood we're gonna need additional help at this point in time, so we can just be ahead of it instead of reactive, where the team is like, "Hey we're buried. Please send help". That's usually when it's too late.20:56 Darren: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about this fine line between support and sales. Like at my company, we don't have a dedicated sales person, we have our support team, which is basically frontline sales for us. People come in, they have questions about the product, our support team answers those questions, will send them links to sign up for things, they'll make recommendations about what would make sense for them. So they kind of become the sales people in a lot of these cases. If it's a large looking account, they send it to me, or to Nick. And we handle more of the SOW type account set up. In your case, like how do you do that? Does your front... Does your support offer sort of sales stuff for signing up ike the one-offs, is that how it works at GatherUp? 21:48 Aaron: Yeah, so our customer success team will do a couple of our single-location demos within a week. And there really isn't a hand-off at all for them. 'cause it's more of a give demo, answer questions, if there's any straggler questions, answer those, then it's self served to go sign up and then they'll reach back out if they have questions. We have the process things to what you alluded to drip emails, a quick start guide, we have a very in-depth user guide, we have a number of ways to help them start with this minimal human touch as possible and then the support team is there to answer questions as they need it. For anything larger, our hand-off is basically when that agreement is signed, so when the SOW is signed, then I will go to Taylor and say, "Alright, here's what the deal is, here's what it looks like." and a lot of times we're even having conversations before that, but then we're like, Alright, here's the person, our team is gonna handle it, we have a little, small internal information hand-off and then I'm reaching out and saying, "Hey great news. Here's your customer success rep, is gonna be Josh. He's gonna schedule your first meeting, and layout what onboarding looks like for you. And now, I'm here just to ride along if you have any overall questions or whatever, but you're in great hands and move forward. So we use that intro email and scheduling that kick-off meeting as the handoff from sales to customer success.23:15 Darren: Yeah, that makes sense. And what's your you cut off? So let's say, how many people will self-serve that happen to have 20 plus locations, do they just come through the website and, "Oh wow, they just signed up."23:27 Aaron: Yeah, yeah very few. [chuckle] And we really find some of the things that we've done to help identify that. We have our multi-location pricing is behind a gateway. So you have to put in who you are and how many locations when you're looking at something. So we use that to reach out and be like, "Hey great. You looked at our pricing you saw it's completely competitive and very valuable. Would you like a one-on-one demo?" So we use that to get them into the sales process at that time and the majority come in that way and we really sell... I would say the biggest differentiator we do customer success with anyone that's paying a set-up fee.24:07 Aaron: If someone says I just wanna handle it myself and do whatever else then we might back off it a little bit, but we find most people like, "Hey I'd rather pay the fee and I get a tour guide, I get all this one-on-one support, I get a process that really is gonna help me get the value out of this." and then we know that customer is pretty serious too so that format has worked really well for us. We will get on occasion, a 5-10-15 location that comes in and they do sign up themselves and put stuff into it themselves and if we run across it, we'll likely ping them. And just, what are things looking like? Is there anything we can be of help with? Would you like to jump on a call to know more? So we will try to intercede with that, but we really find the majority of them end up coming through our sales process.24:52 Darren: Yeah, that makes sense, especially since you have it behind a form. So if you've got multiple locations, you wanna see that pricing they're already in that funnel where the next step is to set up a demo and then it leads to SOW and a set-up contract and all that, stuff.25:06 Aaron: Yeah, and we had a lot of internal debate when we moved to that when we rebranded we went to that method for our reseller pricing and our multi-location pricing, and I ultimately settled like, "Okay we're showing our one location pricing, this is as expensive as it gets per location. And see the other... Who are you, your email, your business and the number of locations, the minute you submit that you see the pricing right then and there you can bookmark that URL and review it as many times as you want. And our sales process isn't... We reach out with one or two emails max just to make sure that they understand everything correctly. Do they have questions on pricing, would they like to see a demo? So we're just trying to be helpful, we're not gonna over inundate them. There's a few on our team that were a little apprehensive and it's worked incredibly well for us and...25:56 Darren: Oh, that sounds great.25:58 Aaron: Yeah, haven't had any push back on why can't I see all of your pricing, and to some extent a lot of our competitors don't even show one location pricing, you have no idea the cost at all until you talk to somebody. So...26:10 Darren: I hate that, whenever I go to a website, it doesn't have pricing and I'm like, Well, no, obviously it's too expensive, so I'm not gonna sign up. There's only one reason why you wouldn't show me your pricing. It's because it's like $20,000, I don't want it, so that's how I think about it every time. [chuckle]26:26 Aaron: Yeah, totally.26:27 Darren: I think your approach is really smart actually. And maybe, I don't know how prevalent that is, but showing the single-location pricing and then for multi-location pricing, fill out this little form. Now you've got the great lead-capture and you have delivered the pricing to them up front. They still feel good. All they have to do is just enter their name and email, they're gonna get that pricing immediately, and then you have your customer success team outreach to them. Now, those will be sales leads, right? For your new sales team.27:00 Aaron: Yep. Which is perfect to give them a handful of those coming in even though my new sales people, their main focus is... They're outbound, they're gonna be generating their own love in the world.27:12 Darren: I got so many questions, but we'll save that for the next episode on sales. Let's keep talking about support. I wanted to ask you about support contracts. This has come up. We have a number of multi-location clients that are unbelievably time-consuming on support. Like seriously, five hours a week, we spend answering their questions, going back and forth, re-answering the same question six times. It's just like some of these clients, we love them, they're great, they are awesome people, but they really need a lot of hand-holding. And I'm wondering... Right now, we do not have support contracts. How do you deal with this, with these really needy customers that need a lot of time and hand holding? What do you do at GatherUp? 28:00 Aaron: So we're just starting to address this as well, our last exec Summit, a month-and-a-half ago, this was one of our topics. And coming from the world of agencies, you had some of these same things as well. And you try to build those into retainers and kinda have it factored out that way, but I think support contracts are really important and I think most of it has to do with how you position it right up front in the process. And the best way to look at it is you outline... You're able to outline for... In our case, the initial conversations we had was something around like three tiers of support. And I guess I should maybe go one backwards. You're probably in the same position as... You offer amazing support and as your company gets bigger, that amazing support becomes harder and harder to be equal all the way across the board. 'Cause where you were doing it for dozens or hundreds, now maybe it's thousands of customers.29:02 Aaron: And to get the same responses within hours and outcomes and all those different kinda things becomes increasingly hard. And I feel the best way to handle it is to kinda say, "Alright you have three different options in working with us," like "Here's the software fee, but then we also have support that you can decide to purchase or not purchase. And if you don't purchase it here is kind of our standard rule of thumb: You'll get a response within 24 business hours or 16 business hours." But something that gives you leeway for them to understand. "Hey, I'm not gonna get something in an hour and I have to live with that, I want it included I want it has a for free, and I'm willing to live." And the right expectations have been set.29:52 Darren: Yeah, that's the key. That's sort of differentiating is 'cause this is the thought that someone may have is be like, "Well, can't I just get support? Why are you offering support to all these other people? Why do I have to pay for support?" And so I think those different tiers is where you can actually make a case for a support contract. That makes a lotta sense.30:10 Aaron: Yeah. Because you end up showing them like, "Hey if you really value this and you want fast turn time and you want guarantees and things like that, well then you can have it, you have to pay for it." It's like anything, if you want a better version that is bigger, better faster, whatever that might be, there's value attached to it, and so you're willing to pay for it. And then when the expectation is off, then you're at least able to say like, "This was communicated, you declined that. You said, 'I'm willing to live with two days or three days to reply for no additional money.'" So we'll see. This is in theory. And we used to do... I've done similar things like this in agency before around development contracts and e-commerce, and website builds. And they worked really, really well in those scenarios. It's just getting all of it to be done up front. The most important part is selling it upfront instead of having them get in and then when they have a problem, and then saying, like, "Oh, well, you can pay to get help faster." And then they're like, "I would've paid from the get-go, now I'm mad because it didn't meet my expectations. You didn't set proper expectations." That's when you get into trouble if you don't have that available, and they didn't make that choice, then you're just making where, "Oh, it is an option. You never asked, so we didn't tell you."31:34 Darren: Yeah. So absolutely getting it in advance is the best way to do it. So I have a client or two now that is quite needy, that I would love to get on a support contract, but it is a very awkward conversation at this point. And then the other potential concern I have is, you have this client who they send you, once a week, a 15-point list of really long complicated obscure edge casey questions. It's like the most obscure stuff you could ever imagine. And even if they're on whatever a free support plan is they're like "Yeah, I don't need a response in 36 hours, I can wait till next week." But man, they just sent us seven hours of work, so much time to go through, look at what their weird edge case concern is, playing around with the software, going back and forth with the dev team. It's just, it's frustrating when you have these specific clients.32:37 Aaron: I would say since you have that historical data, I would use that to your advantage and say, "We've looked at this, we want to serve you at the right level to make you successful and based on our interactions in the last three months, six months, year, this is the amount of interaction, this is the amount of emails and tickets and request... You would be smart to pre-purchase five hours of support a month for us at this rate, otherwise we will have to look at going to a time and materials with this just because of the amount that it is and it's all to ensure you're successful. So it isn't easy but you have to realize what it takes. Ann a good customer and a good relationship, they'll realize that anyway and if they don't, then that's starting to send you some other signals like they have no problem taking you down with them. [chuckle]33:32 Darren: Yeah, I think that they're probably in the back of their minds are like "Boy, how long are we able and get this free support for Whitespark?". Because they know they're sending us so much extra work to do it. They must know that they're just waiting for the email to come where we suggest we're gonna have to start implementing hourly fees for all of this stuff.33:53 Aaron: Yeah. There's always a way to address it when you have history. I think you use that history to your advantage. These are knowns.34:00 S2: Yup.34:01 Aaron: We're not guessing how much you might need, these are complete knowns and here's how we can continue to help you at this level, Now that we understand the level of help your requesting all the time.34:11 Darren: I like it. Thank you. I will take that approach. How do you measure your... At Whitespark we use Zendesk. So Zendesk has this really great dashboard for statistics. So we can see how many tickets and what are the common things. One thing I really love in the dashboard is the search queries. People that are searching our help center, that's a gold mine of ideas of what people are looking for and what problems they're having. So what do you guys use at GatherUp? I'm just curious how you measure and measure success and what's important in support.34:50 Aaron: We use Help Scout and have for a long time and it's at the point where I'm not in it daily, does everything that we needed to and same things you're talking about. Response times, ticket close times, all of that information is available to us. We obviously have it wired in, integrated to a ton of things from everything from... For live chat we use Olark and if Olark's... If we're offline with live chat then it automatically goes and creates a ticket in Help Scout so we can address it that way. And then the same... Right, using tagging, we also do the same on who's asking, what are they asking about. So we track very, very heavily and we share it in our weekly team meetings. Here's the amount of support interactions in total, here is the amount of support interactions from small business, from multi-locations, from agency resellers and then here's what people are asking about. Like review widget is always one of our leading topics. And then we look at other ones? And that's really great 'cause that helps inform us, do we need to do more with some of our other support features like user guide documentation or something in our emails or do we even need to look at something in the product based on popularity or what are they asking about or what's confusing? 36:16 Aaron: So that has definitely led to us doing a number of things to try to be proactive by taking that reactive data with it. So can we decrease those numbers or be of more help? And even the support team. If they have just one link, they can drop in like "Yeah, your question. We get asked all the time. Here's a very detailed user guide post on this with screenshots. Go to here, and this will help you do exactly what you need to".36:42 Darren: Have you built a email response templates at Help Scout where for really common questions, you've got a template you just fire it up and hit send for the most part? 36:51 Aaron: Yup. They have a few of those put together for the most common ones because there are certain ones it's like, "Yeah, we're gonna get asked what review sites do you monitor?". Boom, here's the answer and here's the link to that full list. So absolutely, efficiency plays are huge.37:08 Darren: That's actually gave me a thought right now. Anywhere we have a template, that would actually probably be a good auto email. So for all customers, when they sign up it's part of the email funnel. It's like email number five is most commonly asked question number two. Right? So just putting all of those frequently asked questions that we have templates for into the auto email and so preemptively giving those to customers that might be wondering.37:36 Aaron: Yeah, totally, totally a good idea that having that information makes you smarter about what people are likely gonna hit as a point of confusion or needing some education or needing to be better is huge.37:49 Darren: Yup. I also was thinking about... I picked this up from that podcast we listened to and talked about last episode about proactively showing more obscure features and ways to use the software into that email funnel. So email number seven in the funnel is like "Did you know that the software can do this? And here's a quick little video on how to do it". Right? I like that a lot too in Email funnels.38:14 Aaron: Yeah, that's something we could definitely be better at because we have so many features. We kick so many out. It's like how do you expose those to more and more users and expose them at the right times for them. Getting smarter around all that stuff is definitely an area I have massive interest in. How do you produce great targeting, right message at the right time for them to be like, "Oh yeah, this is exactly what I should use" or "This will make me more successful with the product".38:44 Darren: Yeah right.38:45 Aaron: Couple other things that I think have been really helpful for us, one, we actually use our own product that after a support instance we send that out to gather feedback and then also request reviews.38:57 Darren: Right.38:58 Aaron: So first surface level, yeah, it's great 'cause we find out is a customer happy with that answer, where they serviced timely, was the interaction with their rep great. But secondly, we have driven more Google reviews for us because you're asking for a review, when somebody's just had a great experience of being helped and again, when we talk about that differentiator as our support team. We see that over and over again where people are like, "Yeah, and man, I loved working with Gatlin. So Gatlin was awesome, helped me do all these things, whatever else. And now I wanna go write a review and I'm talking about Gatlin or I'm talking about this other team member." And that's been really huge at not just getting feedback on the support experience, but people saying, "Yeah, your brand and your service are awesome and I wanna tell everybody about it." So that's been really interesting.39:50 Darren: So wait a minute, are you saying that when a customer support ticket closes in Help Scout, they get into a GatherUp funnel where the GatherUp is spinning the how did we do email? That's coming from GatherUp, not from Help Scout? 40:05 Aaron: Yep. Yeah, so we have our... We basically, our customer success has its own profile within GatherUp. We added that as a location. So the wording's different, the survey questions are different and everything else. And then it allows us to look at what is the net promoter score for our customer success team. And then within the last couple of weeks, Taylor and the customer success team has implemented this for onboarding as well now. And we've just got a couple of those in and that's been great to see where, "Hey, here's how I felt about the level of detail and the timing of it. And man, this person was so helpful in onboarding us." And when you're able to read that feedback from a 200 or a 300 location client, that's a very good client for you and you realize what a differentiator that is. And now that's content you could possibly share with your next prospect, "Hey, here's this company. This brand name and you know this brand name really well. Well, here's what their team said about our team and getting started with our products." So not only do we know the same thing that GatherUp does for other customers, we're producing marketing material to inform the next buyer.41:11 Darren: Oh man, I love that. We're gonna do it too. So we basically, right now we just have the default Zendesk email that comes out that rates customer satisfaction, which is not bad, but GatherUp is so much deeper and so much more valuable. So I'm curious, how are they connected when a customer support ticket closes do you have a Zapier connection? Is that what you've done or do they manually go and enter that person? 41:39 Aaron: Nope. I would believe we have it automated. I don't know specifically if we're using our API or we're using a Zap for it.41:46 Darren: Yeah, I can figure that out 'cause I gotta figure out how I can get Zendesk now talking to GatherUp so that I can integrate that.41:55 Aaron: Yup. Nope, you can absolutely make that happen.41:57 Darren: Cool, well maybe I'll talk to the helpful people at MozCon when I come and visit your booth.42:01 Aaron: [chuckle] There you go. Let's look at it. Let's figure it out.42:05 Darren: Yeah. Well that's awesome. How do you know... Are you measuring ticket volume and using that to identify when it's time to hire another support person? How are you figuring out or you're just waiting for your customer support head, your director of customer support to tell you "oh we need to hire some more people"? 42:28 Aaron: Yeah. This... It's kinda the same to where we were talking about with customer success. We wanna have framework for this. We definitely track support volume that same... In our weekly meeting, customer success department has their section and they're gonna say, here's how many tickets, here's how many conversations, here's how many phone calls, here's how many live chats. We break down all of those things by the medium that they're being handled on. But we don't have anything yet that says this is too much, this is too low. We track the flow of where those are. And sometimes we'll zoom out and say, "All right, what does this look like over the last 12 months?" But being more predictive by using those numbers is definitely a next step for us so that we're able to say, "Alright, where we're at here, one rep full time and two part time on support with the rest of their time on onboarding, we're fine, but the minute we hit this, then we need another and the minute this increase then we need another." We'd like to get it to be a little bit more regimented and predictive.43:30 Darren: Sure, yep. That makes sense. Yeah. For us it's just like we just start to feel it. It's like, we're getting overwhelmed and our response time is taking longer. We've just got too many tickets coming in and then we hire again. But so far we're doing fine right now, but we'll see as we grow.43:46 Aaron: There you go. You never know. What do you feel like is your guys's biggest challenge within your support team right now? 43:53 Darren: I think the challenge is being more proactive. So I don't know if challenge is the right word, but it's the next thing we need to do. Moving from a reactive support position to a proactive success position. And I think we have the resources right now. I don't believe that the support team is completely booked all of their time. And so getting a process in place where we can be more proactive and identifying those high value clients and really trying to reach out to them and help them get set up. There's a big opportunity there that I really have to focus on.44:29 Aaron: Yeah, no, that's exactly where we were two years ago. And the first thing is just identifying it, making it a priority so that everyone understands it and then you lay out what are these, if being proactive is the strategy, what are the tactics that support that that we need to put resources into or make sure we have tools to do. And yes, just you stair step and start picking those up and move up the ladder one at a time while you keep everything behind it at the same level it's at and you can get there. We're two years into that and we still have a ton of way to go. You're always trying to perfect it.45:09 Darren: For sure. It's interesting when you think about you talk about the difference between a bootstrap company and a VC funded company like you see these companies like Yelp and Yext that have invested so much into their sales force and not much into their customer support. And it's just like, it's a complete switch of values. They're just focused on signing people up, not supporting them. And it's such a backwards way to approach business, it seems to me.45:36 Aaron: Yeah. Well customer acquisition gets all of the love and depending upon what size you are, how much does retention make an impact for you? And when you're in a smaller bootstrap company, retention is massive because you might not have the resources to do acquisition all day long. For us we're over five years into the company and we're really truly building. We've had one salesperson on the agency side, I do our sales, but only a very small percentage outbound. But now five years later, now we have resources and we have the right fit with our product where we can very confidently say, "Yeah, now it's time to put fuel on the fire and take the fight to people and go and be outbound sales with it as well." So when you don't have the ability to do that, retention is really huge because as much as you need to land those next clients, you need to keep the ones that you have.46:36 Aaron: Obviously we spend a whole episode on Churn. You could do a whole podcast just on Churn all by itself. But yeah, no, it is super important. And yeah, for some people, I think the bigger they get, the numbers become so macro that a lot of it seeps through the cracks. And we're seeing more and more of that in the space right now where people are coming from some of our larger competitors and they're saying," Yup. I spent a year or two years with them. I didn't get a lot of love. I was paying for features I didn't even utilize. It looks like you guys aren't trying to have everything in the kitchen sink and you absolutely have what we need and you have a few other things that they didn't have because you're a little more focused on the SEO and the local search end of things and wow, it seems like people are raving about your service. So let's work together and that's fabulous. I want that to happen all day long.47:24 Darren: Yup. Well, we should keep that happening all day long for all of our services and products.47:31 Aaron: Totally.47:31 Darren: All right.47:32 Aaron: All right, my man. That's a wrap.47:34 Darren: We did it. We're gonna see you next week and we'll record another episode. Dan, I can't wait for that. It's gonna be great.47:40 Aaron: Yeah. All kinds of fun in Seattle awaits us. And yeah, we'll find a way to hide out and record episode 11 at MozCon in Seattle. And I don't know, we'll have to bring something really festive to the table with us being in the...47:56 Darren: Something, yeah.47:57 Aaron: The same area to record. I don't know if we can sit face to face that might not work, but we just might be like a hotel room away from each other.48:05 Darren: Or back to back.[laughter]48:10 Aaron: Totally. We might have to include some video clips of this.48:14 Darren: [chuckle] Totally. Alright.48:14 Aaron: Riveting stuff.48:15 Darren: Good. Well thank you. It was a good chat. We'll talk to you next week.48:20 Aaron: Alright. Thanks everybody. Remember to subscribe to the SaaS Venture podcast or share the SaaS Venture podcast with someone you know that is interested in sales, SaaS anything to do with software products. We appreciate building our audience more and more and it's all thanks to you guys. So thanks everyone and have a great week. We'll talk to you next time.48:41 Darren: Talk to you next time.[outro music]

ceo time google moving seattle startups software boom seo summit boy alpha ibm saas beta vc helpful api yelp apis stripe customer success zapier sow google my business churn outbound moz zap zendesk customer support local seo bootstrapped open beta sows yext help scout mozcon olark whitespark aaron you aaron it aaron yeah aaron yes aaron well aaron there aaron so aaron on aaron all

How To Live The Ultimate Bucket List Life with Kenyon Salo

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 2, 2019 53:06

Download this Episode Unbreakable Success Podcast, Episode 58 How to Live the Ultimate Bucket List Life with "The James Bond of Public Speaking" - Kenyon Salo. Click to Subscribe on >> iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Tunein. Discover how to live the ultimate bucket list lifestyle with the "James Bond" of the motivational public speaking world, our new friend Kenyon Salo. The Bucket List Life is built off the three core principles that have helped Kenyon design a fulfilling life of travel, adventures, meaningful interactions, and achieving his dreams. Kenyon Salo is one of the top trainers, facilitators and keynote speakers in the fields of adventure, leadership, team building, sales, customer service and inspiration/motivation. One of only five members on the Denver Broncos Thunderstorm Skydive Team, he is seen each week during game season flying into the Denver Broncos Stadium at 60+mph, ending with a soft tip-toe landing on the ten yard line. He brings to the stage over 20+ years of successful audience engagement through humor, awe-inspiring moments, prolific storytelling, and ‘edge-of-the seat' content. With over 6000 skydives under his belt and travels that have taken him all around the world, he's determined to live life to the fullest and help others do the same. Through his passions for adventure, storytelling, and connecting with people, he found a simple process to guide others on a path to what most of us crave – living a more fulfilled life. His goal through his engagements is to deliver a powerful and heart-touching message on the possibility of how amazing life can be through providing actionable steps that will help any audience, both personally and professionally, embark on a path to achieve anything they desire. Fast Facts: Kenyon is a Master Trainer and Speaker of more than 100k+ people Trainer for a National Social Media Campaign for Fortune 500 Company Featured on NFL Films, ESPN, NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, MTV NFL Denver Broncos Thunderstorm Skydive Team Performed Stand-Up Comedy at Denver Comedy Works Travelled to 49/50 US States and 27+ Countries *Photographer, Adventure Video Creator 6000+ Skydives 450+ BASE Jumps 2 Amazing Kids Kenyon's truly a motivational force of nature with the elements of a James Bond character; carrying confidence, paying close attention to detail, dominating technology, dressing to kill and always striving to connect deeply. He stays cool under pressure while bringing his listeners through an immersive experience of what it means to live a Bucket List Life. James Bond is one of those heroes that most people can believe in, relate to and truly connect with – He's an ordinary person who uses his gadgets and creativity to do extraordinary things. Just like 007, Kenyon shares effective tools to empower attendees to walk away from the event feeling ready to take on the world. This is achieved while keeping the organizers in mind so that they can rest assured knowing that Kenyon will do everything in his power to make their lives as easy as possible, from the moment contact is initiated all the way through high-fiving after a successful event and beyond. I'm grateful to share this powerful conversation with Kenyon on this episode of the Unbreakable Success podcast. Full Transcript: Aaron: Everybody, welcome back to another episode of unbreakable success. I'm really stoked to have you here. A Kenyan Salo. Every once in a while you'll hear people that actually give themselves sort of a nickname and you are known as the, the James Bond of public speaking, which I love. And sometimes those things can go wrong. Like when you've self and I'm assuming that you, you came up with the theme or at least you and your team came up with the theme because sometimes it doesn't fit where you agree, but, uh, in your case, Kenyon, uh, the James Bond, public speaking, it's authentic. It kind of speaks to the kind of guy that you are, at least from what I've been able to get to know. Have you the adventurous spirit, the confidence, the having a job in wanting to get it done. And uh, you know, and doing it with some style and possess. And I've seen some of your keynotes, I've seen what you're about. And it's definitely been exciting too to get to know you and talk to you a little bit. And that definitely is great to have you on the show today. So for everybody that doesn't know you, tell me a little bit about, tell all of us a little bit about you and what you're up to these days please. Kenyon Salo: Well Aaron, thank you so much for having me on the show. It's such a pleasure and it's really great to connect and that's the one thing that I love about this industry and the potential to be able to do podcasts is it's not just about the podcast itself, it's about meeting the people that are behind the podcast. You, you're, you're living the podcast. You're, you're leading the podcast. And then of course all of your audience members, all of your listeners, I celebrate them and I thank all of you guys for being on. And you mentioned earlier about being the James Bond of speaking and and for me it was one of those things where I wanted something that would catch somebody's eye, but again, at the same time being very authentic to who I am, which is that balance that you talk about where it's like it's important that you, you list yourself as something that you can actually back up, follow up, that type of thing. Kenyon Salo: And so I did some studying on what James Bond is and who he is and, and the, the brand that he personifies. I said, okay, there's a lot of things that I fall into that place where it's like, you know, being onstage, well-dressed, being good with technology, having humor, but at the same time not being infallible, realizing that you can be bumbling, you can make mistakes at the same time and adventurous and succeed in that type of thing. So that was, that was really important to me and I love it and it's far better than a lot of times I see on linkedin where people are like so and so motivational speaker, like you're not going any further in terms of like who is this person? Right? But James Bond speaking, Hey, I'm going to check this out Aaron: for sure. A brilliant, brilliant from a business aspect. And, and even more importantly, I love it because like you said, it's authentic. Um, if I can share a little bit about, with the audience, about you and I and how we want them connecting. It's funny, a couple months ago, uh, I told you when we talked on the phone the other day, the first time I heard you was, was on another podcast called world speakers, I think, uh, from speaker match.com. And you were doing a training on, on speaking because you, you've been doing this in a relatively short window and you've made some amazing progress. I mean for listening, we're going to hook up the links to his website and things like that. Obviously in the show notes for this episode. But your website is stunning. It's what, it's one of the most stunning sites I've seen visually. Aaron: You have so much great content, a content, the people that you engage with, your audiences are just obviously like into it, like you have a great persona persona about you. Um, but what, what drew me to you was when you were given a training on speaker match, you were just giving so much great content to help people accomplish what it is they want to accomplish. Like it was so much authentic authenticity and it wasn't like you were trying to just spread a few bread crumbs so you can real somebody into a sales pitch or something like that. You were just really trying to help and it came through very authentically. And that theme kind of carried through when I see you, when I saw you on stage, uh, watching some of your keynote videos, as I told you, I was prepping for one of my keynotes I was doing last week. Aaron: And I always loved to watch people that I admire along the way. And I think it was watching Mel Robbins and Brendon Burchard or somebody. And then you're, you're a keynote came up and which was cool because I just heard you recently before that. And then funny enough, you and I are connected with, um, Nicole Jansen and I saw that you were all in her pockets and it was, it was sort of a trifecta of, you know, this Guy Kenyan popping up on the radar. And uh, I'm glad that from there we were able to connect and get you on the show today. I definitely would love to have you share with everybody what you call the bucket list life, which is sort of a, one of the overarching themes of what you do. And, and, uh, I'd also love to get to, um, you helping some people out with, with connection. Aaron: Because what I, what I noticed about you, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that it's really, it seems to be really important to you that you connect with people authentically when you, when you're doing your speaking and when you're engaging in conversation. And that's something that is essential for not just speakers but entrepreneurs. People in their daily life. If they're on a nine to five people at home with their family. So I'd love to get some of your thoughts on that as we go along today. But, uh, first and foremost, how did this journey start for you? How did you roll into wind up being this public speaker and especially when it has made so much progress from a business standpoint really fast and really authentically? How'd that play out for you? Kenyon Salo: Well, it's been the one thing that has been throughout my whole life yet I wasn't paying attention to it completely. Yeah. So if I see where I'm at now, definitely we are all in amalgamation of our entire lives. This things that have happened to us, the successes, the failures, the highlights and the lowlights. All those things make us who we are. And for me the common theme that been running through yes, adventure and living that life where I want to experience the word, uh, the world. And that word experience is so very strong because it's deep and core of who I am. You want to experience it. I want to give people experiences. On the other side is the thing that I've been really good at is once I do experiences I want to teach others, I want to help others be able to do that same thing and whether it's back in the day when I was six years old jumping my bike off of a homemade ply wood ramp over a trashcan or then saying, hey, you can do this too, to my neighborhood friends, let me show you how to do it. Kenyon Salo: And then being able to transfer that so later in life saying, hey, this is what I found about mindset and being able to accomplish goals and when you talk about what I shared on the speaker match call and I appreciate you getting and being able to capture that moment where it's that giving freely because our team, our team decided at the beginning of this year that we would give as much as we could give to speakers, give to event planners, give to podcast, give to anybody we can because we realized when we help others first, everything we desire will come back tenfold. Yeah. So we decided to put that out there. So anything I can do to be able to help others, I just give that information knowing that it will all come back and that's how it is. So that's how I got from the very beginning knowing that I was a speaker trainer, somebody that wants to help and that I was going to tie it in with adventure and stories and things like that and be able to bring that to the stage or bring that to a podcast or a training along the way. Aaron: Nice. Nice. For those. Don't go know Kenyon has a. What do you over 6,000 skydive jumps now? Kenyon Salo: Yeah. 6,000 skydives about 400 base jumps. I love to wing suit fly too. So I know a lot of people have seen that on youtube, but it's basically like flying around over houses and trees and it's magical. Aaron: Yeah, it looks, it looks pretty amazing. It's, it's definitely A. Alright. I'm not going to push and say that's on my bucket list yet, but it is. It is out there. Sort of floating around and we'll see if I grab onto it or not. You're, you're still with the broncos. The Denver Broncos, the jump team, so you may see up. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. Kenyon Salo: Schedule comes out every April and I've already got it. It's all on my calendar for the fall season and our preseason game started August and yeah, we get to skydive into every single home game that the Broncos have and that is so. Oh Man. 70,000 people scream landing on the field. Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's a pinnacle of my life. It's amazing. Aaron: Yeah. That's got to be a lot of fun. How long have you been, have you been with the team now? Kenyon Salo: Seven years. So really a 2011 is when it started for me and they started in 2009 and I, we're the only team that's associated with an NFL team that skydives always into every single game. Aaron: That's pretty amazing, man. That's got to be so much fun. Now, again, this is one of those things that, one of the reasons I was really hoping to get you on the shows because you have this discrete mixture of living life to the fullest and you certainly by most people standards, you take it to the extreme. You're jumping out of airplanes, flying wing suit, doing base jumps and real and it's authentically you. You're not trying to show off. You just, it's obvious that you love doing this. It to the point where you even, you even bring them on guests, do some keynotes. Sometimes you bring a, you do that every keynote where you have somebody with a thing under the receipt to have them join you on a jump. Kenyon Salo: Only if it naturally comes up in that moment. That's what it's supposed to be. So sometimes it's just, I say it, sometimes I do it, it just depends. So I've had about a half a dozen people from events decide to come to Colorado or do a skype with me, which it's magical to be able to help them check that off. Aaron: Yeah, that's pretty cool. So will tell us this because uh, like I touched on earlier, one of the themes of your, of what you do when you're speaking is this thing that you call the bucket list life. Tell us what that's about and how it sort of evolved and became a thing for you. Kenyon Salo: Yeah. The bucket list life is really what I've been living, but I didn't know it. And then once I started to dig into it and unpack it, it's what I realized that most people are doing anyways. Or the other side of it is if someone feels stuck and they're not doing one of these three things or they're not doing the three things in a continuum and there's no particular order that you have to do them in. But the way that I, I put them out there is irst create more experiences. Second, share more stories and third, live more fulfilled by helping others. When we do those three things, again, not in any particular order, but when we're consistently doing those three things, we feel the most APP happy. We feel the most alive. We feel like we're doing or being what we're supposed to be on the planet and that's, that's the brilliance in and around it. So yeah, I would love to share those three concepts with you. Oh Aaron: yeah, yeah. Let's, let's talk to him as far as I love to make this relevant for, for you all that are listening right now. I'd love to make this relevant if we start with create more experiences because look, it's 2018. Everybody's hyper. Uh, I want to say hyper busy, but really most people are hyper distracted whether they're building a business or they're, they're running the kids to and from school when they got to get to work and then they got to get to or they got to get to work and work on the side business on top of that. So there's all these things that get us caught up. So, you know, you bring up this point of creating more experiences and a lot of people will immediately push back and say, well, you know, I don't have time to create more experiences. How can I build that into my everyday life? What is your answer the damn, because I think we can. We can sort of try to simplify what it means to create more experiences, but what does that mean to you when you share it with, because obviously you're sharing these speech, the speech with ceos and executives and salespeople. I'm corporate functions so you're not speaking to other adventurous all the time when you're sharing this, so how do you connect it and make it relevant to the people that you're speaking to, including our audience today? Kenyon Salo: Well, absolutely. I believe that every one of us has a desire to create more experiences. Now creating more experiences is about self. It's about what I want to do, what do I want to see, what do I want to experience? Which is totally cool because we have to fill up our own cup, know in order to give to others, so when we want to create experiences, if we think back to times at any time we created a new experience, whether it's a new movie that we saw, we tried a new restaurant or we said, hey, let's try river rafting or jumping out of a plane. It doesn't matter what the experience is, it is, it doesn't have to be, uh, an extreme experience. It just has to be something new and that something new like say, Hey, I want to learn a new language before I traveled to Spain. Kenyon Salo: And so you, you're, you, you learned Spanish and you say, okay, that's great. The thing is, new experiences challenged us. New experiences help us grow. They make us feel alive. Why? Well, there are a little scary. And that's when you say, Hey, we're hyper busy. Well that's really a hyper excuse. It's like, oh, I don't have time to do that open. I'm going to binge watch this on Netflix. Like you could have said yes to that experience and gone and done it. You are looking for irs at you that just people that are saying no to stuff because their fears come up for them. Aaron: Sure, sure. Yeah. That's a, that's a, that is so true. And it's one of the things that, you know, and I brought that point up about being so busy because it's one of the common excuses I get when I'm coaching or if I'm speaking with people and you know, we're bringing up the concept of, of just living more and living authentically and immediately the excuses come up about time. But, uh, I think it was, I'm sure more than one person said this, but we all have, we all make time. We all have time for what were the things we must do. So when it becomes a Muslim becomes a priority for you and I, that we want to create these new experiences we'll make, we'll make room for it. We're fine, move room for it and we'll push the things that are nice to do but not necessarily mandatory to do out in a way. Um, so don't jump into a what's next on the list and what does it look like? Kenyon Salo: Well, I'll add one more thing to the experience because it's sort of thing that you just talked about, which is why we're not doing it. I think that's a key because a lot of people think, well, I want to but I'm not and it's really the thing that we unpack is why are people not doing it? And again, one of the things that you talked about and I talk to audiences all across the country and it's the same four things every single time that keep people from doing a new experience, time, location, finances. You're like, oh, I don't have the money or I have to stay here because of my kids or you know, it's, it's odd, just busy. I got all this stuff and then of course fear, but really what is fear? And that's the environment, the environment that you live in, your friends, your family, your coworkers, the, the where you live is saying, hey, don't go do that new thing. Kenyon Salo: Like don't get into that relationship. You'll break your heart or don't start that new business. You'll lose a lot of money or don't go skydiving. You definitely going to die. Those are the things that come up, like your environment telling you that and sometimes your environment is the environment that's between your two ears. It's your brain that's saying, no, you're going to fail, it's not going to be great, et Cetera, et Cetera, and your environment keeps you from those things. So I push my environment way and I say I am going to do this and it will be what it is. It might turn out amazing. It might not succeed the way I thought, but in the end I always get an experience of a out of it and that experience is always learning and it always helps me become better at what I'm doing. So that isn't a nutshell of what create more experiences is all about. Aaron: Sure. I love it man. And I'm curious. I'd love to get your perspective on this because because doing what you do, um, when you started really pushing your, your speaking career as, as like your thing, like your jam, when you started a really pushing on it years ago, did you have, did you find it easier or did you find it harder based on who you were around at the time and how do, how do you, how do you balance that as far as having people in your circle that are, you know, are going to push you to do the things that are, that are on your own personal bucket list and you know, to do more speaking. How does that look for you? Because we've all got our own thing. I've certainly found that as I started building this platform and this podcast and doing the book I just wrote, if I didn't have certain people around me, including my family, but even outside of my family, if I didn't have the right people in place, it would be a lot, a heck of a lot harder to do this stuff because like you said, your environment really going to create what you consider acceptable. Aaron: Right. You know, we are the five people we spend most time with, so to speak, as Jim Rome said, so how did that look? How does that look for you when it comes to making sure that you've got the right people around you and you've got the support you need to keep, keep grinding out the work that you do? Kenyon Salo: Yeah. You know, public speaking and setting on stage and being in front of a group is one of the number one fears that people have. Sure. And so when you take that number one fear of being on stage, and I was actually talking to one of my coaching clients about this because she was saying that she freezes up before your the announcer name and she freezes up and inside and she's about to go on stage. And what we unpacked was what happened on stage when people walk onto stage and they have to give some sort of presentation and they have that feeling of they want maybe they want to be sick or they freeze up or they have all these fears. Well it comes from the fear of wanting to be perfect or the fear of judgment or on top of that, that the fears of in and around of like will I remember what I'm supposed to say. Kenyon Salo: And what we realized that in that process is that it's those things first and foremost are coming from within our head. And those are the things that keep us from doing what we want to do. And ultimately when we step onto stage in any capacity. And what I mean is you can stay. You can use this stage as just kind of a. it's that thing, a metaphor for life where you're stepping onto the stage in life like I'm going to go step on a stage with this new thing. You need a group of people that are supporting you. First and foremost, need yourself to support you because if you believe you're not worthy of that next step and that again, that's a lot for like, why am I on stage? Why is my message more important than somebody else's? How is my message valuable to the stage and to the audience than than this other person? Kenyon Salo: Well, first and foremost, every person has an inspirational story. Every person in the audience that I'm in front of, they have an inspirational story that can be turned into a two hour movie that somebody would watch the academy award winning. That has inspiration there. So as we align ourselves with really good people in our life, yes, some people are going to fall off that person that used to be there is not going to be there. It's okay. It's okay to me, that doesn't mean that you love them less. It doesn't mean that you like them less, it just means your. We're resonating on a different level and you're moving to a different level. So what I moved into speaking there was a lot of support and I would say the biggest challenges came from within my own head. That was the toughest. Once I moved through that shirt. Yeah. My friends joke about it. I've got this thing with the ladder. They're like, have you stood on any ladders lately? And I'm like, actually I did. And it was amazing and I impacted an audience that on top of it I got paid. So it's interesting how it's still there, like your environment. We'll still poke at you when you're successful. Aaron: Yeah, yeah. That stuff doesn't go away. The fruit can, you know, I'll let you explain to the ladder how you incorporate that with your keynotes. Kenyon Salo: Well, it's part of the experience is part that I talked about and I bring out a ladder and heights. It's one of the two things we're born with in terms of fears, born with fear of loud noises and we're born with fear of heights. Everything else is learned. Every other fear we have is learned. We saw, we heard someone told us so where we experienced and then now we have a fear and it around it, so ladder is that metaphor and I climb up the ladder and eventually I stand on the very top step, you know that step where they're like, do not stand on or above misstep could cause serious bodily injury or death. What I do that and it. It invokes a feeling within the audience as if they were on that step and they their palms sweat and they get nervous and they get uncomfortable, which is what I want, so I use that as a really good tool to unpack that exact feeling. Aaron: Whose idea was it to do just as you were you? Were you just one day wake up and say, dude, I'm want to get a ladder to stand on it during my next keynote? Or was it something that you just incorporated before you even started doing this? Kenyon Salo: Well, I think the keynote that you saw had a stepstool in it. That was the one I saw. It was just a story, one of my earlier ones, and I remember the steps was only two and a half feet tall and I remember practicing onstage backstage. I was like, I hope I don't fall off this step stool. Right? That was my thought process, but it was a spur of the moment and then a month later I was at another event and I was walking through the hallways of the convention center and I saw this ladder and I said, oh, it was an eight foot ladder, and I said, that's perfect. That's the next step. No Pun intended for me to take in this presentation and that I just. I brought it in. I used it, it, it. It brought up so much for the audience and there was actually, I was standing on the top step and this one woman yells out. Kenyon Salo: She says, please get down from that. You're making us all feel uncomfortable. Now here's the key thing. The key thing is I started thinking in my own head, maybe I should take this out of my presentation. I don't want the audience to feel uncomfortable. I am a loving and compassionate human being. Oh No, what have I done? And then I realized and I unpacked it in the moment and I said, you are now my environment and your environment saying get down from that step you're making me feel uncomfortable is the exact reason why I have to be on that step to show you that the environment almost caused me to not do something in life. And they got it at that point. That's when it, it, it just drove it home. Aaron: Yeah. That is brilliant. So. So let me get this straight. So you hadn't even practiced this for the first time you decided to do the eight foot ladder because letters big I saw. I think you hit on one of your photos on your site. It's, I mean he's a ladder that is totally the most humans will pretty much pretty much every human that I know. When you're standing up to eight foot tall ladder. So you were, it was before speech you saw in the hallway and you just decided, I'm just going to stay on the top of it. Yes. Kenyon Salo: Yeah, exactly. That was in that moment, which again, here's the thing, all I said was yes, the idea popped in my head and I said yes to the idea and then I let the how figure itself out. Right. I didn't know how it was going to be setting it up. I didn't know how it was going to be, you know, making that move to the top step. I didn't know how the audience was going to respond. I just said this feels like something I should do. Yes, it's scary, but I'm going to do it and make it happen. And I've gotten as high as 12 foot ladders in the big convention centers with the huge stages. When the stage is three feet tall and you got a 12 foot ladder and I'm nearly six feet, you will let me be very clear. Five nine. So I'm not nearly six feet so. But, but, but again with that in mind, you start to get up to that top. My eyes are at 20 feet. That's a big deal. That is a big deal and it's a great place to make a lot of jokes. Sure. It, it is challenging every time, um, but again, it drives the point home for the audiences and you know, what, no other speakers doing that. So I have that uniqueness. Aaron: You're safe, man. I love doing keynotes, but you're pretty much safe as far as that particular property owners. I'm not stealing their still something else from you, but it's not going to be the latter trick I promise. So we're talking about a bucket list life where we were all inexperienced or excuse and creating experiences. I love the concept and it's so important for so many reasons which, which we all touched on, but what's the, what is the next tier on that? Kenyon Salo: Creating those experiences is the biggest part. And then it moves into sharing more stories, which is exactly what we're doing here. You see, we're more connected in life than ever, but we're also more disconnected than ever. Social media has really made us disconnected. Social media has made us, uh, where we see everything. We have a lot of Fomo or we're not hearing real stories or like, oh, I'm fully caught up with that person. I don't need to actually see them in person. I really believe that as we share stories and look, even social media is doing its very best to have that continue like instagram and the whole stories feature is amazing because it allows us to start to really deeply connect and when you get face to face with someone or at least pick up the phone and you have a conversation or even the ability through skype or facetime and you share those stories, you feel connected. Kenyon Salo: It's an energy exchange. It's like when you sit next to somebody on an airplane and you say, hi, how are you? And then you go into conversation. Next thing you know, three hours goes by and you're still talking to that person. Pretty cool. You know them better than most people because you decided to have a deep conversation with them and I feel because of this energy exchange and the positivity around it, it's really so powerful. It makes us feel like great things have happened and are on top of it. Stories come from that, from the campfire days, from the, from way back in caveman days, and that's what they drew stories on the walls. They told stories over campfire. Eventually we told stories while you know, and we still do it, breaking bread and having meals together and those environments are also where wisdom is passed down or we share like let share something I know that may help you. And that's the power of stories. So stories is a key way to connect. And the stories, as I mentioned, a self is creating more experiences. Stories is about friends and family, creating friends and family relationships. Aaron: Yeah. Um, can you ask such a brilliant point because I mean even if we look at, you mentioned social media these days and for, for anybody that store to it starts a business or even thinking about starting a business, one of the, one of the components of what they feel obligated to have to do is get on social media. You've got to be on facebook, on twitter, and even snapchat. Some people are starting to squeeze into it from a business front and instagram like you mentioned, but really if we pay attention to it just from. If we look at who's really doing well using these tools in their business, it's usually the ones that are engaging in just storytelling beyond, you know, putting up a motivational quote or and things like that, which I do myself and a lot of people connect with that. But really the most engagement happens is when you decide to have the video of. Aaron: You look at a guy like a Gary Vaynerchuk from vayner media. He's. He's always cursing and he's real boisterous and stuff, but if you think about it, the reason people are willing to connect with him, even if it's someone who's not crazy about the language he uses or they think he's too loud, people will watch and connect and listen because he tends to. He allows people in two story like, oh, he'll film a whole interview that he's having with somebody that's engaged with him and his audience and they'll create a whole story about it. If there's a natural attraction to wanting to play out those things or think about, you brought a movies earlier and we love engaging in completely fictional story. My daughter, my daughter went to see, uh, the avengers movie Friday night, uh, with some friends and she came home, said she was crying. She's not even a big avengers fan, but she was crying because she was engaged with the storyline. Aaron: And, and uh, I, I love that you bring that up as, as part of what we should be doing in our lives as, as like a permanent fixture sharing those stories. Uh, it's, it's extremely powerful on so many fronts because it does create a connection. It definitely creates a business connection for those that are, that like to listen to the show, to, to learn something, to help them engage in their business better. And certainly in our personal lives when we're willing, like you said, to share that conversation, even with somebody that's a total stranger on an airplane, a makes a huge, a huge difference. Was there, I got to ask this, was there a certain point when, or was there like a pivotal moment where you realize that storytelling or sharing stories with something that you really need to include as a pillar of what you teach from the stage? Uh, was there a moment that that happened? Or was it, or was it sort of a looking over your shoulder and seeing a collective, a pattern of things that had gone on in your life that made you realize how important that was? Kenyon Salo: I would say both. Aaron: I think what it comes down to is the fact that if you go to a coffee shop and you sit there and listen to the people that are connecting in a coffee shop, you will hear the different stories that they're sharing with their friend or their family member or even somebody if it's a business meeting. Stories are super, super key and it is that bond between two people. And then I definitely love the storyline of movies and to see this and the underdog and even Joseph Campbell talks about the hero's journey and that and how amazing that story line is of what makes that successful and to see how powerful stories are. What I realized is that audiences engage with stories. If you're being authentic and you're speaking from the heart and you can tell stories, and I was connecting with actually somebody is out to lunch yesterday with two individuals and we're having a great lunch and she asked how do you know what stories to tell an audience? Aaron: And I said, first and foremost, it comes down to just being authentic in your storytelling and, and when you're authentic with your storytelling, then that's where it's super, super powerful. And on top of that it's like. It just depends on the moment. Sometimes the story needs to be super visual and exciting. Like I was in South Africa and a wild boar was chasing me and this didn't happen. But I was. And again, this is, this is the storyline and you're building that storyline and that Bubba and something super funny happened, or the storyline is that a more dramatic or more impactful. And again, if we think about the stories we're telling others and the stories we're telling ourselves, yeah, I often say to audiences, are the stories adventurous? Are they like a romantic comedy? Are they like a drama? Hopefully it's not like a horror movie. Right? What movie line is it? Is it a love story? What is the story you're sharing? And that's really how the audiences connect. And so I realized when I tell stories, the audience connects with me, they feel like I know him and if it's a story that's relatable to them, they think it's like he knows me. Yes. One of the coolest compliments to get after the speech. Kenyon Salo: Yeah. I'm sure you've heard a million times. Yes. I love it every time. It's amazing. Aaron: Yeah, it was pretty good. It's pretty great. It's pretty great experience to hear that. It's definitely in it. It's, it's proof itself, you know, to have somebody who was otherwise a total stranger come up to you and tell you how impactful it was when you told that story. So a, trust me, everyone, uh, take it from Kenya and he is a man who knows a live their lives include that storytelling into a regular part of your life. So what's, what is the, uh, let's get to this third of the bucket list life we went from creating experiences and sharing more stories. What's the third leg that we have? Kenyon Salo: The third leg is living more fulfilled. It's the one thing and the main reason we're on this planet. We want to feel like we've lived a fulfilled life. And how does that happen? It happens by helping others. And you know, we had gone into a nursing home, a retirement home, a individuals 86 and above. So we had 86 to 96 years old. There were 10 of them in this house and we interviewed each of them and we ask them four questions. And the first question was, what is something you did when you were younger? And then what is something you're most proud of? And then the third was, what is something you wish you had done? And the fourth was, what is some advice you'd like to give to anybody younger than you? Now going into it, I thought that number three was going to be the powerful one. Kenyon Salo: What is something you wish you had done? But that was different for each person. It was kind of across the board and powerful stuff, but it wasn't the common theme. Number two was the big one, which was what is something you're most proud of? And what it came down to was that every single person said the thing that they were most proud of in their life was not, oh, I saw this, I experienced this. I, I, you know, fell in love with this person, etc. Instead, it was when I gave back, whether it was when they volunteered, their time, their money, they shared something, they opened their house to somebody else. When they gave back, hey, remember that tIme, at the end of their years as the most important thing. And it was the same for every individual. So I started looking into this and I realized that the power is that when we help others first, and I said this earlier, that everything comes back tenfold, but it also is a physical thing that happens in the chemistry of our body, that the oxytocin is released, that cardio protective hormone is sent through our body, through the bloodstream, goes through the bloodstream, goes to the heart, makes you feel great and actually makes you feel healthy and more and you become more healthy because of this and that not only what you do something great for somebody or when you have somethIng that is done for you or if you watch or see something great being done for another individual. Kenyon Salo: All three people feel the same way and have the same chemistry reaction. That's amazing to me. Aaron: It is. It is. It really is. You have the power of giving is, is, is powerful. As you said, it doesn't even have to be you. I mean it goes back to having it right. Five people in your circle, man, you want to be around people that are, that have the same mindset and want to give and they want to contribute through their service or through a volunteer charitable thing that they're involved in whatever it is, because even having people around you that do that, um, you can reap the benefits of it even if it's in a moment that you're not actually engaged with it yourself. I was, when I, I mentioned early, I finished a book recently and one of those studies I talk about in here, I think it was at stanford and they did this study of coincidentally enough, a study of some elderly people and there was two groups. Aaron: One group was volunteers. They are volunteering, volunteering their time and these charitable causes and the other group was not. They just know they're living their lives and enjoying themselves. Long story short, a five year extended lifespan amongst the group that we're givers compared to the non givers was the result of this study. People were actually, they were actually living longer or as the study said, less likely to reach mortality. A, and this is over course of years because they're engaged in giving, so your, your, your point to your point, man, it's at some research backed facts that you're talking about. There's the power of giving is, it's pretty amazing. Kenyon Salo: It is, and you come from that place. You are authentic. I mean as I sit here on skype and I see and I see this background and for the listeners he's got this amazing, this huge canvas of him and his wife and his child and you could see that that that says love across it. Like in big red letters it says l o v e, and that's not just from the family side. My guess is that because you feel out that that word empathy, compassion, love, and that you're willing to put it on a big blown up canvas on your wall. You're, my guess is you live that way. True. Aaron: It is. It is one of my core values, man. It definitely is. I, it is. I couldn't read. I couldn't not have it back there. It's funny because I thought about you don't have something more cool or no, nope. nope. That's the coolest thing you could have. the phasing was my 12 year old sophia and it's of course my wife kathy and a photo and I do. I love it. That was a, a happiest place on earth, man. It was disney dreams coming true. That's right. That's right. Uh, well listen man, I, I love it. Uh, just talk about giving. I gotta ask you this. What is the feedback that you get when you touch on these? Because these are the three main components. I'm sure he talked about many things in the long line of keynotes that you do, but these are the three main components of your presentation. Majority of the time. Is that true? Kenyon Salo: So actually What's brilliant and maybe a little bit of luck that I stumbled upon it this way, the key, the key note was designed with these three things in mind as an inspiration, motivation, keynote. And then someone said, hey, can you do the same keynote and structure it towards customer service? And I was like, I can. And I realized that customer service, it's about experiences. It's about sharing stories with your customers and it's about helping customers first and then I realized I could do it for leadership, I can do it for sales, I can do it for team building, and we started looking into this and even recently someone challenged me. They said, look, there's a high suicide rate in my town, and they said, would your message work? And I said, look, I want to be very clear. I am not a suicide expert yet. Kenyon Salo: At the same time, the people that are happiest are doing these three things. So what I realized, I said, look, I could be an addition to a type of presentation like that where I could explain how when we're creating experiences, we feel alive. We feel fired up when we're sharing stories, we feel connected. We have relationships with. When we're helping others, we feel more fulfilled and it's about community and when those three things are there, generally people start to see the light instead of the dark. And so it's amazing how much this presentation transcends across all forms, audiences, ages and demographics. Aaron: Yeah, I love him, man. And that's one of the things I love about this, it is, so I love things that just work, but they don't just work in this corner of the world or in this particular situation. I love things that just work, which probably one of the biggest struggles I've had in business as a coach and as you know, when I, years ago when I started building this platform is what do I want to, you know, everybody was like, find your niche, you've got to niche it down and you've got to get just your little specialty and you can't talk about anything else because you got to get known as the expert in this thing. That was one of my biggest struggles because I'm a bit of a pragmatist. I mean, are you okay? I've been, I've been a police officer since 1995. I spent two decades just, you know, just the facts ma'am, so to speak. Aaron: So I really, at my core, you know, even though I don't carry that identity around, which is kind of makes me the, you know, this, the things I do these days isn't exactly what everybody else in my industry is doing. So I Am. I've always been a bit of a, an outsider when it comes to that. But I am a bit of a pragmatist and then I like things that just make sense. Don't tell me it makes sense now, but it won't 10 minutes from here, it won't make sense if I drive around the corner for one, it won't make sense if I'm a salesman or won't make sense if I'm a ceo or leading a fortune 500 corporation. And I love this about what you do because these things, they are applicable regardless of where you are. And, and I think that speaks to authenticity because when you're really, when you're sharing a method, a message that's real and authentic, it's going to be real no matter who hears it. Aaron: Assuming they're willing to listen. And I appreciate that about you and what it is you're doing and what you've, what you've built a quickly over these years. Um, I'd love to ask you this when it comes to obviously your got it knows communication very well and you've gotten a ton of feedback. I'm traveling all over the country and all over the world doing theSe key notes. If you had to give someone who is there working on their brand, whether that brand is in their nine to five and they're hoping to get promoted and move up the career ladder or whether that brand is there, a personal fitness trainer and a nutritionist, a nutritionist, and they just want to be able to connect with their people on a stronger, on, make stronger connections as they meet new potential clients and as they're serving their current clients. What are some of the things that you've learned about connectIng sincerely connecting with people that you can share with the people listening that they can get some tangible value out of it that you've seen consistently working for you? Kenyon Salo: I would say think of a time in your life where you met someone and within 10 minutes you feel as if they're a brother from another mother, a sister from another mister. It's like, how have we not known each other like you are on believable. We're best friends now. Like add me on facebook. This is it I. And then you and then you realize that your lifelong friends. Yeah. My guess is the reason that happened is because both of you, not just one, but both of you were being authentic. You were being your true self. You didn't have walls up, you didn't have this idea of being perfect. You didn't have this, these, these preconceived notions that you have to act or be a certain way to fit into what you believed your environment is. You just said, this is who I am and if you think of a will, smith and the pursuit of happiness where he shows up in the meeting and he's wearing the paint tattered clothes. Kenyon Salo: You know, and in that moment you realized he was authentically him and he got the job. So what does that say? You show up being you, and if they don't connect with you, they're not the people you need to be around because you need to be you and that's how you find your people and so what happens is you're in your environment and let's say you want to make a step up in your environment. Again, you authentically be you. Maybe some of those people come with you, maybe they don't, but you also fInd this next level of people and it's. There's a lot of power in that, so yeah, authenticity is the number one game and the one more thing I'll add is specially for speakers or if you're onstage, you must be speaking from a place of who you are when you're offstage. it's not about who you show up and how you show up on stage. It's how you show up offstage and when those two are mirror images of each other, people will connect with you because they say he lives what he speaks. Aaron: Yeah, man, I could not have. If you gave me a week, I couldn't have said that better myself. Honestly, because it is so true. I've seen it happen over and over again, unfortunately I've seen it play out the other way when people don't, when they try to put on a, you know, a false persona or try to act a certain way and they get robotic about it and I get it, you know, a lot of times when it's new for people they're not used to being, they're not used to speaking or they're not used to having a sales conversation or they're not used to getting on stage or on a podcast or doing a show it can feel uncomfortable. So I'm not speaking to that when it feels awkward just because it's, you know, riding a bike for the first time, but, but when the intention is to just look, I'm just, I'm just going to be me and just have this conversation and offer what I have to share. Aaron: And like you said, be the same guy or the same gal onstage and offstage. People noticed that and not only do they notice it, they appreciate it and it makes you stand out. it really does. When we started this conversation today, one of the things I told about you is, you know, I, I love the fact that you're actually, you're actually this dude that can put James Bond and the title of his thing and it's not bs, it's like it's, it's real, it's, it's the kind of life you live in it and it and it's what you're about and it fits. It's not like you're trying to put on this thing on or off and you know, I've been lucky enough to talk with you on the phone and here on this interview and I see you on stage and I can tell everyone listening. It's the same guy. I mean it's, it's, it's, you can hear it in the voice. You can see in the presentation the body language. It's the same dude every single time regardless of where you see a kenyan say though, and you know, I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful to know somebody as another person like that because it speaks highly of you. Kenyon Salo: Thank you. thank you. I appreciate it. This has been super fun. Aaron: Yeah, definitely. Well listen, I want to, I want to ask you this, um, before we wind it up today, I got to use this. There's got to be something I'm curious to know from a guy that is the James Bond of public speaking and enhance this, this amazing mission of, of helping people live their life to the fullest and create these experiences, tell more stories and, and, and be more giving in their own life. What do you, what's the next evolution evolution for you? I mean, you got a lot crossed off the list. What is your, what is your list look like now that has yet to be completed? I think people would love to hear that. Kenyon Salo: The next evolution that is starting to show up for me is this transfer of experiences and teaching of knowledge and helping really into my kids and my kids are 12 and 14 now and I start to think of the, you know, like hey, they're about to learn how to scuba dive later in the fall and they have all these experiences and traveling in international travel and they've done that. But also some of the crazy international travel where it's like, hey, let's just go there and we have no plans. We'll just go let we feel like going left or we'll go right if we feel like going right and a lot of the experiences I've had in my life and being able to share that with them and additionally sharing the knowledge that I've gained through speaking the speaking industry, teaching others personal development and then passing that on to others. Kenyon Salo: So that's from the business standpoint where that start to, that starting to show up now where I want to pass on that knowledge and be able to give that and create systems and models that will help others along the way. So when people reach out, they say, how do I become a better speaker? How do I grow my business? that's great. Or how do I get unstuck from this particular point in my life? I want to help others along the way. So I, I celebrate and anybody that's listening right now, if you want to reach out to me, I mean find me on facebook. Kenyan say low and connect with me. I want to help others so when people reach out and help them in some way, and that's how you and I connected you reached out and I was like, boom, here we are and we're impacting your audience members to. Aaron: I love it, man. Nothing better than creating new experiences with your kids and, and creating new stories until traveling the world. And I love. I love to hear that. You know, you're getting involved in sharing more and wanting to coach other people and help them do more of what it is they want to do in their own, their own business, their life, their speaking career, whatever it is that, that is a, that's a pretty awesome thing. Definitely an awesome thing. So what I'd love to do is, is tell people what's the, what's the easiest way, the best way to get ahold of you? So many like, you know, I need to talk to this guy some more and maybe want to take him up on some, on a coaching offer and do more of what it is he teaches people to do. How can they connect with you? What's the best way to get to you Kenyon Salo: at either facebook or linkedin? And I'm an easy guy to find a kenyan sailor. There's only two of us that I know. It's higher world and I'm the only one that, that you know, that you'll see it on, on social media. So just you can google my name. Kenyan, say low. Uh, you can find me on facebook. The link will be right there on the, on the front page of google. So connect with me there. Send me a message and uh, we'll just open it up. And, and really as I mentioned before, all you have to do is say yes and figure out the how. So I don't know how I'm going to help an individual or that person might not know how that I can help them. but if you're like, hey, something resonates with me here. If you feel that it resonates, reach out. We'll go from there and we'll see what it is. Aaron: Beautiful man. I appreciate it. And to everybody listening, I really need to spell out how important this message is that kenny hands today. Because if honestly, if, if I were going to try to encapsulate what's the best business advice and connection and vice exactly what he's talking about, which is which is being authentic, one of the worst mistakes you can make is to be inauthentic about who you are. Don't apologize. Whatever your personalities, your what your values are, as long as you're living what's important to you. When you're sharing your message and you're and you're growing your business or you're trying to grow within your organization or your or your being who you are, even with your family relationships, you've got to be authentic and be willing to connect with people from, from your gut, from the person you really are. So thank you caitlin, for sharing your stories. I know about you. Have everybody listening. If you go to aaron, keith hawkins.com, type in the word a type in kenyan into the search bar. It's on the top of the screen. K e n y o n I'm one of the coolest names, if not the coolest name I've ever heard it. Where's it from kenyon? Kenyon Salo: My dad's name was ken. Rick. They wanted something similar, but at junior, so it was a baby book, you know, it's, it's so simple. It's just the baby book name. But uh, yeah, it's, it's awesome. It works well. Aaron: Yeah, definitely, definitely an advantage with that name. But yeah, typing Kenyon into a search bar, you get the link to this episode and I'll make sure I have every link I can find to make sure you can hook up with him, um, or just go to KenyonSalo.com and find him there. Please make sure you thank them for spending this time with us today. Kenyon. Before we run, I just got to say thank you for being one of those, one of those guys that I'm happy, one of the people that I'm happy to have in my circle of influence in this network. I love what you're doing. I really do, because if more people will take the lessons that you're teaching and actually adopt them and implement them, man, the world's a better place. So keep crushing it. Keep doing what you're doing and I can't wait to talk to you again soon. We'll definitely keep in touch, my friend. Thanks Aaron. Appreciate it. All right, buddy. We'll talk soon. Resources from Unbreakable Success Podcast Episode 58: Kenyon Salo's website: KenyonSalo.com Facebook: fb.com/KenyonSalo YouTube: Click Here Instagram: @KenyonSalo LinkedIn: @KenyonSalo Twitter: @KenyonSalo Need a Public Speaking Coach?: Click Here

FL267 - Should entrepreneurs homeschool their kids?

The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 26, 2018 117:36

In today's episode, we discuss, should entrepreneurs homeschool their kids? FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast we discuss, should entrepreneurs homeschool their kids? Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right. Let's get started. Shane: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. And we have a very special episode of the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. For those of you who've been listening to our podcast for a long time, you know that normally we do not have expert guests on the show. It's usually a member of the Flip Your Life community who comes on the show, gets a consulting call. We do that on air and we share it with everybody so that you can benefit from the conversation. Actually, the only other guest who's ever been on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast is Pat Flynn, from the Smart Passive Income podcast. Shane: And this one came out of nowhere. Jocelyn sent me a message the other day because we have been discussing whether or not we were going to take our kids out of public school and homeschool them next semester. Jocelyn: We've been discussing it for a year. Shane: Yeah, we've been discussing it off and on forever, and the other day a friend of ours sent us this book. What's it called, Jocelyn? Jocelyn: So it's called The 5-Hour School Week. A friend of mine just kind of randomly sent it to me and said, "Hey, you might be interested in checking this out," because she knew that this is something we've sort of been tossing around for a while. Jocelyn: So, you know, I downloaded it, being a former librarian. I had to jump online and get that thing. Shane: And Jocelyn devoured it and read it in like 30 minutes or something like that because she can read way faster than us. Jocelyn: A little longer than that. Shane: We decided that this was actually a really big issue, not only for us, but for other entrepreneurs out there because as we built the Flipped Lifestyle and we define the Flipped Lifestyle, and we teach other people how to flip their life, a big part of that is freedom, especially time freedom and control of your schedule. That has been a really big problem with us over the last couple of years as entrepreneurs, people who work at home and have total control of our life, it's really been difficult to send our kids to school, where they're in this structured environment and they're sitting in rows and they're on the bell schedule like a factory. Shane: Then also, having to work our schedule around getting up so early to go to school or even if we want to take a trip, wrestling with do we pull our kids out? Do they get behind? Do we have to ask permission to even do that? As we've talked to other entrepreneurs, we realized, especially with people that already work at home or want to work at home, that this is a major problem. Shane: So we reached out to the authors of this book and asked them if they would come on to the show. not only to discuss homeschooling, discuss entrepreneurship and how that all fits together, but also to answer some questions from entrepreneurs in the Flip You Life community and that's what we're going to do on the podcast today, is we're really going to wrestle with this question. Should entrepreneurs homeschool their kid, and if they do, how does that work? What does that look like? That's a really scary proposition. Shane: So without further ado, let's stop talking. Let's invite, let's welcome our guests to the podcast today, and I'm actually just going to say your first names. Jocelyn: We'll let you guys say your last name, okay? Kaleena: Sounds good. Shane: And I am good at butchering names and I want you guys to say this. So we have Aaron and Kaleena. Kaleena: Amuchastegui. Shane: What is it? Say it again? Kaleena: Amuchastegui. Shane: All right. We have Aaron and Kaleena- Kaleena: Amuchastegui. Shane: Amuchastegui. Okay. Welcome to the show, guys. Aaron: Awesome. Thanks so much for inviting us to come on. You know, from you guys getting to talk about what you do and we're really excited to be able to share with you and your community. We're entrepreneurs as well, and we had to do some crazy flips in our life too, so we're super-excited. Kaleena: Yeah, super excited. Shane: I do want to stress that we are not affiliates, we're not getting any benefit for this, you know, financially. Jocelyn: We've met them for the first time, like a few minutes ago. Shane: Yeah, exactly. So we are literally here just to help entrepreneurs in their journey and to help people who are really struggling with this question about homeschooling. So if you could, you mentioned you were entrepreneurs, tell us a little bit about your background as an entrepreneur and then maybe you could go into that decision-making process that led you guys down this homeschool route. Kaleena: Yeah, absolutely. Aaron: Sure. We've been entrepreneurs for almost 10 years now. So originally we were full-time workers. I worked for a residential home builder. Kaleena worked for various offices, different things like that. Back in 2009, that was kind of that first moment of quitting our jobs to become entrepreneurs. Part of that was what everybody wants to try for, is trying to get more freedom, more life, more things like that, but our first couple of years of that was we thought that we were going to get a lot of our time back, but our first few years of entrepreneurship was just really, really long hard hours. Aaron: The businesses that we had chosen, there was 50 and 60 hour weeks and we were buying and selling and flipping houses and doing construction. Kaleena ran a big real estate brokerage. It was a really good experience for us, so we started, after a lot of hard work, we got the money and the finances that entrepreneurship was supposed to bring, but we hadn't quite figured out that freedom part yet because we were working and working a ton. Aaron: Then several years ago, we kind of had those years where there's nannies raising our kids, working way too much around the clock, and just kind of came to these, this kind of different experience where we started to, as entrepreneurs, that way working too much. Our marriage wasn't really going very good, we had nannies raising our kids, they were going off to school and we were really, really unhappy. Then we had kind of some really come to moments. We started adjusting that, changing that business, had to get recycled and back in 2013 Kaleena said, to kind of take a different angle. Kaleena: Right. Shane: You mean when you made it financially, everything didn't work out perfectly? Kaleena: Yes. Exactly. Shane: Come on, that's what everybody thinks, though, right? Once you get that. Aaron: It's so heartbreaking, though. Kaleena: It's super heartbreaking. Aaron: Like when you finally make it to what you think you're supposed to get to and you're still like, "Wait, we're still miserable." That's a sad, sad moment, really. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: You know what though? That's a part of everyone's journey that we talked to that's made it is ... I think we were actually kind of fortunate in this regard in our journey because Jocelyn used to work in corporate, like the ladder. I mean, you're climbing to the top and you kind of get to a point and you realize, "Wait a minute, you mean if I get the promotion I'm still not happy?" and I did college football coaching and football coaching and things like that. So we kind of had these 70 hour work week experiences before we became entrepreneurs, and I think that kind of tempered how we walked into entrepreneurship. Now, granted, we had the 70 hours weeks when we were working full time, raising kids, trying to build a side business, right? Kaleena: Yep. Shane: But you do realize on the other side of that that it's not just the money. The money can create some opportunity, but it's the time. That's really what you got to get back or everything kind of falls apart. Jocelyn: Yeah, and it's just like part of the whole value. You realize that money is important, but time is even that much more important. Kaleena: That's true. Jocelyn: So it's kind of crazy. It's like a journey. You have to go through the journey to get there to understand that, I think. Shane: So as you're doing this with nannies raising your kids and things like that and you have this come to Jesus moment, like, "Oh my gosh, this is not what we want." Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: How old were your kids in 2013 when that kind of happened? Kaleena: So we have four children all together and I had three girls that were three and under. So I had a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and a newborn and when things really kind of hit the head, we had just had our third baby. She was maybe like a year, year-and-a-half old. Really, we just kind of self-imploded. Our marriage was failing. We were both making six figure incomes, but we were miserable, like I've never been so discontent in my entire life. Kaleena: So it's just those moments that bring you to your knees that you're like, "Okay, we've got to change some stuff." So Aaron went on this mission in growth, like a growth mindset kind of mission, where he started reading Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. He read the 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Aaron went on this new mission and I started really scaling back my work. I started hiring people, which we hadn't done. I'd been carrying like 30 to 40 transactions at a time completely by myself. Kaleena: So we started outsourcing some of that work and getting rid of the nannies, and me stepping back into the role that I knew was going to make me happier. So that happened over the course ... I mean, it took a lot of work. I don't want this to sound easy. It took time. Like we were probably a full year in to some serious, serious life changes and business changes when we had this epiphany that things weren't ... We weren't being taken to the level we wanted to be taken to because we couldn't get our kids there with us. Shane: Love that. Aaron: Yeah you know, when we made that first shift to go from 70 hour work weeks to trying to live a four hour work week lifestyle, we made those big changes over that six months to a year, and it really started working. We really started to find where I could travel for work and do things that we could no longer do in California, and then I had a chance to open up - I was doing all these deals again in Texas so I talked to Kaleena and I said, "Hey I need you to open up a brokerage account." Like hey, we've got our family back, we've got our lifestyle back, but now I'm paying 30,000 a month in commissions to other people, I need to go open up a brokerage account. Aaron: And luckily she was super smart and just said, "You know what, we're not gonna work together now. I'm not gonna choose to go back to that lifestyle, we'll make up the money some other way. But I want to raise our kids." Aaron: At that time we weren't homeschooling yet, it was just as entrepreneurs the best lifestyle for us was for me to be running a business and for her to be able to focus on the family. But still at that time she was taking the kids to school and going through that process. Kaleena: Right, and essentially what you were talking about, that 70 hour week but with my kids in school. Shane: That's amazing, and for us we've kind of come to a point about the school discussion. When we quit our jobs, we went into it working together. But we've kind of set some limits in that place, we were working like, during the kids' school hours. So, we'd take the kids to school, we would work from - I don't know. We'd come home, we'd go to the gym, we'd come home, we'd work 10 to 2:30, and then go pick the kids up. Shane: But then we started asking ourselves, is that really what we want for our family? Do we want to drop the kids off and not see them all day? Do we want to have no say in their education? And we realized, I think in the last year, we traded our freedom back to society. Because we are just locked into this school schedule and school cycle now, and it really came to a head this summer when we had to write an essay to get permission to miss a week of school to take our kids to Jamaica. Shane: And I'm sitting here like, what's a better experience? Getting on an airplane and flying to another culture, or sitting in a classroom? And why am I having to write a five paragraph essay to get permission from anybody? We have total control over our lives. We control our finances, we control our schedule, we control everything. What have we done that we've given all our freedom away again? Jocelyn: If that wasn't bad enough, then my son missed a week of school, which was excused by the way because we got it excused from the school, but then he misses a week of school and he gets a little bit behind. And one of the teachers has the nerve to say to him, "Well if you weren't spending so much time in Jamaica, then maybe you would've learned this material." Jocelyn: And I'm like, "What?" Kaleena: Ugh. Shane: Like that is not an either or, you know what I'm saying? Like, life is not either or, even though society wants us to think that way. Kaleena: Right. Shane: Why couldn't we do that and then get caught up and then do something else, or if we had - Jocelyn: Or why wasn't that considered a valuable learning experience that you went to another country, and experienced things that most of these kids in this school may never experience in their lifetime? Why is that not... Shane: And you could bring that back to share it with the other students. Kaleena: Yes, exactly. Jocelyn: Yes. Aaron: I mean, you've read the books so you know, that's the whole basis of the five hour school week, and where that five hour school week came about. It was the same issues of dropping the kids off at school. Kaleena: Right, it was like, "Hey, we're refusing to jump through the hoops of life. We're not entering the rat race. We refuse, as adults, to live this way." And yet we were sending our kids right into that Shane: Oh my gosh. Kaleena: -same rat race that we were rebelling against so strongly. Shane: I'm so glad that you said that, because we literally had this conversation probably about two weeks ago. Jocelyn: This is what our entire brand is about. Our entire brand is about putting family first and not living the way that the rest of society says to live, yet that's exactly what we're doing every single day. Kaleena: Every day. Shane: I got to thinking about our lives. We come home, we've worked hard to build this life for ourselves, in the morning we get up, we go to the gym, we work on what we want to work on, we don't work when we don't want to. I play a little Xbox in the morning I ain't gonna lie. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: We've kind of built this thing to do what we want to do with our life. And then our kids are just locked into this, every 45 minutes. Like Pavlov's dog a bell will ring, and you will go to the next place, and you will learn what you learn. And if you can't keep up with those other 30 kids that were randomly put in your classroom, because they're your age, and you get behind, you're screwed. Shane: It just really doesn't jive, not only with what we're doing, but really what we should be doing. Schools were invented 100 years ago to provide childcare for factory workers in Chicago and places like that, and also to train people to work in those same environments. I'm just not sure that's the way the world is anymore. Shane: I heard this story, Jocelyn told me this quote the other day that said, "A time traveler came to the future, and was so confused by all the things that he saw. He saw iPads, and the internet, and space travel. And he felt really scared and uncomfortable, but then he went into a school and said, 'Thank god some things haven't changed.' " Kaleena: Oh man, yes. Shane: That's kind of where we find ourselves, at a crossroads. Are we really pursuing freedom if we keep putting our kids in this environment? Jocelyn: We've been wrestling with this forever. Another part of it for me is what you talk about in the book, you talk about how you get what's left over for your kids. They give their best hours to school, and by the time they get home, we're tired because we've been working all day. They're tired because they've been working all day. We don't really spend quality time together. Jocelyn: And what's sad is, we spend more time with our kids than probably most of their peers' parents spend with them, and still it's not even quality time. Sometimes it is, but not always. Kaleena: Right well a lot of the time I'm guessing it's staying on top of them to get their homework done, I'm guessing you're having to urge them to get that reading in, even though they just sat in a desk for seven hours. Jocelyn: Yes. Kaleena: So you are having to now work for the school system and really be kind of a command sergeant, and instead of getting to love on your kid and pour into their life, instead you're like, "Get that reading slip done, make sure that homework gets done, even though I only get to see you for four hours tonight." And let us squeeze all that in to this teeny tiny bit of time we have. Shane: Also, then you take them to their sports, or some activity at night time. Jocelyn: Yes, we have extracurricular activities. Kaleena: Yep so do we. Jocelyn: My daughter, she does an all star cheer team, and it's 30 minutes away from our house. So by the time we drive the 30 minutes she has practice for two hours, and we drive back. That's over three hours of time. How in the world are we supposed to do reading at that time? Shane: And then she goes to bed at 9:30 and we have to get her up at 5:30 AM to go to school because they tell us to be there at 6:50, or whatever. Kaleena: And what about if cheer is her passion? What about if she is going to make it as a professional cheerleader, and you're having to squeeze her passion into that teeny tiny bit of time. Because she spent so much time focusing on stuff that does not fill her up. If she was at home, she could be perfecting and mastering cheer. Or perfecting and mastering where her passion lays. That's the biggest disadvantage, that our kids are spending time on things that are not going to add any value to their life. Kaleena: We are spending 40 hours a week with our kids teaching and shoving things down their throat they will never, ever use. Shane: Yeah, and like. Go ahead. Aaron: We had a couple big moments of that, where it was like hitting us, what are we really doing? I was speaking at a conference and I was on stage telling people about the four hour work week. I said, "Hey you guys work too much. This is how you can work in just a couple hours a day and finish your work day and be successful. Know that the five people you hang out with the most are who you're going to be like, so only hang out with winners." Aaron: And a lady stood up at the end and goes, "Hey that's great. So how does this apply to your kids in school?" And we were like... Jocelyn: Ouch. Shane: Uh.... Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: Yeah, and I was telling people, "Hey do this, this, and this." And we were sending our kids off... and we had a big moment that night where we were like, "Whoa!" We had experimented with some different things, but that was a big moment. Aaron: And then just like another evening, going to bed again after school, and extracurriculars and we're telling our daughter, "Hey you need to go get your reading done." And she's in tears, like, "Why? I actually earned a free pass from something else so I don't have to." And we're like, "No, you have to." Because we were brainwashed, too. Aaron: And then we tell her, and we lay down in bed and we're like, maybe she's right. What are we doing? We've done everything we're supposed to do. We've checked the boxes, and we got successful, and Kaleena is still a stay at home mom at that time and we're still not even getting enough time with our kids, and not doing it, and really starting to push, you go, hey there's something really wrong here. Kaleena really started educating herself on it. Shane: And I want to stress here some really important facts. Because I know people that - this podcast is going to be controversial. I know it is. Kaleena: Oh yeah. Yup. Shane: But we have a really good school and a great community. We have really hard working, dedicated, good teachers. Jocelyn: Who care about our children. Shane: Who love our kids, and they work within a system that they don't always have control over. And also if you look at the entire span of human history, it is a miracle in the United States, it is a miracle in the United States that every child does even get to go to school, good or bad. Kaleena: Absolutely. Shane: It is an absolute miracle of humanity, if you just look at it throughout history. Shane: However - and the opportunities that we have to be entrepreneurs, to work on the internet, to build a life that we want, and even to educate our child at home, is all built on the fact that that was available for the past hundred years. That being said, somethings wrong. Something has changed in the way that we're all living that has to be corrected. And the system that we're using now is just not working - for our kids, for families. For anybody. Especially for entrepreneurs who do have that freedom. Shane: One of our things is travel. Whether we're speaking, we do live events around the country. Whether we just want to take a trip for educational purposes, or fun. What happens when you want to travel during the week? What happens when you want to get away for a couple weeks in the winter to keep from getting Seasonal Affective Disorder? All these things that you can take into account, you've still got school to contend with. It is trapping you there just like a 9 - 5 job or like a rat race. Shane: What about your kids who are having their creativity stifled? What if your kid hates math? But they can grasp it, they can do the math that they need to do. But what if they are musically inclined and they're only getting 20 minutes of music a day? Shane: Isaac is taking coding in one of his classes, and he's really disappointed because he's cycled out of the coding class, and he was really getting into it. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, you mean that opportunity disappeared because they can't get everyone through because they only have 12 computers?" Like, what if he wants to keep doing that? He stayed at home sick today and he's up there coding right now. Shane: Where are those opportunities for that? That's where we kind of are at right now. Can we pull this off? Can we do this? But that leads to a whole other set of questions. Aaron: We should say, too, that we absolutely loved the school our girls were going too, too. And the teachers loved our kids. It wasn't that the school we were going to was broken, the system was broken for us. Kaleena: Yes. Aaron: It wasn't a good match for who we wanted to be and what we were trying to do of excelling to these different levels. Then that basis of what you said, the whole idea behind the five hour school week is you can spend an hour a day doing all that normal schoolwork stuff, and then the rest of the day is whatever they want. For travel, or focusing on coding. One of our daughters took coding classes for a while, too. And being able to find that passion. The little details with some focus, they can do all the stuff that everybody else has to do in school, and then they can spend the rest of that time they've saved now on stuff they love. Whether its cheerleading or soccer, whatever. Shane: We've kind of noticed too that school is - and this goes back to there's a problem with how the actual thing has evolved - school's not realistic. It's not realistic to how life actually works. So we can get into the life skills, and balancing checkbooks, and all that's fine. We all have jobs to teach our kids that stuff to. Shane: But when you put 30 people in a room and you teach a lesson once, and you expect all 30 to be able to get there in one class, that doesn't happen. That's not realistic. People learn and grow on their own path. Our son came home the other day and it broke our hearts. I was sitting there talking to him and I said, "Are you okay, did you have a bad day?" And he goes, "I just feel dumb." And I go, "What do you mean?" And he goes, "I'm not understanding area and perimeter, and they only talked about it one day and we went on to something else. But they keep testing me on it." And I'm like oh my gosh, he got to watch the guy do it on the blackboard. But if he was at home, he could watch the lesson over and over until he got it. Jocelyn: And that's how these guys got started, like I know reading in your book that's what was a light bulb moment for you, right? Helping somebody with a math problem. Kaleena: Yeah, so it's interesting. We went on a trip. We started hearing people speak about unconventional education ideas. In fact the vice principal from our private school was leaving to go start an Acton Academy which is an entrepreneurial based school that goes from kindergarten all the way through high school. It's a really incredible program. Shane: We looked at it, we almost thought about moving to a city that has an Acton academy. Jocelyn: Yeah one of our friends, her children go to one. Kaleena: They're incredible. So he's leaving this school, because he's saying, "I have kids and I can't actually send them to the school that I'm a principal at." And so I loved and respected this man. So we were hearing from him, other entrepreneurs were homeschooling their children, and I'd started reading some new material, like Free to Learn from Peter Gray. And so we started slowly tiptoeing into this new territory. Kaleena: So we were like, we're going to pull our kids out of school for a week and go to Yosemite. And I don't care what the school's going to say, we're just gonna go do this. So we're gone for the week, we forget the kids' homework. We think it's going to be a catastrophe. We have this beautiful family vacation. The girls, and we, learned so much together just about the park, about nature. We're doing open air bus rides, and all the things. We're doing campfires with the rangers. We are learning in real time, and making incredible family memories. Kaleena: And so then after a week we get home, and what's waiting for us? A week's worth of homework. And just the fear, and the anxiety sets in and its like panic in my house. And so I start unloading the car and Aaron's like, I'm gonna sit down with the girls, we're gonna knock out homework. Kaleena: Our oldest, Maddy, is stressed. She has to learn long division. They're gonna go over long division this week and she hasn't done it, and this is so terrifying. No exaggeration, Aaron sat there for two hours with all three of our girls and knocked out a weeks worth of work, including teaching Maddy long division. Where she could just sit and independently do problems. Aaron: Its such a fun conversation with you guys, because you guys could've written a couple chapters of our book. Kaleena: Right. Aaron: The same problems you guys are talking about is what's there. We discovered some of it by knowledge, some by seeing it. Those couple hours when we got back, it's the four hour work week principles. If you're really focused and you have no distractions and you're going to the task at hand in the most productive manner, you're gonna be able to finish a whole bunch of stuff in a short amount of time. Aaron: One of the big problems with school like what you said, is that they teach in one method. Which is going to be slower than the fastest person in class and faster than the slowest person in class. So it's really only the perfect speed for a few of the students. And it's only in that subject. So it's not the most efficient way. Aaron: The most efficient way to learn is as fast as that individual can learn. Maybe this kid has to go over perimeter and area ten different times, but in this other subject they get it like that. And so the way we have it set up is that it's that quick focus and then - I take Maddy back to school the next day. We drop her off and she's relieved. We got to pick her and and we go, "Hey how was your day today?" And she goes, "Dad, I was the only one that knows how to learn long division, they didn't even get to it this week." Shane: Wow. Isn't that crazy? Aaron: It is. Shane: You know what's funny though? You still had to deal with all the stress and anxiety. She was so worried about this artificial deadline or consequence that society and the school had placed on her. It's subconscious, they don't know they're doing it. This fear and anxiety was over nothing. Shane: Where is the joy in just, holy crap I know how to do long division. That's miraculous, that we can do these mathematical things, and that's gonna pay dividends down the road. But she got to - what if she had just entered that weekend with, "Oh we just went to Yosemite. Hey what are we studying this week guys? Long division? Cool, let's figure that out." Instead of, "Oh my gosh if I don't learn this tomorrow I'm a failure." And all these consequences, and all these bad things. Shane: You got the result, but you had to deal with all the problems. When you could've just eliminated the anxiety and the problems. Kaleena: Right. Then the problem continued, because for the next three to four weeks the school was still going over long division and Maddy had mastered it and was bored out of her mind. Shane: And that's our daughter's problem right now. She's having the opposite problem. In her class in her grade, not that she's any more smarter or more capable than our son, but she's younger and she's the faster speed right now in her topics. Jocelyn: And she says she's bored. Shane: And she's bored out of her - she doesn't want to go to school. Jocelyn: Basically during a big portion of the day she takes accelerated reader tests, which I don't really have a problem with accelerated reader or anything like that, and I'm not saying anything bad about her teacher. Her teacher is catering to those who haven't mastered whatever it is she's trying to teach, and so because my child has she spends her days reading books and taking tests on them. Kaleena: Right. Oh I know. Shane: She's reading easy fun books and doing nothing. So it's just this weird environment. I go back to, school is not realistic of the real world. Shane: When I wake up every day, I'm looking at the next thing I've got to do to grow our business, to improve our marriage, to help our kids, to help the people in our community, to record podcasts for our audience so they've got something to spur them. I'm always looking at the next thing, there's never a time where I just stop and I'm like, I gotta wait for everybody else to catch up. Shane: That's not real, that's not how life actually works. Looking at how school functions - how old are you guys? Kaleena: I'm 36. Aaron: And I'm 38. Shane: Okay, so I'm 40. Jocelyn's about 30, so we're the same age. We talked to somebody a couple weeks ago, we talked to a guy who was like 31. Right? When we had a live event a couple months ago we had over a hundred people that had flown in for a conference that we put on. There was everybody in that room from age 30 to 60. Shane: But you go to school, and it's the only 18 years of your life where you're trapped with people who are the exact same age as you. And now the schools have become such bubbles. The seniors are kept away from the sophomores. And the sophomores are kept away from the freshman. Everybody's compartmentalized and even the arbitrary - deadlines are one thing - but these arbitrary, weird deadlines, like if you don't figure this out on time, not if you don't do something on time, it's just not real. It's just not the way the real world actually functions in 2000 and whatever. Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: It's completely unrealistic and totally inefficient. Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: It's the least efficient way to learn, is the way that they have it set up. It absolutely takes the fun out of it because they are forced to learn for a certain amount of time, all the time. It is so much less fun whereas instead of being excited about learning long division, it's like checking a box. Kaleena: Yep. Jocelyn: Exactly. Aaron: By doing classroom time less, now when they do learn, they want to. They love it. Because they aren't forced to do it all day long, they're choosing to more and more often. And they're getting to choose what they learn more. Kaleena: Right, we're not learning for a grade and we're not learning to pass a test, we're learning for the sake of learning. Which is totally different. This isn't me shooting down education, I love education. I think learning should be a life long journey. From the day that we're born, until the day that we die, we should be learning something new every single day. Not stop when we get a degree, not stop when we get all A's. It's absolutely crazy that we say, get that bachelor's degree and you're done. We're done learning? Are you kidding me? It's crazy. Shane: School's over. Jocelyn: That's just our natural tendency as people, especially as children. That's their natural tendency, to want to learn. Kaleena: Yeah absolutely. Jocelyn: And I think that sometimes in school we kind of stifle that. If we'd mastered whatever it is that we're teaching that day, read some books and take some tests. You know? Kaleena: Yep. Jocelyn: While that is learning... Shane: It fills the time to find something else. Aaron: Yeah, fill the time. Kaleena: Yeah, fill the time. Shane: Okay so let me go back real quick, and then we have bunch of questions. One of the great opportunities we have because we have an audience is, we reached out. This is a hot topic. I want to stress, too, that Jocelyn and I, we do work together in our business. You guys have divided this up. Shane: We both have been successful in our different business pursuits. But we have friends that homeschool from every economic status point. So there's no restriction, we always kill excuses. That's our number one mission in our podcast. Shane: Anyone listening to this, I don't care if you're just starting you entrepreneurial journey, I don't care if you've made it, I don't care if one of you is an entrepreneur and your spouse isn't, I don't care if you're both entrepreneurs, this is one of those things if you want to do it and it's important to you, you'll find a way. And if it's not, you'll find an excuse. So we just want to slam that door shut, and if anybody's thinking that right now, "Well that's great for you guys to talk about this. Shane and Jocelyn got this big podcast. You guys are doing real estate and stuff." No, there's no excuse not to do this if you want to. Okay? Shane: So when you guys made the call - just real quick before we get into a bunch of questions - where did you make the call? How did you make the call? Did you do it in the summer, Christmas time? Just out of nowhere? What was that conversation? How did you execute that? And how did you end up where you're actually homeschooling? Kaleena: Yeah, so a lot like you guys. We talked about it for over a year. Aaron was ready on week one. The minute I started the conversation, Aaron's like, "Pull the trigger, let's go, I'm in." Shane: "I'm ready to go right now. Let's do it." Jocelyn: He's with ya. Kaleena: Right, yeah. I, however, sat in a whole pool of fear for a decent 18 months. Freaked out. Like, my kids are going to be home all day, every day, and - Jocelyn: You're my soul sister. Kaleena: Yes. Like, I don't have a college degree. Yes, I built an amazing real estate brokerage, but what am I going to teach them? Am I gonna mess them up? How are they gonna socialize? If there is a question out there, I had it. And I was terrified of it. Jocelyn: Do you live in my head? Because I was reading the first chapter of your book, I'm like, "I'm pretty sure she was at my house this morning." Shane: Jocelyn, she gets this book, she just walks in here and goes, "I'm calling these people, we're talking to them, they're going to be on the podcast." And I was like, "Oh, what? What are we talking about?" Kaleena: What are we talking about? Exactly. Kaleena: So Aaron was ready, and I sat in and sat in it, and we had in incredible summer. So we ended the school year and it was pretty miserable. We went into the summer and we were living our best life, and we are living to the highest of our abilities. We're traveling, we're killing it at business, we're killing it at parenting, our marriage is thriving, and it's the middle of August and I'm writing a tuition check to send my kids back to school because I'm terrified of like, what are they gonna say? What are my friends gonna think? What's going to happen? Kaleena: So I put them back into school in September, mind you I get elected as the PTA president this year, I'm super involved in our kids' school. I volunteer, we're huge contributors. That's the other thing. You're like, "Oh my gosh all these people that depend on me, what are they gonna say? How are they gonna feel?" Kaleena: So we go from September into November and it was miserable. I can't think of very many weeks that I wasn't going to bed crying, our children- Aaron: She was so caught up though, like caught up in the moment. As soon as school started again, they were all 100 percent back in it. She was there, it was the long days, it was doing all the extracurriculars, it was setting up fundraisers and things like that. I could see that it was killing them. Kaleena: We were falling apart. We were self imploding, literally. Every day I was dropping them off and it went against everything that was in my gut. Shane: This is November right now for us- Jocelyn: I know we were feeling the same way. Shane: And when you said that, I thought to myself that is the exact experience that we have had. Jocelyn: We seriously hate it every day. We hate it. Kaleena: I know. I do know. Aaron: We ended up - it was an accidentally pushing it a little further... I saw what was going on so I scheduled three weeks of vacation in November. Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: So it was coming up to November first and we realized that I was on a business trip somewhere, and Kaleena is getting ready to write the November check and realizing that they're only going to be at school four or five days that month. Kaleena: Right. We had a couple of business trips, and we decided to mix in going and seeing the volcanoes in Hawaii as an educational piece. So we were gonna be jumping across the country for three weeks and the kids weren't gonna be in school. Because there's also Thanksgiving holiday. It's parent teacher conferences though, and Aaron's in Florida working, and I just call him on the way to parent teacher conferences and I said, "Unless I get a different feeling, I think I'm pulling the kids out right now." And he's like, "I've got your back, I support you, I'm so proud of you..." Whatever. Kaleena: I walked into parent teacher conferences, and the first one was for our oldest, Maddy. And she was a fourth grader. And the teacher said, I'll never forget this conversation because it just solidified what I was doing that day, she said, "Your daughter is incredible. She's so amazing, all A's, the kindest girl in the class, helps people that are below her." All the things you want to hear as a parent, and then she followed it with- Aaron: Reading at a seventh grade level. Kaleena: Right, she's a brand new fourth grader reading at a seventh grade level. And then, I can still hear it in my head, "But, we need to push her a little bit further. We need to get her where she's reading at an eighth grade level. Let's just push a little bit more." Kaleena: And I just kept hearing, "But, but..." And I'm sure she went on and said a lot of things, but all I heard was "but." And I'm like but, nothing. She's having anxiety attacks every day that I'm bringing her to school and she's an all A students. But you want more? Kaleena: I just looked at her and she was like the nicest, sweetest, kindest, great teacher. And I said, "Thank you so much. Maddy's not coming back, I'm starting to homeschool." Jocelyn: Hmm, ouch. Kaleena: Right? And then I did the same thing - honestly the kindergarten and first grade teacher, she was like, "We wish we could do the same with our kids. If there was a way we could make that happen we totally-" Shane: I'm sure everybody had an opinion. Kaleena: Oh yeah. Everybody's all in or thinks you're absolutely nuts. There's very few middle ground to this. Shane: Yeah. Jocelyn: We're used to this. Kaleena: Yeah, you know exactly. Jocelyn: When we decided to quit our jobs in rural, south Kentucky in the middle of the school year, people thought we were absolutely nuts. Shane: People thought something had happened, people came up to us like, "Is your marriage okay?" Kaleena: Right. Shane: "Is one of you getting indicted for something?" We went home one time to Thanksgiving that year and Jocelyn, God bless him, her grandfather came up to me after dinner and we were getting ready to drive back home across the state. And he reaches out, he's old school, he's an old coal miner guy. He was going to shake my hand before I leave, and I looked down and he had put a 20 in my hand, and he goes, "Now son, I know you're not working now, so you need some gas money." And I'm like, "Bro I made last month as much as I made in a year teaching." But he didn't get it. Kaleena: Oh really. Shane: They just- Kaleena: Right no, they don't get it. Shane: If you do something weird like homeschool, like be an entrepreneur, do something to change your life even as radical as, we shouldn't work 70 hours a week because it'll affect our marriage, but isn't it what we're suppose to... Those things really get to people. Kaleena: Oh yeah. Shane: And they don't understand it or have the wherewithal to go do it. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: So I could totally see - this is crazy too, I haven't had this moment in a while. Because we've been rolling now for six years doing what we do, right? But I remember when I read 'The Four Hour Work Week', when I read these other books about entrepreneurship and when I found people that had the guts to go be successful, or at least try and fail. Right? Shane: I remember thinking, "I want that." Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: And, "maybe I'm not to the point now where I can go all in, but I want that." And when you said, "She's not coming back." It just made me, again, feel that I want that. I want to have the guts to say that. I think we're- Jocelyn: If it were up to Shane this would've happened, probably year ago. Shane: You know what's funny though? Until both us are at that point, I think that's how marriage works. Kaleena: Right. Shane: The reason I don't do it is because we are not there yet, and that's an important part of the dynamic is you both gotta get on the same page. Kaleena: I think for me, I needed it to hurt that bad. Shane: You need a catalyst. Kaleena: I did, because, mind you this is us living our best life, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Just like entrepreneurship, homeschooling is the same. There are days when you are digging in deep, and you better remember those worse days that were behind you. I'm sure you thinking back at working for the school system. I'm sure you - Shane: What we look back on, for us, the nutshells version of our story is our son was being abused at a day care center. They were locking him in a bathroom for hours at a time to punish him in the dark. I found this out one morning, and was stuck between a rock and a hard place because I'm a teacher, there's 30 kids in my classroom, I have to be there. There's legal ramifications if something happens and I don't show up. Shane: So I dropped Isaac off somewhere where he could not stay for more than a couple hours. I asked my boss for time off, and my boss told me that I would have to handle my personal problems after work because she knew my son needed me, but my job needed me, too. That's the moment. Every day it gets hard, every day I think about that, I am like, "I'm not ever going back" Kaleena: Yes. Shane: That's where we are at school. When my kid is downcast, shoulders turned, saying he feels dumb, I can't send him there anymore. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: That's what you have to reach back for. Kaleena: Yeah. It needs to - I'm really grateful for that pain, I am, because it is what reminds me that this is why we're doing it, this is why it's different, this is why we chose this lifestyle. The timing was perfect for us, even though it felt like a long drawn out process. Aaron: A lot of biggest decisions, we do wrestle with them for a long time. Even when it was entrepreneurship, it was six months or a year of telling Kaleena, "I need to start my own business, I want go do this and and be..." And when our second daughter was born six weeks early and I was staring at her in the incubator, that's when I was like, "Oh man, this is my fault, Kaleena was working nights, I was working days. I need to do something better for my family now." Aaron: There are a lot of those moments where we think we want to go, and we're learning, and it takes that bigger catalyst to go, here's the moment. And Kaleena was so close, and then it was putting them back in school, those feelings every morning were still there. The big catalyst of going, "Hey your daughter's perfect, but let's push her really really hard." And it was like, yeah. Shane: We've coached thousands of people through our community, and we've seen so many people succeed, so many people fail. Everybody's in between, like every journey. But the people who really have that catalyst are the ones that we find really make it the fastest, because... it's not just something you want. I want a lot of things, but I'm not gonna go do those things. Jocelyn: It works better when you don't have a choice. Kaleena: Yeah, absolutely. Shane: Even something as simple as, we encourage people to do all of their videos live because you have no choice but to get it out. You can stop on a recording. But you can't do that when there's people watching. Kaleena: Yep. Shane: When our kids are watching, when our spouse is watching, when we're watching each other, it just pushes you to a whole new level. So we've talked a lot about some definite benefits, especially for entrepreneurial people who want that freedom lifestyle doing homeschool, but like everything in life it's not all sunshine and rainbows. A lot of times when you make decisions, it's not that you're really even making a decision on which one's the best. Which set of problems do I really want to deal with? Kaleena: Yes. Shane: So what are the, just from a general- Jocelyn: What are the challenges, let's not say problems, let's say challenges? Shane: -yeah the challenges, the negative things that arise when you choose to homeschool? Shane: How long we got? Kaleena: Right. No, that's not true. But I love that you say that's it's a different sort of - it's different challenges. Kaleena: Your kids are home all day for the most part, so just start there and really let that sink in to what that is. Your kids are home all day. So we've talked about all the pros that come with that, the cons are, if you're anything like I am, I'm an incredibly busy person separate from just being a mom. I have my own passions and my own stuff, so it's about finding a balance that works for our family. I think that's probably the number one challenge, is that not only are my kids living their best life, but that I'm not sacrificing my best life so that they can have theirs. Jocelyn: Yeah. Kaleena: Right? This isn't supposed to feel like, I'm giving up my life so that my kids can live their best life. This is supposed to be as a family, we are performing at the very best level that we can perform at. And if I'm not taking care of me and I'm not living into my best self, then all of that kind of falls apart. Jocelyn: Yeah. If I'm being really honest that is the number one hold back for me, that is the reason that I have been dragging around on this for approximately 12 months is because - we talked about this during the break, we just had a break a few minutes ago - but really what it is for me is that I am a very ambitious person myself. I am very interested in business, I want to do the business we are 50/50 partners, we do everything together. Jocelyn: While that's awesome, I can just see that my kids being at home all the time... when they want something and they're at home, they say, "Mom, mom, mom, mom." That's who they want. They know that I'm gonna do whatever it is they want me to do to get them off my back. Shane: Also that's biological, I think, to an extent. You know what I mean? Kid goes to mom. Jocelyn: Yeah. I'll be super honest, that is a huge concern for me because I don't like where we are right now because I feel like I have very little, I guess you would say, genuine interactions with them. It's all about "Get your homework done, get a bath, get ready for bed." Shane: "Get ready for this thing we have to drive you to." Jocelyn: Yes. It's like I have no time that I get to spend with them, so that bothers me. But it also bothers me, the thought that, what I feel is my God given reason for being on this earth, which is to help people figure out ways to get out of their daily grind, I feel like I need to be equally there for my children and equally there for that. So that's really hard for me. Shane: And you're also an introverted person. You recharge by being alone, and now we're having less alone. Kaleena: Yes, absolutely. Aaron: I think one of the challenges, too, is we talked about needing unschooling. Changing the old train of thought. The old train of thought is that the kid need to sit in a desk for eight or ten hours a day, and needs to be working the whole time or they're just being lazy. Right? Kaleena: Right. Aaron: So we have a lot of people that Kaleena coaches, and they get started doing it and go, "Well I do the curriculum and he finishes it in the first hour and then he just wants to go play all day." And we go, "Yes, exactly, and then you're supposed to let him." Kaleena: Right. Aaron: And then the parent is like, "Wait" and you have to unschool that and it's sometimes it's a challenge to them, they're like "Wait what do you mean?" Part of the problem is that old belief, when you do start to get those genuine experiences with your kids. After they finish that, it's like, what do you want to go learn about now? What do you want to go do now? When they get to see that they're in control of so much more of that, whether it takes them an hour or three hours to finish it and then they get to start having more control of their life. Then your time is a lot more of the genuine conversations, "How are you doing?" That sort of thing. Aaron: A change in mindset is a challenge for a lot of people. Shane: We have to remember, we both went to public school, we both got to this point. We have a friend who has a podcast called We Turned Out Okay, and it's hard even if you want to break free from it to break free from it. Because you start thinking about, well look at all the best memories of your life, they were kind of forced upon you because you were at school, but some of the best memories of your life are at school. That's just real life, its hard to let go of that. Jocelyn: I think it's to a lot of the known vs the unknown. This is something people struggle with with entrepreneurship, too. Your current life is not great but it's what you know, it's something known. Shane: And it could be very good, it's just not the highest level you could achieve. Jocelyn: Yeah, and the unknown is this new thing. Whether it be a new business, whether it be a new schooling method, whatever. Sometimes people just cling to what they're already doing because its something that they know, it's like they don't have to think about what could happen or what might not happen. I think that comes into it as well. Kaleena: I also think that it's a lot of work. It's like, you are having to be incredibly intentional with this lifestyle. In the same way that you're intentional about being an entrepreneur, you are going to need to be completely intentional about how your kids are learning. Now, that doesn't mean that all the work falls on you. Kaleena: Here's some really quick hacks, because Aaron talked about unschooling. There is this period for kids who are sitting in a school system, in a traditional classroom and have been for years. Like, my oldest sat in a school for six years from the time she was - we started early preschool. Right? Full day early pre school. Kaleena: We have to untrain that behavior, so is there this six month to year long period depending on how long your kids were in school, where literally you're gonna have to de-school them. Just breaking down those habits, those habits that I kind of feel are unhealthy habits, we had to break those down. Kaleena: I'm gonna tell you the easiest way to do that is just let them play. Give them freedom and let them step into being kids again. We really try to overthink it, I think, as homeschoolers. Like, they've gotta learn this, or we've gotta keep up with what their friends are learning in school, what they were learning when we pulled them out. That is not the point here. We are not pulling them out of school to teach them what they were just learning. We are trying to breed something different than what the school system was breeding. Kaleena: We want something different, therefore we have to do something completely different. So it's like literally taking a deliberate jump in the opposite direction. So if you can stay with that mentality in the first part of it, it really really helps. Shane: That's an amazing tip by the way. That blew my mind. That just crushes - it's taking the con, or the negative - Jocelyn: The challenge. Aaron: It takes the pressure off. Shane: And flipping it on its head, it just removes all those obstacles because we are all socially conditioned for a hundred years, five generations of people basically in a society, that your kid does this at this grade to 18 and this must happen, or you fail. And that's where all these challenges come from. These ghosts, we call them ghosts in entrepreneurship when we talk to people like, don't invent ghosts. Its not that we're inventing ghosts in this situation, we've been told the ghost stories our entire life. Kaleena: Right, yep. Shane: And when we want to do something different, we still remember the ghost story that's been told like it's real. And it just becomes this haunting this that one, keeps you from going into the forest in the first place. Or, two, keeps you anxious and terrified when you're passing through. Kaleena: Oh absolutely. Shane: Okay let me ask you this, what was the biggest mistake you guys made at the beginning? Because the beginning is the hardest part. Kaleena: Yes. Shane: Once you get past the beginning, y'all, it's alright. You can figure it out. So you're not going back, you tell them this, you show up Monday morning and you're like, "Oh wait, we're home, what do we do?" What's that biggest mistake the first few months that you guys made? Kaleena: So honestly going back to what I just said, it was really I planned too much. I put this really big expectation on what it was supposed to look like. So my plans was, because I had seen all these commercials all over the TV for like, K through 12, homeschool your kids at home, it's free. We're gonna give you a stipend, just sign up for our government assisted public school. You can school at home. And I'm like, perfect. That's awesome, they're gonna do all the work for me and I get to have my kids at home. Right? Kaleena: Okay so I'm sure there's a lot of good for those programs for other groups of people, and some of them might work like that and be awesome. The one in California was, you need to log, I think it was a minimum of five hours day. They were keeping attendance. You had to pass standardized testing. So I had this very grandiose, original thought of what my homeschooling journey was gonna look like and on day one it blew up. Because it wasn't what I wanted. Kaleena: So here's what I did that people think is absolutely crazy. I just took the next six months off. I would get up on a Monday and I would ask my kids, "What do you want to learn?" And then we would write it on a white board, and then we would go learn those things. And I literally kept it that easy. Kaleena: And if we had a trip coming up we would learn about where we were going. If they would ask me a question when we were driving down the road, I would hand my 11 year old my phone and I would say "Google that, let's learn about that right now, let's answer that question." Aaron: You guys did a lot of Khan Academy. Kaleena: Right. And we would play around with different curriculums and different apps and stuff that were out there. So, Khan Academy is great and it literally takes you from preschool, where you can get a masters, they take you all the way through college on Khan Academy. Every program, every class. Amazing teachers. The whole thing. Kaleena: So I'm looking at that, I'm looking at Adapted Mind. We're doing some time for learning, I'm downloading apps. I'm familiarizing myself with programs that are out there, and I'm just kind throwing them at my kids. "Hey try this, how does this work for you?" And I set up, I made this thing called the buffet of learning, where I would just set out their computers every day, and set books and activities and things, and just let them pick, what do you want to do today? What are you gonna do in your hour today? Kaleena: And we just played. I didn't put a lot of conditions on that. I wasn't trying to see a result, I just wanted to get to know how my kids learn and what they wanted to learn. Shane: I love it. Aaron: Yeah. Kaleena: And it changed everything, really. Aaron: So much of the book is trying to encourage people to find their way. Try this, then try this, try this. Your situation might look a little different than ours. Kaleena can individually tell people, break it out. But a big concept at the beginning was learning life skills, the stuff they don't really teach in school. The value of money, making good risky decisions. There's a lot of stuff out there. So when we go on the trips to Canada, converting Celsius to Fahrenheit and things like that. Aaron: So part of that mindset, too, was the shift in going, alright let's learn some life skills too. When you do go on those trips, when you go to Jamaica, things like that. There's still other, worldly things that they get to learn. So it was a lot more of a focus on learn all that stuff while she was experimenting with the book work balance. Shane: It's amazing. This sounds like, it's the flip your life blue print. It's exactly what we tell people. People always want to come into the flip your life community, and they say things like, "If I can get my idea and I can get my product and it works then I will continue," or, "If I just had the exact plan and I knew this is what I need to do to be an entrepreneur I would do it." That's big objection. Kaleena: Right. Shane: That's not how it works, that's not how business works. You have to try it and get crushed, or try it and succeed and fail. You have to go out and do. One of the things we encourage people to do is, your idea doesn't matter in the beginning, you just have to go do it to learn all the foundational stuff. And then your next idea gets better. I heard one guy say, "When you start this you're going to suck, but if you're doing it you're going to suck less, and eventually you'll suck so little that you'll actually be kind of good, and then you'll get to great. Kaleena: Yeah. Shane: That's kind of like what you're saying here. Our big thing is, the only thing we've talked about lately is what curriculum are we gonna use? What product are we gonna sign up for? Shane: That's not even the right question at all. You won't know until you try. Kaleena: That's the thing is you won't know and here's the other thing, what works for you in September, it may no longer work for you in May. It is constantly evolving and changing. You have to just be, in the same way that you're flexible with your business and you're constantly listening to the client and figuring out what the trends are setting. All the things, right? And then you're also doing the same thing with your kids, going oh this is what we're into. Kaleena: So our oldest Maddy, when we started this, was all about coding. Coding, coding, coding. Building web pages, marketing, she was so interested in it. So we found Hackingtons - it's like a hacker lab. So we would take her to classes at Hackingtons and she would learn how to code through them, and she would come home and she would do Minecraft. She would do all these different things to learn how to code and perfect that skill. Kaleena: And after three months of just passionately coding, she's done coding. She was just done. And I couldn't believe it, I was like "What? No you're gonna be a master coder, you're gonna build the best websites and the best apps. And you're gonna become a millionaire doing it. What do you mean?" And she's like, "I'm done with coding, I'm not really into it." And she started sewing. So I bought her a sewing machine and she started sewing. Kaleena: Because she was 10 and she's trying to find her way, and if we provide this environment for them then instead of finding their way at 30 or 40 or never like so many of us, we are providing this environment that maybe when she's 18 Maddy's gonna know what she masters, what she's passionate about, what she's so good at. And she's gonna be, 10, 15, 20 years ahead of all of her peers. Aaron: The old mindset was push and push and push them. Now if next month she decides she doesn't want to sew anymore, like right now if there's a hole cut in anything we go hand it to her and say, "We need you to fix this." Or her sisters say, "We need Maddy to go sew it." Kaleena: Yeah. Aaron: She's good. And Maddy's also started a bunch of little business that have been successful. She's a total entrepreneur at heart already. But the big part is, next month if she wants to do something different, instead of getting discouraged and going, "Oh she doesn't follow up with anything." It's like going, "Okay, let's see what's next." Aaron: They did TaeKwonDo for a couple years, they loved it, and all the sudden they were like, you know what I think we want to do dance or something instead? And as parents we're used to going like, "No you have to keep going." Now we try to understand and we're like, "Alright cool, let's find your passion." Aaron: Because as an entrepreneur, and as adults, if we didn't like something anymore we wouldn't do it anymore. Kaleena: Right. Kaleena: How many times have we drawn businesses, Aaron and I had seven failed business before we had a successful one. What if we had just stayed in those failing businesses instead of walking away from them and starting it new? Like you've just gotta keep throwing it at the wall. And it isn't about being lazy, and not pushing my kids for excellent. It's actually the exact opposite. It's really encouraging them to step into who they were created to be. Kaleena: I think that that's a thousand percent about the environment. They just need our support. They need us to facilitate that. It's not about doing it for them, that's the last thing you want to do. They need to - Shane: It's also not like, "Stay in your lane." There is a point where some of that's valuable, like okay I do have to push past something that's hard. Kaleena: Right. Shane: That's not the same thing as losing interest. Totally different. Kaleena: Yeah. Whenever I think that this is, "Oh I don't want to go through it because it's a challenge," or, here's the other big one, "I don't want to go through that because I'm scared and fearful of what's on the other side." Whenever I think it's fear based or challenge based, there's a little more motivation. Right? Like you just know your kids, or hopefully you know your kids. That's what- Shane: Or you will. Kaleena: Or you get to know your kids, I guess. Because I didn't. I didn't know that fear was driving my kids in so many areas. It's like learning that, learning how your kids respond to certain things and then providing the correct amount of motivation and the right environment so that they can learn. Shane: So what you're saying is, in reality, that the fear for us is - and this is a weird fear for us because literally we both have masters degrees in teaching children. Jocelyn: Yeah. Shane: Like honestly, she's elementary, I'm high school. You would think that we'd be like, "Oh we got this." Jocelyn: We got the teaching part. Shane: But the fear part, really for us is, we sit and think back to kind of where we were teachers and we were teac

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Ryan Monette | A Day In the Life of an Audio Engineer

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2016 69:41

My guest this week is professional audio engineer Ryan Monette. Ryan graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Music Production & Engineering. For the last 4.5 years he's been the Post-Production Audio Engineer on staff at Elevation Church, in Charlotte, NC, where he mixes their global TV show, and has many other responsibilities (boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, etc.). You may have heard some of his work, as he sound-designed and mixed the opener video for the Circles conference for the past two years. He even had his own podcast for a short while (TheQueuecast.com). I asked Ryan to come on the show to share his journey towards becoming a professional audio engineer (a job that I've always wanted), and to get him to share some tips for anyone interested in working in audio/video professionally. Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: Think long term and dream big. If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone. Take advantage of free online courses to learn more about audio engineering. Get started with whatever you have. Your mix may sound completely different in a different environment, so listen with different headphones/speakers in different locations. Master the basics and keep going back to them. If you're mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent. When mixing, always use a reference track. Show Notes Aaron: You graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in music production and engineering. For the last five years, you've been the post production audio engineer for Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. You have a lot of jobs there: boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, and you mix their global TV show. Do you mix that live? Ryan: Not necessarily. We can get into that later. There's a process for that. Aaron: Some of the creative people here might have heard of some of your work. You sound designed and mixed the opening videos for the past two years of Circles Conference, which I was at. Have you been there for the past two years? Ryan: I haven't been personally, no. I have wanted to go. I love it from afar, and I want to go in person. Aaron: I wanted you to come on this show because when I first got started, I had dreams of being a professional audio engineer. I thought, “How cool would it be to work in audio and get paid for it? That'd be awesome!” I fell backwards into it by doing podcast editing as a hobby first, then for money, then I met Sean McCabe and ended up working for him full time. I edit podcasts and help out with a ton of other stuff. I asked you to come on the show to share your advice for anyone who's interested in working in audio/video professionally, and to talk about how you got there yourself. So tell me a little bit about how you got into audio. When did you first realize that this was something you wanted to do? Ryan's Journey to Becoming a Professional Audio Engineer Ryan: I love listening to your podcast, Aaron, and what I love about it is I feel like you and I have a lot of similarities in our backgrounds. You're a musician, a drummer, and I'm also a musician. I play several things. My primary instrument is bass, but along with that, I started on piano. I picked up bass, and with the bass I picked up guitar. I took some drum lessons here and there as well. I sing as well. I dabbled in a little bit of everything. I'm kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm okay at a lot of things, but I'm not superb at one thing. Anyway, right around junior high or high school, I started playing the bass. I started playing in little bands here and there. When it came time for college, I had no clue what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I loved music. Aaron: Same here! Ryan: I was living in Las Vegas at the time, so I decided, well, everyone has to have that college experience, and I didn't want to go to college in the same city, so I decided that I needed that “being away from home” experience. I went to the University of Nevada, Reno. I took your basic, general classes, not knowing what I wanted to do. At this time, for my high school graduation, I had received a graduation present of a Macbook Pro. With that, of course, you get the wonderful iLife suite, including Garageband. As a musician, a whole new world was opened up to me. When I was in a band in high school, I was the gear head—I loved the PA and putting cables together. I was drawn to that. Once I had this Macbook Pro with Garageband and I had my bass and my guitar in my dorm, I was like, “I can create music!” I figured out how to work it and record myself. I bought a USB microphone, and that world was opened up. When I was there, I had a friend, and her brother went to this school where all they learned about was music. I was like, “Wait, you can do that? You can go to school for just music?” That's how I found out about Berklee School of Music. I applied, and you have to audition as well. I applied and auditioned, and the first time I tried, I actually didn't get into the music school I wanted to go to. Aaron: This sparks something in my mind. I feel like I might have read an article about Berklee or looked into it and thought, “No, they're really strict on who they accept, based on your performance.” That was intimidating to me at the time, because I never felt like I was that good of a drummer. Ryan: It was intimidating for me, too. Clearly, I wasn't up to par. Aaron: Yet you went for it. That's more than a lot of people would do. Ryan: Yeah. After I finished my first year at UNR, I moved back to Vegas and went to UNLV, the University of Nevada Las Vegas. I took all music classes, forgetting the general ed stuff you need to get a degree. I took all music classes—music theory, because I had never had actual music theory classes, so I thought I needed that. With that, there were some audio classes that I took as well. I was like, “Hey, I like this audio thing.” At the University of Nevada Las Vegas, I had my first exposure to a formal audio class, where I learned all the proper techniques. Later on that year, I applied and auditioned again for Berklee. I got accepted, and the next year, I moved to Boston and went to Berklee for about three and a half years. Then I graduated. When I went to Berklee, the only thing that drew me as a major was Music Production and Engineering. I naturally loved the gear side of things. I fell in love with recording. I was like, “This is what I want to do.” Aaron: You got to spend three and a half years there, studying and learning? Ryan: It is non-stop, 24/7, music, audio, and to be honest, I miss being in that environment so much. Aaron: That sounds fantastic. I always love setting aside time to take online classes, read books, and listen to interviews about audio. Think Long-Term Aaron: You were drawn to the audio engineering stuff, and then you graduated. Ryan: I can remember a specific time in my life, and I'm pretty sure it was my last semester at Berklee. They went by semesters instead of years. It was in one of my capstone classes. Our instructor asked us the typical, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” question. Aaron: I love that question now. I hated it when I was 22. ** Think long term and dream big** Aaron: Plan out where you want to be, because if you can envision it, then you can figure out how to get there. But you have to start by saying, “I want to do this thing someday.” For me, it was, “I want to do work from a laptop. How do I get there?” Now I'm there. So you were 22 and someone asked you, “Ryan, where do you want to be? Where do you see yourself in five years?” Ryan: At that moment, I was trying to figure that out, naturally, as you do when you're approaching the end of college. While I was at Berklee, I loved music. I loved recording music, but my absolute favorite class—they only had one of them, but it was the class I yearned for, that I wanted to take and put in all these extra hours for—was audio for visual media, audio for video. By far, that was my favorite class. The whole class, we were working toward our final project. You choose a five to seven minute clip from a well known movie, and all the audio is completely stripped. You have to recreate everything. That's all the dialogue, all the foley, all the ambient background, all the hard effects, and so on. You have to connect with a film scoring student there at Berklee, and they have to provide the score. I absolutely loved every aspect of that project and the process. When it came time to decide what I wanted to do with my life, it was between audio engineering at a recording studio, working at Disney as an Imagineer, or doing audio at a church. I have always been involved with church, playing on worship teams and whatnot, so I also saw myself doing audio for a church. Long story short, I was really privileged to dip my feet in all of those things after college. After I graduated, I moved back to Las Vegas. Eventually, I found an incredible recording studio, probably one of the top two recording studios in Las Vegas, and I landed an internship. First Audio Engineering Jobs Ryan: I say “internship” loosely, because your typical studio internship is all the stereotypical grunt work—taking out the trash, doing the coffee, and whatnot. I showed up, and they were like, “You went to Berklee? Berklee guys are cool. Here, hop in this session and help us out.” It was open to me, thrown at me, and next thing I knew, I was assisting on sessions with huge clients, I won't name drop. Aaron: You can drop a couple of names if you want. Ryan: I had a pretty fun time helping out with a session with the famous engineer Eddie Kramer, who is engineering for Carlos Santana. Aaron: Dang, man! That's awesome. Ryan: That was pretty incredible. But while I was there, I had this gut feeling inside of me saying, “This isn't it.” Aaron: It's fine, but it's not quite right? Ryan: I could see myself staying there and working my way up, but it didn't feel right. A few months after I realized that I didn't want to stay at the studio, I applied and was offered a job at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I packed my bags, moved to Orlando, and I was working as a stage technician at the Epcot park. There, they found out that I was an audio guy, so they pushed me toward the live audio side of things. I was mixing shows and bands at Epcot and what was at the time Downtown Disney, now Disney Springs, area. Same thing. Almost as soon as I got there, the same gut feeling came in. I was like, “This isn't it. I'm more of a studio engineer. I definitely don't want to do live stuff.” Although I love Disney, it just wasn't sitting right. I was only there three months before the next great opportunity came up, which is where I am right now. One of my friends told me about a job opening for this church in Charlotte, North Carolina, Elevation Church. I had actually been following them because of their podcast. At the time, I was kind of like, “I've got a job, whatever.” For some reason, I ended up on their website, looking at the job. I was reading, and I was like, “Wait a minute, they're looking for someone to do audio for video. That's what I really want to do!” On a whim, I threw out my resume. Next thing you know, I've been here going on five years. Aaron: Did you mention that you were a podcast listener when you sent in your resume? Ryan: Yeah. Aaron: The connections you can make through podcasting is really incredible. Ryan: It is. And I've been working there for 5 years now. How to Get Into Audio Engineering Aaron: I want to jump into what you do at your job at Elevation, but let's pause and do a section on what advice you would tell someone who's wanting to get started. I wrote a couple of things down here. I think it's hilarious that you got a Macbook and your first microphone was a USB microphone. Ryan: Which was the Blue Snowball, by the way. Aaron: That's the worst microphone! Ryan: I had no idea how to use it, either. If I find some of the earliest recordings I did, there are times I'm clipping to the max, square waves. Aaron: Probably bad mic technique, too. But hey; it got you started! If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone. Any USB mics will work for getting started. I like the Blue Yeti, but it's like $100. The ATR-2100 is fine, too. You just have to get something that can record some audio and start playing with it. Start playing with Garageband. Start playing with the free programs. Learn how to enable recording on a track, how to set your input device to the microphone, how to set your output device to wherever your headphones are plugged into, whether that's your mic or your computer. It took me so long to figure that stuff out. I was like, “Why can't I hear the audio in my headphones? What is going on?” Ryan: Same here. Aaron: You have to set input and output, then you have to record enable or do the input monitoring, all that stuff. But start with the USB microphone. Take some basic classes. There are so many great online classes. If you don't have any money at all, if you're super broke like I was when I started, watch some free YouTube videos. Read a book. Ryan: If you go to Coursera.org, they're a website where you can pay to take online courses and get certifications and whatnot, but they also offer free online courses. They even offer free online courses from Berklee. I've seen a music production class there. I've taken a free online song writing class. Check out free online courses, because they can be a pool of incredible knowledge. I took a photography class on there. Coursera is a great place. They're great if you want to take free online courses. Aaron: There are places where you can learn all this stuff. You just have to invest some time. You really just have to start: Don't wait until you have $500 for an interface and $200 for some professional headphones and microphone. Whether you want to start a podcast, start recording audio for a video, or record and mix a demo for a band, start doing something. Stop spending all your time thinking about how you can't do anything because you don't have certain gear or you're not in the right place. You'll learn as you do, especially in audio. You're going to make a ton of mistakes. Ryan: That's how you learn, though! That's one of the most valuable things I've learned in life. You learn from your mistakes. Aaron: You don't really learn when everything goes well. Just Start Aaron: Any other advice you would give somebody, thinking back on how you got to where you are right now? Ryan: Honestly, you hit the nail on the head with “just start.” It's as simple and cliche as Nike, “Just do it.” There is always going to be the next latest craze, the gear, and we've all been susceptible to that. We say, “Oh, well, I could do this if I had X.” It starts with the drive and determination, wanting to do it. There's knowledge out there everywhere. You just have to dig for it. Chances are, you have at least something you can start with. Record something on your phone. Aaron: I have a friend who makes some awesome music on his iPhone. Ryan: Oh, totally. It's as simple as getting an adapter. You can plug your guitar or whatever into your phone. Aaron: Kids these days have it so easy! Ryan: You have Garageband on your phone. I remember when I was figuring this out in high school, and we actually had a four track tape recorder. That was my first start. Get started with whatever you have. Aaron: What kind of stuff do you do at the church? What's your day to day life like? Are you there every day, or is it just a couple of days a week? Ryan: Oh no, I'm definitely there every day. It has been a whirlwind for sure. In the past five years, I have probably played every audio role that there is to be played here. My main thing now is audio for broadcasts, pretty much anything that leaves the church. Our biggest output is the sermon, which goes to a lot of places. It also goes in the TV episode, which we talked about, which goes locally, nationally, and, I believe, globally as well. That's a lot of what I've done. We also create a lot of films, short films, for our worship experiences, anything you can imagine that's video and audio related. Audio post production, like we talk about. I'm constantly on video shoots using field recorders, the boom op, anything you can think of. Audio for video, I've done it. The Gear Ryan Uses Aaron: Let's talk about your gear a little bit. What kind of stuff are you using most in everyday life? I'll do a quick recap: I have the Shure Beta 87A Mic as my main podcasting microphone. It's attached to a Scarlett 18i20 USB Interface (update: I'm now using my Zoom H6 exclusively), which is plugged into a quadcore iMac that's a couple years old. Nothing super fancy, but I'm really happy with where I am. I remember wanting all this stuff back in 2011, thinking how awesome it would be to have it. I have a Zoom H6 portable recorder and a couple of SM58 microphones. I've been pairing down my gear collection because I'm planning on moving in the spring. What kind of stuff are you working with? I use Logic Pro X for editing, and then Izotope iZotope RX 5 for cleaning up background noise or fixing clipping. What about you? What's your day to day favorite gear? Ryan: We use a lot. There's a bunch of gear for field recording and then in my office, which is where I'm at right now. I'll start with my office. Right now, I'm talking into my personal mic, which is a Rode NT1A. It's very affordable. The Rode NT1A is a nice beginner mic which works and sounds great, and I use it for a lot of voiceover projects. Aaron: I like those mics. Ryan: I'm talking into that right now. We also use the Shure SM7B. We have a nice Neumann that we'll use for bigger projects. We like to use Universal Audio Interfaces, so I've got one of those. They're great. They're rock solid. You really can't beat them. At our main recording/editing audio work station, we use Pro Tools. That's very standard, and I've been using that for years and years. I use a lot of plugins. I use a lot of the Waves Plugins. I do use RX as well, and that's the bulk of it. I do a lot of processing, depending on the project. I have a really huge sound library for if I'm doing narrative pieces that involve sound design, sound effects. I have a great app called Audio Finder, which a lot of electronic musicians use to help them find sounds. I use it to help me find sounds. It's a nice way to catalogue sounds if you're a sound designer or anything like that. You can basically tag all these audio files with meta data, and you can search for sounds by their title. Or, if you type in a word in the search bar, it can pull up things based off the the metadata. If you have notes on something, it can find it. Audio Finder is a great way to find sounds. I have some other things in here. I have the Artist Mix Controller made by Avid. I use those if I'm automating stuff. I use those a lot, actually, when I'm mixing the sermons. I do a lot of automation for that. If I'm mixing a piece with a music bed or something, I like to automate the music by hand. It feels more natural, as opposed to clicking and making little dots. That's the bulk of it here in the office. All of our audio engineers have a nice pair of Focal monitors. I also have another set of monitors I built myself. When I mix TV episodes, I have an output routed to a TV here in my office so I can hear how it translates on TV speakers. Recording Audio for Video Ryan: On the front end of things, if we're doing shoots for videos, we use Sound Devices field recorders. We have three different models: the Sound Devices 788T 8 Channel Recorder, a 702 2 Channel Recorder, and then a 633 6 Channel Recorder. That last one is one of their newer models, which is great. Sound Devices are steep in price, but they are rock solid. One of the most trustworthy, well known field recorder brands on the market. That's what you'll see on pretty much every big budget shoot in some way. I do a lot of freelance on the side, which gives me the opportunity EPK shoots or BTS shoots for, recently, a show on HBO called Outcast. Aaron: Outcast? I've been seeing that (I watch Westworld). Ryan: I'm pretty sure it's the same writers or producers or something. I know it's the same writer as The Walking Dead. They shoot here in North Carolina, so with a local production company, we've done some interviews with some of the cast and crew. It's been really neat to be on set and see what they're using. It's cool to see how similar their world is to what we're doing day to day, just with more money and more resources. It's the same thing. Most of their audio guys have some sort of Sound Devices. A lot of them use the 788 as a backup recording rig, and they've got larger multitrack recorders as well, that are also made by Sound Devices. Sound Devices is a great brand. They're crazy expensive, but when you buy that, you know you've basically got it for life. Aaron: Yeah, I'm looking at the Sound Devices 788T SSD 8 Channel Portable Solid State Audio Recorder. It's almost $7,000. I love that! So fancy. Ryan: That SSD does have an internal hard drive. Ours has a hard drive as well, so it's great, because it has the internal hard drive, but you can also use CF cards. You can record on two different mediums. In case something runs out of space, you have it in two places. Aaron: This is super professional stuff. Ryan: Yeah. It is. It's top of the line. Aaron: Fantastic. For all the rest of you, just go with the Zoom H4N or the H6. Ryan: Hey, we do have a Zoom H4N, and we do use that every now and then. Before I came on staff, our first field recorder was the Zoom H4N. Aaron: If I could start over and go back to before I had any kind of interface at all, I think I would buy myself an H4N or an H6. Not only are they portable field recorders so you can walk around with them—they have little stereo condensor mics on them—but they work as audio interfaces, too. You can plug it into your computer with a USB cable and record straight to your computer if you do any kind of podcasting or stuff like that. It's good for the price. Otherwise, the little two channel interfaces are great. They're about $100 for a good one, but they aren't portable. You can't take them to a show or out to a video shoot the way you can an H4N or an H6 or something. Ryan: Speaking of Zoom, they've recently come into the more professional field recording market. About a year ago, they releases the F8, I believe, which is an 8 channel field recorder with 8 mic pres. It's $999 for something very comparable to a Sound Device. It's not quite as high-fidelity, but for anyone starting out, you're really not going to notice the difference. Mixing On Expensive Headphones or Monitors Aaron: I was going to ask you this earlier. You mentioned that you had Focal monitors. Did you listen to the episode I did a few episodes back where I talked about mixing on headphones (Episode 69: Do You Need Expensive Headphones to Mix a Podcast?)? Ryan: Yes, I did. Aaron: I mix on $10 Panasonics. What do you think about that? You can be totally honest with me. You can tell me that it's a stupid idea or that it's okay. Ryan: I agree to a certain extent. I agree that you should be listening to what you're making on whatever the majority of people are going to be listening to it on. For a lot of audio engineers mixing music, that's iPod earbuds, those standard earbuds you get. Something like that. When I mix TV, I have an output routed to a TV in my office, so I can hear it on TV speakers. I do also believe in mixing on something with some sort of higher fidelity type of monitoring environment, whether that's nicer speakers or nicer headphones. Naturally, you're going to hear things differently. The main thing to take away is how things translate. If you're listening to something on one source and you make it sound good there, that's great, but in a different environment, it may sound completely different. iPhone earbuds may not have the bass that a car stereo has. You want to hear how it translates from one thing to another. That's why it's good to at least listen to it on two different sources and not just narrow yourself down to one cruddy thing. That's good in theory, but again, the key takeaway is translation. Aaron: Maybe it's a little bit different for me and I can get away with it because of the consistency of the microphones and the recording environment set we use. Ryan: Yeah, totally. Aaron: I think if I was doing more stuff like you are, with videos and clients and all that kind of stuff, I would absolutely be using my higher fidelity headphones. Ryan: Very true. The bulk of your work is dialogue, podcasts. Aaron: Yeah, that's really it. Just dudes talking into a microphone. Ryan: Yeah. I have done a lot of work here where I'm working in a small studio, but a lot of my mixes have played in auditoriums and arenas. If you're working on projects like music or film that have different audio frequencies and spectrums, remember that sound will be perceived differently in different places. Aaron: How do you even test for that? Ryan: Here, I at least have a sense of how our auditorium sounds, so I've trained my ear to hear in advance and understand how it's going to translate. For something like when we did a live recording in the biggest arena here in Charlotte, we had a video opener piece. I was on point for mixing that, so basically, I had to work with tech and production to find a time after setup where I can bring my session, copy it onto a laptop, and play it through the PA. Then I can make any final mix tweaks there in the auditorium or the arena. I perfected it in my studio, and any small tweaks I was able to do in that actual environment. Granted, a lot of the times, we may not have that luxury. There are also great plugins you can buy that simulate different monitoring environments, like Sonarworks. If you have certain pairs of headphones, you can tell the program, “I have these headphones, now make my mix sound like it's coming through these headphones or these speakers,” so you can hear how it might translate. In that program, they have a final output like the Beats headphones. You can hear how it might sound on there, super bass heavy. Aaron: I hear they're getting better, but I still have never bought any Beats headphones. I probably should (just for testing purposes). Ryan: There are definitely programs out there to help you see how things translate to different monitors. On Location Gear Ryan: We were talking about the gear we use for on location recording. Sound Devices would be our main recorders. For our mics, we use Schoeps. It's a shotgun microphone, so it's a narrow polar pattern with good off axis rejection. Schoeps is a great brand. Again, you'll see this on professional movie sets. That's the mic we use. We have some Sennheiser shotguns as well, the ME66, we have a couple of those, which is more their entry shotgun mics. Recently, I rented some of the MKH416. Aaron: I would like one of those. The Sennheiser 416 is well known as the classic TV shotgun mic, right? Ryan: Exactly. I rented those out because I wanted to try it out for that reason. The Schoeps is very good and very well known on set as well, but so is the 416. I rented it to try it out. It's a trusted mic that a lot of people use for these professional things, and it doesn't really break the bank for what it is. Aaron: They're like $1,000, I think. Ryan: Yeah, and it sounded great. Aaron: The next mic I get is either going to be that or the Rode NTG 3. Ryan: I've heard a lot of great things about that. I haven't tried one myself. Aaron: That's the shotgun mics we shot my podcasting courses with. Ryan: Yeah, I know that Sean uses that for all of his videos. Aaron: I'm excited about getting to go work with those (I'm moving to San Antonio in March or April). Master the Basics Aaron: That's a pretty good run through of your gear. I'm sure you could keep going and discuss a lot more, but I don't think we need to go into that. It seems like you guys are at a super professional, high quality. You have made big investments in professional gear, which is fantastic. I encourage everyone to strive for that, to aim for that, but like we said earlier, use what you have right now. I don't have anything close to what you guys have, but I'm still doing my podcast. I'm doing the best I can with what I have. Ryan: It still sounds great. Aaron: Thanks! It's mostly just knowing how to set gain levels and not having a noisy room. It's crazy how far the basics will get you— everything else is just icing on the cake. I've been watching this video course called Zen and the Art of Work, which I really recommend to everybody. It's mindfulness training mixed with productivity training, which is such a great combination. In this course, he says, “So many of the masters continually revisit the basics.” Mastery is staying on a path. It's not reaching some final goal, it's more about being with the work and investing in getting better, but also revisiting the basics. He was talking about playing piano. He was like, “A lot of times, I just start by touching the keys, pressing the keys, and then doing basic scales over and over again.” It's true. When you get so good at the basics that you don't have to think about it, that's when you start to expand and get to that level where people say, “Wow, you're so good at that. How did you get so good?” You're like, “That was just doing the basics. It's not anything fancy.” It's so important to master the basics and keep going back to them. Learning More Aaron: What's next for you? How do you invest in yourself and improve? Or are you working so much that you always have more learning opportunities? Do you buy books or courses or follow any websites to learn more about this audio stuff? Ryan: Honestly? We had a shift at work to where my role has shifted to mainly just broadcasts. That has enabled me to have a little bit more flexibility and free time, so I've been doing a lot more freelance work. That's great, because it energizes me and keeps me engaged. It keeps me from routine. Routine is great. I love routine, that's very much my personality, but freelance work keeps things interesting. For me, it's all about where and how I can get inspired and constantly feeding that. It's about feeding my desire for creativity. We're all creatives. We like to create. We were designed to be creators, really. Everything I try to do is about how I can become a better creator and what I can create next. It's about finding things that inspire me, really. We touched lightly on a few of the resources that I like, things I've learned and places I've picked things up. If you're interested in audio for post production, there are a couple of great books by Ric Viers. I have two books by him that are really great. The first one is The Sound Effects Bible, and it's not just sound effects in there. He talks about everything from gear to microphones, basics, setting proper gains, compression, some mixing techniques, etc. He also has The Location Sound Bible. There are a lot of similarities, but there's also a lot of talk about gear, shotgun mics, lop mics, recorders, and then he also dives into some of the basics when it comes to mixing, proper gain staging, and so on. Those are a really great pool of knowledge in book form. There are a lot of other books out there, but I have found those two to be really helpful. Other than that, when it comes to audio for video, it's a very small, niche field. There isn't a crazy amount of stuff out there, like there might be for mixing music. For that, you've got tons. You've got Pensado's Place, all these people on YouTube putting out channels on mixing, mixing from home, mixing on a budget, etc. There's plenty of that. Aaron: Graham Cochrane and Joe Gilder are pretty awesome resources for anyone who wants to start a home studio. Ryan: YouTube can be a pool of knowledge for anything and everything, too. You have to dig a little bit and do some searching. On the inspiration side, for me, since I love audio for video, Sound Works Collection is a great place. They'll do mini videos interviewing the sound people that did sound for X movie. Whether it was the last Harry Potter or anything and everything, big budget films, they'll sit down with the recording people, the sound designers, the mixers… It's really cool, because they'll show footage of them doing stuff on location or the foley artists. It's cool to see their process. For me, that helps me stay inspired. It gives me ideas to do other things. They have a podcast as well, and that's great. The videos can be kind of short, maybe 10 minutes or so, but the podcast will go on at length, talking to the audio guys who have made sound for videos possible. It will also be music composers for movies as well. That's really great. I found that great not only as inspiration, but to know what and how audio professionals for big budget films get inside their minds, how they're thinking, and what their process looks like. It's neat to see stuff about sound engineers for big movies and realize that we're not so different. Dealing With a Broad Loudness Spectrum (Dynamics) Aaron: I have a nerdy question here. This is about normalizing and compression, I think. Aiya had asked, “I'm so torn about normalizing sound clips. If I'm working on a longer project in segments, would it be better to adjust my peaks manually for the sake of consistency? It's for a video project.” I'm hearing that there are differences in video volumes. How do you deal with that? Do you do compression? Do you do automation for the different parts? How do you deal with dynamics? Ryan: It depends on the project. I'll talk about how I would mix a sermon, because that's very dynamic. Our pastor will go from whispering, holding his handheld mic close to his stomach, to screaming, holding the microphone, cupping the capsule. Power and respect to him, because it creates a certain atmosphere, which has a powerful effect. That's what I'm dealing with on a weekly basis. That dynamic range is tremendous. Keep in mind, this is going to TV eventually. TV has very strict restrictions. It's not so much on level, but on perceived level. There's a difference between what you see meter and what you're hearing. I can talk at length about that, too. Aaron: Could you give us a super short version? I'm kind of aware of that, but since I just mix in Logic, I'm not sure how to measure it. Is there a way to measure it in Logic? Do you know? Is there a plugin you use? Ryan: I use a plugin from Waves. It's a loudness meter, and its just that. It has a lot of presets, so I'll use the TV standard preset. I'll use it for ATSE85, and I'll use it for a dialogue bus. They've also got one for a master bus. The standard right there is your average level around -24 dB LUFS, so that's full scale. If you have a classic meters, your peak would be zero, so that would average metering right around -10. At least for TV, I've got a hard limiter at -10 dB, to where nothing can go above that. The difference between levels on a meter vs. perceived loudness is the differences between what we hear and the actual energy. In our TV program, we'll have the sermon, but we'll also have a talking heads segments, which is dialogue and a music bed. We'll also go into segments where they'll go into worship from our live album, which had been mixed and mastered as an album. That thing is slammed. If you look at the wave form, it's a sausage. If I'm setting all that by the meters alone and they're all hitting -10, it may look right, but if I look at my loudness meter, that worship segment is going to be off the charts. There's so much more content in there. There's so much going on with all the different frequency ranges as opposed to a dialogue track, which is a narrow field in the frequency spectrum. That's the gist of it. When it comes to my technique for controlling dynamics, for something like mixing a sermon, if I'm going down my plugin chain, the first thing I naturally have is a high pass filter. I'm rolling off those unnecessary lows that are hogging energy. The next thing I'll do is use a compressor, and I'll set the attack to right in the middle, so not fast or slow, and I'll have the release time at fast. We don't want to hear it pumping, letting go. That's catching my peaks. It's not doing a crazy amount, but it kind of is. That's helping do a lot of the bulk compression. Before anything really hits the compressor, I will go through, and as I work my way through the mix, I will clip gain the wave form, so that, say, if he's whispering somewhere, I might keep that, depending on how I have my compressor set. Then, if we go up to a part where he's screaming and my wave form is huge, I will take that down and create those nodes, those dots in the wave form, and drag the actual clip volume down, that gain down. That way, it's not going into the compressor at this high gain level. It's hitting the compressor evenly as the rest of it would. That way, it's not driving the compressor crazy. Then I'll go through and do some EQ and DSing and whatnot. I might add some more compressors in there, just to grab some of those little things coming through. After that, it's subtle, just smoothing it out. Aaron: It is a little bit of both. If she has access to an audio editing program—I don't know what she's using for editing. If you can put a compressor on the track, do that. It's not exactly the same, but I did a YouTube video about how I process podcast vocals, and it's very similar. For podcast vocals, I start with a Logic noise removal plugin. Ryan: I actually have my noise suppressor, and I'll use that later on down in my signal chain. My way of thinking is that if I've got all this compression going on, the compression is narrowing that dynamic range, so it's bringing up that noise floor. I tend to do my noise suppression after the bulk of that compression, because the noise floor is higher and it's easier to work on a supressor. If that makes sense. Aaron: I've thought a lot about whether you should do the noise removal before or after you add a bunch of gain with a compressor or something, and I can't think of a good reason that it matters. You can take out the noise before you add a bunch of gain, or you can add a bunch of gain and take out the noise afterwards. Which is better? I don't know. Anyways, after the noise removal plugin, I put an EQ with a high pass filter, a peak compressor, an RMS or an average level compressor, and then a limiter. Ryan: Like I mentioned earlier, before I had my long-winded answer, it also depends on what it is you're mixing—whether it's music, or a podcast, or something for film. When it comes to dialogue for film, you want it to sound as natural as possible, but you also want to be able to hear if someone is whispering. When it comes to that, I'll still use a compressor, but it will be very, very light. If there's anything I need to do to meet loudness, that I will automate the volume on my dialogue bus. I'll bring that up. That way, it sounds a little bit more natural, instead of solely relying on a compressor to do all the work for you. Aaron: That makes sense. For podcasts, if I notice that there's a section where someone was talking much quieter, like if a guest backed away and talked like that for four or five minutes and then went back to the normal distance from the microphone, in Logic, I'll turn that into its own clip. I make a cut on either side of the quiet part, and then, in Logic, you can double click on it and change gain by hitting Control G. Then you can add 3, 4, or 5 dB to it. That works out pretty well. If it's every five seconds or I have to do it more than five or six times in an episode, I won't do the clip gain changes, I'll just use a compressor. Look at the overall audio file and see if there are long stretches where you can use automation to change the gain, or change the clip gain. Common Audio Mistakes Podcasters Make Ryan: You asked a question that I think would be good to talk about in regards to podcasting. You had asked, “What do you like about podcasts? What common mistakes do you hear people make?” Initially, I read this and thought, “I don't know,” but I spent some time thinking about it. This is great, because it piggybacks off the loudness thing. A lot of the mistakes that I hear when it comes to podcasts in regards to audio is the levels and loudness aspect. I'll listen to some podcasts that sound great, and I'll put on another podcast where the whole thing is super quiet. Then they start laughing, and it's really loud. There are some, like mine, where they have a music bed underneath the entire thing, and then sometimes the music bed is so quiet that you hardly know it's there. You're like, “What the heck is that noise in the background?” Sometimes, it's the opposite. Sometimes, the music bed is way too loud. That's a few of the things I've noticed. A lot of the fixes relate to what we just talked about. It helps to have knowledge of levels and perceived loudness. If you're mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent. One of the biggest things I can recommend for anyone mixing anything, whether it's music, movies, a podcast, is the importance of having a reference track. Aaron: Yeah, I don't talk about that enough. Ryan: That is huge. Professional audio engineers who mix platinum records still do this. They will pull in a track from a different song that is mixed well and is mixed how they want theirs to sound, and they'll have it muted in their session. When they want to have a reference to listen to or train their ear, they'll un-mute it, and they'll go, “Oh, okay.” I'm sure you've done the same thing as me, where you'll be so involved in a mix, you're in it, and you think it sounds great, and then maybe you go away. You go home, sleep, and maybe you come back, and you open it up and you go, “Woah! What was I thinking!” You can get so involved in it that the blinders go up. You get tunnel vision, and you're not aware to some things. It's good to have a reference track or get an outsider's opinion on a mix. The main takeaway here is the reference track. That would help with anything, whether it's the timbre, how you're EQing, or the loudness. You pull in their track and it's far louder than yours, and you automatically know that you need to do something about it. Aaron: That's a great idea. You can kind of do this before or after. You go through and you edit your whole podcast, get everything set up the way you want, create an extra track, and then find a podcast that sounds really good—This American Life or pretty much anything by NPR—download an episode, drop it into your editing program, and play it, mute it, and see what the difference is. Maybe you need to add some gain with an adaptive limiter or with a compressor, or maybe you can tell that your track sounds way sharper or harsher. Are there are too many high frequencies or too much bass compared to your reference track? You can adjust those things. I'm so glad you mentioned that. I've never thought of that before, and that's such a good idea. Ryan: It's one of those things you don't think of much, but once you do it, you're like, “Oh my gosh!” It's really eye opening and really helpful. You can find Ryan online at ryanmonette.com, and follow him on Twitter @RyanMonette.

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Shawn Blanc | Improving Your Productivity and Creative Output

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2016 36:28

Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think and work. Work on building your focus muscle. The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest. Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time. Show up every day and do your best creative work. If you can't overcome fear, push through it—fear is a sign that you're doing something that matters. The way you feel about a product doesn't change how much it's worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it. Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before. Don't undervalue your products. Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing. Pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal. Show Notes: Aaron: We both really loved Cal Newport's Deep Work book. When did you get interested in the idea of intense focus and structuring your life in a way to make sure you get your best creative work done? When did you find that book or that idea and really start working on that? Shawn: I think I found the idea years ago. When I was a creative marketing director, like I mentioned, I was doing 80 hours a week. Part of my schedule was that on Fridays, I would come home and work from home. I wouldn't be on email or answer the phone. I had an assistant, and anyone who needed to get ahold of me needed to go through my assistant. She would screen anything and see if it was urgent or important for the day. If it was, she'd let me know. I set up this distraction-free work time for myself on Fridays, because as the director for the marketing and all the creative stuff we were doing, it was on me to make sure that our marketing campaign for this big, end of the year, 25,000 person conference was going to happen. It was all on me. I had to drive that. You can't do that in 10-minute time blocks scattered throughout your day. For big projects, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time to think, process, come up with ideas, and work on stuff. That was my first experience of going, “I have to have this. If I don't, I won't be able to do my job, and I will always be in reaction mode.” That was my first experience, and that was in 2008 when I came across that idea. It was born out of necessity for me. Obviously, that's not new to the world, but it was new to me. When I quit my job and started blogging for a living, I came to that same spot of saying, “I need to set aside time every day to write without distractions, intentionally.” That has evolved as we've had kids, schedules have changed, and seasons of life go up and down. I need uninterrupted stretches of time on a regular basis to do my most important work and to focus on the stuff that's not urgent today but is very important. If I neglect it, those things will become urgent, or the needle is going to start going backwards and I'm going to start losing ground. Why Deep Focus Matters Shawn: Focused time has always been important. Then I came across Cal's book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. I read that in 2015. That's a fantastic book. There was this chapter in there on intentional practice, and that resonated with me so much. It's very similar to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book, Flow. He has a lot of books on very similar topics on finding flow, getting in the flow, whatever. He has one book called Flow and another one called Finding Flow. It's the idea that not only do you need those times of uninterrupted work, but when you're in that moment, if you can get into the flow, it's challenging, it's hard, etc, but you feel more rewarded. You feel better. You have a higher motivation about the work you're doing. You feel like you accomplished something. I don't know if anyone listening can relate to this. You spend your whole day in reaction mode, bouncing around between your email inbox, your Twitter feed, your Facebook feed, your Instagram feed, back to email, back to Twitter, back to Instagram, back to Facebook, back to email. You're bouncing around all these inboxes, and then you're like, “Wow, I just spent four hours. I haven't done anything.” Aaron: You read a bunch of short emails, maybe you replied, maybe you sent some tweets, maybe you saw some articles. It's so easy to spend all day doing short, quick tasks that don't really change anything. Shawn: Exactly. They don't change anything, and you feel zero satisfaction afterwards. You don't feel like you got anything done, as opposed to if you took those four hours and, instead, spent it focused on something intentional, something that was challenging. If you set aside time to do deep work, when you come out of that time (even if it's just one hour or half an hour), if it was distraction free and you're focused and being intentional, you come out feeling better. After spending intentional time working on something without any distractions, you feel more motivated and you have more energy. It's this muscle. You have a focus muscle that you have to work on, as opposed to the distraction muscle. Why is Creating Focused Time So Hard? Shawn: The hardest thing for getting into that focused work time, getting into the flow, is called the Activation Energy, just getting started. The first five minutes of focus time are the hardest. Something I like to do is have a set time every day when I am going to have my focused writing time, and before I even get there, the day before, I write down what my single most important thing is that I'm going to be writing about. I have the time on my calendar, and I have the challenge, project, or task that I'm going to be working on. As Cal Newport would say, what's the artifact that I'm going to try and get from that focused time? Then I come, sit down, and do the work. I know that the first five minutes will be hard and I probably won't be into it. I have to power through those first five minutes, and then you get into that flow. Time begins to get lost. Anyone who has been a painter, artist, musician, whatever, you can usually relate. You say, “I was just in the flow. I was in the zone.” That's where your best work is going to be created. That's where you're going to feel the most satisfaction with your job. That's where you're going to increase your skill level as a creative person. You're going to level up your ability to do stuff. Sean has talked about this so much with his Learn Lettering course: he did 9,000 hours of intentional practice! That's what he was doing every day. He had this focused time where he was practicing letters. You have to put in the time. How to Stop Procrastinating and Do Your Best Work Aaron: Everyone should read Cal Newport's books, So Good They Can't Ignore You and Deep Work. Both of those books are phenomenal. It's so important as podcasters to pick a day to outline and record an episode, and write the topic in advance. Say, “I'm going to spend 30 to 45 minutes at this time writing about this thing, and then I'm going to record an episode.” Otherwise, what ends up happening, and this is true of so many areas of life, is that you will spend a lot of time thinking about how you should do a thing. I've been thinking about how I should record a screencast for three weeks now. “Hey, I have to record that ‘introduction to limiting' screencast for my Logic course,” and I've been thinking a lot about it, but I haven't done it yet. It's so silly, but that's how procrastination works. You spend more time thinking about how you should do a thing instead of just doing the thing. Pick a task, pick a time, and do the task at that time. That's such a simple version of an idea presented in Deep Work that is so life changing. I talk about that book all the time because I love it, and I know there are still some people who haven't read it yet. It is a book that anyone who wants to create stuff for a living professionally needs to go listen to. Shawn, you should do a whole series of videos or interviews where you talk about deep focus for creative people. Shawn: I do. I did some stuff, like the TheFocusCourse.com/margin page. I interviewed Cal Newport, and we talked about this. I interviewed a few other folks and wrote some articles, and it was on this topic of having margin in your life, the breathing room, so that you can do your best creative work. That's our mantra over there at The Focus Course: Show up every day and do your best creative work. I think margin is a huge part of that. The deep work, the focus, it's a huge part of it. Otherwise, you're just working on your email inbox all the time. That's no fun. Push Through Fear Aaron: The first question I want to talk about is this one from Mariali. She asked, “How did you overcome the insecurity of giving birth to a new idea you weren't sure people would respond well to?” I think this was about a book but it could be about anything, really. Shawn: I didn't overcome the fear. I put it out there and stuck to the plan. The way that worked with my Delight is in the Details book, was that I had done it as a podcast mini series for my members only. It was a little five part podcast, and I got a lot of positive response from people. I had teased it out, and I got a positive response, so I thought, “I should sell this for maybe like $5 as a sample for the Shawn Blanc membership thing.” I thought, “I should rewrite it, so it's a little bit more structured. I'll rerecord it so it doesn't have the welcome in it, so it's a little bit more of its own product.” As I'm doing that, it goes from five episodes to like 12. There were all these extra chapters that I ended up writing. Then I thought, “Gosh, if I'm going to to this, I might as well interview some other people, and then I can charge more for the thing.” Instead of charging $10, I could charge like $20. That would double what I'd make from it. So I made the book, and when I was getting ready to sell it, that was the hard part. That launch day, I just felt super insecure. I felt bad and sick to my stomach. I texted a few friends of mine. I was like, “This book is coming out in an hour. People are going to hate it.” Everyone was like, “Stick to your plan. Put it out there.” The people I trusted, who's opinions I cared about, all said, “You're fine, keep going.” I listened to them, and I did. I kept going and it. I pushed through that fear. I never overcame the fear—I just pushed through it. I kept going. You begin to learn that the fear becomes this mile marker for you, a sign post that you're probably doing something that matters and creating something that matters. Now I've learned that when I feel that, “This might not work,” or, “Holy crap, what am I doing? I'm in over my head!” I should probably keep going, because I might be on to something that matters at this point. Aaron: That's fantastic advice. The Market Decides What a Product Is Worth Aaron: I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I talked about this in the Fired Up Mondays podcast this morning, which is that the market decides what's valuable. People will complain when they see a product that they don't think is worth as much as the company is charging for it. Let's say that you look at a Lamborghini, and you're like, “I don't know why anyone would ever pay $400,000 for that car. Why would you want that car? You could just buy a 1999 Toyota Camri that has 140,000 miles on it for $4,000.” “This '99 Camry works great. It gets me everywhere. Good gas mileage, pretty comfortable. Not the most amazing sound system, but it does have a Bose sound system in it, so it's fine. Why would anyone spend $400,000 on a Lamborghini?” The way you feel about a product doesn't change how much it's worth, which is how much the market is willing to pay for it. There's somebody out there willing to pay that much money. They have that much money, and it doesn't matter what you think about that product. Somebody else went out and made that, and they're going to make money from that while you're at home complaining about how somebody else is spending $300 for a picture book from Apple. How you feel about the price of a product doesn't matter. Shawn: It's how the people that are buying it feel that matters. To say, “I'm not going to start a Lamborghini company because used Toyota Corollas exist,” that's silly, but that's how we feel. Aaron: Relating to my courses, which I'm getting close to wrapping up, pricing is interesting for me. If I hadn't met Sean and the people in the seanwes Community, I think I would have charged a fraction of what I'm planning on charging. I probably would have charged closer to $20. I would have put all this time and energy into it and not priced it high enough, because I didn't realize that there are people out there that sell courses for $1,500 and $10,000. Don't Undervalue Your Products Shawn: I bought a course recently that cost me $2,000. Aaron: So many people don't know that. A lot of us still think that $2,000 is a ton of money. For a lot of people, it is. That doesn't mean that you have to apply such a low price to the product that you're making, just because you feel like $50 is a lot of money. Don't charge too little for your product because you feel like a higher price is a lot of money—that's an easy trap to fall into. Shawn: That's very true. You have to step back. This course I bought, for me, it was a no brainer. I bought the book that was written by the guy, and I went through the book and implemented some of the stuff in there, and it helped me launch my time management class. That did $20,000 its first launch week. I spent something like $18 on this guy's book, and it helped me make $20,000. So his $2000 course was a no brainer for me. This master class version of that book, the online course version of it, that was a no brainer for me. There were a ton of videos, all this implementation stuff, coaching, and all this stuff that was involved in it. There were all these things you can do that can increase the value of your stuff. Don't increase your price just because. Start with your basic price and then double it and double it again. Now you're probably at a decent starting point. You're so prone to under-valuing your own work. You don't just jack the price up because people say so. You need to look objectively and say, “Alright, am I providing the value?” If someone comes in and takes my Focus Course, for example, we charge $350 for it. It's not a lot, but it isn't a little, either. If someone spends $350 and goes through this course, are they going to be able to walk away with at least, ideally, $700 worth of value? I want them to get at least double the value they're paying for it. Can I get it to be even more? Can I get them to walk away with $3,500 worth of value, 10X the amount of value that I'm providing? You charge that, and if people take it seriously, they'll walk away with something that wil literally change the way they spend their time with work, family, health, and finances. This is across the board for their life, and you can't put a price on that. Objectively ask yourself if you're delivering on your promises and providing the value that you say you are. With your stuff, Aaron, with podcasting, if you can help people get a podcast off the ground, they can turn that into a full time business. That's worth $50,000 or $100,000. Someone could say, “Thanks to your stuff, I started a business that's now thriving. I do this as my job.” That's worth so much money! To charge $20 for it? Don't undervalue your stuff. First Steps to Improve Your Focus Aaron: I want to answer Kyle's question here in the chat. I'm going to read his question and I'll let you take a stab at it, Shawn. Kyle asked, “Is there a best first step to improved focus? I can think of so many directions I should go: exercise more, eat better, write down what I'm doing the next day, sleep better, etc. Trying to do all of it at once isn't sustainable. What should I start with?” Shawn: This is great, Kyle, excellent question. I feel like there are two best first steps (which obviously doesn't make sense, you can only really have one first step, but play along). We talked about this in the Focus Course. On the very first day of the Focus Course, there's this super dorky assignment. You have to set out your clothes for what you're going to wear tomorrow. Tonight, when you go to bed, pick out tomorrow's outfit. It's super dorky. You can do it in two minutes. In the morning, you have to wear the outfit you picked out the night before. You have to actually follow through with your commitment. You set this thing out, and you say, “I'm going to wear these pants and this shirt,” etc. In the morning, you wake up, and you have to wear it. You've made a commitment to yourself the night before. In the morning, you wake up and you follow through on that commitment. It's a small step towards strengthening your personal integrity, which is your ability to follow through with your commitments to yourself. That's super powerful. The other component to setting out your clothes the night before and then putting them on is that it's your current self helping your future self. You've saved your future self five minutes in the morning. The quality of my time in the morning is super valuable. My mind is fresh, it's the beginning of the day, there are no fires happening yet. That's my best chance to get my best work done, early in the morning. Protect your morning productivity time and your mental energy by setting out your clothes the night before. It's this idea of helping your future self. Once you get your toe in that water, you begin to see all the other areas of your life where you can begin to help your future self. We were talking during the podcast about this. Kyle says, “Yes, I've done this.” That's awesome. As Aaron and I talked about earlier, when you have that deep work focused time, try to decide ahead of time what that focus is going to be. This is your current self helping your future self. It's so powerful. For me, I write down my topic that I'm going to be writing about tomorrow when it's time for me to write. I have the topic ahead of time, so I know what to write about. Then, when I sit down, I don't have to think about. I have the singular focus to write about this topic that I've already chosen. That can really help with improving focus. Be ahead of your own curve and help your future self. Those of you who are registered for the Creative Focus Online Summit will get to hear Josh Kaufman and I talk about this. He talks about the importance of going on a walk in the morning and having 30 minutes where you leave your phone at home. You go outside, you're moving, you're getting sunlight, but also, it's 30 minutes of thinking time where you can be undistracted. You can just think. He calls it “noodling.” You let your mind “noodle.” He talks about how when you have a productivity system and a focus system that gives you space to think and to be uninterrupted for a little bit, you're going to be far more productive than if you have a system that doesn't give you space to think. For him, he says that that is the number one, single most important component of being more productive and focused—actually having carved out time on a regular basis where you can just think. Be distraction free. That's why he says to take a walk. You can combine that with movement, being outside, getting sunlight, and things like that. It's easier than sitting on your couch and staring at the wall for 30 minutes. I don't say that to put that idea down, but it can be easier to be undistracted when you're outside walking around and you leave your phone at home. As opposed to, you put your phone next to you on the couch and you hope that it doesn't buzz. You can put it in airplane mode, obviously, but it's still right there. You want to grab it and take it off of airplane mode. So coming back to Kyle's question: You have so many directions you want to go. Exercising, eating, writing down what you're doing the next day, sleeping better. Right? People say, “I want to improve my relationship with my spouse. I also want to get better at budgeting my finances. I also want to get better at budgeting my time. I also want to read these books.” You look at it, and there is so much stuff that you want to do. You can't do all of it right now, so pick one thing. What's the one that's most exciting? Build One Habit at a Time Shawn: Kyle, you listed exercise as the first thing on your list, so I would start with that. Not to pitch my course, but I'm going to pitch my course. We go through all the core areas of your life: your job, your relationships, your finances, your “down time,” your physical health, and your inner or spiritual life. These are the six areas of your life. We go through each one of those and spend time on each one, where you list out what's important to you in this area of your life. What's a goal that you want to have or a lifestyle practice that you want to implement, and how can you move the needle forward toward that goal? You come up with six goals and six action plans, one each for the main areas of your life. Spoiler here, at the end of the course, you pick one. Focus on improving one area of your life for six months and ignore the other ones. Don't ignore them in terms of ignoring your wife for two months while you're focusing on work, but you pick one area to build a habit, a routine, a lifestyle practice, that has you making meaningful progress in that area of life. A lot of people say that it takes 21 days to build a habit. Actually, if you're a habit building master, you might be able to do it in 21 days, but it takes most people 60 days to build a habit. That's the average. That's two months! I think a lot of people are probably familiar with the Jerry Seinfeld productivity tip with the calendar. You write a joke every day and you put a big X on your calendar, and you don't want to break the chain. It's the same with this new habit of yours. Say, “What's one thing I can do on a daily basis that's going to help me move toward my goal of exercising more, of being more physically active?” What's the minimum dose, the smallest thing you can do? You're going to go walk for 20 minutes, or whatever it is. Do that every single day for two months. It's a small start, but now you've done it. You're two months in, and now, instead of it being this thing you are trying to get the motivation for to move forward, you're doing it. It has become routine for you, which requires far less activation energy, far less mental energy. It has moved into your life. It's there. It's something that you're doing on a daily basis. Now, you pick the next thing. “Okay, I have the exercise thing.” Keep that and layer the next thing on top of it. You're doing that for your physical health. What about for your inner life, your spiritual life? What's something you would want to layer on top of that, something you could do? Now, during that walking time, maybe you're going to think about something. If you read a Bible or something like that, you could say, “I'm going to have a Bible verse that I think about during my 30 minute walk.” Maybe you're trying to improve your relationship with your spouse. Bring them along on your walk. Now, you can incorporate this. Say, “I'm going to do this on a regular basis,” and you do that for two more months. Then you pick the next layer. Maybe it doesn't build on that 30 minute walk itself. Maybe it's an entirely different part of the day, but the core is the same. Pick one thing, do it for two months, and allow yourself to suck at all the other areas of your life—after that, pick a new thing. This is why New Year's resolutions never work. We say, “I'm going to go to the gym for five hours a day every day starting on January 1st, and I'm going to start budgeting, and I'm going to stop eating chocolate, and I'm going to go on date nights every week, and I'm going to read a book a week.” January 1st, go! It's so much. You're going to run up and try to push a truck, but you don't have the energy, the strength, to move and change that much that quickly. With the truck analogy, if you're driving a car and you want to try and tow another car, you don't gun it with all this slack on the tow line. You're going to rip both of the bumpers off. You start super, super slow. You slowly build up that speed. That's how you do it without getting in a wreck. You actually make that momentum. Start with just one thing. The hard part is giving ourselves permission to pick one thing and focus on that for two whole months. That's the hardest part, really. It's not in the doing. It's in the not despising those small beginnings. That's the crash course of the Focus Course right there. This is the value. If you stick around for the after show at seanwes, this is what you get. Aaron: I'll agree with Shawn and say this: pick one action you can do tomorrow morning that will get you closer to the most important goal. I know how many goals you have right now. I know, because I have that many goals, too. Pick one thing and write it down. Get a little calendar. Make a big X. Do that every day. You'll get other stuff done, too, but you need to think about doing one important thing first thing in the morning right after you wake up. Get that thing done, and then pat yourself on the back, feel good about it, and move on to the next thing. You can follow Shawn Blanc on Twitter @ShawnBlanc, and be sure to check out his website at www.shawnblanc.net.

Shawn Blanc | Content Strategy and Growing an Audience

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2016 52:30

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons. Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life's tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he's learned about growing an audience. Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he's gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life. In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires. Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: Interview your customers to get a real life picture of your audience. Start selling products as early as possible. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. Be in people's weekly cycle at a minimum. Your niche is going to draw your audience but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. Show up consistently to earn people's trust and create an anticipation of future value. Do guest-based podcasts to grow your audience. Reach people that are far outside of your social circle by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Show Notes Aaron: Shawn Blanc is a writer/small business owner/productivity coach/creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons, and Shawn is a member of our Community. He's been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade now. His online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life's tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He was writing about the importance of creating a customer avatar, that's knowing who you're creating for and what you want to help them achieve, what kind of person you want to help them become. I thought it was really interesting, so I sent him an email right back. I said, “Shawn, do you want to come on the show to talk about this? I think podcasters need to hear about this idea of customer avatars and also content strategy.” Shawn agreed, and he also shares my passion for productivity and focus, so much so that he has gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a five day online summit about the power of a focused life, and that's going to be starting, I believe, as this episode comes out. If you're listening to this in your podcast player, it's starting today, I think. I'll give you that link later. In this episode, I want to talk with Shawn about why you as a podcaster need to create a customer avatar, know who you're creating for, develop a content strategy, and then also the benefits of deep focus, what we call deep work. A few small changes in your daily habits can lead to big improvements in your productivity and creative output. Shawn, that's one of the longer intros I've ever done. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Shawn: Thanks, Aaron. I love it. Super excited to be here. Shawn Blanc Aaron: I think of you, Shawn, as a writer and as the creator of an online course called The Focus Course, which is great. You're so much more than that. Do you want to give everyone a quick introduction, how you got here and where you came from? I would also like to hear what your biggest struggles have been over the years of getting to the point where you're at right now. Shawn: Absolutely. I'm in Kansas City. Originally, I'm from Denver. I'm a Colorado guy at heart. I've been married for going on 12 years, and my wife and I have three boys. It's insane at our house. We used to call the first two the Twin Tornadoes, but we just had our third eight or nine weeks ago. Aaron: Congrats! Shawn: It's awesome. Love it. I love being a dad. I used to be a drummer. I know that we have a lot of musicians around here. Sean McCabe plays a little bit of music, I think. Aaron: Yeah, he used to write music, just like he used to do lettering. I still play drums. Shawn: I used to play drums for a large ministry here in Kansas City, and I ended up transitioning out of that. It's a long story, but I ended up becoming a marketing and creative director. I ran a team, an in-house design team, with about 17 people—web developers, print designers, web designers, writers, editors, project managers, whatever. We did a bunch of stuff. One of our huge things was that we would host a conference at the end of the year that I was running. 25,000 people would come out for that. I did that for several years, and then my wife and I got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, “I don't want to do this work as a dad.” Part of it was just super demanding. Anyone who has experienced working in the corporate design scene knows that it's a very demanding spot. Everything is urgent all the time. I was doing like 80 hours a week, and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun, but I was like, “There's no way. I don't want to do 80 hours a week as a dad.” I had that, plus I had this little blog on the side, where I had been writing about marketing stuff. I felt like, “This would be a good opportunity to quit what I'm doing and take a leap, see if I can take my website full time. Could I blog for a living?” That was the thought. I was doing about $1,000 a month in advertising and some affiliate stuff. I figured that if I could give it 40 hours a week, I could get the revenue up to a spot where it could pay the bills. I figured that it could grow from there. Aaron: How old were you at this point? Shawn: I was just about 30, not quite 30, like 29, when I made that jump. I asked everyone that was reading on the site. I said, “I'm quitting. I'm going to do this thing full time.” I asked people if they would be interested in supporting me to write the site for a living. I was like, “If you like what I'm doing, I'll write more if you want to give me some money to do it.” I did this little membership drive. I was going to charge $3 a month for membership. I was doing a daily podcast as a perk of membership. Aaron: You aren't still doing that, are you? Shawn: It's on hiatus at the moment. We'll see. I'm going to be diving back into the podcast scene starting early 2017. I miss podcasting. It's fun. Aaron: You decided to ask people to support you, give you $3 a month, to go full time with your writing? Shawn: Basically. I figured if I could get 500 people, at $3 a month that's $1,500, plus the other $1,000 I was doing, and that would be $2,500 a month. That's not a ton, but I figured that would be enough to cover the bare necessities. I figured that things could grow from there. People signed up, and I hit the 500 person mark by the end of the month before I had even quit. I started my new job, April 4th 2011, basically fully funded as an independent blogger. Aaron: I bet that was exciting. Shawn: It was really exciting. I felt like I got this permission slip from my audience to go for it. As a creative person, sometimes you need that. Sometimes you want to be like, “Do you guys care? I'm here. I'm making this stuff.” A lot of the work we do as creative entrepreneurs is for your audience. I know that we're going to talk about this in a little bit, the customer avatar profile. It's for these people that you really want to serve. When you hear back from them and they go, “Hey, we like what you're doing. Let's keep the relationship going,” it's like having a DTR with your audience. There's something cool about that kind of permission slip moment. It's like when you sell your first product, or whatever it is. People are interested. You get your first positive review on iTunes or whatever. Obviously, there's going to be the junk that comes later, but whatever. Aaron: Some of the haters that come later? Shawn: You forget about that stuff and you keep moving on. Aaron: That's awesome. Asking for Money Aaron: When you think back, do you remember any big struggles or hurdles that you really had to overcome about that period in your life? Shawn: There were so many. It's hard to say, “If I could do it differently, I would do it this other way,” because who knows? If I had done things differently, maybe it wouldn't have turned out the way I thought it would. One of the biggest struggles for me was asking for money. It was a huge challenge related to the membership drive. I was asking folks to support me on a regular basis to write for a living. I was like, “Who am I? What kind of a dork says, ‘Give me money so I can blog for a living.'” Aaron: Nobody pays for things online anymore. Nobody wants to pay for writing. Shawn: Exactly. That was a huge challenge. It has continued to be a challenge for years. I have been doing this for almost six years now, full time. When I came out with my first book, it's called Delight is in the Details, and it was an eBook package thing. I did some interviews. I charged $29 for my book, and I felt like this huge hypocrite. It was this feeling of, “This is information. Information should be free on the internet. Why would anyone ever buy this?” I felt like there was no value in this thing that people would pay for. I was like, “I have to do it. I'm going to charge for it.” Aaron: Sorry to jump in, but at the time, did you really feel like $30 was a lot of money? Shawn: Oh my gosh. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach the day I was going to launch it. I was like, “I can't believe how much I'm asking for this.” Aaron: What did you think was going to happen? Shawn: I thought that people would buy it because they trusted me, and then they would read it and come and burn my house down because I had ripped them off so bad. I charged so much money for something. Aaron: It was your first time launching a product, right? Shawn: It was. It was my first product launch ever. It ended up bringing in like $5,000 in that first 48 hour launch window. It made $5,000 that first couple of days. In hindsight, it was this huge inflection point for me. I think I spent about 100 hours building the thing, made $5,000 from it in the first week, and I thought, “Woah, that was a great return on my time investment! Now I have this product that I can continue to sell.” Since then, in the last four or five years that I've sold it, I want to say that it's sold $50,000 over the years. That's awesome. There's something great about creating a product, and it changed a lot. Producing and selling a book changed my relationship with my audience. Now I'm creating products for them to buy. That initial hurdle was huge. $29 was so much money. I think that was probably the biggest struggle, of being able to properly identify how much value I'm providing people and to price it correctly. That's just hard. I think that's why you should start selling stuff as early as possible, because you have to learn. There isn't a formula for how much value you're providing and how much you should charge for it. You can't just plug your stuff into a worksheet and get a number back. You have to feel out the market, your market, your audience, your skill level. How much polish are you doing? How much depth of information are you providing? Whatever skill, service, or product it is you're providing, you have to learn how to make money and price your stuff! It's hard to do it when you're starting. The biggest challenging for me at first was becoming comfortable asking for money and learning to accurately price my products. Aaron: The other thing is that once you launched that book and got familiar with all that stuff, that was a stepping stone to your future products, your future books and courses, and everything else that you're doing. I'm sure, at that point, you felt like, “Okay. I've done this once before already. Now it's like riding a bike. I just need to get back on and keep peddling, keep going.” Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. It really was a huge stepping stone. One thing I loved about creating and launching a product was that there was a start and an end date to it. This thing has to ship. I worked on it, and I was done. I put it out there. Boom, now it's there. I'm done. It's out in the world. Obviously, you iterate on it. A year later, I added some new interviews. I added some new chapters. I created some videos. I remastered all of the audio for the audio book. Product Launch Hiccups Shawn: Super random story related to this. It was the relaunch of Delight is in the Details, a year after it had come out, and I put it out there. People are buying it during that relaunch period. I get an email from someone going, “I was just listening to the audio book, and the last chapter sounds like it's not edited correctly. Something is weird about the last chapter. You should check it out.” I recorded the audio book and edited it by myself. I go and I open up the audio book for the last chapter and I'm listening to it, and it is the original take that I did of the book. The way I did the audio book, I'm reading it into my microphone in GarageBand. If I goofed up in the middle of a paragraph, I would just take a pause, say, “Okay, again,” and then I would start talking again. That was my marker. The last chapter of the book was that track, the whole thing. The audio track should have been 10 or 12 minutes for that chapter, and it was 30 minutes because of all my edits, retakes, and pauses. The whole thing. What's worse is, it was there from the very beginning. For a year, I had been selling that thing. I was mortified. For a year, I had been selling my book with the last chapter all messed up, and I was mortified. Aaron: Nobody said anything?? Shawn: They didn't. Either no one listened to it, or when they listened to it, they just assumed… I don't even know. I was so mortified. There you go. What worse thing can happen? Earlier, I had been so concerned about selling something that people weren't going to consider valuable. Here's this huge, huge mistake. What a goof! Aaron: I need to remind everyone that this audiobook is called Delight is in the Details. Shawn: The irony, right? That was one of the selling points of the book, too. I was like, “If you buy this book, it's a case study in sweating the details itself. You'll see all the areas where I've sweated the details in this product.” Whatever. Oh man. I was mortified. Aaron: Thankfully, no one came and burned down your house, and it was over a year before anyone even said anything. A lot of us are so curious about people who do such good work, so when a mistake does happen, it's almost humanizing. It's like, “Now I can relate to this person, because they're not 100% on top of everything all the time, either, like I struggle with. I make a lot of mistakes, so it's kind of nice when you see a really awesome musician on stage mess up a part and then jump back into it. You're like, “Oh, they are humans, too.” That's really cool. Nobody burned your house down, thankfully. Shawn: That's why it's so helpful to ship early. You get stuff out the door and you start learning. I love it. Aaron: I tell people this a lot, too, when it comes to podcasts. If you're thinking about making a podcast, there are so many things you can tweak, improve, or work on forever, but it's so much better to say, “What's the minimum I have to do? I want to try and do a good job, but let's do this, ship it, and iterate and improve on it every single week.” If you don't ship something, you'll just pick at it and tweak it endlessly. Before you know it, it's been a year and a half, and you've got three or five episodes you recorded 18 months ago that you're still working on. In the meantime, nothing has happened. Start Moving Shawn: As well, we have this picture of what we want something to look like and what we want it to be, but we have zero experience. I like the analogy of those lifesize mazes. Especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving, there are those corn mazes. They're these giant things. Imagine someone standing at the entrance of this life size maze, staring at the entrance to it, and in their mind, trying to figure out how to get to the end so they can get straight to the end the fastest way possible without making any mistakes along the way. Impossible! Not going to happen. You have to go in the maze and go left to realize that you should have gone right. Then turn around. You have to go through the thing to make it through. I like the phrase, “Action brings clarity.” Action brings clarity. You're waiting for clarity before taking action, and it's not going to happen—you have to start moving. You just have to get going and you adjust course as you go. You start to realize what you should major on and what you shouldn't. Aaron: That's an incredible analogy. I'm totally going to use that in the future now. It's perfect. You sit there and you imagine yourself being at the end of the maze. That's where you see a bunch of other people. Your friends have gone through the maze and they're at the end, so you're like, “I have to get to the end fast. I can't make any mistakes. I can't take a wrong turn, because that's where all my friends are, and that's where I want to be.” You do have to go through it. That's really incredible. Creating a Customer Avatar Aaron: Shawn, you sent out an email and you were talking about this. I want you to explain how you think about customer avatars, and then if you did something like that for yourself when you were just starting, or if this is something that evolved over time. Customer avatar and content strategy, go! Shawn: This is great. When I first started as a writer, I was doing ShawnBlanc.net. My entire job was publishing articles and links on my website. I didn't have a customer avatar or a customer profile, what I had was an ideal reader. I think, in terms of podcasting, it's very similar. Who's your ideal listener? For me, I actually had a person who was my ideal reader, who's name was Shawn Spurdee. He was a really good friend of mine. He and I had become friends through the blogging Twitter-sphere back in the day. When I wrote articles or links, I had him in mind. I thought, “Is this something he would find interesting? Is there a story in here that he's going to want to read? Is this a link to something he would like?” You had that ideal reader. John Gruber wrote about this for his site, Daring Fireball. He talked about his ideal reader, and he called it “a second version of himself.” He goes, “This person is interested in all the same things I'm interested in, and he cares about what I care about. All the design decisions I make on the site, all the articles I choose to link to, the stories I choose to tell, all of that stuff is with this ideal reader/listener in mind.” It was instrumental for me to have an “ideal reader” for all of the work I was doing. You know who you're trying to target. I'm still the writer for sure, but we've switched a lot more of our focus onto direct sales, building a customer base, and selling products to our audience. I still don't have that ideal reader. Who am I writing this for? Who is this product being created for? It has gone beyond just an individual person that I know. We did a customer profiling thing. I have a guy who works for me full time, and his name is Isaac. We took a couple of big, giant sticky pad things, two feet by three feet, they're huge, these giant sticky notes. Aaron: Where do you get those? Can you get those on Amazon? Shawn: You can get a lawnmower on Amazon, so I'm sure you can get sticky notes. We got ours at Office Max, an Office Depot kind of thing. It's weird. You drive to this store, and you can walk in, and they sell products on their shelves. You have to pick it up with your hand and drive it home yourself. Aaron: It seems like a waste of time. Shawn: For this customer profiling session or whatever, basically, we had these four quadrants. What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they say? Something like that. You're trying to get this picture of this person. Who is this person? What are the things that they say? Like, “I love my family. I like to watch Netflix.” Whatever. Aaron: “I want to learn how to make a podcast.” Shawn: Exactly. It's not just business, it's just life. What are the kind of phrases they might say? If you ask them what they care about, what things would they list? What are their pain points that they're feeling in life? For us, creating this customer avatar, we named him Brian. We found a random picture of somebody and stuck it up there to begin to humanize the person. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. We talked about, “Here's Brian,” and we came up with this stuff. Brian has a job that he kind of likes, but he's got these other creative ideas that he really wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to take it full time. Maybe not. That's not really the most important thing for him. The most important thing for him is getting his best creative work out there and being able to do it and feel like he's making progress on the areas of life that matter to him. He's also a dad and a husband, and he cares about his family quite a bit. He cares about his kids. He still wants to be available for them. When he comes home from work, he's really tired, so the evenings don't feel like a good time to do his creative work, but he's not a morning person either, so he doesn't know when he's going to get the time. These are some of the scenarios, the stories, that begin to emerge as you begin to write stuff about this person. What are the pain points that they feel? When they look around, what do they see? What kind of car does Brian drive? Does he like minivans? Does he have a minivan? How many kids does he actually have? You really kind of start to come up with this stuff, and there's a lot you can do to get to a higher level of doing these customer profiles. You can actually do interviews with your customer base. Aaron: I do this! I try to meet people and talk to them, especially when it comes to podcasting. When you interview your customers, you can actually begin to get a real life picture of your real life audience. Creating an Empathy Map Shawn: There's this thing that we did, an empathy map, and you take the empathy map to create your customer profile. We ran this survey to our email list, and we ran a separate one to our customer list. It was, “When it comes to focus, what's your single greatest challenge?” It was just this open-ended question where people could write stuff down. Some people say, “Time.” Or, “I can't focus. I'm distracted.” Then you get some people who go, “I'm trying to build my photography portfolio website on the side because I love photography and I'm trying to grow it. I'm working this other job, and when I come home in the evenings, family is first. I spend time with family, so by the time the kids are in bed, I've only got about an hour left in the day. I'm so tired, and I don't want to spend time trying to work on my photography website, so I don't know where to get started.” The person who gives an in depth answer to the challenge like that, vs. someone who just says “time”, they're really in touch with their pain point. There's a book called Ask by Ryan Leveque, and you can find it on Amazon. He teases out, “You ask these questions, and you separate the people with the longest answers. You put their answers up at the top.” You cut the list at 20%. The bottom 80%, forget about those people, and look at the top 20%, these “hyper-responders.” What are their challenges? What are their pain points? Aaron, you could do this. You could say, “When it comes to building a podcast, what is your single greatest challenge?” You'll probably have someone who says, “Building my list.” Or, “Building my audience.” Or, “Technical stuff.” But then you might have someone who really gives this heartfelt, in-depth answer. If someone gives you a heartfelt, in-depth answer, they're hungry for a solution. That person is going to pay for a solution. That person is going to digest this, and when you give them something, they're going to check it out. Look for these hyper-responders and cater your response to them. That's what we did. That's how we figured out that our biggest pain points for people who go through the Focus Course are one of four primary buckets, so to speak. It's time management, getting traction on their business or side projects, finding clarity on what's important to them and what they should be doing about it, and a lot of people also feel overwhelmed by all that's already happening in life. Or, they look at the thing that they're trying to make progress on, and they feel overwhelmed. They don't even know where to start. Really, all of these things feed off of each other. When one is in a rough spot, the others start to be in a rough spot as well. We go, “Okay, these are the main challenges we're going to address as part of the Focus Course, in all of our writing. This is it.” The people that fit within these four buckets are the ones who are willing to pay for a solution. Use Your Audience's Language Shawn: Read the actual responses, the answers, and take the language that people are saying and use it in your articles. Answer their actual questions in podcast episodes. You use it in your marketing language. The landing page for your product, or your podcast, or your sign up, or whatever—use the actual language of your hyper-responder customers. Now, not only are you listening to them and you know who that ideal customer is, but you're also even speaking their language. A) it's going to be cool because hopefully you'll do more sales, but B) you'll actually get to connect with the people you want to connect with. That's the whole point. That's why we're here. That's one of the huge benefits of having these customer profiles. It can help you stay focused on who you're trying to talk to and what it is you're trying to talk about, to help them. Aaron: That's mindblowing. That's fantastic. At the core, I kind of know this stuff, but hearing you explain it made it even more clear to me. I love that. I want to take it in this direction. How to Grow Your Audience & Create Deeper Connections Aaron: One of the most common questions I get about podcasting is about growing an audience. It's always, “How do I get more attention? How do I get more listeners? How do I grow an audience?” I love what you said right here. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. That's where listeners come from. So many people think that they'll magically get 100,000 people to listen to their podcast, and they won't have any idea of who these people are. They're nameless, faceless avatars on the internet. No! Especially in the beginning, you start small. You develop relationships with people who care passionately about the thing that you're talking about. By investing in them, getting to know them, and asking them questions—regardless of whether you're doing some kind of business thing or not—by just talking to them and getting to know their language, that's how you're going to resonate with them and even more people. What methods have you found effective for growing an audience and developing deeper relationships? Shawn: I think that's a great question. Everyone wants to know the answer to this. For me, there are three primary keys to growing an audience: Consistency Honesty and transparency Relationships. 1. Consistency Shawn: Consistency is core. This is a phrase in the seanwes Community, and it's a phrase I like to use, and that's this: show up every day. That's consistency. We're just people of habit. The internet is a thing of habit, so you have to have that consistency where you're in people's regular cycles. Sean McCabe talks about this a lot. You want to be in people's weekly cycle at a minimum. Show up on a regular basis. Also, that's how people know you're going to be there. There's something about that consistency. One of the ways you develop an audience where people are tracking with you and paying attention when you're showing up consistently. When you show up consistently, not only do you earn people's trust, but you create an anticipation of future value. You want to have that. That's huge. People are like, “I want to know what's next. I want to follow this story and be here.” Consistency is huge. 2. Honesty & Transparency Shawn: This comes out in a lot of ways. In some ways, you want to have the transparency like Nathan Barry talks about, to “teach what you know.” Share what you know. Also, there's a human element, passion and persona, who you are as an individual. Humanizing yourself is so helpful. We don't want to connect with brands, we want to connect with people. As indie entrepreneurs or indie creative folks, when you are running your own thing, you are a brand but you're also a person. You've got to keep the person aspect of it, the human aspect of it, you have to keep it there. Allow your mistakes to show through. Allow your passions to show through. For me, at ShawnBlanc.net, I cut my teeth and grew my audience originally by writing about Apple stuff. I wrote tons of product reviews. It was super nerdy, gadgety stuff. I would also write about coffee, camera gear, books I was reading, music, and things like that. Aaron: Stuff you cared about. Shawn: Exactly. Other interests that were related to Apple gear because it was my site, and I can write about whatever I want. That humanized the work that I was doing. So many people came to my site because of the Apple stuff but they stayed because of the coffee stuff. Your focus, your niche, is going to draw your audience, but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. You're a real person with real interests who is not just this robot spinning off the same thing all the time. 3. Relationships Shawn: This is huge. I stink at it, but I'm trying to reply to emails. When people email me, replying back to them. Also, here's a prime example, having me on your show, Aaron. The practicality of it is that when this show goes live, I'm going to tweet about it. I'm going to link to it. I'm going to point the people that track with me over to your stuff. That's a way for you to grow your audience, but it's also a way for me to grow my audience. Your listeners, a lot of people, don't know who I am. Now, hopefully, some of them will come check me out and sign up for our stuff. There's a really cool dynamic here of introducing your group to someone else. Hopefully, that person will also introduce their audience to who you are. Doing guest-based podcasts is an awesome way to grow your audience. I did some back in the day, when I was first starting my site. I did interviews, blog interviews. The whole thing was conducted over email, and it was just this back and forth email. I did one with Daniel Jalkut, who used to work at Apple and then started Red Sweater. He has the best blogging app on the planet for Mac, MarsEdit. It's a super great app. I emailed him and did an interview with him. I did an interview with John Grubar. I did an interview with Brett Simmons, all these people who are super famous Apple people. I'm going back and forth with these guys and posting their interviews. They link to me on my site, and I get this influx of new readers. Or you find software that's awesome. I would do super in-depth reviews about this stuff, and then people would link to those reviews. Honoring other people, connecting with other people, and doing stuff that's worth talking about. Then the word will spread. That consistency, being transparent and honest about who you are, having that passion and that human dynamic to the work that you do, and then just trying to connect with other people. Do things that people are going to want to talk about. Another example is the summit that we're doing, the Focus Summit. I'm punching way above my weight class here with some of these folks, and it's a chance to hopefully get some of their audience to discover the work that we're doing and visa versa. I hope that people who sign up for this summit will get introduced to some new people and that they'll find some incredible resources. It's just fun. We're all just folks trying to do our best work, right? Aaron: Absolutely. I love that. That's one of the best answers for building an audience that I've ever heard. The Importance of Investing One-on-One Time in Your Listeners Aaron: The thing that I'm working on, and I just want to share this, is investing more time in my listeners. It's hard sometimes, because you can spend all the time in the world talking to people on the internet, as I'm sure you know, Shawn. I'm sure people are constantly emailing you, asking for your thoughts, your advice, and your feedback on stuff, and you try to stay really focused. Something I've wanted to do is spend a little bit of time every day, like on Twitter, reaching out and telling people that I appreciate what they do. Or, if somebody emails me, having a conversation. In depth, giving them 15 or 20 minutes of focus time to reply, and even asking them questions. Someone says, “Hey, thanks for doing your show. I really appreciate this thing.” I'll reply and say, “Thank you so much. How is your podcasting journey going? What are you working on right now? What do you want to get better at?” Some great conversations have come out of that. I'm trying to invest a little bit more in my listeners. I'm at the point now where I've started inviting some of them on the show. “Hey, you sound like you'd be a cool person to talk about podcasting with. Would you like to come on the show?” It just spreads. It's the building of community that will eventually attract people to you. When I started, I had 30 or 40 friends, maybe a couple hundred followers. Every new person that finds my show and gets to know me as a person, who respects the work I do, they might have 200 people that follow them, and they share my show with those people. It just spreads out from there. It becomes this big net. You can eventually reach people that are far outside of your social circle just by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Let them do the work of sharing your stuff with their people, too. Shawn: Yeah, exactly. Focus Summit & Products Aaron: That's fantastic. We're getting close to the end of the episode. We need to wrap it up. I told everyone in the beginning that I would get you to talk about this Focus Summit that you've got coming up. What's the deal with this? Tell us a little bit about that. Shawn: The summit! I'm so excited about this. We have Jocelyn Glei, who just wrote this book called Unsubscribe, which is a fantastic book. It's about email distractions and stuff like that. We've got Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA. Anyone who is trying to do anything related to business, you need to read The Personal MBA. It is a bargain. Aaron: So much good advice. Shawn: It's like a $35 book, and that book is so packed. Excellent, excellent stuff. Sean McCabe is on it, and Sean and I talk about how quantity leads to quality, which ties right into this stuff on showing up every day. The summit is going to be really, really cool. When this podcast drops, the summit is going to be kicking off. Here's the link: The Creative Focus Summit. After the summit wraps up, we're opening up registration for our Focus Course. That has become my flagship product. It changed everything for me, in terms of what I was focusing on. I came up with this course as the next product in a series. I had done Delight is in the Details, and I wanted to write a book about diligence and productivity. I wrote the book, and then, long story short, I realized that it needed to be a course. I felt like the way that I wanted to get these ideas across wasn't a book that someone would read, highlight, think was cool, and then puts back on their shelf and returns to life as usual. I want something that's really going to effect change. I knew that a book would probably go farther, broader, and reach a total number of more people. I would rather fewer people go through the course but have a higher number of them really get real impact. For me, the book ended up turning into the Focus Course, and we've had close to 1,300 people go through it. It's basically productivity training for creative people and entrepreneurs and leaders. It's way, way more than that. It's not tips and tricks. It's what I call “meaningful productivity.” It actually gets to the core, the heart, and the foundation. What do you really care about? How are you really spending your time? This is not a “Five Life Hacks That Will Help Me Go Through My Email Inbox Better.” It's hard questions that will make me challenge my assumptions about my family, my work, my down time, and my rest time. Anyone that thinks that taking a nap will improve productivity, the Focus Course is for you. Aaron: That's me! You have to have a healthy life to do your best work. Shawn: You can't sprint this. This is a marathon, so you have to have that breathing room. The Focus Course opens up after the summit is over, and I'm super excited about it. We're going to have a whole group of people cruising through in January. We're doing a winter class for it. We've got some forums, so everyone can share their progress. It's going to be a blast. I'm really excited about it. The summit is free, and the Focus Course itself is going to be something we charge for, obviously. Aaron: You have to charge for things, or else people won't take it seriously. Shawn: It's so true. Aaron: You have to invest. Shawn: That's something else. We didn't get into that earlier when we were talking about the pricing stuff, but that's another reason to charge for your work. Someone is actually going to have skin in the game. They're going to find value for it. Aaron: They have to ask themselves, “Okay. Do I think this is going to help me enough in my life journey to actually put money towards it?” If they answer that question for themselves and then make the choice to give you that money, they are going to say, “I told myself, I believe, that this is worth my time, so I need to invest my time in it.” Shawn: Exactly. Very true. Aaron: Where should people go if they want to follow you, connect with you, or ask you questions? Shawn: Twitter is a great spot. I'm @shawnblanc on Twitter.

love amazon time netflix community halloween thanksgiving apple action building colorado reach boom consistency impossible mac kansas city audience takeaways honoring honesty ebooks technical delight producing one time content strategy garageband humanizing unsubscribe grow your audience dtr office depot sean mccabe josh kaufman nathan barry john gruber office max personal mba daring fireball shawn blanc daniel jalkut aaron you red sweater aaron it jocelyn glei brett simmons aaron yeah marsedit shawn it shawn you aaron so aaron some shawn yeah aaron they

How to Write a Podcast Description That Attracts New Listeners

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2016 58:04

Your podcast description is one of the first things people see when they come across your podcast online or in a podcast app. This is your chance to catch their attention and sell them on your show. It's your opportunity to convince them to listen. The ideal podcast description answers two questions for your potential listener: Is this show for me? What am I going to get out of listening to this? When a potential audience member comes across your podcast and starts reading your description, they're wondering, “What's in it for me?” This is your chance to tell them why they should care about your show. Otherwise, they won't. Key Takeaways: Your podcast description is your chance to tell people what's in it for them. Refine the goal of your podcast down to a single sentence. Write your description in a way that brings agreement from your intended audience. Don't make your description all about you, make it about your listener. People will only care about you once you've proven you care about them. Your description is there to let people know you have what they're looking for. Write in a simple way that's tangible and clear for your audience. Try to deliver complex ideas simply. Your social media bio is a chance to communicate to people what they'll get if they follow you. I'm joined this week by Cory Miller. Cory is the co-host of the Invisible Details podcast and loves all things design and branding. Aaron: In this world where there's millions of pieces of content competing for our attention, your audience is looking to see if your content solves a specific need they have. You have to put thought not just into your podcast description, but into each of your episode descriptions as well. When a potential listener comes across your podcast for the first time, they're reading the description and wondering, “What's in this for me?” Your podcast description is your chance to tell people what's in it for them. You have to tell them why they should care about your show, otherwise they're not going to. What Should My Show Description Say? Aaron: When writing a description for your podcast or podcast episode, here are some questions to think about: What is your goal with this show? What are you going to teach or share with your listeners? Are you going to interview people? Are you going to bring people from that community in to share what they've learned, or is your show strictly about entertainment? The last two weeks I interviewed two guys who run a company called Dead Signals and produce two radio drama style podcasts (Related: e064 Creating a Radio Drama Podcast Part 1 (With Writer Marc Sollinger) & e065 Creating a Radio Drama Podcast Part 2 (With Producer/Engineer Dan Powell)). Their podcasts are very much just entertaining stories. They're not business related and they're not trying to change the world with their podcasts, they just want to tell stories in the audio medium and entertain people. The way I write a description for my podcast is going to be way different from the way they write theirs. They thought about that and asked, “What are people who would be interested in our show looking for?” They're trying to write a description that would catch the attention of someone looking for an entertaining story. I love the description for their Archive 81 show: “Three months ago Daniel Powell vanished. These are the tapes he sent to me. If you know anything, please contact me at archive81podcast@gmail.com.” They don't even tell you who the guy is, all you need to know is this guy vanished after he sent a friend some tapes. Try to Describe the Goal of Your Podcast in a Single Sentence Cory: Write your description in a way that brings agreement from your intended audience. Write it in a way that, while they're reading the description, they're thinking, “Oh yeah. Yes! This! Exactly that! Yes! I need to listen to this.” That's the reaction you're looking for. You want to write your description in a way that brings agreement from your intended audience. When they look at that description from Archive 81, people are like, “Whoa. That's creepy. I feel like I need to listen to this because I'm intrigued.” You're bringing intrigue and agreement. Whatever it is you write, you want it to resonate with your intended audience. The second thing is to write it in a way that if they're sitting with their phone on a bus heading to work and someone looks over and says, “I see you're listening to a podcast, what's that all about?” they can respond without looking up the description. That's what you're aiming for: you want something they can quickly tell their friend about without looking at the description. It's about clarity. It's not all about you, it's about what they're getting. If they said, “I'm listening to this show where this guy wants to help make me a better podcaster,” that's huge. Or, “I'm listening to this show where they teach me how to build a better brand.” That's very simplistic, but you can build off that and you can craft a description where people can pass that on. That's rooted in telling people what the mission of your company, your brand, or your life is. Being able to distill it in a way that allows people to be able to pass it back and forth is very powerful. Don't Make It All About You Share and talk about the experience you have and why you're qualified to teach on a certain subject. I can say, “I've been helping people make great podcasts for five years. I've worked for 5by5, the founder of Dribbble, Sean McCabe, and the Shop Talk show.” That shows authority and expertise, but if someone asks a listener about my show, they're not going to say, “Aaron Dowd is this great podcast editor and he's worked for all these people and he knows all this stuff about audio engineering.” The person asking about my show doesn't care about me, they only care about what the show will do for them if they listen to it. The words I should use instead could be, “If you want to learn how to make a great podcast, this is the show you should be listening to.” Cory: There's aspects of that you can include in your description. Instead of saying, “Hey, these are all of my accomplishments,” you can change that to something like, “Get knowledge from a guy who has years of experience in podcast editing.” You're putting the emphasis back on the listener and what they'll get from the show. You can do fill-in-the-blank stuff, like: “Learn how to (fill in the blank).” “Get knowledge from 10 years of experience in (fill in the blank).” “If you're an X, Y, or Z, you'll get tangible insights on (fill in the blank).” These are actionable steps. Your description should resonate with the listener, tell them what the benefit is for them, and give them a glimpse of the person they're going to become after listening. If you want, you can slide a little bit of your credentials in there. For instance, Aaron's podcast description says, “Professional podcast editor and producer shares everything he's learned about making great podcasts.” In the moment someone reads “professional podcast editor,” they're going to think, “This show is going to teach me how to become a professional podcast editor,” or, “I can learn something from this person who has this experience.” Ultimately, you have to remember that people will only care about you once you've proven you care about them. In regards to a value-exchange like this, you have to prove that you care about this person before they're going to start caring about you. If I find a new show, and look at it's podcast description, I don't know this person, I have no connection with them, I have no background on them, so I'm looking to see if this is worth my time. Once I listen to it, I can create a connection. That's exactly how it happened with seanwes. I started listening to the seanwes podcast out of the blue and I didn't know who Sean and Ben were, but after listening to so many of their shows, I started really connecting with these guys. That's why I joined the Community in the beginning, because they were talking about all these conversations people were having and I had total FOMO. I wanted to be in on the inside jokes because I felt connected to the podcast hosts. The connectedness happens after you've proven that you're here to deliver value. You deliver value first and the connectedness is all about, in a sense, selling yourself, your knowledge, and the benefit to the listener, and then they can continue to connect with you. Aaron: Make your podcast description about your listener. If you don't know who you're creating a podcast for, that's a problem. If you're just creating a show because you want it to be out there, you might get a few people listening, but you need to think about who you're making your show for. Podcast Description Review Aaron: One of my listeners (Stan) reached out to me, and I wanted to do a review for him to give him some practical steps to help him write a better podcast description. I feel like I can't pick apart his podcast description without looking at my own podcast description first, so let's pick apart my podcast description, then we'll do Cory's show (Invisible Details), then Stan's show. I feel like I need to rewrite my description anywys, so I'm hoping the things we talk about in this section will be helpful to someone else who has been listening who might want to rewrite theirs. Breakdown of The Podcast Dude's Podcast Description Here's the (current) description for The Podcast Dude: “Professional podcast editor and producer Aaron Dowd shares everything he's learned about making great podcasts. If you're interested in starting a podcast, growing your audience, and increasing your influence, this is the show for you. Get answers to all your questions about podcasting: gear, recording, content, editing, interviewing, mixing, mastering, and more. To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you'll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude will help you get there. Don't just make a podcast—make an awesome podcast.” I don't know if I like that first sentence. It's making a claim that I'm a professional podcast editor and producer, but I don't have any evidence to back that up. I'm not saying, “Professional podcast editor and producer for these people.” I do have evidence to back that up, and the people that know me know I've worked with some fairly well-known podcasters, especially in the design realm, but I'm not backing it up with evidence. Also it puts me first—the first thing you see is my name, then I say I'm going to share everything I've learned. Another mistake I think I'm making there is talking about myself in the third person. I want to speak to a single person and I'm not speaking to a single person until the second line. Cutting out the first and the last sentences would be a good place to start, because that puts the focus back on the listener. "What do you want? Do you want to start a podcast? Do you want to grow an audience? This is the show for you." The next part, “Get answers to all your questions about podcasting: gear, recording, content, editing, interviewing, mixing, mastering, and more,” explains the kind of stuff I talk about. This is what I'm going to teach you. That's good, so I'll leave that as it is. Finally, I give my mission statement, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you'll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude will help you get there.” Cory: I think you should remove the first sentence and the last sentence. I thought the last sentence was a mistake, honestly. I think you can add your name in the new last sentence, like, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you'll need to produce a high quality show. The Podcast Dude, Aaron Dowd, will help you get there.” Aaron: I would say, “To stand out from thousands of other podcasts, you'll need to produce a high quality show. My name is Aaron Dowd and I want to help you make an awesome podcast.” Cory: “Make an awesome podcast,” is the last thing people will read and it's the last thing that's going to be on their mind. They'll read, “If you're interested in starting a podcast…” and they'll think, “Yes, I'm interested in starting a podcast.” Breakdown of the Invisible Details Podcast Description Cory: Invisible Details's description says, “A weekly show about building a successful brand through story and authenticity. A brand is so much more than a logo or what is visible on the surface. It's the heartbeat of a company. A brand is about values and the story you're telling. Join Cory Miller and Kyle Adams every Saturday for clear and practical advice on how to define your brand from the inside out. Connect with your audience and stand out from the competition.” I like it, but I think I could rework a little bit. There are a couple of things I'm trying to do with this. First, I'm setting expectations with “a weekly show.” There's no confusion about when it comes out, like bi-monthly, or a seasonal thing. It's a weekly show. Next, the description talks about building a successful brand. Most of the people I encounter who are starting this journey of building a better brand think branding is a out the visuals, logos, and all the things you see, but a brand is all about perception. It's all about how people think and feel about you and what they say about you when you're not in the room. I could rework that second sentence, but I also want it to be introductory, because the people we're trying to reach are people who have new and growing brands. They're just getting that first taste of redefining what brand means, and that's what that second sentence is for. Aaron: You have a solid first sentence and a solid last sentence. Let's say we cut all that stuff out in the middle; it would still be a good description—“A weekly show about building a successful brand through story and authenticity. Connect with your audience and stand out from the competition.” It explains what the show is about and what the listener will get out of it. Cory: It's very action-centered. I'm a very simplistic kind of person when it comes to design and writing. I adhere to this idea of, “How much can I remove but still have there be quality? Can we do less, but better?” That's my whole philosophy. I know people who write out their whole about pages in their description and no one will read that or remember it. You need to create something that is short and memorable. If someone asks if there's a podcast about podcasting I'd recommend, I'd say, “If you want to make a podcast, the Podcast Dude is all about helping you make an awesome podcast.” That's how I would describe it. Those are the ideas and key words you want to plant into people's heads through the description in a very simple way that's tangible and memorable. Aaron: You can't ask people to remember four paragraphs about you and what you do, because they're not going to. If you can't explain the point of your show in one or two sentences, you're going to have a bad time. Cory: People already know what they're looking for. You need to demonstrate that you have what they're looking for. People already know what they're looking for. Your description is there to let them know you have what they're looking for. Breakdown of Stan's Podcast Description Aaron: I didn't get Stan's permission to share the name of his podcast, but I do want to give him some direct feedback. Here's what's on his website when you first visit it, “I'm passionate about coaching leaders to help them reach maximum impact wherever they are currently leading.” “My heart beats faster when someone I spend time with takes a next step towards being more closely aligned with God's will for their life, enabling them to make an even greater impact. My goal is to provide leadership resources that are practical and can help anyone develop as a leader, including moms, dads, teachers, administrators, managers, volunteers, campus pastors, and lead pastors. Everyone leads someone.” The description for his podcast is, “This podcast focuses on ministry leaders to reach maximum impact where they currently lead. We also focus on brainstorming and idea creation for leaders.” Cory, what's your first reaction where you hear that? Cory: It sounds like something I would read in an about page, not a home page. On a home page, you need to speak to the pain of the person who's problem you're solving and it needs to speak with a benefit. I see his goals, but I don't see the benefit for myself. I want to know what I'm going to get out of going to this website. Condense that down to a single sentence—that's what people need to see on the home page. There's a lot of things there and I'm sure Stan is awesome. In fact, I'd love to talk with him about some of this stuff. The problem is I don't know Stan yet and all he's doing is introducing himself. If I'm a leader and I want to have maximum impact wherever I'm currently leading, I want to know that you're here to benefit me. That's ultimately what people are trying to figure out when they first go to your site. You can bring in yourself a little bit later. For the podcast description, I think that's a good start, but I would love to see more actionable sentences. Like, “Learn how to make a maximum impact in the industry you're currently leading.” Aaron: Stan, what do you mean by “maximum impact”? I think that's important, because those aren't very specific words. If you want people to make a change, what kind of change are you trying to get people to make? Go a little deeper on what those words mean. Also, what specifically about brainstorming and ideas? What's missing is a clear description of the problems you're trying to solve for people. Cory: The other aspect with that second sentence is, I see, “We focus on brainstorming and idea creation for leaders.” Does that mean you'll brainstorm for me and give me ideas? Or are you trying to teach me how to brainstorm? Are you trying to give me the tools to have better idea creation? Are you trying to make me into the kind of leader that is able to lead a team, brainstorm, create ideas, have successful meetings, make an impact in our community? Those are the things I want to see and hear about. You can expand on it without being too wordy with it. If I looked at this and someone asked me what the podcast is about, based on the description I'd say, “If you're a leader, they want to make you a better leader.” Another thing you can do is if you've had a podcast for a while, you can go look at the reviews and see what people are saying in your reviews. From there, you can rewrite and clarify your description based on what other people are saying. If you're a new podcast, you may not have that yet, but I would recommend talking with someone. Share everything about what your podcast is about and what your mission is and have them repeat it back to you in a sentence or two. That will give you some good ideas that you can include in your description. Have clarity in your podcast description. If you don't have clarity, you have nothing. Aaron: Talk to a couple of people you trust, or if you have an engaged online community, reach out to them and ask, “What do you think my podcast is about?” and see what people say. If you don't have a podcast, try it for yourself instead. Ask some of your friends, “How would you describe me to someone else? What do you think I'm about?” You'll get a lot of insight out of the answers to those questions. Cory: Stan, I hope this doesn't discourage you at all. The fact that you've shown up and have a grip on your mission and you know how you want to help people, that's good! That's more than a lot of people will ever have, but you just need to focus on clarity. Clarify some of the words and clarify who your target audience is based on this list you wrote. This is a great list, but try to condense it in a way that's repeatable for someone you've just shared it with. You have to write for stupid people. Is that a terrible thing to say? Aaron: It's not just stupid people. People are in a hurry, in a rush, people don't want to think. Cory: Let me rephrase: You have to write in a simple way that's tangible and clear for people. I often see people use inside slang, jargon, and terms that average people wouldn't understand. Don't give me the marketed, straight-from-a-thesaurus words. I don't care about that. If I'm your intended audience, I need it explained in a simple way. You can deliver complex ideas simply with clarity. Communicate in a simple but clear way. Aaron: Candice said, “A well-known author I know said he writes his books at a fifth grade level so that anyone can understand it.” Cory: I didn't mean that people are stupid. You just have to write in a clear way that anyone in your intended audience can understand. That's the most important thing. How to Write Better Social Media Descriptions Aaron: Jonathan asked, “Is there a formula or best structure for writing an effective bio for your social media descriptions?” Cory: First, what is the goal of your social media account? I don't know that there's necessarily a formula, but I know that a lot of social media descriptions have a cap, so you can't write past a certain amount of characters. Write something that's succinct and will help push you toward your goals. Especially now, try to make something that's memorable beyond “Father. Coffee lover. Hiker. Mountaineer.” Everyone is doing that, so if you're doing anything different, you're in good shape. Aaron: The formula I use for my Twitter bio is what I do and what I want to do for you, the person reading. My Twitter bio is simply, “Audio engineer/podcast editor for the seanwes network. I want to help you make an awesome podcast.” Cory: Mine is, “Director of Member Success at seanwes. Podcast host of Invisible Details. Author of Nice-to-Have, currently writing.” It depends on what your goals are. I want my Twitter to be a place where people can get access to me and the content is not in the description, the content is in the timeline. That's where I want people's eyes to look. I don't want to be clever, I want a bullet point credential. That's how I'm using it. Figure out what your goal is, what the goal of your social media account is, and what the goal of your description is. Then, condense that in a way that provides you some kind of credibility and people will continue going down the timeline. No one is going to care on Twitter unless they've gotten some kind of value on your timeline, whether it's entertainment, practical, etc. They're going to go to your timeline first and then they'll want to know about you. I use my bio as a tiny about page related to what it is I'm posting. Aaron: You'll get more followers if you include what you want to do for other people in your bio. Cory: Kyle Adams has a great one, “Icon designer intent on communicating in profound ways and helping others do the same.” Aaron: Jeremy Mura has a good one too, “Designer and illustrator. Teaching others what I know and helping people design a life of greatness.” When I look at someone's bio, I'm wondering, “Why should I follow this person?” Your bio is your chance to convince me to follow you. If I'm not already convinced, I don't know you, and you don't already have a huge audience advocating for you, and you don't tell me what you want to do for me, I probably won't follow you. Your bio is a chance to convince people they'll get something out of following you. Huge thanks to Cory Miller for joining me today. Follow him on Twitter and check out his show, Invisible Details. Links: How to Write Great Show Notes (free show notes template included) Podcast: https://podcastingwithaaron.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronpodcasting Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/aarondowd Blog: https://www.aarondowd.com Recommended Gear: https://kit.co/PodcastingwithAaron

Dan Powell | Creating a Radio Drama Podcast (Archive 81, Deep Vault)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2016 61:59

Dan Powell is one half of Dead Signals Production, creator of the popular Archive 81 and Deep Vault found sound, radio drama podcasts. In this episode, we talk about his recording process, how he designs sound, and his editing process. He shares some of the hurdles he overcame while producing podcasts and what advice he'd give to anyone interested in making a modern radio drama. Key Takeaways: Don't buy your gear new—if you buy the best gear used, it'll last you forever. The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts. Make sure you understand what's happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in. What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don't make something just because it'll get a lot of downloads. Find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice. Think about how the ambience and background noise where you're recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece. Aaron: Hey Dan, thanks for joining me today. Tell me a little bit about yourself—where you're from and where you are now. Maybe a little bit about what your path to audio and podcasting has looked like over the course of your life. Dan: I was born in Rome, Georgia and I was there until I was about 18. It was a medium/small size town in the middle of the woods. I spent a lot of time by myself alone with my thoughts, which is probably what caused me to gravitate to sci-fi, horror, and secular fiction. I began making radio dramas at the age of eight or nine. I used Window 95 Sound Recorder to make these one-man shows. Sometimes it would be me and sometimes it would be my friends, and we would get in front of a microphone and see what happened. That's really what introduced me to audio editing and creative sound design. From an early age, I was interested in what would happen if you slowed down, sped up, or changed the pitch of your voice. I went to Syracuse University for college and majored in English. I loved reading and still really do, but I realized I was spending all my free time in studios recording my friend's bands (or recording myself), and that working with audio might be a good career path. I'd always been interested in creative writing, but I thought it might be good to develop a more technical skill or trade that I could have on the side while writing. I ended up really enjoying working with audio and I decided to make that my primary creative and career pursuit. After school I moved to New York City. I interned, I did some odd jobs, I worked at an Apple store, and I eventually got my first job in the sound industry at Soundsnap, a commercial sound effects library. I did that full time for about two years and then transitioned to working there part time while making more time for freelance work, sound engineering, and working on my own podcast on the side. That's where I'm at now. Aaron: You met Marc (the other half of Dead Signals) in college? Dan: Yeah, Marc and I met his senior year and my post-senior year. I stayed after I graduated to do a fellowship in audio engineering and sound design. One of the cool things about Syracuse is they have this program where if you get to the end of your four years and you decide you want to do something different than what you studied, you can apply for a fellowship that will let you stay an extra year. You basically get a free year of credits that you can do what you want with. I did that after I finished studying English so I could build up my portfolio and get some more one-on-one mentoring strictly with audio stuff. That's where Marc and I met. Aaron: Then you guys formed Dead Signals Productions. Dan: We formed Dead Signals this time last year. Marc came and visited me in New York and we were talking about ideas we had. The project we worked on together in college was Marc's senior thesis project, a radio play he wrote and produced. I was just acting in it, playing the lead. More recently, starting last year, was when we started collaborating and both giving equal input for the project. Recording Radio Drama Podcasts Aaron: Let's talk about Archive 81 and Deep Vault, the recording process and the tools you use to handle the editing. Marc said you guys recorded Archive 81 in a bedroom. Do you remember which mic you used for that? Dan: It was the Sennheiser MKH 8040. I got this mic because it's a really good all-purpose sound design mic. It's good for all-purpose folio recording, like footsteps, fabric movements, and every day objects you want to record. It's also really good for ambient field recording. We recorded the dialog with this mic and another mic called a Sennheiser MKH30, which is a bi-directional stereo mic. The two of these things together form a really good pair for mid-side stereo recording. What I was really interested in when I bought these mics was, one, it was the best deal I found on eBay, and two, I was interested in doing more ambient field recording. Living in New York City there's so many interesting sounds everywhere. There are neighborhoods, parks, and subways. You can turn a corner and be in an entirely different sonic landscape than you were just in. I wanted something that was good for capturing my environment, but when it came down to produce Archive 81, after doing some tests, we realized that these mics would work just as well for dialog recording. I personally would have liked to use a wider diaphragm AKG microphone, but I still think the mics we used worked well for recording dialog. It's good gear and it's what we had available at the time. Aaron: I know a lot of podcasters who use $60 or $70 USB mics and there's a big difference in quality between those and the MKH. What do they run used, close to $1,000? Dan: Close to $1,000. The mic I'm on right now goes for about $1,200 new, but I'm a big Craigslist and eBay deal-hunter. When I was first getting into audio, one of the best pieces of advice I got was when I was talking to someone five years my senior who's successful and established in the music production scene here in New York. He said: Don't buy your gear new. Even if you buy the best gear used, it'll still last you forever. He told me, “I've made a spreadsheet of every piece of equipment I've purchased from when I first started out. Collectively I've saved about $30,000.” That really stuck with me, so now I only buy used gear. I got the mic I'm talking on now for about half of what it would cost new. Aaron: I'm currently on a Shure BETA 87A, which costs $250 new and I think I paid $120 for it used at Guitar Center and it's an awesome sounding mic for podcasting. Dan: I like the richness of it. In general, I really like dynamic mics for podcasts. I like the rich low end and the proximity effect you can get. I use the mics I use because I want to have a lot of applications for things like sound design and field recording, but I don't want to make it seem like you have to buy a $700 or $1,000 microphone. I've seen people get fantastic results with an SM58, which I use when I do event recording gigs. You can get one of those used on Craigslist for $50 in most cases. In many cases, it's probably more ideal if you're at home instead of a treated acoustic space because dynamic microphones do a better job of isolating the sound source and not picking up your refrigerator, your roommate, or your neighbors yelling at each other. Aaron: I agree. I love the large diaphragm condensers, but you do need a quiet, treated room to make them sound good and not pick up a bunch of sound. Alright; let's talk about sound design. Here's a clip of episode one of Deep Vault, which has some dialog with some reverb on. I wanted to ask you about that, and about the part in the music where the footsteps transition into the beat of the song. First, let's talk about the ambience and reverb you used. As I'm listening to it, there's some kind of ambient sound in that. I'm not sure if it's reverb in the space you recorded it in or if it's reverb you added afterward. There's also an air conditioning kind of “swoosh” background ambience. Can you describe how you achieved those effects? Dan: None of that reverb is natural. It's all added in post. I exclusively use impulse response reverb, which is basically the ability to capture the sonic snapshot of a real, indoor space by going in and blasting a sign wave or white noise in it and then recording the echo that comes afterwards, then notching out the original sign wave in post. This gives a ghost emanation of what a space actually sounds like. There's two reverbs fading out and in. There's the outdoor reverb, which I have a light touch on. It's meant to evoke the sense that the space is outdoors and then there's the echo-y underground reverb of the vault they're about to go into. If you listen prior to them entering the vault, you can hear how it evolves from one space to another. I think very visually when I'm working on it. I've said this a lot in various interviews, but because I'm working with Marc on the scripts from the beginning, I don't really think of this as post production. I'm always thinking about space and sonics as I'm reading the first draft of a show. I usually visually map out or make a flow chart of what the space looks like and how things need to transition from one stage to another. That helps me focus better. In the background, we have a desert ambient sound. It's a field recording of a desert that's near an urban area. You have some wind and outdoor air atmosphere, called the air tone, which is the outdoor equivalent of a room tone. If you search Soundsnap for air tone, you'll find a bunch of ambient recordings of outdoor air spaces that don't have crowds, people, or traffic. It's more a general wash like you hear in that clip. There's the air tone and then there's the vault sounds—the ambient sounds of the space they're going into, which is a field recording by a field recordist named Stephan March. I think it's some recordings of some abandoned bomb shelters on the Danish coast. It's some industrial room tones with some distant waves, but they have an underground low-fi industrial roominess to them. Those things blend together to create the atmosphere of the vault. Aaron: I'm embarrassed to say it now, but I was thinking these were effects you could achieve with something like the reverbs that come with ProTools or Logic Pro X. What program do you use to do all this stuff with? Dan: I use ProTools for editing, mixing, and basic sound effect placement. For what's referred to as composite sound effects design—designing a sound effect that needs a lot more depth to it than what you can pull from a library as is—I use Logic. I do that for two reasons. One, I think it's good to have separation between sound effect editing and show editing. I like to be in two different programs when I'm creating the sound of a robot or a door and when I'm editing the show. Having the different software environment helps to streamline that. The other reason is, though I do think ProTools is great, I think it's very flawed for making things creatively from scratch. I would never write a song or demo a song in ProTools because I don't think the user experience is tailored toward composition, whether that's composing a song or compositing a sound effect from scratch. It's great for editing and taking material that's aesthetically already done—like you recording a guitar through an amp—but if you're trying to dial in the tone of a guitar, I prefer to use Logic, something a little more built for making music from scratch. For this scene, I used pretty much all ProTools because I wasn't designing anything beyond simply layering things together and the reverb that goes along with that. I wrote the music in Logic. Dan's Favorite Editing Programs and Plugins Aaron: Are there any stock plugins you use inside of Logic or do you have any favorites? Dan: I use Logic's modular synth plugin, the ES2, a lot because I know it really well. It has a very particular sound but I've been using it for many years, and I can dial in the sound I want pretty quickly with it. I probably should learn some more synth plugins so I don't get set in my ways. Aaron: What about reverb or special effects? I know there's like 50 stock plugins inside Logic. Dan: Space Designer Plugin for Logic Pro X is incredible. It's a great impulse response reverb plugin. I use Waves IR1 for the reverb in this scene, but it could have as easily been achieved with the stock Logic Space Designer plugin, probably easier even, because they have a larger native sample library. Any sound designer you talk to will say that Space Designer is the best free stock plugin of anything. That's a big one. There aren't a lot of other stock Logic plugins I use for sound design in terms of compositing. Although I do really like the basic Chorus and Phaser modulation stuff for voice processing for robot voices. Aaron: You wrote the music for the show. Is the music going to be available somewhere else later? Dan: Marc and I would really like to release an album of the music from our shows. It's something we want to do and there's a few reasons we haven't done it yet. One reason is time. I'm very skittish about making sure everything is mixed properly. I wouldn't want to release the music stand alone unless I was absolutely sure it was put together well. The other reason is that I write most of the music for our shows, but we do have some songs that are done with side collaborators and I would want to make sure it's done legally and copywrite-wise we were in the clear. I want to sign some kind of licensing or formal distribution agreement to make sure everyone is happy money-wise. The song from episode one was me ripping off Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I'm a big fan of their scoring work. Music & Sound Effect Creation for Podcasts Aaron: Let's talk about how you achieved that effect for the song in the sample clip I played earlier. I'm guessing you had the sound of the footsteps on a ladder. Is that something you recorded yourself or is that something you got out of the sound library? Dan: I used several different libraries for that. There's a mixture of some simulated ladder movement in there, like arms reaching and hands grabbing the rungs of the ladder. There's also some pure metal footsteps in there. When I was originally putting that together, there were six or seven tracks, three of which were cloth movements and body motions and three of which were footsteps. Some were more foregrounded, like when one character named Jeremy is counting his steps. His footsteps are louder because he's drawing attention to the fact that he's counting them. The others are more off to the side to evoke the sense of space and depth, because presumably, they're going down a circular enclosure to a vault. That was a real pain to put together. Aaron: I can't believe you recorded clothes rustling to make this realistic. Dan: I can't speak to film, tv, or video, but part of what makes the footsteps convincing in audio dramas is the footsteps being good, but also having cloth movement and fabric rustling. Aaron: With headphones and soundscapes, you have left and right channels, obviously. What do you do when you're trying to make something seem like it's coming from above or below. Is there any way to achieve that affect? Dan: In episode two of Deep Vault, where two characters crash through the floor of the room their in, they're down there for a bit, and then you hear them crawling up through the crash hole to the other characters that are above them. I think it worked pretty well. I think the sequence of the narrative and that you hear them crash through the floor first and the space change around them helps to establish that. It's just a matter of having more reverb and/or more delay on the voices that are further away than the voices that are close to you. I'm still figuring out what my philosophy on panning things is for the Deep Vault. It's an ensemble cast with four actors talking at once, I have them panned around the clock—some are hard left, some are hard right, and some are close to the center. Usually if characters are interrogating or trying to get information from another character or recording, I'll try to have whatever recording or character they're talking to in the center to give the sense that they're gathered around this new source of information they're trying to learn. As far as making things sound far away or from above or below, it's a matter of adding more reverb to the things that are farther away and hoping the sense of space translates. Aaron: I think it does most of the time, but it's something I'm curious about. I'm thinking about the future with virtual reality and how they're going to handle the different angles of sound. Have you had a chance to try VR yet? Dan: No, but I have some friends who told me I need to do it and I really want to. I have some friends who say Google Cardboard alone is incredible. I'm curious what that technology is like, but also what it's going to mean for sound. I'm curious what sound for VR is going to be like and how it's going to differ from the old guard, but also how it's going to use some of the same techniques to make a realistic experience. Aaron: I used the equivalent to Google Cardboard, not even one of the great ones, and it blew my mind. It's going to be a game-changer. Maybe we'll both have future careers in sound design for VR applications. Dan: I'm just trying to stay ahead with what's new for sound design because I'm afraid of being replaced by robots. It's something I think about regularly. Am I doing something that will still be done by a human in 20 years? I feel ok about it most of the time, but you never know. Aaron: I like to think that you'll still have a job because you're being creative and you're doing things that take a human. I guess we'll see. Let's talk about then music a little more. You did this transition where you have this music playing over the sound of the footsteps, and the footsteps blend into the beat of the music. Did you write the beat first? Were you listening to the pattern of the footsteps or did you go back and match those things up later? Dan: They were matched up later, but my choice of percussion samples definitely made them more easily blendable. With the exception of the kick drum, which is more of a classic, electronic bass-pulse kick drum, everything else is found percussion—everyday objects being tapped on. Things like chairs, bags, or plastic silverware. I like working with low-fi sound percussion samples. I think the fact the percussion track in the song isn't a real snare drum recorded in a studio helps serve as the connective tissue between the footsteps and their percussiveness and the song's percussion, and it's driving the melody forward. The hardest part of any narrative creative medium is the transition between two parts. It glues two things together that work well on their own. Sonically, that could be a good example of choosing the right percussion sample in the context of this being a score rather than a stand alone song. Perhaps if this was just a song released on an EP and it wasn't meant to score anything, it would sound better with a non-found percussion or some other type of sound. Sound Proofing vs. Sound Treatment for Podcasts Aaron: Let's jump into some mistakes or hard times you came across when you started doing Archive 81 and the Deep Vault. What are some of the things you struggled with? Dan: I do have one thing about recording in a bedroom. The bedroom we recorded in sounded really good as far as bedrooms go, but we had only ever tested the sound in the room at night when everyone else in the house was really quiet. When it came to production time, we were recording during the three most blizzardy weeks in January when every person was holed up in their apartment in New York City. Above my friend's bedroom is a family with five teenagers, so we had to pause all the time because there were so many footsteps, running water, and cooking sounds. We didn't plan for all of that. I realized that, even though acoustically the room sounded very good, there was no isolation from what's above and outside. That was definitely an error I made in trying to plan the space. The next time, we paid for a real studio, because as cool as it is to record in a good-sounding bedroom for free, it's worth that money to not have to stop every take for outside noise. When you're pausing takes like that for noise coming from upstairs or outside, you're losing the groove you have with the actors. The actors might move around if you have to wait for 10 minutes between a scene and you might have to reset levels, which makes it harder to set levels in post and mix. That was a real learning experience. Make sure you understand what's happening in your environment before you choose a space to record in. Aaron: That applies to regular podcasting too. Someone asked me the other day, “How do I soundproof my room?” They're actually asking two different questions: “How do I make the sound of my room less noisy?” and, “How do I keep outside noise from coming in?” First, you have to stop noise from computers, air conditioners, refrigerators, and the sound of your voice from bouncing off the walls and being recorded by your mic. Then you have to soundproof the room so that the external sounds aren't picked up by your mic. For me, I have three windows directly in front of me and it's an old house, so the windows aren't soundproof at all. If someone was running a lawn mower outside of my window, everyone would hear it. Soundproofing is making sure noises from outside don't come in. Sound treatment is making sure there aren't noises inside your room causing problems in your audio. Know Your Limits Aaron: Any other mistakes or things that stood out throughout this process? Dan: There are so many. The question is what's a useful mistake to talk about, and what's one I perpetually torture myself about at night? I'll talk about casting. With Archive 81, we didn't have a system for how we went about casting it. We put the character notices out on Craigslist one at a time and auditioned and chose people piecemeal. It worked out for the most part, but there were some characters where we were in a real bind because we didn't have enough people in time, so we had to choose the best option. I would have liked to have more options. I pretty much did all the casting for the first season and I didn't go about it systematically, so for the Deep Vault, I wanted to make sure I did it more systematically. I spent a whole weekend auditioning people and planned in advance the characters they were auditioning for and allot time slots throughout the day so I could do it all at once. That was good and it was organized, but I packed too many people in one weekend, so by Sunday afternoon it was too much. I'm pretty introverted by nature and I think I chose my line of work in the technical side of audio production because a lot of times, it's just you and the machine. You do need other skills and to be able to talk to people professionally, but you also spend a lot of time alone, which I'm fine with. I definitely love socialising, like on this interview, but I'll be glad to go back to my little audio hole. That Sunday after three eight-hour days of auditioning and reading lines in character for these people, I was totally depleted. I think I've learned I need to be more systematic about it, but that I also need to spread it out over a few weekends in advance as opposed to trying to do it all in one weekend. Aaron: I'm a productivity nerd when it comes to planning out my days and making sure I have stuff to do. There's a lot I want to accomplish, but when you first get into that, you tend to overestimate what you can accomplish. You think you can do meaningful work for 12 or 14 hours and you don't realize that you can take on too much and say yes to too many things. Half way through, you've given it all you have for six hours and you're worn out and you feel guilty because you didn't do all the things you said you were going to do. It's good to plan and try that stuff so that you know next time not to plan 12 hours of work for both Saturday and Sunday. Maybe you can do that, but you don't know until you try. Start by planning and make notes about how it goes and you'll have a better understanding about yourself and your stamina for the next time. Dan: That speaks to the more general philosophy that doing it is the only way you'll know what your own patterns are, what works for you, and what doesn't work for you. Be open to some trial and error for your own personal workflow. It's easy to look up to certain human accomplishments and think, “This great musician practiced for 12 hours a day, so I must have to do that to be the Rachmaninoff of podcasting,” but at the same time, there are successful and accomplished people who have more human and normal working hour regimens. Trent Reznor is one of those people and it's obvious from his output that he's someone who never stops working. That works for him, but some people need more time to unwind and not get burnt out on things. Dan's Advice for Aspiring Podcasters Aaron: What kind of advice or tips would you give to someone who's interested in doing something like Archive 81 or Deep Vault—a found sound or radio drama podcast? I've noticed in the last year or two they're skyrocketing in terms of popularity. I think there's a lot of people who might be turning the idea over in their mind. What would you say to those people? Dan: The first thing is the writing and acting has to be really good. Have people you can trust give you feedback and critique who you can run things by. If the source material and story doesn't work, then everything that follows isn't going to work either. If you've never done a podcast before, be prepared for many ours of sedentary work. Doing this kind of work takes a lot time and it's a lot of time you have to spend alone in front of a computer. I lost count of the number of times this summer my friends said, “Hey, we're going to the beach. Want to come?” or other things I wanted to do and I had to blow them off because I was editing or doing revisions. Be prepared for that and make sure you're ok with that. If you need a lot of time outside of the house and you really need a social life, maybe this particular kind of podcasting isn't right for you. Interviewing is a very different thing. I don't like to be preachy about exercise, but I do think it's good to exercise if you're doing sedentary creative work because it makes the mind work better and for me, it puts me more at ease. Aaron: I'm with you on that, so two out of two podcasters recommend exercise and good sleep. Dan: Go out there and do it. Work hard and tell the story you want to tell. Don't make anything because you think it'll sell or bring an audience. Marc and I made Archive 81 because we thought it was a cool idea. What you make should be in conversation with your audience, but don't make something just because you think it'll get a lot of downloads. I still feel like I'm learning a lot and trying to figure all this stuff out. Keep an open mind and stay open to learning new things as you go along. I still study sound design with a mentor because there's always new levels I can push myself towards and I don't want to get too comfortable. Sound Design Resources Aaron: Are there any books, websites, or online courses for someone who's a total beginner, or someone like me who is relatively familiar with recording, mixing, and producing music and podcasts but hasn't really gotten into sound design? Dan: Transom.org is a great resource. Although it is geared towards beginners in radio and podcasting, I still find articles on there I can learn from. I think it has a good intro overview to things like sound design. I can't name anything specific, but for a few years now, when I want to learn more about a subject, I find someone I like and relate to who's established in that field and I reach out to them asking for some one-on-one mentoring lessons. That's something I think is worth paying for. Most people will take $50 for a few hours to talk about it. No matter what artistic discipline you're in, it's helpful to find people who are established in your field, reach out to them, and ask for some direct advice. That's what's been the most helpful for me. If there's a sound designer, composer, or radio producer you admire, reach out and see if that's an option. I don't think Ira Glass is capable of doing private lessons with as busy as he is, but I'm sure there are other people who are really good at what they do who are capable. Aaron: There's people at all different levels on this journey. We're talking about audio specifically, but it's true for anything. There are famous people you've heard of and then there's people in the middle who have more experience than you but maybe aren't quite so famous yet. Surrounding yourself with people who share your passion and interests on your skill level is great, but try reaching out and offering to pay for some consulting. Chances are they like talking about that stuff, but it is good to pay people for their time. That makes sure they're invested and they're not feeling like you're taking advantage of their time. Audio engineers have to make money to buy gear! Field Recording Gear and Tips for Podcasters Aaron: Diana asks, “What's your setup for mobile recording?” She's about to start a podcast and will be doing some traveling. I know there are times where you take microphones out into the real world to do field recordings. What's your setup? Is it the same mics and a portable recording device? Dan: A Sennheiser MD421 or a Shure SM58 will work great because most dynamic microphones are good at sound isolation. Another good option to consider would be the Sennheiser ME66 Shotgun Mic, which is a great short shotgun microphone. That's good for both ambient sound and interview recordings in a live setting. It's in the $200 to $300 range and you can find it on eBay, Craigslist, Guitar Center, or Reverb.com for much cheaper. Aaron: What device do you record into? Dan: The Zoom H5 or H6 is a fantastic piece of recording equipment. You can find that new for $300 or used for way less. It's a solid improvement over the H4N in many ways. There's less handling noise, it's less noisy, and the majority of people looking into podcasting would do great with one of those. Aaron: I think this is a situation a lot of people will get in. When you're out and about and recording, you have to think about the noise in the room and the ambient noise, and if there's a possibility of a lot of noise where you are. Coffee shops and crowded restaurants aren't going to be great for getting clean audio. You'll also want to set input gain levels correctly, so you can be sure the levels coming into the microphone doesn't hit zero and clip. You want to keep the highest peaks coming in around -12 DB. What's your thought on that? What do you aim for? Dan: I aim for -12 to -6 at absolute highest for both studio and in the field. I always stuck by that as universal truth of audio, but when I was doing some sound design training this summer with the person I was mentoring under, for sound effects recording, he was advising me to capture things at as high of a signal level as possible without clipping. Being able to focus and isolate the sound source that way really is much more beneficial when you're trying to make a sound effect at non-dialog level. Aaron: Did you have limiters on in that situation? Dan: I usually keep the limiters on, but I try not to hit them. I record on my rooftop a lot. Sometimes I get up at 6am and record the morning rush as it starts to unfold and I usually need the limiters to catch a truck horn or a plane that flies overhead. If you're in a noisy environment, that's another good case for using a dynamic microphone because it does isolate the sound source pretty well. When I was in school, I did a student radio project for a radio podcast production class where I was riding the campus buses and I was on one of those buses on a Friday night when it was filled with drunk kids going from one frat house to another. You can imagine how quiet that was. I was using a dynamic mic and it worked pretty well when I was cutting the interviews together. It had that loud, crazy ambience in the background, but if I held it pretty close to the speaker, I could still isolate them in a way that worked for the final product. Think about how the ambience and background noise where you're recording can contribute to the story and the feel of your whole piece. Dan: With all the woes that came with recording Archive 81 in a bedroom with loud upstairs neighbors, I do think the fact that it felt like an apartment helped the actors get the vibe. I'm not sure how much of that translated sonically, because it's hard for me to be objective about it at this point, but I do think that background worked for that piece. In theory, I would like to do more location recording for audio dramas. If something takes place on a busy street corner, I'd like to get out there with a more formal production sound rig and record it, but Marc and I work at a pretty intense pace and it's not always easy to coordinate that. Many times it makes the most sense to do it in the studio and create the atmosphere after the fact, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. Aaron: Do what your gut says and plan for it. Last week, Marc said one of the hardest thing for him is the time constraints. I definitely feel that too. My podcast isn't anything complicated but it still takes a few hours to produce. When you have a full-time job, other projects, and people you want to hang out with, you really have to focus on what you want to say yes to and what you have to say no to. _Huge thanks to Dan and Marc for taking time out of their busy schedules to talk with me. If you've enjoyed these interviews, head over to their Patreon page and support these guys. Links: Dead Signals Productions Archive 81 Deep Vault Podcast: https://podcastingwithaaron.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronpodcasting Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/aarondowd Blog: https://www.aarondowd.com Recommended Gear: https://kit.co/PodcastingwithAaron

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Creating a Radio Drama Podcast Part 1 (With Writer Marc Sollinger)