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All I'm saying today is the only battle that matters to all Creation has already seen its Victor.

“All I'm doing is pointing out the obvious - and that's avant-garde in a country that dares not to look at itself and its own atrocities in the mirror.” - José Torres-Tama, New Orleans In this episode we dive into the responsibility of the artist, laptop activism, solidarity between Latinx, Undocumented, and Black people, and the urgency to continue creating and sharing new work during these pandemic times, including the latest releases in José’s series of Video Cortaditos and Picante Performance Poems on YouTube.  José Torres-Tama is a writer, poet, journalist, renegade scholar, educator, visual and performance artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He explores the effects of mass media on race relations, the underbelly of the “North American Dream” mythology, and the anti-immigrant hysteria currently gripping the United States of Amnesia, “which seduces you to embrace forgetting”.  Show Notes: The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a historic and highly respected home for poetry, slam, music and theatre in New York Poets José mentions: Keith Roach, Lois Griffth, Sarah Jones and Willie Perdomo This Taco Truck Kills Fascists, an award winning documentary on the Taco Truck Theatre The Taco Truck Theatre, a “theater on wheels ensemble performance challenging the anti-immigrant hysteria & driven by a live music sound-bed. All with tacos for sale.” Black Lives Matter, a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes Spirit McIntyre (Spirit/They/Them), an artist collaborator in the Taco Truck Theatre  El Sol Lotería playing card and José’s “happy hat”  José’s solo show (that’s been touring for 10 years!), Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers New Orleans & The World: 1718-2018 Tricentennial Anthology book published by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities that culturally deported and brutally disappeared Latin Americans and our undocumented immigrants that contributed to the reconstruction post-Katrina from their 2018 Tricentennial anthology. Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist VIDEO CORTADITOS & Picante Performance Poems, José’s video series on YouTube Voces Unidas LA, Louisiana Immigrant’s Rights Coalition that advocates for immigration policy reform and provides direct support to individuals in and out of ICE detention camps in Louisiana and beyond. Ta-Nehisi Coates and his book Between the World and Me The murder of Amadou Diallo by NY police James Baldwin, Black American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist José’s book recommendations, and this week’s Meriendas for the Brain: The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Zapata's Disciple: Essays by Martín Espada, The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, Bitácora Del Cruce by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Franz Kafka  We want to acknowledge the historical moment we find ourselves in, and the long history of activism and labour from Black and Indigenous communities in their fight for justice. We are committed to continuing this conversation with this podcast and examining our own racism and biases as Latinx artists as we continue this project.  Here are some links to support the local pro-Black and Indigenous initiatives:   Links from Black Lives Matter Canada Map of Black & Indigenous Owned Businesses in Toronto to support now and onwards Links to US based funds and petitions     "Todo lo que estoy haciendo es señalar lo obvio, y eso es vanguardista en un país que no se atreve a verse a sí mismo ni a sus propias atrocidades en el espejo." - José Torres-Tama, Nueva Orleans  En este episodio nos sumergimos en lo que es la responsabilidad del artista, el activismo desde las laptops, la solidaridad entre las comunidades Latinxs, Indocumentadas y Afroamericanas, y la urgencia de seguir creando y compartiendo nuevos trabajos durante estos tiempos de pandemia, incluyendo el lanzamiento de la nueva serie de videos en YouTube creados por José, Video Cortaditos and Picante Performance Poems. José Torres-Tama es escritor, poeta, periodista, erudito renegado, educador, artista visual y de performance con sede en Nueva Orleans, Louisiana. Explora los efectos de los medios de comunicación en las relaciones raciales, la parte más vulnerable de la mitología del "sueño norteamericano" y la histeria antiinmigrante que actualmente se apodera de los Estados Unidos de Amnesia, "que te seduce para abrazar el olvido". Bibliografía: The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, un histórico y muy respetado “hogar” para la poesía, el slam, la música y el teatro en Nueva York.  Poetas mencionados por José:  Keith Roach, Lois Griffth, Sarah Jones y Willie Perdomo. This Taco Truck Kills Fascists, un galardonado documental sobre el Taco Truck Theatre / Teatro Sin Fronteras The Taco Truck Theatre / Teatro Sin Fronteras, un "ensemble de teatro sobre ruedas que desafía la histeria anti-inmigrante y es conducido por una cama de sonido con música en vivo. Todo con tacos a la venta.” Black Lives Matter, una organización global en los Estados Unidos, el Reino Unido y Canadá, cuya misión es erradicar la supremacía blanca y construir el poder local para intervenir en la violencia infligida a las comunidades Afroamericanas por el estado y los vigilantes Spirit McIntyre (Spirit/They/Them), artista que colabora con el Taco Truck Theatre / Teatro Sin Fronteras “El Sol” Carta de Lotería y el “sombrero feliz” de José Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers, un solo show de José (que ha estado de gira por 10 años!) New Orleans & The World: 1718-2018 Tricentennial Anthology, libro publicado por "Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities" que deportó culturalmente y desapareció brutalmente a los latinoamericanos y a nuestros inmigrantes indocumentados que contribuyeron a la reconstrucción posterior a Katrina a partir de su antología del Tricentenario de 2018 Eduardo Galeano, periodista, escritor y novelista Uruguayo VIDEO CORTADITOS & Picante Performance Poems, serie de videos de José en YouTube Voces Unidas LA, coalición de los Derechos de Inmigrantes de Louisiana, que aboga por la reforma de la política de inmigración y brinda apoyo directo a las personas que entran y salen de los campos de detención de ICE en Louisiana y más allá El asesinato de Amadou Diallo por la policia de Nueva York Ta-Nehisi Coates y su libro Between the World and Me James Baldwin, novelista, dramaturgo, ensayista, poeta y activista Afroamericano Las recomendaciones de libros de José, y las Meriendas para el Cerebro de esta semana: The Undocumented Americans de Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Zapata's Disciple: Essays de Martín Espada, The Fire Next Time de James Baldwin, Bitácora Del Cruce de Guillermo Gómez-Peña, y Franz Kafka Queremos reconocer el momento histórico en el que nos encontramos, y la larga historia de activismo y trabajo de las comunidades Afrodescendientes e Indígenas en su lucha por la justicia. Estamos comprometidxs a continuar esta conversación a través de este podcast y examinar nuestro propio racismo y parcialidad como artistas Latinx a medida que continuemos este proyecto. Aquí hay algunos enlaces para apoyar las iniciativas locales pro-Afrodescendientes e Indígenas: Links para Black Lives Matter Canada  Mapa de Negocios Afro-Canadienses e Indigenas en Toronto  Lista de links y peticiones en Estados Unidos   All Merendiando episodes are in Spanglish. New episodes of Radio Aluna Theatre are released every Wednesday. Follow and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Radio Aluna Teatro is produced by Aluna Theatre with support from the Metcalf Foundation, The Laidlaw Foundation, The Canada Council for the Arts, and The Ontario Arts Council. Aluna Theatre is Beatriz Pizano & Trevor Schwellnus, with Sue Balint & Gia Nahmens; Radio Aluna Theatre is produced by Camila Diaz-Varela and Monica Garrido. For more about Aluna Theatre, visit us at alunatheatre.ca, follow @alunatheatre on twitter or instagram, or ‘like’ us on facebook. Todos los episodios de Merendiando son en Inglés, Español y Spanglish. Nuevos episodios de Radio Aluna Teatro cada Miércoles. Síguenos y suscríbete a este podcast en iTunes, Google Play, y donde sea que escuches tus podcasts. Radio Aluna Teatro es una producción de Aluna Theatre con el apoyo de Metcalf Foundation, Laidlaw Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, y Ontario Arts Council. Aluna Theatre es Beatriz Pizano & Trevor Schwellnus, con Sue Balint & Gia Nahmens. Radio Aluna Theatre es producido por Camila Díaz-Varela y Mónica Garrido. Para más información sobre Aluna Theatre, visita nuestra página alunatheatre.ca, síguenos en twitter @alunatheatre o en instagram, o haz click en “me gusta” en facebook.  

"EAT MORE CHEESE!" This is the request the country of France is making to its citizens as there is a surplus of the delicious dairy item. All I'm saying is if they are looking for volunteers outside the country, I will gladly partake!

All I'm saying is.... what if we changed our PERSPECTIVE??? Want to get clear on your purpose but don't know where or how to start? Text ALIGN to 31996! LET'S STAY CONNECTED: Instagram.com/babblingwithjas Twitter.com/babblingwithjas Instagram.com/alignedandfine

You've likely heard me say, "Done is better than Perfect". While I do believe that 100%, I also don't believe that you just head into something blindly either. Sure, having something complete is better than not having it complete, but I feel there is a point where you have to plan it out at least a little. For instance, if I wanted to start a podcast and had no idea how to do it, I might think all I need is a microphone. In reality, I will need a microphone, plus something to record it and a way to broadcast it. The point is for others to hear it, whether it is perfect or not. If I'm speaking into a microphone and it is not recording or broadcasting because I didn't know I needed those important aspects to it, then it's not even done, so it can't be perfect. All I'm saying is that, even though we don't need perfection, we still need to plan... At least a little. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/learn-for-2/message

In this week's episode we talk about the return of summertime heat to San Antonio (you can easily imagine Melanie's joy) as well as our shared delight at a recent GMA Deal of the Day. We also discuss the latest developments in our television-watching careers, and we may spend a significant amount of time recapping the first episode of the new season of The Real Housewives of New York. All I'm saying is that it brought us some happiness. And if that weren't enough (well, I mean, it really wasn't enough, but just go with me on the figure of speech), we provide updates on the current state of our pandemic hair - along with some possible solutions because ROOTS. Hope y'all enjoy! Show Notes: - Melanie's (potential) Amazon pool - Susie Davis - Sunday Riley Good Genes - Sunday Riley Vitamin C Serum - The Hunters on Amazon - Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu - The Real Housewives of New York - The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills - Kristin Ess hair gloss - Bumble + Bumble hair powder - Patreon episode with Caroline and Alex - Sophie's folding chair - Melanie's Taylor Wolfe sweatshirt Sponsors: - The Relief Products (use promo code BIGBOO at checkout for 50% off your order) - OpenFit (text BigBoo to 505050 for 14-day trial) - Scentbird (use promo code BIGBOO for 30% off your first order)

Thinking of buying a home with hardwood floors?  Here are a couple of tips on how to check for them, and a funny story as well. For more real estate info, check my blog at https://blog.winnipeghomefinder.com Never miss an episode. Install our FREE Podcast App available on iOS and Android. For your Apple Devices, click here to install our iOS App. For your Android Devices, click here to install our Android App. Check my videos on Youtube [00:00:00] Hardwood floors, 3 tips and one funny story coming up. [00:00:03][3.1] [00:00:07] You're listening to the Bo Knows Real Estate Podcast tips and advice for home buyers, sellers and owners with award winning Remax agent Bo Kauffmann. [00:00:17][9.9] [00:00:22] OK. So today we're going to talk about hardwood floors for a number of reasons. They've become really popular again. Some people think that they're just cleaner. They trap less allergens and dirt than carpets. Some people feel that a nicely finished floor adds a lot of warmth and color to the room and to the house adds a lot of class. For whatever reason, hardwood floors are a sought after feature in a house. [00:00:43][21.7] [00:00:44] So I can tell you that a house built between the nineteen hundreds and up to the late 1960s, it's quite possible that that house was built with hardwood floors originally. I can also tell you that in the 1970s something changed. Builders either got cheaper, maybe hardwood floors got too expensive, but the Qualicos, Flair's, Greentrees and engineered Homes of the 1970s and onwards did not include hardwood floors unless they were a custom built or especially requested by the buyer. Now, remember that fact because there will be a test at the end not saying 100 percent for sure that that question will be on it, but it would be a good one to remember. Wink-wink. [00:01:20][36.0] [00:01:21] If you're looking at something in River Heights built in the 40s and 50s, odds are that there is hardwood floors under those carpets. But how can you tell if the carpets are on there? Now keep in mind you're the buyer. That's not your house yet. You can't just peel back the carpet and damage stuff for the seller. So how can you tell? Well, there's a couple of really neat little tricks that you can use. [00:01:42][20.5] [00:01:43] The first one would be to look inside the closets. So go in the hallway, open a hallway closet. Again, odds are that if they laid carpet, they might not have laid it on the floor in the closet. So if you look at the floor in the closet and it's hardwood floors, well, then the chances are most likely that the hallway is also hardwood floors underneath that carpet. Just because you found carpet in one spot doesn't mean it's everywhere. So quite often they've had the living room, dining room and hallway done in hardwoods. [00:02:11][28.7] [00:02:12] But the bedrooms might be another story. So you have to look in the closets of each bedroom as well. And if you find it inside the master bedroom, make sure you check the second and third bedroom, because I just listed a house in the west end of West St. James, almost near the perimeter where the hardwoods are in the master bedroom. But the second and third bedroom are actually tiled floors. So what do you do if you can't find hardwoods in the closets? [00:02:35][23.3] [00:02:36] Well, another neat little trick is to lift the heat register, the floor heat register. So you lift that piece of metal out, that little diffuser plate and then you can lift the edge of the carpet and tell whether there's hardwoods or just plywood under there. [00:02:50][13.5] [00:02:50] So here's another tip. If you're looking at a two story home, or a story and a half. Whatever the configuration is, if it has a second floor, just because he found hardwoods on the main floor, it does not mean there's hardwoods on the second floor. In fact, quite often there is not. Quite often the second floor is covered either in vinyl, in tiles or they used fur or even pine. That might be wood, but it doesn't have the nice grain that you're looking for. Most of the hardwoods are either oak or maple. So but if you have a house built in the 1920s and 1930s, the upstairs probably does not have hardwood floors unless an owner subsequently added it. [00:03:28][37.7] [00:03:28] And one more tip. So you're walking into a house that's built in 1945 and the current owner has taken it upon himself to rip the carpets out, just to show you that there's hardwoods under there. That's kind of a neat little, little trick. It's not a trick, but it's a neat little thing to do. If you're selling the house and you want to show the prospective buyer that there is hardwoods on the floors. Now you walk through it and you see all these black stains, which quite often are water damage. And if if a black round stain appears in the middle of the living room or near one of the interior walls, it's probably a place where somebody had a plant sitting for many years. And as they were watering it, the water leaked and damaged the floor underneath it. That's fixable. [00:04:10][41.6] [00:04:11] But as you walking through the house, you see that it definitely does have hardwood floors. But they're in really rough shape. Maybe they got some deep gouges in it from a previous owners dogs that the claws have torn it up or just wear and tear away or marks, you know, like I said, those stains. So a common expression is, oh, yeah, you can easily refinish these for a couple of bucks a square foot. Well, not so fast. There is a finite number of times that you can finish refinish hardwood floors. So if this house was built in the 20s, then it was refinished in the 50s and then again in the 80s. Those hardwood floors are getting mighty thin because each time you refinished them, you send off an eighth or even three sixteenth of an inch off the top. [00:04:51][40.3] [00:04:52] So if you're looking at floors now that have been refinished twice already and they've got deep gouges in them, you may or may not be able to refinished them. All I'm saying is that when you go into the situation, don't automatically assume that you can bring those hardwoods back to their original shine. You may not just be aware of that possibility. Now, when I come back, when I have a funny story to share with you regarding hardwood floors. [00:05:14][22.1] [00:05:17] You're listening to Bo Kauffmann of RE/MAX performance realty. If you were enjoying the show, please subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Bell knows real estate. [00:05:27][9.7] [00:05:33] All right, so going back a few years, I had a couple looking for a house in Old St. Vital. Came across this listing that was about a 1978 built house. [00:05:43][9.5] [00:05:43] So here's the pop quiz member. I said earlier, there's gonna be a quiz. Well, here it is. If the house is built in the late 70s, what is it likely not to have? And if you said hardwood floors, you'd be right. Give yourself a pat on the back. [00:05:56][12.5] [00:05:57] But we walk into this house and it's got a gorgeous big living room. It's gotta be 14 by 18 feet. And the most beautiful hardwood floors you ever saw. The center of the room is covered by this big, beautiful Oriental rug. So as we're looking through the house, it became obvious that the house is not to my client's liking for a couple of different reasons. And anyway, they told me that they're not going to be putting an offer in on it. So just for giggles, I lifted the Oriental rug and I was stunned by what I found. And I called them over and showed them what's underneath the rug. They were really surprised. But like I said, they weren't interested in the house anyway. So we moved on. So I went back to the office and bumped into an agent who was quite excited because his buyers were going to put an offer on this house, one of about six or eight at the time. [00:06:41][43.4] [00:06:42] So I said to him, did you lift the Oriental rug. And he says, no, what are you talking about? I said, you know, that beautiful rug in the middle of the living room. Did you lift it to see what's underneath it? And he hadn't. So I told him what I found in his face kind of went white. He rushed off to the phone to tell his buyers and alert them to the fact. [00:06:58][16.1] [00:06:58] So what happened is the current owner installed some really beautiful hardwood floors. But this Oriental rug, that's about 10 x 12 feet. Hundred and twenty square feet. It was always going to be a centerpiece of the room as far as he was concerned. So why waste by twelve hundred dollars of hardwood if you're going to cover it up anyway? So underneath the oriental rug was just plywood, plain plywood sheets. [00:07:22][23.5] [00:07:23] So I challenge you to the next time you go into looking at a house that has a big oriental rug. I challenge you, knowing this story, not to lift that rug. I bet you can't do it. You're gonna remember the story that Bo told you. So I hope you enjoyed the story. [00:07:36][13.3] [00:07:36] And if you're still with me, why not download my free podcasting app available for ISIS and Android devices? It's pretty simple. Just go to Winnipeg, dot tips, slash Apple or slash Android. That's Winnipeg dot t I.P.S. Slash Apple or slash android. That way you'll never miss another episode about Winnipeg. Who will astate or both? [00:07:57][21.0] [00:08:01] You've been listening to Bo Kauffmann of RE/MAX performance realty, are you thinking of buying or selling a house or a condo in Winnipeg called WBO at 2 0 4 3 3 3 2 2 0 2? Remember, Bo knows real estate. [00:08:01][0.0] [447.4]

All I'm saying is, not every kid is going to grow up and be in the corner office. Some of them will start out sweeping the parking and eventually retire running the drive thru window like a BOSS. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/caffeinatedhumor/support

Welcome!   Today's show will cover all the different aspects of remote work.  During the Coronavirus Pandemic, social distancing, and self and mandated quarantines there is a lot of technology to talk about.  If you are not on my email list, sign up at Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. It is a busy show -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Being Successful While Remote Working FCC Asked ISPs to “Keep Americans Connected Pledge” during Pandemic Malware Infecting PC’s of Those Just Wanting More Coronavirus Infection Information Proceeds from Cybercriminal Activity Results in Charges Against an Atlanta Criminal Gang  For 60 days everyone gets unlimited data upgrade from Comcast and T-Mobile   Security Must Be In Place Prior to Remote Work  Your Employer Says Go Home and Work --- Now what?   --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Hey, hello, and welcome everybody to the show. Of course, we put this out on as a podcast as well and all of your favorite podcasting sites, and we're heard right here on WGAN every Saturday from one until 3 pm. Of course, I'm on with Ken and Matt for their morning drive show, which is every Wednesday at 738. Well, their morning drive shows every day. As you might expect, we have a lot of coronavirus related stuff today. But this is not going to be so much on the medical side. It is going to be more on the - How do you work from home? How do you make your business a success, when you have many of your workers who are out for whatever reason. We'll be talking about the technologies of working from home, as well as what the FCC is doing to help make our lives a little bit easier in this set Coronavirus match. You might have seen and how viruses in and of themselves are kind of a big problem. If he were to ask me, we're going to talk about this massive Atlanta based money laundering operation that the FBI brought down. A colossal business email compromised bust that also brought down dozens of different bad guys. What they did and how they're trying to take advantage of the coronavirus to steal even more money from you. Some free upgrades that have come from Comcast and T Mobile. We probably we'll talk a little bit about what WebEx is doing for us as well when it comes to free conferencing systems and team systems for 90 days or more. We will discuss how the more secure businesses out there are making it very difficult, in fact, almost impossible, in some cases, absolutely impossible to work from home and some advice from my wife and me. I've been working at home for more than 20 years, what have we learned over those years, and what have other people been saying that I thought might make a reasonable discussion. Now you'll find all of this, of course, on my website at Craig Peterson dot com, we try and post all of these articles up for everybody to be able to see. And we'll also be talking about this a little bit more in some of our webinars. You might have attended my webinars this week. Last Sunday, I had a great webinar well attended. We covered a lot of ground frankly, about the whole work from home thing and VPNs and some of the technology you should and should not be using. We're probably this week going to start up this coming week and have some specialized ones as well. We're going to be talking about VPNs, the hardware and software you need, and the routers in your home office. Some of the plugins you should be using and what you can do about DNS. So that'll all be coming up this week. There's only one way to find out about this and to get registered. These are free and are essential for you as a worker, as a business owner, or as a manager. All of those people you're going to benefit a lot by checking in with me on these webinars. So how do you get on? Easy just go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. I am not one of these spammers. I'm not one of these internet marketers. I haven't been in the online space now for many, many decades. And it's kind of scary to think about blizzards four-plus decades actually in the whole networking space, and the computer security space for this as well. So I guess you could say I've seen it all, at least most of it. And so I've been taking questions from everybody. What do you want? What don't you want to see? If you do sign up for the list, by the way, I've got three little surprises that will come your way some great gifts of information that are available for you just for the clicking and signing up. Again Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, keep an eye on your mail mailbox because I will be letting you know about these other webinars that are coming up this next week. You know, being the tech guy that I am. Sometimes, I think it's kind of like the cobblers kids without any shoes or repaired shoes. In my case, it was ill-repaired technology and of course, when you needed it, you know just isn't there for you. This week, the problem I've been having has been with my email. If you responded to me, I have to apologize because my email system has not been working correctly. You already know I have thousands of people on my email lists, and I've been trying to keep everybody up to date on Saturday mornings, you get my special emails about what the news is this week. Then pretty much once a month, more or less a week after Microsoft's Patch Tuesday, I tell you what the most critical patches are to install and apply and give you all that information. If you haven't caught that one yet, its because we haven't sent it out, however, we have the very first of that edition all set and ready to go, and we'll probably be sending that out pretty darn soon. And what we're trying to do is save you a lot of time, Microsoft had over 100 critical patches this week, and there's no way that a regular company can keep up with all of these patches. So what do you do? That's what these exclusive newsletters are for, telling you here are the most critical ones, the ones that are in the wild right now. Bad guys are using them. That's easy for them to use to get into your system. So How can you protect yourself? All of that stuff in that newsletter? So I think it's going to be handy. It's one of the things we've heard the most complaints about from people is just what patches Do I need to apply because you can't possibly patch them all. I also had a great discussion this week that I want to bring up while we're talking about patches. And this is for the listener, in fact, in Maine, and a business owner, small business owner, and he is using Android devices sticking with the Google devices. Google makes a phone called a pixel. It's not necessarily the best of the Android devices out there in many measures. But the good news about it is the Google does release updates for it, and those updates can cover all of the critical patches that you need. But the point I made to him, and I want to make sure it is clear for everybody who's listening is that most of the vendors In the Android world do not support vices devices for more than two years. So you only get two years' worth of patch support. And that includes Samsung. And it frankly, if I were buying an Android device, I would probably buy the Samsung Galaxy more or less top of the line, because I know they'll be supporting that for two years. So first of all, check when the device came out. So if you're buying a new Samsung Galaxy phone, and it came out eight months ago, remember, that's eight months off of the two years' worth of support. So you're going to get what a year and four months' worth of support, hopefully, out of Samsung, and then after that, the problem is you're not going to be able to get patches anymore, and that means your security is going to go right down the drain. Keep that in mind. So our basic rule of thumb when it comes to Android devices, if you're going to buy them, you need to buy a new phone every year to make sure That you're able to get the updates. If you are using an Apple phone, you're good to go for five years, five years. So again, the same trick applies. When did Apple released that phone, and you're getting going to get support for five years from when it was released. So with the Apple phones, we advise every four years or just keep an ear to the ground. Apple's good about not only giving you the updates, and automatically installing them, but also having them not break your phones as well as letting you know when the end of life is for each device. We recently saw the end of life for the iPhone six. The six S is going to be coming up later on this year. So you know, if you have a success, you're probably going to have to replace it. Then the sevens will probably be good until next year. They just last, right, and Apple supports them and keeps all of these security patches up-to-date, which is super duper exciting. For us, particularly in this day and age, one of the things I mentioned this week on one of these webinars was, hey guys huge deal here. Because what we're finding is that we're at war and you may not realize it, they're certainly not talking about it on TV. And I'm not talking about coronavirus. I'm talking about war with real live enemies. Just like in the old days, we've got Iran we've got China, and we've got Russia all attacking us actively attacking us. But this is a war in cyberspace. We're not attacking them anywhere like they're attacking us. And it isn't just bad guys living in those countries. We're talking about a war that has been declared by and is officially being run by their government. Now we have retaliated for some of these cyber strikes. Still, it is a real war, and we can expect more of it. We can expect it to increase here with the coronavirus spread because we're all kind of distracted, aren't we? From soup to nuts, the military is distracted. So we have to make sure that we are covering ourselves with security, and that's part of what I will cover in these webinars coming up. I begin with the basics of remote work, including what to look out for and what you need to know. In these webinars, I always answer all the questions everybody has so that you can get the right answers. And I am just you know, it's content-rich, where we're, we're answering your questions, we're giving you all the information we can, and I'm going to be selling here probably in the next week or two, a more advanced course. That does a deep dive step by step all of the tactics and things you need to do and how to do it to lock down your Windows computers, lock down your network, your Wi-Fi, etc. I've heard from so many people that it's confusing going online, searching Google trying to find the information, and no one has it appropriately organized because everybody has their little bit. So we're going to be doing a full paid course on that one. It is for anybody who has to maintain computers, primarily for businesses, where you have to keep these things secure. It will help you make sure the security is going to work for you. Okay, so to subscribe, make sure you get on those lists by going to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. And when we get back, we're going to be talking about working from home some of the things to consider from the tech side. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. Hi, everybody, Craig Peterson back here. I was feeling kind of punky this weekend. If anybody else kind of felt that way. I don't think it was the coronavirus or Covid-19. I have been, maybe about a week feeling run down. I was kind of moving slowly, and it was not much fun, but I'm feeling so much better right now. That's why I didn't have as many of these webinars last week that I wanted to have. I was going to try and do like one a day, but I ended up with more like one last week. Next week is going to be bigger better. I am feeling well. We're going to talk a lot more. Now that you guys have had a little experience working at home and answer even more questions than we could have answered before now that you kind of know what you don't know right a little bit. Get you safe, get your safe at home and get you're using the right tools. We have even put together a little survey to help you check your preparedness to work remotely. We're going to be releasing information about some of the tools and hopefully help you find some tools that are going to help you at home help you with everything from efficiency, through security at with your work at home setups. And we're we set up a Facebook group, and I'm not sure if we're going to use it right away. You know, when I surveyed you guys a couple of weeks ago, there was only I think there's only like one or 2% of people that wanted to do these lives on Facebook. zero percent, by the way, that wanted to do them on YouTube. And the vast majority of people wanted to do regular webinars, so we did it on zoom. I may use WebEx as well depends how many people sign up because my zoom only supports 100 people, my WebEx, which is what I've used for Some of my bigger training supports up to 10,000 people. So we'll you know, we'll see. But you have to sign up. Just go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. And that will also be sending you a few really kind of cool cheat sheets and things that I think you could use. And so all of this is free, absolutely free. And then you will find out about the webinars that I'm doing this week as we do some deep dive webinars as well this week, so it should be a great week, coming up this week. All right, so let's get right down to it. Now. Our first topic really for this week. Well, maybe our next one, right. But this is from the verge. And Kim Lyons wrote this, and it's about how to work from home. And I when I did my surveys of you guys who are on my email list this last week, actually we can half ago, I found that the majority of you who went to the webinar that I held Last Sunday, said that you had never really worked from home before, that this was the very first time. So congratulations to you, I suspect you're like most of these people. We were able to answer all of their questions in the webinar. That's what they're for is to get the information out and answer your questions. It can be kind of fun, and it is kind of different. Many people are just sitting at home in their pajamas and till noon. Now it's time to get back to work because we're looking at an extended period. If you're in the 80-year-old range, even above 70, many of us are still working right. Above 70 years old, you are in the kind of that critical age range where the recommendations are that for the next three months, you need to limit going outside and meeting with people heavily. If you are above 60 or above now, they are warning us that again, and you need to be very, very careful. Although most of these deaths are people who are 80 and older, anybody with the compromised system must be careful, and down till about 25 years of age. So if you are one of these say diabetics or you have emphysema, COPD, or many underlying illnesses, you've got to be very, very careful. So for you, this might be an extended period, we might be tar talking, you know what to see here, March to April, May, mid-June, July, maybe even August that you're going to want to be working from home. So there are a few ways that you can be productive at home, and you know, again, we go into a lot of detail in the webinars. It is just a quick radio hit right today. So, Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe to make sure You're signed up. If you're planning to work from home for an extended period, here are some things that you might want to consider. Remember, too, that the best ways to work at home are going to vary from person to person. What you have to do is figure out what helps you to stay focused and to separate your work life from your home life. And this is something that frankly, I have had a hard time doing. Because you already know I give away a lot of time. And I'm doing that right now too. You'll probably see another email from me this week, where we're volleying to volunteering to spend 15 minutes half an hour with you on the phone to help you with whatever setup you have. And we can even do remote tech support for you. Anything that you need help with, and we're just volunteering this for free for people. Again, you can just email me at Craig Peterson dot com. If you want some more information if you're having trouble if you're trying to make this work me at Craig Peterson dot com, and you're just having trouble with that. But the problem I've had over the last couple of decades of working at home is that separating my work life from my home life. I get up in the morning, and one of the first things I do is I pull out that laptop, and I start checking my email, I'm checking my client's systems, I'm checking our systems, I'm checking on the VPN that clients are using. I'm checking the firewall logs to from our clients as well as for us. Just see if anyone has been trying to hack in. Then we have a look at the alerts that have come up from those firewalls, and other you know, emergencies that might be pending, and solve all of those. Then I get up, and I do my running and some weightlifting down in the basement. I have this great treadmill that one of my daughters had bought for herself. It is a Livestrong brand, from back when Lance Armstrong wasn't a bad word and is a great treadmill. Then I go up, and I shower, and I get back to work. I work all day and then when the evening comes, and we might turn on a TV show while I am, What? Yes, while I'm working on my laptop, and taking care of things for people. That's what I do. Right? I love helping people. I remember when I was about 20 years old, maybe it was 19. And one of my coaches told me, he said he sat us all down. He said I want you to write your obituary right now. You're 20 years old, give or take, write your obituary. What Would you like your headstone to say, try and get it that short? Just a headstone? So we're not talking about multiple paragraphs, you're just talking about multiple words, frankly, what would you like it to say? And I thought about that seriously thought about it. You know what, it has been the mantra for my life here for another 40 years after that, and that is he helped others. That's what I wanted on my headstone. And that's what I've done, right? My wife and I, we've raised together our eight kids, we homeschooled them, all the way up to college. They've gone on to have just extraordinary lives. I still have two of them working with me, which is a real blessing. It's been wonderful. So I haven't solved this problem of separating my home life from my business life because, for me, they've been one-in-the-same. There might be something I need to do with my family during the day. And so I will do it. Because that's the most important thing to me, there might be something that comes up for a client, and I might have to work at it even overnight all night long to get them to the point where they have a smooth operation the very next day at work. That's what I'll do. That's what my family will do. That's what we do for our customers and friends and have forever. And I don't know if that's a bad thing or not, you know if you're going to be doing that if you don't want to do that, but you have to make the decision. Where are you going to draw the line? Okay, we're going to continue this discussion when we get back after the break. We're going to talk about some other things you should be looking at when we talk when we're thinking about the physical side of working from home. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN, and on the podcast and streaming pretty much everywhere. Stick around. We'll be right back. Hello, everybody, welcome back, Craig Peterson here, on WGAN, and of course, online streaming sites everywhere. Just look for me, Craig Peterson, on your favorite streaming app. I listen to podcasts all the time and use them. You know, I mentioned in the last segment that I spent some time in the morning every day on the treadmill, trying to keep my heart rate up into that right range and double-check with your doctor if you have a question about what that range is. It used to be kind of your maximum heart rate was 200 minus your age. I'm not sure what it is. Now, I've heard people say it was like 220 or whatever. But double-check, double-check, double-check. You don't want to stress your heart. I've been amazed at how well I have done for me. I've been doing this daily running, walking, jogging, kind of a combination in terms you know, again, intermittent. You know, go fast, going slow well relatively slow. I started this before Christmas last year. So I've been doing it now for three months. A solid three months, and it has made a fantastic difference. I'm surprised how quickly my heart rate drops now after I've been exercising and how not out of breath I am. Currently, my heart rate is in a healthy heart range. It's been just phenomenal for me. Some people are saying that it does help. I think it's Dr. Fung who says to get your core body temperature up because when it comes to some of these viruses, and it is harder for them to live in heat. There is nothing like a little hard exercise to make that happen. Get that old cardio going. Alright, so back to what we should be doing on the physical side when it comes to working from home. I have a separate workspace, and I'm blessed to have it. We built this house, 25-30 years ago, now. When we designed the house, we created an office off of the back. It reminds me I'm thinking back of that I had two T-1 data lines in here, which was like crazy fast, who could use so much data? It cost about $5,000 a month. Can you believe that back in that day and age, it was rather expensive? Now we've got three and a half gigabits worth of data up and down here. Because, as you know, I run all types of pieces of training and everything right out of here. It has been phenomenal. It's so much cheaper. It's like a 10th of the price of what it used to be for those two T-1 lines, and I have way way more bandwidth, and it is a lot faster, a lot cheaper. I do have that physically separate workspace, but it isn't necessary. You don't need a dedicated office. And I remember thinking that I did and I went out, and I said, you know, I'm not going to rent space for my company per se, like go out and rent this office and have room for Secretary and other people or whatever. And I went to one of these rental things where you can get space as you need it. I went to Regis, so I went to, and we got an office, and we used it rarely, right because it was home. Why not work at home because this is remote work, right? I was remotely working doing stuff for clients. I found it was such a pain to go there, and then you have the office space to maintain, but again, I have a physical office off the back of the house, which is great. What you might need to do is to find a room with a door that closes. In many cases where you have a much smaller living space, that could be impossible, right? What doors do you have? You have closets, and you have the bathroom, maybe you have a bedroom door, maybe you have, you know, the living space and the bedroom space all in one. And, heck, I've lived in those spaces before myself. Here's what you should do. You need to have a space that's dedicated for you to work, and that can just be a corner of the room. That can be a chair that you the chair that you have that you turn around to a specific angle. A small desk set up in a corner, a table a folding table that you pull out a laptop, But that you put on the end of the kitchen table, anything like that, so that you have a space that you go to that is prepared for you to work. And the idea behind this is a fascinating psychological principle that when you have a physical area that you go to that is set up for doing a certain type of work, and your body will go into that mode. It's kind of like when you go to bed at night, and you should not be doing what I do. I don't do this at night, I do in the morning, but sitting there with your laptop or sitting there with your cell phone and doing stuff on it. Your bedroom is for sleeping and maybe one or two other activities. That is so that your brain gets trained that when you go into your bedroom, and you lay on your bed, it says, Oh, it's time to go to sleep. And you then go to sleep. It's the same sort of thing. You're Going with you've got that laptop at the same end of the kitchen table, your brain says, Oh, I'm going to work now. You don't want to use a place like your bedroom or the couch, Chesterfield. sofa, whatever you call it. It should be a place that is not used for relaxation but used only for work. Now, the other trick is to train other members of your household to understand that when you are in this space, I am working. You should not bother me. You shouldn't be coming to me with questions, etc. and let them know that hey, you are going to be around during coffee breaks if you will. And you'll be glad to take their questions, and you'll be glad to do the "honey-do's" then, you know those little things that your husband or your wife wants you to do. It's going to take a little bit of trial and error to figure out what's going to work For you, but it is going to be important. Some people find that one of the hardest parts of working from home is the part that I explained to the very beginning of this discussion, and that is that you can end up working 24 seven. In reality, the best way to do it is to start work around the same time every day ended around the same time, take your breaks, including meals about the same time, every day. Again, don't eat in the work areas, don't sleep in them, don't lounge in them. But, you know, I don't intend to eat at my desk, and I do that less lately now that I've been thinking more about it and thinking critically about it. I try and go to the kitchen to eat, and that does make a difference. You also need to be careful about kind of stir crazy. So you should get up every once in a while, walk outside if you can, I use something called the Pomodoro Technique. I use a timer in which I use a timer that says, okay, you're doing 20 minutes' worth of work right now. So what are you going to do? What's your goal? What are you going to accomplish in this 20 minutes, you set that little timer. I use software for it. But in retrospect, one of those little kitchen timers, you know, the little tomato things where you, you twist the top, and now you've got your 20-minute timer going would be more than enough. That might be kind of nice because it sits there going tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, reminding you that you have work to do right. Now the other side of this is feeling a little isolated at times. We'll talk about some of the applications that you might want to use to collaborate and work together. Also, other rules that I think are important for us as we work from home. It's a little different if you're trying to start an at-home business, I think most of these rules still apply. Still, it's a little bit different than working from home for an employer who expects specific results at certain times and expects certain types of unification. So we'll talk a bit about that when we get back as well. You're listening to Craig Peterson. Make sure that you go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe right now. Craig Peterson, that's S-O-N slash subscribe and get on some of these webinars I'm holding this week, and we'll be right back on WGAN. Hi guys, welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. You know you can get me as well every Wednesday morning on with Ken and Matt at about 738. Last week I got bumped by the governor, but you know what the heck? It's an excellent way to get my segment bumped, I guess. Usually, every Wednesday at 7:38 am with Ken and Matt, and of course, online, you can catch me on pretty much every streaming platform out there. And make sure you join me for these webinars we're having over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be going into more detail answering every question you guys have on working from home, the technology to do it, the ways to do it securely. We're opening up our calendar for people who need some help with their businesses. How to get this working securely, using the existing equipment we have, and maybe some free software to get my people who are working at home, working efficiently and effectively, so I'm going to be doing some webinars on that as well. Let's finish up the topic of workspaces when you're working from home. One of the essential things to also consider is, if you do have enough room while you're working from home to have more than one space, then you can do something quite useful, very efficient, and that is you use different areas for different work tasks. So, for instance, in my case, I am running the business paying bills, depositing checks, doing all that sort of thing. So I have one space where I do that. I have another area where I'm at right now that I use when I'm doing my radio show, television interviews, running webinars, that's another space. I have yet another area when I'm reading or trying to do some studying. I have a space for meditation. All I'm doing is moving around in one room. That's all you need to do to program your brain. When I am in this position, when I'm sitting in this chair facing this direction, I'm doing this. Then with the Pomodoro Technique, where you're spending 20-minutes doing something and then taking a 10-minute break, I always get up, I walk out of the area entirely. I might talk to the family, get myself a glass of water or a cup of coffee, whatever it might be, and do a little socializing and help with whatever needs doing. Then I go back to my space. I get back to work. It's a unique way of working. If you do have people around that can help you with feeling a sense of social connection. But if you're working remotely, you can feel isolated at times. As part of your routine, you're going to want to try and interact with your co-workers regularly. It's kind of like the old water bottle, where you all kind of meet around there and chat and talk and what did you do last weekend? You know, don't feel bad about talking that way. We all need that even if you're an introvert. We need to have relationships with other people. We need to talk to other people. What we do in the office is we use one of these team apps. Now the one we use is the only one that's secure for doing all of this. That is Cisco WebEx, and they have different levels. We use the most secure level. Now, if you are a doctor, I've got to point out right now that there are some temporary rules in place that's part of this whole Covid-19 or Wuhan virus thing that allows you to use things like Slack and Skype, neither of which are secure. Keep that in mind. Those rules will change again, and HIPAA regulations will not allow you to use them. We use WebEx. You can get it for free right now for 90 days. It is phenomenal. It isn't just for meetings, and you know where you've got the camera on your laptop or your computer, and you are having a remote meeting, and you can see everyone, which is wonderful. But it is also for the team collaboration-side of things, where you can have rooms where you can all chat with each other. Now, one of the other advantages of using Cisco WebEx is over everything else is that it provides any level of security that allows people who are outside of your organization as part of a team. So we haven't set up, so some of our vendors are in certain team rooms, and we can talk to them our customers are in individual team rooms so we can talk to them. Now, we have the whole thing fully integrated with our phone system as well. If people call, it drops the transcription of that voice message they might have left into a room for so we can see it all in Cisco teams. If you want, you can go and set it up yourself. But, if you need a little help, or here's the other side. If you purchase it through us, we can set you up with a more advanced demo than you can get on the website. So again, you can just email me at Craig Peterson dot com if you are interested. I'd appreciate it. You know, we don't make any money off of it from the demo. Hopefully, you're going to continue to use it, and we make a couple of bucks a month from it. We can provide you a little bit of support and a little bit of training. It's a good thing, just email me at Craig Peterson dot com, and we can help you with that. We also integrate things like WebEx into large phone systems. It's actually what the military uses, and what the White House uses. They have some very, very secure systems as well, depending on what you need. Keep in mind all of the CMMC regulations that are going into effect in June. If you have to have it for compliance, CMMC, HIPAA, high tech, etc. It is the system for you. You can get the necessary set up for free by going to WebEx dot com. However, if you want a little bit more, I'd appreciate it. If you'd come through my company, Mainstream. Do me a favor and just reach out to me. That's me at Craig Peterson dot com. My team and I can help you out there with getting it all set up and Mgetting you in the place you need to be. So there you go chat over these messaging apps, hold meetings with them. The one you might want to look at, as I said, WebEx is the only one integrated and completely secure at the levels we can provide to you. You cannot get it on their general website. You have to get it from a Cisco partner like my company. Slack is great, and I have used it a lot in the past, but it is just not secure. It is not even close to providing the features that WebEx provides. You might look at Zoom, although it is terrifically insecure, but not as vulnerable as Skype is. But Zoom is quite bad. They made some major design decisions that opened up security holes you can drive a Mack truck through. It is just crazy. I do use Zoom but never for applications where security is an issue. If you've been on some of my webinars, some get hosted on zoom. Mainly because a lot of people use it and are familiar with how it works. I'm not so worried about security on Zoom for my webinars.The problem with the Zoom from a security standpoint is Zoom has a back door. They punched out of the network to allow them to control some of the aspects of your zoom conferences. That why we don't use or allow its use in any of our clients that have CMMC or high tech restrictions. That is a big No-No. They recently got slapped by the regulators. Check these things out. If you are using Microsoft Office, three 365, they have some collaboration tools too. I'm going to talk more about the collaboration tools and my webinars again this week, and we covered some last week. I have not made replays available of these webinars because I want you to attend them live if you can. I think coming up, and I will make replays available. So if you register, I will let you watch a replay. But I want you guys on these webinars. I know 70% of people say they will never attend a webinar and never sign up for a webinar. These are not high-pressure pitch event events. They are where I'm trying to help you out trying to get you going and trying to answer your questions. Okay. So make sure you do sign up. Now the last rule and the rule that I violate most often is trying to end work at the same time every day. So obviously there's going to be times when there are deadlines or project needs after hours, attention. There are times where I mentioned that I would work 24 hours, I've gone three days straight to try and solve a problem which we didn't cause, but the client needed to have solved. We stepped in and worked with other vendors, and we got the problem solved. In most situations after 10 pm work, email can wait until the following day for a response. Remember when we're at the end these work at home environments, that some people are going to start work at 6 am, some at nine, some at noon, and complete their jobs 8 to 10 hours later. They might be on a schedule where an 8 pm email goes out from them. We all project right, and they're going to project, and they're going to kind of expect you to be working the same hours they're working, although that's not necessarily the case. Even though they may sound a little anxious, get them used to the fact You're working from eight till five. And that's it. I'll get back to you tomorrow. Don't even respond to the email that comes in at 10 pm. I think that's important for a lot of people's sanity. For me, I just enjoy this so much. If I did not get paid to do it, I'd still do it. As you know, I do a lot of it and don't get paid for it. I guess that is a testament to the bottom line. Wow, the hour is up, I can't believe it. We're going to the top of the next hour. When we get back, we're going to talk about what you need to think about from your ISP, your internet service provider. That's how you get your internet. So what are some of the considerations here? What has the FCC done this week? What are some of the major providers doing as well? To make our lives and work from home a little bit easier, and don't forget, you know, I'm going to repeat this, sign up, sign up now so you can get all of this information. You can find out about my webinars that we're going to be doing some of the classes all of the free stuff, I want to help you out. Craig peterson.com slash subscribe. That's why I've been on the air now for about 25 years, just trying to help people understand what's going on in the security realm, the technology realm, and we need to understand it right now. So stick around. We're going to talk about that ISP and what that means to you. What are the things you need to consider and subscribe to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and you're listening to me on WGAN and, of course, and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Hey guys, welcome back. Craig Peterson here, of course on WGAN online at Craig Peterson calm. We had millions of people this week, working from home for the first time connecting to their offices trying to get things done trying to do a little collaboration and getting themselves in a little trouble as well. We have seen a significant increase in security problems because of people working at home. But I guess that shouldn't be a huge surprise to anybody that listens here. I have already done some webinars about working from home. I explained the pros and cons of working from home, and some of the technology required to be secure at home. And we're going to be doing more of those free webinars this coming week. We're going to start getting a little more long tail, if you will, drilling down deeper into some topics like VPNs, what are the best ones to use? When do they work? Well, when don't they work? We're going to be talking about your firewalls at the house and the office, and should you be linking them together? How can you split your network? When should you? Why should you, we're going to be covering in a lot more detail some of the questions that we've had popped up and people have been asking us. Then, of course, as always, we will take all of your questions. If you don't want to attend a webinar, if you have made the oath of never attend webinars, then you can always email me just me at Craig Peterson dor com or respond to one of the emails I send out about these webinars. If there are enough people interested, maybe what we should do is take it and get a webinar transcribed for you, maybe some screenshots. Perhaps you can even suggest what might work for you if you don't want to attend a webinar. But they have been very well attended. I've been quite pleased with that. That's after only making one announcement this last week. There was one email that went out is a little bit more than a week ago. I've been working with those people that responded. There are a lot of people I know that want to know more. So make sure you pass it along as well. If you have friends or family or other co-workers that have questions or if your boss has questions. If they're not letting you work from home and you want to work from home, make sure your boss gets on one of these webinars as well. And you can sign up to find out more about them. Just go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and we will be sending you all have that information. As part of signing up, you'll get some different cheat sheets. I think I have included three different cheat sheets. Some of them are multi-page, to help you with your online security, which is, of course, very, very important. We see an uptick in business, email compromises, and other things that are out there. We'll tell you a bit about that in the next segment. We will discuss what is going on with the whole Coronavirus and its ties into security problems. Well, we have had our president deregulating like crazy now for a week or two. Some people would say that our president is stupid. I think it's a brilliant thing to get rid of some of this regulation. You know, we don't live in a socialist country. However, we have many of the problems present in socialist countries. It can take years to get anything through these vast bureaucracies. Bureaucracy has a mind of their own, whether it's socialist, or in our case, a more of a free-market society. Cutting through the red tape meant this last week that they made some changes at the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. Our FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, has done some amazing things so far with making it just so much more streamlined than smooth out items for customers. He got rid of some of the crazy stuff that was in the works previously, which would have increased at the internet expense for everybody. There are so many crazy things going on in increased regulation. The FCC has been putting pressure on internet service providers. These are the companies you're familiar Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, all of your phone carriers. With everybody using smartphones now that we have people who are working from home. So one of my daughters, for instance, works in a call center. And what they have done is sent home their call center people with laptops, that they then connect up to the internet. And in this case, it was a hard-wired internet that you needed to have because she's in the financial services arena. And of course, right, it's my house. So, of course, we have Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, in fact, gigabit for her out to the internet, no problem. And so she hooked up, and she's able to get onto the systems at work, but the way it works With her for the call center and this is very common for call center people working at home or out of the office is the call center software placed a phone call to her cell phone. So now her T Mobile cell phone is going to be racking up thousands of minutes. That could be a problem. So the FCC has been putting pressure on internet service providers and these phone companies etc. to do a couple of things. All of the major ISPs are committed and have pledged to waive late fees and keep customers connected when they miss payments due to this coronavirus pandemic. Now, of course, I get a little bit concerned about what happens if you miss payments for two months or three months? Because you just don't have the income, right? You lost your job. Maybe you were getting paid hourly piecemeal work whatever You don't have a regular paycheck, so you're not getting unemployment. Now you've got three months' worth of bills. The coronavirus is declared, you know, over or was victorious. So whatever the endpoint is on this thing, which is always a problem, right? It's like we go to war. And so how do we, how do we know that we've succeeded in that, but anyways, it comes, and now you have a three months payment to make, or they're going to catch off. So hopefully, that's not going to happen. They call this the keep Americans connected pledge. And we'll see, the FCC has not been able to convince these internet service providers to waive their data caps during the pandemic, but some of them may end up doing that. Home internet mobile providers that sign this pledge include all tests at TNT CenturyLink charter, Comcast Cox, frontier media comm sprint, T Mobile track phone US Cellular, Verizon, Windstream, and dozens of other small ones. Here's the pledge itself. Number one, not terminate service to any residential or Small business customers' because of their inability to pay their bills due to disruptions caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. Number two waive any late fees that any residential or small business customers incur because of their economic circumstances related to the Coronavirus pandemic, you know, how are you going to prove this stuff to these guys? Number three, open its Wi-Fi hotspots to any American who needs them. So that is actually that third one is kind of handy. Because I know a lot of people have over the years jumped onto their neighbor's Wi-Fi service unbeknownst to their neighbor, right? They were over at their house one time and got the password and continued to use it. Well, for instance, with Comcast, if you see an Xfinity Wi-Fi anywhere, and they are pretty much everywhere you see an Xfinity Wi-Fi, you can now hop on and use it for free. Which is when frankly pretty good for people. The FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said I don't want any American consumers experiencing hardships because of the pandemic to lose connectivity. It's a good thing that they're stepping up, and it's going to help maintain this social distancing. He also called these broadband providers to relax or data cap policies. But we'll see if they do the pledge doesn't require that. at&t said that it's waiving home internet data caps. So that's a good thing. And see overcharges are for raising profit, so they're not going to do that Comcast had not promised as of this last week anyway when I did some research on it. He's also asking telephone carriers to waive long-distance and overage fees. And even that ISP says surf schools and libraries should work with them on remote learning opportunities. So this is all excellent stuff, right? Up and restriction. So some of these companies have automatically Comcast doubled the amount of bandwidth available to some customers, other customers increased the bandwidth by 50%, which is good. That's going to help from working from home. Remember, and you've got upstream and downstream bandwidth. If you're working from home, that upstream might be the killer for you. So we'll see what happens here. The FCC has done some things that pushed them in the right direction. You know there are both pros and cons to all of this, as there always is. Now, we have coming up this week, several webinars, free webinars, I'm going to be doing deep dives, these are live. I'm answering all of your questions in real-time. You are going to want to attend these, believe me, whether you're a home user business user, whether you're working from home, or not lots of great information. I'm taking my decade's worth of experience and putting it out there for you. I'm going to have some of my team members on these as well to answer questions that maybe go a little more detailed or, you know, are out of my bailiwick. But all of that can only be found one way, and that's if you're on my email list. I do not hound you. I do not annoy you. But you have to sign up Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. That's Craig Peterson with an o dot com slash subscribe. Stick around. Welcome back, everybody. Craig Peterson here. Hey, if you missed that URL to sign up and get all those free cheat sheets and to find out about our exclusive webinars during the coming week. Make sure you subscribe that URL is Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, Craig just like a town C-R-A-I-G and Peterson P-E-T-E-R-S-O-N dot com slash subscribe, all lowercase. You can get on to my email list. You'll also be getting my weekly newsletter that includes the recap of the top tech stories of the week. We have a new newsletter that we've put together, and I'm going to start publishing that explicitly goes through what the most critical patches are that you need to apply. So that comes out monthly. It's kind of coordinated with Microsoft's Patch Tuesday, comes out about a week later is what our plan is. And that gives us a chance to analyze the patches like this last month, and they had more than 100 high severity patches they wanted to have you apply. If you want to know what are the ones I have to worry about, although this is for you, so you'll get that as well. And you will have the opportunity to sign up for all of these free webinars, learn about different pieces of training, webinars, pop-ups that we have kind of everything all rolled into one. So make sure you check that out and sign up Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. So let's get into our next article about the Coronavirus maps. I got one of these weeks ago, and it was an email sent out to the media. Come check this out. We've put together this new map. And at the time, I didn't think twice about it. I do have multiple layers of security on this network and multiple-layers of protection on my Mac as well. I clicked on it, right, duh. And I was taken to a site that did have a map. I was lucky because I did have the advanced malware protection, the AMP stack from Cisco on my Mac, and it was all appropriately caught by the firepower firewall. I think it is what found it at the network edge. It saw it and what it was doing and stopped it immediately. Even this spread of coronavirus you want to call it Covid-19, which is similar to the SARS. Coronavirus, also known as Wuhan virus, which is where it started. We've got, you know Lyme disease because it began in Lyme, Connecticut, SARS, you know, all of these diseases because of the rivers, they were first found out and stuff, but whatever, this Cova 19, we'll just call it that, which is the disease. But the bad guys are using this as an opportunity to spread malware and to launch cyber attacks. They were fast about doing that. There's a threat analysis report that was released by this company called reason cybersecurity. They had a good look at this to get an idea of what's going on. They found a file called Coronavirus map.com.xe. Yeah, how's that for common right.com.xe, which is where they will try and get you to download it thinking it's an executable. That could be helpful, helpful for you. But in fact, it's not. But there are a lot of people who have downloaded it. I'm looking right now at a table showing where downloads are occurring. What's going on? How many engines detect it. And here's an example of how useless antivirus software is nowadays. As of now, now, this is about two weeks that this particular piece of malware has been in the wild, about two weeks 58 out of the 72 engines that they tested over virus total, only 58 of these antivirus engines even detect it as being a problem. Ours identified it about two weeks ago. So you know, again, more reason not to trust antivirus software in many ways. That's not what we're talking about right now. What we're doing now is this is a new threat, and they're using an old malware trick. And this is kind of part of the whole business email compromise stuff that we've heard about over the last couple of years. I've talked about it. The FBI has published statistics, and we're talking about many billions of dollars victims have had stolen. A very, very big deal. We've got local state officials, federal officials, who have been trying to track it down. The US Attorney's in the Northern District of Georgia, came out saying that dozens are getting charged in this Atlanta based money laundering operation. It funneled $30 million in proceeds from computer fraud schemes, romance scams, and retirement account fraud. It is all stuff that we've talked about before on this show. This announcement was last Friday. Friday the 13th was a bad day for those guys. It says that federal agents have arrested 24 individuals for their involvement in a large scale fraud and money laundering operation that targeted citizens, corporations, and financial institutions throughout the United States. Business email compromise schemes, romance fraud scams, and retirement account scams, among other frauds, duped numerous victims into losing more than $30 million in the course this release goes on for quite a ways. But the bottom line is this new Cova 19 scam where they are saying, Hey, here's a map. You can download it well that one's giving you a virus when you go ahead and try and do that. Of course, their more advanced malware platforms are not going to Luck that through. The next one is business email compromise schemes. And this is where they try and trick businesses into thinking that they owe money to somebody, they need to wire money to somebody, they haven't paid a vendor, etc., etc. It's a standard scheme, and it's up right now. The romance fraud scams, I suspect those are going to be pretty successful right now as people are self-isolating and maybe are feeling though a little bit isolated. And the romance fraud scams are things like, you know, getting somebody to kind of fall in love with you appreciate you. And then you go ahead and say, you know, I've got this bill hospital bill, it's 2000 3000. It's $5,000. And in some cases, it's my nephew, my knees, my wife or ex-wife or whatever. Right. And they have already scammed you into feeling for them, and then they get you to send them money. In some cases, it's Hey, I want to meet in person. And it's going to cost you know, 20 $500 for me to fly over there. And people are wiring them the money. So there's your romance fraud, scam, retirement accounts scams. Oh, man. It's, especially in these cases, with a down market right now. It's, hey, you know, we've got a certified investment plan, and we are still even in these downtime showing the return of 5% or more, you know, they don't want to make it sound like it's too good. And get people to wire the money into their accounts. Think of Bernie Madoff and what he did many other frauds, and they're trying to dupe the victim. So we have to be very careful when we're out there. Watch for online fake dating profiles, third party administrators for retirement investment. So these, see these are the people that have a whole list of them. Just a glance is showing they're about 30 years old in general. That's a shame. There are a lot of foreign-sounding names. All of the people are in Georgia, except for a couple in Texas. Somebody in Nigeria has an A in Missouri. Alright, when we get back, we're going to talk about the next topic here Comcast and T Mobile. Some other things when it comes to working from home. Make sure you get on to my email list so that you can get notified about this week's webinars and other topics at Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. You are listening to WGAN. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson, here. Glad you guys could be with me today we've only got about a half an hour left in today's show with a few more topics to cover. But this has been a big week for people all over the world. For the very first time, many are working from home. That this includes, of course, people right here, people across the United States, Canada, Mexico, even France. Although the demonstrators are wandering the streets over there trying to spread the disease, well, they are French. Now and shout out to all of our people who listen from France. We do have people listening in France, so they know what I'm talking about. I have been putting together some detailed deep-dive webinars for this coming week, where I'm going to be answering all of your questions. I might do one or two Facebook Lives. We'll see how it all goes. I'm not a big Facebook Live fan myself, but you know many people are. So maybe you would like to get involved if you would. Again, these are all free, and I am trying to help you guys out. Believe me. You can sign up for my email list, which is Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. You'll find out about these, and you'll get my regular email every week that comes out the newsletter with the top stories of the week all of the stories we discuss here on the air and elsewhere. We also have a new newsletter that we have the first one in the can we probably will send it out this week. It is about security and what the top patches are this month that you need to worry about a little bit of a deep dive there. We give you all kinds of links to the sites to find out exactly what to install, how to install it, what to do with it. All kinds of stuff that you won't get anywhere else, and you're going to get it for free. Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe where you need to sign up. Make sure you go there and go there right now so that you don't forget Craig Peterson dot com slash, subscribe, believe me, I'm not going to be pestering you. I'm telling you all kinds of great stuff. Hardly anybody ends up unsubscribing. It is very, very rare. I have one of the highest open rates in the entire industry near as I can tell in talking with other people, and that's because people appreciate it. You know, I appreciate you guys too. I have been talking a little bit about tools on some of these webinars. I did a deep dive, and I'm going to do a deeper dive this coming week about the tools you can use when you're working from home. If you're a business owner or an IT person, you will hear about the types of tools that are going to help your teams. One of the things that I just wanted to bring up here now is that Comcast and T-Mobile have both said they are going to upgrade everyone to unlimited data for the next 60 days. They are going to suspend the enforcement of the data cap and overage fees during the Coronavirus pandemic. I think that's good. The statement says while the vast majority of our customers do not come close to using one terabyte of data in a month, we are pausing our data plans for 60 days giving all customers unlimited data for no additional charge. Normally Comcast charges an extra $50 per month for unlimited data or $10 for each additional block of 50G after you exceed one terabyte. They're also making their Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspots free for anyone to use. I mentioned that earlier in the show. So if you are somewhere and you need the internet, and you see a Wi-Fi network called Xfinity, you can hop on and use it. Now from a security standpoint, there are considerations, and we go into those in more depth in the webinars coming up this week. And I have a whole course that gets into a lot of depth on that. But it's great Xfinity just look for that Wi-Fi hotspot on your phone, no matter where you are. They have millions of them all over the country. Anyone that has Comcast, for the internet is going to be providing unbeknownst to them, and affinity Wi-Fi hotspot, okay? Now, normally they are free to Comcast customers, and everybody else needs to buy a pass to use them. They're going to be free for 60 days. They are the largest home internet provider in the nation. And I know there's not a whole lot of them in some of our communities, but they are very, very big at&t, which is the second biggest home internet provider that enforces data caps announced that it would waive the caps as well. So that's great news, frankly, unlimited smartphone data for the next 60 days. Excluding roaming, By the way, so don't think you can get roaming for free, and that applies to any T-Mobile plan Metro by T-Mobile prepaid pant plan as well. It's also giving all of its T-Mobile customers an additional 20 Giga mobile hotspot tethering service for the next 60 days. Sprint, which is being acquired right now by T-Mobile, is taking No coal steps. So there you go. There are your main guys now really, it's just it's down to Comcast is providing smartphone service, not using all their towers though, and T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint are all doing it. Now to help low-income Americans, T-Mobile is working with Lifeline. And it's going to provide customers and extra free data up to five gigabytes and gigabytes I should say, per month over the next two months. Lifeline, by the way, is a federal program. It gives discounted service to people with low incomes, and many Lifeline providers resell T-Mobile service instead of having networks of their own. By the way, T-Mobile also has a 55 and older plan for those of us who are in that age group, and they have discounts for that group as well. So there you go. There is a lot to cover. center there, and thanks to Comcast, at&t, T-Mobile, and the dozens of other ISVs that are going to be providing us with more service for free during these tougher times. Now, one of the things I talk a lot about when we're talking about security is linking networks and having people working from home or remote offices and the use of VPNs, and other security problems, right? Well, here's a real eye-opener. There are many businesses considered part of our critical infrastructure. The businesses that are under FINRA regulations these businesses are in the financial businesses, particularly banks, manufacturers. Anyone who's making anything for the military or DFARS contractors, but the bottom line is, the more sensitive the systems are, the less you want those systems to connected to the internet in any way. And in those cases where you've got the critical infrastructure intelligence agencies anywhere, you have higher security networks, working at home is not an option at all. Well, there are some ways around this problem. And I don't mean around it as in trying to skirt the security issues, but around it in a very secure way. And it depends on how you're working and what you're doing and really how critical and sensitive the data is. You know, the old orange book standards were there for a reason, and people can read some of the older CRTs and things remotely. These new LCDs and LED displays we have are harder to read remotely, but in those cases, forget about printing. Never going to be able to work from home right if, if the information is only available in a SCIF, forget about it, you're not going to be able to work from home, or getting kind of technology there with those TLS and SSL. But anyway, we have to be careful if we are in a business that has this type of sensitive information. So we'll talk about that when we get back. And then we have one more topic for today, and we're going to cover another angle of working at home and what does that mean to you and me, so stick around. We're going to be back. You're listening to Craig Peterson. On w GAN online. Craig Peterson dot com. And make sure you sign up on my email list right now. You have to subscribe by going to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and you'll find out about all of our free resources for working at home. Stick around. We'll be right back. Hey guys, welcome back. Craig Peterson here. We've been talking a lot about working from home. And if you missed any of today's show and you are working from home or your business, who has people who are working from home or considering having people working from home, you're going to want to catch the replays of today's show. And you can usually find those right by going to Craig Peters on.com slash iTunes. You can also find it and almost anywhere in any podcast platform out there. Just search for Craig Peterson, and you'll find today's whole show they're available as a podcast. We covered a ton of topics there, and we're talking right now about those companies that are kind of high stakes security. Intelligence agencies, critical infrastructure, anybody who's developing things for the DOD contractors, subcontractors, sub-subcontractors, and we've got this whole CMC thing going on. And I'm talking with people who have attended these briefings on it and just don't understand what they need to do and how to do it. And they just won't do it because I can't believe they're required to have all this security is crazy. But here's the bottom line. Last week, the US government cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency issued an advisory to critical infrastructure companies to prepare for remote work scenarios as this whole Covid-19 spreads. They told people that they have to check that their VPN networks are up-to-date, that the companies have implemented multi-factor authentication, that they have tested out the remote access scenario. Of course, there's a lot more to it than just that. Cybersecurity consultants, like me, who work with those high stake clients know that remote work and security don't mix unless you understand what you are doing. In this Ars Technica article here, they discuss electric utilities, oil, and gas firms, manufacturing companies, and say that it's not always so simple for many of their most critical customers and even more so for intelligence agencies. It should be a wake-up call. If you are a company that has to meet any of these higher security standards. Most notably, if you have to meet the DFARS standards. The ITAR standards, the new CMMC standards, which are all of the military standards. The NIST 171 standards say

Are you a property manager who loves or hates creating systems by leveraging technology? Do you enjoy or dislike doing inspections, dealing with tenant issues, and handling renewals? Have you considered putting processes and people in place to automate your business? Today, I am talking to Paul Kankowski, a real estate investor with more than 200 doors. Paul increased systems to build a better property management business. He describes how he created computer-based processes for his employees to do everything his way, the same way, the right way. You’ll Learn... [03:10] One-man Show: Learn how to get the job done right and then do what you want. [04:41] Paul prefers to create processes and systems to solve problems. [05:29] No Secret Sauce: NARPM speaker/expert on automated processes/systems.  [07:29] Paradise is Possible: People make more money, if they have good systems. [08:39] Fines: Do I charge? Do I not charge? Decision made by process, not employee.  [09:25] Everything that doesn't have a process, Paul deals with until he creates one. [10:52] Manuals and How To Videos: From simple checklists to 195+ steps to follow.  [13:37] First Process: Tackle the one that's losing you the most money. [16:40] Make or Break and Placing Blame: Mistakes are made by processes or people.  [25:40] People as Process: Property management will never be completely automated. [29:30] Retention vs. Growth: Give good customer service and don't let doors leave.  [36:20] Stay in Your Space: Identify what energizes or drains you, then offload them.  Tweetables Mistakes are made when processes are broken or employees skip steps. Be involved in your systems. Know how they're running for your business to run right. Processes are not a secret sauce that everyone has to have a different one.  Why people like systems: They make more money, if they have a good system. Resources PM Systems Conference (Aug. 10-13, 2020, in Las Vegas) AppFolio Asana Process Street Podio Wolfgang Croskey Mark Cunningham Landlord Source Property Meld DGS 80: Automating Your Business with Process Street with Vinay Patankar  DGS 76: Outsourcing Rules for Small, Medium and Large Companies with Todd Breen of VirtuallyinCredible DGS 69: HireSmart Virtual Assistants with Anne Lackey DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowLive DoorGrow Website Score Quiz DoorGrow Cold Leads Calculator Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are 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 because 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 businesses and their owners. 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. Today I am hanging out with Paul Kankowski. Welcome to the show, Paul. I'm excited to have you on. I told you in the green room that I was really excited to have you because this is a topic I think everybody would be interested in. Everybody loves this idea of creating systems in the property management business, figuring out how to leverage technology. Before we get into this topic, qualify yourself. Tell everybody about you. You’ve done some really cool things in the property management space connected to this. Introduce yourself. Pau: Hi, my name is Paul Kankowski. I'm out here in Temecula, California, this is Southern California. I have over 200 doors right now. We're not huge, but we have increased our systems in order to make ourselves better. I actually started in education. I was a school principal and a math teacher for 18 years, and I was a real estate investor. I've been a real estate investor for over 20 years. I bought a lot of properties and when the crash happened, I became a flipper. I bought a lot of rental properties and people were doing a really crappy job in my area. Now I actually know a lot of property managers in my area, but back then I didn't. At the time, I just didn't have anyone that could do the job right, so I started taking some NARPM classes and I started using that to manage my own properties. I only cared about managing my own properties and family for the first two or three years, and then I went into that to turn it into a business. Since I've turned into a business, now, I don't want to manage everyday things. I don't want to be doing inspections. I don't want to be doing all the stuff that you have to do as a one-person show. We have eight employees and I've created processes and systems so that they do everything that is done by computer and everything in the same way, I can work on higher-level things, more networking, and doing stuff that is more enjoyable in the industry. Jason: More enjoyable for you, right? Because some entrepreneurs hate that stuff. Paul: Yes. More enjoyable, in the sense, that I don't like doing inspections. I don't do them anymore. I don't like dealing with some tenant issues. I don't like dealing with renewals, but I like everything being done my way. I like it being done well. I like it to be done the same type every way. Before (as you know) I have to get my hands on everything to make sure things are being done, so we are giving the best customer service. Now, we have systems in place, so I know that things are being done the way we state it and ought to just hope that my employees are doing it the right way. Jason: Right. What's cool about Paul, for those watching, is Paul's built this business around himself and what he wants to spend his time doing, versus what most business owners think they should or have to do. You get to do things you enjoy doing on a daily basis, which really is different for every single entrepreneur. Paul: Yeah, it's great. I like doing the processes and systems are working on them, but I can't. I was a math teacher for 12 years, so systems and stuff are like math problems. If you have a problem, how are you going to solve it and how do you solve them the same way each time? It also (I think) a great way for people to hire people that can do it for them, to get it done right, but you have to be involved in your systems. I don't care if you don't like the math portion of it. It's just very important that you know how they're running so that your business will run right. Jason: Right. You can't just stick your head in the sand and throw it at somebody and expect that it's going to be done well. Paul: I agree. Jason: Let's take a step back. Everybody listening to this, I want to point this out, too. You’ve run some conferences related to automation and technology. You've got some things going related to that, you didn't mention that. You're an expert at this. You’ve spoken at NARPM, the Broker-Owner, I think, related to this, or the national conference or something like that. Paul: I spoke at the national conference in San Diego. It was something similar to this. I have had four conferences on systems and I have a systems conference. My next one's in August, that will be our 5th one. This has been really good. It's a small conference, they only allow 50 property managers to go do it. It's a workshop, not a conference, I always like to say, because it's not a bunch of speakers speaking. It's a lot of time you getting down and dirty, actually doing the processes, having fun with property managers, and really getting in conversations. “How is your move out? What's your move out different?” Sitting there and discussing with other people what they're doing and then creating the process on people that have already paved the path to do good process. I find that when you sit there and you work with five or six other people, you learn where your inefficiencies are, what's great about someone else's processes that you can copy. Processes are not this secret sauce that everyone has to have a different one. You can take a good process and you can adapt it to your business. That's what our workshops are about. It's a really great time. They usually sell out in about three to four weeks. I usually have a long waiting list afterward, just because we do keep it small. I don't want to get so big where people can't actually sit and have a conversation with each other. Jason: I like the idea. Let's talk about your business. Let's paint a picture of what's possible or what you see other business owners do that had been in these conferences, some of the people that are plugged in, they've got technology, they're leveraging it. I want to paint a picture of paradise or a possibility for those that are listening because I think a lot of people listening are going, “It sounds so complicated. It's probably not possible. I'm sure what I'm doing is nearly just as good.” What are you noticing in your own business? Maybe in terms of margins, systemization, and staff? Paul: This is the biggest thing and this is why people like systems. You'll make more money if you have a good system. I'll look at HOA. HOA was an issue a year ago. We tackled; we were not doing as good of a job. We were handling every HOA issue as its own individual thing. We weren't getting emails to owners. We were dealing with the HOAs, but we weren't letting the owners know, “Hey, we're dealing with it every week.” I lost a big owner because they thought we weren't dealing with the HOA issue, even though we were, but I lost it because of perception. The perception was they were getting email weekly, so we create a process where the owners get updated every week on the condition of the HOA when the things are going to be resolved. The other things that would make more money, first off, we have owners that are happy. Second, the fines that we’re giving to tenants, they were happening 100% of the time. When it’s not in a set process, a lot of times I'm like, “I'm not going to charge that because it wasn't that big a deal. He left the trash can out.” Well no, it is a big deal and it's a $25 charge. You're going to get a charge no matter what now because it's in the steps. The employee who's doing it doesn't have to make that decision, “Do I charge? Do I not charge? Is this one of those things?” That's a step that might have been missed. We've noticed our revenue—when we have processes—doing really well, it goes up dramatically. I would say HOA fines, we might have a couple of $100 in HOA fines the year before and now, it's thousands of dollars. That's a huge difference because we were not being consistent on the fine. That's a huge thing about the process. The other thing is everything that doesn't have a process, I have to deal with. Here's one that we have not created yet, owners leaving us, and we have to exit them. That’s the next process we’re making in the next two months. Right now, when an owner leaves, I have to do all the work because I don't have a process. I'm afraid that my employees might do it their way. They might make a mistake. They might not take them out of the property mill. I'm going to be paying $2 a month for that door that’s not even active because it's not been deactivated or up fully own and that it's $1.50 a month. All these little things that you think, “It's only $2, only $1.50.” You have 20 doors that you're being charged $2 a month, that’s $40. Over a year, you're looking at $480. You have to have good processes so you don't skip minor steps. You say, “Well, I don’t skip.” If it's not written down, you make mistakes. You might not make mistakes but your employees are going to. They're not bleeding the business day-to-day that they're not going to sleep thinking about the business like you are as the property owner. If you write it down and you have every detail there, not only you're going to make more money, you're also not going to lose money from having money just shot through. Jason: Okay. You were just talking about a process that you haven't yet created, that you're working on right now. When you get into this process of creating a new process, how involved are these? Are these like insane, and they have lots of different steps? You're thinking of every nuance and every detail or are a lot of your processes simple? Paul: When I started, they were really simple. When I started, I was Asana, it was a checklist. It was a checklist and everything was the same and it was fine. It was better than nothing, but it wasn't good. Now, my utilities processes are 195 steps. Jason: Your utilities process. Paul: Are 195 steps. When someone does utility, it's about eight steps for them to finish it because one of the things is every utility is listed and so you put SDG&E, or you put Edison, a different step is going to come up for every single utility. It asks you questions and then Neil, my person has to go through 195 steps, they go through nine steps. They go through SDG&E, then it tells them the phone number to call, who they have to talk to. Sometimes, one of our processes for a little water company we deal with it says, “Talk to Susan,” because Susan's the one in the office that they have to talk to in order to pay this bill because this is [...] water district, and they're just kind of backward, I believe that's the one. It says every detail. There are videos there. If I get a new person on, they can watch a video and the video shows them step-by-step how we do, how we put the invoice in AppFolio, how we do everything. It's a training tool for my new employees. I just had a new employee last week. The first thing we tell them is, “You need to go through Process Street. You need to watch these processes and you need to go through this 20 times,” and then I want you to try it, without me even instructing you and see if you know how to do the process. I'm going to watch you do it. If you know how to do it, then I created a good process. If you watch these videos and go through it 20 times and you still don't have a clue how to do your job, then my process isn't good enough at this stage I'm at right now. You can be as small as just wanting a checklist and having people skip steps, which is fine, but there's more chance for mistakes to being so detailed that it's a training manual for every person that comes on. Jason: I love it. For those listening, you're currently using Process Street. We had Process Street founder, CEO on the show before. It was a great episode. Make sure you go back and listen to that episode where we're talking about Process Street. We use it internally here at DoorGrow. I think it's a great software. Now, if somebody is looking to get started with this, or they're showing up at your conference for the first time, they're one of these 50 people, they've got the deer in the headlights, eyeballs going on, and they're like looking around, they're feeling really inseminated, what is the first process that usually people should tackle? Paul: The one that's losing you the most money. The one that's a hemorrhage point. It’s usually either moving, leasing, those are usually two of the big ones, move out. It's funny, right now, we've changed our compass around a little bit. I'm doing a pre-session on the first day, so we're doing it for four hours, where I'm going to work with a small group (10 people), and we're going to break down your process and build it together for the first four hours. You're right, I have people at all stages of my conference now, I have people that have been to every single one of mine. This August, it will be their 5th time going and I have people that's their first time going. We want to give the difference between those that are first-timers and those that have been to four of them. When I started this systems conference two years ago, it was two years ago last September, I started it because I thought my processes sucked. I hired a speaker to come and speak to us, and he was pretty expensive. This is how this conference has started. I put on Facebook, “Anybody wants to share on the speaker cost, we’ll just meet in Vegas.” We had 10-12 companies there and it just started because 12 of us got together, we split the cost of the speaker, and we went together and hung out. We had such a great time, we found that it was so great just talking with other property managers, that we kind of tweaked it a little bit, and then we’re like, “Okay, we are kind of the speakers because we are in the industry. We know what each other needs.” Now it's all about helping each other. If you go to this, you're going to the four hours (in the beginning where you're going to get that), and then just go and sit with other property managers, see what they're doing, write little notes, and get your checklist. Start as basic as you can. I have one guy that will only use Google. Everything is Google sheets, but he has his steps written down and it works for him. Other people are Asana, other people Process Street. Other people like Wolfgang Croskey, have Podio everything automated. All his emails are sent automatically. Everybody that goes, they're using different software, they're using different things, but their whole goal is to help each other and to make it so that your process will be good. Jason: Yeah. I would imagine one of the best things about being there, talking with other people, seeing and hearing how they do things, you're just going to get ideas, and there's a lot of ways to implement that idea. A process is software-agnostic in general. It's a process. You need certain steps to be done, it can be done by humans, it could be done by technology like Podio, it could be done by whatever, but it needs to be done. You need to know what the vision is so that you can create it. Sometimes, this just comes from getting ideas from other people. “Oh my gosh, that’s a great idea,” and you're doing that in your business. “We should do that too,” and then, “How can we do that with the tools and resources that we're currently using?” Paul: Jason, I would say, to start a good process, the first thing you do is you get every employee that's working on a process on the table. You get a big white sheet of paper and you write down, “What are you doing?” This is our creation of the process. Our process is to get them right. It’ll take about two months. It sounds like a long time, but it's really not because of the process we do to get our processes. We start out by getting all the people involved in the process, and we write down, “What steps are you doing? What do you do?” We don't skip anything. After we get all of the steps down, I send it to someone in my office named David who will sit there and put it into a Process Street with all the bells and whistles, all the changes, and when this is going to happen. We sit there, and we go through it, and I try to break it. I go through every single step and I see where it ran into a problem. That's the very first month. I only work for an hour here and an hour there. I work on for an hour and say, “Hey, this is tweaked,” and “Are we clear?” He fixes that. I look at it and say, “Okay, this is good.” After that, we give it to the person who’s actually going to be doing the job. Their job for the first month is to try to find where the process doesn't work and to either, doing the process to be like, “Oh my gosh, we forgot to put the charge into the tenant,” or whatever it is. If they find something wrong with the process, then I'm going to praise them beyond belief because they broke my process. Breaking my process is a good thing. Throughout the entire year or whenever we have a process, whenever a problem occurs in my company—an HOA gets missed, and we have some major issues with some HOA—we look through the process, and we say, Was it a mistake by the employee, or the mistake by the process?” If it’s a mistake by the process, we fix the process right then, right there and get it right again. If the mistake is by the employee, we show them, “Look here are the steps, what happened? Why did you skip it?” “Oh, I'm sorry. I just skipped this step,” now they know that it was them. It's really easy. In the past when you just have, “ Hey, here's what you do with an employee, you're always blaming the employee,” a lot of times, it is not the employee’s fault, it's your process. Jason: Yeah, that makes sense. A broken process ensures you're going to have a bad employee a lot of times. Paul: I agree. Jason: I'm going to recap, this is what I wrote down. It takes about two months. You're going to first document it, sit down as a team, then you're going to build it, then you're going to break it, then you're going to fix it, then you're going to test it. It sounds like over time, you're going to optimize it based on what feedback you're getting from your team, and what feedback you're getting from clients, tenants, owners, and problems that are coming out. Paul: Exactly and that process is never done because the second something goes wrong in our company, you look at what the process is. If you have a move-in and the move-in is a disaster, it's either the employee or process, and you have to check and find out. It's so easy when you have a good process, to find out where the breakdown occurred. Jason: I think this is an interesting thing to point out because I get a lot of people that come to me, and they're like, “I need the perfect magic owner's manual. Where can I buy that?” or “I need this,” and I tell them, “Every single property management business is so unique, so different. How you want things done is going to be different and no business is ever perfect,” it's never just done. I think a lot of property managers think, “Well, I just need this one thing that I could just strap onto my business and it'll finally be perfect, it’ll finally be done, and I won't have to ever mess with it again.” I think that's just not reality. You’ve got things really well dialed in and you're still working on stuff. Paul: I bought multiple different companies through NARPM that I'm glad I bought them because I did look at them. I can tell you right now, there are some things I bought that I never looked at, we never really did, and it says, “Blank your property manager company name,” it is very, very detailed and stuff like that, but until you sit down, if you buy something, it gives you a basis to start working on your thing, don't think, “Oh, I spent $1000 on this. Now, I can just implement it in my company,” you have a framework. By the time you're done rewriting that, it's going to be 50%-60% different (I think) than what you bought. It's still going to help you. It's still going to help you pay Mark Cunningham, or any of these people, or Landlord Source for something that they have, is going to help you in getting your brain thinking about what you need to do for that role or position, but how Mark Cunningham or Landlord Source do their business is not the same way. I don't do my business the same way as anyone and I get a lot of their information. I look at them and I'm like, “Oh my gosh, it’s really cool how they did that,” but then we might have a different law in California, a different ruling, a different way of doing what we have to. You can't assume that what someone else do you can just implement in your company on day one. Jason: Yeah. For a lot of us, it's easier to create something. Especially, for starting from scratch. If you're a startup, or you're a new property manager, you never documented your processes, sometimes it's helpful to have some resources to look at. It might not even be that great. Sometimes the bad processes with the bad ideas are even better because you can look at that and the contrast from what you know you're doing and what you're reading about, you're like, “Okay, we don't want to do anything like this, and I want to make sure that we avoid these things.” I like the idea that you intensely try to break your processes. Paul: Yeah. The other thing I want to add is, I think automation is amazing, but this is my fear of automation. I will automate a lot of my processes, and they’ll be better automated than it is something that we're going to work on. But any bad process that’s automated, you're not going to see that's a bad process. If you have an email that’s automated going out and says, “Dear tenant’s last name.” Putting the tenant’s last name because you're not actually having any human do it at the beginning, then you're going to be automating that for 70-80 emails that are going to be sending “Dear tenant’s last name.” I think you need to do a process for a while by hand. You need to have an actual human being doing the process, checking the boxes, and making sure it's right, so they could find things that are wrong. When you get a process really good, then your next step is to automate, because yes, it's great to save time and have an email every week go out that tells them about their HOA violation or tells them about the moving processes. I still look at emails every once in a while and I'm like, “Oh my gosh, we forgot to change the wording from this move-in email to this move-in email saying the second week.” If it's automated, it’s going to be automated. Something automated bad is going to be badly automated forever. All I'm saying is that a lot of people want to go from no process to everything being automated, and them not being involved. I don't think that's possible. Wolfgang Croskey, he’s automated, and he does an amazing job, but I don't think he went from not having a process to everything running on its own, and him not involved in it. Jason: No. There was a coaching plan for a good while and I know he didn't start at Podio. I think he was using Process Street and even before that, he was working on stuff. I love the idea. You got to do it manually. A lot of property managers are already doing a lot of things manually. They're doing it that way first. They now need to document it, then they need to figure out, how can we start to systemize this? How can we create consistency? How can we automate this? How can we make sure it's being done the same way every single time and there are checks and balances? That's one of the reasons I like Process Street because you can build a process and that’s one step, and you just paste it in a Word document if you have to. Really, really low level and maybe that's the best you've got. Eventually, you can break it into some multiple steps. Then you can get it into something crazy like you're 100 plus step thing that's got context-sensitive options based on what you pick, and it's going to give you different tasks to do depending on what options you're selecting, and you can get really crazy (if that makes sense). The cool thing about having a process though is you can continually improve it. It can get better over time. That means that you're lowering operational costs, you're lowering drag, you're improving your team member’s ability to accomplish things and win, and get things done. Now, what do you think about the challenge of people as a process? What I mean is, everybody has team members that they need in order to think. If somebody is making decisions, they're planning, they're coming up with ideas. Then you have team members that really are operating like a computer. Their job is just to follow the process. How do you balance this in your own company and determine, is this just anybody on the planet that could just follow this checklist, or they need some customer service skills, and they need to be able to communicate? How do you balance the discrepancy that people have that are fearful of processes because they're like, “I want my clients to be taken care of really well.” Paul: You still have to think. You still have to go through it. You still look and see what's going on. How many of us property owners, managers, et cetera, spend nights thinking about everything we have to do the next day? You write steps down on a sheet of paper before you go to bed and then you try to get it out of your mind so the next day you don't forget it. You're not doing that because you don't want to care about your business or you don’t what I think about it, you're doing it because you don't want to be staying up at 1:00 in the morning, sitting there and trying to think what you need to do. Everything we do in life, if something tells us how to do it, then we can start thinking about things that are higher level. You can take your employees. If you could take a lease renewal process and you can make it so that every single time it's done correctly, it's done right, no one wants to think about it, then there's no stress on these renewals. Now, when something does come up that’s stressful, people that are higher level can think about the things that are higher level. You have a maintenance issue where someone falls off the roof and you're getting sued. You're not going to process for that. Now, instead of you thinking about lease renewals and wasting your time on something that can be automated, something that can be just automatic, you can spend your time on high-level items, and you're going to have employees that need to spend their time with high-level items, so you could spend your time on other high-level items. Probably the management will never be completely automated. There are companies that say, “Oh, we could just automate everything,” no, you can automate a lot of stuff so you can spend your time on the 10% of the stuff that really, really matters, that’s really stressful, and that can't be automated. Jason: We talked about this on the show I think probably several times with different companies, but ultimately, the goal (in my opinion) when it comes to technology, when it comes automation, when it comes to systems, is to take off the plate of yourself and your team members, the stuff that's really redundant, the stuff that could be systemized so that you can focus more on depth. I think that's where property managers are going to be able to compete with the big conglomerates, the big companies that are super tech-based, is that it's going to be about relationships. Property management is a high touch relationship type of business. If process and systems allow you to create a more personal touch, to go deeper, to spend more time communicating more intimately with more depth with tenants, residents, owners, then I think you're creating a business that is going to have significant value, and it's going to have longevity because it’s built on relationships. Ultimately, it's people that are giving you the money. As people, we tend to like humanity, and we tend to like people. Paul: If you're spending, as a business owner, 20 hours a month on something that can be automated or something that can be done by someone at a less level, you have to think of your time as value. When I had 30 doors, I did everything. When I had 50 doors, I was still doing everything. You have to figure out where you value your time. I have five remote employees and I have two employees in my office. People are like, “Oh my gosh, that's a ridiculous amount of employees you have for the number of doors you have.” We’re profitable, and we’re profitable because we're in California, we price ourselves well. It's the customer service level we give our competition. Some of them are missing the mark. They are not giving that customer service, so we are giving it. Someone is not going to leave because of some deep discount or just giving really bad customer service where retention is so huge. I'm seeing so many property managers talk about retention being better than growth because if you are losing 20% or 30% of your doors, all your time and ability is going to just stay even. People are spending $500–$1000 a door to get a new lead, but there are others that walk out the door. My thing is to give really good customer service and don't let those doors leave you. They are going to leave you because they are selling, but don't let them leave you because you are not doing the job right. Jason: I find that with clients. A lot of times, the issue with retention. I agree, retention is a significant thing. The issue with retention is often created during the sales and onboarding so if you can really systemize, automate, and build a really solid process during the sales and onboarding, you've got a really solid sales and onboarding process that really develops a strong relationship, that would carry you for years with some clients. Paul: I agree. Jason: And the trust level is higher even if the communication (later on) is really low. If you created them in the beginning, they are going to trust you and it's going to be a lot stronger. If that's not done effectively during onboarding and sales and isn't created well, there's going to be a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear. They are going to be questioning everything that you do. You might end up a lot more operational costs related to that, and they are probably not going to stay with you as well. Paul: I agree. We have one person whose new onboarding is their main priority. It's making sure that new owners have a good experience and are treated well, and the onboarding experience is great. Never lose a customer. I think one of the podcasts I heard about that, I read the book. It was a great book. It's about customer service and taking it to the next level.  The thing is people will spend so much money on different things and then don’t answer the phone. If you can have your people working on the process, working on other things, then you answer your phone, you are not going to let that lead that. You just play when it clicks, $30, $20 get away. Processes are huge for your business to me, they are the number one building block.  I don't think everyone on all the boards is always, "How can I grow? How can I grow? How can I grow?" I think growth is important, but if you grow and all of a sudden, you add 100 doors in one year and it was just you, you don't have a process and everything is in your head, then you are going to lose all those doors because you are not going to be able to give. When you had 30 doors, and you go from 30 to 130 and you’re at the customer service, you gave those 30 people. You are not going to be able to give 130 because all of a sudden, then you are hiring someone. They are going to be like, "Well, how do I do it?"  "Well, you just got to listen to my head." No one can read your head. So, even if you are a single person that's by themself, if you want to give a task away, then start working on the process for it as soon you have to give that away. If you are at 50, 60, 70 doors, I would tell those people it's more important for you to start working your processes right now unless you plan just staying at 50 or 60 and never want to grow.  Jason: This is one of the greatest secrets that I coach entrepreneurs when they come into our program. One of the very first things to start them with is helping them get clarity on where they can get leverage the quickest first. It's usually different for everybody. There are some similarities but the way to identify that is usually done through getting clear on where you are actually going. I have them do a time study, then I have them identify which things are energizing them and which things are draining them, then which things are strategic versus tactical. The strategic stuff grows your business, tactical stuff just keeps it going. Most of the process would work by its tactical work. The strategic work is what you are talking about doing in creating a new process. You are like, "We are going to work for this new process for the next two months when we get this dialed-in." That's what grows companies.  If you get to stay in your area of genius, the things you really enjoy doing as a business owner, and you've identified what does are because you are clear on which things are causing you grief and energizing you versus draining you, then you know exactly what to offload. You know what to give to your assistant and different people. We've had different great companies here talking about [...], hire smart VAs, great assistants. We've had companies talking about virtual team members and whatnot. Those are great episodes if you want to listen to those on the DoorGrow Show. We touched a lot on those different ideas. Ultimately, one takeaway you want everybody to get is that everybody can have the property management business that they enjoy, that they love having, and if we built around you and what your unique strengths are, maybe you love the accounting side, maybe you love doing the phone calls, the customer service, connection with people. Maybe you’re a people person, maybe you geek out on systems and process, but you can do whatever you want to do in your business if that's your intention. I think we get stuck sometimes having the business that we think that we need to do like the job that we need to do in the business instead of the business that we want. Paul: I would agree with that 100%. Last year, we grew 80 doors so that's probably the average of what our average. We are averaging between 5 and 10 doors a month. We haven't really started spending money on marketing because I really wanted to first get everything correct and right. One of my property management friends (who is my mastermind guru) calls me once a month and asks me, "Hey, Paul. Did you talk to a tenant this month?" and I'm not allowed to talk to tenants because it was taking time away that I could be doing other high-level things and I need to trust my team to deal with my tenants.  Now, if it gets to a certain level and I have to talk to a tenant, then that's a different call, but I have to make sure that I am actually thinking about when I talk to a tenant. When a tenant calls because they are pissed-off about the fact that we paid the utility bill and make every charge, I have to trust my team’s going to handle it, my team's going to do it, and that I am not going to get involved in it because I find when I get involved in it, then I might do something that wasn't like the process we agreed upon as a team. I even had to, as an owner, that's $25. You are talking for 10 minutes, not worth my time for $25.  I have to be out of it because I will be like, “Yeah, just waive the $25. I don't want to talk to them anymore.” It's really important that no matter who you are, that you follow what you tell your team to follow. A lot of times, you can do it yourself, you made your own decision, but once you make a decision on how you are going to run your process or what your rules are, you have to stick to it company-wide.  I laugh because it's usually us, as the owner, are the worst culprits of not following what we are going to do. The employees do it because a lot of times my employees’ bonuses are based on serving certain goals so if I don't accept anything, they are like, "Man, you are hitting on my bonus. Don't be messing with my goals."  That's something I've learned is just find what you like. Find what you are good at and get a group of property managers around you that can be like a mastermind group that can keep you focused because you need other owners to tell you, "Stop doing that," because your employees won't always tell you exactly what you need to do, what you need to hear.  The other thing is when systems aren't working right. Now, there's a system in there where my employees can say, "Well, you didn't follow the system here." Every person is accountable for checking off what they have to do in the system. When I don't check it off at the end of the week, an email goes out to every person who missed any steps of the system. I have an employee that's checking that. My name is on there. I miss a part of my system and it will list. I never want to be there with three or four items that I missed because that would look really bad. That's another thing, the accountability, I'm not doing the accountability part. I have an employee on Saturday that answers the phones and her job on Saturday if it’s not very busy, is to go through every single process in [...] and write down who hasn't met their deadlines for that process. Jason: Yeah, accountability. Paul: It works really well. None of us wants to see our name on that list, so everybody is getting their stuff done and it's not because I'm going to yell at them, it's because we don't want to be mass emailed to the whole team that you didn't do your job. Jason: It creates a lot of pressure which is a positive thing. That means you don't have to come down on them all the time. There's this lateral pressure, this internal peer pressure in which most employees and team members are recognition-based. That's how they are most motivated rather than financially, so they want to be seen as doing a good job, and they want to be recognized. That's the opposite. There's that pressure, so they want to make sure they avoid that. Paul: Exactly. Jason: It makes sense.  Paul: And we also do our bonuses based on not being recognized. Even my bonuses. Everything is based on getting your job done. What I saw in the past, we didn't have someone that was going through it weekly. We had some process where they’d be open three or four weeks and not being completed yet. Now, it's very rare for the process. It will definitely not be there if you are listed on that one week. If you are listed in the second week for the same one, then you are going to have a conversation with me, then you’re going to me. Our processes are never missed for more than 5–7days, which is huge.  The only thing that I'm still trying to figure out is maintenance because I use Property Meld and I'm still trying to figure out how I can make sure my maintenance team doesn’t get missed. Property Meld does good ways of doing that. That's something I'm currently working on is how on a weekly basis, we can check to make sure none of that's missed.  Everything that you do, you got to find using the software systems that will work to check on the system.  Jason: All right. Paul, I think it has been really fascinating. I think everybody listening got a lot of value out of this. I loved your tips about where to start. Anything else that you throw out there and want to say to anybody before we wrap this up about creating systems in the business? Paul: I just tell them the dates. Our website is pmsystemsconference.com and the dates of our conference will be August 10th through 13th. It's in Las Vegas and it will be in Rio. It is not up yet, we should have it up next week or two. We are still working on it. We just got the rooms and booked everything yesterday. We just booked for August, but it's a really good time. Last time in January, we went ziplining on one of the nights. We also try new fun stuff because if you are working all day, you also want to have fun. There was a time we went bowling one night which is a great time to get together with a small number of property managers and get to know them. I enjoyed it.  People always ask me how long I am going to do it, I'm going to do it until I stop getting fun. When it becomes a job, then I'll stop doing that workshop, but now I go there and it's like seeing a bunch of old friends.  Jason: Cool, love it. All right, Paul, thanks for coming to the DoorGrow show. I appreciate you. Paul: Thank you so much, Jason. You have a wonderful day.  Jason: All right, so check out his website. Check that out. Thanks everybody for tuning in. If you have a moment, make sure to like and subscribe. If you are watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. If you are listening to this on a podcast on iTunes, then please leave us a review. We would love it. That would be great. If you are a property management entrepreneur, you are struggling, you are frustrated, you are not sure what you need to do in order to grow, there's a lot of different ways you can approach growth depending on what challenges you are dealing with now. We have solutions for various things here at DoorGrow that we can help you with, please reach out. You can check us out at doorgrow.com, and we will talk to you soon, everybody. Until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. 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. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. 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All I'm gonna say is: this is a shitshow of an episode and a guaranteed good time. Nicole is back to talk all things 'Love Is Blind' weddings + reunion and I hope you guys LOVE!!!!! xx https://www.instagram.com/wheresmydrinkpodcast/ https://www.instagram.com/achairformybag/

How Long Does It Take Your Body To Adjust To The Intermittent Fasting This is definitely different for each person, but I would say a couple of weeks. So some people can transition, into a shorter eating window a lot faster. However, I would say usually at most within two weeks. You've kind of gotten more fat adapted. And so what that means is, is that your body is now using fat for fuel instead of using sugar for fuel. Fat adapted is the metabolic state where your body has been in ketosis long enough that you've kind of transitioned what your body uses for fuel. All I'm used to is burning carbs and sugar for all my energy, and once you start fasting you are no longer constantly getting those carbs and sugars so your body has to find a new source of fuel which is fat! So that is basically what that means when your body gets used to intermittent fasting. I've heard people say it takes like six weeks to get fat adapted, in my opinion, that it really depends on how much weight you have to lose and how used to your body is to grabbing for the sugar or carbs instead of for the fat. Check out the FASTING RESET SUMMIT HERE: https://fastingresetsummit.com/   Listen to the new audiobook as a podcast HERE: https://chantelrayway.com/purchase-audio-book/   Check out the Amazon Page HERE: https://www.amazon.com/shop/intermittentfastingthechantelrayway     Check out these things I LOVE:   https://chantelrayway.com/vitaminc/   https://chantelrayway.com/wine/   https://chantelrayway.com/freerecipe/   https://chantelrayway.com/energybits   Get the audiobook & e-book bundle of Chantel's 2nd edition to Waist Away The Chantel Ray Way at a REDUCED price HERE!   Connect with us on Social Media YouTube Channel Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCteFjiVaY6n0SOAixcyZbWA Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheChantelRayWay     Things we love: https://chantelrayway.com/things-i-love-2/  Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheChantelRayWay   This podcast is a SIMPRONTO MEDIA production. ***As always, this podcast is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any condition and is for information purposes only. Please consult with your healthcare professional before making any changes to your current lifestyle.***

REVISED & EXPANDED Edition 2017: Includes Controversial New Images from the NASA Curiosity Rover * 166 Black/White photos (66 in color, Kindle edition only)- Why has NASA not announced to the world the greatest scientific discovery ever made in the history of space exploration?Do you want to know what has REALLY been discovered by the Orbiters and Rovers on the planet Mars?While scientists spend billions of dollars confirming that microbes live in the Martian soil, people sitting at home on their computers studying the Mars images, are making far more astounding discoveries...they have found the possible archaeological remains of an extraterrestrial civilization!M J Craig is a writer, researcher and composer living in Wiltshire, England. He's involved in projects that seek to establish a more enlightened civilization in our world.His first book "Secret Mars: The Alien Connection" was published in 2013, with a revised and expanded edition published in 2017, including a German translation ("Geheimer Mars: Die außerirdische Verbindung").Hard to believe? Well, this challenging book invites you to take a look at the astounding pictures yourself and make up your own mind... SECRET MARS presents over 100 incredible images taken by American and European spacecraft that reveal possible evidence of a civilization that once lived and may still live, on the planet Mars...powerful evidence that scientists are ignoring!SECRET MARS reveals the shocking reason why NASA are forbidden to tell the world about what has been found..."All I'm saying is take a look at the strange geometrical objects in these pictures from Mars. Most of them may just be odd-looking rocks, but if just ONE of these is artificial and it doesn't say 'Made by NASA' on it - then we may be looking at archaeology from an ancient Martian race." - M J Craig, author of Secret Mars

"All I'm asking...is for a little respect..."  Otis Redding (Lyricist) 1967 for Ms. Aretha Franklin's #1 Hit Song - RESPECT How do we recognize respect? What does a beautifully diverse work environment look like? Is it just when we see faces of many different skin colors? Or are there other signs?  What are those signs?  When do we know whether diverse spaces are truly including the voices of those with different faces, skin colors, genders... than our own? These are the questions from my script. Dr. Rumay Alexander, Professor of Nursing & Past Vice-Chancellor of Diversity & Inclusion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill answers... but BEFORE she does... her own story of being a Black Woman, growing up through the 1970's through today reveals decades of direct experience that brought her through the years in the U.S. in which diversity was not present and inclusion was just a dream.   This is PART I of my interview with Dr. Alexander.   She discusses the recent explosive developments with the Confederate Monument, "Silent Sam" which include the replacement of the statue BACK on the campus grounds after a dramatic covering in RED paint and eventual pull down and removal.    

This one is a wild ride, buckle up and grab onto your safety bar - you'll need it. This episode is very explicit. I talk about literally every (bad) thing that happened to me this past week and about all the issues that aggravated me. I think the new moon had something to do with it, or maybe it was the socks... could have also been Josh or Frank, you never know. Which coffee shops do I recommend and which ones do I suggest you stay away from? All I'm saying is you'll have to listen to find out. Have you ever heard of an "oil change"? Well, hear my story about an oil change and the asshole that got right in the middle of it! I can't believe people sometimes! -Brino

Transcript: Pilot One is a Contender for Real Estate PhotographersTranscript (video above)- Hi all, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Monday February 10, 2020 and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. Our topic tonight; my review, my beta testing of the Labpano Pilot One.What's my conclusion the Labpano Pilot One 360 one click camera is a contender for real estate photographers that want to offer 360 Virtual Tours and do Google Street View map updates for storefronts. Those two things. My recommendation is based on loaner of a Pilot One camera, it's a kind of a beta hardware and software but I been loaned a Pilot One camera Labpano sent it to me, it arrived on Thursday January 23, 2020.And my recommendation is also based on a discussion that I had with some super successful Google Street View subject matter expert photographers at the 2019 Google Street View Summit in London. These are power users of the Labpano Pilot Era: and that's the big brother of the the Pilot One.Labpano is presently accepting Pilot One pre-orders through the first week of March 2020 and I have a link for you that you can get a free GPS module that's valued at $129. So free with the link WGAN.info/Pilot One. PILOT One, excuse me, P-I-L-O-T O-N-E, Pilot One. WGAN.info/pilotoneWith the Labpano had previously announced that the Pilot One would begin shipping in late February 2020, it has since updated the shipping schedule to March 2020 and that's at the soonest as a result of the CoronaVirus affecting staffing at its China based manufacturing facility. Okay so, what did I hope to do? There were three reasons that I accepted LabPano's invite to beta test and review the Pilot One.First, I was super excited about creating Google Street View map updates and creating new Google Street View "blue lines" ... Essentially Google Street View where there is presently no Google Street View, that's the first thing that I was super-excited about testing. Second, is to create a PilotTour using the Labpano new Virtual Tour platform in the cloud, featuring auto creation of tours, that's using a process called V-SLAM.Super-excited to see how Labpano new Virtual Tour platform in the cloud would automatically create Virtual Tours without a photographer having to create a constellation or organize the 360s into the tour. So I really wanted to create PilotTours with the Pilot One camera.And the third reason that I wanted to accept the Labpano's invite to beta test and review the Pilot One was to create EyeSpy360 virtual tours using the 360 panorama shots from the Pilot One. Unfortunately or fortunately Labpano is having so much success with pre-sales, I have not received the GPS module and their recommended backpack as of [10 Feb 2020] in order to create Google Street View with Pilot One.And, also unfortunately PilotTour is still in very early development and I'll talk more about my PilotTour testing and recommendations later in my review. I did successfully shoot 360 HDR panoramas with the Pilot One to create multiple EyeSpy360 virtual tours.If you'd like to see examples of my EyeSpy360 tours, come to the We Get Around Network Forum, WGANforum.com and just use the search box, search for EyeSpy360 or search for Pilot One, either way you're going to end up seeing examples of EyeSpy360 tours that I created using the Pilot One, 360 degrees spherical panoramas.In particular I think, two of the tours, two are the We Get Around Network Forum discussions to look at that include examples, one is titled; My Third EyeSpy360 Tour Workflow for furnished Apartment in Atlanta and the other is entitled My EyeSpy360 tour Example Of a Senior Living Apartment: Easy, Fast and Affordable Tour Creation.So my initial thoughts from using the Pilot One as an Apple fanboy, the highest recommendation, the highest compliment that I can make for the Pilot One is that the is that the user experience strives to be Mac-like.And while the user experience is not there yet, I can imagine that the that the Labpano team will achieve a great Mac-like user experience with firmware updates. Well, I have not taken 50 plus 360 cameras for spin, literally there are that many 3D and 360 cameras today 50 plus cameras. That said, I can't imagine that the Pilot One, 2.2 inch touchscreen with logical menus ...I can imagine that the Pilot One 2.2 inch touchscreen with the logical menus is a huge differentiator particularly when it comes to overriding the automatic modes to change camera settings.So it's very easy using the menus to change exposure compensation, the EV value or the WB; the white balance value or focus distance. So not things that you have to remember and press a button and it's a mystery that literally having a touchscreen with menus, it's super-easy to change settings.So that makes a lot of sense for me. I shot with enough 360 cameras to say, it would be really hard for me to go back to using any other 360 camera that does not have a touchscreen as large as the Pilot One; does not have Mac-like menus, it's really, it's a terrific advantage as part of the 360 Virtual Tour creation process. So about shooting 360 spherical panoramas.When I shot three Atlanta Senior Living Apartments using the Pilot One, again these examples are in the We Get Around Network Forum, I kept the settings on automatic with HDR enabled.The in-camera stitched image quality is excellent and I like that the images are typically 11 to 14 Mega Pixel, mega byte, MB JPEG images.They're just big deep files that if you do need to do some editing on I'm just happy about that. So it may be helpful for context that nearly 10 years ago I was using a Canon 5D Mark III with the Sigma 8 millimeter fisheye lens and a Nodal Ninja R1 rotator to shoot 360s.A lot of money, a lot of gear, plus then using two different software's PTGui Pro and Pano2VR to both stitch the images together and clean up the patch where the tripod is located.So important, for the vast majority of professional real estate photographers that require an easy, fast and affordable workflow for shooting 360s, the Pilot One fulfills this requirement.It's so important, I have to say it again. For the vast majority of professional real estate photographers that require an easy, fast and affordable workflow for shooting 360s, the Pilot One fulfills this requirement. I'm going to defer to others to debate the quality of the 360 panoramas, versus other 360 cameras versus the price of the cameras and related accessories.As I just shared with you the Pilot One touchscreen with the Mac-like experience for shooting 360s really are the deciding factor for me.I could imagine that what you look at my 360 images shot with the Pilot One, again the examples are in the We Get Around Network Forum, WGANforum.com, you might conclude that the HDR is not so great or that the color saturation is not the best I would say blame me first for not changing the exposure compensation, the EV, and not doing any post-production to tweak the color saturation and white balance. That said the images are good enough for me straight out of the camera, to use them in the tours without tweaking a thing.I did get a little taste of the Labpano Pilot Tour Virtual Tour platform.Again it's an early, early, early beta. I recommend that Labpano abandon offering Pilot Tour Virtual Tour service and instead focus on third-party integrations with as many of the 130 plus 3D/360 Virtual Tour platforms as possible. I consider the Labpano Pilot Tour Virtual Tour platform in the cloud more of a proof-of-concept to show what is possible with deep integration between the Pilot One camera and other platforms.When possible using the Pilot Open System to create a much shorter and easier workflow for creating 360 Virtual Tours. I could imagine that camera manufacturers like Labpano are obsessed with incremental improvements in the hardware and software and actually the greatest value add Labpano could add is seamless integration with Virtual Tour platforms and software that already exists. It's obviously headed in that direction with the Labpano Pilot Open System.So I can see the potential when the Pilot Tour platform is working that isn't that awesome, because it automatically places and connects the 360s. That said, there are other platforms that already do that such as EyeSpy360. And the EyeSpy360 platform is far more advanced. They've had a, let's call it a five-year head start on deeply understanding Virtual Tours for real estate agents and brokers.And Labpano really needs to come to the conclusion that it's in the camera business, it's not in the tour business.It's really difficult to do both and as I'll talk about in a moment, well, offering, I'll get to the point. (And I should say parenthetically when I'm asked for a recommendation regarding which 3D or 360 camera to buy for real estate photographers or for real estate agents, I always recommend determining the use case first, then to look at the Virtual Tour platform or platforms that are on their short list of the 360, excuse me the 130 plus Virtual Tour platforms and software that exists today.Only then look at which camera or cameras have easy, fast and seamless experience, have an easy, fast and seamless experience with those Virtual Tour platform or platforms.)So at the very least, Labpano should prioritize deep integration with the following eight 3D/360 Virtual Tour platforms with the Pilot Open System allowing for this easy, fast and seamless experience. Those eight are in an alphabetical order, Cupix, C-U-P-I-X, EyeSpy360, Google Street View, Matterport, Panoskin, ThreeSixty tours, T-H-R-E-E S-I-X-T-Y Tours, RICOH Tours, Zillow 3D Home.I've written a related WGAN Forum post titled, Are You a 3D/360 Camera Manufacturer? The Must Have Killer Feature Is ... So I go into great detail on this very point. For clarification, if the Labpano objective is - PilotTour: Indoor and Outdoor 360 Virtual Tour Made Easy" - that's their tagline, I would suggest that they study the EyeSpy360 Virtual Tour platform. For example, the EyeSpy360 workflow is much, much, much easier than the vision of Labpano's PilotTour even when PilotTour emerges from beta, even in its likely future state of what that might be.So for example, EyeSpy360 Virtual Tour, if you take a look at it one of the examples that I've posted to the We Get Around Network Forum that use the 360s that I shot with the Pilot One, it is a much faster workflow than it would be using the Pilot One Pilot Tour feature.So the integration of the Pilot One camera with the Pilot Tour Virtual Tour platform, that's because EyeSpy360 for example, creates a 360 Virtual Tour and a 3D tour and interactive floor plans and hotspots and so fourth.So as a residential real estate photographer or a residential real estate agent or broker, if you're looking at two things; one is the camera the other is the platform. You might say well, even when Labpano Pilot One platform is firing on all cylinders, wouldn't it make sense to have a camera that is deeply integrated with the platform? And I would say yes, but unfortunately I don't believe that Pilot Tour will ever be as good as or as the platforms that I've just, the eight platforms that I have described.Given that, as much as I give Labpano props for a creating a this V-SLAM process essentially that a way to organize 360s in relationship to each other, in my mind it will always be a proof-of-concept that will never be as good as either the eight 360/3D platforms that I've mentioned or many more of the 130.So, and that becomes problematic because I could imagine that the Labpano Pilot Virtual Tour platform could inhibit other Virtual Tour platforms from wanting to integrate with the Labpano camera. So if lab, and that's because the perception may be that and perhaps true that Labpano is planning to attempt to compete with them by offering a free Virtual Tour platform.My feeling is any professional real estate photographer would likely choose a different 360 Virtual Tour platform from the Pilot Tour platform.I can't imagine a professional real estate photographer in a or real estate agent paying $1,200 for the Pilot One and being satisfied with the free Pilot Tour Virtual Tour platform. It's just, it's too basic, and even if Labpano's intent is to have a very sophisticated Pilot Tour platform for real estate agents, let's say they're at least five years behind trying to play catch-up.So there's two issues here for four Labpano; one, is trying to play catch-up with platforms that have five plus years of experience and then two, is having a platform that competes with the very thing that really gives the most value to the Pilot One is the ability to have easy, fast and seamless deep integrations with other Virtual Tour platforms.And, as I've shared, if the platform's feel that Labpano is going to compete with them by having this PilotTour Virtual Tour platform, it may mean that other virtual tour platforms will be super hesitant about providing integration knowing that it essentially is now perhaps helping the camera compete with it on the virtual tour platform side.So I'll come back, I want to talk a little bit more on this topic towards later in my review but I did want to cover some other points.Labpano Pilot One live-streaming. I did find it super easy to live-stream to Facebook. My Pilot One live-stream to Facebook, I've archived that, I've recorded it. It's available on my Facebook feed Dan Smigrod. S-M-I-G-R-O-D, easiest way to find it, come to the We Get Around Network Forum, go to the topic of Pilot One and you'll see that I write about my Pilot One live-stream on Facebook so that you can actually go see an actual Facebook live-stream that albeit recorded.Plus I was presently surprised about the excellent quality of the Pilot One streaming video. So, given the ease of use and the quality of the video, I challenge real estate photographers to imagine how we can offer this Pilot One Facebook live-streaming feature, as an Add-On for real estate clients. I think that something probably really new and only because it's so easy to do and the quality of the video now is really awesome.I could imagine using this feature for example, for amplifying an Open House and for doing a live walkthrough with the agent, that then continues to be available on the agents Facebook page. So any other Add-On opportunities is a real estate photographer that you see.My Labpano Pilot One beta testing recommendations are as follows; as a Pilot One beta tester, again I was given a camera, I was loaned a Pilot One camera and the good news is I would say is nearly everything that I would suggest that Labpano change or fix is likely a firmware upgrade.So here my following notes for Labpano but I think it's probably helpful if you're deciding about buying a Labpano Pilot One camera, any early concerns that I had.But again I think the vast majority of these could be fixed with a firmware upgrade. First, touchscreen keyboard. The letters and numbers and symbols on the Pilot One are simply too small to be practical.So you're presented with a keyboard, while this implementation of keyboard may work on a larger Big Brother Labpano Pilot Era camera, using the touchscreen keyboard on the Pilot One camera is extremely difficult and frustrating to enter the passwords for Wi-Fi.It's super hard. The good news is that the Pilot One has a great way that you set the date and time with a wheel that's kind of like a slot machine and you just keep aligning the wheels. So the process for entering passwords and tour names would be far, far easier with this wheel approach.So first let's identify the problem is that, I sometimes I think it's analogous that when first there was newspapers, then came along radio and radio first began reading the newspaper.Well, that wasn't exactly taking advantage of the medium and then came television and then television was like radio without picture and that wasn't taking advantage of the medium. So probably over stood to say the translation of a large keyboard that would work on a larger screen, simply does not work in to my level of satisfaction on a Pilot One camera.The screen, is the the touch screen is really big but a touchscreen keyboard simply does not work. In my opinion, it was super difficult to enter Wi-Fi, particularly my Wi-Fi where I have very long names for passwords and then for naming tours, it was super impractical being on location, trying multiple times to get the series of letters and keystrokes properly.So the good news is I think Labpano already has a great solution in its approach to the date and time that feels like a slot machine of rotating wheels to pick the date, pick the time. I think that would perfectly work for passwords and tour names.Next, the transitions between menus. It really needs to be obvious that you swipe left or right to move between menus. It needs to be obvious when you can swipe left or right and it needs to be obvious when and how to exit a menu. So Pilot Tour is so close to being awesome, but these things just weren't obvious to me and I even though there was documentation that documentation for us beta testers was somewhat limited and perhaps the documentation for when the camera actually ships will be much better.But again I don't even think that's something you should have to look at the documentation, I think that's one of the Mac-like experiences, is that it just works and it works as expected and I was at a loss about how to transition. So I found myself constantly pressing the physical home button to get back to the main menu, that's not a great workflow.Next is hemisphere shooting. Well, I found the timer hugely helpful for staying out of a shot. It's just not always possible to hide.So I'm sure you've probably been in this position particularly outside where there's just no tree or object to hide behind and if you get too far away from the camera using an app and Bluetooth then you lose the connection. So I could imagine either Labpano or a third-party offering a solution for staying near the camera, but not in the shot and then stepping around to the other side of the Pilot One to complete the shot. About the image gallery in the camera.Well, I'm so sorry, I didn't even bring my camera into the shot, but let's see if I can just turn it on to show this point here.So right here in terms of the image gallery, so I think you can see I think I have some videos that have showed up there. I found myself shooting a blank shot. Essentially I would hold my hands over the four lenses to separate tours. So it would be nice if a separator could automatically be added to separate tours and to separate groups of 360s.So for example, if you were doing or I was doing more than one apartment in the same day. So, in order to separate those groups of 360s, I'm holding my hands around the four lenses, I suspect that it wouldn't be that hard for Labpano to say, okay, there's the algorithm says there's so much time between the time this tour was done and this tour was done, certainly if it was separated by hours then just automatically insert a blank shot to differentiate the groups of 360s and then certainly it would be way easier to delete a blank than to try and figure out which apartment 360s were part of apartment one versus apartment two.Apartments looked the same. Where they certainly look the same when you're looking at a small screen.While I found uploading to my Dropbox super-easy, I would have liked for the videos to be checked that it was uploaded successfully. Now this feature was included, how to say this? In the midst of my beta testing, there was a firmware upgrade and so once I, when I began testing and I uploaded to Dropbox, I didn't have any way of knowing that it was updated to Dropbox, the good news is that feature was added to a firmware upgrade. And that's true for the following. ...I had made some notes to say, there are times when I need to upload some of the 360s but not all, I'm changing priorities of what needs that, I might have shot three tours in a day but the one of those tours may need to be uploaded before the others.In my beta testing, it was hard to keep track of which 360s I still needed to upload, plus, I would like to be able to select which 360s to upload if I did not want to upload everything to Dropbox at once, I had to upload 360s one at a time and it was hard to tell which ones I had already uploaded.For example, I could select multiple images, I was limited to deleting the multiple images with no option for uploading the selected multiple images. So anyway, the good news is I did do a firmware upgrade version 5.0.10 and that actually solved that problem. Of knowing what had been uploaded and what hadn't though I still think I'm having a little bit of difficulty recognizing which videos have been uploaded or not uploaded.I think the check mark has been added to the videos as well. Again, the good news on this list that I've described, they're all likely firmware updates.So if Labpano is an agreement with my recommendations, all these recommendations might be implemented even before the camera ships in March or later.And again, ... I updated to version 5.0.10. The firmware update was an easy Mac-like or iPhone-like experience. It just works as expected. That may seem obvious but I'm sure all of us had, had times where updating firmware was attaching it to a computer and finding the program and then transferring something to a folder.No, you just, the camera indicates that it's got a, it needs a firmware update, you accept and it does the upload and you're done. It's no connecting to a camera, really nice. There's a feature for adjusting a photo, let's call it a photo sphere or 360.It's an interesting feature but I couldn't figure out how to do a batch change. So the good news on the adjust photo which says it's in beta lets you change the brightness, gamma, the shadow, highlights, saturation and temperature, all that's good.But again, I couldn't figure out how to do a batch change and I would say unless I could, it's really super-unlikely that I would just want to edit one 360, I really want to edit one 360 and say Apply All and Apply All actually means, so for example, if I'm doing a tour and there's inside and outside, I'd want to apply the changes let's say, just to the indoor 360s, then edit one of the outside 360s and apply that as a batch change to the outside one. Now that said, I think most photographers are going to bring the images or either going to not do any adjustment or bring them into Lightroom and do the adjustments or a different software program. But that said, I think Labpano is super-close to having this Adjust Photo feature.All I'm looking for is to add the option of batch change and let me select which images I want to add to that batch. About Facebook, I would like an option to save the video to the camera, perhaps it's there and I couldn't figure it out, but I did some live-streaming to Facebook and while Facebook saves the video, I haven't figured out how to extract a Facebook video from Facebook, short of doing screen scraping, I don't really want to do that, I want to have it something that just works.So I'm not sure that I, if when I live-stream to Facebook, if there is an option for saving the video I didn't see it.So essentially I live-streamed to Facebook and I didn't get a video that was saved on the camera. I can only go to Facebook and have the video live there.Now, and one other I think item on Facebook is I would like to be able to set the countdown timer to go live. So when I hit, when I physically hit the button on the camera, I'd like when I go live to really mean I want to go live in five seconds and that way my hand is not in the shot.Now, I'm sure the Labpano Pilot Go App for iOS and Android, probably addresses that issue but I didn't spend enough time with the Pilot Go App to properly review that and frankly I would rather do it on the camera where I'm not guessing whether or not the app actually launched the camera. So, what else? So, I look forward to shooting 360 video. Now 360 video again somewhat outside the scope of a real estate photographers needs, I was really wanted focused on 360 photo spheres for Virtual Tour.Again I talked about Google Street View and unfortunately I did not get to test that. Hopefully Labpano will send me a GPS module and their recommended backpack so that I can do the map updates, the Google Street View map updates and add some blue lines in Atlanta.I do look forward though to shooting 360 video in March 2020 when my wife and I will be taking a week-long Western Caribbean cruise and I will also plan to shoot a 360 tour of our Miami hotel room. We'll be in a Miami hotel for the night before the cruise as well as our cruise ship suite.So my wife and I are celebrating our 25th anniversary, we've splurged on a suite on the ship and I would really like to capture that as a 360 tour and I'll plan to share this additional Pilot One content in the We Get Around Network Forum when we return.Labpano was gracious enough to extend the loan of the camera to me to accommodate our travel plans. Probably get some really nice beauty shots on the ship and on some of the islands and in Mexico. I did have a couple hardware improvements and these hardware improvements may be addressed even before the camera commercially ships but I'll point them out.The home button, Labpano stressed that the Pilot One camera that I received, hand labeled number 22, is beta hardware. So in their production run, Labpano may have already addressed the home button which feels like it's a tiny bit loose when I touch it. So I just felt like I didn't get the tactile response that I was expecting, it just feels a tinge loose.Again I'm using beta hardware, this may have already been addressed in the production run that begins shipping as early as March 2020.And then the next hardware is actually related to the case. So I found that this soft case it's very nice and it's a nice edition.I'd recommend two things to improve it. First, make it easier to put the soft case on the camera, I struggle with that, it's a snug fit and I think that's good, but I think it needs to be more like a funnel so that it starts out really wide and that makes it super-easy to pull it over the camera and then using the drawstring close the top big part of the funnel, I just felt that there wasn't enough material at the top and when I grab it and I put it over the, here let me see if I can just do this for you. So you get some sense of what's going on here.This is, my hands are near the lenses I don't like that, I suppose it went on, but I just felt like if it was wider at the bottom that, that would be a much better. Make it super-easy, make sure I'm not touching the lenses and there's always goes on easily and again it has a nice drawstring, I think that would close it nicely.Let's see, ah, and the second thing on the soft case, is it comes with a carabiner. So it's got this little carabiner here, it's attached to the case and I like this because there's a loop here and I can carry it on my pocket. The only problem is this is a $1,200 camera, this is not a $1,200 worthy carabiner, I would like to see a real substantive carabiner plus one that has a loop for closing it, so I don't have my carabiner open by accident and lose my $1,200 camera on my belt.So those are kind of the two hardware suggestions, obviously really small things in the scheme of it. Again, I think everything else can be addressed in firmware.So I did get some, I got some pushback on my original review in the, We Get Around Network Forum today in the Labpano community, Jocelyn Trowelburst, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly in the Netherlands Antilles. Let me read what he wrote and then let me see if I can respond to that.And so he writes, in part "Completely disagree with your point of view that Labpano should forget about the PilotTour platform. To the contrary the one using V-SLAM, the Pilot One using V-SLAM technology to determine camera position in virtual space is groundbreaking.It is a good proof of concept and further turning to make it work," and excuse me, and it says further, probably means, "In fine-tuning to make it work in practice will result in a huge time-saver for tour creators. What is the integration with other virtual tour platforms, Labpano surely is not going to give away its V-SLAM advantage, other platforms won't know how to handle the data." So respectfully Jocelyn I completely disagree with you, completely disagreeing, so let me see if I can break this down.So I'm going to read through and then kind of break it down. Completely disagree with your point of view that Labpano should forget about its PilotTour platform to the contrary the Pilot One using V-SLAM technology determine camera position in virtual space is groundbreaking.I absolutely agree with that, for a $1,200 camera to have this V-SLAM technology that lets each 360 know where it is in relationship to each other, that's amazing. And incidentally I think what happens is when you do the PilotTour, there's a message on here that says rocket this way and then rocket this way and so that calibration is probably making that V-SLAM possible.Again Jocelyn writes, "It's a good proof of concept and fine-tuning it to make it work in practice will result in a huge time-saver for tour creators." Jocelyn I absolutely agree with you on that.This is a amazing solution but again in my opinion and even as you write, it's a proof of concept to show what's possible.Where we start to verge is when you write, what is deep integration with other virtual tour platforms. So that's essentially saying the the Pilot One camera should be able to work with other platforms to take advantage of the V-SLAM advantage.So when you write that other platforms, when you write Labpano surely is not going to give away its V-SLAM advantage, other platforms won't know how to handle the data, I would suggest that Labpano should absolutely give away its V-SLAM advantage essentially powering as many of the 130 3D and 360 virtual tour platforms to work easy, fast and seamless with the Pilot One. Again the, we all shoot not because we want to shoot, we create these 360s because we want to share them.And it turns out that many of us are using all kinds of different platforms, literally if you come to the We Get Around Network Forum, we have a post where we list in a Google sheet a 130 3D and 360 platforms. And by the way, we also have a post in the We Get Around Network Forum on 50-plus 3D and 360 cameras.We maintain both those lists and Google sheets. This is such an opportunity for Labpano to knock it out of the ballpark to say, okay, one we showed all the platforms what's possible with PilotTour. We can do the constellation configuration automatically with your platform. So they demo how it's possible.Now, first beginning with those eight platforms that I've identified earlier, but then all the way right up through the list of a 130 3D and 360 platforms. Imagine how Labpano Pilot One and it's bigger brother Pilot Era will do when they crush the competition of the 50 other 3D/360 cameras by an offering to make it easy, fast and simple for every 3D and 360 platform to leverage the V-SLAM technology that's integrated in the Pilot One camera.So where you write that this is a competitive advantage that they'll never give up, there's two reasons they must give it up. One, is so that other platforms can take advantage of it and if you go back to my original thinking here that when a photographer is making a decision about which camera, they really need to make a decision about which platform first.And before you make a decision about which platform, about what the use cases are. But a real estate photographer, a residential real estate photographer and commercial real estate photographer are likely to zero in on a good chunk of those eight platforms.And right now, Pilot One is at a disadvantage because there's only a couple other cameras that actually check the box of those eight that I identified. So it's really important for Labpano to have Pilot One easy, fast and seamless integration with those eight platforms.And it's really important that they not, that Labpano not compete with its own Virtual Tour platform.So by Labpano offering Pilot Tour, it's essentially saying to other platforms, hey, we got something that's better than you have, we're going to compete with you and by the way we'd like to still have you deeply integrate.And that's the part where Pilot, where Labpano may shoot itself in the foot by competing with the other platforms. If it simply says about the Pilot Tour platform, this is a proof of concept but we're going to enable this and all these other tour platforms, it'll sell more cameras if it eliminates the competition of having Pilot Tour that will greatly accelerate third party camera integrations with the platform.And oh by the way, at the big picture level in the forward thinking, even if we all looked at Pilot Tour platform at its best case scenario that when the camera actually gets shipped the Pilot Tour worked, remember I've tested it in beta and it doesn't work, but I'll give it, I'll make the concession that I'm sure it will be working at the time that the camera ships commercially.The point is, there are there there are many other platforms that have five plus years of experience in residential and commercial real estate what a Tour looks like. Including a 3D view, the 360 Tour view, the floorplan view, the hot spots. And so, Labpano could make a decision to say okay, we're going to put a ...technical resources into Pilot Tour and once it does that, it's spending a lot of time and a lot of money on building out a platform that doesn't have a competitive advantage with other platforms. Now I suspect that Jocelyn would probably say, well, yes it does it has this vSLAM advantage.No, nom, that's just the technology of how the other platforms get to the final resolution. So for example, the EyeSpy360 Tour, they build the tour for you. Never mind if there's people in the background and it's a tour as a service business and it's presently done manually. The point is as a photographer, it is the tour is created for me and it was super simple to take my Pilot One shot 360s and upload it to the EyeSpy360 platform and have them build the the tour for me.If you were to take a look at EyeSpy360 versus Pilot Tour for example, you would, even if PilotTour was firing on all cylinders in its first year, it's still five years behind in all the bells and whistles that make EyeSpy360 resonate for virtual tour service providers in the residential and commercial real estate space.So Jocelyn respectfully, I disagree and I completely see how important it is for Labpano to have this PilotTour proof of concept but then to abandon it in favor of offering that feature to the 130 3D/360 Virtual Tour platforms and that's where the real value will come to Labpano as well as to residential and commercial real estate photographer and and Google Street View photographers because then we're not asking a photographer to both change for existing photographers in this space to change cameras and to change platforms.Best that they can still stay, that we can still stay with the platforms that of our choice and we just switch to a different camera to achieve that result in an easy, fast and seamless manner. So that's kind of my comment for Jocelyn and that's made with all respect. I think this is just, this may be one of those where we respectfully agree to disagree.Anyway that's kind of my review of the Labpano Pilot One.We have started a number of discussions in the We Get Around Network Forum, WGANforum.com, I hope you if you're watching on our YouTube channel or Vimeo channel in the WGAN-TV Training Academy, in the WGAN-TV Podcast, in the Apple Podcast app, wherever you're watching that We Get Around Network Forum, it's totally free, you don't need to be a member to read anything in the Forum.But if you want to join the conversation, totally free to join the forum, plus you get 50 plus membership benefits including the list of 50 3D/360 cameras, the list of 130 3D and 360 Virtual Tour platforms plus special offers on whenever there's products or services.So for example, on the Pilot One camera, you can get that free GPS module using our affiliate link WGAN.INFO/pilotone ... That's WGAN.INFO/pilotone ... WGAN.INFO/pilotone WGAN.INFO/pilotone WGANForum.comAnd we have offers like that all the time we automatically put them in an email that when you join the We Get Around Network Forum, you automatically receive an email from me that lists the 50-plus membership benefits with all the ways to redeem them simply for joining the We Get Around Network Forum.Anyway thanks for tuning in, I'm Dan Smigrod Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum, you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5:00.

Hey Gurlfraaand!! It's been a while...ok a long while!! All I'm going to say is LIFE happens...and I am learning to be OK with that. Allow me to introduce to you my Co-host...on second thought, take a listen. What was almost a missed opportunity... We want to hear from you!! Share your story, share some tips, give us the gurrrl talk. If you are listening through the Anchor app leave us a voice recording or email us at melissahgp@gmail.com. Have a great week gurlfraaand!!

Click on the link below to discover the #1 skill to making money with affiliate marketing. What do you think it is? http://www.trustthelink.com/ Hey, today I want to answer the question what do you prefer, affiliate marketing or CPA and what the difference is. CPA stands for cost per action and when you are a CPA affiliate you work for a company or group. You get paid when someone does some type of action. Usually this is fill out some information about themselves and join a mailing list. It could be a survey. Some people compare cpa affiliate marketing to lead generation. What you would do is sign up with a CPA network. One of the best ones is MaxBounty. Maxbounty can also be very strict about approving you and they can be very strict on how you get leads for them. The pro to CPA affiliate marketing is you get paid by a company just to get a lead and you don't have to make a sale. Usually this is a small amount of money such as a dollar per lead. Maybe if you work with a company that sales airplanes then it can go up to $2 per lead. Am I wrong, do you know of a CPA affiliate offer that pays more than $2 a lead? I have not found any. CPA affiliate marketing is better that ad sense, but you can do better. In Real Estate there is something called highest and best use. Say you own oceanfront property one option is you could build a single family home and rent it out and make $8,000 per month. This is like being a CPA affiliate marketer. You are making more money, but you can do better with the land. You could build an apartment complex and earn $5,000 per month from 10 units. The way to do this with affiliate marketing is to build the sales funnel and use the lead to promote multiple products to that one person. Low ticket items up front, residual income products in the middle and then high ticket items at the end. Instead of that lead making you $1 it could make you $5,000 dollars all from the same lead. Doing the same work you just make more money. Getting a good lead just might be the hardest part. To get only $1 dollar for it, just seems like it's a bad deal for you. I know what you might be thinking and that is creating the sales funnel,promoting the products that all takes a lot of work. Yes, but it's worth it in the long run for your own business. Another idea is if you don't want to do the work is you can partner with another marketer and use their system. You can still make really good money depending on the deal you make with them. All I'm trying to say is you can do better than CPA affiliate marketing. Plus, when you have a good sales funnel the money you do make you can hire CPA affiliate's to drive leads and traffic to your business. Enough about what I think, how about you? Have you had success with CPA affiliate marketing? Lastly, when it does come to affiliate marketing one of the most valuable skills to learn is how to promote offers to your list, how to build a list, copywriting, email marketing and what to promote. There is only person I recommend for this because I know he is very good and he helped me a lot. If you want to know who this person is just click on the link below or go to http://www.trustthelink.com/. Bye for now.

With the start of 2020, everyone is sceptical about what the year has to hold. Luckily, Roman Kemp had an asparagus to hand, to help predict exactly what was going to happen. Naturally. We also wanted to reflect on the end of the decade, by looking back on some of the most unfortunate things that happened, including the worst ways you've been dumped. All I'm saying is that you may want to sit down when we speak to Jack... And Don't Hang Up! makes a triumphant return, as Roman Kemp starts horsing around, and fools a stable with a dodgy boot and an even dodgier rendition of Lil Nas X's 'Old Town Road'. Listen to Capital Breakfast with Roman Kemp weekdays from 6AM. Follow Roman, Vick and Sonny on Instagram & Twitter: @romankemp, @VickNHope and @SonnyJay

  How do you write a script for a YouTube video? Join Nate and Karen Farfan in today's episode as they discuss what you need to do to sound natural when talking in your video.   Welcome back. I'm here with Karen Farfan. In the previous episode, we did a topic brainstorm and then keyword research. So we know the title of the video that we're going to film. And in this episode, we're going to... We're going to script it out. and it's actually much easier than writing a script. So, if the word script you know discourages you know, that this is easy and the content will come out way better, that's we're going to cover today. Okay, so we picked this title. How to use aloe vera for pimples and acne. So, let me just copy that. I'll just simply paste that here. I'll turn on the numbering so we know that this is video number one. The best way that I love to prepare and recommend that my clients prepare is according to bullet points or talking points. One, you might want to just introduce like is Aloe vera a good option? You know, maybe give it a history of it or... Or just let people know what Aloe vera is. Depending on the audience and how familiar they are with it. And then you can kind of go under the specific. So, you have any rough outline of what you might cover in the video then we can... I can guide you from there. -Where to get aloe vera? Good introduction of what is aloe vera. -Alright. -Yeah. -Let's start with that actually. So, what is aloe vera. Where to get Aloe Vera. And people don't know how to cut Aloe Vera. -Yeah. So, you would show them that? Like demonstrate? -Right. Yes. And ways of easing Aloe Vera. And that would be a demonstration also. -Do you have any stories of experiences? -Personal stories? I never had acne but I think it's because my mom will put Aloe Vera on me since I was a little girl. She just always used it once a week so that will be my personal story. You know, I've always used to never had an acne problem. -Do you think that you'd want to talk about what Aloe Vera is first or to start with this story before that? -The story. -All I'm doing here is just putting down like notes. -Okay. First, I'm going to share my story then I'm going to answer the question "What is Aloe Vera?" Then talk about where to get it. And then I'm gonna do a couple demonstrations. Anything else? -I feel like it needs a conclusion. How do we close this subject? So, my story where to get it, how do you use it. Maybe results. Some pictures or something before and after pictures. -Okay, I like that. And then at the end I put CTA. You ever guess what that is? Call to action. -Call to action. So, that's where you can extend an invitation. -Okay. So, if you had a PDF download of you know. Tips. Aloe Vera tips or something. Or if you had a product and Aloe Vera powder product that you sold or or coupon to a supermarket or something you could give people call to action. Or this could simply be just to invite people to subscribe. So do you feel that's a complete video? -Yep. -Okay. So that is all it took to write a script for a YouTube episode. Instead of going out and word-for-word what you're going to say and how you're going to say it, this will allow you to be conversational. Because if you're reading a script, you've got a teleprompter. You know if you use a teleprompter the right way, you can put it right in front of the the camera lens. And so you're looking right at them but you're you're reading and you you get you get into the the tone of reading and not just having a conversation. So, I recommend not using a script. There's a benefit to script sometimes. But that's usually for a promo video when there's exact language that's necessary. But for this type of an episode where you're going to you know make a 7 or 12-minute video on Aloe Vera, you just have a conversation with some of yours talking to one person at a time. Like, yeah. You know you're going to share your story. So, I think this is a really good outline. -Do you feel that there is any benefit of writing about every one of them? Kind of just read it through? Forget about it and natural on camera? -I have some clients that like to do that. They feel that if they've written it out ahead of time, they don't really read it. And that's beneficial to them. For me, it takes a lot of time if I'm going to be doing preparation work for 20 episodes. So, you know it's 100 minutes it's you know round it up to a couple of hours of prep time. If I'm writing a script out that's that's going to be a day or 2 of prep time. The more preparation you put into a video, it should translate into the more valuable the video is. But at the same time, you know, you're busy. I'm busy. And what's what's realistic. If it's really gonna take that much preparation time, it's probably going to be less likely that I'm actually going to film these episodes. You know, this is going to be a valuable video. You know, if you prepared it, how much more valuable is it going to be? That makes sense? And if it takes you that long to prepare and you're filming less episodes on YouTube, one thing that we haven't talked about in this series yet is why I recommend 5 episodes per week? YouTube loves consistency and they love volume. And while there are different strategies, there are channels that succeed just launching one episode per week. Those are mostly entertainment type channels or content that will go really viral or it had it does have a much higher production quality. For how-to type content and we're basing most of our strategy on search, I found that this strategy works extremely well when you do 5 episodes or more per week. And at the 4-month mark, when you do that quantity, YouTube will then start to promote your content. It doesn't happen when you're doing less than that. So, that's why I recommend preparing this way. Preparing a simple outline because it's realistic. The content is still going to be valuable. You make a 10-minute episode and on average people are watching four and a half minutes of that, that's enough for you to promote your channel. So, yeah we could probably make the video better and get it up to six or seven or eight minutes of watch time. And I'm not saying to cut corners but I just like to be realistic and be efficient. So what are your thoughts on that? -What about if you do more than 10 minutes? 10 minutes is it's maximum. -YouTube recommends between 7 and 16. And even though they they put out that number 7 to 16, my best performing video is over 20 minutes. So, you don't necessarily want to go too long just intentionally. But if you can keep people's attention, then there's no reason to turn off the camera. That make sense? So, if you can go longer and you really keep people's attention then go for it. And that's what I recommend that you do to prepare for your YouTube episodes. Definitely in the previous episode, if you haven't watched that, we did keyword research and that's how we picked this title that will get you results. And I've got a keyword research guide where I show you how to use the tool how to find these topics. So go ahead and click the link below you'll get my keyword research guide for free. And the episodes coming up next, we're going to talk about how to set up your filming studio and whether you should use one camera or multiple.

All I'm gunna say is Happy Stuff! makes me HAPPY! Thank you :)

"All I'm asking from social media is that they take care of the city that they have created. That when someone is murdering someone else they hold them to account. They built this city and put no traffic lights, no laws." An enlightening conversation with Rappler's Maria Ressa - Time person of the year 2018 - on media literacy, social media and the war on truth. #GlobalMILWeek

Hi I'm Kenny Jay R and this is Built 2 last Podcast . Where I'm your host. Bringing to you a new perspective, sound, & hopefully a piece of mind. This first episode was a retake of my first failed attempt to save the recorded segment. All I'm offering this go round is a smooth track and my voice. If you want more help me get to 50 favorites and 100 views..... Peace!!!! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/built-2-last/support

I Don't Wanna Hear It PodcastEpisode 040 - One and One Are Five: I Don't Have To Do ThatThis week we crack open the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis to bludgeon you with our lists of terror. So maybe do yourself a favor and don't listen too attentively - you know, maybe put us on in the background while you reorganize your computer desktop. I'm just saying you should probably keep the volume low so we don't inadvertently transform you into a Kandarian Demon. All I'm saying.I Don’t Wanna Hear It official websiteMusical Attribution: “It Feels Like Love,” “Here Comes That Jazz,” “Little Tramp,” “Baby You Miss Me,” “I Wish I Could Charleston,” “Big Fat Gypsy,” “I Told You,” “No Takeaways,” “America On the Move,” "Mornington Crescent." Tracks licensed through NEO Sounds; license available upon request.

The last episode I did was standing here as well… I had two big thoughts on my mind so I wanted to do another one here. About two or three weeks ago I hosted an event called OfferMind. I sold 650 tickets We sold about $1.9 million on stage … Which is awesome! It was a screaming success and it was a lot of fun. We'll continue to sell that program which is exciting. It was interesting because the ONE skillset you guys can go learn that will massively improve your wallet is MARKETING. The better marketer you are, the less amazing at sales you have to be. When I do my events, I like to teach A LOT. We went from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, and we only took a lunch and a dinner break. One of the principles that I like to talk about the most, is this whole concept of sales psychology. One of the things that made the events so unique is: I don't really want to teach people the newest thing on Facebook. What I do care about is, what is true marketing? HINT HINT: We'll probably gonna have an MLM event soon called Hack MLM Live. WHY DID PEOPLE LIKE OFFERMIND? One of the reasons why people like OfferMind events so much is that I have an obsession with marketing history. I actually wanted to be a 10th-grade history teacher for a long time. I love studying American history and world history. I'm 31 now and what it's turned into is an obsession with marketing history. At the event, I said to everybody, “The purpose of this event is for me to remove the Internet. I wanna remove today's modern distribution channels”. Let's take those away…. What's that to do with MLM? Just hold on tight and I'll show you. https://youtu.be/6Xn5vTcQxD0 Let's go back to 200 years ago… To the time when the printing press was starting to come around in 1750. The printing press came around and suddenly we could have duplicatable messages that they were sending out... That's a BIG deal. Before that, you had to one-on-one to tell everybody. I told everybody at the event, “Let's remove everything to do with the Internet, learn what marketers in that time used to go do, study their patterns and then add the Internet.” That is powerful. Otherwise, the Internet can be a distraction. We think that posting on social media is marketing… IT’S NOT… It's posting on social media! The purpose of the event was to teach what marketing actually is in the context of old school times and then add in powerful Internet principles. It was very, very successful. THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND THE REFUND One of the things that people like the most, is studying this whole bio-psychology. I know I've talked about this a little bit in the past, but there's a certain key point to this. QUESTION: Have you had anybody refund on you? You do the whole phone or hotel meeting or you three-way him, or you spend time with that individual, and you can tell they're not all about it. Vice versa. There are other people where you show them the product and they're like, "This is the best thing since sliced bread, I love the product." Imagine you're talking to somebody and they're not loving it. You walk away, and you got the sale but it's kind of shaky. And you're walking away and let's say you got them on auto shipper. You walk away from him, and that dreaded text comes to you (cause they're not confident enough to actually call you) and they say, "Stephen, we were talking about this and I know I'm within my three day refund period and we just really want the money back." And you're like, "Ugh! Oh my gosh." We have ALL had that experience. Don't act like you haven't. If you haven't, you need to sell harder. Refunds are normal. There are very famous marketers that believe if they DON’T have a 10% refund rate, they’re not marketing hard enough Refunds are normal. DOPAMINE Let's say you have that experience… Why does that happen? There's a principle that I wanna walk you guys through on why that happens. There are four hormones in the brain that causes us to feel good. They're naturally produced by the brain. The first chemical is Dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical of DISTRACTION. We love to get distracted. It is statistically proven that you check your phone 72 times a day. WHY? Dopamine. Mark Zuckerberg said on film to Congress, "Yes, we brought in addiction specialists to make Facebook as addicting as possible." I'm not here to argue whether or not that's right or wrong. That's the statement. They engineered addiction into it. Dopamine is the easiest chemical for our brains to produce out of the four hormones. OXYTOCIN The next chemical is Oxytocin. Oxytocin is the chemical of connection. Of the four, it's the one that we want the most. I need a connection. I need to connect with people. Seth Godin teaches that right now, there's never been a time in history where we have de-tribed so much. We are de-tribing as a society. But funny enough, it's the chemical we seek the MOST. We're not relying on each other like we used to, but we desperately need to feel a connection, which is caused by the chemical oxytocin. We will give up our: Religion Relationships Beliefs Morals … In order to get a connection, even if it's fake connection. We need connection as a species. SEROTONIN The next chemical is Serotonin. Serotonin is a chemical of status. I don't mean like, "I'm better than you." That's not what it is. Status meaning validation. Meaning, I'm okay in my eyes, and I'm okay in those people's eyes over there too. It's one of the driving forces we have as entrepreneurs. I love this stuff man, I really go into this. ENDORPHINS The next chemical is Endorphins. Endorphins are the chemical of work reward. Let's say I'm gonna go jog around a track. The first three or four laps are gonna suck… They always do. But what happens once you get past that first mile is you get the runner's high. That's a work reward. That's endorphins. It's not dopamine, it's not oxytocin, it's not serotonin, it's endorphins. Endorphins come as a response to work reward. It comes in as the response of pain… The pain of growth. I might feel some growing pains as I'm sprinting around the track, but I'll start to feel some endorphins feel goods and it makes me keep going. WHY DO PEOPLE REFUND There are different ways to cause these chemicals inside of the buying process. And there's something I've discovered and learned how to do quite well. You consuming this right here… I'm giving you dopamine 'cause I've distracted you from something else today. Status in terms of it's very much US versus THEM, new MLM versus old MLM. I try to be as vulnerable as possible with this show, which actually gives a semblance of oxytocin. Endorphins are gonna be very hard for me to give you while you read this right now because you're not doing much. If I was to have you go do two or three things and check a box, it would start to give the chemical of endorphins and the feel-goods. I wanna tell you guys why the refund happens. Let's say you're pitching somebody and they're buying from you… They're getting dopamine because they're getting distracted. They're getting oxytocin, one of the easiest ways to get oxytocin is through purchases. You get that buyers high. Let's say there's a brand involved. They know it's an amazing brand. There's a sense of status that comes with it, serotonin. There's a little bit of work reward. The work they did is they pulled their credit card out and they're buying, they're feeling endorphins, man they're on a high. You're getting home all four hormones during the purchasing process. LOGICAL REASONS FOR A REFUND So why do they refund? What's happening in the brain? What happens in the brain is the purchase is not over. Buying is emotional. As I start to purchase, the right side of the brain is really where a lot of those emotions happen, and it overrides the left or logical side of my head. So I stop thinking logically. And when I start saying, "Hey, buy now. It's buy one, get one free right now." Guess what happens? What happens in the brain is they start to justify the purchase. “You know what, it makes sense for me to buy this right now because it's buy one, get one free”. They think it's logical… It's actually emotional though. As they walk away and those hormones start to burn off, the left brain starts to pop back in and go, "Oh crap. Oh my gosh. Why did I just buy this?" They start to freak out a little bit, like, "Oh my gosh. I wasn't planning on buying this thing today." And the left brain has to start justifying the action. I know I'm spitting a lot of stuff here, but understand that *THIS* is where the key is. If you wanna drop your refunds, this is how you do it. REASONS WHY PEOPLE REFUND The other reason why somebody refunds is because you have not armed the logical side of the brain during the sale. You heard what I just said? That's a BIG statement right there. You might wanna go back up and read that sentence again. One of the BIGGEST reasons why you get refunds is because you did not arm the left side of the brain during the sale. MEANING: You didn't give logical closes. Let's say that you go into a grocery store and you're like, "All I'm gonna get is eggs." How many times you actually walk out with just eggs? ANSWER: Never. Why? Beause you like to buy. Everyone likes to buy. "You know what, I should get some bread while I'm here", "You know what, I'm gonna go ahead and get the orange juice while I'm here." "Since I'm here... " What are you doing? Logically justifying. What happens when the first loved one walks up to you and says, "I thought you were just getting eggs?" You panic and think, “What do I say? What do I say?” What I say is the CLOSES. (I'm going way more tactical, far less story than I should on this podcast episode, but I'm hoping that you guys catch this.) LOGICAL REASONS AND CLOSES What happens is as the customer walks away and confronts their first loved one, they cite logical closes. A logical close is nothing more than a reason to ACT NOW. What are they gonna cite? It was buy one, get one free It was half off If I did it now, I got in my buddy for half off Do you know what I'm saying? They start citing logical reasons to act now. Not the stories that you told them. Go watch the last podcast and what I’m saying will make more sense. People DON’T cite the stories, they cite the logical reasons to act now to save face in front of loved ones who asked why they bought something. [PAUSE FOR EFFECT] People cite logical reasons to act now to save face in front of their loved ones. WHY PEOPLE REFUND RECAP Let me recap this real fast here and tie it in a nice little bow. I know that was a lot of stuff. Maybe watch this a few times too 'cause I know that's thick. This is a pretty deep topic. But just think about this… WHAT THIS MEANS IS: When you're selling somebody, you wanna give them as many logical reasons that they should be doing this as possible. You wanna be telling them things like: "It makes sense." "You're smart to get this done now because it's half off." "It makes sense what you take action this now. I totally would too because it is buy one, get one free before midnight." "I wish that I had this opportunity like you have now 'cause I didn't have this when I started." QUESTION: What did I just do? ANSWER: I just armed them with something that they can quote to loved ones when they try to save face later on. Once those buying hormones die-off on the right side of the brain, the left side is left to fend for itself and unless you arm it, they start getting buyer's remorse. That was one of the pieces people really liked at OfferMind. MY REFUND RATE I really don't have that many refunds on Secret MLM Hacks. In fact, with ALL the products I sell, I have an extremely low refund rate. And it's because I understand that part of my role when selling them is NOT to sell them ONLY on the decision to buy. I'm actually arming them post-sale on how to save face in front of their loved ones. That's my role, not theirs. The sale is NOT OVER until they can justify the purchase to loved ones. Otherwise, what happens is people step back and they say, "Well crap. I think I got swindled." because they can't cite any of the logical reasons to act now. Because of that, they start getting buyers remorse. They freak out! The whole point of this episode is that ONE sentence right there: The purchase is not over until you have armed them to save face and status in front of the loved ones once they challenge the purchase. THAT’S IT. And the way you do that is by arming them with lots of logical reasons to act now. When people are like, "I don't know that I like closing." You're killing your refund rate. NEWSFLASH: You're not closing hard, you're helping them save face. You're giving quotables that they're gonna go say to their loved ones. NO ONE ASKS FOR A REFUND ON OFFERMIND One of the reasons I did $1.9 million in sales at OfferMind is because I stacked closes. I've NEVER had a table rush. That was the FIRST table rush I've ever had my entire life. I hadn't even sent the freaking price and people were standing up and slamming the credit card down. BUT I DIDN’T STOP. I kept speaking. There were 650 people and half the room was on their feet! Do you know how loud the room was? I kept going like NO ONE was standing. I talked for another 15 minutes with everybody up, just doing my closers. Dave Woodward, one of the executives of ClickFunnels, is a funnel freak. He paid for this program before he even knew what was in it. He was the first one in the program and he was super excited about it. He’s a funnel freak… Are you? He's in the program and I want you to be as well. You need to tell people WHAT to cite after they go back home and the emotions have died. Logically, they need to know that they should be in the program. They're NOT the salesman, and now they have to sell their loved ones on the decision they made. If you haven't armed them with those logical reasons, they’re gonna feel like you took them. You didn't… But it just feels that way to them. MASSIVE RANT OVER.  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SALE Hopefully you enjoyed this episode of Secret MLM Hacks Radio. I love doing this show. If you could please leave me a review, that'd be AWESOME! This stuff works. I love MLM, I love what I do, I love sales, I love marketing, I love funnels. The opportunity we have right now is RIDICULOUS. There's never been a time where distribution has been so easy. Where products are made so quickly. Where society discipline is dropping so much… Which means if you just do ANYTHING. I know it's tough to find people to pitch after your warm market dries up, right? That moment when you finally run out of family and friends to pitch. I don't see many up lines teaching legitimate lead strategies today. After years of being a lead funnel builder online I got sick of the garbage strategies most MLMs have been teaching their recruits for decades. Whether you simply want more leads to pitch or an automated MLM funnel, head over to secretmlmhacks.com and join the next FREE training. There you're gonna learn the hidden revenue model that only the top MLMers have been using to get paid regardless if you join them. Learn the 3-step system I use to auto recruit my downline of big producers WITHOUT friends or family even knowing that I'm in MLM. If you want to do the same for yourself, head over to secretmlmhacks.com. Again that’s secretmlmhacks.com.

RIGHT NOW, as of recording this, I still have people auto-joining my downline.     I'm still having people auto-buy my products!    It’s not a showboating thing… I just want you to know that the things I teach you guys on this channel are REAL.    If you’re in the program, Secret MLM Hacks, it's cool to watch you BLOW IT UP!    It's been awesome.    MLM SALES FUNNEL AUTOMATION   Routinely, we'll get people who have BIG downlines, who are trying to find another program to sell another product… And they'll come join and it gets BIGGER and BIGGER.    **IT WORKS**    It works because:     I’m doing this podcast   Of the automation that I put in - Which is the funnels.    This might not be that fast of an episode… Usually, every time I say that it's a bit longer!     But you have to understand…    I've had a few people reach out since I've started doing this stuff here, and they'll be like, "Stephen, my MLM will not let me do MLM funnels."    And I understand what they mean… But I just need to tell you guys something real quick.    If you have sold anything EVER, you used a sales funnel.   WHO INVENTED THE MLM FUNNEL?    What we have to understand is this whole concept of the MLM funnel... ClickFunnels DID NOT invent sales funnels.    The first sales funnel that ever happened was when a caveman traded a rock for a fish with another caveman.    An MLM funnel is nothing more than a sales message and an offer, THAT’S IT!    Sales message   Offer   So, when you think about what it is that your MLM has allowed you to do…    You have a SCRIPT, which is a sales message.    And you have an OFFER.     = You have an MLM FUNNEL.    The only reason why the things that I do work so well is because most of the time, people don't build their MLM funnel with very much intent.    They don't do it on PURPOSE.    And because they don't do it on purpose… It doesn't work very well.    Any "a-has" on that?    USING A SOCIAL MEDIA FUNNEL FOR EVENTS    I just finished an event here in Boise called OfferMind, it's my event.    You might have even come to it, which is awesome.    We had 600 people come   We did about 1.9 million in sales from the stage   …. It was awesome!   QUESTION: Guess what I used?    ANSWER: A sales funnel.    "But Stephen, you were on stage."    It was a sales message and an offer, therefore, it was a sales FUNNEL.    I was the sales funnel, you understand?    What I was doing there was super powerful and it was still a sales funnel.    It's sooo much better when you can take what your MLM has given you and find a way to automate the sales message and the offer.    Does that make sense?    FOLLOW THE MLM FUNNEL RULES    The only reason I'm doing this is that I want you to know, if your MLM has said, "You're not allowed to use an MLM funnel," you already are.    When an MLM is like, "Hey, you can't do that."    First of all, follow the rules.    This is NOT a game to try and break the rules with. That's NOT what I'm doing.    I'm not encouraging you to do that. I don't do that.    But you have to understand that going on Facebook Live and telling the story of how you first started using your company's product, THAT’S a sales message.   Funny enough… They're okay with you doing a social media funnel in that way.   BUT the moment you put it on a page that you own, they kinda freak out.    I'm just trying to help you understand that an MLM funnel is broader and BIGGER than most people think it is.    It is not just these ClickFunnels sales funnels.    That's a method.    HOW TO BUILD A SOCIAL MEDIA FUNNEL   I just wanted to walk you through a very simple way to build a social media funnel that helps build belief in people who might be doubting whether or not you should do this in your MLM.    So many guys might be like, "Hey, Stephen, my MLM won't let me do this," and I totally get it.    In fact, several people reached out and they'd be like, "My MLM won't let me use a social media funnel."    And I'm like, "You already are."    I'm like, "How many people do you have in your downline?"    They'll be like, "I have several hundred people in my downline, and we do... I make 10 to 20 grand a month."   And I'm like, "Cool, you already are using a social media funnel."    You're already using one, otherwise, you wouldn't have all that stuff.    If you sold anything EVER to anyone, at any price, whether it was free or paid, it was with a sales funnel.    There's a sales message and an offer, which is all an MLM funnel is.    The fact we put it on pages is a method.    PROVE THAT SOCIAL MEDIA FUNNELS WORK   Look at it that way, and start thinking through, “Okay, well, if that's what a social media funnel is, how can I create a social media funnel?"    One of the easiest ways to prove the fact that you're using an MLM funnel is…    Let's say that you have somebody in your upline or corporate HQ (something like that), and they're like, "You know what? You can't use a social media funnel. You know what? We don't want you to do these things with it."    One of the easiest ways you can prove the concept of internet sales funnels works is by using Facebook.   PLEASE keep to the rules. I'm NOT telling you to ride the line.    All I'm saying is that most MLMs are okay with you going on social media and talking about the product.    That's actually the beginning of any sales funnel.    THE BEGINNING OF AN MLM FUNNEL   There are TWO things you can do on Facebook (or any social media platform) 'cause usually, they're okay with that.    A lot of them DON’T want you to say the name of the MLM and that's okay,    Play by the rules. I do. That's why I've been able to pull it off.    DON’T try to find sneaky ways, don't try to ride the line. All I do is tell the story of when I first started using my MLMs product.    Think back to the day when that started happening for you.    I asked somebody that once, and they're like, "Well, the reason I use the product is that it has the purest ingredients. I needed the best form of ingredients because I wanna be the best human being I can be."    And I was like, "Barf, barf, barf."    That is NOT what I'm talking about. Why did you make the decision to start using the product you're using?    You gotta go back. We call it the epiphany bridge. What gave you the epiphany, "Oh my gosh, I need to be using that product"?   It was NOT ingredients. It's usually something that's going on in your life.    The MLM product that I use… I'm not gonna tell you the name of it, 'cause I keep it very third-party. I don't want you guys to think I'm selling you.    I'm trying to change the industry as a whole.    THE STORY BEHIND YOUR MLM FUNNEL    On my dad's side, pretty much every guy has or is at EXTREME risk of type 2 diabetes and extremely high blood pressure.    And then, pretty much every guy on my mom's side, have had prostate cancer.    So I'm like, "Well, that sucks. What does that mean for me?"    I take that very seriously, 'cause I'm like, "Shoot, son, I don't want any of that crap."    I remember once, watching my dad go through some surgery. He's generally a healthy guy, but that wasn't good enough.    He needed an extra level of intensity on his health 'cause it's still in our DNA.   I remember sitting there, looking at him, and I was thinking. I was like, "How can I avoid this? I don't wanna do that. How do I avoid that?"    In high school, I was 35% body fat. I had a double chin, I was working on a triple, I was a big boy and I was getting picked on like crazy.    And I remember I was walking down the hall… Outwardly, you might have seen that I was a happy kid. I was a super nice boy.    But on the inside, I was kind of this train wreck.   I remember this moment where I was like, "Enough. I'm tired of being big. I wanna lose weight."    And I lifted every day for the next nine months, I lost 45 pounds, I grew six inches. I went from 35% body fat down to 6% body fat.    So low that it's actually 1% away from considered unhealthy.    As I started growing up, and I kinda kept this habit going. I started competing in sprint triathlons and I got third in the 11th Colorado Sprint Triathlon for my age group, which was pretty awesome.   SOCIAL MEDIA FUNNEL STORIES     Do you see what I'm saying? I'm telling a story.    What I would do if I were you is lead that up to whatever product you're selling. You have a story behind why you're using what you're using.    It has NOTHING to do with the ingredients. That's not why anyone buys anything.    They buy the story, not the product.    Half the reason why people buy from you is that you inadvertently have told some stories about the product itself.    QUESTION: You wanna make a social media funnel using Facebook?    Here's how you do it.    Tell the story of how you came to use the products you're using right now in MLM. What is that story?    There was a story, not a feature. There's something in your past and there was a moment where you're like, "I don't want this," or, "I do want that" .    Whatever that might be, tell that story.    What happens in the customer's mind is, you begin to open up a gap where they sit back, and they go, "You know what? Things are not as I thought they were."   It's really powerful.    What happens is, you open this gap up where there's this window of belief, and they go, "I'm starting to feel open."    They're not gonna say that, but that's what's going on inside their brain, psychology-wise.    "I'm starting to feel like there's a possibility this could actually work for me."    That's the magic of where sale happens. That's the magic of when you finally start talking about your offer, where they go, "I can see myself doing this, why don't I just try it?"    That's the magic.    MLM FUNNEL + SOCIAL MEDIA FUNNEL    If you wanna make a social media funnel using Facebook... It's still an MLM funnel.    You tell the story of how you started using the product, and then you’re like, "Hey if you're interested, please reach out, and I'd love to give you a free sample of X, Y and Z."   DISCLAIMER: I don't know what you sell, so customize that to whatever it is you're doing. But do you see how you just made a sales message and an offer? A sales message is just a story.    Tell a story   Deliver and showed the offer to them   Give a little call-to-action. "Hey, reach on out."    That is one of the easiest ways to leverage any platform with a social media funnel. That is an MLM funnel.    It's more powerful if you can customize the page the video is on and put testimonials on there.    To the degree, you're allowed to…  You can add:    Some scarcity and urgency    A few other stories   Maybe you can have the formulator come on in and tell a little bit about it.    ... You see what I'm saying?    Follow the rules. I'm NOT telling you to go be sneaky or whatever.    I'm just telling you that an MLM funnel is broader than most people believe that it is.   That's good news, 'cause if you're like, "Oh well, I don't know that I can use this whole social media funnel thing that Stephen talks about."    You already are!    Just do it with a little more intent, automate it and then automate the follow-up.    That's one of the easiest ways to make money.    STAGE SELLING WITH A SALES FUNNEL    We sold a lot of money on stage two weeks ago.    QUESTION: What are we doing these last two weeks?    ANSWER: Following up.    I am over-communicating with my buyers. I'm saying to them, "Hey, how are you doing? What are your goals? What is it do you wanna do? Let's jump on a phone call."    Do you see what I'm saying?    You can automate that (and we certainly will in the future).    Understand that you're already using a sales funnel, and that's one of the easiest ways to make money.    If you're like, "Does this whole social media funnel thing really work?"    I dare you to put it to the test. Go tell the story of how you started using your product on social media.    PLEASE don't do the thing where you're like, "Working from home today." Snapshot selfie, selfie, selfie, on Instagram.   THAT’S DUMB.    Instead, tell the story about how you started using it and say, "If anyone's interested in a free sample, this is not meant to be high pressure, I just wanna share with whoever is interested."    Tell me you don't get some sales from that.    Storytelling is an art and science of and in of itself. That takes practice.   But just go do it. That's how I started this show.    YOU’RE ALREADY USING AN MLM FUNNEL    Just start telling the stories, and get good at telling the stories. When you do it that way, it's super exciting what happens.    You'll actually find that people are excited to buy from you. You know that when you go sell something to somebody, and you walk away feeling like you convinced them? You know what I'm talking about.    If you don't wanna feel that when you're selling to people, the answer is to get good at storytelling. Then it makes your offer feel like a gift.    Otherwise, it feels like you're convincing them… "Better hurry. Buy one, get one free by tonight. Better hurry, it's half off before this time."   And then they're like...   AGHHHH!    They drag their feet in… They know they want it (but they kinda don't) because you kinda pushed them and there's some convincing along the way.    The only reason that happens is that they weren't sold, they were convinced.    People like to be sold… They don't like to be convinced.    The whole point of this is to bring awareness to the fact that you already have an MLM funnel.    Start thinking through, design and purposefully plan your story. Purposefully plan the offer that you're gonna drop to them.   If you're serious about this and you wanna take this to a really cool level, go get the Secret MLM Hacks Program 'cause it's awesome, and that's exactly what we're talking about.    Have fun building your MLM funnel, your social media funnel, even if you can't build an official one yet.    Have fun building the social media funnel and let me know what successes you have from just going and doing that.   SECRET MLM HACKS SOCIAL MEDIA FUNNEL    I know it's tough to find people to pitch after your warm market dries up, right?    That moment when you finally run out of family and friends to pitch. I don't see many up lines teaching legitimate lead strategies today.    After years of being a lead funnel builder online, I got sick of the garbage strategies most MLMs have been teaching their recruits for decades.    Whether you simply want more leads to pitch or an automated MLM funnel, head over to secretmlmhacks.com and join the next FREE training.    There you're gonna learn the hidden revenue model that only the top MLMers have been using to get paid regardless if you join them.    Learn the 3-step system I use to auto recruit my downline of big producers WITHOUT friends or family even knowing that I'm in MLM.    If you want to do the same for yourself, head over to secretmlmhacks.com.    Again that’s secretmlmhacks.com. 

James: Hey audience, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Podcast. Achieve Wealth Podcast, talks to and interviews, a lot of commercial real estate operators and focusing on a lot of our discussion about value-add real estate investing. Today, I have Neal Bower. Neal Bower is from Grow Capitas Commercial Real Estate Investment Company. He negotiates [00:32unintelligible] and acquires commercial real estate properties across the US. He has almost 400 investors right now. A total portfolio size of 1800 units, in which, like around 1400 is multifamily and another 400 student housing. And I would like to welcome, Neal. Hey, Neal, welcome to the show. Neal: Thanks for having me on the show. James. Very excited to be here. James: Good. So, Neil, he has been on a lot of podcasts and you know, a lot of discussion goes around the data collection and experiments that you do in your asset management and in terms of your operation and just finding the right cities, right? [01:14unintelligible] and also operation leasing. So there's a lot of data that's being collected. Right. So we can go to that in a short while. My question to you, Neal, in the first place, why did you start collecting all this data? Neal: Well, I started collecting the data because I screwed up big time. So I started my real estate career in reverse. I mean, most people will start with a single family rental, right? I was a technologist and I got a chance to actually build campuses from scratch. My boss, you know, helped me. He was the CEO of the company, I was the chief operations officer. This was a technology education company and we were growing so much that we decided we were not going to rent offices from somebody, we would build our own campuses. And so that project of building that campus was insanely complicated because, I mean, I hadn't even built a single-family home. Here I am, building a 27,000 square foot campus that's mixed use. It's got classrooms, administrative areas, and restrooms and I had to learn everything from, you know, egress and fire codes. And you know, doors that lock when there's a fire and you know, ceiling heights, air conditioning, cooling, heating, and 500 other things related to that. So it was a trial by fire. I learned very quickly and did that in 2006 and so 2003 then again in 2006 and got very confident about real estate. I think in my mind, I got overconfident and so I went and bought 10 single family homes in California, I timed them correctly due to no credit of my own. It was just, you know, 2008, 2009 and got crazy confidence. I thought I knew it all. I mean that the fact was I knew nothing and I didn't understand that. And so I went to Chicago and bought 10 triplexes and I screwed up really big time. I made massive mistakes. None of those 10 properties really ever made any money and I realized just how little I knew and I start because of that disaster, which basically was a million and a half that got tied up for five years with no returns in the middle of one of the greatest, you know, gain markets of all time, I realized that I needed to learn more. So I started collecting data about why those units never made any money. And what it came down to is that I was spending too much time looking at the rents and looking at the units themselves and not spending enough time looking at the area quality. The quality of the tenant base, the demographics of the area, the income levels, job road levels, the population growth. All of these demographics are mega factors that affect every single thing that we do. And they affect them in a way that's very difficult for us to ascertain. It's almost like you're being carried along on a boat that's going somewhere at 50 miles an hour, but you cannot see outside the boat, right? That is a situation that is the reality of what is happening. And so I started doing a lot of research and data collection. And the more I collected data, the more I realize how powerful it was if I could go beyond data collection to doing data analysis and applying the analysis from one city to another, applying these analyses from one neighborhood to another, from one state to another. And the more I did it, the better I got at it. And so I decided to do more and more and more of it. And that's how my journey started. James: Yeah. I think demographic analysis has been missed by a lot of gurus out there who are teaching real estate investing, especially even on the multifamily side, right? People are just looking at numbers right now and I think commercial real estate consists of two things and what is the user and the space, right? So and we are missing out the demographic side of it, which shows that the demand and I think that's what you're talking about in terms of demographic and also what is the submarket demand, right? What is changing over there? How is the crime rate, who is staying there, what is the renter profile, right? What's the percentage of renters versus owners? It's just not many people know how to analyze that and that's a very important factor. Neal: They don't even look at it. I mean, keep in mind a neighborhood that has 30% homeowners and 70% renters is very different. Both good and bad from one that has 70% homeowners, 30% renters, right? So these things matter so much that if you ignore them, then if you think that you're in control, that is an illusion. That is an absolute illusion because those things are really driving either your profit or your lack thereof. That's really what's driving things, right? And so one example is, I mean, I teach a course, it's called Real Focus. It's about the power of demographics and how to apply them to create profit. And I teach it Live to about 4,000 people a year. And I teach it online, to another 4,000 people so there are about 8,000 people that take that course. And one of the examples that I like to give people is this, one of the most common statements, in fact, it might be the most common statement of all in real estate is that real estate is local, right? So you hear that all the time, real estate is local. Well, actually real estate is not local. James, real estate is hyper-local. So one of the cities that I use in my examples when I'm doing demographics labs for students is I talk about Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is a good city to invest in, right? So doing really well, population growth, job growth, income growth, all kinds of good things are happening there. So in Columbus, there is a small neighborhood that has an average median household income of $183,000 right? That is not an A that is like an A++. So you couldn't really go much higher than that unless you're in the San Francisco Bay area, you couldn't get much higher than 183,000, no. Well, the point is that 500 yards away from this neighborhood is another neighborhood where the median household income is not 183,000 it's not even 18,000, it's 6,000. 500 yards between the richest neighborhood in Columbus, I think it's the second richest actually, and the poorest neighborhood in Columbus, that's how hyperlocal real estate is. And if you don't understand how much that impacts you, obviously in this $6,000 income area, that's a condemned area, no one there pays any rent. Everyone lives there for free in abandoned buildings to this underneath $83,000 area where there's absolutely no cash flow, right? Because the income levels there are very high, there's really nothing available for sale. Everything's taken, everyone there is rich, you know, single family homes that you know, probably are like 1 million bucks. The differences there are staggering. And that 500 yards shows you how much you're missing if you don't understand how demographics drive everything. James: So I mean, I definitely agree with you because I've seen deals in the hottest market in the country and people just talk about the city, right? But they don't talk about the submarket itself or the particular location, right? So how would you go about defining the boundaries of where you want to define the demand for a specific deal? Neal: You know, that's a very interesting question and what you're really talking about is, you know, where does the neighborhood stop? Where does the neighborhood end? So you could say something like half a mile from me is a Whole Foods and next to it is a Starbucks, therefore I'm in the best area. But the reality of the situation is half a mile is also a very long distance. It's a very short distance and it's a very long distance. Remember 183,000 to 6,000, right? That was half a mile. So what really could be the case? Is that right where that Whole Foods is, a hundred yards beyond that, there's a street, maybe it's a railway line, maybe it's a freeway, maybe it's just a regular street and everything beyond that is a different neighborhood, right? Different quality of neighborhood. So you can't really compare this neighborhood to the Whole Foods and Starbucks side. And maybe, just maybe that neighborhood is only half a mile wide and right where your property is, that street actually is another neighborhood, even lower class. So it's very common for people to say half a mile from me is Whole Foods. But actually, they are not in the Whole Foods neighborhood. They're not even in the neighborhood next to Whole Foods, which is lower grade, they're in a third lower neighborhood themselves, like two grades lower now. And that's what everyone has to figure out if you're looking to do syndications or if you're looking to invest in projects. How do you figure these things out there? There are many ways to figure them out, to figure out where neighborhoods start and where neighborhoods end. I use paid tools, so we'll talk about those and I'll also give you some free tools. Neighborhood Scout is the best neighborhood tool I've seen. I've seen many of them, but neighborhoodscout.com allows me to do two things. It allows me to basically plug in an address so it could be a 200 unit property, I plug in the address, I basically take, pull out a report and it shows me the neighborhood and it also shows me the micro-neighborhood. Now there's a difference between those two, right? The neighborhood itself is very powerful because it'll tell, you know, income levels, crime levels, you know, degree-granting levels, is it walkable? It'll tell you an insanely large amount of extremely useful and immediately actionable information. But the micro-neighborhood part is even more powerful. So you'll see a map and on the map, you'll see the neighborhood, right? You can clearly see what roads are part of this neighborhood, where does the neighborhood start, where does it end? Does it go all the way to that Starbucks, does it not go all the way? But then, inside of that map, you'll see a yellow dotted line, which will show you a micro-neighborhood, and the property that you just plugged in, the address is always inside that yellow. And what neighborhood scout is trying to tell you is, okay, the greater neighborhood, maybe it's a mile by a mile, right? That's the typical size for a neighborhood. You know, one mile by one mile is this, and then your property is part of a micro-neighborhood inside of that. And how does it figure that out? What it does is, it looks at your property, let's say it's a single family home and it looks at the home opposite it and says, are these comparable? Okay, yes, they are. Then it goes another block, are these comparable? Yes. Are these comparable? Yes. Are these comparable? No. This is a completely different kind of unit. So it says, okay, those units are really not inside your micro-neighborhood. Something changes there. Something's different. Maybe they're really ghetto or maybe they're really brand new. And so the neighborhood quality changes right at this line. So that dotted yellow line is very important to me because the moment I see that dotted yellow line, I put it on one of my monitors and on the second monitor, I bring up Google and I go switch into street view and I drive around the edges of that yellow dotted line because I'm driving around the outside edges of the neighborhood that I'm investing in. So that gives me a feeling about that neighborhood. And then I'd drive the insights of the neighborhood, it's a micro-neighborhood, so you can on Google, I can basically drive it in about 15-20 minutes. It gives me a really good idea of what's going on in that neighborhood. Obviously, boots on the ground are better, I get that. But at this point, I've just received this property and I want to make a decision on whether I even want to, you know, spend any time on the property and this gives me that information. And Neighborhood Scout is very inexpensive. I think you can even get like Neighborhood Scout for 39 bucks a month and you get 10 reports out of that. So essentially for $4, less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks, you're going to learn an astonishing amount about this neighborhood. James: But I mean, end of the day, we want to get rent comps and so let's say the property they're looking at is within that yellow dotted line but there's not a rent comp and now you have to go out of that yellow dotted line, you would you look at your rent comp, how would you compare the rent comp that point of time? Because it's two different demographics. Neal: It definitely is, right? So there's an art and a science to the rent comps. Some of your rent comps will be inside the dotted line so there'll be good and some of them will be outside the dotted line. I think it's still useful because it's telling you where's your micro-neighborhood and where's your neighborhood? But normally you'll find that the vast majority of the time, the comps from the broker are not inside the yellow line and they're not inside the neighborhood. James: They are in one-mile circle radius. Neal: Exactly. And so people are like, well this is only a mile away; are you kidding me? I mean, in San Jose we have areas where the average home value is $1 million and half a mile away, the average home value is $400,000 right? And those are bad areas like really high crime areas. So everything can change in a mile. And I think what this neighborhood scout does is it allows you to basically firstly figure out if you should even be using that rent comp, right? So it might only be three-quarters of a mile away but Neighborhoods Scout shows you that your neighborhood, your property, the one that you're looking at, is actually just at the end of that neighborhood. So that neighborhood is ending right next to your property and then this is three-quarters of a mile away in a completely different sort of neighborhoods so you shouldn't go in that direction looking at rent comps. But another rent comp that the broker provides, it may not be in the neighborhood, but it's on the edge of that neighborhood, it's still only three-quarters of a mile away. But that one makes more sense because your neighborhood ends right next to that comp. So that comp from the broker actually makes more sense. I'm not saying that every comp from a broker is fictional, that's not true. A lot of brokers work hard on the comps. All I'm telling you is that out of five comps that a broker will give you, truly two or three are your neighborhood's comps. And this tool will show you which ones to pick. And then there's going to be a couple that are going to be, geographically speaking, still be in that one-mile radius, but they have nothing to do with your neighborhood and that this tool will allow you to basically ignore them. And then on top of that, obviously there's rent comp tools, there's you know, tools like Rentometer and a number of others. That four a five or 10 you know, dollar report. There's another one, for the moment, you know, also starts with the word rent. There are these tools where you paid $14. I remember paying $14 for this report, rent something and it gives me a report that is specifically about a single family and multifamily rents, right? Nothing to do with anything else, not demographics, simply about rents. And it gives me all kinds of rent criteria, you know, it gives me occupancy levels. Now I'm paying another 14 bucks and I've got rental information for my area, right? It's not giving me comps, it's basically explaining the per square foot rent. It's explaining how many units in my neighborhoods are one bed, two bed, three bed, those sorts of things so that I understand what the unit mix in that area is and if it's a good unit mix. So now I've spent $18 but I've gotten a huge amount of information. And what I find is people are unwilling to spend these $18 right? And syndicators are unwilling to spend these $18 and here's my message to you, right? As a syndicator, you only make money if your clients make money because they usually have a pref, right? So they're going to make money first and then you have to make money. You realize that on a 300 unit property if it does well, you can make $1 million or even 2 million and if it does really, really poorly, you make $0 million so you're paid less than the janitor that cleans that property. And it might be that the only difference and I know this is best case scenario, but it might be that the only difference between that 2 million bucks and not even making the janitor's salary, it might be those $18. Because you forgot that part. You look at everything else in the property and you fell in love with it and it had a beautiful pool and it had a beautiful clubhouse and it had a beautiful this and a beautiful that but you forgot to look at the demographics. Because one of the things I can tell you is some of the worst properties have the best looking clubhouses, right? So don't look at a damn clubhouse because they made it that good looking because they want to sell the fricking property to you and get out. James: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean demographic analysis and in some markets like what we're discussing right now, it's very, very micro. And how do you really decide the deal has an upside in terms of rent, that's why we look for in a value-add deal. Unless you're not buying value-add deal, you just want cash flow. Neal: Well, I think more and more of those deals, I mean more and more of the value adds are becoming cashflow. I mean, let's be honest here, James, nobody that I know of, no syndicator that I know of is able to drive up rents as much today as they were two years ago and certainly not as much as they were four years ago. So I think that true value add is becoming less and less available. Even the deals that are a full value add where we say, okay, we're upgrading 80% of the units, I get that, that technically speaking, if you're upgrading 80% of the units, that's a full value add. But I would challenge whether 80% of those units would receive $150-200 rent bumps. Some will, some won't. I mean the market is changing, the environment is changing. There's only a certain number of people in that neighborhood that can afford to pay that higher rent. And as you rehab more and more and more of the properties in that neighborhood, it becomes more and more and more difficult to achieve those rent bumps. So I think more and more people are doing light value add. At least that's where I'm seeing the industry moving to. James: Oh No. Even myself, I moved from deep value add two years ago to lighter. I mean, I still do value add, but it's no more the deep value add I used to do and just because I'm doing more agency loan nowadays, no more bridge loans19:47inaudible] Neal: I think that's really wise because we have to be cognizant of where we are in the cycle. And so I think you're doing the right approach because a lot of these deeper value add projects, there's another name for them and that is they're higher risk. James: And you also pay a premium for it, right? Neal: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. James: Nowadays, the sellers and brokers, you know, you're basically overbidding the price up and you're basically taking the value away by paying more. Neal: Unfortunately that's the case. I mean, our company right now has three rules. Number one, everyone is overpaying. Number two, everything we buy, we've overpaid. And number three, if you don't find new ways of adding value to the property after we buy it, we weren't at our performance. These are our three fundamental rules today in everything that we do. And none of these rules existed two years ago. James: Got it. So coming back to the submarket analysis because I think you have talked about a lot of CT level analysis in lots of other podcasts so I don't want to repeat that again here. Coming to sub-market analysis, so let's say you're trying to prospect a market, right? So let's say I know you like Boise, Idaho, right? That's the top market that is. So let's say now you have Boise, Idaho, how do you go about prospecting within this city, right? How do you look at whether the deal, because the cap rate in the southern part of the city may be different in a certain part of the city, right? So how do you go about prospecting or do you just get the deal and start going? Neal: The true answer is that you know, several years ago I didn't have the kind of broker and partner operator relationships that I have today. My initial approach was to use a tool like city-data. I use a number of different tools, but neighborhood scout is my favorite, neighborhood level tool, city data, plus local market monitor, plus housing alerts, these three are my favorite city level tools. And then, of course, there's Costar. Costar is not just a demographics tool, obviously. Costar has a huge number of other benefits. The biggest benefit of Costar is supply. It understands incoming supply in the market, which as far as I know, no other demographic tools understand. Simply because Costar has these 50 Prius cars that drive around 50 US Metros on a daily basis trying to figure out all new construction that's going on and totaling it up and trying to figure out if demand is in excess of supply. And in many great neighborhoods, really good neighborhoods, demand is often not in excess of supply.That's because the neighborhood is so great that people are building 3000 units in a two-mile radius of you, which means that everything might be hunky dory now, but two years from now you'll be in trouble. So I don't have a cheap answer to give you when it comes to neighborhoods supply levels, really, Costar is the best option to look at supply and make sure that you don't end up in a market where you'll have 3000 brand new units, you know, delivering and they'll have, you know, two months off as concessions and basically tank your rents for a year. So that's my feedback on supply. Now away from supply, looking at demographic trends, you can do that analysis on a tool called city-data.com. So when I look at city-data, there's a map on city-data so you plug in the city. So it could be Houston, could be Columbus, could be whatever city you're in; it works better on midsize and large-sized cities. Doesn't work well on like a really teeny tiny city like Saint George. You're not going to get as much value out of that too. So let's say you're in Houston, right? So go look at, you know, scroll down, you'll see this very nice blue colored map of Houston and you notice something very unique. This is something I haven't seen in any free tools. That map of Houston is already broken up into bits. And you'll notice that some of the bits are really tiny, like half a mile by half a mile and some of the bits are big, two miles by two miles, three miles by three miles. And what city data is telling you is that that tiny little bit, everything inside that resembled everything else inside there, but that big one that's next to it, the two mile by two mile, once again, the same principle applied, everything inside of that two mile radius resembled everything else. That's why some of these neighborhoods are tiny, some are mid-size, some are large size. So what you're really looking at in that map are the neighborhoods in that particular city. Right? And if you click on any one of those little tiles, a box will pop up and that box will give you information specifically about that neighborhood. And there are five metrics in that box that I like to use. Now keep in mind if you pay for neighborhood scout for that particular address, you'll see more information than this, but obviously you're paying for that. If you want something for free here it is. That box, the first thing we want to see in that box is the income level in that micro-neighborhood, remember it might be like 400 yards by 400 yards. You want the income level, the median household income level in that neighborhood, you want it to be above $40,000, 38 is still okay in some of the Midwest states, but what I find is when you're down to 35 it doesn't matter where in the US you are, you're going to have delinquency trouble. So the median household income of 38,000 is the minimum acceptable level for multifamily projects. Obviously, this number has to be higher if you happen to be in San Francisco, it has to be higher if you're in New York. So I'm going to basically say the rule doesn't, that 38K number is really for markets that cashflow, right? So Texas markets, Florida markets, you know, maybe not Miami, but the rest of the Florida markets, that cashflow, maybe not central Austin. So understand what I mean by cashflowing markets. Here's what you'll see at 38K; when that number, the median household income in that box, when it starts going below 38 K, your delinquency levels start rising. And the true killer of profit is not occupancy. The true killer of profit is churn. And churn is tied to delinquency. Delinquent tenants, some of them do care about their credit, and so they just simply move out. They just leave a key and move out and they basically say, yep, you know, I'm going to skip and let's see if this guy's going to chase me. Because they know 90% of the time, it's not worth your while to chase them and try and get that money. You just move on. You rent out your unit, you move on with your life. And these skips and the delinquency connected with them, the repainting, the time that it takes, the marketing costs, the effort, the people time, kills your profit. And what I found is by the time you dropped from $38,000 in median household income to 30, the property and the project, for the most part, has become viable. I do not know of any syndicators that can make a profit in a neighborhood that is under $30,000. I've made that mistake myself. I haven't been able to make money. So to me, that first number that is an absolute is, go into a neighborhood that has the income to support what you are trying to do. Keep in mind, you're trying to raise rents, right? So even 38 is kind of borderline, right? I tend to basically use 40,000 as my minimum number. I have properties that are at 42 44 46; if you're in the fifties you're doing really well. If you're in the 60s then your property is getting closer to a 'B' and by the time it hits $70,000, you are in a 'B' area. So a 'C' area, one of the definitions, my favorite definition of 'C' area is 40 to 70,000 income, right? And a 'D' area is $30,000 and below. So 'C' minus is 40 to 30. And obviously, these are metrics I made up myself. You could successfully come to me and argue, no. In my area a C minus is not 40 to 30, it's 35 to 25 I'll just say, okay, that's fine. These are rules of thumbs that appear to work in the vast majority of the United States that people are investing. It may not work in your area, no argument, but I think that within the bounds of them being rules of thumbs, they do work really well because they allow me to understand the quality of an area. James: Got it. Neal: There are states that have lower delinquency. Utah for example, for cultural reasons, you can go a little bit lower than that simply because 10% of their income is going to the church, right? Everybody in Utah, very religious people, they contribute 10% of the church, which means that when they do get in trouble the church helps them out, right? So many times in Utah you can have lower delinquency even in markets that are under 35K. So that's a cultural issue, a cultural benefit that they have, but it doesn't necessarily apply to most parts of the US. So that's the first thing that comes up in that box. Remember, we're in city-data, we're looking at the blue map. We're looking at the tiles and we're clicking on them in a black box comes up. Well, the first thing there was income. The second thing that comes up on that box is the poverty level, right? It's very much tied back to the income. And poverty level, you want to be below 15% as much as possible. If you can be below 10%, you're going to do really well, but 15% I think is acceptable. And if you don't mind taking more risk, if you're in a noose indicator and you really need to get going, then maybe 20, but I can tell you if that number is 30, you can't make money. It doesn't matter how high the rents are. It doesn't matter how many units have been bumped up by the previous guy and they have $200 in rent bumps and 300 and all that wonderful stuff, it doesn't matter. At 30% poverty levels, you cannot get 12 consecutive months of rent from your tenants. James: So do recommend, I mean, I know that's the job of the active sponsor when they find deals, right? So even the passive investors should go and look at deals... Neal: Why not? Everything I told you, if you, you know, take this podcast and it's going to be on James' website, you can go to Florida or whenever the heck you feel like. Right? So it shouldn't take you as a passive investor more than 10 minutes, the rule still applies. And keep in mind that a lot of class 'C's are going to be borderline on this so don't expect that good syndicators are really buying properties at 5% poverty levels. 5% is not a good deal; at 5%, that's a class A area. And your syndicators not going to make you any money, so there's no problem with it being borderline. You just don't want it to be too far from these numbers that I'm giving. James: Correct. Correct. So let's say you get a deal today on the neighborhood that meets all your criteria, right? Poverty level, household income and all that, so how would you go about underwriting that deal? What's the first thing that you will look at? Neal: Well, I look at the numbers, the same demographics numbers to determine what my delinquency numbers are going to be. Because I find that I can raise a property's occupancy so there are certain levers that I have that are typical syndicator doesn't have. Syndicators don't have marketing teams, right? Syndicators basically have a property manager. That property manager might be good at marketing or bad at marketing. They're typically bad but they're never excellent, right? So we basically decided early on that that extra value add that we have to add in that no one else is adding in, is marketing. And by marketing, I don't mean investor marketing, I mean tenant marketing. So for every property that we have, we're actually adding more leads on top of what the property manager is generating. For some properties, it's 30% more than they're generating; in other properties, it's three times more than they're generating. So they're generating a thousand leads a year, we're generating 3000 leads a year and giving those leads to them. So I can basically move occupancy numbers up, you know, and I'm very confident about those. So I go back to delinquency. So I look at the delinquency of that particular area. Obviously, Costar gives you delinquency numbers, so that's very good, useful information to have for that particular neighborhood. The other thing that I like to do is, and this is not always available, is you can get bank statements from friendly sellers. Not every seller gives it to you, but some do. And one of the nice things about the bank statements is that some property managers, previous property managers have basically put all the money in like in one check. But most of them actually put the money in like every few days. So they collect the checks and then they go to the bank every day or every other day and they put the checks in. So to understand what the quality of the tenant basis and what they're capable of absorbing in terms of rent hikes, simply look at the checks to see how much of the money is coming in in the first five days, how much of it is coming in the next five days, how much of it is coming in the five days after that? Then the five days after that, then the five days after that. They might be saying that my delinquency rate is 2% but what if their delinquency rate was 25% on the 15th of the month? Well, that area, that kind of area where you still have 25 30% of the rent hasn't come in on the 15th, you have to be careful about not being over bullish on how much you can really raise the rents. There's a limit in that market, right? It may not be $200, it might be $120 that you can raise. And accordingly, you want to also cut down on your rehab budget. Because your rehab budget can be 6,000, it can be 8,000 give me 12,000 but in an area where you know, overall income levels are low, let's say 38,000, and you can see that 20 30% of their tenants don't even pay until the 15th, I'm not sure there's any benefit to doing a $12,000 per unit rehab. I'm not even sure you want to do an $8,000 per unit rehab. I think six or four might be better. Rehabbing does have benefits. The velocity at which your lease increases tenants, like the newer units, but beyond a certain level, it's not that they don't like the units, of course, they love it, they're just not able to pay for it. And when you don't want to end up in a situation where the tenants, all of your new tenants that have come in, those are the guys that are becoming delinquent because really their capability was to get $850 a month units, but they're all in the thousand dollar upgraded units. And so now, all of your upgraded units are the ones that have very high delinquency so when I'm underwriting, those are the sort of things I'm looking at. James: Got it. Got it. Yeah, it's very interesting to see delinquency and you say Costar has the delinquency data? Neal: Costar has neighborhood level delinquency data. Yeah, some market levels. So you can basically go in. That very long report, that's like 86 pages, it has averaged delinquency for a particular market. I'm not sure how they get it. No, I have no idea. But what's nice is they also have expense data, right? So they have expense data. Obviously, you talk to property managers about expense data as well but Costar gives you, you know, kind of the average expense for the submarket, the average payroll for that particular submarket. I find that people trying to beat the average payroll by 20%, it's wishful thinking. James: Yeah. How do you differentiate delinquency between the property management's skill versus real delinquency for the area? Because it could be just the property managers are not doing a good job, right? Neal: I think so. So one of the services that we provide on in properties that have higher delinquency, sometimes we have operating partners that don't want to do it but most of the time we do it is we make my staff, our staff, not the property management staff, will make delinquency calls on the sixth or seven. So we don't do it all the time, we don't want to do it. But let's say the property has consistent delinquency problems, consistent; one of the ways to figure out the answer to your question is, is this a tenant problem? Is this a PM problem? Hire somebody, give them a script, have them call every tenant that is not showing as having paid by the sixth of the month, make three phone calls, actually make two phone calls and two text messages on the sixth and the seventh. Repeat the process on the 10th and the 11th. If you do that for three straight months and your delinquency is still high, it's not a property manager problem. James: Well, you find that out after the fact, after you bought the property. Is there any way to find before you buy? Neal: Well, other than the demographics information I gave you? No, not really because the truth is that it could still be a tenant-based problem. But it could be that the previous owner was self-managing the property and let a bunch of deadbeats that should not have been in there. That in my mind is a management issue but not a property manager issue and that's also an opportunity. You bought this property because you think rents can be at 1100 with low delinquency. Right now, they're at 900 with high delinquency. Maybe the guy just let in a bunch of deadbeats so you can ask for credit reports of the last 25 people that have been put in, what was the actual credit report? Some owners will give it to you, some won't. If they're not giving it to you, you have to question yourself why that is the case? Was he just basically trying to just fill up the property? And, in that case, it's not such a bad thing. You just have to know that when you go in, you're going to have a lot of evictions to deal with. But in that case, it's not a tenant base problem. It's not a property management problem. It's a previous owner problem and you are going to benefit once you churn through all those bad tenants, you're going to have four years of good tenants in your property so you can still hit your performer. You just need more maintenance budget, you need more operating budget and you need your investors to be a little bit more patients because your first 12 months are going to be very rocky. James: Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure you've seen a lot of financials when you're underwriting a deal, right? So is there any dirty secrets by sellers that you have found from the financials or when you walk the unit and see, aah, they are tweaking these numbers here to make the property more appealing to the buyer? Neal: I mean, everybody has their own stories about these financials, right? So the one that I find that is fairly common is that you're going into a property, you want to be able to tell during your due diligence, don't do this during their contract negotiation. But during your due diligence, you basically call them and say, hey, we'd like to talk to a bunch of your tenants. And you randomly, always pick a bunch of tenants to talk with and make sure that there's nothing shady about their rent. So you have a tenant that's at $900 and everybody else is at 800, let's pick that tenant and let's talk with him. Let's make sure that there isn't some side deal where that tenant actually is paying 900 bucks and is being reimbursed $200 in cash. James: Has that happened? Neal: that has happened; not in a 250 unit type property, but in a 70/80 unit property. Basically, what had happened was all the new tenants that had started in the last four months, were all receiving cash back, right? I think there were 12 tenants and between them, $2,400 a month of artificial rents were created, which is $2,400 a month is $30,000 a year, $30,000 a year at six cap is basically $480,000. So that $480,000 for the seller was created by him negotiating direct deals with those 10 people and giving them $200 kickbacks. So his cost was 2,400 a month for three months and his profit was 500. James: Wow. I never heard that. That's really sneaky. Neal: Very sneaky. But you think about how much of an incentive that guy has to do it, right? Technically it's not illegal, by the way. James: It's not illegal? Neal: It's not illegal. He has to disclose it to you that there's a side arrangement, but you can't actually send somebody to jail for this. I mean, you can't sue them and win, in my opinion. James: You can't say it's a fraud? Neal: I think you can. I think that that's going to be fought over in court. In my mind, it's something that you should basically, in due diligence, if you look at higher numbers, make sure you talk with those tenants. It doesn't take that much time; during due diligence, you're at the property for multiple days. Right? Why not have conversations with four or five people and make sure everything's above board. Say, hey, we were looking to buy this property and just checking your rental contract and it shows $900 a month, is that correct? And if there's anything shady, that guy is not going to fall on his sword for the previous seller. James: Yeah. I mean, I've done all the due diligence for my properties. I never talked to the tenants. Do they allow to talk to the tenants when you are doing? Neal: Usually they do. I mean, obviously, they won't allow you to talk to a hundred tenants, but if you randomly pick three or four, they do. It's just not something that people ask for commonly, but there's no reason for them to have an objection. So that's one that I've seen commonly. The other one that I've seen commonly is that everything that you're looking at is actually coming out of the property management software, not from the bank statements. So you look at the property management software and it says $111,000 in monthly rents. But when you look in the bank, it's just 88. So what they're doing is basically they're not allocating for bad debt properly. And they're saying, oh, I'm sorry, this the way that our property management, Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah software works. What they're trying to basically say is, Oh, I'm sorry you caught us, but we're going to try and explain it away as some idiosyncrasy of the way our property management software works. But you know, yeah, we didn't actually make 111 that month, we only made 88,000. So I think reconciling bank statements to what the property management software says, is very useful. They may not be trying to screw you over or anything so the difference may not be 88 to 111; it might be 88 to 91 but it still shows delinquency in that property. James: So have you had any of these cases and you backed out of the contract? Neal: Yeah, I have. James: Okay. It's also tricky nowadays, in the hot market nowadays because people are paying day 1, hot money. Neal: It's very difficult. That's what scares me a lot. I mean, you pay hard money and then you find something where they've tricked you. The only way to get that money back is to sue them. James: Correct. Because people are paying like in a hot market... Neal: Even $200,000. I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, that tells me that something is wrong. In my mind, there is no conceivable reason why anyone should pay $200,000 hard on day one. This is all frenzy that has been created by brokers and it's a sign of an unbalanced market. There is no reason why that should ever happen. James: Yeah. Yeah. I mean they do have something called early access agreement where you can go and see the rent roll and all that, but you can do a thorough due diligence. Some sellers allow it, but nowadays, even that nowadays they don't allow. Neal: Well, in my mind, James, I mean, if that is their intent, why don't they just say, okay, well we'll go hard on day five. When people want you to go hard on day one, there's no way to tell if they are doing it because they are unethical or simply because they weren't, you know, somebody who has enough skin in the game and enough confidence in his ability to close. The majority of the time, the reason is perfectly legitimate that they want you to close and so they want you to go hard on day one but I don't think that that's the reason 100% of the time or anywhere close to 100% of the time. James: Awesome. Yeah. It's a bit scary when you do day one hot money. So coming back to value-add, I presume all the deals that you're doing is value-add deals, is that right? Not a deep value-add or not completely. Neal: I have some deep value-adds but a lot of them are, you know, standard $6,500 type value-adds. James: So what is the most valuable value-adds that you see? Neal: Oh, it's easy. The single most valuable value-add are USB ports. One in the kitchen and one in the bedroom. So of all value adds, nothing comes close to that. James: Really, especially just because everybody needs a USB. Neal: Because everybody that comes in comments on it, right? So everybody that comes in comments on it and this is one of those universal things where men and women comment on it equally. And the better value add is, you know, these days, the wall plates, right? You get the wall plates with a two USB ports, correct? So if you wanted to really wow people, the new USB Dash C standard, pay $4 extra for one that has two standard USB ports, but the one in the middle is that new USB Dash C. So I think those are incredible, incredible value adds; they give you a hundred X return. James: Awesome. Awesome answer. That's absolutely helpful. So now let's go to a bit more personal side of questions, right? So why do you do what you do? Neal: The truth is I fell into it, right? So this hasn't been a conscious thing. I did technology. I started doing real estate because I was paying 50% in tax. So basically tax avoidance was the primary reason why I fell into real estate. But I think the bigger thing was that on the technology side, when I had W2 income, you know, many years I made more money than I made in real estate but I always felt nervous. It's like when you have $150,000 salary, you're always nervous about your position. Like, I always have to perform, I can never have a bad year, right? Because they might start thinking, well, we could hire two guys for 175 k each and get rid of this guy, Neil. So there was always that nervousness about not being in control of my destiny. And I don't feel that now. It doesn't matter if I have a bad year and I only make a hundred grand, but I still have control of my destiny and always make it up next year. So to me, I think it was less about ownership and more of our control over my destiny. James: Okay. But you will keep on buying deals? I mean, is that what your plan is? I mean, where do you want to stop? So what drives you to bite the next deal Neal: In my mind, what drives me is that I still feel like I'm creating value in each additional project. I'm finding some way to make those projects work. I'm contributing and I'm making investors happy and also, you know, increasing my own net worth. Will I keep doing it? No. I think that truth be told, I mean, I admire people like JC Castille who just love it so much. He says, Neil, I'm going to be doing this for 30 years. And I said, if I know one thing for sure, I mean you're very sure about what you just said JC, I met him recently. I know for sure I won't be doing this in 30 years and I know for sure I may not even be doing it in 10 years. I mean, to me, I think that life is an evolution and I don't mind telling my investors, look, I'm going to do this for five to 10 years and then I'd like to do something else because my career is very diverse. I've done solar education. I've done basically businesses around nursing. I've done high technology; like three different kinds of high technology, staffing, consulting, education services. I've even been a primary investor in a gas station. I'm an entrepreneur and what that means is at some point, I want to create the systems and processes so other people who are smarter than me can continue running the business forward. And so my most coveted title is not founder and it's not CEO, it is chairman. And so the longterm goal is that at some point, I want to switch to doing that. But I would not hesitate to shut down the business if I didn't feel I was adding value. This business only survives when it adds value if it doesn't add value, making it or forcing it to survive makes it a parasite. James: So when you say add value means, add value to your personal life? Neal: Add value to my investors. So by default, I don't say add value to my personal life because if I add value to my investors, the adding value to my personal is automatic. It happens by default, right? So to me, the only kind of add value that we should be looking at is adding value to our investors. And if it doesn't add value, we'll do something else. It doesn't mean I'll go out of real estate. You know, one of the things is I'm a very unusual syndicator in that half of my projects are new construction. And the project that I'm coming out with this week is called The Grid. It's a $30 million student housing project, new construction. And so why? Because as the market shifts and Class C properties become so expensive that everyone's buying six cap on actual or five and a half cap on actual, then in the back of my mind, I'm going, well, you know, I can make a brand new class A for seven cap. I know it's risky during construction, but let's say I get through the construction phase, isn't it less risky? Because at this point, you know, maybe it's not seven cap, maybe six and a half cap, but don't I have a six and a half cap, Class A building? What's the worst that could happen? Do we have a recession after dropped rents? So what? It's still a seven cap building and it's a brand new. That part of it is not going to change if I can't raise my rents. So I look at that and I go, you know, there's this whole business of buying Class C's at five and a half cap is scaring me. James: Yeah. I was talking to a broker the other day. He was trying to get me to buy a 1960s product at six cap. He says Austin is good now. Then I say what about the B class 1980s? Oh, it's like five and a half cap rate here. I'd rather buy the five and a half cap than buy the six cap; doesn't make sense, right? Neal: I agree with you. And honestly, you should not be, you know, between a B and a C, if there's a half gap difference always, by the B. James: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So is there anything that you do in your daily life that you think has contributed to your effectiveness in becoming very successful? Neal: I think structure. I'm a robot that has some human, characteristics and I like being a robot. I am extremely structured, absolutely structured, all the time and I feel that it's difficult for people to tie themselves to structure. That's a very hard thing to do because we feel like we are losing something about ourselves. We feel like we're losing a part of our humanity. What I have found is that it's actually the reverse. I'm very structured. I start my work, I work with an extremely high intensity and then I stop and when I stop, I completely stop. I have nothing to do with work because I make sure that every second of those 11 hours or 10 hours that I work really count. And to me, I think that that makes me have a significantly greater output than some other folks. James: Got It. Got It. Any advice for newbies who wants to start at multifamily? Neal: Yes. Right now be careful. Please understand that while there is no crash on the cards, I don't believe in all this nonsense about, you know, prices going down 20%. People say that they clearly don't understand macroeconomics, but you are buying at the peak. This may be a peak that is sustained for a significant amount of time, due to the fact that basically, it's very difficult for prices to come down because of macro reasons, but you certainly not going to see the kind of all ships rising effect that we have seen in the last five years. You're starting now, please do not apply the past to your present. This is a tough time. It's going to be very hard. If I was starting today in 2019, the 2013 version of me would advise the 2019 version, not to start. That's how frank I have to be. If you're starting that's fine, but I think you should be cautious and be aware of what kind of environment you're in. James: Got it. Got it. Well, Neil, thanks for coming to the show. Can you let the audience and listeners know how do get hold of you and how to find you? Neal: Sure. I think the best way is through education. I'm an educator, I connect with people through education. I have a portal called multifamilyyou.com. We have about 50 webinars that we do every year on multifamilyyou.com. We archive all of them. They're deep dive webinars. They're very different from podcasts because there's a lot of displayed content and tens of thousands of people attend those webinars each year. So that's probably the best way to connect with me. I don't mind people having my direct email address. My email is Neal, that's the Irish spelling, n e a l neal@multifamilyyou.com. So you connect with me. I also connect with people on Facebook. I think about 10,000 people connected with me on Facebook. And then multifamilyyou.com. If you want to learn more about demographics, I have a free course. It's at udemy.com/RealFocus. That course, I think right now has about a thousand people enrolled. So it usually has 1,000-1200 people enrolled at any given point in time. So that's also a completely free course. We don't believe in pitchers, if you're a presenter and would like to present our platform, approach us, but it has to be pitched free. James: Awesome, Neal. Thanks for coming and adding huge value to our audience and listeners, I'm sure everybody would have learned a ton of things today. Thank you. Neal: Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on the show. Bye, James.

  Understanding and Buying Holiday Travel Insurance   Learn the nuances of buying travel insurance so you're actually covered for unforeseen accidents, delays, sickness, theft and more.  Many claims are denied because people don't understand their policy. Don't make that mistake and learn what to buy.   Why Buy Travel Insurance? You buy holiday insurance to help mitigate some of the lossesyou face when your holiday doesn’t go as planned, especially through no fault of your own.  Without insurance, you can be out a significant amount of cash for bookings you are no longer able to use. Americans now spend close to $3 billion a year on travel insurance, and that’s up almost 20%!  I buy holiday travel insurance for every trip I take. To me, it’s a small price to pay for piece of mind in case something goes wrong, plus I have 24 hour assistancewhen something does go wrong.  It's super important to UNDERSTAND what travel insurance is and the types of things it can cover.  It doesn't cover 'stupid' or negligence like being under the influence.  And it's only to try to make you 'whole' not compensate you for your loss.  So in an approved claim, you in effect, get back the money it cost you had the unfortunate event not taken place.  In this podcast episode, I get to better understand travel insurance in my interview with Phil Sylvester of World Nomads.   Links Mentioned:  Active Travel Adventures podcast   World Nomads Insurance quote  Costa Rica podcast episode Tanzania safari podcast(Mickey faceplant!)   The Best Travel insurance can cover things: Before your trip: You or an immediate family member gets sick or dies Your tour or cruise gets cancelled (in fact this just happened to me after I already bought my expensive plane tickets and some non-refundable Airbnb’s before and after my tour) Your flight gets delayed   During Your trip: Your bags get lost, damaged or stolen You miss your connections due to other delays Something you booked gets cancelled You get sick or injured (or worse) Your destination experiences a natural disaster or terrorist attack   HOW TO FILE A TRAVEL INSURANCE CLAIM Before you go: Put in the cloud a copy of your travel insurance policy.  Make sure you know the 24 hour Assistance Contact number and your policy number. READ YOUR POLICYduring the grace periodto make sure that it will cover the risks you don't want to assume.  Please don't ignore this! Something happened...What Do I Do? You will need to call the Assistance Hotline and have this information available: Your current contact phone number Your policy number Be able to describe the problem Be able to tell them your location   World Nomads is my 'Go To' insurance company when I travel for an adventure because they "GET" adventure!  Virtually every adventure I cover on our companion Active Travel Adventures podcast is automatically included in their standard policy - unlike many travel insurance policies!  If you use my links you'll be helping to support the show - at NO additional cost to you -Thanks!  Kit   Not all companies cover all problems that can happen before and after your trip.   Before purchasing any travel insurance policy, you should understand how the policy will help you if these events occur:   MEDICAL NEEDS   What if I get sick or hurt BEFORE my trip?  If you or an immediate family member gets seriously sick or dies and you need to cancel or delay your trip, your travel insurance can kick in.  Note that if these same loved ones get sick or dies while you’re traveling, you are also usually covered to get back home where you are needed. For you, you would need a doctor’s certification that you are unfit to travel or you, your travel buddy or immediate family member be hospitalized , or God forbid, dies. What about dental?  If you have sudden dental emergencies, like an infection or an accident that breaks your jaw, these are the kinds of things most policies will cover.  But they will deny getting that crown you wanted. It covers sudden changes to what were healthy teeth for things that can’t wait until you get home.   What if I get sick or hurt ON my trip?  Travel insurance is NOT health insurance, so most policies do not cover pre-existing conditions.  If you have a pre-existing condition, then be doubly sure to read your policy. Some policies will allow for pre-existing conditions if purchased far enough in advance.  But if you get hit by a tuk tuk in Bangkok or get Dengue Fever in Brazil, this is when you’ll be glad to have travel medical coverage. This kind of coverage takes care of in and out patient medical care, prescriptions, ambulances, etc.  It won’t however cover you for stupidity like getting drunk and passing out on the street to then get hit by said tuk tuk. It will get you healthy enough to travel so that you can either finish your trip or get back home to where your regular medical insurance will kick in. Also super important:  make sure that the activities that you are planning to do are covered under your policy. Many travel insurance policies do not cover adventures.  That is one reason I recommend my affiliate partner World Nomads.  They understand adventure and virtually everything I cover on the Active Travel Adventures podcast is automatically included with their policies.   If you get sick or hurt and are in such bad shape that you need to get home NOW, then you will be glad you have:   Emergency Medical Repatriation  If you get so sick or injured that you cannot continue with your trip, you may require emergency medical evacuation, which can cost over $300,000 -- Ouch!  But if you’re in a country that doesn’t have shall we say, the most advanced medical care and hospital system, you want to buy travel insurance from a company that will get you out of there and into the hands of quality doctors and facilities pronto.  You want a company whose medical team can decide whether to help rearrange your trip to accommodate fixing your problem or figure out the best way to get you out of there, whether by ground ambulance, air ambulance, sea level aircraft, helicopter evacuation, flight changes and upgrades with medical staff if need be.  But what happens in a truly worst case scenario: What if I die on my trip?   Look over your policy to see if it will cover bringing your body home.  Some will pay for the local burial or cremation. Some will pay for the cremains to come home, some with some without a loved one as escort.  Choose your policy based on what you want covered here. Note also that suicide or deaths caused by alcohol or drug abuse will not be covered.  Most policies will also exclude pre-existing conditions. If one of your immediate family members dies while you’re on your trip, this is usually covered.    PERSONAL BELONGINGS   What about my stuff?  How does travel insurance cover my belongings?    Baggage:    Delays:  Most policies cover getting some necessary items if your bags are delayed for a certain period of time.  This will include things like necessary toiletries, perhaps a jacket. Lost:  The carrier has lost your bags.  Most policies cover a specific amount of loss.  If you have fancy electronics, jewelry or cameras, you may need a special rider.  Also check with your homeowner’s insurance policy as you may have coverage there already.  Likewise, some credit cards are now offering some travel insurance that can cover several of the items we are talking about today.  Review your credit cards to see which offers the most comprehensive plan and then consider booking your trip with that card. Damaged by carrier.  If the airline, for example, busts your bag roughly throwing it onto the carousel, this is usually covered. Stolen.  Assuming you weren’t careless and forgot to get your bag off the bus, or you didn’t go to the restroom and leave your bag in the lounge, if your bags get stolen and you’ve taken reasonable precautions, stolen bags are usually covered.  You must file a police report to file a claim. And before you buy a policy, make sure that the country you are living in AND the country you are traveling to are covered under your policy. I see that some do not cover Brazil, for example.   OTHER PERSONAL BELONGINGS: Note also that most prescription drugsare covered if stolen. Stolen Passportsare often NOT covered, so check with your policy.  I think it’s a good idea to take a photo of your passport and visa, and then email it to yourself and a loved one.  I also keep a photocopy in my purse and suitcase. I’ve never had need to use them, but I’m sure if I do, I’ll be grateful for this foresite.  If someone uses my passport fraudulently, my travel insurance company can also help me here. Credit Cards.  If your credit card gets stolen, it’s not usually covered by your travel insurance policy, but your company’s hotline may be of some assistance.  They MAY cover getting the new card to you. On the copy of your passport, write the last four digits of your credit card number and the toll free international or national number to reach customer service if you need their help.  This is what you take a picture of and email to yourself. If your credit card gets stolen and you then don’t have another to continue your trip, this is not considered a trip interruption because you can devise a backup plan. There are limits for the total claim and for an individual item. Say $1000 total and maximum $500 for an item.  So if only my $750 camera got stolen, I could only claim the $500. If you’ve got fancy stuff, consider getting a rider unless you are willing to absorb the excess loss.   Motor Vehicle Accidents Your travel insurance policy probably WON'T cover the damage to your vehicle so MAKE SURE if you rent or drive a vehicle that either your normal auto insurance policy covers you WHERE you will be driving. Otherwise, you will need to purchase the very expensive optional insurance that the lender will offer.  CHECK BEFORE YOU LEAVE SO YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO! So the bottom line is, your travel insurance should cover the medical costs of the accident, but not the physical damage to the car.  CAVEAT:  You MUST be driving with a valid license for that country (which may mean an international license) AND not be under the influence or otherwise breaking any laws.   COUNTRY ISSUES What if there’s a natural disaster?   In April 2015, there was a massive earthquake in Nepal, killing over 9000 people.  Most travel insurance policies will kick in to get you home after a disaster, but you need to examine your policy before you buy it, or during the free cancellation grace period afterwards.   If you get hurt in the disaster, then the medical issues we already discussed kick in. If the airports or other transportation systems are shut down, or your accommodations get destroyed or your tour company cancels, this is where you’ll be glad that you have travel insurance coverage.  A natural disaster is likely to kick in several components of your travel insurance policy from trip interruptions, delays and cancellations, to possibly some of the medical coverages. A good travel insurance company will have a 24 Hour Hotline to assist you in making arrangements to help solve your crisis. Note that if a major typhoon is forecasted to hit the Phillipines next week, and you decide to book a trip there during this time, that clause would be excluded because the natural disaster was a known entity.  However, if you booked your trip three months earlier, they could not forecast that particular typhoon. Your policy will usually cover you if you follow the advice of authorities. So that could mean cancel the trip if they are advising evacuation, but no insurance kick in if they do not.  Also, if the authorities advise evacuating , but you decide to watch the storm and then get hurt, you’re going to get denied.  In a similar vein, let’s talk about terrorism.   Terrorism There are limits to the terrorism clauses, but if the even is unforeseen, as most terrorist attacks are, then whatever medical or interruption clauses that might be triggered provided you did not book your trip AFTER the terrorist event.   You can’t utilize this clause if you simply get nervous about traveling some place and want to back out of the trip.  Authorities would have to recommend that people no longer advise visiting a place for the trip cancellation or interruption to kick in.  I had assumed, wrongfully, that when I purchased my travel insurance for my upcoming Middle East trip, that if the terrorist threat increased, that my insurance would kick in.  NOT! There would have to be a serious incident in the places that I am going for me to utilize this clause.   Bottom line is you need to really READ YOUR POLICY during the grace period.   Bottom line is you need to really READ YOUR POLICY during the grace period.   Lots of claims get deniedbecause people are not following the policy guidelines or terms.  For example, again on my Mid East trip, my trip expanded from my original tour. My policy requires me to be covered from door to door from my house.  So the first policy I paid for is null and void because I am now traveling both before and after. So I learned my lesson. Completely plan my trip BEFORE i buy a policy.     Certain companies have guidelines as to WHEN a policy must be purchasedrelative to the date of the first deposit.  If you have an expensive trip in mind, it doesn’t hurt to poke around the insurance website ahead of time to see what the purchasing time windows are.   Then one you’ve planned your trip, add up the NON-REFUNDABLE PORTIONS.  Some things like many hotel rooms you can cancel, right? So don’t include those.  Tally up how much you would be out of pocket if you have to cancel your trip. That’s how much to get the quote for.   Travel Insurance companies calculate rates based on the following: Total cost of the non-refundable parts of the trip Your country of home residence Your destination or destinations.  If you are going several places, generally they want you to list the furthest, but double check so that you are following the rules.  It is worth the call to find out. On my upcoming trip, even though I will be spending the most time in the US, the furthest country is Jordan, so I was instructed to input Jordan.  I noticed my rate quote was the same, however, I didn’t want them to have any loophole to squiggle out of if I have a claim. Your age.  The older you are the higher the cost. Your pre-existing conditions, especially if you want to cover them.  If you have pre-existing conditions, it pays to shop around. Some will allow coverage if bought far enough in advance. How comprehensive you want your policy to be.  Are you adding pre-existing conditions, a jewelry or electronics rider?  If you are going on an adventure, is your activity covered or do you need a special rider?   What about other insurances? Credit Cards.  As mentioned, some offer a skeleton coverage of certain items listed above.  It doesn’t hurt to use a credit card that offers some travel insurance, but I don’t think it’s a good substitute for a comprehensive policy. Travel Agent or Airline coverage:  When you check out, often you’ll be asked to get travel insurance to cover your purchase.  This will only cover the ticket you just purchased. If I am traveling domestically and think that it will be pricey if I have to go home unexpectedly because of Mom, I might buy it, but I usually still prefer the comprehensive policy. Also keep in mind that some agents will sell you a cruise cancellation policy.  This technically is NOT an insurance policy. I still say, stick with a comprehensive policy.   How to Choose Which Travel Insurance and Get a Travel Insurance Quote I recommend World Nomadsbecause they understand adventure and they have a real person review all claims, instead of a machine.  Their policy basically, as it should, requires that you use common sense and don’t be stupid or do stupid things.  And if you’re head is on straight, they are there to help you out when something goes wrong. Your goal is not to make a profit off of your claim, just to not be out of pocket.  I find them affordable and are usually my go to. They do have policy limits that mean I can’t always use them (like my really long and expensive Mid-East trip), but they are my general ‘go to’ insurance company.  If you use my link, you can get a quick travel insurance quote and at no additional cost to you, you’ll be helping to support the show.  If I can’t use them, then I use: InsureMyTrip.com  I like this website because I can easily compare travel insurance policies and then pick the right policy for a particular trip and my risk tolerance for that trip.  They also have a third person advocate, so if you get denied a claim you feel should have been honored, they can step in and take a look and possibly help. Whichever method you use, I find it easiest to buy my travel insurance online.     CAUTIONS: Cheap travel insurance may not be good travel insurance.  READ THE POLICY. You get a grace period for several days up to two weeks.  During that time, you can review the policy to see if it is the right fit for you.  If you see that you missed something, you can cancel and get your money back so you can find a better policy. You are most likely going to have to upfront a lot of the expensesand then get reimbursed.  I would recommend bringing a credit card with a high limit in case of an emergency.  Otherwise come up with a back up plan (ie, a family friend or relative that may be able to front you some cash). Complete Transcript Note: This is a machine trasncript bound to be full of boo boo's. I provide it (unedited) so that those taht prefer to read rather than listen to the show have the means to do so.  I apologize for any errors:)   Kit: (00:00) Okay. Kit: (00:02) Six months before my husband passed away. Kit: (00:06) Okay. Kit: (00:06) We were sitting in our office and our desperate right next to each other and bill was in remission and somebody had called me to ask me do something. This is in November, asked me if I wanted to do something the following June. And I said, no, I couldn't really plan cause I didn't know what bill's health had been like because his cancer had come back twice already. And so I was just kind of keeping things in limbo. When I hung up, he said, listen kid, I'm feeling good right now. Why don't you go take a trip? All I'm feeling good. And after a couple of years of medical and the stress of bills, cancer and just all the drama and the rentals weren't doing that well. And so anyway, I said, that sounds really sweet. I said, I have always wanted to go to Africa. I knew that would be some place but with never want to go. Kit: (00:47) He said, well go if you can find somebody to go with you. So I emailed my girlfriend Mickey. I said, Hey Mickey, do you want to go to Africa and go to safari within 15 minutes? She emails back. Yeah, let's go. So here we are November and we decided we're going to go on a safari in January. So we ended up driving to Washington d C to get our visa because we didn't trust mailing our passport there and getting it back in time in case there's a snafu because at the time was so short, had another story for another day about the Snafu that happened on the way to the DC. But anyway, so we finally, we go off on our adventure. We head to Turkey for a few days to kind of recoup a little bit of the jet lag before we head into Tanzania. We land at like two o'clock in the morning as all the flights seem to, or picked up by a tour company who takes us to this nice little eco lodge that we're supposed to sleep for a couple of hours, get up, have breakfast and go out in the safari. Kit: (01:38) Everything's great. We've got this cute little room. It's got the mosquito netting. It's kind of cute. Nothing fancy, but it's nice. We sleep maybe two or three hours, get cleaned up. We're walking down this dirt path on the way to where the restaurant area was in the lodge and single file path and all of a sudden I hear Mickey Stumble and I turn around and she does a face plant and just smooshes her face in. So we are in this backwoods area and she's just bleeding and her nose is smooshed and we can't even use the water from the faucet cause it's not sterile enough. So we had to use bottled water, try to clean it and the people at the lodge couldn't have been any nicer, but we just, they just didn't have the, the medical facilities there. Finally we get the doctor and the doctor actually recommended that she be flown to Kenya for treatment and she's like, no, no, no. Kit: (02:32) I just want the stitches and the doctor does it. Everything's fine, no infection. But he doesn't let her go out into the Bush on the safari because of the risk of infection. She'd be too far away from medical care. So she ends up having to spend the entire five day safari time at that lodge, which in hindsight turned out to be a good thing for her because a, she ends up making friends and family members out of everybody she meets and she still keeps up with all those folks this many years later. But B, turns out also that she gets car sick and 70 something years old needs to use the restroom a lot. Not a good combination when you're in a jeep and a safari bumbling around on, on rocky rutted roads. So anyway, end up being a blessing and thank God that she bought the travel insurance even though it took a while to get all the paperwork and all that. Eventually she was reimbursed for the expenses. So today we're going to be talking about travel insurance and I've got an expert on travel insurance and travel safety with us from world nomads and we're going to learn all the ins and outs of travel insurance, what to look out for, what you should be looking for. And without further ado, let's get started. Kit: (03:43) Welcome to the adventure travel show podcast. I'm your host kid parks. Today we're chatting with Phil Sir Vester from world nomads, the company I now buy my travel insurance from. And in full disclosure is also an affiliate of active travel adventures and the adventure travel show. So Phil is a travel safety expert for world nomads out of Australia and he's here today to answer all of our questions about travel insurance. Bill, welcome to the program. Phil: (04:08) Thanks very much for having me. Kit: (04:10) I know people are gonna think travel insurance sounds kind of dry, so let's get people off with a good start and let's tell them some fun stories to show them. This is going to be a fun show. Tell me your favorite happy ending travel insurance story. Phil: (04:23) Oh, we have so many. Oh, okay. Here's one. There was a Florida guy and he was doing base jumping in Switzerland, would you believe? And ended up hanging on a rock ledge quite a way off the ground and was quite badly injured. He got rescued and we got him back home to Florida and because of his head injury it had to be a low altitude flight. You can't just put them on a regular commercial plane, but we got him home and he made a full recovery. So, you know, that was very expensive for us, but it was a great outcome for him. The downside of it is we don't have a base jumping anymore. Kit: (05:01) And one reason I, I should note, the reason I switched to world nomads from my previous carrier is because I cover adventure travel and I didn't realize a lot of the things I was doing wasn't covered under regular policies. Phil: (05:13) Yeah, yeah. Look, we've got, ah, you know, I think it's about of, uh, over a hundred, nearly 200 adventure activities that we will cover. And generally they're ones that are not covered by other people as well. But you know, there are certain things that we don't cover. You know, like if you wingsuit flying or as we'd like to call it plummeting, uh, you know, it's not going to be covered. Kit: (05:37) Oh, I've seen video of that. Yeah. Now that's pretty cool. It was crazy. We don't cover anything that the bar is set, so I've got to be able to do it. And I'm 58 years old and I'm only in reasonable shape. I'm not like a super athlete, so for the most part we just do hiking, biking, paddling, nothing too crazy or too adrenaline kind of stuff. Yeah, so I bet you you also have some pretty interesting, weird stories Phil: (05:58) of just like freaky things. Can you tell us one of those and then we'll get into some of the nitty gritty? Okay. We've had three broken penises. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I'll explain this. All right. Just stick with me. Okay. Where are your tone joins the bottom of your mouth? There's that little bit of skin there that sort of, you know, little, yeah, that's a frenulum. All right. Men have got to, yes, the other ones down there, if you tear that it plays a lot and there is an operation that you need to reattach it. It's called [inaudible] to me. I see. And we've had that come up with three times. People that have been away on holiday and they've been having some, you know, some wee time with their partner and something's happened and it's got torn. Kit: (06:46) That's a different kind of adventure than what we cover on this show. However. Phil: (06:50) Yeah. Okay. Uh, okay. Yeah, let's hear it. Few years ago there was a, a customer traveling in India and noticed he had an insect bite and it was getting, you know, kind of itchy and whatever. And then he noticed that it was actually moving underneath there and something that laid its eggs under his skin. So he went to the doctor and the doctor said, go buy a piece of mate and strap it to your lake because the lava inside the maggots inside will be attracted to the role made on the outside, not the inside. And they did, they all lift his leg and went into the meat and he threw it away. We paid for the doctor's appointment, but he had to buy the piece of meat himself. Kit: (07:29) Well that one seems like you came out pretty good on that one. Phil: (07:32) [inaudible] Kit: (07:34) so let's, let's, let's talk a little bit about why should people buy travel insurance? Just to like a, a brief thing. Cause I'm gonna ask you some more detailed questions, but just kind of give us a synopsis of what should be going through our heads when we say, oh, we've got this great trip. Why should we cough up a little extra money? Phil: (07:48) Because there are always unexpected things that happen that mean that you're not able to go on the trip or continue the trip or I have to end it early and these are things that people are just not planning for. I mean who would know a volcano would go off in Iceland and ground or flights in Europe who would know that you know you're going to get hit by a BMO when you're crossing the road in Indonesia, who would know if a close family member is going to be suddenly very ill, which means you have to stay home. These things you can't plan for it. You don't know they are unforeseen. And this is what travel insurance is there for, to make sure that you don't end up out of pocket and don't forget. And travel insurance, it's insurance, it's not compensation. So it's going to make sure that you end up financially where you were if that thing had not happened, but it's not going to compensate you for a bad experience. Kit: (08:42) Right, right. And actually the reason that you just brought up about the a loved one or something, that's the main reason that I started buying travel insurance is I have elderly parents now, it's just an elderly mother. But at 93 and a half years old I that I might get the call one day. I travel so much that I need to go home instantly and they stick it to you at the airfares. And some of them, the tours I do are extraordinarily expensive and I just don't want to be out that much cash. Phil: (09:07) Yep. Yep. Well every sensible willed out. Kit: (09:10) So let's, let's talk about, that's one of the key things that most policies covered and that's trip cancellation. So I'm going to ask you about a couple of different things that I know of about trip cancellation. You can tell me a little bit about what are the kinds of things we need to be looking at. One of which is like natural disasters. You talked about the Iceland and weather things like who decides how bad is a disaster and how does all that work? Phil: (09:32) Well it varies a little bit. I mean it's pretty obvious with the volcano cause when it goes bang, that's it. You know an earthquake, same thing but a a natural disaster. If you, if you check out like the State Department's travel section, they will put up warnings about when things, you know, when they advise you not to travel to a destination. That's a big key factor. The British Foreign Office also do those warnings as does the Australian Foreign Office defect. So we kind of take that is you know the Bible basic. If they say to their citizens, don't go here, then you are not, you can't travel against the adviser. View of the old covenant h case is judged on its merits as well. We have underwriting teams everywhere and they will look at events and they'll go, well this has happened. How has that kind of impact our travelers? And so they will, you know, we're, we're constantly monitoring things that happen around the world. Phil: (10:27) But basically if it works this way, if the, if there's been, you know, some sort of incident in the place that you're going, if the planes are still flying there, if the hotel still open and you know, the roads are still open, you're going. But if any of those things are not happening, you know, like you can't get to it. The roads blocked. The hotel has been forced to close. The tour has had to be canceled because of this incident or you know, there's no, no flights going in and out of the destination, then that's the taste. Kit: (11:00) All right, let's, let's take that a step further with terrorism, which is unfortunately something we have to deal with these days at the State Department, let's say, uh, I'm actually this fall going to several places that are a level two, which it's advise a little bit more caution than the level one. If the State Department moves at two a level three does that kick in the insurance because now it's more advisedly not to go what is level three? So I think it's four levels. So level three is saying, Eh, not a good idea. Like Nicaragua right now is a level three and that they're almost in civil war. Phil: (11:33) Yeah, no you're good for level three but you know, don't go near any of the protests in the streets of Managua. But you know, if there's no advice, no level four advice, then you, yeah, you can use the travel insurance has not yet been cut off. Kit: (11:48) And then now on the the death or a serious illness of a loved one, what are the parameters? Who defines loved one? Phil: (11:55) Look, it is actually defined in the policy wording in the PDS. So yet somebody asked us, we did get a question, somebody said my dog died. Does that count as a close family member? We're really sorry and we understand how you feel about your dog. But no. Yeah, it's generally siblings, parents in laws, but it probably wouldn't extend to cousins. But again, every case is judged on its merits. I mean, if you're sharing your life and you're living in the same house as a cousin and it's a cousin that dies, then we'll, we'll say to that, Kit: (12:31) okay, that actually sounds pretty fair at fair than I would've thought. Um, how about, and then sometimes there's coverage for layoffs if you get laid off and now all of a sudden cash could be a problem. Is that typical or is that something you need to look for? Phil: (12:43) Okay. It does happen. The amend, the one of the other providers as we've got [inaudible] policies for US citizens is if you get called up for military service or you get called up for jury duty or if the business that you work for goes into liquidation, you know, it goes bankrupt and you're required to be there to help clean up and things like that. So there's a lot of reasons why you can cancel around those sorts of areas. Kit: (13:08) Yeah. It sounds like you're actually using some judgment calls, which is nice cause it sounds like it's some of the things that are above and beyond what, what you read in the actual policy. Cause I've looked at the website kind of extensively. So you've talked about the weather and then also if you miss a flight or a connection through no fault of your own. How's all that work? Phil: (13:27) Okay. This is complicated. If you, which lots of us do because you know we'd like to book our own trips and our own flights. If you book a flight from destination to destination B, stop over it with the intention of going to destination C and you book airline number one for a and B, but you book airline number two for B and c and you miss the connection. That's your fault. That's your problem. You didn't allow enough time to be able to make the connection. Whereas if you had booked from a to B to c with airline one the whole way through, it's their responsibility to get you to see. So if you're held up or delayed or your missy connection in destination B, they will sort it out for you and they will put you on the next flight. But in the first scenario where you've got two different airlines as far as airline two's concerned, when you just don't show up, they don't know where you've come from, they don't know you've got a connecting flight, you just haven't showed up. And airline one has, when they eventually get you to destination B, they fulfilled their commitment to you. So it's your fault for not allowing enough time to make the connection in between. So don't leave it a couple of hours if it's really important that do it. Stop over, have a day in the, in destination B. Yeah, Kit: (14:43) that, that's actually happened to me and d was not covered. So I get that one. Now Phil: (14:48) we will book our own cheap flights and we like to make it up ourselves. Right. I get that. But just have to be aware that you leave enough time. Right. Right. Now what about the lost or delayed luggage? How's all that work? You obviously have got to report it as soon as you can at the airport. Always keep those baggage tickets. They stick on the back of your boarding pass varies from, cause I'll take it, you've got not just Americans listening and maybe it's some British people this, no, no actually we are. We're international and we have over a hundred countries. We've got like 13 different policies that cover people from around the world and the wording unfortunately slightly different in the mall. So generally though, if your luggage is delayed for more than 12 hours, in some cases it's only six hours, but you know it's like say 12 hours, check the policy wording, you can then go and spend and get some essentials to make it up. Phil: (15:41) That might mean that you need to go and get some new underwear. You need some toothpaste, you need, you know, some pajamas a you, it may be in a cold climate and you need a new jacket or something like that. You're entitled to go and get those up to a certain amount, which I think is around about $250 a day. And you can claim that back now if it's gone for more than 24 hours, I think there's 24 24 hours. If it's that and then it's considered completely lost, then it's basically as if it's been stolen and we'll pay out the maximum benefit that we've got for your luggage. Now let's switch gears to something that's, that can be really, really expensive and that's medical. So let's, let's talk a little bit about if somebody's got a preexisting condition. For example, a lot of our listeners are over, let's say over a certain age, over 60 a lot of people that we interview here, and they may have diabetes or they may have some heart conditions. Phil: (16:34) How does all that work? Again, with like I said, 13 different policies and different wordings and what have you said, check the policy in the world nomads policy for your country of residence. But there are some of those conditions which we do cover. But if it's not on the list of things we do cover, then we don't. And if you are traveling and something happens that is related to that condition, it won't be covered. So we are not necessarily the right policy for you cause not all policies are everything to everyone. So the reason you should read the policy wording is to make sure that it's right for your circumstances. So you, if you have a preexisting medical condition, you may need to go and choose a different provider who does on their own providers who have screening processes and they will say, yeah we'll cover you for that for an extra premium or no we're not going to cover you for that but we'll cover you for this whatever. We're not one of those because that just adds a layer of complication and slows things down. We are a different type of travel insurance and we might not be right for you. Okay. Now would that be something, do you know of going to like ensure my trip back calm would be a good resource to do that? Sure, Yep. I know of the brand in Australia that has a screening process, but I'm not aware of, I don't know. Kit: (17:49) I used them before I switched to you, but I don't remember them ever asking me about any preexisting conditions. So I guess the bottom line is to read your policy in check while you still have the grace period. That's going to be the only time you can get your money back. If it turns out you inadvertently bought a policy that's not suitable for you. Uh, how about if you have an accident or sudden illness or you eat something? Oh boy, you got sick. What do you do then and what kinds of things are covered there? Phil: (18:15) You have medical bills, so if you're overseas and new VOR, ill look, if it's a minor complaint, find an near clinic and get the medicines that you need and what have you and keep the bill that you get from the clinic and then submit that and you'll be reimbursed if it's a major incident and you're admitted to a hospital. Sadly, when you're admitted to the emergency department, as soon as they've stabilized you to make sure you're not going to die and they've stemmed the bleeding, one of the next people you will see will be somebody from the front office with a clipboard and they're going to be asking you how you're going to pay for this treatment. I'm serious. The person with the clipboard turns up and that's when you go, here's my world nomads policy number, give them a call and they will call our emergency assistance teams and we will swing into action there. Now our in house medical teams will liaise with the people treating you to make sure you're getting the best possible treatment. We will assess the hospital that you're in and decide if there's actually a better one nearby and if it's possible medically advised to move you to get the better quality care and we will pay the bills up front so you can concentrate on getting well rather than having to find your credit card in your wallet. Kit: (19:33) Right now when my girlfriend Mickey, we were in Tanzania and she had a really bad fall and they wanted to fly her to Kenya. She chose not to. Would that have been something when the locals are even saying you shouldn't get that treated here, you better go into the next country, you get better treatment. Is she a doctor? She's not. The doctors were saying exactly she adult number cause she's stubborn. The start ended well but if everybody's saying Eh, you know cause a lot of places we go to our go to may be a little dicey when it comes to the medical scene there. So Phil: (20:07) yeah call, call our emergency assistance team and no it shouldn't be called in emergency. It's like customer assistance team and traveler assistance team. Really like give them a call and say look this has happened. I've had a fall. The locals here and saying don't get this treated here. Go to Kenya. What do you advise we will, you know, you'll probably end up speaking to our in house nurse or our in house doctor who will make the best assessment they can over the phone. And then if it's decided that, yeah, okay, we can't tell from here, whatever, and you do need better treatments so it will get arranged and we'll get you somewhere where you're going to get quality care. And I got to say, if the locals are saying don't do it, I would whoa, Kit: (20:49) you hear that Mickey? Uh, it just, it's, it's so hard cause you know, you, you're so excited to go on your trip and we are walking to breakfast the morning of our safari and she just does this face plant and just smushed her face in and she's just, and she's also, you know, be fuddled and you know, just, it just wasn't what you're expecting that day and you know, surprises happen. And she was just being shook up and stubborn. She's like, no, I'll just go ahead and stitch me up here. So whatever. Like I said, it ended up working out fine, but it was a little traumatic morning. She's pretty tough then, right? Yeah, she's very tough. She's very tough lady, so she's pretty cool. Yeah. All right. So now let's say what, is there any kind of coverage amounts we should ask for or is this something that you have a choice on or how does all that work and any recommendations there? Okay. Phil: (21:41) In Australia, the United Kingdom, we're kind of used to travel insurance being the way it is through world nomad. But Americans are kind of used to a different type of insurance won't see you. This is the value, this is the cost of my trip, this is a value of my trip. And then you get charged and certain percentage of that of the cost as your premium at doesn't work that way. With world nomads, what determines the cost of your premium here is the maximum benefits payable. So you know there was a limit of say $1,500 on lost luggage. So that's the maximum benefit that you can claim and given. And then you go across all the other benefits against which you can claim that determines what the premium will be. So if you are going on a $500,000 trip to tens and year, your insurance premium determined by the, the better maximum benefit of Alpha will be saved. I don't know what it is. I'm making this up. Maybe you know a $150 if you're going on a $50,000 trip to Tanzania, it will still be $150 because of the maximum defined benefit that's payable. So you won't pay any more if you're going on a luxury trip as if you going backpacking somewhere. It's the same because it's defined by the maximum benefit possible. Kit: (22:59) Okay, so so it's so it looks like we need to look at the policy to see what the coverage limits are and if we see that there's a huge gap between what the coverage limits are versus our trip. And most of our trips aren't anywhere near those kinds of things. I've looked at your policies, everything that I've covered so far for the most part outside of maybe Kelly would fall within those ranges. But if you're doing some extraordinary luxury trip, you need to check that closely before you buy. Did I get that right? Phil: (23:26) January. The thing that happens most often is people have got really super duper expensive camera equipment and the maximum benefit for the leading camera is not going to replace it. You know, you might have a $5,000 camera and it's not going to be covered by our benefit limit, but in that case, people who've got big cameras that generally are a part of some sort of professional association or Semiprofessional Association and you know, or photography club or something like that. And those clubs generally will have insurance policies for their members to cover their equipment. So you make sure that your camera equipment is covered in some other way. The world nomads policy has got that equipment benefit level and if that's not sufficient, then you know, you should look at getting additional insurance to cover a specific item Kit: (24:14) and US citizens at Leisha check their homeowners policy because sometimes in particularly we have a rider, you may have coverage there. Phil: (24:20) Oh totally. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. A lot of home policies will cover it. Things like laptops and cameras when you take them out of that out of the house. Yeah. And they often have higher benefit limits than we do at world nomads. So you know, so you walk into breakfast in Tanzania and you fall and split your face open, but also smash your camera. We will do the medical stuff, but don't claim the camera from a, the camera damage without his claim. The camera damage with your other insurance Kit: (24:47) and when you buy something expensive, make a copy of the receipt because a lot of times your credit card company will offer some insurance because they figured we're going to forget all about it. So that's another little hidden insurance benefit that you may have and not even realize you have now also gets a little bit confusing with the insurance with the Schengen travel insurance in Europe. Can you explain a little bit about that? That whole thing was kind of new to me anyway. Phil: (25:10) You know, the USTA that you need to get into America, which is you have to apply for clearance for these at free entry. It's kind of like a visa to say you don't need a visa. Right. That's what's going to happen in Europe as well. You're gonna need to apply so that they can screen you beforehand to say that you're eligible for visa free entry. That's all that is. Kit: (25:32) I thought there's a requirement for travel insurance with that now too. Uh, Phil: (25:36) probably a requirement for medical insurance. So your travel insurance will cover that. Kit: (25:40) Oh, okay. That's probably what they're going after. Okay. All right. Yeah. So yeah, cause I understood that you had to show some kind of proof of insurance. Phil: (25:47) You've already got travel insurance, which includes medical, you see if you've only taken out trip insurance, so you have any cupboard, you know the flight that doesn't include medical, which is why travel insurance is as an all encompassing trip insurance, medical insurance, evacuation insurance as a combined product. That's why that's better to have because as you say, and you know you're going to have travel insurance anyway. Kit: (26:12) Right, right. And then also I read too that sometimes some travel agencies and cruise lines and all that, they'll push travel protection, which is quite different from travel insurance. Can you talk about that a little bit? Phil: (26:25) Yeah, that, that's like the trip detection. So what they are doing there is they are selling a product and you can buy it at a kiosk at airports in the United States you are offering insurance against the cost of that travel ticket so it doesn't cover anything else. It doesn't cover your medical costs. It probably doesn't cover loss of your baggage and what have you. But if the flight is delayed or the flight is canceled, then you can make a claim for insurance compensation thing that to cover your costs that you've lost. So it only covers one thing and they are making around about, I would suggest, I don't know for sure, but I reckon they're making about 50% commission on that insurance that they sell you. Kit: (27:07) Yeah, that's about what I read too. So, yeah, so it's not necessarily a good value. And, and people are getting confused between protection and insurance or what they have in their mind, what they're buying. Phil: (27:18) Correct. And they're using the word protection for that reason. Kit: (27:22) Is there any tips you can give us about how to not only just evaluate insurance policy, but also the company behind it? Because there's, you know, everybody's heard of the nightmares, oh, I bought insurance and they didn't pay anything and Blah, blah, blah. How we evaluate looking at a company Phil: (27:40) such a major, it's really great for that. Go onto the company's website, find their Facebook site, find that, see what people are saying, go on other travel forums, see what people are saying it as well. Because you know, read it is a great place to find information like that as well. It is such a heavily regulated industry worldwide that there are no dodgy operators. You're not going to buy insurance and it's not properly bad. It just doesn't happen. So you're pretty safe with going who maybe you choose with the product that they are offering, which is right for your circumstances. It's very, very, you're not, you're just not going to fond an insurance company that goes bankrupt. But their processes for handling claims about whether they are good at that or not, we'll be very, very clear on social media. But don't forget as well, lots of people get very upset on social media of like, oh, I paid all this money and they won't pay my claim. Phil: (28:34) There's not an entitlement to be paid for something. You actually have to play by the rules. And in lots of cases, people you know, have done things which are not covered. We had a case recently where a customer was upset, they got altitude sickness was, they were in Nepal and they were at 4,900 meters, but they had purchased a policy that only covers up to 4,600 meters and now it's only 300 meters and can, yeah, but you know, that's what the policy wording said. You know, that's the one you chose, but then you've done something different. You've just, so maybe you originally plan not to go above that altitude, but then suddenly you found a reason to, he could've called us up an upground new policy to get covered, but you didn't. So now you're saying, oh, it's not fair that you've rejected my claim. We ended up paying by the way, because you know, yeah, it is only 300 meters or so, but a lot of the complaints that you get, Oh God, they won't pay my claim. It's, yeah, it's because you don't qualify to get it paid. Kit: (29:37) Okay, and then that brings up the other thing too is a lot of times are mad because they might've done something negligent or they might have been under the influence or can you talk a little bit about that and maybe give some stories about that? Phil: (29:49) Yeah, sure. Here's an example for you. For Australian customers who go to Bali a lot, it's very great destination. We go there a lot. It's very close by. It's like our Cancun place. 60% of the claims that are made related to motorcycle injuries out of Bali, we reject because they are not licensed to ride. They're not wearing a helmet or that under the influence or what we call the unhappy Trifecta. All three drunk, no license, no helmet. And they crash and fall off like a client, sorry, not happening. So we reject 60% of those, uh, those, those requests. Kit: (30:28) I like beer. So if I have one beer and something happens to me, I'm not covered. Or do you have to have a certain limit or, or, or is there a, a formula that you use? Phil: (30:38) Yeah, every case is judged on its merit. Somebody will assess your claim and they will make investigations and they will get the toxicology report from the hospital where you're admitted and we'll find out how much alcohol was in your system. And then they will make a person, a person will make a decision on whether your state of intoxication may have contributed to what happened to you. So there's no hard and fast rule because common sense prevails. And I know people will find this hard to believe. But it is true if we get somebody and you know, these are people that we care about, these are our customers, these are our, you know, these are nomads. We want them to travel. We will look and go, well under this part of the policy, we wouldn't pay that claim. But, uh, there's a contradictory part of the policy over here that says we are able to, to pay it. Phil: (31:29) You know what, let's use that one and pay the claim. And as long as you can justify that, I mean then we can, we can look after you and we're gonna we don't, we don't want to strand people in hospitals with huge bills. If there's some way that we can find that is going to pay it, then we will do that. So some a person is making that assessment on your claim. So, you know, we try and put as much humanity into that as we possibly can. But if you're over 0.05 or 0.08 or whatever the legal blood alcohol limit it is in the place where you have the accident, then it's very likely that it's going to be, you know, a contributing factor. But look, if you've had one drink and your sensibly walking back to your accommodation rather than riding a motor scooter and a vehicle Koreans off the road and hits you, you could be as drunk as a skunk, but as long as you know, because that was somebody else's fault, you did not contribute to what happened to you. Phil: (32:24) So it's interesting as well by the way, because we were looking at this now that they've legalized cannabis in Canada and it's like how do we treat that? And there is such a, you know, people do go to destinations because cannabis legal or at least dispensed in places in the United States and the same thing applies. But the, in Canada, the government has said if you are intoxicated, if you are under the influence and you have a traffic accident, then you will be judged. So the Canadian government advisers don't smoke and drive at all. And we would be kind of following that advice as well. So that's the rural set up there. But I mean it's really easy to determine what your blood alcohol level is, but not quite sure how it is to determine how intoxicated you are by cannabis. So go easy. Kit: (33:13) And then also if somebody is, we do a lot of hiking on this program. If so many clients at the top of the mountain, they're just too tired to come down. You don't send a helicopter for them, do you? Nope. Nope. That's their problem. Right? Have people tried? Phil: (33:28) Sure. We've got a massive problem with that in Nepal at the moment because there are lots of helicopters operating there and a lot of very tired and grumpy and saw people at the tops of Trex who can't face another four days trekking back. And it is a problem. And, and if they are claiming to have symptoms of altitude, mountain sickness, altitude sickness, then first priority is to look after their welfare. So, you know, they will get medically evacuated and yeah, and it's, it's a problem if you are at the top of mountain and you haven't planned well on up, what will happen is night will fall, a blizzard will come, the local Alpine rescue team will be throwing in an action and they will come and get you off the mountain and put you in a hospital. Then that's where your travel insurance takes over and we start paying your medical bills and we are canceled and miss trips and all that sort of stuff. So No, there is no helicopter with the world nomads, you know, our little symbol Sanchez, the little sort of in command, there's no helicopter with cheers plays and on it that will come and get you. Sorry, Kit: (34:42) I definitely get that. You've got so many people that are hidden to Nepal, they're not doing their training, they have no altitude prep at all. And then they just wanna be able to show an Instagram that they did this or they did that. So now I totally get that you shouldn't have to pay for somebody arriving woefully unprepared. Phil: (34:57) Why would you put yourself in that position in the first place? I mean, it's like airbags in cars, right? So people go, I've got their bags so they stopped wearing their seatbelt. You know? Why would you put yourself in the position where you haven't planned appropriately, where you may find yourself too tired to get back down where you've gone? Why would you do that to yourself? Kit: (35:14) Well, they may not have the experience to know. Yeah, maybe. I think with Instagram and, Oh, I've got another question coming up about that. You know, they, they see people doing all these things and they want to do it and they may, you know, I heard of somebody thought she was going to the Appalachian trail, pushing a shopping cart, you know, I was like, has she done any homework whatsoever before she started out? Phil: (35:35) Well, here is another about travel insurance. All right. We don't cover the stupidity. Seriously. You're doing a really dumb thing. We don't cover that. Kit: (35:43) Got It. Got It. All right. What about people that are not traveling so specific with specific dates? And this is a very personal question because I got a really complicated project this fall that I'm going to multiple destinations over the course of several months with time in between that I haven't really, I haven't booked the flight yet. I book the tours, booked the conferences, so combined it's too much. So do I do an individual policy or do I do chunks of policies or how, how do I do something like that? And what do you do with people that are just traveling nomadically and don't really know where they're going to be? Is there annual policy or chunk policies or what do we do? Phil: (36:22) Well, you can get a policy that covers you for the world worldwide. So let me get this straight. So you're going away and then you're coming back at an indeterminate time. At the end of all of this, you're not coming back home in between. Correct. By a policy right now because you've already outlaid money on tools and what have you. Get a policy now that covers the dates that you're going to go. And if you don't think you're ever going to come back, then get worldwide for up to six months. Now. Federal regulations when you can't do more than six months at a time, but you can renew your will nomez policy while you're on the road. So you just get online and extend it. And if you've got worldwide then you can go anywhere that you like. But if you know you're going to a specific region, you can get a policy for Asia, you can get a policy for South America out of world nomads. So it doesn't really matter where you go within that region. Kit: (37:12) How about some credit cards bragged that they offer travel insurance? Can you talk about that? Phil: (37:17) Yeah, sure. And they do. And the policies are generally underwritten by the same people that are underwriting, you know, specific providers. But you again have to read the policy wording to see what they cover. They often have a higher deductible than a it standalone travel insurance provider. And there may be criteria around how it's activated. Do you have to tell them beforehand? Do you have to have paid all of your trip portion of your trip or pay for on the credit card. So make sure you know how it's activated. Then check who the emergency assistance company is that they are using. Cause it's not, you know, somebody in your bank who's going to help you and you're in trouble. They've, they've got service provider, find out who they are and you know you can make an assessment of those as well. And the other thing is what is the emergency assistance number that comes with your credit card insurance? Phil: (38:12) You have to dig around pretty hard to find that sort of information. And the other thing is you don't know exactly how much you pay for that. They go, it's complimentary, it's included in your credit card. But they don't tell you how much that travel insurance policy is actually costing you. You've got a willed nomads, you know you're paying, you know, $109 for that policy, but you get this complimentary, not free, but complimentary travel insurance and they're stinging you for it. It's all the charges that you're paying for that. So it's actually not very good value either. And just on a personal level, if you're, you know, if you've just face planted in Tanzania, are you really going to call your bank to look after you? Why wouldn't you know like let's get a, you know, let's get a specialized travel insurance provider to run it for you. I don't know, like it's there and if it suits you again, you know, like I said, we'll know him as policies. I'm not going to be perfect for everybody. Maybe the one that comes with your credit card is perfect for you, then go for it. Kit: (39:16) What about to a, sometimes our car insurance here in the states covers, at least in the United States, I've never, I can't remember overseas if I rent a car, I'm covered on that. Does that translate in travel insurance when you're traveling outside of the area or can you talk about that a lot? Phil: (39:35) Well, you'll so unsure about it. I'm pretty sure everybody else's does. My American car insurance cover me for that excess damage waiver. I think they call it, Kit: (39:45) does my car coverage? If it says it does, does that cover a scooter in Vietnam for example? I have no clue. Phil and I went back and forth on this auto insurance and what's covered and what's not covered, and I edit out all that junk because the bottom line is, is you need to check with your auto policy here at home first and see what is covered there. And if it doesn't cover you where you're going, you're going to need to buy whatever the insurance is at the place that you're going with whatever the vehicle is, whether it's a scooter or a car, whatever. And the key thing is, is you've got to make sure that you have a valid driver's license for the location that you're going to be in. And that might require having an international driver's license. You have to wear the hell about or follow whatever the rules of the roads are in that country. Kit: (40:30) And you can't be breaking any rules, which means you can't be under the influence and you gotta be following the law. So your travel insurance basically will cover the medical problems if you have an accident and assuming that you are following the rules but it will not cover the auto vehicle damages. That's what your auto policy needs to cover. And if you don't have an auto policy, you need to buy one from the company you're renting from. So that's the bottom line. And some policies may cover your deductible on auto accident but not the actual accident. So I can not emphasize more clearly you need to read the policy, you get a grace period after you buy the policy, you download the policy, you actually read it and see is this a suitable policy for you and are you willing to take the risks that are not covered. Your policy will spell out in black and white what is and what is not covered. And you cannot expect them to make exceptions. That's just the way it is. Okay, so let's switch gears and let's talk about stolen baggage. Phil: (41:37) The biggest problem we have, and it's a little unfair, is what's what's considered to be unaccompanied baggage. If you are not paying proper attention to your belongings and they get stolen, the loss may not be covered. And sometimes that gets down to, oh I just put it on the table now turned around for one second. And it's like, yeah, well that was unattended baggage as opposed to, you know, I, I left it over there and walked away to another shop and came back, which is quite obvious. So sometimes it can sound really unfair about the way it is treated. So please look after your belongings. Don't put your cell phone down on a table and turn around just for a second. Cause in some places that we traveled to, they are or can be solid on the black market for like, you know, a month with wages for somebody local. So look after your belongings, don't leave them unattended. And don't be surprised if you do and your claim is questioned. Kit: (42:40) Let's, so let's talk about theft. You're walking through the markets and somebody snatches your purse. Phil: (42:46) So you had it on under your arm. They still grabbed or they cut, they cut the strap and ran off with that. Yep. Is that covered? Yeah, it happens all the time. Hatton. Just recently, actually a friend of mine works for a big international airline and they have had two or three of the cabin stuff, have had the handbags snatched by motorcycle thieves. You know, they ride by and just pull them off. There's an Australia woman who died because of that, about three or four years ago. So yeah, look, if you're injured in that, yes. If the bag has got valuables in it and it will often have things like your passport in it, yeah. Then the cost of replacing those items will be covered. That is absolutely. They left lots of baggage. Yes. It's covered. Plus you may have been injured as well, so we'd cover your medical bills Kit: (43:34) and so what kind of proof do we have to present to you? It's something like that. I mean, I don't take a picture of what's in my purse. How do we have to show you that we've actually had a loss? Phil: (43:42) Well, it's pretty obvious with a passport. I don't have it. I can't leave the country. I need to go and get a new one. If it's something like a camera or something like that, and you should do this with all of your positions that you take away. Nobody keeps the receipts when they bought stuff. You know, maybe you've had your camera for five years and you don't know where that receipts gone and what have you. But to prevent fraud, we're going to need some sort of proof that you owned it in the first place and some sort of proof that I actually was stolen from you. So the proof that you had it in the first place, if you've got the receipt, great, nobody does. But if you tape, you're the one person that does,

All I'm gonna say is this is my FAVOURITE city I've been to! It's so sunny, and clean, and quirky, and busy, and interesting, and fun, and MUCH, MUCH MORE! Barcelona brings me happiness! :)

Common courtesy is all I'm asking for here!  That's what this show is all about.  How often are you left waiting and waiting for a return message?  Do you wait so long that you turn into a stalker trying to get a response? Well, I have and I don't like being that person, but I also hate hearing crickets!  I mean does it really take so much of someone's time to just answer back.  In all my many years of business practice that is the one thing I believed, at one time, was just a given.   In sales, I had to be the consistent itch to my advertisers making sure I got the ad, the new copy, the proof, the payment, etc.  Because I was responsible to the publication and wanted a paycheck for all my hard work. But today, and for the past 14 years I report only to myself.  As a network marketer I get a commission when I complete the sale, as in most sales position.  However, I don't have to report in to someone else first nor am I responsible for someone else's deadline or bottom line.   But it still stinks when someone cannot take time to answer back.  To return the proposal, to call you back.  I would much rather be told I am not interested than leave me hanging with a maybe.  Or have someone sign up for your service or product and never let you follow through on how to use it.  So why sign up? This has baffled me for a long time, but even more so as the skills of personal communication have been transferred to Social Media posts, likes and group interaction.  How about you and me, one on one?  All I'm asking for is common courtesy to respond in like.  If you were on the tennis court or playing pickleball or any game - would you not feel compelled to return the ball?   Passing On A Smile, Gail   

I'm very excited to share with you a little bit more on how I actually get paid to find my leads. In the past, I have taught this concept several times… But I wanna share with you some more examples. When I was going around talking to a bunch of friends and family… And I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do… I'm not bad mouthing that, you understand? There's nothing wrong with talking to friends and family. Where I have the issue is before you even approach them, when you know, "Hey, they're not gonna be a great fit," but you go forward anyway. Or you have to convince them in. Have you ever noticed that those are the people that you have to hold a cattle prod to their back to get them to do anything. I don't want that kind of individual. I want somebody who WANTS to be in, who WANTS to be a runner, who is ready to work. And who actually WANTS to build a real asset… And not just a little money on the side. I WANT actual runners, people who are looking to build a business. GENERATING LEADS WITH FRONT-END PRODUCTS Every business needs leads. So what do you do? That was the issue I ran into. I remember when I finally walked through my entire list, and there were multiple times I wrote out 240 people… And I was like, "Look at all these people. Oh, my gosh. And if they got even a fifth of that... " And you start playing the percentage game. "What island will I buy?" I joke about that, but that was one of the things that I was like, "Holy cow." And it was one of the things that I was super concerned about when it suddenly wasn't working 'cause I was like, "Where else do I get my leads from? I have no idea where to get my leads." And suddenly the business was dead and I couldn't talk to anybody. This is something that, if you've not run into in the past... You're gonna run into it. If you don't figure out a lead machine, if you don't figure out a lead system, it's going to DIE. Every business that does not have consistent leads and cash flow dies. Those are the two numbers you should always watch. How many leads am I getting? Actual leads. Not just like, "I'm kinda interested." Qualified leads. Track them every month. We started doing that on a white board. When we started actually tracking the leads, for some reason without me even consciously doing more, we doubled the next month. Then after that it was like, another 50% higher than that… Just by us tracking it. I encourage you to start tracking the amount of leads coming in. ACQUIRING CUSTOMERS WITH FRONT-END PRODUCTS I wanna share with you ONE of my absolute favorite ways to not only get leads, but also get them faster while not having to pay for them. ' You need to understand a principle that all of us Internet marketers understand… Whoever can pay the most to acquire a customer wins. You can even have a worse product, but be able to spend more to acquire customer profitably, and you will WIN against the people who have better products. It's ONE of the major reasons why, when big MLMs say things like, "The product's so great, just go get it in front of the people and it sells itself." That might be true to a very small percentage of people… But the reality is, if I can spend $50 to acquire a customer and you can only spend $5, I am going to dominate you, even with a worse product. That’s why you have to think about this like, "Okay, so how do I actually make a lead machine?" All I do is teach people how to make lead machines, and wait for them to qualify themselves and say, "You know what, I am interested, Stephen. I'm interested in whatever you're doing. Let me come over and start chatting with you." I have some numbers here and what I don't want this to be is like, "Look at Stephen showing all the numbers of all the stuff he's making." Could you raise your hand right now and be like, "I will not get offended". FRONT-END PRODUCTS ARE UNAFFILIATED WITH MLM I wanna share with you real life stats of things that I'm actually doing… This is just ONE of my products that is actually generating leads for me. Qualifying them and teaching the ones are a good fit. I'm not saying that they're not good if they don't join my downline… Some of them already have one, which is great, they should stay in theirs. I'm not trying to pull from other places. That's not what I'm doing here. What I'm saying is there's a group of people who are already unhappy with what they're in. There's a certain kind of ‘moon's aligned’ individual. Q: Is it everybody? A: No… And it shouldn't be. What I do is create these front-end products that are unaffiliated with my MLM. It doesn't even say what I'm in. It's unaffiliated. I don't teach their stuff I'm not selling their products I don't do anything … I have something literally in the front here. I don't talk about it, I'm not speaking about it, I'm not saying the name of the product. I'm not even alluding. I keep my nose so clean. I'm not saying what it is that I'm actually in… And I know it drives some of you guys crazy. But that's the point! I create these front-end products that attract the dream person that I would love to have inside my downline. WHAT FRONT-END PRODUCTS DOES YOUR DREAM CUSTOMER WANT? It's gonna be really hard to attract your dream customer or your dream downline member if you don't even know what that looks like. Get good at defining what your dream is… And we talk a lot more about that. If you're liking this stuff, go to secretmlmhacks.com and grab the program. So I’ve got my dream customer… And what I'm gonna go do is figure out what this person is struggling with. I'm gonna figure out what things they're having a hard time with. Maybe they haven't gotten over their fear of talking to somebody. How can I make a general product (meaning it's not MLM company specific) teaching people how to overcome their fear of speaking to people? What I do is list a whole bunch of problems… Problems and problems and problems and problems and problems and problems… I go through and I look to see the ones that I could solve, like, "Oh, you know what, I actually know what it's like to be afraid of speaking to people, here's how I got over that." What if I was to film a small little course and sell that for a little bit of money? SELL IT… Don't give it away for free. Now I have a product that’s NOT affiliated with my MLM. It doesn't say the name, it doesn't say the product, no alluding… There's no cross-over. All I'm doing is I am creating actual value. THE LARSEN DEFINITION OF ‘VALUE’ What IS value? Value is when you solve a legitimate, expensive problem. It has to be expensive because you need to get paid; this is capitalism. It has to be legitimate because it can't be like, "Well, it's a serious issue." In one of my favorite Shark Tank episodes ever, the reason why they didn't wanna take the time of day to listen to this lady is because they were like, "You didn't solve an actual issue here. You just made an interesting trinket." Then she was like, "No, it's a real problem." They're like, "It's not a real problem, it's like a cute thing." You have to solve an actual issue. Value is solving a legitimate, expensive problem. How can I cause value in whatever they're doing? I want them to have success in their thing. Then I'm gonna solve these and make my own products and sell them because it's capitalism. Then I'm gonna make this big old list of people who are buying and not buying... You have buyers and people who just opted in and didn't actually purchase… Then I'm gonna keep providing value to the buyers (I'm gonna sell them the next thing), the people who just opted in (I'm gonna get them to try to buy the current thing). What it allows me to do is spend ad money. I don't take profit from these things, that's not the point. ADS FOR FRONT-END PRODUCTS The point is the recoup ad cost, because if I can spend money on ads... And I got ads, ads, ads… I can talk to so many more dream people than those who are not spending ads. Money moves faster than time. So I'm gonna go spend money on ads… Then they're gonna come pay me money, and I'm just gonna recycle it right back into the ads. What it's doing is spitting out a list of qualified people who have said, "I'm really actually serious about this." The mentality of somebody who spends nothing versus $1 is so much different. FREE versus $1 is the longest road ever. That's why I can sell something that is super cheap. This is how I do it. Now I got a list of people who are buyers and I'm gonna ask them to buy the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. I'm not talking about MLM or about the products. I'm not alluding to the products, I'm not trying to be sneaky, I'm not trying to ride the line as much as I can. The reason I'm walking through this again because we've noticed this is one of the MAJOR questions people have, and they get stressed out about it. Just keep it simple. All I'm doing is… Making a product Solving a legitimate issue in the marketplace that people pay for that is completely unaffiliated with my MLM WHAT IS A SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFER? We call this process a self-liquidating offer. Meaning, I'm gonna make an offer but it self-liquidates. I'm not selling it to go make a bunch of money and take it, I'm only doing it so that I can spend more on ads that attracts my dream customer. All I do is I make a cool product that only my dream customer would be interested in. I wanna talk to ONLY those people who have had a hard time, a scary time with talking to people. They have a hard time with opening their mouth, they don't know what to say in front of people, they clam up. If you like this, again, go to secretmlmhacks.com and buy the program. **This is my blatant pitch** As we've gotten further down the show, I'm more blatantly pitching it because it's in the program! Just go to the program. I can't give you EVERYTHING on this podcast. When you say… What: Is my dream customer? Issues are they having? Are those are legitimate and valuable and expensive problems that I can actually solve? Then I'm gonna go in and make that, and I'm gonna make it really awesome. I'm gonna over-deliver. I want a reputation for delivering more value than they bought… Which is what I do, and why my offers are so huge, and why I put so much stuff in them to help you and actually accelerate the success with it. ADDING VALUE TO YOUR FRONT-END PRODUCTS I'm gonna pump tons and tons of stuff in there… Then they're like, "Man, this guy's really helping me." They come and they purchase. They buy the product, and then I'll have a list of people who bought it, and those who didn't (and that's okay)... But the buyers list might buy the next thing. All that's doing is feeding the pot of ads. And those who opted in, maybe they just need to hear more of my stuff. Let's send them to the podcast. There's always people who reach out and say, "Stephen, dude, whatever you're in, I just wanna join it because I like the structure that you're giving." And I'm like, "Cool." Q: Did I outbound pitch? A: No. Q: Did I talk about my MLM in these ads? A: Heck, no. Q: Did I talk about my MLM in these products? A: Absolutely not. It's a separate island… And that's why it works so well. MY SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFER STATS I wanted to share with you a few numbers on this… So you can see how powerful the principle really is . It's life changing. It changes the entire MLM model (and there's nothing wrong with that). It's multi-level marketing. That doesn't mean you can't use actual tactics that are used in other businesses. One of the products that I sell is the Secret MLM Hacks product. I just wanna share with you some of the numbers on this… So that you can see me doing this in live action. What I have over here is a dream customer… And I have my MLM downline. REMEMBER: it's its own island… Not talking about it, not sharing anything about it, keeping it separate, keeping it separate. As of right now (me recording this) the program is $997. We are increasing the price to $1,500 (if not $2,000) soon. The ONLY reason why is because we have found that the person who is our dream customer, they're already at a certain level of success. It's fine if you're new, and we have options for you if you can't afford that kind of thing (and that's totally fine). The other reason is because I have a lot of people who come in now and are hoping to fulfill on it. I have to pay them too. I'm gonna show you gross numbers. This is not the actual profit numbers. I've been selling Secret MLM Hacks for over a year and a half now. I'll just grab the most recent year… [Right now it's July 26th… So I grab July 26th through the beginning of July 2018. July 2018, July 2018 through 2019.] HOW MUCH MONEY DO MY FRONT-END PRODUCTS MAKE? I printed my stats sheet right before I got on this… We got $429,000. The earnings per click, we're getting $54 per click (which is pretty awesome). And the average cart value is $1,157. … Meaning for every purchaser of Secret MLM Hacks, even though it's a $997 product, we're actually getting MORE than that. And I wanna share with you guys WHY, and why this is such a powerful principle. I want you to look at and be like, "How can I also?" NOT, "I don't qualify." It's, "How can I?" Just in the last year, we haven't spent that much on ads. I'm gonna walk through a few numbers on this. So we have $429,000. There's a principle here that I want you to understand… The last few podcast episodes I've done on this show have been a lot more informational and instructional… But there's still from a 30,000 ft view… And it's just so that you understand more of what I'm doing. A few people will be like, "You can't do that." Well, I am doing it. And NO, I'm not the only one doing it. I didn't invent this. I observed, and I'm just doing the same, and now I'm LOUD about it. FRONT-END PRODUCT BUYERS AND NON-BUYERS So we have a list of people who just opted in, and then we have a list of people who are our buyers. These are pretty good numbers. There's a metric us, in the internet marketing space, follow. The metric is that for every person… You usually make $1 per person, per month on your list. If you're bad. In the last year 46,000 people have seen the webinar registration page but 22,000 people actually opted in. That's a 48% registration rate. We have 22,000 people who opted in. Because there's always people who opt out (and that's part of the game) we have 20,000 people on that list. About 2,000 people have opted. I'm not the only fish in the pond, man. Go follow someone else. Now, there's one other piece to this… We have spent about $70,000 in ads and have $429,000 in revenue… Which is pretty awesome. Think about this... Q: Would you spend $70,000 to generate $400,000? A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me think about this here real quick though. Okay, so... Boom. That's in revenue. This is an SLO. I'm gonna go create a cool piece of value which teaches something amazing. There's no pitch but they come and they ask to join my downline. I'm just driving ads to this. We've spent $70,000 in ads, in the last year we've generated $429,000. I'm kinda kicking myself because I'm like, "That could be way bigger." CHATBOT SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFER We created a self-liquidating offer… And it's a Chatbots thing. In the last year we've had 957 people purchase our $57 thing. That's a revenue of $54,500. $54,000 in SLO revenue. $70,000 - $54,000 = $16,000 $16,000 on ads to generate around $400,000 in cash. We've had 371 purchases of Secret MLM Hacks in the last year. We have a whole product here that is basically paying for our ads. We're almost completely removing our ad cost by having this self-liquidating offer. It's a Chatbots thing that says, "Hey, this isn't the actual thing that you're going to, but if you wanted it's kinda cool." 957 people have paid $57. That's $54,000. I wanna run one more number by you… This is what real marketers on the internet actually look at. What I'm talking about right now is marketing math. Come learn how to do that, Secret MLM Hacks. We do about $2-$3 per person per month on this list. The whole point of the episode is for you to see some live examples. Secret MLM Hacks is $997 right now. We're gonna increase the price. The chatbots thing is $57... And I'll have a whole episode about that in the future. What's interesting is, in the last quarter, it's $160,000 (in the last three months). AVERAGE CART VALUE OF FRONT-END PRODUCTS When somebody buys Secret MLM Hacks, how much money is actually coming through per person? What's interesting is the average cart value is above $997. It's actually $1,146. What does that tell us? For every four chatbot sales, we're getting ONE Secret MLM Hacks sale. Isn't that crazy? In the last week we spent two or three grand on ads, but it generated $13,000. I'm just giving you guys some real life numbers. Guess what? I don't know how to drive Facebook ads. I don't need to know how to drive Facebook ads. Honestly, I don't know how to do most of the things that my business does. To be an entrepreneur, it's not to be an expert in everything. Just go find the who that knows the how and orchestrate it. We are actually almost completely liquidating right now. Those numbers I showed you over the last year, they've improved since a year ago. The numbers now are waaay better than the numbers even a year ago. For every dollar going in, we get three or four bucks out? Tell me another investment vehicle that can do that. You know another place that can give you 400%? I challenge you to go and get Secret MLM Hacks. Go to secretmlmhacks.com. FIND PEOPLE TO PITCH WITH FRONT-END PRODUCTS I know it's tough to find people to pitch after your warm market dries up, right? That moment when you finally run out of family and friends to pitch. I don't see many up lines teaching legitimate lead strategies today. After years of being a lead funnel builder online I got sick of the garbage strategies most MLMs have been teaching their recruits for decades. Whether you simply want more leads to pitch or an automated MLM funnel, head over to secretmlmhacks.com and join the next FREE training. There you're gonna learn the hidden revenue model that only the top MLMers have been using to get paid regardless if you join them. Learn the 3-step system I use to auto recruit my downline of big producers WITHOUT friends or family even knowing that I'm in MLM. If you want to do the same for yourself, head over to secretmlmhacks.com. Again that’s secretmlmhacks.com.

This episode was a tough one. All I'm going to say is bring your tissues and prepare to cry...

I help talented coaches attract premium clients at premium prices, so they can quickly and reliably build a 6-figure business doing what they love. Visit https://www.WilliamWinterton.com to see my exact process! Today I had the AMAZING honor and privilege of talking with Steve Larsen. For two years, Steve was the Lead Funnel Builder at ClickFunnels for Russell Brunson, and put over 500 sales funnels under his belt (but honestly, lost track a while ago). Eventually, he left ClickFunnels as an employee to get his own 2 Comma Club Award and his business crossed $1 million 13 months later. His podcast, Sales Funnel Radio, was created to share best practices, teach the finer points of marketing and “funnelology”. In today’s conversation, Steve shares a little of his backstory and how he eventually (by default) became the lead coach/trainer at a multi-million dollar company. He then goes into detail about how to create an offer that is PROVEN to attract clients. It’s a strategy that he has used with hundreds of clients, time and time again and he lays it out so cleanly, the AH-HA moments start exploding one after another after another! If you want to learn more about Stephen (including why he’s wearing that tee-shirt) check out this link: https://www.stevejlarsen.com Connect with WilliamFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/william.winterton.7LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-winterton/TRANSCRIPT: William Winterton Alright, I'm here on Coaching Success Radio. And I'm super stoked, because today I've got Steve Larson on, and I get a big show at the beginning here to kind of explain who he is. I would love to hear from you, man, who is Stephen Larsen, Stephen Larsen Someone who is still developing himself. (laughs) No… it's been fun. I first started out I was kind of an entrepreneur by not by choice, you know what I mean? I don't think many people, many kids grew up thinking like, you know, when I grow up, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, like it's just not a normal thing. But turns out, it's incredibly fun. And something that I was kind of thrown into when I found out I couldn't feed my lady, right, I can feed my new brain and stuff kind of hit the fan. And it was really rough for a long time. And I went through I recounted recently. It was my first 17 tries, didn't really work very well. And I went from everything from like, selling stocks and options, the real estate and diamonds and ebooks and daughter of sales. And I mean, I did a lot of stuff. And then I found out this thing called funnels, right, this funnel world was amazing. And it was about try number 17. And it was another 16 or 17 they weren't all failures, but it was like none of them were like the screaming successes, you know, it wasn't for another 16 or 17 to one was like, Whoa, holy cow, you know. So anyway, I've left my job as a ClickFunnels funnel builder and been doing on my own. And it's been awesome. William Winterton I think people anybody who's not aware, Sales Funnel Radio is a phenomenal resource. And it's just, you're basically telling your life through this podcast, right? Stephen LarsenYeah. William WintertonDocumenting your journey. So what I'd love to get into- because of a lot of our audience, we're talking to coaches, people who are just starting out in the coaching world, or people who are coaches and trying to figure out how this game works and how to actually make money in this. You'd kind of became a coach and that really wasn't your intention… I don't think in the beginning, but you somehow got handed this thing I think by Russell, probably, like, I need you to coach, all these people. And you had no idea the magnitude that's going to get to. Talk us through that story a little bit. Stephen Larsen But yeah, totally. So it actually was I've only been working for Russell for about almost two years. And it was probably six months in, we were at his old office, and we're sitting there and, you know, we sat literally back to back almost can see his face in the reflection of my monitors, you know, which freaked me out for a while I was like, Dude, don't say anything stupid. This is amazing, you know. And after a little while, though, he was on with his inner circle, he gets off, and he muted and he turned his camera off that is kind of like, here's a full day coaching and relax for a second I go, dude,, you're saying the same thing, basically, to every single person. And he was like, I was like, kind of funny to get is kind of funny. And he's like everything from a supplement to a makeup business to it's like crazy. E-com to info business to retail to it was like, I was like you're saying the same thing? And I was like, What if we created something between you and then so that you can take them from, you know, here and up instead of all the way from the ground all the way up. So what I did is I started going through like 12 years of his content and took me six months to organize it. And I said from this minute and second to this minute. Second, you're talking about this. But really, you should know these things before you know that and it was like this huge trail and it took a long time. And anyway, I begged to be we put into this members area, we made an event around it. And I begged to be the guy to go on stage and Russell couldn't. And they're like, oh, okay, we'll see. I don't know, but like, I wanted it real bad. And I begged and I, you know, played the game how I needed to and made sure I like getting my myself in there. And I had to be the guy to teach when Russell can get on stage. And that's when Steve was born. Right? That's when Steve Larson was born, I started finding my voice. And we all thought that I was going to be teaching and like, we thought I'd be teaching marketing. I was not planning on being a coach, I had no interest in being a coach. Nothing against it. It's just I was like, I'm really into funnels, you know, and I go and I'm standing on the stage and I start realizing that I'm teaching these models that work. But once they understand it, the real work begins because now they're going to start working to execute the model. That's where they need the coaching. And we all thought I'd be doing this like marketing stuff. And it wasn't I ended up helping them get through their own garbage. So they can even execute the model in the first place. And then, later on, it was the One Funnel Away challenge and Russell's like, dude, your DNA is built for this, you yell at people without them knowing you're yelling at them. And I was like, well, then one foot away started. And that's kind of how it happened. And that's the biggest thing I've realized as coaches. It's, it's, I mean, yes, we teach him like these cash models, but that's not why they fail. doesn't work for me. Yeah, but that's not why it's not gonna work for you. It's not gonna work for you. Because, you know, like, you haven't worked through enough of your garbage, Steven, execute that model. That's kind of what happened. William Winterton Yeah, so no, like, it's totally a very unconventional approach. Because a lot of people that I'm talking with I work with, they go through and have a ton of training, they learn to become a life coach or health coach or fitness coach, and they go through the halls coaching training. At the end of the day, your main goal is to get somebody from here to here, and you're just you've got a kind of a very unconventional approach to that in terms of like, Look, you know, I'm not taking it I've actually enjoyed listening to kind of you don't you don't take anybody's crap, like, yell at people very nicely, but like, I'm not dealing with it. So it's, it's a thing where you're now it kind of leads me to like the authority of offer creation. That's kind of where you've landed, man, you got to be the coach. Right? You still coaching though, but your main, kind of where you're, your sleepless landings at offer creation? talk about that a little bit? I know, that's kind of where your passion is. So Stephen Larsen Yeah, you know, everything, everything. can't sell anything without an offer. Right? So how do you craft that without, so it can be attractive and something that people get psyched about when they see it. And there's a lot that goes into that is, the better people can understand. This is true for coaches as well, you know, the better you can understand behavioral psychology, like why we make the decisions we do, the better coach you'll be. And the better marketer you actually end up being that actually, coaches and marketers are very similar with skill sets, in my opinion. So what's interesting is, like, as I go to these offer creation methods. I mean, they've worked for hundreds and thousands of people and so many people made a million dollars off the moon so so like, Man, I'm not gonna lie. Like the reason, I started yelling was out of pure frustration after a while. It wasn't like a stick. It was, and I'm getting a little impatient with this person who keeps asking, but will it work it for me and I have responded for 15 minutes, say, Yes, just do it. But I'm in a unique scenario, what? You found a way to negate 100,000-year-old brain like you have one to it works also. And so I started coming up with these rules for coaching. Right, like, I will put in as much as you put in, I will, and a lot of it came from Sean Stephenson actually. I was listening to him at the first phone hacking lab I went to and he was teaching the Coast Guard mantra. And he's like, you're right. And I know you I'm sure you've heard it right there. They go out and helicopter and there's a ship sinking and as more bodies in the water than his room and helicopter gut-wrenching decisions, who do you save, and he's like, you save those as swimming towards you. Right. And for a long time, I felt responsible for every single person that was coming in. And when I heard that, I was like, oh, man, I gotta stop. And so putting the ball back in their court. Look, here's your host. I'm teaching you how to make the money that way. But be prepared, because you're gonna have a lot of obstacles, you know, was a Robert Kiyosaki. And he's like, the moment you start down any journey, you're going to have these character flaws explode in your face, and you got to address them before we can move on. So it's funny because I love teaching the offer creation. But when I do, I mean only keeps in a few of the models right now. But it's just because I teach him and then I observe the behavior of the individual. And you go back and like Oh, man. Anyway, I love offer creation. It's amazing. It's the core and the heart of why we market but I've really, can you William Winterton Would you mind? I'm going to jump in here real quick. Can you Would you mind kind of walking us through offer creation of a very amazing term… it's very broad, somebody who doesn't understand it fully. We talked about having to build your offer, we talked about having to have your ideal client stuff, can you give us kind of a little snippet of a, you know, like Steve Larsen genius in that. Stephen Larsen Hopefully his genius Oh, man. Let me get some paper here. So we have to understand is like, so many times people… I feel like the way people made offers even five years ago was they would just start bundling stuff. And they'd be like, well, let's put this product in this product and this product and this product… and a lot of people would start assembling these offers, were the products inside the offer was just tons of stuff, right? It just stuff stuff, stuff, stuff. And a lot of it wasn't even related. So what I do, that's made it so unique is it's a combination of so marketing is just changing people's beliefs. So that they go buy something, right? That they're already in motion to buy. That's all marketing is. It's not logos and slogans, it's not cute little as nothing that business cards, I hate business cards. It's just, it's just changing beliefs with the intent of a sale. So what's interesting about my offer creation method is that it kind of incorporates that, and addresses the product of the same time. Anyway, so what I do, first of all, is I imagine my, my customer, and I'm like, let's think about this customer here, this customer, they're already momentum towards something, and they're already feeling pain. A lot of old-school copywriting courses would teach things like, you need to go and talk about the issues that your customer has, that they don't know they have so that you can then bring your solution. And there's some truth to that. But they already have problems though. And I want to sell somebody who is consciously aware of the problem that they have so that I don't have to create it, it actually kills half of the work that was taught like in the previous 10 years around copywriting, it shortcuts it like crazy, you don't need to do that. Just go and figure out. So my dream customer is somebody who is already a few things, they're already in pain, and they're conscious of that pain. They're already spending money that has been one of the most powerful criteria is ever, they're already aware of other solutions that are out there. And they've actually tried them. So huge. They already are consciously seeking another option. Right. And these are like, this is like a lot of things that I go and I think through before I even think about an offer, like sales message, offer funnel that comes like step 99. To be honest, what I do first is get ridiculous clarity on the who. And once I know the who this parts really fun and it's really at the foundation of how I create the offer. Every single customer that's out there has all these best problems, right? Or things they need solving. All I'm going to do is I'm going to start listing out problems. Now it's a gift. You know, like when you go to like, I say get Click Funnels. Okay, how many things did you have to solve in order to actually use Click Funnels? Right, like, I gotta learn how to write copy, right? I had to do that, you know, I remember the froze like, man, I can make a sales video, what kind of camera you know, or I gotta do this so that all these problems start popping up in order for you to actually have success. Right? And every single solution that you sell, somebody actually causes more problems. And that's, it's crazy to realize that and it's actually a gift to entrepreneurs. So all I do is I think through all these problems that this customer currently has and what they're wanting, and then I rank the problems is actually I do it. I called this called the core problem planner. That's what I call me. And, and I'm like, Oh, you know what, because not all problems pay me the same, I could solve the problem how to put groceries into a bag at the end of the checkout line. But that's not a very valuable problem to solve. Right? Right, I'm going to solve a problem that's a combination of super valuable for them, but also expensive and valuable for me so that I can get paid a lot. So engineering, this offer to create a lot of cash before, like before even think about the offer is I want to know at the heart of what I'm solving it's reason click falls can charge what they do. They solve an issue that is highly valuable. That and legitimately for both sides. And so at the beginning, before even think about a solution, I just want to know what problem I'm going to dedicate my entire business to solve. That is how I figured out the foundation of my offer. Now all I do is think about my one solutions, one solution that I call the core solution, one core solution. And this is this part super fun and easy as well. So I think about one core solution. And then I start thinking about like, well, what are the follow-up problems that that solution creates, such as Click Funnels crap, now I needed to figure out what a sales letter is. Right? Then all I do is I think through little tiny mini solutions for all the following problems I can think of. And that becomes my offer, that becomes the stack slide as we call it. And that's it. And now it's coming and problem derives rather than what should I go create, which is what college taught me. So backward. I'm not the one buying it. Who cares? Right? William Winterton Yeah, you're not your ideal client at all? Stephen Larsen No, yeah. So that's how we bed. So very fast. William Winterton That's how we got. And that's great. And I think that's the thing we get so wrapped up in and I talked to coaches all day long. And they're their biggest thought, at least a lot of them are, I've got to get more training, I've got to learn how to do this better. I've got to become a better coach, I've got to do all this stuff. And it's like they learned they learned they learned that perpetually schooling and learning. And it's awesome because they're continually you know that they're feeding that right? When it comes out to, you know, creating something, the number of times I see people who are like, Hey, I'm a life coach and a health coach. And that's what they say you're like, Yeah, but what do you Who do you serve? What's your Fix? Right? Yeah. So so what you just laid out and how people are realizing this, this is what you're laying out is is so key to actually making your coaching business work. Yeah, get offered place, you're just another face in the crowd Really? Stephen Larsen So true. Before even thinking about what you do, I was thinking about who you want to serve. In fact, that's where I got stuck for years as I was like, what products I sell, what should I sell? What should I sell? And it was like something I kind of whipped myself with for years. It wasn't until I switched it that actually started making money. I mean, it was that stark of a switch. And instead of saying, What do I sell, it's, who do I sell? And when I got clear on that, what to sell was actually chosen by the who knows, like, Oh, that's way easier. I don't have to be this prolific, creative genius, and make something that no one has ever seen, like college and mainstream entrepreneurship teaches. That's false. And others like us, we just have to the game ever. William Winterton Nice. Hey, Steve, I would keep you on here for another hour too, because I just feel like I just suck value out of you all day long. I have to respect your time. I know you got like a minute left probably the most. Is there anything that I have not asked you that would just be for a coach who is maybe not brand new, but maybe has been stuck? Maybe they've been going for a couple of years? And they're just stuck? Is there something you would just throw at them for? Can you also lose a little bit? Stephen Larsen Yeah, hundred percent what I realized my role is and kind of for some of it offends some people, man, I'm not trying to offend anybody. I just this is what I learned was that you know, I was in high school, I was 35% body fat. I had a double chin working on a triple, right. I was a big boy. I was getting picked on. I got straight D's I pretty much I got mercy graduated from high school, I went to college I got kicked out because I got pretty much straight F's. And I to wait for years to go back to reapply. I was told that I probably have ADHD, which that's not confirmed that I don't really care anymore. But whatever. Like I had a near clinical fear of speaking to adults, especially I would see an adult down the hall and I would walk the other way physically freaked me out. I had some real issues. And I would call myself like the least likely success story. So what the thing I had to realize is that funny enough when that counselor that was going to he's like you probably have ADHD, it became another whip. Oh, man, you're I don't qualify anymore. Like, I can't be I already knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I can't be an entrepreneur anymore because of Look at all this evidence. Look, I got kicked out. Look I got right. And it wasn't until I realized that. That man, those are gifts. Like every single thing in my life that has been bad. I've had to face and until I actually consciously faced it, it became a strength. And now Funny enough, one of the things I'm known for, and I'm like, What? So what's funny, this is what I realized my role as a coach is it's just this and I know why people ask what they do now, right? They my role of a coach is to teach these cash models, right? This is what they want. This is what they want what they need, is this, right? And they're going to go through some serious crap along the way. And they need to realize that the obstacle is the way Ryan Holliday quote and actually keep a coin on my desk that says the obstacles away as a reminder, I ended up learning how to learn four years later went back to college almost got straight A's the whole time, right little coin obstacles the way. And on the back says the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way and I freakin' love this right. And I went I lost tons of weight and started competing in sprint triathlons and placing in them. I learned how to speak you wouldn't know that I was afraid of speaking now. Right? It was by me. Like they want whatever you're coaching them for. But what they need is to realize that all this crap in their life, all these reasons why they feel like they're unqualified, or the very reason they'll be followed in the future. But most of them don't get it. And so what happens is, while I'm in the middle of my coaching, and I'm teaching this, but I'm starting to observe this, they start doing some of these things. Oh, Stephen. I just don't have the time right now. You know, I just wish that I or Stephen, you know, I so wish right now, like, I can't do this because of this, right? And they want me to say yes. And the moment I say yes, I release them, I release them. And it's why I started yelling. Because they would look at me. And they'd be like, well, Stephen, what this. So this only works for those will be like three weeks into the one phone away challenge. So you're saying this, this only works than for the scenarios, right? What is wrong with you, right? I've gone over this time and time again, talk asked me to let you go cuz I'm not going to, which means you are going to let you go. So you face you in the mirror next time. And that's what's so funny. And people would like to poop their pants half of them will leave. But we're left with these people who are ready to actually face the crap in their life obstacles the way and realize that, and the funnel we launched last week, I'm still using the same principles that I learned six years ago, has nothing to do with the model anymore. It has everything to do with how far I'm willing to grow and face my obstacles and find the next one to find the next one and read it develop me keep the goal what it is and break me on the goal. Don't change the goal, break me on it and keep building me on it. And I keep killing all these nasty character flaws that I didn't know I had. And that's what people run into. And so when you're coaching somebody, whatever it is, that's what I'm watching for, as I'm watching for this logical release that they want me to give so I can justify them bowing out and I'm like not going to do it. Not going to do it. I'm going to make you feel the heat. Right. And anyway, but that's what I remember the obstacles away. William Winterton That's awesome, man. Awesome. See you guys been a pleasure. Thanks so much for jumping on. And hey, I'd love to have you back at some point. Whenever your schedule freezes up for the next you know, 35 days. Stephen Larsen You're the man Dude, this has been awesome. Love to be on the show. William Winterton Thanks so much.

All I'm saying is...maybe you can find it within yourself

I'm not going to give a summary about this episode. All I'm going to say is this is the MOST important solo episode I've done to date. Take a listen :)   Aaron Patton: @aaronbpatton   New Age Influencers: @newageinfluencerspodcast http://newageinfluencers.com/  

MY MLM TOP LEVEL STRATEGY   I have a program that I make available to everybody in my downline (not just those who are directly underneath me).   It's a program where that helps with auto recruiting in MLM. It takes care of 90% of the heavy lifting involved in onboarding somebody.   The program helps you set up all these funnels and the downline automation that we use.   What's cool about the MLM I'm in is, they're super-psyched about all the stuff that I do.   They're like, "Hey go for it. You got major greenlights."   So we go and build funnels and we send traffic. We do all these internet marketing things that most MLMs don’t let people do. So it's super cool.   I want to walk through what we're actually doing. The TOP level strategy.   Yes, it took awhile to work all this out. When you see it, don't freak out and be like, "Oh, I have to go do all this."   No, no, no. I'm just teaching you why we're so unique. Why we're so different, and what's made it so different.   THE FIRST PART OF MY TOP LEVEL STRATEGY   Most of the time what an MLM teaches about is the MLM itself. That makes sense. That's what they're selling. You can't blame them.   But there's a whole bunch of other problems that you need to solve if you're actually going to turn this into a business.     How am I going to...   Get leads? Train and teach other people once they get underneath me? Get people on the continuity plans where they're paying every single month and autoships?   There's a lot of other problems you need to solve.   Not just for yourself. Everybody else coming in likely has those same exact questions. The exact same.   Whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins.   Whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. If you can spend only $10 in ads for MLM, and I can spend $15, I'm going to destroy you.   Because I can put my message in front of more people.   That's an internet marketing principle that I’ve been using in the MLM space. It's the reason why my stuff's done so well.   Because no one else is doing it.   HOW TO USE ADS FOR MLM MARKETING   Here's the big principle...   What I do is, I create my own product. My own. Let's say that I'm selling it for $27.   STEP 1: I create a product for $27.   STEP 2: I'm driving Facebook ads for MLM straight to the product.   STEP 3: After they buy the product, it's very simple. I just say, "Hey, do you want to join my MLM?"   STEP 4: I'll do it in a whole bunch of email automation sequences. Or I'll do it on a thank you page. I'm not actually the one doing it.   It's how we're getting so many leads. I just automated all of this.   Someone buys the product then afterwards I'm very softly asking them, "Do you want to join this MLM?"   When somebody buys this $27 product, I don't take profit.   I take ALL that $27 and roll it right back into my ads for MLM.   I roll it directly back into my ads for MLM.   That let's me create a machine in front of my MLM that is going out and fishing people. It's putting hooks all over the place and it's paying for my ads. I've never put a dollar of my own in my ads ever.   BECAUSE OF THIS.   STEP 1: Create a product.   STEP 2: I sell it.   STEP 3: All that money goes back into ads.   It's just a machine.   On the back I'm spinning out leads and shooting them over to my MLM.   PART TWO OF MY TOP LEVEL STRATEGY   When I shoot them over to my MLM, but I'm shooting them over to this application. An auto recruiting funnel. It automates the recruiting process.   So I say, "Hey, do you want to come join the MLM?" If you do, come over here and apply to join my downline.   If you apply to join my downline, and you make it, we'll give you the very same systems you just walked through so that you can generate leads and start auto recruiting as well.   This is how you recruit people besides friends and family. I'm not telling you to not go to them if they're gonna be a good fit. I'm saying once you're done and those leads are dried up, here's how you go get more leads.   Once someone applies, I get them on the phone.   I DO NOT let anybody join my downline if I can't even get on the phone with them.   I don't like getting on the phone. It's not really my thing. But guess who's getting on the phone?   Cool phone closers. Using a very simple script.   And guess who those phone closers are? People in my downline.   The closers answer the last few questions that they have. Then there's a program that we send them if they get accepted.   The program handles ALL the onboarding. It handles all the major questions. This program tells them what to do step-by-step for 30 days and tells them more about the MLM. How to set stuff up, how to set up autoship, how to go talk to people.   I give them the auto recruiting funnels. They get all these answers.   DOWNLINE AUTOMATION   I don't know I've ever drawn the top level strategy. That's why I wanted to do this.   All I'm doing is I'm generating money through other small products, up to even more expensive products.   But it's not for profit.   It's so that I can go and continually speak louder and louder on the internet.   Money is faster than time.   I can go and I can speak to tons of people. All automated. With ads for MLM.   OPTION 1: Drop some money out there in ads.   OPTION 2: I could go hang out at a freaking mall and talk to people who are likely not interested, and don't have opportunities on their mind. They're just trying to shop.   The more I've done this, it make ZERO sense for me to influence my team to go do that. If they want to, sweet. I'm just not going to teach that as part of my strategy.   I would rather teach them how to put ads for MLM in front of people who are likely going to join.   Let's have them buy this little cool little product. Afterwards, let's go and automate our pitching to them and get them to go apply. That's basically it, okay?   THAT’S IT.   That's what makes our team so unique. That's exactly what we've been doing.   You can model that with your own team. It took a long time to build. But it's been cool.   AUTO RECRUITING   I'm going to take traffic. Traffic is something that I can control on the internet. I can hand a couple bucks to Zuckerberg and he's going to send me some eyeballs.   I'm going to send some traffic to a product. We often call these products SLOs (self-liquidating offer).   We're not trying to make money on it. It's self-liquidates our ad costs. It could be anything from $7 - $2,000.   The name of the game for us right now is to make different kinds of front-end products. Not for money.   To back into traffic. Then we soft pitch people into our MLM by telling them, "Hey, go apply to join our downline here."   When we get them on the phone, they actually apply and they're like, “Yeah this is a good fit for me. I really actually really do want to do this.”   We've automated a lot of the training after they actually join. Both from what our MLM is wanting us to go do, and also from my standpoint.   You get a lot of these systems so that you can get off the ground and running.   That was actually the hardest part. It took me forever to build.   I'm a geek. 100% internet geek. I don't want to have to require my people to be a geek in order to pull off what I've done.   I keep it super, super simple. Just do this. Then do this. Then do this. BOOM.   SETTING UP DOWNLINE AUTOMATION   Once someone joins, we send them to a super cool onboarding sequence. It's dripped out to them over  30 days. It tells them what to do step-by-step to get set up.   Then it walks them through our MLM's sign up bonuses. Those fast-action bonuses. A lot of times, MLMs will offer as soon as you join. What we're doing is we're walking them through that.   How to…   Set it up Take advantage of it Set up all these other funnels   I wanted to share with you guys what makes us so different. I'm getting more and more questions about it. Frankly, I wanted an episode to point back to.   THIS IS HOW WE DO IT.   Most of the time when you join an MLM they will say, "Hey, here's a whole bunch of education on just the MLM."   Some of them do pretty well with the whole three-way thing or phone closers.   Hardly anybody has dedicated onboarding process.   The thing that has made us super, super unique is this part...   I'm going to teach our peeps how to get traffic.   I teach them how to create these little front-end products. I give them a whole bunch of them that are pre-made.   We know that when someone buys them, they're going to be a good fit for our MLM.   If you like this kind of stuff, I challenge you to start drafting it out. Treat it like an actual business rather than just like a hobby.   It’s an internet marketing company + MLM.   Info-products + MLM.   That's how I've killed it so much and that's how we're doing so well. It's exciting stuff.   I am showing you EVERYTHING.   This is what the big guys ACTUALLY do and I wanted to share with you guys as I've been building it.

Dr. Habib talks about why the current healthcare system is not good enough for you.    Transcript below: Hi this is Dr. Habib. Today I want to try to go over what determines whether a doctor discusses blood pressure versus arthritis versus cholesterol on any given office visit. So first, some of the logistics, and then I'll delve into the medial aspects, and finally, hopefully the way it should be done. So you may imagine that the doctor's very smart. He's figured out which is the most important criteria for that office visit. And what I want to tell you is that let's look at what is involved in that decision making. Number one, the duration of the visit. So if you have a physical, it's a long visit, minimum 30 minutes. It could go long as an hour. Just depends on the doctor, really. It's beyond what depends on the doctor. If he wants to get reimbursed, he has to spend about 45 minutes, go over certain points to be able to check off, in order to call it a physical for reimbursement purposes. So it's really not about what he wants to do and how much time he wants. He's being driven by what reimbursement he's looking for. So physical is a complicated, or annual physical, so based on the fact that it's gonna be more detailed, a longer process, then it should warrant more time. But for the average visit, it's about 15 minutes. My joke is and it's not really a joke, 'cause it's a serious joke, it's five minutes to check in with the receptionist and your insurances and all that paperwork. And it's probably about a few more minutes with the medical assistant checking the blood pressure, the height, the weight, and then you get about five minutes with the doctor. And a few more minutes to check out again. So that 15, 20 minutes was literally only five minutes with the doctor. And that's not a joke. That's kind of unfortunately the reality. And in that short period, let's just say, that short period of time, that office visit, how did that doctor figure out whether we should talk about the blood pressure today, the cholesterol today, the acid reflux, the joint pain, the rash, how did he figure that out? Well, like I tell you, if somebody came in with an acute problem, it's different. Your shortness of breath. That could be mild, but we're trained to look at all the possibilities, so even though it may seem simple, we should be prepared for a long visit because it could be a pneumonia. It could be a pulmonary emboli. It could be a chronic obstructive lung disease. It could be asthma. It could be a inflammation, a pneumonitis. The point I'm saying is that, that for acute problems, it's variable, but things like blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, these are very stable, and so the doctor's already pre-programmed himself to know, I'm only going to spend 15 minutes, of which you know it's not really 15 minutes, on cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes. And so the myth is, you would imagine that the doctor had figured out which is the priority, and I'm gonna at the end of this video, dispel that. Dismiss that concept. And what I want you to understand is that, he is going to be discussing a subject matter with a duration of time that's gonna match the reimbursement, so he's actually practicing under the parameters, of what the insurance reimbursement. That means diagnostic codes, procedure codes, reimbursement. And not because of what he deems is the most important thing. So let's use some examples. Cholesterol's pretty benign. You have to have cholesterol for a long time, where there is any association with cardiovascular problems. Blood pressure, same thing. The fact is that you could have blood pressure for one week, one month, six months, one year, no acute problem will happen. In fact, we know it takes decades for the blood vessels to get stiffened up before the heart starts to get bigger. And so I'm not condoning waiting a decade without treating it. All I'm saying is that there are certain things that need more of a priority. Like acid reflux. Look you have pain and the pain is because either there's too much acid in the stomach or gastritis, or that acid is going up behind the chest. Gastroesophageal reflux disease. Either one is at the very least, uncomfortable because after you eat, you could have pain. When you're trying to sleep at night, you cough. The reflux is irritating the oropharyngeal area. You could have chest tightness. You could even mimic chest pain, like you're having a heart attack. In fact most of the hospitalizations, at least the 24-hour observation is where people go in with chest pains, majority of which is acid reflux because by default they excluded heart attack, okay? Now so that's fairly acute and it should be addressed. So you'd imagine that the doctor would maybe give you a strategy like, okay why don't we see if can do lifestyle changes. Get rid of dairy, get rid of acidic products like citric acid from foods, maybe cut that back on tomatoes and bananas, lose a little weight, And if the symptoms are a little bit more severe, then maybe he'll say why don't we use a medication over the next few weeks just to calm down the acid because you know, beyond the pain, it's eroding, it's damaging the lining in the stomach, damaging the lining in the esophagus. There's complications if you don't manage that. And I can go into that a little bit later. But so with the medication, you would temporarily cut the acid, giving the lining time to heal and the doctor has now given you advice on how to change your lifestyle. And so at the end of the four to six weeks, that's how long the FDA has approved the acid lowering medication for, and when you stop the medication, theoretically your symptoms should be over. But as you know, most people's symptoms persist, so doctors continue on that medication. So here I want to put it together for you now, is that about one in four people have acid reflux disorder of some kind. That means gastritis, esophageal reflux, mild, moderate, severe, the whole bucketload of spectrum of people. It's about one in four. It's interesting how adults, particularly between say 40 and 60, there's about one in three have high blood pressure. Mmmm that's interesting. So could there be a link? And now I'm getting to how the doctor should be thinking and putting it together in determining when the office visit should occur and what should be discussed, as opposed to, well you know I've got 15 minutes so I'll just bring you in for blood pressure 'cause that's all the insurance will reimburse me. I'll bring you in for 15 minutes for cholesterol 'cause that's all the insurance will reimburse me. Just being a devil's advocate, when the doctor, a good doctor, if he was so good and he just addressed everything at once, he will not get reimbursed for everything at once because it's all about that time factor, right? Time factor and that's unfortunate because that determines the activity, the behavior, the decision-making of the medical practice, including the doctor. That's unfortunate. So let me summarize again, the doctor's not deciding the condition to manage based on priority, unless it's an acute problem, like breathing problem, a chest pain, or of the chronic stable conditions, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes. Those don't determine, those don't require any prioritization, unless it's something like an acid reflux. But here I'm trying to tell you that acid reflux is quite common. One in four people. Blood pressure is even more common, one in three in that of population. Could there be a link? Well here's the link. When you are being treated with acid lowering medication, and that means that the acid in your stomach has been minimized, you will not be able to produce a lot of products like nitric oxide. So nitric oxide helps blood vessels open up increase blood flow. When you open up blood vessels, they are under less pressure, so blood pressure would come down. Conversely, if you're shutting off the acid, and your body's not making nitric oxide, then theoretically you have tighter blood vessels, so that's where the blood pressure starts to go up. And the problem is that nothing happened overnight. So the stomach problems were probably brewing for some time, and the blood pressure doesn't just go up overnight. So as, say the acid problem and the acid lowering medicine has been driving down the nitric oxide, and the blood pressure is gradually going up, maybe below 135/90, so you don't treat it. And that's the priority that I want to talk about, is that the doctor should be trying to links things together. So this is the analogy I want you to think about. So if you have cholesterol, most doctors will recommend at some point, theoretically after six weeks of lifestyle changes, that's what the CDC recommend Center for Disease Control recommends six weeks pretty much for all conditions, blood pressure, cholesterol, high blood pressure, I'm sorry. Blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, acid reflux, all that start with number one, number two lifestyle changes, diet and exercise. Then medication. How many times have you heard that from your doctor? Not too often, unfortunately. That's what the CDC recommend, not medication first. So if you have somebody that is coming in with blood pressure, cholesterol, or diabetes, and we're treating the blood pressure number with a blood pressure lowering medication, that's two-dimensional medicine. The high cholesterol with a cholesterol medication, that's two-dimensional medicine. The blood sugar being brought down with the blood sugar medicine, diabetic pill, that's two-dimensional medicine. And I just gave you a window into a little bit of a multi-dimensional, and eventually you'll understand it should be three-dimensional, which is that there's a link between the stomach acid and the blood pressure. They should not be two different visits. They should be put together because that's the right way to do it. In fact, underlying all of those conditions, the reason why people end up with heart attack and diabetic complications is because of inflammation. Now where does that come from? That comes from within the gut microbe, we'll call it the gut microbiome. And so depending on your diet, the gut microbes will send signals to turn on inflammation and oxidation, things like that. And the problem is that, you know, that's the level that the doctor's not going to address because there's no prescription medication for that. And so in order to really do three-dimensional medicine, is to understand that, what's common about the blood pressure? What's common about the high cholesterol that may lead to heart disease blockages? What's common about blood sugar and who gets the bad outcome? Who gets the heart attack? Who gets the neuropathy, the retinopathy, the nephropathy, these are the end damages of the eye, the kidneys, the nerves? And underlying it is understanding there's some central activities going on that's inflammation, oxidation, and immune problems, immune dysregulation, we call it. Now that's called three-dimensional medicine. So literally in every visit, it should be everything that the patient is suffering from and what the patient doesn't even know. The doctor should know, but unfortunately if there's no medication, usually doctors don't study it, and probably more importantly, there's probably no reimbursement for treating oxidation and inflammation, and if I'm wrong, somebody can call me and email me and contacts me, but I don't think I'm wrong because there's no diagnostic codes for inflammation, oxidation, immune dysregulation, not autoimmune disease, immune dysregulation. No code, no reimbursement. Doctor isn't gonna talk about it. Now when I do an office visit, I look at all the problems at once. And I try to see how they're interconnected. That's the way it should be done. In fact, I'm pretty sure that that's the way people would want it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that people would want to know, Doctor, is there something else other than the diabetic pill for my sugar? Doctor, is there something else other than the blood pressure pill for my blood pressure? Is there something else for my cholesterol other than the cholesterol pill? The answer's yes! But if you're taught allopathic, which I was actually, then you're gonna advise allopathic, that means prescription, but remember CDC, lifestyle changes, number one, number two, diet, exercise? Overlooked by most people. Because those done correctly could actually fix the problem and for myself, I have additional knowledge beyond lifestyle, in terms of supplementing. The only reason you need to supplement is because you're deficient. If you weren't deficient, you wouldn't need it. But if you have a good lifestyle, where you go to sleep on time, your body has time to regenerate and repair, and balance out the hormones. If you didn't put the bad refined foods into your body, then you wouldn't get inflammation from the bacterial signals. If you put good things, you'd flourish or you'd nourish the bacteria in the gut. You would have the nutrients to reduce inflammation. You'd have the nutrients to produce nitric oxide and blood flow, and support the immune system. And frankly, because of the complex lifestyles that we have, you may need to supplement in this day in age. Well let me just give you the obvious ones that every doctor should know. Vitamin D deficiency's an epidemic. Okay if you don't know that, you may need to go, this is to the doctor, you may need to go back to medical school, maybe, or read a few more journals. How about B12? Rampantly a deficient in most people. Again if you don't know it, go learn it. This is again to the doctor. Because why are these important? Because they're the connection that makes the body work right. So Vitamin D is involved in literally every organ system in the body. So it would help with dementia. It would help with insulin sensitivity. That means it will be better for your diabetes. It helps the bone get stronger. Everybody knows that. Vitamin D's also important for the immune system. It supports natural killer cells. It's probably one of the most potent ways to push out a virus, if you super-dose it. So maintenance is one thing, and instead of the range being as low as 30 and as high as 100, maybe the range should between 80 and a 100. I mean does it make sense to have a level as low as 30, and most people are lower than 30? No it doesn't make sense because people like myself who live at 80, don't get as many viruses. Certainly when I decided to get it up to 80, it used to be 17, a reflection of depletion, deficiency, right? And so that vitamin, I'm changing subjects a little bit, but this is what I mean about three-dimensional medicine. It cannot be, you know, high, low, good, bad. I mean that's like junior school. I mean we call it junior school, but we can call it kindergarten if you want to. It's just really simplistic and in this day in age, when we have so much knowledge, but that knowledge is coming from scientific journals beyond the medical journals. Medical journals are by definition, one variable at a time. They're usually based around a drug versus a placebo. It's interesting they don't put two drugs head-to-head. I wonder why because nobody wants to come out the loser. So that's an interesting concept. Why is it that lipitor and zocor haven't been put head-to-head? Why is it that aciphex and nexium hasn't been put head-to-head? Why is it that two types of ace inhibitors haven't been put head-to-head for blood pressure? The reason is because the industry do not want to cannibalize each other. It's very sad because as far as the patient is concerned, you'd want to know which one is better. And so going back to as I said that, why it's important to understand which organ system to address, I call it the art of medicine. So there is a list of treatments, there is a list of diagnosis, and there's a different types of patients. We as doctors are taught to understand male, female, younger, older, and epidemiology, the what to expect. The different treatments, you know, where that's mostly prescription for most doctors, minus prescription on prescription. And then you know of course, you may just assume that doctors know how to diagnose, but unfortunately, you know, diagnosis is not waiting until you have the heart attack or waiting for the cancer. There are other ways to diagnose, or in my case, I also like to predict and I like to prevent, and if you have the disease, I like to reverse it. But let's look at those three concepts. The phrase that I have is the right treatment for the right patient at the right time. Why do I say that? You could have two identical twins, they look the same, they're built the same, just assume, which is not always the case, they have the same medical problem. Just assume. The reason why I have to think about the right treatment for the right patient at the right time is because we know that depending on one's lifestyle, whether one does not sleep, whether one smokes, whether one is overweight, whether one eats badly, will determine what diseases are expressed. Therefore, just having people that look the same with the same problems, and remember I said the same problems, but they're going to be different. So the right treatment for the right patient at the right time is three-dimensional medicine. And in order to be a good three-dimensional medical doctor, you can't do that right out of medical school. It's a little overwhelming because it takes not only knowledge, which takes time, especially because knowledge, the newer knowledge, is dependent on technology, you know? Evidence-based medicine. You know, evidence that came out one year ago wasn't around ten years ago, five years ago. Therefore, there's no way you could've come up with that, right? So one is experience and that's almost like, you can, it may not sound good, but trial and error. You know, when we have 10,000 patients that we've treated, we've kinda figured out through the practice of medicine. You know, certain patterns one way or other. Then you combine that with knowledge that's constantly evolving. And then different therapeutic modalities, like intermittent fasting, is no medicine at all. No medicine, no vitamin, no nothing. That is a profound treatment, which there's a lot of information out there. You don't have to be a doctor to go find that out. And most doctors wouldn't know it anyway because it's not in the medical journal. It hasn't been put head-to-head with a medication because the medication would lose every single time. Guaranteed, right? So the point I'm making here is that three-dimensional medicine is understanding, you know, the different conditions would before the disease comes, during the disease, or a complicated stage, the different therapies out there, the different diagnostic tools, and all those have to be in the permutation. Those have to be in an algorithm, and that's what an experienced doctor would do. And frankly, I've actually written that down, so that other doctors could follow it. Is that how do you take a good history? How do you do a good exam? Where are the data points? And then the algorithm is to be able to put it together, and the algorithm is to, over time, understand that there are priorities. There are specific ways to put it together. I give you examples about how the acid or stomach problems, and blood vessels, which seem like totally different parts of the body. They're connected. They're connected even more than you realize because if you have an acid problem and you cut off the acid, then the bacterial flora alters. You will be invaded by opportunistic bacteria that wouldn't have got through the acid layer in the stomach. Now that will alter the signals that come out of the gut, depending on your diet. Those signals, as I eluded to, inflammation, oxidation, immune dysregulation, that's the prerequisites to all bad outcomes. That means the dementia patient gets worse dementia. The cholesterol patient gets the heart attack. The diabetic gets the eye complication or the kidney complication or the nerve complication. And so they are connected. They're all connected. In fact, one of the ones that I just want to kinda end on because a lot of concepts here, and may be very difficult. So the summary so far is that there's the right treatment at the right time for the right patient. You gotta figure that out. That's rethinking medicine. That's the art of medicine. And then what I wanted to focus in on is that the connection between say, heart disease and cancer, you may imagine you know, what is the connection? Well what we know is that underlying is the inflammation, really. Inflammation allows dementia to take place. Inflammation allows heart attack to take place. That's 70% of heart attacks, by the way. And inflammation is bad for, you know, damaging the DNA and potentially could cause cancer. But what's common is that we know that when you have a methylation defect, like MTHFR, methylation reductase problem, then those people have more cancer and heart disease. Well there's a connection right there. Methylation. And so my point is, everything is connected. Just the fact that we don't understand everything doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So the whole concept should be that just because there's no study, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. The fallacy about the study is that the study can only show one thing. One variable. Good or bad. But the point is the doctor should not use that as the endpoint. It should just be a piece of information, a data point. And many, many studies put together multiple data point. Then it could be utilized much more usefully because often times when you have evidence-based medicine, you actually have more questions than answers. But that's okay, that's how it works. You have to have some data and it's good to have that one variable, but it's a very slow process. What I like to do for the 21st century is understand this three-dimensional medicine, there's multiple variables, and accept it for what it is and look for patterns where you can be put those variables head-to-head with two-dimensional medicine, like the double-blind placebo controlled trial. Put it head-to-head. Put it head-to-head with intermittent fasting. Put it head-to-head with medication. And then look at the outcome because that's what it matters at the end of the day. So in my practice, all I gotta say is just look at my outcome, and then because I'm an MD, I have documentation of my starting point, my baseline, my intervention, and my follow up, and usually the follow up is a combination of all the data points that I started off. That's evidence-based medicine and so that's where you can tell people, yeah you can reverse the diabetes. You can reverse a blood pressure without medication. You can even get people off insulin. But the final point is, listen, it's about communication and relationship with the doctor. You go to the doctor and it should not be a transaction. It should be a relationship. Maybe it takes multiple visits to build that relationship. So the doctor can get to know you, you can get to know the doctor. It's really a very personal relationship and the more personal it is, I think you'll get more out of it. And I'm not here for you to get information from me to confront the doctor. I want you to be a better consumer. When you know more, you can ask better questions. When you ask better questions, then usually people are forced to, I mean the doctor will be forced to think about it a little bit more. And it's okay if he doesn't have the answers. Doctors are trained in allopathic medicine, right? We became doctors 'cause we were really stimulated by pathology and disease. Now that I've become older and wiser, I realize that look, that is a means to an end because once you get that disease, it's very hard to pull back and you can't get back from 30% to a 100%. So as I've said in multiple videos, when people understand that when you're born, let's assume you're at the best of health, and when you're, let's say, 80, 90, 100, you're at the lowest point of your health. There are five stages of cell decline. Most doctors are picking up diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol problems, when it's stage three and four, which happens to be when people are around 50. But you know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that even 20-year-olds don't feel right. The 30-year-old doesn't feel right. The 40-year-old doesn't feel right. Take a good history. Teach the patient how to be their own gauge. Blood tests, especially the black-and-white ones that most doctors use, are when you've already got the disease. Those tests are very rarely useful for understanding when the function's going down. So stages of one, two, three, this is functional decline, so as the function goes down, it becomes dysfunction, at which point the body's complaining. You have to have a good ear yourself and the doctor should understand how to take a good history, is when these dysfunction. If you ignore it or you don't know how to address it, then you'll get disease. That's when doctors are diagnosing the blood pressure, the cholesterol, the diabetes. That's too late. And you know, just example, when you go for a stress test, it's not going to be positive unless you have greater than 90% blockage. Again, you're waiting 'til you're way down on the stages of cell decline and physiological function. So here, I think in summary again, you know, as I said, I want you to have a relationship with the doctor, and yes, it's not possible for every doctor to go over the five, six different complaints at once because he may be tied down by the system. I fortunately am not tied by the system because I look at health and healthcare, which means I've got to prevent, predict, and my job is to make the patient functional and make them optimal again, so they can get off the medication and never need the medication. Now for the most doctors, unfortunately, as I said, that they are burdened or hands are tied by reimbursement, and so if you go to an insurance doctor, you know, for what it's worth, unfortunately, it's going to be dictated at least 50%, I suspect it's actually much higher than that, by the reimbursement system, the whole process. And then, you know, of course, a good doctor will still engage, you'll have a good relationship, but wouldn't it be better if it was more than five minutes? Wouldn't it be better if it's more than 15 minutes? In fact I can't spend 15 minutes and understand everything about the patient. Now if there's a doctor out there that can learn everything about the patient in 15 minutes and fix everything, you know, I wanna come and learn from him. But you know, medicine is not that simple because it's not two-dimensional. The doctor that comes up with a quick answer, he's doing two-dimensional medicine at kindergarten stuff. The three-dimensional medicine is exponentially more complicated, and it take time. So even on the first visit of spending an hour is not enough. I need the time, I need the data point, I need the follow up, I need you know, and it's a wonderful exploration, or into the human beings and there's nothing more rewarding than fixing the problem. Merely controlling it with pills, which once you stop the pills and the problem's still there, that's not really good medicine. That's what we've gotten accustomed to, is just controlling, managing, and I wanna redefine the word, treatment. If a patient hears treatment, they know that the doctor's giving me the best possible treatment, which is really fixing the problem. And unfortunately, let me dispel that myth for you. Treatment means controlling, managing because there are very few things that you can fix with a prescription. You have to understand that there are ways to predict and prevent it. Now if you have the disease, if you catch it at stage three, you can definitely reverse it. You may even be able to reverse a lot of stage four. But if you wait and go to stage five, you may not about through reverse at all, but the aim would be that use the least possible medication. Okay so that's for today and another occasion, we'll talk about a different subject matter about the practice of day-to-day medicine and the way it should really be practiced.

I almost died from the Influenza A Virus. I'm recovering well but I'm addressing the additional medical conditions at this time. All I'm asking for is prayers and well wishes. Until next time, Namaste.

With the start of a new year, many of us will begin creating trialing goals, such as our desire to obtain a certain title by a certain date. In this podcast, we discuss the benefit of designing smaller, obtainable goals that are laser focused on building specific skills for both you and your dog, and how these smaller goals will ultimately help you achieve the "big" goal of earning your desired title. ----more---- Want to learn more about Dog Sport University? Check out our website and look over our Dog Sport Skills courses. You may also be interested in our informative webinars as well as the Dog Sport University blog.  Have you heard about Scent Work and want to delve deeper into that activity? Perfect, we have just the thing! Check out our sister online dog training platform, Scent Work University where you will find courses and webinars suited for both those dog owners who simply want to have fun, and those who are seriously competing with their dogs. Maybe you're looking to help your puppy or dog in the manners department. Then your need to check out Family Dog University where we provide a variety of programs to help your dog be the best canine family companion they can be! PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Dogs Sports & Training Podcast. In this podcast, we talk about all things dog sports as well as all things dog training. We'll provide you a behind-the-scenes look at what your instructor may be going through, what your trial officials may be going through, provide you some training tips and much more. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about how in a new year, we can start designing some trial end goals and how we have to make certain that those are ideal goals and that we're not setting ourselves up and our dogs up for failure. Before we start diving into the podcast, I'm just going to do a very quick introduction to myself. My name is Dianna Santos. I'm the Owner and Lead Instructor for both Dog Sport University and Scent Work University. Dog Sports University is an online dog training platform where we provide online courses, webinars and seminars covering such topics as dog sports, such as agility, competition obedience, treibball and tricks as well as good manners courses such as our Family Dog Program, our Perfect Puppies Program, Canine Good Citizen Prep, Real Life Skills, Shaping Behavior and much more. In addition to being a professional dog trainer, I'm also an approved trial official and have actually worked with a competition organization. So, now you know a little bit about me, let's dive into the podcast. So, at the start of the new year, it's very common for all of us to start designing some goals, some resolutions, things that we would like to do. And when we're involved in dog sports, one of the most common things that people do is that they will start designing some trial end goals, some things that they want to achieve in that given year in regard to dog sports if they happen to compete. And that may be that they're going to start competing or that if they are competing, they want to obtain a certain goal as far as a certain title. What I'd like to do in this podcast is to really nail down what I would claim would be a better way of designing those goals, so that you can actually achieve them in training and so that you're not setting your dog and yourself up for failure. Because sometimes when we put out a goal post, it's just so incredibly vague such as, "I want to obtain that title," it can be a little difficult in order to put together a plan to actually achieve that goal. So, in this podcast, we just wanna talk about some of the better ways that you may be able to design your new year goals, so that you can maybe ultimately obtain that title, but you're actually working towards very specific goal points instead. I'm going preface this by saying I personally have a love-hate relationship with competition. I personally can take or leave dog sports a lot of the time as far as the competing piece. I really enjoy the activities, I enjoy the training part of it. And there are times when I really enjoy trialing and there are other times where I find it really super stressful. And a lot of that just has to do with the fact that I get stuck in my own head a lot of the time. My dog is brilliant. If he had a better handler, he would have a lot of letters behind his name. By coming at it from that perspective and because the titles themselves don't hold any inherent value all within themselves in that I need to have a title in order to get up the next day. That's just not how I'm wired. I can come to the place of putting together goals a little bit differently than someone who really thinks that having the titles is really, really, really important. And it's not to say that either approach is wrong. It's not. What I'm hoping to do in this podcast is just outline some of the ways that all of us can at least do a better job of our designing our goals so that they can actually be obtained. I have actually done the whole thing of saying, "Oh, well I would like to achieve this title by this date." This has never worked for me. Now, the argument could be made that maybe that's just because I don't have a good approach, maybe it's because I'm competitive enough. Who knows? My guess is going to be that for me personally, and this is probably true for a lot of people is that that goal didn't provide me with a whole lot of information. It was just a date on a calendar that seemed to get closer and closer way too quickly 'til all of a sudden, we were there and there was no way that we were gonna be prepared in order to obtain that goal, in order to do well in whatever sport it may be. Whether it be rally, obedience, barn hunt or scent work. So, what I want do in this podcast is to outline some of the things that I've found to have been successful as far as helping me really design some good goals that can be obtained through training and practice that are all pointing towards ultimately ending up at that title. So, the way that this would work is you, of course, will have a big goal. And the big goal can absolutely be the title. So, for instance, in scent work, one of the goals that I would have for 2019 is that we do go back to trialing. That would be goal number one. And goal number two would be that for one of the competition organizations, which is NACSW, that we would obtain our NW2 title, which is the level two title. So, that is a big goal. But from that, what I need to do is I need to figure out well, why are we obtaining that right now? What is missing? What is missing training-wise? What is missing skill-wise? Why is it that we don't have that already? What is it that we need to do as a team, both on the dog training side and on my skill side together, what is it that we need in order to obtain that title? And this is where I think designing some very specific goals will help, so for instance, for NW2, you're gonna be dealing with more distractors within the search area, so we would need to have a very specific exercise set up where we are working on those kinds of things where now there are distractors within the search area itself. So, then we have a general premise, but now you need to break that down into smaller goals. An example of that would be I would like my dog to work a container search where there is two distractors out within the container search and he successfully finds the hide without hitting on the distractors. Perfect. And then from there, you can start making it a little bit harder. There's going to be five distractors out and there's only going to be one hide. He successfully finds the hide. He does that, great. That goal is checked off. Then, we wanna do it within a time limit, then we wanna do it when he's both on leash and off leash. Then, we wanna do it where the hide is actually blind to me where I don't know where it is. So, I hope you can see that even with this very simple example, that's starting with the big goal of we would like to obtain our NW2, you can then from that, figure out what your actual actionable goals would be. And then, from there, you can make it even more specific where you can actually come up with a game plan of how it is that you're going to be developing your training program so that you can obtain those skills. And the key here is that it shouldn't just be focusing on the dog. Nine times out of 10, with dog sports, it's a team effort. It involves both the dog and the handler. You both have to be showing up and doing well. You have to have good skills. So, you want to make certain that you're focusing on both. You're not putting all of your emphasis on the dog and you're just kinda sitting at the sidelines saying, "Eh, well we'll figure it out." You wanna make certain you're working on both of you. So, to take another dog sport as an example, one of the things that I would like to do this year is to get more involved in our rally and our competition obedience trialing and a lot of that's gonna depend on my body, whether or not it decides to cooperate or not. But instead of just falling back on that excuse, so saying, "Well, there's a really good chance that my body isn't going to cooperate, so we're just not even gonna try." This year, I'm actually going to put a training plan in place where we are going to at least training wise be prepared to go into certain trials. Whether or not we actually make it on trial day is an entirely different question. That all depends on what my body says that day, but it's no longer going to be an excuse of saying, "Well, you know, we don't need to perfect this stuff, because I probably won't be able to do it anyway." Just recognizing that if this is an important goal that we have to work on it and it's going to require work. I'm going to have to make certain that I have a certain period of time of practicing these specific skills that I am videotaping my practice sessions, that I'm seeing where things could be improved, where it is that there are weaknesses either within the training itself or even with my own handling. What am I doing with my body? So, particularly with rally or a competition obedience, one of the things that I tend to do when I'm heeling, is I'll tend to look over my shoulder down at my dog. And what that does, it pushes him back, because I'm looking backwards. The other thing I've had an issue with is having a very good rhythm when I walk and that can make things very difficult for the dog, because they're constantly flowing between a fast walk and a pace and a trot whereas if you can just find a really good rhythm, it makes things a lot easier for them. So, what I would need to do, because we would like to go forward and actually compete in both rally and competition obedience is I need to do two different things: I need to work on my dog skills, so that he understands the various things that he would need to do both at the entry level of that dog sport as well as a level ahead of it, because you never wanna just prepare for the bare minimum. You don't wanna go in there just by the skin of your teeth. You want to be able to go into that trial knowing that your dog could actually enter the level above and do well. That way, it's easy peasy. So, I need to work on those things with him. A lot of it's just cleaning it up and finessing stuff. But a lot of it's gonna be on me, that I need to make sure that my handling skills are up to par, that I'm doing my piece. So, those are the kinds of things that all of us can do where if you have said to yourself, "I want to obtain this title in 2019," that's great, that's fine, but what is it you're actually going to do to obtain that title? And then be really brutally honest about it. Where are you right now? Where will you and your dog be able to go within a reasonable period of time? And it very well may be that you may not be able to obtain that goal within that time frame and that's okay. That's one of the big things that I think a lot of us put way too much pressure on ourselves and our dogs, because we're worried about the calendar and a lot of the calendar stuff is because we're worried about other people. So, we're thinking about what other people would think about us, whether it be our dog's breeder, whether it be our friends, our colleagues, whatever. None of that matters. You wanna make certain that you're doing this in a way that both you and your dog can be successful, you're not biting off more than you can chew and you're designing goals that are actually obtainable. So an example of an unobtainable goal would be if you had just purchased a 12-week-old puppy from a breeder and you wanted to obtain your OTCH or your MACH within that year. That's not going to happen. Now, are there people who have done a MACH in a year? There are. It's really very rare and it's not a really good idea. You're not gonna be able to get your OTCH in a year. It's just not gonna happen. It doesn't mean that you and your dog are bad. It just means that it's gonna take more time to develop those skills. So, make certain that you're being realistic with your goals. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by asking what would take normally two, three, four years of skill building to be jammed all into one for no other reason than to say that you did it in that time frame. You're just gonna drive yourself crazy, you're gonna make it so that your dog hates whatever activity that you're doing and it's probably not gonna work out for the best. Just be realistic with these sorts of things. Design goals with the undercurrent that you're going to enjoy this. The one thing about dog sports is that this entirely elective. You don't have to do any of this. It's supposed to be fun, even for people who do this for a living. They enjoy doing it, even if this is what they do in order to pay the bills. They still like the sport. They still enjoy it. Don't design goals that are basically guaranteed to make you miserable at the end of the day, because they're so incredibly difficult. And that also doesn't mean that your goals should be really gimme, like, "Oh, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna feed my dog a treat today. Oh, I did my goal." You know, there has to be a balance. But make certain that it's being realistic, you're keeping in mind all the various things that are gonna go into obtaining that goal and then it's not just such a broad thing such as, "I'm going to obtain this title by this date." That's not going to help you. You need to be able to break that down into very specific skill sets that both you and your dog are gonna have to work on and ideally when you're designing your goal, you have an idea of how it is that you can then obtain that goal and you may even wanna break it up into smaller steps. The more short-term goals you can set, the better it is. Because that way, it feels as if you're making progression. If you only have giant goals, it's never going to feel as though you're getting there. It's gonna be like three months down the line, you're gonna be like, "I'm nowhere even close to where I wanna be right now." But if you actually break that up into smaller pieces, you can keep track of it whichever way works best for you, on a piece of paper, on your smartphone, however. But just jotting it down, we've done this, we've done that, we've done the other thing. You know what, we're making pretty darn good progress. But by also keeping track of it, you can see when you're back sliding. You can see when you're not on track. You can see when you veered off the path completely and you ended up in Osh Gosh Land. So, the whole premise behind this is with the start of a new year, a lot of us are gonna start making goals and we're gonna be saying how we would like to do this, that, and the other thing. And there's nothing wrong with that. All I'm suggesting is that we be a little bit more mindful of it, particularly when we're interested in competing. It's great that people do a reset and that people have nice, fresh eyes in the new year and there are things that they would like to try and do with their dog. Maximize on that positivity and this is coming from someone who is a lifelong pessimist, but maximize on the fact that you do feel this sense of revival. Maximize on the fact that you are excited to try these new things. That you are excited to try to obtain these different goals. But set yourself and your dog up to succeed by breaking those up into smaller pieces, so that you can actually obtain them. So, I hope you found this podcast helpful. Thank you so much for listening. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.

What up folks!!! We're back with another episode. So... This joint starts out a little weird. All I'm going to say is... Butt Stuff... Then we talk about some of our favorite TV Dramas. We also discuss the Cyntoia Brown case and how white dudes seem to get off with crimes POCs would definitely not get away with. That leads us into talking about how trash the justice system is and neighborhood Policing. We also get into the the Cardi/Offset toxic thing and talk a little about the King of RnB debate going on too. In MFA we get into protecting black women at all cost!!! Remember LIKE, SHARE, COMMENT, REVIEW. We're on most of the thing(ITunes,SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play). PEACE!!!

My Guest this week is Malcolm Handley, General Partner and Founder of Strong Atomics. The topic of this conversation is Fusion power - how it’s funded now, why we don’t have it yet, and how he’s working on making it a reality. We touch on funding long-term bets in general, incentives inside of venture capital, and more. Show Notes Strong Atomics Malcolm on Twitter (@malcolmredheron) Fusion Never Plot Fusion Z-Pinch Experiment. ARPA-e Alpha Program ITER - International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. NIF - National Ignition Facility ARPA-e Office of Fusion Energy Science Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air Transcript  [00:00:00] This podcast I talk to Malcolm Hanley about Fusion funding long-term bets incentives inside of venture capital and more Malcolm is the managing partner of strong atomics. Strong atomics is a venture capital firm that exists solely in a portfolio of fusion projects that have been selected based on their potential to create net positive energy and lead to plausible reactors before starting strong atomics. Malcolm was the first employee at the software company aside. I love talking to Malcolm because he's somewhat of a fanatic about making Fusion Energy reality. But at the same time he remains an intense pragmatist in some ways. He's even more pragmatic than I am. So here in the podcast. He thinks deeply about everything he does. So we go very deep on some topics. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.   Intro   Ben: Malcolm would you would you introduce yourself? Malcolm: Sure. So I'm Malcolm heavily. I found in strong [00:01:00] atomics after 17 years is software engineer because I. I was looking for the most important thing that I could work on and concluded that that was kind of change that was before democracy fell off the rails. And so it was the obvious most important thing. So my thesis is that climate change is a real problem and the. Typical ways that we are addressing it or insufficient, for example, even if you ignore the climate deniers most people seem to be of the opinion that we're on track that Renewables and storage for renewable energy are going to save the day and my fear as I looked into this more deeply is that this is not sufficient that we are in fact not on track and that we need to be looking at more possible ways of responding to [00:02:00] climate change. So I found an area nuclear fusion that is that it has the potential to help us solve climate change and that in my opinion is underinvested. So I started strong atomics to invest in those companies and to support them in other ways. And that's what I'm doing these days   What did founding strong atomics entail?   Ben: and he did a little bit more into what founding strong atomics and Tails. You can just snap your fingers and bring it into being Malcolm:  I almost did because it was extremely lucky but in general Silicon Valley has a pretty well worn model for how people start startups and I think even the people getting out of college actually no a surprising amount about how to start a company and when you look at Fusion companies getting started you realize just how much knowledge we take for granted in Silicon Valley. On the other hand as far as I can tell the way [00:03:00] that every VC fund get started in the way that everyone becomes a VC is unique. It was really one story for how you start a company and there are n stories for how funds get started. So in my case, I wasn't sure that I wanted to start a fund more precisely. It hadn't even occurred to me that I would start a fund. I was a software engineer and looking for what I could do about climate change. I'm just assuming that I was looking for a technical way to be involved with that. I was worried because my only technical skill is software engineering but I figured hey, but software you can do many things. There must be a way that a software engineer can help. So I made my way to The arpa-e Summit in DC at the beginning of 2016 and went around and talked to a whole lot of people if they're different boots about what they were doing and. My questions for myself was does what you're doing matter. My question for them was how might a software engineer help [00:04:00] and to a first approximation even at a wonderful conference like the arpa-e summit. I think you'd have to say mostly these things are not moving the needle mostly in my terminology. They don't matter and it really wasn't clear how a software engineer could help and then because I was curious because I'd read many things about. Companies claiming that they were working on fusion and they were closed and made an effort to hit every Fusion Booth. I could find and a one of those booths. I said, I'm a software engineer. What can I do and they said well the next time this guy comes to San Francisco, you should organize an audience and he'll give a talk and won't that be fun? So that guy is now one of my science advisors, but that was. The first part of my relationship there. So he came I organized the talk we had dinner beforehand and is like how close is fusion and he says well, it could be 10 years away, but it's actually [00:05:00] in infinite time away. And the problem is we're not funded. So then you say well how much money do you need and it turns out to be a few million dollars you say that's really really dumb here. I am in Silicon Valley my. The company I work for is sauna making collaboration software for task management just raised 50 million dollars in here. These people are credibly trying to save the world and they're short two million dollars. Maybe I can find some rich people who can put some money in the answer was yes, I could find a rich person who is willing to put some money in and Rich. By and large unless they're really excited about the company do not want to put money in directly. They don't want that kind of relationship. So you work through all the mechanics here and you run as you can convince people to put money in but you need to [00:06:00] grease the wheels by making a normal VC structure in this case. And then before, you know it you wind up as the managing partner of a one-person VC fund but single investor. And then you say well, I've had a surprising amount of impact doing this. What should I do? Do I keep looking for that technical way to be involved and my conclusion was there's really no contest here. I could go back to my quest of how how is the software engineer? Can I help climate change or look? I've already put four million dollars into Fusion four million dollars of other people's money, but companies have four million dollars that. Born kinda half without me and several of them are doing way better making way more progress than they would have without me. And now I have all these contacts in the fusion industry. I can build a team of advisers. I'm in all of these internal discussions about [00:07:00] what's coming next in federal funding programs, and I'm invited to conferences and that kind of thing and it was. So obvious that the way to keep making an impact on climate change was to keep doing what I was doing. So that ends with my now taking the steps towards being what I call a real VC. Someone who goes out and really raises the next Fund in a much more normal way with multiple LPS and a much more significant amount of money. Ben: Got it Malcolm: Ray's right now in the baby if you see they VVC or. Ben: So you invest in babies? Malcolm: No. No, I'm the baby. That's and Tina that raises a whole bunch of questions.   Why did you structure the venture as a vc firm?   Ben: So one is why did you decide to structure it as a VC fund instead of say a philanthropic organization if you just wanted to redirect money. Malcolm: The short answer is [00:08:00] because I can get my hands on way more money. If this is a for-profit Enterprise, so my all P was very generous and trusting and also very open-minded and part of the four million dollars that I mentioned before actually was a donation. It was a gift to the University of Washington to support Fusion research there because. That particular project that we wanted to support was still an academic project for the others. The companies were our for-profit companies and there's just no good case to say to someone who has money. You should give money to support these for-profit things in a way that gets you know profit if they actually work you can tap a lot more money if you offer people a profit motive. And I think you create a stronger chain of [00:09:00] incentives. They are encouraged to give more money. I am more encouraged to look after that money. I have a share of the profit with my fund if it ever makes a profit and and finally you get a more traditional control structure. I don't yet have. At an actual Equity stake in these companies because we did a convertible note or a y combinator safe, but I sit on the board of the companies. They all know that my investment will turn into voting equity in the future and it's just a much cleaner setup. So I think there were no downsides to doing it this way and a lot of upsets the bigger question, which I. Contemplated the beginning of all of this was even for for-profit money is a fund the right vehicle or other other [00:10:00] options that I should pursue. That's something that I spent a lot of time looking into it after creating the first fund what other options are there, right? (Alternate structures) So one approach is you say, well there are four or however many companies here. I like what they're doing, but they're. Really annoyingly small by Annoying. I mean they are inefficient in terms of how they spend their money and their potentially leaving Innovation on the table. So the companies that I've invested in are all about four people maybe six, but that kind of size and they have one or two main science people in each company those. Interacts with other scientists a few times a year a conferences those scientists at the conference's are of course not completely trust to love each other. They are all competitors working at different companies [00:11:00] each convinced that they're going to crush the other guys and that's the extent of their scientific collaboration unless they have a couple of academics universities that they're close to. And when I think about my background in software, I never worked in a team that small I had many more people that I could turn to for help whenever it was stuck. So one thing we looked at seriously was starting a company that would raise a bunch of money and buy these four or so companies. We would merge them all into one. This is called the Roll-Up. And we'd move everyone to one place. They would certainly have a much larger pool of collaborators. They would also have the union of all of their equipment right? So now when someone had a new idea for an approach to Fusion, they wanted to test instead of needing to contemplate leaving [00:12:00] their job starting a new company raising money buying. Or scrounging a whole lot of equipment and then yours later doing the experiment. They could practically go in on the weekend and do the experiment after validating their ideas with their co-workers. Right? I think there's a lot to recommend this and it was seductive enough that I went a long way down this path in the end of the the complexities killed. And made it seem like something that wasn't actually a good idea when you netted everything.   Complexities of Roll-Ups   Ben: Can you go into a little more detail about that? Yeah, which complexities and how did you decided it was not a good idea, Malcolm: right? So it's much harder to raise money for because you're doing something much less traditional as I guess that's not necessarily harder in some ways. If you come to the market with a radically new idea. You're so novel that you. [00:13:00] Breakthrough everyone's filters and maybe you have an easier time raising money seen it go both witness. Yeah, and my existing investors was not enthused about this. So I would have certainly had to work past some skepticism there on top of that you have to convince all of these companies to sell to you and that looks really hard. The CEO of one of the companies told me look I'm a lone cowboy. I think he said and made it very clear that he was used to executing independently and didn't want to be part of larger company. Potentially. I could have bought his independence by offering him enough money that he couldn't refuse but that's not really the way you want to build your team. Other companies were enthusiastic but it would getting [00:14:00] the majority of these benefits would have required people moving. Yeah people and companies and these companies have connections to universities. Of course, the people have families they have whole lives. It wasn't clear that people wanted to move. It really looked as if everyone was really excited about a roll up that happened where they lived. Yeah on top of that. These people are cordial to each other at conferences. And at least think they wanted to collaborate more but they're also pretty Fierce competitors. So you also had to believe that when these people were all brought into one company. They would actually collaborate rather than get into status contests and fights and that kind of thing. Not to mention all the more subtle ways in which they might fail to collaborate and it really big wake-up call for me was when the [00:15:00] two technical co-founders one of my companies started fighting these people had known each other for decades. They were best men at each other's weddings. They had chosen to found the company together. No asshole VC had bought two companies include them together and force them to work together. This was their choice. And it got to the point where still they could not work together. I went down I spent two days at the company watching the team Dynamic interviewing each person at the company one-on-one and made the recommendation that the company fire one of the founders. So you look at that and then you're like, well these people say they're happy to cooperate with everyone at these other companies to I really believe that so. Huge caution, I think yeah other people cautioned me that the [00:16:00] competitive factors would be reduced. So I had one guy who went through YC not doing Fusion just a regular software startup say look when we were doing way see we were in the same year as Dropbox and it was clear the Dropbox was crash. And if we had known that actually we were part of some big roll up and we were going to share and dropboxes success. We would not have worked as hard on our little company as we did wanting to match their success. Yeah. (Holding companies and how they worked) So eventually I looked at the third model the first model being the VC fund at the second model being the roll up. The third model was a holding company and this is meant to be a middle ground where we would have a company that would invest in the various Fusion companies that we wanted to support. They would not be combined. I [00:17:00] guess. I'm neglected to mention several of the other advantages that we would have gotten with the holding with the roll up in addition to a unified team of scientists. We would have had the pool of Hardware that I did mention right we would also been able to have other infrastructure teams. For example, we could have had a software team that worked on modeling or simulation software that all of the different Fusion teams could use so the idea with the holding company was we would still be able to centralize things that made sense centralist right things where you could benefit by sharing. But we would have these companies remaining as separate companies. They could raise money from other people if they wanted to or we couldn't provide the money when they needed it. They wouldn't have to move they would be independent companies. But the first thing that we would do is say a condition of taking money from us is [00:18:00] you will give all of your experimental data and enough. Of the conditions of your experiments to us so that we can run our own simulations using our own software right and match them against your experimental results. We would of course encourage them to use our modeling software as well. But that's harder to force. So the idea was software is something that really can be shared right? We would encourage them to share it and by having access to their. Their detailed data, we would be able to validate what they were doing and being much more informed investors than others so we could make better investment decisions. We could tell who was really succeeding and who might be struggling or failing so we couldn't make better investment decisions than other investors, which would help us. It would also help the companies [00:19:00] because our decision to investor to continue to invest would be a more credible signal of success or the value creation and they could use that to to shop it around to raise money from other people. So to the benefits there would be still internalizing some of the externalities while keeping people with their independence, but allowing resource sharing and better signal. For further support raise so much more flexible sharing sharing where it made sense and not where it didn't and then in an optional way later later on we might have said, well, it turns out that the number of our companies need the same physical equipment may be pulsed Power Equipment, which is a large part of the expense for these companies so we could have bought that. Set it up somewhere and then said you're welcome to come and do experiments on our facility and you could imagine that over time. They would decide that the [00:20:00] facility was valuable enough that someone from the company moved there. And then maybe they do all their new hiring their and the company's gradually co-locate but in a much more gradual much smoother way than. In the roll-up where we envision seeing a condition of this purchase is you move right having just talked up the the holding company's so much. Obviously I decided I didn't like that either because that's not what I'm doing one of the death blows for the holding company was doing a science review of the four companies that I've invested in so far. Plus several other approaches by this point I built a team of four science advisors. We put all of these seven or so approaches past the advisors for basic feedback is this thing actually a terrible [00:21:00] idea and we haven't realized yet or what are the challenges or is this an amazing thing that we should be backing and the feedback that we got was that one of them was? And should definitely be back right for a bunch of them. The feedback was waiting to see another one. Was it an even more precarious position because of execution problems to more that received favorable feedback did not and still do not have companies associated with them but feedback was positive enough that we. Pay people to work on them inside basically shall companies so that we own the IP if something comes to that but what did we not so sorry just to interrupt right now. They're in universities right now. They're dormant. They're dormant. Okay a common theme in Fusion is someone does some [00:22:00] work gets some promising results and then for one reason or another fails to get. Funding to continue that it sometimes the story is then the Republicans got into power and cut the funding or they got less funding than they wanted. So they bought worse equipment and they wanted and therefore they weren't able to achieve the conditions that they wanted but they still did the experiment because of the bad conditions that got bad results. So they definitely didn't get any more money from that a whole host of reasons. The promising work doesn't continue. Yeah, so in both of those cases there are promising results and no one is working on this got it.  Yeah another sad Fusion story. So so bunch of things came out of that science review, but what did not come out of it was oh yes here. We have a pool of for companies that are all [00:23:00] strong and deserve. And have enough overlap that that some sort of sharing model makes sense on top of that. It was becoming clear that even a holding company was sufficiently novel pitch as to make my life even more difficult for fundraising. Yeah, so it just. Didn't look like something that was worth taking that fundraising hit for given that the benefits for seeming to be more theoretical or in the future than then in the present     Alternate Structures   Ben: So with a VC fund to my understanding you are sitting on already given capital and your job is. To deploy it I'm going to use air quotes as [00:24:00] quickly as possible within a   certain limit of responsibility. Would you ever consider something where you do something there there these private Equity firms that will have a thesis and the look for companies that meet these a certain set of conditions and only then. Will they basically exert a call option on promised money and invest that and it seems like that's that's another structure that you could have gone with. Did you consider anything like that at all? Malcolm: Right edit your description of a VC fund and yes, we may I please one is you're not sitting on a pool of money that is in your bank account. Some of the money is in your bank account, but there's a distinction between the money that is committed and the money that is raised. [00:25:00] So you might say I want to have a VC fund that has 40 million dollars over its lifespan if you wait until you have raised. All 40 million then the deals that you'd identified at the beginning that you are using to support the raising of your fund will likely be gone. It can take a long time to raise even a moderately sized fund. Yeah, unless you're one of those individuals leading very Charmed lives where in weeks they raise their entire fun, but for the rest of us the fundraising process can be 6-12 months that kind of thing so, You have a first close where you've identified or where you have enough and money committed to justify saying this fund is definitely happening. Right [00:26:00] we're going to do this even then maybe your first clothes is 15 million dollars. You don't need all 15 million dollars to start making your Investments right now. So you have 15 million dollars. Right, but over the life of the fund you do Capital calls when your account is too low to keep doing what you're trying to do. Right? So the LPS get penalized heavily if they fail to produce the money that they have committed within a certain amount of time after you're calling it got it you could in principle call all the money at the beginning but you damage your friends metrics if you do that. Got it. Funds are. Graded through their internal rate of return and I remember exactly how this is calculated. (Internal Rate of Return (IRR) ) But part of that is how long you actually have the money. So if you got the money closer to when you're going to spend it or invest it, you look better got it. So that's the first edit. The [00:27:00] second edit is I wouldn't say my job is to deploy the money as quickly as possible. Mmm. My job is to deploy the money for the best results possible. I measure results in terms of some combination of profit to my investors and impact on the world. Right because they think Fusion is well aligned to do both. I think these prophets are pretty consistent. So I'm not trying to spend my money as quickly as I can. I'm trying to support a large enough portfolio of companies for as long as I can. Large portfolio of companies because they want to mitigate the risk. I want to include as many companies in the portfolio. So that promising ideas do not go unsupported. That's the impact and also so that the company that succeeds if when ultimately does is in my fund so [00:28:00] that my investors get a return got it and then I want to support them for as long as I can because the longer I'm supporting them. The larger return my investors get rather than that later value creation accruing to later investors. Got it. Also.  longer. I can support them the greater the chance that the company has of surviving for long enough and making enough progress that it can then raise from other investors investors who probably will know less about fusion and be less friendly to Fusion.   Why not start the Bell Labs of Fusion   Ben:  okay, there's there's a bunch of bunch of bookmarks. I want to put there the first thing is one more question about possible structures. So a problem that you brought up consistently is the  efficiency gains from having people all in the same place all sharing equipment all sharing code all sharing knowledge that. Does not happen [00:29:00] when you have a bunch of companies, why are you so focused on sort of starting with companies as or groups of people who have already formed companies as as the basic building blocks. So for example, you could imagine a world where you create  the Bell Labs a fusion where you literally just start from scratch. Hire people and put them all in the same place with a bunch of equipment and aren't working together without having to pull people  who have already demonstrated their willingness to go out on their own and start companies. Malcolm: Yeah, great question and the bell Labs diffusion is an analogy of it gets thrown around a fair amount including to describe what I was trying to do. Although I agree. It's slightly. I think there are two answers to that question. One is [00:30:00] by the point that I was really considering this. I already had invested in for companies. So partly the answer is path dependence got it and partly the answer. Is that by the time I was clearly seeing the problems with the rollout especially but also the holding company it was. It didn't seem as if just starting a company from scratch was really going to change that some people make the argument that actually the best plasma physicists aren't in companies at the moment. They are in Academia or National Labs because the best ones don't want to risk their reputation and a great job for a two-bit company that's going to have trouble. And therefore the if you could come along and create a credible [00:31:00] proposition of the legitimate company that will do well fundraising and prove that it will do well at fundraising by endowing it with a lot of money in the beginning you may then hire those people right? I know some people who are convinced that this is possible. You still have to deal. The asshole complex that is common with infusion. These people have had their entire careers which are long because they are all old or they're in PHD programs basically to become quite sure of the approach that they want to take for Fusion, right? So it was difficult to find a team of four. Experienced knowledgeable and open-minded advisors for my science board and not all of those people are able to be hired for any price. I think if you want to actually stock a [00:32:00] company with these people you need more people right and they all need to be able to be hired and you still need to convince them to move and you still need to convince them to work on each other's projects. So it I think it's an interesting idea. I have real concerned about the lack of competition that you would get about all the areas that I just mentioned and on top of that when I looked into the situation around the software sharing and the hardware sharing more closely. I became less convinced that this is actually available. What's that on the software side many people don't even believe that it's possible in a reasonable time frame to create simulation software that [00:33:00] can sufficiently accurately simulate the conditions used by a whole range of different approaches to Fusion at the moment. We. Many different pieces of software or yeah codes as the physics Community calls them that they're each validated and optimized for different conditions different temperatures different densities different physical geometries of the plasma that kind of thing. There are some people who believe that we can make software that spans a sufficiently large range of these parameters. As to be useful for a family of fusion approaches. There are even people who claim to be working on them right now. Yeah, and when you dig more deeply you discover, yeah, they're working on them, but they haven't accomplished as much of that unified solution [00:34:00] as they think they have is they say they have so you talk to other people who use these and they're like, yes. Yes, I think those people really have the. I think they might be the people who can do this. They're not there yet. So the notion of spinning up a team of software engineers and plasma physicists and numerical experts and so forth to try to do that came to seem like a bigger lift with much more dubious payback in the relevant time frame than I had initially thought similarly on the hardware side. It is really costly in many ways to reconfigure physical equipment for one experiment and then reconfigure it for another experiment is really bad when you have to move things between locations as well or move a team to a site and configure everything there and then do your experiments for a month, but [00:35:00] it's still bad even. All the people and all the equipment are in when se you get to the most consistent results. If you can leave everything set up and you want to be able to keep going on Saturday or keep going on Monday because you weren't quite done with those through experiments. So to what degree can you really share these results these certain not these results. She killed to what degree can you really share this equipment? Yeah, definitely to some degree to a large enough to agree to justify. Spinning up a whole company. I'm not convinced got it on top of that. If I were to start a company doing this, I would need to find a CEO build up a whole team that I don't have to build when I'm investing in other companies, right? Should I be that CEO of many people assumed that I showed her that I wanted to or something like that. I think it's a really hard sell for [00:36:00] investors that I'm the best person to run this company on the other hand. It wasn't actually clear who should do it. Incentives: How do you measure impact and incentivize yourself?   Ben:  Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I want to [00:37:00] go back to you're talking about incentives previously both that your incentives are to both have impact and make money for your shareholders. Yeah, I want to ask first. How do you measure impact for yourself in terms of your incentives you. I mentioned something along the lines of company's existing that would not otherwise exist. So like how it's pretty easy to know. Okay. I've like made this much money. It's a little harder to say. Okay, I've had this much impact. So  how do you personally measure that? Malcolm: Yeah, the clearest example of impact so far is another project called fuse annoyingly. Annoyingly the same name is spelt differently. So this is the fusion z-pinch experiment Fu [00:38:00] Ze at the University of Washington. And it's the group that we donated to (Fusion Z-Pinch Experiment. https://www.aa.washington.edu/research/ZaP) it is all four of the companies that have given money to so far are supported by our pennies Alpha program (ARPA-e Alpha Program:https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=arpa-e-programs/alpha ) its Fusion program and all four of them got less money than. Rpe would have liked to have given them. So the time that I became involved with the fuse project they were behind schedule on their rpe milestones and we made them a donation that enabled them to hire an extra two people for the rest of the life of the project that enabled them to catch up with their milestones and become the. Most successful of the fusion programs that are P of fusion projects that are PE has [00:39:00] when I say most successful what I mean is they are hitting their Milestones they are getting very clean results. So there they have a simulation that says as they put more and more current through their plasma. They will get higher temperatures and higher densities basically. Better and better Fusion conditions and that at a certain point they will be making as much energy as they're putting in at a point beyond that they will actually be getting what we call reactor relevant game getting a large enough increase in energy through their Fusion that they could run a reactor off that this and the way we plot their progress is. We look at the increase in currents that they're putting through their pastor and check that they are getting results that match their theoretical results for them. It's especially clean because they have this theoretical concern this theoretical curve [00:40:00] and their experimental results keep falling very close to that curve. So it's a really nice story because the connection between the money that they got. From strong atomics and the people that they hired and the results that they were able to the progress they were able to make with those additional people and the scientific validity of what they were doing is clear at every step. Yeah. So so that's one way that I can see the impact of what I'm doing another way. That's more. Is by being involved in the field and trying to make sure that it all makes sense to me. I wind up having insights or coming to understandings the turn out to be helpful to everyone. So I spent a long time [00:41:00] wondering about the economics of fusion. Companies are understandably mainly focused on getting Fusion to work and they don't spend that much time thinking about the competitive energy Market that they're likely to be selling into 15 or 20 years from now and what that means for their product. I spend time thinking about that because I want to convince myself that the space matters enough to justify my time. So I went through the stock process. And came to the conclusion that the ways that the companies were calculating their cost of energy were wrong. They were assuming that the reactors would be operating more or less continuously and they would be able to sell all of the electricity that they made whereas the reality is likely to be that for five or hours or so every day. No one [00:42:00] will buy their electricity because wind and solar producing cheaper electricity. See, right. So the conclusion that I've come to is well so scratch that so the companies often conclude that they need to be demand following they need to make their reactors able to ramp up and down according to what the demand is right that has other problems because the reactors are so expensive to build and so cheap to run. That ramping your reactor down to follow the demand doesn't actually save you any money. And so it doesn't make the electricity any cheaper. So I worked through all of this and came to the conclusion, which I think most people in the fusion space agree with know that you actually need to have integrated thermal storage. Your reactor is producing typically hot molten salts. Anyway, right and rather than turning that into [00:43:00] electricity. You should store the bats of hot molten salt and then run the reactor continuously and ramp up and down the turbine that is used to go from hot molten salts to electricity interesting turbines are cheap. They have low fixed costs. So you can much more affordably ramp them up and down plus if you were going to be demand following you were already going to be ramping your turbine up and. All I'm saying is keep the turbine demand following right make the reactor smaller so that it can run continuously. Right which is the most efficient way to use a high Capital cost good and then have a buffer of molten salt. So that's the that's a kind of insight that have come to by working through the economics and overall the investment case for Fusion. That I hope will help all the companies not just the ones I'm [00:44:00] investing in.   Incentives for LPs   Ben:  so those are those are your incentives is that combination of impact  profit and you also have LPS because of the VC fund structure. Where do you see there? What are their incentives in terms of what they want to see out of this? All right out of your firm Malcolm: my current LP is anonymous and so there's a limit to what I can say about their incentives sure, but they care about climate change. They basically by into my argument that climate change is real and worth mitigating, right and. Fusion is a promising and underinvested potential mitigation.   Does the profit motive increase impact?   Ben:  And to go a [00:45:00] little farther into that this is just a comment about impact investing as a whole  so the question is could they get a better return? By tape putting that money into a this definitely putting you on the spot, but I think you could probably make an argument that they  might get a better return just on the money putting the money in some other investment vehicle. And so they probably  want to see that same impact that you want to see and. I guess the the thing that I'm interested in is  does having the profit motive actually increased impact and if so how Malcolm: regarding the potential for profit. When [00:46:00] I started doing this, I thought it was really a charity play. I guess more politely only in Impact play but set up in a for-profit structure so that if it happened to make a profit then the people who had enabled it to happen would be able to share in that profit right as I have. Looked at the space more closely and refined my argument or arguments in this area. I have come to believe that there's a meaningful potential for profit here. This is all hinges on what you think on the chance that you were saying for Fusion working. It's very clear that if you shouldnt Works in a way that is economically competitive. The company that gets there will be immensely valuable assuming that [00:47:00] it manages to retain and say p and that kind of thing. So I've taken stabs figuring out the valuation of one of these companies the error bars are huge. So I got numbers around 25 billion for my low-end valuation closer to a trillion for the high-end. It's really hard to say, but the numbers are big enough on the profit if it works side right that it really boils down to do I think it's going to work that is a hard thing to put numbers on but by investing in a portfolio of them you increase your chances.   Risk, Timescales, and Returns vs. Normal Firms   Ben: something I know from other VC firms is that. You have to they have to limit their risk. They don't make as risky Investments because of their LPS because they feel they have this financial duty [00:48:00] to return some amount to their LPS in a certain amount of time right? I do you worry about those same pressures. Have you figured out ways around them ways to extend those time scales. Malcolm: I don't think I'm going to be subject to the same pressures because anyone who gives me money is going to be expecting something very different. Yeah, so instead of being subject to those pressures. I think that the same psychology manifests for me as limiting my pool of investors. So it's a real problem. It just plays out differently. Got it. That's it. A few things are different for me because I'm pitching the fund differently a normal fund cannot look at a space and say it's really important that something works in this space, but [00:49:00] it's not clear which company might succeed because there's real science risk, right so normally. Normally the investors to Silicon Valley can decide that this company or these two companies should be the winner and they can all agree that they're going to put all their money in there and they can anoint a winner it will win because it's getting all the money shorter than major Scandal that does not work for in when investing in companies with a heavy science risk. That's why I think you need to invest in a portfolio of companies and a normal fun has trouble doing that because they are obliged by their investment thesis that their investors have signed off on to spread their money out across different different sectors. Okay. So again, that doesn't make life. Magically easy [00:50:00] for me. It means I need to find investors who are on board for doing something different specifically investors who are wealthy enough that they are diversifying their Investments by investing in other funds or Vehicles besides mine and are not expecting diversity from me. But having found those investors, I will then be in a much better position because I can concentrate. In one sector and really solve that or at least strongly supported   Is Money the limiting reagent on fusion?   Ben: got it that makes a lot of sense. I want to shift and talk about Fusion itself. Okay a little bit more. So I'm sure you've seen the the fusion never plot. I'll put a link up in the show notes. (Fusion Never Plot: http://benjaminreinhardt.com/fusion_never/) So the question is this plot makes it look like if you pour more money in it will go faster. Do you think that's actually the case or is [00:51:00] there something else limiting the rate at which  we achieve Fusion Malcolm:  if you have to leave the existing spending. Then adding money is a way to make it go faster. But a cheaper alternative is to spend your existing money more wisely the world's Fusion spending and America's Fusion spending to a first approximation all goes in to eat. The international thermonuclear experimental reactor this International collaboration in France. (ITER - International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines) This thing came about because the next step for a fusion experiment in America and Russia was too expensive for either country to pursue independently, even though everyone's first inclination was surely to keep competing. So became a collaborative [00:52:00] Endeavor and. It's now a collaboration between many countries that things expected to suck up 20 billion or more and has a depressing schedule that ends with Fusion Energy on the grid and 2100. Okay, America puts on the order of a hundred fifty million a year into either directly and say 500 million a year. Into what are called either relevant projects domestic projects where you're trying to learn about something some problem that's relevant either but you're learning in a way that is smaller cheaper better controlled right than a 20 billion dollar massive building where everything is inevitably really complicated the. Other placed in America spends money is on [00:53:00] Neff the national ignition facility, which is really a weapons research facility that is occasionally disguised as an energy research facility. Another way that it's been described to me is the perfect energy research facility what these cynical people meant was it's too small to. (NIF - National Ignition Facility: https://lasers.llnl.gov/) Actually get to ignition or energy Break Even but it's big enough that the people working on it can tell themselves that it might get there. If only they work harder If Only They dedicate the rest of their career to this. So it has large numbers of people who really care about Fusion Energy much more than bombs working on. Because it's the best way that they can see meaning the best funded way that they can see to get there but they don't actually seem to believe that it's [00:54:00] going to get there. They just don't have any choice. So we spent a lot of money on these two programs and that funding would be more than adequate for forgetting to. If we spent it on anything more modern it is not controversial to say that these techniques these two facilities are the best Fusion approaches and experimental setups that we could come up with in the mid-80s the mid-90s when they were being designed that's a fact that's when they were being designed. They've had limited upgrades since but yeah, that's. That's the overall story. What is controversial is weather continuing to support them is the best move. There are people who believe that we need to keep putting money in there [00:55:00] because we're going to learn a lot if we keep doing that science or because if we don't put the money in there, then the money will get pulled and probably stand on bombs or something like that, but it won't come to fusion and so. Better bad money in a fusion than worse money somewhere else, right. My personal view is that eater is such a ridiculous energy project that it harms the entire Fusion field by forcing people to pay lip service. To the validity of its goals that we would be better off admitting that that thing is a travesty and that there are better ways to do Fusion, even if it meant losing the money now, I'm not certain about that. But that's the gamble I would take good news is we probably won't have to take that Gamble and it [00:56:00] looks as if the federal government is becoming much more open to to a yes and approach to funding. The mainstream approaches diffusion if and eater and a variety of projects for alternative approaches and more basic Research into things like tritium handling tritium breeding hardening materials to deal with high-energy neutrons. Lasting longer in the face of high-energy neutrons that kind of thing. So I think there's real momentum towards building a in inclusive program that can support everyone and that is of course the best much as I would take the gamble with killing eater and killing them if they do produce real scientific results, and and if we can have all these things that's a wonderful out.   Government Decision Making and Incentives   Ben:  on that note who ultimately [00:57:00] is the decision maker behind where government Fusion money is spent and what are their incentives? Malcolm: This is America. Is there ever one person who's the decision maker about some Ben: maybe not one person but is it is it Congress is it unelected officials in? Some department. Is it the executive branch? Do you have a sense? Is it some combination of all of them? Malcolm: The money flows through the department of energy a sub-department of the doughy is rpe, which has its 30 million dollar Fusion program and will hopefully have a new and larger Fusion program in the near future. (ARPA-e: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPA-E) There's also the office of Fusion science in an office of Fusion Energy and science ofes that funds a lot [00:58:00] of the mainstream Research into Fusion ( Office of Fusion Energy Science https://science.energy.gov/fes/ ) arpa-e is to my knowledge created by Congress and fairly independent of the doughy, but there's still feuding. I think without describing malice to anyone. It is a great Testament to many people's conviction and political skills that they were able to get America to fund niff and either more or less consistently over decades at a high cost and. Those people are highly invested in those projects continuing. I don't know whether that's because they genuinely believe that that's the best way to spend the money or fear that the money would disappear from Fusion completely [00:59:00] if it stopped or don't think that the Alternatives actually have any scientific credibility or. Are so now trapped by the arguments that they've been making strongly and successfully for decades, but for one reason or another or many reasons, they strongly believe that we need to continue to do these so there is a tension between people who want to fund the Alternatives and the people who want to fund the mainstream fusion   Who are the government decision makers?   Ben: and who are these people  do you have any sense of actually who they are? Like I'm not asking you to name names, but like what is their role? What is their nominal job title? Malcolm: I think it's a bunch of civil servants within the Dewey Congress has a role like cotton Congress gets to decide how much money to provide and that's often attached to a. About how that money will be spent right there have been [01:00:00] Congressional hearings on Fusion the covered either and whether we should continue to fund either it's a lot of different people.   What are the roles of Academia, Government, Industry, and Philanthropy?   Ben: Okay? Yeah.  I'm just really interested in dating you down until I like where we're the incentive structure is set up  along those lines in in your mind in sort of an ideal world. what do you see the ideal rolls of the the four Columns of Academia government private investment and philanthropy in making sort of an epic level project like Fusion. Yeah happen. Malcolm: There's a ton of room for government support on this. The federal government has National Labs that have the best computers the best software which is often classified the best testing sites many in many [01:01:00] ways. The only testing site. And lots and lots of experts the one thing that the federal government lacks is a drive to put Fusion Energy on the grid as quickly and as commercially successful as possible. I don't rule out that the federal government could develop that drive but. It seems like a long shot given that there's a lot of disagreement about climate change and energy policy and that kind of thing. So I think that the ideal would be that the federal government supports Fusion research with all of its resources Financial expertise modeling modeling software. Modelling hardware and testing facilities in partnership with Private Industry. So [01:02:00] that Private Industry is providing the drive to get things done. So I imagine a lot of research done at the federal government so that if the current crop of companies bottom out if it turns out that their techniques don't work. We have more Fusion research coming down the pipeline to support a later crop of companies, but we would have companies working closely with the federal government to try to build reactors getting assistance in all those ways from the federal government and providing the drive. The company's  would have this. Call of Fusion Energy on the grid that they would be working towards but they would get to use the federal government's resources for the areas that they're focusing on. There are also the areas that the companies are not focusing on areas that are largely common [01:03:00] to all companies and therefore no company views it as on their critical path to demonstrating reactor relevant gain, For example, for example tritium is toxic to humans and difficult to contain. It turns out even hydrogen is difficult to contain it leaks through metal surfaces, but we don't talk about this because hydrogen is. Astonishingly boring and section in small quantities. So we don't care that it leaks out of our containers we do care when tritium leaks out of containers because it's heavily regulated and toxic right? So any Fusion company that's handling Trillium is going to need a way to contain tritium with very low leak rates. Also, the world does not have very much true. You can't actually use tritium as a [01:04:00] fuel for Fusion. You have to breed tritium in your reactor from lithium. So the real inputs to the reactor if it is a deuterium tritium reactor will be do tarian and lithium and you'll be breeding tritium from lithium in your reactor. So we also need to study how we're going to breathe. The tritium right? We're making mathematical calculations about the tritium breeding rate how much tritium we will get out after doing Fusion relative to the amount of tritium. We had before doing fusion and these tritium breeding rates are close to 1 if they're below 1 or really not enough above one. We're screwed, right? So there's important work for academics. And the federal government to do to better understand trillion breathing rates [01:05:00] and what we can do to increase them and write how to make this work.   Companies aren't incentivized to look at things on critical path   Ben: Right and at the companies are not incentivised to look into that right now because they don't feel like it's on their critical path Malcolm: investors Pope maybe including myself have made it clear to these companies that. What they will reward the companies for is progress on the riskiest parts, right? This is valid you want to work on the Unruh Burning Down the biggest risks that you have, right and everyone perceives that the biggest risk is getting through Fusion conditions. Sorry. In many of these companies are already getting to Fusion conditions, but everyone perceives that the biggest risk is getting Fusion to work getting reactor relevant games from Fusion, right? So compared to that these risks are small and it's [01:06:00] valid to the further, right? If you're a single Company If you're looking from the perspective of a portfolio, which the federal government is best positioned to do which is. Going to be somewhat well position to do then your risks are different you're willing to say I have a portfolio of these companies. I don't care which one succeeds I'm doing what I'm doing, assuming one of them will succeed. Now. What can I do to D risk my entire portfolio, right? You look at it differently and then these problems start to seem critical. So with my second fund one of the things I want to be able to do. Is support academics or maybe for-profit companies that are working on this but the federal government isn't even better fit for this it is perfectly positioned to do this.   What does the ideal trajectory for Fusion look like?   Ben:  I think a good closing question is in your in your Ideal World.  would Innovation infusion come into being what would the path look [01:07:00] like? Imagine  Malcolm? King of the universe and we started with the world we have today what would happen Malcolm:  I think the federal government would do the  heavy lifting but it would rely on private companies to really provide the drive. It would the federal government would also support the longer term. Things that are critical but not the highest risks such as the tritium issues today - and perfect.   Why do so few people invest in fusion   Ben: there anything that I didn't ask that I should have asked about Malcolm: one question that comes up quite often is why so few people invest in Fusion? Yeah and why it is. That I'm the only one with the poor.   Ben: Yeah, if you could if it's there's a possible payoff of a trillion dollars, right? And that's  even if it takes 20 years  the AR are still pretty good. Malcolm: Yeah, the way I think of it [01:08:00] is there's a funnel where. It's like a company's fun offer acquiring customers. But in this case, it's an industry's funnel for acquiring investors and investors are falling out of this funnel at every stage. The first stage is of course, you have to believe in anthropogenic climate change, but we have lots of investors who believe in.   Why do you need to believe in climate change to fund fusion   Ben: quick question. Why why do you need to believe in that in order to want to fun fusion? Malcolm: Okay, that's a fair point. You don't have to but it's the easiest route. Okay. If you don't believe in climate change, then you have to believe purely infusions potential to provide energy that will be cheaper than fossil fuels, right. I believe a zoo that but it is a higher bar [01:09:00] than I believe the climate change is going to encourage people one way or another to put a premium on clean energy. Got up when I do my modeling. I'm not taking into account carbon taxes or renewable portfolio standards, but it's nevertheless easier to convince yourself to care about the whole thing. If you think that this is an important problem, right? Otherwise you could do it just because you think you can make a whole ton of money, but it is a high-risk way of making money, right? So one way or another let's say you decide you're interested in well. No, I think that's carry on with the. The funnel for a climate change. Yes. Yes, because there are a few more places that they can fall out and these places might apply to an ordinary profit seeking investors as well, but it's less clear. So you've decided you believe in anthropogenic climate change [01:10:00] and you'd like to see what you can do about it. Maybe you then narrow to focusing on energy. That's a pretty reasonable bad energy is something like 70% of our emissions  when you track everything back to the root. So perfectly reasonable Pace to focus within energy. There are lots of different ways that you might think you can do something about it. There's geothermal power. There's title power a long range of long tail a large range of long tail. Ways that you can make energy and a lot of people really get trapped in there or they decide they're going to look at the demand side of energy and think about how they can get people to drive less or insulate their buildings better or whatever. And in my opinion most of these people are basically getting stuck on [01:11:00] things that don't move the. Yeah, the don't add up to a complete solution. They are merely incrementally better. So when you look at things that might move the needle on energy, I think that the supply side is way more promising because the demand side is huge numbers of buildings cars people whose habits need to change on and on if you can change the supply side then. It doesn't matter as much if we are insulating our houses poorly driving too much that kind of thing. If we have enough energy we can doesn't matter we can make hydrocarbons. From the raw inputs and energy and we can continue to drive our cars and flat our planes and heat our cart heat our houses that have natural gas furnaces and that kind of thing. Ben: Well, if you have if you have absurd amounts of energy, you can just literally pull carbon out of the air and stick it in concrete   right? Malcolm: That's [01:12:00] the other thing. So, I believe that focusing on energy Supply is the right way to go because. With a distributed Grid or not. We have many fewer places that we make energy than where we consume energy and what you said, we're looking at significantly increased demand in the likely or certain case where we need to do atmospheric carbon capture and sequestration. It takes the energy it takes energy to suck the carbon out of the atmosphere and it takes probably. More energy to put it into a form where we can store it for a long time. Right? So I think you need to focus on the energy Supply even within that we have lots of ways of making clean energy that aren't scalable and there's a wonderful book called sustainable energy without the hot [01:13:00] air (Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air https://www.withouthotair.com/ ) that catalogs for the United. All the ways that they could make energy renewably and all the ways that they use energy and is more or less unable to make the numbers add up without throwing new clear in their got it nuclear or solar in the Sahara and then transfer transmitting the energy to to the UK. So that's it. You can probably make Renewables work. If you can start but the problem with Renewables is that well Renewables come in two forms that are the predictable forms like Hydra where we control when we release energy and then the variable Renewables like wind and solar where they make energy when Nature cases  for those. We need something to match the demand. That humans have for energy [01:14:00] with the supply that nature is offering and you can try to do that in some combination of three ways. You can over build your Renewables to the point where even on bad days or in Bad seasons, you're making enough energy. You can transmit your energy. You can overbuild you can space shift your energy. By building long distance transmission lines and you can time shifts your energy through storage. Right and it turns out that all three of these have real costs and challenges storage is an area where people get pretty excited. So this is the next point that people fall off. They say wind and solar are doing great. storage isn't solved yet, but gosh it's on these great cost curves and like I can totally see how storage is going to. A solved problem and then Renewables for work and I think there are two problems with that is that these one is [01:15:00] storage actually needs to get a lot cheaper. If you want to scale it to the point that we can use it for seasonal storage. Right? And we need a solution to the seasonal problem. There are places like California the. Vastly more Renewable Power sometimes if you're in the other times of year in California, it's by a factor of 10 or 12. Wow. Yeah, so it's not a day by day. It's Yeah by month and and that's critical because if you are cycling your storage daily just to to bridge between when the Sun's shining and when people need their power you get to monetize your story. Every day you get the entire capacity of your stories roughly right used 365 times a year for the 20 years that your plant is left. Right? If you're cycling it seasonally meaning once a year you get to sell 20 times [01:16:00] the capacity of your storage rather than 20 times 365 times the capacity of your storage. So your storage needs to be one 365th of the price. To hit that same price Target. Yeah. This is a really high bar for storage is economics. So the first problem with betting on storage is it needs to drop in price a lot to really solve the problem. The second problem is lots of people are investing in storage. So if you want your money to make a difference in terms of making you a profit or having an impact on the world. You need to out-compete all those other people working on wind and solar and storage.  you're going to play in that space and that leaves something like nuclear. There are compared to Fusion plenty of people investing in various nuclear fission approaches. So again, your company can make a difference your money can make a difference there. [01:17:00] But and it'll be a bigger difference than in wind and solar and storage but a small difference than Fusion. So say you get all the way to I think I want to invest in Fusion.  what you now encounter is an industry where everyone you talk to will tell you that their approach is definitely going to work unless they're being really nice and that everyone else is approach is definitely not going to work  \so. Pretty understandable at that point to give up on the whole Space. So in this is the step before that you have to to get over the hurdle where Fusion is always 10 years way. It's been 10 years away for as long as most of us have been alive,  you have to decide that you even want to look at Fusion then you hit the problem where everyone says nasty things about everyone else to a first approximation if you spend a long enough time there you might find a company. The convinces you that they are different that all those other people are crazy [01:18:00] and they're worth investing in but I've talked about why investing in one company is a bad idea to invest in multiple companies. You have to find some advisors or just be Reckless enough that you can so you have to find. Enough advisors who are open-minded or you have to be sufficiently Reckless to just roll a dice on these companies or maybe just sufficiently Rich that you're going to roll the dice on these companies, but it's a real hurdle to find advisors who are experienced and credible and open-minded enough to support investing in a portfolio of these companies. Yes, even then, If you're a regular VC fund which you probably are if you have enough money to do this, right we have the problems that I mentioned earlier where your Charter is to invest in a diverse [01:19:00] set of companies and you can't put enough money in these companies to infusion to support a portfolio of companies. so that is the funnel  did ends with as far as I can tell just strong atomics coming out the end as the only fund supporting a portfolio of fusion companies. That's why in my opinion. There are not more people investing in Fusion in general along the way.   Outro I got a lot out of this conversation here are some of my top takeaways.  There are many ways of structuring organization that's trying to enable Innovations each with pros and cons that depend on the domain. You're looking at Malcolm realize that a VC fund is best for Fusion because of the low return from shared resources and the temperaments of people involved just because there's a lot of money going into a domain. It doesn't mean it's being spent well. I love the way that Malcolm thought very deeply about the incentives of everybody. He's dealing with and how to align them with his [01:20:00] vision of a fusion filled future. I hope you enjoyed that. It's like to reach out. You can find me on Twitter at been underscore Reinhardt. I deeply appreciate any feedback. Thank you.  

Strap in and get ready for some real talk! In this episode, we share the confessions of a nervous competitor...who also happens to be a professional trainer and a trial official. "What, they are not perfect?!" Nope. By sharing her story, the hope is this will help fellow competitors who are also nervous about competing. This could be their battle with self-doubt, fears of not being flawless when they compete, or their obsession with outside forces that have nothing to do with the quality of their training (what other people think, etc.). Being open and honest about these things will hopefully be a launching point for future conversations we can all have as a community. ----more---- Scent Work University is an online dog training platform focused on all things Scent Work. SWU courses and webinars are not only for those who are interested in competition, but also for those dog owners who are simply looking for something fun and engaging to do with their dogs. Check out Scent Work University today! Interested in another dog sport, or looking for help getting your dog to learn some manners? Dog Sport University is sister online dog training platform, give it a peek and see what it has to offer you and your dog. PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the All About Scent Work Podcast. This is where we're going to be talking about halting Scent Work. We'll be giving you a behind the scenes look as far as what's your instructor or trial officials may be going through giving you training tips and much more. In this episode, we're going to be talking about what it's like to be a nervous competitor, particularly when you're already a professional trainer and you've actually worked for a competition organization before and how that could be a little challenging. Before we start diving into the podcast, allow me to do a very quick introduction of myself. My name is Dianna Santos, I'm the Owner and Lead Instructor for both Scent Work University and Dog Sport University. These are online dog training platforms that are designed to provide outstanding instruction to as many people as possible regardless of whether they're near a dog trainer or not. I've also been a trial official with United States Canine Scent Sports as well as AKC Scent Work. I'm a Certified Nose Work Instructor through the NACSW and I've been teaching group classes since 2011. So now you know a little bit more about me, let's get started in the podcast. Now, I don't think that being nervous when you're competing is a rare thing. I think that a lot of people can relate to the fact that you could become nervous when it's your time to step up to the line. Are you going to do well? Is there something you were going to forget? What about your long line? Are you going to be doing patterns? What if you say something incorrect? There's a lot of reasons why you would be nervous, but when you're an instructor and a trial official, I think there's an added level of stress. So in this podcast, what I wanted to do was just to document how I feel about the whole thing and the challenges that I faced that are all put on by myself, no one is causing this to happen to me. This all a personal thing that I'm going through. But I don't think that it's a strange thing. I don't think that it's an anomaly. I think it's actually fairly common. So my goal is to hopefully help someone else not feel so nervous to realize just how much weight we give to trials and it's not to say the trials aren't important. Is that to say that I'm trying to diminish anyone's training, but at the end of the day, this is a game and if you don't pass a particular trial, it's not the end of the world. Your life is not going to come to an end. It may feel like that at the time, but that's not really the case. So again, the point of this podcast is just to really let you know how I'm dealing with this stuff and try to give you some ideas of how you could avoid some of the pitfalls I've put in for myself because there's no point in me going through stuff and then having you do the same exact thing. So just for full disclosure, I am a professional trainer. I have been for a while. I have worked for a Scent Work Organization. I am an approved official. I have officiated, I've worked in score room, I've done a variety of different things within Scent Work. I do not think that I am the end all and be all of Scent Work, far from it, but I do feel I know my stuff to a certain degree as much as anyone can know anything, especially related to dog training. If you ever hear someone who says, "I know all the answers", you should take that with a grain of salt. With that being said, I have not trialed as much or as often as some. There are some people who you look at their trialing schedule and you're like, "Wow, that's amazing". I have a love/hate relationship with trialing and a lot of it has to do with the fact that quite frankly, I'm a sore loser, I will readily admit. It is not something that I'm proud of, it's something that I've had since I was a child, so I don't like the way that it feels when I lose or I don't get a Q. But is also a lot of judgment that I've placed on myself and again, there's no outside force that's doing this. It's all in my head. But I also tend to believe that I'm not the only one who's going through this. So I'll tell you a little bit about my journey as far as Scent Work trialing and where I am right now. So, my very first trial that I ever did in Scent Work was years and years and years ago, and it was with my first Doberman and it was really my first foray into a dog sport at all. I wasn't a professional dog trainer yet. I was in the process of thinking of becoming one and I had no idea about this whole dogs sport thing. I was completely green, I was like a deer in headlights. So I think I was just so new, I didn't even have an opportunity to be nervous, I was just doing it. I showed up for the ORT with a dog who never should have went to that ORT and I give a lot of props to the people who hosted the trial. They were very welcoming, they were very understanding, they answered a lot of questions, they made sure everything was safe and my dog happened to pass all three ORTs in that day, which was great. Then we determined this is not a good idea. He's not reactive, he's aggressive. It put him back in his training. It was just not a good idea to do. But that was my first taste of actually trialing. Then from there, I started my professional dog training career and I was doing training for Scent Work. But when I started trialing again, it was actually for Barn Hunt with my new Doberman who is very social and very happy and very wonderful. We did very well in Barn Hunt, he just seemed to take to it like a fish to water. So that went nicely, "Oh, Q's are good. Q's are fun. Trialing is fun, the ribbons are fun. Oh look, he has little letters behind his name now. That's exciting". I did an ORT and he missed one odor, which was fine. Then we went back and we did it again, which was perfectly fine. Up to this point I'm feeling okay, I'm not feeling too bad yet. We then do our NW1 and he passes it on his very first go and I was elated. I was so excited and there was a woman sitting next to me in the parking lot and she came out and she was so upset because her dog had missed a hide and she was visibly upset, angry upset. Then she just went into this whole meltdown of first she was angry at life, then she was angry at the officials and then she was angry at herself and she apologized to this dog for the remainder of the day. I think this was her second search that she missed the hide. So basically for a NW1 that means that you're done, you miss a hide, you're all set. That has really seared into my brain that I never wanted to be that person. It's not that I think that she's bad or wrong, I felt bad. I felt really sad for her that she was going through all of this because here I am with my brilliant little dog. We happened to pass everything and we had fun and there she is and she's distraught and I felt awful. It was just gross. It was like, "I hope that that's never me." I hope that I'd never get to that point because in what's the ... Why would I be doing this trialing thing if it made me miserable? Well, fast forward to, I go to my NW2 and in between that time period, I had done trialing with some other organizations and he had done well. There were searches that several USCSS for instance, you're able to keep all the cues that you earn. So if you miss a search is not the end of the world. But if you pass your others, you still walk away with something, which is really great. It's a great confidence booster. It's just a different dynamic. But for NACSW, it's all or nothing. So we go in for our NW2 and at this point my body is already a mess. I can barely walk. I'm a mess and we go to do our exterior search and it's down a couple, maybe three or four steps and then you get to your start line, then you can go. So I hobbled down the steps and then I released him for his start line. My long line is all tangled, so he pulls me a little bit and he is not hunting for odor, but there is probably a lizard or something similar within this little garden area and I'm like, "Oh, dear Lord". Now mind you at this point, I'm a professional trainer, I'm a official with another organization, I'm a CNWI, so I'm a certified instructor with NACSW. The person who is judging me is a co-founder of NACSW. I have photographers that I've seen other trials that I was either officiating or I was working with. I have clients who are sitting there and they are volunteering at this trial. Can we say pressure? It's not pressure that any of these people are putting on me. Not one of these people were looking at me saying, "Well, you had better get that hide or I'm going to hate you." But that's what I'm thinking in my head. So now that he is in lizard mode, I'm thinking "That's it, we're done." So I'm trying to get him to other parts of the search area to make sure at least we covered the whole thing. In my mind, lizard time took 15 hours. When you watch the video, it took a whole of like maybe 15 seconds if that, and right next to that garden area, was a garden hose off by itself and that's where the hide was. Do you think that my dog went to that area or tried to multiple times? Of course he did. Do you think that his mother would let him check that out? Of course she didn't. So we looked at all this other stuff and I timed out and then when they told me where the hide was, I honestly never even saw that garden hose. I was so up in my head about all this other stuff that I wasn't even in the moment. I was so concerned about, "Oh, now he's going to be just on the lizards. All these people think I don't know what I'm doing. They're going to take away my instructor status". Like none of this is going to happen, but it's what I thought and "Oh, by the way, it's on video. Awesome, I'll make sure that I buy that". So from there, we then go into our container search. Same judge, same co-founder of NACSW, same photographer, and even more people that I know who are volunteering. I'm like, "Great" and it's in a gymnasium and the containers were a collection of different kinds of boxes, but the things that are the most important to the story, are metal lunchboxes. I set my dog up at the start line, I release him, and he immediately launches himself on top of one the metal lunchboxes and slides down to the very middle part of the gymnasium as he's riding this lunchbox and I know damn well that's not the hide, but I'm so concerned that he's going to destroy this entire search area that I just call it and the judge said "No, but he's having a really great time." So I know I'm done. Like there's no fixing this, we are so not into doing this NW2. But good grief, we then go on because we still have to do everything else. We have an interior search and our interior search is two rooms and I elect to have him off leash for both rooms. So the first room, there's going to be two highs and the second room, there's going to be one hide and they were classroomish kind of things. So I release him to go for the very first room and he buzzes around looking like he's not doing a whole lot of anything. He's just running around, which is a wonderful thing to see. At this point I'm feeling just resigned to the fact that we haven't passed and kind of just enjoying him being joyful. But then he comes up to a garbage can that has wheels and he sniffs that wheel and in my head, I call alert, but my mouth doesn't say anything and he leaves. Now I'm stuck with this debate of, "Oh no, I was supposed to say alert and I didn't. What do I do? How do I get him back and all?" He's just like ... It's just, it's a mess at this point. We then go to the middle of the room and he's able to work on a hide that was on a chair. Brilliant. Actually called alert for that one. Feed him, fabulous. We got back to where the garbage can is. Do you think that I motioned near the garbage candy? Do you think that I did anything to help my dog? Of course I didn't. So now he's like, "Well clearly you didn't like that hide when I told you about last time. I'm going to go bounce around and go see what other stuff I can find". So I called alert on some sink or something where it would never be in a million years and the poor judge was like, "No". You could just like hear it in her voice like "What are you doing?" That was where I had the soul crushing feeling of "They're going to take my official card away. I'm not going to be able to be an instructor anymore. I can't be a trial official anymore. They may take my dog away". I mean, none of this is true at all, but it's everything that you're thinking in the moment. So I collect my dog and was like, "Oh, what a good little honey". Here, that's where it was. Like, "Yeah, I know that's where it was" and we do the second room and I have to say, even though everything has been a mess up to this point, he really rocked that second room. It was an inaccessible hide and he told me that it was inaccessible hide, he was bracketing it like it was crazy. So, wouldn't you know, I actually called it and we got a yes. "Woo, yay". Then we had our vehicle search for our very last search. Once again, our judge is a co-founder for NACSW and there's a bunch of people again that I can recognize who are either filming or they're volunteering. The start line, I believe the vehicle was in something like a tennis court or something similar to that, though was surrounded by fencing. The start line was at the opening of when the gates, but the vehicles are inside. Again, we're in Southern California, it's summertime, so it's hot. Do you think that I would just after they told me that I could go, would walk up to the vehicles and then let him search? Of course not. Why would I do that? That wouldn't make sense. So I released him from the start line, nowhere near the vehicles. Then eventually we got to the vehicles and he told me about the hide pretty quickly. Do you think that I called it? of course I didn't call it. So now my poor black dog in the middle of Southern California summer is in sweltering heat and burning pause and it's just a mess going around and around and around and finally, he shows me again and I say alert and I get the where and I point and I actually get a yes. Now mind you, this is NW2. Do you think that I said finish? I mean, watching the videos from this trial for me personally is hysterical because it's just such a mess. It's just awful. But even so, the world didn't end on that day. It was a learning experience. These are all things that I took away saying, you know what? We probably weren't ready for this trial to begin with. He probably is fine, I need help clearly. But it's not that big of a deal and just because these people are there, I'm sure that they would have been delighted to have celebrated in our success if we were successful and I'm sure that some of them were like, "Oh, that's so sad that it didn't go well". We did get called out during the debriefing of the judge for the interior search. The first search said, "Oh yeah, and the lady with the Doberman. That Doberman, what he likes to do is run around, stir the odor up, and then find where the hides are. It's really interesting and fun to watch". It's like, "Yay...". But the point being is that with that trial, I have not been rushing to go back into another NW2. I've actually been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and putting it off some more. Well, I finally entered one thinking because it's in the town that I live in, there's no way I'm going to get into it. We did and I'm like, "Oh God, this is going to be a great opportunity for me to show that I don't know what I'm doing again". The thing is that, it's not that I don't know what I'm doing, I do. I have a lot of years under my belt. My dog is really good. I'm not the best handler in the face of the earth, I know that. My body doesn't cooperate really well and my brain, my mind does not help. The lack of self confidence really becomes glaringly obvious and worrying about all these other things. Particularly now that I've launched these two online platforms, my concern is, "What do you mean you don't have your NW2 yet? That's awful. I'm never going to work with you. You have no idea what you're doing, you sucked". It's not true, I actually do know what to do but I am a poster child for what happens when you let all these thoughts get away from you. So I'm hoping with this podcast by sharing and being very open and honest about the stuff, cause I'm not shy about sharing it at all. Then hopefully I can help somebody else realizes that that's all really silly and are there people out there who will say that, who will think that, who will talk among their little circle and say? "Oh, she's such a joke. She can't ... She doesn't even have her NW2 yet. I can't believe that people give her money." Sure, there very well maybe. But that's not the majority of people and even if they do, so what? I don't have someone banging down my door saying "You are no longer allowed to be an instructor. You may not be an official. You're no longer allowed to own your dog because you haven't titled to the level that we think is appropriate". Like it's just ridiculous. But that's exactly what I think a lot of the time, and I don't think that I'm alone. While this is for people who are officials or who are trainers, I think that there are people who also have those issues when they are just competitors. They're worried about the other competitors think, they're worried what their classmates think, they're worried about their instructor thinks. It's a very natural thing for people to go through. But I can tell you it doesn't help you. It's not a motivator. All it does is muddy the picture for you. So again, my NW2 is this weekend and I can quite honestly tell you I'm not looking forward to it, which is silly and I just have to have a really good assessment with myself of why am I doing this? It has nothing to do with the organization because I can tell you I've tried with a number of different organizations and every single time that we trial, it's more stressful than fun and it's just because I'm worried about these other things that no one else cares about. So I need to determine is there a way that I can compartmentalize? Is there a way that I can fix the way that I'm looking at this, so it is actually enjoyable? But if it's not, then we probably shouldn't be trialing. There's no reason to put myself and my dog in that kind of situation and particularly for my fellow super nervous and self conscious competitors, just know that there's no way that you can be there for your dog as a teammate that you need to be if you're not mentally in the game and that's easier said than done. Something that I struggle with clearly and I haven't found the perfect solution to it. I know the things that I should be doing about this as far as how I could change my thinking about it and I just go, "Oh, that's just so hard, we'll deal with that later. I'll go do some other project before I have to worry about that". But if you're finding yourself constantly concerning yourself about what other people think, is going to take away from you building these memories with your dog and from you performing well. Even if performing well doesn't mean a cue, is still means that you and your dog are jelling together as a team. I've seen this happen with other people and I go, "Ugh, if you would just get out of your own way, you would be fine". Then I'm always expecting them to turn around and be like, "Hello, kettle, how are you?" So it's easy for many of us to say to other people, "Oh, this is what you should do", and "Oh, here's a solution to your problem" when really you're struggling with it yourself. As far as some real life tangible things that you could take away from this podcast, just know that for me personally, if I had a client or a colleague who went to a trial and they did not qualify, I do not have a little black book that I'm keeping track of all that stuff. I'm not waiting to pounce on them and say, "Ha ha, you are not as good as you thought you are". That's not what I do. Instead, I would always celebrate the things that they did do and they did well at that trial. Even for my NW2 that I just described, that wasn't really all that great at all. I can still hold on to the fact that while that container search was for all intents and purposes on a professional standpoint could be deemed as a disaster, it was hilarious. That's very funny. He was having a grand ole time. We weren't going to cue, I hope that he doesn't do it again, but it was funny in the moment. That will be a memory that I will hold onto the entire length of time that I am blessed to have him. That's something, so if you're having difficulty finding joy in trialing and you're nervous about it, but you're not nervous about whether or not your training is where it should be, but you're nervous about all these other outside factors. The one thing I can tell you from personal experience, being someone who I honestly an instructor and an official would be more exposed to potential backlash. It's overblown, it's not true, it's not real. It really is all in your head and there will be some people who are detractors. There will be some people who are negative, but the vast majority of people are not. The vast majority of people are very supportive within this community and they understand that you're a person, that you're a human being and you're not a robot. You're not a machine. You're not perfect and neither is your dog. People happen to like humility and they like honesty and being authentic. Being vulnerable is all those things, being where you're admitting to say I'm a little nervous. I'm not nervous that we can do well, if I can just get my head in the right space. If I think about this right then I think we'll be fine. But I get in my own way because I'm worried about all these other things. The key point is that you're not alone. There's a lot of people who think that, particularly if you happen to be a professional trainer and even more so if you also happen to be a trial official. Now that this rambling podcast has gone on, you may be asking yourself, "Okay, well little miss teacher lady, what are you doing to help yourself where that NW2 that is coming up?" The main thing is I'm just trying to not load my schedule up with too much other stuff cause that tends to be what I do when I'm stressed. I try to put on tons and tons of other projects so that I can constantly keep myself busy. But what's going to happen is as that day approaches and then I say, "Oh no, that day is eating into my schedule, maybe I'll just skip it", which would be bad. So I'm trying to keep a balance. We're doing short little training sessions leading up to it. Nothing major, but just making sure we're keeping it really nice and fun and high octane for both of us. I'm just trying to keep my expectations realistic. All I'm looking for going into this is to have a good time and I know that sounds incredibly cliche. "Of course you'll have a good time if you qualify", but I can tell you there have been times that I've gone to trials for other organizations that had nothing to do with the organization per se, but just the way that I was conducting myself at the trial where my dog did great, he would get five out of five or six out of six or whatever the case may be, and I didn't have a good time at all. I was stressed to the nines, I was trying to do too many things at once. I was working at the trial the same time I was running him. I was doing a million things at once and it was miserable. I didn't like it at all. I'm looking to not have that experience again. For this NW2, if we don't pass anything but we together as a team have fun, that's all I care about. I mean sincere, true, real life fun. If he wants to dance on containers without destroying them or whatever else, okay. I not promoting that, but it's the change in mindset of "I'm okay if we don't Q as long as we're having a good time together." But if we can't even do that, then I just don't think that trialing is a good choice for me. That's just got to be a choice that I'd have to make at some point because right now it's ... I'm at a fork in the road where there have been some experiences have been really pleasant. Obviously the ones that you could win, more of those are in that camp. But like I said, there have been times when we've killed it and I didn't have fun at all. It was miserable. So I changed some things so that I'm no longer trying to do 20 million things at once when I'm trialing and I'm hoping that they'll make a difference. But I honestly don't know if it will, because I'm still expecting myself to have this little voice in the back of my head that are saying, "You have to be perfect. How are you not perfect? Now no one's going to listen to you. No one's going to buy your courses. You're going to go out of business, AHHH". What's the joy in that? That's miserable, that's awful. So a lot of this is going to hinge on my ability to quiet those voices that aren't overly helpful, to focus on the training and the knowledge that I have, the amazing ability that my dog has and not get stuck in those circular patterns of thinking that are quite unhelpful. If we're able to do that and we're able to have fun, then we may continue trialing. But if we don't, meaning I'm not able to do that, then we may just need to take a break for awhile and that may include never going for an NW2 again and who knows? He's five, we have plenty of time. What I'm hoping that people can get from this rambling of a podcast, is that there is no absolute way of how you need to do this. I know people personally who have done dog sports for a long time and they just burned out. They took a long break as more talking like 5, 10, 15 years. They didn't do anything and then they came across another dog that they thought would do well and it piqued their interest a little bit. Then maybe try a different dog sport and they take it in stride and they make sure that it's fun and they prepare ahead of time so they're not just winging it. They're going in when they're prepared and they are just coming at it from a better perspective where they're able to go in, realize this is just a game. It's an opportunity to make memories with their dog. They're prepared to do well and they don't Q every time, but they have fun every time and that's something that I aspire to be. I don't know if that's possible for me personally, but I'm hoping that people can understand is that your journey doesn't have to stay linear. You can change your mind at any point. So even if I were to turn around tomorrow and say, "You know what, I don't think this trial thing is for me". That may just be for now, it's not as though I'm handing in some card that says I'm never allowed to trial again. It may just be that I trial at a later date. So if anyone else is battling nerves, self doubt, they're concerned that the world is glaring at them, they're not going up the levels as fast as they thought that they should. Their dog doesn't have as many letters behind their name. They don't have as many accolades, particularly if you're an official or an instructor. Just know that first of all, no one cares. Really, no one's keeping track of these things. The people who are quite honestly, their opinion doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Just don't get bogged down in that stuff. If you're really are struggling, it probably is best to just take a break. Your pocket book will thank you. Trialing is expensive and if you're not having a good time, which is going to translate to your dog not having a good time, it reaches and make a whole lot of sense. So just take a break to reassess and then maybe you only do certain things. Maybe only trial so much, and then maybe we're able to turn a corner and you're just a trialing fanatic and you have fun every single time and that would be great. But the main thing that I'm hoping that everyone can understand is that you don't have to be stuck doing anything. All of this is a choice and it should be a choice you make individualized for you and your dog and that can change over the life of your dog. That can change if you were to get another dog, that can change between having different dogs in your household. But whether or not you trial or not, doesn't define who you are as a person and that's coming from someone who struggles with that very thought. I know intellectually it's true, but it's difficult for you to admit, particularly when you're a professional. So I hope this podcast was able to help anyone else out there who has been described as a nervous competitor because of outside forces. You're not alone, it's actually fairly common. But just try to reassess so you can figure out the best way that you can find, joy again for both you and your dog. I hope you find this podcast helpful. Happy training and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Neuro-Linguistic Processing, or NLP, is one of the many psychological coaching tools out there that some people completely swear by, while others think it’s just another pop-psychology fad. Our guest Nick Cownie, armed with a clinical background, has made a name for himself by distilling a lot of overwrought NLP techniques down to just their most essential components, and he’s here to tell us about how to put them to good use—and tell us a harrowing tale of being kidnapped and left in the desert! Background Nick Cownie is a sales psychology consultant, NLP consultant and practitioner based out of Wagga Wagga. Originally trained in traditional Chinese medicine after his health sciences degree, he worked in a clinical setting for fifteen years before moving into NLP. He and his wife were early adopters of the training and coaching methods that are standard today, moving their mindset training services online back when that was unheard of in the field. A method that matters In a landscape pretty crowded with models and tools vying for our attention, what’s the big deal about NLP and mindset training? Nick says it matters because it’s so well-equipped to tackle the major problems he sees over and over again for people going into business for themselves: Low confidence. Nervousness, anxiety, and impostor syndrome, which all lead to self-sabotage for otherwise talented and capable people. Procrastination and lack of discipline. Feeling stuck putting off tasks you know will help you—or only getting stuff done when you really feel like it—majorly holds people back. Lack of influence. Being comfortable influencing others—without slipping into inauthenticity, sleaziness and manipulation—is a crucial skill to develop. Sleaze versus science Nick says NLP absolutely has a bad reputation with some—and in a lot of cases, it’s totally deserved. A lot of techniques and materials practitioners sell are heavily padded with unnecessary fluff, and there are entire niches of NLP dedicated to using it for manipulative sales, or even manipulation in your personal life. That said, while his methods pull from a lot of classic NLP frameworks, he shies away from using a lot of their terminology, preferring to stick with the established psychological terms for the same things. While some of the wording around mindset training and mindfulness can get very hokey very quickly, Nick emphasizes that NLP terms like “anchoring” are really just psychologically-standard tools like state elicitation and associative conditioning. They’re about training your brain to stop getting stuck responding to negative stimuli, and start being able to access positive states in a predictable way. "I'm a pragmatist,” Nick says. “All I'm interested in is results." Influencing yourself The trick to fixing your mindset, Nick says, is essentially to get out of your own way. That means identifying the person you are right now, with all your pros and cons—that’s You, Version One. You have a lot of obstacles in your way—maybe fear of failure, impostor syndrome, lack of discipline—that are stopping you from succeeding. You, Version Two, is the person who is able to succeed, because they aren’t held back. You need to identify what the differences are between Versions One and Two of yourself, and take action to clear the obstacles and gain the skills you need to bridge that gap. Obviously, it’s easier said than done—but Nick shares one of his tools with us for getting past your fears. Tune in to learn how to use emotional states and conditioning to instantly access the most confident version of yourself! Influencing others Communicating effectively with others is a big part of NLP—and while the basic techniques can be used in a manipulative way, Nick stresses that won’t do you any good, in sales or in life. Effective, influential communication using NLP tactics can get your genuine message across to clients in a way that’s most likely to reach them. “You can do that and still be authentic without manipulating anyone,” Nick says, “and do it in a way that's more likely to have them convert if they are the right client.” He also says that manipulation tactics are really a way of influencing the wrong people—which always comes back to bite you in the end. “You get a bunch of refunds, a bunch of bad reviews—it doesn't really work anyway.” Nick shares one of his tools with us for learning to influence others in a genuine way—it’s easy to apply in sales settings, and it’s easy to remember, too. He uses this simple four-step acronym: F - Focus their attention. A - Access emotions. S -  Seed potential. T - Trigger the response. An integrated method Nick pulled a lot of useful knowledge from his time working in Chinese medicine, including a foundational concept called bian-zheng, the process of recognizing patterns in diagnosis. He uses it as a guidepost for recognizing patterns in his own work, and has found it helps him find approaches that work across different contexts and industries. How to get started NLT and mindset training are skills, Nick says, just like anything else. There’s no overnight solution, and every tool in the system takes time to be fully effective. He stresses to Troy that every time you show up to work on your skills, even a little, you're improving. But take the pressure off yourself to be a master overnight. Let your incremental progress add up like compound interest, and it will! Nick is also leaving WPElevation listeners with some freebies—click here to access The Self-Sabotage Solution, which includes an infographic, a voice-guided walk-through of the mindset technique mentioned earlier, and a two-hour training video running through mindset training tools. You can also reach him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

We talk with John Sutton who owns a Foxtrot class Soviet Submarine moored in the middle of the River Medway in Kent.This may seem an unlikely location for a Soviet submarine but John tells an interesting story of how he acquired it.Before we go further I’d like to thank all our Patreons who donate monthly to support the podcast further and get access to some exclusive extras. Now you might wonder what this Patreon stuff is I go on about - in short it's a way of you can help fund further podcasts. All I'm asking is if you enjoy the podcast to agree to pay as much as you can afford each month. You can cancel at any time and amounts as little as little as a $1 or a £1 a month really help keep us broadcasting and expanding the show.Just click here to visit our Patreon page.So back to the episode, after viewing some of the photos of the sub listing in the river, with some trepidation I boarded a fast Javelin train at London St Pancras and within 30 minutes I was in Strood and I could see across the Medway the low silhouette of the Foxtrot.We join the interview with John and I aboard his small launch in the middle of the River Medway. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/coldwarpod)

I used to think being excellent was a good thing.  And then I read The Big Leap by Gay Hendrix.  All I'm saying is we need to raise our standards - even higher than we think.  This week's podcast is going to give you a taste of the #NotPerfect Family, as you'll hear a clip from a call where I told group members why not live in your "zone of excellence."    Notes and things... The #NotPerfect Family: The #notperfect Family gets you on the phone with me and the rest of my #notperfect-ers twice a month. You'll get exclusive content just for being in the group, plus access to a private #notperfect facebook group. Click here to join!    Breathe University: “Breathe University is the eLearning platform led by Dr. Eric Thomas. Inside BU, you get access to Eric Thomas, along with all of his proven tools, strategies, and resources you need to jump start your greatness in one convenient location. It includes video courses taught by Dr. Eric Thomas, with 451+ exclusive on-demand videos and 187+ total hours of online instruction, mastermind calls, live events, and resources. You can start anytime and you can work through the material at your own pace.“ (via breatheuniversity.com) My #SundaySelfcare: Everyone who has ever worked in customer service needs to hear this I do Sunday Selfcares ever week on facebook and instagram! Connect with me there - or tune in live :)    Books.... The Big Leap - by Gay Hendrix “New York Times bestselling author Gay Hendricks demonstrates how to go beyond your internal limits, release outdated fears and learn a whole new set of powerful skills and habits to liberate your authentic greatness.” (via amazon.com) Crushing It by Gary Vaynerchuck Crushing It! is a state-of-the-art guide to building your own path to professional and financial success, but it’s not about getting rich. It’s a blueprint to living life on your own terms.” (via amazon.com)   Wanna listen to the books we talk about the show? An audible membership gives you one credit a month to use on any book you want. Credits rollover to the next month, and you get to keep the books forever!  For a free trial, visit www.audibletrial.com/tonyrossishow

This week the Chicken Kid is on the bench, but Ter and Lil Brutus are joined by regular guests Sour D and Jimmy. All I'm just say about this episode is this shit goes off, and from now on Jimmy is known as Professor Pissdaddy Hammerfist and he loves sensual tickling. This week's breaks are "Werewolf" by Michael Hurley and "Swallowtail" by Brian Jonestown Massacre. Subscribe to Mortville!!!

Today's episode was recorded on Sunday at The Reliance. The whole day was an unexpected joy, and my guest on this episode is the person responsible for the event. Her name is Hannah, and she tells us all about the brand behind the whole day: Beard of Aaron. You can find out more about Beard Of Aaron, and all of the performers from the day, through the following links: Beard of Aaron: -- https://www.instagram.com/aarons_beardz -- Eddy Strings: -- https://www.instagram.com/eddystringz -- Andrew Bellow: -- https://www.instagram.com/andrew_bello -- Ruthela: -- https://www.instagram.com/ruthela_music -- Richy: -- https://www.instagram.com/officialrichy15 -- Thank you Hannah for your time, and thank you to all of the performers for a wonderful day! Thanks for listening. Please consider donating to my Patreon page -- https://www.patreon.com/saddestnightout -- to help me build what SADDESTNIGHTOUT can become. All I'm asking for is £1 a month. You can find me in the usual places: Twitter: -- https://www.twitter.com/saddestnightout -- Instagram: -- https://www.instagram.com/saddestnightout -- Email: -- saddestnightout@gmail.com -- Patreon: -- https://patreon.com/saddestnightout -- iTunes: -- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/saddestnightout/id1361554117?mt=2 -- TuneIn: -- https://tunein.com/podcasts/Music-Podcasts/SADDESTNIGHTOUT-p1118077/ -- Stitcher: -- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/saddestnightout -- Soundcloud: -- https://www.soundcloud.com/saddestnightout -- Take Care.

Today's chat was an absolute blessing to behold, and considering the slump I've been lately, this was just what the doctor ordered. Thank you very much to the three guests that joined me for today's episode: S.Rise: -- https://www.instagram.com/sriseofficial -- K9: -- https://www.instagram.com/k9_keba -- Kimba: -- https://www.instagram.com/iamkingkimba -- Thanks for listening. Please consider donating to my Patreon page -- https://www.patreon.com/saddestnightout -- to help me build what SADDESTNIGHTOUT can become. All I'm asking for is £1 a month. You can find me in the usual places: Twitter: -- https://www.twitter.com/saddestnightout -- Instagram: -- https://www.instagram.com/saddestnightout -- Email: -- saddestnightout@gmail.com -- Patreon: -- https://patreon.com/saddestnightout -- iTunes: -- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/saddestnightout/id1361554117?mt=2 -- TuneIn: -- https://tunein.com/podcasts/Music-Podcasts/SADDESTNIGHTOUT-p1118077/ -- Stitcher: -- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/saddestnightout -- Soundcloud: -- https://www.soundcloud.com/saddestnightout -- Ok, so the catch-up didn't happen before tonight's open mic. But there's always tomorrow.

Today I'm talking about my current thoughts on the ever-growing tools we have at our fingertips as musicians. It's easy to deny change, but vital to embrace technologies like this. I don't discuss it in this clip because it all happened afterwards, but consider looking into automated mastering . All I'm saying is do some research before denying it. There is potential in this area - the technology is only going to get better! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/danbarracuda/support

Today's episode was recorded at last night's open mic at Allsop Arms, and it features two newcomers to both the open mic and the podcast. Both of whom have travelled some way to join us. Those newcomers - in this chronological order - are: Eamon and Dylan of Collective -- https://www.instagram.com/collectivemusicnyc -- Raquel Galdes -- https://www.instagram.com/raquelgaldes -- Thank you all for joining me for today's episode and for playing last night. Sorry you never got to play Bartoleu, maybe next time. Thanks for listening. Please consider donating to my Patreon page -- https://www.patreon.com/saddestnightout -- to help me build what SADDESTNIGHTOUT can become. All I'm asking for is £1 a month. You can find me in the usual places: Twitter: -- https://www.twitter.com/saddestnightout -- Instagram: -- https://www.instagram.com/saddestnightout -- Email: -- saddestnightout@gmail.com -- Patreon: -- https://patreon.com/saddestnightout -- iTunes: -- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/saddestnightout/id1361554117?mt=2 -- TuneIn: -- https://tunein.com/podcasts/Music-Podcasts/SADDESTNIGHTOUT-p1118077/ -- Stitcher: -- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/saddestnightout -- Soundcloud: -- https://www.soundcloud.com/saddestnightout -- Congrats AJ!

Just me on this episode, talking about a whole bunch of live shows that I like to watch on Youtube, as well as what I imagine my longer live set might be. Here is a link to a playlist of the videos that I mention in this episode (I hope this link works): -- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpVxn0RnXuOMywwspH0wSnh1V68JWQ4JZ -- Thanks for listening. Please consider donating to my Patreon page -- https://www.patreon.com/saddestnightout -- to help me build what SADDESTNIGHTOUT can become. All I'm asking for is £1 a month. You can find me in the usual places: Twitter: -- https://www.twitter.com/saddestnightout -- Instagram: -- https://www.instagram.com/saddestnightout -- Email: -- saddestnightout@gmail.com -- Patreon: -- https://patreon.com/saddestnightout -- iTunes: -- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/saddestnightout/id1361554117?mt=2 -- TuneIn: -- https://tunein.com/podcasts/Music-Podcasts/SADDESTNIGHTOUT-p1118077/ -- Stitcher: -- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/saddestnightout -- Soundcloud: -- https://www.soundcloud.com/saddestnightout -- Take Care. And sorry I'm late.