Podcasts about andrew thank

Hello folks,  I had such a lovely time recording our episode 'The Nightingale' with Danielle and Galeet Dardashti, that after having talked with them at length about the old tape cassette recordings of family conversations, celebrations, singing, and music that Danielle had found stashed in a box in their parents' basement, we decided it would be nice for you to hear some of those recordings for yourself!So, here's the full first episode of The Nightingale of Iran, aptly titled "The Time Machine" for you to listen to. You can find the rest of their series by searching wherever you enjoy your podcasts, or alternatively head over to www.nightingaleofiran.com.We'll be back, as usual, on 3rd December, with our next full episode of Series Eight - 'The Marine' with professional genealogist Richard Holt.Thank you for listening,Andrew  Thank you for listening! You can sign up to our email newsletter for the latest and behind the scenes news. You can find us on Twitter @FamilyHistPod, Facebook, Instagram, and BlueSky. If you liked this episode please subscribe for free, or leave a rating or review.

INTRODUCTION: EPISODE #100!!! AMOR ES ARTE | ARTE ES AMORLOVE IS ART | ART IS LOVEA memoir written by Andrew Velázquez Through the lens of lotería—the Latinx game of chance, I explore my experience of being gay, young, and a creative loco in East Los Angeles. I reimagine ten lotería cards to represent the people and events that shaped my first 40 years of life. Each chapter testifies to a lotería card image such as El Diablito (Little Devil), La Rosa (Rose), and La Muerte (Death). Using these cards of destiny, I find my true self to navigate the world. My memoir defies the conventional thinking that a sensitive, lonely barrio kid, traumatized by relationship abuse and family crises, eventually falls victim to gang violence, addiction, or suicide. I bring my stories and images together to show how I overcome self-destructive behavior and how I channel my energies toward a successful career in Hollywood's beauty industry. I tell an against-the-odds life story that connects self-acceptance to art and love. Andrew is also a makeup artist:This born and bred Angeleno always knew he was meant for a career in beauty. Andrew has created signature looks for some of Hollywood's brightest stars including Lady Gaga, Michelle Williams, RuPaul, Demi Levato, Neil Patrick Harris & Carmen Electra. As a makeup artist on ”Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” Andrew regularly created the sisters red carpet ready looks and at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, he was the key makeup artist for Florence and the Machine, including applying avatar-like body makeup for her radiant dancers.  INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to): ·      Lots of Fan Clacking!!!·      Mí Corazón – Andrew's Makeup Line·      Amor Es Arte, Arte Es Amor – Andrew's Memoir·      Being Raised In The LatinX Community·      MADONNA·      Los Angeles Nostalgia ·      Prevalent Insecurity In the LGBTQIA+ Community ·      Coming Out·      Angels In The Psych Ward·      Andrew On American Beauty Star (Top Three)CONNECT WITH ANDREW: Website - Book - Makeup: https://AndrewVelazquez.comYouTube: https://www.YouTube.com/AndrewVelazquezInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewvelazquez_Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrewvelazquezcom CONNECT WITH DE'VANNON: Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.comWebsite: https://www.DownUnderApparel.comTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sexdrugsandjesusYouTube: https://bit.ly/3daTqCMFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/SexDrugsAndJesus/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sexdrugsandjesuspodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabooTopixLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannonPinterest: https://www.pinterest.es/SexDrugsAndJesus/_saved/Email: DeVannon@SDJPodcast.com  DE'VANNON'S RECOMMENDATIONS:·      Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse & Codependency Support Groups (Virtual) - https://www.meetup.com/pittsburgh-narcissism-survivor-meetup-group/·      COSA – 12 Step Recovery For Victims Of Compulsive Sexual Behavior - https://cosa-recovery.org·      A Recommended Reading To Help Heal From Narcissism - https://amzn.to/41sg6FO ·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)o  https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370o  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs ·      OverviewBible (Jeffrey Kranz)o  https://overviewbible.como  https://www.youtube.com/c/OverviewBible ·      Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed (Documentary)o  https://press.discoveryplus.com/lifestyle/discovery-announces-key-participants-featured-in-upcoming-expose-of-the-hillsong-church-controversy-hillsong-a-megachurch-exposed/ ·      Leaving Hillsong Podcast With Tanya Levino  https://leavinghillsong.podbean.com  ·      Upwork: https://www.upwork.com·      FreeUp: https://freeup.net VETERAN'S SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS ·      Disabled American Veterans (DAV): https://www.dav.org·      American Legion: https://www.legion.org ·      What The World Needs Now (Dionne Warwick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHAs9cdTqg INTERESTED IN PODCASTING OR BEING A GUEST?: ·      PodMatch is awesome! This application streamlines the process of finding guests for your show and also helps you find shows to be a guest on. The PodMatch Community is a part of this and that is where you can ask questions and get help from an entire network of people so that you save both money and time on your podcasting journey.https://podmatch.com/signup/devannon  TRANSCRIPT: ANDREW VELÁZQUEZ [00:00:00]You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to! And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right at the end of the day. My name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world as we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your life.There is nothing off the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.De'Vannon: Andrew Velázquez is here with me today to mark the 100th episode of The Sex Drugs in Jesus podcast, and that is a huge accomplishment. Y'all and I could not be more grateful. Thank you, God. Thank you everyone who listens to and supports this show now, Andrew has written the book, it's called.Love is art. Art is love or amor, esp.He also had the makeup line called me[00:01:00]and do the celebrity makeup artist and alsoan educator.Now in his memoir, Andrew defies the conventional thinking that a sensitive, lonely barrio kid who's been traumatized by relationship abuse and family crises must eventually fall victim of gang violence, addiction, or suicide. In his book, Andrew brings stories and images together to show how he was able to overcome self-destructive behavior.Establish a successful career and bring art and love together in a way that's never been done before.Now Andrew has created signature looks for some of Hollywood's brightest stars all including Lady Gaga, RuPaul Dimmi, Lovato, Neil, Patrick Harris, you name it. He's done. Please listen in as Andrew and I get real and vulnerable with you that are to help someone lonely, isolated, and hurting out there. We love you.Hello all of you beautiful people out there and welcome back to the Sex Drugs in Jesus podcast. I'm your host Devon, and I have with me [00:02:00] today for our 100th episodes, a beautiful, talented, incredible, lovely. Queer creative with a beautiful wavy hair that you see right there. Andrew Velazquez. Darling, how are you?Hello. Andrew: Good. How are you coming? So I had that, and if you need that sound audio again, that, De'Vannon: God, Andrew: that thing is huge. Thank you so much for having me. Yes. I'm gotta, I gotta get you one. I'm gonna send you one. De'Vannon: Gosh, that thing is to be beautiful. So y'all, so before I get into Andrew here, the 100th episode is a really big fucking deal.And why it is is because most podcasts is, I understand they don't make it to this point. People get into just about anything in this world for all kinds of reasons. And podcasting is one of those things that looks glitzy. It looks glamorous. So everybody wants to go run off and start a podcast. And [00:03:00]then you see most of them, I got like 10 episodes, 15 episodes, you know, or they might do like, you know, maybe like 10 episodes a year.You know, I hit the ground running a year before last, and I didn't stop. I released a show every week, nonstop, every Thursday, you know, you know, unless some shit done went down. But generally speaking, it's every Thursday. And so it's a really big fucking deal to make it to episode 100. This means I'm serious, that I'm committed.This is meant to be and it is gonna be here to stay. Andrew: Oh, happy for you. Congratulations, congrat. Congratulations. So happy for you. It is definitely a milestone. Yeah. Well earned, well deserved all De'Vannon: that. Thank you. And so, when I was toiling over who the hell I could get to, to share this moment with me Andrew's, Andrew's people reached out to me, and his story is so enigmatic, it's so cataclysmic, it's so polarizing, and I felt like I had so much in common with him.He's from Los Angeles. Everybody who [00:04:00] knows me knows the City of Angels is all I talk about. I love la I was out there in the military and everything. I'm obsessed with that city. And when I'm rich enough, I will go back and you know, I'm queer and I love me some Latin men, that's all the dick I used to get when I was out there.I, I've sat on plenty of Latin dick Andrew: and that's right. We're dangerous too though. We're spicy and dangerous. De'Vannon: So am I. So we always, along y'all, he's an author. He has his own memoir out. He and our both 40 years old, he's a celebrity makeup artist. He's worked with Lady Gaga, Demi Vato fucking like everybody.He's an educator. He's a spirit light worker. He is a healer. Y'all. He's, he, he's like me. You know, like, you don't have to worry about what you're gonna talk to with somebody like this cause he is done so much, you know, it's just how we're gonna get through this hour and give you credit. So he is literally [00:05:00] the definition of everything, and that is why he is here today for episode one.Double O tell us about yourself, Andrew: baby. Wow. I mean, that just, I, I have chills. Your listeners can't see this, but yeah. I am so honored to be here for your hundred episode. Congratulations on all of your successes and what you're doing. The service you provide, the light, I feel it, the energy that you're exuding, it's beautiful.And I know that your followers and your audience appreciate that too, because you're healing. That's why good things are coming to you. I'm gonna call you divine cuz I see only a divine human being in front of me and that's exactly what you are getting the divinity of, of life. And yeah, that's, that's my philosophy too is, you know, I first generation Mexican-American parents are immigrants from Mexico.They met in their teens and I was their first born in East La Boyle [00:06:00] Heights. And yeah, being raised in such like a macho area was a little difficult for me for being just a such creative, feminine, flamboyant kid. And everything that I was trying to be a kept being told that it was wrong.Cause you know, where my parents got married, it was like the church. I was raised Catholic, so I got baptized there. I did my first communion, I did catechism. All, you know, knowing that I'm sinning and because I like boys and trying to hide, that was just, It was heavy. It was really heavy. And my mom just was the first to be like my mentor, my icon.She introduced me to Madonna in the eighties, who I'm obsessed with. I am the proud owner of four Madonna tattoos. She's right here. There's, there's other ones. Yeah, this is from erotica. And she just celebrated her 30th year anniversary for the sex book, which was released here in Miami. [00:07:00]And so she was really like my first, I don't know, my first like muse, you know, watching my mom do her hair and makeup in the eighties and just taking me to cosmetology school while she was going.She just was fierce. Just drag hair, makeup, done, jewelry, accessories, and she was my queen. So for her to support my my arts and my interests in wanting to like be creative meant a lot for me. But, You know, helping raise my brothers. Cause I, I have three younger brothers and my dad worked as a mechanic during the day.A tow truck driver at night was a lot of responsibility for the oldest sibling to, you know, be a provider also and be their mentor. So I just remember like, I don't know, watching 9 0 2 oh saved by the bell and seeing the drama there. And I'm like, why don't I have that drama in my life? Why do these teenagers have all these dramas and I'm this perfect cookie cutter kid helping raise my brothers Like, this is not.[00:08:00] Hmm. So I made the drama and that's chapter three in my book called elto, which means little devil, I call it My bad. And that's really where I started to rebel. And, you know, we all go through like self-discovery and just that cross of like youth child into adolescence. You're not an adult. Yeah, it was just like an awakening moment.I went 180, I just flipped. Went from this perfect kid to just rebel partying with drag queens. Met my first club kids, went to the Rays and the nineties in LA was just all rage. It was so fun. They used to call me Space Boy and I would you know, dress in all these crazy like avan garde colorful outfits.And I finally felt like free and liberated with other creative people and, and queer people. Finally, like my first drag queens, you know talking [00:09:00] like Stacy Hollywood, DJ Irene, like these are the people that I used to party with like in the early nineties. Like it was the hard house. That was just the rage, right?Yeah. So Arena Circus the Alexandria Hotel, like, oh, I remember going to a rave at Knottsberry Farm. The K Rave. Yeah. And it was just so lit that these kids were jumping. Because NASP Prairie Farm had never done that. So they were literally jumping the gates trying to get into, into the rave and just like party out all night.But they canceled it right away and they shut it down. So they never had a rave at ATSP Farm again. But yeah, it was, that was, that was very liberating and finally feeling like I was part of this community. But with, with that nightlife there, there's also a dark side, right? There's also like alcohol, drugs and all of that.And finally, like, experimenting with boys and having my first experiences and [00:10:00] just being exposed to addict addiction and then realizing, oh, my mother, my mother's also an alcoholic and has been suffering from chronic depression. And I was basically her like right hand man. So that was the hardest part to, for her to she kind of like rejected me when I finally came out and.I just went through like, like a huge depression cuz here was this like queen that I used to look up to and then she said, no, this is the route you're going. Like, I don't want anything to do with it. And I ran away and left. But, you know, I remember I'm gonna be extremely vulnerable because that's like, what's, that's what's I think the most important thing to be authentic and, and expose like the truth to, to grow and learn from.But yeah, after a couple suicide attempts that were failed, I was [00:11:00] taken to hospital at psych Ward 51 50 where I discovered therapy. And I just remember having this epiphany and this like my aha moment, right? My my reality check where this young Latino man that was in that only spoke Spanish, looked at me and was like, Andrew, you don't belong here.Like you have a light. What? And, and this was, he was only telling me this in Spanish, and he would write me poetry. And I finally felt like, heard, seen and like I existed in that matter. So I remembered that very distinct moment saying, I don't wanna live this life. Like, I don't wanna go down this dark path.I realized the addiction can, can be real. And it's in my, it's genetically in our family. So I chose to follow my passion and my craft and my career. And at the age of 16, I graduated and took my GD and I just started my [00:12:00] my journey in, in the arts and the fashion industry. So fashion school, cosmetology school, and then working in retail, corporate cosmetics truly saved my life and.Here I am now been in the industry for 22 years, gonna be 23 next month. I've been independent freelance artist for eight years now. I'm a memoir, author of owner of a cosmetic company also. And it's all based around the same thing, like my culture, my passion, my craft. It's called Love is art.Art is love because for me, the other one cannot exist with the other. And in Spanish it's called. So that's the story. It's, it's a lot. I mean, to get the detail, you gotta read the book. I can't give too much away, but that's like the synopsis, De'Vannon: right? And so, yo the book covers beautiful, like he said, like the different cards and everything are on the front.[00:13:00]You know, in Spanish they call it Yeah. Good job. Good job. Yes. I was down till, like, a couple of weeks ago and they were complimenting on my Spanish, and now that I'm back here, it's like I can't fucking put three goddamn syllables. When Andrew: when you're in it. Yeah, when you're in it, it just, it just kind of rolls out. You gotta be in, in the community and then, or vela, that's when it really comes out.Exactly. Would all that, yes. De'Vannon: So I wanna go back and touch on a few things that you said. It, it registered me Absolutely heard you said that, you know, you were raised in that macho community and, you know, the, the Latino community can be very machismo, very toxic, toxically, masculine. Mm-hmm. And, you know, and so, mm-hmm.I remember when I was a kid, I was like super femme and everything like that. And I wanted to play with Ken and Barbie dolls and twirl [00:14:00] around and I'd wear my, me too, right? I'd wear my mother's heels and take a belt and make a dress out of an oversized shirt. And and my dad would take me out into the yard and, you know, insult me and berate me for being feminine and try to make me learn how to box and stuff like that.And I'm all like if I, Andrew: yeah, you're, you were in the De'Vannon: military. I went in the military when I was 17, but this is when I was like, in elementary school. He was out there trying to make me a man, whatever the fuck that's supposed to be, you know? I'm like, no, I wanna see what's under Ken's pants. Damn it.I know you're, Andrew: you're. Surprise though. It was just like flat or a little De'Vannon: bulge. Yes, I am a, I was a baby, right, Lester, when I was in the third grade deal with it. Judge me if you wanna. Andrew: And so we all had that. We all had that. De'Vannon: So I wanna know you mentioned you went from being [00:15:00] good to bad because everything was so good.You, you were trying to find the complications. I felt this way too. When I was in the church. I felt like I was a little bit too good when I get kicked out of the church. Then that's when I got caught up with the drag queens and the alcohol and the drugs. I became a drug dealer. Like you had felt, I felt liberated.I felt like I was being myself. I don't know if I was numbing some of that pain from being kicked out of church. I think I was with the drugs and alcohol. Tell me, did you ever get bad into alcohol or drugs or anything like that? Or, Andrew: or were you able to Oh yeah, absolutely. Yes, for sure. I definitely had some partners that, and some boyfriends that I probably were not the best choices.And in my book, this is chapter five , which is the spider. Just to give you a quick history on it, is Mexican bingo game of chance. And I was [00:16:00] mesmerized by all the artwork cause they resembled tarot, which I didn't even know at the time what tarot was as a child. Cause my mom introduced me to this game and my brothers.But later I realizing that with tarot and with Loya, each card has a symbol. So the reason I chose these tens specific cards is because they resonated with the timeline of my life. And so laa for me is the triggers and traumas of all the bad relationships. I'm not even gonna call 'em bad relationships.I'm gonna call them challenging relationships that have taught me because now I'm I'm at the point where I've done a lot of like self work and I mean, I'm still, I'm, I call myself. A student of University of Mother Nature and I'm always gonna be learning. And so all those moments have helped me realize, you know, that we're all just kind of like these lost little souls, like these lost little angels that are trying to like, figure out and navigate where the right path is.So these partners that I had that did have addiction problems [00:17:00] you know, at the time it was fun because like, yes, everyone's partying and you're just like, you wanting your wasted the quickest thing. I remember just waiting in line at Arena with like Mad Dog 2020 boondog, like the grossest stuff, but we would drink the fastest, cheapest shit to just like get the most shit wasted before we entered the club.Cause it was just like, we gotta get wasted before we get inside the club. Cuz we didn't, we were young, it was ages club, but we were not even old enough to drink and we were just, you know, getting wasted to. Loosen up dance and just like party all night. But through that, like fast forward into like my twenties, you know another Latino individual, this is a, I'm Mexican, so this is a different type of Latino.This, he was Columbian, Ecuadorian, and I just was a different world that I had an experience with, like the salsa me mbia, and then just [00:18:00] the, the lifestyle and the party of that culture. It just kinda like infatuated with me. But as as like fast and heavy and dangerous as it was, is as quick as I realized, like, whoa, this is, like, this can go dark.And he would drink all the time, you know, he would do drugs. He started going to like sex clubs and. I don't know what, where I was mentality wise. Like my self-esteem was just shot and I felt like this is the best that I can do, so I'm just gonna settle with it. I don't know, I really dunno where that came from.But I did, I got a D U I because this one time we partied and he wanted to continue to party and was threatening me if I didn't take him to get more liquor, that he was just gonna go to sex club and do like his own thing. So I felt like obligated [00:19:00] to, all right, I'm gonna take you. And he was driving and it was swerving and then I was like, no, let me take over.So a, after getting that D U I, I just, it was like my rock bottom. It was like my lowest of low because of the partner that I had chose the time. And I'm realizing later in reflection, like. I chose these partners for a reason. And I think I was trying to fix them. I think I was trying to groom them up cause I was introducing them to fashion and art and all that as well.And then all of a sudden they would change. And later I'm realizing like you were trying to fix yourself. Like you were actually, you are projecting what your insecurities were onto this individual and it just counteracted and affected you where you took the dark that was being, and, and you know, dark attracts each other, right?Like light attracts light. And so yeah, [00:20:00] I mean I, I obviously I'm not with that person anymore. Very happily married. We're 13 years together now and gonna be nine years married this May. And that's a lot for a gay man. And, you know, our, because it's, it's, but it's like I realized like I had to go through all those.Relationships and those triggers and traumas to, to like really fix me and love me for all of me. And that's when I, I was able to attract and the person that I kind of deserved and earned and, and actually saw me for me and didn't make me feel judged and didn't make, forced me to be something that I wasn't meant to be.You know? So I honestly, I'm even grateful for all those, those challenging moments for sure. De'Vannon: Right. And so I hear maturity, you know, in your words there because you understand how much good things come from the fire, from heat and intensity. You know, you've really [00:21:00]grown in life when you can grasp that and you don't look at problems and things that make you uncomfortable and things that hurt you as necessarily inherently negative, you know, cuz so much So when I, when I hear you talk about like the alcohol and the drugs and the sex, you know, vice.You know, it's one of the things that really take any anybody down in life. They are a gargantuan problem in the lgbtqia a plus community. Y'all, our people can't get picture is, can't get enough. Crystal meth, can't get enough, all that. Can't get enough Dick, can't get enough calm, can't get, can't get enough blow jobs, can't have enough origin for me.Andrew: For me it's work now though. But yes, there's always something De'Vannon: because you've grown to that point and you know, but before you had to go through being abused by all of these vices. And look, I'm not saying that there's nothing, anything inherently wrong with crystal meth and crack and cocaine and orgies and sex clubs.[00:22:00] But you know, bitch, when you at the sex club every night when you, and you leaving your boyfriend at home and not telling him you're going and when, or if you just at sex club every night, you single or you are high, Andrew: like it's gonna take a toll De'Vannon: eventually. It's gonna take a toll. But my point is, I need people, bitch, I need you to ask yourself what you really doing it for.Because after a point is not for the entertainment lonely or are you insecure? Are you seeking validation in these, right. Keep going back. So our community is hella insecure, no matter how pretty, we are always at the damn gym. Six packs, bubble butts everywhere. And don't nobody like the damn self. I don't see what the fucking point is.Andrew: What's the why? What is that all about? Like what? I'm still trying to figure that out. You know? What does RuPaul call it? Inner saboteur. Some people call it little bitch voice. Like, I think it's just learning how to navigate with that. Like it's [00:23:00] never gonna go away. It's always there. However you can. I, I think through writing this book and through the, the experience that I've, experiences that I have gone through have taught me that through trauma you can transform and triumph into power.You just have to believe it. You just have to know it. And, and really at the end of the day, it's being of service to others like, like you're doing with, with your audience and sh and, and sharing the knowledge and the, the growth. And that's, I think that's like the legacy we all need to leave behind as humans is through our, you know, journeys and our experiences that we can share that and, and share the growth and the tools that have helped shape us to where we are in a stable place, that, that truly brings happiness.Then that can also be infectious, just. And addicting as like alcohol and drugs and sex, you know what I mean? Like the positivity can also be just as addicting. And I [00:24:00] know that we share mutual podcast friends with a survivor to thrive and give 'em a little shout out. And they're on that same mission, you know what I mean?And I feel like it's not a coincidence that we've all been introduced to each other for, you know what I mean? During this time when it is the considered the, the most depressing time of the year, which is also my, happens to be my birthday December 27th. And now we're in January, which is melancholy and can be hard for our community or anybody going through mental health issues.So why not lift each other up and why not celebrate your struggles and, and transform them into something good, you know? Mm-hmm. Whatever that means for you. De'Vannon: The, yeah. Yeah. And I am gonna dig deeper into the mental health aspects of your book in just a moment. And y'all, like he said, you know, he's written his book to help the people's transparency that y'all heard me say a thousand times, [00:25:00] you know, is the greatest form of help because we learn and grow by listening to what other people have gone through.It is a trap when we think we're isolated and alone, when really the person sitting right next to us is either going through the same thing or has gone through the same thing. When I got H I v I thought I was the only one. I thought I was gonna die. I didn't know half the damn queens in Houston at the shit too.No one talked about that. We were too busy doing all the cocaine. Exactly. Doing all the cocaine at F Barn at South Beach, you know, and everywhere else. And at Jrs to do rather than to actually have real conversation. And so he, right, Andrea's wrote, written his book in order to help help some of you save your lives, to prevent you from committing suicide, to stop you from hurting other people, to stop you from hurting yourself.Cuz when you read that book, you're gonna know. Okay, this fucker went through the same shit. Maybe it's not just me. It is incredibly empowering to know that it's not just you or as they say over on Survivor, the thriver know that you are not alone. Andrew: [00:26:00] Absolutely. You said that beautifully. So I wanna know, and that, that's really No, go ahead.Sorry. De'Vannon: Yeah. I wanna know, you mentioned Catholicism from in the past. Mm-hmm. Where are you at in terms of spirituality today? Andrew: Like I said, yeah, I mean, I was born into that. It was it was all I knew, like it was, we lived on that block, you know, where my parents got married, where I was baptized, where I did my first commune and confirmation where I became a godfather.It was it was just when you're, when you're Mexican in east LA that's just what it is. Like, it just gets part, it's like peanut butter jelly comes with the territory. But And I I De'Vannon: about today specifically because people are born mm-hmm. Into all kinds of religions. I was born Pentecostal, you know, that's what you're okay for.Your family gives you, I don't feel like, like the learn behavior. Right. I feel like it's more valid once you become an [00:27:00] adult and you consider all the options. Mm-hmm. If you still wanna stay with that, then I think it becomes authentic. But until then you Yeah. What people told you to do. So what, what spiritually have you discovered for yourself?Andrew: I mean, obviously at that point, I, I, as a kid, I didn't agree with marriage only being between a man and a woman. And then, you know, just the, the history of the priests and the abuse and the, all that. I, I didn't agree with any of that. But even, even, even even Madonna too with Journey and her being Catholic and like a prayer and being the first advocate for l g BT Q, putting in her cd in her tape a condom and to protect se use protection for sex and literature on aids.Like, she was the first one to kind of give me a voice. And I, I felt seen, like [00:28:00] just the fact that I knew that I was gay. I felt like I was gonna get AIDS just because of that simple reason in the eighties and the nineties. But I mean, even that's kind of like part of my spirituality. So for me my husband and I go to non-denominational church.We are part of Unitarian. It's more of a communal thing. And it's more of just because they're accepting of everything. And the, the philosophy is to celebrate love, life human experiences. And it's, it's really lovely. I mean, it's. I ki I, I liked it because it brought me a little ba back to the nostalgia of the good things of going to church when I was Catholic.But I'm, I'm a spiritual person by Mother Nature and the universe. I believe in the law of attraction. I meditate every day. I practice gratitude. I journal, I visualize I consider my dogs my spirituality as well. I have dog, I have three dogs, you know, I have dog therapy [00:29:00] with them daily. I practice kind acts with others.I I'm an earth sign, so I love anything that has to do with the outdoors and just going on hikes and doing yoga. We're gonna do yoga tonight. You know, it's being healthy. We're both vegan, we're both animal lovers. My, my cosmetics is vegan and animal cru tea free as well. So I'm just, I'm a spiritual person as far as just energy, you know what I mean?Like this's just. What I love about being a human being is that I'm so connected with Mother Nature and we're all the same at the end of the day. Like there, it has nothing to do about your color of skin, your orientation, your gender, hus in your bedroom, what you eat, nothing like, we're all literally the same breathing things, elements, you know what I mean?It's looking at like, my veins is just like looking at the roots at a on a tree. [00:30:00] When you're like in a plane and you're looking down as the earth shrinks and you see all the little cracks in the rivers of, of earth, those are the veins of earth. It's all the same thing, you know? And so whatever spirituality is for the individual, if it makes them feel special and, and seen and that's, that's all that matters, whatever gives them that like happiness, that joy, that light.And for me it's, its mother nature. So that's my form of spirituality. De'Vannon: Okay. Look, I love to keep me a good garden in the back. I love eating off the, I love riding horses. You know, when I'm not riding Dick, you know, and everything like that. Exactly. Appreciate I can appreciate the fuck out of that. So, I wanna go back to this rejection of your mother because you know, she's a, you know, she sounds like the embodiment of a drag queen's in a straight woman's body.She supported you until you made it official. There's no goddamn way. She couldn't have already [00:31:00] known mothers. No, the bitch wasn't blind. I mean, I don't mean that insultingly. I mean that You're Andrew: good. You're good. De'Vannon: You know, I'm like, girl, you could see, you could read the tea. Andrew: I mean, I was going to the makeup.Yeah. So I was going through all De'Vannon: that. So, So you felt accepted and she already knew what it was. So it almost like for her, it might have been better if you never would've made it a official by saying the words. Hmm. So for those, for people out there, for queer people, especially Latinx people who have been rejected and there is a lot of rejection of L G B LGBTQ people because of how the Catholic church is, your culture is hella Catholic, you know?Mm-hmm. And so take me, take me back to when that rejection first happened and really give me some words to those feelings. Cause I want you to embody what somebody else is going through right there. I want you to vocalize that. Andrew: Yeah. [00:32:00] And 10th grade, and I, I think I had ditched school that day. I lived in a studio that was on the same property.My parents a lot of Mexicans do this where they build homes inside their homes and other. And it's just like a lot of houses. And so I, I, I was grateful for that cause I had a little bit of privacy, but my mom always had a key of course. And so I remember having my friends over the night before and we're listening to like Morris depe.And it was just kind like that vibe wearing all black, my doc Martins, you know, my black bomber jacket and drinking red wine and thinking we're cool and smoking marble red cigarettes. We were disgusting and clothes, but it was just, that was the thing that we did. And I just remember like waking up like hungover and it was time for school and I'm like, ah, I'm [00:33:00] not feeling it.I'm not gonna go. So I stayed home painted my fingernails and was just kind of like being lazy and just bumming around the house. And then my mom came in and like, just like, and Mexican moms. Can rage and just open the door and slammed and was like yelling, what are you doing in Spanish? Of course,you know, like all that kind of stuff. It was very . And and then she was like, picking up my jacket, picking up the bottles. She's like, what is this stuff? Why are your nails painted? Why are you dressing like this? What are you doing? Like, what are you gay? And that was the first time she had ever ever asked me that.And I finally like, I was so tired of yelling back and forth to like, I remember we were both yelling so much that we had to take a break to just take a, a breather. And then I finally yelled back and I said, yes, I'm [00:34:00] yay. You know, and a part of it felt good to just finally say it and vocalize it and to put it out into the universe, but also like seeing the sadness in her eyes did not feel good.And I just, I saw her like just kind of shrink and just, that made me shrink too. And then she just said, well, I don't support that. You're gonna have to leave you. If you're not gonna go to school, then you need to get outta here. And she left. And so I just remember feeling rejection alone, abandoned. Why am I here causing so much stress to all these people around me?And, you know, the per, the one person that I, that I thought was always gonna be my hero, that I, that supported me is now like, just telling me to get out and that I'm done with you. You're not good enough. Like when she said, De'Vannon: does she mean you no longer can [00:35:00] live here? Or when she's saying, I can't see your face today, what did she mean as a.Andrew: A teenager, I thought I took it as like, you, you don't, you're not gonna live here anymore. Like, if you're gonna live like that, you're not gonna live here. Like, those are the words that I heard. Yeah. That's how it sounds to me. So I, so I said, okay, and I, I did run away. Obviously I had to come back to get my stuff.And again, just going through the lows of the lows, seeing the alcohol, drinking that some more, discovering Tylenol pm, taking some of those. And the combination of it, I was just like, I was just, I was so sad. I was so alone that I didn't think I was able to get over this, like, low. So I just, I decided I wanted to take my own life.You know, I was gonna try and it [00:36:00] didn't work, you know, it didn't work. I woke up the next day. With my wrists, still bloody, but kind of like crusting and trying to heal just disorientated and dizzy from all the wine and the, the pills. And I'm like, all right, well, I guess I'm gonna go to work.I'm sorry to school. I didn't, it didn't work, you know, just put on my bomber jacket, go to school. I'm like, second period, get a call from the school counselor and says, you need to report to your school counselor's office. Get to the office. And they're like, your mom just called and apparently she went into your room and saw all this stuff and is really concerned about you.We need to see your wrist. And so I was hesitant, but obviously ended up showing, and they were like, all right, well you're a minor at this age in Roseville High School, we're not allowed to let you out of our site. We need to report to the center quad area, and we're gonna let you know what [00:37:00] is gonna happen to you then.So I get escorted with the security to the center of quad area. The bell rings and as the bell rings, the gates open up and an ambulance drives in as the ambulance is driving in the doors open and the security is escorting me into the ambulance. All the schoolmates come out running and seeing me getting into this ambulance and girl, I was mortified.I was, I was the most embarrassing moment and just kind of like, that's it. I'm over. I can never get back from this. There's no, there's not gonna be a way to fix this. You know what I mean? It was, it was very heavy, it was very embarrassing and exposing and was rushed off to White Memorial Hospital in Royal Heights, and they pumped my stomach and they stitched up my wrist and.[00:38:00]And yeah, I was admitted to a psych ward as a one 50 minor. It was who continued? Are you okay? Say what? I mean, it was, honestly, it hon, at that point I just surrendered. I, and I just kind of, I gave it to God at that point, you know, and was like, I'm just gonna be reborn. I'm gonna be a child. I'm gonna be infant.I'm gonna just let you guide me. This is where I'm supposed to be now to, to learn and to grow. I, I guess I'm gonna listen to these therapists. So I discovered therapy, which I fell in love with immediately cuz I'm finally being heard. I'm finally having tools and resources to, to help navigate my emotions, my feelings.And then I met that angel That young man that wrote me poems and [00:39:00] talked to me and said, you don't belong here. And told me I was special. And, and I finally like, believed it, you know? And that's, that's when I told you earlier that I made that conscious decision to not go down that route anymore.And I'm, I'm still in therapy to this day. I mean, it's not every week I mean like it used to be, but it definitely saved my life. And I feel that person was an angel. Cause fast forward to later, as I'm going through self-discovery and I'm writing my book and I'm journaling, I'm like, what happened to him?So I tried to research, but obviously through the privacy of hospitals, like they're not allowed to expose any information. But they were like, yeah, you were the only, they said you were the only one there in your room. So what the heck does that mean? You know, like they're saying that I was the only one in my room, but I distinctly remember this.Young man named Miguel telling me, you're, you're, you know, [00:40:00] you don't belong here. You, you need to follow the light. How long was Miguel? De'Vannon: That's crazy. How long was Miguel Andrew: in there with you? I mean, I, I was only in there for two weeks. He had already been there for a month. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I don't remember.We never exchanged numbers. Like So you think, I mean, we had pagers I think at the point, De'Vannon: right? So you think maybe it was, I remember the pager days. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Do you remember Uhhuh, I'm sorry you went through all of this and mental health is a big fucking deal in the queer community because a lot of our issues come from our parents because our parents have their own unresolved issues.The church has told them what to think about their own children. Not, not all mothers and parents are able. Be like, this is my child. I don't even a damn what the church has to say because, you know, our parents have their own issues. And so this is a huge reason why there's a lot of insecurity in our community.It comes from our own households. Now do you think this was son [00:41:00] who was in there with you, perhaps And y'all son, Miguel is just like son, son, Miguel, St. Michael, the Arche angel. Andrew: Yes, yes, yes. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I, it was definitely an angel and I, when my mom I, I was born two days after Christmas.I was supposed to be born like on Christmas, but it happened to be two days after. And she said cuz she was really into Like astrology. And she used to watch Walter Melo, I dunno if you know Walter Melo, who it was like the famous like tarot card reader in in the Latino community. It was like the thing that we watch religiously every Sunday, like after the, the, no, it was Walter.And he would tell you like, capric, Corno, tourist, blah, blah, blah. So she, cause of him, she used to tell me, you, when you were born, the sun, the Earth and the Moon and Mercury were line and you were born at 6:05 AM I, they gave [00:42:00] me you, you, they gave you, oh, sorry, let me rephrase this. They gave me you in a red stalking and as you're going in my arms, I just saw a big star on your head and a light on your right side.And I'm just staring at this little gift in this red, like stalking this and I'm holding it. And so she kept telling me that as I was. Growing up, like you have a star, you have a light on your, so I don't know, I, I can't help but go back to that, you know what I mean? Like go back to these little angels, these little whether it's whoever, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's a drag queen that past life, but she's saving me.That's what I like to I feel like we all have some kind of angel to protect, you know, some kind of either light energy, whatever you want to call it, you know, it could be our [00:43:00] past ancestors or ancestors. It could be maybe your past self and your reincarnate. I don't know. But something was there.It was very prevalent. It was, and it was the moment that I changed my mind. Otherwise, I could have gone down that addiction route. I could have gone down, you know, The gang route and like been in the closet and continued to live this straight life because of course I acted like I was straight forever.Because that's what you do when you're in that kinda environment. Otherwise you're gonna get clocked, you know, and jumped and bullied and I was all those things. But yeah, I, I can only say like now being with my husband, his name is Johnny Debut for 13 years. Accepting me for all of me. My femininity, my masculine side.He, yeah, he's just, he's my homie for life and he's the one that's just [00:44:00] I don't know my mean, like reminded me to love myself too. And I'm just very grateful for that. Cause it's been, we've had a journey on our, on our own as well and the good and the bad and but yeah, we're best friends. He is, he is just been The rock for, for everything.And I'm gonna be that right back to him too. For sure. Hey, hey Johnny, De'Vannon: Daniel, whatever you ask me, introduce Savannah and I'm saying Andrew: hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. De'Vannon: Hey Johnny, how will I get to have cocktails with you one day? Yes. So let's lighten this up as we get, we're down like our last couple of minutes here.So we've talked about some darkness, bring some light, and so yeah, we, we get light through darkness and angels are real. You know, I've spoken about how they've appeared to me before, all kinds of places on the side of the street and restaurants, you know, and there's [00:45:00] been times where it's like nobody else even sees this person in here.And I'm not the only one talking to them and everything like that. I turn around sometimes my husband sees them. Now look, y'all, they don't, I've never had them, except for in dreams appear to me in any sort of glorious way. When they appear to me on the street, they're just plain clothes people. And then we talk mm-hmm.Stuff like that. And I turn around and then they're gone. One of my favorite appearances is one time I was out in my yard, this is the last time I ever touched a rake in my life when I was in high school, raking these leaves. I hate yard work. I'm like, can we get a fucking, can we get a fucking maid? Do you see my nails?I'm queer. I shouldn't be doing this. Ugh. So, so I'm raking this fucking leaves and I hate wet ground and, ugh. This, this, this black guy walks down the street and he's just like, Hey, be careful for those poisonous snakes. Now we are in the hood, you know, just in the middle of the city. Oh, we're not out in the country.Why the fuck would there be a snake? He's like, were you careful of those snakes? The next [00:46:00] pool, there was a goddamn damn poisoned snake flopping all around in. They're trying, oh, hell no. I threw that right down. I'm like, I don't, not a snake. I don't give a damn with my dad. I want me to do, ain't no more chores being done in this yard.I looked up that that guy had told me this, like not a split second, and I looked up and he was gone. And I had something like that happen when I was a kid. You know, they'll show up, say whatever. I looked down and I'm like, he, they can't take nobody. Run that damn fast. You know? Or as or as the Hebrew scripture tells us, you know, we've entertained angels at unawares and be careful how you treat strangers.Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Absolutely talk about makeup. So y'all, like he said, he has own makeup line. Oh,Andrew: it was a good segue. It was a good segue. Had to do it right. And De'Vannon: every time he cls that fan has a title of his book, AOR Art Arta Moore. Or love is art. Art is Love. Yes. So [00:47:00] his first color palette is, is called Me Corone, which stands for my heart, you know, in Spanish. Mm-hmm. Go ahead and hold it up. So, Ooh yes.It ain't no bunny ram harm in making that. That's what I'm here for. That shit is vibrant. Thank you. You know, every now and then, you know I might beat this face up. You know, I'm gonna have to get your shit. Oh, I would love Andrew: to do your makeup. Yes. Let's make that happen. Oh, don't. I'm gonna De'Vannon: be in LA soon. God.I pray to God the next time I go to Los Angeles, cuz I'm in Louisiana where I live now. I pray to God the next time I go to Los Angeles it's, I'm there to stay. God. Need to go Andrew: home. Wait, I'm actually gonna, I'm actually wait, I, I'm going to Nashville in February. De'Vannon: That's a bit away from Louisiana still. I mean it might be kinda like Yeah, you're right down here by New Orleans and stuff.So whenever you come to Mar are you ready to do you a Mardi Gras carnival? Andrew: We do [00:48:00] love New Orleans. Yes, I do. I got De'Vannon: you hooked up bruh. So, okay y'all, so he bought this show called American Beauty Star and that, that color palette, he just showed up. You know, go ahead and tell everybody like, you know where they can find that.Your website is gonna be in the show notes. I'm gonna put your link tree so people can find you in case you wanna go ahead and vocalize it. You can tell them where they can find that in your book. Andrew: Thank you so much. Yeah, you. Search for the show on Amazon Prime, just type American beauty star, and you can binge watch me on season one.I'm right there working all the magic. That's where I started writing a book as form of therapy. While we were quarantined, I had no access to devices, so I would resort back to my hotel room and just start drawing and went back to my roots. What brings me passion is that's my, my craft. And then I wrote the book.This has been a four year project. The first year was to [00:49:00] write and edit the book. The second year was to design the cover of the book as well as the cover of each chapter. So I took 10 models and painted them from head to toe and turned them into these characters that you see on, on the cover of the book that represent Theia cards.And through the process of making the body makeup is when I realized there was like a lack of pigment. So I went into product development and that's where I chose to create my first palette, which is called . And you can see like one of the actual models wearing the colors and all the artwork inside is in, is in, is the artwork that's infused into the book.So it's all part of the same brand. And then through that, seeing my models get emotional and hot and you know, sweaty, I decided to also make a fan, which is also part of the same collection. And all the artwork from the book is infused onto the fan. And I lastly have a calendar. Which is good [00:50:00]for 2023.So this is the only way you can get the actual print of each card is by having your Amos Art calendar. So you can find everything on amos art.com or love is art artist love.com and that's where you can shop for the palette, the fan, the calendar, and the book as well. You can also go to Amazon and search for the book and just type Andrew Velazquez.And then my website is andrew velazquez.com for my salon portfolio and all the thanks, beauty tutorials, et cetera, De'Vannon: all the things. I love the options. You know, are you a Sagittarius as well? Andrew: US gays like options too. De'Vannon: You right. That's damn true. So, you know, I'm born on December 16th. I need everything.And so, Andrew: oh, nice. We're close. Capric the 27th Capricorn. Yeah. Capricorn. Oh, you can? Yeah, you can come. I have a [00:51:00] Saurus Rising double Capricorn with the Sagittarius Rising and all my besties are Sagittarius as well. You can come De'Vannon: to the Sagittarius Ki Keani. I'm gonna get you in. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So this is, so I looked up a couple of the videos and y'all, I love Andrew's his Instagram and his YouTube channel or Clutch.He has this beautiful avatar, avant garde look that he does on this girl, which is so like on tempo right now with the way of the water just coming out. You know, he has a Marvel inspiration stuff that he does. Th this, he does full body art, not just face, you know, this is head to toe fear shit, bitch.Here. Shout out to Mama Ru Paul right now. So on, on this American Beauty star. We're gonna talk about Lady Gaga, RuPaul, dim Lovato last. It's gonna out. So you're good before that. American Beauty star. So I look this up. So you got this panel of judges, these people on here doing this makeup, Andrew's in charge of the full scale production for this Oh.Show and everything. And then they will [00:52:00] be judged just like you've seen on Project Runway, you know, all the different things. So Andrew comes out, this stone cold bitch is sitting there with like white hair, you know, white outfit. And the, the person that left the review, I, I don't, I, I don't think that was Christie.I think that was the other girl. And and Andrew: so anyway, it was Huda from Huda Beauty, De'Vannon: right? And so I think somebody might have thought she was a little bit too hard, but, you know, I was just leaving everybody's opinions for that. But you know, Andrew's out there on stage and they're like, are like Andrew and then all the stuff, no, every judge's face just has no fucking emotions.You know how they fuck with the contestants and, and they leave them there in silence. For, for what? Felt like an eternity for me. And I wasn't even the one on stage. Yeah. Felt like Andrew. He's all like, oh shit. The look on the look on your face. We loved your look.[00:53:00]Andrew: That's exactly how it was. Oh my God, you did your research. Well, you gonna be so goddamn dramatic right De'Vannon: now. I'm, I'm sitting here in my house, gimme a cup of tea to deal with this stress. And you know, Andrew did well. He made it to the top three. That's a big deal to be there that long with all of that shit going on.And I love the way that you would talk with your co, I guess competition, friends, I don't know exact term on set. Mm-hmm. You know, in the back. But it's almost like you were there like guide, you know, you were giving them advice and everything like that and like keeping them together. It was very nurturing the words you would say to them on this show.Talk to me about your experience on this show before we talk about Gaga. Andrew: Oh, yes. No oh my God. That it feels, what was it like five years ago? Yeah, it was five years ago. I had just wrapped working with [00:54:00] Tyra Banks on America's Next Top model. So, and that was like the third cycle that I had worked with her doing hair and makeup.And, and what I did while I was on Top Model is I absorbed her like a sponge, cuz I knew that this show, American Beauty Star was coming right around the corner. And so the premise of American Beauty Star was to basically be Tyra Banks create a director. So not only did I have to do hair and makeup, but I had to conceptualize and create the runway for the fashion show design, the wardrobe accessorize, design the nail.I also had to choose the music for the, the platform. I had to tell Emily Rose, the International Vogue cover director to photograph and tell the model how to pose. So all these things that I knew were coming up, I knew like, this is, this is what I do like this. I'm, I feel very good about this. I feel very confident going into this.And I'm gonna come in, in, in a [00:55:00] humble approach. And so that was my intent, right? Going into this and always putting the energy exuding out for my mother's health is what I would kind of like meditate every day on my own. Because they said, you're gonna be quarantined for three weeks. Do you have no access to your devices?You have no access to your loved ones. You're, this is a frozen hard environment, which is basically you can't talk, you can't speak unless the cameras are on. And it's a production strategy to conserve your energy for camera type. But it's also. A psyching test to test your patients, your stress levels.And it's so funny because that's where I started developing this little twitch that happens on my arm. It's actually happening right now as we speak. I don't know if you can see it, like the little eye on the, it's switching a little bit, whatever, to that degree. Yeah. And so and I never had that before until [00:56:00] this show, but because we were only allowed to bring paper and my old school like iPod, you shuffle, I would listen to music like Madonna Ray of Light.Obviously, you know, other people that would like made me zen. I came up with Zen Drew, and this is where I started drawing for the book and creating the concept behind of what I wanted to do. I didn't know I had a concept during the time of the the show though. I just knew that I was like, Journaling.This is my form of therapy. And so I, I, I, I listened to the direction from the judges. A Adrian a Lima is the host who I loved, and she's stunningly gorgeous, even more in person, more so in person. Serjan is our mentor whose Beyonce's makeup artist. And, you know because I had been in production on a reality competition show [00:57:00] before, I knew a little bit more, I had a little more insight on kind of what goes behind the scenes.But now I'm the one in front of the camera place on hard ice. So I kind of knew that there were, there was three parts to the, the production In the morning you would come in, dress in the outfit that you were in the last night's outfit that day we had to recreate for continuity, whatever we did on the challenge last night again.Then we would find out, like you saw with the white snow queen, that we were gonna stay or leave. And yes, I was sweating. My back was drenched and my arm was twitching. But my goal was to always listen to the, the, the feedback and put that into the next challenge. Then the second part of the day was your, your kind of like, your interviews and what you see in between they, they call 'em the confessionals.And so that's where oftentimes they would set you up with the producer [00:58:00] and they would ask you questions and I could pick up when they were trying to alter my answer or get something else outta me. And I would say, no, that's, that's not something that I would say. I'm not gonna say that. Don't ask me to say that.And I, I remember asking for a different producer when I didn't, when I was in vibing that, you know, the, this, this isn't coming out through for my best interest. This is coming out for. Airtime or production, and I'm not here for it. Like I wanna be authentic, Andrew and what I came up with, what's called my Zend.So they listened to that and I went, I had another producer, and she really made me feel like safe, made me feel heard, and, and, and I feel it's because of her. She was another angel that I was able to, to be vulnerable and to, and to be just true. And then the last part of the day was the next challenge.And then you're introduced to a new a new ex whatever [00:59:00] project you're gonna come up with. And I, I felt everybody's anxieties, right? I felt everyone's trying to, like some people were trying to be shady. So the what you see is real, you know, some of it, yes, it's beefed up because they want to stir up some drama specifically on America's next time model.But for American Beauty Star I think they were, they would, they would find. People's strengths and weaknesses and then enhanced them by and, you know what's the tar the right word? By instigating stuff and by asking right questions and by like probing. I wasn't here for it. I think they picked up on that.I think that's also why I didn't win. But I think that's why I made it to the finales because they knew like, oh, this guy, he's well put together. He's corporate, he's professional, but I wasn't drama. You know what I mean? And because I sense everyone else's anxieties, I would try to give them positivity and, and give them zen as and just tell [01:00:00] 'em to, Hey, just trust your, in your intuition.Just go with what brings you joy and follow that regardless of what everybody's telling you. Like follow that. And I feel like that's kind of like what helped me stay at towards the end. Although I didn't win in the winning title, I won so many other ways and growth and exposure and experience, I was able to open up a salon after that.And I'm very grateful for it, you know what I mean? Would I do it again? Absolutely. I would bring it on all stars. I will come back on season four and go up against my students, go up against whoever. And I'll win that. I'll win that bitch. I'll take that bitch home. Hell season four all stars. De'Vannon: Take me with you.I can I can supply the underwear. I'm sure y'all need a pit crew for my down under apparel brand. Hey, I can do something. Andrew: Let's go. De'Vannon: Okay. So then, so as you thank you for that breakdown. I love you had this fabulous experience and I just speak more exposure over you and riches, both in this world and in the one to come and in the [01:01:00] unseen realm too.Yes, Andrew: yes, yes. Between De'Vannon: Lady Gaga, RuPaul and Demi Lovato, which one of these can you give us the most dramatic story from, from working? Andrew: I mean, I can, I can talk about all of them briefly. Who did I work with first? It was probably RuPaul. We, Mac Cosmetics was the sponsor brand for season one, and through that sponsorship, David not only provided the cosmetics, they provided artistry support, which was myself and I managed the pro store on North Robertson in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.So we were like the flagship that all entertainment would approach for. Sponsorship product, artistry help, whatever it was. So I worked on season one and we were in charge of just doing the guest judges. So I did like Michelle Williams from, you know, Destiny's Child. And Ru [01:02:00] Ru is just great.She's just such a big flirt and just you can feel her energy when she comes into the, the room. And this is still season one, so it was very fresh. I was invited to come back for season four this time through an agency and still do the guest judges and the pick crew as well. So we had to oil them up and and then you can see me actually on season four in the background cause they would sometimes have us be in the audience.And this is the one with Sharon Needles. I think who else was. Fifi O'Hara and they're fighting like on the wwf, kinda like wrestling. So you can see me in the back, like yelling. So that's a little behind the scenes. And then Gaga was through Sharon Gold, who was Madonna's hairstylist during the Blonde Ambition tour.And Sharon we're shop with us at Mac frequently to get product, to get her discount. Cause we offer, they offered a pro membership [01:03:00] discount for anybody in the industry. And so she hit us up once and said, Hey, I'm coming in tomorrow. Can you make sure that we have. A little private area. Yeah, absolutely.Yeah. We're gonna need your face charts, your pigments, and some brushes. I have an artist a musician that I'd love to introduce you guys to. She's new. She's up and coming. Okay, great. This is like during MySpace, right? So she was, they kept calling her a MySpace artist. I'm like, all right, cool, whatever.MySpace come in. All good. So here I meet this little tiny brunettes you know, skinny young, like 20 year old. She was like, twinky, right? Her name is Stephanie. And she is like, how do you, what do you do with these space charts? Show me how to use these space charts. I'm doing this music video and I want you to work on the music video.I'm like, okay, cool. Yeah. So I was Sharon's assistant for the music video love game. But again, not knowing who this individual was, I didn't even know her artist's name until we got to the set. And now they're saying, oh, you're working with Lady Gaga? Who's Lady Gaga? What is that? What does that [01:04:00] mean?And literally, In like a matter of two weeks, she was on logo Next, next now award show and overnight she just became this huge sensation and her album just like skyrocketed. And that was it. Like that was the one time consulting with her in the store and then working in the music video. And I will forever take that to my grave cause she's Queen, you know, to all of our LGBTQ community as well.And then Demi was for another big queer moment during the la gay Pride. And I was in charge of the avant garde body makeups. And I was also able to do her like glam that morning for a really don't care music video. So it was a 13 hour day. She's such a hard worker. I remember she just came back from Paris.She, this is when she used to shave the [01:05:00] CI of her hair. She's like, You know, can you clean me up? I didn't bring clippers cause I wasn't aware that I was gonna do like grooming and I, I just was prepared for makeup artistry. So I had to, th this is another fun fact I'm gonna share with your audience. I had to taper and sh and shave, fade the side of her head with lash scissors and a mascara one and just like a cute little blend to make it look tight.And then the rest of the day was turning these dancers into like mannequin avant garde, like avatar makeup. So like blue, pink, gold and black. And it was hot during real life on afloat, during la gay pride in a little pickup truck behind her, touching her up every so often and touching them up. Just exhausting, but, you know, really, really great to work with.And she was very gracious. And this is when she was dating I forget his name. The my Latino, I should [01:06:00] know his name, HETE. But anyhow, it was a, it was a great experience. She was fun. Gaga was fun, RuPaul was fun, and I love them all as artists. I think what they represent as, you know, ex a self-expression and what they do for our community is just, is awesome.So I'm gonna forever take that to my grave. Hell yeah. And De'Vannon: look, I hopefully you get to work with them again. I speak it so. Mm-hmm. So I've

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is "Augmenting Workers With Wearables." And our guest is Andrew Chrostowski, Chairman and CEO of RealWear (https://www.realwear.com/). In this conversation, we talk about the brief history of industrial wearables, the state of play, the functionality, current approaches and deployments, use cases, the timelines, and the future. If you like this show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/). If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 92: Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/92). Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (https://trondundheim.com/) and presented by Tulip (https://tulip.co/). Follow the podcast on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/75424477/). Trond's Takeaway: Industrial wearables have come a long way. There is a big need for assisted reality in many workforce scenarios across industry. There are now companies taking good products to market that are rugged enough, simple enough, and advanced enough to make work simpler for industrial workers. On the other hand, we are far away from the kind of untethered multiverse that many imagine in the future, one step at a time. Transcript: TROND: Welcome to another episode of the Augmented Podcast. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is Augmenting Workers With Wearables. And our guest is Andrew Chrostowski, Chairman and CEO of RealWear. In this conversation, we talk about the brief history of industrial wearables, the state of play, the functionality, current approaches and deployments, use cases, the timelines, and the future. Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, for process engineers, and for shop floor operators hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim and presented by Tulip. Andrew, welcome to the show. How are you? ANDREW: Hi, Trond. Great to be here. I'm doing great. TROND: You know, you are a poster child entrepreneur engineer, Oregon State, University of Southern California. You are actually an expert on the future of work. There are so many people that say they talk about the future of work. You are implementing and, selling, and evangelizing a true future of work product, not just a story. We're going to be talking about augmented, assisted all kinds of reality and collaboration, Andrew, because that's, I guess, what it's all about. And you lead the industrial wearable company RealWear. But first, I want to get to the fact that you're a certified firefighter. Now, how does that fit into this? ANDREW: That's really a great question. And one of the things that's been passionate for me from the beginning is being close to the customer. It was true when I was an Air Force officer designing for systems that would support our warfighters and putting myself in their situations in life and death. Certainly, I think about it in terms of customers, and we were dealing with other lines of business and trying to understand the customers' perspective, and especially the frontline workers that create those products. And when I took over the Scott Safety business when I was part of Tyco, their particular market was firefighters. They were the leading provider of air tanks, cylinders, respirators, what we call SCBAs, self-contained breathing apparatus for firefighters. Now, I know a lot of things about a lot of areas of technology. But I didn't know anything about firefighting. And so when I took over that business, the first thing I did was go to Texas A&M and actually get trained and certified as an interior firefighter. So I actually put on all the bunker gear, timed donning just like you do when you're in the fire station, fought real fires that were built, and to understand really the challenges they faced. And I came out of that training really having a greater appreciation for just how challenging that work is. And I know it's shocking to your listeners, but everything we ever see on TV and movies about firefighting is wrong. Basically, firefighting, besides being terrifying, and difficult, and dangerous, is basically blind. You're in the smoke. You're in the dark. And my background in the Air Force thermal imaging systems and multispectral systems came back to me. And I said, "You know what we need to do is give predator vision to firefighters and give them the chance to see the unseen in the dark." And so, coming out of that training, I initiated an in-mass thermal imaging system for firefighters that went to the market about 14 months later at Scott site. TROND: Wow, that's some real background there. I'd like to start with that story because it reminds me that what we're about to talk about here, you know, wearables, it's not a joke. These are, you know, in industrial environments, these are not optional technologies once they really, really start working. And you can sort of say that they're first-line technologies. They better work every time. So this is not a case where you could kind of, well, you know, let's install another version and restart and whatnot. These are eventually going to be hopefully systems that the modern industrial worker really starts to trust to perform their job efficiently. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of all of the different things that RealWear is trying to do, I wanted to just ask you a basic question, what is assisted reality? It's a curious phrase. It's like, why does reality need assistance? [laughs] You know, where does that even come from? ANDREW: You can deny reality, but you can't deny the effects of denying reality. When we talk about assisted reality, it's a point on the spectrum what we call XR, the extended reality. It starts with reality and ends when that virtual reality, the fully immersive digital environment that we experience and what we talk about a lot in the metaverse. Then coming from reality forward, you have assisted reality, which is a reality-first, digital-second environment, which is what we focus on. It is the idea that this is the technology available now that allows a worker to be productive and work safely in a real-world environment. When you get into augmented reality, which is something that we think of when we think of products like HoloLens and other similar types of products, that's where this digital environment begins to overlay the actual environment. It imposes a cognitive load on the brain so that you're now having to focus on things that aren't really there while there are things that are really around you that could hurt you. This is great when you're in a safe environment, in a classroom, in a design area, when you're collaborating in the office to be able to immerse yourselves in these three-dimensional digital objects. It's much different when you're walking on the deck of an oil rig or you're potentially working around a cobot that can hurt you when your attention is distracted. And then we have sort of that virtual reality game that we started with in the metaverse where people are now kind of transposing themselves into a fully digital atmosphere. We at RealWear have focused on making a difference for the future of work and focusing on those 2 billion frontline workers who could work more safely and more productively if they were connected. And it makes perfect sense to us. If we learned anything from the COVID lockdowns, we learned that this idea of working from anywhere, the idea of the office worker working from home, working from the coffee shop, all of this now has become just a given. We know that we need these digital tools to collaborate remotely. What we only have begun to just crack the code on is that there are, again, 2 billion people working with their hands on the front line who could work more productively and more safely if they were connected workers, if they had access to information, if they had access to collaborating in a hands-free way with their counterparts across the world. And so RealWear, our focus is this mission of engaging, empowering, and elevating the performance of those frontline workers by giving them an assisted reality solution that is extremely low friction and easy to use. TROND: I like the distinction there. Even though this podcast is called augmented, I like the distinction between AR and assisted reality. Because there's really, I guess, you can see it more clearly in the consumer space where it sounds so fascinating to enter these virtual worlds. But in industry, the virtual is really subservient and needs to be subservient to the very reality. So I guess assisting reality is the point here. It's not the endpoint that is necessarily the virtual. You're using the technologies, if I understand it, to strengthen the ability to survive and be very, very efficient in reality as opposed to entering some sort of virtual space where you are simulating more. You're talking about critical applications in the physical industrial reality, so that's now clear to me. Having said that, this is not easy to do, is it, Andrew? ANDREW: No. I mean, there's a lot that comes into this idea of making technology that's human-centric. And all the things you were just talking about really bring us back to this idea that this kind of assisted reality solution is about helping the human being at that nexus of control operate more safely and effectively in a variety of environmental conditions. It is really important that we think about the technology serving the person and not so much technology that is imposing itself on people, which is oftentimes what we see as we try to roll out different kinds of technical solutions. The folks who are doing work with their hands who are daily exposing themselves to risk have a very low tolerance for things that waste their time, are difficult to use, or distract them from reality. And so all of those things are factors we took into account as we developed this first head-mounted tablet computer that now is in the market as the Navigator 500. TROND: Andrew, can you tell me a little bit about the history and evolution of these kinds of technologies? Because there is so much hype out there. And you did a pristine job as to making these concepts fairly distinct. But how long has there even been an industrial product? I guess a lot of us remember the first Google Glass, but partly what we remember is the hype in the consumer market, which then kind of fell flat. And then they reemerged, I guess, as sort of a light competitor to you guys and then has since somewhat disappeared. But, anyway, there are a lot of attempts in the near history of technology to do this kind of thing. I mean, it corresponds pretty neatly to various sci-fi paradigms as well. But what are the real prototypes that go into the inspiration for the technology as you have it today? ANDREW: Well, I'm glad you mentioned science fiction because really the way I would start this, otherwise, is, say, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we had Star Wars. And if you think back to that show, science fiction has been part of how people work in modeling, how people work for decades and more, from Jules Verne all the way through to Star Trek and the like. And so when you think about these technologies, you go back to processes and technologies that support humans collaborating. And back in Star Wars, we had a character called Boba Fett who famously has, and now you see it in the Mandalorian, a little device that comes down from his helmet in front of his eyes and acts as a rangefinder and computer screen. Actually, one of the founding engineers that were part of the design of the first RealWear device came out of designing Boba Fett's helmet. And so there is really a connection there about how people have imagined people work and how people actually work. And the actual part really started with Dr. Chris Parkinson and spending over ten years working on what is the right ergonomics. What's the right way to shift the balance, the weight, the size, and manner of the display? How do you control the windows and amount of information displayed? And how do you suppress the outside noise so that you can have a voice control system that makes it truly hands-free? So it began with this idea of all great things start with a spark of imagination. And then bringing that to a very practical point of view of solving the problem of being able to give someone information and collaboration tools hands-free in an environment where they can work safely but connect to all the value and information that's out there that we enjoy every day working as office knowledge workers with the internet. TROND: Andrew, what are some of the technical challenges you had to overcome? I can imagine; first, you have to design something that is probably bulkier than you wanted, and then eventually reducing its size is one thing. But I can imagine the algorithms apply to, I mean, there's imaging here, and there's a bunch of design techniques to make this work. And then you said ruggedized, right? I mean, this stuff cannot break. ANDREW: That's right. TROND: What are the kinds of things that went into and is going into your next-generation products? ANDREW: Well, I think that's a great question. And, of course, as new products evolve and we build on the learnings we've had from having one of the largest install base of wearable computers in the world, we can sit there and say, look, it starts with ruggedization. Because, frankly, these frontline workers, when they're wearing these devices on their hard hat, at the end of the day, that hard hat gets tossed into the back of the truck. It gets tossed in the van. It gets dropped on the ground, or in the mud, or out in the rain. So we knew right away that we had to build a device that was able to hold up to that, things that a lot of similar kinds of products that are out there just can't hold up to. So we started with this idea that it had to be extremely rugged. It had to be lightweight enough to wear all day. And our first version did that very well. The Navigator 500 has come now just as rugged but now 30% lighter. So we've learned how to make that ruggedness, even in a lighter form factor. You have to trade-off on how you see that display in bright sunlight, in dim settings. You have to think about how you operate in a noisy environment. So you can imagine if you're trying to use a voice-driven assistant, whether it's on your phone or a little microphone device in your home, you use a wake-up word, and then you have to try to talk clearly. And if you don't talk clearly, you end up having it not do what you want. That's very frustrating for a frontline worker, and it's just downright distracting and dangerous at times. So we chose to have a system and voice control that does not require a wake-up word. It's always listening. And it listens in context to what's on the screen. Literally, what we say is you say what you see. And that's about all the training you need to learn how to use the Navigator 500 effectively. And because it's so easy and intuitive, people get used to it quickly. And they go gravitate towards how it's making their work easier to get to, how it's easy to launch a collaborative meeting in any number of key applications, whether it's Microsoft Teams, Cisco, Webex on demand, whether it's Zoom, whether it's TeamViewer, any number of other partners that we have in terms of the types of collaborations. TROND: Well, I want to get into some of the use cases in a second, but just briefly, so you were founded as a company in 2016. And you're now, I guess, 140-some employees. I mean, it's fairly recent. This is not something that you've been doing since the '70s here. But on the other hand, this is also very challenging. It's not like you produce something, and all of industry immediately buys into it. So I just wanted to address that, that this particular market, even though it's always been there as this potential, there doesn't seem to have been kind of a killer application like there is in some other hardware markets. And maybe you're thinking you will be one. But I just wanted you to address this issue. Recently, the IBC the analysts came out with this prediction that they're forecasting a decline actually year over year in units sold. And they're also saying a lot of new vendors are going to come into this market, but the market is not very mature right now. What do you say to that kind of an argument? ANDREW: There's a lot to unpack there, so forgive me if I miss some of the things you brought up there. But I'd start really with RealWear and how we develop this. The Navigator 500, the product we have on the market today, is highly modular, lightweight, does all these types of things, and that's really the eighth generation. Even though we only have been around since 2016, the thinking behind this form factor has gone on for eight generations. So we've got a lot more maturity than some of the other folks who might be thinking about entering this market. We've also focused entirely from the beginning on that industrial frontline worker. It's a niche of over 2 billion people but very different from the consumer aspect and what people have gotten used to in terms of dealing with a piece of glass that they might carry in their pocket all day long. We think that A, we've kind of created this assisted reality space. We've won in so many of these industrial cases because of the way we make work safer and more productive. We've now passed applications where we've had installations over 3,500 units with a single use. We've got, in multiple cases, over 1,000 deployments. We've got 75-80 deployments of over 100 units. So we really have broken through. And what we see is whenever we talk about the assisted reality market, or we can talk more broadly, we usually only see data on augmented reality. They put all these smart glasses in sort of a category. And we're really only a portion of what they count as smart glasses. So when they start saying there's downward pressure on that market or it's not growing as fast, it goes back to something I just read in a book about builders in terms of how innovation happens. And the author described augmented reality as a solution looking for a problem. We came at it with a particular problem we were solving, and that's I think the big difference between us and a lot of how people have come into this space. We knew exactly the problem we're trying to solve. We knew that we wanted to make the human the central part of that control Nexus. And we knew that we wanted to be in a space where others would find it difficult to succeed. And so, as we've been successful here and as we continue to grow and expand these deployments and getting into larger and larger deployments, we know that others will kind of begin to look into this space and try to compete. But most of them are bridging over from that consumer side where a lot of the fundamental design trade-offs they've made do not well-support all shift use in a ruggedized environment and with the ease of use that we've designed into our products. TROND: Andrew, that makes a lot of sense to me. MID-ROLL AD: In the new book from Wiley, Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations, serial startup founder Dr. Natan Linder and futurist podcaster Dr. Trond Arne Undheim deliver an urgent and incisive exploration of when, how, and why to augment your workforce with technology, and how to do it in a way that scales, maintains innovation, and allows the organization to thrive. The key thing is to prioritize humans over machines. Here's what Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, says about the book: "Augmented Lean is an important puzzle piece in the fourth industrial revolution." Find out more on www.augmentedlean.com, and pick up the book in a bookstore near you. TROND: Let's talk about some of these bigger deployments. So I don't know if you can mention names, but the biggest one, I'm assuming, is in the automotive industry because they are at the forefront of a lot of automation technology. So I'm just going to make that assumption. Tell me a little bit about that deployment. What is it all about? What are they using it for? What can you tell me about what they're using it for? ANDREW: Thank you, Trond. And I'm super excited about our success in the automotive sector, not only just because of what it represents but because, as an industry, it's so central to economies across the globe. And when we think about the transformation of that industry going to electrification, that change creates opportunity for us as well. So today, with our partner TeamViewer we're in over 3,500 dealerships. Virtually every dealership in America now has a RealWear product in it. For those technicians, when they're dealing with a particularly tough problem, they're able to put on our device as simple as what I'm doing here, just putting on their Navigator, their HMT-1. And they can call and connect with a technical assistance center in Detroit and have a first-person conversation with an expert who can help walk them through that repair, whether it's pushing diagrams to them to, illustrating over the video that they're getting but helping them solve that problem faster. And why is this so significant? Well, because from the customer point of view, you're happy that your problem is being solved quicker. You've got your car back. The dealer is happy because now they've been able to invoice the customer or invoice for it in this particular case to get their warranty repair dollars back. And Ford is happy because now they've got a happy customer, and they've got a better reputation and user experience. So it's a very positively reinforced system. And so when you think about that application alone of just being able to solve problems of existing cars, now think about the introduction of all of these electric vehicles to dealers, not only with Ford but anybody else you can think of is moving into electrification. There are a lot of technicians who know how to work on a gasoline engine, but very few who maybe know how to really solve those electricals. So this is a way that these dealers can bridge the skills gap that exists between what they have and what they need to be able to do in the near future. And that skills gap, by the way, is recognized not just in the automotive industry, but you and I experience it every day when we deal with restaurant industry, service industries, trucking. You think about any kind of skilled labor situation; we know demographically we've got a big gap. And that's going to be persistent for decades. And so a tool, a knowledge transfer platform that lets people move up that learning curve more rapidly to do more meaningful work, to be more self-actualized as they do that not only helps people but it helps industry serve their customers. And so we see ourselves really at the forefront of transforming work as we know it. TROND: I'm so glad you went to the skills, and it's so exciting that that's the main application right now because I think there's a lot of discussion, obviously, in the industry across sectors about the skills gap; they say, right? That the gap...we have to train people, or they have to go to school. They have to learn. It's an endless complexity. But, I mean, you're sort of saying the opposite. You're sort of saying cancel the training, put the headset on. Some of these things, very advanced training, very advanced advice, real-time support, can happen without going aside, looking at a computer, calling someone up, talking to you, you know, see you next week with your car. And then, meanwhile, what you're doing is scratching your head for a while, trying to figure out what's wrong. But you're saying this creates a much more dynamic scenario both for delivering the service and actually for the human worker who's trying to deliver some sort of service here and is plugged into an information ecosystem. I'm just wondering, is that a very, very typical use case? And do you foresee that that is the use case for assisted reality? Or are there wildly different use cases just depending on, I mean, pick another industry. I was just imagining the medical industry, famously remote surgery, or whatever it is. Some sort of assistance during surgery is obviously the big use case. I could imagine that there's something to be done here also with RealWear. ANDREW: Yeah, I mean, this is such an exciting area and topic to talk about, education, how people are educated, how that education plays to their employment and their employability, and how they add value and have careers. And we all have talked about whether university work is preparing people for the kinds of careers there are today or whether or not we need to be considering other kinds of applications, going direct to coding or whatever else. So when you talk about frontline workers, it's absolutely a matter of specific knowledge. It's not just general knowledge that matters. It's very specific things that can happen. And so by connecting people to experts, you do two things: you get the job done right away, but you also mature that worker because they learn from those experiences. And they can use our device to actually, while they're doing the work, film it. It can be curated and then used as training videos for the next generation of work that goes with it. So I think that alone is really exciting. There are so many use cases, though, beyond this, remote experts see what I see that we've been talking about. That's really...I'd say the predominant deployment today that people think about is how do I collaborate remotely on the front line? And that's super valuable. But what becomes even more interesting is when that device becomes a solution for how you do your daily work. As an example, if you're a heavy engine manufacturer and you have an end-of-line inspection, and that inspector is using a clipboard and a checklist to look at how the engine is functioning, imagine replacing that. For one of our particular customers, that takes about 30 minutes. When they implemented workflow using hands-free Navigator, they were able to reduce that time to about 12 minutes because now the person is not wasting time going back and forth to a clipboard, or to a table, or writing things down. They're absolutely hands-free, immersed in the work, being presented the next inspection point in their display, being able to photograph it, work through it, look at a comparison, document it. And the important thing is not just that they're doing it faster; they're finding three times as many defects because they're not distracted. We know there's no such thing as actually dual processing as human beings. If we think that we can listen to a Zoom call and do emails, we're doing neither very well. We know that we're just quickly switching. And that's the same thing that a lot of frontline workers experience. When you make it immersive and hands-free with workflow, now you begin to expand the value that this technology begins to support so much greater. As we move along, the implementations and the deployments are going to move from sort of this collaboration centric to workflow centric to then being able to be with our partner, IBM. IBM has actually created something they call Inspector Wearable, where they're giving a superpower inspection to an operator who might be standing at the end of an assembly line watching a car roll by. It stops in front of them. The camera knows, because of machine learning with Watson up in the cloud, that, hey, this is what a good wheel should look like and immediately highlights the operator with a telestration that's the wrong nut. There's a scratch on this rim or whatever defect we might be talking about. So then you start actually using these technologies that are inherent with the system to be able to augment the capabilities of these workers. And that starts to get really exciting. I'll add one of the points to that is in Q4, we're going to be introducing a thermal imaging camera that can easily be just snapped on on the part of our modular solution for Navigator to be able to then snap on a thermal imaging camera and give that person predator vision to be able to see if they're walking around their plant. They can see that an electrical panel is overheating or that a motor is hot, or they can use it in any of the hundreds of thermography industrial programs that people use today. So I think part of that transition goes from just being collaboration to how we work and do workflows to actually augmenting the capabilities of the folks who are wearing these wearable computers. TROND: Yeah, and that's so interesting. And, I guess, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's where it ties into not only IBM but a bunch of your other software partners too where Tulip being one of them, where now that you're providing a device, it actually is the end client that can put that device to use in their own scenarios. And they can build, I guess, apps around it and find their own use cases that may not be the ones that are super apparent to any of those who deliver it, whether it is you delivering the hardware, IBM, you know, delivering perhaps the machine learning capabilities or some other knowledge, or it is Tulip delivering kind of a frontline software platform that's adaptable. It is actually the end client that sits there and knows exactly how they want to explore it, and then in a second iteration, change that around. Or am I getting this ecosystem wrong here? ANDREW: No, I think you're onto something there very powerful, Trond. And there are three specific dots we have to connect when we think about a sustainable solution that can be deployed broad-spread across an industrial base, and the first one is the device. The device has to be right. It has to work for the user. It has to meet the requirements of the environmental conditions they're operating in. And so the device is critical. And that's really where RealWear started our journey with that focus on the user and the user experience with our device. But the next step is really the data that comes with it. That's that part where it's both accessing data and creating data through applications that they use to feed the data lakes above and to feed back into this IoT world where there's information coming up from our equipment and being fed back to us that we can take action on. And then, ultimately, we have to connect to systems of record. And this is where Tulip, for instance, one of our partners, plays such an important role. It's that connection between all of these things that talk together, the device, the data, and these decision-making systems of record, that now when they talk and connect, it's a very sticky situation. Now you've created more than just a point solution. You've created a system solution where you've changed the way people work, and you reduce friction in interacting with those systems. And I think that that's a real clear case. I'll give an example that RealWear did in a very simple way. We recently acquired a small company called Genba AI. Their whole purpose in life was to be able to take a CMMS system, which is done for maintenance purposes, and working with eMaint, which is a division of Fortive, and be able to then say, "We can take that currently operating device that requires a worker to print out a work order, go do something, and then put it back into a computer, we can now do that with voice only." So, again, you take friction out of that interaction and allow them to do things easier but with the systems of record. And so that's why I get so excited about partners like Tulip that are making and connecting the dots between all of these disparate systems that we find in fourth-generation industrial complexes and making them work together seamlessly to give information to make better decisions by the folks who manage that work. TROND: This makes me think of something that I promise we'll get back to in a second talking about the industrial metaverse, which I think is far more interesting than the consumer metaverse. And we'll get to that because you were starting with this whole ecosystem that starts to develop now. But before we get there, I just wanted you to comment a little bit on COVID, COVID-19. Massive experience; no one is untouched by this. And there clearly was a future of work dimension to it. And people have made a lot out of that and prognosticate that we will never show up in the office again, or hybrid is here forever. What did COVID do to RealWear? ANDREW: Well, you know, it's an interesting perspective. I've been with RealWear in one capacity or another since almost the beginning, starting off as a Strategic Advisor and Chairman of the Advisory Board to, stepping in as the COO during the series A, and ultimately becoming the CEO and Chairman of the board in 2020 just as COVID was happening. So a lot of that immediate experience of RealWear was at a time when the whole world was starting to shut down and realize that we had to work differently. So I literally had one meeting with my direct staff as the new CEO before Washington State was shut down. And all the rest of the year was done via remote work. So it's not a dissimilar story to what a lot of people went through in recognizing that, hey, what used to be done in the office and was deemed important to be done in the office had to now be done elsewhere. And we came quickly with this adoption of digital tools that supported this digital transformation. And what it really did was act as a catalyst because before, you could have a conversation about the value of remote collaboration software, laptop to laptop, and that sort of thing, but nobody was thinking about the front line as much. That was a really tall connection for RealWear to make. We'd go in and talk about the value of a hands-free remote connected worker. But when you suddenly had millions of displaced workers all contributing, in some cases with productivity increasing, it now said, hey, by the way, do you want to take this great hybrid environment you just created, and do you want to extend it to those important people who don't get to stay home, who don't get to dodge the risk of being exposed to COVID, who have to go out and serve the public or serve your customers? And now, if we talk about giving those people connectivity and extending that with technology that exists today using familiar platforms...RealWear runs on an Android 11 platform. That means imaginations are limitation, not technology. All those solutions we're talking about can be done in an Android environment, can be imported very quickly, and provide a solution for those users. And so it acted as a catalyst to say that remote experts at smart glasses, as it were, were here, and it was now, and this technology was ready. And the deployments took off. It probably shortened our deployment cycle. Our sales cycle probably contracted by 70% during COVID as people began to realize this is how we can get work done. This is how we can continue to serve our customers. And so it was a huge change, not only in terms of the demands that we were able to meet thanks to the great teamwork of our whole RealWear ecosystem and supply chain partners, but it also made a difference because it changed the thought processes of leaders who now realized that creating a connected worker not only was feasible, that it had a real, recognizable ROI to it. TROND: Andrew, you're really speaking to me here because eons ago, in my Ph.D., I was working on this very visionary idea back in 1999, the early internet heydays. Again, the future of work people and tech companies were saying, "We are soon unleashing the situation where no one has to come into the office. We will sit all separately on these islands and work together." So I would say I guess what has happened now is there's a greater awareness of the need for hybrid solutions meaning some people are physically there, others are not. But the powerful thing that you are enabling and demonstrating visually and physically is that remote is one thing and that it remains challenging, but it can now, in greater extent, be done. Physical presence is still really, really powerful. But what's truly powerful is the combination of which. It is the combination of physically being there and being amplified or assisted, or eventually perhaps in a fruitful way augmented but without losing touch with reality if it can be done safely. That's really the power. So there's something really interesting about that because you can talk about it all you want. You can say, well, with all the technology in the world, you know, maybe we don't want to meet each other anymore. Yeah, fine. But there's a powerful argument there that says, well if you combine the world's biggest computer, the human being, with some secondary computers, you know, AIs and RealWears and other things that have other comparative advantages, the combination of that in a factory floor setting or perhaps in other types of knowledge work is really, really hard to beat, especially if you can get it working in a team setting. I guess as you were thinking more about this as a futuristic solution, Andrew, what kind of changes does this type of technology do to teamwork? Because we've been speaking about the simple, remote expert assistance, which is sort of like one expert calling up another expert at headquarters. And then, you move into workflow, which is powerful product workflow in industry. But what about the group collaboration possible with this kind of thing? Have you seen any scenarios where multiple of these headsets are being used contemporaneously? ANDREW: Yeah, I mean, I think there's the application of not only people using them broadly in doing their work but also then being connected to a broad number of users. There's a great video that Microsoft put out when they built Microsoft Teams to run specifically on our RealWear platform. And in it, we talk about a plant where, you know, Honeywell was certifying a very large deployment technology in a plant that normally would take 40 workers to go to this facility and physically sign off all the things that need to be done for this large automation system. But using Microsoft Teams and RealWear devices, Honeywell was able to do that completely remotely. They were able to have the folks who were on site wearing the devices going through. And all of these people who would travel to it are now wherever they happen to be, in the office, at home, somewhere else, being able to see what was happening in the factory and sign off and validate the work remotely. So it's like this world where we've taken away the borders, these artificial borders between the office, not the office, and then the front line. And I think that the biggest thing that we can take away from this conversation today, Trond, is that we all probably accept that some form of hybrid work is here to stay with office workers. We've just proven over the last two years that you can work extremely productively as a remote team. And we've also validated there are times when we just got to come together from a human point of view to accomplish even more in terms of some of the cultural and emotional intelligence and teaming things that happen. But what we've also learned is that those frontline workers don't have the luxury of being somewhere other than where the value is being created on the manufacturing line, up on that cell phone tower, or in the street laying asphalt. They all have a job to do, and they have to do it in their presence. And so when we then connect those people and give them access to all of the information that we as connected workers in a hybrid environment accept and the collaboration, we find that that is a place that really brings the dignity of that frontline work up. It inherently makes them more engaged with their customer, with the job they're doing, with their peers that they can now connect to so seamlessly, and, frankly, with the company. So I think that there's a change here that's happening that's going to be about the right degree of connectivity for the job. And we'll do more of what matters based on the work that has to be accomplished. And we're just not at a place yet where robots are going to replace carbon-based computing systems that are self-replicating. That's the way NASA described people back, I think, in the '60s is a general-purpose computer that's carbon-based and self-replicating. And really, that's going to be with us for a long time. And the dignity of those people doing valuable work and helping focus on how do we make them safer and more productive in these very challenging environments? That's changing the future of work. And it's aligning more closely with this idea of, hey, being connected makes us more effective as a company, as a tribe, as a nation, whatever it is. Connectivity becomes extremely valuable. TROND: It's a big trend. And it's about time there's some justice to it. I mean, you speak with passion about this. It's almost unbelievable to me, and it should be [laughs] unbelievable to a lot of people, that we've invested billions of dollars in office software, in kind of automation for efficiency's sake. But we haven't, until this point almost, invested, certainly not the same amount of dollars and euros and yen, in human-centric technologies that are augmenting people at the same time. Because there's nothing wrong with these other technologies or if they're benefiting office workers, but as you point out, billions of workers could be enabled, knowledge workers. They just need somewhat different tools, and they're harder to make. This is not like making a desktop software program. These things have to work in a real rugged context. Andrew, thank you so much for enlightening me on the challenges and the exciting not future anymore. Andrew, it's the exciting presence of this technology in the industrial workplace, and what that bodes for the future when I guess, people see the picture and are willing to truly roll this out to every frontline worker who needs this kind of amplification. ANDREW: Well, Trond, thank you so much for having me. And I think when your listeners think and hear about AI, I know the first thing that crosses their mind is going to be this artificial intelligence, the compute power that's being built into the cloud to solve all these technical problems. But I'd like them to also begin to think about that as augmented intelligence, the way human-centric technology can make those workers better able to do the work that has to be done by people. And we're so excited to be able to talk about this. Thank you for the invitation to explore this topic. I really appreciate the chance to share some of the things that RealWear's done in this regard. And I'd love to come back next time and expand our conversation. TROND: You have just listened to another episode of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Augmenting Workers With Wearables. Our guest was Andrew Chrostowski, Chairman and CEO of RealWear. In this conversation, we talked about industrial wearables now and in the future. My takeaway is that industrial wearables have come a long way. There is a big need for assisted reality in many workforce scenarios across industry. There are now companies taking good products to market that are rugged enough, simple enough, and advanced enough to make work simpler for industrial workers. On the other hand, we are far away from the kind of untethered multiverse that many imagine in the future, one step at a time. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 92: Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes, and do let us know if you do so. The Augmented Podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operation platform connecting people, machines, devices, and systems in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology but also, importantly, empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring, and you can find Tulip at tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. You can find us on social media; we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube. Augmented — industrial conversations that matter. See you next time.

On today's episode you will hear part 4 of 4 of Russell's interview with Andrew Warner about the Clickfunnels start up story. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the 4th and final installment here of the interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club, where he's going deep into the Clickfunnels startup story. I hope you've enjoyed it so far. You know, throughout this entire interview, it was really fun. He brought my wife onstage and some of my partners onstage, and brought other people who didn't like me at first onstage and kind of shared all these things. I hope all you guys are enjoying it and really enjoying this interview. I hope that this starts making you think about your startup story. Some of you guys are living your startup story right now, and maybe you're depressed or nervous, or scared, or afraid or whatever. And hopefully this gives you motivation to know that I was there too. In fact, I'm still there many times, but it's okay and it's part of the game and part of the process. And someday you'll look back and you'll have someone like Andrew interviewing you about your startup story and you'll be so grateful for the trials and things you're going through now. So with that said, we're going to queue up the theme song, when we come back we'll listen to part 4 of 4 of the Clickfunnels startup story interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club. Andrew: And I know a lot of you have asked me what's coming up next and Russell's going to talk about that, how you're going to get to Sales Force level, but why don't I take a couple of questions from someone. Is there anyone who's been sitting here going, “I can't believe Andrew didn't ask that.”? Is there anyone who has something standing out for them? Should we just have them onstage. Unknown person: We got mic's. Andrew: We got mic's from over there, okay. Audience member: Alright, a little bit deeper of a question. What is something, I know you're strong in your faith, family, God, I mean kind of all around, what's something that's really made you who you are? You've mentioned before that made you as a marketer with your dad, you're up late watching an infomercial. But what's something that inherently that could have been experienced, maybe a quote in the back of your mind that's just driven you, it could have been something that your parents taught you when you were young. What is, is there, it's kind of a little bit difficult of a question to look back, there's probably a million things. But what are one or two that really stick out, that make you the person that you are? Russell: I have a million thoughts just racing through my head. The one that just popped in the front, so I'll share that one, hopefully it's good. I remember when I was a kid my dad gave me a job to go clean the car. I went out there and I cleaned the car, I did my best job, I thought. And I came back in and I was like, “Hey dad, it's clean. Can I go play?” I was like, “Come look at it.” So he could let me go out and play. And he was like, “Well, is it good? Are you proud of it?” and I'm like, “I don't know.” And he's like, “Well, are you proud of it.” I was like, “I don't know.” And he's like, “Go work on it until you're proud of it, then come back and let me know.” And I was like, oh man. So I go back out, and I was like, “Am I proud of this?” and I was thinking about it, I guess technically I'm really not that proud of it. So I was like trying to do more things, trying to clean it better, and to the point where I was actually proud of it. And then I came back and I'm like, “Dad, okay the car's clean now.” And he's like, “Are you proud of it.” I'm like, “I am.” And he's like, “Okay, you can go out and play then.” I think for me that was such a big thing because it was just like, that internal “Am I proud of this thing that I'm giving, that I'm putting out there?” and if not, keep doing it until you are. And I don't know, that was one of those little weird dad moments that he probably didn't mean as a teaching opportunity, but definitely has been big for me ever since then. Andrew: Good question. Is there one on this side? While you're finding a person who has a question, Whitney, did you have more to say? You were going to ask more, right? Yeah, can you get the mic over to Whitney, please? She's right over here. I know I didn't ask your full question. Whitney: Hi Russell, how are you? Russell: Awesome, how are you doing? Whitney: Good. So with your business, what is, back to like when you were first starting, I kind of want to know, what's the one thing when your business was really hard, when you were really struggling, what's the one thing that kept you going? Just in the back of your mind. And then I have a second part of that. What would you say was your biggest failure and what was the greatest lesson you learned from it? Russell: That's not an easy question. Andrew: The biggest failure. Russell: Oh man. So the first question was, what was the first one again? Thinking about the biggest failure, I'm trying to…Oh, what kept it going? Andrew: Give me a sec. Are you going through that now? You are, what are you going through right now? Can you stand up and get close to the mic? I can see that this is a meaningful question for a reason. What's going on? Be open. Whitney: I'm just trying with my business, I'm trying to get my message out there. I'm really, I'm just baby parts of Clickfunnels, so I'm just figuring out how to do a funnel still. But my company is called Creating Powerful Women, so I am just trying to teach women how to grow a business while they grow their family at the same time. And I'm doing that right now, because I have 3 little tiny girls. So I'm just like, okay, I'm still trying to figure out this myself and then teach women how to do it at the same time. So it's just, I'm still in that struggle phase. Andrew: Is it partially because you feel like an imposter, how can I tell them what to do? That's what I was saying to you earlier. Whitney: When I don't even know. Yeah. {Crosstalk} Whitney: I feel like I need to have that success level before I can teach women to go out and do it. But the reason when I found you in the hall, and I said, “I want Russell to be vulnerable and tell like the nitty gritty parts of the story.” And those stories are what make people relatable to you, that's kind of where I'm at, as I realize that I grow a bigger following and a bigger audience when I'm more relatable to them, which I realize I don't need to be up at that level to do that. Andrew: I get that. Russell: So my question for you is, have you been working with women? Helping them so far? Tell me a story of someone you've helped. I'm curious. Whitney: So I went through post partum depression a couple of years ago, after I had a baby and a lot of the women I've been reaching out to when I shared those stories, those women have been coming to me saying, “Hey, how do you get through this struggle? I know you've gotten past that, so I want to hear the hard stories that you went through.” So a lot of the people who I've been coaching one on one have been people who have gone through those exact same things  that I have. Russell: Okay when you do that, and you share the stuff with them, and that clicks for them, how does that feel? Whitney: Like I'm fulfilling what I was put on this planet to do. Russell: That's the thing. That's the thing that keeps me going. It doesn't happen often, but it happens often enough that I crave that. I'm super introverted, so it's always awkward for people to come to me, but I still love when they come to me and they're like, “Hey, just so you know real quick…..” Like last night, we were in San Francisco, or San Diego, excuse me. Someone came up to me in the hall and I was kind of like, I'm nervous to talk to you but you're going to talk to me. And he said, “Hey, just real quick, you legitimately changed my life, you changed my family.” And started tearing up. And I was just like, I let myself feel that just for a second and then I go back to the awkwardness, but for a second I feel that. And It's just like ahh. That's what it's about you know. I use Voxer for my coaching clients. So every time they Vox me and say something like that, there's a little star button and I star it and it stores them in this huge thing of all the starred ones. So now days I'll go back and I'll listen to that and I'll listen to people like 2 years ago that said something about how something I did effected them, and it's just like, that feeling. Because everything we do in this life is for feeling's right. Everything is just a feeling we're looking for. We eat because we want a feeling. We did this because we, I wanted a feeling. We're doing everything for a feeling. So it's like if I can remember the feelings of the thing I'm trying to get, and I can experience it again, then it, that's what gets me and keeps me going.  And I think that any of us that are lucky enough to have those feelings, a lot of times we forget about them. No, remember that because that's the thing, when it's hard and it's painful and it's dark, it's that feeling that's just like, that's the, you remember that and you let yourself experience it again for a minute. And then for me, that's like, okay, I can get back up and I can go again. Andrew: Great question, I'm glad you asked it. How about one more over there? You know what, yeah, let's give her a big round of applause, please. Audience member: I was actually going to ask a little bit about that vulnerability. I was surprised, I'm big in the SAAS space, I've been to Dream Force, follow a lot of Clickfunnels. It's pretty rare to see a CEO want to put themselves kind of on the roasting side of things. You're from here, from Sandy. I was just kind of surprised, what was it that really compelled you to kind of want to come back and do this in Utah? When I saw your email I thought it was a clickbait scam. Russell: Oh it is, we're selling you something next. Audience member: I really thought I was going to come and it was going to be a video of your face spinning and it was going to be like, “Hi, we're here.” Because I follow Clickfunnels, but it's just really rare, especially being down in Utah county, that was kind of unique that way. Andrew: Wait, one sec. Does Clickfunnels allow me to actually place someone's city in the headline, like I want someone from San Francisco, you could. Oh, alright, I get it. Audience Member: It said like Idaho, we're in the surrounding areas, it's going out to 8000 people, limited seating. So as a marketer I was just like, is this a real thing? You know. So I showed up and I was excited to see you. But why come back to Utah, what does this event mean to you and why want to be vulnerable and kind of open up? I learned a lot about you personally that was great to hear from a business side. Russell: So my beliefs are, and I believe we have the best software company in the world, so I'm going to start with that. But if it's just about the software, then it comes down to who's got what feature. People are moving and shifting and changing because of the features. That's the thing. So Clickfunnels was like, no it has to be more and it has to be a thing. And it's interesting, people who sign up for Clickfunnels, who click on an ad, they come and sign up. That's why John can't do, it doesn't work that way. They sign up for a web, clickfunnels is a website builder for crying out loud. You boil it down, we are a website builder. That is boring. So people don't come for that. They stay for that. That's why they stay, that's why they stay. But they come because of a feeling, and they come because of a connection. I want to be able to take the videos from here because if I can more people who come through my funnels to hear this story, they're going to stick with Clickfunnels because they realize we have a soul. There's a reason behind this, it's not just the software company who's trying to make a bunch of money. We're actually, we have belief behind it. So that's why we do all these things. That's why I still write books. That's why we do videos. That's why we do vlogs. That's why we do this fun stuff, because it builds connection with people, and connection really keeps people staying, even if some other company's got a different feature than we do, or it's cheaper and we're more expensive, or whatever. So that's the big reason why we still do it. And then I thought it would be fun to come down here because I grew up not far from here and it's just kind of a fun thing. We've been working with the Harmon Brothers and we started another project with them and their family owns the Dry Bar Comedy Club, if you guys have ever watched Vid Angel, that's one of their families companies. When Vid Angel had their little hiccups, they shifted all the programming to this, the Dry Bar Comedy Club, so we used to watch all the comedians here. And I was like, this is like the coolest location to do something like this. And one of the other side jokes, I don't know if I shared this with you or if it was just in my head, but Andrew is famous for doing these big scotch nights, and as a Mormon I can't drink scotch. And I was like, what if we did this, but at a Dry Bar, just this funny play off of that? And it all worked out. Andrew: You know, usually at events I do scotch night afterwards and say, ‘Everyone come back to my room.' That's not going to go over very well. But Dave's been to mine. He drinks water and feels comfortable. We have good water for Dave. How about one more, then I want to get into the future. Audience Member: So you always talk about how, like for Clickfunnels you guys took like 6 tries to finally make it work, right. And how most of the time when you guys start something it doesn't work the first time, that's why you have audibles and all those things. So I was wondering as someone that, you know I'm starting and getting that, kind of like that lifts, what is the biggest thing that you see, versus like a flop funnel versus something that kind of takes off and explodes? What's the audible or the change that you normally do that shift or the message change or whatever it is, that makes it finally take off? Russell: Traditionally the difference between a funnel that works and doesn't work, I'd say it's probably 50% offer. Like if the offer's wrong it's not gonna, that's usually the first thing. But then if it's actually a good offer, that people actually want, second then is usually copy. So like what's the hook, those kind of things. And then design is probably 3rd. All that stuff that Theron and those guys didn't like at first. The things that, because it's not like we just made up this stuff, you saw 8000 funnels we tested and tried in the journey of 15 years of this, that now we know what things people convert on. So it's just like looking at stuff that you know is working and modeling it because you this structure works, this kind of thing. But usually when something is broken it's coming back and figuring out, this offer's not right. People didn't want it. And that was the problem with Clickfunnels. The offer, we took 4 or 5 times to get the offer right, and then as soon as the offer is right, you can tell when it's right because people will buy, even if everything else is bad, if your offer is amazing people will give you money for it, you know. So that's definitely the biggest part, and from there it's copy, then design, then all the little things that stress some people out, like me. Andrew: So I've got, we'll come back. I see there are a few people that have more questions; we'll come back to them in a moment, including you. I promise I'll do more. But you did tell me about all the different things you guys are working on now. Of all of them, what one is going to get you the closest to Sales Force level? Russell: That's a good question, there's so many things. So I would say, I'm going to ask you a question is that alright? Have you ever played bigger yet? Played bigger? Playing bigger?  Andrew: No, what do you mean by that? Russell: That's the name of the book right? Play Bigger? Andrew: Oh Playing Bigger, the book. No. Russell: Yes. So that's book's been interesting, if you guys haven't read it, it's one of the biggest ones as a team that we've been reading. But it's all about designing the category and becoming the king of that category. So I feel like we are the king of sales funnels, and that's our category, the thing that's going to be there. And then if you read through the book, the next phases are like, building out the ecosystem that supports you as the category. And the fascinating thing about sales force, if you look at it when, I probably shouldn't say this on video because someday Mark Benioff's going to watch this and be like, “I'll never give you money.” But sales force isn't great software, right. It's this hub that things are tied into, but the reason why they did 13 billion this year, they're trying to get to 20 billion is because they built this ecosystem. The ecosystem is what supports this thing and grows it up, and builds it. And that's like the next phase. So I think for us, it's like we have this, we have funnels which are the key. It's like the CRM for them, it's the central point. But it's then bringing all the ecosystem, it's building up all the things around it, right. Andrew: Letting other people create things on your platform, becoming a platform. Russell: Yes, becoming a true platform. Andrew: can you create a platform when what you want is the all in one solution when you're saying, “you don't have to plug in your chat bot to our software. We're going to be chat bot software.” “You don't have to plug in infusion soft, we've got email marketing in here or mail chimp.” Russell: It depends, because you look at Sales Force is similar too. They have their own things that they either acquire and bring them in, or they build their own, things like that. And I think it's a hybrid of that. I think it's, we allow people to integrate because some people have tools. We will, our goal is to always be the best sales funnel builder on planet earth. We may not be the best email auto responder in the world, we have one and that increases our revenue. And people who love us will use our email auto responder, but there may be some other one that's better. But it's not our big focal point. There may be a chat bot that's got more features and more things, that's not gonna be our focus to make it the best, but we've got one built in to make it. So theer will be, that's kind of our thought, that we will have the things included, so if people want to go all in they can use it. But if they love yours because of these things, they can still bring that and still bring it in. You know, and then as we grow, who knows what the next phase is. Is it acquisitions, finding the best partners? People that most of our members are using, start acquiring companies and bringing them in, internally similar to what Sales Force does, growing the platform. Andrew: Just keep letting people build on your platform and then does that make the platform more valuable, or do you guys get a share of the money that people spend on these external tools? Russell: Both, I think. Stripe for example, Stripe, I think we process 1.7 billion dollars through Stripe. We make over a million bucks a year from Stripe referral fees, for just letting them connect with us. So there's value on both sides because it makes the platform more valuable because people can use it easier, but we also make money that direction as well, and those type of things. Andrew: Okay, what is Actionlytics, Action… Russell: Actionetics. Andrew: Excuse me. Russell: So that was Todd's name. He loved that name. So Actionetics is, it's what we call internally, follow-up funnels. So we have sales funnels, which are page one, page two, page three, page four. Then a follow-up funnel is send this email, send this text message. “Here's the retargeting pixels, here's the thing.” So it's the follow-up funnels. It's all of the communication that's happened after somebody leaves the page with your audience. Andrew: And that's a new product that you guys are creating? Russell: Yeah, it's been, actually we make more revenue from Actionetics than we do from Clickfunnels right now. We've never marketed it outside though. Andrew: I can't get access to it, it asked me for my username and password. I said, I don't have that, so how do I sign up for it? Russell: it's only been in beta. So we opened up at Funnel Hacking Live, people signed up there. And then we kept it down for a year, then we opened it, so two Funnel Hacking Lives we opened it, and then my birthday we opened it. So that's it. But we have, it's over, 12-13 thousand members who have upgraded to that. And then we're probably a couple weeks away from the actual public launch where people will be to get, everyone will be able to get access. Andrew: And already people are spending more money on that than Clickfunnels? Russell: Yeah, because it starts at $300 a month versus $100. So it's the ascension up. So they go from $100 a month to $300 a month and then the new one, it scales with you. Because we're sending emails and Facebook message, it gives us an ability to grow with the platform as well, and not just have a $200 a month limit. Someone might pay $1000 or $5000 depending on how big their lists are. Andrew: You're really good at these upsells, you're really good at these extra features. How do you think about what to add? How do the rest of us think about it, based on what's worked for you? Russell: Okay, that's a great question, and everyone thinks it's a product, the question most people ask is, what price point should my upsells be? It has nothing to do with that. It has 100% to with the logical progression of events for your customer. So when someone comes to you and they buy something, let's just say it's weight loss. So they come to you and they buy a weight loss book right, and let's say it's about how to get abs. So they buy that, the second they put their credit card in and click the button, in their mind that problem has now been solved. I now have six pack abs, the second it's done. And people don't think that. So what people do wrong is the next page is like, “Cool, you bought my abs book. Do you want my abs video series?” it's like, “No, I just solved that problem. I gave you money. It's been solved.” So what we have to think through, for logical upsells is like, “okay, I just got abs, what's the next logical thing I need?” So it's like, “Cool you got abs now, but how would you like biceps? We can work it out. This is my training program to grow here.” For funnels it's like, here's this funnels software, or here's this book teaching you how to build funnels, but after you have a funnel you need traffic. So traffic's the next logical progression. So as soon as someone's bought something, the customer's mind, I believe, that problems been solved. And it's like, what's the new problem that's been opened up, because that problem's been solved. That's the logical… Andrew: I got my email addresses because of Clickfunnels, the next problem I'm probably going to have is what do I send to people? And that's what you're solving. What about this, fill your funnel, it's a new software. Russell: Yeah. Andrew: What is it? Russell: How do you know these things? That is good, you have been digging. So I'm writing my third book right now, it's called Traffic Secrets, and then on the back of it we have software that's called Fill Your Funnel, that matches how we do traffic with the book. So when someone reads the book, you login and the way we do traffic, we focus very heavily on influencers. We call it the Dream 100. So you come in and you login and you're like, “Here's the people in my market. There's Tony Robbins, there's Andrew..” you list all these people and it starts pulling all our data, scraping all their ads, their funnels, everything  and shows you everything that's happening in their companies, so you can reverse engineer it for what you're doing. Andrew: So if I admire what John is doing for you guys, I could put you in the software, you'll show me what you guys are doing, and then I'll be able to scrape it and do it myself. You're nodding. And you're okay with that? John: It's awesome. I'm excited. Russell: Excited. Andrew: Have you been doing that? Is that part of what's worked for you guys at Clickfunnels? John: Yeah, we like to, we call it funnel hacking. We like to look and see what other people are doing. Andrew: So you're actively looking to see what other, man as an interviewer that would be so good for me to understand what people are doing to get traffic to their sites. Alright, so… Russell: We buy everyone's product, everyone's. I bought Drew's like 6 times. Yeah, you're welcome. Just because the process is fascinating to see. Andrew: And then the book. What's the name of the book? Russell: Traffic Secrets. Andrew: Why is everything a secret? What is that? Russell: I don't know. Andrew: No, I feel like you do. I remember I think it was… Russell: It all converts, 100% because it out converts. Andrew: Because the word, “secret” out converts? In everything? Russell: Everything. I used to onstage be like, “The top three myths, the top three strategies, the top three lies, the top three everything” and like “secrets” always out converted everything else, and then it just kind of stuck. Andrew: And then that's the name of this book. I'm looking here to see…yeah, Melanie, she told me when you organized this event you said, “Secret project”. That's it. Russell: If I just tell people what's happening then they like, “Oh cool.” I need to have to build up the anticipation. Andrew: Even within your team? Russell: Especially within the team. Yes. Andrew: Especially. So secret is one big thing. What else do you do? Russell: Secrets, hacks… Andrew: No, within the team. So now you get them interested by saying it's a secret. Russell: So I'll tell them a story, I'll tell them the beginning of a story. I'll be like, “Oh my gosh you guys, I was listening, I was cleaning the wrestling room and I was going through this thing, and I was listening to Andrew and he was doing this campfire chat and it was amazing. And he's telling this whole story, and I have this idea, it's going to be amazing. But I'll tell you guys about it tomorrow.” So what happens now, is they've got a whole night to like marinate on this and be like, “What in the world?” and get all excited. And then when they show up, they're anticipating me telling them, and then when I tell them, then I get the response I want. If I tell them they're like, “Oh cool.” I'm like, no, you missed it. I need that, in fact, I'll share ideas all the time, I'll pitch it out there just to see. I know it's a good idea because Brent will be like, “I got chills.” Dave will start freaking out, and that's when I know, “Okay, that was a good idea.” If they're like, “Oh that's cool.” I'm like, crap. Not doing that one. It's the same thing. Andrew: I've heard one of the reasons that you guys hang out together is one, he's an extrovert and you're an introvert, but the other one is Dave will one up you. Russell: It starts the process. This is the bubble soccer event we did. Initially it was like we're going to have influences, or we were launching the viral video and like we need, let's bring some people into it. And then we were asking how someone could bring big influencers, like “you have to do something crazy. Like get a Ferrari and let them drive over it in a monster truck.” I was like, “That seems extreme.” I was like, “What if we played football on the Boise State Stadium?” And Dave's like, “What if we did bubble soccer? What if we tried to set a Guinness book of world records…” and then next thing we know, we're all Guinness book of world record champion bubble soccer players. It was amazing. Andrew: And that's the thing that I've heard about your office environment. That it's this kind of atmosphere where, see for me, look at me, I've got that New York tension. When I talk to my people and I talk to everyone it's like, “You've gotta do something already.” And you guys like fun, there's a ball pit or whatever in the office. Am I right? You go “we need a, we're gonna create a new office. Let's have a bowling alley in it and a place to shoot.” That's the truth. Russell: It is the truth. It's going to be amazing. Andrew: Does he also tell you, “We need to do something this weekend. Date night, it's a secret.”? Russell: Maybe I need to do more than that, huh. Andrew: Yes, does he use persuasion techniques on you? Russell: It doesn't work on her. Andrew: No. Russell: She's the only person I can't persuade. It's amazing. My powers are useless against my wife. It's unfortunate. Andrew: Do you actually use them, or when it comes to the house you go, “come on, I'm tired already, just…”? Russell: I tried to do something today and she was like, “That was the worst sales pitch ever.” I'm like, “Dang it. Alright, I'll try again.” Andrew: Hey Siri, text my wife “I've got plans for tomorrow night. So good, Russell just told me about it. I'll tell you later. Secret.” Period, send. Russell: That's amazing. Andrew: Wowee. Does anybody know how I can get a babysitter here. {Audience speaking indistinctly} Andrew: They're a little too eager to spend time with my kids. Thank you. Alright, I said I would take a few more questions. I know we're almost out of time here. Who was it, it was someone on the right here that was especially, you looked, uh yeah you, who just pointed behind you. Audience Member: Hi, okay, Russell I've been in your world since about 2016.. Andrew: Hang on a second, who the, I'm sorry to curse, but who the f**k comes to a software event and goes, “I've been in your world.”? This is amazing about you. I'm in San Francisco, there's nobody that goes, “I'm so glad I've been in the hubspot world.” It doesn't work that way. I'm sorry, I had to interrupt. Okay. I've been in your world. He's selling you software, you're in his world. Sorry. Audience member: You have to listen to his podcast, it's a.. Andrew: I've listened to his podcast. It's just him talking. Audience Member: He talks about it, it's a universe. He creates a universe. Andrew: You know what, here's the thing that blew my mind. I thought it was him in a professional studio, I saw him in San Francisco, he's talking into the voice recorder on his phone. Okay, yeah. I gotta feeling that Russell's going to go, at some point, “Religion is just an info product. I think I could do a better job here.” Alright, yeah. Audience Member: okay, I entered the Clickfunnels universe in 2016 and since that time, I came in with a lot of hopes and a lot of, it was just a really exciting experience to have you break down the marketing, you really simplified it right. So I see that, I'm an ambassador for the one comma club challenge right now, and people are coming in with such high hopes and such tremendous faith and trust in you. And I have a friends that I brought into it and everything and they're coming in, just like, they're really staking a lot on how they've persuaded to join your universe. Sorry, universe is the wrong word. But from that, I guess the question is, there's a few things. I think a lot of people are afraid of that type of responsibility in the products that they're delivering, and of course there is a tremendous failure rate of people who don't get what they're persuaded in. So there's a lot of magnification on the two comma club, and the people there that are the successes, but the question that I have is, the responsibility that you feel for that, I feel that you feel the responsibility because you're constantly looking for new ways to simplify, bring in new coaches, bring in the new team, make products and offers that are completely irresistible. Truthfully, I went to Funnel Hacking Live, I'm not spending any money, 20 thousand dollars later. I mean it was truthfully so irresistible, but you've crafted such unique things in an effort to truly serve that client and really get them to the place that they're looking to go. So I'm not sure if the question is coming out, but there's a lot of responsibility that all these bright eyed, bushy tailed you know, wannabe marketers are coming in really truthfully feeling the genuine just truth that you're telling them, but then there's a big crash and burn rate too, which is normal in that space. I'm not sure what the question is. Andrew: Congratulations  to the people in the two comma club, what about the people in the no comma club. What do you feel is a sense of obligation to the people who aren't yet there? What do you feel about that? Russell: Is that the question? Andrew: Is that right? Audience member: I guess the question is, there's two parts, one is the responsibility that other people are feeling, the fear that they're feeling to put something out there because they're afraid of a failure rate. So just like, Whitney over there was talking about, she's got those fears. So there's normal fears that come along with that, so how you deal with that, in that it's not because of lack of delivery on your end, but there's still people who are spending tremendous amounts of money, or small amounts of money that just aren't getting what it is. So it's really about your internal feelings about that topic. Russell: It's a good question. There's a lot of different ways I could answer it. I'm trying to think, for me it's a big reason I do have a con stripe, because I do feel like I have a huge obligation to people who sign up for our stuff. So I'm always thinking, how do we simplify this, how do we simplify it? What's the best way to do it? What's the thing? But that's also what creates innovation right. It creates the ideas, it's that, how do we serve these people better? How do we serve them better? Probably the best analogy, in fact, Brandon over here was working on a video that he sent me last night, that I had a chance to watch, it was really cool. We had Sean Stephenson speak at the second Funnel Hacking Live. Was anyone there for that one? A couple of you guys. Sean Stephenson, if you know him, is the 3 foot giant. He's this little dude in a wheel chair, one of the coolest humans on earth. And he told this story, it was funny because man, I had another emotional connection watching it last night actually, watching it. And he talked about stories like, “How many of you guys here are upset because you got 17 followers on Facebook and you've got 13 likes on your YouTube video, and you're pissed because of all this stuff.” And I think of a lot things that way. “I'm trying this thing, I'm not a millionaire yet, I'm not making any money, blah, blah, blah.” And they're upset about that right. And what Sean said, he's like, “Do you know how they choose who they're going to save when a helicopter is flying into an ocean and there's a boat that's wrecked with all these people. Guess how they choose who they're going to save?” and he said, “What happens is the helicopter drivers, they fly over there and go down to the people, going to save them, and guess who they save, they save the people who are swimming towards you.” He says, “That's how you do it. If you try to save everyone, it will drown you, it'll drown the boat, and everybody dies. But you save the people who are swimming toward you.” And then he came back and said, “Those 17 likes on your video, those are the 17 people who are swimming towards you. You have to understand that.” So for me it's like, we talk about the money because that gets people inspired, but when it all comes down, the really internal belief, no one really cares about the money. They want the feeling of the connection and the help and they want to change the world. They have their thing, and so it's like, we talk about the money because it gets people excited, but I don't know anybody who that's the real reason why they're in business. They're in because they want, they want to help those people that are coming towards them. So you notice when you get deeper into the culture, it's not just money, money, money, money. It's how do you serve, how do you impact, how do you change the world, how can you get your message clearer, how can you do those things? And when you shift from the money to that, then the money starts magically coming. So for me, it's just like how do we get more people thinking that way more often. I don't know if that's the right answer or if that helps at all, but it is definitely something I feel a big obligation for but I also feel like I'm super grateful for the people who are willing, I'm grateful to Don Lepre, spent all that money doing the infomercial on that thing. And I didn't implement it back then, when I was 14, right. I'm grateful to the next guy who re-inspired me and I bought the thing and didn't do anything and then next person and all those things, because eventually it stuck. So for me, it's like I'm going to keep creating offers and keep doing cool things, and trying to inspire people because it might not be the first or the second or the fifth, but eventually if I keep being consistent on my side, it's going to keep getting it and eventually the right people, those who actually have something they want to share, something they actually care about what they're doing will figure out the way. And we're just going to keep trailblazing and trying to do our best to make a path that they can all follow. So that's kind of how I look at it. Andrew: Great question. Let's close it out with one more. Yes. Dave did you find someone, because I just found someone right here. Why don't we do two more then? Since you found one and I found one. What's your name? Sorry, Parker? Parker. Go next. There we go, let's go to Parker next and we'll close it out with him. Parker: Alright, so the biggest question I have for you Russell is, I've seen you guys' amazing group you guys have at Clickfunnels, and every time I go in your guys' office it's nothing but excitement, energy, and not only you don't have to inspire your workers to work for you. They come there excited and hearing your amazing stories that John and Brent had of, they stayed with you for all this time and you pushed them and they pushed you and there's this amazing cycle. I'm curious as far as, because I want to have an amazing group like that one too so I can affect the world the same way that you have, and even do better than you did. And that's a completely admiration thing, that's I don't know. Dave: Cut from the same cloth here. Russell: That's his dad. Dave's son. Andrew: Oh got it. That makes sense. Parker: The question I have for you is, how do you find those people? Is it nothing but like a whittling out process or do you see these characteristics already in the people that you have? Andrew: One sec, how old are you? Parker: I'm 20 years old. Andrew: 20 years old and you admire your dad and the guy that he works with so much that you want to not just be like him, but be more like him? Can you take of my kid tonight? Sorry, that's amazing. Does your dad come home with this energy like this energy like, “We're going to capture the world. This is what we're going to do.” Parker: it is the funniest thing. Oh my gosh. Every way you see him online, social media, whatever the heck it is, it's exactly the same way he is at home. When you see him on the tv talking about like, “Oh this is…” or when you interviewed him. Andrew: I've watched his podcast, I see that thing. {Crosstalk} Parker: you know as much as I do then. Andrew: What did he motivate you to, like to sell as a kid, or to upsell as a kid. Parker: So he would like talk to us like he was a sales person basically, in the aspect of he talks about things as far as, this person did a terrible job at selling. They could have done this, this, this and this.” And we're like 10 years old, I think at the time, I think. I don't know. It's more of a recent change since he joined clickfunnels and he's got this amazing excitement and energy. It's an amazing thing and I wish to have to people like my dad when I become a, when I start to do my own thing. Andrew: It is contagious isn't it? Parker: yeah, it totally is. Andrew: And I've been watching, what's this new Vlog that you've got. It's on Russell, it's on Russell Brunson's YouTube channel right? I'm at the end of it going, “Hell yeah, why am I taking a shower now. I gotta go, I got stuff to do.” Right. These guys are out there taking over San Francisco, that's my city. So I guess you're feeling the same way at home. Now, he's there twice, he suddenly owns a place. So your question was…? Parker: My question was basically, how do you find these amazing people to work, not only for you, but with you and to help you accomplish your dream? Is it whittling out process or it you have innate ability to find people? Russell: So as you were saying that I started thinking, I'm thinking about the partners on our team, who none of them came through like a help wanted site. None of them came through like, Brent went to church with me and he showed up every single week, every single month, he was my home teacher and showed up every single month consistently and we became friends and we did stuff together. John married my cousin. We were on the boat in the middle of the lake and he pitched me on a network marketer opportunity and I was like, I love this guy. And then I pitched him back and we just, and it was amazing. And then Dave, we were at an event like this and we had a signup sheet if you wanted to take the speakers out to dinner and Dave ran back and signed up every single line under mine. So I went to every single meal with him for 3 days. I think it's just, I think a big part of it, I think most entrepreneurs can't build a team because they're waiting to build the team. And I think for me, I didn't know what I was doing so I just started running, and what happens when you're moving forward and motion is happening, people get attracted to that. And some people will come for bad reasons and they'll leave, and I've been taken advantage of multiple times, things like that will happen, but the right people will stick around. But it's all about, it's the motion right. That's what people are attracted to. If something's happening. I don't know what's happening, but I want to be on that train and they start coming. So I think it's taking the initiative of “Okay, I'm going to start running and I have no idea if anyone's going to follow me ever. But If I do this and I keep doing it consistently then people will.” And you know, it's been a consistency thing. I'm 15 years into this business now, 8000 funnels deep. But it's a consistency, and when you do that and you're consistent, then the right people will just start coming into your life. But not waiting for them initially. If I would have waited to build my team initially, we wouldn't have a team. Everyone we met was like in the, as we were having motion, the right people started showing up. Andrew: Alright. Thanks. Speaking of, thank you. How many people here are actually at Clickfunnels, if you work at Clickfunnels. Can you guys stand up if you work at Clickfunnels. There you go. I feel like at the end of this everyone's going to want to go and meet Russell. Everyone's going to want to go and mob him. And he's not that social, number one. Number two, I feel like you're going to pass up these fan-freaking-tastic conversations, I've gotten to know the people who work here a lot really well in preparation for this, I really urge you to see the guys, the people who are wearing these t-shirts. Get to know them. Push them into a corner, understand what's working for them. And really, you're fantastic people, thanks so much for helping me do this. And thank you for having me on here. I really appreciate you being open, being willing to let me take this anywhere. You said, “I understand what Andrew is trying to do. He's trying to figure this out. I'm going to let him run with it and let him make the magic happen.” And I think we made a lot of magic happen. Thanks so much for having me here. Russell: Yeah man, it was amazing. Andrew: Thank you all for coming, I'm looking forward to meeting every one of you. Thanks.

Are short-term rental businesses coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and being resurrected? Do owners love the return on investment (ROI) and income, but tired of the turnover, logistics, and moving parts? If you're doing it all on your own, hand it over. Today's guest is Andrew LeBaron with BuyMoreTime, a flat-rate property management solution for short-term rentals. Andrew began his real estate journey by being the marketing director and a guest on Joe Fairless's Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Show. Then, Andrew started buying, selling, wholesaling, fixing, and flipping properties and got licensed to go even further. You'll Learn... [02:13] How Andrew went from greeting big-name podcast guests to becoming one. [05:15] Hoteling 101: Managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. [05:54] Team Effort: If you don't have a team, you will not thrive (or sleep). [09:23] COVID: Great for short-term rentals, not for property managers or owners. [12:40] Questions: How much could my property rent for? What needs to be inside it? [16:23] Mistakes: Give gifts and leave notes for guests to make a big difference.  Tweetables “Shorter rental management is big bucks.” Hoteling 101: Owners of short-term rental properties just wanted more time and freedom, and managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. “There's so many facets to this. There's legal, there's inventory, there is coordination with cleaning and maintenance. Then, there's guest responses. It's literally 24/7.” “When you have a short-term rental, you're not selling a place to stay. You're selling an experience.” Resources The Best Short-Term Rental Management Andrew LeBaron on Facebook Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Show with Joe Fairless BiggerPockets Grant Cardone Gary Keller Barbara Corcoran Airbnb VRBO The Giftology Stay Here on Netflix JF1896: How To Grow Your Property Management Company with Jason Hull DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrowShow. 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're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not 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's guest, I'm hanging out here with Andrew LeBaron. Andrew, welcome to the show. Andrew: Thank you. Jason: Andrew, you're with an organization company called BuyMoreTime. Andrew: That's it. We are a short-term rental property management solution. Jason: Cool. Andrew, we don't have a lot of vendors and people on the show typically related to the short-term rental industry. This will be interesting because I have been getting a lot more calls related to that lately. Maybe a lot of people are starting to resurrect these short-term rental businesses coming out of the pandemic, where there's a black swan event that squashed the industry temporarily. Let's first get into a little bit of background about you and how you got into this industry. Andrew: Yeah, sure. It's funny. We're on a podcast right now. I actually started a long time ago as a marketing director for a podcast. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Show with Joe Fairless. He buys multi-family apartments. That's his main gig. Jason: I think I was on that show. I've been on a lot of podcasts back in the day. Andrew: I wouldn't be surprised. Heck, maybe, I reached out to you some years ago, who knows? It's the world's longest daily real estate podcast. I mean his work ethic is insane. Years ago, I got into real estate. I jumped into (of course) Bigger Pockets. I jumped into Joe Fairless's podcast. On one of the podcast episodes he said, I am looking for a marketing director. Someone that can help connect me with more guests. If that's you, send me an email. I'm like, I want to try that. I sent him an email. I'm like, I don't care if he pays me. If he pays me, great. If he doesn't, so what? I was his marketing director and I got to meet some of the coolest people—Grant Cardone, Gary Keller, some really big names. I didn't get to speak to Barbara Corcoran, but I got to send an email. There were some pretty big names on that podcast and I was actually able to be a guest. I was starting my real estate journey and from there I started buying and selling properties, wholesaling, buying, fixing, and flipping. I started buying small apartments, 6 units, 10 units and so on and so forth. Then I got licensed because I wanted to take it a little bit further. I thought, okay, if I'm not going to buy these, I'm going to either manage them, and so on and so forth. Then I realized about 3½–4 years ago from an accident, actually, that shorter rental management is big bucks. In fact, we bought a house that we couldn't sell. We tried everything we could to move, the property just wouldn't move for some reason; it was just a weird property. I told my partner, whatever. Let's furnish it. We went to goodwill. We got these truckloads of just random furniture and we loaded up into this house—we're such rookies—and we put it up or lease or we set it up for Airbnb. I kid you not, this lady wanted to rent it for a week for $250 a night. I was like, it's got to be a joke. There's no way. She's like, no, I'd love to stay here, me and my family. From there, I thought, the short-term rental space is where it's at. We started buying more, furnishing more. Then all of our friends said, can you help us manage ours? We're like, okay, we can help you. It's hoteling 101, but that's how we became BuyMoreTime. We noticed that owners of short-term rental properties just wanted more time and freedom, and managing a hotel is not time and freedom. It's a lot of work. Jason: Right. I don't think there's any industry that takes more time and more customer interaction than the hospitality industry. I think that's rated at the top. Property management is second to that, they say, so it's right there. Andrew: It's pretty insane. There's so many facets to this. There's legal, there's inventory, there is coordination with cleaning and maintenance. Then there's guest responses. It's literally 24/7. There is no sleep. If you don't have a team, you will not thrive. Jason: Right. Tell us a little bit about BuyMoreTime. What is it exactly that you do? Andrew: BuyMoreTime is a flat rate management service for short-term rentals. We are a service-first company. If you have a property on a short-term rental platform, say, Airbnb, VRBO, if you have a motel, small apartment building, you want to do a couple of apartments and you want to maximize your ROI by leveraging the short-term rental platforms and its traffic, then you can hire us. We will manage that for you. We'll set it up. Most of the time we're looking for clients that already had it built, but we can set it up. We will set your teams—you're cleaning team, your maintenance team. We'll handle messaging 24/7. We will take over your hotel. That's what we do. Jason: Okay, the hotel. Awesome. Cool and I checked my inbox. I was on the Joe Fairless podcast back in May of 2019. It's been some years, but I was there at one point. Andrew: That's so cool. Jason: But I didn't even know it was that big of a deal. I guess that was pretty cool for me in hindsight. Andrew: That is really cool. Jason: Awesome. What would you say to people that might be tuning into this on the short-term rental side that are doing this themselves currently? Why would they want to get in partnership with you? Andrew: Well, just like our name prescribes, if you are tired of wasting or you're trading your time for money and you love the ROI, you love the income, 2–3 times than average rents across the nation is what you can expect from a short-term rental. If you're getting $700 rent in the south, you could get double that. You can get triple that. Depending on where you are. There are many variables. But if you're tired of handling that yourself, you can literally hand it over to our company. Our sales team will answer all your questions. We'll link you up into our software. We will hit the green button and you sit back and simply watch the interaction between your guest and our team and obviously your bank account. There is no touching it. I mean we literally set it up in the beginning so you don't have to manage it all. We have your team. We have your inventory. We would restock your toilet paper, paper towels. Sheets. There's just so much to say. It'll hurt your head if you think about it. Inventory management and supply chain, that's what we do. We handle all that. That's what your listeners can glean from our company. That's what we can do for them. Jason: Now, you had mentioned a little bit of info about how appealing it might be to get into the short-term rental game, 2–3 times the amount of income coming in. But what about those that have been burned by Covid? They said this was too painful. We weren't prepared for this. Money just stopped. Vacation rental market was just decimated. They're just afraid to get back into the game. Andrew: You know what's funny? Covid actually was great. I think that's the only thing I'll say about Covid as far as short-term rentals go. For a property manager or for an apartment owner, for property owners, Covid was not great because you have the moratorium. There's a lot of struggles there. For us, for the short-term rental gamers, it was wonderful. People couldn't leave. No one could go anywhere. We saw a decline in March of 2020. We saw a slight decline in occupancy. Our typical occupancy is hovering around 92%. Occupancy inside the short-term rental game is very different. You got 30 nights out of a month, depending how many nights you booked, that's your occupancy rate. It dipped I think just 70% flat, 70% or 73% flat. After March, we started exploding. It was quite the opposite. People couldn't go to Europe. People couldn't go to other countries, so they had staycations. In the beginning, this whole journey there's kind of like this Airbnb belief that when you have a guest that wants to go from one side of the city to stay in your place, that's a big red flag because it's probably going to be a party, probably going to be a kid. But at this moment, with Covid, it was like, look, I'm a tired mother. My husband and I would just want to get away. We got a babysitter. Covid shut us down, can we come stay? We haven't changed our [...], yeah sure. We don't discriminate, but at the same time, we would stop asking all the prying questions. Are you in college or not? College parties are the worst. But we would allow them to. We actually exploded really well during Covid. Jason: Interesting. I would have thought it would have been the opposite. Now, is BuyMoreTime location-specific? Is this all over the US? Is it beyond? Where do you guys do this at? Andrew: We're in five states right now and two countries. We're in Canada, in here, and five states. We can do this anywhere. We could pick up anywhere. Obviously, you need to qualify. We have a qualifying call. It's called a discovery call where we discuss what your property is like, its condition, your needs, and so on and so forth. See if we're a good fit. Not everybody's a good fit, obviously. Not every property is a good fit. Not every area is a good fit. We just want to make sure that it's going to be a win-win situation for everybody. Jason: Are you wanting listeners that are listening to the DoorGrowShow, to this episode, regardless of where they're at to just reach out, or are you looking for specific areas? Andrew: Regardless of where they're at to reach out, absolutely. Jason: Cool. What are some of the biggest questions that potential clients want to know when talking with you? Andrew: Number one question, how much could my property go for? How much could my property rent for if I was to work with BuyMoreTime? My answer is, when you come to BuyMoreTime, you should already be established. We're not a coaching company. We're not a let's boost your traffic. You should already be established, description, photos, 5-star reviews and you say, look, I got this in the bag. I just need to hand over the reins. That's all I want to do. For the costs, less than paying a VA every month, you're going to hire our team and we're going to run all of your operations. Jason: So this is for those that are just tired of the turnover, tired of the logistics, tired of making sure all the moving parts are happening. You'll handle all of that. Andrew: Correct. Jason: It sounds like you do it quite affordably. Andrew: Yup. $349 a month is our price and it doesn't fluctuate. The good news is we built this to service our property, to scratch our own itch. We're investors first. We have short-term rentals. We buy property. I'm sitting in one right now, up north. I've only been here for a couple months, brought my family into it. This will eventually be a short-term rental up in the pines. We wanted something where I didn't have to pay 20%, 25%, 15% of my profits. There's a lot of other companies out there like us where they have this really cool software and service—services, in my opinion, are subpar—but you pay out 20% of your profits on your highest month. It's like you're being penalized for using their service. To me, I would want some sort of program that I know what I'm paying for every single month. Every single month is the same rate, no matter what. In that way, I can easily predict my income for my highest months. Everybody's got the highest months. Austin's got a high season. Arizona, all over the place, they have a high season and low season. Florida, they have a high season. For us in AZ for example, it's going to be March and April. From other places, it is that same month or those months. These companies rob you 20% of your total proceeds. I thought that's not cool. Let's give the profits back to the owners and we'll just take a small fee for managing their property. Jason: All right, so the first the main question everyone wants to know is how much could they get and probably what is the cost. What else are they curious about, usually? Andrew: They usually want what I need in my property? What should be inside it? Especially, if you haven't done this before. Let's say you manage apartments, or you own a building, or whatever it may be, and you're talking to some partners or your client about setting up an Airbnb. That's probably one of the biggest questions is what goes inside of it? The one thing I need to tell people is when you have a short-term rental, you're not selling a place to stay. You're selling experience. I don't know, Jason, if you've ever stayed in a property on Airbnb before, but I just… Jason: I have. Andrew: You have? Just scrolling, you're looking for beautiful photos. You're looking for awesome amenities. You're looking for 5-star reviews. You're not looking 4-star, you're not looking for 3-stars, you want the best. You're looking for a very awesome experience. I think the biggest mistake that a lot of short-term rental managers go through is they're just trying to just fill it with stuff. That's not the case. If you have the ability to stock the fridge, stock the fridge. If you can leave a note for your guest, leave a note. If you could set up a system to leave nice things for your guests or send an extra message saying, we're so glad you're here, do it because that's what it's about. Jason: Yeah. There's a really great book called The Giftology, and in this book he talks about how just little gifts and little things actually make a big difference. And that makes a big difference giving something because that just makes it novel. It makes it stand out. It makes it different. I really enjoyed the show on Netflix called Stay Here. I don't know if you've seen that. Andrew: Yes. Jason: They're making these properties ready to be really amazing experiences, and that was a big part of the show is all about this experience. People are coming to Austin and have a certain type of experience. There needs to be a barbecue and some of these things. People are going to different areas in order to have the experience of that area and kind of tying that in. They made it really hyper relevant. Any other questions people tend to ask? Andrew: I think one other question they ask is how do I stand out? How do I be different? Everybody has got a condo on Airbnb. If you go to airbnb.com right now, looking at Austin, look in your zip code, you'll see thousands. How do I stand out? I think the biggest tip I have for those people that want to know how to stand out is, what is something that is going to make your place so memorable that people will be talking about it and they'll come back? There's a really easy way to do this by asking yourself what do people not offer that I can offer? What do they not have that I have? Some people have this huge TV, surround sound, just crazy entertainment, amazing sofa. That's good, but what is extra? I've seen some people add movie tickets or tickets to some amusement parks. I don't know how cost-effective that is, obviously, but depending on your budget versus how you can stand out, that's going to predict how you stand out. Jason: Interesting, cool. Well, how can people get a hold of you that might be interested? Andrew: This question always comes up in podcasts. I sometimes tell my cell phone number, but there's a link that actually you have, Jason, where you can get a hold of us. I'll just let you add that to the show notes. I'm going to just defer that back to you. Other than that, you could reach out to me on Facebook. Jason: Awesome. Yeah. He gave me an affiliate link, everybody, which is cool. I appreciate that. We'll put that link in the show notes. We'll link that on the podcast episode, online on our blog as well. It's been great getting familiar with you here a little bit. I really enjoyed the different perspective on Covid about the short-term rental industry. I know that I had lots of clients in the long-term game that were able to convert several into long-term during that time period in areas that they had challenges, but that was interesting. I didn't consider the staycation part, but I think a lot of people got really anxious, cooped up inside, and were looking for just a change of scenery, even if it was nearby. That makes a lot of sense. I appreciate you coming on the show, and until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes and tune into the DoorGrowShow on YouTube as well. And if you are interested in growing your property management business, we're having some really great success with our new DoorGrow and scale mastermind. We have one of our clients John [...] join in November, in the middle of the winter months, during the pandemic, in Boston. He added 125 doors in the last six months just using one of my strategies, and it cost him $0. He didn't spend any money on advertising. Anyway, reach out if you're interested. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye everyone. Andrew: See you.

As a property manager, have you considered investing in mobile home parks? Not interested? Not your thing? Some people won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. Today’s guest is Andrew Keel of the Keel Team. Andrew’s here to convince you otherwise. He talks all about mobile home park investing as an attractive and appealing asset class. You’ll Learn... [02:00] Sticker Shock Stigma: Why investing in mobile home parks is a good idea. [02:48] Longing to be a Landlord: Leverage other people’s money to buy properties. [03:30] Yellow Letter: Knew nothing about mobile homes, but knew it was a great deal. [04:00] Shoutout to Lonnie Scruggs: Learned how to make money with mobile homes. [05:10] Temp to Forever Cashflow: Use capital to buy and manage mobile home parks. [07:07] Three reasons why to invest in mobile home parks: Highest returns out of any form of real estate. Demand for affordable housing is off the charts. Supply is limited. [12:40] Bottleneck in Business: Finding good quality deals big enough to move on. [14:54] Boots on the Ground: Third-party property management for mobile home parks. [18:58] Utility Infrastructure: Most important aspect and most expensive to replace. [20:12] Tax Shelter: Mobile home park business of depreciation and improvements. [20:57] Models: Community owners own homes vs. every home is park-owned rental.  Tweetables “Some people won't even touch it with a 10-foot pole. That artificially creates a moat to this investment class.” Andrew Keel “I knew I wanted to be into real estate. I knew I wanted to be a landlord, but I didn't have a lot of money.” Andrew Keel “The demand for affordable housing for this country is off the charts.” Andrew Keel “The stigma of living in a mobile home is not as strong in the midwest as it is in other parts of the country.” Andrew Keel “We are looking at a more scalable model to have the tenants own their homes. Then, we just have lot rent.” Andrew Keel Resources Keel Team Deals on Wheels: How to buy, sell, and finance used mobile homes for big profits and cash flow by Lonnie Scruggs Mobile Home University (MHU) Boot Camp HUD NARPM DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive 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 the 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's show is going to be all about Mobile Home Park Investing. My expert guest is Andrew Keel of the Keel Team. Andrew, welcome. Andrew: Thank you. Jason: Andrew, before we get into this idea of Mobile Home Park Investing which, I'm guessing a lot of property managers right now are like not my thing, I'm not even going to listen to this one. I'm going to skip this episode. Before you do that, Andrew's going to convince you that it might be a good idea. Andrew: I'll give them my best shot. I think one of the reasons why I like the asset class so much is because of that stigma that a lot of people see. That initial sticker shock of the asset class. That's a huge part of why the industry is so attractive, some people won't even touch it with a 10 foot pole. That artificially creates a moat to this investment class. Jason: Right. Just a little protection built in, okay. Some of them were thinking that's kind of like having a trash heap around the property. Nobody wants to come in. Maybe it doesn't look very appealing. Before we get into that, Andrew, tell everyone about you. You've got a lot of things going on. Give us a little background of how you got into real estate investing, property management, how did all this start for you? Andrew: Yeah, sure. I started flipping houses around Central Florida and wholesaling residential contracts. I did that for about two years. I was trying to become a landlord but I started with nothing. My parents went bankrupt when I was in college, lost the house I grew up in. I knew I wanted to be into real estate. I knew I wanted to be a landlord, but I didn't have a lot of money. I initially thought, hey, I need to have a lot of money to be a landlord because I can't afford to buy these properties. That was before I learned how to use other people's money and leverage other tools. I started flipping houses and I got a deal through a yellow letter that I mailed out on two mobile homes in Ocala, Florida. That's just a couple of hours north of where I live in Orlando. These were nice, vinyl-sided, single roof homes that were manufactured in the mid-1990s. I could buy both of these for $2200 cash. I was like I don't know anything about mobile homes but this is a great deal. I just knew it. I had two titles, I left that day. I gave them the cash. I came home and got on YouTube. I typed in how to make money with mobile homes? I was like I don't know, there's got to be a way to make some cash off these things. I came across a guy named Lonnie Scruggs. He used to teach this class, and he has a book called Deals on Wheels. It talked about buying mobile homes, fixing them up, and selling them on contract to an end buyer. That's exactly what I did with those two mobile homes. I was able to fix them up, just clean them up basically. Some new paint and some new flooring. I sold them for $3000 down and $250 a month for five years. I did that on both of them and I only paid $2200 cash for both. I was like wow! This is a great model. It's not forever cash—that was my end goal—but this is great, temporary cash. I ended up doing that 19 more times and bought individual mobile homes through various parks throughout Central Florida. I sold them on contract. After doing that, I met some mobile home park owners. Again, I had this idea in my head that you need to be extremely wealthy to buy mobile home parks—the whole community. Through talking with them, they gave me that epiphany of using other people's money. I could be the sweat equity that would manage the properties. That was a huge Aha! moment for me. I immediately became glued to the asset class, read every book, went to every seminar, went to the MHU Bootcamp a few times, and just became a sponge for the asset class. That was a defining moment for me—getting into that industry. After I went to one of the bootcamps, I met a passive investor there that was just looking to invest and didn't want anything to do with the operations. He happened to be in the finance industry and worked really long hours but had a ton of cash that he wanted to deploy into this asset class. He partnered with me, and we bought the first mobile home park. It ended up being a really huge success. After that, we ended up buying four more communities since that one went so well. Since then, I have brought on more investors from friends and family to others outside of that. We do syndications now. We aggregate money from a pool of investors and then purchase these assets into a single purpose LLC. It's been a very awesome ride. It's been exciting. It's been blood, sweat, and tears into this at this point. Now, we're at 23 communities which is amazing and a blessing. We have a ton of people that work for us now and are awesome members of our team. That's a little about how I got into where I am today. Jason: You never just woke up when you were a kid and said I want to grow up to do mobile home park investing. Andrew: No, that's not how it went at all. I just kind of fell into this but I believe mobile home parks are a mode of investment for a few reasons. One of those that's really important is it has the highest returns out of any form of real estate. Right away, I was attracted to it. Number two, that makes it that much better, the demand for affordable housing for this country is off the charts. I think you can talk to any real estate expert and they would tell you that. Number three which is the main reason, number one, put it on the top of your list of why mobile home parks are a great asset class to invest in is because the supply is limited. Any other asset class whether it's self storage, multifamily, whatever, it's easier to develop those and get those approved. Where mobile home parks have this stigma, there's this not in my backyard initiative where people don't want a mobile home park built right next to their subdivision. It's very hard to get zoning approved for a new mobile home park development. Number two, from an economic standpoint, mobile home parks are loss leaders for municipalities. On average, they cost around $11,000 a year to put a child through public schooling with the cost of the school, the teachers, et cetera. In mobile homes, the owners of the mobile homes, they only pay maybe $50-$100 a year in their personal property taxes on their mobile home that they pay at the DMV just like you would pay taxes on your vehicle, or both, or so forth. The taxes are very low, but say a family of four that has two kids in elementary school, that would be a huge loss to the local municipality every year for having that family in their municipality. That's a big reason, the supply is shrinking. On average, there's 10 mobile home parks across the country that are torn down every year. It's continuing, it's getting more than that. More and more, they're torn down and put into better land uses for multifamily and whatnot. It's very rare, if any at all, are being developed from the ground up. It's very interesting from a supply standpoint. Jason: Are you involved in getting them developed? Andrew: I'm not. There's lower hanging fruit in communities that are already established, to be honest. It's less expensive to go in and fix the existing infrastructure. The majority of mobile home parks, I think 80% of them, are owned by my mom and pop owners. It's not an institutionalized asset class like multifamily and self storage. With that, you're able to come in and increase value very quickly through increasing that operating income, whether that's through modest rent increases, billing back utilities, increasing the occupancy. A lot of these communities have been owned by a mom and pop for 30-40 years. They have a lot of equity. A lot of these are paid off pretty clear. With that, we've been able to acquire five communities with stellar financing because they're able to be more flexible since they don't have some of the restrictions that a bank would have on a mortgage. It's a very exciting asset class. It's new to a lot of people but it's definitely a mode of investment. It's not something that you want to go to the country club and brag to your friends about. It is also very unique in that aspect because that stigma does keep some investors out of it and keeps cap rates significantly higher. Jason: Okay, okay. The first thing you mentioned is it has the highest returns. Qualify that a little bit, compare it maybe just a little bit, let's back this up. Some people listening, maybe their ears perked up when they heard that. Andrew: Yeah. If you're familiar with commercial real estate, properties are valued off of their income, there's the income model. Cap rates for mobile home communities are typically between 8% or 12%. If you compare that to multifamily, you're not able to get as big of a spread between the interest rate you're paying on your loan and the cap rate that you're purchasing the property for. The cap rate is the net operating income divided by the purchase price, for those of you who aren't familiar with that. Basically, we aim to get at least a 3.0 spread between our interest rate that our loan we have in the community, and the cap rate that we're paying. If we're able to create that Delta, we can offer our investors 20% cash on cash return annually. Jason: All right, okay. I’m taking notes. If you can offer investors that, it's not too difficult to get investors you're funding? Andrew: Yeah. We've been very fortunate to have a lot of people reaching out to invest with us. At this point, I would say the bottleneck in our business is finding good quality deals that are big enough to move the needle. There's a lot of communities that are between 50 and 100 lots that are a good place to play in. The communities that are bigger than that offer even more economies of scale in terms of expenses versus income. Those are the ones that are getting eaten up by institutional buyers at this point. Some of the REITs, some of the large private equity firms, are now playing in this space because they've seen high returns. They know supply is limited and demand is off the charts. They're going after those larger properties. Those are harder for us to compete with because those cap rates are getting compressed. Jason: This is just in your local market that you're willing to work and target? Is that correct? Andrew: We have communities all the way from Georgia to North Dakota, all the way down to Tennessee, and all the way across Pennsylvania. We're right in the center for the most part—the center of the United States. We did that for a couple of reasons, it was mainly strategy. Hurricanes primarily don't go across the midwest. However, there was a polar vortex last year, that was absolutely crazy. Hurricanes, it's protected against those. The stigma of living in a mobile home is not as strong in the midwest as it is in other parts of the country. For the most part, we aim to purchase communities in the middle of the United States. Jason: Got it. How difficult is it for somebody that's currently focused on single family residential, or maybe they're doing commercial, or maybe they're doing multifamily, to add this in as another business—basically another arm of their business and to work on this? Andrew: That's a great question. First off, I think we should say that third party property management for mobile homes communities, that's like across the nation, it's basically unheard of. There's like two or three companies that do it and they're not doing it at a high level. It's very tough because it is management intensive. Even though a lot of these communities don't own the mobile homes themselves, they just own the dirt underneath them, your maintenance costs less. There's just other reasons why it's a little bit difficult to manage these communities on a large scale because of the turnover and things like that that do happen. Jason: You're managing just the parks, you're not managing individual rental properties. Andrew: Correct. We get a lot of rent off the ground. Now, as a necessary evil of the business, when a home goes up for sale or say we come to own one of these homes, we have to then sell it to the tenant for them to become a tenant-owned resident and rent out the land to them. There's probably about 20% of our total units that are homes that we've sold to the tenant on contract. They're still responsible for maintenance but it's sold to them like a rent credit program, is what we call it, where they're making payments monthly to then pay off the home. Then, eventually, they will just pay lot rent. Jason: We didn't say this at the beginning, we probably should qualify you a little bit more by saying how many units are you over right now? How many are under management? Andrew: We are at 1497 units right now. That's across 23 parks. Jason: All right. How critical it is to have boots on the ground in all of these 23 locations? Andrew: It's paramount, in my opinion. We have an onsite manager at every single location. That's typically a resident that had the nicest home, we converted them into an onsite manager. All they are is just basically an eyes and ears person that communicates with our corporate office. It keeps us abreast of what's going on in the community. That has been really important for us to just be able to understand what's going on. Typically, we go after someone that has a fixed income like Social Security and they have one of the nicest homes in the communities. They're retired and they're home. They're like the community watchdog. They keep us up to date on what's going on. Then, our corporate office which we have 14 corporate offices, offsite management employees, handles everything from the financials, to the project management, to collections, to bookkeeping, et cetera. Jason: Got it. These are all parks that you have some sort of an ownership in, correct? Andrew: Correct. We only manage parks that we have ownership in right now. Jason: Got it, okay. For those listening, if somebody has a property management business, maybe they're a real estate investor and they're wanting to get into this, what advice would you give as the first initial step? They're looking around. They notice there's a mobile home park or two that probably could use a little love. Maybe the mom and pop owners would be willing to have a conversation. What's the first step that you think they need to be aware of? What knowledge do they need to gain first? Andrew: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say you need to go and get educated. You need to go to the MHU Bootcamp that's offered by Frank and Dave. That's like the industry leading educational platform that teaches everything from how to find deals, how to value them, and how to manage them. Within that class, you'll learn about the utility infrastructure. The utility infrastructure is by far the most important aspect of these communities because that's the most expensive to replace. For example, a community that's on the city water or the city sewer is more attractive because there's less risk on that half. Versus a community that's on a well and septic. A well and septic, there's a lot more testing involved. Now, you're servicing a community that is using that water supply. You have to make sure that there's certain chlorine, certain tests done on a consistent basis, to manage that water system. The same thing if you're on a septic or waste water treatment plant. Wastewater treatment plant can cause $500,000 to replace. You have to make sure that they're maintained on a high level. If they're not, you could be front of the bill for a very expensive project. Jason: A lot of what makes a mobile home park work is underground is what you're saying? Andrew: Correct. Jason: Okay. It's not just land, there's infrastructure that's really critical underneath. Andrew: Very, very, critical. Those are all items you're able to depreciate and we love that part of the business because mobile home parks are also a known tax shelter because of those improvements. Jason: Interesting. You said that Frank and Dave over MHU? Andrew: M as in Mary, H as in Harry. Mobile Home University. Jason: Got it, all right. I thought I would make sure. Cool. What else should they know about mobile home park investing that we haven't covered so far? Andrew: I'll just give a vague overview of it. There's a model where the community owners will own all of the homes and basically operate it as a flat apartment community where every home is a park-owned rental. That is not the model that we follow. We are looking at a more scalable model to have the tenants own their homes. Then, we just have lot rent. There's a couple of reasons. Obviously, repairs and maintenance would be a lot less. Your expenses will be a lot less. Also, your turnover on a tenant-owned home unit is approximately 4%-5% annually where the turnover on a park owned home unit is closer to 50% annually. From a management side of things, if you have a tenant-owned home community, you're going to spend less time dealing with turnover compared to a park owned home community. There's communities out there that have done both ways but we prefer the tenant-owned home model. In regards to mobile home park investing, it is affordable housing. If you're familiar with affordable housing in multifamily, HUD housing, or things like that, you can deal with a lot of the same residence but there's also different classes just like in any asset class where there's very high end mobile home communities that have swimming pools, community centers, three golf courses. Then, there's communities on the lower end that are just not taken care of very well. The homes are really close together, there's a lot of older homes. We try to aim right at the middle. We're looking at the C class parks that maybe we can bump up into a B. That's typically where we play. Jason: Got it. All right. For those that heard all of this and still thought there's no way I'm going to touch this. There's no way I'm going to go to MHU. I don't want to do any of this stuff, but those returns sound pretty sweet. Maybe I should talk to Andrew. Maybe there's a mom and pop that's listening, they're like you know what? I'm tired of this garbage. I'm tired of dealing with this place. I want out. It's time we retire from running this mobile home park. They're like maybe we can have a conversation with Andrew. Who are the people that you're wanting to get in touch with you? Whether it's investors, whether it's potential people that can create a deal with you? What are you interested in? Andrew: All of the above. If there's a wholesaler that comes across a mobile home park and they want to assign it, or it's a property manager, or maybe it's someone that wants to partner on their first deal because they want to learn the operations before just jumping in with two feet. All of them should reach out to me. My website is keelteam.com. I'd be happy to chat with you. I love talking about mobile home parks, you won't have to pull my leg too hard to go on the phone with me. Jason: I could tell. Andrew, I appreciate you coming on and sharing a little bit about mobile home park investing, helping open my audience’s eyes to that just a little bit. Maybe you'll get a few phone calls, maybe some people will get into this. Who knows? Maybe there'll be some sort of a hybrid where deals even workout. Are you looking at expanding outside the midwest at all? Andrew: Yeah, we've looked at some deals in many different areas. Not in California but outside of that state we've looked at several deals. You have to hit a certain number of units for it to make sense for it to go to a new market. You don't just want to go after a 40 lot mobile home park in Idaho when the rest of your communities are all in Ohio or Pennsylvania. We definitely looked at other places. I've JV'ed with people that brought me a deal that they didn't have any money but they just found this great deal. I found things like that and I'm totally open to sharing what I know on the operation side to others that bring a deal to the table. Jason: Awesome. Andrew, I appreciate you coming on the show. I wish you continued success. Andrew: Jason. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you having me on the DoorGrow Show. Jason: All right, cool. Make sure you reach out to Andrew if any of this sounds interesting, you are curious about this in working with him, or getting into it yourself. That was keelteam.com. If you're looking at figuring out how to grow your property management business, I had so many calls this week from new clients that have come onboard with us. There's this common challenge that property managers tend to deal with at various stages. I've noticed that you've got that first sandtrap at about 50, 60 doors in the single family residential space where you're dealing with how do I start to get ahead? How do I create some leverage in this business so I'm not just trapped as a solopreneur here forever? How do I start getting more doors than I'm losing so I'm not just breaking even every year in terms of growth? If you're dealing with any of those kinds of challenges, we're really going to help you break through that initial barrier. Then, there's that second sandtrap which is usually if you can break in a healthy way past 100 doors, if you haven't done that yet, talk to us. If you break past 100 doors in a healthy fashion, which means you're not just a real estate broker. That's really healthy and you've got this unhealthy property management business on the side, we can help you with that too. You do it in a healthy fashion. Then, you'll end up usually in the 200-400 door category and then you get stuck. This is where I see a lot of property managers stuck in NARPM. A lot of property managers are struggling. There are specific things that you need to break free from that sandtrap. Usually, the challenge is they're not getting the right thing members. They're not able to retain team members for a long time. They're trying to build and systemize the business, build a team. They just don't have a business that's scalable. Even if it were fed a lot of potential business, or a lot of deals, or a lot of leads, once they approach that 400 or maybe up to 500 units space, the business owners feel really stressed out. They built a team usually the way a solopreneur thinks. They built a business based on what the business needs, not on what the business owner needs to lower their pressure noises through the roof. Every person that they have on their team is coming to them for everything and asking questions. First, it feels really exciting when you're small. As you scale and as you build, it feels really suffocating. You become the biggest bottleneck in the business. If you're experiencing that, then reach out. We would love to have a conversation so that we can help you break past that second sandtrap as well. Anyway, I'm Jason Hull over at DoorGrow. Make sure you also check us out. We've been really pumping up Instagram and getting going. Follow us on Instagram, it's just @doorgrow. Make sure you get into our community at the DoorGrow Club Facebook group. You can go to the DoorGrow Club. Just go to doorgrowclub.com. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.

Stephen Olyniuk Interviewer: So in today's podcast, we'd like to welcome Andrew Ferris. He's the development officer and program director for the children's miracle network. So, welcome! Andrew: Thank you. Good to be here. Interviewer: And one of my first questions is gonna be- tell us a little bit about yourself, Andrew, and how you became involved with the Children's Miracle Network. Andrew: Sure, yeah. Kind of an interesting path how I got to where I am today. So just going all the way back to university, it's kind of when I got first introduced to the child health sector. So, throughout university, I worked as a one-on-one specialist with kids across Manitoba. So I would essentially go on camps across Manitoba and work alongside a child with autism to kind of make sure that they're integrated into the programming stuff. So that's kind of how I got introduced to child health, kind of starting my passion there. But I did a BA in Psychology, and I graduated a University. Got a job in the corporate world. And learned some valuable things, but kind of didn't really feel the passion was there. So I did some research on what options I had for post graduate education. And I actually found this non-profit management, in the business development program for non-profit charity program out in Toronto. And essentially, I applied to it. And within a month, I was pretty much packing my bags and moving out to Toronto. So when I got to Toronto, I completed my program in non-profit management and business development for non-profits and charities. And then I end up getting a job at SickKids, which is a children's hospital in Toronto. And I did some work in the corporate partnerships department. And then I was kind of faced with the difficult decision of: “Do I wanna stay in Toronto or do I wanna come home, bringing what I learned in Toronto back to my home community?” And ultimately, I decided to come back to Winnipeg, just because… I mean, I love it here. It's my home. My friends and family are here. And one of the main reasons why I went to do that non-profit management program was really to improve my home community. So essentially, made the decision to leave all the excitement in Toronto and come back to Winnipeg. And from there, I got a job at Global Philanthropic, which is one of Canada's largest non-profit consulting firms. So we worked alongside charities in Winnipeg, (?), Marymount. And the children's hospital is also one of our clients. And it was through there, I kind of linked with up with the CEO there. And he brought forth this job for me. And I obviously accepted it because I just kind of had that passion for children health at the beginning. And I always did wanna work at a children's hospital. So it was pretty much a no brainer for me. So that's what brought me here today. And I've been directing the Children's Miracle Network program since July of last year. So I'm just over a year now. Interviewer: And throughout the time we've spent together, I find you're very passionate about it. I think you're a great fit. Andrew: I would like to think so! Let's hope. Interviewer: Exactly. So, for people that maybe don't know that Remax has a partnership with the Children's Miracle Network (CMN). And some agents choose to take part, and some don't. So we choose to take part. And we make a donation with every donation that's sold or someone purchased with us. So can you tell us maybe a little bit about the partnership between the CMN and Remax? Andrew: Sure. Let me just kind of explain what CMN is, so people who don't know- know. So essentially, the CMN is a large non-profit organization that operates in Canada and the United States. And their main mandate is to raise critical funds to support specialized equipment for their local children's hospitals. So each state, each province has a children's miracle network hospital. S ours would be the children's hospital in (?). And the CMN has a large portfolio of corporate partners, such as Remax, who each have specialized programs, funding campaigns, that are designed to raise money in support of their local children's hospital. And, I mean, the main mandate is that if we change the health of children, we change the health of the world. We change the health of children in Canada, we change the health future of Canada. So that's really the core of CMN. And in terms of our partnership with Remax, it's actually one of the longest standing partnerships in the CMN. So, it's been operating since 1992. And like you said, the Remax agents have the option to donate certain proceeds from each sale towards the CMN, which goes directly to our local children's hospital and all the local children of Manitoba. So, it's an exclusive program to Remax. And the impact is huge. And it's just a great way that Remax agents are able to engage with our children' hospital. Interviewer: Wonderful, wonderful. And then, you know, what kind of success has the partnership seen in Canada? Andrew: It has seen immense success. So, just in terms of numbers, we have over 7k real estate agents in Canada that are taking part in this program. And in 2019 alone, I believe over 7.5 million had been raised. Just in 2019 in Canada. Interviewer: Wow. Andrew: And that goes, again, directly to the local children's hospital. So, I mean, that's immense impact right there. It's huge. Interviewer: Ok. So that kind of answered my next question to you. What does it mean to the children's hospital to have a community partner and support, such as Remax? Andrew: It means everything. I mean, just in current times with Covid, community partners such as Remax are really the ones that our children's hospitals have relied on. I mean, with Covid, a lot of events, a lot of fundraising things have had to be cancelled. That brings in quite a lot of revenue for the children's hospital. So it's having, our community partners like Remax, that continue these campaigns through Covid, that really do pull us through these tough times. And, you know, our hospital over 130k kids that come through our door every year. And Covid or not, that's happening. You know, that doesn't change. So having the community support, our ups and downs of the economy, whatever, it's just incredibly crucial for us. Interviewer: So then, in 2020, what will money be raised… Like the money that's raised by the Miracle Home Program, what will it be supporting? Andrew: Sure. Every year, through the Remax program, there's kind of 3 pillars that we look to raise money for. So first is revolutionizing treatment and care. Second is for frontline pediatric education and training. And the third is creating healing environments. And for this year, we really focused on that third pillar of creating healing environments. So money raised is really going towards the child life department. Which, at its core, essentially exists to make sure that children and their families have the best possible experience within the children's hospital. Especially when they have to have a long stay. So, the child health department has specialized child health. Our child life specialist who are trained specifically to make sure that these kids get the best care, best… They're in their mental state best as they can be, given the tough times. So some programs of the child life include musical therapy, clown therapy. They have specialized play places. They have a children's hospital TV station that gets aired all throughout the children's hospitals. So again, it's just really meant to make sure that these kids have a positive experience with the hospital. It's very tough for them to be in the hospital. I mean, it's not fun. And it's equally stressful for the parents as well to have a kid in the hospital. And with Covid, too, it's really made things difficult in terms of visitations. So, we've had lots of kids that haven't been able to visit all their family members. And that's very tough for them. And the child department really gets into gear and distracts them and makes them as happy as possible. So that's really the main focus of funds from the Miracle Home Program this year, which again, is incredibly incredibly crucial and very timely with Covid and everything. Interviewer: Wonderful, wonderful organization from the events that we've been out to. And you see the kids light up when they see Doctor Goodbear. Andrew: Yeah. Doctor Goodbear's a staple. He's been around for years, and he's not going anywhere. Interviewer: And I imagine that with Covid that it's more difficult for visits like that to happen, and that they probably don't happen is my guess. So I'm just wondering do they, has that been happening with the television station that they have? Or anything like that that happens? Andrew: So yeah. Like you said, it's been difficult. So we've had to kind of be creative with how the kids are engaged. And the children's hospital TV station is one way that we can kind of get Goodbear in there and use it as a way to kind of make things happy and distract them from the outside world. And how they're not usually able to visit everybody they would be able to. Interviewer: Right. So, how do Remax agents get involved in the Miracle Home Program if they wanted to? Andrew: So it's pretty easy. I mean, every Remax agent is a broker manager. And they would have all the information on how to sign up. So it's very easy. Essentially, they would have that information. You just fill out a quick form and submit it, and you're pretty much good to go. I also encourage any Remax agent in Manitoba to reach out to me as well, just with any questions. You know, maybe I'll get you to share my content information later as well. Interviewer: Absolutely. Andrew: It's a very quick process, really easy. And I'm always happy to answer questions on how to sign up. Interviewer: Ok, great. So, I'd like to lighten things up a little bit towards the end of the podcast and just find out a little bit more about you. What are some of your favorite things? What is your favorite food? Andrew: Favorite food? That's a tough one because I like food a lot. And I'm gonna base it most off of what I order most on Scubidicious, and I think that would be sushi. Interviewer: Sushi? Andrew: Yeah, that would be my number one. Close second would be any type of pasta. Interviewer: Alright. Is there a plug for any sushi restaurants? Andrew: Ok. I'm gonna give you Yujuro on (?) plug. I'll give them a plug for sure for my sushi. That's if I'm eating in. If I'm not eating in, if I'm eating the order, if I'm ordering it, I usually go to walk-on court. Those are my go-to's. Interviewer: Awesome! I'll have to check them out. Andrew: You should. Yeah, you should. Especially Yujuro. I'll say they're good. They know what they're doing! Interviewer: Ok, great. How about favorite movie? Do you have… Andrew: Favorite movie… I would have to say Wolf of Wallstreet. It's a ride. It is a ride. A little bit of long (?), but it's one of my favorite movies. And I've watched it at least 5 times, it's so entertaining. I love Leonardo DiCaprio. He's one of my favorite actors. Interviewer: Yeah. I'd have to agree, he's a magnificent actor. Andrew: Yeah, I almost like every single movie of his. He kills it. Interviewer: And hobbies. Do you have a favorite hobby? Andrew: Favorite hobby? Well, it's kind of seasonal. So in the like nice months, I love hiking. So hiking and walking around in the outdoors. The big thing, like fishing, hiking. I spend time outdoor swimming. That's my main thing. In the winter months, kind of hunker down a little bit. But I like to go skating. I play drums. So I play drums here and there as well. And listen to a lot of music. And obviously watch Netflix and all of that fun stuff. I like to be very social too. So lots of craft breweries. And for food, I told you that. Interviewer: Awesome. You, one of the things you just mentioned, hiking there. Is there any trail that you've been on recently that… Andrew: Oh, man. So I did my Rise of Manitoba today. So I pretty much did, I think I did around 10 or 11 hiking trails in (?) this year. And my favorite would have to be Hudlake trail. Interviewer: Why favorite? Andrew: It's beautiful! I love that one. Second maybe McGillbert Falls is nice. But I don't know, I think (?) trails are my favorite. It's a nice long hike. Whole portions along the lake and it's just insane. And it's pretty challenging too. There's some nice challenging parts which I love. Interviewer: For the past two years, Alicia and I have been doing kind of a “explore Manitoba” every Wednesday. We take the afternoon off and we head out somewhere and we'll do a little post about it. And on social media, that's the thing that gets the most attention. Any time we're out, someone says, “”Hey, we're going to this weekend?” And Hudlake is one of our favorite trails. McGillbert Falls is on our list. We haven't made it through yet, but we'll do that one pretty shortly. And one that's really unique is the devil's punchboal. Andrew: Oh wow! Interviewer: A little bit of desert in the middle of Manitoba. Andrew: It does not feel like Manitoba. I love that. Interviewer: Nope! Andrew: Not at all. And you know, I think there's one… I mean, there's minimal positives of covid. But one, I think for me, and for a lot of other people, is that they've explored Manitoba a little bit more. I mean, not necessarily by choice. But it's kind of forced people to explore their own backyard a little bit more. And I know I have, more than usual, because some days you'll be travelling to other places. But I think people are kind of like learning to appreciate Manitoba a little bit more. And there's so many beautiful spots to go. So, that's awesome! Interviewer: Yeah, you've just got to dress for the winters and you can find beautiful things to do in the wintertime too. Andrew: I know. I'm not really ready, but it is what it is. Interviewer: And one of the things you mentioned- music and drumming. So do you have a favorite type of music or musician? Andrew: Favorite musician? I would have to say Sitting Color would have to be my favorite artist. Music? I won't say I like everything. I respect pretty much every genre. I mean, for me, for drumming I really like some beats and rhythm. So, I mean, you can find that in any music. So I really can't say I would favor genres, just because I respect lots of music. But yes, let's say Sitting Color. In terms of the 90s, I'd say Oasis would be my favorite band. The 90s and… Yeah, I like everything! I don't know. Interviewer: How long have you been drumming? Andrew: Since I was in grade 2. So a long time! It was one of my favorite… Actually, my first word was actually “gums.” And I meant to say “drums.” Interviewer: There you go! Andrew: I was talking about drums. Interviewer: You were the kid that the parents “loved.” You made lots of noise. Andrew: Oh yes! I certainly did. I still remember getting my first drum set. I don't even know how they dealt with that. I really don't. Interviewer: Great. Do you have a favorite day of the week? Andrew: Thursday. I like Thursdays. I think it's because you have the anticipation of Friday being tomorrow, and I don't know… I just feel like I get the most productive on Thursdays. Getting ahead, getting everything done for the weekend. And getting excited for the weekend before. So I'm gonna go for Thursdays. Interviewer: Alright. That's the way it is. Sometimes when you have a deadline or something that gives you that extra push. Andrew: Exactly! I feel like Thursdays- that's my day. That's my day. Interviewer: My final question. What would you say you're most excited about right now? Andrew: Right now? Sounds a little bit weird, but I ordered a new table from (?). Table and chairs. Dining room table. So I'm supposed to be getting that tomorrow, so I'm a bit excited about that. I know it sounds weird, but I like getting stuff in the mail. So I'm excited for that. I'm also really excited for… I live on the river. So I'm really excited for that to freeze over. Because I'm really really excited to… Hopefully, this year, the trail will be open. The skiing trail. Skiing down the (?) for some beers. Interviewer: Awesome! Great. You have to send me a picture of your table when it's all set it. I'd love to see it. Andrew: I'll send you a selfie with my new table. Interviewer: Sure, great. Alright Andrew, I really wanna thank you for coming on and doing this with us. And we wish you all the best. And I hope that the CMN just continues to rise and be successful. Andrew: Awesome! Yeah, thanks Stephen. And again, thank you for all of your work. You're also personally involved with the Children Miracle Home program and working with us as well. So, thank you. And I thank everybody at Remax for continuing all the awesome support for the hospital. Interviewer: Will do! You have yourself a wonderful day, sir! Andrew: You too! Have a good one! Interviewer: Bye!   Andrew Ferris Development Officer & Program Director, CMN Children's Hospital Foundation of MB 204-470-8928   Stephen Olyniuk Alicia Olyniuk stephen@teamolyniuk.com alicia@teamolyniuk.com (204)981-2009 (204)3924262 www.teamolyniuk.com Turning Realty into Reality #realestatewinnipeg #realestatemanitoba

I spoke to the chief economist of PwC in Nigeria Andrew Nevin. We had a conversation on taxes, central banking, and economic reforms in general. Andrew also explained his preferred measure of economic progress as opposed to GDP, and whether we should be more like China or India. I thank Andrew for agreeing to share his views with us.You can always listen or download right here on Substack or do the same on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, and Pocket Casts. There is also a transcript below. You can rate us on any of these platforms, this helps others find the show.TRANSCRIPTTobi: Hi everyone. I am on today with Andrew Nevin, the Chief Economist of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Nigeria. It’s great to have you, Andrew.Andrew: Great to be here, Tobi. Thank you so much.Tobi: I will like to start about taxes. Oil prices have collapsed, and along with government revenue, so naturally, the government is looking towards taxes as a way to buffer the government’s revenue source. What I just want to ask is, how realistic is that plan, especially in the current economic climate? Andrew: Well, I think that we all understand by now that Nigeria collects a small amount in tax compared to other countries. I think the number is about 6 percent of GDP, very small. So for the last few years, there's been this narrative from the government: we need to bring people into the tax net, people need to pay more taxes, more tax compliance, that I think we've all seen. And now of course with the collapse of oil revenue there's essentially no tax revenue coming from oil for the next few months, at least, and maybe longer. So, of course, the government is in a very difficult fiscal position. So naturally, they're going to say "we now need to increase our efforts to bring people into the tax net to increase the tax revenue". There are two problems with that. The first problem and we've highlighted this over the last four-five years is: it's very difficult to increase taxes when people feel like they're not getting services. So if we think about the social compact in Nigeria, certainly over a decade that I've lived in Lagos, the social compact is simple: the government doesn't really tax you very much but it also doesn't provide services. So people provide their own security, their own electricity, their own healthcare, their own education, their own infrastructure, and that has been the social compact. It’s not ideal, but that's the way it’s worked. Now the government comes along and says, well, we want to bring you into the tax net, we want to increase taxes, the rates, the number of taxes, and people say: hold on a minute, this social compact doesn't work unless I'm getting some services. So that's one challenge. The second challenge that we’ve talked about over the years and is really now quite a huge pressure is, [it’s] very hard to raise more taxes while the economy is not growing. Over the years from the 2015 recession we still had very low growth, 1-2 percent, a little over 2 percent in 2019. So [economic] growth has been below population [growth], which means that incomes have been going down, which means it's hard to take more money out of people. So both of those things remain challenges, we now have this confluence of events where effectively half of the revenue or more than half of the revenue going into the federation accounts collapsed and yet it’s very difficult to take taxes from other places. Tobi: It’s interesting you talked about growth because I was looking at data from the IMF a few days ago and per capita income in Nigeria has basically stagnated in the last four to five years. So basically people are not growing their income and it's very difficult to raise taxes. But there is another argument that I would like you to explore with me, which is that, is it also about capability for government? I mean, there is no national database and that is not cheap. How significant a barrier is that to expanding the tax base?You asked on a general level, on a general level, if we don’t get investment up, we won’t be able to bring people out of poverty. - ANAndrew: Well, I think that there has been a lot of progress on that, certainly in Lagos where I live. The electronic record of the LIRS [Lagos Inland Revenue Service], the ability to bring people into the tax net, the [indistinct words] that they have, those things have got[ten] stronger and stronger over the last few years and they've made progress on that. But I think that what you raised, Tobi, is a really...is a general point. I think there is a lot of capabilities, certainly the Federal Government, the Lagos government which I know best, and other States. But I think sometimes the problem is the capability is spread too thin. We have so many MDAs at the Federal level, so you have a pool of very talented civil servants and people [who] come from the private sector...to cite a couple - Dr Jumoke, Yewande Sadiku at the NIPC, Engineer Chidi over at the concession group...I mean you have some very high-quality people, high-quality staff, but we'll get so many MDAs, sort of create complexity and then there are pockets where the Federal Government or the State Government don't necessarily have enough capability. I think also at the state level, it's a real challenge. Many states as we know have very small IGR [Internal Generated Revenue], they haven't yet sort of got their records or their system in place to raise internal generated revenue from the businesses that do exist in the states, but the states are trying on that... but I think you highlight a really...yes, a very critical issue.Tobi: Still on income growth, what do you think has to change for per capita income to start growing in Nigeria? There are a few hypotheses that we are going to explore as we talk along but just your general view, what would it take, what has to change?Andrew: Well, I think the perspective we’ve had over four or five years is pretty simple. People talk about this program, and agriculture, it’s small business, and concessionary financing, all of these little pieces...but when you ask in general what the issue is? We need to grow. We’ve said for years that the country needs to have GDP growth of 6 to 8 percent a year to reduce poverty and alleviate unemployment. Why? Because we have population growth that is probably almost 3 percent a year, so if we're growing at 6 to 8 percent, per capita income will be 3 to 5 percent growth per year. So that starts to be meaningful over a few years. But more than just GDP growth it needs to be inclusive. I think the period from 2010 to 2014, there were lots of GDP growth but it was not shared evenly or not shared appropriately throughout the country. So we need to grow 6 to 8 percent. Now, how does that happen? At the very basic, almost mathematical or physics level, to grow requires investment. So how much investment? When we look around at the economics of this in some other countries, the investment needs to be close to 30 percent of GDP which in Naira terms, say, in 2018-2019 come in with, maybe, a 150 trillion Naira...so 30 percent is 45 trillion Naira of what economists call gross capital formation. We are only getting a little more than half of that, maybe 25 trillion roughly. We cannot grow 6 to 8 percent when there is not enough investment. So then that leads to a very simple question, why is there not enough investment?I lived for ten years in China. I went to China the first time in 1983 which was the beginning of their economic transformation and they have lifted 500-600 million people out of poverty, they’ve grown 8 to 11 percent, 8 to 12 percent, 6 to 10 percent for forty years almost now, and how do they do it? Well, you have to invest. So we have to invest in Nigeria. Then the question is, given that Nigeria is probably the number one economic story on the planet right now for potential, why are people not investing in Nigeria? Why are Nigerians not investing enough? Why is the diaspora, who have resources and know the country not investing enough? And then if those two groups invest, then foreign investors, direct investors will also invest but they are not investing. So that's the question we’ve posed to the Federal Government. You asked on a general level, on a general level, if we don’t get investment up, we won’t be able to bring people out of poverty. But why are people not investing? If we want to explain it very simply, what we say is: right now, it’s too complex and too costly in Nigeria to do business. Despite the incredible efforts of Dr Jumoke [Oduwole], a national heroine over at PEBEC, it’s still too hard. Too many agencies, too many costs, too much complexity, so people choose not to invest. I was talking yesterday to the CEO of a major Nigerian company, very successful company, and he was talking about one of the global giants that I won’t name here but who is evaluating between South Africa and Nigeria for coming into the country and they made the decision... they’ll eventually come to Nigeria, but they made the decision, for the moment, to go to South Africa. He said it was very simple, they just found it too complex dealing with too many agencies, too many taxes, not just the level of taxes but the complexity of taxes. So until the Federal Government and the State Governments are serious about wanting to make it an attractive...and I said this, sorry, let me also add, Tobi... I say this not as just the Chief Economist. My main role at PwC is I oversee our financial services practice, so I am out-serving clients, I run a business - PwC. I also have two technology companies that I have helped found in Nigeria, so, you know, I'm doing this I'm not just speaking about it and I can tell you - it is not easy in Nigeria. So we have this incredible opportunity, we have incredible entrepreneurs both Nigerians in Nigeria and in the diaspora and yet it’s not been tapped quite yet.It may be distressed, but I prefer democracy and Nigeria's democracy is a work in progress but it's a democracy. - ANTobi: That's interesting. You mentioned China, so let's explore that. Everybody would love to copy the East Asian model, right? But in Nigeria, it seems, at least to me, that we are still doing import substitution industrialisation rather than exports and oriented manufacturing that lifted Asia out of poverty. Now, I'm asking at a conceptual level, what has to change in policy circle for us to see the distinction between those two models?Andrew: Well, I think to begin with, I said I’ve lived ten years in China and I think there are some positive things we can take from it but the truth is, China is not a democracy. It's an autocratic, one-party state and I'm not sure it's a great model. Maybe, in the end, that would win out economically. It may be distressed, but I prefer democracy and Nigeria's democracy is a work in progress but it's a democracy. I think that we've advocated over the last one or two years that the right...and of course people come all the time, I go to conferences and people say Rwanda, Singapore as models for Nigeria, we said very clearly, we think: look, if you're going to take one country as the model for Nigeria, that we have the most lessons to learn from, it's actually India. And why? India is a large, diverse country. It has religious differences, it has cultural differences, it has geographic differences, it has very different topography and no one can argue that Nigeria is more complex than India. They are both complex. India, like Nigeria, is a messy democracy, a work in progress. But despite that, they have made a lot of economic progress in the last twenty years, really unlocking things starting in the beginning of the ‘90s. Then when you go to the economic model, what unlocked it for India was not exporting goods (physical goods), it was exporting services... particularly around IT. Many countries have a diaspora but the thing about the Nigerian diaspora is, they are at the top end of the income ladder. - ANSo one of the things that we are starting to say is, like, should we be focused so much on exporting physical goods because if you think about where we're at, a couple of things are going on. One, of course, is, to export a physical good, it just requires a real improvement in the infrastructure that we have - port infrastructure, road infrastructure to bring down the cost to be competitive. Secondly, where are we going to export to? If you think about what's happening in the world, the population in Europe is shrinking population, the population in North America is basically flat, are we going to be able to export into a shrinking market into Europe? There are already people that export physical goods into Europe, can we displace them? I'm not sure that we can that easily. Can we export to India? Well, they already have their own manufacturing. Can we export to China? Well, they’re sending their manufacturing here. So I'm starting to think that we should kind of leapfrog and actually go back to the lessons from India and export Nigerian brains without exporting the people. If we go back for a minute to the way the economy works here, the biggest source of FX is actually diaspora. So Nigeria, unlike many countries...I mean, many countries have a diaspora but the thing about the Nigerian diaspora is, they are at the top end of the income ladder. They are the best-educated group in the United States, they earn above the average American which is an amazing accomplishment for a new immigrant group. We are exporting Nigerian brains and then a lot of the money falls back. Now, we then ask the question, can Nigeria export people but without people leaving Nigeria? So that they are working in Nigeria but they are earning foreign exchange, they’re being paid at the global level or a little bit below because that's what people bid from the demand side, and it’s starting to happen. I want to highlight on this show one incredible woman, incredible Nigerian heroine, and [her] company. This is a company called Outsource Global which is based in Kaduna and Abuja and it outsources to global companies for different kinds of support - call centres, but also…the other support is not necessarily voice to voice but task, legal task in some cases. It has over a 1000 seats on there and it’s founded by this amazing woman Amal Hassan, and it's growing in the Covid-19 because people need more remote work. So think about what's happening here, we now are exporting Nigerian brains, very high value-added, they are not physically leaving Nigeria and this is starting to happen. If you look at some of the global companies like Microsoft, for example, they are putting more and more of their development into Nigeria. So what is that? Again, that's an export of Nigerian people, of Nigerian brains. So I'm starting to think that rather than advocating for trying to follow the East Asian model (that model is gone historically), we should follow more the Indian model, companies like Webpro, Infosys that has turned into giants now. They employed millions of people in India. Tek Experts is another one in Nigeria that is exporting Nigerian brains. To me, that's a higher value-added path at the moment.Tobi: My follow-up to that would be: that requires a relatively high level of human capital and the distribution is unequal and the ability to take advantage of that opportunity will be unequal as well. Maybe it will be different for Lagos, Kaduna, as opposed to Kebbi or...so now my question is do we really have to adopt a distributed, varied development strategy at the sub-national level?Andrew: Let me just go back to the point you made about exporting people being high end... absolutely. Remember, you want to export very high value-added things, that doesn't mean it's the whole economic strategy, so in terms of domestic sectors, we said for four years now the number one sector is real estate. Why? Because, first of, there's a housing deficit. I don't want to give the number because the number that's being repeated, very large number is not very accurate, we don't have that many homeless people in Nigeria but a lot of people live in substandard housing and there is a housing deficit. We need more housing not for the high end but for the middle-income people, lower middle-income people, and that drives employment domestically. So we are not exporting housing but we're doing housing, that is the biggest sector for us. The reason to our employment is every time you build, you need local building materials, you need carpenters, electricians, plumbers, labourers, caterers come on site. And once the place is sold, the family that moves in, they want to furnish it, [and] over time that drives other industries so that's one domestic industry. Agro-processing, we are very keen on as well, we've written a lot on it. But, again, it may not be for export. Some of it could be for export - cashews, maybe eventually palm oil will export but, of course, we have such big domestic uses of... just the domestic use of that is huge. So I don't want to say that exporting brains is the whole economic strategy [be]cause you're right, but it's so high value-added that if we had, I don't know...if we had a hundred thousand educated Nigerians exporting their brains but sitting in Nigeria will have a massive impact on the economy because they're earning good salaries. Now, they're spending the salary, they're buying homes and that's important to labourers, you get the normal, sort of, knock-on effect. So we need [the] export strategy and we also need, kind of, the domestic strategy. Now your question about sub-national, yes, we've said for a long time that one of the major issues in Nigeria is the imbalance of economic development. We have Lagos 30-40 percent of the formal economy in Nigeria and yet many people who are in Lagos that come to work but they don't want to be in Lagos. All of us who live in Lagos are aware of the challenges with the traffic, with the infrastructure. And if you talk to some of the senior political people in Lagos, they will say the biggest problem we have in Lagos is every time we address something, we get more people coming in. So we need development across the country, we need it in Cross River, we need it in Sokoto, we need it in Niger, we need it in the North-East as well. But I think that what's happened over the last two years is it’s not just us saying it, I think everyone recognises it. Domestically people are doing this and you start to see the emergence of some really incredible governors who have taken responsibility for their states. To name a few that I am familiar with...His Excellency Governor el-Rufai in Kaduna working very hard to move the state forward. Governor Makinde in Oyo State. Governor Obaseki, I mean, obviously there are some critical challenges in Edo State but he is very focused on the right things. So I think that's a great movement forward and the Federal Government recognises this too. So, again, we talk about PEBEC and Dr Jumoke, we talk about the National Investment Promotion Council with Yewande. Those groups are now working at the subnational level, I think that's a major step forward for the country and we're going to start to see the fruits of it. I think most governors recognise they themselves have to be out and getting this investment I talked about earlier and are making real efforts. So I think we should be encouraged by that but it's got to accelerate, we have to take the pressure off Lagos, we have to give young people, in particular, a reason to want to stay in their state, or not necessarily move to Lagos [but] to move to some other commercial center where they can find opportunities.Tobi: Deindustrialisation: how plausible is it an hypothesis for slow growth in Nigeria? I mean, services is growing really fast and in terms of value-added it has a higher share of the economy, and agriculture has also a large share but industry has shrunk over the last few decades. So how plausible is deindustrialization as an hypothesis for slow growth?Andrew: Well, I think that we all understand the challenges that industry...talk to MAN (the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria), for example, all the members there understand just how difficult it is to operate and of course you have power issues, you have infrastructure issues et cetera. But before commenting on that, one thing that is important to remember is sometimes the statistics are difficult to interpret. So if you look at the division in the country between services, agriculture, manufacturing get certain numbers... but if we have a tomato paste processing plant, does that get classified as agriculture or manufacturing? So I'm not so worried about, kind of, the statistics [be]cause it is very arbitrary which is what's happening on the ground. But in terms of the manufacturing side of things or the agro-processing which I think is a big component of it that should grow, (and) of course, it already happens...we have companies that do agro-processing. We have Flour Mills, UAC, Dangote...they do a lot of these. But of course it's been difficult. As I said before people have to build their own infrastructure, their own power situation et cetera. So MAN said, we’ve said, others have said...it's so obvious that [the] precondition to moving forward for more value-added manufacturing in any sector is obviously power. We've struggled with it with the privatization that happened 2013, but it seems sensible “oh, privatization, hopefully that will lead to a better power situation” but the truth is it's got[ten] worse and I think now the whole country, everyone recognises that. But I'm quite hopeful on the power situation. Again, first of, there has been [an] admission by everyone, every government, every private citizen that we’re in a power emergency. Two, you’ve got one of the leading figures/leaders in this country stepping up to lead the new super committee that is looking at power and I expect they’re going to come out with some...sorry, let me also say that I'm very very happy that Governor el-Rufai has recovered from the Covid-19 virus, it makes you realise how everyone at every level of society is vulnerable. Thank God that he recovered. But Governor el-Rufai I expect that committee comes out with its recommendations to do some radical things on that, recognising, obviously, we need a cost-reflective tariff, we need a way the bottom of the pyramid can get access to some power. We also need some, probably, decentralization because there are so many technologies for power, and so many decisions to be made it's difficult to make them all at the center. But I do think that would unlock a lot of these issues over the next few years, so I'm very hopeful on the power situation. Tobi: On the power issue, if you have to come up with, say, three things that would really need to happen for that sector to see the needed to change, what would be on your list?Andrew: I'll give you one thing. So we did put out a paper that suggested actually that we should focus the power that we have, uninterruptible power, to manufacturing [and] charge them more for it if they're willing to pay for that, but that's one idea. But the big idea that we put out for three or four years is simply decentralisation. If you look around the world...so I'm Canadian, I think most people who follow me know that. We often on Twitter have discussions about immigration to Canada from Nigeria, but in Canada, power is a provincial issue. So you have Nova Scotia which is a province of about a million people and I think it has (I'm just guessing) probably between 200 and 400 thousand customers between residential, commercial, and industrial and it's a provincial matter. As far as I know, I don't even think there is a national regulator of electricity in Canada. The provinces sort out their own electricity, there's lots of different models - some privatisation, some state/public-sector lead pieces of it and it works fine and then, of course, the provinces sell power between themselves, they sell power to the United States. The power from Niagara Falls which is a large (I am sure people have seen pictures of it, also not far from where I grew up) which [has a] massive hydroelectric dam there, sells its power to New York State and the Federal Government doesn't get involved. So if you wanted to put one big idea out there, it's decentralization. Today, the decentralisation is even more critical because there are so many technologies to produce power on a smaller scale than we had before. If you go back to when I grew up in the sixties, you had this image of big power plants, big thermal plant, big hydroelectric plants, big nuclear plants...now power can be produced in situ where you are at a smaller scale. If you take gas power for example, the scale economics aren’t that strong so if you have gas, you could produce power locally for local needs. So, in answer to your question 3 big ideas, let me put one big idea which is let’s decentralized the power decisions. And I think if you told States "get on with your power situation", they would find local solutions to their own situation to make sure that they had power, that their manufacturers had power, that the bottom of the pyramid had access to some power, maybe subsidized rates, but those decisions can only be sorted out locally.Tobi: Interesting. Decentralisation seems like the solution to a lot of problems in Nigeria.Andrew: Well, people say to me, why do you stay in Nigeria? You’ve lived all over the world, you can be anywhere. I say this is the future. I mean, as we know, the population projections having us come third largest most populous nation, hopefully in my lifetime we’ll see that. It's the biggest economic opportunity, people are incredibly entrepreneurial in tough conditions. So how do you unleash that energy? It's just easier to let people get on with it at the local level. I'm not the only one or PwC is not the only one saying it, except there is now widespread recognition that things have to happen at the sub-national level. I mean, of course, one powerful idea you want to see in any country is, a state has a great governor, I mean Governor Makinde focused on health care, focused on education, focused on continuing the projects of his predecessor rather than abandoning [and] wasting those resources. If the Governor in the next State is not doing it, people are going to say "Oyo is moving forward" and they are going to hopefully elect someone. But that goes back to what we discussed earlier, it's an imperfect democracy but all we need to do is push forward.Tobi: I would want to talk about the Central Bank, how Central Banking is being done in Nigeria. Now, take the power situation, the Central Bank Governor has been on a tour the last couple of years that, oh, this sector, textile, whatever, so they say power is the problem and this is what we are doing to finance power provision. My question is should that really be the remit of the Central Bank?Andrew: I think I will just go back in history a little, a short-term history. What brought me to Nigeria was the financial crisis in, well, the developed world in 2008. I moved to Nigeria in 2009 and my first client in Nigeria was the Central Bank of Nigeria when Governor Sanusi who, of course, became the Emir of Kano (and now is no longer the Emir of Kano) was running it. And he in 2013...I was at the bankers’ committee strategic retreat in Calabar in Cross River and that was his last bankers’ committee retreat. So CNBC came to the meeting and they asked him this... and we all watched while he was interviewed...it was sort of live interview with us in the room, bank CEOs, and people like me, advisory people, sitting in the back and the sides and they asked him exactly that question seven years ago (cause he started intervention programs and, in fact, some of the work that we did with him earlier was what encouraged his interest in agriculture because we pointed out that agriculture was 35 or 38 percent of the economy but had none of the lendings, so that got him thinking about that). So he said, look I get you, you can look around at different Central Banks around the world and they don't do things [like] what we're doing here. And he said but the reason I’m doing it is if we don't do it, who else is going to do it? [The] Central Bank has always been the Federal Government’s MDA that has the most capability, very talented people, high-quality organisation, so they've sort of stepped into the breach. That said, given your question, I guess we've sort of said...look, we're asking too much of the Central Bank in Nigeria.  Sometimes I go on television, and the monetary policy committee will be meeting and the next day or the next week they will be asked: should they cut rates, raise rates 13 percent, 12 and a half, 13 and a half? And I say, look, I don't even think that question is that important because the issues that we have in Nigeria the Central Bank can't solve that way. We have, I won't even call it fiscal issues, we have structural issues that can only be solved by the executive and the legislature at the federal level, at the state level working together, for example, on the real estate... to unlock the real estate sector. So we ask too much of the Central Bank, I wish it wouldn't get so much attention. If you look at developed economies, if I take Canada, for example, I don't think most people can name the Central Bank Governor. He does his part on that, adjust interest rates to some monetary policy intervention. Basically the economy works because it's structurally sound and I can give you an analogy. The Central Bank Governor of any Central Bank in the world is a racecar driver and if you give him a car from the 1920s, it's only going to go as fast as the car from the 1920s goes. If you give him a car from the 1950s, it's only to go as fast as a car from the 1950s. And if you give him a car from 2020, Ferrari (F1 Ferrari), it's going to go that fast. So the issue [is] that people should not be putting so much pressure on the Central Bank in Nigeria to fix our economic and social challenges. It's going to be fixed elsewhere.Tobi: Forgive me, Andrew, this leads me to a sort of question about institutions generally. Yeah, Sanusi started this and maybe, just maybe, he had the sense to know where the limits are, the extent of the capability of the Central Bank to actually solve what you have also said are structural problems that should be fixed at [a] political and fiscal level in Nigeria. Now, we've had some situation in the last couple of years where the Central Bank itself has been the source of domestic economic distortions, in terms of prices and exchange rate. I was reading a paper a few days ago by the former World Bank Chief Economist where he clearly said that there is some evidence, as much as we know what evidence are in economics, that there is some evidence that Central Banks in developing countries would generate a lot less distortions if they adopt some kind of rule-based intervention in the market as opposed to discretions. What I want to ask you is this: is it time for some kind of rule-based regime at the Central Bank? Some kind of legislative oversight over what the Central Bank is allowed to do so we don't have a situation where central banking will only function according to the disposition of the personnel in charge.If we wanted to have a more rules-based approach to monetary policy, absolutely, that would benefit the country, but it also requires the other pieces of the national leadership to do their parts so this will be part of a comprehensive whole. - ANAndrew: I think I would agree with that but the way I phrase this is, we need to take pressure off the Central Bank. I mean, the legislative and the executive arms need to say, okay, we get it, there's a limit to what the Central Bank can do. Obviously Central Banks need to be involved with questions around the currency, interest rates, stability of the financial sector, let's simplify the role here and you can do that and we will create rules that send positive signals to people involved in the economy and investors to do that. That would be great, but then the legislative and the executive arms then need to take on the task of doing what needs to be done to fix the economy structurally. In a way, what's happening is the Central Bank is intervening in tomatoes, intervening in SMEs, intervening in cultural things, in the power sector because the other arms of government have not stepped up to their responsibilities. So, absolutely. But it will have to be part of the whole package. It wasn't like the Central Bank was entering into terrain that was being already done, they enter in because there was a vacuum. If we wanted to have a more rules-based approach to monetary policy, absolutely, that would benefit the country, but it also requires the other pieces of the national leadership to do their parts so this will be part of a comprehensive whole. Tobi: Okay. Another question I want to ask you on that is, I spoke to Nonso on this show a couple of weeks ago. You know Nonso Obikili and one point he raised is that over the last ten years or so, there's been not too many economists at the Central Bank. Bankers have, sort of, exerted a lot more influence on the Central Bank. What I want to ask you is should we separate banking regulation from monetary policy? Would that be a useful way to go, like they did in the UK, for example?Andrew: It's a good question. Canada where I [am from]... everyone knows I'm Canadian...those functions are separated. The Central Bank of Canada is effectively just doing monetary policy. Regulation of the banks themselves, and we have five big banks, some other banks and, of course, the larger financial sector is regulated by any other group, works perfectly fine for us. So I think it's certainly an option. One of the things people may not realise, just for historical reasons, if I remember right two-thirds of the banks are supervised by the Central Bank and one-third supervised by the NIDC. Just for historical reasons they use the same standards, as an example. So we already have supervision done by [a] non-CBN group there, so I think both models can work but I think it's probably, you're right, easier in a leadership sense if the Central Bank can just focus on the core issues of monetary policy, exchange rate policy, interest rates and some other group does the supervision. But I think that issue in the context of our overall problem is probably a secondary issue for the moment.Tobi: Let's go out of that orbit a bit. The creative industry, Nollywood, music and all, how much of a growth potential does it have? Netflix is now in Nigeria and there's a lot of excitement.Andrew: It's massive. We've done some work in the creative industries, how to get funds to them. Even though there are lots of barriers, you'll still see the incredible success of the music industry and now the Nollywood industry around the world, and of course it's massive domestically. But to make it grow more we need to have a little more structure in the industry, particularly people that are creative, that create these incredible products need to be able to get the fruits of their labour. I mean issues around piracy and distribution. But I think enough people have recognised this now, as I said we've done some work...there are people, groups with money outside of Nigeria who now recognise and want to invest in this industry. And again, as we're saying earlier, Outsource Global, Tek Experts, Microsoft...they are exporting Nigerian brains and earning FX for the country increasingly. Nollywood and the music industry as well are earning FX for the country, big exports. And of course, it's not just Nollywood, it's also fashion, for example, it is a big part of African fashion, people around the world are listening. Last night after dinner we listened to Nigerian music, it's just... that's what we do now. It's fantastic, and I think it is also a fun industry. One of the things that Nigeria does better than any other place that I have ever really lived is events. I mean it's just incredible when you sort of see some of it...and of course, it's tied together and night clubs, parties, all of that is tied together with the entertainment industry is a great part of Nigeria.So I think it should get a lot of attention. Now, one of the things that is critical to it, of course is, again, financing. What's happened over the last few years is the banks have become a little more specialised in what they support. Five years ago you never heard of this but now there are some banks, I won't name them here, that are focused on the entertainment industry. The way it works in banking or financial industry is, you really need sector expertise. So if you look at, say, for example, Sterling Bank they have a public strategy, health, education, agriculture, renewables and transport. They really go deep in those sectors. FCMB has come out very clearly says it's going to be agriculture-focused and then some other banks as I said now focused on Nollywood and the music industry. To the extent they've got [the] expertise, they have better ways of channelling money into it. So I think we'll see it develop rapidly and that should be encouraged. Again, it's a service industry but it has great potential to generate value for Nigeria.Tobi: Let's talk about the tech sector. You are an investor and also an entrepreneur in that sector, what is the current state? I'm asking this because, of course, this is going to be a bit controversial... I have a few friends who think that the way things are currently is still a bit overrated...Andrew: The tech sector. The tech is overrated?Tobi: Yeah.Andrew: I think the thing about the tech sector you have to remember is... I meet so many young entrepreneurs, I always make time, someone reaches out on LinkedIn, I'll read the business plan...and, you know, the energy level of the entrepreneurs is just fantastic and just the sheer courage to try something. But the truth is into these, sort of, startup tech things, most of them are going to fail. Sometimes the young entrepreneur is absolutely convinced of his or her success which is fantastic, you need that energy. But the point is you might have fifty fail, but if you have three that succeed in a big way that makes a difference to Nigeria, that is what we want. I don't want us to focus on the failures, what I want us to focus on is how do you create something that works in the Nigerian condition? If we take two areas or three areas, so we take edtech, healthtech, and cleantech/energy. So, health and education - we have said it's basically impossible for Nigeria to duplicate the models that were built 150 years ago in these areas in developed countries. So if you think of medicine, you have physical doctor, physical nurse, you have one doctor for every 500 people on that. We can't mathematically ever get that many doctors in the right location, so there has to be some technological/healthtech kind of breakthrough to deliver. And I know lots of people working on it, we should encourage that and there will emerge out of that some successful ones that find the right models to put things together. In a way, Nigeria has spent its money and in many cases not getting anything for it. - ANSimilarly in education, particularly with Covid-19, people have started to realise they can learn remotely, they can interact with people remotely. Now, how do we solve it for education for Nigeria? But, again, the local conditions are so critical. I've seen some people trying to bring solutions from developed markets, but we don't have the power, we don't have the bandwidth and then your solution fails. What I want to encourage our young entrepreneurs is to try to find things that work under the Nigerian conditions and can piece together these challenges and solve it. Cleantech, as I mentioned, [is] exactly the same thing. Even if we build out the grid, we'd still have, I think estimated for Africa, if the grid was built out economically we would still have 400-500 million people who are not connected to the grid in Africa in 10 years. So the only way to deliver power to them is in situ, like, where they live the only way to do that is obviously through solar. Because if you have to deliver them some kind of fuel, one that pollutes but too, it's just the same problem as the grid, it doesn't really solve the issue. Again, what are the solar solutions that are coming through? Lagos is actually the centre of solar technology around the world, small-scale solar right now. We have so many companies trying so many different things. Some will fail and many will fail, some will work. What I will say about the tech industry is, yeah, there's a lot of hype, one of the areas that I'm not so convinced about is AI (artificial intelligence) you're always hearing about it, what does it really mean? But out of that hype, there's going to be people that build organisations and companies that solve real problems for Nigerians.Tobi: How significant is the talent gap in that sector? Jumia has their engineering staff in Portugal, I know a popular fintech that has their [it’s] engineering staff in Turkey, and is that a function of our low investment in education?Andrew: Well, I think as we know, when Nigerians are given the opportunity, they are incredible learners. We said before, the diaspora has gone and done great things in many countries when they get the education. But in answer to the question, Tobi, yeah, the country is underinvested. People are not getting enough education, resources are diverted to the wrong things, so we started to say the only thing that public money should be spent on are education, health and to some extent some infrastructure, particularly roads. Toll roads are quite inefficient so it makes more sense for the public to finance the roads, but not the port, not the airport, not Ajaokuta Steel, not refineries. In a way, Nigeria has spent its money and in many cases not getting anything for it...it has wasted its money the wrong way. The way we put it is, the only thing that [the] government should be investing in is the Nigerian people. Invest in Nigerian people, [the] economy is going to improve. [If] what you just described doesn't happen, we get programmers in IT people who are domestic, we get some of that exported through these kinds of companies I talked about, some of it go to the diaspora and we get a flow back. But, yeah, we need to invest in people, it's that simple. So if there is one message that we as PwC would like to give the country is if public sector resources are invested in people, the country will thrive.Tobi: Let's close out with coronavirus, the pandemic. The conversation in Africa and, of course, Nigeria has been about how affordable are the economic cost of this, weighed against the public health measures that are being taken - the lockdown, and everything...what some are calling a Keynesian supply shock that has caused even a larger plunge in demand and margins are down for a lot of companies. What I want to ask you is this, if you are in the room with the presidential committee or task force that is responding to this, what are the things that we need to do to have the right balance between the economic cost and the public health measures right now?Andrew: Well, Tobi, I'm not sure I'm wise enough to know the answer to that. I think we all grasp just how difficult the situation is and I really...as you said, the health unknowns, the economic challenges. Six or seven weeks ago, we said the two things that countries need to focus on are: one, getting resources to the bottom of the pyramid and, two, keeping the food supply chain intact. Why is that? Because we understood a lot, you know, in the beginning of this...what would happen is if you have a lockdown, all the people who are in the informal economy or even the formal economy that are effectively earning daily income, daily wages, they are going to lose her job. We've had tens of millions of people in Nigeria lose their source of livelihood in a very short space of time. Everyone needs to eat, so getting them resources is the most important thing and, of course, it doesn't work if the food supply chain isn't intact. The issue with the food supply chain is you actually need some movement [because] where food is grown is not the same place as where it's processed which is not the same place where it's consumed. I think the government has done a good job of focusing on those two fundamental issues, it's imperfect, we don't really have a great system for getting resources to the bottom of the pyramid on that, but I think that between the government, civil society, private sector...people have recognised this issue and they've really been doing the best they can. And, of course, individuals - every individual that's doing well in Nigeria is connected to people who rely on their daily wages and to the extent that they can, many I know are supporting people who have lost their livelihoods. So in the short-term, that's what the country needs to focus on and I think that the Federal Government has done a good job. That said, it's just so complex...it complex from a science, health perspective, we don't know everything about Covid-19, the transmission, asymptomatic people, how many people have it... it's challenging from a testing viewpoint in a place like Nigeria. Testing is being ramped up but still, we haven't tested in a lot of the population. So I don't know the trade-off, I think the Federal Government agency/taskforce is doing the best job they can but we're also seeing cracks with the coordination with the state level Governors, they are under pressure. We all see what's happening in Kano, what the Governor is saying about relaxation during Ramadan (Kano lockdown), yet, there are 100 new cases, over 90 in Kano. How many real cases are... I'm not second-guessing the government, I think they've done all they can in a very difficult situation and I think we're in for, at least, a few months of real challenges in Nigeria. And I want everyone listening to stay safe, keep as many people safe as you can, it is not easy.Tobi: Finally, Andrew, it's kind of a tradition on the show...what's the one idea that you would like to see everyone either in Nigeria or globally adopt?Andrew: We, and I, personally, have started to advocate in Nigeria that we don't measure GDP, that we measure the progress of Nigeria by the progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. The relationship between GDP and human welfare is not that strong and as I said in the 2010 to the 2014 period GDP grew a lot, but the benefits were disproportionately distributed. SDGs are very clear - no hunger, no poverty, good education, clean water access to healthcare... those are things that actually really matter to the welfare of Nigerians. So the one big idea we have is rather than every day we stand up and talk about GDP growth 2.1 percent, 1.6 [percent], 5 percent, whatever the number is, I would like to have a scorecard across the country in every state [of] how is the state doing on their SDGs and have a way of gathering. So people like me can stand up and say" Kwara State is doing fantastic on these dimensions that really matter to people, Cross River is doing great, this other state is doing not so well, Lagos is making progress". I want the language, let's call it the "lens" to shift from a GDP lens to  Sustainable Development Goal lens in Nigeria. That's my one big idea for the day.Tobi: That's interesting. Thank you very much, Andrew, it's been fantastic talking to you.Andrew: Thank you, Tobi. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe

Published Sep 6, 2018 - [Chris] G'day world, Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from MeMedia Studio here at Burleigh Heads for episode 93 of Get Fact Up! And today we're talking about Research Backed Content Creation. So, Andrew, why are we talking about this? - [Andrew] Well, basically, this is how everyone should be creating content. And we talk about this a lot, like, why are you even bothering creating content if you don't know what you're doing it for, if you don't know what keywords you're going for, if you don't know what your competition is like. If you don't know if it's going to contribute towards sales or just people visiting, like that sort of thing. That's kind of what I want to talk about today. - I think this is also putting the consumer at the central part of the conversation. - [Andrew] Mmm. - Around content creation. They are the ones that are going to be your customer. They are the ones doing the searching. They are the ones consuming the content. - [Andrew] Yeah. - And if you don't actually know what it is they're searching for? You're just, pissing into the wind really. - Yeah, effectively, yeah. And talking about what they're searching for, that's basically where you start with all this, so, on this next slide here, I've got a bunch of keywords, and I'm using AdWords data here, so it's pay-per-click info. But it also shows the average monthly searches. So I decided we'll use home insurance as an example, here. Because it's competitive as, I mean if you look at the keyword bidding range over there, your minimum you're going to spend on a cost-per-click is 12.67, maximum about 40 bucks, so. - I love home insurance, or I love insurance as a test case. Because realistically, it's a boring topic, and I think we can take this somewhere, so let's have a look. So home insurance top, - Yeah, so. - What top of page bid range, what's the top bid there? - [Andrew] Okay, so that's to get to the top of the first page. - [Chris] Of course. - [Andrew] The low range is sort of the minimum you'd probably be spending to get there. Obviously different times and when different competitors are active, it's gonna change. And then the top of range, sorry the high range, is the most you'd be spending. I would suspect it's probably higher than that as well. - Yeah, so interestingly, $48 per click, on homeowner's insurance. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - For that keyword, but has a relatively low average monthly search, so that's quite interesting, that that's the most expensive keyword. - It either means people are really not being smart with their ad spend, or that's a really high buyer's intent sort of keyword, so maybe that particular keyword tends to convert better. - True. - It could be one or the other. Probably a bit of both. - Or, or the campaign managers for the insurance company advertising are bidding heavily on the wrong keyword. - Yeah, could be asleep at the wheel. Could be just a bidding war for the fun of it, you know. My point is, it's crazy amount of money you'd have to spend to rank for this, so what do you do next? - Exactly. - What's a better place to look than keywords? Because if you haven't got your funnel tight, and, you know, all the leaks patched up in here, you're basically wasting money here, so, what's a better place to look? - So using, we use this place, this tool as a starting point for our research, and then we take it to a whole another level using various other tools, and our own smarts. But it is an interesting conversation starter for this type of research. And you know, it gives you, just some ideas around average monthly searches, and which keywords are more popular than others. You know, homeowners insurance quote, 30 average, 30 searches on average per month. Homeowners insurance, 140 searches on average per month. Home insurance, 12,100 searches per month. Now these are-- - [Andrew] Australia. - Yeah, these are for Australia, and they're also very high level keywords. - [Andrew] Yeah, yeah. - So let's keep diving in, because-- - So, yeah, moving on, like, obviously you could spend money to rank for these, but you prefer to get organic traffic for these, - [Chris] Hmm. - But, with that level of competition, and if we go to the next screen, we can see the organic competition as well. With that level of competition, I mean, how would you get to rank there? The difficulty here is 60, and that's just looking at the page authority and the main authority for all the competitors on the first page. Which is extremely high. I mean, you're going up against Allianz and Budget Direct and things like that. - [Chris] Compare the market, yup. - Also, if you wanted to rank organically here, obviously you would want to get maybe like your service or listings page, like the page with all your products, to be on here, not an article or something like that. So, how do you make that interesting? How do you get that on there? Well, you kind of can't. - [Chris] No. - You have to think outside the square, and I know that's where we kind of want to go here. - Well, sorry, let's rephrase, because you can, we know you can, but-- - You can't just make that page get there, you have to, just like a-- - Do a lot of stuff around it. - Call it like a hot air balloon method, where you're sort of using a lot of stuff around it to drag it up. - [Chris] Yup. - With everything else, so, the next thing you want to do is find related keywords, related long tail keywords to home insurance, and also what we call shoulder niches, which is more generalised verions of the same keyword. So I collected up a a whole bunch of different keywords that sort of fit in that category, they were related, or you know, very similar category to that but tied in, like someone that's looking for home insurance is also thinking about this. And amalgamated them, and we have a look here. So what we're trying to do next is find opportunities. First thing we see here is the difficulty is much lower for all these keywords. And you can see there's a couple examples down at the bottom I just sort of pasted there. - [Chris] Yeah. Organic click-through, right? Which is the purple one, is pretty high. - [Andrew] So that's good, so low difficulty, high click-through rate for all of these sorts of topics. And then the next thing we want to do is look at SERP features. And it's a little bit small here, but basically what that is, is I've analysed, what, other than just simple text results are there. So is there images, is there videos, is there local pack, is there maps? - [Chris] Yeah, so what are we seeing on those SERP features there, the first two, they're really high. - [Andrew] Okay. - [Chris] Competitiveness on content. - [Andrew] That's AdWords. - [Chris] Yup. - [Andrew] So basically, everyone's fighting in the AdWords space here. - [Chris] Yup. - [Andrew] The next one is there's a lot of maps listings, which obviously, everyone is gonna have Google My Business set up. - [Chris] Of course. - [Andrew] In this industry, one would hope. And then the other two bigger are shopping related. So obviously buying policies directly on Google. There's not an awful lot in the way of imagery. There's not an awful lot in the way of, like rich media articles, which is the one in the middle, that's dead flat. And there's not a lot in the way of video, so, this is where we can see there's some opportunity here. - [Chris] Yeah. - So rich media content, and we always talk about this. - Yeah, absolutely, we do always talk about this. And what we mean by that, is that obviously text content is where we all start. Our previous videos have indicated that a video, a two-minute long video, can actually cover about a thousand word article. You know, you can fit a thousand words into a two minute video, pretty much. - And best of all, it's high engagement, but I'm coming up to this soon. So, some pretty good related keywords I found here, like home insurance tips, why have homeowners insurance, that's not the exact keyword, but it's related enough, and then looking a little bit outside to broader sort of categories, how we calculate your insurance policy, and I like this one, how building materials affect your premium. - Yeah, that's really interesting. - I thought that was really cool, like, that's something people would probably want to read before buying a house or-- - Building a house. - [Andrew] Building a house, yeah building house. - Absolutely. So that's really interesting and I guess this is what I was talking about earlier, is putting the consumer at the central part of your content marketing strategy. What is it that they're interested in? What is it they're searching? You know, I know we didn't put it in here, but I started thinking like, well, the biggest thing that I want to know is how to save money on my home insurance. - [Andrew] Hmm. - You know, how do I hack, hack my insurance to-- - [Andrew] Yeah. - To get the biggest bang for buck. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - Not just home insurance, insurances across the board, health insurance, am I wasting my money? Or how do I get the most out of it? If I'm gonna pay for it, how am I gonna get the most out of it? And funnily enough, I think maybe, insurance companies might be thinking, no, we, well at least me as a consumer, I think insurance companies are thinking, no, we don't really want people to get the most out of their insurance, because that's gonna cost us money. - [Andrew] Mmm. - Well, regardless of what you think, insurance companies, consumers do want that. - So if you actually deliver content to them that they're really interested in knowing, then essentially, you're going to attract them through organic and not have to pay per click. - Yeah, and something that people are probably wondering is, so a lot of these topics don't necessarily mean somebody's immediately about to buy. - [Chris] No. - So how do we get to that? - Don't worry about that for now. That's sort of in the last step here. At the moment we just want to get highly engaged traffic, relevant traffic, to your website. And then we sort of tie that back in. But moving on, I'm looking at okay, so just a slightly more related keyword to home insurance. We've got home insurance tips. Big difference here, difficulty to rank this organically is 27 as opposed to 60. You're going up against some, just slightly more general stuff, so you can fit in quite easily when you look at you're up against insurance council and finder.com.au. And best of all, organic click through rate for that is 100%. So people looking for home insurance tips are guaranteed to go into something on the first page. And that they're doing their research. - [Chris] We can't get better than 100%. - [Andrew] Yeah. - [Chris] Yeah, this is really interesting, yeah so, insurance council, finder, iselect, all non-insurance companies creating content which we know full well they're making money out of because they're probably doing affiliate marketing or something along those lines, and getting a clip of the ticket when people actually do sign up. But they could actually be selling advertising to those insurance companies or whatnot. - Mmhmm. - Now, insurance companies shouldn't be relying on these third parties. We're speaking-- - [Andrew] That's right, yeah. - About insurance companies as any business. Any business shouldn't be relying on third parties creating a bucketload of content about their industry niche, to then drive traffic to them. - As much as affiliate, an affiliate channel is a good income stream, and channel in its own right, if it's too big, it floods the market with content that just pulls people away from you and your direct brand, so it's an issue. So, slightly better difficulty, slightly better competition here, like it'd be easy to rank for home insurance tips. But how do you do that? So, we have a look at what obviously everyone else is doing. And we've seen that they're not doing much in the way of rich media content, so go for that sort of thing. Video, with subtitles, podcasts, relevant interesting images in your content, infographics, subheadings and sections to your content divided up so it's skimmable, and combine it all together, basically, like-- - [Chris] Combine all that content together. - Video, blog, images, all that sort of thing. Basically, you're looking for engagement. Interactions with your page, time on site, low bounce rate, pages per visit, that's what will get you above finder.com.au for home insurance tips. - And then, as an insurance company, if you actually surpassed all those third parties. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - And they click directly on your content, you've saved yourself that affiliate marketing. - [Andrew] Yeah, they're not taking your clip at the ticket there. - [Andrew] So. Coming right back to that, how does that relate to you getting your service page, your home insurance page up? This last step is what everyone forgets. That's, - [Both] Internal linking. - [Andrew] So all of this awesome content that you're putting out there, it's getting you ranked for all these relevant terms to your industry, make sure you're linking back. In your content, inline your content, and in the footer with a call to action back to your home insurance service or catalogue page, I guess you'd say. Because all of these well-ranked articles that you're putting out there, they're all going up the Google ranks. They're all linked back to your main one, and that gets dragged up with it. Whoa. It's a little bit hard to do these movements. Your main page gets dragged up with it. So that's how you, basically, would rank a page that's difficult to rank with really high competition. - [Chris] Yeah. - And that's also what other people aren't doing, yeah. - Yeah, so this is tip of the iceberg, I guess, snapshots, of where we would start with our keyword research, you know the actual, I think the half hour prep time that you put into this, we didn't dive into all of the opportunities that would come out. - Aw, yeah, it's huge, and just the research phase in itself, you could do an entire three or four episodes on. - Absolutely. - You know I just, - Got the data ready. - Well, maybe we're geeks, maybe we're not, but I know there's high fives get thrown around the office when we find the, this awesome piece of gold, which is a keyword or phrase that is being searched, thousands of times per month, tens of thousands of times per month, and has super low competition, and/or has no competition for that rich media content. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - And guess what, we're going to overtake you, as the competitor every time when we see that, every time. - Yeah, like we always say, we find and go for the low hanging fruit first, get results quickly. And we've seen some clients have, like one piece of content drives 50% of their traffic to the website now. - That's the role that-- - Hundred hundreds a week. - Well, that's right, but that's because we haven't just stopped at creating one piece of content. - [Andrew] Yeah, yeah. - We've created bucket loads of relevant, engaging content, yeah? Related to the keywords. - Mmhmm. - That have high search terms. - That we know people are looking for in. - And we're internal linking. And we're driving traffic back to those important pages. What do people want to know after they've started reading every piece of content? They want to know how much it is. If you know, even if they're not ready to buy, they still want to consider it, right, that's really interesting, how much? Wait, what? Okay, is there an opportunity to buy now? Well if I was going to buy now, how much is it? So, what's the details? How do I go through the process, if I wanted to? Tell them that. Link them back to that page, that conversion page, that you want to rank really well. People may not buy now, but they still want to know the process. And in an insurance case, just for example, it's going to be a year-long consideration, or at least half a year. Maybe halfway into the year, I'm going, hmm, where's my health insurance or home insurance sitting at the moment? Where could I save money on that? How can I maximise those costs? - And there's going to be a lot of searching, in between there as well. They're going to be researching a lot, so I'd say this is probably a niche that needs a lot of content out there, and I'm not seeing enough of it out there, to be honest. - Super slow burn, and again, we're just using home insurance, and house insurance, and health insurance, and car insurance as one example. This is the same case for everybody. Everybody is taking longer to consider what their next steps are. They're doing a lot more research. They're getting more educated. They got the resources. - Mmhmm. - You know, are sitting there. The internet is sitting there, giving them those resources as and when they want them or need them. And so, having all of that content, if people are constantly hitting your website on the topics that they're searching, and not somebody else's, for the course of a year, guess who gets considered, is the highest to be considered when buying. - Mmhmm, and who gets ranked the best. - That's the obvious sideline benefit, yeah? And we all know that Google organic traffic converts best out of all traffic. The pay-per-click stuff, it hurts. It actually hurts to pay that, geez, $48 per click. But the reason why they're doing it is because potentially, it's a high converting keyword. But if you get that for a lot less, as in free through organic, you'd take it every time, wouldn't you? But it does take an investment, a front-loaded investment. - Yeah. - To get it to that point. Cool. - Time. I hope everybody got some value out of that. Data-backed research on content creation is super important. If you're not doing it, like we said, you're just pissing into the wind. If you don't understand that, basically you're throwing money away, on your content creation. - Yeah, it's not worth, it's not worth doing it. - Yeah. - [Andrew] Because you could actually be having a detrimental effect to your brand and SEO. - Yeah. - [Andrew] If you don't do the research. - Yup. And you're just putting content up for content's sake. If you're not putting up rich content now, in this 2018. Forget about it. - Basically Google doesn't like trash content. Google is a garbage collector. - [Chris] Yup. - It has to clear out the crap constantly, so. If you're making Google's job harder, then it's going to consider you basically a pollution. - Yeah, and if you're not structuring your content to be skimmable, and you're just dumping that content on the page, copy-paste out of your word processor, with no formatting whatsoever, then essentially, yeah, you're going to lose me as well. You're going to lose the consumer. Yeah, I might come to the page thinking I get this awesome article, and all of the sudden I just see paragraphs of, you know, 12 point text, with no bolding, no headings, no images, no infographics, no video, nothing for me to share, nothing for me to take away, no reason for me to bookmark it and want to come back again. - [Andrew] Mmhmm. - [Chris] See ya later, I'm out, three seconds, you've got three seconds to keep me on that page. You'd better make that content look awesome for to start with. Anyway, let's wrap it up. Thanks for watching guys, MeMedia, Get Fact Up! We've been running this for a little over two to three years now. Two years, a little over two years now. And it's proof that content marketing works. If you want to talk to us about content marketing, you can tell that we've got the smarts, the know-how, and definitely passion to drive your business above and beyond on Google organic search search results, which is what converts the most, so give us a call. Thanks, and see ya next week. - [Andrew] Thank you.  

Victoria:Hey everyone, it’s Sensei Victoria Whitfield here, your journey partner in business, welcoming you back to episode 60 of the Journeypreneur Podcast. This is your source for channeled holisticstress management techniques, guidance, inspiration and motivation to stay on your path to rapid financial ascension and massive impact as a conscious entrepreneur. Today’s episode, I’m going to bring back a dear friend of mine, Andrew Mellen so that you get to know him better. He and I both were members of a business group coaching program and we noticed that now that we are no longer at the program, we have so many people that we know and love, and we miss them and would love to maintain a relationship with them. So today, he is going to be on with me so we can get to know him better here, and I am going to be bringing other friends of ours on to the podcast in the coming weeks so that you can get to know them along with me. So, strap in, here we go! Andrew, welcome back to the Journeypreneur Podcast. Andrew: Thank you, it’s great to be here with everybody. Hi! Victoria: Yeah! So, let’s get into it. Maybe this is the first time someone is meeting you. What helps, I found, is to be able to share what are the 3 things, maximum 3 things, you’re known for in your business and in your career. So, tell us. Andrew: Ok, well for one, I am known as the most organized man in America. So, that was not a title that I gave myself. That’s something that the media called me. And so, I am happy to use it. So that’s one thing. Time management, productivity, efficiency, sustainability those are the things that I focus on in my work with both individuals as well as B2B companies like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Mets or American Express. And there’s a certain mindset that I’ve picked up along the way to keep growing my business these last 20+ years. Let's talk about it! - Are you blocking your next business breakthrough? Take the assessment at http://www.victoriawhitfield.com/quiz to find out, and book your Breakthrough Call with me!

On today’s episode you will hear part 4 of 4 of Russell’s interview with Andrew Warner about the Clickfunnels start up story. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this part of the story: Hear Russell get put on the spot when he has to answer various questions from the audience. Find out why Russell loves Voxer so much and uses constantly. And find out how Russell plans to take Clickfunnels to the level of Sales Force in the future. So listen here to the final part of this 4 part set of the Clickfunnels Start up story as Russell is interviewed by Andrew Warner. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the 4th and final installment here of the interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club, where he’s going deep into the Clickfunnels startup story. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far. You know, throughout this entire interview, it was really fun. He brought my wife onstage and some of my partners onstage, and brought other people who didn’t like me at first onstage and kind of shared all these things. I hope all you guys are enjoying it and really enjoying this interview. I hope that this starts making you think about your startup story. Some of you guys are living your startup story right now, and maybe you’re depressed or nervous, or scared, or afraid or whatever. And hopefully this gives you motivation to know that I was there too. In fact, I’m still there many times, but it’s okay and it’s part of the game and part of the process. And someday you’ll look back and you’ll have someone like Andrew interviewing you about your startup story and you’ll be so grateful for the trials and things you’re going through now. So with that said, we’re going to queue up the theme song, when we come back we’ll listen to part 4 of 4 of the Clickfunnels startup story interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club. Andrew: And I know a lot of you have asked me what’s coming up next and Russell’s going to talk about that, how you’re going to get to Sales Force level, but why don’t I take a couple of questions from someone. Is there anyone who’s been sitting here going, “I can’t believe Andrew didn’t ask that.”? Is there anyone who has something standing out for them? Should we just have them onstage. Unknown person: We got mic’s. Andrew: We got mic’s from over there, okay. Audience member: Alright, a little bit deeper of a question. What is something, I know you’re strong in your faith, family, God, I mean kind of all around, what’s something that’s really made you who you are? You’ve mentioned before that made you as a marketer with your dad, you’re up late watching an infomercial. But what’s something that inherently that could have been experienced, maybe a quote in the back of your mind that’s just driven you, it could have been something that your parents taught you when you were young. What is, is there, it’s kind of a little bit difficult of a question to look back, there’s probably a million things. But what are one or two that really stick out, that make you the person that you are? Russell: I have a million thoughts just racing through my head. The one that just popped in the front, so I’ll share that one, hopefully it’s good. I remember when I was a kid my dad gave me a job to go clean the car. I went out there and I cleaned the car, I did my best job, I thought. And I came back in and I was like, “Hey dad, it’s clean. Can I go play?” I was like, “Come look at it.” So he could let me go out and play. And he was like, “Well, is it good? Are you proud of it?” and I’m like, “I don’t know.” And he’s like, “Well, are you proud of it.” I was like, “I don’t know.” And he’s like, “Go work on it until you’re proud of it, then come back and let me know.” And I was like, oh man. So I go back out, and I was like, “Am I proud of this?” and I was thinking about it, I guess technically I’m really not that proud of it. So I was like trying to do more things, trying to clean it better, and to the point where I was actually proud of it. And then I came back and I’m like, “Dad, okay the car’s clean now.” And he’s like, “Are you proud of it.” I’m like, “I am.” And he’s like, “Okay, you can go out and play then.” I think for me that was such a big thing because it was just like, that internal “Am I proud of this thing that I’m giving, that I’m putting out there?” and if not, keep doing it until you are. And I don’t know, that was one of those little weird dad moments that he probably didn’t mean as a teaching opportunity, but definitely has been big for me ever since then. Andrew: Good question. Is there one on this side? While you’re finding a person who has a question, Whitney, did you have more to say? You were going to ask more, right? Yeah, can you get the mic over to Whitney, please? She’s right over here. I know I didn’t ask your full question. Whitney: Hi Russell, how are you? Russell: Awesome, how are you doing? Whitney: Good. So with your business, what is, back to like when you were first starting, I kind of want to know, what’s the one thing when your business was really hard, when you were really struggling, what’s the one thing that kept you going? Just in the back of your mind. And then I have a second part of that. What would you say was your biggest failure and what was the greatest lesson you learned from it? Russell: That’s not an easy question. Andrew: The biggest failure. Russell: Oh man. So the first question was, what was the first one again? Thinking about the biggest failure, I’m trying to…Oh, what kept it going? Andrew: Give me a sec. Are you going through that now? You are, what are you going through right now? Can you stand up and get close to the mic? I can see that this is a meaningful question for a reason. What’s going on? Be open. Whitney: I’m just trying with my business, I’m trying to get my message out there. I’m really, I’m just baby parts of Clickfunnels, so I’m just figuring out how to do a funnel still. But my company is called Creating Powerful Women, so I am just trying to teach women how to grow a business while they grow their family at the same time. And I’m doing that right now, because I have 3 little tiny girls. So I’m just like, okay, I’m still trying to figure out this myself and then teach women how to do it at the same time. So it’s just, I’m still in that struggle phase. Andrew: Is it partially because you feel like an imposter, how can I tell them what to do? That’s what I was saying to you earlier. Whitney: When I don’t even know. Yeah. {Crosstalk} Whitney: I feel like I need to have that success level before I can teach women to go out and do it. But the reason when I found you in the hall, and I said, “I want Russell to be vulnerable and tell like the nitty gritty parts of the story.” And those stories are what make people relatable to you, that’s kind of where I’m at, as I realize that I grow a bigger following and a bigger audience when I’m more relatable to them, which I realize I don’t need to be up at that level to do that. Andrew: I get that. Russell: So my question for you is, have you been working with women? Helping them so far? Tell me a story of someone you’ve helped. I’m curious. Whitney: So I went through post partum depression a couple of years ago, after I had a baby and a lot of the women I’ve been reaching out to when I shared those stories, those women have been coming to me saying, “Hey, how do you get through this struggle? I know you’ve gotten past that, so I want to hear the hard stories that you went through.” So a lot of the people who I’ve been coaching one on one have been people who have gone through those exact same things  that I have. Russell: Okay when you do that, and you share the stuff with them, and that clicks for them, how does that feel? Whitney: Like I’m fulfilling what I was put on this planet to do. Russell: That’s the thing. That’s the thing that keeps me going. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens often enough that I crave that. I’m super introverted, so it’s always awkward for people to come to me, but I still love when they come to me and they’re like, “Hey, just so you know real quick…..” Like last night, we were in San Francisco, or San Diego, excuse me. Someone came up to me in the hall and I was kind of like, I’m nervous to talk to you but you’re going to talk to me. And he said, “Hey, just real quick, you legitimately changed my life, you changed my family.” And started tearing up. And I was just like, I let myself feel that just for a second and then I go back to the awkwardness, but for a second I feel that. And It’s just like ahh. That’s what it’s about you know. I use Voxer for my coaching clients. So every time they Vox me and say something like that, there’s a little star button and I star it and it stores them in this huge thing of all the starred ones. So now days I’ll go back and I’ll listen to that and I’ll listen to people like 2 years ago that said something about how something I did effected them, and it’s just like, that feeling. Because everything we do in this life is for feeling’s right. Everything is just a feeling we’re looking for. We eat because we want a feeling. We did this because we, I wanted a feeling. We’re doing everything for a feeling. So it’s like if I can remember the feelings of the thing I’m trying to get, and I can experience it again, then it, that’s what gets me and keeps me going.  And I think that any of us that are lucky enough to have those feelings, a lot of times we forget about them. No, remember that because that’s the thing, when it’s hard and it’s painful and it’s dark, it’s that feeling that’s just like, that’s the, you remember that and you let yourself experience it again for a minute. And then for me, that’s like, okay, I can get back up and I can go again. Andrew: Great question, I’m glad you asked it. How about one more over there? You know what, yeah, let’s give her a big round of applause, please. Audience member: I was actually going to ask a little bit about that vulnerability. I was surprised, I’m big in the SAAS space, I’ve been to Dream Force, follow a lot of Clickfunnels. It’s pretty rare to see a CEO want to put themselves kind of on the roasting side of things. You’re from here, from Sandy. I was just kind of surprised, what was it that really compelled you to kind of want to come back and do this in Utah? When I saw your email I thought it was a clickbait scam. Russell: Oh it is, we’re selling you something next. Audience member: I really thought I was going to come and it was going to be a video of your face spinning and it was going to be like, “Hi, we’re here.” Because I follow Clickfunnels, but it’s just really rare, especially being down in Utah county, that was kind of unique that way. Andrew: Wait, one sec. Does Clickfunnels allow me to actually place someone’s city in the headline, like I want someone from San Francisco, you could. Oh, alright, I get it. Audience Member: It said like Idaho, we’re in the surrounding areas, it’s going out to 8000 people, limited seating. So as a marketer I was just like, is this a real thing? You know. So I showed up and I was excited to see you. But why come back to Utah, what does this event mean to you and why want to be vulnerable and kind of open up? I learned a lot about you personally that was great to hear from a business side. Russell: So my beliefs are, and I believe we have the best software company in the world, so I’m going to start with that. But if it’s just about the software, then it comes down to who’s got what feature. People are moving and shifting and changing because of the features. That’s the thing. So Clickfunnels was like, no it has to be more and it has to be a thing. And it’s interesting, people who sign up for Clickfunnels, who click on an ad, they come and sign up. That’s why John can’t do, it doesn’t work that way. They sign up for a web, clickfunnels is a website builder for crying out loud. You boil it down, we are a website builder. That is boring. So people don’t come for that. They stay for that. That’s why they stay, that’s why they stay. But they come because of a feeling, and they come because of a connection. I want to be able to take the videos from here because if I can more people who come through my funnels to hear this story, they’re going to stick with Clickfunnels because they realize we have a soul. There’s a reason behind this, it’s not just the software company who’s trying to make a bunch of money. We’re actually, we have belief behind it. So that’s why we do all these things. That’s why I still write books. That’s why we do videos. That’s why we do vlogs. That’s why we do this fun stuff, because it builds connection with people, and connection really keeps people staying, even if some other company’s got a different feature than we do, or it’s cheaper and we’re more expensive, or whatever. So that’s the big reason why we still do it. And then I thought it would be fun to come down here because I grew up not far from here and it’s just kind of a fun thing. We’ve been working with the Harmon Brothers and we started another project with them and their family owns the Dry Bar Comedy Club, if you guys have ever watched Vid Angel, that’s one of their families companies. When Vid Angel had their little hiccups, they shifted all the programming to this, the Dry Bar Comedy Club, so we used to watch all the comedians here. And I was like, this is like the coolest location to do something like this. And one of the other side jokes, I don’t know if I shared this with you or if it was just in my head, but Andrew is famous for doing these big scotch nights, and as a Mormon I can’t drink scotch. And I was like, what if we did this, but at a Dry Bar, just this funny play off of that? And it all worked out. Andrew: You know, usually at events I do scotch night afterwards and say, ‘Everyone come back to my room.’ That’s not going to go over very well. But Dave’s been to mine. He drinks water and feels comfortable. We have good water for Dave. How about one more, then I want to get into the future. Audience Member: So you always talk about how, like for Clickfunnels you guys took like 6 tries to finally make it work, right. And how most of the time when you guys start something it doesn’t work the first time, that’s why you have audibles and all those things. So I was wondering as someone that, you know I’m starting and getting that, kind of like that lifts, what is the biggest thing that you see, versus like a flop funnel versus something that kind of takes off and explodes? What’s the audible or the change that you normally do that shift or the message change or whatever it is, that makes it finally take off? Russell: Traditionally the difference between a funnel that works and doesn’t work, I’d say it’s probably 50% offer. Like if the offer’s wrong it’s not gonna, that’s usually the first thing. But then if it’s actually a good offer, that people actually want, second then is usually copy. So like what’s the hook, those kind of things. And then design is probably 3rd. All that stuff that Theron and those guys didn’t like at first. The things that, because it’s not like we just made up this stuff, you saw 8000 funnels we tested and tried in the journey of 15 years of this, that now we know what things people convert on. So it’s just like looking at stuff that you know is working and modeling it because you this structure works, this kind of thing. But usually when something is broken it’s coming back and figuring out, this offer’s not right. People didn’t want it. And that was the problem with Clickfunnels. The offer, we took 4 or 5 times to get the offer right, and then as soon as the offer is right, you can tell when it’s right because people will buy, even if everything else is bad, if your offer is amazing people will give you money for it, you know. So that’s definitely the biggest part, and from there it’s copy, then design, then all the little things that stress some people out, like me. Andrew: So I’ve got, we’ll come back. I see there are a few people that have more questions; we’ll come back to them in a moment, including you. I promise I’ll do more. But you did tell me about all the different things you guys are working on now. Of all of them, what one is going to get you the closest to Sales Force level? Russell: That’s a good question, there’s so many things. So I would say, I’m going to ask you a question is that alright? Have you ever played bigger yet? Played bigger? Playing bigger?  Andrew: No, what do you mean by that? Russell: That’s the name of the book right? Play Bigger? Andrew: Oh Playing Bigger, the book. No. Russell: Yes. So that’s book’s been interesting, if you guys haven’t read it, it’s one of the biggest ones as a team that we’ve been reading. But it’s all about designing the category and becoming the king of that category. So I feel like we are the king of sales funnels, and that’s our category, the thing that’s going to be there. And then if you read through the book, the next phases are like, building out the ecosystem that supports you as the category. And the fascinating thing about sales force, if you look at it when, I probably shouldn’t say this on video because someday Mark Benioff’s going to watch this and be like, “I’ll never give you money.” But sales force isn’t great software, right. It’s this hub that things are tied into, but the reason why they did 13 billion this year, they’re trying to get to 20 billion is because they built this ecosystem. The ecosystem is what supports this thing and grows it up, and builds it. And that’s like the next phase. So I think for us, it’s like we have this, we have funnels which are the key. It’s like the CRM for them, it’s the central point. But it’s then bringing all the ecosystem, it’s building up all the things around it, right. Andrew: Letting other people create things on your platform, becoming a platform. Russell: Yes, becoming a true platform. Andrew: can you create a platform when what you want is the all in one solution when you’re saying, “you don’t have to plug in your chat bot to our software. We’re going to be chat bot software.” “You don’t have to plug in infusion soft, we’ve got email marketing in here or mail chimp.” Russell: It depends, because you look at Sales Force is similar too. They have their own things that they either acquire and bring them in, or they build their own, things like that. And I think it’s a hybrid of that. I think it’s, we allow people to integrate because some people have tools. We will, our goal is to always be the best sales funnel builder on planet earth. We may not be the best email auto responder in the world, we have one and that increases our revenue. And people who love us will use our email auto responder, but there may be some other one that’s better. But it’s not our big focal point. There may be a chat bot that’s got more features and more things, that’s not gonna be our focus to make it the best, but we’ve got one built in to make it. So theer will be, that’s kind of our thought, that we will have the things included, so if people want to go all in they can use it. But if they love yours because of these things, they can still bring that and still bring it in. You know, and then as we grow, who knows what the next phase is. Is it acquisitions, finding the best partners? People that most of our members are using, start acquiring companies and bringing them in, internally similar to what Sales Force does, growing the platform. Andrew: Just keep letting people build on your platform and then does that make the platform more valuable, or do you guys get a share of the money that people spend on these external tools? Russell: Both, I think. Stripe for example, Stripe, I think we process 1.7 billion dollars through Stripe. We make over a million bucks a year from Stripe referral fees, for just letting them connect with us. So there’s value on both sides because it makes the platform more valuable because people can use it easier, but we also make money that direction as well, and those type of things. Andrew: Okay, what is Actionlytics, Action… Russell: Actionetics. Andrew: Excuse me. Russell: So that was Todd’s name. He loved that name. So Actionetics is, it’s what we call internally, follow-up funnels. So we have sales funnels, which are page one, page two, page three, page four. Then a follow-up funnel is send this email, send this text message. “Here’s the retargeting pixels, here’s the thing.” So it’s the follow-up funnels. It’s all of the communication that’s happened after somebody leaves the page with your audience. Andrew: And that’s a new product that you guys are creating? Russell: Yeah, it’s been, actually we make more revenue from Actionetics than we do from Clickfunnels right now. We’ve never marketed it outside though. Andrew: I can’t get access to it, it asked me for my username and password. I said, I don’t have that, so how do I sign up for it? Russell: it’s only been in beta. So we opened up at Funnel Hacking Live, people signed up there. And then we kept it down for a year, then we opened it, so two Funnel Hacking Lives we opened it, and then my birthday we opened it. So that’s it. But we have, it’s over, 12-13 thousand members who have upgraded to that. And then we’re probably a couple weeks away from the actual public launch where people will be to get, everyone will be able to get access. Andrew: And already people are spending more money on that than Clickfunnels? Russell: Yeah, because it starts at $300 a month versus $100. So it’s the ascension up. So they go from $100 a month to $300 a month and then the new one, it scales with you. Because we’re sending emails and Facebook message, it gives us an ability to grow with the platform as well, and not just have a $200 a month limit. Someone might pay $1000 or $5000 depending on how big their lists are. Andrew: You’re really good at these upsells, you’re really good at these extra features. How do you think about what to add? How do the rest of us think about it, based on what’s worked for you? Russell: Okay, that’s a great question, and everyone thinks it’s a product, the question most people ask is, what price point should my upsells be? It has nothing to do with that. It has 100% to with the logical progression of events for your customer. So when someone comes to you and they buy something, let’s just say it’s weight loss. So they come to you and they buy a weight loss book right, and let’s say it’s about how to get abs. So they buy that, the second they put their credit card in and click the button, in their mind that problem has now been solved. I now have six pack abs, the second it’s done. And people don’t think that. So what people do wrong is the next page is like, “Cool, you bought my abs book. Do you want my abs video series?” it’s like, “No, I just solved that problem. I gave you money. It’s been solved.” So what we have to think through, for logical upsells is like, “okay, I just got abs, what’s the next logical thing I need?” So it’s like, “Cool you got abs now, but how would you like biceps? We can work it out. This is my training program to grow here.” For funnels it’s like, here’s this funnels software, or here’s this book teaching you how to build funnels, but after you have a funnel you need traffic. So traffic’s the next logical progression. So as soon as someone’s bought something, the customer’s mind, I believe, that problems been solved. And it’s like, what’s the new problem that’s been opened up, because that problem’s been solved. That’s the logical… Andrew: I got my email addresses because of Clickfunnels, the next problem I’m probably going to have is what do I send to people? And that’s what you’re solving. What about this, fill your funnel, it’s a new software. Russell: Yeah. Andrew: What is it? Russell: How do you know these things? That is good, you have been digging. So I’m writing my third book right now, it’s called Traffic Secrets, and then on the back of it we have software that’s called Fill Your Funnel, that matches how we do traffic with the book. So when someone reads the book, you login and the way we do traffic, we focus very heavily on influencers. We call it the Dream 100. So you come in and you login and you’re like, “Here’s the people in my market. There’s Tony Robbins, there’s Andrew..” you list all these people and it starts pulling all our data, scraping all their ads, their funnels, everything  and shows you everything that’s happening in their companies, so you can reverse engineer it for what you’re doing. Andrew: So if I admire what John is doing for you guys, I could put you in the software, you’ll show me what you guys are doing, and then I’ll be able to scrape it and do it myself. You’re nodding. And you’re okay with that? John: It’s awesome. I’m excited. Russell: Excited. Andrew: Have you been doing that? Is that part of what’s worked for you guys at Clickfunnels? John: Yeah, we like to, we call it funnel hacking. We like to look and see what other people are doing. Andrew: So you’re actively looking to see what other, man as an interviewer that would be so good for me to understand what people are doing to get traffic to their sites. Alright, so… Russell: We buy everyone’s product, everyone’s. I bought Drew’s like 6 times. Yeah, you’re welcome. Just because the process is fascinating to see. Andrew: And then the book. What’s the name of the book? Russell: Traffic Secrets. Andrew: Why is everything a secret? What is that? Russell: I don’t know. Andrew: No, I feel like you do. I remember I think it was… Russell: It all converts, 100% because it out converts. Andrew: Because the word, “secret” out converts? In everything? Russell: Everything. I used to onstage be like, “The top three myths, the top three strategies, the top three lies, the top three everything” and like “secrets” always out converted everything else, and then it just kind of stuck. Andrew: And then that’s the name of this book. I’m looking here to see…yeah, Melanie, she told me when you organized this event you said, “Secret project”. That’s it. Russell: If I just tell people what’s happening then they like, “Oh cool.” I need to have to build up the anticipation. Andrew: Even within your team? Russell: Especially within the team. Yes. Andrew: Especially. So secret is one big thing. What else do you do? Russell: Secrets, hacks… Andrew: No, within the team. So now you get them interested by saying it’s a secret. Russell: So I’ll tell them a story, I’ll tell them the beginning of a story. I’ll be like, “Oh my gosh you guys, I was listening, I was cleaning the wrestling room and I was going through this thing, and I was listening to Andrew and he was doing this campfire chat and it was amazing. And he’s telling this whole story, and I have this idea, it’s going to be amazing. But I’ll tell you guys about it tomorrow.” So what happens now, is they’ve got a whole night to like marinate on this and be like, “What in the world?” and get all excited. And then when they show up, they’re anticipating me telling them, and then when I tell them, then I get the response I want. If I tell them they’re like, “Oh cool.” I’m like, no, you missed it. I need that, in fact, I’ll share ideas all the time, I’ll pitch it out there just to see. I know it’s a good idea because Brent will be like, “I got chills.” Dave will start freaking out, and that’s when I know, “Okay, that was a good idea.” If they’re like, “Oh that’s cool.” I’m like, crap. Not doing that one. It’s the same thing. Andrew: I’ve heard one of the reasons that you guys hang out together is one, he’s an extrovert and you’re an introvert, but the other one is Dave will one up you. Russell: It starts the process. This is the bubble soccer event we did. Initially it was like we’re going to have influences, or we were launching the viral video and like we need, let’s bring some people into it. And then we were asking how someone could bring big influencers, like “you have to do something crazy. Like get a Ferrari and let them drive over it in a monster truck.” I was like, “That seems extreme.” I was like, “What if we played football on the Boise State Stadium?” And Dave’s like, “What if we did bubble soccer? What if we tried to set a Guinness book of world records…” and then next thing we know, we’re all Guinness book of world record champion bubble soccer players. It was amazing. Andrew: And that’s the thing that I’ve heard about your office environment. That it’s this kind of atmosphere where, see for me, look at me, I’ve got that New York tension. When I talk to my people and I talk to everyone it’s like, “You’ve gotta do something already.” And you guys like fun, there’s a ball pit or whatever in the office. Am I right? You go “we need a, we’re gonna create a new office. Let’s have a bowling alley in it and a place to shoot.” That’s the truth. Russell: It is the truth. It’s going to be amazing. Andrew: Does he also tell you, “We need to do something this weekend. Date night, it’s a secret.”? Russell: Maybe I need to do more than that, huh. Andrew: Yes, does he use persuasion techniques on you? Russell: It doesn’t work on her. Andrew: No. Russell: She’s the only person I can’t persuade. It’s amazing. My powers are useless against my wife. It’s unfortunate. Andrew: Do you actually use them, or when it comes to the house you go, “come on, I’m tired already, just…”? Russell: I tried to do something today and she was like, “That was the worst sales pitch ever.” I’m like, “Dang it. Alright, I’ll try again.” Andrew: Hey Siri, text my wife “I’ve got plans for tomorrow night. So good, Russell just told me about it. I’ll tell you later. Secret.” Period, send. Russell: That’s amazing. Andrew: Wowee. Does anybody know how I can get a babysitter here. {Audience speaking indistinctly} Andrew: They’re a little too eager to spend time with my kids. Thank you. Alright, I said I would take a few more questions. I know we’re almost out of time here. Who was it, it was someone on the right here that was especially, you looked, uh yeah you, who just pointed behind you. Audience Member: Hi, okay, Russell I’ve been in your world since about 2016.. Andrew: Hang on a second, who the, I’m sorry to curse, but who the f**k comes to a software event and goes, “I’ve been in your world.”? This is amazing about you. I’m in San Francisco, there’s nobody that goes, “I’m so glad I’ve been in the hubspot world.” It doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry, I had to interrupt. Okay. I’ve been in your world. He’s selling you software, you’re in his world. Sorry. Audience member: You have to listen to his podcast, it’s a.. Andrew: I’ve listened to his podcast. It’s just him talking. Audience Member: He talks about it, it’s a universe. He creates a universe. Andrew: You know what, here’s the thing that blew my mind. I thought it was him in a professional studio, I saw him in San Francisco, he’s talking into the voice recorder on his phone. Okay, yeah. I gotta feeling that Russell’s going to go, at some point, “Religion is just an info product. I think I could do a better job here.” Alright, yeah. Audience Member: okay, I entered the Clickfunnels universe in 2016 and since that time, I came in with a lot of hopes and a lot of, it was just a really exciting experience to have you break down the marketing, you really simplified it right. So I see that, I’m an ambassador for the one comma club challenge right now, and people are coming in with such high hopes and such tremendous faith and trust in you. And I have a friends that I brought into it and everything and they’re coming in, just like, they’re really staking a lot on how they’ve persuaded to join your universe. Sorry, universe is the wrong word. But from that, I guess the question is, there’s a few things. I think a lot of people are afraid of that type of responsibility in the products that they’re delivering, and of course there is a tremendous failure rate of people who don’t get what they’re persuaded in. So there’s a lot of magnification on the two comma club, and the people there that are the successes, but the question that I have is, the responsibility that you feel for that, I feel that you feel the responsibility because you’re constantly looking for new ways to simplify, bring in new coaches, bring in the new team, make products and offers that are completely irresistible. Truthfully, I went to Funnel Hacking Live, I’m not spending any money, 20 thousand dollars later. I mean it was truthfully so irresistible, but you’ve crafted such unique things in an effort to truly serve that client and really get them to the place that they’re looking to go. So I’m not sure if the question is coming out, but there’s a lot of responsibility that all these bright eyed, bushy tailed you know, wannabe marketers are coming in really truthfully feeling the genuine just truth that you’re telling them, but then there’s a big crash and burn rate too, which is normal in that space. I’m not sure what the question is. Andrew: Congratulations  to the people in the two comma club, what about the people in the no comma club. What do you feel is a sense of obligation to the people who aren’t yet there? What do you feel about that? Russell: Is that the question? Andrew: Is that right? Audience member: I guess the question is, there’s two parts, one is the responsibility that other people are feeling, the fear that they’re feeling to put something out there because they’re afraid of a failure rate. So just like, Whitney over there was talking about, she’s got those fears. So there’s normal fears that come along with that, so how you deal with that, in that it’s not because of lack of delivery on your end, but there’s still people who are spending tremendous amounts of money, or small amounts of money that just aren’t getting what it is. So it’s really about your internal feelings about that topic. Russell: It’s a good question. There’s a lot of different ways I could answer it. I’m trying to think, for me it’s a big reason I do have a con stripe, because I do feel like I have a huge obligation to people who sign up for our stuff. So I’m always thinking, how do we simplify this, how do we simplify it? What’s the best way to do it? What’s the thing? But that’s also what creates innovation right. It creates the ideas, it’s that, how do we serve these people better? How do we serve them better? Probably the best analogy, in fact, Brandon over here was working on a video that he sent me last night, that I had a chance to watch, it was really cool. We had Sean Stephenson speak at the second Funnel Hacking Live. Was anyone there for that one? A couple of you guys. Sean Stephenson, if you know him, is the 3 foot giant. He’s this little dude in a wheel chair, one of the coolest humans on earth. And he told this story, it was funny because man, I had another emotional connection watching it last night actually, watching it. And he talked about stories like, “How many of you guys here are upset because you got 17 followers on Facebook and you’ve got 13 likes on your YouTube video, and you’re pissed because of all this stuff.” And I think of a lot things that way. “I’m trying this thing, I’m not a millionaire yet, I’m not making any money, blah, blah, blah.” And they’re upset about that right. And what Sean said, he’s like, “Do you know how they choose who they’re going to save when a helicopter is flying into an ocean and there’s a boat that’s wrecked with all these people. Guess how they choose who they’re going to save?” and he said, “What happens is the helicopter drivers, they fly over there and go down to the people, going to save them, and guess who they save, they save the people who are swimming towards you.” He says, “That’s how you do it. If you try to save everyone, it will drown you, it’ll drown the boat, and everybody dies. But you save the people who are swimming toward you.” And then he came back and said, “Those 17 likes on your video, those are the 17 people who are swimming towards you. You have to understand that.” So for me it’s like, we talk about the money because that gets people inspired, but when it all comes down, the really internal belief, no one really cares about the money. They want the feeling of the connection and the help and they want to change the world. They have their thing, and so it’s like, we talk about the money because it gets people excited, but I don’t know anybody who that’s the real reason why they’re in business. They’re in because they want, they want to help those people that are coming towards them. So you notice when you get deeper into the culture, it’s not just money, money, money, money. It’s how do you serve, how do you impact, how do you change the world, how can you get your message clearer, how can you do those things? And when you shift from the money to that, then the money starts magically coming. So for me, it’s just like how do we get more people thinking that way more often. I don’t know if that’s the right answer or if that helps at all, but it is definitely something I feel a big obligation for but I also feel like I’m super grateful for the people who are willing, I’m grateful to Don Lepre, spent all that money doing the infomercial on that thing. And I didn’t implement it back then, when I was 14, right. I’m grateful to the next guy who re-inspired me and I bought the thing and didn’t do anything and then next person and all those things, because eventually it stuck. So for me, it’s like I’m going to keep creating offers and keep doing cool things, and trying to inspire people because it might not be the first or the second or the fifth, but eventually if I keep being consistent on my side, it’s going to keep getting it and eventually the right people, those who actually have something they want to share, something they actually care about what they’re doing will figure out the way. And we’re just going to keep trailblazing and trying to do our best to make a path that they can all follow. So that’s kind of how I look at it. Andrew: Great question. Let’s close it out with one more. Yes. Dave did you find someone, because I just found someone right here. Why don’t we do two more then? Since you found one and I found one. What’s your name? Sorry, Parker? Parker. Go next. There we go, let’s go to Parker next and we’ll close it out with him. Parker: Alright, so the biggest question I have for you Russell is, I’ve seen you guys’ amazing group you guys have at Clickfunnels, and every time I go in your guys’ office it’s nothing but excitement, energy, and not only you don’t have to inspire your workers to work for you. They come there excited and hearing your amazing stories that John and Brent had of, they stayed with you for all this time and you pushed them and they pushed you and there’s this amazing cycle. I’m curious as far as, because I want to have an amazing group like that one too so I can affect the world the same way that you have, and even do better than you did. And that’s a completely admiration thing, that’s I don’t know. Dave: Cut from the same cloth here. Russell: That’s his dad. Dave’s son. Andrew: Oh got it. That makes sense. Parker: The question I have for you is, how do you find those people? Is it nothing but like a whittling out process or do you see these characteristics already in the people that you have? Andrew: One sec, how old are you? Parker: I’m 20 years old. Andrew: 20 years old and you admire your dad and the guy that he works with so much that you want to not just be like him, but be more like him? Can you take of my kid tonight? Sorry, that’s amazing. Does your dad come home with this energy like this energy like, “We’re going to capture the world. This is what we’re going to do.” Parker: it is the funniest thing. Oh my gosh. Every way you see him online, social media, whatever the heck it is, it’s exactly the same way he is at home. When you see him on the tv talking about like, “Oh this is…” or when you interviewed him. Andrew: I’ve watched his podcast, I see that thing. {Crosstalk} Parker: you know as much as I do then. Andrew: What did he motivate you to, like to sell as a kid, or to upsell as a kid. Parker: So he would like talk to us like he was a sales person basically, in the aspect of he talks about things as far as, this person did a terrible job at selling. They could have done this, this, this and this.” And we’re like 10 years old, I think at the time, I think. I don’t know. It’s more of a recent change since he joined clickfunnels and he’s got this amazing excitement and energy. It’s an amazing thing and I wish to have to people like my dad when I become a, when I start to do my own thing. Andrew: It is contagious isn’t it? Parker: yeah, it totally is. Andrew: And I’ve been watching, what’s this new Vlog that you’ve got. It’s on Russell, it’s on Russell Brunson’s YouTube channel right? I’m at the end of it going, “Hell yeah, why am I taking a shower now. I gotta go, I got stuff to do.” Right. These guys are out there taking over San Francisco, that’s my city. So I guess you’re feeling the same way at home. Now, he’s there twice, he suddenly owns a place. So your question was…? Parker: My question was basically, how do you find these amazing people to work, not only for you, but with you and to help you accomplish your dream? Is it whittling out process or it you have innate ability to find people? Russell: So as you were saying that I started thinking, I’m thinking about the partners on our team, who none of them came through like a help wanted site. None of them came through like, Brent went to church with me and he showed up every single week, every single month, he was my home teacher and showed up every single month consistently and we became friends and we did stuff together. John married my cousin. We were on the boat in the middle of the lake and he pitched me on a network marketer opportunity and I was like, I love this guy. And then I pitched him back and we just, and it was amazing. And then Dave, we were at an event like this and we had a signup sheet if you wanted to take the speakers out to dinner and Dave ran back and signed up every single line under mine. So I went to every single meal with him for 3 days. I think it’s just, I think a big part of it, I think most entrepreneurs can’t build a team because they’re waiting to build the team. And I think for me, I didn’t know what I was doing so I just started running, and what happens when you’re moving forward and motion is happening, people get attracted to that. And some people will come for bad reasons and they’ll leave, and I’ve been taken advantage of multiple times, things like that will happen, but the right people will stick around. But it’s all about, it’s the motion right. That’s what people are attracted to. If something’s happening. I don’t know what’s happening, but I want to be on that train and they start coming. So I think it’s taking the initiative of “Okay, I’m going to start running and I have no idea if anyone’s going to follow me ever. But If I do this and I keep doing it consistently then people will.” And you know, it’s been a consistency thing. I’m 15 years into this business now, 8000 funnels deep. But it’s a consistency, and when you do that and you’re consistent, then the right people will just start coming into your life. But not waiting for them initially. If I would have waited to build my team initially, we wouldn’t have a team. Everyone we met was like in the, as we were having motion, the right people started showing up. Andrew: Alright. Thanks. Speaking of, thank you. How many people here are actually at Clickfunnels, if you work at Clickfunnels. Can you guys stand up if you work at Clickfunnels. There you go. I feel like at the end of this everyone’s going to want to go and meet Russell. Everyone’s going to want to go and mob him. And he’s not that social, number one. Number two, I feel like you’re going to pass up these fan-freaking-tastic conversations, I’ve gotten to know the people who work here a lot really well in preparation for this, I really urge you to see the guys, the people who are wearing these t-shirts. Get to know them. Push them into a corner, understand what’s working for them. And really, you’re fantastic people, thanks so much for helping me do this. And thank you for having me on here. I really appreciate you being open, being willing to let me take this anywhere. You said, “I understand what Andrew is trying to do. He’s trying to figure this out. I’m going to let him run with it and let him make the magic happen.” And I think we made a lot of magic happen. Thanks so much for having me here. Russell: Yeah man, it was amazing. Andrew: Thank you all for coming, I’m looking forward to meeting every one of you. Thanks.

Local musician and author, Andrew Castro, discusses his new book Overcoming Your Anxiety for People on the Go.Transcript:INTRO: This is Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today, your host is Ojig Yeretsian. She'll be speaking with Andrew Castro, a professional singer-songwriter turned author. He's recently written a book, Overcoming Your Anxiety for People on the Go. OJIG: Thank You, Andrew, for coming in today. Welcome to the show. Can you tell us about yourself and why you wrote this book? ANDREW: Yeah. So for me, the book wasn't planned. I kind of just spontaneously decided that I had all this information in my head, and I wanted to sit down and write it. And for me, it was just years of personal experience with the content that's in the book. And so I just kind of felt like a gut feeling that I needed to sit down and just put it out. So I just sat down at my computer, wrote it, and I'd struggled with anxiety and stuff. But it didn't really become like a problem for me until I was about twenty five, I’m thirty three now. It was just kind of built, kind of like happens for a lot of people like a hidden layer that you just think it's kind of who you are. And then all of a sudden, it just kind of explodes just from too much buildup. And that was kind of what happened with me, and I went through years of it, pretty debilitating stuff. And then then I kind of got over it, but I went back in the same patterns, and then I, uh, had another bout with it again for a couple of years. And then I decided that, you know, it's time to make an actual change, not just let's see if I can fix this a little bit, but go back to what I was doing. So I had to really change my entire life patterns along the way. Along the way, I've been a professional musician, too, and that lifestyle doesn't always give the best results for not having anxiety, you know, because you're constantly not knowing where you're gonna be next kind of thing. So but yes. So the book just kind of came out, and it didn't take that long to write. It's short, but I outlined it for a couple weeks and then took about two months on and off to write it. OJIG:How do you define anxiety? ANDREW: I wouldn't put any single definition on it because there's so many different variations of it. People have social anxieties. In a simple term, for me, it's just overwhelming. I think that would be the best way to describe it. It's just an overwhelming feeling that there's, you know, social anxiety people who, like I have a friend who has social anxiety. He has more panic, and I have more generalized anxiety, but it's all comes down to just being very overwhelmed by whatever situation you're in with that anxiety. I have small social anxieties like most people do, but nothing that's overwhelming for me. But, you know, for him, social anxiety is overwhelming, like interacting with new people or being in group settings. It just and I don't feel that. But I can understand what he's going through because I think the general of feeling of anxiety is pretty, pretty close to the same. Just depends. Some people have it in this situation, and some people have in that. For me, I would say it's over just overwhelming sensations in thoughts, and they can just cycle and go back and forth with each other. OJIG:It sounds like it's very common. ANDREW:That's the biggest thing I think I tried to come across within the book is that you're not alone. That's the thing that people see and struggle with the most is when they get these feelings. You can't feel what somebody else is feeling, so you don't know that the things you're feeling aren't just you going crazy that they're actually like a pretty common thing, and I don't usually use stats much. But like there is one that always stuck out was that there's about forty million people in the United States alone that suffer in their life with some sort of anxiety disorder, which is an enormous amount of people. And those were just the people that are telling the truth. You know, there are some that are hiding it or don't want to talk about it. I think in some way almost every human in their life goes through some form and some get caught in it more and it lasts for a very long time and some some don't, some just have, ah, easier time letting go of things. For me, it wasn't like that, I just got caught in a cycle. Habits are a big thing, but, yeah, people are alone. And when that's the first thing that I realized when I started reading other books and other people's blogs and stuff, and I was like, it made you feel a little like, ‘Oh, there's other people with this’. You take a deep breath and then a lot of them have gone through it, and they're like, Oh, yeah, things the anxiety doesn't really bother me anymore. And so you go, ‘Okay, how'd you do that?’ And then you start to learn. I try to tell people to educate themselves as much as possible. Understanding something is the first step to getting over it. I think I compared it in the book to when you have your ah, cell phone and they put, like, new software on it. And, you know, you don't know what the heck’s going on. You know, the apps are changing. You don't know what you're doing, and you get frustrated. But the more you do that, you're not gonna learn anything. So if you just take fifteen minutes and start to learn ‘ah ok’, then it's like ‘Oh, this is actually better’ and then you start to learn the phone then all of a sudden, like, just take the time to learn it and you're not afraid of using your phone. You were like, I mean, with anxiety prior to take a few months or even a year. But if you learn about it, it diminishes the fear that you have over it. OJIG: Take us through the process. How does anxiety start and how does it grow? ANDREW: For everybody is different. So I'll speak for me. It definitely started when I was a young. So I talk in the book about this thing called a snowball effect. And it's a pretty common thing that people use for a ton of things that I thought it applied well to this. I think you kind of have a point in your life where things start to happen and you can go this way or that way, you know. And, uh, I chose this way, whatever that way is. When I was young, I had this memory of being at a drive-in movies with my parents, and I was just I was four or five and I just started crying because I had these overwhelming thoughts that my parents were going to die someday. And I was really young, but the feeling that I remember is that I couldn't control, that was gonna happen. And that for me, it was like a big thing throughout my whole life is not being able to control things around me that are uncontrollable. And then I don't like that. And then, you know, you worry about those things, even though it's impossible to stop those things from happening. But I did that from a young age, and you just don't know. You're unconsciously you don't know what you're doing to yourself. So for me, it started like that when I was really young. And then I went down that way, and I would just constantly worry about things over and over and same patterns. And just after years of doing that, it just ballooned, snowballed. And then best way to put it is that it explodes. When I was in my twenties. I mean, I liked to go out on my friends and drink, and that doesn't help somebody who's already sensitive to anxiety. So then, ah, yeah, just just kind of exploded. So that snowball just builds and you don't know it's building and the only way to stop it from building is to change, and that's very hard. But if you don't change, you know it's like that, Einstein quote, paraphrasing: but the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over. So a lot of people want to not feel what they feel, that they're not yet willing to change what they're doing. But that's not their fault, really. It's just kind of a symptom of anxiety. They're afraid to do it, but when you get there and you start the process, it's well worth it. OJIG: There are a lot of self help books out there about anxiety. What makes Overcoming Anxiety for People on the Go unique? ANDREW: So I definitely took a couple examples from a couple books that I love. And I think what makes my book and those books unique is that there's no, it's not about tricks and gimmicks. No pinch this nerve or, you know, take ten deep breaths. I'll use this essential oil and that, and those are fine, like I'm not knocking those. Those are good, but they're all temporary things that are very impermanent, simple things that will help you in this moment. And my book is more about the long haul. So it's about the process of changing your perspective on your thoughts and your sensations and all that stuff. And I think a lot of books out there nowadays are doing that more. Ten years ago or so, it was just about the gimmicks and tricks. But we've learned so much about, uh, your your mind and, you know and sensations and your awareness that the way to get through anxiety is acceptance, and being aware of it, instead of just reacting to it. Had people interview me before, and they always they go ‘so what are some tricks and tips on how to you know’ and I was like, I mean, I don't really want to give those cause that's not what it's about. I've done those before, and they will, they kind of will help, like breathing obviously help. It does help. But it's not gonna, it's not going to do anything tomorrow or the next day. So you gotta learn, to just see things differently, and it takes a long time. But everybody's process different. Some person get over in two months, two years, five years. It's all different. Everybody's different in that way. Yeah so I think it's unique and just that it doesn't. There's no tricks or gimmicks. It's just everything in there is about how to take big steps to getting or little steps to where you want to be. OJIG: I found it to be engaging, humorous and a very quick read. Why only eighty pages? ANDREW: Because I think I just wanted to engage people. And I don't I don't like long books. When I get a book that's like four hundred pages and it looks like a daunting task. So when I see a book that short, but I packed a lot of content in it and just, you know, eighty whatever, pages it is. I wanted to be a book that people could read in the sitting or two to sitting three things, and then it's just something you can take with you, and you can just just reference it. OJIG: And its small so you can carry it in your purse, backpack, satchel.ANDREW: Right and that's what I wanted it to be something like you said in a purse or backpack or whatever. And nowadays, to people don't have attention spans either, you know, so keep it short and the people love that, ‘Oh, I read your book and like to sitting down to go back and re-read some stuff’. So that the whole idea of keeping it short and carry it with you people are saying that they're doing that.OJIG: That's great. So you've been getting positive feedback so far? ANDREW: Yeah, it's been it's been great. And it's a little overwhelming sometimes, like, because I'm not a doctor or , you know, a psychiatrist, or therapist and whatever. And sometimes I don't feel totally qualified. But I'm not, I'm not giving anybody advice for like this is what you need to do, I'm just telling you, here's what I did. And if you can try that and it works, then great. If it doesn't, then you know. But I try to encourage them to read other books, and if they're not going to therapy, they probably should. I think everyone should go to therapy like the whole world. Everybody should, have some sort of therapy sometime. OJIG: We're all the walking wounded. ANDREW: Yeah, exactly. Everybody everybody has, you know their things. And but I have given people advice, but I try to do it from my own experience kind like a book. I stick to that because I don't want to tell somebody that they need to do something for them because I could get in trouble with that, especially if they do something and it doesn't work or they hurt themselves or something. I don't want it. So I just ‘Here's what worked for me’. And yeah, a lot of people message me and told me that they're implementing a lot of things I said and that it's helping little by little. You know, basically, I try to tell them is to be patient. That's the hardest part. It takes a lot of a lot of courage and a lot of willpower, because sometimes I'll have really bad adrenaline. Just pumping through my body, and you just I have to sit there and just watch TV or read your book. Just sit through it, because if you start fighting it, it just gets worse. And the cycle continues. And I knew that I had just to be like, ‘Okay, come on and just let's just have it out’ and then you sit there and sometimes it last for hours. It's draining, and you want to quit all the time, but gotta find it in you to keep pushing through. OJIG: It sounds like it's a practice. ID/BREAKIf you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today's guest is Andrew Castro. He's speaking about his experiences with anxiety and depression. He's recently written a book, Overcoming Your Anxiety for People on the Go. OJIG: What are you hoping to achieve with this book? ANDREW: Well, first I wrote it, I think a lot for myself, just like a therapeutic process. And I just want, if it could just help some people. I don't know how many that’s going to be, if that's a hundred, I mean, five hundred, as long as it helps some people that's it's accomplished its goal. I just wanted to get people and I want people to know that that you don't have to be like this forever. That's the thing that scares I think everybody. And still I get that sometimes, like, I'll get a little bit of anxiety, and then, you know, those old thoughts would creep in and be like, ‘What if it's like this forever?’ But then I now I just ‘No. Let's just give about thirty minutes’ and you'll see it's just gonna fade away, and it usually does.OJIG: Is this the book you would have wanted to read when you first realized that you were dealing with anxiety, that this is what it was? And did you seek any medical guidance or advice? Did you see any professionals? ANDREW: Yeah. So this I didn't know it, but this would have been the book, you know, that I wanted to read. And then I did. There was a book called At Last The Life by Paul David. And my book is very much modeled like his but, just with my own experience. Yeah, that book was the book that was like that started me on getting to my recovery. You don't know what the time you're just looking for anything. I started therapy was in seventh grade. I remember just being overwhelmed by a lot of things then, and I, at that age, asked my parents to see a therapist. And, uh, it was very bene- I went to it for, like, ten, twelve years, something like that. And then I stopped. And now now I see one down the street from where I live in Sacramento every every few weeks or so. Just, you know, sometimes I don't even necessarily need it. But I talk about it. And then as far as medication and stuff for a couple months, I was on Xanax. But there was always something in me that I didn't want to be a slave to something. I think medication is great to help you get where you want to go. But if, I know a lot of people who take it just to get rid of their symptoms. I always try to, like, really walk the line here because medication is very beneficial in the right circumstances. But it just it could be a crutch, and you sometimes never want to let go with a crutch. And a lot of people just take medication and just don't change anything in their lives. That's when you ah, you don't go anywhere, you're just you're basically just you're numbing yourself and which some people you need it. At times, it's so overwhelming that you have to have it. But if you don't implement the other, the other practices that will actually change your whole perspective on what you're going through, then you're always going to need the medication. If you need medication, you should go to a professional and you should have a whole game plan and say, ‘Okay, I'm gonna be on this specific medication for four months and at two and a half months we're going to slowly wean off it, and while we're doing that we're going to get deep therapies to what's happening because what medication does it can take the edge off to give you room to, implement these things.’ Like sometimes people get so overwhelmed that they can't get their mind to accept what's happening because they're so overwhelmed. I've been a nervous flyer before too and still kind of am. And I've taken Xanax on a plane, and it works. Like you get you get really, you know, kind of mellowed out, and it gives you room to kind of organize yourself a little bit. But, you know, I always had the bottle, but it was almost like a comfort. And I remember, I go on trips and I always bring the bottle because I was like, just in case something doesn’t go over well. But I knew I wasn't gonna take it, like I just knew. But I knew if it was there and I had to or something that I could and then but when I really started noticed I was getting better was I remember that time I just had it and I was going on a trip and I just didn't bring it. I was like, ‘well, let's just see what happens’. And then I got through the trip and then you get confidence more you do that. So that's what from me, what it was was I felt personally that I could get through it without using medication. Not everybody can. I don't know if everybody should try either. OJIG: You have a phrase in the book you mentioned ‘Don't believe everything you think’. Explain what you mean by this. ANDREW: I got into meditation, like a couple years ago, two and a half years ago. That quote there didn't mean anything to me two and a half years ago. But, you know, I read a lot of books on especially on Buddhism and Eastern philosophy, you know, and, you know, my own personal perspective on is they seem to have something right on all that. And so what it is, what it means is that I have a section the book called The Thought Factory. And so I say that your brain is like a factory and its main product that it produces and exports are thoughts.OJIG: Assembly line.ANDREW: Assembly line, just thoughts. And they're just that's all they are. And if you really want to get really deep into it. You're really not even necessarily thinking all those thoughts. They're just just taking in stuff. And then, you know, smells will trigger a thought, or a sight will trigger a thought or a person will trigger something that just stored in your brain just keeps getting sent up. And then there's a great line in a book: Your mind directs your thoughts towards your awareness. So your awareness, you know there's awareness which we don't exactly know what it is. But there is awareness, and your mind projects these thoughts, and then they're so real and something overwhelming that we put all our energy in awareness into them so you can take a thought, like from get on airplane. And before I get on it, I just picture it crashing and burning and whatever. And that's not happening. That's not a real thing. That's hard for you to understand that, but like to not believe that is that's reality. That thought is happening right now. But you were projecting yourself into the airplane crashing and you're making yourself get all worried. But you're just sitting in the airport, doing nothing. So it's just a false, just false. OJIG: Having the space to ask yourself in the moment ‘Is this true?’ANDREW: Right, yeah, especially during meditation. You, can see thoughts just pass. They kind of float and then they burn out. That's a big thing with people with meditation is they think they're not supposed to think like I couldn't stop thinking. Well, you'd probably be dead if you weren't thinking. One thing that helped me was that your heart its function is to pump blood to the body, your liver, you know, detoxifies, your digestive system digests your food, your eyes see and your mind thinks. It's just a function of your body, and that's what it does. It thinks, and you can attach your awareness to certain things to problems, all the do all this stuff. But if you attach your energy and awareness to every thought you have, it's going to be, it's going to be rough. And, um, that's what happened with me. I would have negative, scary thoughts, but I would believe them so much because they were in my head. So I was like they have to be true and you have thousands of thoughts all the time. Like if those are all true that the world would be a really weird place. You don't have to believe any of it. You get to choose what you want to put your energy into and believe and go from there. But meditation really helped me with that. There's a monk, who said, ‘Don't believe your thoughts. They're fake news’, which I thought was great, especially for this time. OJIG: It's the beginning of the new year, and people may be setting intentions. Can you share a nugget of how listeners can change their habits or make a change around this? ANDREW: Yeah, I think doing one little thing differently is a start. When I was younger, I had bad OCD. And I did a bunch of different things before I went to bed. Like it took me a long time before I could got to sleep, right To check the blinds. I checked the locks and do this. You know, one night I just decided to eliminate one thing. You know, one little thing like tonight, I'm not going to do that. It was hard not to do that one thing. And then I don't the other things, but And then once I didn't do that one thing you to try and take it. So I think for people you know the new year. I think if you have ten, you know, really crappy habits that you know are just these aren't doing me any good, get rid of one and go from there. Because the biggest thing is gaining confidence and they talk about that a lot in Buddhism too; it’s faith in the things you've done, give you the confidence in the faith in yourself to keep going kind of thing. And any faith is great. But that, for me, was a big thing. Because so when people eliminate one little habit like for a New Year's resolution and they see that after a few weeks and ‘oh the habit’s kind of gone or it’s changed’ and they start to go, well, I could probably that with another habit and then you slowly start to do that, and that changes your perspective on, on, things. Because humans, we are our habits. If you consciously go through your day, you'll probably notice fifty things that you do every day almost the same way. And if a lot of those things are negative, you're inflicting harm on yourself through some of those habits than it's just going to keep building. And that's when you're gonna have a lot of stress and anxiety and depression. You know all that stuff because you're like watering those seeds. So that's what's going to grow. OJIG: Can you read some passages for our listeners? ANDREW: Sure. So I really like this one here. This one I'd like to talk about with people, but it's hard for people to hear this. I'll read, and then I'll explain. It says the universe doesn't owe you anything. The sooner you realize that things are just the way they are, and sometimes they're crappy, the sooner you will learn to accept your situation from that point on, you can decide who you want to be and how you want to get there. It's all up to you, But please realize your anxiety is not special. I've been so lost my own anxiety that I didn't realize close friends around me were suffering from the same thing and vice versa. We're all in this together. We all share some form of suffering. The quicker we can all realize that suffering is a part of life, the quicker we can master our response to that suffering. Basically, a much more gentle way of putting it is you are not alone. Okay, so I like this one's in the afterward, and it says, anxiety is not something you need to carry with you the rest of your life. At least you don't have to carry it the same way you have been carrying it. I hate when people tell me to manage my anxiety. The only thing I'm going to manage is keeping myself on task and dedicated to eradicating old habits, to shift my perspective on life. We got ourselves into this mess so we can definitely get ourselves out. So I like those because especially the first one, there was a friend of mine who was going through the same the same thing. And I didn't even know that because you're so caught up in all this is my problem. No one's feeling the way I'm feeling. But there are millions people feeling not only the way you're feeling, but exactly the way you're feeling. This isn't something that's unique to me. Like I'm the only one who has this disease or something like it's not a disease. It's just, you know, it's a psychological disorder and millions of people have it. And there was something I learned from Will Smith actor and he said he was using much of examples. But one was like If you were abused when you were a kid, which is awful and you have trauma from it is terrible. And it's it's a weird thing to hear because I'm not saying anything negative. But it's still that person's responsibility to fix it and to deal with what's happening because no one else can deal with it for them. People can help them and support, but same with, like, if you have a death in the family, do you still have the things that are left inside you that you have to learn to accept and be responsible for OJIG: Healing yourself.ANDREW: Healing yourself and you need you need support, you need people around you. But in the end, if you can't make the decision, the universe doesn't know anything. It's just, basically, you have to take the initiative to do it. What I've gone through is very minimal compared to someone who's like lost a parent when they're young or, you know he's living in some country that's torn apart by war. My problems are small comparatively, but I still need I need to sit down and go. These are my problems. I have to fix them. And if you want other people to fix them for you, that's never gonna happen. I wrote an article for this local online publication in Sacramento, and I said that I'm the one who built my life, so if I built it, I can tear it down and I can rebuild it kind of thing. And obviously, sometimes, genetically, you're more prone to things. But that doesn't mean that has to be you forever or whatever. It just means you have to work a little harder rebuilding it. My choices and habits built this building of anxiety. So, I can knock it down and I can build a new building next to it or far away, or whatever. You know what you're going through is not special. It's very common. And that's That's a good thing. I'm not trying to be mean about like it's just it's not special. Like I had somebody call me once. They were going through a really tough time they were asking me, How do I get rid of these feelings right now? And I just told him, You can't That's hard for them to hear. It was somebody close to me, so I was like to realize you can't get rid of it actually frees you from fighting them. OJIG:So it's part of the human condition. ANDREW: Yeah, that's like we were talking about Buddhism that we saw because there's lost there's disease, There's pain, there's all this stuff and you're never gonna be able to get rid of those things. You gotta learn to deal with those things. OJIG: How has anxiety or living with anxiety impacted you as a musician and as a performer? ANDREW: Started playing, writing songs maybe, like nine years ago. And I love doing it so much that I wanted it to be my career, But it's not a very easy thing to make into a career. So it caused for me a lot of stress because I just felt I wasn't made to have like a what you call a normal job. I guess, you know, you go to the office or you go work, whatever. But then I had this thing that I love to do that. I was getting better out, but it doesn't make any money, and money is a big stress builder. It's one of the biggest things that people have regrets about or, you know, are worried about in the future, and it causes a lot. And that caused me a lot of anxiety because I want to do this thing. But I couldn't make money at it. Then I move to Sacramento because a smaller area and I really networked and I made it my profession and I toured. It's a very exciting thing, so make a little exciting way to make a living. But it's very draining because you play shows sometimes with two people. When you leave town Or you're playing some restaurant or bar and no one's paying attention. Or you have ten shows booked in February and then four people call you cancel and you just lost like a thousand dollars. It's ah, the unknown cause me a lot of anxiety and stress. And so when I start writing this book, I took a break from music till about just a couple weeks ago, and I started writing again. I took, like, six months seven months. Just no, no writing, no recording and again changed my whole perspective on music. So before I was chasing it, like I wanted to be a star and beyond stage and playing music, and it was like getting competitive and stressing me out. I just now, I don't. Now they don't care. I don't want those things. I just don't I don't put my energy into go about a different way. I won't write the songs. I want to write a play. And people like him great. If they don't, no that’s it. OJIG: Did your anxiety ever prevent you from getting on a plane to go to a show or from going on stage? ANDREW: No. You know, I just have a weird way of doing things. I can't remember a time where I was just really terrified and didn't do it. I used to have to get drunk to get on the plane. That's how I used to do it. No matter what time is, the flight was at 7am and I got there. It was bad. But that's how I had to get on a plane. Because I was just, you know, on then that I've changed is now I don't I don't do that. The stage fright. I definitely had it. Remember, going open mikes out when I lived out here, I'd go to one's all around Berkeley in San Francisco, and I'd sign up. I go, Okay, I'm fifth, so I have about forty five minutes or an hour. So I go sit my car and I practice my songs over and over like two songs. That's all you get down like in there for like, an hour practicing. I get really nervous. But then once I get on stage, there's no nerves. And so I started to realize that, and I had a big show out here in San Francisco at The Independent and was opening for this guy, and I was like, sold out. No one knew who I was, and I was so nervous, so much adrenaline because, you know, it's five hundred people out there, and I was like, I'm solo act, or was, I’m gonna get a band now, so I was just by myself all the time. So I was just backstage. My friend came and I was just jumping up and down, trying to shake stuff out. Because I was just, like, really amped up. I’m gonna forget the lyrics, I’m gonna forget the melody. I’m gonna forget all this. And then I just got up there and the crowd just started cheering and screaming like I was the headliner. Well, all right, that's cool. Then I just started playing and everything's fine. So the anxiety has never prevented me from doing anything. Even when I was at my worst, I knew if I didn't do it, then it'd be easier to not do it the next time, too. Same with flying. I love to travel the one time I don't get on a plane then it's going to be easier to not get on the plane the next time. You know, the fear will just build and take over, and it’ll become easy not to do it. OJIG: Has writing this book helped you in your musical path? ANDREW: Yeah, it definitely has. Because at the time I wrote this book and made me take a break from music, which I never did. People would tell me this, this isn’t me saying like, you're the hardest working musician, it’s inspiring because I would just go to every open mic, play every show, I released four E.P.s within, like a twelve month span and then an album, and I just wouldn't stop. And then I took a break, changed my perspective, kind of like what's in the book. I just changed my whole perspective on it, and then my writing now is different than it was before. I think before I was trying to be something I wasn't. My first musical loves were like Tom Petty and Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, all those. I want to got to go back to writing those songs, get a band and write like some pop rocks stuff that I really want to do . So that's what I'm doing now, and it's so it's learning more to just be myself.OJIG: Andrew, what does the future hold for you in terms of next steps?ANDREW: I'm going to start a podcast, so that's in the next. Hopefully in January, I want to talk a lot about the content of book, and just even it's going to be hopefully like bi weekly. And it'll even talk about the current state of the world because that causes a lot of people anxiety right now. I'd like to get into talks to in front of groups, especially places like here, like colleges with younger people that are at that point where these kind of things can really, creep up on them and then music for me. I'm gonna start a band, and I'm going back to the studio, hopefully this week with some new songs and try a whole different approach to it. OJIG: It sounds exciting. ANDREW: It should be hopefully.OJIG: And where can our listeners get more information and find your book? ANDREW: Yeah, so the easiest way to find it on just Amazon. You search probably just search Andrew Castro but or the title of the book is Overcoming Your Anxiety for People on the Go. There's a Kindle version, and there's the paper back. I have a website, but I'm waiting till I get the podcast going everything before I start directing people to that. Right now, everything's going through Amazon. OJIG: Any parting words for listeners who may be anxious but struggling to name it? ANDREW: Yeah, I would say one is to educate yourself. There’s this book, mine, At Last a Life by Paul David. There's a book called Dare by Barry McDonough. Those are three, including mine. Three good books that you can go to, and those will help you and be patient. You're going to feel good when you read the books, like, Oh, you know, and then that's going to go away and you're going to go back to the way you felt. Never put a time limit on your recovery. You go into it with a full dedication and trusting the process. You're going to have setbacks, big ones. If you're having a setback, that means that before the setback you were doing better. Educate yourself, be patient, and you're not alone. I mean, there's probably hundreds of millions of people that are going through some sort of anxiety disorder at some point in their life. If you're not patient, you're gonna drive yourself into the ground. And if you don't educate yourself, you're not gonna understand that what you have is pretty common, and it's it's fixable. And then if you don't understand, you're alone, you're always going to feel isolated. So I think those three things are good to take with you.OJIG: Thank you so much.ANDREW: Thank you for having me.OUTRO: You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today's producer was Ojig Yeretsian. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes University. See you in two weeks. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

  Enrique and Andrew catch up on what the birds are saying. They talk about the effect of living with an oracle versus reading and oracle. The conversation winds through ideas of how being in tune wit the oracles impact their relationship with the rest of life. Finally they end by answering listeners questions.  Episode 13, Poetry, Magic, and Ice Cream, and episode 63 [00:00:30], Definitions and Silence. Think about how much you've enjoyed the podcast and how many episodes you listened to, and consider if it is time to support the Patreon You can do so here. If you want more of this in your life you can subscribe by RSS , iTunes, Stitcher, or email. If you'd like to connect with Enrique go check him out on Facebook here.  Thanks for joining the conversation. Please share the podcast to help us grow and change the world.  Andrew You can book time with Andrew through his site here.  Transcription ANDREW: [00:00:00] Hello, my friends, welcome to The Hermit's Lamp podcast. I wanted to let you know that the new intro music here was composed by my daughter, Claire. I hope you dig it. I certainly am loving on her creativity. Also, this is episode 91 with Enrique Enriquez. And if you have not caught our past conversations, you should go check them out: Episode 13, Poetry, Magic, and Ice Cream, and episode 63 [00:00:30], Definitions and Silence. Both available in the archives, either on the website or in your podcast catcher.  [new music!] Speaker 2: [00:01:00] Let me start by saying thank you to all the Patreons who support this podcast in general, and specifically help the process of providing transcripts of every episode to the public so that anybody for any reason can access all this wonderful information. Those fine people are getting access to great bonus material and they make this happen. If you are listening to this podcast, think about how many episodes you've listened to, how much you've appreciated it [00:01:30], and please consider heading on over to Patreon.com/TheHermitsLamp, and pitching something in to continue supporting this work. It is truly a situation where every dollar helps.  Welcome back to The Hermit's Lamp podcast. I'm here today with Enrique Enriquez, who is a card reader, poet, and artist, and you know was featured in a wonderful movie called Tarology, which [00:02:00] you can find on many places online right now. [Here's the trailer on YouTube: https://youtu.be/A5UR3VesQGo] This is the third time that Enrique has been on the show, and if you haven't checked out the other episodes, check the show notes for them. I'll provide links, so people can go back and hear our previous conversations. Enrique, for people who are meeting you for the first time, who are you? What are you about? What's going on?  ENRIQUE: Well, you know, the other day I went to a bookstore that is across the street. And first of all, Andrew, it's always [00:02:30] so good to hear you and always so good to talk to you.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: But anyway, you know, I have this book store across the street and I went there. And there was this voice, they were doing something on the floor, I was talking to the guy. And then as I was about to leave, the woman on the floor stood up to say, "Wait!" and then I turn around and say, "What?" And say, "Are you the guy who talks like a bird?" And I say, "Yes, as a matter of fact [00:03:00], I am," and she say, "Yes, a friend told me about you," and I . . . That made me very happy, you know?  ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  ENRIQUE: So, I guess, I am the man who speaks like a bird. ANDREW: Excellent. ENRIQUE: And at the moment, that seems to be plenty.  ANDREW: I think that's wonderful. I mean, for me, listening to the birds and, and trying to speak with them is definitely one of my, one of my favorite things these days. You know, I've been spending, for [00:03:30] years now, really spending a lot of time trying to engage with them, and more and more over time I've found myself drawn deeper and deeper into . . . into the world of birds. So yeah, it's wonderful.  ENRIQUE: Yes. Yeah, if you know, I suspect that birds are some sort of [Amic? Homic?] knowledge religion that is universal. I only know one person, a friend of mine, who says that birds are jerks and he hates birds. And [00:04:00] he say, "I know you like birds, but I hate birds," and but also always ... ANDREW: (laughing) That's a lot of strong feeling for birds!  ENRIQUE: Yes, exactly. ANDREW: Why does he hate birds?  ENRIQUE: Yes, but usually, I don't know, I mean, I guess, we said, you know, a bird is somehow that the embodiment of a long [garbled at 4:28] We [00:04:30] look at a bird, we think of birds, we listen to birds. You know, it's just about survival. They go around trying to find something to eat. There is no, no Romanticism in this view of birds, which is fine. I mean, I think it's a great exception, because usually as soon as you . . . You know, the other day, I was talking to . . . having a beer with these poets, a poet from Turkey and a poet from New Zealand and [00:05:00] they asked me, "What do you think about Trump?" And I told him what I believe, which is that Trump has no place in my reality. I don't care. And then, as soon as I mentioned birds, they told me all kinds of fantastic stories about their own relationship with birds. And about 45 minutes into the conversation, I say, "See, that's why I don't think about Trump." ANDREW: Right. ENRIQUE: I mean, there are better things to talk about, your, your mind. [00:05:30] Yes, so I think that that that's how, birds account for that common longing we have, for some sort of transcendence that I don't want to, I don't want to put a name to it. But then when you actually make a bird sound, you realize that you are, you are enacting this form that is at once transparent and opaque, you know, because you're not really saying anything, and even so, everybody understands you. ANDREW: Mmm.  ENRIQUE: So I end up realizing [00:06:00] that I like to speak like a bird, and that basically means that since the beginning of this summer I started actually recording myself using all these bird calls, like these wooden artifacts or metal artifacts that imitate the sound of birds, and then sending my friends bird messages instead of text or voice messages, right? And by speaking like a bird, what I actually accomplish is, I avoid misunderstandings. ANDREW: Mmm. ENRIQUE: Everybody [00:06:31] seems to understand the form of a bird sound. ANDREW: I like it. I feel like we must have talked about this on the podcast previously. You know, in the Orisha tradition, Osain, who is . . . He's responsible for all the knowledge of all the plants and all the magic that comes from that. He's sort of the wizard who lives in the forest, who's been . . . ENRIQUE: Beautiful. ANDREW: Broken down and, you know, scarred [00:07:01] by various conflicts and battles he's had over the years, and Osain speaks like a bird. And you know, when we . . . when we do certain ceremonies and we sing, there are . . . There are these parts where we sing, where we're singing not any words, but just to imitate the sound of the birds and to acknowledge the way in which Osain speaks to us, right?  ENRIQUE: Ah, that's fantastic.  ANDREW: Yeah, so, you know ... You're in [00:07:31] good company.  ENRIQUE: Yes, of course, and, no, it's amazing when you start looking into it, that the amount of effort and time that people have put into trying to imitate birds or talk like birds or understand birds, through history. And there is a, just as you say, there was a sort of pre-Koranic poetry that was all based on imitating the cooing of a mourning dove. And then you have the same in New Guinea. There is a tribe there that all their poetry is [00:08:01] based on the idea of imitating the cooing of a mourning dove, that wailing sound.  But, I mean, there are countless examples and, of course, thousands of poems about birds, but I guess I . . . Something clicked or shifted this summer. So, I started working with that because I understood that the moment I started sending these bird sounds to people, I went from somebody who could interpret signs [00:08:31] to somebody who was just delivering signs, so they became the interpreters, they were the ones telling me: "Yes. Thank you. I really needed this today." Or, like happened the other day with this, this man. He sent me a recording of a bird that he hears out of the window and then I just mimicked it. I just imitated the same . . . I sent him back the same thing, but I made it and then he say, "Oh, I love yours because I can hear my own name in it."  ANDREW: (chuckling) ENRIQUE: And [00:09:01] you know. And that, like a friend from Finland who say, you know, "Birds are only quiet when there are earthquakes or tsunamis or something horrible is about to happen." ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: "So whenever I hear your bird voice, I just feel that everything is okay." And to me that's . . . I mean in a sense, yeah, something shifted, because I think that, in a sense, turning the other person into the auger, into the interpreter, it [00:09:31] has something to do with the idea of an oracle as something that should poetize life instead of giving answers.  ANDREW: Well, and I think that, you know, let's be honest about, you know . . . I mean, I won't even bring my clients into this, about myself. There are times where I go to the oracle, hoping that the oracle will tell me that everything's going to be okay. And, you know, the prospect of thinking that well, as long as . . . as long as I can hear the birdsong, [00:10:01] or as long as I can go into my, my messenger and find a note of you playing, and play that song, the answer is the birds are singing, there's no tsunami. There's no earthquake.  ENRIQUE: Exactly.  ANDREW: There's no predator here, right? You're good. Take it easy. (laughs) ENRIQUE: Exactly. That's exactly one of the ways of seeing it, yes. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And, so, yeah, it has been a really, you know, at some point I started to suspect or to . . . Or maybe I decided [00:10:31] to start acting as if all these enterprises of divination, as if we already got it backwards. . . ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: You know, and usually we have this idea of this image of the person, the reader, the diviner, who's sitting waiting for the client or the, you know, consultant to come. And then I decided, no, it should be the other way around, right? Because in . . . I was reading The Iliad, you know, and there is this moment, which is a rather irrelevant moment, [00:11:01] when it is said that when a person arrives to the city, he fills everybody with excitement because of course, there is still the potential of what this person may be bringing, you know, news, things, a weird fruit, something, right? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And then I thought about that in relationship with angels, and the idea of the angel. And of course, angel is a word that comes from a Greek word for messenger, [00:11:31] right? So, the idea of the messenger. The messenger brings news, like the birds that come and, as you say, everything is okay. The birds are singing. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: Or look over there, because the bird, you know, flew that way.  So, I decided, I think it's better to become the angel, or to imitate, you know, dreams and angels, which are the only oracles that actually visit people. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And obliterate the reading on the table and just be . . . appear on people's lives and [00:12:01] then disappear, which is something you can now do, thanks to all these little gadgets we have, and social media, and all that, so you can really become, or have, a virtual presence. So that's where I am at now.  ANDREW: You've become the psychopomp, right?  ENRIQUE: Yeah, somehow, yeah in a sense. It's this idea of . . . I mean, I . . . You know, I am a witness, and I look at things, you [00:12:31] know, and, at some point, I guess I . . . what I understand is that I, in terms of giving answers to people, solving people's problems, giving them solutions, healing, all that stuff. I don't do that. I don't know how to do that. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: But I know how to pay attention. I know how to be a witness. So, at some point it may be that I find a place and form. Right? I look at something that is worth [garbled] or worth sharing and then [00:13:01] maybe that sound, that word, that form could be the answer to somebody's question or the solution to somebody's problem. It could even bring some sort of healing to them, but it's not me. It's not me doing it. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: It's . . . They are the ones interpreting the sign. ANDREW: Well, and I think that . . . You know, I think that one of the things that's really interesting and that, you know, I certainly appreciate about you and about all of our dialogues because, [00:13:31] you know, I think that the delivering of more concrete messages is also great and it's a thing that I certainly enjoy.  But I'm also really interested in this space where, where we, revoke the expectation of meaning in a concrete way. You know? And like, I made this deck earlier in the year, which I shared with you when I was in New York, you know, the Land of the Sacred Self Oracle.  ENRIQUE: Yes.  ANDREW: And you know, I created . . . [00:14:02] I initially wanted to say nothing about it. And like, I was like, I just want to make it and put it out there. But everybody, almost everybody that I talked to was like, "I don't know what I'm . . . I don't know what to do with this. So, I need you to tell me stuff." And I was like, "All right." So, I created this course for it and . . . which is, which is now, it's just basically a PDF. And the first lesson is, these images are nothing but ink on paper, [00:14:32] they don't mean anything. They have no concrete meaning in and of themselves. What do you actually see? You know? Because I think that leading people back to themselves is so profound and so powerful.  ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: And so, against the nature of our culture, right? The nature of . . .  ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: . . . the Modern Age, right?  ENRIQUE: Well, but that . . . What is interesting about that is that, that is exactly what contemporary art brought about. ANDREW: Right. [00:15:02]  ENRIQUE: You know? All . . . today, beginning of the 20th century, art basically showcased a common narrative and that could be . . . You know, you go to Italy to see all these paintings of the Virgin Mary or Christ, or the, the, you know, the Book of Genesis or whatever. You have this idea of okay, we all understand what we are seeing because we share these references. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And then came, you know, Malevich or Kandinsky [00:15:32] or even Donald Judd or all these people and say, "No, now you have the possibility to understand that thing before you on your own terms." ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And that's exactly what you're saying. Forget about what that is for the other person standing next to you. What is that to you? And of course, we still abhor that, I mean, most people put a lot of resistance to that, because they want to be told what it is. One is . . . like the other day, I had this, you know, I had [00:16:02] been reading the cards this woman finds out on the sidewalk. I have talked to you about this. For more than 10 years. And I stopped the other day because she, she sent me a card, and I told her about Nikolai Gogol, the Russian writer, and I . . . There is this wonderful little book a friend gave me about the dreams of Joseph Cornell. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: So, this woman pulled out all the dreams of Joseph Cornell [00:16:32] from his diary. And the amazing thing is that when you read his dreams you realize that they are not extraordinary in any way, right? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: Which is beautiful, because you realize the dreams are these material things available to all of us and a plumber can have dreams that are as extraordinary as the dreams of a fantastic artist as Joseph Cornell. But what was really interesting is at the end . . . She also wrote about all these people that Cornell was influenced by. [00:17:02] Not in terms of his work, but in terms of his relationship to dreams. And that I found fascinating. He had like the lineage of others like Blaise Pascal or you know, Freud. And then he spoke, or he took notice of Nikolai Gogol, and there was this rich lady who wrote to Gogol, saying, "Can you please interpret this dream for me?" Right? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And Gogol wrote back and say, "Only your soul can tell you what the dream means." ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: "Don't [00:17:32] ask any wise man, because they won't tell you. They are not able to. They won't be able to say what it means. You have to find a quiet space. You have to. Within yourself you will find the meaning of the dream." So, I said that to this woman, right, who had sent me a little card she found somewhere. And she got enraged. She told me, "No, you have the obligation of telling me what it means." Because of course, we don't want to be within ourself. That's a . . . [00:18:02] It's a . . . it's a very tall order. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And, in theory, we don't have time, right? We are always under this imaginary constraint of time. And she said that "You have the obligation of telling me." Of course, I dropped communication immediately because I feel I have no obligation. I have two kids, that's obligations enough.  ANDREW: Yeah. ENRIQUE: Other than that, you know. But in a sense, I understand, there is a . . . what you're saying, in terms [00:18:32] of your own deck. I mean, people have an extraordinary resistance of coming to terms with their own experience, because actually, most people are looking for mythology, not for experience. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: You know. They want a little story. They don't want an experience.  ANDREW: Well, and exactly. You know, and I . . . a friend of mine who I was sharing the art with as I was making it, you know, they would have this reaction where they would be obviously fascinated by it, and then . . . But they'd be like, [00:19:02] "But I don't know what it means." And I'm like, "Well, just look at it. Do you have a feeling?" And they're like, "Yeah. I really have a feeling when I look at this." I'm like, "Great, then it's perfect. Go with that feeling!" You know? And even if their reactions were not, not articulatable, right? They would . . . I might have, you know, had I known then, I might have been like, "Just sing me a bird song about it. And we'll see what it says," you know?  ENRIQUE: Yeah. Well because if something [00:19:32] is really hitting home, the only possible responses are either laughter or silence.  ANDREW: Yes.  ENRIQUE: You know, that's the moment when we are completely impacted by something. We laugh, which is almost like a defense mechanism or we are quiet, because of this, we are taking it deep, you know. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: So, and of course, we still think that we have to feel special and important when we are having an experience.  ANDREW: Yeah. Yeah. Because people aren't comfortable sitting in [00:20:02] that. So, I was at this conference and, as the culmination of the workshop that we were doing, we were to sit and gaze into the other person's eyes, and sort of allow all that had been exchanged between us to sort of settle in. And the person that I was sitting with was uncomfortable with this and started to laugh every time we looked and tried to look away a bit or whatever. And so, I just sort of sat there and said to myself, "Well, I [00:20:32] can laugh with them, we can laugh together."  And so, so I started to laugh and as soon as I started to laugh, they continued, but were able to sort of sit with me with it. And so, we sat there, you know, in the midst of several hundred people. Everyone else dead silent and gazing solemnly into everybody else's eyes and having their own experience. And the two of us laughing so hard the tears were rolling down our face, because it just kept escalating, the longer we did it, the funnier [00:21:02] it got, right? And you know, I mean . . . ENRIQUE: That's brilliant. ANDREW: One of the . .  . one of the more magical experiences of it, you know, and I don't remember what the rest of the reading was. I have no idea what we said to each other. I mean, I might . . . I think I made some notes, I could go and look, but for me, the real significance was that we both changed something in that moment through our engagement and our laughter, right?  ENRIQUE: Yes, and that's actually . . . That was an actual communication, you know, where you had your communication, [00:21:32] communicating through laughter, which is in a way communicating through form. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And not through words. I mean words are wonderful. And I love words, but words are also overrated. You know, there is a whole field of experience that exists outside of words.  ANDREW: Sure. Yeah. ENRIQUE: And, and when you really have a profound experience, you are usually in the space outside of language, then comes the problem of sharing it, right? And then you have to find the right words, which is a whole other thing. But with the actual experience is not in the space mediated by language. [00:22:03]  ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  ENRIQUE: No matter what the French say.  ANDREW: Yeah. I completely agree with you. I think that that that sort of moment where you're just engaged with something beyond words is . . . is really where, where things are wonderful. Right? ENRIQUE: Yes. Absolutely. ANDREW: I mean, it's, it's an experience that I'm always seeking out, you know, in one way or another right? In my relationships. In my relationship with nature, through the art that I make, even, even through my hobbies, like going rock climbing. One of the things I like about rock climbing is [00:22:33] that, you know, when you're 25 feet off the ground, and you know, working on a climbing problem, there's no . . . There's nothing but the sort of sense of trying to figure out how to move in space in relationship with the wall and it's not . . . it's not words. ENRIQUE: Exactly. ANDREW: It's not anything. It's just . . . it's just a feeling and it's the feeling of being in that relationship with the wall itself and the puzzle, you know? ENRIQUE: Yeah, I mean that's, that's actually a beautiful example because the wall is there, [00:23:03] speaking in stone. ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  ENRIQUE: And then . . . and your body has to reply in your negative space for the stone.  ANDREW: Yeah. ENRIQUE: Otherwise, you basically fall and die.  ANDREW: Right. ENRIQUE: So, you have to become endowed with that form and that's a . . . yeah, that's an excellent example.  ANDREW: Yeah, and it's definitely one of those things where you know, you can make your mind up. You know, I mean, especially, you know, like I'm not the world's best climber by any means, but you know, I climb [00:23:33] sort of relatively challenging, for most people, kind of things. You can decide all sorts of things before you start the climb, but once you put your hand or your foot or you know, whatever on the, on the hold then it tells you, if you're listening, what it wants you to do or needs you to do.  ENRIQUE: Yes.  ANDREW: And everything that you thought ahead of time kind of can go completely out the window where you're like, "Oh. I thought I'd be able to hold it from that angle. But in fact, I have to hold it from the other side now," or "I have to do this [00:24:03] or that," or "Oh, wow. That space is so much broader than I thought it was. I don't know how to, how to cross that gap now." And then you . . . then you have to sort of feel it and feel the motion and it really becomes a process of .  . . Most of the problem-solving comes not so much from even thinking about it, but from being there and saying, "Okay, where do I feel the most settled in this position? And where do I feel like I can move from?"  ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: And then you're like, "Okay, now, now, now I [00:24:33] can see my way forward."  ENRIQUE: Yeah, any embodied knowledge that you have, that we all have, and of course you acquire with experience the more you speak or you are in dialogue with the rock and the mountain, but at the same time, somehow, that's also dream. That's some sort of thing which, just letting the symbolic world, meaning the world of forms, guide you upwards. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. For sure. Well, [00:25:03] I mean, I feel like this this brings us into something that you and I have been, you know, discussing, you know, kind of . . . I mean over the last, last year or so, over the last six months, you know, this question of what does it mean to live with the oracle versus to sort of learn and work the oracle. I'm not sure if I'm articulating it quite right in those words, but it's a good starting point, right?  ENRIQUE: Yes, and I think [00:25:33--a little garbled here] that that's extraordinary. It's really an important question, I think. Then . . . I mean, for example, there are ways to tackle it, but this year, I finally managed to stop doing tarot readings for . . . which means that I finally managed to say no, which is really hard because usually what you want to say, "Yes," but I decided that it had no, I mean, I decided that there is a . . . You [00:26:04] know, honesty is prophecy. And then, when you actually give an honest look at anything, you know the future. And it's only when we fool ourselves, you know, we say, "Yeah, let me invite my alcoholic friend to the party. I'm sure this time he's going to be okay." ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: That's when we, you know, get derailed and then we get surprised by something that in theory, we say [00:26:34] is unexpected, but it isn't, you know, we are just fooling ourselves. But so, I decided okay, if you really remove things from the table, the only thing you can do is be present, you know, and pay attention.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: But of course, I can only accept that because whatever effect extended exposure to the tarot had on me, [00:27:04] allows me now to see that way, you know, and for . . . I see it.  At some point you realize that the reason why we place two cards and put a space in between them, right, and at some point, then, we realize that we think of that in terms of space only because we are very slow, but it's not really space, it's time. And then we [00:27:34] realize, oh, that time is equivalent to the time that exceeds between the two, [garbled, some words may be lost] somehow you realize, you discover, and you inhabit the space in between. You live, we live in the world all the time, cards or no cards, right? And I think that the, the, I mean the ultimate effect, I guess, is to be able to have a beautiful life and I think [00:28:04] that has to do a lot with being able to be present and to contemplate what is around and then you let . . .  I find myself in a very strange position, because I now work with all these people who are interested in language of the birds. So, we work with, you know, words, fundamentally, we break words apart and we turn them into little clouds, and we are actually looking for the void [00:28:34] within the words, right? And the letters become pegs that are holding the void in place. So, we go beyond meaning into form and then I will feel that it's almost like, sometimes, it's almost like seeing an angel. Like seeing a, you know, you see this beautiful thing that you know you found it when you see it, but you can't even define it, right?  And it has been one thing to do that for years and years on my own and another very [00:29:04] different one to . . . to share that work with other people and then to see the effect that work has on them. Right? And one of the beautiful things, of course, is that people feel very grounded, very centered, when they do this work, but then you have it. So, these are the people that . . . (ringing phone) ANDREW: I'm sorry.  Let's pause for a second, Enrique, until my phone stops ringing. ENRIQUE: And we can see that could be . . . Absolutely.  ANDREW: All right. [00:29:34] Apparently, I can't make the phone stop either. (laughing) Oh, boy.  ENRIQUE: Yes. You don't have superpowers.  ANDREW: I don't have superpowers. Yeah, okay.  ENRIQUE: So yeah, so, in any case, when you start sharing the work with other people, and they start doing that work, and you realize, oh, now people are talking about how their dreams change, right? And they have all these different beautiful [00:30:04] dreams that somehow follow the forms they are putting on the paper, right? Or, or people who feel grounded. And then you realize well, this is what living with the oracle is. It finds expression in anything you arrange . . . ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: Around you. And, you know, Gaston Bachelard, the French writer, talks about poetic [00:30:34] reverie, right? And he says, literally that, he says, we can't actually . . . We have to discount dreams because we don't have control over them. But then, if you submerge yourself in a constant state of poetic reverie, you change your own dreams. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: Because you are learning to be beautifully in the world, to think beautifully, right? And in a form . . . in a way form begets form. So, if you learn to move in a certain way, then that can [00:31:04] raise an echo, right? And all that . . . I know that all this may sound very abstract and probably useless, but it all accounts for basically being in the world in a beautiful way and living a beautiful life. Eventually, you can share those things with other people. And . . .  For example, the other day I was talking to this very young woman. Her name was Natasha. And I showed her how her name . . . You know that if you separate the variables, which are the soul of a word [00:31:34] from the body, which is the consonants. She basically . . . the three As on Natasha form a triangle, right? With them . . . like an inverted triangle.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And then the consonants form a square. So, when I show her that as forms, we saw how her soul, the triangle, was a little bit off-center to the square, the body, and she was really concerned about appearing or being too [00:32:04] predictable. So that gave her great comfort. Because of course, having an off-center soul is not being predictable. And, in a sense, I had to explain that. I just saw something. I say, "Oh, well, this makes me feel better." And I don't know what that is. And again, I never know what that can do for anybody. But I also think that there is some comfort for me [00:32:34] in thinking that something so abstract cannot be named, right? Because if you cannot really name it, then you probably cannot trivialize it.  ANDREW: Hmm. I think it's . . . I think it's . . . You know, my . . . So many things. All my thoughts are colliding now! (laughing) And it's like, how do I put all this into words that make any sense to anybody else? Right? It's just . . . ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: So, [00:33:04] we talked about how . . . you know, being . . . we need to, we need to sort of see things as they are, right? And that when we're surprised by circumstance in readings, possibly, probably, we've been fooling ourselves on some level, you know? Because I think that, I think that that's certainly my experience, right? There are . .  . there are surprises, life is surprising at times, but most of the things that people ask [00:33:34] questions about aren't really surprising and people generally have a notion about what's going on. They just don't like it, don't want to say it, don't want to face it, or whatever.  You know, and for me, you know this sort of Stoic idea of it's always better to know what's real then to sort of live in any other kind of version of reality, you know, or to cover it up. I think that that's something that I sort [00:34:04] of really have valued over a long time. And I think that the kind of Stoic notions, if you can kind of work with them outside of the macho bullshit, that's so much stuff that gets layered on them today, I think that they really can be helpful. And then I think that once we know what's real or what's, you know, closest to what's real, for whatever we want to say about that. That's a whole other episode, but . . .  ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: Then we can start to understand [00:34:34] and engage with this other world that doesn't need to have concreteness attached to it per se, right? And I think about my walk in the woods talking to the birds. I think about . . .  People always ask me, you know, like, "Well, do you do daily readings? What do you . . . How do you read the cards for yourself?" And you know, these days, a lot of what I do is, I just sit with the cards. And I put out some Marseilles cards and then I put out my, you [00:35:04] know, my Sacred Self Oracle, and I look for, look for the patterns that emerge between those. And especially because I'm often taking notes on my iPad, I'll take a picture of that card, and then I'll draw on top of it. And I've moved outside of the notion of reading in any sense that anybody means by that. And . . .  ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: And it is so grounding, and so centering, and sometimes there's a message that emerges, [00:35:34] sometimes it filters back down into language or words or whatever. And often the words that come out don't even really matter. They don't even necessarily make sense in any sort of overt way, but the flow of them, the practice of making them or arranging them, the practice of thinking them, is the message and is the oracle. ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: And the consequence of that oracle is not tangible and direct in an overt way, but [00:36:04] it somehow modifies myself and my relationship to the world, my day, whatever it is that's going on, in ways that allow me to move forward in a different manner. ENRIQUE: Yes. That's the dialogue in the day. The hand and the wall rock, you know, when your hand gets caught, to match the rock wall, your climb, it's the same thing. It's form speaking to form. And that in itself is [00:36:34] the message. And of course, that doesn't have an intellectual effect, because you can't just even talk about it. It has an emotional effect . . . ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: Which is something that a lot of people miss. When you are in contact with an oracle, you're basically exposing yourself to, to have, to that, for that thing to have an emotional impact on you. And, and maybe, there is something also, that may be very silly, you know, but oracle is a word that basically accounts [00:37:05] originally, at least, for an opaque or oblique utterance, right? A phrase, a bunch of words that don't have a clearer meaning.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  ENRIQUE: So, it requires thought and, and in the way I see it, there is an experience that let's say, is a little common still. A person, any person, opens a poetry book, finds a line in the poem, and thinks, "Ah, this [00:37:35] speaks to my condition right now." Right? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And we know that that poet didn't write that for her, or not even about, it's not even about that, that the person is experiencing. But the person can see how that speaks to her. You know, "Yes, this accounts for this experience I'm having." ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  ENRIQUE: And that's an experience that most people feel or know, understand, and even our culture at large values [00:38:05] it, that. We respond to it, we pride ourselves on being a culture that generates that kind of experience. So, we can take that one step further, and say, well this is a . . . Fal'e Hafiz, you know, the divination with a poet by Hafiz, the Iranian poet, which is basically the same thing, only that it's not any book of poetry, but only a book of poetry by Hafiz. You think about a problem you have, you open it up, the [00:38:35] first line you read, that's the answer . . . ANDREW: Mm. ENRIQUE: To your problem. And the thing is, that Hafiz was a very very obscure poet. So, it's never like, "come back on Tuesday," or, you know, play the 36."  ANDREW: Right!  ENRIQUE: So, it's a really really contrived sentence. So, you have to meditate upon it. It is the same as meditating upon form. And then eventually say "Yes, I understand how this is speaking to my condition." [00:39:06]  And we can take that one step further and say the I Ching, right? Which is still a book and still full of lines, literally and metaphorically. But then, now, we don't say, "Okay, open it in any page and the first thing you see, that will be it." We say, "No, we're actually engaging with chance." So, we take all these sticks or the coins and we start going through a process that renders this idea of the odd and the even. [00:39:36] So we, you know, we get to the hexagrams. And then from the hexagrams to some sort of commentary on the hexagrams. So, we are again left with some sort of obscure phrase that in theory is responding to our situation, right? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And then the next step, of course, is get rid of the book.  ANDREW: Yeah. ENRIQUE: And keep the sticks. And right there, we have all the divination [00:40:06] systems we know, right? We have the shells with the bones, throw the cards, or the coffee stains or grinds or the clouds. And the funny thing is in our culture, the moment we get rid of the book, we step into what people define as superstition, right? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yeah. ENRIQUE: It's no longer this poetica pursuit, basically, because we have this very old-fashioned idea of poetry as something that is anchored on the word, words, and [00:40:36] not on form. But of course, every time you look at an oracle you're reading, and that reading is a poetic reading. It's as opaque and obscure as the poetry by Hafiz or the I Ching commentary or the poem that you read and . . .  ANDREW: Well in the . . . ENRIQUE: You know, I was talking about this with . . . yeah, yes, go ahead.  ANDREW: In a sense, you know, when we . . . You know, not in a literal sense, because from within the tradition, we have a different dialogue [00:41:06] about it, but from the point of view of our conversation, when we are divining with the cowrie shells and we say that the, the Odu has arrived, right? Like the living energy of the Orisha that is the sign that came out in this divination. And the belief is that the arrival of that Odu changes the person's life. It is . . . it is just that process of invoking that energy through [00:41:36] the shells, and looking at it and seeing it and it being there, and then afterwards the diviner's job is more so to manage that dialogue and make sure that the person understands enough of what has been said so they can go away and think about it, right? I mean and there are other sort of literal pieces too but, but that idea of the energy of the oracle arriving, and us receiving it, and that being the thing that changes our life . . . You know, it comes with the notion that we don't understand [00:42:06] what that is, exactly. We can't articulate it clearly.  And even, even when we're interpreting the Odu in a traditional way, we can't necessarily, on any level, understand all of the implications and so on of that. We are merely just making sure that we've, you know, read the appropriate lines that are relevant to it and marked the right things. And after that, it's up to the person to sit with it and allow that to unfold with them and through them and so on, in a way that [00:42:36] is certainly energetic and otherwise, but also definitely poetic, and goes back to that sort of obtuseness of Hafiz, or other things, the I Ching, where it's like, "Huh? What does this really mean? How does this apply? How does this apply today? How does this apply while I'm at the butcher's? How does this apply when I pick my kids up from school? You know? It's that living with it that is the . . . that is where we get the most out of it and where it is the most transformational. You know? ENRIQUE: Yes. Yeah, and [00:43:06] I mean, I was talking about this with my wife the other day, and she say that the problem, really, the moment you get rid of the book or the moment that you step into the oracle is the other person, the interpreter, you know? There is this, the moment you need the other person to tell you how to relate to the oracle. And I thought that was really interesting because again, it's brought me back to the woman who say, "You are in the obligation of telling me because I'm not going to do any thinking."  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And [00:43:36] of course, I mean, again, it is really interesting to, for me at the moment to think again that by delivering an open object, turn the other person into the interpreter. They have to come to terms with forms and understand what those forms are saying to them. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: Because at least I don't know. I don't know what, who they are. I don't know what they are, you know, feeling, and I must certainly have no, [00:44:06] nothing to say about anybody's life, but they know. I think they always know. And you say, also a few minutes ago, they have an idea of what's going on. And basically, they may not like it. So, they're trying to find almost like a second opinion. That's why . . . I mean the other day, somebody was asking me about the ethics of readings and divination and I told her, well, there is an ethical problem, because in my experience [00:44:36] most clients are dishonest. They want to hear what they want to hear.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And they will twist your words. They will, you know, re-ask the question again and again until they get what they want, and even if you don't give it to them, they will hear every word you say as if you say what they want to hear. So, of course, there is a lot of dishonesty in the profession, but it mostly come from the clients. Of course, [00:45:06] there are dishonest readers. But even the honest reader has to put up with that person who has decided beforehand what they want to hear. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And I see that as way more . . . I mean, and again, it's really . . . Do you know, I think that there is a love for the majority for example of the cards or any oracle, at some point you want to really share that beauty with other people. And that takes you so far. It [00:45:37] comes to a point at which you understand: "Yes, but I'm speaking of a beauty and this woman's still speaking about this [garbled] on Thanksgiving. You know? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: I really don't care. It's not really my problem.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think, yeah. I think too, like, somebody . . . Somebody was asking me if . . . Somebody was . . . I was posting about my . . . So, my journey for, with [00:46:07] rock climbing. You know, I was, I set myself a goal for the year. This is the only resolution I made for 2018. And my resolution for 2018 was to still be climbing at the end of the year. That was my, my entire goal. No achievement attached to it. No, you know, anything else, just still be going and doing it. Just keep returning if you go away, and be, and still be there at the end of the year. Because [00:46:37] I think that, you know, like the oracle, you know, if we, if we promise to keep showing up, you know, the oracle reveals things to us over time. ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: We don't know when or how that comes, and so if we endeavor to be with it, then, then we will hear what we need to hear as we go, to a large extent. And somebody, somebody was posting . . . somebody posted in response to that, that if they, they wondered if the universe challenged us whenever we set an intention, you [00:47:07] know, if it deliberately brought stuff up, you know. And I think that for me, and I'll let you answer for yourself. But for me, living with the oracle in this open-ended way and living, in a, for lack of a better term, kind of more Stoic way with a real sort of working to, to see things as clearly as possible all the time and face the things that I might rather put in the closet or leave [00:47:37] for another day.  I don't . . . I don't feel like the universe has a lot of agency in the way that that question implies, you know? There are surprises that are . . . that happen, you know? You know, in relationship to me climbing this year, there were two surprises: One, I dislocated my collarbone in the winter, tobogganing with my daughter. And that took like [00:48:07] four months to really fix. It's horrible. I don't recommend it to anybody. And two, you know, I'm getting divorced this year and, you know, although that is amicable and, and going well, relatively speaking, it takes a lot of time and attention and doesn't always leave energy for other things. But I don't think that any of those have any relationship to . . . to my intention or my desire to climb or do other things. I think that those are, those [00:48:37] are just the inevitable stories of being alive, right? We are alive, and things happen and we get sick and . . . ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: Life comes up and things change and so on and we don't need to, or I never need to, arrange a narrative around that in a bigger way. So, I'm curious. I'm curious for you. Do you . . . What agency do you feel comes back from the universe? Do you think that there is something organizing it or testing us or . . .  ENRIQUE: No, I actually, no, I always say the same thing. I think that [00:49:07] the universe doesn't care about us. Or maybe I will say it doesn't care about me. And I know that people want to be, to feel otherwise, you know, but you know when I was a kid . . . and this image has been coming back a lot recently. I watched this documentary about Africa, right? And there was this method of catching monkeys, which consisted of filling up a hollow tree with grain. ANDREW: Uh huh. ENRIQUE: And then, you know, the monkey will stick his hand into the hollow [00:49:37] tree, grab the grain, but then couldn't take the handful, the fistful out. The hole was only big enough for the empty hand to come in. But if he had grain in his hand, in his hand, he couldn't take it out. ANDREW: Yeah. ENRIQUE: And basically, these guys just will walk up to the monkey and grab it because the monkey will never let go of the grain.  ANDREW: Yes.  ENRIQUE: And I mean, it's insane, right? But I think that in terms of daily life, we are all monkeys with our hand [00:50:07] stuck in a hollow tree.  ANDREW: Yes. ENRIQUE: And most of the time, you realize, yeah, but can you just open the hand and let go? ANDREW: Yeah. ENRIQUE: Life works the way it works. And in that sense, there is no mystery, even if it takes you by surprise all the time, basically because we think that there is a mystery there. And yes, sometimes we catch a cold and sometimes we get divorced and sometimes we, you know, we're surprised by somebody giving us a loaf of bread. ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  ENRIQUE: I . . . I [00:50:38] don't think that actually, at least I understand that that's not the way people think, but I never thought of any kind of oracular work where oracles had any dealings with daily life in that sense, of letting me know if I should change the oil of my car today or next week, you know? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: I think it's more about transcending daily life and finding some sort of center, true beauty [00:51:08] through some sort of . . .  ANDREW: Yeah. ENRIQUE: Through some sort of sublime condition in life. ANDREW: For sure.  ENRIQUE: Yeah, but all day, even the other day I was talking about, you know, people, people talk about sigils, and then I realized, first, the first mistake you make when you make a sigil is wanting something? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And then you realize when you make a sigil to, I don't know, lose weight. Let's [00:51:38] say. And another sigil to get a red car. You're basically making the same operation, right? You make, you take the words, you eliminate certain letters, and you consolidate everything into one small or smaller emblem. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And then you realize, oh, but what you're doing there, it doesn't matter what you want. What you're doing again and again and again is a reduction. That's what then . . . In the world of forms, [00:52:08] what you are actually spelling is a reduction. Which means that in time, it doesn't matter how many things you wanted, you end up with your mind drinking.  ANDREW: Hmm. ENRIQUE: And of course, people don't like that, because, besides you can't sell a book saying this stuff, right? You can't sell any books and don't want stuff. They only want books that say, I'm sorry, I want to say you're entitled [00:52:38] to want everything, and I can tell you how to get it.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: But you realize there is something really silly about trying to control daily life, especially because daily life is not even that interesting, you know, and it takes care of itself.  ANDREW: Mm. Yeah. I think that . . . I mean it's kind of why, over the years, I've sort of moved to . . . My [00:53:08] magic that I do tends to tends to be most often orientated towards what I, what I kind of now often call as identity magic, which is how do I, how do I change myself so that I can be more like more like what seems fruitful, more like what, you know, remove those obstacles in myself to doing the things that I need, you know, it's not so much about changing the world as it is about [00:53:38] shifting myself in relationship to it so that . . . If there's desire attached to it, so that what I desire is more accessible, or so that I'm more, more at ease and more in the flow around whatever it is that I need to work on and change, you know? ENRIQUE: Yes.  ANDREW: Yeah.  ENRIQUE: Yeah, I don't know. I think it's a song. At some point, I understood or I [00:54:08] have been made to understand that presence is meaning . . . ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And presence is also performance.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: Whatever you are, you're performing, you're enacting, you are projecting something, and causing an effect. And I'm at the moment more interested in just being, you know, and be present and play along with the fact that causes. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: It's like when this woman started laughing, looking at [00:54:38] your eyes, and you laughed with her, you know, you said that's a reaction in the moment and that's what there, you know? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And trying to make her chop or, I don't know, levitate, will be useless. So, yeah, it's . . . I'm finding a lot of pleasure in walking around by with my pockets empty. And of course, I don't know what magic is. I think that, in other words, I think that magic or [00:55:08] some experience of mystery that I actually pursue or often feel works best when you don't want anything, when you don't want it, and it appears and surprises you, gives you something. It's like a gift, you know, but it's not something you pursue in terms of how can I command for this to happen at will. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And again, I understand that when you say that magic . . . When . . . the moment I speak [00:55:38] of magic without will, I'm almost like undefining magic in terms of what people think magic is, right? They all seem to be convinced it's about will, exerting our will, and I think it's more about stepping aside, letting things happen.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Well, I think it's definitely about . . . for me, it's definitely about making space so that [00:56:08] I can be engaged and present with the subject of the magic in a way that it allows it to unfold, to some extent without control, to a large extent without control, because I think that the idea of, you know, "Oh, I really want this person to fall in love with me." I mean, I think the minute that you're fixated on, on one person is the minute that you've already kind of drifted into a problematic territory and should go back to . . . ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: Why that person? [00:56:38] Why do you want them when they are not reciprocating? What is it you're looking for? What is it you could do without magic to make this . . . ? You know, I mean, many questions, right? But, but rather, what could I . . . What could I do to have more, more romance in my life? What could I do to have better connections? And is there a magical act that, that feeds and supports that in an open-ended and sort of allowing the universe to show us, allowing ourselves to witness and notice it in an open, open [00:57:08] and present way as the opportunities float around us, rather than sort of exerting a massive amount of control, which I think is, which is very rarely fruitful, you know.  ENRIQUE: Yes. Well, you know, my . . . This year, one of my favorite moments is . . . I have this friend, who about 12 years ago, he was named the godfather of a child, right? And he decided beautifully that his gift to this kid will be the gift of language. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: So, he set up an account, a bank account and he has [00:57:38] been putting money there for years, assuming that at some point, maybe this kid will want to learn, you know, Italian so he can go to Rome and live there and learn the language. But then this summer, he spent a morning with me by the river and we were playing with all these bird voices, you know, and talking like birds and the birds will come and all this and that. So, and he went, he bought a box full of birdcallers and sent it to this kid.  Yeah, so there is something extraordinarily beautiful in [00:58:08] inspiring a person to complete this crazy act of gifting a kid a set of birdcallers, and then he wrote this note, saying, "I believe this is a good first language for you to learn. And, and then for that gesture not to fall flat, you know, and for the kid to actually embrace this, and then this is a kid I don't know, I probably will never see in my life, but somehow, it's beautiful to think that there [00:58:38] is some residual effect of what I do that is part of that kid's life, and I don't know. I'm . . .  The other day, for example, this woman wrote to me and she said that she wanted to speak like a hawk. And it's beautiful. We saw this at [Brawn's?] we saw that actually allows her to do so. And she say, "Well, I have a problem, and the problem I have is that I'm surrounded by [00:59:08] sparrows." So, I told her, "Well, you know, the problem is that the only way you have for you to know if you are actually doing it right is that all those sparrows are going to fly away, because you've become a predator, right? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And she say, "Oh, but, I mean, I love the sparrows. Do you think they were going to trust me?" I said, "Yes. I mean, they are going to trust you as much as a sparrow trusts a hawk." Okay. So yeah, it's fantastic to think you can . . . A, this faith [00:59:38] when a person can ask you that question, can talk about this [garbled] bird's nest to still be close to the birds. And at the same time, like a little bit . . . We are really not just talking about talking like a hawk, or talking about voice, we are talking about the consequences of having a certain voice and being responsible for what we say, what we put out in the world. And I . . . being full of all of the [garbled] but I can [01:00:08] see the poetry or of living a poetic life through embracing the form of a bird voice and the bird language. So yeah. ANDREW: That's wonderful. Well, maybe we should wrap up the us talking part of the conversation here, and there were definitely some questions that came through, through Facebook. And I think at this point, I'd love to, I'd love to hear you give like a one word [01:00:38] or a one phrase answer to them, rather than us sort of go into a big long conversation or . . . kind of like we did in one of them where . . .  ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: I did the rapid-fire questions at you. Let's look at these rapid fire . . . ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: And see what comes, okay? So, one person asks . . .  ENRIQUE: Okay.  ANDREW: So, with your children, are they interested, would you teach them these things about card reading? What are your thoughts on children and cards? [01:01:08]  ENRIQUE: Well, I have three kids. The middle kid already asked me to teach him and I did so. And then yesterday, my daughter told me that, and she's 10. One of his friends, his classmates, actually asked: Did your father ever taught you, told you how to read tarot and [garbled] in the French way, in such a beautiful way, that I think she already knows everything she needs to know.  ANDREW: Yeah, my [01:01:38] youngest got a Sibilla deck and reads that for me sometimes . . . ENRIQUE: I have Sibilla, yes. ANDREW: And it's just, you know, she's so great at it. It's just, she's like, "Oh, look at this. Somebody's going to do something you don't like, but this is going to happen. But there you go. It's so wonderful," right? They have a sense of it, I think, which is great and . . . ENRIQUE: Yes. ANDREW: It's less about teaching and more about just . . . ENRIQUE: Yeah. I mean my son, when I explained . . . Yeah, when I explained [01:02:08] it to my son in after 15 minutes, he told me, "Oh, I understand. This is all about transformations." And I realized, "Oh, it took you 15 minutes, it took me 15 years."  ANDREW: Right?  ENRIQUE: Okay.  ANDREW: Yeah. ENRIQUE: You know, that's that. Yeah.  ANDREW: All right. Next question. What is the poem that the world needs in these times?  ENRIQUE: I don't know. I mean, I guess my [01:02:38] issue is that I don't have any faith in the poem. ANDREW: Mm. ENRIQUE: As you know, in the actual poem. I guess there's poetry, and poetry's everywhere in a sense. But I will say in terms of poetry, yes, yes, you just need to listen to the sparrows. You know, the sparrows have this beautiful thing, that is, they are like Zen monks. A sparrow only makes a, like a little sound, you know, over and over and over, so it says everything it needs to say in one syllable. It's [01:03:08] almost like tasting water, you know. So . . . ANDREW: Yeah, yeah. ENRIQUE: Yeah, the voice of the sparrow. ANDREW: What has surprised you regarding tarot in the last couple of years? ENRIQUE: You know, the tarot world is like that movie, Groundhog Day. ANDREW: (bursts out laughing) ENRIQUE: It's the same day again, over and over.  ANDREW: (still laughing) Yes, Bill Murray. ENRIQUE: So, we're all Bill [01:03:38] Murray.  ANDREW: Perfect. Yeah. ENRIQUE: And that's . . . Every day the same deck is being published, the same book is being published, the same conversation about the origin of tarot is being published, the same theory about the secret behind it is being discussed.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And that's how we go, you know, it never ends.  ANDREW: Perfect. Do you consider tarot magic? And do you practice any forms of magic?  ENRIQUE: Oh, every morning, [01:04:08] I sit at a café, in the same place next to a window. I look at words in my notebook. And if something appears [garbled--black?], in terms of form, I share it with some people and then that snowballs into something. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: And that's the magic I do. And, yeah, I mean, everything can be, I guess, magic, but I do feel that for something to be magical, there has to be an otherness.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm.  ENRIQUE: Meaning it has to take you to another [01:04:38] place. It's, I don't know. It's hard to imagine doing magic with something that is completely like a daily thing, you know, but it could be. I mean, I think that, yeah. In any case, I don't know if magic. I think that the world has a poetic influence, meaning that forms speak to each other through analogy. Maybe that's magic. I don't know if magic is an intelligence. I don't [01:05:08] know again, if there's an agency, like a big finger that is invisible and it's swirling things behind. I don't know. ANDREW: Yeah. Fair. And last question: What would, what would it take for you to put your tarot deck again right now? Given that you're not really doing readings and such any more. ENRIQUE: Every time I make an exception.  ANDREW: Yes. Yeah. ENRIQUE: Every time I make an exception, [01:05:38] I end up confirming that it's pointless.  ANDREW: Hmm.  ENRIQUE: So, no, I don't think so. I'm not, you know, I have nothing to sell, and I'm not in a crusade for people, not to do readings or to any kind of ideas I may have, I'm just trying to get by finding my own language. I will do all these things, which is a way of saying to find my own. You know, I think that that's what the philosopher's stone is. To find your own language. ANDREW: Right. ENRIQUE: And your own language is not English or Spanish or Italian. It's how [01:06:08] you organize forms around you. And that's why they . . . you know, the, the alchemists say, that's a great work, you know, and they say the philosopher's stone cannot be handed down, you know, passed to another person. You have to find it yourself. It's because of that. You have to find your own language. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. ENRIQUE: Otherwise you're just living in the shadow of another person's language.  ANDREW: Right. Perfect.  ENRIQUE: And yeah, so, so and well. Yeah. Okay.  ANDREW: I think that's a great place [01:06:38] to leave it. Go find your language, everybody!  ENRIQUE: Perfect.  ANDREW: Perfect. And if it sounds like birds, let us know. (laughs)  ENRIQUE: Exactly. ANDREW: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with me this morning and especially for fighting through all the Skype up and downs. It's what I get for recording during Mercury retrograde.  ENRIQUE: Oh, it's okay. It's always great.  ANDREW: Perfect.  ENRIQUE: Thank you. It's always great to talk to you. ANDREW: Thank you, you too.  ENRIQUE: I hope to soon.  [music] ANDREW: [01:07:09] I hope you love this conversation, as always, I hope that. Enrique did all the Patreons the pleasure of recording a bird song just for them. So if you are a supporter of the Patreon in the $5 and up category, you can go find that recording now at Patreon.com/TheHermitsLamp, and if you're not a supporter: Well, what are you waiting for? The birds are waiting to speak to you. Talk to you next time.

Tiny Farms CEO and co-founder Andrew Brentano thinks cricket protein will ensure future food security. Tiny Farms is an AgTech and Precision Farming company that produces food grade cricket protein for use in pet food and animal feed applications offering a sustainable, safe, reliable protein source for pets, livestock animals, and people.Transcript:Lisa:This is Method To The Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm your host Lisa Kiefer. Today, I'm speaking with Andrew Brentano, the Co-Founder and CEO of tiny farms. Welcome to the program, Andrew.Andrew:Oh, thank you.Lisa:You are the perfect guest for a show about innovation. Co-Founder of Tiny Farms. First of all, tell us what Tiny Farms does, and what is the problem you're trying to solve.Andrew:We are basically, precision ag company. What we're doing, is we're trying to grow a whole lot of crickets. The big problem we're addressing is that we basically cannot produce enough animal protein to keep up with the demand. We've got growing population, growing per capita consumption and also a really huge growing pet food market, which is consuming a huge amount of meat. Traditional meat consumption, your livestock, your pigs, your chickens and your cows, is a hugely resource-intensive endeavor.You're concentrating huge amounts of feed, 25 30% of all the crop lands on earth are just growing feed for animals. Then we're also grazing about 25% of the earth's surface for cattle. There's really not any room to expand. We really have to find these higher efficiency ways to supply that animal protein that people need.Lisa:You have found, what I think is a pretty unique niche in this market of cricket farming, protein farming. I know the argument about cattle using energy and all of that, but what you're saying is that dogs, chickens, all of these other animals. If we can feed those animals your product, we can make equivalent savings, maybe?Andrew:Yeah. We can offset these huge resource environmental footprints. If we take the pet food example, in the US, we're feeding about 30 billion pounds or more of meat just to dogs and cats every year. That market is growing like 6% year over year. If we can, instead produce crickets, which use just a tiny fraction of the food and the water and the space required, we can essentially get more from less. We can meet this demand without just completely overextending our current resources.Lisa:Okay. When did you start this company?Andrew:We started in late 2012. We initially got the idea ... of course it took a while for markets to actually developed. We were a little bit ahead of the curve. We've been-Lisa:Do you mind if I ask how you came to this? Were you doing market analysis studies or looking at big data? How did you figure out that this was a niche?Andrew :In that moment, what we were doing was really just thinking about big existential problems. We were trying to decide what should we be spending our time and energy on and had really started drilling into food production. Everyone's got to eat. It's the largest and most resource-intensive endeavor that humans do on this planet and also one of the most immediately going to be effected by climate change, population growth, et cetera. What we realized when we were diving in was that meat production was this huge concentration of where all the resources were going, It was the most inefficient place and also the highest demand. Everyone wants to eat meat. We thought, wow, this is-Lisa:Yes. Especially with incomes going up.Andrew:Exactly.Lisa:First thing they want to do is have the steak that you and I have.Andrew :Exactly.Lisa:Right?Andrew:This westernization of diets around the globe, all these trends were pointing to essentially meat crunch in really the relatively near future. People need this protein, but how do we produce protein more efficiently but that still has a high-quality nutritional profile? We're looking at agriculture. We were looking at algae and fungus. Then we came across a body of research about insects and their nutritional values and their production efficiencies, historical uses around the world, and it just made so much sense.Lisa:Who's using crickets? I assume some of these countries have been using crickets for thousands of years, is that correct?Andrew:Yeah. Particularly in Oaxaca, in Mexico and some other Central American cultures. There are long traditions of eating crickets and grasshoppers, both interchangeably. A number of African cultures also like different types of crickets that are native, crickets and katydids. Then in Thailand, more recently, I think there's been a long tradition of eating different insects. Very recently, there's been quite a growth in, particularly the cricket market there. The Thai government has even, for the last 10, 20 years been sponsoring and promoting this. There's now tens of thousands of small backyard cricket farms supporting those largely street markets.Lisa:How did you start? Were you right out of college, or what was your motivation here?Andrew:I guess, I was about two and a half years out of college. I went to University of British Columbia, studied absolutely unrelated to agriculture, a program called cognitive systems. It was AI information systems, linguistics. What that did instill was this mindset of systems thinking. I'd worked an AI startup. My Co-Founder Jenna, who's now is my wife, had been working for an artist. She went to Rhode Island School of Design. She was managing an artist business in LA. We'd been living in LA for a couple of years and decided this wasn't fulfilling. This wasn't really where we wanted to be or what we wanted to be doing.That was where we took a summer, went and started doing freelance web development just to pay the bills and took this time to decide what are we going to do with our lives that's can be meaningful. That's what led us into this. It was important that, you we found something that we could do that would apply our creativity and actually be meaningful. HLisa:You know how we're all about organic and sustainable. How does that fit into the cricket industry? What do they eat? How do you follow the path to make sure they're sustainable and that they're organic?Andrew:Yeah. The great thing about crickets is they'll eat anything, pretty much. I mean, they're basically omnivorous. Anything you could feed a pig, or a chicken, or a cow, or basically any other kind of animal, they can eat. They really have a very high, what's called feed conversion ratio, which is basically the amount of food they have to eat to grow a certain weight as a ratio. With crickets, it's about 1.7:2 pounds of food to get 1 pound of cricket. To give comparison, chickens are more like 3:1. Pigs are between 4 and 6:1. Cows can range from 8:20:1, depending on what the diets are. Even if you fed them the exact same thing you fed a commercial chicken, you're using much less of that feed.You've got this corresponding, way much smaller land and water footprint. Then because they are so efficient converting that feed and they'll eat anything, we can then take food by-product streams and agricultural by-product streams and incorporate that into the feed formula. That can range anything from stale bread, which commercial bakeries, large scale ones are producing millions of pounds of stale bread or excess bread. They essentially overproduce by about two what they actually sell. Then we can also go to agricultural processing. There are huge streams of by-products, like dried distiller grains that come out of ethanol production, spent brewer's grain, juice pulp from the citrus industry.Lisa:The wine industry.Andrew:The wine industry. Exactly. Almond holes are huge one in the United States, or in California alone, we're producing 150 million tons of almond holes every year.Lisa:They're kind of like goats in the insect world.Andrew:Yeah.Lisa:They'll clean everything up.Andrew:Right. All we have to do is balance the different inputs, so we get the nutritional profile that grows the cricket efficiently We understand that pretty well. We can basically say, okay, we'll take 20% of this, 30% of that, 50% of that, blended altogether, and then we can just grow our crickets.Lisa:You been able to notice differences in tastes of your crickets by what you're feeding them?Andrew:One of the reasons crickets are so good, is they have a pretty mild and generally pleasant taste regardless what you feed them. You definitely can tell different things. You'll get either a nuttier cricket. Sometimes it'll be because the cricket is a little fatty or a little leaner.Lisa:What would you feed it to make it fatty?Andrew:You could feed it, for one, more fat or a higher carb diet. You can make it leaner by having more of a protein and fiber formulation. We've fed them carrots in the past and they turn just a tiny hue, more orange. They actually pick up a tiny bit of that sweeter carrot taste.Lisa:Do you ever feed them chocolate?Andrew :We've never fed them chocolate. It's a bit expensive.Lisa:How do your vegetarian or vegan customers feel about this product? Do they have any concerns?Andrew:There's two camps. There's one camp where folks are vegetarian and vegan primarily because of sustainability issues, humane treatment of animals, ethical issues. Those are exactly the issues that we're targeting and trying to address with cricket production. Those folks are generally very, very receptive to incorporating insect protein into their own diets. What's really exciting for these people is when we say, yeah, did you know there's dog and cat food you can get with insect protein? You've got vegetarians and vegans, but they still have a pet cat that they have to feed meat too.It creates a real dissonance for them. It's an amazing solution for those folks. Then there's folks that maybe have a religious or spiritual aversion to actually eating living animals. For those folks, that's fine. That's a different set of issues. Insects are living things, and if they decide that's not what they want to eat, it's not the product for them. We generally think that we have a great solution for the folks that really see the fundamental environmental and ethical issues around meat production.Lisa:If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method To The Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today, we're speaking with Andrew Brentano, the Co-Founder and CEO of Tiny Farms. Tiny Farms is building the infrastructure for a new category of our food system, cricket protein, one that will play a big part in ensuring future food security. Talking about your products, and you just covered one, which is feeding pets. What other products do you have, and who are your customers?Andrew:Our core business is the design and development of a high-efficiency cricket production facility. That's really the big problem. We want to get crickets out into the market, but how do you do that? How do you produce enough crickets cheap enough that it can actually become this bulk commodity that could reasonably offset traditional meats. In a way, our core product is actually this method for producing them and then also how do you process them into palatable ingredient.Lisa:I read that your method was unique in that it avoids the monoculture of most agriculture.Andrew:Yeah. One of the fundamental problems that we see in traditional livestock production, farming in general, is that you have these huge centralized productions, whether it's, say 10 thousand acres of soy beans or if it's a mile-long chicken house with 4 million chickens in it. When you think about ecosystems and biology, that's a really unhealthy ecosystem. Also, it's incredibly risky because if something comes in there that's a blight, or past, or a disease [ 00:10:48], it just can, wipe out everything very quickly.The approach that we take is a more distributed model where we'll set up smaller production units, and then we'll put them around in a cluster, in a region. That way, you never have this just huge, enormous centralized population issues of just having a lot of animals in place, breathing and pooping and eating and all of that mess and the potential for pollution. Also, that you significantly reduce this biological risk.Lisa:Crickets get disease and die out like other ...Andrew:We've been lucky. We've never had a blight. We have a very tightly controlled environment, keep the biosecurity levels pretty high. There have been, in actually a different species of cricket than when we grow, there is a disease. It only affects crickets. There's no risk to any people or animals but that have gone around and wiped out some of the cricket farms that have existed in the US. One of the cool things about insects, again, too, is that biologically they're so different from people that you don't have the same zoonotic transfer of diseases the way that you've got your swine flu or your bird flu, which can jump to humans. It's this huge health risk.Every animal has diseases and parasites that can affect them. The cricket is so different. Its life cycle's so different. They don't carry that kind of disease that could jump to a human. It's much safer. Even with a mosquito or a tick, they're transmitting a disease, because they're actually holding some like human blood, Mammalian blood in them. It's not that that animal itself actually gets a disease that can transfer to a human.Lisa:You have a cricket powder, but that's primarily for feeding animals. Does it also go into human-Andrew:We produce this cricket protein powder. It's completely food grade. It's completely perfect to use in human food products or pet food products. We focus on the pet food market, because we see a really, really big opportunity to offset a lot more of the consumption in that space. There are a ton of human food products out on the market, and a bunch of being produced right here in the Bay Area. Chips and snack foods and energy bars and baking flour mixes and stuff that-Lisa:With cricket powder.Andrew:With cricket flour. Yeah. Exactly. In that market, it's awesome. It's a really great way to start introducing to people this idea that they can eat crickets. Long-term, the best possible thing is we stop eating animals as much and we eat much more insect protein. Put it in something that people want to eat anyways, crunchy, healthy snacks.To really have the big impact we want to have, we have to figure out how we can start really replacing the meat that we're using as quickly as possible and as big of volume as possible. That's where we're really focusing on the pet angle. There's actually another company here in Berkeley called Jiminy's. They've released a line of dog treats. The only animal protein in that dog treat is cricket protein. Dogs love this stuff.Lisa:You don't have any retail human products yourself as a company.Andrew:We do supply another brand that is currently distributed at the Oakland Days Coliseum and it's called Oaktown Crickets. In the cricket production, get more into how that works. You harvest most of the crickets at a certain stage in their life when they've got the optimal protein content to make into the protein powder. Then you maintain a chunk of your population to go through adulthood and breed your next generation. Those breeders, we call them, they've got a higher fat content because they're, particular the females, are full of eggs. They're really, really tasty.In Thailand, those are the prized ones that people want. They'll fry them up and sell them in the market. For the protein powder application, they're not very useful. What we do is, those get sold for culinary use. We had local chefs use them in different specials, and then they're being fried and seasoned and packaged in little snack packs and distributed at the Colosseum. [crosstalk] Extra tasty.Lisa:One of your main goals is to address the challenges that are facing agriculture, what we just talked about. Are there any other challenges that you've experienced as you enter this marketplace?Andrew:One of the big fundamental things about how the agricultural system is set up is it's very linear. You extract resources, you dig up phosphorous, you create nitrates and nitrites for fertilizers. You pour them on the fields, you grow these plants, you harvest them out, you process them. You throw away the byproducts. Then you feed the animals, and the animals create a huge amount of poop. You don't know what to do with that. It just sits there. Then the animals get eaten. It's this very just linear extractive system of production.That's part of why we're having so many issues with soil degradation and waterway pollution. We're also just running out of phosphorus, which is its whole own problem. What we really see is an opportunity for insects is to help start close some of these loops and create more of a circular system. If you've got your wheat industry and it creates all of this chaff when you process the wheat into flour ... well if you can efficiently convert that, instead of just say composting it or throwing it out there or using it more inefficiently to feed dairy cow, you can turn that into a really high-quality protein, putting that through the base of the cricket as a bio converter.We've spent the same amount of nutrients and water to produce all parts of that plant. If you only eat a little bit of it, that's not very helpful. Then the cool thing about the crickets is, the waste they produce is completely dry and stable. They're not releasing-Lisa:The cricket poop.Andrew:The cricket poop.Lisa:What is it called?Andrew:It's called frass. That's the technical term for insect poops. It's basically the consistency of sand. If you go by Harris ranch or the big feed lots, and they're just-Lisa:Hold your nose.Andrew:Exactly. Producing huge amounts of nitrous oxide and methane and ammonia. These are greenhouse gas emissions that are many, many times more potent than CO2. Instead, you've got this very, stable, safe product that can be applied directly as soil. It's actually produced dry. You can cost effectively transport it. You-Lisa:And amend your soil with it.Andrew:Exactly. Yeah. You can take it back to the source of production, or you can put out into gardens, community gardens, home gardens, anywhere. The frass, which is our by-product, we've just recently gone through the approval process with the California Department of Agriculture to sell that as a retail fertilizer. We now have one pound and five pound bags of that.Lisa:Where could I find that?Andrew:We've just listed on Amazon, and we're starting to starting in the Berkeley area. We're getting it out to some of the local gardens stores. We're hoping that we'll have a chance to really take on a life of its own. Besides that, we're also able to sell that wholesale to bigger garden and farming operations in the area.Lisa:How did you find the funding to start all these operations?Andrew:Definitely, financing is the least fun and hardest part of starting a business. We were able to bootstrap the first several years. We were just actually building websites on the side while the initial pieces came together. Then when we realized that we really understood what the business model was going to be and what the growth plan was, we were able to go out and convince a handful of angel investors to come in and put enough money that we were able to launch our first R&D farm down in San Leandro.That was really just a process of getting out there, both going to pitch events, networking, going to basically the places where the kind of people are who care about sustainability and the food system, who understood the issues. Actually, a number of our investors found us, which was great. We had enough of a presence on social media and had been featured at a few events that they said, "Hey, I really believe in what you're doing." They understood why, and they knew it was going to be a long road to get there.They were very supportive. Then, from there, once you've got initial traction, then as you need more funding, you go out, find ways of getting in front of the right people and being able to tell that story and show how the payoff is going to happen down the road.Lisa:Everybody's pretty aware. It's a huge problem.Andrew:It's amazing how the awareness and focus changed from 2012 to now, because when we started and we're going out there saying, hey, insect protein is this amazing solution. People just raised eyebrows. Now, we go out there and people say, "Yeah, we know, but how are you going to implement it?" Which is much better conversation, because we actually get right into the meat of what we're doing and how we're solving the problem. We don't have to worry about spending half an hour just convincing someone that they should even take us seriously.Lisa:Who are your major competitors?Andrew:The industry is so new, The demand for the product keeps growing at a rate that, essentially, we're not able to directly compete, because we're all just trying to keep up with the scaling of demand. There's a farm down in Austin, Texas, which has gotten some great funding and done some cool stuff, building their operation. There's a big operation up in Ontario, Canada that's been one of the major suppliers in North America.Lisa:Internationally?Andrew:They're a good number of companies in Thailand and Southeast Asia, starting to be a little more presence in Mexico. When we think about it, for us to saturate this market, they're going to have to be thousands of cricket farms, right? We have this concept of a benign competition. When they have a win, that's good for us, because we're growing this opportunity together. It's much less cut throat than you find in more matured and saturated markets.Lisa:There's room to grow in it. Yeah. For sure.Andrew:Huge, huge opportunity.Lisa:Have you had any negative response?Andrew:Certainly. Particularly early on, you got a lot of ew, yuck. What are you doing? What's great about people, is that we really quickly get used to ideas. The same folks we would talk to six years ago and say, "Hey, we think you should try eating crickets." They'd say basically, "No way in hell would I do that." My test is based. I'm sitting on an airplane and the person next to me says, "Hey, what do you do?" How does that conversation go? Six years ago, went one way. Now, Lyft drivers or just folks out of the coffee shop I say, "Hey, we do cricket protein." Almost immediately, people now start telling me why it's a good idea. I mean, it's amazing how the public perception has shifted. I think it's really just a consequence of exposure.Lisa:If you can find a tasty way to get protein and not have to pay what you pay for meat ...Andrew:The market's so young. It's still a pretty premium product. The price point is similar to that of an equivalent meat product. So like the cricket protein powder is basically a dried ... It's 60% protein, 20% fat. It's this really nutrient dense product. It costs similarly as if you bought meat and dehydrated it. What that would cost, 15 to $20 a pound, which seems like a lot. Then you think you're reducing that down. You can get your fresh crickets. The costs of production is similar to your higher-end meat now. What's great is that's with really barely any R&D that's been done over the last few years.Lisa:Barely anybody in the marketplace.Andrew:Barely anyone in the marketplace. You think about what the price of chicken and beef is right now. That's the result of 50 years and trillions of dollars. Our industry, with five years and a few million dollars of development, is already getting competitive with meat. In the next few years, it's just going to soar below that, which is great. Up until very recently, there'd never been really any indication of actual opposition to the idea. It was just niche enough. No one was really worried about it. We did interestingly have the first high-profile shot across the bow.What happened was, late in July when the Senate was starting to go through their appropriations bill process, Senator Jeff Flake actually introduced a amendment that would specifically ban federal funding for research projects around insects for food use. This really caught us all off guard, what seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere.It was very strange and essentially someone had brought to the senator's attention that a handful of small innovation grants had gone out from the USDA to companies that were developing food products with insect protein. It's not the kind of thing that someone like Jeff Flake would just pick up. Someone out there suddenly cared enough to bring that to his attention. We don't really know exactly what went on there.Lisa:You don't know what went on.Andrew:Not yet. Yeah. We have an industry group. There's over 90 companies in the United States, Almost every state, there are companies working with insect protein, whether it's for pet food or animal feed or for human food, both on the production side and the product side. This is actually an amazing opportunity for American economic growth, American leadership. It's very surprising that something would come along like this that you would want to block federal research funding. Specifically, it's the small business innovation research grants that were being referenced. We've received some of the same grants as well.Lisa:Was that this year?Andrew:This was just a few months ago. Now, very luckily, that amendment was not accepted into the final version of the appropriations bill. We realize like, oh, there are people that care enough to start throwing up some roadblocks. That's actually a good sign for us that we're being taken seriously in that way.Lisa:That's a positive way to look at it.Andrew:For us, anytime that we have a conversation with someone and I convinced someone that they should take this seriously or they should go to A's game and buy a pack of crickets or they should go to the pet store and get some Jiminy's treats that they can feed their dog. That's a huge win for me.Lisa:Yeah.Andrew:Every time I'd ride in a Lyft or sit on an airplane, that's an opportunity. Yeah. I mean, there's already been this level of engagement, which is great.Lisa:I wanted to ask you about other projects. One of them I'm intrigued with is the Open Bug Farm.Andrew:In a earlier stage of our business development, we actually developed an open source mealworm farming kit, basically for people at home who are interested in this. The could either buy the kit from us or the designs were online. It was all off-the-shelf components, so they can make it themselves.Lisa:Like having chickens in your backyard.Andrew:That was the same kind of idea.Lisa:Instead, it's crickets.Andrew :Exactly how we were modeling it. In fact, a lot of the people who were interested in that, wanted to grow the mealworms to feed their chickens. That project didn't end up being really good business model for us. We didn't keep selling the kits, but we kept the designs for it out there. What was really great was around that project, we just launched a forum and a huge number of people came to that forum and asked questions and provided expertise. We were able to share some of our expertise on the topic.Now, there's this huge information resource that just has tons and tons of discussion about raising different kinds of insects at different scales, from commercial to home scale. We're really happy that exists out there. We get a lot of inquiries from people that say, "Hey, I just want to start growing some crickets for myself or some meal worms" or whatever it is. We don't have time to help every one of those people individually. We're able to say, "Hey, go over to the forum here, because there's just this huge drove information."Lisa:What do you see in the future?Andrew:Looking at the future, there's just so much room for growth. For us, the key thing is just get more commercial cricket farms built over the next years. Get the production ramped up, instead of just being able to have niche premium pet treats on the market. There can be full-diet pet foods and then maybe even your mainstream pet foods. If the Walmart brand of dog food could have even 5% cricket protein instead of meat, we'd be saving millions and millions of pounds of meat, hundreds of millions of gallons of water. It's all just about being able to grow the production volume to be able to meet those demands.For us, the path to doing that is not just building cricket farms ourselves but to be able to take the facility that we've designed and package that into a turnkey product that we could then license out to a production partner. Because we got a lot of inbound inquiry from folks that say, "Hey, I would love to start a cricket farm, but I don't really know how." There's great opportunity to leverage that and provide a ready-made solution where you can say, "Well, here's the setup and here's the training. We can provide the technical support." Then you can grow these crickets, and then we can help you process that into the protein powder that we can get out to the market."That's really the longer term growth strategy, is being able to engage with all these partners. Over the last several years, we've had hundreds and hundreds of people contact us, say, "I'm a dairy farmer, but I want to get into crickets." A lot of folks with agricultural backgrounds, maybe they grew up on a farm, but their parent's farm isn't quite big enough to support them coming back to work on the farm. They say, "Hey, maybe I could throw up an outbuilding and we could have a cricket farm there."There's a huge amount of opportunity for people that essentially have cricket production as their own business and be able to feed into the supply chain where we can have this huge impact offsetting meat. Fundamentally, what we are after is really converting, like I mentioned, this linear extractive food production system into a circular sustainable food production system. Right now, we're just so overextended on our demands, on the very limited resources that we have available in terms of water and soil and arable lands and even just nutrients available to grow crops.We're going to stop being able to produce food. When we talk to folks in the chicken industry or the beef industry, they're actually all very interested in the potential for the insect protein in the feed for their animals. Because all these animals are not just eating plant-based proteins. Almost all the animal feeds out there also have some amount of fishmeal in them, which supplements key amino acids and fats that you don't find produced in plants. Fishmeal production is a really shocking industry. We basically send out ships that scoop up indiscriminately, all the small fish. Particularly, they'll go scoop up whole schools of anchovetas and anchovies. Then they just grind that up into a powder and send it off into the animal feed formulations.Essentially, all that farmed salmon is basically eating wild fish that's been caught and ground up and pelletized and then fed back to that salmon. Something like 90% of fisheries are on the verge of collapse or have already collapsed. There's a huge amount of interest in introducing insect proteins into animal feeds. The FDA and AAFCO, which is the organization that controls what can go into animal feeds, have already approved soldier fly proteins, which is another insect that's being widely grown for use in salmon feeds. Now, the FDA has also just indicated that they think that should also be allowed in poultry feed. Poultry feed is one of the biggest consumers of fishmeal in the land-based agriculture.Lisa:Do you have a website that people can go to?Andrew:Our company is Tiny Farms. The website is just www.tiny-farms.com. Yeah. You can check out our basic offering. You can contact us through the contact form.Lisa:Are you selling tiny farm hats, like you have on? [crosstalk]Andrew:We've printed short-runs of shirts and had these hats made just for the team. There's enough interest that I think we'll get those listed up there soon. We just have to start thinking about the food system, in terms of a self-sustaining system and not like feel good sustainability. This has to be a system that can continue to produce food forever.Lisa:There are a lot of us living here, and we'll need every tool we can use if we want to keep enjoying it.Andrew:Yeah. Exactly.Lisa:Thank you, Andrew, for being on program.Andrew:Thank you. This was fun.Lisa:You've been listening to Method To The Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes University. We'll be back again in two weeks. 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In this episode T. Susan Chang plays host to interview me about my new deck from Llewellyn – The Orisha Tarot. We talk about my 18 year journey with the Lukumi tradition that brought me to this point. This episode is a deep dive into the how and why of this deck an dthe role the spirits have played in its creation too.  You can see the deck and get it from my website here, Amazon, or at your local bookshop.  Think about how much you've enjoyed the podcast and how many episodes you listened to, and consider if it is time to support the Patreon You can do so here. And you should go see all the good stuff Susan is up to here.  If you want more of this in your life you can subscribe by RSS , iTunes, Stitcher, or email. Thanks for joining the conversation. Please share the podcast to help us grow and change the world.  Andrew You can book time with me through my site here.  Transcription SUSIE: Hello, everybody! You're hearing a different voice as the host of this week's Hermit's Lamp podcast. I'm Susie Chang, friend of Andrew, and Andrew has kindly invited me to come on the show in order to interview him about his new deck, the Orisha Tarot, since he obviously could not interview himself! [laughs] Normally, at the beginning of an interview, what I would do is introduce the guest, but since the guest is the host, I guess I'll just do a very cursory introduction of what I know about my friend, Andrew. As you know, he is the proprietor of The Hermit's Lamp, the store, which is a touchstone for all of us in the tarot community, and he is the voice behind The Hermit's Lamp podcast. He is an artist in his own right and a creator of beautiful works, decks, and he is also a priest in the Lucumí tradition, and we'll be talking about that some more. But the reason that we're here today is to talk about the Orisha Tarot, which is coming out from Llewellyn in September … What day is it?  ANDREW: Basically, today, according to Amazon.  SUSIE: For real! Fantastic! Yeah, this is very exciting. So, I understand decks are already shipping out, and I was also particularly interesting -- interested -- in doing this podcast because we're both Llewellyn authors. I've got a book coming out from Llewellyn on tarot correspondences just next month. So, shout out to Llewellyn for supporting the work of tarot lovers everywhere.  ANDREW: Absolutely. SUSIE: Yeah! So the Orisha Tarot is officially out. Congratulations! ANDREW: Thank you! SUSIE: It's been many years in the making, hasn't it?  ANDREW: Yeah, I mean it's … It's always one of those things. Where do you count that from? You know?  SUSIE: [laughs] ANDREW: I signed my contract for it about two years ago, maybe a little bit less than that. So that's probably as good a time as any. But even at that point I had already made a dozen cards and had spent five or six years prior to that thinking about it and trying to figure out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. So. You know?  SUSIE: Right. And actually, I'd like to back up even further, to the beginning of your story in this tradition. And to find out a little bit. Because it's been about ten years, I think you said? Something like that?  ANDREW: Ten years as a priest.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: As of August. It was 2000 when I started getting involved in this tradition. So it's been about 18 years that I've been involved.  SUSIE: Wow. So that's … Really, it's been a long journey for you. And I was listening to your wonderful interview with our friends at the Tarot Visions podcast, and I think you mentioned that you came into it through kind of a circle of friends who were exploring different esoteric traditions, and I kind of wanted to know a little bit more about what drew you. You mentioned that you were, you know, a friend had brought in his own explorations of Lucumí, and I wanted to, first of all, sort of talk a tiny bit about the context of Lucumí, since not everyone will be familiar with it, and also, a little bit more about your attraction to it. Now, as I understand it, Lucumí is a Cuban offshoot of the greater Yoruba African traditional religion, yeah?  ANDREW: So, the story you get will depend a lot on who you talk to. Like many things. Right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: You know, so, at the time of the Atlantic slave trade, Yoruban wasn't really cohesive at all. That whole area was a bunch of city states and so on, right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: So, this idea that there was sort of one cohesive African traditional religion, or ATR, which these things spread from, isn't really historically accurate. You know?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: If you came from, you know, the city of Ife, then, you know, your tradition slants in one direction, certain deities are, you know, held above others; if you come from Oyo, then, you know, that's going to have a different set of traditions and sort of a different kind of more primary veneration and tilting towards certain deities over others. If you're down sort of in the coastal parts of kind of western Africa, towards the south end of that sort of prominence, the way in which some of the Orisha are going to manifest, especially the water Orisha, are different than if you're sort of further north, or inland, or in other places. You know, and so … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: It's important to understand that these sort of … All of these Orisha traditions and their diasporic manifestations, you know, as they found themselves in different countries, throughout the Caribbean and North and South America, they all varied depending on which groups of people were enslaved and brought over, which traditions survived, what happened in relationship to the indigenous culture that was present, you know, in Cuba indigenous culture was sort of pretty much wiped out, so there wasn't much inclusion of that into the traditions, whereas in other parts, you know, especially in South America, you know, some of those cultures continue to sort of live alongside and there's sort of more sharing of ideas. SUSIE: Yeah, it seems like in many of the diasporic manifestations, you see fates that have been heavily syncretized with whatever was going on locally.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think that, you know, the question of syncretization is always an interesting one, you know?  SUSIE: Yeah.  ANDREW: The story that some people like to say is that they were syncretized in order to conceal them and to prevent … SUSIE: Right. ANDREW: And to protect them and to allow them to practice covertly, you know … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And I'm sure that that's true in some ways. But also, you know, there's a lot of … In nonwestern approaches to magic and to spirituality, there's often a real sense of "hey, what's that guy good for? What's that spirit …?" SUSIE: Right. ANDREW: "What's that one going to do for me?" Whereas this sort of very practical notion of, you know, you come across somebody and you're like, "well, I read about this guy, what's that saint good for?" SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And there's the syncretization that happens, for sure, but there's also the notion of like, having more spiritual people in your corner is not a bad idea at all. Right?  SUSIE: Exactly, exactly. ANDREW: And so, so I think the history is interesting to try and unravel, but I think that we'll never really fully understand exactly what was going on with everybody involved.  SUSIE: Exactly. And I think that, you know, people of faith kind of make faith work however they can, right? You know, it's sort of like you'll always have schools of thoughts that try to keep, you know, try to distinguish and separate and go towards a purist mentality in terms of practicing faith, and then there are others who'll say, well, we work with what we've got, you know?  ANDREW: Exactly. SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: So, and so, to kind of answer your kind of like, about my lineage … My lineage, as far back as we know it, originates with this woman Monserrate, you know, she's the farthest back that we can trace that, and my lineage originates in Cuba and through those sort of Cuban traditions. So. Variations of the diasporic traditions, for sure.  SUSIE: Right, right. So we're talking about … We're specifically talking about a tradition that came to Cuba through the slave trade.  ANDREW: Exactly, yeah. SUSIE: And do … You actually have some reference to that in, I think, your Ten of Swords card.  ANDREW: Absolutely. SUSIE: Which seems really appropriate, yeah. So, I wanted to know a little bit more about your personal journey, in terms of whether you yourself grew up in any kind of faith community, or whether you were … you know, did you have to rebel against one? did you long to belong to a faith community? What was that like for you and what was discovering this community like for you?  ANDREW: So, I think that one of the best things that my parents did was not raise me with any traditions at all.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: My parents weren't particularly religious, you know ... SUSIE: So what did you rebel against? [laughs] ANDREW: I didn't rebel against any- I mean I rebelled against everything. But we'll get to that. But what that meant was, you know, when I said to my mom, I want to go to the psychic fair and find some books on magic, when I was 12, my mom was like, okay. You know, when I like, picked out Alistair Crowley, she was like, sure, go ahead.  SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: So, that meant that I like had a lot of space to really get involved and think about other things, you know?  SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: You know, other than sort of when my parents split up and we started going to Anglican church, mostly I think because my mom wanted some community … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: I didn't really have a lot of connection or experience with any kind of organized religion. But what happened was, when I was 14, I almost died in a car accident.  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: And after that I wanted to understand everything. And so, I didn't rebel against anything as such, but what I really wanted to know was, like, what does this all mean? Right? Like all of it. You know. At that point I'd already been reading tarot for a year … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: I'd already been studying Crowley for a couple of years. It was already really invested in sort of a magical world view. And at that point then I just started reading everything I could get my hands on, right? So I'm like in grade 9 and 10, and reading Nietzsche and … SUSIE: Sure. ANDREW: Picking out, you know, people who can talk about these things. The youth group at the church was run by an ex-Jesuit, and so I would like corner him and be like "hey, tell me about this, tell me about that, tell me about this," and for the most part, people would indulge me and have conversations with me about it, you know?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. Was there another organized religion that you were drawn to? Before Lucumí?  ANDREW: No. I mean, Crowley's work. You know?  SUSIE: Yes.  ANDREW: For me it was basically all about Crowley's work.  SUSIE: And you were in the OTO? ANDREW: Yeah. When I was in my ... It wasn't until much later though. It wasn't until I was, you know, well into my 20s that I actually even considered … I was like, oh, maybe the OTO exists here in Toronto. Maybe I could find people. Mostly I just practiced independently and pursued and tried to talk to people. SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: Yeah. And then basically I left the OTO and the Armed Solace, which was another initiatory group, and moved into practicing Lucumí, you know? That was my journey.  SUSIE: Yeah, yeah. And it's been, as you said, like an 18-year journey at this point. And, so that's something I wanted to sort of ask you about, in terms of doing the artwork, telling the stories, introducing the wider world to this tradition. You know, often when we are talking about faiths we didn't grow up in, you know, there's this question of whether it's your story to tell, or whether, you know, at what point do you become a representative? And so that's a question I have for you, at what point did you feel that you were invested enough or, you know, that you had a strong enough sense of belonging to be able to bring this to other people?  ANDREW: Sure. So, there's a whole bunch of pieces to that answer. SUSIE: Mm-hmm. It's a complex one. [laughing] ANDREW: Yeah! We'll start with this. When you … When you become a priest, right? You become initiated into a lineage, right? So, you know, and when we talk about ancestors, the word we use most of the time is Egun. Right? We mean Egun to mean, ancestors by blood, and ancestors by initiation, right?  SUSIE: Right. ANDREW: And so, you know, my Egun are those priests of the Orishas, going back to Montserrate and beyond, you know, and they're lost to history beyond that. And so, part of the conversation for me is, this is my lineage, this is my, these are my ancestors at this point, right? And this is something that we take pretty seriously within the tradition, right? Initiation and lineage are really significant. SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: And so that's part of the thing. Part of it is, although my parents did not practice this tradition, I am initiated into this lineage in a traditional way.  SUSIE: So, so there's a difference here between blood lineage and spiritual lineage.  ANDREW: But the word does not differentiate. We don't differentiate, right? So, if you … We could … You could get a reading, and, your traditional reading, and your reading could come in a good way or a bad way, depending on what's going on with you, from the Egun, right?  SUSIE: Right, right.  ANDREW: And when we're divining, if it's possible, we want to mark who that is, and we would ask, ancestors from the lineage, and ancestors from the blood line, and depending on what the reading came out as, it would guide us. And we could narrow it down, and be like, "Oh, yeah, the ancestors are upset with you, and in this case it's someone from your blood family, or in some other case it's somebody from your initiatory lineage," but we don't differentiate, the word means the same, right?  SUSIE: Yes, I seem to remember reading something this past week about the idea that your, your, they're sort of one set, one bloodline sort of over one shoulder and spiritual guidance over the other, but they sort of combine and you need both. And I guess, you know, speaking about the outlook and cosmology of the faith, would it fair to say that, you come into this religion, but the religion itself proceeds from the assumption that everybody, no matter where you come from, no matter who your parents, or grandparents etc. were, has a relationship, or a potential relationship they haven't yet realized, with the Orisha?  ANDREW: I don't think that that's actually true.  SUSIE: Okay. So that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of here.  ANDREW: Okay. Before we come to Earth, we choose our destiny. We choose our Ori, right? Ori is sort of, not easily translated into one thing, but if you think of it as sort of your guardian angel, your destiny, and your higher self, all as one entity, that's probably a reasonable set of points to make sense of it, for people who have those ideas already.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And when you choose your destiny, before you come to Earth, it's sealed, right?  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: And so, we don't know what all it entails before we come, but if it's part of your destiny to get initiated into the Orisha tradition then opportunities will present themselves for that. It's not to say that you couldn't force them otherwise, but those wouldn't be in alignment with your destiny. And really, when we're talking about sort of initiation, and sort of connection, and those kinds of things, they really all ought to be dictated by either divination, or dictated by Orisha in possession of people, right?  SUSIE: Yes.  ANDREW: It's not really, you know. There are many people who will come, people will come and Orishas are like, "yeah, okay, we'll help you," right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: Or the people will come, and they'll be like, "no, you should go do something else," right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: Either direction, go over that way, go look at these people, you know, like go look at these other traditions. It's definitely not for … It's not meant for everybody, per se, and it's not closed in any, you know, in any particular way, although certain houses and certain, you know, lineages, might be more closed to outsiders than others, based on a whole bunch of different factors, but … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: It's much more so that, you know, if it's part of your destiny the opportunity will arise, if it's not, then, you know, you might run into it, but they might say, no, you're good, go to the other side.  SUSIE: Right. Well, this is interesting to me because I've noticed that there seem to be a lot of people who are clearly didn't grow up within the culture who have become drawn to this religion or some form of it, some form of the faith, and, you know, taken it on. And, it seems as though there is, you know, a certain openness to those who commit themselves, whether or not they grew up or had family or, you know, understood the culture. Right?  ANDREW: Yeah, I mean I think that, I think that there are opportunities definitely for people to engage and connect with these traditions. And there are definitely practitioners around who are, you know, open to people who didn't grow up in these traditions and so on, for sure, right.  SUSIE: Right, right.  ANDREW: That's definitely a thing, and you know, I mean that, I think one of the things I see that's going on is that, certain people seem like they're looking for tradition, right? They're looking for … They're kind of doing something that doesn't have a long living history, and they're kind of looking backwards for, or looking around for those things that do, you know?  SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: I think that's part of why the Tarot de Marseilles is sort of resurfacing. SUSIE: Right, right.  ANDREW: You know, it's, I think that it's why the Orisha traditions are shifting and coming forward more. You know?  SUSIE: Right. That's one of the things that … I guess that's why I was asking you so much about your own background in terms of, you know, working independently versus belonging, right? Because I think that that's something that a lot of us struggle with, especially those of us who grew up, you know, in an era where religious community isn't something that one takes for granted.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. SUSIE: Yeah. So anyway, I think that we should probably turn a little bit to the work itself.  ANDREW: Well, let me finish answering … Cause we started with this question of me and sort of, you know, doing this deck, right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: You know, sort of … And we kind of started talking about the ancestral piece and drifted away, and there are a couple of other things that I want to sort of … SUSIE: Okay, good.  ANDREW: So I mean, one of the things, like I did a bunch of things around creating and starting this process, and getting permission before I started this process, and certainly one of them was sitting with my elders and talking about what I wanted to do, and, you know, getting advice from them.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And certainly part of it was asking the Orishas themselves, asking Elegua for, you know, his blessing to proceed with this project.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And also, you know, sort of sitting down with people and sort of showing my art with, you know, with different people and people of color and so on to kind of consult with my choices around representations and so on, so.  SUSIE: Absolutely, absolutely. ANDREW: I really wanted to, you know, you can never please anybody, and I'm sure there'll be some people who'll be upset by the deck, and well, you know, that's life. Right? But … SUSIE: Right. But it sounds as though you have a lot of support. At least within the community you have access to for the work that you undertook. ANDREW: Exactly. SUSIE: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Cool. So I wanted to talk a little bit about making a tarot deck, approaching a tarot deck, coming out of the various traditions you come out of. So I know that you started out with Crowley and the Thoth deck -- or, I know you pronounce it "Toth," [laughing] and also that your primary commitment as a reader for quite a while has been the Marseilles deck. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. SUSIE: So, how … Why did it seem like a natural choice to you to translate or to represent what you know from Orisha as a tarot deck? You know, I think a lot of people would say, well, you know, since there isn't an obvious 78 card structure, you know, number of deities, all the sort of correspondences that tend to underlie at least the Golden Dawn-derived decks, or the general tradition of tarot reaching back to the 15th century, you know, why, why do a tarot deck and not something more free form like an oracle deck?  ANDREW: Well, because, one of the reasons why I made this deck was because I wanted to create a bridge between the people who have traditional experience with the Orishas, and people who have experience with the traditional tarot structure.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And I wanted to use that … those two pieces as a way of creating a bridge so that people could sort of have more understanding of each other. And of what's going on, right?  SUSIE: Yeah, yeah.  ANDREW: And so, I really, you know, I mean, I've got nothing against oracle decks, I mean I released one earlier in the year. But, in trying to think about something as large and expansive as the Orisha traditions, it really … Having a clear structure, like the tarot structure, allowed me to frame and set the conversation in a way that allowed me to finish it [laughing] cause otherwise … SUSIE: [laughing] Right, it's ... otherwise, how do you know when it's done? [laughing] ANDREW: Yeah, right? I mean, we divine with, you know, upwards of 256 different signs.  SUSIE: Right. ANDREW: Each of those signs is as complicated or as a trump card, or as sophisticated as a trump card … SUSIE: Right. ANDREW: and then there's, you know, depending on who you ask, you know, a bunch of primary Orishas and maybe, you know, like even hundreds if you start getting into different paths and roads, it can expand infinitely in every direction, right? So.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. I'm curious in whether there's much crossover between the two communities, that you've noticed. I mean tarot, and Orisha.  ANDREW: Sure, lots of people. I know lots of people who are initiated. You know, I mean, that sort of … syncretic piece, kind of "what can I do with this?", you know, that continues to be a problem with a lot of Orisha practitioners' lives, right?  SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: It's more purely, just the Lucumí Orisha stuff. Many people practice some combination of, you know, Paulo Moyumbe, and espiritismo, and card reading, and, you know, other things, depending on who they are and what they feel is important and what they have access to. So there's not like … There's not a lot of hard rules … SUSIE: Yeah.  ANDREW: About the Orisha tradition. Certainly not the tradition I practice.  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: I mean, definitely don't mix them in one ceremony. SUSIE: But it's okay if you practice them separately.  ANDREW: If you go to church on Sunday, and then you tend your ancestral Boveda, and then you have some Orisha, and you go between them, depending on what you feel and need, it depends on where you go, it's a really common experience for a lot of people. So.  SUSIE: Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you addressed that, cause that's something I was really curious about. You know, you don't dilute your practice by sort of mixing a bit of everything. On the other hand, you're one person, and, you know, if you're drawn to different practices, then perhaps you're drawn to different practices for different needs.  ANDREW: Sure. And if the Orisha don't want you doing that, they'll tell you! For sure. SUSIE: [laughing] Right.  ANDREW: They'll be like, "stop it!"  SUSIE: That's not cool. Yeah.  ANDREW: Yeah.  SUSIE: So, a little bit about what people can expect when they're approaching the cards. Now, it's not like there's a particular Orisha per card. There's Orisha in some representations of some cards, some cards have concepts from Lucumí, some cards have one of the Odu on them, so, sort of like, how did you approach how you wanted to impart all of this information structurally into the deck?  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. So, I really, I wanted to try and avoid what I had seen done in other decks in the past.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: Not because it's wrong per se, but because it doesn't give the conversation enough meat. Right? You know a lot of decks would say, well, Shango is the king, and therefore, he's the emperor, and so when I draw the Emperor I'm going to draw Shango.  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: And that's fair, you know, I mean Shango is the emperor, he's the king of the Orishas.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: But, but there's a lot more to it than that. What does that mean? In what way does kingship or power in that way show up in a variety of different contexts, and what are the different conversations that we could have, right?  SUSIE: Exactly. ANDREW: And so, when I was sort of working with the trump cards, I wanted to embody the ideas that I see being behind, you know, behind the cards themselves: spiritual authority, earthly authority, fortune and chance, you know, like different things. I wanted to sort of embody those bigger ideas and kind of avoid kind of just a straight, this symbol = this symbol here … SUSIE: Yeah, I call that the matchy match. [laughing] ANDREW: Right? Exactly. SUSIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  ANDREW: When I was looking at the number cards, which for me often represent sort of more the what and the how of life, right? I wanted to kind of focus more on stories, and those things that tend to be more about particular patakis, or stories or ideas from the lives of the Orishas and the lives of their practitioners and where that kind of overlaps and integrates with those numbered cards. And then when I got to the court cards, I wanted to, I wanted to really kind of explore the way the court cards can be sort of seen to line up with roles people might play in the community. Right?  SUSIE: Right. ANDREW: So, when we're looking at those, we see … One of them, the Aleyo, the new person who's just coming to this tradition, who's ready to learn, and they're making an offering to, you know, the butcher, who is a very skilled and important part of the ceremonies in the community, to the elders who run the ceremonies, and the singers and the drummers and the artists and all of those things, so I kind of went through and sifted those ideas into where I felt they aligned with the court cards best. SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: So, the court cards then become really positions or roles one might find oneselves in, in religion, and over time, with the traditional idea of the court cards, over time we might [00:29:27]. Over time we might be, you know, we might play this role in this community and that role in another community. And so on. So. SUSIE: Right, right. And I think hat underscores what I think sometimes we forget about court cards, which is that we can be any of them, and we are any and all of them at different times.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. SUSIE: So, about that … A word you brought up just before, which I think is pretty important for us to discuss, the word Pataki, the story. So can you tell us a little bit about how that is contextualized within the faith and also, we should mention, that that is the name of the book that goes with the deck, Patakis of the Orisha Tarot. Yeah. ANDREW: So, patakis are the stories of the Orishas and their practitioners that are meant to be instructive, right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: The word parable, you know, is a way to maybe give a different word for it in English.  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: And, you know, especially when we're divining, right, we'll often give a proverb, and we'll often, you know, tell a story about the Orishas. And, this is part of this oral tradition of it, that we are expressing these ideas in ways that allow us to tell the person things, in ways that are easier to hold onto, easier to integrate, that give us some meat, rather than just saying, "hey, don't do this thing," which we might also say … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: We might also tell the story of when one of the Orishas did that thing and what happened to them.  SUSIE: Yes.  ANDREW: "Oh yeah yeah, okay I see that. I shouldn't do that thing, cause this is gonna happen," right? There'll be a problem.  SUSIE: There's something about these stories that's so human and relatable, right? You know? I mean is it not the case that the Orisha themselves were at one time human or before they became more than human?  ANDREW: Well, that's a … That's a contested … Somewhat contested point of view. Many Orisha are what's known as urumole. They came from heaven. Right? They originated purely from spirit.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: There are Orishas who are considered deified ancestors, Shango being one of them, you know, Oduduwa being another one. You know, there are these spirits, these people who led great lives and led their communities and so on, and became, you know, deified after their death. The question that comes up in those conversations, then, also is were those lives that Orisha descending and living on Earth for a period of time?  SUSIE: Yes, right. Yeah. ANDREW: So, I mean, I think that it … I think that there's no clear answers to that. But in general, the majority of the Orishas did not start as human, but originated as part of the unfolding of creation, and then came to sort of live these lives and, you know, have these stories and experiences that we now understand. And also, when we're talking about some of these stories, I think that we also need to understand that some of them, and there's no easy historical way to say which ones are not, but a good chunk of them were probably stories about priests of those spirits.  SUSIE: I see.  ANDREW: Made these mistakes in their lives. It's like, "Oh yeah, you're Bill, the priest of Obatala who lived down the road …" SUSIE: [laughing] ANDREW: "Remember when you did this?" "Yeah, I remember," right?  SUSIE: [laughing] Right, right.  ANDREW: And those stories become, you know, part of the myth, right? Part of the lexicon of these traditions.  SUSIE: Yes. I guess what makes me wonder, you know, what their relationship with mortality and humanity is, is because these stories, the emotions and the sort of currents that they represent are things that anyone can relate to. You know, there's jealousy, there's anger, there's, you know, there's infidelity, there's theft, there are things that you don't sort of in the same way that in the Greek mythology you see people, you see deities acting badly, right? Or in ways that show that they can make mistakes too.  ANDREW: Definitely. One of my elders likes to say, you know, "They made those mistakes, you don't need to, okay?"  SUSIE: [laughing] ANDREW: Right? But, you know. We're all human. We're gonna learn or we're not gonna learn. But we'll learn one way or another. Right?  SUSIE: Right, right. So, a little bit more about deck structure. So, first of all, I noticed immediately that there were some sorts of ways in which your experience with tarot informed the deck. First of all, there's a little bit of a thought sensibility, in that your Strength and Justice are ordered in the way that the Thoth deck and the Marseilles deck do, rather than the Rider-Waite-Smith. I noticed that you have ordered it wands, cups, swords, disks, fire, water, air earth, which is a very hermetic thing. And the very fact that you call them disks also comes out of the Thoth tradition. But, I also wanted to know a little bit, for example, of ... I can sort of understand where the structure for the majors comes from, but what I wanted to know a little bit more is about the pips. Because your primary reading background comes from, as far as assigning meaning to the pips, I guess would be based in Thoth originally? I wondered if there was sort of more relationship …. Would someone who comes from a Rider-Waite-Smith tradition instantly recognize, or from a Golden Dawn tradition, instantly recognize the concepts in each of these minor cards?  ANDREW: Well, I mean I think so. [laughing] SUSIE: [laughing] I can tell you that I certainly did. ANDREW: I mean, here's my hope about this deck. You know?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: I mean, so, obviously, I started with the Thoth deck, and I read with that deck for many years, exclusively. But I also read a ton of books on tarot, right, during that time. And had a lot of conversations, especially once I started branching out in the communities more, and you know, I mean, I've read lots of books on the Waite-Smith tradition, and, you know, all of that sort of and a bunch of that older stuff, you know?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: Hermetic or otherwise. So when I was, when I was creating this deck, there are … People who are reading the book, you'll come to some spots, you'll hit a few cards where it's like, you know, in the Marseilles tradition, people often think of this card this way, and I'll give a little bit of context, and then when you go and read it, it'll make a ton of sense.  SUSIE: Yeah.  ANDREW: And, that's really mostly because I could have, you know, I could have written ten times as much about these cards as I did. But Llewellyn said, you can only make the book [cross-laughter [00:37:02]  SUSIE: Right, right.  ANDREW: And, and I really endeavored to sort of kind of hold what I see as kind of the middle of the road on these meanings, right? I mean I didn't … the numbering is the numbering, and to me ultimately the numbering … I mean, this might be blasphemy from a hermetic point of view, but to me the numbering of the trump cards is really largely irrelevant.  SUSIE: I think it's arbitrary, yeah.  ANDREW: It's a historical precedent that's [inaudible at [00:37:30]. SUSIE: Although, although, Andrew, I think it's important that you made Elegua the Fool. I think, you know. ANDREW: For sure!  SUSIE: Yeah. As the Orisha who comes first.  ANDREW: For sure, yeah, yeah. But, but, you know, choosing Justice to be this number or that number, I'm like, eh. I almost never read the numbers when I read cards, because I just see the cards, right?  SUSIE: Right, right.  ANDREW: So, you know, this deck is really meant to be, you know, a kind of relatively even representation of tarot as it exists today, right?  SUSIE: Yeah, yeah.  ANDREW: And so, there's not … none of it's slanted too much one way or the another. There's no like "Well, you need to know that Crowley called this card the Aeon means, you know the goddess Nuit means this... SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: It's just not like that at all, right?  SUSIE: Yeah, I mean, my sensation as I was getting to know the deck was really that it was about the stories, and which story fit which card best.  ANDREW: Yeah. It's one of the things that I actually really … I wouldn't have guessed that I would have felt this was so important, but the feedback that I've gotten from the people who've gotten their books already, or gotten their copies already, who I shared advance copies with and stuff, is … including some non-tarot people who just are reading it because they really like me.  SUSIE: [laughing] ANDREW: The feedback I keep getting is that the material is really accessible. And to me, that's like a really important thing. You know? I didn't want to make this difficult, I avoided using as much jargon, or like, you know, Lucumí words, as much as possible. I really, you know, I didn't get into hermetic philosophy particularly anywhere. You know there are all these branches and wings of my own personal experiences and practice, that I just brought them all down to the dining hall, I was like, "All right! Let's all have lunch to talk about stuff in a general way." SUSIE: [laughing] ANDREW: You know, it's hard to make that happen, so.  SUSIE: Right. Well I think that, you know, I think it's really important for anyone coming to this deck to get to know the book, to read the book, really read the book, because it's, you know, it's 350 pages, it's real, it's got every single page not only has a story that's associated with the card, but also sort of breaks down the symbols that you included in the card, what its divinatory meaning might be, and sort of what the advice might be that goes with it. And I found that incredibly helpful in terms of, like, you know, if I came across a card where my own sort of tarot background wasn't making it immediately obvious to me what you were trying to do, I could just go to the book and it was really clear, you know, like within a minute. So, I think that it's … This is one of those things where … And I generally am not a person who believes that readers always have to go to the book, but I think it is really enriching and helpful to contextualize using what you wrote for this deck.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think unless somebody has a strong living practice with like, you know, with a traditional Orisha practice, yeah, it might be hard to start just by looking at it … SUSIE: Yeah, yeah.  ANDREW: Most people who come from those traditions and read cards, as well, then maybe they don't need the book as much, you know. It's always interesting as I share the images on the, you know, on social media and stuff, I get, you know, priests jumping on the thing, and like, "how you choose to represent this here! it's perfect!" you know? SUSIE: [laughing] right. ANDREW: They just get it, right? Because they have both of those pieces. But it's so nice to see people be moved to see themselves and to see the tradition in this way, which is really gratifying.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm. Before we move off structure and start talking a little bit more about the art and the specific cards, is there a sort of through line in each suit that we should be looking for? Something that's going on in wands only, something that's going on in cups or swords or disks?  ANDREW: That was … That was a notion that I abandoned along the way. You know, in making a deck there always comes this point where the reality check steps in, and you're like, this is the limit of what I can do, you know.  SUSIE: Yeah, yeah.  ANDREW: And the sort of the idea that there was sort of one through line for each set of suits, I didn't really, I couldn't really find it, and you know there are a couple other ideas about levels of detail and symbolic representations that I just realized I'd be spending another five years like hand-drawing beaded things all day… SUSIE: [laughing] ANDREW: I'm like, that can't happen.  SUSIE: Right, and if … I mean there are certainly color and number correspondences you could have worked with but, by forcing it into you know, existing tarot structure or hermetic structure I think you would have been doing something that was not necessarily conducive to the most rich environment of reading these cards. ANDREW: Exactly. SUSIE: You know what I mean? Yeah, although, I'm looking at … I've sorted it out, separated my deck out, Ace, Cups Swords, sorry, Wands, Cups, Swords, I'm looking at the Aces, and there's definitely, I get at least just from my background, I get an elemental feeling off of those cards, you know, a fire, water, air, earth feeling, and even if that's not something that you intended to do or carried throughout the deck, there's still something there, I think. ANDREW: For sure. I mean, in making this deck it's definitely … A lot of stuff just emerged in the creative process. And although I spent a lot of time thinking and writing and making notes about what went where and why and so on, when I sat down to make the cards, a lot of stuff just emerged as part of that process, you know, from the news, from the creativity, by chance or whatever, my own conscious formulated it, so there's a lot of stuff in there that happened as I was making the cards, it wasn't necessarily fully thought out … SUSIE: But which is just part of you, as a reader and a practitioner. ANDREW: Yeah. I mean, you spend 32 years working with the tarot, right?  SUSIE: [laughing] ANDREW: It's a lot of ideas in the back of the brain there that are trying to come out in one way or another.  SUSIE: Right. So, let's talk a little bit about the way the cards look for those people who haven't been lucky enough to pick up their decks yet. It's a gorgeous production, first of all, I think you, you know … the artwork's just stunning, and Llewellyn did a great job, I think, as well. First of all it's a borderless deck, which, thank you! [laughing] That's …  ANDREW: Llewellyn let me do something that they had never done before, which was: all of the titles are handwritten.  SUSIE: Yeah! Yeah! ANDREW: [crosstalking [00:44:55] to the cards. They're not obscured, they're easy enough to see when you're looking … SUSIE: You can find them.  ANDREW: [crosstalking] Off of the bottom. They fit in more with the artwork, so it's easier to kind of just look at the artwork, or just look for the title when you need to.  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: That was something that we had a bunch of conversations with …  SUSIE: I think it was a brilliant choice. Because, you know, it really foregrounds the story of the art. The art fills the frame, you know, everything about it allows you to immerse yourself in what's going on in that picture, and then secondarily you, you know, check out whatever title it was so you can sort of match it up with your own tarot knowledge. But I really appreciated that and I'm really glad that they made that decision and you, you know, suggested it. And also, the colors are so saturated and so bold. So the texture and look that you were going for was based on Gwash, right?  ANDREW: Well, so, actually, what I was … So, I used to paint in Gwash a lot, before I had kids. But, you know, having kids, and having a space to set up art, you know, a small, urban space, isn't really that easy, right?  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: So certainly, that's a piece of my sensibility and my aesthetic, but part of what I was really looking for was, you know, starting, it's hard to date now, but starting quite a while ago, I went from being super structured and really trying to sort of make everything perfect, to really kind of moving to a more gestural and looser way of working. And so, you know, this kind of comes out of that, you know, sort of move away from you know, sort of pursuing absolute realism to pursuing something else. And then, the other piece of the aesthetic is, you know, I wanted to include different pieces of symbolism, but I didn't want to make it look like the Thoth deck where there are so many symbols that you don't really know what to look at sometimes.  SUSIE: Yes, yes.  ANDREW: And so, one of the things that I decided along the way was, you know, there's a lot of use of textiles, especially in Africa and west Africa, and the Orisha traditions, there's a lot of use of textiles in making thrones, in making ceremonial outfits, you know, in making panuelos, which are these elaborate cloths that we put on top of the Orisha sometimes. And so I wanted to kind of have a reference to that without trying to like emulate it or create like, recreate specific patterns, but use that visual idea to create a space for that symbolic language to hold, right?  SUSIE: Yes.  ANDREW: For the use of number, and through whatever other symbols got added to those designs and so on. So.  SUSIE: Yeah, I really picked up on the fact that the design sensibility behind this had that sort of sense of, you know, scope and flow and bold lines that you get in textile. And, you know, that's not something you always see in tarot, and so it was really kind of a relief to the eye to sort of not get too, I don't know, bound up in the busy?  ANDREW: mm-hmm. SUSIE: Yeah. I think what we see is sort of a looseness of the line, and … But at the same time a real exactness in terms of what symbols you wanted to portray and the way that you foregrounded them in each card. So, so, you did this actually on an iPad, right?  ANDREW: I did, yeah. I did all of this digitally. I've been working pretty much exclusively digitally for the last five or six years now, I guess, ever since …  SUSIE: Yeah. And does that have to do with being busy, being a parent, you know, just trying to live life in addition to being an artist?  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean I don't have a studio space, you know, I don't have … Toronto is apparently one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, thanks for that, whoever's responsible for that … SUSIE: [laughing] ANDREW: But space is certainly at a premium. And, you know, the only space where I maybe could do more studio type work is at the shop, and I already spend lots of time at the shop seeing clients and doing other stuff. I don't really want to be at work even if it's sort of as a creative outlet. And the iPad, you know, it's always with me, and when I was making this deck , I would just be like, oh, I've got an hour, time to work on one of the cards a bit. You know?  SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: Here's some writing. Or whatever. It's just, it's always at hand, it's super portable, and especially, I got an iPad Pro, like one of the big ones, and an Apple pencil, which finally I was able to make happen through the process and you know, it's the best thing ever, it's just … SUSIE: Yeah, and if you get interrupted, you can just save it, and pick it up later.  ANDREW: And I'm sure, like from a production point of view too, you can work in layers, like in Photoshop … SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: It's a real treat. So all the backgrounds are their own layers and all the symbols SUSIE: That's great, yeah.  ANDREW: The line work symbols and stuff. So if I make a mistake, if I change my mind later … SUSIE: Right, right. Plus it gives you more freedom. I mean if you're doing a background you don't want to just stop to make room for the foreground, right?  ANDREW: Right? Yeah. All also, I just sent all the Photoshops to Llewellyn, and they asked me if they could take some of them apart and use pieces for making the box and other stuff, which they did, which is fantastic. I'm so delighted with it. It just, it allows for a variety of options in a way that traditional mediums just don't, you know?  SUSIE: Yeah, I was really excited to realize that you did this in a digital format like that just because I didn't know that you could create art like this in that way and have it come out looking so good. You know? ANDREW: Mm-hmm. SUSIE: And the other thing is that I just, I thought it was really funny, that just practically speaking, that it made so much sense for you. This is one of my hobby horses, the idea of just how difficult it is to be both a parent and a practitioner, you know, just to live your life and try to do this work is a constant struggle. Like, you know, you're in the middle of a banishing ritual and some kid is like, coming through saying, Mom, I missed the bus! ANDREW: Yeah! SUSIE: I mean, it's like it's every day, you know, trying to make that work is tricky for a lot of us. So I'm glad you found a way to make this happen.  ANDREW: Me too.  SUSIE: Okay, so I'd love to, if you feel like it, I'd love to talk a little bit about specific cards. If you could just give me a second, I have to plug … My laptop's going to run out of charge. I just have to plug it in real quick. ANDREW: Yeah. SUSIE: Just, be right there. [pause] Okay, we're good. And I can strip that out of the tape, later on, if you want. Okay. So, let's talk about a couple majors. I wanted to return to the Fool card, cause I think that's super important, where you have Elegua, who is, I guess, you know I don't want to make the mistake of trying to do too much equivalency here, but he is the one who makes communication possible as I understand it.  ANDREW: Yeah. Elegua is the Orisha we speak to first in every ceremony, because he opens and closes the ways, and Elegua is all of the communication everywhere, on every single level, right. If we think about the communication between every cell in your body is that communication between the parts of the universe, you know, nothing exists or could happen without Elegua being there to facilitate that transfer of information from one place to another.  SUSIE: Right. Right. And so, I think, you know, that's what makes it so important and so appropriate that he's the first card in the deck. You have to, even to open your mouth, to gather the air to speak, you have to be there, right, although he also has a presence in a number of other cards as well. And what people will see, when they look at it, is, I guess the, a common representation of Elegua is the kind of stone or concrete head with the cowrie shells embedded in it, right?  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. Yeah, when people … A common solution, a relatively common solution to troubles in people's lives is to receive what's referred to as the Warriors … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: Which is Elegua, Ogun and Ochossi. It's an initiation that you don't have to be a priest to have. Anybody can receive this if it's marked or required. And they come into your life to help you fight your problems and overcome your obstacles and so on. And what there's actually, people are really accustomed to seeing these cement heads with the cowrie shells, but traditionally depending on your lineage, Elegua is … they have marked the path of Elegua, and there are many ways in which Elegua might be made. But I chose to make the one that people understand the most because I wanted it to be somewhat familiar to people, for sure.  SUSIE: Right, and this is actually a symbol that ordinary people might have in their homes, right?  ANDREW: Maybe.  SUSIE: Yeah, yeah. Well, just real quick, after I got your deck, I had the craziest dream, where I dreamed that I got up and I went outside. And this was around midnight. And the UPS truck comes, [laughing] and gives me a package with my name on it, and I open it and I suddenly start to feel really strange like I'm high or I've taken something or ingested some kind of substance, like, just through opening the package. And then I was instantly transported into some kind of rite that was going on in my dining room. And Elegua was there. [laughing] And I thought this was, obviously this is not, I knew almost nothing before this week about this tradition, but, and I certainly have no way of knowing what significance that had or what, you know I certainly can't speak for the tradition in any way, but I thought it was, so interesting that, you know, my dream maker chose to take the delivery of your deck to me as this kind of mind-altering frame-shifting event. and then introduce, you know, this personification of communication, the opener of the ways, into the dream.  ANDREW: Yup. Indeed. SUSIE: So I was very grateful for that experience. Okay. The only other major I really wanted to make sure we talked about was the Priestess card.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. SUSIE: Because it's not what people would ordinarily expect to see in a Priestess card, and I thought you could talk a little bit about what we're looking at and how it relates to the High Priestess we know and love.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. So, this is actually one of the cards that gave me the biggest trouble.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: I spent a lot of time working on this card, they're a bunch of drawings that got scrapped along the way, because I was just like, no, nope, no, no, no, that's not gonna cut it, that's too simple, that's too this, that's too whatever, right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: You know, so what we see in the Priestess card, is we see a bunch of cowrie shells, right?  SUSIE: Right. ANDREW: And the dillogun, or the cowrie shells, are you know one of the traditional tools of divination. For olocha, for priests in the way that I'm a priest, it's the way in which we speak with the Orishas. And, when we divine with the shells, we pray, and we invoke an opening with Elegua or whoever, for an Odu, for a sign, like a, the idea almost like a card to sort of … But those energies, those Odu, are the living unfolding of the universe, right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: So, they represent all of the knowledge that was and is and all of the possible knowledge of the future, or the possible unfoldings of the future. And so, those energies that arrive when we do a reading, and come to play in the life of the person who gets the reading done … It's actually a serious ceremony to get a reading.  SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: It alters the course of your life, right? And, you know when we think of the Priestess or the Papess, right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: One of the things that we can talk about is knowledge, right? And it's deep metaphysical knowledge, right?  SUSIE: Right. Which isn't readily accessible to you at a surface level.  ANDREW: And, when we think about the Hierophant or the Pope as sort of the outer face of spirituality, the High Priestess is the inner face. She's the inner mystery of that, right?  SUSIE: Right . ANDREW: And she is that knowledge which is hard to get to, that knowledge which is hard won, and that knowledge which is tied to a deep respect and a deep cosmic awareness of the nature of the universe, right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And so this Odu and the method of divination and the process of divination, to me mirrors that, right?  SUSIE: Correct.  ANDREW: And so the shells become the mouth of the Priestess, right? And if we look at it in a sort of Rider Waite symbol, right? Cascarilla and the Ota, the black stone?  SUSIE: Yes! ANDREW: They mirror, we use those in the divination process, but they mirror those two columns … SUSIE: The boas and jacim, yeah.  ANDREW: The positive and negative vibrations that are in that sort of duality.  SUSIE: And those are a kind of … Are they a yes/no kind of stand-in?  ANDREW: Yeah, we use them and other things to ask specific questions within a reading. We each have … There's about a half dozen Ibo that all have ritual significance, and we use them in different ways depending on the nature of the question we're asking.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And then the other thing that's going on in this card is, usually people divine on a straw mat or a tray … SUSIE: Yeah.  ANDREW: With cowrie shells. And some people use a wooden tray, maybe, but more often than not a straw mat. So, I wanted to create this idea of the straw mat, but then this idea that below it is this sort of cosmic opening, right? This connection to everything.  SUSIE: Yeah. ANDREW: So, this is actually probably one of the most abstracted cards in the whole deck … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: In that it doesn't really show an Orisha or a thing that is sort of easily connectable, but I think that it really represents a sort of, that depth of knowledge and connection, direct connection to the voice of creation, that I associate with the High Priestess and that you know I associate with this divination process.  SUSIE: Yes. Now the Odu themselves, they're transmitted orally, right? It's not something that you just pick up a book, and not anyone can do it.  ANDREW: Yes. If you're not a priest, you cannot do cowrie shells, right?  SUSIE: Got you.  ANDREW: There's no … The best thing we could say is that you don't have the spiritual license, and my elders would be quite clear, you know, you can do anything you want with these shells, but they don't speak for the Orishas, therefore whatever you get is irrelevant.  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: You know … SUSIE: So it's not like what we think of … As tarot readers, we just pick up a deck and anyone can give it a go, this is something that you really need to go through initiation and be crowned as a priest to do.  ANDREW: And spend a long time studying, right? You know you need to understand that there are 256, technically 257 signs. Each of those signs has a specific hierarchical order of Orishas that speak in them. Each of them has proverbs, songs, ceremonies, offerings, taboos, patakis, and then each of those signs can come in ire, like the sign of blessing, or asobo, the negative sign, and then there are many kinds of ire and osogbo, and if you start to multiply those out, you start to realize how many different permutations are possible in this system . SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: It takes a very long time and a lot of study to really come to understand what all those things mean.  SUSIE: Yeah, and is that something that … So, this is something that you might do as a priest, correct?  ANDREW: Yeah.  SUSIE: And did you internalize all of those 256, 257 signs or was it, is it an ongoing study? How does that work for you?  ANDREW: There's no end to the study. [laughing] SUSIE: Right. [laughing] ANDREW: Like hermeticism. When do you know enough?  SUSIE: Oh, you never know enough. No no no … [laughing] Right. Okay. Well that's really helpful in terms of getting into the card. Are there any other majors that you'd kind of like to draw attention to before we look at minors?  ANDREW: No, I'm happy to take your lead. SUSIE: Great. And honestly I would like to go through every single card in the deck, and I was having a lot of trouble sort of singling out a few that might be interesting to talk about, but given our time constraints, we'll just focus on some. I was looking at … the Nine of Wands, we're kind of going in order here, Nine of Wands [static at [01:04:39] see in this card, it's so interesting, because as I understand it, from your story, this is a representation of Yamaya, or one of her avatars I guess … ANDREW: Yeah. SUSIE: And there's a shipwreck, or an underwater ship, and [static] got a knife, and the knife has clearly just been used. So, maybe you can tell us a little bit about that.  ANDREW: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that people … In making the deck, I wanted to disrupt people's preconceived notions, right?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: Of certain things. You know, like people, it's common for people to say, yeah yeah yeah, if you want love, go and talk to Ochún. Right? And Ochún will help you find love.  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: He might, it's possible, but sometimes [inaudible] Ochún in what context and so on and so on, right? But you know, Ochún also doesn't really dig people complaining very much, it's not a thing that she's really that into … SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: So, depending on the attitude that you're feeling about this, Ochún might also be irritated by you approaching her about it, it's very hard to say.  SUSIE: Yeah.  ANDREW: Which is why, you know, traditional practitioners divine, right?  SUSIE: Right. ANDREW: Because the good answer is, in traditional divination, any Orisha that offers to help you with a problem can help you with that problem.  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: Whether we sort of generally associate that with being their purview or not, doesn't really matter, because if they say they're gonna help, they're gonna help, and you just say thank you, right?  SUSIE: Right.  ANDREW: And, so when we think about Yamaya, people think about Yamaya as a sort of loving mother energy, as a sort of always supportive energy, right? You know?  SUSIE: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: We really sometimes people are sent to work with her when they need sort of grounding and stabilizing of emotions … SUSIE: Yeah.  ANDREW: But, you know, Yamaya also has many roads and many avatars, right? So we're talking about, you know, Obu Okotu, it's not gentle, she's really a lot more like a shark, right?  SUSIE: mm-hmm. And so, you know, the idea, the thing that people often say, is that when the ship wrecks, she grabs the sailors and takes them down to their fate, right?  SUSIE: Yeah.  ANDREW: And so there's this real sort of show of strength and power with her that isn't what we would normally associate with it, but which is 100 percent a part of her personality, or at least her personality on that path, right?  SUSIE: Right. And I actually thought that this was … You know, the more I thought about it, the more it tied to my own understanding of this card. I mean when I think of the Nine of Wands, I think of someone who has been derived their strength from the vicissitudes of life, from the experiences of having suffered and having learned.  ANDREW: Yeah. SUSIE: And I think that … I also think of it as a very lunar card, so that made it kind of feel familiar to me as well. But also, the fact that power has a personality and ruthlessness to it, as well.  ANDREW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the Nine of Wands often turns up to speak of people who are strong clear incredibly competent, and sometimes hard for other people to relate to because of those things, right?  SUSIE: Yeah. They've been through a lot.  ANDREW: Yeah, for sure.  SUSIE: Yeah. Okay. Fascinating. And plus, it's just beautiful. You see the body of Yamaya, but at first you may not even recognize that it's a human form because of the blue on blue, it's a very underwater card. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Looking at -- Oh, you know, one of my favorite cards of all is your Ten of Cups. And, which I did receive this week, once, and what I love about it is the story that goes along with it. So maybe you could talk about that a little bit.  Sure. So when we were talking earlier in the podcast about picking your Ore or picking your destiny, right? This card represents that process, right?  SUSIE: mm-hmm. ANDREW: You know, when everybody's hanging out in Orun, up on the other side, you know where we're all spirits, eventually, people for whatever reasons decide it's time to come back to earth. You know, decide it's time to come back down here, you know, to the marketplace, to hang out and party, to fulfill something they haven't fulfilled, whatever it may be. And when they make that decision, they go, as my elders described it, you go down the hall to this room where Adela, who is the Orisha who crafts these destinies, as a series of sealed gourds … SUSIE: And that's the picture that we see on the card, we see Ajala with the gourds.  ANDREW: Yeah, I mean I think of it more as a person choosing their destiny. SUSIE: Oh, I see! ANDREW: But maybe.  SUSIE: Could be.  ANDREW: Adula, as far as I know, I've never come across any personifications of them … SUSIE: So this, so in your mind, this was the soul choosing which one. ANDREW: But, and we don't have a sort of super clear sense of karma or carry over from one life to another. It's not really … it's a mystery that we acknowledge that we don't fully understand, right? So you go into a room full of sealed gourds, and you pick something, and you really don't know, it could be horrible, right? It could be great, whatever. But if you've been good friends with Elegua, you know, and you've kind of kept good faith with him, maybe you reach out for something and he gives a little cough and says hey, not that one. SUSIE: [laughing] ANDREW: Don't take that one. Right?  SUSIE: And I love this that you have this little sketch of Elegua under the table, you know, very quiet. Very subtle. Yeah. [laughing] Just giving you a hint.  ANDREW: Yeah. So once you pick your destiny, you go back and see your creator, and then your soul goes into a body.  SUSIE: And you can see in the background of the card, you can see the outline of the Earth, so this idea that you're outside the material realm at that moment, choosing your fate, yeah, mm-hmm. I think that's just really beautiful. And I think it's quite relatable to, you know, in a traditional sense to the Ten of Cups, which I at least think of as the end of a cycle, you know, I often think of it as the end of the complete sequence of minors in some ways, because if you go through correspondences it immediately precedes the Two of Wands. But there's also this feeling, you know when you see the family on the Rider-Waite-Smith Ten of Cups, of this sort of being, they're taking a bow. This destiny is finished! And we're looking towards the next.  ANDREW: People … the belief is that people tend to reincarnate along family

Daniel and Andrew talk about different ways of relating to the ancestors. Especially getting into how to help the ancestors evolve and make our lives better in the process. They also get into their relatinoships to the orisha and ways of thinking about practicing a tradition that you were not born into.  Daniel can be found through his site here. His events are there too.  Daniel's talk on practicing other peopels traditions is here.  Andrew's upcoming Ancestral Magick Course can be found here.  Think about how much you've enjoyed the podcast and how many episodes you listened to, and consider if it is time to support the Patreon You can do so here. If you want more of this in your life you can subscribe by RSS , iTunes, Stitcher, or email. Thanks for joining the conversation. Please share the podcast to help us grow and change the world.  Andrew You can book time with Andrew through his site here.  Transcription ANDREW: Welcome to the Hermit's Lamp podcast. I'm hanging out today with Daniel Foor, and Daniel is a Ifá priest and has done all sorts of wonderful work along the lines of ancestral healing. And Ancestral Medicine is the name of the book that he has out. And he and I have a lot of similarities in practices and the kinds of things we're interested in, so, you know, lots of people have been suggesting I have him on for a while, and, and well, today's the day! So, welcome, Daniel! Thanks for being here!  DANIEL: Thanks so much. It's good to be here.  ANDREW: There are people who might not know who you are. Who are you? What are you about?  DANIEL: Yeah, well, I ... to locate myself a bit, I'm a 40-year-old, white, cis-gendered American living in western North Carolina. From Ohio, originally, but traveled a good amount, but live in the States, and have a PhD in psychology. I'm a licensed therapist, so I have a background in mental health.  But mostly I'm a ritualist, and I've been training with different kinds of teachers and traditions for over 20 years now, and started out with more shamanic pagan background with magical things, and migrated into involvement with Islam, and Sufism, Buddhist practice, and then circled back to involvement with indigenous systems and earth-honoring traditions. And in the last decade have been immersed in west African Ifá practice, lineages in the Americas and also in west Africa, and so I'm an initiate of Ifa, Obatala, and Oshun, and Egungun priesthood, [inaudible], and in the lineage of Oluwo Falolu Adesanya Awoyade, Ode Remo, in Ogun State. So I've been four times to Nigeria, and that's one influence on my practice.  But mostly I teach and guide non-dogmatic, inclusive, animist ancestor-focused ritual practice. The last two years or so I have shifted to training others, which has been really satisfying after years of doing more public-facing ritual, I'm now ... I do some of that but mostly I'm training other people in how to guide the work. And I have developed a specialization in repair work with blood lineage ancestors. But I also operate from a broader animist or earth-honoring framework that isn't limited to just that. So. And I'm a dad, I'm a, you know, married, and love the earth here, and live in the American South, which is kind of strange, but also okay. Yeah.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. That's awesome.  DANIEL: Yeah. ANDREW: So, I mean, I guess, my first question for you is, when did you start feeling the ancestral stuff calling you?  DANIEL: Well, my own lineages are German, English, Irish, early settler colonialist to North America, and so I didn't inherit any religious or spiritual framework or culture that was of value to me in any conscious way as a young person. And so, my first teachers in shamanic practice, Bekki and Crow with the Church of Earth Healing, in the late 90s, nudged me to get to know my ancestors ritually. And it was really impactful, actually. I was surprised by it. I'd never thought about them really before that. And I ended up assisting with an older ancestral guide or teacher, my father's father who had taken his own life, and just showing up for that work, which was powerful.  And it was a catalyst for me to research, do a lot of depth genealogy research about my own family history, and that dovetailed in with my training as a therapist, so I was in a period of connecting a lot of dots and valuing my own heritage, and, in a grounding way ... Not in like some awkward, go white people way, but in a way that helped me to reclaim what is beautiful about European, you know, northern western European cultures, and ... including earlier pre-Roman, pre-Christian magics and lineages. And so, I ran with that ritually. And have guided 120 maybe, multi-day, ancestor healing intensives since 2005 in that work, so I spent about six or seven years getting grounded with all of it myself. Then started to help other people with it. And it just organically developed as a specialization. And I tend to be a little obsessive about a thing, when I'm into it. I'll do that like crazy, until it's ... yeah.  ANDREW: Yeah, I think ... I mean, I think it's interesting how ... Cause I do a lot of ancestral work as well, you know ... DANIEL: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: I do ancestral divination work and, you know, ancestral sort of healing and lineage healing and so on.  DANIEL: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: You know, I've been teaching it with my friend Carrie, we have this, we developed this system of people working with charm casting as a tool ... DANIEL: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: To get into that work. And, you know, we've been traveling around and teaching it everywhere. We were in China last year teaching it, and stuff like that, with people ... DANIEL: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: You know, I think that the thing that sort of stands out in your story, that I think stands out everywhere, is so often, like the last little bit, you know, the last few generations, it's kind of wonky, or like there's not a lot, there's not a lot of connection or living connection. Even, you know, it wasn't until last year that I found out that my grandmother read tea leaves when she was alive ... DANIEL: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And she's been gone for like 12 years, and it just never came up before. She never talked about it, and my mom just never brought it up. Not for any particular reason but it just, it just was never a thing. Even though that's the same grandmother who bought me a tarot deck when I was like 13, long ago.  DANIEL: Right. Of course she did.  ANDREW: But I would have talked about it, right? But how ... Often when you kind of go back, you know, a few generations or somewhere a bit deeper, you know, there are these sort of more ... evolved isn't the word that I super like, but you know, like, more grounded, more helpful, you know, ancestors with a, with a sort of more capacity to be really guides and assist you in this process, right?  DANIEL: Yeah, often. It ... Where those cut-offs happen varies so widely from one demographic or even one individual to another, and I know in a lot of my own lineages, it's been over 1,000 years since anyone during life had a culturally reinforced and supported framework for honoring the ancestors. And so the older ones, the ones even before that, are quite available. So it's not ... I mean I could ... reinforce some kind of orphan victim culturally-damaged white person narrative, but it's not that sexy or useful, and so at a certain point, you're just like, well, you pick up the pieces where they're at, and get the fire going again.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: And the older ancestors are happy to do that. And so even if someone comes from a really recently and before that culturally fragmented set of lineages, the ancestors are still available, the older ones, and the main repair orientation or practice that I encourage people to try on at first is to partner with those older ancestors and with them, assist any of the dead who are not yet well, any of the ones between those older ones and the present, who are not yet really well-seated, really vibrant. Help them to become well-seated ancestors. So the dead change. It's very important for us living folks to not fix them in some static condition.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: Just cause people were a pain in the ass or really, you know, culturally in the weeds during life doesn't mean they're doomed to that condition forever. They can really change and become, not only, like, not ghosty, but they can become dynamic, engaged, useful allies for cultural healing work in the present.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: So. ANDREW: Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's a misconception that a lot of people have that they automatically change on crossing over. DANIEL: Oh, sure, yeah, that's different. (laughing) ANDREW: And then the other side of that is, you know, they can change, but it might take a bunch of work, even if they did change, right?  DANIEL: Yeah, totally. Yeah, both, both are true. Yeah. The idea that just dying makes you wise and loving and kind is really hazardous actually, as a world view. So. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: Cause it'll lead to a view of ... I've seen it at times in pagan circles as well, where it's “Oh, the ancestors, ancestors are good, let's invoke them all. Okay, here are all the names of my ancestors, and the pictures, and let me light a candle and strongly invoke all of them.” ANDREW: Yeah. DANIEL: Well, I hope your invocation doesn't work. ANDREW: Yeah. DANIEL: Because if it does, you're going to get a mixed bag! Cause your people are, you know, if they're well, awesome, but if they're not yet well, and your invocation works, then what you have is some not yet well ghosty energy in your space.  ANDREW: For sure, right? And some of those spirits can be pretty tumultuous, you know, if they're ... DANIEL: Oh, no doubt. Yeah. ANDREW: [crosstalking 09:53] here. I have one grandfather that I continue to work with who, sort of, work on, let's put it [laughing].  DANIEL: Right.  ANDREW: It's been a long time and they're still not ready to be, you know, front and center in anything, cause they just, so caught up in so much deep, deep trauma in their own life and in their generations before them, and, you know. DANIEL: One of, one of the things that I don't, I won't say it's unique to how I approach it, but it's emphasized in how I approach ancestor work, which isn't across the board, is I take a very lineage-based approach. Like I don't even really encourage, necessarily, relating with individual ancestors that much. ANDREW: Hmm. DANIEL: So in the case of someone, not to speak to your specific case necessarily, but let's say someone's grandmother is really quite entrenched in the unwell ghosty range of wellness. My strategy is to make sure that her mother and her mother and her mother and her mother and the lineage of women before them on back through time to the ancient weird witchy deity-like grandmothers, that that whole lineage is deeply well, and the repair happens from the older ones toward the present. And so, once you have the parent of the one who is quite troubled in a deeply well condition, and the whole lineage before them deeply well, as a group energy, asking them to intervene to address the rowdy ghosty grandparent tends to be ... It can ... Well, it can be more effective, simply because there's a re-anchoring of the rogue individuality in a bigger system, in a collective energy.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: And there's a respect for seniority or hierarchy, by having that person's elders be the ones to round them up. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: So, so that's. I shared that because in the West, generally, I find that people tend to conceive of ancestor reverence primarily as a relating of one individual to another individual, and, and some of the lineage or group level aspects of it can get lost, or they're not as emphasized. And so I find that's an important nuance to include, and then another is, and we've spoken to it, is just the way in which one's ancestors are not at all just the remembered dead, the ones, the recent ones, but they include ... The vast majority of them are living before remembered names. And that's helpful for people who are like, my family are abusive trolls. I'm like, okay, I believe you, but I think what you mean to say is all the generations you know about, which is probably not more than two or three. ANDREW: Yeah. DANIEL: And so, it's like, you're at the ocean, at a windy, cloudy day, and you're saying, “Oh, the ocean is tumultuous,” well, I believe it is, right there at the beach. But the ocean's a big place, yeah. So expanding our frame for who we mean when we say ancestor is gonna be helpful too. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. For sure. Yeah, and there's lots of times when, you know, we'll make offerings or do work with all of those ancestors, right? With the Egun, right, with everybody? Right? DANIEL: Yeah.  ANDREW: You know? And in those ways and so on, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting how ... It'd really be interesting to make sure that you're looking at those things. And some of my, some of my best ancestral allies have been gone, you know, three, four hundred years, right?  DANIEL: For sure. ANDREW: Or longer.  DANIEL: Yeah, totally, yeah. ANDREW: They arrive, and they're just like, “Yes! You're the beacon of light amongst all of these things, and let's radiate that out to everybody afterwards and anchor further and deeper,” right?  DANIEL: Yeah. For sure. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. So, when you're doing work with people, are you mostly focused on ... you know, because a lot of people come to ancestor work because they want to get messages and receive stuff and do ... DANIEL: Right. ANDREW: ...[inaudible at 13:59] kind of stuff, right? I mean, I think that that can be fruitful, too, I enjoy that kind of work as well, but that's not really what we're talking about here either, right? I mean not explicitly, right?  DANIEL: Yeah. If we say like, what's the point? It can ... There are a lot of different motivations that can drive someone to want to engage their ancestors. The most common one is, “I'm suffering, will this help?”  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: That's legit. Sometimes it will help indirectly. Sometimes it will help directly because the source of the suffering is unmetabolized intergenerational trouble that's directly connected to ancestral interference, and so sometimes it, you know, it can help in different ways.  Another motivator for the work is seeking life guidance, cause the ancestors have insight into our unique destiny, and can help us to move into closer alignment with that, you know, our unique instructions or soul level work in the world.  As you know, in Yoruba culture, we sometimes talk about the world as the marketplace and Orun or the spirit world as home, and, and so if you forget your shopping list, working with the ancestors can be like, “Let us show you, you said this, this, this, and this,” and be like, “Oh, yeah, okay, thanks,” and so that's helpful to not waste our lives.  And ancestors can be great for being a resource to parents or supporters in family, like they're especially good with all the family sphere, the domestic sphere, like being a responsible family human. And they're also good allies for cultural healing. A lot of the racism and colonialism and sexism and other kinds of cultural toxicity and garbage and bad capitalism that we're stewed in and trying to get out from underneath and help transform ... Those are ancestor, those are troubles created by the ancestors. Like, they're implicated in the trouble. And so they have, appropriately, a hand in resolving the trouble as well.  And so they're great allies, by whatever form, activism, cultural change, all that. And so I really think that working closely with one's ancestors helps cultural change-makers to up their game, so to speak. So that's another motivation.  And this is, I guess it's related to the one about destiny, but, inspired a bit from the Yoruba frameworks. The collective energy or wisdom of the ancestors is associated strongly with the Earth. Like the onile, the earth is like the calabash that holds the souls of the dead. And because the Earth is associated with accountability and, you know, moral authority, and is the witness through of all interactions, in that way also the ancestors carry that same quality of accountability. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: And I think whether or not people can consciously own it, some part of us craves accountability. Like we want to be seen and checked when needed. ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: There's something really like ... our daughter almost made it to the top of the steps. Like, the door was open the other day. She's nine months old. But we caught her. It was good. It was way better than had we not held her in that moment.  ANDREW: Right. DANIEL: And there's a way in which that kind of love and connectivity is like, “Oh, I'm not alone in the universe.”  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: If I crawl to the top of the steps, someone will pick me up. So we want that, and the ancestors bring that, as well, when we live with them.  ANDREW: I think it's a, I think it's a thing that, especially, you know, in my experience, people, in Western culture, struggle with too, right? This sort of willingness to acknowledge an authority or an awareness or a position that's sort of above them in a way that they can allow in to say, “You know what, actually, we do know what's better for you in this moment.”  DANIEL: [laughing] Oh, yeah, it's- ANDREW: You what, my friends, you know, going down that road has nothing to do with your destiny, or what have you, right?  DANIEL: Oh, yeah! [laughing] ANDREW: Here's your fault in this mess that you're trying to put on this other person, right?  DANIEL: Oh, yeah, no, people, look, I'm a teacher, also, and so often it's great and fine, and sometimes people are idealizing in awkward ways, and like, oh, don't do that, don't do that. But, but just whatever, fine, it's fine, it tends to burn out and even out. And also sometimes people are really just not okay with anything resembling a power differential or a student teacher relationship.  ANDREW: Right. DANIEL: And it's ... It's tiring a little, as a teacher. Because there is a difference between telling someone just what to do in an authoritative way, and also saying, like, “Well, do you want to learn a thing? Because I know this skill. Like, what do you ... do you want to tell me how it goes, cause ... ?” So, so yeah, it is ... I think it's a function of power so often being abused, that people understandably have mistrust.  ANDREW: Yup!  DANIEL: Yeah. So I have compassion for it, and also the piece around hierarchy and authority is really, is challenging. In the coming months, some dear friends are going to Nigeria to do initiations and I was talking to them last night, and I was like, in the nicest possible way, “Really, your main job as the initiate is to obey.” ANDREW: Yes. DANIEL: Just to, like, the ritual is done to you, nobody really cares what you think about it. And it's totally fine.  ANDREW: Stand here, stand there, [crosstalking 19:59]. DANIEL: Right! Yeah, totally, sit down, drink it, sit, eat it, say thank you. Like ... ANDREW: Yeah.  DANIEL: Yeah. Like you're the thing being consecrated. Your input is not needed.  ANDREW: Yeah. DANIEL: Nothing personal. Next time you go back, then you can have an opinion.  ANDREW: Yeah. And even then-- DANIEL: And even then, so you get one small vote. [laughing] Yeah.  ANDREW: No, for sure. Yeah, let's see what people who ... I mean come for readings of all kinds, but you know, people who approach, you know, getting dillogun readings and stuff like that, and you know, the Orishas come through, and they're like, “Oh, you know what? Don't drink this year, don't, you know, whatever. Don't get tattooed. Don't, you know, no, no red beans for you.” They're like, “Well, what do you mean? I don't understand.” It's like, “Well...” [crosstalking 20:52] DANIEL: Obey! [laughing] ANDREW: What is the understanding? I mean, in a lot of that situation ... in some of those situations, the understanding is more obvious, right?  DANIEL: Right. ANDREW: I had a conversation with a person who'd say, “Well, it seems like you kind of have this kind of challenge, and this is kind of the thing that might counter that,” and they're like, “Okay, yeah, maybe.” But other times it's just energetic or on other levels that it's just like, you know, it's kind of the ... It's an equivalent of saying “Hey, carry this citrine with you for the next year, it's going to help your energy,” but it's in a different structure that people don't relate to in the same way, right?  DANIEL: For sure, yeah.  ANDREW: And then they're like, “But, but, I don't want to be told what to do!” I'm like, “What else are you gonna do?” DANIEL: You just paid me to do that.  ANDREW: Yeah, you asked, right?  DANIEL: [laughing] ANDREW: You didn't have to, I wouldn't worry about it ... DANIEL: But some part of us does, some part of us really, I think wants to be told what to do. And that could go awry, and I'm not saying it's an entirely healthy impulse, but there's something about accountability and structure and community and limits, that's actually really intimate. ANDREW: Yeah. DANIEL: And if you can't hear and accept “no,” your “yes” is meaningless.  ANDREW: Mm. DANIEL: And so there's something that's precious and sweet about protocol and tradition and about structure.  ANDREW: I also think that a lot of people don't really ... Faith is a really complicated and difficult thing for a lot of people too, you know?  DANIEL: Mm.  ANDREW: And especially when entering a new tradition, you know? And, and I think that part of what we're talking about here is also a matter of faith, right? What is your faith in the ancestors or the Orisha or whatever, and how, how do you sustain that faith through being deeply challenged by all that stuff?  DANIEL: Yeah, and for me, look, I was involved with different Orisha teachers in the States, American, for the most part, and ... it didn't work out that well, for the most part. I mean, complicated. But I ... I felt like there was a lot of restrictive and unhealthy and kind of confused energy around it. And I had an opportunity to go to Nigeria to reset some of the initiation-like things that had happened here, so I took a risk on it, and I'm like, “Well, this is either gonna be like the final straw, or some breakthrough,” like, “let's pray for the latter.” And I saw kind of a non-dogmatic group community like, in my Ifá initiation, there were men aged like 80 to five, holding space. Like, and 20, 30 people there. And people were teasing each other, playing, and having a good time. Like the people were well human beings, they seemed happy. And so that relaxed, teasing heart aware energy. I'm like, “Oh, good, this is what I was looking for.” And it helped ... For me, it helped me to trust, and just not fight the system. I'm like, “Just tell me what to do.” Just okay, “eat the pig dung,” okay, “Leave me a bite,” or whatever. Whatever it is. Just tell me what to do. So.  ANDREW: Yeah.  DANIEL: Yeah, it's great.  ANDREW: I used to, you know, get some people who would bring their, you know, like, elderly, Cuban elders to the store. You know? And pick up stuff. DANIEL: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: You know, they're here in Toronto to do a thing, and they'd bring this person to the store, right? And you know my Spanish is not great [laughing] and their English was not great, and we'd like, know some like, Yoruban words in common or whatever. And you would see how sweet and genuine and nice they were. And then they'd notice that like, you know, I've got plants growing at the front of the store for working with religion, and they'd be like, “oh, alamo,” I'd be like, “yeah, yeah,” and we'd have this like sort of pidgin conversation and a bunch of other things, and mostly what it would be is our hearts being opened, all this sharing of our love of this religion and these spirits ... DANIEL: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And the continuity of that. And it was such a beautiful and uplifting experience, even though there wasn't a lot of words that were associated with it. There was just so much communication happening at other levels, and you could, you know, I could feel my Shango just being happy about it, you know, be like whoever there, too, just being happy about it, and so on. You know? It's so uplifting in that way, right? But ... DANIEL: That's good. It's one of the things in, you know, we had mentioned in our previous chat about my talk on practicing the traditions of other people's ancestors. And-- ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: I respect it a lot about the necessary and important dialogues around cultural appropriation, and especially, not only, but especially around respecting different Native North American or First Nations, as you say, traditions, and being mindful of what the conditions of involvement, if that's open, to non-Native people are, etc., and what's important to understand is those same parameters are not universal, and how cultures are shared and understood from one part of the world to another really vary.  And Yoruba culture, for example, is generally an open system. Yoruba people in my experience, in Yorubaland, have never had anyone feel off about me being there and training in Orisha, except for the Christians, who were like, “Why don't you want Jesu?” I'm like, “We have Jesu where I'm at,” it's like, “It's fine, like, go Jesu!” but it's not why I'm here. And one of the things that is important though, is, it's family, like you're stepping into a family, a spiritual family. It's not like a “Hey bro, thanks for the culture, now I'm gonna go back and set up shop, I got what I need.” There's a ... And so when your teachers hit you up for money, it's family. That's what like, you can't be part of a family and have a bunch of stuff, and then other people don't have something, and you don't share it.  ANDREW: Yeah. DANIEL: And so it's ... It's not like you're getting exploited. I mean, that also happens. But just the ethic of sharing and supporting one another. If people don't want that, then they might not want to get involved. because most indigenous systems that I know of that are open to people not of that blood ancestry hold things in a family-oriented way. There's intimacy with that, but there's also connectivity, reciprocity, accountability. Yeah.  ANDREW: And, you know, so, you know, my immediate family where I was initiated lives in the Detroit area, and my, you know, my elders are in Miami, you know, and like, but like, especially when the Detroit folks are doing work, you know, especially bigger things like making priests, you know, I always show up, like, you know, it's like you, when they're doing the work, and you're like, “Oh, it's so inconvenient for me to take four or five days off and go down there and help out, right?” And it's like, yeah, it's inconvenient, and you know, it's time off work, and it's whatever, but it's what those people did for me, right? And it's what allows all of that to continue, and it's a chance to, you know, to also sustain those connections, and you know, sing together, and sit and joke together, and, you know, complain about handling the ... cleaning up after the animals together, and whatever, it's just part of it, right? Like ... DANIEL: Right. ANDREW: And in the absence of being willing to engage that community element of it, right? It's pretty ... If you don't have the community element in one way or another, especially in the Orisha tradition, you don't really have much of anything, you know?  DANIEL: It's true, with the tradition, it in my experience is very communal, and there are a lot of ritual domains of activity you just can't pull off solo.  ANDREW: Yeah.  DANIEL: And it's just that, you know, it's a lot of hard work, it's heavy lifting. And for people who have worked with psychoactives, there's a certain kind of feeling among the group after a long, successful, like all night acid trip, when the sun's coming up, you're sort of like, “Oh, we've just gone through something together.”  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: And, and, minus the LSD, there can be a sense after a multi-day ritual of a strong sense of magic and beauty and intimacy that's shared through all the effort and all the devotion ...  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: That it takes to keep old lineages of practice alive.  ANDREW: Yeah. DANIEL: Yeah.  ANDREW: For sure. And I think it's, I mean, one of the other points that I think was super important ... It's been a while since I listened to that talk and we'll link to it in the show notes, cause it was a good talk. Folks should go back and listen to it. You know, is also the fact that these are living traditions, right? They have continuity. DANIEL: Yeah. ANDREW: And, you know, but there's a big difference between, hey, we're gonna call up some Greek deities and see what happens, you know, and, like, or you know, see what happens sounds dismissive, I don't mean it in that way. And you know, there's nobody, there's no continuity to ancient Greece, in that particular way, versus there are people who've been practicing these traditions from person to person to person, all the way through until now, and you can actually go and ask those people and they can answer you as to what's done and how it's done and why it's done. DANIEL: Yeah. No, it's true. People don't ... If they don't know something, would be in the habit of divining on it, but I wouldn't want someone to, like, not go to flight school and then divine on how to fly the plane. [crosstalking] Yeah.  ANDREW: Yeah. There's that great proverb, which I'm sure you know, which is “Don't ask what you already know,” right?  DANIEL: Right. ANDREW: And I think that there's a sort of choleric glory to that which is, you know, there are things you just shouldn't ask, cause you should already know them, right?  DANIEL: Right. ANDREW: You don't need to ask if we do this thing because we know we don't. You know? DANIEL: Yeah.  ANDREW: We know that Oshun won't take this as an offering. We know that we don't do this kind of thing. We know that, like, you know, you don't ask if you could rob a bank cause the answer's already no. You know? DANIEL: Right. And there's a beautiful essay [inaudible 31:07] by Ologo Magiev [31:09], a child being asked to divine, and their parents died young and so they didn't get the information. And so they invoke their ancestors, and bring a lot of humility, and wing it, and it turns out fine. And, and I think there's also this kind of an implicit message, “And don't do that again. Don't pull that card too many times.”  ANDREW: Right?  DANIEL: [laughing] Then go train! ANDREW: For sure, right?  DANIEL: So, it's both. The deities have kindness, and benevolence, and also, careful! ANDREW: Yeah. And, you know, I was traveling, and I got a call that a friend of mine was like at death's door in the hospital, basically, right? And, you know, and I was just literally at a rest stop getting, gassing up the car when I checked my phone in the middle of New York State, right?  DANIEL: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: And I was just like, all right. And so I went and, you know, kind of looked around for some stuff, and it's like, there's nothing, like I can't, there's nothing I could really sort of put together here, so I just collected a bunch of white flowers and, you know, it's really hilly, right, so I just took them to a spot that I thought was appropriate for Obatala ... DANIEL: Mm-hmm.  ANDREW: And I was like, Obatala, this is all I have today. I'm here, it's this situation, and I need you to accept these and intercede in the situation. And you can get away with that. But that's not practicing the tradition. And that's not gonna, as you say, it's not gonna fly all the time, right?  DANIEL: Yeah. ANDREW: When you're at home, you can do all sorts of other things, you have your shrines or your ancestors or wherever you're working with, right? They will accept these things, cause they do understand circumstance and they're not tyrannical about it, right? They just say, you don't want that to be your way of practicing forever.  DANIEL: I spent years like, I don't know, not quite 20 years, not involved in a really dedicated way in one set tradition. I was training with different traditions for a period of time, and would definitely learn stuff, and would develop my own ashe [33:20] or whatever, but I wasn't like embracing one fully, as an operating system. ANDREW: Yeah. DANIEL: But I learned that it's possible to do it that way. That was actually really helpful to me. That it's possible to go deep with one's own ancestors, to go deep with the spirits of the land, where you're at. ANDREW: Sure. DANIEL: And to get to know them, and to get clarity about your own destiny and to just constellate in the different powers and forces and spirits that are gonna help you to do that. And I also ... that there's loneliness in going it solo, as well. There's like a freedom and a loneliness, both. And it drove me eventually to ... You know, I spent almost ten years involved in Orisha practice and Yoruba ways before I decided to initiate. And it's like a long slow dating process. It wasn't a lot of charisma. It was like, oh, you're the last one left standing, and ... ANDREW: [laughing] DANIEL: We have a ton of compatibility, why are we not doing this? And I go, okay, I guess we're gonna do this. So we just had the high match on the dating, you know, religious dating profile website. So I'm like, oh, maybe we should try this. And, and I haven't regretted it at all. It's very ... It's been a relief. The sense for me is of being held in a bigger frame. And it's not really ... It's not what I teach publicly, I'm not publicly offering services in that way, even though there are certain ones I could, in integrity.  I'm still in training, I'm still trying to learn Yoruba language, and especially with a west African orientation of practice it's such an aural language-based tradition, especially Ifá practice in particular, so I'm trying to hold a ... I think if you're not ancestrally of a tradition, the standards are even a bit higher for you to get it right, which I think is fair and understandable. Especially with the cultural climate of racism in the west and all that, for European ancestor people to be doing west African Ifa, you need to not look like a fool doing it, and so part of that looks like studying the language and really, you know, taking to heart the training.  ANDREW: Mm-hmm. DANIEL: But, it's possible to go really deep without stepping into a tradition. And there are a lot of ritual advantages to having a system to work from, as well. So I appreciate both sides of that. Yeah.  ANDREW: Yeah, for sure. I think you can get there ... I think you can accomplish the same ends either way, right?  DANIEL: Yeah, yeah. ANDREW: I think that where it gets, where it gets touchy is where you're solely working independently, but within the set of spirits that has a living tradition. If you're only working independently and devoid of traditional teaching, you know, that's where it starts to become a question for me of what ... DANIEL: Well, yeah, no, if the main powers you're working with are the Orisha, it's like, well, you've got to, here's the front door. You can try crawling in the window, but it's going to go badly, so.  ANDREW: Yeah.  DANIEL: Yeah. But if you're just working with the weird old land gods and your own ancestors, you can get away with it. yeah.  ANDREW: For sure.  DANIEL: Yeah, for sure.  ANDREW: Yeah. I also like the weird old land gods. You know? There's this beautiful ravine, you know, about a two-minute walk from the shop, [crosstalking 36:45] in Toronto. It runs through and you know, under there, there's sort of part of a buried river, that was once upon a time up on the surface, and all sorts of stuff, and there's wonderful and magical energies that are there, and really fascinating things have happened in that space over time. You know? Like I was ... I was there making a ... dealing with something and helping somebody, and making an offering essentially to the spirit of that place in the snow, right? And then when I came out of sort of the wood part back onto the path, all of these moths emerged, these white moths. And I'm like, there's snow on the ground, and it's snowing right now, what is going on with these things? And I'm like, all right, I'll take it. Big old yes from the spirits of this place on that thing, you know?  DANIEL: Mm-hmm. ANDREW: So I mean yeah, there's some amazing stuff that can happen in those ways, for sure.  DANIEL: Nice. Yeah.  ANDREW: So, I mean, first thing is, I'm going to ask you now if people should, if they're listening to this, and they want to think about starting a, you know, where they should start? And I know that one of the answers is definitely, they should go read your book, cause your book is great. DANIEL: Sure. ANDREW: But like, for the context of our conversation today, where would you kind of point people? Where, where do you point people [inaudible 38:02]? DANIEL: I'm not a very trusting person, really. So, if I were to listen to this conversation, and I didn't know that I'm a good person, I would go to my website, which is ancestralmedicine.org. Root around there, see what the vibe is, and there are other talks, or whatever, and see if you, you know, get an instinctual, this guy's not crazy vibe from where I'm coming from, and if you're drawn to the ancestral work, there are three main ways to engage.  One is to connect with one of the practitioners in the directory there. And there are 30 some people at this point who are trained in the work. Men, women, all different genders of people [38:43--not sure I've got his exact words here], ancestrally diverse people, lots of different opportunities for low income sessions, sessions in seven languages, so, opportunities to connect with people directly for session work. That's the most efficient way. Another is that I offer an online course that starts in December, that's thorough, and it maps along the heart of the book, chapters 5 through 9, which is lineage repair work, and there's a lot of support throughout that course, so that's an option, and I'll also be offering a course through the Shift network in the fall.  And then, a third way is the in-person trainings. And the last one I'm going to guide probably in North America will be in just over a week in Ottawa, the 24th to the 26th, and there's a talk on August 22, next Wednesday, in Ottawa as well, and all the info on that is on my site, and additionally, to that, there are trainings in maybe ten cities and also coming up in Australia and Mexico and maybe Russia and Canada and Victoria, so. And those are done by students who I trust to guide the work. So in person work, online course, or sessions, are, in addition to the book, the three main ways to plug in. Yeah.  ANDREW: Perfect.  DANIEL: And, and, you know, like just to say it, if you're wary of people, which is warranted, this approach to the work doesn't involve the practitioners or me or anybody saying, “Hey, this is what your grandmother says to you.” It's about stepping the individual through a process of reclaiming and re-energizing their ability to connect directly with their own people. So, it's an empowering approach in that way. It's not somebody getting all up in the mix and channeling messages to your people. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not this approach, so. And especially if your family's a mess, it's useful to do ancestor work. Cause you get some space from all that, and connect with what's beautiful and trustworthy in your own blood and bone lineages. So that's grounding, it's helpful, also for the cultural healing that's needed.  ANDREW: Yes. Well and I think it can be quite liberating, you know, because we're carrying those patterns, right?  DANIEL: Oh, yeah. So you can relate consciously or unconsciously with your people, but you don't get to opt out of relatedness. Yeah. ANDREW: Exactly, right? And if we can tidy those up and take some of that burden off of us or free ourselves from that, right? Then we get to show up much differently in that way, right?  DANIEL: Yeah. I think the masquerades in Yoruba culture, Egungun, and it's a blessing when they come around, but it's also a lot of people try not to be touched by them. And so there's ... It conveys something about the ancestors, like, they're dangerous to avoid and they're dangerous to have around. ANDREW: Yeah.  DANIEL: But, whatever, it's just like living humans. [laughing] ANDREW: For sure. People are challenged on both sides of the veil, right?  DANIEL: [laughing] Yeah, exactly.  ANDREW: For sure.  DANIEL: So, good.  ANDREW: Well, thank you so much for making time today, Daniel. It's been great to hang out and chat with you.  DANIEL: For sure, thanks, Andrew, thanks for your service, here. Blessings on everything you're up to. ANDREW: Thank you. DANIEL: Yeah. Good.   

TeeDee and Andrew talk about the values of initiation. How it changes a person and how that enhances ones talents. They also talk about Oshun and how Teedee understands her after 20 years of initiation.  Connect with TeeDee on her website. Think about how much you've enjoyed the podcast and how many episodes you listened to and think consider if it is time tosupport the  Patreon You can do so here. If you want more of this in your life you can subscribe by RSS , iTunes, Stitcher, or email. Thanks for listening! If you dig this please subscribe and share with those who would like it. Andrew   ANDREW: Welcome to another installment of The Hermit's Lamp podcast. I'm here today with T-D González, who I know from the Orisha community, and who has been making some wonderful product and really representing some of the things that I think are significant and important about both tradition and initiation. So, for folks who don't know you, T-D, who are you? What are you about? T-D: [laughing] So, I am an Olorisha of the Afro-Cuban Lucumí tradition, initiated to the Orisha Ochún. I was ordained in Cuba in 1999. I live in Los Angeles, California. I'm a mother of two little boys. I'm a widow. I have a lot going on. And I've enjoyed making spiritual baths, which was one of the first things that I learned, one of the first things that many of us learn in the religion. And I've been doing that for about 20 years now, and I just recently began to sell a dried spiritual bath utilizing the herbs that we use in Orisha worship, in Lucumí Afro-Cuban Orisha worship that pertain to Ochún, so it's an Ochún bath. And I'm really excited about it, I love making it, I love working with the herbs, and it's a lifelong learning process for me.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm, yeah, it's awesome. I think we need to definitely talk about the herbs but the first question that I want to kind of start with us talking about is, who is Ochún?  T-D: [laughing] ANDREW: Right? And I ask this because, you know, I had David Sosa on a while back, and we talked -- T-D: Mmmhmm, mmmhmm, my dear friend.  ANDREW: Local human. And, I think it's really important because I think Ochún is, possibly from what I see, one of the most popular of the Orishas, and yet so much of what I see, in general conversation from, you know, people outside of the tradition doesn't often jive very well with my understanding of her from a traditional context at all. T-D: Right. ANDREW: And even in the traditional context, you know, I mean, some of my elders basically say, well she's kind of unknowable.  T-D: Right. And she's a deeply misunderstood Orisha.  ANDREW: Right! T-D: She's very popular and well loved, probably because of her beauty and because of her dominion over some of the aspects of life that obviously all of us are striving to attain or to enjoy.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: But she is deeply misunderstood. So -- And she means different things, probably, to different people, even among initiates. ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: I see Ochún as elegance and beauty, but maybe not necessarily in the most apparent ways or in the most superficial ways. And I definitely see Orisha as working through other people. So Ochún for me is a motherly figure -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And she's forgiving and she's understanding and she's compassion, but she also can be stern, and she also can teach us very difficult lessons. And she also demands respect. And she demands regard for the counsel that she gives us, you know.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: So, in some ways I always say, you know, I'm a little bit afraid of Ochún. I'm dedicated to her, I'm crowned to her, I love her, obviously, I've dedicated my life to Ochún, and she's blessed my life in many many ways. But Ochún is not an easy crown to wear. People make lots of assumptions about her children and things of that nature. Ochún is a very complex Orisha. On, you know, in the most basic terms, you know, we can say Ochún is a healer, Ochún heals with fresh water, Ochún also makes herbal decoctions, Ochún is a diplomat, Ochún is an astute businesswoman, Ochún is multifaceted, she's an incredible cook, she's a wonderful and caring mother, she's a wonderful mate, there are many aspects of Ochún. And obviously, then there is the connective part of Ochún in terms of sparking human connection between one another.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: One of the praise, Oríkìs or praise names for my aspect of Ochún, is Oneabede. A bede is that long brass needle that's used to sew nets. So we can say she knits together the fabric of families ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: Or the web of societies. We could just go on and on.  ANDREW: For sure, yeah. And I think about Ochún in my life, who's been, ever since I, ever since I sort of entered the religion in about 2000, she's been a constant. Right? She's always standing up for me, always there to help me, you know, always showing up when I need something ... T-D: And she's a fighter! [laughing] ANDREW: She is a fighter, right? And like you said, she demands her respect in a way that is unquestionable, you know? So before we do a ... what's called a reading of entry ... T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Which is before you get crowned, there's a reading that gets done to make sure that everything's good for the ceremony space, right?  T-D: Right. Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Has everything been covered, do we have all the right things, is there some unexpected problem?  T-D: Right. Some call it the vista or the obo de entrada, or, you know.  ANDREW: Yeah. And Ochún, in my reading of entry, showed up and says, "So no matter who's marked as your mother this weekend, I'm always your mother."  T-D: Right. ANDREW: And I was like, "That's right, Mom, you are!" You know? And that continues. And it's definitely that respect piece, but, it's also ... There's a profound intelligence?  T-D: Absolutely. ANDREW: That I think that gets overlooked ... T-D: Absolutely. ANDREW: And that diplomat, that business piece, that ... T-D: That social intelligence, that's really really important. You know?  ANDREW: Yeah. Mmmhmm. T-D: It's really important. And the whole piece of love, love goddess, and that whole thing, procreation, productivity, which she kind of dovetails, obviously, with our supreme, you know, Obatala, is, I think that the element that has to do with love speaks to self-love. And self-acceptance. And self-forgiveness. As much as anything else. It's not always a sexual kind of thing, you know, and attracting the things that we want to -- Ochún has a lot to do with attraction, Ochún has a lot to do with transformation, but it's not always in a sexual way. It can sometimes be and obviously it is, but those aren't the only, you know, avenues for that element in our lives. ANDREW: Yeah, for sure. So, I think I'm just going to have to collect a bunch of children of Ochún speaking about her nature over time on this podcast.  T-D: And I'm sure you'll get 50 different answers -- ANDREW: Yeah! T-D: From 50 different children of Ochún, but -- ANDREW: It will be beautiful. T-D: I want to speak to this thing that you talked about, this whole thing of aché, that we know that we're born with aché, right, and so this aché is this divine, if you want to call it grace, if you want to call it energy, you know, different people call it different things, we're all born with this, right, and we're all made up of this. And some of Vershare's writings even allude to the idea that Oldumare is aché, that God Almighty is aché. We're born with it. And we have our gifts and our grace and our energy, but then to actually be ordained as a priest is to receive the specific aché that we require in order for us to ethically fulfill our destinies, right? That's this idea that we chose a path, that we chose a destiny before we were born. And that we require this aché of these Orishas that we receive aché of, in order to be whole, in a sense, right? Or to be fully aligned with our higher selves. ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And so when we receive this aché, this aché that we receive is not the same aché that we're born with. It's really an amplification, an augmentation of what we have. And then it's almost like, you know Willy talks about this in some of his classes, the oreate ritual specialist Miguel Ramos, talks about this idea that it's almost like you have a bank account deposited of aché. ANDREW: Mmm. T-D: And then you receive, you know, augmentations to that from ceremonies or initiations or additional rites that you undergo.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And then your behavior and your character help to augment that or to multiply that or deplete it depending on how we conduct ourselves. So those are kind of some avenues or some conversations about aché, and then obviously we have the aché of our, of the Orisha to whom we're primarily dedicated as priests.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And I think we work for the rest of our lives to kind of develop that and grow that thing, and -- ANDREW: Yeah. And I think there's one other piece that sort of falls into that as well, right? Is that we are initiated, and we receive the energy, the aché -- T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: The grace, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: The connection to the spirit and so on, right?  T-D: Yes.  ANDREW: But we also are initiated into a lineage. T-D: Absolutely!  ANDREW: And we are connected to this line of people and Orishas and aché that go back -- T-D: Absolutely. ANDREW: As far as we can remember. T-D: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's essential. ANDREW: And I think that this notion of, or this practice of, being initiated into a lineage also adds to it, because ... T-D: Absolutely. ANDREW: It gives us permission, or some people might use the word license -- T-D: Right, licencia. Mmmhmm. ANDREW: To work with these spirits, and it forms a contract or a ... you know, most often talked about, like a family bond, right?  T-D: Right.  ANDREW: Because we use the word egun, which means ancestors ... T-D: Right. ANDREW: And when we use the word egun, we mean our ancestors by blood, our family ... T-D: Right.  ANDREW: And our ancestors by initiations -- T-D: Or by lineage, right.  ANDREW: And I think that this conjunction of the two forces, right? The energy that we receive directly from people, from our ceremonies, and from the spirits themselves, and that energy that we can access and that we can work with through working with these ancestors, I think that that combination really is where the magic happens? T-D: Absolutely. I agree with you wholeheartedly, cause you're calling on that energy.  ANDREW: Yeah! T-D: You're calling on that energy before we do anything, right?  ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: When we recite our mouba, we're literally praising God and the deities and the elements and we're literally calling the names ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: Of those who came before us, of our lineage, and we're calling the names of those exalted priests who existed before us even from outside of our lineage ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: I think that's essential. And yeah, that absolutely speaks to that concept of ritual license. That aché that you receive as an initiate endows you with something that will develop in time with training into ritual license and the ability to perform and to function as a priest on behalf of yourself, on behalf of others, to benefit the community, absolutely. And that is an essential piece, and it speaks to what the Cubans call fundamento, because if you don't have that you're just kind of floundering, fooling around, and this is not that type of thing. And there are absolutely different spiritual traditions and there are people who are born with deep gifts ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: With deep connections to their own ancestors, to their own spirit guides. There are people who have to do little to no work to have the things that they do flourish, but Orisha worship is different from those types of systems and traditions. ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: This is absolutely a communal system that requires ordination, initiation, training at the foot of elders, recognition by one's elders. As I said, this is definitely a learning path ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: That one sets their foot upon and they will continue to learn for the rest of their lives.  ANDREW: True. T-D: My mother in law lives with me. She's 85, she just celebrated her 60th year as an Olorisha of Ochún, she has crowned many godchildren, she's a wonderful Diloggún diviner, she is an incredibly knowledgeable herbalist, she's just an all-around Olocha of the type that was fairly common 60 years ago when people were kind of all living on that island in that environment and didn't have, didn't function or have to deal with some of the stresses of a modern life in a large place, you know? And she still reads, and she still studies, and she still learns, and she still asks questions in rituals. And she may be one of the -- she's definitely one of the most knowledgeable people, you know, functionally, in terms of ritual competence, that I know. And so it just tells me, this is a learning path, we're on this path for life.  ANDREW: Yeah, I think it's, I think that it's really a significant point, right? I think that a lot of people have a notion about spirituality, whether it's this path or another path, and I know when I was younger I had this notion, that we will at some point arrive. T-D: Right.  ANDREW: At some point we will get there, and we will be, we will know the things, we'll stop having questions ... T-D: Right. ANDREW: We'll stop whatever, right? And, you know, I mean, I look at the elders that I know, and they're always still asking questions, right?  T-D: Right.  ANDREW: And it's one of those things that the more I learn about these traditions, and even in my Western mystery stuff, even though I decided to walk away from that path ... T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: I could see how much more there was to learn, and that it was infinite, right?  T-D: Right.  ANDREW: And I think that it's really important to cultivate that sort of curiosity and engagement, right? T-D: Absolutely. ANDREW: I also think it's interesting, cause you brought up, and I want to kind of talk about this for a bit, before we lose it in the flow of the conversation -- T-D: Okay. ANDREW: That distinction between like Espiritismo, and muertos, like spirits of the dead, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: And, you know, what we would call, what more people might call spirit guides ... T-D: Right.  ANDREW: You know, guardian angels?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: You know, in the sense of like, some spirit that looks over us, and, what do you see as the role of those spirits in your life or in people's lives in general? Because I often see people conflate them with Orisha or with other things, and I'm curious. T-D: Right. And it's -- it's easy to do, especially when we are in a tradition where many of us, and most of our elders even, will use the word egun for everything, right? Anything that's dead is egun. ANDREW: Right.  T-D: So, even if they're talking about spirit guides, which we would say muertos, or guías, or protectores, or even ... ANDREW: Ada Orun. T-D: Right, Ada Orun, or even Ada Orun, it's easy to flip that tongue. ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: But yeah. Or even where they, some people talk about -- sorry -- even they use the word egun, people who are practitioners of Palo. So it just kind of gets thrown across the board. So it's -- I think it's important for us to be able to kind of designate or understand the differences, so we don't have this kind of totally crucado kind of crossed up situation, but I think that they are important. I think that a lot of that kind of -- I don't want to call it confusion, but kind of mixed up language, comes from the fact that we are ... Our religious practices and our spiritual practices descend from multiple ethnic groups of people that intermixed together in one geographic location, and so we have people practicing multiple spiritual traditions, you know, again, there's a creolization, it's not just strictly this Yoruba thing, because this is not just a Yoruba religion any more, in terms of the ethnic group. And it hasn't -- it hadn't been that way in a long time in Cuba or Brazil either. And now even more so, it is not, because we've got this kind of universal religion now, where people of different races and ethnic groups and backgrounds are practicing these religions, so. Excuse me. But back to your actual question was, I think that spirit guides have a very important place, I think Espiritismo has an important place in the overall practice of Afro-Cuban religion, because I believe that it fills in some gaps that were missing, and this is one school of thought. There are many schools of thought; there are others who will disagree. And I don't necessarily think -- I don't think it's filling in gaps that have to do with egun or ancestral practices, the more I learn about traditional Yoruba religion and the more that I study and read about that, it seems almost like Espiritismo tape kind of fills in some gaps that are missing with Egbe worship, that did not transfer to the New World. ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And so, oftentimes you'll hear Yoruba scholars describe Egbe as Yoruba Spiritism.  ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: Because Egbe is not an Orisha, and it's not one entity, it's like a group of entities that exist in the spiritual realm, and so the more I read of that and learn of that, I see, or I believe, I'm led to believe, that perhaps this filled in a bit of a gap where that was concerned. But I think for all of us, I mean, I come from a house where a lot of Espiritismo is practiced. My elders are espiritistas. I was married to a Palero and espiritista, and I just see how it functions in the life. Once people become developed, it can just help you in so many ways, just in so many little practical ways. But it is a separate practice from Orisha.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And so I think what often happens is, people who are outside of the religion, who do not have elders, are being led by spirit guides to do things, and they believe that they are interacting with Orisha. And, I just don't think that's the case. So all these girls that you see on Instagram and other forms of social media building these empty altars, altar tables, or they're calling them shrines, that don't have any Orisha in them with all kinds of pretty little knick-knacks and afefedes and mirrors and compacts and things -- those are likely -- I believe the impetus for that is a spirit guide that's pushing them to do that. But they just think it's Ochún. Or they think it's Yamaya. And so they've set up their altar, you know. That's what they really believe, and I think that push is so strong coming from those guides that it's pushing them to do something and they are doing something. And these dreams that they have that they're ... ANDREW: Mmm. T-D: You know, that they may be misinterpreting cause they don't have elders to guide them.  ANDREW: Well, and I think that there's an important sort of magical concept at play that people lose track of, or they don't like it.  T-D: Okay. Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Which is, when spirit speaks to us, right? They can only speak to us through our conscious and our unconscious, right? And so that communication is very easily flavored. Right?  T-D: Okay. [nodding] ANDREW: By our ideas, by our hopes, by our aesthetics ... T-D: Right. ANDREW: By our concepts. And this ... The capacity to differentiate between different kinds of spirits or, you know, whatever, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: I think is very difficult. And if a spirit shows up and wants to help you, and you're like, "Please be Ochún, please be Ochún, please be Ochún," and it's ... It's kind of in that neighborhood, you know?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Like, overlaps with that energy, of course that communication is going to get covered with that, right?  T-D: Right.  ANDREW: You know, it's gonna, it's gonna get clothed in those symbols and ideas, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: You know? And I think that it's really interesting to sort of try and understand how those communications and how those things happen, right?  T-D: It does. ANDREW: And I think sometimes it's an ego piece. Sometimes it's an unconscious piece. Sometimes it's ... You know, sometimes it comes from the spirit too, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: You know? But I think that it's really important for people who are exploring in directions like this to, you know, to try and be clear about it and to, you know, if you're looking to go in those directions, you know, considering looking for more traditional verification, you know?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Because that's gonna be way more fruitful over time. T-D: Yeah. ANDREW: You know? Because the challenge that I've noticed with a lot of people is, they get pulled into something and into working in a direction, and then they don't know where to go, and the spirit can't guide them further, and so then they get stuck and their life becomes, you know, not what they hoped it would be.  T-D: Right.  ANDREW: Or they have problems, and not because the spirit's necessarily making them, but because it can't take them anywhere else ... T-D: Right.  ANDREW: And then, and then they become disenfranchised, or bitter, or they get deeper issues kind of emerging from that, right?  T-D: Yeah. An important factor, I think, is [sigh]. I don't want to throw this all on millennials this or millennials that.  ANDREW: Uh huh. T-D: But, you know, different age cohorts do have some tendencies and so we may see a lot of this with millennials not wanting to, you know, follow the rules, or have guides, or submit themselves to elders, or this kind of thing, but I think it's important to just kind of lay it out on the line, that, number one, one factor that isn't necessarily specific to millennials, is that you have people who are kind of -- they may be rejecting, or seeking something outside of the Abrahamic traditions, and so when they find other religions or Afro-Caribbean spirituality, they may be operating under the misconception that because there's not a church per se, that these are not structured religions that have orthodoxy. ANDREW: Right.  T-D: And so that can create conflict and a lot of problems. Because these are very structured religions. There is orthodoxy. They are hierarchical religions. They are oral traditions, largely, even though now we have more learning resources that are not ... ANDREW: I think that that is actually, you know, I mean, I'm, I don't know about the millennialness of it ... T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: I mean, you know, I think that the issues ... Every generation has their own ideas, right?  T-D: Right. ANDREW: But I certainly think that being ... Everybody in this day and age who has access to the Internet, right? has ideas.  T-D: Mmmhmm, mmmhmm. ANDREW: And the amount of people who show up in my orbit who have sort of notions that they've picked up from somewhere that are really quite not traditional, you know? I think it's because of this flood of information ... T-D: There is. ANDREW: And people want it, and so much of it is ... It's kind of half-baked, you know?  T-D: It is. There's a lot of incorrect. I mean there are people ... You can go on YouTube and there are people who have tens of thousands of followers who are not giving accurate information. Or who are giving information or who have a perception or what they're voicing is really not orthodox or traditional at all. And so then when someone comes in contact with people who are part of the community and they encounter that orthodoxy, it might throw them off.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: Or even put them off. You know?  ANDREW: Right. T-D: Which I think is unfortunate. But I think, you know, there are some aspects of the religion that you can access, just in terms of historical facts, you know? This started out, you know, as an imperial religion that was a part of a culture that believed in the divine right of kings and that the kings are direct descendants of Orisha ... ANDREW: Sure.  T-D: And, you know, us, we're, our practice comes largely from the Oyo empire, and so there's lots of structure and strictures and all that kind of thing that exists. It's not just this free-flowing kind of whatever you feel type of thing. And so, I think it's important for people to kind of at least try to learn a little bit about the historical stuff. Just take bites of it, you know?  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: Cause that will kind of put you in a better place, really, than just watching lots of YouTube videos ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And things like that.  ANDREW: I also think it's interesting because I think that a lot of people who I run into who come into the tradition or are considering coming into the tradition, right, or are coming for a reading or something ... T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: I feel like a lot of them don't know what to do with the reading that they get, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm, got it. ANDREW: Someone shows up and they get a reading, and they come in a sign, and it comes out that everything's firm and solid and good, you know?  T-D: [laughs] Mmm. ANDREW: And then the reader's like, "Well, the Orishas love you, hugs and kisses, see you later," and they're like, "What do you mean?" T-D: Wow. ANDREW: "What do you mean?" Right? "What do you mean?"  T-D: Right. That's problematic too, obviously.  ANDREW: Right?  T-D: Because those Odos, those divination pattern, which we call Odu, have inherent messages in them. ANDREW: Sure. T-D: And some of them admonish the diviner to speak the more -- I don't want to say negative, but negative side of the pattern, and to give warnings, and --it's a message -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: That they're kind of -- As a priest, you know, we have Ita, which are a number of life divinations, but it's the same concept as a road map. One may be temporary while the other may be permanent ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: But it's still a road map for you to follow for your life, and so even if it's just dealing with a specific point in time and a specific situation, I think, you know, obviously, a lot of people are performing readings [sigh] who just are not conscientious ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: About the work that they're doing.  ANDREW: Right. T-D: It's not just about marking an ebbó or an offering or a sacrifice that you can then charge the person for you to perform. You're really -- It's a connection, right? Between the Ori of the person who's come to receive the reading and the diviner connecting with Elegua, and giving them this message that they require, and so I think that is really important in terms of fully exploring and investigating the message of the Odu that's fallen, and taking the time with someone who is not in the religion. You know? When someone comes for a first reading, it's really important to explain to them what that's going to involve, and what it means, and what to expect, on top of what the actual message is going to be.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: Because as we know, it's easier to lose the blessings that are being foretold than it is to convert negativity that's being expected into blessings. ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: You know, so, it's a highly responsible task to perform a reading for someone, whether it's a Diloggún reading or a spiritual reading. It's a highly responsible task and the person who's performing that reading needs to take it seriously and they need to convey that level of seriousness and sacredness to the person who's coming to receive the reading. It's not a game or a parlor trick. It's a connection with ... to the divine. ANDREW: Mmmhmm. Yeah. And it's also not ... although it has the appearance of fortunetelling sometimes ... T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Like, "hey, watch for this thing ..." T-D: Right. [nodding] ANDREW: It's also not fortunetelling, right?  T-D: And the diviner needs to make that clear, also. You know, that this is not fortunetelling.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. And it's also ... The advice about what you don't do is SO important and ... T-D: It really is. ANDREW: Or maybe more important than what you do ... I mean … They're both important, right?  T-D: Right. ANDREW: And this notion of the way in which taboos are handed out, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: "Don't do this thing, don't do that thing." I think is something that is also very complicated for people sometimes.  T-D: It is.  ANDREW: Especially because sometimes those connections are super obvious, right?  T-D: Right.  ANDREW: Like, you came in a sign that says your head's not very clear, don't drink. Right?  T-D: Right.  ANDREW: Eh, it's easy to understand, right?  T-D: Right. ANDREW: But some of the other connections are less clear, right?  T-D: Right.  ANDREW: And ... and yet ... they still need to be abided with, and that's sort of ... T-D: Right. And so maybe the diviner could help that person ... you know, kind of give them some insights into it. You may not hit on the exact thing, that that taboo or prohibition pertains to for that person, but it gets them thinking along those lines. ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: You know. Don't eat this thing. You know, maybe that thing would make you sick, or maybe when you go to have it, you're going to be at someone's house and it's not going to be well-prepared ... ANDREW: Right. T-D: Or maybe you'll need to make that as an offering one day and it'll save you so it's more of a medicine.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: You've got to kind of open the way that person perceives that prohibition. So that they can think about it differently than just, "I can't have that thing."  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: You know. ANDREW: People don't like to be told they can't have things.  T-D: Right. None of us like that, you know? [laughs] ANDREW: So, every time you sit on the mat, be like, "Please don't take away something I like."  T-D: Don't take away. Any time you receive another Orisha with any ties, like "oh, don't tell me I can't have this thing." ANDREW: Exactly.  T-D: But you know that it's important to observe those taboos because you've chosen this path as your life path ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: But someone who's just going to receive a reading may not understand that, you know, for the next 30 days, or depending on, you know, how you were taught, the next however long amount of time, while this Odu, while the energy of this divination pattern is around you, you need to, you know, refrain from doing this thing or that thing or engaging in this or that or eating this or that.  ANDREW: Yeah. For sure. So, I'm going to switch topics a little bit here ... T-D: Okay. ANDREW: Kind of, kind of but not ... T-D: Uh oh! [laughs] ANDREW: So, we've been talking about aché, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: And, one of the things that I've found fascinating was watching the way in which you described your process around making these new baths that you're offering. Right?  T-D: Okay. Yes.  ANDREW: You know? And, I mean, can you talk about it, because I think that the commitments to putting your energy into it, and the hands-on-ness of it, I think is fascinating to me, and so I'd love you to share some of that for people to understand.  T-D: Oh my goodness. So, I think it's -- There's obviously a little -- This is an unorthodox type of bath, the first bath that I'm offering as an Ochún bath. It's unorthodox in the sense that most people here in the States who practice the religion perceive Orisha herbs as just the herbs we use to consecrate heads and consecrate Orisha. And they're always fresh herbs that we work with. And the herbs that we use for spiritual baths -- Obviously people in Florida and other places, they may use fresh herbs. But in the Afro-Cuban practice, there are some herbs that get boiled. Plenty of herbs are dried, it's fairly common. It's very common for Paleros to work with dry herbs. And so, I'm using -- I'm making a dried herbal product. I'm growing most of the herbs myself. I'm washing them and drying them and confecting the baths with them. And because I'm a one woman show and I'm just starting to do this, I'm labeling all of my tea tins myself by hand, and some of the labels I kind of make, they're not really labels, I wanted it to look a certain way, and I wanted it to have kind of a vintage apothecary look, and I wanted there to be some texture. So I ended up doing a lot more kind of physical hands on -- ANDREW: Cause-- T-D: Crafting, then I had originally thought. ANDREW: You've skipped over a little bit, though, right?  T-D: I skipped over a lot! ANDREW: You're growing the herbs -- T-D: [laughing] Yes. ANDREW: And then you're picking them -- T-D: Right. ANDREW: And then you're hand washing them all, right?  T-D: Yes, and I'm drying them. ANDREW: And then you're hand drying them -- T-D: Right. ANDREW: So that they can them be properly dried -- T-D: Right. ANDREW: And cured. T-D: Right. Cause I want them to be properly dried and cured.  ANDREW: And not like moldy and disgusting, right?  T-D: Right. I didn't want them to be moldy or disgusting, and yes, I live in southern California where it's pretty dry, so it's not like I have a big issue with anything getting moldy or disgusting. ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: And I have some nice drying racks that I hang that are like the ones that people might use for tea or other herbs. And in terms of the confection of the baths, it's kind of an unorthodox thing cause there's a lot of praying and singing and not the same exact kind of ora that would go on to make omearo, but some of that, you know, a good little bit of that. There's not divining going on but there was some divining going on in terms of what my ingredients would be for the bath -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And there was consulting with my own elders about that. So -- And I do have some really good teachers. As I've mentioned, my mother in law, my madrina, I also work with my Olua here in Los Angeles who is actually a sustainable gardening specialist, and my other Olua teacher, Luis Marín who lives in Maryland who is an expert herbalist, and he practices achéche, traditional Yoruba Ifa but he's initiated to Elegua in the Lucumí system. So I do have some really knowledgeable teachers to confer with. But in terms of the actual process of it, yes, I'm [laughing] -- you know, I'm making it the way that I would make a bath for someone who came to me to make a bath for them. So, and I sing when I work. I sing when I do a limpieza or, you know, spiritually clean the house. And this is an Ochún bath, so I sing Ochún songs and I sing Osayin songs.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. And -- T-D: And I open my work, I actually stand in front of my shrine and I ring my Ochún bell and I recite oríkì and I pray to her before I start my work, and then when I'm finished making the batch of the bath, and I do small batches, when I'm finished I go back and I pray to her and I sing, and I recite oríkì and prayer and once it's done I light a candle and I sing some more -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And I leave it there at the foot of my Ochún. ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: And sometimes I put my Ochún sopera on top of it! [laughs] ANDREW: [laughs] Just put a little extra of that energy in there! T-D: Yes!  ANDREW: Fire it up a little further?  T-D: I do. ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: I do, and so, and I want to say, you know, this concept of kind of making magical things, you know, I feel, obviously that the power is inherent in the herbs that I'm working with and inherent in the Orishas and I just have an unwavering faith in that.  ANDREW: Mmm. T-D: So, and I have an unwavering faith in my elders and in my lineage and that they put Ochún in my head and they did it properly and they've taught me, and I've conferred with them and that I'm doing this properly, and I do it with a lot of love, honestly. ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: A lot of love, and heart, and I say a lot of prayers for -- I'm so emotional, you have to forgive me -- for the people who would use this bath, you know, I pray for them, that they should have good health and that they should have happiness and love in their lives and that they should love themselves and accept themselves, and that they should have prosperity and that goodness should flow to them and to their lives. And so I do a lot of that because that's what I know and that's what I've seen when rituals are performed for me, people pray for me, people pray for my children, and so I pray for the benefit of anyone who would touch anything that I put my hands on, you know.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. Yeah. And I think that, to me, there's that, what I hear and see and what you're talking about is this sort of both the depth of experience, the history of the tradition, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: And that sort of connection to aché and to lineage, right? And I think that, you know, it's -- it goes even beyond just some of those things, right, because it's also your aché, right?  T-D: Right. ANDREW: Like you can accomplish these things partly because it's in you from your destiny to do so as well, right?  T-D: Right. ANDREW: Like not everybody is meant to be an Ochunista or, you know, an herbalist, or whatever, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: We all have different graces and strengths, and I think that that capacity and attention is so wonderful, right? And, you know, how many, if you count the growing of the plants, how long is it from start to finish before one of these comes out in a tin, right? It's a long time. T-D: It's a long time, it is. And I think that from the beginning, my godmother did always kind of try to motivate me to learn about the plants -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And I said, "oh, it's just too much, it's overwhelming, ah," you know, I like to make the baths, I'll use this, what I know, I'll use that ... But as, over time, you know, little by little, you look, and you have more and more plants, and then I married a guy who was a Palero, so there were more and more plants.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: So you just learn, you don't take it all in one big bite, or one big gulp. ANDREW: Right. T-D: There's no way you can do it! And I don't know the Oju this is associated with, it's “bit by bit we eat the head of the rat,” you know ... ANDREW: Right. T-D: It's this idea, the head of the rat has very little sharp bones in it. And so if you're gonna eat that meat, which is a delicacy, right, for our ancestors, our spiritual ancestors, you have to eat it very very carefully. And so, it's a very slow and kind of careful process. And I don't perceive myself as being particularly knowledgeable. I perceive myself honestly as a rank and file Olorisha and I've been very fortunate and blessed to have some really knowledgeable elders who have shared with me and I will spend the rest of my life learning more about herbs and growing herbs and continuing to take classes, continuing to ask questions of other people older than me and younger than me. And maybe one day, you know, 30 years from now, I'll be an Oceanista ... ANDREW: Uh huh. T-D: But, you know, this project, if you will, is just an incredible, an extraordinary opportunity for me, and I love it, and [shrugs], that's all I can say, I love it, and I wish I had begun with more gusto 20 years ago and not felt ... not allowed it to make me feel so overwhelmed. And I also find it interesting that I've received lots of comments and feedback, you know, from elders who are espiritistas, who say "Oh, al fin tu estás haciendo trabajo de tu muerta principal," like, you know, "finally you're doing this work that, you know, that your primary muerta's been trying to get you to do for years and years." And, you know, I have been told of her, and I knew of her, but I didn't really understand that she was an herbalist. I saw her working over a pot, you know, a caldero, kind of bent over, sitting down, and her hands are moving. You know? And I would say that. And my madrino was like, "What did you think she was doing?" [laughs] "What did you think she was working on over that pot?"  ANDREW: [laughing] Yeah. T-D: You know, she was working with barks, and bottles, and ojas, and herbs, and leaves, and stuff, you know. ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: But it's a process and I think it comes to us when we're ready. When we're ready for it and open to it.  ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: And sometimes it has come to us little by little over time and we didn't even realize it and then we looked up and said, "Wow! Where did all these doggone plants come from?" ANDREW: Exactly, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that -- I think that that idea of -- Back to this question about guides and spirits that walk with us, you know?  T-D: Yes!  ANDREW: I mean, I think that figuring out how to live with that, and work with them, I think is so important, you know?  T-D: It's essential but it is so hard for some of us. ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: And I'm gonna tell you this, my background, I'm an African American, my family is from New Orleans, so saints and Catholicism and all that was not foreign to me, but many African American people or others who have or Anglo Americans or others who come from a Protestant background, it seems very Catholic to them, and not only that, but it seems very Christian to those who may be looking for something outside of Christianity. And so, until people dig a little bit deeper and really understand about Espiritismo and that they're different and also different ways of working with these spirits, that's when you kind of get that depth or get that connection that, you know, this is something that's really important to me, and when you are surrounded by, or find yourself in the company of people who are really developed spiritually, and how it helps their lives and how it can help your life ... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: That's when you start to see the importance of that. And when you -- or the importance just of being able to distinguish between your own fears, or your own ego, and messages that are being sent to you from your guides, you know -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: Is hard. And I can say, I lost my husband almost six years ago to cancer. I have struggled financially with two young children, living in a city where the schools were great when I was a child but aren't so great now and have to pay tuition for my kids and stuff like that, and make choices that I didn't think I'd have to make because I didn't think I'd be alone. You know, there's a big difference between two incomes and one income.  ANDREW: Yes. T-D: And I will give the credit 100 percent to my muertos, my spirit guides, my protectors, and my ancestors that even gave me the idea to sell these baths or make them available to the public, something that I love to do -- ANDREW: Sure.  T-D: And that I have been doing for years, and it never occurred to me, and I have been told, Andrew, so many times, you know, "You're going to have a business, you're going to do well at a business one day." Well, I'm not there doing well yet, you know, I'm just starting, but my parents were small business owners -- ANDREW: Yeah.  T-D: And I just never -- and we had a very comfortable life, but I just -- the only thing I was really good at was food things, and food businesses are very expensive and rigorous and require a tremendous amount of capital -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And I just couldn't see that. And so when this idea came to me -- This idea didn't come to me! The idea was given to me. It was a blessing that was given to me. And that just blows me away.  ANDREW: Well, you know, from a certain perspective, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: So, I started working as a card reader, 15, almost 16 years ago.  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: You know, I quit my job in advertising and started ... T-D: Wow! ANDREW: Reading cards for a living, right?  T-D: Okay. ANDREW: And I decided that I wanted to make a product.  T-D: Mmmhmm, mmmhmm. ANDREW: And so I started making herbal baths. And this line of baths that I make now.  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: And, you know, I got them in some stores around town, and I did some things with it, and in some ways, that starting point is the starting point of the whole store I have now, where I have a full store now, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: So, you know, and it comes from that listening in, and leaning in, and being like, "All right, spirits, I can do these things. Oh yeah, I can work on that," and, you know... T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: What comes from that listening, in my experience, especially if we're faithful to it, right? Over time-- T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Is everything, everything comes from there, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: And I think about, when I show up at the shop, or tonight's Saturday and we're recording and I'm gonna lock up later and go home -- T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: I always lock up everything and sit here and check in with all my guides and my spirits and I thank them for this, and I thank the Orishas when I pray to them every day, because all of this comes from their guidance and their influence, and my work, but -- T-D: And it's a blessing. It's a degree of freedom for your family.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And when I was a young person, a teenager, I just saw the work, you know, my parents did. And they had multiple small business endeavors, and they were successful, but there was a lot of work.  ANDREW: Sure. T-D: But working for yourself, there's just a degree of freedom, a space for personal expression and creativity, independence -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: That you'll never find in corporate America or corporate Canada or in the West, you know ... ANDREW: Corporate anything, right?  T-D: Anywhere, you're just not gonna find that.  ANDREW: It's just corporate Earth now. Isn't that the deal?  T-D: Right. That's what it is, right, globalization. But I just, if I could develop this in time, you know, in a few years or whatever, into something that I could do full time and have a small shop and grow some herbs on the roof, or in the back, or whatever, that is my ultimate goal, and to be able to kind of be there for my kids, and they can come into the shop and go in the back and do their homework and help me carry stuff or whatever ... ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: That's a beautiful way of life, because it allows you to engage in something that you value and something that you can share with the community, that you can share with others, and it allows you to continue to grow -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: As a priest, and to grow in your spiritual practice and your knowledge and ultimately, you'll be able to pass that on to other people as well. So yes, definitely, you know, you're someone who I see as a shining example, you know, honestly. ANDREW: Well. Thank you. Well. So, let's see if people want to go and check out your stuff, they should know where to find you.  T-D: Oh, yes!  ANDREW: Where are you hiding out on the web there, T-D?  T-D: So, I have a website, it's https://www.spiritualbathtea.com, and you can order the bath there. It's an Ochún bath for love and prosperity. It has a lot of beautiful things in it. And Andrew, I'll send you one, I know that you're a master bath maker but I'm gonna send you my bath, because it's just like wine, maybe you have your vineyard and I have my vineyard ... ANDREW: Oh yeah, for sure.  T-D: You know, but we can enjoy each other's products of one another's labors ... ANDREW: Absolutely. T-D: And I'll definitely be sending you a bath.  ANDREW: Super. I can't wait!  T-D: But yes, it's got at least five of Ochún's herbs in it, it has more, and it's got some other really nice elements in it that ... it's got three different types of sandalwood in it, it smells really lovely, and it's a really beautiful bath and I've received a lot of really positive feedback about the bath from users, and I love making it and I put a lot of love and care into it. And it definitely gives a new meaning, and you know, the word art, or the word crafts, these have many different meanings, and what were the meanings, the original meanings, of, you know, these things.  ANDREW: Well, you know what, the really funny thing is, you're kind of actually doing what the millennials are doing. T-D: I am?  ANDREW: You are, cause I mean, what I see a lot in sort of the millennial culture, things that people see about that, is this return to hand crafted, to small batch, to stuff made with love, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: So you see these sort of various things, food wise, and you know, clothing wise and otherwise ... T-D: Right. ANDREW: That, they're not corporate, they're not mass-produced.  T-D: Right. ANDREW: They come from people who have learned how to, you know, hand do things -- T-D: Right. ANDREW: In traditional ways or new ways. T-D: And this will never be mass-produced, ever. ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: It's just not that -- that's not my concept, it's not that kind of thing. So if I wake up tomorrow and you know, Amara la Negra or Beyoncé put me on their, you know, social media, there'll just be a back log, but the order will get filled, but you know, I might buy a couple of those labeling machines, to label my tins, [laughing] or you know, like I said, my dream is to be able to afford to buy 10,000 from China of those fancy tea tins that are already embossed and printed, but the bath is, it's always going to be something that is beautiful, that I'm going to put as much beauty and love and care into as I possibly can, and that my own hands have touched, because that's it, you know, that's where the magic is -- ANDREW: Yeah. T-D: It's multi-- it's multifaceted, right? It's got these different components. ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And so, you've got your spiritual license, your ritual license, your learning competencies, but it's also what you put into that thing, you know?  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: There are lots of people who are well-trained, who are very knowledgeable, and who are duly ordained, who just throw some shit together.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: All day long. And I will never ever do that. Cause that's got a lot to do with personal integrity and accountability to Orisha, too! Why -- I mean, I'm going to try to make the most beautiful thing that I can if it has Ochún's name on it. And when I do my Obatala bath, it's gonna be the most incredible excellent thing that I could ever imagine. ANDREW: Yeah. Because I love Obatala, and he loves me, because he gave me a wonderful husband. You know, I just am always going to do the very best that I can.  ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And to try to make something, and plus we want to please people, right? We want people to feel that their money is well spent and that their effort in acquiring the thing is well spent.  ANDREW: Right. T-D: And is special to them.  ANDREW: Yeah. And I know for myself, whenever I'm in a position to represent the religion in one way or another, I feel a lot of pressure.  T-D: Absolutely!  ANDREW: Right? To get it right. T-D: Absolutely! ANDREW: I made an Orisha tarot deck, which is coming out in the fall through a major publisher, right?  T-D: Oh, wow! Okay. ANDREW: And-- through Llewellyn, it'll be out in September. T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: And, it took me a long time to make it because I constantly felt this pressure, from me, right?  T-D: Yeah, it's from you, it's just like any overachiever ... ANDREW: Right?  T-D: You're not competing with other kids, you're competing with yourself. [laughing] ANDREW: There's nobody else, it's just me and the art, or you and the bath, or whatever. T-D: Right!  ANDREW: Yeah, no, it's fantastic. T-D: That's definitely what it is. I definitely put my best into it. And I hope that that shines through and that people will see that and just to add one more thing, you know, it's really important, this idea that we have, of that license [sighs]. I just can't really say enough about that, I kind of get emotional about it. You can't create an Orisha bath if you don't have Orishas. ANDREW: Mmm. T-D: You know? And they're certain herbs that belong to Orishas, and all the herbs belong to Osane, but if you don't have the ritual license to work with those entities, how are you creating a bath? How are you creating a ritual? You can certainly do a spiritual bath, you know, working with your spirit guides, and working with your muertos, your protectors and guides, but working with Orisha requires Orisha. Requires consecrated Orisha.  ANDREW: Yeah.  T-D: So.  ANDREW: For sure. T-D: Don't just throw some oranges and some -- ANDREW: [laughing] Cinnamon -- T-D: Yellow flowers and some honey and cinnamon in the bathtub and say that you're doing a bath with Ochún cause Ochún is not there in that bath with you. ANDREW: Yeah.  T-D: [laughing] Not to be snarky! ANDREW: No, I think, I think it's important conversations, right? And I think that one of the reasons why it's my intention to have you and David Sosa and, you know, other traditional practitioners on, is I think that it's really important to have a dialogue about what tradition actually has to offer, right? And I think that it's a thing that's hard to understand, it's a thing that is not obvious in sort of the more modern world ... T-D: Right. ANDREW: And it's not obvious if you didn't grow up in a magical tradition or in a magical, you know, I mean, I had the great fortune to not be raised with any religion ... T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: And I discovered Western mystery tradition stuff, and Western esotericism when I was like, 11 and 12, right.  T-D: Mmmhmm, Mmmhmm. ANDREW: So I grew up self-educating myself in a magical approach to the world. T-D: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: And I think that's what has allowed me to step into it and into the Orisha tradition so well, is that the only traditions I've ever known have been magical. And spiritual in this way. And -- T-D: Yeah. ANDREW: And were also initiatory, right?  T-D: Mmmhmm, mmmhmm. ANDREW: Right? You know? They're all pieces that I understood from the beginning, kind of coming into this, right?  T-D: Right. ANDREW: I think it's important. T-D: And, it's very important. It's foreign to a lot of people, and, you know, it's important to say, you know, Orisha worship is not a self-initiatory system, it's a communal system, that has an intact priesthood, it has existed for many generations, for thousands of years if you go all the way back -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: And it's an ancient religious system that has an orthodoxy and a priesthood and a specific path that one follows and that's very important. And that you cannot, even though the world changes, things change, things evolve, you can't fit Orisha into your own mold or -- ANDREW: Mmmhmm. T-D: Or mold Orisha to fit your lifestyle, in that type of way. It's not that type -- it's a religion, it's a structured religious system. ANDREW: For sure. All right. Well now we've given everybody something to think about!  T-D: Yes. ANDREW: Thank you for making time -- T-D: Thank you! Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it, it was very kind of you and I appreciate your time.  ANDREW: Oh, it's my pleasure, thanks.  T-D: Thanks. 

Welcome back to our weekend Cabral HouseCall shows! This is where we answer our community's wellness, weight loss, and anti-aging questions to help people get back on track! Check out today's questions: Louise: Dr. Cabral. I am so very grateful to have found you. You and your team do outstanding work, from your clinical expertise, to your podcasts, to your excellently laid-out website and user-friendly instructions for treatment protocols. I am starting my 7-day detox and will continue on with your candida protocol. Here is my question: I tend to have soft, peeling fingernails that break easily. What do you think about collagen, silica, and biotin supplementation? Ruchi: Hi, I am looking for children candida and bacterial overgrowth protocol for my son. My 6 year old son is suspected to have candida yeast overgrowth and based on reviews from other moms, I am hoping that your protocol will help him. I am based in Netherlands and may not be allowed products from US. Do you have any branch in Europe from where we can order? Please advice. Thank you. Kind regards, Ruchi Andrea: Hi Dr. Cabral, I have struggled with constipation for years now, and after trying several protocols, elimination diets, x-rays, etc. I still can't figure out the root cause. My question is this: Can a tight hip flexor or abdominal muscle impair digestive function? When I palpate my lower left quadrant, it feels dense and ropey, and I can't tell if I am feeling a strained muscle or part of the sigmoid colon. Thanks so much for any help you can provide! I love your podcast. I've learned so much and continue to learn more each day. Anonymous: Hi Dr. Cabral, thank you for answering my question on HSVII and the CBO protocol. I am early in my 2nd pregnancy and wondering if the high/full spectrum vitamin C, full spectrum magnesium and reishi powder are safe throughout pregnancy. I take your Orthomolecular/Innate Iron prenatal combo. If so, at what dosages? Also after a emergency cesarean first pregnancy I have contemplated a planned cesarean this go around (never thought I’d say that, as I wanted a natural birth) however I also have a fear of possible outbreak the time of birth. Any recommendations for delivery? OB wanted me on valtrex 2 weeks before delivery which I never took because my baby came a month early. Less important, but curious, if the virus can be eradicated why would arginine foods still sometimes trigger it? Anonymous: Hi Dr Cabral! Accounting to the Arginine / Lysine List on episode 273 someone with HSVII should also avoid blueberries? This is one of the foods that i have every day in my smoothie as one of your high recommendations. Pumpkin seeds are another healthy go-to I have a couple times a week and I even opt for the sprouted pumpkin seeds. Any suggestions? Anonymous: Hi Dr Cabral! I have a question linking the gut, SIBO and immunity. Stool tests have shown that I have ‘nil’ lactobacilli and bifidobacterium. I also have a leaky gut (lactulose recovery 1.5% and mannitol recovery 19.6%) and an immune deficiency (igG subset deficiency). My question is - how do I restore balance in my gut when I don’t seem to tolerate any probiotics due to relapsing SIBO (I’ve tried many). The only way I seem to keep SIBO in check is to stay on maintenance herbal protocols, prokinetics and strict(ish) diet. I know this isn’t helping to heal the gut though ....yet all my symptoms (eg stomach spasms, nausea etc) return when I try to broaden diet or introduce probiotics, fermented foods etc. It’s a vicious cycle. How would you suggest moving forward to heal the gut? Andrew: Thank you so much for everything you do for us and humanity. You are an amazing soul. Quick question for you regarding a friend of mine. She bruises extremely easy all over and has pretty severe menstrual cycles. No birth control pretty healthy. I suggested she take the adrenal + hormone lab. She also was recently on acutain for acne until I was finally able to get her to question it enough to where she ended up stopping at less than a month of use. Any advice is much appreciated. Thank you!!   Thank you for tuning into today's Cabral HouseCall and be sure to check back tomorrow where we answer more of our community’s questions! - - - Show Notes & Resources: http://StephenCabral.com/792 - - - Get Your Question Answered: http://StephenCabral.com/askcabral  

Andrew, Aiden, Fabeku, and Jonathan are back with a surprise or two coming your way this episode. We start by catching up, and discussing the events of the past couple of months and end with some amazing questions from our listeners! Check out our past 2 episodes if you haven't yet. Full episodes and ways to connect with the skulls can be found in the links below. *EXPLICIT EPISODE ALERT* Click here to listen to the first chat by Stacking Skulls. Click here to listen to our most recent one.  If you'd like to learn more and sign-up for the Ancestral Magick Course, click here. Find the Stacking Skulls Shirts, and all other types of merch here. If you are interested in supporting this podcast though our Patreon you can do so here. If you want more of this in your life you can subscribe by RSS , iTunes, Stitcher, or email. Thanks for listening! If you dig this please subscribe and share with those who would like it. Andrew   If you are interested in booking time with Andrew either in Toronto or by phone or Skype from anywhere click here. ANDREW: So, there are two quick things I want to share with everybody before this podcast gets going. The first being, Stacking Skulls now has shirts. That's right: they are on my website. If you go into the product section, you'll see a section for shirts. Or you can just search for Stacking Skulls and you will find them. And secondly, we spent a lot of time talking about ancestors in this course, and coincidentally, or perhaps synchronously, I am running my ancestral magic course, which is an opportunity for everybody to learn some brand new divination tools that I have created so that they can build a tighter relationship with their ancestors, either known or unknown, and start to learn to work some magic with them. So, if you're interested about that, jump over to TheHermitsLamp.com and slide over to the events page, and you'll find it. Without further ado, Stacking Skulls, my friend. [music] Welcome to the podcast, folks. Just to give you a heads up before we start: there were some technical issues with Jonathan's microphone. We've trimmed them and cut it, so it flows, but if you run into anything strange, that would be what was happening. [music] Hey world! We're back: Stacking Skulls. This is the magnificent first show of 2018 with all four of us wonderful wizards in the same place. Thanks for tuning in again. And, if you have not listened to the previous rounds of shenanigans, you may want to go back and do so, or you may want to bypass that entirely. I'll leave that in your hands. You know? But there are two previous episodes or installments of myself, Aidan Wachter, Fabeku, and Jonathan Emmett, and you know, we've gotten together a few times and talked about some things, so I'm going to kind of lead us off, though, with our kind of starting point thing, which is, like, hey folks, what's new in the last three months since we last all hung out together? JONATHAN: I had a microphone up my butt. [laughter] ANDREW: Excellent. Now, the explicit tag! JONATHAN: Next, Aidan's turn. [laughter] AIDAN: You know, this has been like the craziest three months ever. Right after we recorded the last time, my son died, and that was a really huge and transformative thing. And it's hard to describe it anyway, but...there is like a massive massive hole there and loss there, but it was also incredibly beautiful. We were able to get him home from the hospital, so that he died in his back yard, with a bunch of friends and family around. It was easily the most magical and beautiful thing that I've ever seen. And then, I had surgery. And now I'm pretty much recovered from that. And playing catch-up in the shop after those two things, and as of last night I'm now a double grandfather, as Ash's partner, Desi, just had twins last night. And they're beautiful, everybody's good! ANDREW: That's amazing. Yeah. Whenever I've gone through big losses in my life, you know, like two of my brothers died within six weeks of each other... AIDAN: Whoa. ANDREW: And, I always find myself at those times, in, like this sort of liminal space, right? You know? Like where I just sort of end up where I'm like, I feel like I'm constantly in ceremony for some period of time afterwards. And surgery does that, and, you know, I mean, for me, having kids, I don't have any grandkids, but having kids did that. Do you feel like you're still kind of in that, that kind of space? Are you like, sort of living 24/7 in there, or...? AIDAN: It's really wild, because, I think in the last episode, we talked about that I have these kind of death spirits that I've been hanging out with for a couple of years now. And in the week that I think I talked about, how they've gotten really busy, leading up into it. And so, that had become this, like, every night crazy kind of spirit initiations with these kind of hive beings that their thing is death, that I call the sisters. And so, when he, when I found out that his heart had stopped, that they had him on life support, I went in and they were totally waiting for me, and so it was very odd, cause they'd clearly been setting me up for this thing, for a couple of weeks. And so, I went straight in to go find him, where he was, kind of stuck in between, and assist from there. And so, the combination of all of that and then actually flying out, I guess two days before he was, we actually removed him from life support, and going through that process there, it's the most complete thing that's kind of a major event that's happened to me, as far as kind of fully self-contained in a way, of anything that I've ever experienced. So it's very odd, cause in many ways, I just feel really really good, you know, and I'll get hit at points, you know when I've been doing work for Desi and for his babies, there'll be these moments that are very very sad, but it's really just about, I know how much he would have liked to have watched the thing, and met them in the flesh and done that whole thing, that was really important to him, but what I feel like is this huge shift. You know, you have those moments in your life when you can feel like the cogs in the wheels of the machine are always turning, right? And to me, we're always trying to like, smooth that out and gauge where it's going and gauge what the next configuration is going to be. And this feels, in a really crazy way, like it's the smoothest kind of complete snap of things. So that's really what I have more than it being anything else. And like, just mass clarity. So there has been a huge amount of work going on, but it's really been, like there's a ton of stuff that, I don't need that anymore, I don't need to think about that any more, let's do the work to finish that piece off. About things from my childhood, and, you know, social dynamics, magical dynamics, all that stuff. There's been a lot going on, definitely. But so far, it's, you know, it's weird to say, in that situation, that everything seems really good. But it does. ANDREW: Yeah. I mean, it's certainly my experience of... Well, it's one of the reasons for the practice, right? You know? Whether that's Fabeku's The Practice, trademarked, or whether it's just having a practice, right? AIDAN: Yeah. ANDREW: I mean, you know, I think that there are... Ideally we get to these places where there's grief, there's loss, there's whatever, right? And there's the hole, and there's the absence of that person from experiences, and the feelings that come from that, right? But then there's also this capacity to be like, I find myself at various points thinking, other people seem like they feel like I should be way more upset about this... AIDAN: Yeah.... ANDREW: ...than I am, and I have this sort of very deep grounded position around it, where it's not avoidance or denial, cause it's actually almost like a hyper level of looking at it so squarely that it becomes easier to accept it, or to recognize it, and to see the ways in which that is, as you say, maybe that, the moving of the cogs, the machinery of the universe, the inevitability of some kind of fate force or, or just something that is just beyond our control at this point, either way, whether it was destiny or not, you know. AIDAN: Yeah. And I think, yeah, that in spades, and it's really interesting, because it's also, and I'm sure that all of you have had this experience, that we do all this work, kind of in these liminal states, or... ceremonial work or ritual work, not in a ceremonial magic sense necessarily, but just the work dealing with spirit, and dealing with the universe at large, what I call the field, and periodically, there are things that happen that really make you realize you haven't done your work in some places? [laughs] ANDREW: Mmmhmm. AIDAN: That you're like, “Oh! That smashed me!” Right? And I've had a good number of those. This was the reverse of that. This was like, I got the news about him, I went in, the allies that I work with were like, really sweet, and like, okay, you now know what we've been up to with you, let's go do it, you know? He's here, he's stuck. Let's fade him. And that's the most beautiful thing that I've ever experienced. And to me, it is, it is the, yeah, you can do money magic, you can do attraction magic, you can do whatever, but to me it's that: How is the work assisting your reality in the actual reality that you're in? ANDREW: Yeah. AIDAN: And this was totally solid. ANDREW: Yeah. AIDAN: And it remains totally solid. And I feel like at least the people that I've dealt with closely that were close to him all get that, in a way that I've never seen around someone's death before. And I think it is people who were doing the work, and who are... I have this knowledge that I've had since I was a kid, that I kind of realized what historical life expectancy of humans was, and the numbers that even got anywhere close to there, and what infant mortality rates and childhood mortality rates are, and so since I was a little kid, I've had that knowledge of that. Like, this is a totally iffy thing. You don't get to stay, and you don't get to pick when you leave, and far more leave sooner than later. You know? ANDREW: Mmmhmm. AIDAN: And, I've had that. I was in San Francisco, at the kind of height of the AIDS wipeout there, and so that's also, I think, you know, at an early age, I lost a lot of people. And so, it was really interesting seeing this, and going like, this is the most okay I've ever been about having somebody cross over. But I think that that's really tied into the work that I've been doing for the last five or ten years. That I could actually be there with it as it was, and go, okay! This is, me, it doesn't matter what I want here, I'm irrelevant in this situation, so... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. AIDAN: I would help the process that's actually happening, to happen in the way that it's supposed to, you know? But yeah. That's what I've been up to. [laughs] ANDREW: Yeah. Well. It's affirming to hear you talk about it. Do you know what I mean? AIDAN: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Because, because I think that there are lots of ways in which, especially certain kinds of conversations around magic can feel sort of superficial and transitory, whereas this sort of, the deep work of, I don't know what you would call it, elevating oneself, healing oneself, harmonizing with that universal, the cogs of the universe or whatever, you know, I mean, to me that work has always been the most important work, but it is, except, you know, except when you lose a wheel, you don't notice it, right? Like there's no way to really sort of see it in action, and then when you see it, you're like, “yeah, it's so good that I practiced all that driving with three wheels, cause, one just came off, and now I can stop safely and put something else on there and see what happens next, you know?” So. AIDAN: Right. Well and I think it also syncs into that concept that kind of connects to a question that we had that, in passing, which is this kind of, there is this direct relationship in my mind from what we now are viewing, the pieces that we can see of it, anthropologically, as shamanism, right, which is this, to me, this epic chain, of shamanism and magic and sorcery and whatever you want to call it, spirit work, that goes back as far as we go back. And I think that this kind of thing is the root of it, you know, it's about... The reasons for all the kind of death mysteries are not because there's some way out of it! [laughs] ANDREW: Mmmhmm. AIDAN: It's just, this is a reality that is the most prevalent reality other than the birth one, right? And that's that, the wild thing about this to me is that, you know, he's gone now three months almost exactly, and his children are now here as of yesterday. And I think they're going to have a really... They have a fantastic mom, who has a fantastic network of people, and I think they're going to have really fantastic lives, and yeah, there'll be that piece that they didn't get, but he's like, he's an epic, mythic creature for anybody who kind of has watched this, it's like, and I don't know that that's a benefit or a drawback, to grow up with that! [laughs] Without getting to see some of the grungier sides of it as a kid. Yeah. But, they're going to be special people. They've got special people all around them. ANDREW: Yeah. JONATHAN: You know, I was kind of thinking, while you were talking there, it kind of makes you wonder if he had to leave so that they could be born, in a way. I mean, just, the surrounding, everything surrounding the situation of how it just kind of happened, it really was no warning of any sort or anything, I mean it just kind of happened. It just, it makes you wonder, you know? I think about weird stuff like that. But it does kind of feel like he had to go so they could be here. You know, it's kind of a change of energy or exchange of... the... AIDAN: Mmmhmm. No, I totally, you know, it's one of those things that again, we never get to have those answers in any… JONATHAN: Right. AIDAN: …definable way, but the thing that I saw, through the time that I was out there when he was in the hospital and then when we brought him home, and had, I don't know, there must have been 20 or more of us in the back yard with him... …Was, you could see the transformation happening on all of those people. While it was happening, I was like, either you could see that there was a way in which this thing was a huge gift to all those people, to see someone's death happening and it being processed by the people close to them into my mind, the most beautiful way that you could hope for, you know? JONATHAN: When I was 12, I think I was 12, I was pretty young, anyway, my grandfather, loved this man dearly, he was just one of the coolest guys in the world. He taught shop in east Wichita, in, you know, some of the toughest parts of town, and he was Native American to top it off, so you know he probably didn't get treated very well, but he was just such a good man, it was hard for me to let him go, but… I was 12, and he had a death rattle, and I don't know if people are familiar with... It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not pretty to listen to... And I remember my parents left, and I was just there in the room with him by myself, and our preacher at the time, she wasn't really a preacher, more of a spiritual leader, came by and we were talking, and he started having the death rattle again, and she went to get a nurse and he died. And that was my first experience with death, at such a young age, and it was... It didn't devastate me, like, "oh, I saw somebody die, now my world's over," it was just, it was kind of fascinating, but you know, it broke my heart, because it was my grandfather. So, I kind of understand that, I mean, it's an interesting process to watch someone actually leave [static] you know and that was [static] on several... AIDAN: You're breaking up... ANDREW: Yeah, turn off, your microphone's suffering from what you've done to it, it's going in and out, my friend. JONATHAN: Is it? I broke it. AIDAN: In and out! I see how it is. JONATHAN: How's that? [laughs] ANDREW: It's good. JONATHAN: So, I should keep my microphone out of my butt. Anyway... ANDREW: Let's [laughs], on the segue of Jonathan's problematic microphones, what's going on with you, Fabeku? FABEKU: Yeah, it was... it's been kind of an interesting few months, you know, it was holiday stuff, and you know, weird, I'm not, I don't love holidays anyway, but this one was a little weird. You know, my mom's getting older, and has some health stuff going on and that's been...not so great, and with that, there's some weird cognitive stuff that's starting to happen, and I think it's interesting, cause I was relating in a different way to what Aidan was talking about with... You know, it's been interesting to kind of look at that cycle of her, she's in her eighties, and, you know, kind of getting to that phase where things are becoming kind of difficult and problematic, and it's interesting, kind of watching the other people around her, and kind of their stuff that's happening with that, and you know, the kind of the... the sadness, which I get, but kind of the panic and the fear and the weirdness and that kind of thing... Had a chance to talk with her a little bit in the busyness of the holidays, just kind of where she's at, and it was interesting, like she, she mostly felt okay with things, until everybody started freaking out, and then she got kind of fucked up and worried about it, and you know, so we talked a little bit about that, kind of managing other people's shit, and you know, we talked about ancestor stuff, and it's interesting, cause she, I mean, her background couldn't be any more different than mine in some ways. She grew up in a super religious Pentecostal home and music was "of the devil" and, you know, all of that kind of stuff, so, we have pretty different philosophical takes on things, but, yeah. We, it was a good conversation, we got to talk about the ancestors and kind of crossing in a good way and being met by the ancestors and you know, I, we talked about kind of my practices with that a little bit, and I asked if she was all right with me kind of working with the ancestors to, you know, kind of do what they need to do so when it's her time, you know, it can be as smooth of a transition as possible and, you know, it's again, like this is, it's a weird conversation to have with somebody. But to me, like we've been talking about, this is why we do this work, you know, I'm all for money magic, I'm all for all of this other stuff, that's fantastic, and, you know, when there's giant life shit like this, yeah, these are the moments when I feel really super grateful that we do what we do, and we have this stuff available to us. You know for me, it, I was thinking about this a few days ago, how these practices become, at least for me, these shock absorbers. You know? It's not that it prevents shit from happening, but when it happens, it allows us to stay more oriented and more coherent than we would be otherwise, and, you know, then if that extends out to the people around us, then we can help them get or maintain a better sense of coherence and orientation, and that's a pretty remarkable thing, to me. ANDREW: I think it's such a significant point of view, right? Because so many people lose faith because they do stuff, religiously or spiritually or magically or whatever, and then some life thing comes along and they're like, “why did this not get prevented?” Right? You know? And then they falter because of that, right? You know? Like I remember, a day and a half before my second brother passed away, I was divining with the Orishas, right? And I came on this really bad sign, right? Basically, a sign of unexpected things and tragedies that shake your whole world all the way down to your foundations, right? And so, I did what I do when stuff like that shows up. I basically called all the people who are important, you know? And I knew that he was going through a hard time, and so I called him, and I was like, "dude, come to my house, come over here, you know, I know you're out doing whatever, but, like, come over here, you know, after work, come over here, I'll come pick you up, come over here," right? And he decided not to, you know? And then that, ultimately, that decision that he made led to his passing, you know? And you know, there are these flags that I think that are there that warned that something's coming, right? You know? Like, gird your loins, put on your armor, get ready, shit's going to get shaken up, but it's rarely ever as clear cut as anything else, and to me that doesn't diminish my faith in these processes, because the warnings and the advices of that reading carried me through that time in a way that I could have been, it could have been so much worse for me, without that, you know? So. Yeah. AIDAN: Yeah. It was interesting, when I went out to Athens, I took out a deck of cards that I had just got and decided I was going to take that with me, to be my thing, and I'm not a big diviner, I don't, if I do a reading a week, that's a lot for me. And, as I was moving through, whether this was on the plane, or off by myself getting dinner at some point, and there was a sum process coming up, I would ask the cards to show me what would help me. ANDREW: Hmm. AIDAN: It would give me these readings that I would interpret in some particular way, at that moment, and I would invariably be completely wrong, but having that information in my head, and expecting things to go a particular way, was like the most perfect "assistance" I could ever get, which was what I basically had asked for. I didn't say, "what's actually going on?", I said, you know, "what should I have in my head, or in my mind, going into this situation," and they would give me something, and that was an incredibly useful tool, it was very, it wasn't accurate to what events actually happened, but it was totally dead accurate to what attitude I should approach each of those situations with. And so, I do think it's very interesting, that, I talk a lot about the biggest issue with magic is our kind of limited perceptual abilities. It's like... And when we're first starting out, that can seem like we're totally disabled until you kind of figure out how it works for you, you know. But I totally see that side of it. It's becoming more able to communicate or understand communication, even if it's not perfect. FABEKU: Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. I think that, you know, I, to me, that goes along with this thing that, cause I, I do divine a lot, like that's kind of one of my things, and I think since starting that, well, since starting it and fucking up a lot and misunderstanding and misapplying things, since then, my thing has been, how do I continue to expand my bandwidth for this connection and this communication, whatever it is, particularly around blind spots, things I don't want to see, difficult news, outcomes that aren't what I want, you know, times that I've misunderstood something and then shit goes totally sideways from that, you know, how do I expand my ability to stay connected and stay in communication when those things are happening? Because to me that's when it really matters, right? I think that… AIDAN: Yeah, absolutely. FABEKU: You know, if just suddenly, if we use that bandwidth and it goes dark, what then? So, for me, it's, you know, how do we, how do we keep that capacity as full and accessible as we can, when we really need it? You know. I think that's, it's not easy, but I think that's pretty critically important work. AIDAN: Yeah. ANDREW: Yeah, that's kind of, you know, I used to do a lot of readings about life and the future and whatever, and I still do when I'm planning and stuff like that, but, like, my regular readings, which are like, maybe two or three times a week these days, are: How do I keep myself in the zone? How do I get back to the zone? How do I move out of this sort of out of sorts-ness that I'm feeling back to being centered and grounded and aligned? You know? AIDAN: Yeah! ANDREW: And that's like, essentially the question, as much as there is a question, right? That's the question, and that's always the question. It's not really about anything else or anybody else or whatever, it's like, what do I do internally, to, you know, to be in, like, full on mode today, or as close to full on mode as possible, you know? AIDAN: Mmmhmm. FABEKU: Yeah. I get that. I like that, that idea of, you know, what do I need to do to stay aligned? And I think that's the thing, I think a lot of times it does come down to asking better questions, right? Because I think probably the last significant experience I had with that, about a year and a half ago, I had surgery, and, it was supposed to be, kind of a not, I mean kind of a big deal but not a big deal, and, you know, before I did some divinations with it, a couple of people did some divinations for me, everything was fine, all good, in and out, easy peasy, don't sweat it— That's not at all how it went, right? Everything that could have gone wrong did, and then some, and it was crazy. It was, it went sideways in ways that really could have been incredibly catastrophic beyond what it was, and as I was in the hospital thinking about this, you know, I think it could have been easy to, like you said, Andrew, get pissed or kind of lose faith, that wait, I read this, and other people read this, and everything was supposed to be fine, and I almost fucking died, like what's the deal? ANDREW: Yeah. FABEKU: But instead where I landed with this is, what if I had asked different questions? What if I had asked better questions? Instead of, you know, "what's the outcome of the surgery?" but instead like you're saying, "how do I navigate this?” You know, “what do I need to do to move through this in an aligned way?" That would have been a different thing, and I think it would have been infinitely more useful to me, in that moment, than the questions that I had asked on the front end, because I was super anxious about it, and so I think that led me to asking questions that were, I think, reasonable, but probably not the smartest and most helpful questions that I could have asked. ANDREW: The "tell me it's all going to be okay" reading… FABEKU: For sure, absolutely. ANDREW: ...Is 100 percent human and like we all do it, right? Like, but yeah, there's a lot more to kind of say, than that, maybe? And, I also think though, like, you know, when you, one of the things that happens when you divine, with, like, the Orishas and stuff is, in many situations we ask if the reading is closed now, are we done, right? But we don't say, like, is this perfect? You know, we don't say whatever. We say a phrase that essentially translates to "has everything that needs to be said been said?" Right? Or "has everything that can be said been said?" Right? And it's like, that's it, right? Did we miss anything? No, we covered it all? Okay. And then beyond that, it's inherently not part of the conversation or it couldn't have been part of the conversation, you know, and that's an awkward thing to accept in the beginning for people, I think, right? FABEKU: For sure. ANDREW: They want perfection of their spirit. FABEKU: Yeah. AIDAN: I think it also sinks in, there's a, I think it's at the end of Njáls saga, there's this really incredibly graphic vision of the Valkyries as the weavers of fate, and they're weaving in bloody intestines, with like a head as the weight, and spears as the shuttle rods, and beating it with spears, and this is after this whole book of lots of really violent death. And one of the things that I got from that was that they're really saying like, you know, our obsession with fate as humans is always about the survival of the body. We try and, you know, unless we really move to somewhere else, and they were basically saying, this is all blood and guts, here in the body. This is where it goes for everybody, right? And so, I do think that that approach that both would be given that you were talking about Andrew is, it's what I'm learning with divination, is, that's where I get good help, is: “Yeah, show me the face that I would put forward to walk through this next room?” ANDREW: Yeah. AIDAN: And I get really good information that's hard to describe, but, oh, yeah, I know that guy, right? You get used to your visitors in the cards, and you go, I know that guy, I know who I am when I'm that guy, and so I can try and approach this, like...that guy. Or I can look for that woman. Like who's fulfilling that role? And then I'll listen to them. You know, it's usually, it's very frequently that the cards tell me that I should pay attention to the next thing that my wife says more than I might want to. [laughter] ANDREW: That's the challenge of living with an oracle, right? AIDAN: [laughs] Absolutely! ANDREW: Yeah. FABEKU: Well, and I think what's interesting about the conversation is that when we move to the place where we're asking questions that are beyond our own sort of vantage point or unlimited concerns, and I think we open it up to get answers that not only come from that place but that can move us past those places, right? If my focus is only, “okay, tell me everything's going to be okay,” that's a very brief and kind of limited conversation. But, “how do I navigate this?” That moves me past that, and I think it makes us available to the inside perspective, ideas, whatever it is, that we're not going to get if we're asking those questions that are more limited and kind of in the box. ANDREW: Yep. Well, and let's be honest, from the point of view of the universe, the sun going supernova is okay, right? FABEKU: [laughing] Exactly! ANDREW: It's all okay, there are other suns, there are other universes, there are other whatever... FABEKU: Right. Yeah. AIDAN: When I was going through a super rough spot, about ten years ago, my mom sent me a card that I always loved that said "everything will be okay in the end; if it's not okay, it's not the end!" [laughs] ANDREW: Yeah. AIDAN: I mean totally, like yeah, it's okay, you knew you weren't going to stay here, so what's the issue? ANDREW: Yeah. AIDAN: Mmmhmm. ANDREW: Absolutely. Well, you know, it's interesting, I mean, so, in thinking about what I might want to share about kind of what's been going on for me in the last stretch of time, it's interesting how thematic it all is, right? So, one of the big things of my last year, was my mom had surgery, she had her hip replaced back in August, and then she, three days later, fell and shattered her femur, right? And so, in December, she went home after spending four and a half or five months or whatever it was in various facilities kind of getting tuned up, you know? And, so it's been this journey of like watching her go through these things and, you know, watching her go through these things, where it's like, you know, she's no spring chicken, she's my mom, so she's got a few years on me, and it's like, this could be the end, this could be the moment, right, and kind of as we were talking about sitting with that squarely and trying to look at the real reality of these situations… So, you know, that's been going on, and then the other thing that has been sort of flowing with me a lot, is you know, Saturn and its retrogrades, and its switching into Capricorn, and all of this astrological energy that's been going on has been something that I've been really feeling intensely. You know, I mean, over the last while, for sure, being a Sagittarius, and you know, it's now left my sign and so on, but also, this transition to Capricorn, whereas other times I've been like, “aaah, I don't like you Saturn, you've fucked me a lot,” this time I was like, you know what, I was listening to, I think it was Austin Coppock and Gordon White talk about it, and he was just like, throwing out lists of things that are positive in this kind of placement stuff. And he talked about, like, the dead, and stuff, and I was like, yeah, that's really where I need to kind of sit with my energy, you know, and step more into working with that and living with that and feeling that, you know? And it's just very, it's a carry-over of all of these things we've been talking about, right? It's kind of taking ownership of my relationship with the dead and with death itself, but with the dead more so, and how foreign that is to kind of almost anybody else that I know, you know what I mean, like, even people I know who are mediums, I feel like, I feel like often it's not quite the same. You know, I was writing about it one time, a while ago, and I was like, what is a good word for the magic that comes from a deep love and devotion to the dead, and from their reciprocal love that comes from there? You know, and I don't have a good word for that, but, you know, there's just something very particular about what's going on these days. Later today, as part of kind of culminating a work that I started at that transition of Saturn into Capricorn, I'm going to sort of finish making the shrine pieces that I started consecrating then, so that I can continue to do this work and stuff, but it's very apropos of this conversation, right? This sort of life and real like life and death stuff, right? You know, and, kind of like our conversation, I might go to this work for prosperity and I might go to this work for other things, but it's really about living continuously in some form of connection and awareness of that mystery, and sort of constantly honoring that mystery, cause ultimately it's one we'll all be initiated into, but yet it can also be such a source of power and life while we're alive, too. So. AIDAN: Yeah. ANDREW: Yeah. FABEKU: Yeah, you know, as you're talking about that, it reminds me, and I feel this a lot, and I don't think I had words for it until I just heard you talk about what you did, but when I'm doing magic, especially certain kinds, again, especially work with the ancestors, there's this intimacy to it, right? It's like it feels like there's this very direct, intimate, uniquely personal at the same time kind of big and cosmic intimacy that's happening through this interface, right? It's like this direct interaction with these things that are really at the core of being human. Again sure, you know, money, sex, relationships, attraction, all of that, human, right, but if you strip all of that away, the end of it, there's life and there's death and there's love. Right? That's what's there. And when we're engaged in these practices where we're working at that foundational level, there's this incredible profound intimacy to it that I think is pretty remarkable. Yeah, and I don't think I had the words for that until I just listened to you talk, Andrew. AIDAN: That's one of those... And that's an interesting thing, I was doing work with Fabeku the last two years, where this thing, this kind of connection with the dead and communion with the dead and being a part of this structure of these, like the creatures that I, or the beings that I met, the allies, the sisters. Where the thing that happened right before Ash died was that they basically brought me into their thing, like they really are, I don't know if I have a better description, they're a collective, but I think of them as like hive beings. And, when they brought me in, the thing that was so interesting was that from their perspective, how beautiful this stuff is, that they're like, “yeah, you guys do this other thing, in between when you're dead,” but it's this transition in and out of when you're dead that has got all of this potency and all of this beauty and where you don't have all of the, this kind of weight of inculturation on you… ANDREW: Mmmhmm. AIDAN: ... was how I interpreted how they were kind of running through me. And I think that that has to have been a more normal perspective that somehow, we kind of, and maybe this is just as we kind of figured out how to not lose half of the children or something, you know, and we're raising an expectation that barring something weird, you make it to a reasonable age or something. My sense is that if you're in a whatever kind of hunter-gatherer tribal thing, that vision of death has to be so different than the one that we carry now in 2017 America, and that's a bit of what I've felt has been going on with me the last couple of years as well, has been this really strong connection to this, like this is the, it's a thing I don't think I could teach much about, you know, but... ANDREW: Mmmhmm. AIDAN: ...it's the most important aspect of what I do, I think, is like... ANDREW: Yeah. AIDAN: I go into and spend time in, and they show me all these things that I genuinely have no words for, but that are really natural normal things. Yeah, it's fascinating. ANDREW: I had this dream, oh, maybe six months ago, where I was up on this high mountain range, like maybe in the Himalayas or somewhere, and I was in a graveyard, and there were these three eternal beings that were there. And I was there because, in the dream, because I wanted to be initiated into their mystery and under- and know what they know. And they basically said, “well, you've come all this way, all you have to do is give us the sacrifice, and we'll initiate you.” And then, what they asked me for was to surrender everything that I have ever known, or everything that I knew, and get rid of it. And then they would welcome me into their mysteries. And in the dream, I reached into my body and drew out this little blue box that was the sum total of all of my knowledge and knowing, and I gave it to them, or put it on the earth, and they accepted it and then proceeded into the dream further, so. I think that there are these really, places that inherently transcend our knowing, right? Or at least our knowing in a conventional sense, for sure. Well, so, we did as we usually do--oh hey! [musical entrance] AIDAN: Streaker! JEN: Hey! [laughter] JONATHAN: That felt dirty. ANDREW: So, for those people listening-- JONATHAN: Put your clothes on, Jen! ANDREW: We were chatting and joking around in the chat room about Jen streaking through our performance here, and I thought, how funny would it be, to have Jen just jump in for a minute. So, hey Jen, what's going on? JEN: Hey! FABEKU: Hey, Jen! Holy shit. JEN: Yeah... AIDAN: Awesome to see you. JEN: Good to see you guys too. ANDREW: Yeah! So, we've just been talking about death and super heavy stuff for like a long time, so what's going on, what have you got, you were going to bring a question in. JEN: Well, there was one question I had for Aidan. It started on his little request for questions, but it was about, like any advice or stories working with plant or animal allies. I see a lot of things sort of being appropriated of, you know, my spirit animal is this, my power animal is that, and it makes me wonder, like, you know, did you choose that because you happened to like that animal, or what? you know and so maybe just stories about your experiences with this way of working. AIDAN: Mmmhmm. Well I have two that are kind of relevant, and the first one is from a long time ago. And my girlfriend and I were up at Mount Shasta where many weird things have happened for me, and this was early on in my meditation practice and I was probably, I think I was 20. And it was super beautiful, we were up in the meadow up on the mountain, and I just went and found a rock out in the sun and sat down. It was sitting kind of like, this was before I could sit full lotus, so somehow crosslegged with my hands on my knees, and I'm sitting there, and I space out, and I can feel like this pull, in like two totally different directions, I've got my eyes closed, and I couldn't kind of translate what was up about this pull in two different directions and what, when I opened my eyes, I looked down, and one of my hands, and I don't remember which one any more, has like five of these big blue butterflies on it, and the other one has maybe 25 flies on it. There's like no cross-mingling. They're not doing anything. They're just hanging out. And I must have spent a half hour with them and they never switched places and nobody ever left until I was gone. And they were, all of the other butterflies that you could see were collecting all the salt and sweat off my skin, I couldn't really tell what the flies were doing. And I've never known anything other than that, it was just, this was this thing that happened. And it was one of those events that changed things, as most of the Shasta events did for me. And then, I think, I don't know, I mean, I laugh at my spirit at the kind of idea of spirit animals because my deep ties into non-asatru kind of freaky shamanic Odin stuff have me always and always have had me working with wolves and ravens. Which are like, super cool, right? And so you go, that's just bullshit, if I was viewing them as power animals. But as you know, cause you've got the book, there are these forms that I've learned over time to shift into in the trance world, and they just allow me to have different perceptions of what's going on. And so, that's my main experience with it is that I have these shapes that I can shift into, that like if I'm getting freaked out by something, if I move into the kind of raven shape, its perspective of what's going on is utterly different than mine. It doesn't have this human view, it doesn't have human concerns, and the same thing with that kind of wolf form, and this has kind of been breeding a lot in the last year or so, where, I'm not necessarily anything like a human now when I'm in the other spaces. And it just allows a lot of freedom that is lacking other times. But I don't have, yeah, the whole idea of the spirit animal thing, I don't really get that, I don't know what that is. But I think you can work with those shapes or at least I can work with those shapes. In ways that are very beneficial. ANDREW: I don't really, I mean I also don't really work with animals in that kind of way, or maybe I do and just my way of talking about it doesn't line up so that I recognize what other people are talking about as being the same but maybe it is the same. But you know for me there are these things that happen that are really significant, you know, and so I was out in the woods and this albino turkey came out of the woods. Completely white, right? And like it came out, it hung out, and we were like sort of five feet from each other and we sort of had this exchange where aside from where I was like, "holy shit, this is a really weird bird, what is going on here?", once I settled in and figured out what it was... 'Cause it was really big, right? Turkeys are not small animals, right? Especially later in the summer, right? And I was just like, oh, what's going on, and so I connected with that very intensely and then there was another time when I saw an albino porcupine and that was very intense, and then the only thing that ever sort of segues into me feeling sort of more a lasting connection with them versus sort of like a message connection is, I had this dream that everybody was freaking out because there were fishers in the woods, which are these sort of wild and ferocious animals, you know, they're known for like eating cats and other stuff and are considered fairly dangerous. They're sort of the honey badgers of our part of the world, right? JEN: [laughs] ANDREW: And in the dream, I was like, don't worry, they won't bother me, and I went out and I just sat down and this albino fisher came out of the woods and curled up in my lap and sat there and we just hung out. And then a few weeks later, somebody who knew nothing about the dream gave me a fisher skull, and so, it's one of the few skulls that I keep around to stack. But you know... AIDAN: [laughs] ANDREW: But even that became part of work that I do with another spirit, which is actually the spirit of a person who has passed on and it's sort of, there's a connection there, it's sort of an avatar of that person, as opposed to necessarily being the animal in and of itself, so. JONATHAN: I actually got my spirit animal from a-- can you guys here me now? ALL: Yeah. JONATHAN: I actually got my-- I was named, and was told at the time what my spirit animal was, by a Lakota Sioux medicine woman. So that's my lineage on that, and I've had that verified by people that didn't know me, later in life, of the total number of people that I walk with, the spirit that I walk with, and the animals that are around, so I kind of believe what she says, you know. I work with him a lot, and not really, kind of like what Aidan was saying, really ask him to do things or handle things for me that I can't, or that I don't know how to handle. Or to work with me on shapeshifting and stuff like that; however, ironically, I laughed when Aidan said wolves and ravens, 'cause I do the same thing with both wolves and ravens, is I do a lot of shapeshifting with ravens because of their perspective is higher than mine, so I can see it from a different level. And it's just fucking fun, so, that's just kind of my, that's how I've always kind of worked with animals, it wasn't really so much as they guiding me but kind of just walking together, now, just kind of living life and learning from them, 'cause they have so much information, if people can actually just do it. [laughs] Did you know that wolves can talk? [?] Oh yeah! [?] Hey my door's knocking, hold on. JEN: [laughing] Maybe it's a wolf! ALL: [laughing] JONATHAN: Probably should, tell me to get off the phone... [?] Albino porcupine, you keep your distance! JEN: Right? FABEKU: So, you know, I guess what I would add to it, I think, I get what you mean, Jon, when you're saying things get a little appropriated at times. I think really what I would say, this to me goes to the necessity to do our work and to deal with our own shit, I think in any of these practices, 'cause, I think for me, some of the pieces that feel problematic around this, they're, when I hear people talk about it, it feels very utilitarian in a way that the element of relationship seems missing, right? It's kind of like the way people would talk about a tool. Like, you know, I'm gonna do this with a hammer and I'm gonna do this with my spirit animal, and I get that, and I mean listen, people start where they start and it's fine but I think that you know, for me, it becomes problematic when we look at these things as tools or objects, right? Like for me it really is like, where's the relationship? how do I more clearly relate to them? And I feel like if we relate to them as things or tools then I think at best it's a really limited thing and at worst it's probably I think it moves us into almost working with some kind of distortion or echo of the actual thing, right, because we're not really, there's not a clear and real relationship happening, so I think the utilitarian thing is weird and I think the other element of doing the work is, you know, I think that, I know a lot of people that have come to these practices as ways of filling holes in themselves, and maybe not so consciously, so the fact that everybody seems to have an eagle as a totem, and kind of the same way that like in a past life everybody was a king or a queen or whatever the fuck. It's like yeah, probably not... JEN: Cleopatra, usually, always good! FABEKU: So I think, it's like... ANDREW: Jonathan Emmett was the one true Cleopatra, so we know that everyone else... FABEKU: That's been covered, right? But I think the thing is that if we don't deal with those gaps and those holes and that shadow and that pain and we end up filling them with things that are probably not accurate or not really there, and then we start basing a whole lot of shit on top of it, and to me that stuff becomes really problematic. So, this, really I guess my contribution would be, you know I think we just have to be conscious of and then clean up our own shit before we drag it into the practice and then start mistaking that for some kind of spiritual or magical reality that it probably is not. So. ANDREW: Yeah. And once we've built some structure up then it's really hard to knock that down. FABEKU: For sure, yeah. ANDREW: ...work at it, right? And so. But. Yeah. AIDAN: Yeah, I think that, that's kind of, to me, if you're working with kind of a spirit view and a spirit world, for me the biggest thing was to just slow the fuck down and like go, okay, if I've got somebody that's talking to me, that's good, I don't need to go hunting for sombody else and I can see, will this person talk to me about other things, or will they introduce me to other things? So even like in the, in my, the main zone that I go to when I'm doing trance work, the allies are like, the first allies that I met are like intermediaries, and they're like, there's stuff that doesn't move around and so, if you don't go to where they are, it doesn't matter how much you call to them, and so if I roll in, and I get the ally that's not being particularly helpful but that's hanging out, it's like, okay, would you like to take me somewhere else? And they're like, finally, dumbass! And then I can follow them and they'll be like, "go into the scary fucking cave," or whatever it is that's going on. And that's the , but that's about time, and depth, but I do think that there's the, or even the idea that I'm going to travel through different space and ask to meet the allies there, that might take a long time. There's a space that I go into now, that's finally opening up, and it's like, this has an animal in it, I forgot about it, and there's this big-assed elk thing, that could give a fuck and a rat's ass about me, and I show up, and it just looks annoyed, like, oh, it's you again. It's like dude, whatever, if you want to open this up a little bit, that'd be cool, and it's like, not now, later. ANDREW: Yeah. AIDAN: And that to me is the stuff that I get, we've talked about this a little bit before on here, with the four of us, is, if it's all running super smooth and like clockwork, it's probably not super real, Or, there's [inaudible] that's creating myths, 'cause to me, it's like, it just doesn't go that way! And I could be fucked up, I could just be a mess, and... JEN: Well something that motivated my question was in northern California around 2010 I went to a find your power animal workshop, which was a lot of drum trance journeys and when we went in, to find our power animals, I got buried in ivy for 15 minutes, there was nothing, and everybody was having these stories and they were like, yeah, and then this elephant took me to the bottom of the ocean, and a squirrel, and then landed on the back of a tiger, and then we had this unicorn that was in space, and it was like, uh, I was buried in an ivy, with nothing, and they're like you have a power plant! And I was like okay, power plants, and every other journey I was actually working with plant allies and not animals, and I was the only person there, and I was like, and lots of intense things were happening, but it wasn't an animal, it was like, and it surprised me, because everyone had these fantastic creatures, and it was like " I just got the plant kingdom," you know. [cross-talking] FABEKU: What I think's interseting about that, and this is when I talk about, and I talk about it more of like allies or the others, right, because I think that like, the languaging, and we were talking about this earlier in the conversation about the kind of the questions that we bring to divination, like, this is where language becomes problematic, right, because people usually talk about power animals or whatever it is, fine, but there's a million other options for allies, right? Plants, stones, weird alien creatures, that as far as I can tell aren't here, and but when I've had conversations like that with people, sometimes they act really surprised, like what do you mean, there's a plant person that you work with, or a stone person, there are animals! And it's like well, okay, AND... ANDREW: Can't go wrong with a magic space pickle! FABEKU: There we go! I claim that as my ally, the magic space pickle, right? But... ANDREW: Yep. FABEKU: I get that, I think that sometimes we create these kind of needless and unhelpful limitations that really shape our experience because of what we bring to it that okay, I'm going to go meet an ally, and they said power animal so it has to be a power animal, I think that, I don't love that, I think that that stuff gets us super sideways, so when we end up with ivy, we think, what the fuck is happening, right? Like it's somehow a problem that it's really not, so. ANDREW: Yeah. And really like, you know, what if it's burdock, or what if it's, you know, plantain, or what if it's like, some other sort of amazing magical plant that's in your neighborhood that's like the weeds that grow in the driveway in the lane weights, right? That doesn't mean that it's not profound and magical and powerful and a lot of the plants that I work with are, if they're not Afri-Cuban stuff that I'm working with for part of my religious practice, they're predominantly things that grow here or that I grow myself and you know, there's, to me there's some of the most wonderful magic is like being able to go out in my back yard here at the shop and be like, yup, a bit of this, a bit of that, pull this guy's roots, go down to the ravine, dig up a litle of this, grab this out of the swampy spot and next thing you know you've got something good, and I mean I think that there's such a, and not an origin, but there's such a cult around like, mandrake, and like all these sort of, the witch herbs, and I'm like, those don't grow here, those aren't my plants, those aren't part of my orbit, you know, and I remember not so much in recent times but like when I was getting going, kind of having some feels about some of these things that everybody else was doing and working with and I'm like, nah, I don't think so, I think I'm gonna work with the basil some more, I think that plant's really kicking it up for me, and it's like, you know, it doesn't have to be everything else either, right? And ivy's great, right? That stuff overcomes everything, right? That'll rip your bricks apart if you allow it to go too far, right? That's pretty strong. FABEKU: One of my favorite magical plants is kudzu, love it. Never met it until I moved to North Carolina, it was all over the fucking place, and I was totally taken by it. We were driving down the road and I was like, what is that? and the person that we were with was like, "Oh, fuck, it's kudzu, it's terrible, it's this," and I'm like, no, there's something to that plant, and I literally wanted to stop on the side of the road and walk over and just touch the plant to figure out what the fuck was going on. I super dig kudzu for magic stuff. Super dig it. And, I think to get to that place that you're talking about, Andrew, I think that this goes back to we have to clean up our shit, irght? Like if we don't feel like enough and we feel like it has to be big and weird and exotic and flashy, we're not gonna say, I'm working with kudzu! It's gonna have to be mandrake or you know, whatever it is, and so again, like you said, not that those aren't powerful, but if we're led there because there's coherence, cool. If we're led there because we're trying to fill a hole, and mandrake feels like an easier plug for it than dandelion, not great. Right? And I can't believe we're conna end up kind of skewed and sideways as a result of it. and, not only that, but missing some really powerful that otherwise, we could build relationships with these allies and do some pretty amazing work with them, so. AIDAN: I think that that sinks in really kind of beautifully to, yeah, it's like we're enculturated to all sorts of things, just as the nature of being social humans, and so, for some people that's, you know you know, I guess, you know that you are meant to be with the head cheerleader from the time you enter sixth grade, and you know that you are going to have this particular life, which shuts down all of these options, right? And this happens in spiritual practice all the time too. This is to me the kind of beauty of chaos magic and also where it goes horribly awry, is to me the idea of chaos magic is like, you don't have to know where this is going. You don't have to be looking at what happened in the 1800s or in the 1500s or in 900s or in the written record. If this is a natural practice, which is why I dislike the term occultism--occultism seems to me to always be kind of referencing things that are hidden, when I think most of it's like shit that we just forgot how to do. Nobody hid it. But yeah, and then there's just all of this possibility. The most powerful thing that I've been given is this weird little nine sentence charm that changes all the time, and it's peculiar, and it sounds really really witchy, but it's also so retardedly, "The Craft," or something. JEN: Oh my gosh, I want you to say it... AIDAN: I can't take it seriously, right? JEN: [laughing] AIDAN: But it does this beautiful thing, and it's like a joke, I think, from my allies, like they've given me this coded language, like this is how you get from here to here, and every time I go to do it, I'm like, this is so silly, it's like, and it's being open to this stuff, and realizing that these are language systems that we're overlaying upon experience that's not happening in the body in the normal sense, and so doesn't really exist. And so yeah, you go into the other world and you meet the space pickle, why not? Who... You don't think that that didn't happen to somebody before, just because it isn't written down? We've been here for a long fucking time, somebody has had serious relationships with the spirits before. There is no doubt. ANDREW: Lucky, lucky somebodies! JEN: Head cheerleaders! AIDAN: And it's probably Jon... ANDREW: Uh-huh. [laughter] FABEKU: When in doubt... AIDAN: Nice! [laughs] ANDREW: Cool. JEN: Well, thanks for letting me crash your party for a minute; I'll... ANDREW: Thanks for jumping in, Jen! AIDAN: That was awesome! JEN: I'll end my streak now. And let you get back to it... [?]: Whew.... JEN: See you guys later! ANDREW: See ya! AIDAN: See ya! ANDREW: All right, so we have this list of questions here; I feel like some of them we've already kind of touched on. You know, I mean, yeah. So, I guess, KJ Sassypants wants to know, what's the weirdest or wackiest thing that's ever happened to you in a magical or shamanic context? I'm afraid to ask Jon... [laughter] ANDREW: Anyone got anything that you'd like to share? We can't hear you, Jon. Jon, I see you talking, but I don't hear you. [laughter] FABEKU: While he sorts that out, yes, weird, god, where do I start, shit! So, a couple of weeks ago, I did some like hunting tracking magic stuff, right? It was very specifically like had my eyes focused on a very specific target, and -- so for me, after I do work, I'm usually paying attention to , you know, just what's happening in th world, sort of looking for omens and signs and confirmations and things-- and I was sitting at the window, with the cat, looking out, and, all of a sudden... So there's this family of hawks that lives maybe 100 yards across the street-- This was just within a couple of days of doing the magic-- All of a sudden, out of the tree, like a fucking bullet, this hawk flies out and catches some small bird mid-flight and literally rams it into the window that I'm sitting in front of and then flies off back to the tree, right, and I'm like, well, you know, as far as omens for hunting magic go, that's sort of terrifying and pretty rad at the same time, so, um yeah, it's probably not the weirdest, but the most recent bit of weirdness, that's for sure, so. ANDREW: I -- I can't hear you now. AIDAN: Try, Jon. You got it! You're good! JON: That was it? AIDAN: You're good! You got it! JON: Can you hear me now? ALL: Yeah. JON: Okay, was that the question about the paranormal, when I said could I use the paranormal reference? ANDREW: Sure! Use whatever you got! JON: Okay. So the weirdest probably thing, I was doing a reading on a house in Carthage and we've had -- hi, kitty -- we've had some instance of a pretty dark entity -- I don't like to use demonic because I think that's a bad word, and I think it's wrong -- more of just probably not ever human, type entity, anyway. So, we're doing an investigation one night, and we had a group there doing a tour, and I spotted this entity, 'cause it likes to hang out on the stairwell, and, so I'm trying to coax it down and to come talk to me, like I wanted to get it to talk-- well, it did. And pretty much threw me for a loop for about, I don't know, six months. To where I was a little bit off my rocker for about six months. And honestly, the you know I, it engulfed the upper part of my body, to where a person two foot away from me couldn't see me from the waist up. And, I still couldn't tell you what it was. I can tell you that it never was alive, I know that for a fact, I know that it was never in corporeal form of any sort, but yeah, I walked out of the house, I had to get away for a little bit, when it lifted, and I was freed from it, for lack of a better word, I walked outside, and I sat down on the ground, and I tried to ground as best I could ground, but I was not entirely in my body for at least 30 minutes there, but mentally it was a trip for probably about six months. So, it was a little bit of an interesting deal, but what brought me back into my body was kind of a funny story was, there's these big, not cedar trees, juniper trees in the front yard, they're huge, and I put my hand up on the juniper tree and an ant bit me, and that popped me back into my cells, so it was kind of an interesting, interesting ordeal. But yeah, I still couldn't tell you what that thing was. But I'd like to go back and work with it, but the last couple times I've been there, he hasn't shown up. So. ANDREW: Maybe it's following you around, Jon. JON: Boring ass-- ANDREW: What's that behind you? [laughter] JON: No, that's a cat! [laughter] Probably. ANDREW: I mean, so many things, but like, one of the things that I often do is like, if I'm doing certain kinds of cleansings for people, I'll take the tools and pieces that I've used in the cleansing, and I'll take them into the ravine system here, you know, and there are spots where I dispose of that stuff so the spirits that are there, and the earth that's there can just take that back and it can go away, and not just pass on to anybody else, and so, it was frozen, like stuff was frozen when I was there, right? And it was sort of, freezing rain and snow was coming down, and so I went down into the ravine and you know it's like this, we live in a big city, right, so it's like this lit path, and I go off of that and off into the hills and the woods around there a bit, and to the spot where I go and get rid of stuff, or one of the places, and it's all fine, I do the work, it feels fine, and I turn around to leave, and as I'm walking out, this like two dozen white moths emerged from somewhere and followed me, like they were just around me and they just emerged even though it was freezing out, and they followed me as I walked out onto the path and stuff, and they followed me along the path for a ways, before they sort of drifted back off into the woods, and it was one of those things that when they were gone I was like, did I hallucinate that? What's going on? But yeah I took it as the success of the work and the spirit of the forest kind of clearing everything away for me as I was leaving, you know, but... What have you got for us, Aidan? AIDAN: There's a few to pick from, and I'm sorting to see which one is the most acceptable. Um. Yeah, probably my third, I think it's the third kind of major initiation that I had was the summer that Ash was conceived, me and his mom stayed up at a relative of her's house on the lake. And there was a, we stayed in a bedroom that was like the guest bedroom, it was up this stairwell, and this was like a really beautifully made but kind of cabin built place on this lake in Washington State. And we were there for quite a while, but I was out paddling around in the canoe on this little lake and I don't know what i did, but I knew at the point that I did it that I had upset the lake, and this is really a little bit before I got enough into magic to be thinking this way. I had some practices I was doing, but I hadn't kind of developed any world view where this would make sense until after this event, but. In some way I knew that I had pissed off the lake and I had best get home. And t

In this episode, Craig speaks with Andrew More, Owner and Managing Director of More CA, a chartered accountancy firm.  Andrew has set out to add value to his services by not just helping his clients with compliance but also offering them real world advice, assistance, and guidance.    When asked about the kinds of problems Andrew helps his clients with, he explains that his practice puts an emphasis on the ethos of collaboration.  This involves brainstorming with his clients to solve issues and problems they are faced with.  They work with technology to facilitate processes and ensure accuracy in the figures, along with other specialists to help improve their clients’ businesses.   Unlike the run-of-the-mill accounting firms most business people see once or twice a year, Andrew is more hands on.  He engages with his clients on a more regular basis and encourages them to ask questions no matter how simple they may seem.   Andrew has had to differentiate More CA from the rest of the traditional accounting firms by adding more value to his clients.  One way More CA has done that was by educating the practice’s clients on what they must expect from their accountants.  As he starts to work with his clients, he asks four basic questions such as What is your structure? What are your issues? How do we contact you? What are your goals?”   More CA’s purpose in asking the clients what their goals are is to determine whether their personal goals and business goals are in alignment.  Once they understand what their client’s goals are, they can advise them on the manner of which will be relevant to helping them achieve their goals.   When asked about what he enjoys about being in business, Andrew mentioned that he enjoyed working with his clients.  In his previous job, he knew he could offer them more than what the same old accountancy model offered.   Andrew feels that he has succeeded in what he has achieved.  However, he says his goals are constantly changing.  These goals push you to be better and not content with who you are.  He reviews his goals about once a year.   His assistant, Claire, holds him accountable for his goals.   Sometimes, his friends and family do the same.  Most of the time, he engages in introspection and what he calls “self-review.”  Bouncing ideas around with a trusted friend or colleague. From these discussions, he is able to get clarity and allows him to identify what to prioritize and what not to prioritize.  It comes back to the Paretos Principle, also known by other monikers such as the Law of the Vital Few, the 80-20 Rule, and the Principle of Factor Sparsity.  Basically, it states that approximately 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the causes.   The one thing Andrew has been able to uphold in his professional demeanour and personality has been developing his empathy.  It’s about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and trying to understand where they are coming from in terms of their matters, issues, accidents, and failures.  This hit home for Andrew because it made him realize that nobody comes into work to do a bad job.  In the same manner, none of the clients are out there to harm you as well.  You cannot be judgmental.  Things need to be taken from their intentions that were made.   Turning his clients into aspirational go getters takes a lot of work as well.  The clients need to understand what their preferences, their approach to risk, whether conservative or moderate, and what they want to achieve.   Andrew’s advice for small business owners in New Zealand is that if your accountant hasn’t asked you what they’re trying to achieve or what your goals are, then you’re not getting your money’s worth and you probably have to look around.  He advises small business owners to work closely with their accountants and allow them to help the business owners achieve their goals.   When asked what the difference was between bookkeepers and accountants, Andrew says it really comes down to the price.  Accountants are now sharing a lot of their business with bookkeepers.  Chartered accountants, however, have more to offer in terms of knowledge, educational background, and experience.  Offering value added services to the clients sets More CA apart from the rest.  When the client needs advice, wants to do anything important, wants to grow, has plans to grow and succeed the business, and the like, he or she would need a chartered accountant.   Mistakes that are regularly made by business owners include budgeting for tax.  Many people don’t do that.  Some businesses have gone under because of their failure to budget for taxes.  Second, business owners need to have goals or connect to something.  These goals need to be written and shared.  This starts that collaborative movement in your business and in life.  It also allows you to achieve or realize something that was totally unreachable.   One way to do this is to collaborate.  Andrew considers that as the key.  With the help of specialists, business owners will be able to focus on what matters to them .     THE PROJECT GUYS PODCAST ANDREW MORE INTERVIEW   WHAT WE NEED TO BE ASKING OUR ACCOUNTANTS   Craig Oliver: Welcome everybody!  Craig here from the Project Guys once again. Today, I’m talking to Andrew More, who’s the owner and managing director of More CA. More CA is an accountancy firm. Andrew set out the business and the frustration with the traditional accountancy firm model. He really wanted to be able to partner with his clients and offer a bit of value for their money. So, rather than just doing compliance for his clients, he wanted to be able to offer real world advices, assistance and guidance their financial health to help achieve their goals. So, I’m really excited to have Andrew here as a philosophy on what we should be asking for our accountants and what have them move forward with us with things. So, welcome, Andrew! Andrew More: Thanks, Craig. Thanks for having me along. Craig: So, let’s start off. Tell us a little bit of your background, how you got to where you are now… obviously, you’ve got a funny accent, how did that all come from? (laughter) I mean, why did you decide to go into business? Elaborate on that a little bit more. Andrew: So, I’m not from around here. I’m from Edinburgh, Scotland but I grew up in the family business and my best friend, they were in a family business as well. So, yes..I was influenced by that in an early stage. My education, I attended towards  math and physics and ultimately accountancy.  I tended to have a natural flair for those sorts of things and hey, I love autonomy. I love doing this my own way. So, I think a natural progression to business was where  I was gonna go and when we’re expecting our first child, I decided it was time to risk everything and go out  on my own.  Maybe not best for the partner but it gave me enough time with the family and it let me do things the way I wanted to. So, it was a pretty good move. Craig: Cool. So, tell us more about your business. What is it you do? What problems are you solving for your clients? Andrew: Okay, so my firm, More CA,  is substantially a chartered accountancy practice and a small one at that but we have an emphasis on an ethos of collaboration. Now, by collaboration, I simply mean people getting their heads together and solving the issues and problems which are facing the business people. So, we do this and we collaborate with technology to make things easier, make things more accurate, re-collaborate with specialists such as accountants, lawyers, business advisors and all of these sorts of things and we involve ourselves, as specialists in our own wee way and also obviously the business owners because they do a lot of the work and they make their business the best. We do all the basic compliances.  You’ve mentioned earlier, the kind of financial reporting, the tax returns but our main emphasis, as I said is, collaboration.  So, the problems that we tend to find are quite varied. So for instance, yesterday, I was dealing with a restaurateur, guy owns a quite successful wee restaurant and what he’s come to know is that he’s made such a success of himself. He doesn’t have any time. Craig: Roger. Andrew: So, he’s asked us to take all his admin work off him. So, we freed up a lot of his time to progress other projects by helping him out by putting out flexi-time payroll.  He’s doing all this rostering and we’re helping him do that. We’re putting in a lot of add-on apps for zero in order to take care of the necessary paperwork and then we’re doing the book keeping and we packaged it all up into a nice monthly bill that he’s happy with. So, he’s now focusing on what he wants to do. Other areas, other problems, we routinely get around growth.  We help people kind of, work out their plans towards growth, set targets, those sorts of things and work towards them. Some people have succession issues and we try to help them out. Succession is always best dealt with early on. Craig: Yeah. Andrew:  You set out what the goals are and work towards that plan. Craig: So, you’re really getting involved with these businesses. So like, collaboration, partnership…you’re not just an accountant you might see once or twice a year.  It takes time. It’s sort of, understanding your business and working with them to help them achieve what they’re trying to achieve and their little personal goals.  Isn’t it? Like you said. Andrew: That’s correct. Craig: It’s a real hand on type philosophy. Andrew: It’s very much hands on. It’s very much based around engaging with our clients regularly, giving them the confidence to be able to ask those question which they might feel that are silly. So, we’re making them comfortable within themselves and yeah, we appeal to people who have that sort of idea. Craig: Cool. So obviously, that a different way of thinking about accountancy services, no doubt when you were started off, you  came out of wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and gung-ho about it all. Tell us a bit about of some of the challenges and learnings you’ve had on from the early years right through now, the different challenges, different things that you have learned. Andrew: Okay, so I think that the major challenge or the major hurdle which I had to overcome as being an outsider in provincial New Zealand and this might sound a bit strange but professional service operators such as  accountants, lawyers tend to be passed on down the family chain like heirlooms. Craig: Yeah. Andrew: So, really just getting my foothold in this province and actually appealing to people that I’ve actually got the skills and services that they require has been a challenge. Nowadays, it’s getting people to understand that as a charted accountant, I offer more than the traditional accountants you store from. Craig: Yes. Andrew: So when I say traditional accountants, I mean, maybe the big, big firms when they’re dealing with small business have tended to just give their clients a set of accounts, a tax return, a letter and a bill once a year. Craig: Yup, yup and we’ve been guilty of that. Andrew: Yeah and that’s not very enjoyable for anyone and there’s very little added value and so we’re trying to step away from that and teach our clients that, that’s not all we do.  That’s very much the first stepping stone of the first foundation stone in regards to actually being involved in helping them get ahead, achieve goals. Craig: Yeah. Andrew: We’ve never had that conversation because charted accountants are never offered. They’ve dictated terms and nobody came to step ahead and show that we would have a lot to offer. Craig: So, I dare say some of the challenges would have been around perhaps,  educating the market place, educating the clients to almost expect  more  and teaching them “This is what you can expect and these are the sort of things you should be asking for or demanding” type of thing, rather than going to an accountant or your lawyer towards a scary time, going down to the dentist at a scary time. It’s actually someone who can help you progress your business Andrew:   Yeah, so we’ll probably ask her routinely and we have our contact chief that we fill in with our clients and it goes through a whole various kind of,  “What’s your structure?”, “What’s your issues?”, “How do we contact you?” All of these things. Craig: Cool. Andrew:  And the major point of it is our goals section. We ask our clients what they’re goals are. If we don’t know their goals, we can’t advise them appropriately. So, if we understand our goals or if they don’t have goals, we’ll help find their goals. Craig: Yup. Andrew:   They might not be goals based on business, they might be personal. Craig: Yup. I’ve always had to look out for that. You got your business and your personal, yeah. Andrew:   Yeah, at some point they’ve gotta converge. You can’t have personal goals which are tangential from your business goals because then you’re gonna be at a constant state of hating yourself for being in business. Craig: So, often the business funds the personals Andrew:   Correct. Craig: Yeah. Andrew:   So, everyone’s got goals.  It’s just the case of documenting them and if we can understand their goals then we can advise them on the manner of which will be relevant towards to actually achieving these goals. Craig: Yeah, cool.  Awesome. So, what do you actually enjoy about being in business? What is it like to expand your wills? What do you enjoy about your business or your industry? What do you base your success at? Andrew:   Okay, so, what do I enjoy about my business? Craig: Yeah. Andrew:   I like doing business my own way. (laughter) Andrew:   One of the main things with getting at and going out to business by myself is that I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing for our clients and the firm that I was working for.  We were just giving that same old accountancy model of no added value and I knew we could do so much more. So that’s why I went to business by myself and that’s why I like to plow my own lawn thoroughly as they have warned me against and I’m not trying to be a disruptor. I think I’m naturally disruptive and the fact that I am offering a bit more .Key to my success, I could say that my success is moderate so far. Craig: C’mon! Andrew:   And I guess if you, if I still look at where I am now compared to when I’ve first started out, I’d say yes, I’ve succeeded in what I have achieved.  But the thing about goals are, we are constantly changing them. Craig:  Yup. Andrew:   So, you look back in it now and you look at yourself now and you probably think, “Oh, I’m only a moderate success because I’ve reassessed my goals.” And I think that’s probably one of the keys, you’ve gotta have goals. If you don’t have goals, you’re probably just gonna plod along, doing things that you may just be content with who you are. Nothing wrong with that. Craig: No. Andrew:   But I’m fairly aspirational. So, I set goals and I review them. Craig: So, how far would you review your goals?   Andrew:   I would review them at least once a year and well, I’d reassess myself on it once a year. I think it really comes down to what your goals are and how quickly you need to respond to maybe adverse events. That’s how quickly and how often you review them.  If you got projects and you’ve got a short time scale. You’ve obviously need to review your actual milestones regularly but my goals have been pretty much annually based on two-year, three-year, or  five-year goals. I’ve got milestones placed along the way to six months annually. Craig: Do you review them yourself or do you bring advisor parties to help you play devil’s advocate or a third party influence or external…do you know what I’m saying? Like, with your clients, do you bring in your professional… Andrew:   It’s always nice to be held accountable. (laughter) Sometime though, I don’t personally do that. I have done with my assistant, Claire, she knows what my goals are and certainly used some people to bounced ideas off. So, I do use that devil’s advocacy and that could be friends, family and those sorts of things. Craig: Yup. Yup. Andrew:   But a lot of the time, I’ve done self-review. I’m searching for doing this for others like I can do it for myself. I write loads of business plans. Craig: Okay. Andrew:   I write loads of them with these great ideas I conjure up over Christmas time. (laughter) Craig: Over Hanukkah Andrew:   And I review them on the second day and I go “Oh, that’s rubbish.” Craig: [incomprehensible] One day, there’s going to be a great idea in there and you could be the next great Mark Zuckerberg. (laughter) Andrew:   Yeah, you understand it right? You need tough collaborators and for small business people, it’s pretty hard to find collaborators. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   So even if it’s your partner, your colleagues, your friends, share your ideas. And hey, if one of them is happy to be a devil’s advocate and maybe just to help you ask those questions that justify your own ideas, hypotheses, your philosophies, just have them justify it. Craig: And sometimes, it’s just like and all in fairness as well, you have so many ideas in your head, so many businesses plans the clarity as to which you should follow and which ones you should bin. Andrew:   Yeah, just like your goals. Craig: Yeah. Yeah.  And I just went through the process myself, last week, I had lots of little projects on the go, not quite sure if  they were gonna amount to anything. So, I had a meeting with someone I trust on Friday,  bounce my ideas around. This was a big mess of brains from this section down, got massive clarity out of it, know which ones to prioritize and which ones are not.  Yeah. Andrew:   It comes back to that whole paretos principle of that 80-20. Craig: Yeah. Andrew:   So, what are you trying to achieve? Figure out your goals? If this project doesn’t actually fit in with your goals, what you’re actually trying to achieve? There’s probably no point of taking it on. Craig: No. Andrew:   If you’re wanting to have a lifestyle balance and you take on a project which is gonna consume a hundred hours a week and you’re not gonna do it. Craig: No. Andrew:   You’re not gonna achieve it. So, you need someone to go, “Hey, Craig. That’s a massive project, you’re not gonna do this as well as you actually want to.” Craig: So, work out your genius. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So later you might not think yourself as a leader but as a leader in at sort of industry or community, what have you learned personally and professionally, perhaps of yourself in the last few years, being in business for yourself rather than working in the cooperate? Andrew:   Okay, well.  I guess even working in the corporate world or doing any sort of thing, you know in a business leader, you gotta  have certain things. You gotta have a sort of, systematic process driven. You gotta have some sort of discipline, those sort of things that are pretty much standard. Probably the main thing, I’ve learned, which I’ve tried to uphold in my professional demeanor and personality is empathy. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   And really by that I mean, putting yourself in that predicament of the other person and trying to look at matters and issues, accidents and failures from their perspective.  This kind of hit home to me was dealing with the staff in my previous and realizing that nobody comes into work to do a  bad job. Craig: Yup. Andrew:   Likewise, none of your clients are out to harm you, none Craig: None. (laughter) Andrew:   Would you say that your clients are the few you deal with that set out] to harm you? Craig: Yes. Andrew:   And so, when things do go awry and things do fail and accidents happen, just step into their shoes and understand what their intentions were and more often than not, you’ll find that they’re well-intended and they’re good people. It just wasn’t the right call.  So, I hold hese beliefs and I hold myself to them in a professional manner. Personally, unfortunately, as I take to the football field, my fight club fever comes around and I become a horrible, mouthy center forward. But I… (laughter) Craig:  There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s where you take your aggression out. So long as you don’t do it with a client. Andrew:   Yeah, so empathy would be the main thing there. Craig: Yeah, now that’s a good thing to have there, empathy. Like you said, it’s  often…people having a bad day but it’s been a build-up of all sorts of things. It’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back in the morning.  It’s totally irrelevant with what you’re doing with them.  But you just, felt it rough for the day. Andrew:   Yeah. So, when have people have issues as well. Craig: Yeah. Andrew:   A lot of people have far greater issues  or hang ups than you will ever have. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   So, you’ve gotta  just take time. Don’t be judgmental. Craig: Yeah. Cool. Andrew:   Take everything from their intentions that was made. Craig: Cool. Cool.  So, the majority of the  listeners, listening to this will be small to medium business owners in New Zealand and Australia. In your opinion, what sort of things us, as business owners been asking in and or demand you from our accountant? Andrew:   Well, I’m guessing that all accountants will be offering the same thing. So… Craig: Yes, let’s assume that. Andrew:   …pretty much the traditional model that I was talking about.  Craig: But that’s the bare minimum though, there’s the expense and the expectation. Andrew:   That would be the bare minimum but really , it comes down to what you’re trying to achieve. So, if you’re happy and content with what you’re doing and that’s probably all you’ll ever need. And so, maybe you’ll differentiate between providers and price. If you’re looking for something or if you’re aspirational or goal-driven or you have ideas of who you want to be then what you’re really wanting is somebody to be interested ,to show interest, to maybe document with what your interests are, to know what your goals are and ask these questions. If they haven’t asked you that, then how can they possibly try and give you professional advice which is gonna ba appropriate for you if you don’t know what you want to achieve. So, I’d say if for a small business owner in New Zealand , if your accountant hasn’t asked you what you’re trying to achieve or what your goals are then you’re probably lacking and you probably need to look around. Craig: Good. Good. That’s good. I haven’t thought of it that way. I thought it was the other way around with the push-demand stuff but like you say, often you don’t know what you don’t know.  At least, they’re asking you their questions and you’re willing to share them as well and then you know you’re on the right track, don’t ya? Yeah. Andrew: Well, the thing with accountants is that if one character came and had this great amount of knowledge and experience and education. But we’ve tended to use our dispense the advice purely for the bigger corporates, the really big clients who pay huge fees. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   And it’s never actually filtered down to small businesses. So, the small business person comes in and they dictated what they’re getting. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   The thing that I can’t say is that tax returns, they don’t really get the opportunity to sit down and say, “Hey, Mr. Jack the accountant. You got all this knowledge. Can you get me the benefit of it?” and when the client is sitting right across the table from this old school chartered accountants, dictating terms. They don’t feel comfortable enough to ask those questions. They don’t feel comfortable enough to ask what the previsions is, “What’s provisional tax?”,  “Why are you sending me these bills?” Craig: It’s an intimidation factor, isn’t it? Andrew:   It’s an intimidation factor. So, if they could have broken that down over the years and actually given some real value to their clients, we wouldn’t be having this issue that we’re currently having. Craig: Yeah. Cool. Awesome. So, how often should we be reviewing our accountant’s offerings? Let’s face it, men today, we just walk around, new financial year, is it too late to ask my accountant these question or do I have to wait next year? What should I be doing? Does it matter?  Andrew: It really doesn’t matter. I would say that with anything, you should review the value in it.  The problem being that a lot the cases we take on or a lot of the clients we take on do have goals or issues. They’re not issues and goals that can be fixed in a silver bullet.  There are some things that might take a year or two to gain the understanding, embed the knowledge, empower the individual to make decisions, understand their goals and to progress.  Let’s say if you’re reviewing once every one or two years then that would be fine.  However, it comes back to the fact that, “Has your accountant ever asked you these questions?” , “What are your goals?”, “What are you trying to  achieve?”, “How can we help you?” Craig: “Why are they in that business?” Andrew: If they haven’t asked you that then they aren’t putting the right amount of  effort in. They’re not interested and why would you have a business adviser that wasn’t specifically interested in  what you’re trying to achieve? Crag: I guess also, it’s very well that they could ask where in your goals you’re at because it’s sort of a new way of thinking. But this is actually following through with taking interest in those goals. It’s easier to say, “Oh, what are your goals in your business?” and then they go “ Oh! I’ve never been asked by that. I don’t really know what I wanna share with you today, Mr. Accountant.” But they need to follow through that. They need to say, “Oh, well. Tell me more about that. How can I help you achieve those?” or “What do you need from me?”   Andrew: You ask what their goals are, you ask them how they could be most of help so you can follow up and ask people right there who are stuck in that mindset of traditional accounting.   Crag: Yup. Andrew: They still come to us, on price or efficiency or convenience and we  get from that basic compliance but are happy with that  and we wouldn’t change that if that’s what… we’d want to make them some aspirational goal-getter when they don’t want to be so understanding that, understanding what their preferences are, understanding their approach to risk, whether they are really private  or whether they are gambling-oriented, whether they want to take risks or whether they really came to shine retiring. If you know all this, then you can  better meet  their demands, meet their requests and fulfill or satisfy the clients Crag: Yeah. Cool. Lovin’ that, lovin’ that.  So, maybe we can identify say, maybe  our current accountant is not doing as much as they could be possibly doing but like changing banks, changing lawyers, changing dentists, it’s a pain in the bum. How to change your accountant? I don’t know. That’s perception would be, wouldn’t it? It’s almost as if breaking up with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, ain’t that though? Andrew: Yeah, man. Crag: It’s a big move. Andrew: Unfortunately, text messaging doesn’t work. (laughter) Crag: No. No Andrew: Or not calling her back Crag: Facebook messenger Andrew: And you still get the bill for their blah Crag: Yeah. Yeah. Andrew: So, it’s always been an issue that we’ve come against as well. We had previously told our clients, “Hey, just give your accountant a call and tell them that you’re moving on” and that courtesy that was shown was never, very rarely, reciprocated by the accountants. Crag: Yes. Andrew: Our position nowadays is to leave it to us and provisions within our ethical guide which require new engagements to ratified or disputed and for information to pass within seven days. Crag: Okay. Andrew: Most accountants will adhere to that and that’s all that’s required. We do find people, especially in provincial New Zealand have deep seated relationships with their accountant and has  been passed on to them. They’ve had a long standing agreement and they may find that changing and having that conversation’s really kind of awkward, really uncomfortable. Crag: Yes. Andrew: So, if they don’t want to do it then that’s where we step in, doing it in a professional manner. If they do still want to do it then they’re perfectly allowed to do so. But they are under not required to justify their decision and it really comes down to “But the accountant was such a good friend.” Then friendships are reciprocal. So, you’re paying them a fee to do a certain service for you and you’ve asked for extra help and they’ve taken their fee on their in their arm, giving you that extra help. What kind of friendship’s that? Crag: Yes. Andrew: It’s not your issue, it’s the accountant’s issue and they probably deserved to lose you. Crag: Yes. Andrew: We see the same way with our services. We don’t tie people up because we want them to be comfortable enough to say, “Andrew, you’re not doing a good enough job. Stand up and give us our service or we’re gonna cut of our monthly installment of our fee.”  Crag: Yes. Andrew: And that will give me moving. Unfortunately, we don’t have that. Craig: And the consumerist of the client saying, “Oh, I don’t see… I’m struggling to understand the value of what I’m receiving from you.”  And then as the supplier, they  need to justify that or lift the game or or whatever Andrew: Absolutely, just life their game. As we talked about earlier, transitioning to an accountant, dictating terms…the power is now moving to the consumer. Crag: Yeah. Andrew: The subscription-based packaging, the ability to shift between different packaging, different accountants. That’s how it should be. Crag: Yeah. Andrew: That should be the flexibility that a small-business owner should demand. So, we are offering it, there’s other people in the market that are offering it and moving between accountants should not be difficult and it doesn’t need to be. Crag: Yes. Andrew: We can do that all for you. Crag: Awesome. So, on the more personal note, now that you’re a big advocate of good work and life balance which is why I guess is one of the reasons why you went into business for yourself. Andrew: Uh-humm. Crag: Since you’ve been in the business, you’ve become a father to two. Andrew: Yes. Crag: You’re also a husband and now a business man, obviously. Andrew: Yeah. Crag: So, how do you manage? How’s your work-life balance going? What’s the tip? What’s the golden nugget about that? Andrew: Well, I had so many diminished. (laughter) Having no business in the first year was great Crag: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew: I couldn’t pay the bills then.       Craig: But great for the golf swing. Andrew: Got two holes in one. Craig: There you go.! (laughter) Andrew: Yeah. Sometimes you gotta fill up some holes in. It is becoming more difficult, my business is growing. I’m very happy with it. Craig: Yep. Andrew: What’s demanded is our systematic and process-driven approach and if you invest upfront in these sorts of things then you can actually still achieve it. Technology, we’ve put out on stuff like receipt bank. We’ve got zero-running. We’re doing all these sorts of stuff. We’ve got different portals in our website where our clients can engage with us routinely. They can set up their own meetings and they do everything. We use Skype so our clients don’t have to suffer traffic or parking things. We’re able to get across the country. So, we are working on work-life balance for both us and our clients. Although our own work-life balance may have diminished since the early days, I still play sports and I still drop my kids of at daycare, I pack them up most days. I’m normally home to make dinner. So, I’ve still achieved it. It’s really just about having a plan, understanding what you’re requirements are ,understanding what your resources are required and working towards your goal.  You can achieve it. Craig: And I guess, it comes back to reminding yourself as to why you did it in the first place, isn’t it? Andrew: That’s true. Craig: I’ve seen too many people start off with having this idea of a good work-life balance but then the work is 60-70 hours a week, forget why you’ve ever done it. Then once again, work in a job. Back to the first job. Andrew: Correct. Craig: Obviously, you’ve embraced technology. How has technology changed the industry since you walked out of the University so many years ago. Andrew: I walked out of University at ’99. Craig: Oh, there you go. Andrew: So, it’s been a while… Craig: 18 years ago. Andrew: I was looking at this recently, it took me back to my first job. I was working as an auditor at Edinburgh, Scotland and in 2001 and 2002, I was senior auditor on a job in Edinburgh, it was one of our bigger clients. They were manufacturing in home sale, you know one of those paper products, lever arch files, different kinds. Craig: Yup. Yup. Andrew: It’s a huge turn over though, but they’re full accounting system was purely manual and I mean hand written. Like, volumes upon volumes, libraries of books, day records and ledgers, trial balances, the works. So, they employed our financial director who’s a chartered accountant on a ridiculous salary and he was doing what we regarded these days as, menial tasks…  Craig: Right. Andrew: And taking days over them because that was what was required. Craig: Yes. Andrew: So, what you were spending days over can now be done automatically through inventions such as zero… Craig: Yes. Andrew: Fantastic new invention and to produce a trail balance report is a click of a button. To balance, to reconcile your bank is probably 20 minutes work in a week. Craig: Yep. Andrew: So, we’ve moved from days of work done by a skilled individual to minutes of work done by a layman or somebody in business who has probably never done accountancy papers. Craig: And has got no interest in it whatsoever. Andrew: So, we’ve seen a massive shift in technological movement of huge disruption and that has men that are  time-involved has reduced massively and the accuracy of the work that has been prepared or the reported that have been prepared are far more accurate than what was done previously. So that has given, I think this has probably been the basis whereby governments kind of deregulated those. Craig: Right. Andrew: Allowing people to do it a lot more  themselves, allowing more bookkeepers in the market at the expense of chartered accountants. So, that’s a real problem for our industry and as chartered accountants but we’re our own worst enemies. We never gave out enough information away, we never engaged enough with small business when they needed it. The traditional accountants just profit those for years. Craig: So, obviously, technology we know has taken over the world, so to speak. It’s not going away. So what do you think the industry is going the next five to ten years? Andrew: I personally think it’s probably a bleak future. It will probably take a backwards step for a point, for a certain time. Craig: Yeah. Andrew: But in the short term, it would be very beneficial for the consumer because there’s currently  a price war. When you look at the services of a traditional accountant gave compared to what bookkeepers today giving, they are substitutable. Craig: Yes. Andrew: So, for their easily substitutable services, because financial statements by one is roughly the same as financial statements of another. You’re just pressing button to create them and it comes down to price. So, people are going towards the cheaper one and the bookkeepers are charging a third or a fifth of the price of a chartered accountant. Craig: Yes. Andrew: And they’re just small business people. After all, you have to be very savy when it comes to cost. So that’s what’s happening in the big firms, sharing a lot of business with the bookkeepers. Craig: Right. Andrew: The problem with that is, the chartered accountants do have enormous educational backgrounds, huge experience. They have wealth of knowledge which bookkeepers just do not have. Craig: No. Andrew: Bookkeepers are very good bookkeepers which I think is a very good business advisers. The problem when it comes to  small businesses is that they’ve never given advice and are probably blah with small business. So, now they’re losing out because they’re substitutable products and book keepers are getting in. So, come to tipping point where people are realizing, “Hey, I could do a lot more for my clients.” like we are. Craig: Yes. Andrew: And we’re telling people, “Hey, we’ll give you this advice and we’ll patch it up with the same sort of price as a bookkeeper.” Craig: Yeah, Andrew: “And we’ll give it routinely for you.” We’ll engage or we’re going to avenge the end up by the dumbing down of our profession and I think, more likely, we’ll get the dumbing down of the profession first of all be fore anyone can take a stand to exchange things. Craig: Yes. Andrew: It tends to be a compromise of convenience, price and quality. Probably, the most evident one of recent time is journalism. Craig: Right. Andrew: When was the last time you bought a newspaper? For me, probably a couple of years, maybe more and that’s because I can log into my iPad and I can read the news in the morning and get a gist of what’s going on in the world and never have to go to news and I’m quite happy with what it is.? The photographs are awful, they’re better from an iPhone. There’s no artistic merit. The grammatical and spelling errors are deplorable. These people struggled to get through school and they’ve chosen a profession where they’re writing English. So, we’re seeing them dumbing down as people go for convenience, quality and price.  Craig: Yup. Andrew: Over here, we got technology that’s running these reports and could be creating what the accountants used to do and they are accurate and they are, 90% is good, maybe? Maybe just as good in some cases then are easily substitutable. So, it’s easy to see why the consumers are going down that way. Craig: I guess it comes back down to educating the market place. There’s a bookkeeper who can do your work, your account in just a push of a button. But now we’re gonna educate, you actually need more than that and here are some service providers who offered the value and this is sort of something the account has shifted from being a compliance to adding value to your business. As a key partner to your business, isn’t it? Andrew: Okay. Craig: Like you said, transition and re-educating to market place. Andrew: Bookkeepers are great bookkeepers. If you’re wanting advice, you’re wanting to do anything important, you’re wanting to grow. You want to have plans on how you want to grow and succeed your business and how you sell it and how you value it whether the business you’re buying is actually making sense. You’re going to need a chartered accountant. Craig: Yes. Andrew: If you can get that information and you can get that sort of engagement, and that interest from someone then you should take every time because otherwise you’ll be with a bookkeeper and hey, if you’re content just kind of pottering along and doing the things that you want to do, you’ve got a lifestyle that you’re very happy with then a bookkeeper is the way to go. Craig: Yup.   [33:40] Andrew:  . If you want something more important or you want someone to advise you and collaborate with you and you really need someone who is going to give you that. But not off track the Craig: There’s gonna be no Andrew: There’s gonna be a few of those. Try not to get some bad ones. We see ourselves as more of collaborative. Craig: I guess also, in a way, it’s good that a small business like yourselves and there are other people with the same size as you that can change in a whim. But the corporates can’t have that flexibility. They can’t change overnight, they can’t adapt overnight, can they? Andrew: We’ve invested the last 6-7 months getting our review of our business up and running. Getting it done, understanding what we’re trying to achieve and reconfiguring our mindset around, “What does our client base want?” and we’ve invested our time and quite significant resource in getting our website up. So, we engaged a portal where people can ask questions, drop information, set up appointments. Engage over us with media and over Skype and all of these sorts of things. So, it’s not so much of a web…but I do agree that bigger firms have, if they wanted to undertake this, they would have a huge made up of systems and process to set up, maybe some staff to lose, maybe staff to be brought on, huge up scaling coming a lot longer. Craig: Yeah, you got the flexibility to make change and we can see what you’ve just been through yourself in the last 6-7 months. It’s that sort of thing that could potentially help your clients to do the same thing. Nothing happens overnight but you can help walk through that procedure, that exercise because you’ve done it yourself. Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Craig: And if I had a big pocket full of money there to implement these sort of things,  you’d realize that it takes time to implement things, it takes time to redesign our website because that costs money. It doesn’t happen overnight. Andrew: We’re very happy sharing our thoughts and these things because really, that’s what we do. We give advice and when people are saying , “What portal should we use?” We’ll say, “Well have a look at   blah. It’s been great for us. ” Craig: “Better stay away from this one because this was a nightmare for us.” Andrew: Yeah. You’re going to have to pass on this knowledge because that was what we really suppose, we are collaborators. Similarly too, I started my business myself, I started it worth nothing, like 3 climbs(?). I’ve had to build my own business myself. So, if you’re starting a business, why would you go to someone who is fourth generation inheriting a chartered accountancy firm, who’s never started a business?  Craig: Never been but yeah Andrew: How can they advise you? {36:00} Craig: How could they know the pain of not being able to or pay the groceries that week?   Andrew: How could they not know what the hurdles are? Craig: Yes. Andrew: They might know from a theoretical standpoint but are never gonna know from a practical standpoint because they’ve never done it. Craig: No. Exactly. Exactly. So, from your experience, what are some of the mistakes that you see business owners are making? And what advice would you give both established and start up small businesses? Andrew: I guess when we look at the mistakes which are regularly made which was really made to put into effort to emphasize when taking on clients. First one is, budgeting for tax. You’d be surprise how many people don’t. We had businesses go under simply because they don’t budget for tax. But it’s very easy to actually get your mindset the right way that you could actually put money aside and never have that problem.  The other one is you’ve gotta write down goals or connect to something.  Write it down, it’s far more powerful than just keeping it in your head.     Craig: Do you think that you could share those goals? Andrew: Absolutely. Sharing your goals, sharing your knowledge, sharing your dreams. Craig: So, writing them down and sharing them. Andrew: It’s very important because as I said earlier, it starts that collaborative movement. You feel that you are being held to account by even if you tell your partner. She’ll go, “Oh, how are your goals going?” Craig: Yes. Andrew: “How are you actually achieve these?” “When are  you going to achieve this?” Or your friends, share them.  We see it with startup businesses and startup land with who is next door. Craig: Yup. Andrew: And they had a lot of people putting up different ideas and sharing all their knowledge and by doing so, they’re actually moved their businesses forward to their business ideas. If you keep your dreams to yourself then you’ll probably never realize it. If you share them then you might find that  there’s a movement. You might find somebody and they go, “Hey, that was a great idea. Let’s push this forward. I can help you here. I can get someone else to fill the void here and then we’ll move forward. ” Andrew: So, very true there. Craig: What’s a good advice would give them about these sorts of things? Andrew: I would say, write them down. Have a plan. Be mindful that your plan might change. Be mindful that if you set a goal now, in three years’ time you might have achieved it or you might have realized that it was totally unreachable. So that would change your path too. Craig: ..to a moving target sometimes. Yeah. Andrew: And let’s say, “Yeah, we’re very essential to this and we emphasize this.” Collaboration is key. Craig: Cool. Andrew: Use specialists. We do. There’s no point in trying to reinvent the wheel and trying to create your own resource where are resources out there which are free.  Even look at the tools of business on the IRD website. Very useful, it’s like, given in layman’s terms and answers all of the question that you have about your accountant. IRD gives you free GST classics. So, sign up for them. Craig: Yeah. Andrew: Otherwise, you’ll pay for your accountant, $600-700 to teach you the same thing that you’ll get for free. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use the people who are meant to give you these stuff. Craig: Awesome. Awesome. Hey, that’s been awesome, Andrew. Thanks very much for your time. I got some really cool tips from that and especially around the need to collaborate either friends, family, other business advisers, other business people, networking…just find some people. That’s great stuff. Seek advice. Expect more from our accountants. Ask what value are they providing you apart from just compliance. Big one, obviously is set your goals. Write them down and show them to some key people that you can keep in touch. Like what Andrew said, “ You share your goals with them and they’ll share your goals with you”  and you can review them for each other with a beer or something and keep in touch with your accountant. So, if someone wants to talk about the products and services that you provide, how do we get a hold of you, where could we find you? Andrew: So, we’re at www.moreca.co.nz  so that will give you direction as to how to engage with us. Craig: So, that’s more with one o or with two? Andrew: One. m-o-r-e-c-a.com That’s our platform. That’s our new website. There’s a lot of free resource on there. Craig: Awesome. Andrew: It’s pretty basic. It’s meant to start a conversation or to help you understand where you’re at. If you need more specific or particular advice…contact us through the portals. There’s plenty of them there. We offer a free consultation. Go by skype meeting if you’re outside the province or you can pop into the office but you can book that online as well. Craig: Awesome. Andrew: So, really, really became a helpful tool there to start the process and we’ll try to expand our blog in time. If you have any particular questions that are coming up, send them in. We might add them to the blog and add some feedback. Craig: Throw in an email if you need help. Andrew: Absolutely. Craig: Awesome. Now, we really appreciate it, Andrew. Thanks very much for your time. Andrew: Thank you, Craig.    

Part 2 of this amazing story is here!In June 2016, Andrew Hundley became the FIRST juvenile lifer in Louisiana to be paroled following the U.S. Supreme Court's Miller and Montgomery decisions that prohibited the mandatory sentencing of children to life without parole. It was clear that he was not the same 15-year-old who went to prison in 1997 to the parole board who approved his release.Since his release from Angola, Andrew has earned a Masters degree in Criminology, is founder of the Louisiana Parole Project and is known in all circles of justice as the real life Andy Dufrane.Whatever side of this issue you sit, you will not want to miss this episode.In this episode Woody and Jim sit down with him for an in depth interview you are not going to believe on Bloody Angola Podcast.#BloodyAngolaPodcast #LouisianaParoleProject #AndrewHundleyLouisiana Parole Project website:https://www.paroleproject.org/Check out P2P Podcast (Penitentiaries to Penthouses) Here:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-p2p-podcast-penitentiaries-2-penthouses/id1646270646?i=1000586120763SECOND CHANCES PART 2 TRANSCRIPTJim: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Bloody- Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim: I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: I'm Woody Overton.Jim: And we're back for Part 2, Woody Overton.Woody: Part 2, Second Chances with our main man.Jim: Andrew Hundley. How are you?Andrew: I'm well.Jim: I feel like we just talked to you. [laughs]Andrew: Thanks for having me back.Woody: Yeah, [crosstalk] right. Andrew, I just want to say that it's an amazing story, y'all. You've got to go listen to Part 1. I don't think we've maybe done one or two series on Bloody Angola that-- actually series, one or two episodes that went past episode 1.Jim: The only one that we did was Archie Williams.Woody: No. Brent Miller.Jim: Yeah.Woody: So, two, you'll be the third. Thank you for being here, I really appreciate it. Y'all go back and listen to the first one if you haven't.Jim: Yes, please do.Woody: When we left off last, you were at state police barracks out at JESTC, and you gotto finish telling me how you got swung.Andrew: Yeah, I had unauthorized female visitor, to keep it PG. [laughter]Andrew: I had a female friend who visited me at the office I worked at one evening. I knew that wasn't supposed to happen. It happened. And I understand that you keep visitors off of the premises because you never know who's going to be coming out there, what they're going to be bringing out there.Jim: I ain't hating on it. I don't blame you. [laughs]Woody: [crosstalk]Andrew: [crosstalk] -I'm not the first guy to get in trouble and probably not going to be thelast guy that got into that kind of trouble. Jim: Some things are just worth it. [laughs]Woody: Everybody you see today and the rest of your life got there because two people had sex.[laughter]Andrew: But it was against the rules. They actually didn't move me immediately because my job that I had--Woody: They didn't want to release you.Andrew: I had to finish some job responsibilities. But they said, "Hey, you're going to have togo." I said, "I want to go to Angola."Jim: And wow. Before you say anything else, that's just like-- Woody: You're one of the only people ever said that--[crosstalk] Jim: Yeah, you might be the only one to utter that sentence.Andrew: Well, and I recognize and I had done enough time and met enough people who had been to Angola and who, in prison speak, were successful at Angola. They had done well. And I wanted to be a trustee. At state police barracks, I was a trustee but the only place as a lifer going if we say back into DOC, I couldn't go to DCI or Wade or Hunt or any of these other prisons [crosstalk] have to go to Angola.Jim: What year was this?Andrew: Oh, that was in 2012, 2013. Jim: So, it was post Burl Cain? Andrew: No, Burl was still there. Woody: Burl was still there.Jim: Okay.Andrew: When I first get there, I actually go to Bass. For my first couple of months, I was a cell block orderly at Bass, paying my penance. As soon as I got there, they told me, "Look, keep your nose clean, out of sight, out of mind for a couple of months, and we've got a job for you." They told me this as soon as I got there.Woody: That's really cool.Jim: Your reputation preceded you some way probably.Woody: Another unique thing about what you're saying is, I don't think people understand-- I would say you might have a better number on than me. Most people at Angola are nevergetting out, like 80% or something like that. But to go in and have to do 10 years to make trustee without a low court or high court writeup, holy shit, bro, that's almost impossible. So basically, they're telling you, "Keep your nose clean, lay low for a couple of months and you shake it out, we got a job for you," basically, you almost were like getting credit for time served already.Andrew: Right. They gave me credit. Look, I had a unique experience. Woody: Meaning, credit under the trustee program.Andrew: I used to tell people I did my time like Benjamin Button. [laughter]Jim: In reverse.Andrew: Yeah, I did my time in reverse. Most people start at Angola and they're either going to die there or there are some old timers who after they've been there for a few decades, they'll allow a transfer to a prison closer to their home if they request it, if they have space. For me, I ended at Angola and did my last few years there.Woody: I got to interrupt because I'm visual. You ask to go to Angola, and had you ever been to Angola before?Andrew: I'd been only for boxing matches. I had been there for those kind of trips.Woody: So, you're taking that ride up, or they giving you the ride up and you hit the gates and you go inside the wire the first time. Do you have any different impression? What was your impression?Andrew: I was thinking, "Oh, man, I hope I made the right decision." [laughter]Woody: Right, because this is like the Harvard of convicts.Andrew: Yeah, because I'm starting to second guess because it's like, well, if I would have gone back to the smaller prison, I was big fish in a small pond. And now, I was telling myself, "You're just another lifer here. You're going to be lost in the shuffle." But thankfully, I wasn't lost in the shuffle. Thankfully, my reputation did-- I did have a good reputation.Woody: I'm sure somebody called and gave them a heads-up and say that, "You better get your hands on this dude because he's the bomb."Andrew: I got there. You go on this review board as soon as you get there, and it's medical, mental health, security, classification, and they're trying to figure out where they're going to send you. A lot of guys will start off in a cell block, or some guys will go into medical facilities. Some guys will be under mental health observation. And never having lived at Angola but new Camp J is not the place to be.Woody: Right.Jim: Don't send me to Camp J.Andrew: The major who was on the review board is like, "Hey, I got a call about you. Let me see what they want--" He's telling pretty much everyone on the review board like, "Someone's about to make a decision where this guy's going to go. We're not going to make the decision." He gets off the phone and says, "We're sending him to Bass." And I was like, "Okay. Where is that?" He's like, "You're going to Camp J." And I'm like, "Oh, my God. I thought I'm coming here to be a trustee."Jim: You're sending me to lockdown.Andrew: And I'm going to lockdown because you go to J when guys on death row screw up. They get sent to J, to the cell blocks at J because people would rather be in their cell on death row-Woody: Absolutely.Andrew: -than be at J because J is wild. Now look, today J has been shut down for a fewyears because of talk about-- Jim: [crosstalk] -reason for that.Andrew: Look, Camp J is four cell blocks and one dorm. They have a few guys in a dorm that are cooking for the guys there. They're taking care of the place, taking care of the yard. You hear J, you assume the cell block. Just having worked in the cell blocks, these are guys with significant mental health issues.Woody: Most of them, yeah.Andrew: They're throwing feces on each other. They're throwing stuff on the guards. They're guys who've been back there so long and there's this mentality in prison, bar fighting. And you make enemies in a cell and you throw stuff on so many people. You've seen this guy, he comes out on the tier for his shower. Y'all stay up all night cursing at each other because that's just how time is done. And then, you get into it with so many people, you're back there a couple of years and they say, "Okay, it's your time to come out." Like, "Oh, no, I can't go into population because I've threw crap on so many people."What these guys don't realize is, look, all y'all have thrown crap on each other. Y'all cursed each other out, talked about threatened to kill each other. You get out, chances are, "All right, man. We're in population now, we're going to put that stuff behind us." But so many of those guys, they've developed these enemies, and then they just dig their hole deeper and deeper. There are guys who've been back there decades and refuse to come out of their cells.Jim: Damn.Woody: The listeners know, like you're talking about, to get sent to Camp J, not the dormitory, but to get housing and cell on Camp J, you had to break a rule in prison. Not just regular fist fighting. It's fighting with weapons or attacking an officer or raping someone or whatever it may be, it's a serious infraction. You don't get classified and sent to Camp J immediately, most people. You get sent to wherever, and then if you're so bad that you can't follow the major rules inside-- those rule infractions, they could be a street charge too. But if you're so bad that you can't live in the general population with the worst of the worst, or what's considered to be the worst of the worst in America, you got to send to Camp J. It's a huge mental issue. I agree with you, like 90% of that shit is mental.Andrew: They call it the Behavioral Management Unit.Woody: Yeah, right.Jim: [chuckles] That's one way to put it.Woody: You lock them up and throw away the key.Andrew: The reason that they had to shut it down was it's an old cell block, and they couldn't repair the cells. Guys would open up cells, jump on guards.Jim: Oh, my God.Andrew: [crosstalk] So, whenever they sent me, they said Bass, which is the name of the dormitory, the general population dorm for the guys that work and serve. Luckily, it was like, "No, we're sending you back here," they did me a favor because it's like, hey, they recognize, "This is a guy that's done a lot of time. We have something in mind for you. So, we're going to put you on timeout."Woody: And show you what the worst could be if you want to fuck up. Jim: Yeah.Andrew: They told me, "Give us a couple of months." Those couple of months, it's like no one else talks to me after that. I remember day 30, day 45, I'm thinking to myself, "These people told me-- they've forgotten all about me." I remember seeing the assistant warden over the camp after I'd been there about two months, said, "Hey, I don't know if you remember me," he's like, "Yeah, I remember you." "You haven't looked at me. You haven't acknowledged me. Just want to make sure." He said, "Have you hit your two months yet?" "I'll hit my two months at the end of this week." He said, "Okay, we'll see what happens." Two days after I hit my two months there, they came to me and said, "Hey, we're moving you to Camp F, and you're going to be working out on the range crew. We're going to make you the clerk on the range crew."Jim: That's awesome.Andrew: What it ended up being, obviously Camp F is the old timer camp, class A trustee. Iwas in my 30s, I was the youngest guy at Camp F. [laughter]Andrew: By like 20 years.Woody: Yeah.Andrew: The youngest guy. There may have been guys that weren't quite that much older than me. But I go back there, and I have this job and I didn't realize how great of a job they were giving me. 18,000 acres, the thing that's awesome about the range crew is you have trustees that get to leave whatever camp, leave the main prison, get outside the fence, be on the property. But the thing that's awesome about the range crew is cattle there-- on just one little spot of the prison, there's cattle from the front to the back of the prison. So, when you're on the range crew, you have access to the entire prison. When I say the entire prison, I mean the property.Jim: So, you were a cowboy?Andrew: I was a cowboy. I wasn't born a cowboy. Jim: [laughs]Andrew: I learned how to ride a horse. Learned how to take care of cattle. The cows at Angola are 2000 head of cattle, not counting the bulls and not counting, given time of the year, when mamas are dropping calves. There are actually a lot more cattle there but every cow is on state property control. They're branded, they're tagged.Woody: Oh, my God. I remember-- [crosstalk]Andrew: When John Kennedy was State Treasurer, he used to give DOC hell, "How the heck do you lose a cow?" I was a guy that if I read that in the paper, I would think the same thing, "Well, how the heck do you lose a cow?" And I learned on 18,000 acres, it's really easy to lose a cow because if a cow goes in a drainage canal and dies--Woody: Or a gator gets--[crosstalk]Andrew: You're hoping that the buzzards are going to tell you where they are. So, part of my job was to keep up with the cattle that were on state property control and to do continuing inventories, order the meds, order the vaccines, along with just general clerical responsibilities around the range.Woody: You have a brain that I don't because my entire state career every fucking year when I had to fill out these property forms and serial numbers and I hated that shit. I'd rather be kicked in the nuts than have to fill out one of those. You were doing it every day all across the whole scale.Andrew: And then, another job responsibility I had once I got the job was assisting with the management of the rodeo as it relates to the rides. In my job, I was responsible for the fall and spring rodeos, to get the riders signed up and to assign the rides. There are people who-- the stock contractor comes in. There's, obviously, Alan Barton and his crew are managing what's going on inside the arena. There are acts coming in. Security is getting the public in. There's the hobby craft. There's the concessions.But the guys that are participating, someone has to organize them, someone has to decide who's getting what ride. It's sort of interesting because that's really a high-pressure thing because everyone wants a ride and everyone wants to be on this shoot. My responsibility was being the guy that fairly distributed rides for people who signed up. In the middle of the rodeo, you'll have guys who are on a horse and then they hurt themselves, but later in the day they were supposed to be on the poker table. So, I have to keep track of that and replace them in real time.Jim: Wow. Did you have anybody helping you?Andrew: I had people that would help me, but I'm the kind of guy that- Woody: Nobody is going to do it--[crosstalk]Andrew: -nobody's going to do it as good as you.Jim: [laughs][crosstalk]Jim: Struggle with delegation. [laughs]Woody: You were the CEO of everything that state workers--Jim: Well, if you do it, it's done right. [laughs] Or if it's wrong, it's your fault. And that's important.Andrew: But I can remember people ask me often about what I'm missing. I think there'll come a point in my career where I'll move out in the country, get a piece of property and have cow because there are days when you work around cattle, you just get this gunk in your nose at the end of the day, especially when we're pushing cows, got them in a catch pen, working them, and you just get all this muck in your sinuses, I miss that. I had to be in prison to really feel this sense of purpose and enjoying-- there were times I forget I was in prison. I forget I have my-- [crosstalk]Jim: Wow. It's almost like [crosstalk] you're so involved.Andrew: -sentence because I was in nature. I was working around these animals, got run [unintelligible [00:19:15] people. I think people have this idea that brahma bulls, the meanest thing that you could come across and know a mama cow that you're pulling the baby from will run your ass over. Well, I've been run over quite a few times and been kicked by cows. So, it was a great experience for me.The other thing I should say about my experience at Angola that was totally different from everywhere else I had been. Obviously, I was an outlier everywhere else I was having a life sentence. I would see people come and go. There were a handful of lifers at Wade, a handful of lifers at DCI. But when you get to Angola, everyone has life or everyone has 50, 100 years. They're not going to do that sentence. You every once in a while got a guy that somehow ended up at Angola that's going to be going home, but that's the outlier.And I got to meet so many older guys who had been there for decades. Some of the best people I ever met with in my life, I met in prison, and they were in prison for murder. I know that the general public can't get that, or they think I must be twisted to see that. But you see who a person becomes. I'm not meeting people in their worst moment. I'm meeting people years later after they've developed, they've taken responsibility for whatever brought them to prison and they've changed their lives. So, I think that had a big impact. Frankly, seeing a lot of death at Angola, going to funerals at Angola and seeing people buried and their headstone being on the penitentiary property, it's life changing.Woody: We did an episode on the Lookout Point and the call for making-- and all that stuff, that Burl really stepped up the game on.Jim: That's exactly right.Woody: [crosstalk] -we missed an episode. My mama sent me the article afterwards. Governor Edwards, when he passed, they had them make his coffin and he was buried. But then, his wife or some family member had him dug up and cremated. But so, we did Billy Cannon's. [crosstalk]Jim: Yeah. We definitely talked about that. It'd be a good point to bring up Burl Cain brought two very, very important things to Angola, in my opinion. He brought religion and he brought education at a level no prison had ever seen in the country. Everybody makes mistakes, Burl became very powerful, and with that, there became maybe some problems. But probably the most well-known warden in the history of the country, I would say. Would you agree? Did you ever have any dealings with him?Andrew: Oh, certainly. My favorite story about Burl, and he would do this to a lot of people, you always knew Burl was the boss and Burl had the vision. If you were going to work for Burl, you were going to carry things out the way Burl wanted it done. Burl had a whiteboard in the ranch house where he would often hold court around lunch. If there was an assistant warden, staff member who had to see Burl, Burl had a convict he wanted to come see him, you'd get called up to the ranch house and he had a whiteboard. Burl used to draw a circle on the whiteboard and then put a dot in the middle of it. He'd hand you the marker and say, "That's where I am. I'm the dot. Show me where you are. Are you in the circle? Are you outside the circle?"Woody: Wow.Jim: [chuckles] That's pretty awesome.Andrew: And he would tell you, "Draw it. I want to see. Where are you?" If you'd put that dot inside the circle next to him, "So, well, let me know if you're with me, because if you're not with me, we'll draw your dot outside of the circle." I think that's a perfect encapsulation of who he is. He had a vision. He knew how he wanted to do it. Obviously, it's hard to stay in one place. He was at Angola over 20 years. That's unheard of. No one will ever be warden of the penitentiary--Woody: I know this off the record that numerous times, and actually tapped Jimmy Le Blanc to be head of the Department of Corrections, he turned it down. He believed in so much in what he was doing in Angola. When he was warden at DCI, when I started-- I trained at Angola, I think it was Camp F is where the--Jim: Yes.Woody: Yes, I slept in a dormitory there and everything, but my mom was raised on the [unintelligible [00:24:08]. So, we say Bloody Angola, the Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. That's more of a catch-all. Certainly, it's not a nice place to be, but it's certainly not to 19--[crosstalk]Jim: '65, '64.Woody: -when they had [crosstalk] yards and shit like that. I forget the name of certificationprogram, it's a national thing run by the government. Andrew: HOST?Woody: Yeah, that certifies prison. You got to really-- Andrew: Oh, ACA.Woody: American Correctional Accreditation, something like that. But Angola was nowhere near that when Burl got there, and he did all that too.Jim: Right. Leader of men, there's no doubt about it. Now, I believe the head of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.Andrew: Correct.Woody: Most listeners don't know the Montgomery case comes out, how did you learn about it? How did you hear about it? And what happens next?Andrew: US Supreme Court actually has made a series of decisions that affected how we sentenced juveniles. I mean, it's not that long ago the first decision where they looked at adolescent brain science was Roper, and it was new science. It's sort of what everyone who was a kid or had kids, knew kids or immature kids are impulsive. And the Roper decision, that's when they said, "You can't execute a juvenile anymore." I mean, that's just in the last couple of decades that we haven't been able to execute-- The Supreme Court said, "Stop executing juveniles."Woody: I was a police officer when that came out.Andrew: And they said, "Hey, kids are different from adults, and we have to treat them different than adults." Eventually, there was the Miller decision. And all these decisions, we're in prison, we're watching the news, we're reading the newspaper, we're keeping up with it. The guys who are going down the rabbit hole, staying in the law library are telling everyone what's happening. So, we're just watching it. The Miller decision came out in 2012, and that decision said that you can't give a juvenile a mandatory life without parole sentence. Well, if you remember in the first episode, I said when my judge sentenced me, there was only one sentence.Woody: Mandatory without.Andrew: If my judge would have had an option and gave me life anyway, the Supreme Court decision wouldn't have affected me because the Supreme Court didn't say you can't give a juvenile a life without parole sentence. It said it couldn't be mandatory. The judge has to have leeway. But Louisiana and some other Southern states--Woody: They still followed it.Andrew: We're fighting it, the retroactivity, because they said, "Okay, well, this only affects new cases. It can't affect all these old cases." I actually went back to Acadia Parish in 2013 after Miller. I was fortunate my family could afford to hire an attorney for me. The judge who was there for my trial was still on the bench.Jim: Oh, wow.Andrew: He agreed for me to come back in. He said, "Now, I have an opportunity to give you a different sentence. I'm going to sentence you to life with parole, and I'm going to let the Department of Corrections figure out what that means," because there wasn't a law in the book that said what does-- life is still life in Louisiana, whether you're a juvenile or not. The parole board wouldn't schedule a parole hearing for me, obviously, because there's nothing that says that.Woody: To set the precedent.Andrew: Yeah. We're hearing from all of our attorneys that this isn't going to affect old cases. So, in January of 2016, the US Supreme Court ruled in a case called Henry Montgomery, Baton Rouge case. A black guy, he was 17 years old, when he shot an East Baton Rouge sheriff's deputy. Not to argue that case, Henry, he shot someone who happened to be a sheriff's officer. He didn't know it was a sheriff's officer, but still, he shot a sheriff's deputy, and he was held accountable and was initially given the death penalty, ended up with a life sentence. His case made it to the Supreme Court. I remember we initially thought, "Man, that's such a bad case to make it to the Supreme Court," because everyone in prison knows you don't--Jim: When it involves a police officer--Andrew: You don't commit a crime against a police officer because you're not going to getany mercy.Woody: So the listeners know, when they submit to Supreme Court, Supreme Court has a right to turn down the hearing of the case. They don't have to hear it.Andrew: Right. So, they agreed to hear it. In January of 2016, they reviewed it favorably. Henry Montgomery, what his attorneys were arguing was that Miller's retroactive, and it affects Henry and people who've already been in prison, not just new cases. The Supreme Court agreed, and it put me at the front of the line.Jim: When he says the front, the very front.Andrew: The very front. It's not because I obviously wasn't the person who served the most time. I wasn't the person who had the most certificates. I was at the front of the line because most other guys in my position, they couldn't afford to hire attorneys, and other courts didn't want to fool with it. There weren't any local judges that were looking to start resentencing people. Everyone's like, "Oh, let's wait and see what the Supreme Court does." Well, my judge looked for the-- was happy to hear when my attorney went and said, "We were going to file for a hearing for a change in sentencing." He says, "Let's set a date."Woody: I'm sure also, I know what he told you originally, but I guarantee that the judge looked at-- that you did your time, you didn't let your time do you. You totally turned your life around, or you've been on a straight and narrow other than the one time at JESTC. [chuckles]Andrew: That's true. He put all that stuff into the record, and that obviously helped me. So, when the Montgomery decision came down, my attorney petitioned the parole board and said, "You owe him a parole hearing." At that point, the state of Louisiana had not issued-- the legislature hadn't changed any laws. So, he was arguing because of what the Supreme Court said, "Because his district court already sentenced him, you have to give him a parole hearing. You can't hold the legislature's inaction against him." The parole board agreed and actually got an opinion from the attorney general's office that said I was parole eligible.I go before the parole board in June of 2016, I'll be honest with you, even though I knew I was rehabilitated, knew if I get out, I'm going to do well, I still know I committed a horrible crime. I was in my 30s. I was 34. I'm telling myself, "I'm going to be denied," and I'm preparing my family, I'm going to be denied. This is the sort of a process and every couple of years I'll be able to reapply. And in 10, 15 years, they're going to get tired of telling me no, and I'm going to come home one day. And I'm going to tell y'all, my biggest fear, I didn't say this in the first episode. My biggest fear while I was incarcerated wasn't about someone hurting me, wasn't about being raped or being stabbed or even not getting out of prison. That wasn't my biggest fear. My biggest fear and what would keep me up at night was the fear that my parents would die while I was incarcerated.Woody: Yeah, I get it.Andrew: Because I've seen men whose parents died. Mom's the last person with you. Andwhen mom goes, everyone else goes.Jim: And they had your back the whole time you were in prison.Andrew: They didn't make excuses for me, but they showed me love. They visited me.Woody: Shoutout to your folks, man.Andrew: They answered my phone calls, and my mom and dad just sustained me. I went to prison as a 15-year-old, and even although my body matured, there was part of my-- I never went off to college. I never got that first job.Woody: The growth experience.Andrew: I was emotionally dependent on my parents' love and affirmation. So much of me furthering my education and doing good things in prison was so when my parents would come and visit me, I could say, "Guess what I'm doing?"Woody: They could be proud.Andrew: I say all that to say that whenever I had the parole hearing, I prayed, and I just prayed. "I know I'm not going to make it this time, but please, God, just let me come home while my parents are still alive so then I can be there for them as they've been for me for my whole life." Luckily, that day, I have a parole hearing. Generally, they tell you after the hearing, you've been granted or you've been denied. They threw a curveball, and they said, "We want to take this under advisement. We want to think about it." I understand I was the first juvenile lifer after Montgomery with a parole hearing. The parole board generally doesn't hear at that point, murderers going up for parole.I go back to my life in prison. I tell myself, "You're going to be denied. You're going to get a letter in the mail in 30 days that said, 'You've been denied. Apply again in two years.'" I'm back on the range crew. I'm back doing my job. I'm worrying about cattle. I'm worrying about inventories. I remember it was 10:30 on Thursday, June 9th. My supervisor is a guy named Alan Barton, June 9th, 2016, his phone rings, and he answers it, and he looks at me, and I could tell whatever that the call was about, it was about me. And so, I'm wondering, "What's this about?" Nowhere did it come into my mind this has something to do with parole. And he's like, "Okay, okay, okay." He hangs up the phone, and he looks at me, and he says, "Pack your shit." In prison, when you hear, "Pack your shit," it's usually one of a couple of things, but it could also mean you're going to the cell block.Woody: Right. It could mean you're getting swung. The other one is you're going home.Andrew: You're going home. This is how much I didn't allow myself to believe I was going home. I was prepared to go home. [crosstalk] Immediately, in that split second, "What are the things--? Do they know I brought a brick of community coffee back to the dorm to get to this old timer. What do they know? I got some extra chicken out the kitchen." And he says, "You're making parole." And I was just like, "Wait. What?" He's like, "The parole board granted you, and you're releasing now." I lived at the office of the range crew at the lake house, at the hog lot, this is prison jargon. Like, 80% of my properties out there because I go back to the dorm to sleep and then come back to work and work all day. He says, "Pack your stuff," and I was like, "Man, if this is a bad message, I don't want to pack all my stuff. So, let me go to the camp and see." He's like, "I'm not bringing you back. You're going home."So, it took me going to the camp and then giving me my release papers to sign before I believed it. They said, "Do you want to call anyone?" I said, "Yeah, I want to call my mom." So, they give me the phone, I call my mom. She answers, and I said, "Hey, do you know anything about me?" She says, "Yeah, we're coming to get you." I said, "How long have you--" My mom knew one hour before I did.Woody: Wow.Andrew: My attorney called her from the parole board to say, "Hey, the parole board just called me in to say that they're granting Andrew's parole." It was great that my mom knew for an hour before I called her. She knew she was waiting on that call. My sister had just graduated medical school. My parents were packing her up, getting ready to send her off for her residency. So, just thinking, my younger sister finished medical school, they're packing her up, and at the same time, their son's releasing from prison.Jim: What a day.Andrew: I was told at 10:30. I got up that morning thinking, "I may die here. I may get out in a few years." At 10:30, they said, "You're going home today." At 04:00, I was walking out the front gate with my family.Woody: Wow. One of the few people--Jim: For the first time outside since you were 15. Woody: Outside of the gates of Angola.Andrew: Right. Packing, getting all my stuff gathered, and all these old timers and these juvenile lifers who've been there all this time are coming up to me, "We're so happy for you, man. This is awesome." I remember thinking to myself, "Man, how much grace that they have," because if I was in their shoes, I would be saying, "Why this guy?"Jim: Yeah. People try to sabotage people getting out sometimes in prison. Andrew: "This guy's only been here 19 years. Why is he getting out?" Jim: You would almost think there'd be jealousy there.Andrew: Yeah, and I'm sure there was but guys were just showing me so much love. The last two guys I talked to before I get out were two juvenile lifers. One had been in for 40 years. One had been in for 50 years.Woody: Wow.Andrew: They say, "You're going to be the guy that helps the rest of us get out." I don't think they meant literally, but like, "You're going to get out, and you're going to show that people can get second chances. Man, you could do well." I was like, "Man, I'm sorry that it's me." They're like, "No, no, man, get the hell out of here. You're going to do well." We're driving down that road that I didn't know if I'd ever leave. My sister asks me, "Well, now what?" I had all these plans on paper, but now it's like, "Oh,-Jim: Now, it's real.Andrew: -it's real." I told myself what came to me is, "I've got to find a way to help people. I've got to find a way to help these people that I've left behind." So, through that guilt of leaving my friends behind was born Louisiana Parole Project.Woody: Wow.Jim: And what a beautiful project, and we're going to get into that. I do want to say, because I sense you had a little bit of guilt with you that you were the first, and there were these people that in your mind are more deserving because they had spent longer time and all ofthat. For me, looking from the outside, I think you had a lot of-- and I don't even know if you felt this pressure, but I would have thought you would have had a lot of pressure on you because anybody who was against that ruling is watching you to wait for you to fail. "Y'all going to see. Y'all going to see, they let these guys out and watch what happens. They're going to screw up again." Wow, were you the total opposite of that, number one. Probably far exceeded even people with the best of intentions, expectations, and that's what we want to get into. But you did. You were the first, and that was great.You also were carrying a heavy burden, just like these guys told you, you're going to be the one that they use as the example. So, I'm sure in the back of the mind, they were thinking, "Be a good example because you can screw it up for all of us." [chuckles] So, you were just that. Now, I want you to tell us about your Louisiana Parole Project and what it does and the value of that for these released convicts, inmates, people.Andrew: I come home in June of 2016, I recognize-- my dad gives me a truck. I knew I couldn't go back to Eunice, Louisiana. Everyone knew me for the worst thing I did. They either loved me or hated me but there weren't opportunities there. And I wanted to go to college. Heck, I was 34 years old, getting out of prison from this life sentence, smart guy. I've already earned these credits. Testament to the prison system, I felt getting out, like, "Man, I've earned all these credits. I have to go to college." Whereas if I wouldn't have had those opportunities, I might look and go, "Damn, I'm not ready to invest four years of my life. I got to go into the job market right away." So, I enrolled for college right away. But then, I started telling people, "Man, I want to find a way to help these guys. I realize I'm coming out and with this ruling, I'm just the first. There are going to be other people coming home. How do we create opportunities for people when they come home?"I'm going to be okay because my family is going to make sure that I have opportunities to be successful. I had built a network for myself in prison that I know, "Hey, I'm going to take advantage of this network to find a good job and to hang around good people and have volunteer opportunities." The guys coming home and I had enough common sense to know that, "Hey, the first few people who come home are going to affect it for everybody. So, we need to make sure the first guys who come home are successful so that stakeholders, namely parole board, governor, judges, keep giving people chances." This was an abstract idea and literally just starting, building it out from my experience, from the experience of the first few people that came home, what did they struggle with when they first come home. And we've built a program. We're a nonprofit organization, so I had to figure out how to build a nonprofit organization, how to set it up.Jim: Not easy.Andrew: My first job was actually someone clued me into working at Pointe Coupee Detention Center. I taught pre-release at the detention center for a short time. There's a curriculum, and it's actually this curriculum I taught in the inside at Angola, at Camp F in my spare time. So, I have a job. My first paycheck goes to chartering the organization with the Secretary of State's office and the local clerk at court's office. And then, applying to the IRS for the 501(c)(3) status. All that costs money. So, I'm just figuring out the administrative part of building the organization, asking funders for money. It's the chicken before the egg. I'd say, "Hey, this is what we're going to do." Well, funders would say, "Well, what have you done?" "Well, I haven't done anything."[laughter]Jim: "That's what we need you for."Andrew: "We need the funds." "Well, come back to us whenever you've done something." A lot of volunteer work, part time, going to college. And then finally, we had a couple of funders that took a chance on us. I mean, fast forward from 2016 to today, we operate a residential reentry program in Baton Rouge. We work with people who've been convicted all over the state that are coming home, and we work with people who've done 20 years or more, because we recognize these are guys who are more likely to listen to their peers. And it's a pure mentorship program. Same concept with AA. If you're an alcoholic who's going to AA, your sponsor is going to be another alcoholic.Woody: Somebody's who been through it.Andrew: Who's been through it and so we had the same mindset. We're going to have people who've come out of prison, who've been successful mentoring other people who come out of prison. Initially, that was an odd mindset for law enforcement, for probation and parole for DOC, because their job is usually keeping ex-cons away from each other. But today, we own and operate nine transitional houses in Baton Rouge. We own these homes outright. Seven houses for men, two houses for women. When they come home from prison, we're giving them a safe, stable place to stay. We have rules, we have expectations, but some of the things, our clients have served 20, 30, 40, 50 years in prison. So, it started out with these juvenile lifers coming home. And the legislature passed a bill in 2017 that also allowed something-- some people call it 40-Year Lifers, some people call it Disco Lifers. There's a group of about 120 lifers during the 70s that had parole eligibility before the legislature in '79 made life, life without parole. There was a bill that restored parole eligibility to some of those guys.Woody: I didn't know about that.Andrew: We helped some of them get back out. Jim: Wow.Andrew: And the governor has been signing commutations. And a big part of why he's signing commutations is because we say, "Hey, if you give this person a second chance, our program is going to help them rebuild their life." He took a couple of chances on people, and he's been signing more and more commutations. He's in the last year he's in office. Last week, he signed commutations for 12 lifers. These people are going to come through our program. To date, since 2016, we've had over 370 men and women who were once serving life or de facto life sentences have gotten out of prison. I know people hearing this go, "Wait a minute, 370 lifers?" Yeah, 370 lifers and de facto lifers, people sentenced to 50 years, 99 years, 200 years have come home. The reason you haven't heard about it is because they're not going back to prison.Jim: Period.Woody: Because they had made-- [crosstalk] Jim: Yes.Andrew: Our recidivism rate is 1%.Jim: 1%, y'all. Let that sink in.Woody: But you got to give them the other side of the scale. The average just on general recidivism rate is in the 40% range.Jim: Yeah.Woody: Which means almost one out of two that get out without Andrew's program aregoing to offend again. Jim: I'm sorry. Go ahead.Andrew: I said this to y'all before we went on air. I have a unique perspective where I did time, I'm a criminal justice practitioner, and I got my master's degree in criminology. So, one thing I learned actually getting the book education is when we hear like, "Almost one out of two people return to prison," the problem is it's the same couple of guys that go back and forth, back and forth. And they actually--[crosstalk]Jim: Yeah. Quadruples the number.Woody: Regardless, take those guys out of the equation, 1% is a stupid, crazy number in agood way.Andrew: We start working with our clients before they're released.Woody: Let's do it like this. You showed a picture of two people that you picked up yesterday, tell us what the process is going to be for them, from where you start until hopefully where it is.Andrew: Sure. So, two lifers came home yesterday. One served 41 years, one served 38 years. We started meeting with them months ago when we knew they had opportunities to come home. One was given a commutation by the governor, went through the pardon process successfully. The other guy was actually resentenced by the Orleans District Attorney because it was determined that he was overincarcerated. He was someone, after reviewing his case, they decided that he was less culpable than his co-defendants and he shouldn't have got a life sentence. So, they made a deal with him. He pled guilty to time served, came home. Anyway, we started working with him and it's just how much what our organization's reputation is. We go in, ex-cons--Woody: I was going to say, you go to Angola.Andrew: Go to Angola and the warden lets us in to go and see guys and prepare because they know we're not going in to bring in contraband. We're not trying to get anyone to escape. We're trying to get people out the right way, but we've got to go and prepare them for what to expect. To be frank, I've got to go in and determine, is this someone I want to help? Not everyone who applies to be our client, we accept. We turn down a lot of people. We look at the prison record and we also read between the lines. Having done time, someone who's done time or worked at Angola--[crosstalk]Jim: Real knows real. Andrew: Real knows real. Jim: [chuckles] As they say.Andrew: We want to make sure that it's someone who's taken responsibility for their actions and addressed the things that brought them to prison and bettered themselves and they're ready to come home. People, you're different at 25 than you were at 15. You're a different person at 35. You're a different person at 45.Jim: Amen.Andrew: A lot of my clients are 60- and 70-year-old men who are taking up unnecessaryspace at Angola.Jim: If you're judged by your worst mistake you ever made, everybody would hate everybody. Everybody, stop for a second, think about the worst mistake you've ever made, and then think about if everybody knew about that if they'd hate you or strongly dislike you. People change.Andrew: We pick our clients up at the front gate of the prison when they're released. We bring them to our program. Our clients, things we all take for granted, they've never used a cell phone, they've never used a debit card, they've never paid for gas at the pump, they've probably never opened a bank account. Who has been incarcerated for decades and still has their birth certificate and their Social Security card? These people, if they came home and didn't have the support, they'd just crumble, like, "Where do I start?" And their families, many of them have outlived their families. The ones who do have families, families love them, but they don't know where to start. So, our job is to prepare people to be successful. We're not putting people up for life and giving them a place to stay. We're training people to be self-sufficient.Woody: Like a transition.Andrew: It's a transition. We want you to learn the skills you need. I give someone their first cell phone they've ever had. [crosstalk] After a week, they're going to be like a 10-year-old with the first one. So now, we got to teach you how to put the phone down. Now, we've got to teach you what workplace etiquette is. We've got to teach you that when you went to prison, what was considered flirting is considered harassment. We've got to teach you what this institutionalization that you've had, "Hey, in society, we're more accepting of different people, different ideas. You've got to let that old thinking go." A lot of guys obviously come home with skills, and now we're--Jim: Mad skills, especially trade skills.Andrew: So, we're looking to do-- and I shouldn't just say, guys, we work with women too. Once they go through our initial program, we feel confident. Now, we're working to find them jobs. We give them transportation. We're going to transport them to their parole officer. We're going to transport them to their job. We bring them to the grocery store. We bring them to their medical appointments. Initially, "Hey, we're going to take care of all your needs. Now, we're going to teach you how to be self-sufficient." Our goal is we're turning tax burdens into taxpayers. We're not just getting people out and saying, "We're saving the state money, because that's one less person you have to pay for," we're turning these people into taxpayers. We're not just turning them into taxpayers when they're working. We're getting them volunteer opportunities. They're volunteering in the communities they live. I tell clients, "Go join a church." Some of them say, "Hey, I'm not into church." And I say, "You go find your church, find you an AA group, find you some group. Start showing up. After you're there three or four times, someone's going to recognize you and say, "Hey, you want to go to lunch? Hey, tell me about yourself.'"Woody: Integrate them into the community.Andrew: When people get in trouble, 9 times out of 10, it's because their family doesn't know what they're doing. There are no connections. What we find that's worked is we want all these tentacles into them. I'm going to tell you we're a parole officer's best friend because our parole officers have no problems with their clients because oftentimes, the guys out onparole, mama may not know where you're at, but that parole officer is keeping in contact with you, a Parole Project client. These are people who were convicted of the worst crimes, and they're the most successful group out there.And then, the mode is some of our clients who've come out been successful, we've had people start their own small business. We have homeowners, state employees, carpenters, welders, cooks. The people, you walk into Walmart and you don't realize the guy who's checking out next to you just got out of prison doing 30 years. You're in church, the person in the pew next to you is someone who came home. And that's the point. What does someone who's been in prison look like? We're training them to not only to blend in, but to give back to the community.What I would say is we've proven in Louisiana, a place where life without parole is something that is exactly what it means. And we've just accepted that, "Well, we give people life, and we can't let them out because they've done something so bad, they can't get out," or we keep them there so long, they can't adjust to society. We're proving that wrong, and we're proving that. And this isn't like a bleeding heart speech, because I'm not a bleeding heart. I don't believe-- there is a reason we have prisons, there's a reason we hold people accountable. Well, we can hold people accountable, and then we can take a look back and see, is someone worth redemption? Is someone rehabilitated? Someone worth a second chance? And it's a resounding yes. There's a way that you can support someone.One thing I hate to hear is, "He's been in so long, how can we let him out?" What I say is, "Shame on us as a society if we keep someone in prison so long, the reason we can't let them out is because we've kept them in prison so long."Jim: That's a great way of putting it. And you know what? I think your nonprofit does more than anything else, is the same thing that you get inside prison from the staff if they're doing it right, hope. The biggest reason that people reoffend, in my opinion, is they try other things, they hit a bunch of roadblocks, and it's the only thing they know. If you have a felony on your record and you go apply for a job and you have to disclose that felony, and you do, you're doing the right thing, it's hard. Look, I'm not saying they didn't earn the right to have to struggle with that, but it's hard for people to give you a second chance. It is not easy. I'm not someone that lived in that life, but I've seen a lot of people pass through my life that have had that struggle. I've seen people turn back to the only thing they know, because it's the only way they can make money, is by slinging drugs or doing whatever it was that put them in prison to begin with.Your program is really helping them adjust and teaching them that there's another way because anybody who's respected, even the worst of us, when you're respected for the right things, for being a good person, paying your taxes, all those things, you have a self-respect that you don't want to go back to that life.Woody: And then, second chance also-- Jim: It's hugely important.Woody: -what you just hit on, people come out and they can't get the jobs or people are like, "I'm not hiring a con," through second chance, through your program, somebody did take a chance. They're probably the best damn employee in the world. They're like, "Can you give me like 10 more of them?"Andrew: I was about to say two points I want to respond to as it relates to second chances, there is not an employer that we've gotten someone connected to-- a lot of times, it's a lot of work, getting this employer to take a chance, and I understand it. He's got to think, how isthe public going to feel about it? How are my other employees going to feel about it? There's not an employer who doesn't come back and say, "Hey, if you have another guy, I'd be willing to hire another guy." We have multiple employers, car dealerships in Baton Rouge, state government agencies that have multiple clients working for them.As it relates to hope-- We talked about Warden Cain, the current warden of Angola, Tim Hooper, is really a good man, and he's doing good things up there. But as it relates to hope, prisoner-on-staff violence is down at Angola. Prisoner-on-prisoner violence is down at Angola. Participation in educational and self-help programs are up. Why is that? Because people in Angola are seeing people go home. And not only go home, but they're seeing them stay home and stay successful. They know guys' success, guys communicate, and it gives people hope.Jim: So, light at the end of the tunnel.Andrew: What I tell people, even the hardest person who says, "I don't believe in any of this, lock them up. Why should I care about prison conditions?", if you don't care about the thousands of people who live in Angola, care about the employees who work there.Jim: That's right.Andrew: Because they should go into a safe environment. What I can tell you is, it's a safer place to work whenever there are people going home and there is hope in the prison. Hope is a good thing.Woody: Absolutely.Jim: This is a damn good episode. One more thing-- Woody: [crosstalk]Jim: Chills. How can people help support your program? Woody: Say the full name.Jim: We're going to link all of that too.Woody: [crosstalk] -links and everything. We're going to put it across all our stuff because I believe what you're doing is really awesome. Y'all, they are nonprofit, and you fund it through donations and stuff, right?Andrew: Yeah. Jim: In grants. Woody: Grants.Andrew: Grants and individual donations. So, our name is Louisiana Parole Project. Our website is paroleproject.org. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, @paroleproject. Check us out, you'll see-- If you're wondering what does someone look like coming out of prison, take a look at our social media. We call it the Money Shot, is the guy walking out of the front gate.Jim: [laughs] I love it.Woody: Hey, I'm going to follow--[crosstalk]Jim: The Money Shot.Woody: When we leave the studio, I'm going to go follow.Andrew: And people can donate to our organization online at paroleproject.org. Your donation, no matter how large or small, helps us buy someone coming out of prison, a pair of shoes, helps someone go to driving school, fund the cost to getting their driver's license, gets people started. We are a nonprofit organization, and all of our money goes to supporting people. It's a good investment. What I could tell you is, is it costs taxpayers thousands of dollars to keep people in prison for life. The older you get, the more expensive it costs.Jim: Doubles.Andrew: It does. It's a good return on the investment. We have been ill served by politicians who have fostered the idea that keeping people in prison forever makes us safer. We've led the country in incarceration because of life sentences, and it didn't affect crime. The people who are committing crimes today are not the guys getting out of Angola. So, there's a difference. When we hear some people are like, "Ah, I'm not into these reforms that are happening," what I can tell you is without a doubt, because I see it, I work with these guys, they're not the guys committing crime. They're the guys who are paying taxes, giving back to their community.Jim: Well, thank you for that and keep up the good work on that end. One more thing before we let you get out of here. You got a child and a wife now and we haven't even mentioned that. His wife's a doctor, y'all. How about that?Woody: Yeah.Andrew: Yeah. I'm a lucky man. God's shown me a lot of favor. The best job like I've everhad now is I'm dad to an 11-month-old daughter. Jim: Beautiful.Woody: Aw. Congratulations.Andrew: It's been a wonderful experience. Woody: Congratulations.Jim: Well, keep killing it, man. Keep doing the good work.Woody: Hey, you know what? I would like to ask you back again sometime. Jim: Please.Woody: Because this is [unintelligible [01:02:21]. This is important.Jim: Very important. Thank you.Woody: Thank you.Jim: Thank you very much. We appreciate you.Andrew: Thank you.Woody: Our favorite episode we've ever done. Episodes actually that we've ever done.Jim: Yeah, it was great. We hope y'all enjoyed this. Follow the Patreon, subscribe to us, if you'd like more information, and hopefully you would on the LPP, we're going to link all of that in the description of this podcast. Just scroll down, you'll see it there. You can click on it and help.Woody: When you hear it, if you're moved like I was, share it because we want everybody to know this story.Jim: That's important. Yes.Woody: And we've told you, it'll always be something different coming out of Angola. This isas far in the positive spectrum as we've ever been. Jim: 100%. And until next time, I'm Jim Chapman. Woody: I'm Woody Overton.Jim: Your host of Bloody-Woody: Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim: Peace.Our Sponsors:* Check out Factor and use my code bloodyangola50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy