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In this interview Lisa talks to Dr Tim Ewer an integrated medical practitioner about his approach to medicine some of the complementary therapies he uses besides conventional allopathic medicine and what exciting research is happening around the world - they get into everything from laser therapy to light therapy to hyperbaric oxygen therapy and beyond.   Dr Tim concentrates on individual and personalised  patient care and combines the best of current western medical practices with evidence-based traditional and complementary medicines and practices. Integrative medicine takes into account the physical, psychological, social and spiritual wellbeing of the person with the aim of using the most appropriate and safe evidence-based treatments.   Lisa sees this integrated approach and open minded attitude that is constantly looking at the latest research and technologies and that focuses on the root causes and on optimal health rather than disease as being the way of the future. Dr Tim's Bio in brief  Dr Tim Ewer (MB ChB, MMedSc, MRCP, FRACP, FRNZCGP, DCH, DRCOG, Dip Occ Med, FACNEM) is vocationally qualified as a physician and general practitioner. Tim has been working as a specialist in integrative medicine for the last 30 years, before which he was a hospital physician for 10 years after gaining his medical degree and specialist qualifications in the UK.   Dr Tim's website  https://teora.co.nz/   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show:   For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com   For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/running/ Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics/ measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/mindsetu-mindset-university/   Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information   ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.   Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening. "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   Transcript of the Podcast:   Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits. The show that helps you reach your full potential with your host. Lisa Tamati brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:12) Well, hi everyone. And welcome back to pushing the limits. It's fantastic to have you this week. I have dr. Tim Ewer, who has an integrated medical practitioner and physician who is based on the beautiful region of in the South Island of New Zealand. And Dr. Tim came to my attention because he has a really an amazing hyperbaric facility in this area. He used to work at the Christchurch hospitals and he's a hyperbaric trying to doctor he's also does a lot of complimentary and integrated medical approaches. So looking at everything from Eastern medicine through to, you know, acupuncture through to laser therapy. And in this conversation today, we have a good real in depth. Talk about where, you know, things are going some of the greatest and latest research and technologies that are coming on stream and some of the exciting developments and his approach to healing people and helping people. Speaker 2: (01:09) I just like to remind you, before I hand over to Dr. Tim my book relentless is now available in stores right throughout New Zealand. It's also available worldwide on Amazon, on audio books. It's in my website at lisatamati.com. I'd love you to go and check that out. And the book is titled relentless. And as the story of bringing my mum back after a mess of aneurysm and being told that she would never do anything again, and this was our journey back, it's a really insightful book that looks at the mindset of overcoming massive challenges. And I really love you to go and read that and to share that with your networks as well. Lastly, before I go, I'd like you to also follow me on Instagram. I'm quite active on Instagram and on my YouTube channel as well. Have over 600 videos on the YouTube channel and including a whole lot of my documentaries that I made from my beaches around the world. If you want to have a look at the YouTube channel that's just it just search for Lisa Tamati on YouTube, and that will come up and on Instagram, it's @lisatamati right now over to Dr. Tim Ewer and of the mapper health center in mapper. Speaker 2: (02:23) Well, hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show this week, I have a special guest, dr. Tim Ewer, Dr. Tim is sitting down and mapper and the views of DePaul sort of Nelson area. How you doing dr. Tim Speaker 3: (02:36) Very well. Thank you strangely a rainy day to day, but that's probably the rest of New Zealand a bit rainy. And normally it's always sunny here. Speaker 2: (02:46) Very sunny place. I was just saying I used to live down there for a few months when I was picking apples back in my young years, and it was hard work, but I'm very a beautiful area to live in. So yeah, you live in a piece of paradise doctor you are as an integrated medical professional and has a hyperbaric clinic down down that way. I don't want it to get dr. tim To talk to, I don't know if we have a doctor, Tim doctor, you are, what would you prefer? I've got to go back to share a little bit about the work that you do and talk about traumatic brain injury in particular as an area that is obviously my interest with my mum's story. So can you give us a little bit of background, your background and how you got into doing what you're doing and the integrative and hyperbaric side of things? Speaker 3: (03:41) Sure. I guess my story from that point of view, start it off. I'm originally from England. So I trained in England at one of the English universities. And even when I finished my training and I'd come out with distinctions and all of those sorts of things I thought there must be more to what medicine's about or what health is about. Let's say than what I have been told. And ever since then, I've been looking to find other ways to, to improve people's wellbeing. So I continued on with my specialist training became what's called a specialist physician. But at the same time, I would sneak off at weekends and go to the London college of acupuncture and learned acupuncture. And I learned medical hypnosis, and I ended up studying nutrition and some homeopathy and a variety of different things, including bioenergetic medicines over the years, of course I spent a bit of time working in hospital as a specialist. Speaker 3: (04:45) And that's actually where I came across hyperbaric medicine. That was in Christchurch where they had a big hospital. I was working in the hospital as a specialist and they had a big hyperbaric chamber there. So I spent seven years helping to run that we did it free and we spent our weekends or nighttime sometimes helping people with the Benz and carbon monoxide poisoning and all sorts of things like that. And at that point, I had a little bit of an existential crisis and decided that I wanted to leave the hospital side and develop my own integrative clinic, which I did. So we're going back 20 or more years now. Wow. And I moved up to this beautiful area and now in, and found a little place to work from and thought, well, if everything goes well, people will eventually just come to me and find me. Speaker 3: (05:35) And that's really what's happened. I started off way back then with just myself and a wonderful Mary receptionist. And now we have 23 staff and that part of the clinic so much so that I've now moved across the road to have a separate integrative clinic so that I can continue to just doing what I like to do with a couple of nurses and myself and two other integrative doctors and an integrative psychologist and these sort of people. So it was a matter of pulling things together over time to, to have a variety of options for people, a variety of it in a way of languages, how to understand disease and wellness. And what I've found over all of those years is that there isn't necessarily, as, as the great sages have often said, there's many paths to the top of the mountain. So it's a matter of finding the right one for each person versus a lot of Western medicine, which is very much scripted in terms of you have this diagnosis, you have this treatment versus you are this person with this variety of different things going on in your life. Speaker 3: (06:54) How can we find ways of getting either balance or detoxed or whatever needs to happen in that process to get it back towards house. Speaker 2: (07:06) So it's sort of looking more towards the root causes and, and as opposed to dealing just with symptoms and looking a little bit outside the box, did you, did you cop a lot of flack for that in the early days with, you know, coming from their sort of allopathic, conventional medicine world and, and looking then at things like acupuncture and you know, things that are outside of the, the standard box, if you like, has it been a difficult road or a in, have you seen that change over the last few years? Speaker 3: (07:42) It's a good question. I think originally I had to do it secretly and it wasn't approved and it was separate too. And I had to, I had to have two different lives as sort of Jekyll and Hyde components going on and you can decide, which is which out of mainstream or holistic. And so that was kind of difficult. But over the years what I found is if I started applying some of these techniques and people simply started getting better my colleagues would say, well, what are you doing? You know, what's, what's happening to those people that don't normally get better and now they're getting better. So that started me, gave me the opportunity to start talking about some of the things I did, but to be honest, while working in the hospital environment, it was quite difficult. So it wasn't until I moved up and started my own separate clinic that it gave me much more space, if you like to practice other things. However, I will say that the conservative elements of the mainstream still quite antagonistic to some of the things that we like to do in integrative medicine. And so there is that sense of walking along the brief tight wire, some of the times and having to basically practice really good medicine in a mainstream way, plus all the other things of both sides. Speaker 2: (09:17) Yeah. Being brilliant in both sides of that. So yeah, I, I mean, I th I see as a, someone who's come, not from a medical background but had a few issues along the way, shall we say, and going, okay, this isn't working, I'm going to look outside the box for myself. And having, you know, a couple of, with my mum, with myself with my brothers some very great success in, in looking outside the box. And I see a a massive movement of, of change and change in mentality now because we have access via the internet and the, and the stuff that we have available by a pub med and all those sort of great places where you can go and do your own research, that it's no longer completely controllable what what we do. And we can take ownership more, and we have the ability to take more ownership that we didn't have when we didn't have the internet and the ability to access great minds and great people and great research and the information that's coming out, you know, on a daily basis. Speaker 2: (10:25) I mean, no person on earth can stay up with it all. It's just so much. So if you wanting to do your own deep dive into a certain area, you can certainly find yourself down some very deep rabbit holes and becoming quite expert in a, in a, in a narrow field that you're trying to research. And do you see that in the people that are coming to you, that there is a shift in the people that are starting to come to you and say, Hey, I've seen this, I've heard about this, I've read about this as this something that's gonna help me. And people taking more ownership in that, in the, in the clientele that you sort of have, Speaker 3: (10:59) I think you're right. I mean, we're part of a informational revolution that's going on at the moment. I did say it's escalating all the time and it's growing and growing, which is a wonderful thing. Most of the time, it's the song, which is either contused or fake news, as they say. And I think being well-informed as the main thing, a lot of this, it is about helping a person become informed about what's going on. And so they can then take more control over themselves because they understand what it's about. And so that's the journey in a sense, it's helping to understand the person to some extent, walking in their shoes a wee bit to see, okay, what's going on? How can I put this together and express it back in a way where that person can make the right changes to bring about what they need to do? Speaker 3: (11:51) That's an edge, a very general of looking at it. Sometimes I had a great example this week of a person who came in a woman who was in her forties. She was well educated, but she had a whole selection of what, in Western medicine, we might consider the bizarre symptoms from neurological ones to skin, to all sorts of things. And she'd seen urologists and various people, and they'd all been scratching their heads about what's going on. She's obviously not, well, we can't put it together. But I said, look, why don't we, why don't we try a different language for this? And I then talked about the whole concept of low kidney energy and how it related to her tinnitus to her lack of mental agility to all sorts of components. And it's not to say it was just a way of bringing a whole raft of things together in a way that had a sense to it, rather than a sort of chaos, that, that chaos can be very unsettling and you don't know how to make sense. And particularly the experts can't make sense of it. Then you're kind of stuck with what the heck's going on. I might just going mad and, and she wasn't, she was just having a whole series of different things, which we could start bringing together under an umbrella of understanding. And even though we didn't have to use TCM as part of the treatment necessarily it gave it, she felt so much more at ease by the end of that, with an explanation that seemed to bring things together. Speaker 2: (13:36) Yeah. And it enabled her to maybe take a new approach to the way, say if you're getting disparate sort of information. Cause it was really hard when you're looking at sometimes your, your symptoms and then trying to go, well, where is this coming from? And what is it, you know? And it could be a myriad of things and trying to piece it together. You must have an incredible brain to be able to hold all of these, facets it without any sort of contradicting you know, dogmas even with an, in the knowledge that you have. Do you find that a bit of a juggling act at times, Speaker 3: (14:14) Strangely enough, not much. There are various possibilities for that. One is if you're into astrology, I'm a Gemini. I'm not a great, astrologist mind you, but there's two of me. And so we can talk to each other. I was brought up in a way where I, interestingly I don't want to get into my personal background particularly, but at one point I was went to a very expensive English school, but I actually stayed with my mother in a council house in a really poor area. So I went from one group of, in the morning to another one in the evening. Wow. And you had to talk the language of both. Yeah, yeah. To work it through. And I think that a sense of dance of life is good because it makes one, I'm able to cope with lots of different things at the same time, try and bring them together Speaker 2: (15:15) And being able to relate to people. It was, it wouldn't be a brilliant training and being able to be on every level and, and talk to people and communicate and, you know having this wealth of knowledge from all of these different disciplines and science areas, it must be very, you know, like to have that broad spectrum integrated approach. I think, you know, I wish there were more doctors available in New Zealand. There was, you know, we were starting to see more functional and integrated practitioners coming out and then you've got, you know, your, your whole health coach coaching in different areas. But it's a, it's a, certainly a changing world. And I'm hoping that there was going to be some change hopefully in the mainstream. Speaker 3: (16:02) Yeah. I mean, I've put up a little plugin and I may about those an organization called Amer the Australasian integrative medicine association, which is a mix of both doctors who do integrative medicine and also other health practitioners. And so on their websites, you can often get information about integrated doctors around New Zealand and Australia. Speaker 2: (16:25) Fabulous. That's a really good tip. I'll put that in the, in the show, Speaker 3: (16:30) Dub, dub, dub, amer.net.edu, but New Zealand. Speaker 2: (16:35) Okay. Well, we'll check that out. Cause you're getting in all sorts of lists of people. Now let's go a little bit into hyperbaric and I wanted to sort of touch on today. Some of the possible treatments for brain injury whether that's, you know, from stroke or traumatic brain injury or you know, concussions or aneurysms, in my case with mum your, your experience with hyperbaric in the, the medical grave facilities, I've had a mild hyperbaric chamber. My mum who might listen, sort of know my story with my mum. Four years ago, we had this disaster after three months in hospital, we've told, you know, put her in a, in a hospital level care facility and she'll never do anything again, she's major brain damage. I found hyperbaric on the internet and I managed to get a a commercial dive company that let me have access for a while. Speaker 2: (17:38) And then I had such success there that I ended up buying a mild hyperbaric chamber and installing it and out in their home and put her through she's had over 250 sessions now at 1.5 atmospheres that combined, and that, wasn't the only thing I did. And it ended up being an eight hour protocol every day that I sort of put together from pieces from functional neurology and nootropics and epigenetics and functional genomics and really diving deep for the last four years into the science and doing what I could, you know, it was either do everything I can or lose my mom. Those were the two options. So I was desperate to get her back. And on that journey, I've, I've hyperbaric is so powerful. His has so many things that it can be really good for. What, what are your experiences where that and the work that you did in the hospital and what it's actually recognized for versus what it overseas, perhaps as being used for two different things, aren't they, what's your take on that Speaker 3: (18:51) Sort of conventional set of indications for using hyperbaric? We still hospitals use we only have two hospital hyperbarics in New Zealand and one in Christchurch and one in Devonport which is really the Navy one rusty open hospital used us. Other than that, they're all private ones. So the hospital ones really is the history they came from. They came from a Navy based history for treating the bins really, or in the ancient days, you go back a hundred years, a case, some workers, which of the people that put in pylons for building bridges on the go of the water, they had to put the pylons in and they would get the bins and the bins. It was because when they came up, they were in pain and they were bent over because they were having gobbles coming out into their spine and their muscles. Speaker 3: (19:49) So yeah, the hospital based ones are really a very strict set of criteria. Like as I said, the bins various forms of severe infection, gangrene infections a few other conditions like carbon monoxide poisoning, possibly cyanide poisoning. But there limited number of conditions. It doesn't include brain injury. It doesn't include strokes. It doesn't include neurodegenerative diseases. It doesn't, Incruse clued fibromyalgia, a whole raft of things where we now realize there's reasonable evidence that it has some impact. One of the troubles with medicine is you'll know, is that it relies on this gold standard thing called a randomized controlled trial, where you have to do a very difficult process of having a placebo group and a treatment group. And for doing that, the hyperbaric is a nightmare because to try and have a treatment that isn't a treatment that looks like a treatment is quite hard. Speaker 3: (20:59) A lot of the work that's been done is kind of on the edge of how good it is. So most of the research we tend to see about is where we've used it lots of times and have said, ah, this seems to be working it's anecdotal it's case series. And there are some great researchers used, you'll know, like poor hearts in the States and so on. And to give some credit, the Russians have been doing it for much longer, but a lot of this stuff is unpublished. So there's a huge amount of volume of work going on around the world. And now one of the best units is in Israel. They've got some great work going on there. So, but these are the kind of these are the people going outside, the normal bubble of what's accepted as, okay. And yet they're getting good results as far as we can tell until you get that ask TT of gold standard, the conventional systems unlikely to change, that's the problem. Speaker 2: (22:02) And the, the having, you know, the randomized control trials is just not going to happen. And something like hyperbaric that hasn't got a patentable drug, realistically, the costs are too high aren't, they, Speaker 3: (22:14) It is high and there have been some trials, but they nearly always stop at 20 treatments. That that's the number that they stop at. Yeah. That's, it's kinda like I'm saying you've been on a drug per month and let's see how it's worked is it's kind of that way of thinking Speaker 2: (22:35) The genetic shifts happening, right. Speaker 3: (22:37) 200 hours of training as a whole lot of things that aren't going to happen in that time period, or they are, it's going to be fairly mild, not, not as far as you could. And as you know, one of things with the poor hearts researchers, he kept doing spec scans and checking up on patients and he found that they were still improving at 80 treatments, still improving. I mean, Hey, so we stop at 20 with our RCTs. It's not a great place to design. Is this working or not? Speaker 2: (23:08) And, and, you know, I mean, I know with, with mom I've yeah. Like I said, put her through 250, you know and I still continue to see improvements and I do it in blocks now, and then I give her a break from it. And it's in those breaks when you often get the next level of, of improvement. Speaker 3: (23:27) I think that is the epigenetic effect probably saying, Speaker 2: (23:32) Yeah. You know, to fix apparently 8,000 genes that can be influenced by these epigenetic shifts. And it's, it's, it's I like going to the gym, you know, I'm not going to go to the gym and then three weeks time out looking like taught. So they got, or, you know, it doesn't happen that quickly, but the NGO Genesis the inflammation, the STEM cell production, certainly at the higher or lower pressures they happen over time. Do you see also a benefit and stacking it for the ones who have a better word with other protocols? So, so other things like ozone therapy, for example, or P myth therapy or anything else that you find beneficial combining? Speaker 3: (24:23) I think, I mean, I would say yes in a, in a clinical sense of experience, but I couldn't say that there are trials with trials to say, like to have only one or two variables. They don't want to throw a whole lot in at once. You agreed, I would start probably with nutrition and there are a number of nutrients, which you know about that you can throw into the equation. I think as auxiliary treatments my particular interest at the moment is photobiomodulation, it's using laser treatment. Speaker 2: (24:56) Oh, I would be very interested to hear what you have to say about photos. Speaker 3: (25:01) So I think this to me is an up and coming thing. I've spent the last two or three summers going to a conference in Germany, a laser conference where some of the, the experts get together from around the world. And they talk about these things. I've also been to one in Australia last October. What, what we're now what we've known about. Okay. Let me tell the curve. Speaker 4: (25:28) Okay. Speaker 3: (25:30) Phases. We're not talking about cutting lasers, which are where you focus the beam to a point. So drill holes and things like James Bond. You know, that's not one of those, okay. We're talking about parallel, light photons. That is they're going side by side. So they're not drilling holes in you. And what happens with that? And there's a lot of great research, and this is where there's far more research out there than most people know about, because unless you're interested in this field, you don't go looking for it. I've got quite a big database now looking at all this stuff. And what we w one of the things that, that does, it does a whole rock to things a bit like hyperbaric. But it particularly affects the mitochondria because your mitochondria are the little components in every cell of your body, pretty well, that produces energy in terms of ATP and NADH as well. Speaker 3: (26:27) And those mitochondria, well, if we go back a little bit in time, those mitochondria, I actually what's called proteobacteria in the ancient of days, they were bacteria that had been incorporated into you carry out excels and also the cells, because they needed a bigger energy source. These provided the energy. So we became part of the place, if you see what I mean. So the interesting thing about mitochondria in their rules are what we call chromophores, which are proteins that react to light because that's how the bacteria actually got their energy originally, like plants. They were converting sunlight into energy. Okay. So how about how mitochondria respond to light at different frequencies? So different frequencies do dislike your different chemical reactions in the mitochondria. What so that's one little pack to hold onto it. And when that happens, a number of things happen. Speaker 3: (27:31) One, you get obviously the ability to produce a whole lot of repair mechanisms get stimulated energy mechanisms get stimulated. You turn off excessive inflammation, a whole lot of things you want to happen happen by getting your mitochondria to work properly. And in fact, one of the concerns that even about getting older and aging is that our mitochondria are not functioning properly, or we have less salt. It is the basis of aging really isn't it? Mitochondrial dysfunction, certainly one of the big, big keys. So different frequencies will do different stimulate different components. So we now know with lasers, we use different colored blazers to get different effects. However, the big problem is that if you try and print, since you use blue or yellow, the penetration is very small. So, but as you go towards red, you get more and more penetration. Speaker 3: (28:30) And what most of us now use is infrared. Infrared is the most penetrating of all colors. And what you can now do is, is get lasers that will penetrate right through bone, even through the skull, into the brain very effectively. I can give you a story if you want a story. It depends on what, what got me really interested in this area was another bit of serendipity where a number of years ago a patient in Oakland well, it's man in Oakland phoned me. I said, look, my wife has got this terrible thoracic vertebrae, vertebral abscess. So several vertebrae and unless she has continuous antibiotics she gets very unwell and in a lot of pain. And so she'd been on antibiotics for 18 months and every time she stopped it, it flared up badly to the point that they said, look, the only next thing we can do is do an operation where they go in through the past the lungs, through the anterior approach, which is to scoop out the dead material and pass and try and rebuild the spine, which is a dangerous operation horrific. Speaker 3: (29:53) And so the husband who was not an entrepreneur, he had did some research. He's a very bright guy and he came across hyperbaric oxygen. And so he found me because I, at the time was the only person with a high pressure, private hospitals refuse to do anything. That's fine. When in doubt we started treatment and we were part way through the treatment. And he came in to me and he said, Hey, Hey Tim, what do you know about lasers? And I said, well, not a lot, really. And it's developed, have you seen these papers? How power lasers at certain frequencies will kill bacteria, including staphylococcus, which she had. Wow. I thought, wow, that's interesting. And I read up on some papers and I then researched more and I came back to him a day or so later and say, Hey, look, you're right. This looks quite promising. Speaker 3: (30:50) He then said to me, okay, look, you find me the right laser. And I'll get it here in three days from anywhere in the world. I thought, wow, that's a good, I haven't been asked to do that before. So I found this one in the States, which was 25,000 U S wow. He had it there in three days. Boom. Wow. And we just started treating with both. And the long and the short is after two sets for treatments, she has been able to stop all her antibiotics and has stayed role for the last 18 months, two years while having any problem, it's amazing basically, and the MRIs improved and everything's, you know, there's new bone growth and so forth. So it just gave me that insight of, wow, there's so much information out there. Why didn't I know about it. So I got to know about it. Speaker 3: (31:42) I've been to these conferences. So now I'm starting to use a similar laser to the one he got just by the way, anyone who wants to get one, I found that his was actually made in China and I got it for a third, the price, what was it called? Because I'd love to have a look into that myself. Yeah. So it's a, it's a nice, it's a classical advisor. So you don't want to play there ladies as have class one to four and four is the most powerful, so you've got to be married. Yeah. So you've just got to be careful. Don't China in people's eyes and things like that. But anyway, so I've been using this for a number of different situations and there's some great research, randomized control trials of various things. One of them, which I found quite amazing is using it to depression, where they showed that if you did the left frontal area that in a randomized controlled trial, they improved similar to drug treatment. So there we go. Speaker 2: (32:46) Is that something looking at the vitamin D pathways or something like that? Or is it, Speaker 3: (32:53) I don't think so. No. I think it's a separate effect on we know from, in terms of depression also that often it's, so their frontal area on a QEG that's the main area, or if you do a functional MRI. And so it's just that, that was the area of this one to work on, to improve its functioning. So the thing with the laser is it's simply trying to restore a normal cell function as best it can. Speaker 2: (33:18) Is that laser available? Like, can you as a nonmedical professional get one of these, I mean, this gentlemen Speaker 3: (33:27) Far Mark Palmer exciting because a lot of this work's been done with the sort of laser that I would have the cost for, but then I'm realizing that low level laser treatment, L L T low level laser treatment, which is class three, but even on art seems to work. And what, when I say that, believe it or not is that this is something that's in the usually 50 to 500 milliwatt versus I'm using 15 Watts or 15,000 milli Watts. So what we initially thought is Hey, how can that possibly get through the skin, the underlying tissue, the skull, and into the brain and that level of power. It just didn't make sense. And yet the trials showed that it does. And what we now realize is that the skull, when you look at it with very high powered electron microscopes sections actually has this lattice works of tubules going through it, which the light can probably pass through. Wow. Because otherwise it just didn't make sense that something could hit this solid bone and still get through when, if you did it on the, on something similar thickness without those channels, it wouldn't so that, but anyway, so low level lasers are looking very good at the moment and they're much cheaper and much easier to use different ones. Speaker 2: (35:06) Yeah. I've got I've I've got two from via light. The 16, yes. I've got the two ones that go up up the nostril at the nasal ones at the, what is it? The eight, eight 55 or something in him. Speaker 3: (35:21) That's the nanometers. So that's the actual wavelengths of which is infrared. But then they piggyback onto that they what they call modulator. So that I think the one I've got the neuro one as well, which is still the 40 Hertz one. I haven't got that one, but 10 Hertz one. Yeah. That's the one that goes across the skull. Is it doing that? It's the actual, so what, this gets much more kind of exciting in a way, from my point of view, if you get, if you're excited by tech technical things, is that they, the wavelength of the infrared, which is the 800 to 800 to a thousand nanometers, roughly yes. Infrared that wavelength is what is going through into, in this case, the brain what you can do is you can pulse that process and that then becomes a frequency that's received by the tissue. Speaker 3: (36:24) So to some extent, the wave length going in is doing one set of things. And then on top of that, you can what I call piggyback, but the correct name is modulating the, so that you get a frequency, which has different effects. Now I'll give you an example a year or two ago a patient who was a local barista fell off his mountain bike and did the usual over the handlebars, hit his head, got concussed and tried to go back to work, but he is it problem with it. He had a cognitive deficit where he couldn't tolerate much noise people or anything, as soon as there was a lot going on his brain sort of short circuited, he couldn't think. And as a barista, that didn't work, he couldn't interact with people. So he had to stop working and this went on for months and he wasn't recovering. Speaker 3: (37:24) So he came to steamy and I said, look, okay, we'll use the laser. And we did a few sessions without obviously much improvement at what we call a continuous rate where it's just the infrared process. But then I looked at some of the research and I thought, what I can do on my laser, I can actually put in any frequency I want, I can change it. It's a sort of fairly clever one. And I, so I put it at 10 Hertz frequency that session from then onwards, he just got better and better and better and went back to work and he knew it the next day. He'd said, look, I'm so much better just from that one session once we did the 10 Hertz. So what we're understanding now, there's a lot of research going on around the world here. The guy cut in the States called Michael Hamblin. Speaker 3: (38:15) Who's one of the sort of gurus of this, but also in Australia and in Tasmania, interesting enough, they're doing a whole load of research. Look at these frequencies, looking at what's bears, looking at what how much you need and what they're finding. It's a little bit like hyperbaric. When I started doing hyperbaric, we used very high pressure as well, partly because we're treating divers, but a lot of the therapy was based on two to 2.4 atmospheres treatment and everything, as you know, what, what requirement is actually, some of the lower pressures are better for certain situations restore brain function. And they're finding that with the lasers, you don't necessarily have to hammer it in hard with a very high level. It's more of about the subtleties of the right frequencies, the right dose, the right evidencing. So this is where a lot of work's going on. I don't think we've got all the answers by a long way, but I think it's a very exciting field risk, low risk, you know, very low risk. What we do know about, as you're saying these lays, this sort of laser is pretty well without risk providing you don't look at it. And with the sort of laser I've got that if you hold it in one place, it gets too hot. So there's a heat element. Whereas the low level that doesn't happen, they using led lights now instead of laser. So Speaker 2: (39:43) I saw one just yesterday when I was doing some research on tinnitus I've forgotten the name of it, Luma meat or something like that. Laser therapy that they're doing the doctor in Australia was doing it for the inner ear to regenerate the hears on the inner ear to help, you know, tonight as suburb sufferers and his disease suffers. And then we're getting lots of success with that. And I certainly, you know, when I heard about it and did some, some research on it for mum, I think it's been a part of her recovery as well. I only had internet-based the nasal ones and I had one at the 600, the 600 in him and the other one at the eight, eight 50. But I'd like to look into this more. It seems to be a lot going on around frequencies general, whether it's light frequencies or PEMF pulsed electromagnetic field. Do you know anything about the PE EMF at all? Speaker 3: (40:42) Yeah, I mean, I think this is a really exciting area. It's it's, to some extent it started off with someone called Royal rife in the, in the States. Do you know, do you know about him? He's a, he was a doctor back in the 1930s, forties, fifties. It was really quite a brilliant doctor, but actually ended up in a sad situation because, well, I'll come to that. So he started looking at how frequencies could be used in medicine. And what he found is that by using, he had a cathode Ray tube in those days to produce them. And he also developed at the time, the most powerful microscope light microscope that existed a very intricate complex microscope that allowed him to look at cells while they're alive. What's called dark microscopy, which was very new at the time. Speaker 3: (41:43) And what it could do is look at cells and then the mom with his catheter, gray different frequencies and see what happened to them. And what he found is that he retained some frequencies and see different things. So he kept saying, you know, if you're trying to kill this by this seems to be the right frequency or this cancer, this frequency seems to be the right frequency and did a of research over a years and started getting some really quite astounding success with these patients. And a number of his close friends started their colleagues. We started using similar instruments and again, started doing very well until the FDA got winded at all. And they came in and Congress skated every part of his equipment that he had, and he was left in ruins. But and yet there's a huge amount of information left behind about what he was doing. And so a lot of the ideas of different frequencies for different illnesses came from his early work. Speaker 2: (42:49) That's right. I do remember that story now. And there is a few of his machines that have been Speaker 3: (42:54) Absolutely. So there are some original ones possibly when they say original, it's really hard to know because we don't know really what the regional ones, cause there's some sort of stronghold by the FDA got rid of them, but there's also some very modern versions of them now, which are computerized, which obviously he couldn't do. But so just to say that I think the electromagnetic field concept I mean, we're, we're in a very low electromagnetic field when we're not around other gadgetry and we're inside the field of the earth, which, you know, the Schumann frequency, which are an important frequency that have been there since, you know, we evolved. So they are part of our evolution. So they're part of what is normal for us. And so those frequencies are quite important frequencies. When we start coming in with very set frequencies, like 50 Hertz for electricity and all these other things, we're actually interfering with a whole normal ability to stay in homeo homeostasis, to some extent. Speaker 2: (44:06) And this is where, yeah, the EMF side of the argument, or, you know, the, the problems that we're possibly facing with, with CMS, it's from all our devices and 5g coming, goodness knows what's X gonna do. And PEMF is very different though. It's using the right frequencies Speaker 3: (44:24) That's and it's also using the therapeutic way. And by and large, in, in at a low level, rather than a level, you don't necessarily, again, have to use these massive magnetic fields to get the effect that you want. You can use really very subtle ones. Speaker 2: (44:39) And again, it's working on the mitochondria, I believe from the research that I've done, it's actually having an effect on the mitochondrial health and function. And I, I just, I wish we had a, I wish everybody could have access to a place where we had all of these things lined up next to each other and, you know, the ones that are lower risk at least that we could all, you know, be able to use without huge costs involved in a utopia, perhaps something like that. Yeah. Speaker 3: (45:08) I think we're moving a little bit towards that and I expect, and maybe on another occasion, I'll talk about sound therapy and how the that's another component of frequency, but I, I agree you can use to CS, which is cranial electric stimulation very simple devices like the alpha STEM, very expensive, what it is that almost immediately induces a sleepy, relaxed state. Speaker 2: (45:40) Yes. Yeah, I'll be, I'll be in that one too. So yes, Speaker 3: (45:46) It's kind of bizarre that you can just put two clips. I kept on each year and start the machine. And within minutes you're feeling drowsy and very relaxed, Speaker 2: (45:57) But it's mentioned and Ben Greenfield, he's a famous biohacker and trainer out of the States and his new book boundless, which is quite an amazing book. It's got, you know, everything known to man, and then he mentions the CES and using that to, to go to sleep every night and how it's improved as her sleep. So there's just so much things that are coming. And I, and I find it really exciting if we can integrate the traditional medical model with some of these like you are doing. And it's a really exciting thing for me. And I just wish we had more access for more people. It is, you see, before I don't need any promotion because I have so many people wanting to come to me and I can, I can truly believe that because there's such a need out there. Speaker 3: (46:49) The wonderful, unfortunately there are a few old phrases in medicine. One is that medicine changes coding. When the previous generation dies. It tends to prove slowly Speaker 2: (47:04) It's hard, Speaker 3: (47:07) People vote with their feet. And I think that's what we're seeing. A lot of people are actually saying, I don't want this. I want that. Rather than just accepting what's there, that's very healthy on the whole saying, okay, I'm, I'm getting quite informed about what I think I need. I just need someone to guide me through that process and if necessary me with some of the resources. And so I think that's a very important thing. And I think by and large, it is being embraced a bit in general practice to some extent, but probably less so as you move up the ladder into secondary and tertiary care, which is a kind of specialist areas, Speaker 2: (47:48) And this is why I think it's important that you know, where, you know, want to be in the preventative space where possible, so that we, you know, are looking at things before it gets to the point where everything's taken out of your control, because you're now in the intensive care or in the hospital, some where it's actually impossible to get any of these things. And it's important that we take control and ownership. And this is what the show is really all about is, is educating people about the things that are out there and the things that they can do their own research is it's a curation. If you like of information from brilliant minds in different areas, so that we can have, these can have these conversations and open up these discussions so that we can start to realize that there is more than just a pharmaceutical model or a surgical model, which is mostly what we were offered. I mean, those are very important and very good, but Speaker 3: (48:44) Yeah, they're largely the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. To some extent they have much more difficulty dealing with chronic longterm problems. They're good for the acute and the end, if, you know, if I break my leg, I'm going straight to the hospital. Speaker 2: (49:00) Yeah. Yeah. And then you might come home and do a hyperbaric session on the way home. Speaker 3: (49:07) Most of my I'd live in it. Speaker 2: (49:09) Exactly. I would tell you if I have one that you've got, that's brilliant. Just coming back to hormone sorry. I wanted to talk about hormones in relation to brain injury. Is there something you're seeing yes, under diagnosed often with traumatic brain injuries, especially Speaker 3: (49:28) A very interesting point. You bring up in time. I should I have a whole presentation on all of this, but one of the papers I'm just kind of going to, Speaker 2: (49:38) I have to get you back on to, to take us through the whole presentation. Speaker 3: (49:43) Okay. So this is, I'm just reading from my slide now, the prevalence of hypo pituitary ism. So you put your three glands just behind your eyes and produce several homelands in mild, moderate, and severe brain injury was estimated at 16.8% for mild. So that's nearly 17% interesting, only 10.9 for moderate and 35% for severe TBI. But what that saying is that people can have interference with some of their hormone production or a relatively mild event. TBI is common. We now realize one of the big things that's only recently kind of come to is how frequent TBI and what we call MTBI mild, traumatic brain injury, and eh, from sports through to domestic violence, through to all sorts of things where people are getting minor injuries all the time. When I say all the time, several in a row or within a period of time. Speaker 3: (50:49) And it can be that I had a sort of patient just this week, for instance, had come up from Christchurch to see me who had had an injury a year ago, where he had walked into a metal bar, cause he was looking the wrong way and wasn't actually knocked out. Then when I started talking about it, he said, Oh, well, yeah. And the previous year I did that. And then I fell over and hit my head, did that. And before that, and we had this whole series of minor traumatic brain injuries, and this was a store on the camel's back because since his last one he's hardly been able to work. He can't concentrate all these things that are familiar to us with MTBI. And so it's often that kind of background of quite a few, and then something knocks you out when they're not bad words, but something pushes you over the edge. Speaker 2: (51:42) And then you start to have, well, actually a year, we he's had some consult consults with me as well. And I've it, it, I think people think that they have to have her knocked out, had a major car accident before anything is actually a real problem or if they had it. So in the case of my brother who was a professional rugby player some of the things that I'm seeing in him now, and I have permission to talk about us information are signs to me of a delayed response to brain injury and, you know, helping him work through all of those, but often you, you won't know that it was the thing that you did 10 years ago, perhaps that can still be affecting your brain or that your personality has changed because of a brain injury or your energy levels, your hormones and so on. And this is why it's really important. Speaker 3: (52:42) And I'd also add in there that that store on the camel's back of that minor injury may actually be because there are other things going on, like other toxins, whether they're heavy metals are related to what you're working and so forth. So there can be a variety of other things that was sitting there in the background and until really challenged, didn't seem to have a problem with them yet when you're challenged, you do, and you then have to deal with those as well, come right through a detox process quite often to deal with some of the oldest. Well, some of the background stuff I should say. Speaker 2: (53:26) Yeah. And so, you know, looking at like with brain injury and optimizing brain health, we need to be looking at foundational health issues as well as okay. For the fancier things like the hyperbaric and the laser and all of those, the hormone assessment and, and starting to, to educate people around, you know, systemic inflammation and the job of mitochondria and all of these aspects, which heavy metal detoxing, which is something that we should all probably be interested in. And then layering on top of it. Some of these other therapies and that multipronged approach is something that I think has been the reason that I think I've been successful with mom is that having those, those layers and then continuing to look, what is the next thing, what is the next area that I can explore to bring the next but back? And as you say, it can build on each other. And as we get older, we build more toxicity in our body from metals. Most of us have got some sort of, Speaker 3: (54:27) We don't have history. Speaker 2: (54:29) We do, and we collect it and then it starts to it's that bucket there's that we sort of manage it to here and then it overflows and then it's all sorts coming out. So let's, you know, being in that preventative mindset of, okay, I'm going to help my body detox before I perhaps get something else happen to me. You know, it can be a good, a good way of looking at it. W we've covered a whole lot of areas everywhere. Just one last question for me, an area that I'm interested in, I've just got a new kit, new ozone therapy kit. What's your take on ozone? This is something I've just been getting into the last couple of weeks and researching is it, you know, like it seems to have some of the same benefits as hyperbaric in, in a way a different process and delivery, but it seems to be quite similar in some aspects. Have you had any experience with those on, at all Speaker 3: (55:30) A bit? I'm not an expert on it, so I'll say that, but I've read a fair amount on it. And I have a colleague working for my clinic now who has a perfusion equipment, which kind of topics I think like many things, it's a double edged sword. So people, first of all, must never have agree. Those are toxic to the lungs. So the idea that, Oh, I'll just get a kit and breed. Some is the completely wrong thing to do. So it has to be introduced into the body. And that's where we run into problems. First of all, because you can put it in through various artifices yep. Other than the breathing one. And that makes it plain or it can be given and it can be given intravenously in two ways. One literally as a bonus ozone, which is somewhat, could be risky. Speaker 3: (56:36) And although those that use it say that it isn't or you can take some blood off, mix it with Arizona and reproduce it, which is the one in Germany has been done for many years now. So there's quite a lot of research from them about its use. And I think it, it has a definite role as a, as a strong antiseptic for the staff. So in terms of killing bugs within the organism it probably has an anti cancer component. The problem with when we say probably is actually getting the research done. So again, this is more anecdotal evidence but it, it has a way of re oxygen icing, very similar, I think, to hyperbaric, but also sterilizing as well, which is slightly different from hyperbaric to barricade. It has to be an anaerobic bug for that to work. So I think it does have some definite roles. I think if you're doing your run, you you're talking, it's going to be very careful Speaker 2: (57:46) The home therapy. Yeah. That's ear insufflation and rectal insufflation cupping, that type of thing. But yes. Yeah, I think, I think it's a good thing to have a few obviously need to be taught and doing some training in it this week how to, how to use it safely. Definitely don't want it anywhere near your lungs. But it, it, that dangerous side, as far as the lungs is concerned, a very good thing to have as a basic first aid for any infection that you get, you know, speak Corona even maybe they are looking into the research at the moment is if it can help with the coronavirus. And I've got a dr. Rowan coming on my show next week, who's one of the world's top experts and ozone therapies are really excited. He actually went to Africa and the Ebola crisis got shut down, unfortunately by, shall we say the mafia somewhere over the, there, when he was treating patients and treating in training the doctors and it, but it is a very, it seems to have a lot of research over a long period of time. Speaker 2: (58:56) And again I think a very interesting one to do more research on yourself and to maybe add into the, to the, to the list of things that you can do. Speaker 3: (59:08) I definitely think so. And of course, you know, for me, I would be probably if I was concerned about personally concerned about Kobe, be using high dose intravenous vitamin C, which we do here anyway. So that's part of the same. But you brought up than I did. One of the research the Germans had done in Africa on malaria was using one of the blue lasers intravenously or into the vein while taking one of the B vitamins, which so this is using PDT, which is photo dynamic therapy. So photo meaning the laser dynamic, meaning you give something which sensitizes, whatever the target is to the laser in this case, it's the bacteria, or at least in his, but it's actually the malaria parasite I should say. And they showed very definite success with doing this wow light and the vitamin B irradiation. Speaker 3: (01:00:18) I think they call that. Yeah, there's UV radiation too. So this is a this is using PDT, which is similar, but using, for instance, one of the things that I've been working with is PDT here, where we use the infrared laser with the sensitizing agent, which is called InDesign and green. It's a green dye that they eye specialists use to look at the back of your eye and cancer cells taken up preferentially to normal cells and hold on to it. Whereas normal cells pass it through within 30 minutes. Wow. So what you do is you give this an hour or two before your treatment and then shine the laser light at the cancer. And I've had one remarkable disappearance of a cancer just doing that. So again, for everybody, before I get too many times, this is an area of interest and it's cool PDT photo dynamics. Speaker 3: (01:01:25) So using light with an agent that don't and I also use an ultrasound machine and the thing that sensitizes you to Roxanne is curcumin. So and using ultrasound and because Tim was hold onto it for a long time, you can use that to, Hmm, goodness. Isn't that funny? That's without me now, they won't go SPD T so no photodynamic therapy, right? I'm going to have to look at that one. Now this is experimental. So it's research stuff. So that's not something that's out there for everyone to go and get it's something being looked at around the world. There's a huge amount of research going on in medical circles and sciences to find the right agents, the lights frequencies and so forth, but a promising area using nanotechnology to deliver the sensitizer to the cancer as well. There's a lot of very fancy stuff going on. Speaker 2: (01:02:34) Wow. This is very exciting. Well, I think we've covered a lot of ground today. Heaven. We thank you so much, dr. Tome. I really appreciate your time. And the fact that you, we, you know, we have such a great doctor in our midst and who is looking at all of these very exciting areas and integrating knowledge from all areas and having such an open approach to it. I think that's absolutely brilliant. I wish you were bit more local. It would be good. I would love to have you again on the show to talk about, maybe do a presentation and the, the the information that you were talking about the just earlier at some stage when you have time, but I'm super appreciative of your time. Did I know that you're an extremely busy man? Is there anything that you would like to say to wrap up the show or any, any final words? Speaker 3: (01:03:28) I think just I'd support the whole idea of, of integrative medicine as a. And I think that can involve a whole load of different health practitioners working together to get that model by the way, rather than just one person as the way forward to the future for getting, not just from disease to some degree of wellness, but getting to full wellbeing, the next layer up. And I think that's really where we're heading and a lot of ways through lifestyle, you know, diet, all of these different things. And to me, like you've been talking about today, what excites me particularly is the idea of using light color sound and vibration as part of that journey. I think it's fascinating. I think we're only partway there. We haven't mentioned sound yet. That's another whole area, so there's some interesting things going on to try to make that happen. Speaker 2: (01:04:21) Very exciting times ahead. I can't wait for a little bit more research to happen and to make it more less expensive in more doable for people so that they can actually get up. Dr. Tim, thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate it. And we hope to, Hey, hope to have you on again soon. Speaker 1: (01:04:42) That's it this week for pushing the limits, be sure to write review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com

Don't Need Pants if You Don't Got Legs. Do you have to peeeeeeee? Follow me on Titter. Say Stafe! Secondhand Urine Bike. Can gnats live underground? Because I'd really like to know. Pinch a Nickel so Hard the Indian Rides the Buffalo. Adama Gunna Give It to You. Scott's Bush is full of gnats. The Morning Uncanny Valley. Sneaking Into His Six-Foot Distance. How's Your Face Tic? F-you, naked man and the bike you rode off on! Choose Your Own Adventure with Tom. Reccamentals and more on this episode of The Morning Stream.

Don't Need Pants if You Don't Got Legs. Do you have to peeeeeeee? Follow me on Titter. Say Stafe! Secondhand Urine Bike. Can gnats live underground? Because I'd really like to know. Pinch a Nickel so Hard the Indian Rides the Buffalo. Adama Gunna Give It to You. Scott's Bush is full of gnats. The Morning Uncanny Valley. Sneaking Into His Six-Foot Distance. How's Your Face Tic? F-you, naked man and the bike you rode off on! Choose Your Own Adventure with Tom. Reccamentals and more on this episode of The Morning Stream.

CHANGE OF SCHEDULE DUE TO COVID-19... That's not just the title of this episode, but also an announcement. Because I'd rather not talk about Corona-virus week after week (and some other reasons) - I'm temporarily changing the schedule of the show from a weekly Tuesday release, to be a little more flexible and random. For the next month (or few), I'll still be releasing episodes, but maybe not weekly (at least once per month) - and not always on a Tuesday.

James: Hey audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth True Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today I'm happy to get Ivan Barratt into our show. Ivan is a multifamily owner-manager syndicator who specializes in large apartment complexes in the Midwest and he has been doing it since 2015 with over $18 million in equity, with more than 3000 units as the primary GP. And he has grown his company, which is Barratt Asset Management to be best in class two time inc 5,000 private equity and management firm. And he focuses a lot on equity, finance, acquisitions, and companies' strategies. So currently managing over 300 million in assets, comprised of almost 3,500 units. Hey Ivan, welcome to the show Ivan: James, so good to see you, dude. I always love talking to you man. It's good to be on the show officially. James: Absolutely. I know we postponed it a few times so this is going to be very, very valuable to me and to my listeners as well. And so, Ivan, let's get started. How did you get started, right? Let's quickly go through it. How did you get started and how did you end up with $300 million in assets under management? Ivan: Yeah. You know, for me it all started with one duplex that I house-hacked back in 2000. I'd wanted to be in real estate my whole life. My dad is in real estate. He was an attorney, always owned rental properties on the side. A couple of entrepreneurial uncles on both sides of my family that owned apartments, gas stations, car washes, all kinds of businesses. So at a really early age, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I wanted real estate because I thought, gosh, why would I want a real job when I could just go out on a lot of property and do whatever I want and watch the rent cheques just come in. So I went to school, went to college, went through business school, got a degree in real estate finance, got out, house-hacked a duplex. For the first eight years, I worked for a mentor in mostly development, but also property asset management. All kinds of different jobs that I got to have that I got to where I working for this real estate developer. And most importantly, I got a front-row seat to the great financial crash in 2008 at a really young age, a huge gift. I learned. I wasn't as smart as I thought. I learned that I was doing real estate the wrong way and that's when I really started modeling multifamily companies. Because I'd always wanted to own apartments, but I also saw that in a downturn, those multifamily companies got bigger, they got stronger, they acquired more assets because of the way they were financed. And so that really was the impetus to get me started in my own pursuits. Then I actually started in 2010 as a property management company first because I knew that if I could figure out the property management game and doing that for others, that when it was time to buy bigger deals for myself, I would have a higher likelihood of success of execution. So I started buying a few small deals at the same time, was managing for other clients. Anything I could get my hands on where I didn't have to carry a gun and I was doing everything. Started from the bottom, then started being able to buy larger apartment deals. And when I say large, I mean, my first apartment deal was six units and about 35 and a 30. Then I said I'd never do another small deal again and I bought 15 cause it was just too good to pass up. And then from there, I started syndicating. I did my first syndication of 60 units and I bought 112 and all the while, still managing for other people as well. That was really how we grew the company in those early days. Once we got to onsite staff size properties, there was really no turning back, pretty addictive. Fast forward to today, we still do some management for others but we mostly manage our own assets now. And we are far and above are our biggest clients. And that's the shorter version of where I come from and how I got here. James: Got it, got it. So is this 3,500 units, is it all you? I mean, your company or you guys do fee manager part of it or how does that? Ivan: Yeah, so I own about 3000 units. We're down to about 500 units that we manage for others, it's not really a focus moving forward. We still have a few close partnerships that we like managing for. But really the way I've built and designed my company is not to be a profit center of property management, more to be an execution machine for my own wealth strategy. And so I think you and I've talked about this before, you know, on the property management side, I could be Scrooge and I could really be tight and I could probably make a 15% margin but instead, we focus those dollars into our culture, our people, growing leaders within the organization, having fun. Property management is not easy. You know, having great events and really trying to create this beautiful machine of people that want to come to work, want to do a good job, want to stick around a while and believe in what we're doing. We call it the band fam. James: Awesome. Awesome. So let's go deep into the, you know, how you got started and it's just so interesting, right? I mean, you had that vision to start from property management first and then added assets, which is, you know, how like even like Ken McElroy started, right. He started being a property manager first. Ivan: Ken McElroy was a huge influence in my career. Yeah. Huge influence. I read his book very early on and that was one of the key influences for starting my management company and figuring that out first. James: Yeah. And I think he had mentioned it many times. I mean, for the audience who doesn't know who's Ken McElroy. He is one of the largest owners of multifamily in the US. I mean, he is an advisor to Robert Kiyosaki and he's a big guy, well-known guy, a well-respected guy in the multifamily industry. And he mentioned very clearly in his book, right? I mean, to get started, you probably want to work for someone or go work as a property manager. And I don't think so many people are following it because people think it's just buying assets and letting it ride through a, it's okay. But what did you learn from that experience? And starting from property management and going into as an owner as well. Ivan: You know, this is 2011, 2012, I've got 70 units and I am everything. I'm the busboy, the cook, the maitre D. I'm the leasing agent. I'm the property manager. I'm the rent collector. I had a little bookkeeper that came in every other week cause I didn't want to screw that up. So I literally did everything first and learned to be efficient with it and also learn, you know, strengths and weaknesses and made a lot of mistakes. I've finally just decided early on that I knew I was gonna make a lot of mistakes and that was just part of it. I finally figured that out in my mid twenties, that being an entrepreneur is a lot about failing forward, making mistakes and learning from those mistakes and not quitting. It's not a calm, okay sort of method, but it's the backstory to a lot of successful entrepreneurs. So I just copied what those who had been there before me had done. James: Got it. Got it. And I mentioned it in my book, I mean, across all commercial real estate, multifamily is a really, really good asset class but the hardest part in multifamily is property management, right? I mean, managing that 300 or 100 units income stream from different people is just the hardest. I mean, you'd rather buy an office, have three tenants, professional tenants and you're done. Ivan: Yeah. Multifamily is the best asset class for return on investment on the planet until you move in the people. James: Yeah. Until you move into the hard job of multifamily, which is basically the property management and, you know, you'll figure it out. You'll figure it out beginning in itself that, you know, property managers, I mean, you want to start from property management and going into asset management. I mean, you and I know that you really don't make money in property management. It's basically a time-consuming job. Ivan: The most important one, but very, very time-consuming. The most important job, James: Absolutely, the most important and we do it for control, right. For control of our value... Ivan: Oh, absolutely. I couldn't imagine hiring a third-party manager for my own assets. It's just the way we do things and the amount of control we have, the ability to move pieces around. For instance, we had one property that was suffering a little bit. We were still trying to get the right management team in place. We took our best leasing agent in the entire company and we moved her across the state to do her thing at an asset that needed her assistance. And that's very easily done when you control the management side of it. If you're out there and you're just another number to a third-party company that's a far more difficult solution to get. They're not necessarily going to give you their best people or move around their best people. James: Yeah. And I also think property management is the best way to make deals, numbers work in this market cycle, right? Where the market, it's not like appreciating like what it used to be in the past five years. Ivan: You're giving away my best secrets, James. James: I know. Ivan: How we get our value-add picture to work is a big part of it is being able to manage these units efficiently and knowing exactly what it's going to cost to run them and finding inefficiencies and reducing expenses. It's one of the three legs on the stool right now for making deals, achieve target returns. No question. James: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that's very important for...that's why we do vertical integration. Because deals at this stage of the market cycle, where everything is overpaid and people are bidding for high prices for everything and it's just so hard to do, you know, if you're doing it third-party. Ivan: No question. James: So, yeah, I mean, to be frank with you, in the last one month, I have like four guys, four friends who are syndicators, who never had a third party. I mean never had their own property management. They called me for a meeting. They say, Hey, how can we do our own property management company? And I asked why and they said, Oh, you know, all these guys are not good. All this third party, what I told you guys like two years ago, right? And I say, do not do it. But they say, no, we are going to do it. Right? So I mean, yeah, if the market is 150% and your property management is 70% capable, market is 150%, your property management company capabilities are mask off by the market. Right? But if it's the other way around, right now, I don't think the market's at 150% probably is 90 80% right? But now you know, everybody's getting undressed on how capable they are. Now, everybody's like scrambling to go and say, now they're seeing all the weaknesses of all the third-party property management companies. Right. Ivan: Agreed. James: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So come back to deals that you buy in the Midwest. So is it you are in Midwest and is that why you buy in that market? Ivan: Well, I'm lucky. I live in a place that's really great to invest in right now. Midwest, it's steady. The markets we look at have been growing on average 3% a year for 35 years. They don't boom, but they don't bust either. And so, we like a lot of these tertiary and secondary markets in the Midwest that have also successfully decoupled from the Roosevelt economies of old and have government education. Health care is big. There's some blooming in the tech space, R and D, there's some big insurance companies, financial services. So there are these markets like Indy is a great example that hasn't quite seen the boom that some other markets have, but they've just continued to steadily grow, which is really good on a five to seven-year hold period if you can find the right assets inside those markets. James: Yeah. Midwest I mean, I'm not sure where I read it, but essentially the whole Midwest is very stable in terms of economy, right? Ivan: Yeah, it really has become that way. And also in the B, B plus rental cohort, the percentage of rent income is still in the mid to high 20% range versus a lot of hotter markets where it's higher than that. So I would see that as a sign that there's still room to grow rents if you're good at picking growing submarkets within those markets. James: Got it, got it. Yeah. If you're able to identify the submarkets within the market itself.  Ivan: The submarket within the submarket, within the submarket, right? James: Well that's what real estate is.  Ivan: Hyperlocal.  James: Hyperlocal. Yeah. And I'm sure you being local, you would be able to know a lot of areas on your own and then you'd be able to figure it out things. So what are the States are you investing right now in Midwest city? Ivan: So far we're in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, we've got lots of submarkets in these areas that we are targeting. And then from there, there are certainly other States we've got our eye on, here in the Midwest as well. James: So, the deals that you are getting from this Midwest, is it through brokers or how are you guys, through relationships or how's that? Ivan: At our level...so our typical deal is going to be somewhere in the 30 to $40 million range and all those assets are controlled by the brokers. If you try to circumvent them and start going direct to sellers, they're really not going to keep you on their deal flow list. So we use the brokers to our advantage and we get a lot of off-market deal flow from our beloved brokers. We've closed a lot of transactions with them. They know we're a great company to do business with. We never retrade, we close quick. And so, we ended up being on the shortlist when they've got a seller that may be willing to transact but doesn't necessarily want to go full bore on market. James: Got it, got it. So let's say today a broker sent you a deal, right? So what would you look for in that deal that may be attractive for you? Ivan: Yeah, so we're looking for newer assets that are late 90s, early two 2000s. We'd like some stability because our fund dictates that the property can pay monthly cash flow to the LPs starting within 30 days of closing. And we liked that cashflow to be current to the preferred return of 7%. So it's got to have cashflow, day one. And then we still want to see some upside from value add, bringing in our management team, like you and I just spoke of, to manage it more efficiently, but also to make some improvements. If it's the mid-90s, it likely can stand some amenity upgrades and some cosmetic upgrades to the units. So we're looking for, for those two pieces.  And then third, we want a market where the rent is still growing, jobs are coming in, it's a good school district, you've got population growth. So those three components. If those add up to a reasonable expectation of 15, 16, 17, 18% IRR on a five to seven-year hold, we'd like it. We underwrite it to attend. So, if we're holding it more than seven years, we want to do two and a half, three and a half X equity multiple net, or we really want to harvest every five years if we can. James: So how do you determine the exit cap rate? I mean, I know you can't really determine the exit cap rate but in the Midwest States, how would you underwrite, what is the market cap rate plus how many...? Ivan: Yeah, I know there's a lot of talk right now about exit caps and what makes sense. We always just provide a cap rate sensitivity analysis. So we show what it looks like if the cap rate goes up every 25 bips, we show what the return looks like. It's our suspicion that cap rates are maybe a little bit lower than they will be over the long run, but not as much as you'd think. The spread right now between the 10 year treasury, which is at 150 today (actually it's a little less than 150 thanks to the coronavirus) and say a cap rate on buying out of five and a half or six, you're talking about 500 basis points spread in some cases.  In 2008 when the economy crashed, the spread between the 10 year and commercial cap rates was 50 75 basis points. So if you think about the spread between what you get for leaving your money in a 10 year bond and what you get for putting your money in multifamily is still very, very fast. So I don't see that spread going up unless interest rates go up a lot and there's a growing consensus that interest rates aren't going up anytime soon, the debt would just get too expensive. There are too much deflation and global slow down in the macro global economy to force rates up. They're actually continuing to have to ease and keep rates down. And so, I am certainly in the school of thought that we are going to look much more like Japan over the next decade. We're not going to have a lot of negative GDP but we're not going to have a lot of positive growth either. So rates will stay fairly low and there will be a demand for risk assets that offer a healthy spread above the 10 year. So that being said, you know, I probably went down a rabbit hole, maybe a little too deep, but with that being said, you know, we're typically looking at 50 basis points on the exit at five years but we don't get too caught up into that. We never show our pie in the sky and projections to our investors. We never show what we think the maximum rent we're going to return is. For example, I just bought a 272 unit deal, a fantastic deal I'm excited about in the submarket called Greenfield, Indiana, it's inside the Indianapolis MSA, third fastest growing County in my state. And I just have been organically raising, for instance, closing $150 a door on renewal and I'm painting and carpeting. James: That's awesome. Ivan: So I'm not really worried about my exit cap on that deal. You know what I mean? The thing is if cap rates, this is the other reason why you and I get 10 year, 12 year agency debt is because if there's this point in time where cap rates spike, I'm not selling, I'm going to hold the property in cashflow. Just think about it, James. If cap rates are going up, it's because of inflation. Interest rates are going up to fight inflation. Agree? James: Yep, absolutely.  Ivan: Well, if inflation goes up, rents are going up too. And the best part about apartments is that we get to reset our rents every month and every year. And so if I don't have to sell at this little point in time and I can raise my rents and wait for things to stabilize and cash flow along the way, I shouldn't be as worried about an exit in a specific year. Where people should be worried about exit cap are these shorter terms bridge loan deals where they're banking on a big rent increase in a refi or a sale two years from now or three years from now. I think that's taking on a measure of risk that would be a little more than I'd be willing to buy it off. We locked in that agency debt early. James: Yeah. Yeah. I've been doing my agency, all my deals has moved to agency, you know, for the past two years I've stopped doing bridge loans just because of the exact reason that you are talking about and yeah, I agree. Bridge loan do have some risks. Some people like it because they think they can flip it but you don't want to flip at the end of the age of the market now [21:51crosstalk]  Ivan: It can also flip the other way on you. James: Yeah, exactly. I mean, bridge loans and turning around huge deep value add needs a lot of skills and you are really banging on the market timing right now. There are a lot of factors to put in. I mean it's like a flipping a house, you're flipping an apartment. So is that how you started from the beginning itself, where you have trained your investors to focus on the cash flow of the deal? And a lot of my investors now, they want like annuity, just give me a cash flow. I don't really look at the pop the bag and it just give me an annuity because you know, six to 8% return cashflow is an awesome return. Right? And it can be much more awesome going down there. Ivan: Yeah. So, how we work with our investors is first, we educate them on how we mitigate the downside. Why we do agency loans, why we lock in for a longer period of time and we plan to hold it. Why we're buying a little bit newer of an asset versus what we were buying in different stages of the market cycle. Then we look at the yields of the property and we look at with them, like you just said, look at this asset. If nothing else works, it's still going to yield seven, eight, 9%. And then we're looking at what's the potential upside down the road, in that order because people do want to see cash flow first and they don't want to lose money. And it's nice to be in a situation where if the stock market is down 30% or if it's 2008 2.0, we might not be selling anytime soon, but we're still going to be cash flowing. Whereas, other parts of their portfolio will be hammered. James: Correct. At that time, that seven to 8% would reap some really, really good return. I mean, you are basically getting it now and you're just maintaining it throughout your market up or down cycle. Ivan: And it's harder but that's why we look for deals that have that seven, eight, 9% cash flow very quickly. And we pay monthly on our distributions is because I like monthly cashflow. I know you do and investors you do. James: Yeah. But is that how when you started like six units, 30 units, 35, is that how you were looking at the apartment? The perception of change. Ivan: No. [24:17inaudible] 2010-2011. When I bought that property, it was bank-owned, REO so that those were heavy value add deals. So early on, I was learning how to reposition a property. Because that was the market cycle that we were in, the stage of the market cycle at that time. And so, I started off buying those, I bought some C properties and Bs and we're looking for more of those heavy value-add deals. And as the market changed, we changed with it. James: Got it. That's very interesting. That's the part that I did. I did a lot of deep value-adds and you know, prove ourselves. I mean, deep value-add takes a lot of skills. I mean, even value-add takes a lot of skills or how fast the turnaround or how we manage a contractor, how you manage your finances, how do you manage your scope of work and the schedule itself. It's very complicated, right? I mean, a lot of people would have done it by skill. A lot of people could have done it just because the market appreciated, not to say because they did the job itself. Ivan: I'm sure you are excited for those deep value-add deals to come back one day down the road. But today a deep value-add deal, we just underwrote one. There was a moderate value-add, maybe $15,000 a door and if everything went according to plan, we would make a 15 IRR. James: Then what's the point of doing deep value-add? Right? Ivan: What's the point? Right. Because I just bought a 1998 vintage deal. It's fully occupied. And I just told you I raised rents organically already and that's going to do a 17. And so, there's so much demand and there are so many buyers trying to crowd in and buy these so-called value-add deals that we've gone to a different strata within our space to find value. And then, when those value-add deals, get back up above a 20 IRR, I'll start taking another look at them. James: Got it. Got it. Got it. So you have changed your strategy just because of the market cycle, and you think that is what the investors want, and you still get, I mean, a lot of investors who had even one, three, 4% return, right? So if you're able to give them like, you know, 15% IRR or 17% IRR, they would be ecstatic. Ivan: Yeah, in my opinion, I've got to be mindful of the market and work within my marketplace. There's opportunities in every stage of the cycle. But you have to go right with the market, not against it. James: Yeah. So how are you competing with big institutional players? Because they look for this 1990s, 2000, and they'd be able to look at the same deals that you are looking at. Right? Ivan: Yeah. It's very hard. It's very hard. I'm very lucky that I started this several years ago. And that I've got a reputation and a track record with the biggest brokers in my region which are all national brokers. And we lose a lot, we lose a lot to big guys. I've just lost a deal yesterday for a deal, I loved it, at 41 million and some out-of-town buyers who've done it for 44 million so they can have it. A lot of times it's off-market. And then some of these submarkets that we're keenly interested in are off the radar of some of the bigger fish from out of town. And that's really how we're finding a lot of value. We know where the emerging markets are, the old Dave Lindahl approach, right? We know how to spot an emerging market and that's a key to getting that value. That's really, in my opinion, one of the only ways that you can get those returns up to where they need to be to continue to please your existing investors and attract new ones. James: So let's go into details on how do you identify emerging market. Can you give like top three things that you look for to identify this as an emerging market? Ivan: You know, there's a lot to it. I'm lucky that I'm in an area that I want to be in, but we're looking at infrastructure improvement is a big one. We're looking at population growth, job announcements. Have the developments. So example in Indianapolis, I know where the growth is going. I know where the good submarkets are that it'll be the big suburbs of tomorrow. Infrastructure is probably one of the biggest ones. For instance, we're buying in a market right now or they're building a brand new federal highway over the Ohio river that is going to bring more jobs and more commerce. Right?That's just a few of the nuggets James: I think the local knowledge and the local connections, right? Just, just the local knowledge itself is just very powerful. Ivan: Yeah. But it's not as hard as people think to find. I mean, if you're looking at the entire map of the United States and you're like, okay, I got to find an emerging market, that's going to be tough. But if you can start to focus in on an area and say, okay, what's like one rung out, where's the growth going? Where are the new big infrastructure projects planned? Where are the good schools out in those areas where people are moving to, where the housing starts, right? Housing brings commercial, commercial brings jobs and jobs bring multifamily. James: Got it. Yeah, it's very interesting to see where is the path of progress and just go and target that where the big fish is not really looking at.  Ivan: And then if you're buying below replacement costs and you're doing it right, you should have a rental range that gives you an economic moat between what a new construction project would have to deliver and would have to charge in rent. So if I'm in an area, like I told you about Greenfield and Indianapolis, I'm in that area and right now my target rental rents are maybe 1150, 1175 target rents after renovation. If I know in that market that somebody wants to come in next door and their rents have to be $1,400- 1,500 a month just to get a shovel in the ground then, I've got a decent defensive asset. So new supply, in many cases for me, isn't as dangerous. It's actually, it can be a good thing. James: Got it. Got it. Yeah, that was my question because in 1990 2000 vintage, sometimes can be competing with a new supplier.  Ivan: Yeah. You really got to make sure your Delta is three, four, five, $600, especially if you're buying A-minus like me. It used to be the difference between A-minus and A-plus was maybe $200 and now in a lot of markets, it's 500, 600, 700, maybe a thousand. And so, if you can figure out where to enter that market and have a large spread between you and new construction, you're much more insulated from A-plus concessions. James: Yeah. Got it. Got it. So apart from getting good loans, because right now, the interest rates are pretty low, apart from the buy itself, you're probably buying at a certain price that you think you can hit the investor target. How do you do value-add? I mean, what do you look for in this 1990s, 2000 vintage that is common. What are the biggest value-adds that you see that is your favorite? Ivan: Oh, that's none of your business. James: Come on, man, reveal the secret. I have to work hard on 1980s, 1970 probably. I want to go to 1990. What are the things, apart from the price, apart from the loan? Ivan: Well, listen, I'll give you a nugget. James: Yeah, you can give a few. Ivan: A lot of operators are spending way too much freaking money on unit improvements. James: Okay. Ivan: Okay. And so because we're vertically integrated because we're property managers and we know everything going on on the front lines, in the trenches, we know where we're going to get an ROI. We know that maybe granite countertops don't get us the ROI but really nice Formica does. We know that a yoga studio...in redoing a 90s fitness center with new equipment and a little yoga studio, it's going to get us a much better ROI than stainless steel appliances, for instance. So it's just knowing your market, it's knowing really the ROI on those improvements and how they impact rent and it's different everywhere you go. It's not like you can just take what I say, go do it anywhere. You have to know in that market what works. James: So is it by doing market surveys where you look for, I mean, in terms of...? Ivan: Well, remember we don't have to survey the market here because we are in the market. We manage the properties. We have leasing agents all over the Midwest that are giving us instant, realtime feedback, right? James: Yeah. Yeah. Ivan: But with that said, we shop our competition. So, because we control our management company and we're part of the apartment association, it's a very tight family in the apartment industry and we really hire from within most of the time because it's such a specialized job. And so, my team can call anybody on any apartment project anywhere in the Midwest and say, hey, it's Cat from Band. Can I shop you today? And they do the same to us and we all trade information on what's working and what's not. And that's really one of the really cool things about property managers, we help each other, right? James: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it is a very small... Ivan: No here is what we do: We shop ourselves, we secret shop ourselves. We're very upfront with our competition. When one leasing agents calling my competitor and saying, Hey, can we trade what's working, what's not? What are you guys renting for? But then we secret shop our own people and they get scored on how they do by outside sales consultants. James: So, you talk about two things. One is the amenity where certain amenities are desirable, where you can raise rents because it's more desirable. The second thing you talk about is the efficiency within the pipeline of property management. Ivan: Listen, nobody uses the gym but it still sells people on renting. James: Yeah, I know. It's crazy, right? I mean, right now I'm being more cautious about what I spend on a gym because I know people may not use it. So I know there's a gym…  Ivan: Yeah but it's the wow factor, James. Oh, you've got a yoga studio. Maybe I'll do yoga now. I've been meaning to do yoga. The year goes by, I never did any yoga but I rented from that guy, James. James: And I see my property managers using the gym, not my residents. That's okay, you need everybody to be healthy.  Ivan:  #culture. James: So let's talk about amenities. How do you decide on which amenities are more attractive? Ivan: It's all a functional market. And, again, it depends on what marketplace that we're talking about. So we're looking,  we will redo pool furniture. Bark park is an easy one to put in if it's not already there, we're typically redoing the gym. A lot of times we're redoing the clubhouse with new paint, new furniture, maybe a couple of computers. Again, things that sometimes we will never use, but just to give that wow factor when they come in to be able to close them on living there. James: So do you increase, like, I mean, you'd be mentioned in the beginning, $100-150 per door just by adding amenities and better management, I guess. Ivan: Yeah. It doesn't always work out that well and usually that 150 is coming from multiple areas. We're raising certain fees so maybe the owner hasn't raised pet fees or water fees since they bought the property. I get bad reviews on my website because we raised water fees to market, you know, but that's just part of it. It'll come from organic rent increases, which is where we're just raising the rent on turn. And then it comes from quick cosmetic improvements to the units, on turn as well. Paint, countertops maybe new cabinet hardware. We rarely ever take out the cabinets. Maybe new switch plates, maybe some new flooring in the kitchen and bath. Very light improvements. James: So among the things that you mentioned just now, what do you think is the most valuable improvements that is the biggest bang for the buck that all your residents love? Ivan: Yes. James: Which one? You've mentioned like five or six, which ones? Ivan: I've given you more nuggets that I should, man. I feel exposed to you. I feel like I got to tell you these things, but no, no. I'm like, keep this to myself. You know, it depends. Sometimes it's organic, right? We bought a couple assets where it was a big company. They own 5,000 units, but they still ran it like a mom and pop and they were like 20 years old and they never raised rents. If people don't move out, they don't renew them and increase them; we do. Another property, it was the amenity package that really started getting more income in other properties. So it's all those things and it's property by property, which one's going to move the needle the most. But typically you need all those components to get into that target rent. That 125, 150, 175, it's going to help you achieve your target returns over the whole period. James: Got it. Got it. So yeah, that's very interesting. So let's go back to whatever you mentioned just now to the demand of the property, which are the residents. Do you think the residents in this 1990s vintage, 2000 year apartment residence is harder than class C, 1960, 1970 residence. How did you manage? Was it more maintenance? Ivan: In some ways, it's less maintenance but in other ways, the tenants can also be the residents. We don't call them tenants anymore, James; the residents. James: Yes, exactly. Ivan: The residents can be more demanding, have higher expectations. See you've got to have the right people there that are used to managing that particular product with the income of the residents that live there. So yeah, some people would misunderstand and thinks that A-plus is easier because everything's new and shiny and oftentimes A-plus is extremely management intensive because of the expectations of the residents. So in some ways easier and in some ways not. James: Yeah, someone told me, a regional manager told me that A or A-plus residents are much harder to manage because they have all this ego that they can pay. They expect a lot of things from the property management company and sometimes their delinquency can be high because they say, I can pay next week, you don't have to really come up... Ivan: We find the collections are usually better. James: Okay. Got it. Got it. So let's go to financing. So on top of agency debt you also do hard debt,  right? And why did you choose some of the deals to be under hard loans? Ivan: It's a great way to take a ton of risk off the table. It's a 35-year amortization and it's full and meaning, you can hold that note for 35 years without having to refinance yourself. So you take a lot of risk off the table. The interest rates are somewhat lower, although Fannie and Freddie have gotten very competitive in the last couple of years. It allows you to get an 85% loan to value on after repair value, so you can finance a lot of improvements as well, which is great in some circumstances. So if you want to hold the deal a while, like 10 years or more, HUD can be a good alternative. It's also very compliance heavy. There are audits, there are physical audits of the property, so you really have to know what you're doing.  We like it just simply for risk management. So we have several assets that are HUD. Big myth is that HUD means it's an income subsidized project and that's actually incorrect. HUD finances A, B, C, D assets. Their mandate is to help provide rental housing so it's available to a lot more people. A lot more assets than people may recognize. It's certainly not for everyone, but in certain circumstances, I think it's advantageous. We locked in our last HUD deal November of 2018, a $34 million deal. Locked in with HUD, our all in note rate is 313. James: And I remember November 2008, the interest for agency debt was pretty high cause I did lock in some deals at that time and I think that was, I think, November, December is when it picked up and it came down again. Ivan: Yeah, it was luck, we were able to catch the bottom of that treasury dip, which helped but it was still lower than the agency. James:  I know HUD like a six months once distribution, where you can take out the money. How do you do distribution to your investors when you have that kind of limitation? Ivan: That's one of the downsides of HUD. You can only distribute every six months. That's why we don't use it very often. It's a different investor profile. Some investors want to be defensive. They want to have their money in something and they want to have leverage but they want to have downside protection. So HUD works really well but it does not provide the same sort of cashflows that agency and Freddie do, which is why we typically use the agencies. For instance, I think I said earlier with our fund, it distributes monthly; I couldn't do that with HUD. James: Got it. Got it. Hey, Ivan, let's go to a personal side of you, right? Why do you do what you do? Ivan: You know, for me, multifamily and growing BAM as a business is a lot of fun. Because the bigger it gets, the more fun I get to have and it's a great business for designing the life I want and designing the business in a way that it's the life I want for myself, my wife, my family. And so I liked the wealth and the freedom with real estate. Yeah, that's the crux of it. James. I've got some big goals and being a good dad and a good husband and a good member of my community and leaving behind the legacy. And for me, owning real estate and owning a business to operate it, is the path. James: Would you do this for another 20 years? Ivan: You know, it's funny, I got to sit down with an older guy on the banking side of our business of multifamily. He took his bank public. I dunno what he's worth, but it's over half a billion dollars. He's probably approaching 70. And he says, Ivan, you don't stop; you just play the game at a higher level. And I can tell you he's having a lot of fun, has a lot of freedom, has a lot of time with the grandkids, travels wherever he wants for as long as he wants, with whomever he wants. So I don't see myself retiring in the traditional way, I want to continue to just play the game at a higher level. James: Yeah, it is so fun to keep on improving things. Ivan: Yeah. And I like to tell young entrepreneurs this and people that are newer to the business, if you're getting bigger and you're not having more fun, you're not doing it right and you need to refocus on your people and your process and so that you can scale it. Because none of us can just keep working harder. It's unsustainable. James: Correct. Yeah. That's one of the challenges that we are having and we are trying to grow and you know, it's becoming harder to find that process and people especially to replace what we do. And we have set an expectation on how things should be done, but not everybody is gonna work like what we do. Ivan: The first coach I hired four years ago, all we focused on was figuring out what my one thing is that if I spend most of my time on that, I will be successful and then finding the right people to do everything else. And then the hardest part is from a guy that started myself and did everything myself, the hardest part but the key is getting out of their way once you hire them. James: That's really hard. And you're right, that is the hardest part. Ivan: I think Tim Sarah(?) said it best. James, he wrote some articles about letting little bad things happen and that's key. Excuse me, I thought I was going to sneeze. Learning to let people make mistakes even when it costs you money and letting them learn and fail forward just like you had to do, it's very freeing. And when you have a management company and you've got fees coming in every month, it becomes a little bit easier to start to let those little bad things happen. Let people fail forward, let them learn and make sure they're not just coming to you for the answers all the time. James: Got it. Got it. Yes. The art of delegation and managing people. So it's just so hard to master, right? Ivan: Well, if you get the right people, there's far less management. You get the right people in the right seats. That's a big part of it. James: Yes. Yes. I agree with you. Let me ask you one more thing. I mean, you started from six units to now, almost 3000 units. So I mean, you have gone through a lot of experiences. Tell me one proud moment that you can never forget that you were really, really proud of yourself. Where you think, Hmm this is something I will never forget in my life, what is that moment in your real estate career? Ivan: Oh, so real estate category? James: Yes. Something related to real estate. Real estate family, I mean, anybody, just a human interaction. What is that one moment where you think that, 'I'm very, very proud that I did this and I can never forget this until the day I die'? Ivan: So it was one of our first bigger deals, it was only 89 units. I think I bought that one after I bought [48:53crosstalk] Yeah, I bought 112. I had already bought 112 units. And so I almost passed on this deal. It was only 89. I'm like, I don't want to do a deal that's only 89 units. And it was in kind of a rough area that we thought was maybe emerging. We kind of looked at each other or like my partner and me, like six months ago, this deal would have been huge for us, why are we turning our nose at this deal? We should do it. And we did the deal, we got it at a good price and people thought we were crazy. And it was a little bit difficult to raise the money. And we bought it from a construction guy that had already done all the heavy lifting on the value. So people thought, right, what's left to do because this guy already improved it physically, but we had the suspicion that we could manage it better. And two years later, we sold it for almost $2 million more than we bought it for, ended up selling it at a two and a half X to our investors in two years, a little over two years. And that was my first like really big home run. And I remember thinking, gosh, we almost didn't even do this deal. James: Yeah. So what did you guys do in that deal to make that much money since it's already done..? Ivan: We got a much better manager in place. We got a really good maintenance guy in there and of course, we asset managed them and we were able to raise rents, we got occupancies up. We reworked the utility bill back to make more revenue there. So the cap rate on that one didn't compress all that much on the sale. It wasn't just like the market went up. We just got in there and turned around the NOI because this guy was really good at making all these physical improvements and he was a terrible manager. And so we got all that straightened out and a couple of years later, had a big win to show for it. James: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I remember my third deal was like, everything's done, well, I was trying to find out what's wrong with this deal and it was a smaller deal from what I used to do, trying to really analyze what's wrong. Something is wrong but it ran in and out of contract like five times and the seller was really frustrated, so he wanted someone to close it so that's where I came in at that time. So Ivan, why don't you tell our listeners how to find you, how to get hold of you or your company? Ivan: I'm all over the internet. The easiest way to find me and my team is probably Ivan barratt.com. B A R R A T T If you Google Ivan Barratt, you can find ivanbarratt.com. Barratt Asset Management. Ivan Barratt Education, which is a site I put together for accredited investors, but they all cross-pollinate. So you find one, you'll find them all. I'm all over LinkedIn. Okay. And then if you want to talk, 317 762 2625 James: Is that your cell? Ivan: That is my scheduler to get you on the phone with me.  James: That's going to be, I was surprised. It sounds like a cell phone, but it's not. Awesome, Ivan, thanks for coming over. Hope you enjoyed it. Ivan: I had so much fun, man.   James: I learned so much from you and I'm super happy to know you and thanks for coming in and add value. Ivan: Yeah, I'm sorry to miss you in New Orleans. I can't make it. I'll see you at the next one, dude. I always enjoy our conversations and I gave my banker a ton of crap, thanks to you. I appreciate that. James: Oh yeah, absolutely. I gave you that tip.  Ivan: Oh, yeah. James: All right, so thank you.

Episode transcript:PAUL SANTIAGO: Thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it, Renee.RENEE DALO: I'm so happy to be here. This is going to be great. PS: How long have we known each other? We've known each other--RD: For so long.PS: Yeah, but it's just from a distance all the time.RD: We're at the same networking events all the time.PS: Yeah, we just never get to chat, so this perfect for me.RD: Yeah, we never have a sit-down.PS: I've always wanted to talk to you, because you're always the most colorful person in the room.RD: Oh, you're so sweet.PS: And always catches my attention. RD: I love that, thank you.PS: So yeah, of course. And thank you for being here, really appreciate it. Before we start, I would love it if you tell the listeners and the viewers something about yourself that they would probably be surprised to know. RD: So I have been to every state in the contiguous US at least once, if not twice. Because when I was younger, I was a musical theater actor, and so I toured the country in a bunch of shows. So I've literally been everywhere except for Hawaii now. But I can't really tell you where anything is, because all I've ever seen is the inside of the tour van and the inside of the theater. So super well traveled, minimally.PS: Nice. But you've tried to hit the touristy spots of every--RD: Yeah. When we were in Memphis, we didn't have time to go to Graceland. I've driven by the sign that says "Grand Canyon" four times. This is just life on the road. You're always off to do another show and you're always off to do something else. So I always joke with my husband that eventually I'm going to make him get an RV and show me all the things I missed in my twenties. Even though I was right there, it's just we couldn't go.PS: We've always thought about renting an RV, but me and Stella, my wife, we're not really outdoorsy people.RD: Oh yeah, no, I'm not an RV person. I'm a Four Seasons person. I'm a room service, down comforter person for sure. Stella and I are the same, I think, in that, and you as well. But something about, I just feel like getting an RV and seeing the country is the way you do that particular thing.PS: Yeah, it's easier. And it's probably the most American thing you could ever do, going around the country, right?RD: Yeah, I agree, yeah.PS: And it always confuses me, because I always felt like the most American thing you could do is just hop on a plane and just fly and travel. But no, it's just getting into the nitty gritty, and do it like Walter White.RD: I don't think we're going to make any meth.PS: Okay, hopefully not.RD: That's next level, I'm not going to do that particular thing.PS: Okay, so I'm always curious about how people start out, and I really want to know what your origin story is. How you started, and what got you into this industry. And also, what you're up to right now.RD: Sure, so how did I go from being a musical theater actress to a wedding planner? So when you're an actor, especially in New York City, a lot of times you're working hospitality as a side job, and that was very true for me. I worked in a lot of fine dining restaurants in New York City. And then when I moved to LA, decided didn't really want to do musicals anymore, kind of didn't want to live out of a suitcase anymore. That life, really, it was great while it was, but then I was approaching 30 years old, and I thought, "I kind of want to lay down some roots somewhere." And I thought LA would be as good a place as any. So I got a job in hospitality. I opened a restaurant, which is one of the restaurants at The Grove, which is a big outdoor mall here. It was a big deal to open this place, they built it from scratch. And I was part of that opening crew. And in the time that I worked there, I went from hostess to waiter to bartender to banquet server, banquet captain, banquet manager. And so what ended up happening is that I was running the banquet rooms at this restaurant, they were six rooms, and I was one of the people that ran them. And I ended up doing a lot of weddings that way, because it wasn't a luxury venue by any stretch, but people would have weddings there, and they would always give them to me because, "Oh, Renee can do the weddings, she's good at that, she's good at the weddings." At the same time, that was in my season of life where all of my friends were getting married. So I planned a lot of weddings as a hobby right around that same time, because they were like, "Well, you're doing it at work, and you seem good at this. Can you help me?" So what ended up being-- I planned my best friend's wedding 12 years ago with $7000, like no money whatsoever, like nothing. What ended up happening is that people who were at that wedding, or people who knew my friend would say, "Oh." I would get random emails from people that were like, "Oh, can you help me plan my wedding? I was at this wedding," or, "I heard you do this." And so I created a business before I even realized what I was doing, because I was getting emails and referrals from people that I didn't know. I remember one time, I got an email from this girl who said, "Jeanette sent me to you." And I was like, "Who the hell's Jeanette? I don't know this person." So I realized that I liked it, and I was good at it, and people were coming to me for it, and so I probably should do it. And then it was a few years after that that I really started my business now, which is Moxie Bright Events. So it took me a few years to get really clear that it's a business that you could run and make a living. But I've been doing it for so long at that point, that it seemed silly that I wasn't doing it professionally. But that's what I did. After I got married, my own wedding planner, because I got married in Philadelphia, said to me, "I don't understand why you're not a wedding planner in Los Angeles." And I was like, "Well, there's so many." And she was like, "So who cares?" And it was that weird-- sometimes you just need that one person to say the one right thing to you. And it's so simple, but having Erin say to me, "Who cares? Just go do it. It doesn't matter if other people are doing it too." I was like, "Oh, you're right." So yeah, it sounds silly, but it kind of just happened.PS: Yeah, all you need is that one person to push you. And fortunately for us, it's someone close to us, so it's easier to be like, "Oh, okay, I'll give it a shot." Because they know you already.RD: Yeah. She said, "You needed me less than any client I've ever had. I don't know why you don't do this professionally." And I was like, "Oh, I don't know." But again, this brings me back to what we're talking about today, is I had a lot of limiting beliefs about myself and about this work, and I had to work through those in order to be able to do this at the level that I'm doing it now.PS: It's funny, because when you said your friend got married for $7000, which is pretty much nothing.RD: Nothing.PS: Stella and I got married, our budget was $6000.RD: I love that. Well, how long ago was it though?PS: I have to answer this correctly. It was 10 years ago.RD: Yeah, see? My friend was 12 years ago. So back then, you could make something of that a little bit, a little bit more than you can today.PS: Well, it was bare bones. We got married in a church, and our reception was at an Indian restaurant, an Indian buffet, which is $10 per person or something like that.RD: Oh yeah. This wedding that I did for $7000 was in a photography studio. The power went out, because I didn't know enough to check the power. So when we plugged in all the lights and the DJ plugged in, all the power went out. And the DJ came up to me during the ceremony and whispered in my ear, "Do you want to have lights, or do you want to have music?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" And he's like, "We have a power outage." And I just started crying, because I was like, "I don't know." Now, I would check the power. But it was so bare bones, minimal, minimal everything. We had a craft services caterer do dinner, it was crafty. It's so funny.PS: Those things make you really, really stronger when it comes to accepting challenges as soon as you start out. How do you feel about that? When you start out your business, should you take more risks when you start up? Or should you take more risks when you're a little bit more confident?RD: I think we should always be taking risks. I think if you own a business, I believe that inherently, you are a risk taker. I just think entrepreneurs have to have that little bit of-- we have a little bit of crazy up in our brains where we think, "I'm going to try this." And I think that if you are someone who really loves safety, maybe owning a business is not for you, because there's not a lot of safety happening all the time. I think at the beginning, you've got to throw yourself into the fire. Honestly, at this point, I tell my clients or potential clients, there's nothing that rattles me. Your venue, God forbid, could burn down around us and I'm still not going to yell. Nothing gets to me, I've seen it. But the only reason I can say that is because I had a wedding where the power went out my very first wedding. So once you've lived through it and nothing bad happens, you figure it out, nothing can rattle you. But at the beginning, I think, just starting is a risk, right? So calculated risks, of course. Smart risks, hopefully. But you've got to take risks, there's no way around it, I think.PS: Yeah, because once you take risks, I guess your senses are sharper, you're more aware of what's happening around you. For us, when we started out, we had our first fist fight in a wedding on our third wedding, and it was the groom and his groomsman in the bathroom. RD: Of course it was.PS: Yeah. So after 10 years of doing this, after nine years of doing this, I'd be like, I know exactly what to do and how to handle a fist fight, or prevent someone from-- yeah.RD: Oh man. Courage is a muscle. Everyone thinks courage is some value that, oh, this person is courageous, they're brave. That's just a muscle. If you never exercise it, it's going to atrophy just like anything else. So jumping into that fist fight, or knowing enough to not jump into that fist fight, that's the things you learn on the job. There's no other way to learn this job, I think. PS: And I feel like for people who are starting out, well, at least for me, when I was starting out, I didn't really have anyone to ask, or have anyone to mentor me about these things, what to expect. So I feel like when you're starting out also, make sure that you approach the people who have been longer in the industry, just so they could give you tips. Because I feel like people want to see other people succeed, at least the good business owners, right?RD: Oh yeah. And I think too, the climate is so different now. When I was starting, yes, I did have support, I did have a mentor, I had some really good friends. But there wasn't all the podcasts and the blogs and the education, the online education. There's so many other ways to get knowledge nowadays. Yeah, find a mentor, and then really listen to them. Intern with someone and follow them around, soak it up, don't just take it for granted. Because sometimes the best business people aren't necessarily the best educators, but they still have a lot to share. But you just have to be the person that's super aware of them and what they're doing and how they are presenting themselves in the world.PS: I love that, I love that, because that's actually my main problem right now. I know a lot about business, but I guess I don't know how to say it or how to ask people online. If I'm in a Facebook group, I ask them about something, and they react differently, and then I reread it, I'm like, "Oh crap, I said it wrong," or something like that. Now my question is since we're already talking about this, and you've been saying that you tell your clients, "Nothing can faze me, the building would be burning down." So the way you say stuff, I feel like it's really important, right? So our topic for today is the power of language in your business. So why does the language really matter in our business? RD: I think it's two things. So one, obviously we're using language all day long. I used to call this the power of words in your business, because I think words gets it down to the base level, right? Because we're communicating all day long, we're communicating when we talk to each other, but especially via email, and especially on our websites, there's words everywhere, right? So we have to choose them carefully. And what I know about modern life, because I know, and I do it myself, is that I try to be super casual and approachable and friendly. But oftentimes, what that means, especially for women listening, it means that we sometimes use a lot of unintentional subconscious limiting language, right? And what I mean by that is if you're ever talking to someone, just about anything in life, and you say something that's kind of a bummer, or you say something not great, and they go, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry." And it's a weird phrase, right? That we use. We use "I'm sorry" a lot for things that we have no control over, nothing to do with, no jurisdiction over. We just say "oh, I'm sorry" as a way to express empathy, right? But it's a weird phrase, because you're taking responsibility for something that isn't yours. And it's just one of the many ways. If you ever answer a client email, how many times, just off the top of your head, have you answered a client email with, "Oh, so sorry, sorry for getting back to you so late."PS: We don't say sorry, we say "apology". We apologize. RD: Yeah, which is great. When I first started talking about this, I went through my Gmail, my business account is a Gmail for business account. In there, you can search your mail, and I searched the word "sorry" just to see what would come up. And it was hundreds of emails, hundreds of times I had said. And in most of the time, it was like, "Sorry for not getting back to you within an hour." I was apologizing for something that was ridiculous. "So sorry it took me a minute to research this." What? No, that's my job. So the language we use matters, because we are subconsciously giving our clients and other vendors and everyone we talk to, we're letting them see who we are through the words we use. And if we're starting with "sorry, I'm so sorry", it already puts you in a position subconsciously, their trust is eroding in you, right? They're thinking, "Oh, this person, they didn't get back to me? Oh, they think they were late getting back to me?" It's these little things, it's super micro, but it's the reason I always want to talk about it, because I think so many of these little tiny things that we do, when you add them up, end up really coloring how someone else looks at you, how they view you. And if we can make these tiny changes, then over time, it's going to have the most impact, because it'll start just becoming the way you talk. Like you said, we don't use "sorry", we say "apologies". That is a different thing, those two words mean very different things when you're taking them in as the person who they're being said to.PS: So it's so funny, because I use "I'm sorry" a lot when I email, right? And I know this person who's a grammar Nazi. Stella, my wife. RD: I'm a grammar Nazi, too. PS: So she's like, "Never say you're sorry. Always say apologize, apologies." My goal is, since English is our second language, I want people to know that we know how to speak proper English. No offense to the Californians, but California English, there's California English. Water is "waa-d'r" here. So there's a thing. And it took me three years to adapt to the California English, because I wanted to make sure that, at least in my head, it's a little bit more flawless, and eliminate my accent just so I could blend in a little bit more. But just heading towards the proper English, which is British English, I don't know, without the accent, just the correct pronunciation.RD: Right. I'm from New York City, so my actual accent is ridiculous, you would laugh. The accent I was born with is crazy. And I do the same thing, I work very hard on not sounding like I'm from any particular place.PS: So I think me too, my Filipino accent is wow, once you hear it, you're like, "Oh, wow." So that's the thing. I feel like heading towards the proper English would benefit your business as well, you as a person. Because now, more than ever, social media has evolved into this thing where people spend a little bit of their time with, now it's just everywhere. People, when they're not doing anything, once they're on their phone, you know they're on social media.RD: Oh, for sure.PS: And the way they talk reflects their personality now. RD: Have you ever gotten an email from a vendor or from a client where they're using text talk? Where it's like, "C-Y-A," and you're like, "C-Y-A? Cya. See ya. Okay, got it." Honestly, me, Renee, when I get language like that, I always think, oh, this person must not be very smart. That is just where I go to. And so consider, if you're listening, and you're someone who emails in text speak, maybe that's how you're being perceived, right? We all have these predispositions to how we think of someone when we hear them talk or when we read what they write. So I love that you said you're really trying to go with the correct English, because you want people to take you seriously. You want people to know that you're smart and you're capable, and so therefore that translates to you in proper English. For me, what I want to communicate with my emails and my language in general is that I'm capable and that I'm in charge, right? Because I'm a wedding planner. So for me, my emails can't be too soft, because otherwise I don't think I'm sending the right message. One of my clients left me a review last week. Can I cuss?PS: Sure, yeah.RD: She said in the review, "Renee is a badass." And I honestly walked around all proud all day that I was like, "I'm a badass." Because as a wedding planner, I am the captain of the ship, right? So my emails have to come from a place of authority. So if I'm sending emails that are like, "I just wanted you to read this timeline. I don't know, I think that they think that maybe we should do it this way, but I don't know, what do you think?" And just like, "Let me know when you get it," and then like, "Just no big deal, whenever you have a sec." If I sent emails in that tone, no one would ever respect me or take me seriously or listen to me. So my emails, my communication, has to be pretty clear and direct, and dare I say, almost masculine. And I don't use a lot of phrases like "I think". At least I try not to. I know I say that more when I'm speaking, I say, "Oh, I think da da da." But I hardly ever say "actually, I think", because that also makes it sound like I'm surprised by my own thoughts. "Oh, I had a thought, actually. Get ready, I had a thought, guys." I try not to say the phrase "does that make sense?" Because what I have found with "does that make sense" is, especially when it's a client email, right? So a client will email me 12 questions in a row, right? Which is pretty typical for me. And I'll answer every single question. And if at the end, I say "does that make sense", and I read this in a book and it stuck with me, so "does that make sense", it's saying two things. It's saying to the person you're communicating to, "Are you smart enough to understand what I've just said?" Which is insulting, right? Or, "Am I so crazy nuts that I can't communicate properly what I'm trying to get across to you?" So I have now really tried to get rid of "does that make sense". Instead, what I say is, "Look forward your thoughts on this." Or simply, "Thoughts?" Question mark. What are your thoughts on the things I just explained? Right? Because we have to be really clear on what we want people to take away from the interactions that they're having with us, right? I know that I in the past had tended to overexplain something, feel weird about it, and then say, "Oh, that was too much of an explanation, I know, but hopefully it made sense." Well, if you don't think you're making sense, rewrite the email. Just rewrite the email. We don't need all of the fancy rigmarole. But I do think with social media, like you said, I think we're moving toward a place with our language, just as a culture, where we're super getting super casual. PS: Super casual.RD: And I don't know that I hate it, I definitely don't hate it. But I also wonder, I don't know, on some people's Instagrams, like Jenna Kutcher for example. Do you follow Jenna?PS: Yes.RD: Jenna writes these really beautiful captions to her Instagram pictures. And they're frequently paragraphs, right? And they're like a little mini blog post, and she's always really expressive. And I think that is her authentic voice, I don't think someone else is writing that for her. I think that's how she feels, what she wants to communicate that day. But I also can sense that some other accounts who follow, and the reason I mention her is because she's a huge account. Some other accounts that I also follow who are smaller, who are looking to others maybe for guidance, are using that same sort of authentic speak as, quote, unquote, air quotes "authentic speak", and I wonder if it is authentic to them. Because I think we all have our own voice. I know when I write something that sounds like me, it gets better responses from people, people can hear it in my voice. I think if we're all moving toward this casual social media authentic-y speak, that it's all going to sound like the same voice.PS: So before we move forward, let me go back to when you said "does that make sense", that phrase. Is there a deeper impact when you email it, as opposed to saying it to someone's face? Or is it--? Okay.RD: Yeah, I think so. I think the words that we write have a lot more weight than we give it credit for. Because 99% of the time, my communication with my clients is email. And that's the way I run my business. So I'm not dying to jump on the phone with people. Which is funny, because I'm a podcaster, and you would think that I love talking. And I do, but something about getting my workday interrupted with a phone call is really off-putting to me, I just want to get my work done. So more often than not, I'm emailing. I feel like if you say it in person, if you say "does that make sense" in person, that you're possibly reacting off a visual cue, right? If someone's looking at you like I'm looking at you now, obviously it doesn't make sense. They're telling you with their face, "I am confused." So it's easy to say, "Does that make sense? What part should I go back over?" But if your emailing "does that make sense", you have no visual cue. What you're hoping is they've read the email and you haven't confused them, but you don't need to say it in that way. "Does that make sense" is a really triggering thing for me. When I read that a while ago, I was like, "Oh my God, I do that." The other one is the word "just". "I'm just a wedding planner." How many times have you heard someone say that, when you say, "What do you do?" "Oh, I'm just a DJ. I'm just a..."PS: Yeah.RD: It's so damaging.PS: It is. It's very like you're not really proud of what you're doing. Some people, when they say that, they actually mean it. So that's okay, right? Whenever he says, "I'm just a doctor." No?RD: Can you imagine? "I'm just a doctor?" Have you ever? I believe this is a systematic problem with the wedding industry, because I know for a fact within the world of events, weddings are sort of looked down upon as not as serious, not as lucrative, not as whatever. Which I think is a bunch of BS. but I know that in the wedding indistry, because I talk to so many other vendors, I think we all suffer from a little bit of impostor syndrome. And I think that's where that comes out, right? When you're talking to someone, and they say, "Oh, I'm just a blah blah blah," I'm always the idiot in the group who is like, "You are not just anything. You are amazing."PS: Oh, good for you.RD: I've been calling it out, right? To be like, "How dare you say that about yourself?" But I think when we feel self-conscious, when we feel not enough, when we have the impostor syndrome, it comes out in these little ways. PS: So here's my struggle going back to "does that make sense". Because the first time I heard that, I'm like, "Is this person mocking me? Do they think that I'm an idiot?"RD: Exactly.PS: And then I realize that everyone is using it, because I'm trying to mold my California English. And I've been using it for quite a while. And so I was actually talking to one of my guys, we were at a shoot, and I was trying to explain it to him, what we're going to do. Instead of me saying, "Does that make sense?" I asked him, "Okay, do you understand what I said?" Is there a difference? Because with "do you understand what I said", I actually wanted to make sure that he understands, because we're parting ways, and he's going to reception, I'm going to the-- is there a difference?RD: I would probably, in the future, say, "Do you have any questions for me?" Because it's more open-ended and it gives them more agency to participate, right? Because "does that make sense" is yes or no. "Do you understand what I said" is yes or no.PS: And then he never understood.RD: He didn't. See? "Do you have any questions?"PS: Okay.RD: And oftentimes, especially when I'm dealing with my assistants and stuff, if it is something that is different, unusual, anything out of the normal, I will say, "Repeat it back to me." Because I'd rather have them take ownership of it, even if it's wrong, right? Even if what they're repeating back to me isn't right. And then I can go, "No, that part's not right," and sort of help them and educate them in that moment. Because I think we can be asking better questions, I know we can all be asking better questions of people. But I think "does that make sense" needs to be fully retired, just get it right out of there.PS: Yeah, there's a lot of words, phrases that shouldn't be used, coming from me observing.RD: What else do you think? What else shouldn't be used?PS: Man, right off the top of my head. I'll think of something. But there's a bunch of words that irritate me when someone says it, then I'm like, "You're not using it right." Because we came here 2008, so I was 28 years old when we came here.RD: Oh, I did not know that.PS: Yeah, so that's why I spent three years talking to people on Yelp, the telemarketers, I would just talk to them on the phone. Stella said, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "I'm trying to practice my English."RD: Oh, I love that.PS: So I was just trying to convince them that I'm from here. So, okay.RD: That makes me so happy, I love that. PS: So now here's another struggle of mine. My authentic language, the way I talk to people, is different from my business language. Because we came from Filipino to English to California English, and now California English, we kind of need to dial it down a little bit more, because we're trying to cater to, I guess the higher end market, who doesn't talk like that. So my question is what's the difference between using authentic language, as opposed to speaking or writing off the cuff?RD: I love this. So oftentimes on social media, I will see fellow wedding vendors who I know wrote a caption off the top of their head. And the reason I always know it is because they frequently assume that the reader understands where they're coming from, understands the wavelength that they're already on. So sometimes the off-the-cuff ones sort of tend to start in the middle of a thought, or I'll read it and go, what are they talking about? I remember, this is a a while ago, someone posted a photo, it was a candid photo of a fire pit, right? But the caption said, "This place would be great for a rehearsal dinner." But it was a fire pit. And I stared at it for a few minutes and I was like, what is happening? It was geotagged with a location, so in theory the person posting wanted to communicate that this location would be great for a rehearsal dinner because of this cozy fire pit. But what we needed as the reader was the whole thought. We needed you to start us at A and end at Z. "One of the things my clients always ask me for is a cozy spot for their rehearsal dinner where people can really gather around and talk. And this restaurant, with this cozy fire pit, has that for you," right? So that's the way, you have to sort of connect all the dots for people. When we write something off the cuff, especially Instagram captions, I think sometimes people think, "Oh, when I see this image, it makes me think of the following thing that I'm going to put in this off-the-cuff caption." And then you read it and you're like, "I have no idea what they're talking about." Because we're not in your brain. You have to draw the full picture for people, you have to connect all of it together. But you still have to do it in your authentic voice in a way that doesn't seem so business-y. Because I'm sure you follow those more business-minded accounts that are like very stilted language and everything sounds like business, and you're like, "Well, that's no fun," right? So on social media, what the people want to see is the person behind the brand, so they want to hear from you and Stella. They don't want the voice of "Boffo Video does good video." So it's a really specific new skill set that we all have to have because it's part of our businesses now.PS: I've tried so hard to stop saying "I can't". Those things, it's so hard, because you see it on social media. And I have to be honest, if I were to just speak my authentic language, I probably wouldn't even post anything, because I'm too lazy. But I have to. So whenever I'm on social media, the first five posts I scroll through, I absorb the way they speak, and that's what I just type.RD: One of the things I think we can all be doing for our businesses is really drill down how your business sounds, right? How your business, what your business cares about. So for Moxie Bright, which is my wedding planning business, we really care about hospitality, we really care about taking care of guests, we really care about those moments at a wedding that you can't even predict that are going to happen, that are going to be awesome. So a lot of times when I post something on my Instagram, I'm calling out those moments, right? I'm calling out that moment of amazing service or I'm calling out this moment of friendship between the bride and her bridal tribe. I am specifically angling because it's coming from my head, my viewpoint, what's important to me, right? So I'm always putting it through that lens. I feel like if someone else were to look at the same images on my Instagram, they'd probably come up with a million different captions, because of what's happening in their brain, what's important to them, and what goes through their lens. When I'm doing posts for my education brand, for my online courses and stuff, that's a completely different language, because I'm talking to different people, I'm talking to other wedding planners, I'm talking to them about making more money, about being better at their jobs. It's a completely different audience, and it has to be a completely different language. Now for me, right now those are on the same account, right? So you can literally look through my Instagram and think, "Oh, here she's talking to clients, here she's talking to other wedding pros." But for instance, I call my students rockstars. So if you're a student in one of my classes, I'm going to address you as, "Hey, rockstar," no matter what. I don't know how it started, it felt right and I went with it, and now it's a thing. And I think to that, you have to honor that too, what feels right? I'm definitely not someone who's hashtag blessed, right? You're not going to see that on my account, it's just not my thing. You're more likely to see an F-bomb on my account with a (makes explosion sound) emoji.PS: Yeah, that's the thing. I guess it's just so hard to come up with an original idea, I mean an original text, in such a short span of time. Because I feel like people who post on social media, at least the ones who are really good at it, schedule everything.RD: Oh yeah.PS: And I suck at it, because you know what I'm really good at scheduling? Podcasts. Everything else, I suck at.RD: See? There you go. Scheduling is much easier, because then you're not having to come up with a caption on the fly. I use Planoly, and I schedule at least two weeks out if I can. I took a social media break this year, I didn't post at all for the month of June. I just wasn't feeling it. And I was like, "I'm not going to force myself. The world's not going to end if I don't put up a square every day." And I didn't do it. And then I got back to it when it was time. And then I was able to be like, "Okay, let's write some fresh captions." For me, I don't stress so much about the caption. It could be because my background, I have a background as a writer as well. But I look at the picture and I go, "What is this? Oh, okay." Sometimes it's so simple. I think my post today was a wedding bouquet from two years ago, and I think I wrote, "Never tired of this gorgeous bouquet from Shindig Chic." That's it, because it doesn't always have to change the world. Sometimes it's just appreciation for this beautiful thing. And that's okay, too. You don't have to write the mini blog posts that Jenna Kutcher is writing. By the way, Jenna Kutcher is writing those from a sales language perspective. She's writing those to convert. She's selling things. Even if you don't think she's selling anything on that post, girl's still selling something, because she's got an entire empire full of things to sell. So if what you're doing as a service provider is wanting to get people to contact you, right? Wanting someone to like you enough to reach out. Then all you really have to worry about is talking to the right people, being your true self, and hopefully the right people will be attracted to you. Because you're not trying to sell a course or preset filter. She's got a ton of products.PS: Oh yeah. And she's really good at posting something and asking, "How's your day going?" And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, she's talking to me."RD: And at the end, you're like, "I think I need her podcast course." And you don't know what happened. You don't know how it happened. She's very persuasive.PS: She's really good at that.RD: That's a whole other language. We don't need that. If that's not your goal, that's not what you need. You just need to be putting things out there that are authentically you. I post a lot of photos of food on my Moxie Bright account, because I love food, my clients love food. And I've had people say to me, "You post a lot of food." I'm like, "Uh huh, okay, thanks for noticing." What, am I not supposed to post the things I like? I'm going to post what I like.PS: Yeah, it speaks to your followers, it speaks to your tribe.RD: Yeah, but I also like it. If my followers decided suddenly they liked, I don't know, what's something I don't like? Country music. I don't really love country music. But if they were super into it, I still wouldn't be posting it. Because I'm just like, "Not my thing," right? I can't talk about something I don't know anything about. I feel bad now that I said I don't like country music. I like some country music, you guys.PS: To be honest, when I started editing wedding videos here, and some of the clients, it was like, "Oh, we want Brad Paisley." Before the whole copyright thing, I fell in love with country music.RD: Did you?PS: Yes, but I'm not deep into it. I'm kind of like you. I appreciate country music.RD: I like all the girl singers. So if there's a girl singer, like Martina McBride, I'm into her, love her. Faith Hill, love her. Any girl who can sing, I'm in. But no, the guys, I don't know anything about.PS: Okay. I'm the reverse. Well, you know what? I know Shania Twain. Because I'm Filipino, so we sing a lot. So now my question for you now is, since we were talking about "I can't" or "slay, girl" or whatever. Because for me, on Instagram, it's me who's talking. Stella, she sucks at social media, she doesn't want to do that, because she hates being on social media, so I do all of the captions and stuff. So when there's, "Oh, wow" or something like that that's weird, it's never going to be her, it's just always me.RD: I love it.PS: My question is how can we stop using limiting language in our business and life? How do I get to stop?RD: Well, I think first, you have to have the awareness that you're even doing it. So a lot of times after I talk about this topic, I've presented this at conferences and stuff, I'll get emails months later from someone who's like, "I was at your talk, and I went through my email, and oh my God, I've been saying 'sorry' and 'just', and I've been doing it all." And I'm like, "Yeah girl, you got to figure it out." You have to first understand that it's happening, right? There are some, especially when you're writing, there are some tools. So if you use Google Chrome, which you should all be using, because I love it, there is a plugin. The name of the plugin is called Just Not Sorry, which is great. And it literally will underline for you in your emails if you're using any word that is a limiting language word. But the other thing that's fun too is that sometimes you actually are apologizing for something, and sometimes you're like, "Oh, so sorry, this email got missed" or whatever, it'll still underline it. It doesn't necessarily understand the context. But it will tell you, "Hey, are you sure you want to use the word 'just' here?" "Just" is a big one. "Just" is the one that people go, "I don't use that," and then weeks later they say, "Oh my God, yes I do, it's everywhere." Of course it's everywhere. Because it's our culture, right? It's in our vernacular to use these words that make us sound soft and approachable and agreeable and easygoing like everyone wants to be, especially in California, super chill all the time. And I get it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has a place in your business. Because you have to understand, you have to determine and figure out for yourself how you want to be perceived, right? Because a lot of times, I'll talk to, especially groups of women, and I hate to keep saying that, but as a woman, it's a big deal for me. And they'll say, "Well, I don't really have control over how I'm perceived." Absolutely false. You 100% have control over how you're perceived. You can script that for yourself. You can make that happen for yourself. But first you have to have the awareness of it. So one, awareness. Two, tools like Google Chrome plugin. Three, start noticing it in other people, too. And it might make you less liked for a minute to be like, "You just said," call out your friend, be like, "I thought we weren't doing that anymore." Because it's pervasive, it's everywhere, and so it isn't just a quick fix, it is an ongoing thing. The other thing that I did for my assistant and for anyone who's in my inbox is I have a little, small document of "these are words we don't use". This is language Moxie Bright does not use, right? And even in my interactions with my clients on their wedding day, in my employee handbook, there is a list of things we don't say. So if someone were to come up to one of my assistants, a guest on the day of the wedding, and ask them a question, and if they don't know the answer, they're not allowed to say, "I don't know." What they're supposed to say is, "Let me find out." And that's the biggest example I can always give. It's taking that negative "I don't know" and turning it into something open and curious and positive, which was, "Let me find out. I'll go find out for you," right? So that person is then taking ownership of whatever the situation is. They are coming to someone else who might know more, finding out the answer. Saying "I don't know" is closing a door. That's like what you said, we don't want to say "I can't", right? I can't. Well, maybe you can't right now because you don't have the right information, right? So what do you say instead of "I can't"? Are you retraining yourself to think a new thing?PS: Well, the "I can't" that I'm talking about is the RuPaul Drag Race "I can't".RD: Oh.PS: Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. But if we're talking about the "I can't" that you're talking about, I usually say, "I'll see what I can do."RD: Yeah, I'll see what I can do, exactly. Perfect, it's perfect.PS: "I can't." RD: I need to watch RuPaul's, I haven't watched RuPaul's Drag Race yet. But it's come up a lot lately, and so I feel like the universe is telling me to watch it.PS: Oh, they have a really, really extensive vocabulary of all the really fun phrases that people use.RD: Someone referenced a death drop to me the other day, and I was like, "I don't know what a death drop is." And then I Googled it, it was like, "Oh, that looks painful."PS: Yeah. I've seen comments that say "typing from heaven because I'm dead right now" or something like that, because the thing is so beautiful. So now I really want to ask you about this, because that kind of language attracts a certain kind of tribe, a certain kind of group, right?RD: Totally.PS: If I want to charge more and target the more luxurious market, should I continue saying that? If I were someone who does that.RD: I think if it's authentic, you should.PS: Okay.RD: I think in our industry, we have a really effed up thing about luxury, I believe. Every luxury client I've ever had has not come to me from social media. They have come from 100% personal referral from someone who's a friend of theirs. There's a little tight-knit Beverly Hills group that I work with all the time. Some clients, I've done all of their events, and then they refer me to their best friends, and that's how it works. Those people never read my reviews. They don't care. They want a personal referral, and they want you to show up and be professional. I think this marketing to luxury market doesn't really work. I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but I think be your authentic self. Listen, if you are-- let's just say I start watching RuPaul's Drag Race, and I feel compelled to post about it, I'm probably going to use that language because it's fun, right? It doesn't mean that that's who I am as a human every day of the year, and I have to say "slay" on all my posts, right? But I think it's fun to let people in to see who you are a little more. I'm a huge fan of the Canadian sitcom Schitt's Creek, which everyone, have to watch it immediately if you have not watched it. So lately, all of my Insta stories have had GIFs of the character David Rose making faces, and I've never explained it, I've never said, "I'm a huge fan, and so this speaks to me now." I'm just doing it. And I've got people message me on Instagram, "Oh my God, you watch that show, too?" I'm like, "Yeah, of course I do." But it's a way to let people in authentically without having to have a big deal about it. I'm sure the moment will pass in a few months, I'll be moved on to some other show, it's fine. But it's like you have to be able to play. And if you want to use "slay" one day, then you slay. But as far as a luxury market, I don't think they're looking for anything specific. I think they're looking for people who are really good at their job, who their friends have already worked with.PS: Okay. I was thinking about that.RD: I don't know how to tell you to break in. Everyone's like, "How did you get that first Beverly Hills client?" I'm like, "Through her yoga teacher." Through her private fancy yoga teacher. So you just don't know.PS: So let me know what you think, too. Because I feel like as long as you're authentic, social media caters to, especially if you want to target higher paying clients, right? Social media caters to the people around you. And if the vendors who know these luxury market clients like your personality, then it's an easier sell, right?RD: Absolutely.PS: Instead of targeting the luxury people.RD: Yeah. Think of it this way. It's like dating, right? If you want to impress someone, you put your best foot forward. So this is a different example, but I'll use it anyway. My friend who is the private yoga teacher, she works with very high-end clients. Russell Crowe used to be a client of hers. She used to go to his home and teach him yoga. And one day he was looking for a masseuse. And she texted me and said, "Who do we know who'd be good for Russell to get a massage?" Right? Because it has to be the right person. At that level, when you're talking about that person, that level of celebrity, that level of luxury, it can't just be the person we saw on Instagram who we think might be cool. It has to be the right person. When we went through a list of people that we knew, and she was like, "No, that girl drives a-- no, that girl's bad, she'll talk too much," or, "Oh no, that guy has a weird energy," right? There's nothing you can do at that point. You just have to be who you are, and you'll be right for someone. And it's the same with your language. You just have to talk the way you talk authentically in full complete thoughts ideally on social, and the right people will be attracted to you. And you know what? The other cool thing is you'll repel the wrong people. I think we spend a lot of time worrying about who we're attracting, but sometimes I'm like, "Who am I unattracting? Who am I sending away?" Good for that too, right? Because just in using not only limiting language, but inclusive language, right? If you're only posting the same kind of couple all the time, right? Perhaps you're sending a message that you're not open to working with everyone. Same thing with your language. If you're only ever talking about brides and grooms, brides and grooms, brides and grooms, you're leaving out a whole other section of people who are getting married.PS: So it's pretty much just curating. When it comes to business, you just make sure you curate. Be yourself, but you curate.RD: Yeah. Curate inasmuch as you feel comfortable curating. I'm certainly not someone who wants, you see those Instagram accounts of "everything's pink and white". And you're like, "How are you doing that? That's so much effort." I'm not about that life, I don't have that kind of time. But definitely curating your words is so important to me, because I know that none of us are spending enough time thinking about it. We're all just going off the cuff and saying what we think, and saying what we feel, and writing what we feel. And in the end, we're ending up too much in our feelings, and too much in our apologies, and too much in our self-doubt, and not enough standing in our power with our words, and really, intentionally communicating clearly and effectively and efficiently and with authority, what we mean.PS: Okay. I like that, because I feel like social media has changed the way. Before, when we started out, the "about us" page is the only page that tells about you. Now, social media. In the "about us" page, you're like, "I like riding horses and eating hamburgers." Now everything is out there.RD: It's true.PS: People are addicted that they can't stop just shooting out information about themselves, that I feel like when it comes to curating, when we talk about curating, at least for me, I feel like curating is cleaning up. You invite someone to go to your house, and the first thing, once they open the door and see your living room, you're like, "Shit, there's so much stuff on the floor and I need to clean up." So curating is kind of like that. Just make sure that when people Google you, they see a really nice-looking-- doesn't have to be perfect, but just clean. RD: Yeah. I love that you said, too, about the curating. I feel like when we say the word "curating", people are automatically like, "Ew, I don't want to." But what I hear in what you're saying, obviously correct me if this is incorrect, is that you feel like there is a fine line between sharing who you authentically are and who you want to work with, and the kind of work you want to put out there. And then there's people who really overshare, right? And they're telling you, or the people who go on Insta story and Insta story their entire day every day, they're living in some weird reality show that they've made for themselves, where this is their breakfast, and then they're walking the dog, and then they're answering emails, and then they're getting a haircut. And it's like whoa, hold on. What I like to think of for these things, because I'm certainly not someone who wants to Insta story my entire life. I was an actor, I got that amount of attention back in the day, I'm good. I always think if I want to share something that seems kind of tricky or seems kind of maybe challenging, or I don't know. I just always think, is this thing that I'm sharing, is it something that is a wound, an open wound, or is it a scar? Have I learned something from it, right? If it's like a client cancelled their wedding, and we're in the thick of cancelling it, and emotions are high, I'm certainly not going to go on Insta story and be like, "Here's how to cancel your wedding." No, there is a time and a place, right? You have to talk about that once the moment has passed, when it is a scar. The people who overshare, the people who do that thing where you're like, "That is aggressively TMI, I don't need to know all that," I think they're operating from a different place where they're not. And that's what I think we mean by curating. Come at it from a place of what is it that I want to share and teach and educate, or just simply communicate about, and not from a place of, "This just happened, and I'm gonna sound off on it," right? PS: Yeah. So I was talking to a social media expert, I was talking to someone, and we were talking about-- because when I post something on social media, especially the stories, because I always believe that Instagram feed has to be clean, that's about your company. And your stories is where you get dirty. And by dirty, I don't mean sending--RD: Yeah, you can play a little fast and loose with the stories.PS: Yeah, but then when I post something on stories, I just go about my day, right? I take photos of a tree or, "Oh, I'm going to this restaurant." But I never post until the next day. Because I want it to be purposeful. "Oh my gosh, that experience at the restaurant is the highlight of my day," and that's the only thing I'm going to post. So I feel like people need to learn to step back, because the pressure of posting something right now is just tremendous that it's not really healthy anymore.RD: I agree.PS: And I feel like I should have one episode, podcast episode about mental health, because it's just so draining. Especially for me, because I'm not really a very public kind of guy. If I had a choice, I'd probably not post anything. But the pressure of trying to put something out there, yeah.RD: Yeah, I agree with you. Posting while you're in the moment of something takes you out of the moment. You're no longer in the moment, you're now looking at it from a distance, going, "How are people going to react? Oh, what should I say about this moment?" Just be in the moment, man, just post later. I tend not to post when I'm at networking events like the ones you and I have gone to for so many years together, because I don't want people know where I am. There is a weird part of me that is like, "If someone were to follow me around, they could, if I were posting in real time." And I know that sounds very paranoid, but that's just how we are, that's how I am today.PS: I actually saw and read an article, oh, I think it was online, a forum, and I started implementing it. When we go on vacation, I wait two days before I post something. Because we're on our way back, and we just started our vacation online, just so no one's going to know that oh, their house is empty, no one's in the house, stuff like that. It's me being paranoid.RD: But then again, these are all things we have to think about when we're talking about our businesses and our social media. It's such a different world now than when we started.PS: Yeah. So now my question for you is, if I want to change my copy, my language, how do I go about that for my business?RD: So first, I think you have to drill down what your core values are as a business. Mine are online, you can look at my core values on Moxie Bright, on the website, on the "about me" page. But I think once you have those core values, even if you don't publish them, even if you just write them down for yourself, right? Then make sure that all your language points to that. For me, I always want my language to be really uplifting, outgoing. I don't like passive voice. So if you don't know that means, not you, but if your listeners don't know what that means, active voice is like, "I am eating a sandwich." Passive voice is "I am going to eat a sandwich", right? I always want to be in the active voice. I want all my copy, all my Instagram captions, even if I'm talking about something that happened in the past, I still want my reaction to it, my comment on the image, to be in active voice, because it's important to me. It's one of the things, one of my pet peeves. Even when I listen to podcasts, when people say, "We're going to talk about blah blah blah." Just talk about it. You're already here, we're in it, just do it, right? That's just my impatient New Yorker, I think, coming out. But so that's something that's important to me. It's important to me to not use limiting language. It's important to me to communicate in a voice that allows people to easily feel comfortable with me being in charge. Because again, that speaks to what I'm doing for a living. If I were someone in a more creative primarily field, maybe if I were an interior designer, or maybe if I were a photographer, maybe my language would be a little more creative, a little more flowery, because you want to communicate that I have that sort of creative spirit. I'm not so concerned with that for what I'm doing currently. I more just want to be seen as an authority. Because it helps my clients trust me, and then it automatically takes out so many problems in the long run, because they're like, "Oh, Renee's got this," right? Because all of my language and my demeanor speaks to that. So that's what important to me. It doesn't have to be important to other people. But that's one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about this topic, is that I find it so prevalent in our industry. I've been at so many networking events standing next to someone, and someone says, "What do you do?" And they go, "I'm just a wedding planner." And it makes all my skin crawl right off, right? I'm like, "You're not just anything. You're a business person, you're a CEO, you're the president of your company, you're the founder, you're the creative force behind your company." We're so much more than the titles we give ourselves. Because everyone wants to be modest and humble. And I get it, you don't want to be a jerk. But also, you have to own your shit, you have to own your own expertise. Because as a business owner, nobody's going to give that to you, right? No outside force is going to come in and say, "Paul, you're the CEO now." And you're going to go, "Oh my God, am I? I made it." It's like, "No, we're making it ourselves," right? So it might sound arrogant sometimes, and you don't have to say it all the time, but you have to believe it. You have to believe that you are the CEO, whatever inflated title you think is too much, you have to behave as though that's true. PS: I love that, because for us, we've been doing this for nine years, our business has been existing for nine years. And we've never seen ourselves as the owners, right? So for the nine years, we've been just slaving away, making sure that we have work for everyone and blah blah blah. But then, just one moment, we were talking to our friends, and they're like, "You're the CEO, you have to do CEO shit. You can't just do secretary stuff, just hire a secretary. Do owner stuff." And the way that you say that to yourself, it makes you feel more empowered. People who say that they're just wedding planners, and they go to conventions, you're not just the wedding planner, you're already at a convention, that means you're serious. This is a real, real business. So yeah, people have to own up to--RD: Yeah.PS: Yeah. I love that.RD: You have to change your mindset, and you have to learn. It's going to sound so woo-woo, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but I believe it. You have to vibrate at a higher frequency for stuff like that. You just have to let yourself be up here unapologetically. And because, listen, at the end of the day, our businesses are our babies, and we are solely in charge of them. So if something in your business isn't working, it's our responsibility to fix it. And sometimes, it literally just is-- the mindset is off. Your mindset isn't working in your favor, right? And but again, this mindset is pervasive, it comes out in our language. So when I hear someone say, "I'm just a wedding planner," I'm thinking, oh, what's going on with them, right? Do they not have a supportive spouse, maybe? Maybe their spouse is saying, "Well, this little thing you're doing is just for now." Maybe they are not natural leaders. Maybe they have to work on their leadership for their team. Maybe they just have to change their mindset around money, right? We didn't even get around the topic of language around money, but it's the same deal. It's learning to control the language that you have around all of these things. Because once you start acknowledging it and changing it, then it becomes second nature, and you don't have to say to yourself, "Oh, I said 'just' again." Right? Now, when I say "just", I think, oh, did I say it? As opposed to I'm always saying it, and I'm training myself out of it.PS: Yeah, I love that. So my last questions, it's plural because-- it's actually just one question.RD: Okay.PS: So it's basically what language should you use for rejection when you feel like the couple doesn't really fit with you? For example, I saw last night, I saw online, someone asked, "So what do I tell the couple if I see a lot of red flags?" Before they sign, how do I talk to them and say "eh"? RD: I, in the past, have said-- well, first of all, I don't give anyone any sort of pricing or any information until I've spoken to them. And I firmly believe that that is the way everyone should be doing this, because what we do is so personal that it's really hard. It'd be hard for me to send out a price sheet and have someone be like, "I choose you." You'll be like, "Wait a minute, who are you? What is even your deal? I don't know if I want to work with you." So first, we have a conversation. And if I see a lot of red flags, oftentimes I won't send them a proposal. What I'll send instead is an email that I think I have in my canned email that's letting them down easy. And I just say, "It's been really lovely speaking with you and getting to know you. Based on what you told me in our conversation, I don't think that I'm the right fit for you." And I don't necessarily give them reasons, right? Because it doesn't matter, because they're not going to change. Or more accurately, nothing that they can say at that point will change my mind that I don't want to work with them, right? So I had a client, or not a client, but a potential client, many years ago, describe herself as a bridezilla six times during the consult. And she would say it and then laugh, like haha, like it was the funniest thing. I never laughed, I was just taking notes. And she didn't have her fiance on the call. She never even told me his name. She never referenced him, like "my fiance Joe". She just said "my fiance" as if that were his name. By the end, I said, "I'm sorry, you never gave me his name." And she goes, "I didn't?" And I said, "No." She was, "That's funny," and then went into something else. And I was like, it just was clearly not for me. So I wrote her an email and I said, "It was really lovely getting to know you. Based on our conversation, I don't think I'm the right fit for you. Here's who I'd recommend for you." And I always send at least two referrals to people that I really genuinely think could handle that situation, right? That I think they'd be a better fit for. And I don't necessarily feel the need to overly explain myself. In that particular case, she did write back and asked why. And I said, "One of the things I love as a wedding planner is working equally with both halves of the couple, no matter what that couple looks like. And because your fiance wasn't on the call and didn't seem very present in the proceedings, I just know that it's ultimately not going to be a good fit for me." And I never heard from her again. So I think when you're strong in your convictions and you know your core values, and you know the people you want to work with, it's much easier to say no to the ones you don't. But I also don't think we need to be writing diary entries about how much we don't want to work with them. I think that's when it pays to be super almost masculine in your responses, just like it's a hard line, right? Because the other thing you can say is like, "I don't think we'd be a good fit because you said something about being a bridezilla." And then she'd be like, "Well, I was just kidding," and blah blah blah.PS: That's it.RD: Then you're opening it up for more drama. It's a no.PS: Okay.RD: It's hard though, hard to do that.PS: It's super hard. I feel like the person who posted that online, he was just afraid to piss him off or break their heart.RD: Yeah, of course, you don't want to be a bad person. And also, not all of us are in a position to say no to the money. But then again, once you have a bad client that you've taken for money, you always realize that's bad money. You don't want that money anyway.PS: I think it's good that people have us, people like us to tell them that it's money now, but it's going to be a headache in a few months.RD: I feel like everyone has to do it once, and then they go, "Oh yeah, that was bad." Yeah, that was bad.PS: Okay, so the last one, the very last one, because I said language for rejection, right?RD: Yes.PS: What language-- how do you say-- how do you deal with a really livid couple when you did something wrong? Or you didn't do anything wrong, and they're super mad, how do you talk to them?RD: So I always try to figure out where they're coming from. Oftentimes, it is not about us, and the hardest thing as a business owner is to not take things personally. Weddings are emotional, right? A lot of times, we are getting the brunt of something that happened with someone else. And I know as a wedding planner especially, so many times I'll get an email that's like, "We're behind and da da da da, and this and that." And I have to read it and go okay, this person feels panicked, because they think something's not happening that should. I always deal with the facts first. I take the emotion right out of it. In fact, sometimes I actually ignore the emotion, right? Especially if they're coming at me hot, I'm just like, "Okay, what are the facts here? The facts are this person feels scared, this person thinks that A, B and C was not done. That is incorrect, A, B and C is done, here's the proof of when it was done. What else can I help you with?" I always try to move it forward, especially because my clients, or some other brides or grooms or whomever, tend to get a little worked up. Sometimes I always tend to just go okay, don't take it emotionally. Sometimes you got to close the email, walk around the house a little bit, walk around your office, burn it off, come back and be like, okay, what are they really saying, right? Because it's hard when someone's like, "You didn't do something." If they're pointing fingers, "You're bad at your job." And they might not have said that, but that's the tone, right? It's hard to divorce yourself from that and be like, "Okay, well, that's their opinion. Let's deal with the facts." And listen, if you didn't do something that needed to get done, or there was a misstep, of course apologize, absolutely apologize. And oftentimes, what I try to do is I make it right and then apologize. Fix it before you even-- fix it, just whatever it is, fix it. And then go back and say, "You know what? You're right, that did not get done, but it is done now, and here is the outcome." Because basically, all those emails are, all those communications are, is them throwing up a flare going, "Oh my God, something's really bad, we have to fix it." And so your job is to just fix it. Just fix it, fix it first. The other thing with communication, and you didn't ask this, but I'll just say it now. So many times, our clients are frustrated with us because they don't know what we're doing. And oftentimes it's eas

Finally, after months of searching my local lounges, CIGRco sent me a Fratello Bianco! I've been looking for this cigar since discovering the Fratello brand in Q1 of 2019, so when I pulled it out of the CIGRco August box, I was super excited!The Fratello Bianco III, which is a robusto, is wrapped in a dark Mexican San Andres wrapper. The cold draw has flavors of light, semi-sweet chocolate. The cigar is easy to light, and the draw is fantastic.Fratello Navetta Review: https://www.cigarscore.com/review-fratello-navetta/Fratello Navetta Inverso Review: https://www.cigarscore.com/cigar-review-fratello-navetta-inverso-toro/CigarScore Merch!: https://click.cigarscore.com/merchytUse coupon code  CIGARSCORETV  to get 15% OFF!Brand: FratelloLine: Bianco, RobustoSize: 5 x 56Cut: GuillotineLight: TorchPrice: $9Wrapper: Mexican San AndresBinder: Dominican RepublicFiller: Nicaragua, Peru, United States Pennsylvania BroadleafBuy this Cigar: https://click.cigarscore.com/fs-frtlo-biancoFinal Thoughts:When I started the Fratello Bianco III, I had medium-high expectations. I'd smoked several Fratellos by this point and I loved both the Fratello Navetta and the Fratello Navetta Inverso, so I hoped the Bianco would deliver the delicious goods.And it did! The Fratello Bianco III is a great cigar, and I think it's a satisfactory replacement for the higher-priced options I just mentioned. Although it's not as premium, it does cost about 25% less. This cigar had a great draw and a decent burn. With each puff, I could get plenty of flavorful smoke.Because I'd smoke this cigar again and I'd recommend you check it out, the Fratello Bianco III robusto earns a CigarScore 5.#CigarScoreTV #CIGRco:::::Find & Rate Where to Smoke Cigarsat https://www.cigarscore.com:::::Where I buy my cigars: https://click.cigarscore.com/famoussmokePremium Cigar Samplers: https://click.cigarscore.com/fs-premiumsamplers:::::Get CigarScore Emails - https://www.cigarscore.com/subscribe::::: Gear I Use To Make Videos :::::Main camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon80dMain lens: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon18125mmMusic: https://www.cigarscore.com/musicLapel mic: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-movolv1Sturdy tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-tripodTravel camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canong7xiiHandheld tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-manfrottoShotgun Mic: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-videomicproCrazy-Cam: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-hero5Ultra-wide lens: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon1018mmMy close-up, headshot lens: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon50mmGrippy tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-gorillapod:::::SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cigarscoreTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/cigarscoreInstagram: https://Instagram.com/cigarscore:::::AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER: Hey, so, some of the links in my videos and descriptions are affiliate links. But, I only recommend products/services I use and love myself =) More details here - https://www.cigarscore.com/ads-and-affiliate-disclaimer-disclosure/

One of the first things I noticed about the Espinosa Comfortably Numb #1 was that its label was backward, or upside down. While most cigar labels read left to right (with the foot being on the right), this one requires you to flip the cigar over.After cutting and lighting the cigar, the flavors were smooth and rich, and the draw offered no challenges. At about the halfway point of the cigar, I started noticing hints of cinnamon and toasted bread.Brand: Espinosa CigarsLine: Comfortably NumbSize: 6 x 52Cut: Guillotine Punch V-CutLight: TorchPrice: $8Wrapper: Ecuadorian HabanoBinder: Unknown, CorojoFiller: NicaraguaSmoke Time: 76 minutesShop This Brand – https://click.cigarscore.com/fs-espinosacigarsCigarScore Merch!: https://click.cigarscore.com/merchytUse coupon code  CIGARSCORETV  to get 15% off your entire purchase!Final Thoughts:After enjoying the Espinosa Comfortably Numb #1 for just over an hour, I have to say, this cigar is pretty good. There's not a lot to criticize about this stick.The price is right, the burn was mostly even, and the draw was perfect through the entire smoke.Because I'd smoke this cigar again and I'd recommend it to you, the Espinosa Comfortably Numb #1 earns a CigarScore 4.#CigarScoreTV #CIGRco #GoodCigarCo:::::Find & Rate Where to Smoke Cigarsat https://www.cigarscore.com:::::Where I buy my cigars: https://click.cigarscore.com/famoussmokePremium Cigar Samplers: https://click.cigarscore.com/fs-premiumsamplers:::::Subscribe to my YouTube Channel! - https://click.cigarscore.com/subscribeonyoutube::::: Gear I Used or Mentioned in This Video :::::Main camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon80dMain lens: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon18125mmMusic: https://www.cigarscore.com/musicLapel mic: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-movolv1Sturdy tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-tripodTravel camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canong7xiiHandheld tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-manfrotto:::::SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cigarscoreTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/cigarscoreInstagram: https://Instagram.com/cigarscore:::::AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER: Hey, so, some of the links in my videos and descriptions are affiliate links. But, I only recommend products/services I use and love myself =) More details here - https://www.cigarscore.com/ads-and-affiliate-disclaimer-disclosure/

Penny & Sparrow is a folk music duo from Austin, TX. On their tour through Louisville, Andy Baxter and Kyle Jahnke, the talented guys behind the band, stopped by for a few bourbon pours. We talk about life on the road, their musical creation process, and how their fans give them bourbon at shows. You can catch their latest album, Finch, wherever you stream your music. Show Partners: * Barrell Craft Spirits is always trying to push the envelope of blending whiskey in America. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. * Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. * Distillery 291 is an award winning, small batch whiskey distillery located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Learn more at Distillery291.com. Show Notes: * Pappy Map retires: http://bourbonr.com/blog/pappy-van-winkle-release-map-retires/ * This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about the holidays. * How did you all get into music and start the band? * Where does your inspiration come from? * What is your craziest moment with a fan? * How did you get into bourbon hunting? * What bourbon got you hooked? * How does the band work when you live in different states? * Who is the messy one? * What's it like on the road? * What do you listen to on the road? * Have you been on the Bourbon Trail? * Where do you go when bourbon hunting? * Do you ever get free bourbon? * How did fans discover your were into bourbon? * What does it mean to you when someone says your music has changed their life? * Where did the name Penny & Sparrow come from? * Was there a moment where you felt like you made it? * Tell us about your latest album, Finch. 0:00 We like to call ourselves rose a rock occasionally was a rock yeah sleep folk sleep. Good music to procreate to Yeah. Yeah, these are the things that we call Yeah, we discover music as like nobody's working out to Penny and Sparrow like, at least to the best of our knowledge nobody's getting a good pump while they listen to your workout as a stroll. 0:32 Welcome back, everybody. It is Episode 228 of bourbon pursuit. I'm Kenny. And here's the news. The dates for the Kentucky bourbon festival 2020 have been announced. It will take place on September 16 through September 20 of 2020. The festival which draws novice and experienced bourbon lovers to Bardstown, Kentucky every year will celebrate the storied history of distilling America's native spirit during National bourbon Heritage Month. Tickets for the Kentucky bourbon 1:00 festival will be made available for purchase during the summer so make sure you continue to visit Kentucky bourbon festival at KY bourbon festival.com. To stay up to date on all the latest festival happenings and developments. Now for some pursuit series news Episode 15 is now hitting retail shelves across the state of Kentucky. If you're interested in getting a bottle, pay attention because here's the small list of stores that our distributor gave us so you can go out and find your own. Westport whiskey and wine, the party source go big blue liquors depths, fine wine, Ernie spirits bind pig bourbon market, the brown hotel and the brown barrel. We appreciate all the support for going out there and buying a bottle and we hope to bring more here in the future as well. Now it's a sad day in the bourbon world is Blake from bourbon or calm is announced that he's retiring his Pappy release map. It's something that many people around the country including myself used over the years to kind of know when Pappy was gonna be hitting in my state. And Blake he puts it all out there. 2:00 His latest article, that it's time to stop because there's a rare chance that you will ever get it. And if you do, the odds are you are not going to be paying MSRP. He also kind of throws a quick jab in there saying that Sazerac rock really isn't doing anything to prevent counterfeits, nor are they doing anything to stop stores or distributors from playing this game. And you can read more about this in this article within our show notes. Now for today's podcast, I met Andy and Kyle the guys that are behind the band, Penny and Sparrow for the first time back at the 2019 for castle Music Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. I won't ruin the beginning of the podcast for you. But besides being great musicians, and also being incredibly funny, these guys are also really into bourbon. And I'm going to anticipate that after you listen to the stories that these two have to tell about their life on the road, their creation process, and of course, their love for bourbon. You're gonna become a fan as well. Now, it's time for Joe to tell us a little bit about barrel 3:00 spirits. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 3:05 Hi, this is Joe from barrell craft spirits. We're always trying to push the envelope of blending whiskey in America. Find out more at barrel bourbon.com. 3:15 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char. We're coming up on the holidays. What a wonderful time of year you have your family and your friends together. And you crack open the cork. You pour a little bourbon in your glass, you sip by the fire. It's so magical. It's so wonderful. I absolutely love the holidays. But here's the here's the kicker of it all, is that it is not easy to buy bourbon for people anymore. For God's sakes, I'm trying to figure out what to get some of my friends who I always get bourbon and they get everything already. So here's my recommendations for 4:00 Want to buy your friends who are bourbon fans? Come down to Kentucky or find someone who's in Kentucky and buy private barrel selections. I mean truly, and honestly, those are the best possible gifts that you can get because they are unique. They are unique to that particular store. And if you don't know what a private barrel selection is, it's when a liquor store or a club goes to the distillery and they actually select a barrel of bourbon that is bottled specifically for them. You'll see their sticker on it and then when you give that as a gift to somebody, you can tell them you know, that's one of only 75 or 200 bottles of that bourbon it when that bottles gone, you'll never have any of it again. And in fact, you don't have to go to Kentucky you'll find that whether it's a total wine or a local liquor store in your market or a big chain like Kroger, you'll find that there are excellent private barrel selections there. Just walk up to the cash register and say hey, you have any private 5:00 barrel pics. And if they look at you like you're crazy, you know you're in the wrong store. So hopefully by now if you're listening to this podcast, you've already found your bourbon store. And if you don't have your bourbon store, just ask us in the comments where you should be shopping. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram, hey, even my YouTube, just search my name Fred Minnick. Until next week. Cheers. 5:32 Welcome back to that episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon. Kenny here today just in the basement recording studio, but this is going to be an opportunity that we rarely get. I mean, it's an opportunity where we are trying to find new guests that are able to bring a new dynamic to the podcast. You know, we've had WWE superstars on before and today we're going to have a music artist on that. me you've maybe heard of and if not, you're going to learn more about them too. 6:00 Day. But I want to tell a quick story of how we all kind of got connected here. So, you know, we're starting to get involved with a lot of more music festivals, and, you know, for castle, bourbon and beyond, and so on and so forth. And when you do that, you get put on a media list. And with the media list, you kind of get spammed with a lot of band managers and PR people. And it's usually pretty generic. Sometimes it'll say like, hey, and then they'll be like a variable that says, like dollar sign, insert name here. And it says, like, you got to meet these people. They're great. You can see you can see him on stage at this time. And let me know if you want a chance to have them on your podcast or have them on, you know, maybe in your newspaper article because they don't really tailor it. It's just, you know, just something generic that goes out. But you know, shout out to Joe, Joe's, the PR manager for Penny and Sparrow. And he sent me a very personalized email and it kind of started off and saying like, Oh, hey, like, Listen, these guys are actually like really into bourbon. And that's kind of what kind of kick this off because usually people's 7:00 You know, you gotta have mon like, okay, sure what are we going to talk about? music that is because if we don't have any shared interest in bourbon, this is going to be a pretty, pretty lame for a bourbon podcast. And so we took an opportunity I said, Yeah, that's that's awesome. Let's go meet these guys so we had an opportunity to sync up at four castle after their set. And we talked and I mean, we talked for probably a solid 30 minutes there and I think we just we there's there's magic I mean, there's there's something was happening right all the all the stars were aligning, and, and we really kicked it off. And these guys are huge bourbon nerds. They're really into it. Plus, they make great music. And so I'm happy to be able to introduce these two guys to the show. So today, we've got Eddie Baxter, and Kyle Yankee. They are the duo behind Penny and Sparrow which has been featured in Rolling Stone and they're also came out with the latest album Finch. So fellas, welcome to the show. Hello. Thank you for having us. Greetings to you constant listener. 7:58 So, you know, I couldn't be 8:00 Usually like talk about bourbon like as we usually go into this like it's because we usually have a master distiller somebody get coming on but you know you guys bring a different dynamic to this so we'll talk about bourbon here in a little bit. I kind of want to learn more about you all like talk about the origins of the band. Maybe talk a little bit more about the type of music y'all do as well because I know it's kind of it's like folk music maybe like iron and wine mixed into it kind of talk about like, where you all get your you know, your vibe and everything. folk music iron line is very, very good. A good comparison. We like to call ourselves rose a rock occasionally was a rock Yeah, sleep folk sleep. That's good music to procreate too. Yeah. Yeah, these are the things that we call Yeah, we describe our music as like nobody's working out to Penny and Sparrow leads to the best of our knowledge. nobody's getting a good pump while they listen unless you enjoy your workout as a stroll. Yeah, cuz that is what we can provide a good stroll soundtrack can do that. We started doing music and 9:00 College because I needed a place to stay. My wife knew this guy and 11 other guys that lived in this huge house. That was basically a shithole frat house. 9:10 By the way, not at all. I'm just letting you know this was that many people in a small space with very little air conditioning is filthy is filthy. So I moved in and Kyle and I pretty quickly found out that we both liked music and both sounded pretty okay when we sang together. And man, the rest as they say sort of history. We just kept plugging along and on a small home rig that his mom and dad got him for Christmas, we recorded our first song with the sheer expressed intent of having music that our kids could someday listen to. And here we are eight years later with no kids. 9:46 That's pretty cool for one day they'll listen to it. Yeah, if we procreate Yeah, they'll be able to hear it. They'll be able to they'll be able to get down on it. But I mean that your all's vibe like what you all do. You know I think I read that you make serious songs, but you're not very serious people. 10:00 All right. And that's kind of like the kind of vibe y'all put. I mean, we were down here talking before we started recording here. And we were just cracking jokes left and right. So kind of talk about the music, like where the inspiration comes from the lyrics, everything like that. Yeah, we that's I mean, what we mainly try to do is write basically autobiographical songs, things that we're working through things that would be cathartic to us. 10:26 But that's usually the more internal stuff, which is great. I mean, we talked about it all the time. It's the the deeper conversations Andy and I have. 10:35 But yeah, I mean, I don't we don't live in that part of our we have, I feel like the majority of what we do is, as humans is just light hearted. Yeah. And I remember years ago, when we started doing this, we started taking ourselves really seriously on the front end, right? Like we were we featured ourselves being serious guys writing heartfelt music with good lyrics and the least on stage. Yeah. 11:00 So we'd show up to these shows, and then we would, you know, barely move an inch and not talk and not laugh in between songs just to try and, you know, sing our ass off. And then I remember my dad talking to us after a show one time and more or less said, Jesus Christ, let him come up for air. I think the point he was getting at was like, Look, this isn't who you are, when you're not onstage like, this is sort of more of a character, you're creating this overly serious, you know, facade. So just do you see like that I didn't raise an overly sensitive son that would happen to all that he definitely raised an overly sensitive side is true, he did do that. But he also raised a sort of a goofball as the his old man. And so for what it's worth, it felt so much more free just to be the same person on stage and off. So the same dumb shit jokes that we make in the van is what you get here on a podcast is what you get on stage and we do a show and that feels really nice. Yeah, I mean, I had the opportunity last night to go and check you guys out on the show because you guys are doing your your nationwide tour right? 12:00 Now and I know it's going to be finished by the time this this wraps up. But it's funny because you all you mean exactly exactly what you just said, right? It's it's serious songs, and then you all bring this different vibe to it where you like you try to bring it up lifting. I mean, at one point, Andy, you're doing this thing of like, All right, let's get the clap. Let's get the beat going. And then you would raise your hands slowly, slowly need said as I raise my hands. I want to see your hands in the air. And then when I make like this musical cue of like, stop, everybody stop. No, I don't want to see repeat. And it'd be great job too. Yeah, really impressive. Yeah. And I think I even told him when I do that, I want you to shut the hell up. Yeah. Which is aggressive to say to a crowd of paying customers who came to see you do a thing, but really, that just point needs to be gotten across. And they do they went into it. It's awesome when people are I mean, maybe it's because it's bourbon country. Everybody was slightly hammered, but they really they bought in which is nice. Yeah. I was about to say how many venues do you go to and there's like four roses posters just blasted everywhere over like Morgan headliners last night. Oh, dude. It's this is a different 13:00 chunk of the country okay like people here get the brown water and they're down with it as are we but I feel like we had three gifted bottles to us last night and they were all good Oh really? Yeah they were all nice we had an eagle rare we had a Woodford double oak forgetting one from a another distillery but we got gifted these bottles and I was like, man, it pays to play in Louisville. Yeah, so good. That's awesome. And yeah, free bourbon is always the best bourbon. It's a great bourbon. Yeah, it tastes better. Yeah, that's what we're down here to we were sitting there sampling from my bar before we started here. We had started with some dusty and I think we got we got Booker's right here is what we're sampling on right now. So that's a fact and constant listener. You should know that. We are in a layer. It's not just a studio, we are in a bourbon layer. There is lighting fixtures made out of barrel hoops. There are thousands of bottles surrounding it thousands. Like if it's a powder keg in here, one errant match and the whole blocks going up in flames. Yeah, we're gonna make sure we don't have a gas leak little bit later. He just 14:00 Right, yeah, positive of that. 14:02 And so, you know, the music is fun and it's interesting and you all are been going and I kind of want to talk a little bit more about, you know, the road and the tour because I'm sure you've got fans. I remember there was one fan last night and I think she tried standing up or waving she was she was on the right side about five rows back and every song she was just going crazy. What's your craziest like fan moment that you've had? That's a good question. I'm really good one you know, Skid Row comes to mind. Yeah, Skid Row probably comes to my most likely that mean Andy with a fan 14:36 who loved our stuff. The the man had a few too many drinks and was kind of shifting between being extremely excited and happy to see us like tears of joy seeing us and telling us how much he loved us to literally almost throwing punches at us. And he had some just Jacqueline 15:00 Hi, I'm going on while we were there, oh, he was a psychopath. And he shall remain nameless. But he went by will actually this is not on his birth certificate. So I think it's safe to say this. He introduced himself as joke. That was his name. Yeah. So rule number one. Yeah. Don't be friends with anybody named john. Sure. Yeah. But junk like Kyle said and met us with tears in his eyes saying I'm so glad we got you here. I'm so glad we got your you're going to show them you're going to show them and saying a lot of nonsensical like the hell does this guy mean? So Kyle, and I basically consoling him. Yeah. While he was meeting us, which was really sweet. Like I took it. We're here. We're here. Thank you. So we're also glad you're here. Thank you for this is a gig, right? Yeah, we can still play. And he then proceeds to, you know, basically ask us a really basic question. Like, you know, how far was a draft day? And he's slurring over himself. And as Kyle goes to answer the question, it was just act it out. Yeah. Let's just do a little role play. Yeah. Okay. We're used to this. Yeah. Okay. You I'll be 16:00 junk UBU Okay, and how how long was draft today? Oh the drive Shut up. fuck up, dude. 16:10 So the important parts of that interaction dude, buddy, buddy that's it. Yeah, I took away that took away that's the most important thing that you could Garner from that story is that he said shut the fuck up dude, buddy. And we have ever since us dude buddy as the perfect you know, hey, screw off they want to call somebody and that was with a fan so I don't really know what to do with that other than Hey, thanks, john I'm glad to exist in this weird world of ours. But no no crying outrage like on stage when you're up there and he was just cool calm and collected in a seat. Oh, no, there's no Well, there were some crying outrages he kept screaming out the phrase make them wonder over and over, which we still to this day are not sure what he meant by that. But we're doing our best still junk. If you're listening to this. We are trying to make them wonder every night every night. I think that's 17:00 That's the new lyric to our new new title though new song is what it's got to be. Yeah, it's totally true meta man named junk in Skid Row. We're going to make them 100 mega one day we are eight years later still making them. 17:13 Oh man, that's fantastic. So I guess we'll we'll kind of shift a little bit and we'll kind of talk about bourbon. So kind of talking about your all story with bourbon like, Where are you introduced to it? How did you kind of get into it? Because you know, Kyle, I know last time we talked it you know, you're part of like the r&d next and we talked you're part of like the the hunting party now like you're searching for bottle bottles and stuff. So I think we both got started, I guess similar in time, our our manager Paul's a big collector of bourbon. And he's got this thing called the steel speakeasy, which is really rad. And he was the one who showed us for the first time like, Hey, here's the really nice stuff. You've had a lot of the shitty stuff. Let's try some really good things. And I'm going to talk you through some of the taste notes, some of the flavor profiles just 18:00 Some of them get you get your feet wet a little bit. And I took to it really fast really enjoy it as this Kyle and for me one of the things that keeps me sane on the road is hunting for two things, where books and bourbon so I'll go to liquor stores just along the highway as I'm driving in the van or used bookstores and it's just really neat once you've been introduced to how big this world is. how big the world of dusty hunting is how big the world of rare bottle hunting is, and raffles are like the secondary market when you get invited into that and you see how crazy it is but also, you know, the community family aspect of people tagging you in a thing because they know you like Booker's 20th anniversary or they know you've always wanted to find the Booker's right bottle and so they tagged you in when they thinks a decent price in the secondary market. This world's huge man. And so once we got our feet wet into it, it was sort of snowballed from there and now, and now I'm a moderate alcoholic, and I really like bourbon a whole lot. That's where it's thermometer. It's good. 18:59 Good lottery 19:00 Good don't go over that that edge right? Yeah, that's all I need to worry about. Do you think like how early on when we were down in the speakeasy were you overwhelmed a bit when we were like down there with 1000 and a half bottles known because you and Paul are my Sherpas? 19:14 You guys tell me everything I need to know about. 19:18 I love that answer. Yeah, thank you. I felt comfortable. calm. You made me wonder down there. That's that's how I wanted your first experience. Be. I was it was I tender and affectionate Ender? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Laughing that's how that's Yes. No, that's how your first time should be tender. Whisper the notes. Yeah, it was a bourbon into my hand and give me a soft, gentle kiss on the cheek. Got It's hot. And I'm glad that I didn't know 24 proof 19:50 tenants. 19:55 Man, we just fell in love with it pretty early on and now it's on the writer every night. 20:01 It feels neat to be able to try local stuff and and go by I love baby distilleries. I've got like this massive affection for seeing someone knowing that the craft took so many years to make, like there are these people who gather buddies together started a small distillery, and all of a sudden, they're like putting juice and barrels, and they have to wait. It's a waiting game, and they hope and their fingers are crossed. And so when good stuff comes out of that, I know that for me, it's inspiring because I know what it's like to crockpot a creative idea and wait for it. And that hoping is part of the thing that you're doing, whether it be making music or making booze like you just have a hope you really desire to make a good thing. You put everything into that you can knowledge know how expertise, advice from other people, and then you sit and you wait and hope. And I have a lot of value for that. Which is one of the things I think I'm drawn to bourbon about and baby distilleries, because I think that that's hard to do. And it's risky as shit, man. Oh, yeah. And that's good. That's cool to me. I love that. Well, Andy, I mean, what 21:00 can talk about more about what was there like one bourbon or anything like that that got you kicked or hooked on it or anything like that. Like there's Oh yeah. So kind of talk about what that what that was. It was Booker's for sure it's my favorite to this day. I mean, the way that I always when people ask us our answers the same we both love Booker's and my usual response depending on who I'm talking to with why I love it so much is a the nostalgic pull of it being the first fancy bottle that someone bought me like the first fancy ish bottle and being blown away by how spicy it was. And I tell them the reason why it's my favorite is it it's a it's a bourbon you can have three ways. It's three Bourbons in one bottle. You that is a totally different flavor profile, if you haven't need versus how you have that with a drop of water swill let it open for a minute versus having a couple cubes in there. I mean, you are literally changing the flavor complexion three totally different ways. And as the ice melts, you're going to get a fourth and fifth and six depending on how long you sip on it. 22:00 So any chameleon bottle like that, that exists I'm fond of, which is normally Why go for the hazmat shit. I'm just a huge fan of high proof stuff like that a chameleon. I like that I don't think I've ever heard that one I'm Can I steal that you can share science yours now I'm gonna go ahead and pour in the ship for me and it's all yours will keep going. 22:19 So, Carl, what about you? I mean, I know he said, You know, he said he'd like Booker's as well. But I mean, was that your first introduction was somebody that said, like here drink this hundred 25 proof stuff. You're gonna love it. So I remember Andy and 2011 when he was like, man, I think I like bourbon. That's, that's great. That's really cool. And at the time, I didn't know too much about it. I just started doing a text message. Really? sweet man. Yeah, thanks, man. Cool personal epiphany. Yeah, enjoy a good Tuesday. And I remember you would you drink. 22:51 Just like all of the standards, just like a makers are bulletin, any of those and you are just learning about them. And I do remember when you got your 23:00 First, your first bottle of the good stuff daddy's first book. Yeah, it was very sweet. isn't good time. But then that was it. I feel like it just came over. And I mean, we at the time, were already spending so much time together that I was part of the whole process. And that's just not like yours like guiding Angel, like the whole thing. I'll continue on Go on. How would you say that I'm your enabler and that I to have made you a moderate alcoholic through this process? Because I'd like for you to not say that. I can't not say that. It's definitely true. Yeah, it's very true. Cool. Yeah, we're in the same spot. Yeah, I feel great about that. Our liver is fine. It's fine. We're young. It's length. And if anything, if anything is Old Ironsides Yeah, there that thing can take. And it's fine. I'm say take a look. And I don't know if I like that. But it's okay. Because you really can you have to look at the end. I'm working on that. But yeah, that's how I just and you is for sure my enabler. Through through all of it. My dad is more of a scotch guy. And so I knew about scotches and then I think Andy's 24:00 My whole family in fact about the bourbon world because my dad now will go and buy anytime he knows we're going to travel through hope by the biggest bottle of bourbon that is possible to buy and will be so excited about it. It looks like a super super soaker tank 24:16 it's literally like I didn't know they made them that big It looks like a novelty inflatable but it's real and it's full of Woodford any acid every fucking time. Yeah, I'm so grateful. 24:26 And it's almost cash by the time you leave. Well, I wouldn't gonna say it but yeah, but yeah, if I had a nickel for every like ambling midnight to 2am walking down the stairs at the young house. I've had that huge daddy bottle I'd have loads of nickels. 24:43 So kind of talk about more your your all's camaraderie because you know you grew up together went to school together in Austin. But you don't live in Austin together anymore? Correct. You guys are separated by a state now. So like that. Yeah, that's my talk. So kind of talk about like how that all works out. 25:00 You know the band The friendship, everything. Yeah. Will you talk about the band? I'll talk about the friendship. Yeah. So as a should we should we start with that? Let's go friendship then you do? Yeah. Okay. So I don't think that friends. In fact, I know this. Friends don't spend as much time around each other. Normally as Kyle and I do. I've lived with Kyle in three different homes, both as a married individual, me, my wifey, his wife and another buddy and his wife all lived in this house in Austin in this communal type setup, where we would be going on the road, and our wives and friends all get to always share meals together. And so we lived in married housing together, we lived on the road in various hotels, we lived in San Antonio and a house together. We have lived together in college so much time has been spent with this human. And over that time, you learn a few things not only about each other, but you learn about how to have interpersonal relationships, but 26:00 Right, like you learn like if I again, the amount of mercy extended and mercy received and hard conversations had and celebrations and things to be more and and births and funerals and everything that we've had as a friend group is so much higher than most people have just out of sheer proximity. We live together we work together, we have slept in the same lucky into bed more times than any friends have ever done before, at least to the best of my knowledge. And when we were recording back in the day, we would sleep on couches, just head to toe unlike one individual couch that that was a fact. Yeah, and we didn't enjoy that. One is not 26:42 to say somebody enjoys 26:44 that somebody is a me. 26:48 Yeah, we just with the sheer amount of time that we spend together I feel like not only is this my best friend, but there's there's something deeper than that. It's something that's close enough to begin and it comes 27:00 Out of hard fought years and time spent, there's no substitute for time spent ever. There's no sub for it. I've spent thousands of hours with this person talking about the scary shit in life, the beautiful things in life. And everything in between. And the end result of that has been something that, like I said, is closer to kin than most things that people will ever have. And closer than brothers, that I know like most people that I know don't even have this relationship with their kin. And that has definitely fed into how we do music. And this is a little bit weird for us to live in a different place. Now. It's the first time in our lives that we live in a different city different state. And granted, we still see each other hundreds of days a year as we toured together, but it's definitely affected the music in a good way but surprising. Which brings me to the next phase, the music kind of what would you say our friendship is when it comes to music and its creation. Well, me and Andy we hate each other. So we have to be separated by at least by at least a two to 300 28:00 jerril Simon and Garfunkel thing, right? Yeah. 28:03 And well So Andy we both moved to Alabama for a season. And Andy fell in love with it. I also loved it but wanted to come home to family were to be back in Texas. So I moved back. And so to record we wanted to stay home just because it's a lot of travel if if we don't. 28:21 And so we've just learned learned how we each have our own little individual studios that we go to we record with our buddy Chris Jacoby in San Antonio. And he goes and records with Chris buffet. We each have our own individual Chris's that we record in their studios. CRISPR get on the phone, right Mike Chris over here, his Chris over there is perfect. And we just do the method. I do a lot of the melody and he does a lot of the lyrics. And 28:48 when it comes time to record, we just do our own individual thing and kind of just mash it all together and see what works and technology allows it. Pretty crazy thing now. Sweet. Not so hard. Yeah. Sweet, sweet. 29:00 Internet. We couldn't stream it. Who knows where to be here, man? What was it I think, who was at the open for you all last night. Caroline Spence, Caroline Spence she had a she had a really funny kind of like opening to one of her songs and saying like, oh, I've got like a couple million downloads on Spotify with this one song. It's amazing that my parents have figured out how to use Spotify 29:21 solid Carolina. 29:24 So who's the messy one between you to me? No, I were both pretty messy. I would say I you're very sweet to say so. I think we can both be tidy when necessary. But I think I would probably get because he's more form and function like he would never asked me to pack up the van. What I do, and I've learned it now I've learned this about myself and it's fine. I am not efficient in a lot of movements. And so I look at Kyle and I'm like, Kyle, if you will please do this for you. Or will you do it and then teach me so that I can now know how to do it your way spatial reasoning I did not score very high. 30:00 On I knew lots of synonyms but I did not know how to put the blocks in the right order so that they would fit neatly into a van he does so I think that would mean that he's cleaner well that's that's like a dad move right you know to pack up a pack up the truck to go down to Myrtle Beach or to Florida or desk whatever it is and you're sitting there playing a game of Jenga with all your luggage I've got that I've got that gene whatever it is in my tool I it's so hot The other day I literally it did happen where you start waving fan and yourself like Oh, it's so nice to have a man around. 30:34 And I would honestly say something like that every time I see impacting man like I'm so proud of you. Amy peg the van the other day and the doors wouldn't shut up. He was like trying feebly trying to shut both of the doors to say Cleveland was not nice, but it was just calling it what it is and painting a picture. Yeah, typecast. Listen, it's here. It's banned. I think I literally pushed you out of the way was like I got this. Just 31:00 I'm out, and then I put it together. Oh my insolence my silliness that I would even tried to back the van but did but in terms of who's cleaner, both of our suitcases explode. That's why I'm entering every single hotel room we enter. That's true. They do so to answer your question, maybe it's a push, but the more organized of the two of us would be Kyle. Yeah, I don't be somebody I'll take her. Yeah, you'll have to look at its object. I'll take it. So when you're on the road, are you are you all constantly talking to each other is like one person napping while somebody else is driving? Or is it you know, you said like, you've talked about everything deep and everything here. So is that is that what does that what driving on the road is like for you also, we, the last four days. Before we got to local, we had four days of six hour drive days each. So within that six hours, there can still be two hours of talking, and a good two hour nap and then two hours of just 32:00 Looking at your phone or whatever else you want to do, or just staring off into the distance Yeah. And that's about what happens each time is just a mix of all of those and whoever is in the driver's seat gets the ox cord and gets to choose what we listening to. 32:15 So you got into on the road got a good system. Well, I mean, it's almost guaranteed. You're going to look at see a few things with Ryan, our tour manager, you're going to get a steady diet of pop divas, you're going to hear lover by Taylor Swift over and over again. Then you're going to hear him switch over to never getting to know Anderson's lover, that whole album on repeat that some Shania Twain and I will never weasel in when Kyle's in the seat recently. It's been a lot of RMB RMB Yeah, yeah, I don't I can't listen to anything but right now, which is just fine some slow moving kind of get you in low juniors. Yeah, that's what I'm looking in this home a little bit as I will always Yeah. Manny, what are you alluding to? I didn't 32:58 just like thank you. 33:00 Yeah, you mean you can make it look at Andy as much as you can, but it's like yeah, after a while you're just like, all right. I miss home a little bit. Yeah. Listen the RMB stuff. I get it, man. It's nice. It does. That's been that's been on the docket for him for a while now. So it'll probably bleed into the next record somehow. Yeah, for me, it's guaranteed I will sit in the front seat. Probably be quiet for like 20 minutes and then put on my Stephen King audiobook more Stephen King podcast. And they will both look at me smirk a little bit and put their headphones 33:32 such as life man such as life. So So I mean, so you're a podcast listener right. So the Stephen King stuff, so you don't you're not a fan of just like listening to whatever's happening. Going around as you're driving then. No, not so much for me. Yeah, I think we're gonna let him have a Stephen King. No, I'm sure he's a beautiful human, Stephen King, and I hope to meet him one day, but please, I I just haven't read his books yet. Now, I'm not a book reader either, but I can listen to a book 34:00 Totally that's like why they invented movies. Like why would you? Why would you read a book? Yeah, we made it past them. Yeah. It's like when you sit down with a book for a month when I can get finished in an hour and a half, and see the problems, my shit on y'all and I don't want a problem here in the zoo, Andy's a fast reader. And so he doesn't get that he can finish a book in a few hours. And that's where he finds enjoyment. And it still I've been reading the same book this whole tour and I think it's like 150 pages. Oh, God, and like it's half and more pictures. Right? Yeah, it's actually it's actually shell Silverstein it's a really good novel. He's gonna love it when he finished it. I could barely finish it goose goose bumps novel anymore, right. So man, choose your own adventure. Yeah, sweet RL Stine. I love you. 34:42 So, you know, kind of shifted a little bit back to bourbon real quick before we start losing listeners talking about this random. 34:49 So, you know, kind of talk about, you know, have you all visited the trail, you know, come into Louisville, Kentucky, like have you been to distilleries like is there something around there that that kind of fascinates you 35:03 As the saying goes, Portland is weird. Perhaps it's something in the water. It turns out that there might be some truth to that. The Oregon capitals primary water source is supplied by the bowl run watershed. It's also the key ingredient in one of the city's most popular watering holes, Bull Run distillery, the boulder and watershed is a very unique water source. It's protected by an act of Congress back in the 1870s. And the city's fathers got their hands on a beautiful lake up in the Cascade Mountains. And it's been that way since the 1870s. It used to flow through wooden pipes by gravity to Portland. 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But I got to see a lot of the stuff behind the scenes in terms of like I didn't know about the ALGEO and orphan barrel stuff and how I was involved with bullet and all that stuff is my first time ever being behind the door. That was my first experience was the bullet one and then I went to Buffalo Trace which sort of like the Cadillac for me. It was lovely. Never seen a brick house never been inside one before. I was the the perfect target for the guy that sits down and watches the video in Buffalo Trace and was just like 37:47 just just full, full geek Boehner and loved it so much and I'm sitting like asking questions of the tour guide I'm that guy. I was. I was really loving it. And like man, I again, if 38:00 I lived nearer to here I do it so much more often because it's such a cool thing man. I know that there are other worlds as big as this in the booze world like I know the the world of smelly A's and wine is huge and if you want to go to you've got favorite vintners and favorite years and all that famous and maybe sometime that'll be a thing that I get into but right now this is like the second most passionate affinity that I have is bourbon and I love that and Stephen King's a good number one to have it is pretty good 38:31 again selfish plug listener out there if you know Stephen please connect him with my people. 38:38 Hey, will you tell me Can you show your Somali a skills with this bourbon with what we're having? Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean, let's put you to the top I 38:48 want the listener to hear what I basically what I go through, but I get to go through Oh, and welcome to Andy's bourbon tasting. This is imagine you're my ear. Yeah. If you switched by normal 39:00 Take the left earphone out, put it back in, but the right one and I'm all around you. What I'm drinking today friend is Booker's right. This is the first fancy bottle I ever bought for myself. My wife was furious. I found it in Texas, or outside of lower Greenville. And here it comes to me via the bourbon pursuit podcast and his willingness to share his nice booze on the nose, a stringent rye smoky, very sour ish In my opinion, which I love very much very much right? But this drinks more like a bourbon very spicy, stays in the back of your throat right above the tongue just lingers there for much longer than it would the burning taste that you'll get with anything high proof and Booker's is always there and always present. But this even though it's Ryan astringent, in my mind still has a sweetness that is not normally present and rye whiskeys for me that I love, which is why I would compare it to a bourbon and that is my tasting note for today. On Booker's right, thank you don't fantastic, slow clap for that. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was nice. 40:00 Right yeah sure head guys into it. I mean, because Booker's ride this was this was one of the most, you know, highly anticipated and allocated releases that came out a few years ago. It's long gone from the market who knows if we're ever going to see something like this again, because this was a batch of ride that actually Booker know put down, right? I mean, this was this was something that happened a long time ago. But what was it that kind of got you into the kind of the hunting scene Andy like what got you into trying to find where bottles or anything like that? I think it was the first time that Paul described to me how few of these get made and the stories behind him like you just alluded to the fact that if I remember right, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but Booker Booker know when he was there, and like his latter years, this was the only project that outlasted in terms of his actual life. This is post mortem released. Absolutely. But he had his actual hands on the mash bill on the creation process on the front end. And the story of that to me, I knew this was a bottle that I had to hunt down and find which is why I have it in the bunker because 41:00 Booker's get that in style jackpot For me it was the first thing that made me fall in love with bourbon I collect as many of their offerings as I possibly can the best use of ever had my life is Booker's 25th anniversary and so for me hunting began with this bottle which is pretty cool that we're you know, having it in this podcast but the first time I ever remember bouncing over to multiple different liquor stores when I news release week for this, and I was just hoping, you know, and I was I was so green, like, didn't have a fucking clue. I'm literally walking to places like, do you have it? Yeah. And they're like, like, I would get laughed at so hard. But this one, like, younger clerk at this liquor store was like, I think I can probably get one. I mean, I think that the dude that we had promised to bailed, and it was just too high of a price point for him at the time, and I was like, I'll do it. And again, wife was none too pleased until I explained like, I'm not gonna do this all the time. We don't have the cash for it. But I saved up my money from the road. We're good. And it feels really cool to say that it began a love for 42:00 Hunting dusty is later on when I learned what they were finding out old distilleries that I occasionally can find on the secondary market that people sell. And where do you go for this? Like, how do you hunt? Yeah, that's good question. I mean, like, I would say that you're you're in a decent position. I wish I should I say you probably wish maybe when you started doing this, like six years ago, you were on the road. Yeah. When you're on the road. That was prime opportunity way back then. Right. Because even back in 2013 2012 timeframe, the stores were still littered back then they couldn't sell the stuff sure until 2014 hit 2015 then everything just was scarce. It was just a ghost town and some of these liquor stores to find allocated bourbon. So yeah, to talk about your story there. Well, the hunt for me like it begins not on the secondary market. For the most part, I love going to hole in the wall along the road hole in the wall, seemingly dilapidated liquor stores and checking behind the front rack and what I mean by that 43:00 I've had incredible luck in in and around smaller towns and Alabama checking package stores and looking at old like literally they'll put the new version of wild turkey one on one of the front. And then if you look behind you might be lucky enough to see like you can tell cork difference you can tell label difference that I've found at least six bottles of us Austin Nichols wild turkey that way just from looking in the back and that just means that nobody goes into that package store and buys wild turkey. They had to buy it to get the new label to keep their rep happy or whatever. I found age state at old charter and found some old log cabin some really great best old saying yeah some some really cool dusty finds just from people who've like only these package stores for years. And you know, don't know what they have and I'm not out there trying to scam them because I don't do any I don't resell anything. My my meager bourbon collection in my little closet of my house is all for drinking. I wanted to have specific bottles set aside for specific purposes in my life. 44:00 When a buddy has a kid, we're going to open up birthday bourbon. When there's a death in the family and I want to celebrate the life that has been extinguished, I want to open up the Booker's offering. I want to open up the dusty of the bottle and bomb bomb beam that I have from the 60s. That was there. I mean, he was in the barrel when Kennedy was alive, like, Are you kidding me? Like there's so much of this stuff that I see a bottle that there's limited number of and I immediately see a story. And I see who was alive when it was first in the cask and I see all of those things that matter to me as a storyteller and my other job. And so I admittedly I wax nostalgic and poetic on everything in my life. And I've done that Full Frontal with bourbon and I'm very pleased with it. It just makes the hunt so much easier because it makes it something fun to do. And so the secondary markets like the last stop the last stop I'm like, I really want to thing but I know that there's no chance I'm gonna be able to find it in the wild. But for a person who hasn't done that, what does that even look like the secondary market secondary markets tough man sometimes you can invite 45:00 The private Facebook's and lots of stuff, but you've got people online that'll buy a bottle for X number of dollars. And then they will take that MSRP and they will multiply it by 1000 million dollars. And then say yes, you can have this MSRP bottle of $170 for the meager pricing of 1200. Gotta and it's brutal but to be honest with you, and this is just being really blunt and whether this gets me castrated by bourbon fans or not, there are times where the story the juice is worth the squeeze the story of the bottle and me never being able to get access to that bottle outside of this really jacked up price on the secondary market is worth it. Like I'm saving up for the sheer fact that someday I'll be able to get a bottle of Booker's 25 be for probably 850. Now I think 600 was a couple years ago, but that about right azz pretty much on point or out there. So looking at that I'm like, okay, I want that and and is the story and the amount of time 46:00 And dinners that I'll be able to have that with and back porch conversations. 46:06 Is it worth it? And the answer is, of course, of course it is. To me and that's not for everybody but if you spread out that price point over the amount of time and stories that I'll be able to have it on it then yeah towards it. So there you go. So if your listener out there, you're a fan of these guys. You got a book or 2015 around. There's there might be a private private concert you could have in your backyard for a bottle who knows I'll rub your back. Lots of stuff. There's a lot of ways 46:33 so I mean, are you so Kyle I'll ask you so when when when you're on the road and Andy's driving or you're driving or whatever? Does a DC like a rundown liquor stores like pull the pull pulled over pulled over? We gotta go, Sam. Yeah, we both do, because I know that's what he did. So I'll see what it'll be like, is this a good looking one, we need to stop here. And most times, ZS there's really not a there's very rarely I know, to go into a liquor store. So we'll go pretty often and I know what to look for. 47:00 Now, which is really fun, I know how to say the things to the guys behind the counter to see if there's anything back there. Yeah to play that game game, and I'm in it now, which is nice, but I know that uh, whatever whatever we find whatever the bounty is. We'll go to Sir Baxter, which is great. And then I'll get a couple polls off at every once in a while. Pro tip for you hunters out there, just one. I won't spoil all the tricks. But one, a really great way to get in good with a local liquor store that sells fancy bottles is before you let them answer upon asking if they have that midwinter nights DRAM or whatever really cool bottle you're looking for you immediately say before you ask before you let them talk after you've said do you have this is Do you have anything in the back? You say also if you do have it will open it right here right now and will each have a poor and that is a great way to immediately be like I've seen people turn on a dime when they were going I gotta tell me No. And then I'm like, Is it worth 48:00 it for me to like have a poor of this stuff right now with the the owner then buy the bottle from him. Yeah, because it does two things in one thing you get to try the juice, you get to try the juice with a friend who also probably loves bourbon because he's selling the stuff he pedals it and then you're probably going to get future offers or future looks because that guy knows that you give a shit because then you're not going to resell an open bottle. Like for him I find it for most people I find that disarming because they know that I'm not in this to make cash. I'm in this because I love the juice. I love the story and I really want that bottle to open up and drink in my house and it'll get open eventually might as well now yeah, exactly as will make it happen. So take that and run with it listener So even with the with the fandom that you have anything like that nothing's like nothing's free coming your way. I mean, I talked about bourbon all the time and yeah, all I get samples sent to me But yeah, for the most part, nobody sitting here sending me allocated bourbon, but even in the music world. Nobody's like, Hey, I got all this Booker's in the back waiting for you guys, right. We got occasional offers 49:00 The occasional offers of people that are kind enough that want to bring us bottles and we get gifted because they know that we dig it we can give to a fair amount of booze on the road which we love the idol amazing. Please continue doing really great, really love that's a good trend. Let's keep that rolling at the end of every tour we do a bourbon lottery because we'll have 49:18 a decent amount that we've both accrued by ourselves and that we've accrued from GIFs from people and so we'll get to the end of a tour a leg of tour and we just go one for one we like rock paper scissor who goes first then we go one for one and first Captain second cap Yeah, and usually those bottles that we still share but we just keep in our house and get to slowly sip on but we're both at each other's houses enough that like we basically choosing which ones we want to have a little bit more of a drink anything at my house and whenever I'm over at his house like he's got bourbon, I'm drinking that too. And so it's literally like it's a first Captain second captain and the only way that he's not going to get it as if he doesn't show up in time for me to finish that bottle. 49:59 get hurt. Yeah. 50:00 So I guess the way to get in good graces, you gotta feed these guys bourbon. Yeah, you guys are bourbon bourbon geeks at the end of the day, which is awesome. And I think that's one of the main reasons why we love to have you on here is because I don't think there's a whole lot of people, we could go and talk to better musicians out there that could have this level of conversation with us as well. Because, you know, like you all are, you're in the trenches, too, right? You're, you're out there, you're hunting, you're driving, you're looking for stuff, and you know what to look for. Right? I think so. I mean, and again, this world's huge still learning what this is like, I've only known about dusty for like, three years. And so like the amount of knowledge that you can amass in this world is massive dude, so crazy to learn about who used to own Old Crow, what years were good. When did it stop being great? When is it is it making a resurgence? Like all these nuance things that you can figure out about this world is huge. And to me, that's just fun. It's just a fun thing to start studying. And so it's changing really quickly. Yeah. Like, especially some of the smaller distilleries around the nation that are happening. feel like there's no 51:00 More to know than ever. It seems like Yeah. It's just an exciting time to be somebody who loves this stuff. Yeah. So if I remember correctly last night, Andy, when you were on stage, you were drinking bourbon. That's fact. Yes. I mean, you were you're drinking bourbon between the songs like you had I think he had a poor with some some rocks in it or something like did you know I was getting we were both gifted that we were gifted 51:23 some old forester on stage. And before that, I was I was Yeah, and we had Eagle rare. In the cup Eagle rare walking onto stage. We had a good amount of bourbon last night just from people bringing us random poor, which is great. How did how did fans get to know that you all were into bourbon? I don't know if there's a time on stage that Andy or I are not drinking bourbon. And I think it think it became apparent after a few years of us just just constantly in between songs, having people. Yeah, okay. And so I think and then eventually people would buy us Bourbons, and send them 52:00 onstage and we started, we just would say how appreciative we were, and we would drink them, which is also great. And that on top of just talking about it, 52:11 whether it's social media or random interview questions like print interviews when they ask, I mean, again, like I said, it's like, second most touted affinity in myself. And so when it comes to both of us being asked on interviews, what do you into? What are you on the road to stay sane? Aside from drinking, we don't drink this thing saying, Yeah, but it complicated, complicated answer. 52:35 But But in all seriousness, when people ask us what we're into, like, it's one of the earliest things we can talk about, like we like drinking bourbon, we like collecting it. We like trying new stuff, local distilleries, like all that. It's a natural overflow of something that's already cool, that we have loved for years. And so when people caught on to that we are very grateful that they have decided to say like how cool this is a way that I can say, Hey, I like your music. It's given me a lot of solace. Have a pretty 53:00 It all the moments that have like music, your music has been a part of our life for a few years now and we'd like to give back. And a lot of times they choose to give back with sweet hundred proof goodness, we are pleased with that choice I was about to say and kind of tail off on that last one is like when somebody does come and says that, you know, your music has inspired their life, like kind of talk about that, right? Because I mean, this is we're getting a little deep with this, but kind of talk about like, what that means to you all as artists. To be honest with you, man, anytime we get to be a part of a thing that's been healing for somebody. Anytime somebody comes up and says as it happens fairly regularly, now, we've toured enough and we've seen enough cities and met enough people that people get to come up and tell us a story of of a moment in their life that they got through with the helping hand of catharsis and music, and we've gotten to be a part of that. And so anytime someone steps up and says that a good thing resulted in emotionally beneficial thing healing. catharsis happened because of our tunes, and 54:01 I don't know that there's a better compliment you could give our music we a lot of why we write our music is is for that it's our own healing. A lot of the times it's it's pretty often autobiographical. And I know that's not the only way to write music. I mean, in the pop world, you're not looking to write something that's heavy or something that's that's going to be specifically cathartic. Yeah, I think carry on a grand day said, you know, leave your boyfriend for me or something. Yeah, yeah. So, a little is emotionally deep. Yeah. Like, there's a lot of shift, it really can be. 54:32 But the fact that someone else would also feel what we're going through kind of it just as pretty binding for us. It's a really cool thing. 54:39 To although our intention wasn't to be like, we want to write something specifically for other people, because we write it for ourselves to know that other people are also connecting with it is just really, it's a cool bond to have with somebody to be like, yeah, we're, we're in the same thing together a lot of the time. So it's really cool. It's really cool for us when anybody tells us right on absolutely 55:00 And so I guess another thing to kind of tail off on from the last question before then is you know you all are not also discriminated in the whiskey world as well because I think it was a city or two ago you did a shout on Instagram saying somebody sent you some of your favorite cinnamon flavored whiskey. Oh yeah, well let's Let the record reflect a few things one will drink it if it's wet and it tastes decent. We will 55:24 we will say the the honey whiskies we just have had we had too many bad experiences in college can't do it so much honey and few can't do it. Yeah, do not good. It's bad to like I just barely heard before. Okay, good I it's it's very triggering. I get I get like American honey shell shock and it's no good. But for the most part, if it's wet and curiously tasty enough to try we'll we'll do it and somebody said for whatever reason we didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about I think we I think we just 56:00 just mentioned it on a whim, did you? I don't remember. I don't remember doing that sometimes you just they're talking on stage you know and that's fair. We could have rambled and said something about fireball but like four shots of fireball appeared. Oh gosh, and well and four shots later like we were like crossing arms on stage and like newlywed couple shooting fireball and then they flirting with us on the line. Yeah, it was great. It was such a such a 56:26 fireball reached out to us is really great. We never responded to him. We need to offload it back. Don't get there sending us a care package. 56:34 No idea What's in the bag. I hope it's just a huge fucking beach ball with fireball on the side. So take it Yeah. Cool. Sounds great. I think because last night you were talking about like, you know, trying to figure out how do you get sponsorships and you're like, you're like what do these guys actually stand for? Now? I think you figured out what you all stand for total fireball. Yeah. Honestly, it's like bring us your strange it like if you could say like, what's your thesis statement for how you want to 57:00 Like roping your sponsors like who's strange out there who wants to do something really weird? Because we're into that that's great for us. We're we gave a random shout out to white claw and great hopes that they'd flirt back with us. We don't even know to what end we don't we're not asking for anything. It's just like what will they say if we start and I also just want to pit white clog against fireball second half storm of the century baby we say go for the highest bidder go for our affections. You don't care Be it cinnamon popery whiskey or if it be this sweet, sweet blackberry White Glove go Yes, sir. Vodka. There you go. You'll start wearing like fireball jerseys on stage now like when you're going out there. That's okay. We didn't sell out 10 out of 10 would do it but I would only do it if they didn't pay us money. I'm like I'm not getting paid for this. Just want the leather jacket. I just want this jacket because I think it's dope. 57:52 I guess one more thing about the band that I want to ask you because I don't think we ever talked about it back in forecast when we first met is the name 58:00 Penny Sparrow like, Where did the name originate from? And how did y'all come up with it? So when we were roommates, we had one other roommate in our room, and it was way too crowded for all three of us. It was basically bed dresser bed dresser bed dressing. And he was an author or a writer. 58:19 And he wrote under the pen name of Penny and Sparrow, and we were getting started. We used to just go by sports teams, because we Why not? It was nothing was really official for us. So anytime we would play a show, it would be like, Hey, we're the Utah Jazz happy to be here. I read the Dallas Cowboys. And by show he means like when somebody in the community was like, hey, we've got a fundraiser and there's gonna be like 13 needy people. We need we just need somebody to play matchbox. 20 covers and 58:48 we're like, oh, we know Rob Thomas. And so we did that a lot of media by sports. So you go by sports teams, and eventually we did one that was paid out, be it not very much money. 59:00 And so they came up to us and basically we're like, Hey, you can't be a sports team anymore. This is making me look bad. Please don't make me look bad we just pick we please just pick anything that's not Utah Jazz. Yeah. And so our roommate who went by opinion Sparrow, we basically just asked them were like, Hey, can we just use your name and then anything we do in this room will do under the guise of finance barrel? And that's where it just kind of stuck and we just kept it and here we are. We years later doing we picked that name when we saddled ourselves with that we didn't think that this was going to be where we would be no seven years later. Yeah, if we did w

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Stories in this episode: Sarah longs for a new perspective after loss and finds it with a feisty group of octogenarians in LA; A kilt-wearing stranger shows up to Brian’s weekly game night and volunteers to take a road trip with him; Emily promises 99-year-old Mac she’ll get him to 100 and finds the best friend she was promised by God in the process. SHOW NOTES: To see pictures and videos from our storytellers this week, go here. TRANSCRIPT: KaRyn Lay: Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay, and I'm here with my friend and fellow producer Sarah Blake. Sarah: Hi, everybody.  KaRyn Lay: Sarah, why are we here together today?  Sarah: Because today's episode is about unexpected friendships. And we're talking about friendship and our friendship is something to celebrate. KaRyn Lay: It's totally something to celebrate! Sarah and I first met, actually, I don't remember the moment that we first met, do you? Sarah: No, me neither.  KaRyn Lay: I just feel like I've always known you. But I do know that we first met in a singles ward in Salt Lake City in our 20s when we were just doing the things that single people who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do in their 20s. So like, I'd see you at FHE and occasionally like at a "Munch and Mingle," if we felt like we had the energy to go to that and try to flirt with a boy, right? I feel like you and I just always had so much in common. So it was really easy for us to be friends.  Sarah: Yeah, really natural. We're readers, we're writers, we're prolific Goodwill shoppers. KaRyn Lay: I was always jealous of your red boots.  Sarah: Those were my best find ever.  KaRyn Lay: Yeah, that was a good find. So we've been thinking about friendships and how it's really easy to be friends with somebody who has a lot of things in common with you. And it's much harder to be friends with the people who seem different.  Sarah: Or maybe it's, maybe it's that it's harder to start those friendships, right? It can be unexpectedly easy, but you weren't looking for it and you didn't know how to start it.  KaRyn Lay: And I think Sarah, the reason that you're here, beyond just us celebrating our friendship, is that you have a story about a really unexpected friendship that you want to share with us, right? Sarah: Yeah, when we picked this topic, this story of my own immediately came to mind. Do you want me to tell it?  KaRyn Lay: Of course I want you to tell it. I love a good story.  Sarah: Okay. So when my husband Casey and I were first married, we lived in Los Angeles. And it was a very fun time. We were renovating this duplex we had bought, we lived pretty close to the beach, sometimes we saw movie stars. It was pretty idyllic in a lot of ways. But we had this little dark rain cloud in our life, which was infertility. We really wanted to start our family but we just didn't get pregnant, didn't get pregnant, then I had a miscarriage. And then we couldn't get pregnant and had another miscarriage. And it was a hard time for me and I wasn't talking to very many people about it. I just couldn't even bring myself to say the words of what I was struggling with. And I remember even a couple days after my second miscarriage, I went to babysit for my friend's kids, so she and her husband could go to the temple. And I really wanted to do that for my friend, I also thought it'd be good for me to get out of the house instead of laying around crying. So I went and her kids wanted to watch the Disney movie, "Tarzan." And that opening scene where the gorilla mom loses her baby, I mean, I just sat there crying and crying in the dark, trying to wipe away tears so her kids—my friend's kids—wouldn't see how sad I was. But I still didn't tell her even, like I didn't tell my friends at night when she got home what I was dealing with. I just couldn't talk about it. But I needed someone who understood. And I think heavenly father knew what I needed. So in our ward, there was this row of old ladies, what do you call a group of old ladies? A gaggle? A pew? They all took the back row in the chapel and everybody knew that was their place. And these women were in their 80s and 90s. They had all moved to LA in the 40s and 50s for their husbands to work for Howard Hughes Aircraft stuff. And then they'd all had a ton of kids and their kids are all grown and their husbands were all dead. And now they had each other in this awesome sisterhood that sat together. They were spunky, feisty, interesting women. And one day I was sitting next to one of them in Relief Society and she mentioned that they had formed a chapter of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. And I really identify with my own, like Utah pioneer ancestry. And so I said, that's super cool. And they invited me to come to a meeting. So I went to a meeting and I didn't know what to expect, but it was just all the ladies from the back row of the chapel. I don't know if they'd ever invited anybody young before or if anybody else had ever been interested, but they were really excited to have somebody new there. And somebody gave a presentation about a pioneer ancestor, and we all stood with our hand on our hearts and recited something and we sang a song and scheduled the next meeting. But then it got really fun when they broke out the deserts and just sat around talking. And I realized that as a young woman growing up, you don't very often get to see older women in their natural habitat, you know, just like letting loose and talking with their friends. And I know my mom had good friends and those friendships were important to her, but I never saw them quite like this, and my grandmother's, too. But what was amazing to me was these women sat and talked about their lives, and they were just reminiscing, but they were telling the stories of the worst things that had ever happened to them. And then they were laughing their heads off because like life had moved on and they saw it with this perspective that I think you can only get in your 80s. Like, "Remember the time when all our husbands got laid off at the same time and one of the husbands had to lay off half of them?" Or the time the kid jumped off the roof and broke his arms. Or, one of them had a disabled son and she spent literally decades fighting with doctors to keep him out of institutions. And another woman had this daughter who just did everything wrong that she could, like doing drugs and running away to follow a rock band and saying the most outrageous and rude things. And they would tell a story and then they would just like laugh until they cried, wiping the tears from their eyes and slapping their knees and stuff. And it was amazing to me.  And I didn't even realize quite how it was causing a shift in me. But I remember driving home from that meeting. And I don't think there's very many moments in life where you feel changed by just a few hours, but this was one of those for me, because I realized that I had been just, I felt surrounded by these walls of my doubt and my self-pity, my tragic sense of how hard my life was right now. And it was like all those walls had been pushed way back by the perspective of older women. Seeing it in their own lives really, truly, "Time heals all wounds," and "This too shall pass," and life will go on. I suddenly had a vision that there's a future me out there in her 80s, maybe she's surrounded by loving posterity or maybe she's not. But either way, she's okay. And like, it's going to be okay. This is just a moment, and life is still full of joy. And none of my younger friends could have taught me that. Anybody saying you know, "You're probably going to get pregnant soon, it's going to be fine." It wouldn't have done it for me, it wouldn't have been what I needed in the same way it was just rubbing shoulders with these women whose own life experience could show me truly it is going to be okay. KaRyn Lay: First of all, I adore the visual of you in your 30s, sitting in this room full of octogenarians, slapping your knees and laughing.  Sarah: I wish you could have met them. They were so great. KaRyn Lay: It sounds so great. And I love that that friendship was exactly what you needed at that exact moment. And the other friendships with people that you would have immediately been drawn to, maybe that had something more in common with you like age or stage of life, wasn't actually what you needed.  Sarah: I think that is probably true for a lot of hardship. Like when you're going through something, your usual friends might not be the ones you need the most.  KaRyn Lay: So how do you find these kinds of friendships? Like, what's the secret for opening yourself up to a kind of friendship that you wouldn't maybe naturally look out for?  Sarah: Well, I think a lot of it is just a gift of God sometimes, right? And being open to that. But I think in the stories in this episode, there's an element of risk. And on the other side of a little risk is the reward of a new friendship.  KaRyn Lay: So true, so true. And like you said, today we've got two more stories from people who took that risk, who opened themselves up and found friendship that absolutely surprised them in the best ways. Our first story comes from Brian, who was perfectly content and happy with the friends that he had when a kilt-wearing stranger offered to accompany him on a road trip. Here's Brian. Brian: So I guess it's kind of ironic that in a room that included dwarves and elves and ogres, that it would be the bald human that would have such a profound effect on my life.  Growing up, I was always a real introvert, I only had a couple of really close friends. And it stayed that way until I got home from my mission and started going to a young single adult ward. I started to become friends with a group of guys there and found out that they got together on a regular basis to play "Dungeons and Dragons." I grew up as a geek, I like superhero things, I like fantasy and all that kind of genres. But I had never played "Dungeons and Dragons." And I thought, well, this would be like a cool experience to go sit in and see what it's like. So I asked them once if I could come over and just watch and they said, "Sure." And they told me what time they were playing. The day that I went over, it turned out that one of the guys that was in the group at the time wasn't able to show up that day. And so they asked me, you know, "Do you want to play so and so's character?" And I remember saying, "I don't know what I'm doing this just literally, I'm just sitting down at this table for the first time ever." And they said, "Well, that's okay. You know, we'll show you what to play and don't worry." And now 26 plus years later, we're still playing. We've had different people come and go, but there was a core group of us that have stayed together all these years. When we started out, obviously, we're all single, We were all in this single adult ward. Now we're all married with children. We have one grandfather in that group and we still get together every other Monday night and play. And in fact, two of the guys that I play with were my best men at my wedding reception because I couldn't pick between them, we were that close. After we had been playing together probably 10 or 15 years, someone from our core group, Dave, brought a new friend that he had met to play. This new player looked very different than the rest of us. Let's just say he had a shaved head, earrings, rings on his fingers, I know that least one of them was made from a nail. Had either sandals or bare feet, I don't recall which, I would guess bare feet based on how well I know him now. Just really different than what the rest of look like. But I remember thinking, "Dave, what have you brought into our group?" Which, I look back on now, and I'm so embarrassed that I ever thought that, but I did. I was really protective of this group because it really was the first time I had a close group of friends, I mean, we did everything together. But I thought, okay, you know, let's invite him to play and, and he was good at playing, he had played before, so he fit right in that way. He took over someone's character, and he became part of the playing group, but he wasn't part of our group. And then something happened. For the job that I used to have, I traveled extensively by car. I would drive all over the western United States. So I'd spend a lot of time in the car, and I would always invite my buddies. And they would always say no, you know, they had jobs, so I understood that but it was always fun to ask them and see if they could go. And then one day, I said, "Hey, I've got a trip down to Vegas next week. Is anybody interested in going with me?" And Russ piped up and he said, "Yeah, I'll go with you!" And I remember thinking, "Oh, I, okay." I didn't expect it because, you know, we didn't do anything outside this group. But it would have been rude to say, you know, "No, I meant all the other guys, not you." So, well, you know, he said yes, I invited, he said yes and I always say I want someone to go with me so let's, okay. I drove down to Utah County and picked him up really, really early. And I think looking back that I was kind of glad that it was dark outside because it was almost a barrier because I was maybe a little uncomfortable. So we started talking very safe subjects, geeky subjects, you know. Can you name all seven members of the Justice League's original lineup? Can you name this? And what artists do you like? What's your favorite title? Just very safe subjects. We tried to figure out who among us was the bigger geek. And we decided that he ended up winning simply on the fact that his father-in-law's name is Bruce Wayne, which, obviously to any geek that that's a trump card that just can't be beat. So it was a good way to break the ice, you know, to stick to those safe subjects. We had a lot of driving ahead of us, obviously down to Vegas. And it was a week-long trip. So we were going to be spending a lot of time together. And then we kind of started branching into other subjects. I'm very much a creature of habit when I go on the road. I eat the same restaurants at the same place, eat, you know, the same thing, everything just like that. Even some hotels I'd stay in the same room. And he was very much against any type of chain. He was very much, let's look at that little hole in the wall diner over there. Or let's ask the person in the store, "Hey, where would you go to eat?" And so as he would do that, it was fun too because it was something new for me. It's like oh this is, you know, I would never do this. And I started to kind of come out of my shell not only around him but just in general, I think because it was new and it was fun. And he kind of taught me that a lot of times, those are the best places to go, you know, some of the best food you'll ever try. If you spend a week with someone, you're either going to come home, not speaking to them at all, or you're going to be a lot closer, and I realized that, hey, this guy's pretty cool. Over the next few years, we did travel a lot together. The shortest trip we took was a day trip and the longest trip he's been with me on was 17 days, where we went all over Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. We ended up creating a world together because you really have a lot of time in the car. We're very different in our views on a lot of things. I'm very conservative in a lot of my views and he's very liberal. My music would be Billy Joel, Elton John, Michael Buble, and his Metallica and Flogging Molly and Dolly Parton. So we're very different in that way. But when we talk and we discuss these differences, there's never any animosity. We can discuss politics for instance, and not have any bad feelings towards one another. We're able to see the other person's views and there's never any bad feelings, which I think is a lesson to a lot of people. He really changed my life in a lot of ways. He's taught me not to pass by life, not to stay in that shell. He does wear kilts a lot on the road, which is a lot of fun because I'll walk in a store four or five seconds behind him, and I do it on purpose. And he knows I'm doing it on purpose. Because if I walk in behind him, especially in little small towns, that's the best because the looks he gets from the people that are in the stores are priceless. And I know in my head that they're doing the same thing in their own way that I did when Dave brought him into the group. You know, they're, they're judging him based on his external appearance. Like when I said, you know, "Dave, what have you brought into our group." As it turns out, what he brought into the group was a brother. He is one of the few people that when I talk to him on the phone, there's times at the end, when I will just say, "Hey, I love you, man." And he'll say it back. He is someone that I will call when I just need someone to talk to. He's always, he's a great listener, and he is very good at counseling. And I like the fact that he doesn't just agree with me and say, "Oh, you know, yeah, you're right of this," but he will point out, "Okay, how can you grow from this?" I think God puts people like that in our lives to teach us lessons. It would be easy to say that God put him there to teach me not to judge people. And that is an easy answer. And I think he did, I think he put him there to teach me that. But I also think he put him there to make me a better person in a lot of other ways. I think God knew that there were going to be times that I would need Russ. He was there for me during one of the lowest points in my life. I was battling—still battle—with depression. And I had gotten to the point where, as I would drive, there were times that I would think, "If I didn't turn this corner up here, it would look like an accident." And when I needed to talk to somebody, he was always there and didn't matter what time, and he would just listen and he would love unconditionally. And I don't want to downplay those other guys I play with because they are very much brothers to me. They showed up one night at my house at 11 o'clock at night, because they knew what I needed. So I don't want to downplay them at all. He's just become, he's become a brother. It makes no sense, it really doesn't because we are so different in so many ways. And maybe that's what makes it so fun is that it doesn't make sense that we should be friends. But I know that he was put there to teach me a lot of things and to be there, almost as a stand-in for my older brother. I'm the oldest but I mean, you know, my heavenly older brother to put his arm around me when I needed it. A scripture comes to mind when it says that "God looketh upon the heart." And I think that Russ is a great example of that because when you see him, you're going to make judgments based on the way he looks. But if you get past that Bulldog exterior to the puppy dog that's beneath, you see the way that Christ sees him.  I think that I hope that I'm a little more understanding now, a little more willing to get to know people underneath rather than just judge by that first four seconds of seeing them. And I'll be forever grateful for the bald human that entered the dungeon that day. KaRyn Lay: That was Brian. When I first heard the story on our pitch line, I was immediately drawn to it. Partially because I love a good story and Dungeons and Dragons was involved, but also because I have a few gamers in my family. And I know how close-knit and connected those 12-sided-die groups can be. So when I heard that Brian was talking about friendship, I wanted to hear about it even more. I love his willingness to admit that he was protective of that friend group when Russ first came into the circle. It kind of reminded me of that childhood feeling that we have sometimes when the new kid comes to school and you immediately are like, "No, they're not like us." Sometimes new friendships or the possibility of new friendships can feel like a threat to our system. But I love what Russ and Brian found out: Love is an infinite resource. There's room in our hearts for new friends, there's room there. And if we don't think that there's room there, God can help us to create that room. And letting new people into our lives is absolutely going to bring change in one way or another. Whether it invites us to try that new hole-in-the-wall local restaurant instead of the Olive Garden or letting someone see the hardest things in our hearts. It takes real courage and sometimes an act of God, like Sarah said, to get us to open up to the possibility of a new friend. But I really believe that on the other side of that is more love, more connection, and growth, which is exactly what our Father in heaven wants for each of us. Our last stories from Emily with a special appearance from her friend, Mac. It's a story of a friendship that might not have come without the intervention of a loving Heavenly Father. Here are Emily and Mac. Emily: For years, I felt like I never had friends and I felt really lonely. I think a lot of it is our perspective of how we think of ourselves and how we feel like we are around people. And for me, I just felt like I also was a person that didn't always connect with people on that deeper level. And so I love to be with people and serve them, but then all sudden, it's like when I'm not around people, I'll have that like, real sense of loneliness, kind of that bitterness. And it kind of bites, like sometimes it's really hard and sometimes tears are shed. I was really lonely and I had prayed for years to Heavenly Father, "Can I have friends in my life? Can I please have a friend?" And it's just really interesting how my friend came to me. Before I met Mac, I had just transitioned from living in Ecuador and serving in the orphanages. I was there for two months and it was an incredible experience. I loved it. It changed me. And then I moved back to the States and I was so lost. When I moved, I was actually going to live in a whole different city, and just circumstance after circumstance I ended up living in a different city than I had planned. And so I ended up in this apartment by myself. I was 24 at the time, single, and it was just like, like, what do I do with myself? I just feel so lost. I've always played the piano since I was eight years old. It's just been my thing my entire life. And so it's just always been my de-stressor. It's been my entire life, it's what I do. Growing up, my mom used to get so mad at me when it was time to get ready for school every morning, bless my mother's heart, she'd have to be like, "Emily stop playing the piano and please get ready for school." And I'd always be like, "Mom, I don't want to," Every day because it's just me, like the piano just feeds out of me, songs just constantly. When people would be having conversations like sometimes I just don't even talk because I have music going through my mind. And I don't really want to talk, I just want to play your piano that I see in the corner of your room. And no joke like, still to this day, like, I would rather go play your piano and talk to you while I'm playing the piano, but I don't want to just stand here and talk to you if there's a piano in the room. It's kind of like a kid who has a problem with candy-like, it's constant. So the piano, I feel like, allows me to express myself. It's almost even hard to explain, like, there's no words for it. And so it's one of those connections that we can have with people is music. And that's my latest connections. And maybe that's why I would rather talk to them as I'm playing the piano because it's like connecting our souls. I really think that's what happened with Mac and I. Heavenly Father knows me. I always have loved older people, but to get that deep level of a friendship he involved at starting around a piano, around music and so the day I met Mac, I had been praying for opportunities to play the piano and praying for opportunities that could bring me joy. I'm outside running, down the street, have music playing in my ear, do my normal run. And then all sudden, this prompting came into my mind, my nose tingled and it was like, "Go play the piano now." I'm like what? And I turned my head, and there's an assisted living center there. And I had never seen it and I'd ran that same street for three months. And I thought, "Oh, that's funny." Still, with the music playing in my ear, I just started running again. And the voice came again, loud, "Go and ask if you can play their piano now." Honestly, when that prompting came, and I heard that, like, other voice in my head, I just learned you don't even doubt them. Because why would I be thinking to go play a piano in the middle of a run? Like I wouldn't be. And so I just learned that like promptings come at the most interesting time, and I have to follow those. And so that prompting came and it just honestly didn't even surprise me. It just surprised me that it was right then and it said to do it now. Because I thought, "Well, I can go tomorrow or I can go another time." So I step into the assisted living center. and I asked the front desk like, "Hey, would you be open to if I come and play the piano for you sometime?"  And they were like, "Sure, why not right now?"  I'm like, " Wait, what? Right now?"  And she was like, "Yeah, sure."  So I like literally, still in my running clothes, go to where they have their piano, and I just start playing. And in walks this cute little old man with his walker, with his little pep step, walking towards the piano. And he's like, "Hey, when's the show start?"  I was like, "What show?" I was like, "I have no idea what you're talking about."  He's like, "No, when's the show start?"  I was like, "I'm just here to play the piano."  He goes, "Oh, that's great!" And so he sat down on the piano bench with me started talking.  Mac: I can't remember just how it was, but I was so impressed with Emily, not only a beautiful girl but a wonderful piano player. I was so impressed that you would take your time out to do something like that for an old duffer, to come and entertain us show people. Emily: My first thought was like, "Who is this funny old man?" He was so hilarious and he was just so with it. And I was like, he's really asking real questions. And so then I asked him, "I was like, how old are you?" And he was, like, "99 years old."  And I was like, wow. And then I was like, Wait a moment. You're 99. I asked him, "When do you turn 100 years old?"  And immediately, his demeanor changed. He got all depressed and all sudden he goes, "In six months." I was like, "Wait, what? That's so exciting. Like, you're going to be a century like no one ever lives to be a century." And he did not act excited at all. He didn't care. And it bothered me and I was like, that's it. This man has got to live to be 100 years old. Like no one can say that, right? It's so funny, I'm not a person that likes to make bets or deals, I never have been. Literally, I knew Mac for maybe 20 minutes. It just came out of my mouth and I was like, "I want to make you a deal. I'm going to keep you alive until you are 100 years old by coming to play the piano for you once a week." He laughed at me and he's like, "We'll see about that." And I was like, deal. Game on we're gonna keep you alive till 100 years old."  Mac: You say, "I'm gonna get you to 100." I just thought somebody has an interest in me. When I first came here, I thought well, I'm not gonna stay there any more than 30 days. They said, "Why?" I'm not old people like they are. They're just old people and I don't know, they looked like they were from the Valley of the Lost. People moving along without a purpose. Emily: Making this deal for Mac, just like sparked this thing in me that helped me to fill this purpose like, I got to keep this man alive. But I also felt like if I come and serve him, it will be a friend for him. And that it would be something he could look forward to. Just the conversation that we had that day on that piano bench, like, it just kept me like wanting to go talk to my friend. And so then I started going once a week, but quickly, that turned into the daily thing. And so I literally would go do my runs and then stop there on my way home and I'd go play some songs for him. But then it just evolved. He started inviting some of his friends, of the residents that live there. Pretty soon he'd say, "We need to go pick up so and so from their room." And by then, I also had made friends as well with residents that I would see in the hall as I was walking through and I would say "Hey, come we're gonna play some music."  Mac: Oh I, kind of, I looked forward to that every week. She had kind of a schedule. She'd come to my room and pick me up and she'd call me "Duffer," and I'd call her "Clapper." Called the Duffer and the Clapper. Emily: So then I'd go pick him up, but we definitely could not leave the room without his golf shoes on, insisted his hair was combed, and we had to grab his harmonica and then we were good to go. Mac: I guess I was so proud of how I looked. I always felt like I had to look my best.  Emily: And he is so funny, his personality that we'd be going to each room and then he'd start saying, "Watch out. We're getting the gangs out, the party's just getting started." So here's some that can hardly walk, so they're holding onto my arm, with their a little cane, we're going down the hall. Here's some that would be willing themselves, like so funny. And then we all meet at the piano, a gathering place.  Mac: She would stop by, pick up several of the people here and get with those, get around the piano, anxious to get right there by the piano and listen to her play. She was wonderful. And then with nearly all of us singing along with different songs, and Emily promoted that all alone and so she became a great fixture. People looked forward to that music. That's how I got to convince, well maybe I can do something with my harmonica. So I started playing a little bit. Emily: While doing this, things just changed inside of me. I was like, wow, I'm not so lonely anymore. The more I was around them, I felt like life's gonna be okay. It just was like one of those friendships that when you meet, and it just clicks, you're just like, "Whoa, like, where's this friend that I've been praying for for a long time?" Just one of those connections when you meet people you're like, "Well, that was definitely God putting them in my path." And my favorite thing of my friendship with Mac is that we both have a talent of playing music, and we love to share it with people. And the funny thing is, is I've played my whole life. Mac started when he was 10 years old, but he would only play the harmonica when he was using it to call the sheep in. And it wasn't until we met that both our talents blossomed, that we started playing for people, that his harmonica skills became incredible. He'd start with only one or two songs when I first knew him, and then he would be playing five or six by the time we were done with each dance party.  Mac: Oh, thank you. Anyone that can get music into their lives has a better chance of having a complete and happy life. Emily: So, about six months of building this friendship with Mac, I started feeling yucky. Like I was so tired all the time. And I noticed that I started feeling like I had the flu every single day, it was the weirdest thing. Because I'd wake up, go for a run and then I would just start to feel so yucky and my arms would burn, my hands would burn. And then I noticed my feet started burning. And I noticed when I was starting to run, I would start to trip because I couldn't feel my feet. My fingers would all sudden just have no feeling and I would be playing a song and they would ache and throb up so bad and the burning got so bad, that I'd have to stop in the middle of a song. And when I would go play for Mac, I'd sit there on the piano bench with him playing songs, have to pause, tears are streaming down my face, Mac's blind, so he couldn't even see and he didn't understand what was going on. It was really hard for me. Every doubt and fear ran through my mind as I was sitting there on a piano bench. Will I ever be able to play the piano like I used to? Will I ever have that back again? Well, my whole life be like this? Is this something that's been taken from me one of my favorite things that brings me the greatest joy in my life? God, did you take this from me? Will it ever come back? God when I'm here serving your children, where are you and why can't I continue to help them? I think that's when I had to realize too, that sometimes we can't serve in the way we want to, but oftentimes, it's always in the way we need to. And so some of those days, maybe those residents didn't need to hear as much music and they just needed friends. And so we would just start talking. Here they were sharing their stories with me of when you know, their spouse had passed away or an illness that happened to them and they didn't do it as in a rude, like "Get over it, Emily," or something like that. It was always such a teaching moment that I walked away just so inspired by their examples. When I realized that true friendships are when we open our hearts, and that we're not focused on ourselves, but that we share stories and things that we've learned, but it just brought such closeness and realness. And it wasn't just a service and happy friendship, and how are you doing today? And it was real. I mean, it was the deepest friendships I've ever had. And it just made me laugh because I'm like, how am I have more friends that are older, that are in their 80s or 90s than truly than my own age. But always, every time I left that building, I would leave a happier person than I was then when I walked in because they taught me such valuable lessons. I had finally gotten a diagnosis that I had Lymes disease. I had never told Mac, but he could tell just by my voice, or by how I gave him a hug, he could tell when days that I didn't feel good. And he started picking up on it and he would say, "Have you had a good day today?"  And I'd say, "Yes."  And he goes, "No, you haven't."  And I'd say, "Yeah, you can tell huh?"  And he goes, "You don't feel good today, do you?" And it really meant a lot that he was there as a friend and he would ask. But he knew that it took all that I could to get out of bed, to get him and those residents so that we could play. I mean, I was terrified. I'd lay in my bed when I was so sick. And think if I don't get up today, this man's gonna die. And I made him a deal to keep till 100. I have to go, I have to go get him. And I always pick myself up, get over there, drag myself over there and do all that I could.  Mac: I didn't realize I was doing any good. She always says I helped her as much as she helped me. I always felt our purpose in life was not what we can do ourselves. I wondered, maybe God should tell me what my purpose is. So I guess my purpose was to help Emily along and her purpose was to help me along. Emily: The more I got to know Mac, I learned that he had family that came to visit him every day. And so sometimes I'd wonder like, should I be continually coming to visit him every day? Does he even enjoy these visits? I really realized these visits meant more than anything. He was looking for friendship as well. He needed that. People need friends, we need each other, at any age. He wanted to make a difference, I wanted to make a difference. And when our friendships have the same goals that we want to do, it's amazing how God puts each of us in each other's path and that we were able to make that difference. Around the same time I was diagnosed with Lymes disease, Mac made it to 100. We made it to 100 years old, and I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe we had done it. Now he had definitely had to do all the breathing, but I was so relieved that we made it to 100 years old. I felt like I accomplished what I said I was going to do for him. And that I kept my end of the deal. His family through a huge party for him, lots of people came, we're all at the party mingling and Mac comes over to me and He says, "So, now what? You didn't promise me anything else." I didn't even know what to tell him. I was like, I'd only just made it a goal to keep them alive till 100 years old. That's all I felt. And now what? And yet, reaching 100 wasn't the end for us. In like a month, he'll be 103 and I will be 28 years old. He's also taken it upon himself to be my dating consultant. And it's not working out for me. So far, his success rate is zero. But I haven't given up on him yet. Mac: "I'm gonna get you over 100 years old." She mentioned that many times. And I said I'll make a promise. I'll do that if you find somebody to get married to." She said she'd do that, so I'm still plugging along, so she's got a lot of work to do. Emily: The other day I was telling him about my friend that's going to get engaged. And he goes, "You know, I can't keep living all these years just waiting for you." I said, "I'm trying" and he goes, "So am I." Never did I ever think I'd still be best friends and have a dating consultant who's 103 and is blind. Even now, to this day, Mac and I get asked to play the piano and his harmonica at funerals, and events. We actually go on tours. It's hilarious. And when we're playing at these funerals, Mac will lean over to me and say, "This is hilarious we're here playing for someone that's much younger than me. This isn't even my funeral." Mac: Emily supervises and we played at three different funerals. And I found that I've really got a purpose here. I feel closer to the Savior all the time I listen to Emily play because that melody comes through and puts meaning to life. Emily: Mac's amazing. He's my best friend. I still feel lonely at times and knowing that his time will come soon, there's always that sense of will I feel loneliness again? I question that. But I have such a greater peace now and trust that I know the Savior's there. Mac would always say that if you have a heartbeat, you have a purpose. And I realized through this whole experience, I wasn't focused on myself, I wasn't focused inward. I was focused on loving others, that they're here too, that they're lonely too. We need each other. We're not here to be alone. Like we're here to be together, we're here to be friends. We're not here to suffer life alone.  Mac: I guess the Lord doesn't want me to come back. He wants me to stay here to understand that we're here for a purpose. And until we go to the other side, our purpose is to try to make other people happy. Maybe I'm here to help Emily and she was here to help me. KaRyn Lay: That was Emily and her 103-year-old best friend, Mac. Well, almost 103. If you want to hear some of Mac and Emily's musical collaborations, we'll have a link to the album that they made together in our show notes. I promise you will want to hear Mac's harmonica stylings. I also wish you all could have been in that room to feel the adorable energy between Emily and Mac when they came in to record. I think energy is really the right word for it because what their friendship did is energized each of them for their unique challenges. For Mac, it was finding a reason to live again at 99 years old. And for Emily, it was finding a way to fight through her loneliness and a debilitating illness. And isn't that the thing about inspired friendships? However, they come to be, those friendships set off a chain reaction of discovery and mutual joy just as it did in their story. And that makes us better. It makes us better for everybody and it teaches us more about the love that our Father in heaven has for us. I do remember Sarah. I do remember how we met. Well, I don't remember how we met, but I do remember the circumstances in which our friendship came to be. And that is because I took a risk to move to Salt Lake City. I didn't have a job. When I first moved there, I had no job and no place to live. And I rolled up into Salt Lake and God kind of— I felt like God sort of put me into this, this avenues space like the avenues in Salt Lake. And so then we were in the same ward together. And do you remember what we used to joke about, that ward at that time, we called it the—  Sarah: The Island of Misfit Toys? KaRyn Lay: The Island of Misfit Toys, and X-Men school.  Sarah: Oh, totally! KaRyn Lay: Because we all felt like we were developing specific talents and gifts that God wanted us to use in our lives. And I think it's really interesting that he puts us where we need to be so that we'll meet the people who can change us and show us something different, something new about ourselves that we didn't know before. And you did that for me and I hope that our friendship never ends.  Sarah: Me too. KaRyn Lay: That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to Sarah and Brian and Emily and Mac for sharing their stories and their faith. And special thanks to Susan Bender, Mac's daughter, who helped us to get those fun recordings of her dad. We'll have the transcript of this episode as well as some fun pictures and links from the stories in our show notes at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel. All you got to do is go and find this episode and click on it and right there you'll find all the show notes. So check it out. If you have a great story about your experience Living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you on our pitch line. Leave us a short three-minute story pitch at 515-519-6179. You can find out what themes we're working on right now by following us on Instagram and Facebook at @thisisthegospel_podcast. That's @thisisthegospel_podcast. If you loved this episode, will you please leave us a review on the Apple App or Bookshelf PLUS+ from Deseret Book? We love to hear your thoughts about individual episodes or the podcast as a whole. We read every single one.  This episode was produced by Sarah Blake with story producing from Katie Lambert and me, KaRyn Lay, With story editing by Danielle Wagner. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix At Six Studios with additional mixing from KC Blake. Our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts, like the "All In" podcast at LDSliving.com/podcasts. Have a great week.

CigarScore Merch!: https://click.cigarscore.com/merchytUse coupon code  CIGARSCORETV  to get 15% off your entire purchase!Initial Thoughts:Plasencia is another brand I have a love/hate relationship with. After smoking two of the Plasencia Alma Fuerte Generacion Vs, I loved the brand. After trying the Alma del Campo, I didn't understand it and I wondered what the company was trying to accomplish.So, today, with the Plasencia Alma Del Fuego, I'm... cautiously optimistic. This cigar has a dark wrapper that, like the Alma Fuerte, is fairly rugged looking. The wrapper isn't really smooth, it has some veins, but it looks tasty.Brand: PlasenciaLine: Alma Del FuegoSize: 6 1/2 x 38Cut: GuillotineLight: TorchPrice: $16.99 (August Luxury Cigar Club)Wrapper: NicaraguanBinder: NicaraguanFiller: NicaraguanLearn About This Cigar - https://famous-smoke.7eer.net/05V3VFinal Thoughts:My time with the Plasencia Alma Del Fuego was interesting. This cigar had a nearly perfect burn and the draw was practically flawless.If you've tried other full-bodied cigars from Plasencia, I think you'll like the Alma Del Fuego as well. That said, I didn't like this one as much as the Alma Fuertes that I've had.Because I'd smoke this cigar again, though I might try it in a different size, the Plasencia Alma Del Fuego earns a CigarScore of 4.#CigarScoreTV #LuxuryCigarClub #PlasenciaCigars:::::Find & Rate Where to Smoke Cigarsat https://www.cigarscore.com:::::Where I buy my cigars: https://click.cigarscore.com/famoussmokePremium Cigar Samplers: https://click.cigarscore.com/fs-premiumsamplers:::::Subscribe to my YouTube Channel! - https://click.cigarscore.com/subscribeonyoutube::::: Gear I Used or Mentioned in This Video :::::Main camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon80dMain lens: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon18125mmMusic: https://www.cigarscore.com/musicLapel mic: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-movolv1Sturdy tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-tripodTravel camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canong7xiiHandheld tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-manfrotto:::::SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cigarscoreTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/cigarscoreInstagram: https://Instagram.com/cigarscore:::::AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER: Hey, so, some of the links in my videos and descriptions are affiliate links. But, I only recommend products/services I use and love myself =) More details here - https://www.cigarscore.com/ads-and-affiliate-disclaimer-disclosure/

Project Management Software   I don't care how big your business is, or if you think you need this or not, you need it. If you don't think you need it, you just never used it properly before. Now I'm talking about Asana and Trello and all those other different project management software pieces. There's lots of different project management software items out there, and the thing that you need to remember is your mileage varies, obviously. Read more about Trello: https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/479-want-to-know-why-we-love-trello Trello is Awesome We're huge Trello fans. After mucking around with a lot of different project management tools we found that Trello is great, especially at their price point. I like having a diversity between the different software packages that we use and Trello ticks that box as well. I don't necessarily always like buying into the same brand. Although it's nice being in the same ecosystem, it doesn't always pay off when they up all their prices or infrastructure goes down. Office 365, yep. That would never go down for nine hours during a business day in Australia. But then it does. So it's fantastic and you've got to make sure that you look at project management software from a perspective of how it manages and works with your business. Trello is Easy to Use One of the great things that I like about Trello is how easy it is to manage the cards. You can create lists of cards, and each of those cards can then have tasks, and each of those lists can have multiple cards that you can then move between the lists. Imagine, let's look at it like this. You're a kid and you want 15 different things for Christmas, and you want those things no matter what. Instead of having to ask for all of them, they all have equal value. Instead you could make a list of what the priority items are. You can have the lower priority items, that, not the red bike, but maybe it's the pencil case, you know, I kind of want that because my other pencil case looks a bit dodgy and a you don't want to be picked on at school, so you want this other cool pencil case. I know, I know, do kids even use pencils nowadays? Anyway, this project management software will allow for you to have that in a separate list of a lower priority, and then when you actually get it for Christmas you can move it into, I got it from Santa. And then you've got that in the list. When to Use Project Management Software I use project management software to manage different projects between my teams, and that works out really well. I've even got one that I manage with my girlfriend. So you can use it for anything and everything. But the big thing is when you have a brainstorming session with the rest of your team, even if it's just yourself wearing different DeBono hats, thinking hats, you are able to see what tasks need to be done and visualise what's the most important task to be done. Set reminders and make sure that you're kicking goals. It Makes Life Easier Project management software is just about making your life a little bit easier. It's not going to overtake everything, but it is definitely going to make things when you go, "Oh, I need update that thing on the website. Who do I do that? How do I know who that goes to?" And you go, "I'll put that to the web guy." Our computers are a bit slow, make another project board, call IT. Then your IT department comes in, they do an audit and when they do an IT audit, it comes through and they say, "Okay, you need to upgrade this, this, this, this and this." Again, you can see all of these different tasks that need to be done and you can set a priority on them, and you can see what stage they're at. So it's not just good for you, it's good for you to be able to keep accountability with the rest of your team. The Price Tag is Great I can't speak more highly of Trello. I've been using it for a number of years and I'm still on the free plan that is still servicing us as we require it. Now, I always use another package called ConnectWise, which does a little bit more nitty gritty technical stuff, but generally speaking, Trello is going to get you 95% of the way there. I use Trello for all of our marketing teams, for any of our sales teams, for any of the other collaboration that we do with any external companies. t's there and it does its job, and it does it well. And the price tag's right. The Final Word So I would give Trello four and a half out of five. The only things that I would change is ultimately just allowing for a few more integrations in the free package. But that's just because I'm being stingy, so they have to make their money somewhere. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this and if you have, please make sure to jump over to iTunes, send us some love and give us some feedback. What would you like to hear about? What project management software are you using? Because I'd love to go and trial that out and see how that works for us. Stay good.

CigarScore Merch!: https://click.cigarscore.com/merchytUse coupon code  CIGARSCORETV  to get 15% off your entire purchase!Note: The ring gauge is measured in units of 1/64th of an inch. A 64-ring cigar would be one inch in diameter.Initial Thoughts:I love getting cigar recommendations from the CigarScore community, and today's cigar was recommended by YouTube user "Steve's Lip-Smackin' BBQ" on this video. Today, at Steve's request, I'm smoking the New World Toro by AJ Fernandez.Before lighting it, I noticed that this cigar has an interesting aroma. It almost smells like there's a hint of rose in the dark, coarse wrapper. However, immediately upon lighting the cigar, it was very smooth and sweet.Brand: AJ FernandezLine: New WorldSize: 6.5 x 55Cut: PunchLight: TorchPrice: $8.99Wrapper: NicaraguanBinder: NicaraguanFiller: NicaraguanLearn About This Cigar - https://famous-smoke.7eer.net/05K9OFinal Thoughts:If you like peppery cigars or cigars with lots of spice, you'll enjoy the New World Toro by AJ Fernandez. If you don't like cigars with heavy notes of pepper, you'll, at least, like the first half.This cigar is well made, it has complex flavors, and it comes in at a fair price. The draw remained practically perfect the entire smoke, even though we got a torrential downpour during the second half of the cigar. However, there was a burn issue that required some retouching.Because I'd smoke this again when next in the mood for a moderately peppery cigar, the New World Toro by AJ Fernandez earns a CigarScore 4.#CigarScoreTV:::::Find & Rate Where to Smoke Cigarsat https://www.cigarscore.com:::::Where I buy my cigars: https://click.cigarscore.com/famoussmokePremium Cigar Samplers: https://click.cigarscore.com/fs-premiumsamplers:::::Subscribe to my YouTube Channel! - https://click.cigarscore.com/subscribeonyoutube::::: Gear I Used or Mentioned in This Video :::::Main camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon80dMain lens: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon18125mmMusic: https://www.cigarscore.com/musicLapel mic: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-movolv1Sturdy tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-tripodTravel camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canong7xiiHandheld tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-manfrotto:::::SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cigarscoreTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/cigarscoreInstagram: https://Instagram.com/cigarscore:::::AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER: Hey, so, some of the links in my videos and descriptions are affiliate links. But, I only recommend products/services I use and love myself =) More details here - https://www.cigarscore.com/ads-and-affiliate-disclaimer-disclosure/

Check out the CigarScore Merch Store at https://click.cigarscore.com/merchytUse coupon code  CIGARSCORETV  to get 15% off your entire purchase!Okay, real talk - I've smoked this cigar (and reviewed it on CigarScore.com) before. But I forgot. Well, my subconscious must have been working overtime, because I bought this stick to review!Is the JFR Lunatic Maduro Short Robusto worth smoking twice? Was this one as good as I remembered? Let's tune in to this gripping tale of cigar confusion.Buy this cigar: https://famous-smoke.7eer.net/EW44nInitial Thoughts:I first discovered the JFR Lunatic brand from my friends at the Luxury Cigar Club. They sent me the JFR Lunatic Habano Short Titan, and while it was good, I wasn't quite hooked. That is until I tried the Lunatic Maduros. Wow, these little guys (and big ones too) are packed with bold, rich flavors. To be honest, I had two of these JFR Lunatic Short Robustos earlier in the week, so they're already on my radar as a great cigar (and I reviewed this cigar in March). Let's see how this one holds up.Brand: JFRLine: Lunatic, Short RobustoSize: 4 3/4 x 52Cut: GuillotineLight: MatchesPrice: $5.99Smoked On: May 4, 2019Learn About This Cigar - https://famous-smoke.7eer.net/EW44nFinal Thoughts:Although I really enjoyed the JFR Lunatic Maduro Short Robusto I smoked in March, this cigar had some issues. The burn wasn't always even (though it did finish almost perfect), and there were some cracks that developed along the way. Also, the flavors this time around weren't quite as delicious as they were before. Even though this particular stick wasn't perfect, it came pretty close. Because I'd smoke this again, heck, I'd even buy a box, the JFR Lunatic Maduro Short Robusto earns a (high) CigarScore of 4.:::::Find & Rate Where to Smoke Cigars at https://www.cigarscore.comWhere I buy my cigars: https://click.cigarscore.com/famoussmokePremium Cigar Samplers: https://click.cigarscore.com/fs-premiumsamplers:::::Subscribe to my YouTube Channel! - https://click.cigarscore.com/subscribeonyoutube::::: Gear I Used or Mentioned in This Video :::::Main camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon80dMain lens: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canon18125mmMusic: https://www.cigarscore.com/musicLapel mic: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-movolv1Sturdy tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-tripodTravel camera: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-canong7xiiHandheld tripod: https://www.ellorywells.com/yt-manfrotto:::::SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cigarscoreTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/cigarscoreInstagram: https://Instagram.com/cigarscore:::::AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER: Hey, so, some of the links in my videos and descriptions are affiliate links. But, I only recommend products/services I use and love myself =) More details here - https://www.cigarscore.com/ads-and-affiliate-disclaimer-disclosure/

Today’s guest needs no introduction. He is one the most iconic living figures in bourbon today. He’s been on episodes 77, 105, and 175. He’s even got his own personalized scooter to get him around the distillery and that is Jimmy Russell. This podcast touches on his early years and how he was selected to become the next master distiller. He talks about the changes he saw at the distillery as it exchanged hands throughout the years. Also, we get to hear the story on the birth of Rare Breed and his opinion on chill filtering vs non-chill filtering debate. Show Partners: Barrell Craft Spirits blends cask strength, high quality spirits to explore the effects of different distillation methods, barrels, and aging environments. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Use code "BOB2019" for discounted tickets to Bourbon on the Banks in Frankfort, KY on August 24th. Visit BourbonontheBanks.org. (Offer good through 6/30.) Aged & Ore is running a special promotion on their new Travel Decanter. Get yours today at PursuitTravelDecanter.com. Receive $25 off your first order with code "Pursuit" at RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: The history of JW Dant and Log Still Distillery - https://www.distillerytrail.com/blog/j-w-dant-investing-12-million-to-restart-historic-distillery-in-the-bourbon-capital-of-the-world/ Heaven Hill 7 Year Bottled in Bond Launch - https://www.facebook.com/bourbonpursuit/posts/2640636035998401?__tn__=K-R Leave us a review! https://link.chtbl.com/LeaveAReview This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about speaking at a Total Wine event in Atlanta. Does limestone water make a difference in bourbon? How long does it take to cook bourbon? Can you burn the mash? When did you start at the distillery? What roles have you had at the distillery? What Master Distiller trained you? How did he decide he wanted to train you? What were the early years like? Was there anything from prohibition that affected the distillery operations when you started? Will you all need to increase capacity soon? What was it like when you first started traveling to talk about Wild Turkey? What were your biggest challenges on the road? Were you nervous when you first went out on the road? Were you happy traveling and talking to the consumers? What was the name of the distillery before Wild Turkey? What was it like to distill then ship the bourbon away? Tell us about the other former Lawrenceburg distilleries. What was it like when you were out on the road? Do you think it helped grow the brand? Do you prefer to travel or be at the distillery? Tell us about Kentucky Spirit and Rare Breed. How often are you going through and sampling barrels? Do you have a favorite warehouse? Do you have a favorite floor? Why do you only have 7 floors? What innovations have you seen throughout your time in the bourbon industry? Talk about your rye mashbill. What do you think of non-distilling producers? Tell us about the inception of Rare Breed. Do you like the barrel char flavor? What do you think of chill vs. non-chill filtered? What kind of steak do you like? How much time do you spend at the visitor's center? What do you drive most of the time? Are you excited to have Bruce at the distillery? Did you ever want to own the distillery? Why do whiskey consumers get enthralled with age statements? Any life advice for younger generations? 0:00 I've had one bad job since I've been here. My dad worked for Old Joe Distilling company. The last 10 years of his life he worked here. 0:09 You know what the problem was? You were working here too? Yeah, I was his boss. 0:13 Oh really? (laugh) 0:28 Hey, it's Kenny here and this is episode 207 of bourbon pursuit. It's been a pretty busy week and a half of bourbon news. So let's get to it. Another warehouse comes crashing down. However, this time it's not because of unknown reasons, but it was because of disastrous weather in wind. O.Z. Tyler located in Jonesboro, Kentucky, had a corner of warehouse age get ripped off and barrel started coming to the ground back on Monday, June 17. About 4500 barrels and bourbon more in that quadrant that have now been rescued. The warehouse has been successfully deconstructed, and the cleanup process is underway. That particular warehouse holds around 19,400 barrels. O.Z. Tyler has been in daily meetings with the Environmental Protection Agency to make sure that everything stays contained. On the right side there has been minimal damage in very little leakage because bourbon barrels are constructed to withstand plenty of movement. JW Dant, you've heard the name before because it's one of the many brands owned by Heaven Hill and is also one of the prominent bottled in bond Bourbons that you see on the shelf. And it's been talked about previously with Bernie lovers back on episodes 3637 and 89. Well, heaven Hill may own the name JW Dant as the brand but they don't own the person. j w. Wally dance surprised the crowd during the national bourbon Day celebration in Bardstown, Kentucky, announcing a $12 million investment to build logs still distillery on 2200 acres of land that he purchased that was once guessed them and he decelerate until that was actually shut down back in 1961. In 1883, that distillery at this site was called head and beam distillery but was closed during Prohibition. The distillery reopened the repeal of prohibition, eventually selling to United distillers and later Shanley production at the old distillery was relocated to Louisville in the early 1960s. And production at this location had ceased. The JW dant brand name was sold to heaven Hill in the early 1990s. Heaven Hill still produces JW Dant bourbon today, so don't expect this name on a future bottle from logs still distillery. You can read more about the history of JW Dant and logs still distillery at distillery trail.com with the link in our show notes. while speaking of heaven Hill, everyone is up in arms either celebrating or chastising them over the new announcement of the relaunch of their heaven Hill bottom and bond. You may remember this last year when this product was only available Kentucky and it disappeared from shelves when it had announced its retirement. However, it's back. But there are some catches. The age statement has been increased one year from six to seven years old. It's still bottle and bond at 100 proof the packaging is a bit more flashy than its white label screw top predecessor. Now the big news might be that it's not launching in Kentucky, and it's not going to be available in Kentucky on the first release. Instead, it will be immediately available in California, Texas, New York, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, South Carolina and Colorado. And the prices jumped from the once low budget daily bourbon of $12 and 99 cents to nearly three times that with a suggested retail price of 3999. We're gonna be discussing this one in a lot more detail on the next round table. So we can see where this new price point positions them in the market. So stay tuned for that one. Today's guests, he needs no introduction. He's easily one of probably the most iconic living figures in bourbon today. He's been on episode 77 105 and hundred and 75. He's even got his own personalized scooter to get him around the distillery and that's Jimmy Russell. This podcast touches on his early years and how will you selected to become the next master distiller and how he saw the changes of his own distillery changed hands plenty of times throughout the years. It was certainly an honor for myself to sit there and chat with this man one more time to really just hear more about his story. You're listening to this podcast so we know you enjoy it a little bit. So if you can please be our boots on the ground. leave us a review because that helps the show grow and find new people. Now let's hear what Joe Beatrice over a barrel bourbon has to say. We've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 5:03 Hi Joe from Barrell Bourbon. Here we blend cask strength 5:06 high quality spirits to explore the effects of different distillation methods, barrels, and aging environments. 5:08 You can find it on the shelves at your nearest retail store. I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char. I was changing my nine month old baby's diaper. When suddenly an enormous back pain struck my lower back a spasm seized my spine. It says if 1000 vodka troops grabbed their pitchforks and started stabbing me. Thank goodness I was able to place Julian gently down and the changing station as I toppled over and intense pain. I simply couldn't move. And all I could think about was the total wine event I had in Atlanta later that day. I considered canceling it decided to push on. I drove to Atlanta from Louisville stopping every hour to stretch my back. At one point I thought I was going to pass out in the middle of $1 general and chat and knew them as I was shop for back support things. If I did pass out there, I don't think I would have woken up with much. It was a very interesting crowd shopping that day. I pressed on, I get to the total wine two hours late, and there was a decent crowd waiting for me. I tried standing and talking but could barely stand. So I sat and talked about taxation and bourbon. I never really know what I'm going to talk about with these things. I like to feel the crowd out. And this was one I felt was really hungry for geeky knowledge and somehow bourbon taxes just kind of rose to the forefront of what to talk about. I went through my spiel sign some books and magazines, but couldn't have a tasting. For some reason. Georgia doesn't allow people to have tastings and liquor stores. When will our country figure out that responsible alcohol actions are the answer, not pesky bands on things like tastings. I feel really bad for those total wine workers because they can't really share the goodness of bourbon. Anyway, the next day I went to Atlanta's other times wine. When I ran into the show's good friend Kerry, aka suburbia who taunted me with a vodka bottle and took a picture of the pleasure he had. You should check it out on his Twitter handle look for suburbia, it really captured my disdain for the bourbon job stealing parasite known as vodka. Seriously, vodka sucks. Okay, I told my therapist I would cut back on my vodka rant. So let me get back to the total wine stuff. I did a similar talk about taxes at Kennesaw store and later hung out with the club Atlanta bourbon barons, where the founder Giuliano opened up his house and insane collection to me, at this point, after hitting up the urgent care center the day before, I was on some medication for the back and couldn't really partake in much of this great whiskey tasting. But I slipped a little, just a little. One of the members is Atlanta's leading personal trainer and geologists who sees Atlanta Braves players and people who have a bunch more muscle than me. He offered to look at my best And that, to me is the epitome of the bourbon community. We like to help one another. Atlanta was gracious with the bourbon hospitality and concerns from a health and it just made my trip all the worthwhile. So thank you so much to the Atlanta bourbon community for opening up your arms and accepting me and my bad back because I hobbled to and from all the total wine stores and to your homes. I shared this with you because I feel like the bourbon community is at a breaking point on the internet. I'm seeing constant trolling and bickering and online forums. And maybe it's time we go back to the old ways of the bourbon social life. You know, when you invited total strangers into your home and poured over your conversations with your very best Bourbons. Those were the good old days, and I'd like to see us get back to them. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, have you subscribed to my new magazine bourbon Plus, you should. Latest cover features the actor Jeffrey Wright, who's starring in James Bond and john wick. He's on the cover. Check it out. Until next week. Cheers 9:08 Welcome back to the episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon back in Lawrenceburg filming recording on site at wild turkey distillery wild turkey Hill I believe one time is what you call it right Jimmy 9:21 is known as wild turkey he'll it's been named Ed bar county is known as wild turkey. He'll 9:26 There you go. So we have master distiller Of course, bourbon legend, Jimmy Russell on the podcast today. And before I kind of dig into it, just want to say thanks to everybody from the empire that helped set this up everybody that also kind of figured out the logistics for it as well. We are recording outside today. So if you hear some trucks going by, it's something that Jimmy had already mentioned earlier to us that there is a rock quarry probably about a mile and a half down the road. And apparently they make some pretty damn good limestone and that's where you hear these trucks that are just going back and forth all day. Right You know, this is where all the lamps only had to have good limestone water to make good bourbon and the Kentucky River is all spring fed limestone water. So I guess we'll go ahead and we'll kick it off with that. So anybody everybody knows Jimmy so we'll get we'll get past that but you know, we'll we'll talk about water in general right because I think it's one of those things that gets a lot of talk about when it comes to Kentucky bourbon you know, you talk about limestone and about limestone filtration but does it really matter at the end of the day because a lot of stuff goes to like reverse osmosis and it's really filtered heavily through there so what's 10:32 kind of your thought process well done in the cooking process we use just limestone water is no go so old time we use house Moser is I use when we're cutting a bourbon after it's been aged for years, but it's just regular Kentucky River water when when you're actually cooking it 10:47 coconut. Okay, so I guess let's let's give some people a little bit of a schooling. So when you're cooking bourbon, what's what's the usual time process when it goes into the masher and everything like Well, 10:59 it depends on time a year we're cooking 400 bushels to a mash corn rye and barley malt. Now the cooking times are the same we cook corn up to 212 degrees and then we cook it for a period of time. Then we start cooling down we had a rather certain temperature has a little more starts a little more flavors, and then we cooling down to certain temperatures. It had we had to barley malt barley malt converts all starches into fermented will sugars. Then we pump at our firm better at our east and East a non ferment will sugars produces a bourbon in 72 hours. And this depend on temperature cook, the cooking temperature is always the same. But cooling down from 200 and 20th. We're cooling water outlet Kentucky River used to cause and all in the wintertime, we can cook and pump a fermented mash mash out in a firmer and three and a half, four hours. And when we just shut down and last part of June the water was hot. It was taking four and a half five hours. So what you're doing, you're setting there and beating that grain to death cooking in the I use simple terms. Just like cooking at home, we leave something on the stove too long. It gets mushy and not as good. So 12:11 yeah, but do you get any like, like say you're putting in like a baking pan? Does ever actually get like black underneath of it? Like if you actually cooked it too long? No, no, no. So you're not gonna actually get can actually burn it. 12:23 No, you're not going to burn it. 12:25 So is there? Is there a point when you know that the mash is done? 12:28 In your opinion? Oh, yes, you can tell by looking at the firm better. First day is pretty smooth and even on top. And they used to own sugars and the apartment or is rolling and moving and it's the natural movement was the East really known the sugars scene. And as it starts finishing Oh, we call it down down they'll start dying down and it'll be come out clear on top. 12:52 Oh yes. The father the firm enters right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 12:55 We call it beer at that stage. 12:57 So distillers beer. Absolutely. I so what's let's let's give everybody a little bit of a history lesson too because you started here at wild turkey back in September 10 1954 Okay, so you know the exact date remember the time 13:12 6am seven o'clock in the morning 13:16 maybe I'm not the first person to ask that one. I don't know. Yeah, so you you've pretty much taken you've done a pretty much every single role with inside as 13:25 well yes. 13:27 Most of times you started in the bourbon business you started one place you stayed there all master still it took me under his wing. And that started out in the lab and salary time I learned that you know we learned a job well you can sit back and take it easy, then a boom into something else moves. So that experience in running the ball and operation running the whole client and exercise client management for several years. So what what made it into balls By the way, who was your master distiller that Mr. Bill Hughes he was young distiller for probation and Helio God appeared top heel. And he's took me under his wing started training and were born raised here in Lawrenceburg, Anderson County, and he'd known me you know, all my life and he more or less took me under his wing started training me. 14:14 What What was it about you that? Did he see something? Was there a glimmer in your I did you? Did you ask like, what was it? 14:21 No, I didn't really know. He just they just started trading me doing everything here. 14:25 He's like, here's the here's the biggest sucker in the room. And probably 14:29 nobody else would ever 14:31 know how to use it. 14:33 So what were those were those beginning years, like when you're when you're trying to have this apprenticeship. 14:40 While he's learning everything in the story. I worked in quality control and the story that day and time we didn't have all is saying they will quit what you have now. we'd run analysis on the corn, check it make sure it meets our standards, everything we done by hand. Now you have good equipment to check off, they're going to say you check all the grain and maybe four days are with you my brother scoop shovel shovel, and done a little bit everything. 15:09 So So you started 1954. Right. Yes. So at what point was that during pre post, sorry, post prohibition and and was there anything that really that was, I guess, prohibition ask that that affected your your job at the time? Or is everything just running full cylinders? We started of prohibition in 1933. And this story, some of the buildings and our storage bill some our storage building here 15:39 was built for and 1890s. And most of the steel was, was dismantled cause it was 1919 1933. A lot of them didn't think they'd be back in operation. But the family that owned this at that time is a big rock where why the amount of limestone out here blows. And they own that rock quarry too. So they work here in wintertime. Work in Iraq, we're in the summertime. 16:04 So yeah, you weren't running full cylinders, like you are today. 16:09 Still the same way as to the hot mush July which medicine we don't make any bourbon you just too hot. Doing it now bottling in Hawaii, how's everything Danish goes on all the time? Before it's a cooking mash? It just takes too long to cook them and cooling down. 16:26 Now, do you think that has any effect on the supply of what you all can try to produce? Or? I mean, do you look at it as maybe we should throw in some air conditioning units or open some windows? And 16:36 well, that's not the problem is the water? Oh, is it we say we start having chill water to cooling down. And it just takes along with our we've doubled the capacity owners are to steer in the last few years. So we're running about 346 faster right now. So when we build servers angry, the refurbished everything, we doubled our more than doubled our capacity. And the way we got it now we can put in extra parameters, we can still put in more firm owners and increase more and more. 17:08 I mean, do you do you see the day coming? Where you're going to where you're going to need to do that? Or is right now everything pretty good. And status? Well, 17:14 you know, I hope we have to go save when I started 50 or 60 barrels a day. Now, of course we're restricting our own product, everything to wild turkey products here we make our own product, a drone product and bottle our own product. 17:30 Well, almost right you've got a few other things out there old recipe bond and 17:35 that was too old to steal was that was a one time deal. They went back and done some compile on that. But that's some older stories was here. And they've been looking at some of the older stories for for probation. Maybe doing a special every once while now. 17:49 Yes. What to say I was like there's another one that could be coming out. I think it was the wash. Was it the barons? The barons releases or something like that. They look like it was kind of another another camp party thing. But we figured you probably didn't have a whole lot of your hands involved in that one. No, I didn't. So another thing I guess let's give an idea of, of what so at some point, you are also Do you remember when you had to start going on the road to start talking about the bourbon? Yes, 18:20 it was probably at least 30 years ago or more. And production to master distillers working in production. They just do is to play. That's all you done. And our company started me out going on the road and made a trip all across the United States. And it is completely different is now everybody is all whiskey don't make it. What it is nowadays, everybody. With all internets and everything. Everybody knows everything is going just like this broadcast broadcast. You all covered everything people know what's going on all the time now. 18:54 Well, there's a hungry consumer out there, right? They, they, they want to know more 18:58 they want. That's what I say when I say started. There's always good in my country with what it was. But now they're very well educated. They know what's going on all the time. 19:06 So what was what were some of the biggest challenges when you were doing that in regards of trying to get people to either listen to you or try the product? 19:14 Well, they listened. When you started talking to them, they really listened and this one he's a bourbon Sally's come along whiskies of the world and it's all over the world anywhere you go in the world, you know, for many years, and bourbon was strictly a Southern Gentleman strength. They got their cards or cigars and bourbon went to back room playing cards. That's where it comes in. How will you read old story you never drank bourbon till after five o'clock? Or somewhere? It's always five o'clock. Yeah. But that was always storing in his coming worldwide right now. The export market is huge. everywhere in the world. Now bourbon is really doing well. Were you because you were 19:56 I guess you consider yourself a pioneer when it comes to going out traveling and and talking about the whiskey. Were you nervous? 20:03 No, not really. No, I'm just playing. Oh, Jimmy. I'm saying Well, I mean, 20:08 at this point, yeah, you've stood up and you've talked in front of a bunch of people for quite a long time. And I know one of the things that was always relatively funny was Eddie would always say you know you didn't really do a whole lot of talking at home but you should see it the distiller you're doing you're doing your thing then you're always talking 20:25 well that's what he said the first trip he made with me. Then he come back home said Mama, you don't know that he said he's out here so you can keep him quiet. What 20:36 do you think you think you found like 20:40 like a new new happiness when you were when you were traveling of trying to find a way to connect with consumers I 20:45 had but I've always been people enjoy people. I'm a call myself a people's person. I like to be just like here. I tried to get down to Visitor Center at least once today. Talk to the venture see what they have to say about it. And my wife likes to come here to and on Saturdays. My family has breakfast to get we're family everything's open Joel except our home. That's all but we have breakfast together every Saturday morning. And we she'll come out with me actually she worked here for ideas even she worked here for eight years or children come along and she stayed home took care of the children and and we have Bing she likes come out here and see the vicious dog and they like see are so weak and then after church on Sunday we normally come out a little while on Sunday afternoons I get to spend more time in a visitor center that away for through the week. I got a job to do up there and I don't get down here as much. 21:41 So you know I think I remember this correctly. When you said your your wife Georgia, by the way it is now was this place called was it old tub or Old Joe? Is that what all 21:51 know it was Anderson County just still in 21:53 Anniston County. Okay. 21:54 And then one time was really brothers. And it was JT s brown at one time. And then been since 1971. has been Austin Nichols. 22:04 Gotcha. All right. We'll see. Mr. Sir. I'm learning something today as well. 22:08 They also Nichols company. They had their bourbon made here. It was shipped to New York and bottled in New York at that time. And they bought everything out here. Both the whiskey the day old already here. Um, it was already there. So they both and they didn't buy any other products at JDs brown at them. They didn't buy any of that. 22:30 Alright, so at what point so you were here during the entire Austin Nichols? 22:34 Since they've actually owned everything here in Kentucky. 22:38 Absolutely. So what was it like during that time to sit there and distill and then just ship everything away? Like what was what was the Lucille Ball and everything here? Okay, you're still doing that too? 22:48 Yeah, we're doing everything here. So talk about a little bit because that was in the 70s. Right. So it wasn't it wasn't the heyday for bourbon. No bourbon was true. Say back in that day and time bourbon restrictive Southern Gentleman. Right. So what was what was the, I guess you could say the are or the feeling that, you know, kind of went through a lot of the veins of people around here of what's going to happen with bourbon during that time. I mean, well, you know, before prohibition, it was 12 distilleries here in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, Canada was known as one of the biggest selling cup places it was at that time. Most when I started with steel for here for roses known at nationals are still here in town. Old Joe distilling company was here, and Hoffman distillery was here, then we were here. So when I started the steel forward, now we're down to two four roses and us, 23:41 right. And so what what was what was the Old Joe and Hoffman? What? What kind of fate were they delivered? 23:47 Well, Joe was one of the oldest brands just our 1918 is one of the oldest, oldest brands, and they had several different brands. And in Auckland, they had half and broke. Then they started days were broke. Hmm, there was worried started, 24:04 which, from what I understand is Ezra Brooks was even a real person, right? 24:08 I thought he was I'm not sure. 24:11 Fancy. I don't know. I think that's been one of those biggest lords of bourbon. Nobody actually knows who Brooks actually is. I think it's just a fictional character. Good to be. 24:21 Jimmy Russell doesn't know I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and put my stake in the ground. It might be fictional. I might be right on that one you might be right. 24:29 So I kind of want to go back a little bit about, you know, your time on the road and what it was to to start doing that because you said you weren't nervous. But what was what was the reception of a lot of those people? You know, you'd said that they were they were listening. But do you think that that sort of help kick mark or sorry? kickstart the the market at the time for what we're seeing today? 24:53 Oh, yeah. say they've started wanting to learn about his dad and no, back to Ezra Brooks. Love the fellowship, Assyria his his first name was Ezra now well, that had anything to do with it. I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know either. But the fellow that owned all hapa distillery, while the owners first name was Israel, 25:11 we'll have to look into that. And put that on the research papers for later. But again, I cannot go back to your traveling, you know, the reception of those individuals and how that kind of kick started. So how long? And how many years? Were you traveling? And you're still doing a little bit not near 25:27 as much? Well, I'm still doing it in the States. I'm not going overseas at doing most of traveling overseas now. But, but I've been in just about every country in the world, who was talking about bourbon and say it's become a worldwide drink people's really educated and where you go in the world now. And so you have the bourbon side is in Japan, Australia, Europe, everywhere. Women in the bourbon women, the whiskey of the world and everything nowadays. 25:53 Absolutely. So do you. I guess I'm trying to find a good word to kind of summarize this with but when you're Did you did you look at that time traveling as as a good time to be able to do that? Or would you rather been back here at the distillery kind of overseeing a lot Oh, I enjoy 26:11 doing that. I would want to be a distillery. I wouldn't want to do it all the time. Like la the ambassador's is now they're on the road all the time. But every so often be out on the road and see what two people has to say, you know, you make it, agent, bottle it and ship it out. Unless you had complaints. And we've had very few of them over the years. You never heard any more about it. This way. When you're out in the field, you get to meet people. It's enjoying it and drink it and hear what they have to say about it. 26:40 So when we talk about just the whiskey in general, what do you what do you look at as some of the more brands that that you fall in love with? You know, we've talked to Eddie and and you know, he talked about everybody's got their baby, right? Everybody's got their baby. And so he looks as Kentucky spirit and rare breed. We're really your babies. Yes, 26:59 Kentucky's spirit and Blanton's was the first two single barrels on the market. Way back in early 90s. The first two barrel proofs on the market was Booker's and rare breed and that was late 80s, early 90s. Now everybody that has them but they were the first to own the market. 27:16 So kind of talk about what the Kentucky spirit line really is and what it kind of means to you as well 27:21 the Kentucky spirits of single barrel your hand selected and selected one when you say single barrel has come one barrel and one barrel only. So you're selected. Now here way we do it. Every barrel has a little different taste, even though it's the same going in his way of white oak tree grows in the woods has effect on a tree. I use simple terms. You plant flowers around your home all the way around someone who better on one side or another cause you get more sun more rain or same with white oak trees. So we were selected, were selected consistent taste Now we have this barrel program or bars restaurants, distributors can come in and select their own barrel. We'll have some more spicy pans on the wood some lyst because they know their customer we're trying to please everybody who are they know their customers and they were picking one one of my wanting more spicy one might not want is spicy. So when we're selecting the single barrels 28:19 so the I mean how often were you actually going through and testing some of these Kentucky spirit barrels to see if they matched up profile that people would want to come in and actually purchase them 28:30 we we've always done that we check everything we're Hey, we don't control our grains check before it's ever unloaded, we check it actually grounded. We check it when it's been cooked. We check the firm owners we taste a new product before it ever goes into barrel and then we check new barrels make sure they meet our standard we use a number for heavy char we make sure everything meets our standards before 28:54 so it's like it's like you almost have like a battle of wills here right because you've got this you got this heavy lean on consistency where you're saying like yes, we've got one mash bill we go in one entry proof we do this we do this that have this level of consistency and it's like but we're going to come up with a product where every single thing is different 29:13 you know me I like to be consistent even though I've come up with American honey I've come up with several different experiments over the years but you know I use simple terms Yeah, I certain foods and if I don't like taste them but I'm not gonna eat them again. 29:31 Like what like what foods you're not gonna try again? 29:36 Yeah, cuz simple. It feels like people say like, I'm too old to eat this anymore. I'm gonna enjoy the rest of what I'm going to eat. 29:41 Well my wife sure she says I too much steak and beef. 29:46 You can't have enough steak. That's BBQ Yeah, there you go. What about stuff that you you're not going to touch? Anything that you're not going to touch anymore? No Really? 29:55 Mo is not very few thanks to that. Oh like 30:00 Alright, so let's talk a little bit about the warehouse is here. So it seems like you probably know every every nook and cranny of a lot of these things right? So do you have Do you have a favorite warehouse 30:10 you know to me, most of them. If you sit near you see they all said about the same level. Get same airflow, get same air flow and everything it or some places are you know they're down in valleys different places. But here we're good now at likes a and b warehouse he says it is but you know he gets something in your mind you believe it but I may. I don't see a lot of division er houses. 30:38 What about the floors Do you have a particular floor that you're akin to? 30:41 Well the third fourth fifth floors ideal aging. The first and second floors at same story warehouses. It can be 30 degrees difference between the top floors and the bottom floors. It ages two faced on the top floors and don't age fast enough on the bottom floors. So at times you have to rotate bottom the middle forces idea who managed in temperature and all that there's not that big change in it so but the bottom folders and top floors it is if you use over an hour going to the warehouse you start up steps every floor use field difference in the heat on up. 31:16 So why do you think they stopped? What do you stop at seven place? Why would you go like a 50 story warehouse? 31:25 Do you love bourbon? How about festivals? course you do. So join bourbon pursuit in Frankfort, Kentucky on August 24 for bourbon on the banks. It's the Commonwealth premier bourbon tasting and awards festival. You will get to taste from over 60 different bourbon spirits, wine and beer vendors plus 20 food vendors all happening with live music. Learn more about bourbon from the master distillers themselves that you've heard on the show and enjoy food from award winning chefs. The $65 ticket price covers everything. Don't wait get yours at bourbon on the banks.org and through June 30 you can get your discounted ticket offer two tickets for the low price of $110 when using the code be EOB 2019 during checkout at bourbon on the banks.org 32:18 Hey everyone, 32:19 Ryan here and I know when I celebrate a weekend with friends I want to bring some of my best bourbon. However, if I'm on the car, a plane is not convenient. Plus my bottles are clanging around they're not really secure. So I have the perfect solution. 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They apply their expertise from brewing and began distilling at beer barrel finished whiskey began production 2012 and rock house was the club is featuring it in their next box. The barrels come from Tennessee get filled a dragon's milk beer twice the mature bourbon is finished in those very same barrels. Rocco's whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories from craft distillers across the US. Along with two bottles of hard to find whiskey rack houses boxes are full of cool merchandise that they ship out every two months to members in over 40 states go to rock house whiskey club com to check it out. And try a bottle of beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye use code pursue for $25 off your first box 34:00 so why do you think they stop what do you stop at seven place? Why would you go like a 50 story warehouse like what would be the will be the the ideal way of not doing something like that? Well 34:10 I don't know how that would look but it'd be monstrous it'd be monsters but to back in that day in time they didn't have all this quit but you have now they they had police horses pulling the barrels up to the top floors. Oh really? Yes. 34:25 Yeah cuz i guess i mean i've seen you've seen you can go in some of these these warehouses and you do see the you can see like the pulleys and you do see like essentially like almost like an elevator shaft you put it on pull it up 34:37 cool isn't it? That's what they don't leave these two for prohibition here. 34:41 They didn't like put a put a backpack on you with a rope and make you go 34:46 away man does I now you have Rick and machines and all the put them up into three tour. So used to tear Rick's back Ned day we call the dropper she had a cable with hooks on the end. And you looped it up over the for Buffy and one fellow would hope to borrow was a hoax and I'll be back pulling them up earlier than Rick now you have all kinds of equipment to handle it now. Yeah, same way taking them out. You had to take them out the same way. 35:12 So what other I mean let's let's go ahead and rewind the clocks of time here right so during your time what other type of innovations have you seen when it comes to just yeah, either that's rolling barrels or wrecking barrels or dumping or anything like that that sort of either made it easier or just 35:28 it's made it easier you got better equipment now everything's better equipment, you know in the dump room used to knock the bone out of every barrel still. Now we got you got a bone puller pulls the barrels out soaks $1 now same way and fill in barrels you field every barrel, you had to drive the bone and it rolled it out. And it's a lot of those things is better equipment. Now that's why I say our forum and everything, we haven't changed anything. We just have so much better equipment now than you did and everybody to steal you run it by hand you had one hand on the steam veil, want to head on flow veil and you actually you got to be consistent improves on your steel if you prove runs up and down on the steel the flavors are going to be up and down. So you have to be consistent get good if you want consistent taste and flavor you gotta run the same prove all day long. 36:21 So I guess now it's a lot easier because it's all probably computer controlled 36:26 with how we have computers but we still at hand operators are still doing it by hand I can sit there and 36:32 click on click a mouse and I can make it like that and 36:35 then they had when we're grind and grind that has to be their meals we're cooking a cooker fella has been around the cooker we're filling the first matter yes be there so we're still got a computer city have sitting around doing some buy in and that's still in the middle of steel is about 240 degrees and it was hot back in that day and time setting imagine you got air conditioning control room for no sudden oh 37:04 yeah now they're just they're living life of kings or is so he you got to see the hard days hard days everything done by hand 37:12 Yes. 37:13 So let's let's talk a little bit more about the the distillation pieces of it so you've got one match but let you do for all the Bourbons but you also have a ride 37:21 around Nashville right? So talk a little about the rye when was that introduced? Like because I know for a while you know you used to have wild turkey from Maryland source oh not a store it is like bourbon even to this day you have allowed people to bourbon can be made distinctive product United States of America. And a lot of people thanks has been made in Tokyo it's not bourbon. When I started in Radwan made in Maryland, Pennsylvania. It wasn't rat whiskey rye was dominant grain on the East Coast when they come here and that's what they first started us probably George Washington was one of the first distillers I'll get this question all time who's the first distiller someone says a words I you know what I say? The first old farmer got over the mountains got a steel set up claims at the first and Is that another so I don't know whether anybody really knows who really registered still rewards. 38:17 Now that's going to be a mystery that will never going to solve. So back to the rye You know? So when was that when was that introduced here? Because I'd we had mentioned that it was it was sourced at one point for wild turkey 38:31 well it made in Pennsylvania were made for us in Pennsylvania. Okay, but we've ever since I've been here we bottle right? Then we started Mike or own 38:41 probably 38:43 late 60s early 70s. Most rise says 95% 100% rise. Ours is old fashioned formula. It's got raw corn, corn and barley. And that's way that if you look back to original recipes for and Pennsylvania, Maryland as well, they were 39:00 right. So I mean that's so you're keeping the same Nashville that you you sort of were even right. You can consider that contract was stealing if you were taking it out of out of Maryland and bring it back here. Is that 39:12 technically what it was? No, they was making it for us. 39:15 Yeah. Wasn't that considered contract distilling 39:17 or they was gone? Yeah. Same way bother stores in Kentucky right now. does a lot of social media does still brands, it does not have the story as Nautica, and that's what's made the bourbon market short right now, a lot of Bourbons made such a huge jump in the last seven or eight years. Same way as a lot of them were selling bourbon, other people live in a barn and lived under other brands. And now they're shorter bourbon. 39:43 So what's your what's your what's your take on that? Do you think? Are you a fan of indie peas or non distilling producers? Do you 39:51 think? Well, you know, they're making it for people how they want by either I guess or how they want it done. But no, monastery is Bowser says bourbon or rye all have come out of hit on it right. 40:06 Rising Tide raises all ships and right that's that's the way to look at it. So So yeah, so you've been doing that for a while. Rare Breed is the the barrel proof baby of yours. So kind of talk about the inception of that. 40:21 Well, actually, we were tasted we sample say we sample everything we're saying was Asian each year sitting here in LA the visitors come in, we'd be safe and we would sample right in the warehouse at that time. Dr. Bone had a thief pulled our Berlin sampler dr. Terry lovers come in KFC. Why can we get some of this? Why can't we get some of that? That's what brought to me. That's what brought the idea for us here that if they've wanted, that we could probably make it happen. Right? Right. It's easy enough to just not just basically just dump it right away. Don't need to prove it down too much. Right? You can't prove it that Yeah, not can prove it down. Actually, the only thing you can do is put a little water behind it to clean out your filters. Because you got a filter to get this so much at char HR and dump trolls. You'll see big flakes a char and Eric comes loose in that barrel. Then you have a lot of little fan jar that you had to filter to get f5 Charla, 41:21 a lot of people like that fine char at least some of the whiskey geeks What about you, do you when you when you have the opportunity to just go and sample something or go ahead and just fill up your own bottle? Whatever it is, do you get a little bit of that just barrel char sitting around in there? Do you 41:34 like that? Really, you don't get with a thief pull it out. You don't get that in there when he jumped the barrel and get everything out of it. 41:41 Right. But are you a fan of it? Because Because he don't be people like people? I mean, I I don't know. I look at it and you're like, Oh, it's kind of like an extra little little thing about having the bottles you can can you swirl it around you can see that 41:52 a lot of people's like so something wrong with it when they see that is what it is. 41:57 Yeah, I could see a probably a general consumer market would probably look at it like that. The same reason why everybody went to chill filtration at one point because you put ice in it and all of a sudden looks cloudy, but now we're starting to see this shift or this turn where people are, they're asking for, you know, non shelf. They're asking for throw a little piece of char in there for good measure. So I know 42:20 I know, I know it's authentic or something, you know, actually we never use chill for it depends on the proof. It depends on how much water you're adding when you cut it down whether the show failed or not. So at one on one prove up in just a few years ago we never geophones this tall it that what will happen to it. If you say you're shipping it from here and maybe 40 degrees goes to Canada 20 below, they get cloudy and hazy. And that's what you're doing. You're checking out some of those sayings. They won't get that away when you chill. 43:00 Now there's there's always the the never ending debate or story. If you do chill filter it are you removing any flavor. 43:10 Well, unless you see by federal law, if you move so much flavor, you can't call the bourbon anymore. So now you are doing very little flavors. 43:22 So you don't think it's really affecting anything you think it's more of a aesthetic. 43:26 Yeah, it's a now in the lower proves if you're adding a lot of water. See we're not a rule of thumb. It takes about a gallon of water Drew's 100 gallons of bourbon one proof point. So our barrel proof right now is 116.8. And we bonded one on one. You had very little water to it. That is coming on that barrel. 140 something you couldn't have 80 proof you had a lot of water to it. Absolutely. Because we just seal distill it low proof and put it in a barrel at low Bruce to say Hi, are you still were allowed to steal up? 160 proof? Hmm. And I use simple terms. You like to eat steak? 44:05 Do you want it well done or you want to medium rare? Yeah, 44:08 you like it? Well done. 44:10 I'm not a well done fan. I'm a medium medium rare. Just you don't get a lot of the those flavors you 44:15 answer my question. 44:18 You're taking the flavor. Hello. 44:20 Yeah, I mean, so it sounds like your state guy we were talking about already. So 44:27 are you uh, yeah, ribeye fillet. What's your what's your 44:30 what's your Academy? Like on the primary of verse your prime rib guy? I didn't even think about that row horse race choices. 44:37 Oh, yeah. That's so Joe Redis she had she had prime rib cooker for you go out around. Yeah. 44:45 You know, when the children are growing up, she cooked all the time. And now just the two of us and she never knows what time I'm getting home at nights. So weed out just if I'm in town, we added lunch. And you know, it's bad when you go restaurants now and they bring the teeth to you. Like what we said, 45:05 Jane? Yeah, well, I mean, you're here in Lawrenceburg. So I'm sure everybody probably knows you by name, that's for sure. Right. 45:10 Lehman likes to their place to we go to Lex and a lot of course I got a lot more restaurants and we have here in Lawrenceburg. 45:18 Absolutely. And so let's let's kind of talk about you know your time here at the distillery now you spend a lot of time down at the gift shop, chicken, some hand sign and bottles. 45:27 Try to get down at least once today, but I'm in distillery. Most all the time. I try to get to this person or at least once to today, usually about this time they afternoon. course they get off. Regular workers gets off at 330. So I'll usually go down our late night afternoons and sit around. I like 45:48 is it about you think it's the best part of your day? Or do you just like to have a healthy balance of getting in front of people? 45:52 I want to hear what people have to say. You know, I'm on the list and see what they have to say. Uh huh. 46:01 And plus you've got your your scooter, your own personalized scooter down there. 46:05 They had two bunnies. I can't get around and he feels he goes in these fields and I write it down here. 46:12 Right. Really? Okay, so it's an off road kind of guy. 46:16 Yes. Run 40 miles an hour on the road. Well, you 46:19 could just take it to the McDonald's parking lot if you're getting hungry today. Right. 46:23 It's not lost in Mattoon last night for the road he's got turns angles narrow lane. They bought that special for me I didn't even know that he's getting it till one day they said we need you down to Visitor Center will what it was I thought somebody that are wanting bottles I walked in and hey, come pushing that out. Sit here. This is what you go around around. 46:45 But you actually came up here we're recording outside on this hill. You actually came up here in your car you're looking actually drove up here on that? Yes. And now if had been the first for the week? Well, they tease me about this. You know what I draw most of the time 46:59 when you got most of the time 47:00 1998 Ford pickup truck. four wheel drive. Yeah, now I feel as well. And my wife forgot to her for Christmas. She's never drove it much so it's been sitting in the garage for three weeks so I told her to get out and drive Yeah, well battery dies, right? Well, it's it's only got 4000 miles on it. Yeah, and I'm driving a whole lot then well $2,000 we go to Destin Florida we're vacation Fourth of July we we drove down back so to 47:31 see now everybody that lives out in the the Destin region they know where to catch you when it when it comes time to for family vacations and stuff like that is so the other thing that you know I kind of want to talk about just kind of kind of wrap it up with some more bourbon talk is over the years you know you've had your hands in a lot of the releases that have come out and stuff like that you've handed a lot over to Eddie as well and then you've everybody's what he's really banging on Bruce to really move here now. We've I've been I've been sensing that a lot recently. You know where do you kind of see the the lineage going? I mean you excited to have to have Bruce come into here and do you think he's gonna do a good job like what do you think that's gonna be like? 48:11 Well like he said if he if he says I don't do something the heavens me. 48:17 Me and Bruce holdovers from there 48:22 but this is saying I enjoy so much about to bourbon business. All of us are close friends here in Kentucky if one of them gets in trouble others doing is anything they can to help them out. And we talked about Booker know Elmer Lee and part rain we all grew up together. Fred Nolan he grew up together at Parker son Craig been they they're about the same age they grew up together. But Craig had to give it up you know Parker old friend of mine he had Ellis disease engages in his 70s he got the point tour he still could talk all right he couldn't do anything they have big trucking company isn't cattle farms. So Craig had to give it up and stay in taking care of the farms and all now you got Bruce and free its own free little free together now so steal that vision is going on in 49:16 yeah i mean you do see this this family lineage is happening across pretty much pretty much all of them right i mean there's there's something that that there is to be said about that 49:27 little bit different on the heaven Hill side right let disappears disappears and more more business focused rather than distilling focused but the only thing known is to relive 49:37 all of this is Sharon before and countries are stock 49:41 so at one point would you would you rather had the opportunity to like buy back wild turkey and put it under the Russell name? No, we never did own it. Yeah. Well not buy it back. I'm just saying like if the opportunity presented itself or was just something that probably would never would have happened and it wouldn't happen yeah. 49:58 Yeah, it's the know it's very costly. Yes, yes, very costly. And see, most sayings if you don't turn your inventory winter for months, you're not going to be in business very long. See here we're not thinking about even turned inventory with the same date 10 to 12 years from now. So we got a lot of money tied up space in the state of Kentucky we pay a tax on each barrels and since you're in ages, yes the state of Kentucky 50:26 now you'd also mentioned 12 years but from what I understand and what I remember is that you're you're more of a like a seven to eight year old bourbon guys the 50:34 same to toys with seven to 12 Yeah, now we do an older limitation ever was while we put out 14 year old 15 the same thing the decades if we just finished the ad put out it's got 10 to 20 year old version, but it's just a few barrels and we we keep our record bottling one a lot 1400 Barroso badge bother in a small but there's no such term as small badge 50:59 now you can doesn't 51:00 really matter you can call whatever you want ours is about 100 250 barrels who were tasted all the time we found somebody thanks agent a little extra special will set them aside and keep taste them and if he starts getting that woody okie taste like a lot of would know he tastes you like an older bourbon but I don't like it and he starts getting that we can move them down at the bottom of our house and slow at age and down. We can't move same hundred thousand barrels as well on the inventory right now. 51:26 So I guess let's let's talk about that with Woody and okie bourbon because there is kind of a shift in the way that consumers are looking at buying bourbon when it comes to like a whiskey geek market right when people are coming out with crazy age data 2327 year old Bourbons and they do they've got this like heavy okie painting panicky kind of taste and flavor to it. However people like you are saying that's that's probably not the way you should be drinking personal taste Yeah, 51:57 how much it's your taste you drink whatever you live with this not my taste so 52:02 why is it that you think that 52:05 I would say a new whiskey geek or new whiskey consumer gets totally enthralled with this large number on the package rather than the taste and 52:15 it's a lot of people thanks older it is a better it is now go back to scotch which I know a lot about that to see they're using barrels has been used to us as I get as we 1516 years old to really get some good taste in it because they're using barrels and we've already used and the one thing about it when they start using your barrels they want to keep using them goes and eight years we lose about a third of a barrel is soaks into the wood and they're getting some flavor allied barrel so if they used our barrels one year beams or makers or Buffalo Trace and then it's going to change the taste of their product and that's one thing it's like food and all I want to taste the same everytime i don't i don't want some food taste this way tonight. Next week it tastes different way I don't 53:08 there's a lot of variations you can do to mac and cheese 53:12 anymore right and then you know that's funny saying mac and cheese now is all over the world he used to be he didn't see much but they were you going to world as mac and cheese they got it all now so many different ways they fix it now and cookies 53:29 Do you have a favorite mac and cheese rest we could just turn this into mac and cheese pursuit because I think there's there's not a lot of people that don't like mac and cheese 53:35 right. 53:37 Joe rata make a good mac and cheese. We don't eat much. No no mac and cheese for 53:41 all much anymore. My parents put two majors in it. 53:45 Really? 53:46 That's a new one. Here they their mac and cheese when I was growing up had two majors in it that see I don't think I've ever had that. 53:55 I can always try it though. I can always try. So we're gonna wrap it up with with one one last question here. And this actually came from a listener. His name is Jeremy. And he said me myself of several people that I know love visiting the distillery we love to visit with Jimmy for an hour. So he's a good rich source of information and bourbon lore. Now, he kind of wants to ask, what's a couple things to like an advice that you would give of things or codes to live by for younger generations? 54:24 me do it. Like I said a while ago, do it right or don't do it at all. Don't try to change keep consistent taste and flavor and all the time. Don't keep changing different times as you say to him says I'm hard headed in ways but I've done a lot of experiment in over the years with American honey with the barrels has been a scotch different barrels and everything. I've done a lot of experiment over the years but I stay strictly to old tradition doing it the right way. 54:57 Well, that's that's the bourbon side. But just in life in general. And life in general. What what what do you have some good, some good little tidbits that you can hand down to young generations of whether it's Don't work too hard? Maybe it's just enjoy what you love, whatever it is, enjoy 55:14 what you love. Don't try to be somebody who are not. That's what, you know, I don't I hope you see I'm not put on the plane Zambia, just, that's something I'm a piece of trash put on a big spiel. And I'm not if I really had 55:31 deep thoughts with with plain old Jimmy right. Alright. So let's go ahead, we'll wrap it up right there. So make sure that if you get the opportunity to come to Lawrenceburg and visit Wild Turkey, try to figure out was we're recording around three o'clock right now four o'clock, he said he's usually down at the visitor center then. So that's when you know is probably a good time to go catch him. Or you can ask the visitor center and I'll be glad to come down there and salty. There you go. You can do that as well. Right. So he'll do that for our panel cast. Listen, I will. Jimmy thank you so much for hopping on the show today. It was a pleasure to talk to you and you know, capture a lot of that good information. I'm sure we all learned something new every single time and I think we're gonna have to go back and figure out who this Ezra Brooks character was. 56:14 Yeah. Well, thank you for coming and being with us. We enjoy it anytime. You're always welcome here anytime you want to come 56:19 back, except your house right. Now that 56:22 that's all. We're family. 56:24 It's okay. I'll accept that. I'll accept that. Would you be surprised? 56:29 I'm not good on these computers. Other people tell me I saw we were home on 56:36 the internet. No. 56:39 Well, you know where you live? 56:40 Yeah, that's that's the that's the scary thing about it. gotta hide your address. 56:46 No, I'm in the phone. My name is in the phone book here and everything. 56:49 Oh, well. There you go. You can you can you can find them in the local Lawrence County phone book. Right. So with that, I want to say Jimmy, thank you again for coming on the show today. It was a pleasure to have you. That's how you can find Jimmy and I can meet him I'm sure we already talked about it will be back down in Destin, Florida at some point soon. And who knows you might see him at your favorite liquor store across the country signing bottles. 57:10 Thank you, sir. Appreciate you come. Say you're always welcome. Anytime you want to go. 57:15 I appreciate it. And make sure you follow bourbon pursuit on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And if you do like what you hear you want to see more interviews with legends like Jimmy, make sure you support us patreon.com pa te r eo in comm slash bourbon pursuit. That's how we're able to keep buying new equipment, putting miles on the car and making these good interviews happen. So with that, I want to say thank you again and we'll see everybody next week. 57:40 Cheers.

Jeremy Elliott is a Reiki Practitioner and spiritual healer who works in the Chattanooga area; his practice is called Positive Resonance. He’s also a self-described “spiritual nerd” who writes about a wide range of psycho-spiritual topics that explore how to live the life you have always dreamed of. I invited Jeremy on the show to share some of his knowledge about the topic of Ascension. GUEST LINKS - JEREMY ELLIOTT Positive Resonance HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSONSlade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUPShift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRONpatreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT Jeremy: Okay, so ascension, there's essentially two things. There's the process and the event. Ascension is basically the process of reconnecting with God. A reason that it's called "ascension" is because here in the physical world, we're at low vibration, low frequency. So during the process of self-purification, which is another term for healing, we are raising our vibrations and eventually we will make it up to the point where we do reconnect with God or with everything. With Oneness. Slade: How did you become interested in this topic in particular? Jeremy: Actually, this topic kind of found me as a part of my path. For a lot of my life, it was not on really a spiritual path. I was working on websites in a corporate office. And then at some point I realized that I could definitely produce more meaning for the world. I had a more beneficial purpose for the world in general. And in that time, going through this process of self-discovery, the ascension topic really hit me in a big way. There's a lot of background, but I'd really like to get into more about the ascension in particular. Slade: Yeah, go ahead! And talk about what that process is for you. When you discovered it, it sounds like there was a process there that you latched onto and were interested in going through as part of a personal journey. Tell me about what that was. Jeremy: So just to give a little of the background, in my 20s, it was a point in my life where I didn't care about spirituality. I wasn't interested. It didn't matter, didn't make a difference to me. Then a close relative in the family died at a relatively young age, in their early 20s, and somehow that just set off, I don't know, it was a trigger. Something clicked and all of a sudden, I just started getting into everything. I didn't even know about meditation. I found this word in a book. I looked it up. I was looking up 'spiritism' which is a fascinating aspect of emerging Christianity and psychic abilities, life between lives, all this kind of thing. And for meditation, I got into Buddhism and that's where things started becoming a little bit problematic in life was how to deal with spirituality in life. At first there were questions like, how do I... because life was becoming in many ways, it was starting to become meaningless and kind of painful on one hand. I was starting to notice that things weren't clicking. I wasn't happy. I'd read about enlightenment and... Oh. That's what I want. That's going to solve everything. That was really the start of the whole process. Now, years later, I can say that's not the way you go about it. Actually, it's a lot different process because the journey... and it really helped me understand that what I was doing as I was looking at my life thinking, okay, I've got problems, and I want a solution to them. I want to get out of this pain. I want to be happy. And so I said, if I choose enlightenment, this is what's going to work for me. And so I go sit down on my meditation cushion for weeks and months and years. Nothing happened. At the end of it, it's almost like, you know what? This isn't working and I've done this for so long. What's going on? There was some resentment because when you realize this, it's almost like I made some kind of bargain with God. It was like, if I be a good spiritual person for so long, then everything's going to work out. I'm going to get my goody bag at the end. And that's not the way it works at all. So at this point, there's almost this idea of, maybe I don't really want it after all. Screw that. What that was, was actually just a classic case of what's called spiritual bypass. What happens is, what people will think, okay, I've got these problems. But now that I'm working on enlightenment, all the life issues, that's for little people. That's not for me because I'm too spiritual for those kind of concerns. It's a common trap to fall into. What actually happens is, the pain in our life, what we get in life is exactly what we need for ascension and for self-purification. That pain that we're trying to avoid by seeking ascension or seeking enlightenment, those are the signs that are signaling exactly what we can find inside of ourselves that we need to work on. So it's really kind of the opposite. We always tend to do things the opposite way than what we really need to do. So for instance, any time that you in life find something that you're not happy with, that is a signal that there is something inside of you that needs to be healed. So in healing that, whatever that is inside of you, that's the process of self-improvement. That's the spiritual path. That's what leads you to ascension. Slade: Mmm... let me stop you there and say that, when you said that, the first thing that I thought is, most people respond to that with thinking they need to change their circumstances or the situation that's causing them problems, right? Jeremy: Right. That's very common that people aren't happy. They think, I just need this. I just need that. Just to make it a short response. Anything that's temporary is not going to get happiness. Nothing external, in other words, can give you happiness. It has to be something internal. That internal is finding your true self and your true worth. This process of self-purification is actually uncovering... what has happened in life is we've all been wounded. We have these emotional reactions. People hurt us and that pain, instead of allowing ourselves to feel it, we repress it. We stuff it down inside. When that happens, those emotions actually prevent us from feeling our true self and our true worth. So the process of self-purification, the ascension process, is a journey of actually healing, is bringing those up, allowing ourselves to feel the pain in order to release it. One of the things that I like to point out to people is that... negative emotions are very tricky to deal with. Nobody likes to feel them or to work with them. But it's important to understand in the idealistic world that we're living in, the extent that we allow ourselves to feel negative emotions, that is the same capacity to which we will be able to feel positive emotions. If we don't allow ourselves to feel negative emotions, we cannot feel happiness. We cannot feel joy. So it's not avoiding the negative emotions or avoiding the negative situations, or trying to find things, bringing things into our lives that'll make us happy. It's actually working through the things that are difficult for us and are causing us pain. By working through those, we will get to happiness or the joy that we're seeking. Slade: So how do you work through that? When you and I were initially discussing this topic, writing back and forth, you talked about there being sort of stages, right? There are official stages to ascension, with some of the early stages being about this purification process. Explain what... because people hear that and they think, okay, I'm supposed to be going through a purification process. What does that mean? Jeremy: Okay so there's two aspects to it. Personal process and then there's the general process. In general, what we have if we're on this planet here, we have the first 7 initiations. And just to put this into perspective, in order to reach perfection, or oneness with God, there's 354 overall. So some people kind of think that once you reach enlightenment, or you ascend off this planet, that, okay, you're home free. It's not that way. You can think of the Ascended Masters, the ones who have ascended from this planet, as being just older brothers that are also not very far along the path but are there. And interestingly enough, those Ascended Masters, they want to help us because we're going to eventually take their place as they move up in what's basically called a spiritual hierarchy. So the stages, what we're dealing with here on Earth, we have, kind of before the initiation process, when you start the ascension process, you're now called an Initiate. Before that happens, you're basically on your own. You're doing whatever. You're experimenting. You're experiencing life. Once you start thinking about good versus bad or having some conceptual ideas of right and wrong, and also start to begin to manifest qualities of love and compassion, you're starting to get on the path of ascension. Now the first three stages of ascension deal with being able to have some sort of control over your physical body, your emotional body, and your mental body. There's a very good reason for this. So once you start to ascend higher and higher, because your thoughts and your emotions they're actually, can't say physical things but they're objects on the spiritual level. So even though we can't see them, if you look at the higher level, when you get to the astral level and higher, the spiritual beings that are helping us, spiritual helpers, they can see those as actual objects and those have consequences. So if you were to take somebody from the Earth plane and put them on a higher level, those thoughts would instantly manifest. So if you don't have control of your thoughts that well, well guess what? You've just actually done that. So this thing about ascension. It's not something like God's here being like... we're not playing favourites. This is just a necessary part of the process in order to be able to get to another level without doing harm on a higher level. Moving up in the initiation process, the 4th initiation is something that probably a lot of people on a spiritual path, at least that I've seen, are experiencing now is sometimes known as the "Job initiation", where everything in the world just kind of becomes meaningless. Everything that used to give you pleasure doesn't give you pleasure anymore. Or maybe just kind of your world collapses and everything falls apart. One of those two aspects. At first, it's extremely painful and mentally, because you feel like there's nothing for you, life doesn't make sense. It's all over. What that is is kind of like, for people who understand or know about tarot, it's kind of like the tarot card where it's a destructive process but it's actually a freeing one because it's allowing you to understand what's really important. That the physical, material things of life are not important. It's the spiritual aspects that's important. So it allows you to build a firm, spiritual foundation. As you build higher, the 5th initiation, you're actually starting to merge with your spirit, which is the divine aspect of yourself. And then when you get to initiation 6, you're actually at the beginning of the ascended master stage and at the end of initiation 7, you have completed your, you are basically, you are no longer in a cycle of reincarnation. You have released yourself. When you're at that level, if you think about what that level means, that means always having kindness in your heart, always having pure thoughts. When I say that, of course, I'm already laughing about the fact that people are gonna be like, okay, all I have to do is control my thoughts, control my feelings. No. That is not what you do. Because you can't. You can't control your thoughts and you can't control your emotions. The process of self-purification is one where you're finding, what is inside at a higher level that is affecting your thoughts and emotions? Whatever's influencing your thoughts and emotions, that's what needs to be healed. And that you can work on and help purify. Slade: I was gonna say, what about observing, because observing is not necessarily trying to control. You can acknowledge that you're having a certain thought or emotion without becoming overly attached to it or acting on it. So that's kind of a mid-range stage or goal in that process, right? Jeremy: Correct. Yes. You do want to have an awareness, or it's not that you... It would be very helpful if you had an awareness of your thoughts and your emotions at all times. Because people get lost in them. So part of the process is to, when you have an awareness, first of all, don't judge anything. The minute you judge it, you've basically repressed it. You've said, oh, I don't want this. And then when you start doing that, then it goes away and once those thoughts go away... When you're not aware of something, you can't fix it. Slade: Where would you fit re-framing into that process? This is something that I do a lot so of course I'm gonna quiz you from my limited perspective. But one of the things that I try to do is not only to acknowledge and observe those thoughts, but to replace them. Like you said, there's an equally positive level of thought and emotion for those negative thoughts and emotions. So how does that play a part in your perspective on this? Am I on the right track with that? Jeremy: Can you give a specific example? Because I'd like to use it. Or maybe I'll give an example: Let's say somebody's a jerk, right? You have this thought, somebody's a jerk. So you would reframe it and say, well, I really like this person. Is that kind of what you're doing? Slade: Well probably what I would do in that instance, like if I were to experience somebody who was acting a certain kind of way to me or whatever, causing me to have a negative thought or emotion about them, depending on what my relationship to that person was, if it was a random stranger, I might look for some kind of thought about the fact that it doesn't really have anything to do with me. That might be sort of a low level way of re-framing that. If it's someone that I am, say, close to, who's triggering me in some way, pissing me off, one of the first things that I'll do is remind myself what their intentions are. Most people, especially those you're in relationships with, their intention is not to annoy you. And I'm easily annoyed. Jeremy: So the way that I would take this, instead of worrying about what their intentions are, I would be like, Oh, this is great. Somebody is annoying me. Because every time that happens, this is a gift that, it's like telling you, there's something inside that is bothering you that can be healed. So these are basically triggers. And when you find repeating patterns, it's very helpful because then you're like, okay, this has happened over and over. This person's triggered me over and over. It's like the Universe is saying, "Look, you need to look into this. There's something in there." At which point you can meditate on. You can go inside and... what's going on? Slade: Right. Jeremy: Actually you don't need to feel... So you can feel pissed off in the moment, but in the same moment, having an awareness of being pissed off and being like, oh, this is great. I'm being pissed off. So what's happening here? In other words, be curious about being pissed off. Because most people are like, they take it and they immediately go into defense mode, like, oh he pissed me off, and want to clamp down. The moment that you have that emotional reaction, for instance, when you stop breathing, when you clench your mouth, you tighten your muscles, that represses that emotion. It keeps it from being able to express itself. It doesn't mean you want to act on the emotion, but you definitely don't want to hold it inside. By looking at it with curiosity (what's happening here?), you're also allowing it to have it's space. You're holding space for that emotion so it can fully express itself. At the same time, of course you don't want to keep doing that over and over again because that just doesn't make sense. But it just gives you that, it's showing you what you need. You can look and say, okay, when has this happened before? Look into childhood. Where in childhood did somebody piss me off? There might be something there that's... Oh! That's what happened. It was a memory that you'd long forgotten about and that needs to be healed. Because at the moment as a child, for instance, you saw it in a way, from a child's perspective, you took it in a lot differently and it caused a lot more pain than it needed to cause. Slade: I think that's a really useful simple tool - to be curious about everything. To investigate it and to treat your emotional responses as kind of diagnostic tools. Jeremy: Right. That's exactly right. That's actually kind of the purpose of all our relationships. We think that relationships are there to make us happy. That's not it. If you cannot be happy by yourself alone, then what you're doing is, you're expecting somebody else to make you happy. That's not the job of the other person. Slade: Oh gosh. That's a whole other show right there. Jeremy: Haha... Off of that tangent. But the point of every relationship that we have with a person is because that person reflects us. So if somebody is doing something... because there's people that do stuff that are "wrong", but we're not annoyed by them. Because we don't have that aspect inside of us. It's those things that they do that piss us off, that's because we have that same aspect in us that we're ashamed about. If we did not have that, we wouldn't care. So the problem with spirituality is where you have to be brutally honest. You have to throw out self-judgement. You have to throw out shame. You cannot feel guilty about this. You have to take everything on the level of, no matter what I've done in life, God is there and he always loves me. He doesn't care what I've done. He's seen it all. Once you've realized that, then you can look at yourself and be like, the only thing I have to heal is, I have to heal being able to love myself. When you're in those situations where you're looking for this stuff, immediately of course you want to go into denial. You want to make it look like, oh it's that person pissing me off. No. That person's showing you an aspect of yourself that you're ashamed of. That's what's pissing you off and you're projecting it on the other person. Slade: Sigh. I'm trying not to have any kind of emotional response to that. I'm taking it in. I'm gonna put that in my toolbox. I probably derailed you a little bit from talking about your process. Let me bring you to something that I always think about when I see the word "ascension", and what we've been talking about is kind of like the personal individual's soul's process, so to speak. But whenever I hear that word, I always think of the kind of collective, the human race as a whole ascending. Talk to me a little bit about that. Jeremy: Let's talk about that. Yeah. Because ascension is connected very much to new age. This is promoted as a new age show. New age, of course, we're entering the Age of Aquarius. So we're no longer in this, you know, people who are spiritual go meditate on a mountain or go off somewhere. We, the new spiritual warriors or healers, we're people in the community, we have families. This is one part of the new age. The other part of the new age is a fact that the, it's not just people who ascend. The planet is also ascending. So the planet has reached its 4th initiation apparently in 1987 with the Harmonic Convergence. And now, since at least 2012, we're having 5th dimensional frequencies come in. What does that mean? It means a couple of things. Higher frequencies make spirituality and spiritual healing a lot more accessible. For instance, when I practice reiki and I'm doing long-distance healing, I'm not only sometimes accessing the dimension of, well I'm accessing the dimension of space because I'm doing it long distance, but sometimes I'm accessing the dimension of time as well because I might have the healing done at a later time than I would, or do it in a sequence. So that's really exciting. What's more exciting is that it allows people in general to speed up the process of ascension. So what used to take, let's say, a lifetime to do an initiation, we can now do in a matter of years. As a matter of fact, for people who are here now listening to the show, there's a possibility, and I'm not saying a "should", but there is a possibility, it's out there, that any of us could reach the 7th initiation. In other words, escape the reincarnation cycle by the end of this lifetime. It's kind of this idea of, okay, if it feel right for you to do that then go ahead. There's no "should" here, but that's an open possibility. And it's something that's very exciting. Slade: So you mentioned 2012, since then there were 5th dimension, other frequencies coming in. Does that explain... like I felt when I first started Shift Your Spirits, if you go way way back in the archives to 2006, you find me kind of meditating a lot on this idea of the ascension of the Earth, of mankind in particular. And I felt this profound sense of excitement and hope and energy rising, whereas in the last few years, I almost feel like the energy has been overshot in some way, or I worry that, did we miss the train or what? Jeremy: So to explain a little bit what's going on, because the Earth has ascended, that has affected us as humans ourselves. There was a possibility at one point, there was a lot of people whose vibration wasn't high enough and they weren't going to be able to survive. So this idea of this, maybe in Biblical... this "Armageddon", a mass killing off of people, that was kind of a possibility because of the ascension of the Earth. There could have been people that didn't make it, for lack of a better term. What ended up happening instead was, there was a lot of, we would say "lightworkers", to use the term who were able to increase their vibration, basically their "light quotient" at a very rapid pace. And because of these people bringing up their frequency, their vibration, they were able to raise up the vibration of the whole, and that happened very quickly in that period between, let's say, 1990 to 2010, in that area. So that's what you would have been feeling. Now it was great for everybody. We're all here. We all made it. However, it did cause a slight issue because ascension is more than just the vibration. You also have the aspects. The mental aspect, the physical aspect, and the emotional aspect I talked about earlier. Those aren't necessarily raised at the same time. That also is necessary in order to continue higher. So when you get, at a planetary level, part of ascensioning and go towards what's the Cosmic, the next level is the Cosmic level, you're not going to be allowed to get to that level unless you go back and integrate those other aspects inside you. So just because a person has a high rate of vibration or is a high stage of initiation in the ascension process, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're very well integrated on other levels. So you can have somebody that could even be an Ascended Master who still is having issues with thought purification, with emotional purification or emotional maturity, as you could call it. Slade: As you think about these concepts, you think about things that are happening physically in the world, species die off, the incredible amount of pollution that we seem to have absolutely no collective perspective on, what's the story that you personally tell yourself about how that is reflected in this ascension process? What is going on with all of that... I guess what I'm asking is, does that mean that we're failing at it miserably? Is there some other explanation for why all that stuff is happening and it's part of the process and maybe I can chill out about it. Jeremy: There's a couple of ways of looking at it that are both necessary. So the first aspect is, what happens outside is a reflection of what's inside. It's very literal. So what you see outside is really what is inside you. If you see pollution outside, what that means is there's more to work on inside of you. So people like to, they have this concept of, I've got to change the world, I have to help the world. On a spiritual level, there's no significance of importance. If you stop a conflict with your spouse, you have done something just as important as on a world level of stopping a war. It's easy to get discouraged when you see these big problems, but you have to understand on a spiritual level, all problems are the same and you CAN make a difference. Every time that you are able to successfully deal with purifying your thoughts or your emotions, you are helping prevent disasters on a large scale in the world. You're literally doing that. The other part of this is the fact that, even though things do look bleak, everything is happening for a reason. And part of that reason is to help us realize that we do need to work on ourselves. But also, we need to realize that we do have unlimited power. We do have the capability of turning things around, but it's never a direct... You can't directly fix anything. I think we've pretty much explained on the show already. It's not, okay we have pollution in the world. We need to solve pollution now. If we have pollution in the world, there's still some pollution in ourselves that we can fix. And by doing that, it will help solve... the world will solve on its own. Slade: Hmm... So are you hopeful that enough people will become enlightened in that way that it will change things in physical reality somehow? Jeremy: I have hope that no matter what happens, it's what's needed to happen. It's not even, okay, this is good or this is bad. There's no judgement, okay maybe the world will explode. But it's just, in the end, that's a material object. We as spiritual beings will live on. We will mature no matter what environment we're in. We obviously don't want... I'm attached to this planet which is one of the reasons why I'm still here, right? Slade: Yeah. Jeremy: But again, we don't have to concern ourselves about external things because that external thing, that's just the movie that we're watching. That we can't control. But we have so much power to fix what's inside of us. And as long as we have hope of doing that, everything's gonna work. Slade: Oh I like that. That gives me a lot of hope and I'm sure that that's very useful to other people listening to this as well. Talk to me about practical stuff. Are there "techniques" helping to enable this process? Jeremy: Actually, there are quite a few things that you can do, just kind of spiritual practices. Now we've already discussed a little bit about looking inside for things that need healing. So the process of healing... Let's back up a second. The Spiritual Path in general, that is the process of self-improvement. So instead of trying to jump directly into "I want to ascend", just realize that everything you're doing to heal yourself or to improve yourself, you are on the path, okay? So you don't have to worry about it. And also, everything that comes in life, it's almost like, just look at what's happening in your life. That is the main thing that's going to help you find what you need. Because it's reflecting back what you need in your life. But as far as practical things that you can do, there are things like, you can repeat a mantra. You can repeat God's name. For instance, a technique you can do meditations where you will basically ask to speak to your guides, to speak to the spiritual masters. You don't need psychic abilities for this stuff. It's almost like you're using your imagination. But anything that gives you this feeling of connectedness. Even things like go to a yoga class, right? Go to your tai chi. All this stuff is helpful. If you're really interested in just a hundred different actual ascension techniques, there's a guy, part of what was the Ascension Movement in, I want to say, the '90s and a little later. Joshua David Stone. He wrote several books mentioning hundreds of these different little things that you can do. For instance, he talked about the whole encounter which is out of A Course in Miracles is to look at every person as if you were meeting God. Look at everything as if you're meeting God. So think of this plant in front of you as God, or the tree as God. He has so many different ideas you can use, if that's an interest. Slade: It sounds to me like a lot of the information or literature that you were inspired by or drawing on is more of a Buddhist teaching. What about somebody who has maybe a more traditional faith system? What do you say to that person? Jeremy: So, the first thing to realize is, keep your belief system in place. When you're in the ascension process, you do not need to change the beliefs in any way whatsoever. It's only important that you recognize the necessity of self-improvement. I like to say to people, there are as many ways to reach God as people, right? You don't need an exact path. You just need to use your own intuition. Every person has their own path. What works for one person is not gonna work for another person. Slade: Well you and I both live in the same area in southeast Tennessee, so we encounter a lot of fundamentalist churchgoers etc. and ask you probably experience in your daily life, a lot of the people that I really love and have friendships with are very different in their faith systems from me. It's something that I always struggle with and have spent kind of a lifetime learning how to process that. It's interesting because I'm thinking about, if we look at this thing of, this idea of it being kind of a diagnostic of what needs to be healed within ourselves, I can see this lifelong story arc of me growing up in the midst of this fundamentalist environment thinking, how the hell did I end up here? Really pissed off. I was much angrier when I was younger about it than I am now. Whereas now I have, I feel a much more elevated way of talking to people from different faith systems. And to tell you the truth, I have found that I'm actually much more in alignment with someone who is very devout in a different faith system from me than someone who has no faith at all. So for instance, even people who are devout Christians, are a little bit more open to the concepts of miracles and of some of the thoughts as objects kind of context that you and I are talking about. What I'm hearing you say is, within any faith system, there is this kernel of truth about this self-improvement path. All churches have that within then. Jeremy: So every religion has the truth in there. It's just a matter of recognizing what the truth is. The other thing to realize is that our life situation, whether religious or not religious, is exactly what we need right now on our path. So if a person's religious, I actually grew up Mormon, that's exactly where you're supposed to be. There is a purpose for that. It's definitely not something where you have to worry, oh I have to change my belief system. I need to do this or that. No. You are there. You've got to... And if you think about your own personal experience, the doing what you had to go through was what you needed to heal the aspects that you came into this life with. Slade: Sure. Jeremy: As long as you have the faith that your life, what you're living, your path that you're on, that's what you need. That's been provided for you. This is not by chance. Slade: There's one thing about this ascension conversation that you and I had that I wanted to make sure and get your thoughts on. What's the relationship between ego and ascension? Talk to me about that a little bit. Jeremy: Okay, so once again, what the ego wants to do when it hears about ascension is, oh, I want this. The ego is something where... it's just life in general where we think a car is going to make us happy. We think that this relationship is going to make us happy. Well, we think ascension is going to make us happy. So the ego will use ascension for its own purposes. And again, when you go, when you have a desire for anything, that prevents you from actually any kind of... self improvement. Because what you're doing is, now you're grasping onto something. You're thinking, okay, if I only had this, then I would be happy. Instead, you need to stop and be like, what's going on now? Slade: I wanted to hear you speak a little bit about this idea of handling the desire for ascension, the desire for enlightenment. I thought that was a really important thing to speak about. Jeremy: Right, okay. So this is a good question because it comes up a lot as... the ego is something that is going to want... it thinks it needs things for happiness. It thinks it's gonna want this or that. Ascension or enlightenment is going to come up. A good way of dealing with any type of desire is to realize, in the physical world, we don't get what we want when we want it. That's not going to happen but any time the ego comes up and rears its ugly head like, I want this now, that's what produces the pain. But we have to recognize that we do have needs and we do have wants. And if there's something that we do have a need for, we do have a need for love, we do have a need for this and that. So we sit with that pain and we say, okay, I recognize this. I am in pain because I do not have this but I still realize that I would like this. I'm not going to give up the desire just because I do not have it. Because a lot of the time, what the ego's going to do is, oh I can't have this now. I didn't really want it anyway. I never get what I want, that type of thing. So the healthy, emotional response to anything including ascension is to recognize, okay I do have this pain. I do have this desire. I want this even though I can't have it now. It's okay. I still respect the fact that I would like this. Slade: Tell us a little bit about the work that you do and where we can connect with you online. Jeremy: I'm a reiki practitioner in a holistic medicine locally in the Chattanooga area. My business is called Positive Resonance. My website address is https://pozrez.com/ Slade: Very cool. Jeremy, thank you for coming on and having this conversation with me. Jeremy: Slade, thank you so much for inviting me. It's been a pleasure.

Because I'd rather not get frostbite or be blown over.

Support the Marriage After God podcast by checking out our online store and resources. https://shop.marriageaftergod.com “If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.” ― Dave Ramsey 1 Corinthians 10:24-27 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. How do you view debt that one person brought into the marriage as “ours” especially when the two of you are on different pages about spending before the debt is paid off? What do you recommend in terms of building multiple streams of income? Publish a book - https://bookworthy.com Start a small business based off skills or resources you and your husband have Photography Painting We know many people who have made a decent income off youngliving. How do you both feel about taking risks financially? Such as investing in something that might cost a lot but also make money in the future. Luke 14:28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? James 4:13-17 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. Do you make a college fund for your children? If so how much do you add to it each month? How do you feel about mortgages? We are debt-free but live in NYC and seems you can’t own a home without a mortgage. Is that still debt-free? How do we not touch savings? How to tithe when financially struggling? What is your take on separate bank accounts in marriage? The bible speaks very specifically to this question Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:8, Ephesians 5:31 The 2 shall become one. When budgeting do you allow for a savings amount for birthday gifts food ect or does it all come out of general? What percentage of the budget should be allowed for food? Assuming all food or going out? How much is a realistic amount to save each week? My husband and I are in so much debt. We don’t know how to budget. Any advice? We want to be debt-free and not living paycheck to paycheck. We have 3 boys. How should we decide what they can and can’t do because of the budget? they love sports must ect. What do you do for health ins we are self-employed would love to hear what you do. How do you navigate financial stress as a team? What do you guys use for a budget? How do you budget with kids, one income, and a stay at home mom? I want to be a stay at home mom but we are not sure we can afford it. What should we do? Do you have any advice on seeing if you are ready to go to a one income household? How do you prepare to go to one income with a second baby? Dear Lord, Thank You for everything You give to us. Thank You for our finances and thank You for our jobs so that we can provide for our families so that we can give back to You, and be generous with others. We pray we would be good stewards of all that You give to us, especially money. We pray we would be faithful to use our money the way You want us to. Help us to be united in our marriage in the way we spend, save, and give. Help us to make financial decisions with wisdom and with wise counsel. Please help us to live debt-free and may our lives be a testimony to others of Your faithfulness. May we be people who seek to use our finances to build your Kingdom! In Jesus’ name, amen! READ: [Aaron] Hey, Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna answer your questions about finances. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years, through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage and encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Aaron] First and foremost, we always want to invite you to leave a star rating on the podcast. It helps other people find the podcast, it helps people learn about the podcast, it gets us in the rankings so other people can find it, it's awesome. We'd appreciate if you could just scroll down to the bottom of the podcast app and hit a five-star rating, or actually whatever star rating you want to. And if you have time, you can leave us a text review. That'd be awesome. We read those, they encourage us, and we'd really appreciate that. [Jennifer] We also want you guys to know that this Marriage After God podcast is sponsored by our store, shop.marriageaftergod.com, and just to highlight one book bundle that we carry that we wrote for you guys is 31 Prayers for my Son and 31 Prayers for my Daughter, and we wrote these for you to help encourage your prayer life over your children, and we're really excited about these books and we wanted you to know about them. [Aaron] For the icebreaker question, Jennifer, what is one thing you would do today to get out of debt if we had debt? Because we're debt-free, but if we had debt today, what's thing you'd do right now to help us get out of debt? [Jennifer] Okay. I think the first thing that comes to my mind is I see a small piece of paper and I just write a number on it, let's say $100, and then I would take that day to go around the house and figure out what can I sell today, whether it's through Facebook Marketplace or through my friends, text messages, or whatever. What can I get rid of today to make that $100 and then send it straight to the debt? [Aaron] Okay, I like that. I'll one up you. I was thinking selling everything in the house. [Jennifer] You would. [Aaron] Well, because we have a lot of things and we don't realize how much money is just sitting in the house with your furniture, and through, I wouldn't be able to sell everything like our bed, but-- [Jennifer] No, you said everything. [Aaron] Well, okay. We could sleep on the floor, people sleep on the floor. [Jennifer] Aaron would sell everything. I on the other hand would just get rid of stuff we don't use. [Aaron] Well that's how we were when we were in debt, babe. [Jennifer] We had little. [Aaron] We had very little, but we did sell almost everything we had. I think that's what I would do. I would actually go through the house and I'd say "Okay, what can we get rid of?" And I'd probably, Dave Ramsey says it funny, he says, he says "Sell everything," and so that your kids wonder if they're next. [Jennifer] Oh my gosh, that's terrible. [Aaron] That drastic. Go through everything and get rid of everything. [Jennifer] Speaking of Dave Ramsey, we have a quote of the day by him. [Aaron] Yeah, it's if you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else. [Jennifer] So you're living like no one else. That sounds like a Marriage After God right there. [Aaron] Yeah, it's true. It also reminds me of another quote that says if you want something you've never had, you gotta do something you've never done. I believe it's by Thomas Jefferson, but other people say they don't know who it's by. But the idea is that if you make choices today that no one else is making, everyone chooses to be in debt, everyone chooses to spend money unwisely and just buy things and to use credit cards. Those are normal, everyone chooses that. But if we choose to live differently, [Jennifer] Radically. [Aaron] If we make choices like, well, this hurts and it's painful, but no one's doing this, what it does is it affords you a life that later on you can live like no one else is living. You make choices today that allow you to live a certain way later. [Jennifer] And I feel like that later comes so fast, just in the scheme of life. [Aaron] Life does fly by fast. [Jennifer] It might seem hard now, right, but this season is so short in comparison to the rest of later. [Aaron] Yeah, we have, I remember our season getting out of debt. In the middle of it, it was so daunting. [Jennifer] It seemed like a long, drawn-out thing. [Aaron] And it was like, this is never gonna get done. [Jennifer] But it wasn't. [Aaron] But now it's been behind us, what? [Jennifer] Eight, nine, ten years. [Aaron] Ten years. That was a long time ago. We've been debt-free for ten years now. [Jennifer] And we're living in the later. [Aaron] We're living in the later, so yeah, we get to live like no one else now because we made choices that no one else was making back then. And I remember people thinking we were weird. We didn't have much. We had actually nothing. But I wouldn't trade it. [Jennifer] Yeah, I don't regret being debt-free. [Aaron] We encourage other people all the time. We're gonna do it a lot in this episode actually. [Jennifer] Yeah, so speaking of this episode, we thought it would be fun to answer your guys' questions on finance. We pulled on Instagram Live and just asked you what kind of questions you guys had about money and budgeting and all kinds of things, so today's episode we are going to focus on your questions and trying to answer them. [Aaron] Yeah, so each one of these questions is from someone who follows us. And we're gonna, we don't have all the answers. [Jennifer] Nope. [Aaron] We will answer the best as we can, we'll answer with scripture if we can, we will answer from experience, and we might say we don't know on some of them. Because I'd rather say I don't know than make up an answer that is false. [Jennifer] Yeah, and just right off the bat if we want to give some resources that you guys can look up for more information about finances, we do really like Dave Ramsey and just his whole ministry on helping people get out of debt, [Aaron] He's helped a lot of people get out of debt. [Jennifer] Lead faithful lives in finances, so check him out, Financial Peace University is his thing. Also, Money Saving Mom is a great resource. She has a lot of good stuff, go check her out. [Aaron] Let's start this episode. I want to read some scripture to give us a foundation of why we should even care about our finances, our money, getting out of debt, all of those things. And it's found in 1 Corinthians 10, verses 24 through 27. "Do you not know that in a race, "all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? "So run that you may obtain it. "Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. "They do it to receive a perishable wreath. "But we, an imperishable. "So I do not run aimlessly. "I do not box as one beating the air, "but I discipline my body and keep it under control "lest after preaching to others "I myself should be disqualified." And what I love about this is Paul's saying, he's saying the race we're running is this race of faith, it's the race that we're running toward heaven and with God and with the Holy Spirit, and our prize is imperishable. We're not running to get a trophy, we're running for an imperishable prize which is eternity with God. And Paul says here, he says "I don't run aimlessly," meaning he's got a specific goal, he trains a certain way, he's thoughtful about it and he knows what he's doing. And then he says "I discipline my body "and keep it under control," and again, the purpose of this is so that in our preaching, we're not disqualified. The reason we talked about finances and getting out of debt and why these are important for the Christian to be aware of and to walk not aimlessly in is because we have a job to do in this world, and it's to preach the Gospel. And part of preaching the Gospel and not being disqualified is are we an example? Do we have self-control in all things? [Jennifer] Yeah, including finances. [Aaron] Including finances. Or are we taken under by our own debt and our own cravings and desires and "Oh, I want that new car or I want that, "or I want to eat out all the time," or whatever it is that sucks the money out of us and makes us incapacitated financially. Paul wants us to know that we shouldn't be running aimlessly so we should have a plan, we should have a goal, we should have purpose in mind, and he wants to remind us that the Gospel that we're preaching, we ourselves don't want to be disqualified after we've preached it, so we need to be disciplined and self-disciplined and self-controlled. I just that'd be a good place to start. [Jennifer] Yeah, I love it, it's really good, yeah. [Aaron] With this. It's actually why we got out of debt. It's part of our story. We left doing missions work. We're doing the Lord's work, we felt the Lord calling us home and saying "I want you debt-free so you can be free," and we went home. [Jennifer] But we had a goal. [Aaron] Yeah, we went home specifically to get out of debt, so everything we did was focused around getting out of debt. [Jennifer] And I felt like that word aimlessly really stands out to me, because I feel like, because I feel like it's really easy when you look at finances to almost avoid the hardship of finances or the things that weight us down, the stress that's involved, [Aaron] Yeah, pretend it's not there. [Jennifer] To pretend it's not there or to ignore it, which leads to being aimless. If you're not willing to face it and confront it, then the other option is to be aimless. [Aaron] Yeah, well there's no goal, you're floating, you're like "Well, I'm gonna," [Jennifer] Because if you have a goal, then you're gonna be forced to look at what you have and say "Okay, this is how I get from point A to point B." [Aaron] Yep, and we have to write those goals down too. We've just been talking about lists lately. And if you write it down, it becomes real. Just a quick tip, write down your goals, how much you want to pay off, when, when do you plan on getting out of debt, and then start hitting those goals and doing everything you can to hit them. [Jennifer] And even if you have a specific strategy and you guys figure out how you're gonna do it, write that down too. [Aaron] Yep. Okay, let's go right into question number one. [Jennifer] Okay, is there any rhyme or reason with any of these? [Aaron] No, it looks like you just put them in order from what you received them. [Jennifer] Okay, let's do it. [Aaron] How do you view debt that one person brought into the marriage as ours, especially when the two of you are on different pages about spending before the debt is paid off? [Jennifer] Oh man, I feel like we answered this really good in our book, Marriage After God, because we share our different perspectives of money and the value it had in our lives, how we spent it, and this idea of debt. [Aaron] This was us. Whose debt did we have when we got married? [Jennifer] Well, I believed it was yours. It had your name written on it. But God had to teach me the lesson of what it meant to be ours. [Aaron] Yeah, and you married me, debt and all. You married me, sin and all. And we don't get to marry someone but only choose the parts of them that we're going to walk with and be one with. Now, when we have sin, those are things that need to be changed and repented of. Even the debt needs to be dealt with. There's things that need to be dealt with, but we deal with it together. [Jennifer] Yeah, so to answer this question how do you view debt that one person brought in? View it as ours, so assume that responsibility as now ours, both of you working to do it, because I'll tell you what, it wasn't until God changed my heart and I received Him changing my heart on it being our debt that we actually were able to make change in knocking it off. [Aaron] Think about it, if you would have expected me just to deal with it, while you're spending how you want. It was our money, right? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But then if you spend it how you want, it would have made it that much harder for me to deal with it. [Jennifer] Yeah, you probably wouldn't have been able to get out of debt. [Aaron] I would say yeah, ours, and then it says if we're on different pages of spending, [Jennifer] Get on the same page. [Aaron] The reason you're in debt and having a hard time paying debt off is because you're on different pages about finances. [Jennifer] Yeah, get on the same page. That means that both of you are gonna have to make sacrifices to stay on that same page when it comes to spending, saving, paying off debt, all of it. [Aaron] Yeah, and a quick tip, make a rule. We made a rule, if there was anything over $25, we had to immediately bring it to, but when we were getting out of debt, we actually talked about everything that we spent. [Jennifer] Yeah, everything went to that. [Aaron] But now, we have rules about if it's gonna cost so much, we actually ask permission. What happens though is it keeps us both accountable to what we're spending, that it's not just like "Oh, I accidentally spent $600, sorry," that doesn't happen. [Jennifer] Okay, I think we answered that one pretty good. Number two, what do you recommend in terms of building multiple streams of income? [Aaron] This is a cool question. [Jennifer] I also feel like in this day and age I feel like there is a lot of opportunity. [Aaron] Oh, we have infinite opportunities. People make money just on social media by not even selling anything, they just they post for other people and they make money. [Jennifer] Why do you think it's a cool question? [Aaron] Well because we did this. The way we got out of debt was we started a photography business. [Jennifer] Yeah, we used our resources of what we had, which was a camera. [Aaron] We used our passion for photography and we had resources in relationships. We knew someone getting married and we were like "Hey, can we shoot your wedding?" And they said "Sure," they needed a photographer, they didn't have much money. Actually, we did that for free, they bought us a flash or something. [Jennifer] Yeah, I think the very first wedding we shot, we shot together for a flash, which she had to buy for us before the wedding. [Aaron] Yeah, and then I think we charged like $400, and I think it was like $600, and then it was like 850. [Jennifer] Each job that we got, we just, yeah, increased. [Aaron] Well we made a rule. We're like "Every job, we're gonna increase a little bit." Until eventually we were making $1,200, $1,500 a wedding, and we were working Saturdays and Sundays, shooting families and weddings while working full-time jobs during the week. [Jennifer] It was crazy town. [Aaron] Now I want to say we had no kids back then. [Jennifer] Yeah, so we were able to. [Aaron] It would definitely look different today with having kids. But it is still possible. A couple of ideas we've had. [Jennifer] Well for starters just like you said about the seasons thing, I think it's really important for couples to know that if you're gonna go into a season of hard work, meaning either both of you or one of you is heavily working, there just needs to be an end date where you're saying "Okay, we're gonna sprint this season," [Aaron] Yeah, this next six months we're gonna work this hard. [Jennifer] We're gonna work this hard and that way expectations are set and nobody can get mad at each other, and then there's a season of rest. Don't forget to give yourself that season of rest. [Aaron] Yeah, because you'll, if you just get it working nights and weekends, [Jennifer] You'll burn out. [Aaron] And all day, you'll want-- [Jennifer] Your family will burn out. [Aaron] You don't want to do that. It's a good reminder, and that's how we've always looked at it, we did the photography thing for a season, it was a year and a half that we did it and we crushed hard at that, we were doing so much. By the end of it we hated weddings. [Jennifer] But it was fun. [Aaron] It was super fun, and really hard. We got out of debt though. The idea is, we have a few ideas. The first one that we have is publish a book. We make a living now off of books that we've published. And we learned how to do it on our own, but one of the little things we started a while ago is called bookworthy.com, it's a course Jennifer and I made, teaching people how to self-publish, so if you're interested and if you're a writer, if you have children the book idea, if you do art or photography, publish a book, you might be able to make a little bit of money on Amazon. It's actually free to do as long as you have all the time and energy and the talent to do it. Another one is start a small business based off skills or resources you and your husband have. Like our photography business. [Jennifer] Yeah, another one would be painting. If you like to paint, you can sell canvases of different things that you like to paint. [Aaron] Yeah, or if you have some tools for painting. I've known people to paint houses and make really good money on the weekends. Doing handyman work, there's so many things that we have skill-wise that we don't realize is actually valuable. There's someone who needs what we have. Maybe as a couple write down the resources, the talents, the skills that you have and see how those can make money. [Jennifer] And you can utilize places like Etsy.com as a venue to sell your stuff. [Aaron] Yeah, we know someone that they just were really good at sewing little bows and start an Etsy store and sell a bunch of bows! [Jennifer] We also have people who've made a lot of money off, there's a lot of companies out there that have great models. Things like Young Living. [Aaron] Yeah, they've made it really easy to sell anything. Those are just some ideas. There's so many, so many ways to do it. But having a small business or doing some sort of side jobs it's how we paid off all of our debt. And it does add levels of complexity to your life, but it's totally doable, and it's sometimes the only way to get out of debt. If your normal job doesn't afford your enough financial liquidity to pay off debt, doing a side business for a while or a side job can definitely do that. [Jennifer] Okay, moving on to number three. How do you both feel about taking risks financially? Such as investing in something that might cost a lot up front, but also make money in the future. Which there's no guarantee. Let's just be straightforward. [Aaron] We always get told that, like this is a no-brainer, you just gotta start it. We always tell ourselves the best-case scenario and we don't think practically through it, so I just wanted to read Luke 14:28 says "For which of you, desiring to build a tower, "does not first sit down and count the cost, "whether he has enough to complete it?" And I just wanted to remind us that wisdom should tell us "Okay, that sounds like a great idea, yes," because it could totally be profitable to spend a little bit of money now, if you could figure out that it's going to double or triple or whatever. But we gotta count the cost. What's the time investment it's gonna take? What's the financial investment it's gonna take? How long will it take to return that? How much time is it gonna take to maintain and build and grow? Those are all things that we have to think about when trying to take a financial risk. And then the, we've done this before. We've been really frugal in the past and avoided any sort of risk and we've also made mistakes in risk. And what would you say is the better side of it? [Jennifer] Well like you said, counting the cost. I think it's always really important that we sit down and figure out how this will benefit our family or how this will hurt our family, and I think the times that we've made mistakes or the times that we don't really count the cost, [Aaron] Yeah, and we rush into things. That's been my fault, many a times. [Jennifer] Well, I wasn't going to point the finger. [Aaron] Yeah it's all right. [Jennifer] I was gonna say out of the two of us or how, because the question is how do you both feel about it, how do you feel about taking risks financially? What's your process? [Aaron] I'm usually pretty safe, but I have made mistakes and it always comes back to I don't fully think through it, I tell myself the best-case scenario, and often it's a rush. And so now we have these rules of it's a rush, it's a no. For the most part. There's been times, but usually if it's a rush, it's a no. [Jennifer] Yeah, when I think about this question, I think "Well, if it's a risk for some sort of investment "or stocks or something like money-wise that way," I always get really nervous and I'm like "Nope, I won't do it," but when it comes to a risk of taking a risk on someone or somebody's talent, one of ours, something that we have a dream to do, that's easier for me to say yes to, even if we waste a lot of money doing it. I don't know why, but there's something in my heart that just says "Let's go for that." [Aaron] Yeah, and if it could be a slow and minimal risk, that's always, what we try and do is like how can we make this as little of risk as possible? Like if we're gonna work with a new company that's gonna print our books or advertise for us, or whatever it is. It's all risk, technically, because they can mess up. You could buy the wrong thing, you could spend the wrong money, it just-- [Jennifer] Would you say that it would be wise to also seek counsel on certain decisions, like maybe those close friends that you have, or-- [Aaron] Oh 100%. Getting many wise counselors around you is the way we do battle and we win battles. I just wanted to read one more scripture on this. James 4:13-17 says: "Come now, you who say, "today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town "and spend a year there and trade and make a profit "yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. "What is your life? "For you are a mist that appears "for a little time and then vanishes. "Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. "As it is, you boast in your arrogance. "All such boasting is evil. "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, "for him it is sin." I just wanted to bring this up because the other side of this is to remember that we have no control over tomorrow. We don't know. I could invest today and the Lord can come tomorrow. We can, doesn't mean not to, but James is telling us less have a heart of like "Well if the Lord wills it." We're gonna work, we're gonna plan, we're going to count the costs, we're gonna get counsel, we're gonna figure things out, but to be honest, if the Lord wants it to happen or not. [Jennifer] The other thing I want to add to this section about taking financial risks is you guys gotta be in unity when taking financial risks and don't, not at the cost of your marriage. I don't want people to jump into making decisions that, one spouse is for it, one spouse isn't. I really think that there needs to be unity whenever you advance in making decisions like this. [Aaron] That's a good point. Be in complete unity, have peace about it and I would say lastly, you should not taking a financial risk unless you have some extra money to play with. [Jennifer] To risk. [Aaron] If you're literally not being able to buy groceries to risk this, that's not a good strategy. [Jennifer] That's good. [Aaron] It may mean sell some more things and say "Okay, we have this extra $1,000, "we can put it towards debt or we can start this thing, "but that $1,000, if it's gone or not gone, "isn't gonna hinder your family from being taken care of." [Jennifer] That's good, I'm glad you mentioned that. Okay, number four. Do you make a college fund for your children? If so, how much do you add to it each month? [Aaron] Do we have a college fund? [Jennifer] No. Short answer, no. Do we have a little bit of savings if they needed it? Sure, but we also want to encourage our kids, just in their future we talk about college. We want to encourage them to be hard workers, that if they needed to pay for their own college they could. [Aaron] Yeah, and teaching them the abilities that they have and how they can make money. We have an IRA that we put money into that could be used for school, but we don't necessarily have a direct college fund. [Jennifer] And do we put money in it every month? [Aaron] We don't put money in every month, we put it, for a while we were but we adjust that based off of how our income is. The next question is how do you feel about mortgages? Well I hate mortgages. [Jennifer] Everybody does. [Aaron] Who likes mortgages? [Jennifer] This is specifically, this couple was asking because they say "We are debt-free but live in NYC and it seems like "you can't own a home without a mortgage. "Is that still being debt-free?" Having a mortgage? [Aaron] Well technically no, because you're in debt. But some people would say "Well it's good debt, "because it appreciates." Well sure, as long the market is appreciating. There's again, you don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. [Jennifer] I feel like for the majority most people would say it doesn't fall under the debt-free title. [Aaron] Yeah again, so we bought a house. We got a mortgage and we did the normal thing, but we had been debt-free for seven years before buying a house. There's a season actually leading up to like six years into our debt-free-ness I didn't even want to buy a house because I didn't want to get in debt again. But you know, things change and we made a different decision and our goal was to treat that debt the same way we treated the other debt. Again, you have to count the costs and you have to make the decision that way and get wise counsel. Can you afford it? And then, because the way I looked at it is I was paying X amount of dollars for rent anyway, so if I could pay that to something I'm gonna own, that's why we decided to buy a house finally. [Jennifer] We actually put a stipulation on it. You said we're not gonna, we're not gonna even look for a home to buy if the mortgage isn't less than what we're paying for rent. [Aaron] Yeah, that was a, man, because when we were looking it gets so easy to start looking outside your range. [Jennifer] Yeah and you keep going up and up. [Aaron] Like "Well it's only another 10,000, "well, this is nicer." I don't know. [Jennifer] Are you repeating me? [Aaron] No! That's my inside voice, I don't know. But I did, I made us a hard stipulation. I said "I don't want to buy a house "that mortgage's gonna be more than our current rent." And we did, we actually hit that. It took us a long time and it was really frustrating at times. [Jennifer] And we had to be patient, but I would just like the other questions I would say you guys have to be in unity if you are gonna go into that mortgage. [Aaron] Yeah and count the costs, it's gonna be an investment that you have to put your own blood, sweat, and tears into. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] All right, cool, let's move on. How do we not touch savings? It's a pretty short question. [Jennifer] Bury it really deep in the backyard. [Aaron] If this is a self-control thing, then you need to learn self-control. Like if you're just dipping in because you wanted to go out to eat or if you want to buy that thing-- [Jennifer] Have that coffee. [Aaron] That's, you're never gonna be able to save if that's how you are. If it's a problem with you can't pay your rent, dip into savings. [Jennifer] That's what it's there for. [Aaron] Yeah, that's what it's there for. I would say just practice. Give yourself goals. Say "We're gonna save to this dollar amount, "and if we do, we'll celebrate by spending a little bit, "1% of it." [Jennifer] That's a good idea. [Aaron] And that way you're helping yourself, training yourself to go longer without dipping into your savings, and you have a goal you're gonna hit. [Jennifer] Yeah, cool. Okay, number seven. How do you tithe when you're financially struggling? [Aaron] How did we do it? [Jennifer] Sowe lived pretty radically, we still tithed even though we were struggling financially. We believed that everything that we got was God's and we gave it back to him. [Aaron] All of it. Nobut we had this, I believed that generosity and giving and tithing were spiritual disciplines and I believed that I wanted to trust God. And I remember telling us, I said "Hey, the only place in the Bible that God tells His people "to test Him is in the Old Testament," and He tells His people, He goes "Bring all the tithe "to the storehouse," when He's talking about the temple. [Jennifer] In Micah? [Aaron] Yeah, and He says "See that I will not open the floodgates of heaven," [Jennifer] Or was it Malachi? [Aaron] Oh, it's Malachi I think you're right. It's the last book of the Old Testament. And He just challenges them to challenge Him. Like "Hey, you do what you have been supposed to be doing "for all of these generations that you haven't been doing it "and I will pour out my blessing on my people." Now that was talking to the Jews, but God hasn't changed. And so I looked at God and I said "I want to give. "I want to be a giver, I want to be generous, "I want to be a tither." And what was awesome is a couple things happened. We were able to give and be generous, and it also changed our perspectives on money. [Jennifer] Yeah, we didn't hold it so tightly. [Aaron] Which is the whole point of giving anyway, of knowing it's all God's. We actually, while we were trying to get out of debt, we made it a challenge to ourselves to see how much we could give. What is funny is it kept us from giving ourselves pretty much anything. We just had enough to live on and not only were we able to pay our debt off, but we were also able to give more than we ever were able to give. Not that that made us any more righteous or anything, it was our own personal challenge and it was pretty awesome to see that God still provided, God grew what we were able to give, and decreased our debt as we were faithful. [Jennifer] Yeah, I think one of the things we wanted to avoid too was, well once we were out of debt and we have money, is it gonna be harder for us to give then? You know what I mean? We wanted to build that habit-- [Aaron] Well because the mentality's always like "Oh I'll give when I have more," and I have a scripture to reference for this, but once I have more, that's when I'll give. And we're not giving this as a command to anyone. You have to choose in your heart and decide in your heart what you're gonna give and how you're gonna give as a family, and that you are, at any level of giving, are you gonna trust God? Are you gonna seek Him and are you gonna be wise with your money? Because that's what He wants from us. He wants us to be wise, not just frivolous and like "I'm just gonna throw it away, here's that, "and oh, I can't pay rent now," no, be wise. If you want to give, pray and ask how you guys can give and ask God to change your hearts on what money means to you and where it goes and when it goes. And the verse I wanted to bring up about this is in Mark 12 and it's about this Jesus recognizing how two different kinds of people are giving and he says "And he sat down opposite the treasury "and watched the people putting money into the offering box. "Many rich people put in large sums. "And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, "which make a penny. "And He called His disciples to Him and said to them "Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more "than all these who are contributing to the offering box, "for they all contributed out of their abundance, "but she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, "all she had to live on." And so just that mentality of once we have more then we'll give, Jesus is showing us in this picture, he's saying "Actually, she gave more out of her poverty "because she didn't have much to give but she still gave." Knowing that, if we have the mentality of one day we'll give when we have more isn't the right mentality to have. The right mentality to have is like "God is yours, teach me. "Teach me how to use it. "Where do you want it?" [Jennifer] Okay, number eight. What is your take on separate bank accounts and marriage? [Aaron] Well I think there's a scripture that speaks clearly to this, and it's in Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:8, Ephesians 5:31. [Jennifer] Hold on, those are a lot of verses. [Aaron] Oh, well they all say the same thing. It says the two shall become one. Our take is that it should just be, there's one place that money goes, it's our money, and we use it for God's Kingdom. [Jennifer] And having the one bank account, it helps you in building that oneness and that unity and practicing and walking it out on a daily basis. [Aaron] Yeah so our perspective is you share a bank account. Now we have a savings account, we have a few accounts, but there's not her money, my money. [Jennifer] No, we all have access and we all put into it and we all take out of it and we talk about it a lot. [Aaron] Yeah. Number nine, when budgeting, do you allow for a savings amount for birthday gifts, food, et cetera, or does it all come out of general? [Jennifer] Okay, so how we would do this is we would have in our budgeting we would account for food and even going out to eat, but then we'd just have a general fund where those kinds of things came out of. Birthday gifts and random things. [Aaron] Yeah, we called it our personal allowance, which was after we broke down all of our budget, whatever was left, which was usually nothing. Sometimes it was a little bit. But yeah, we've never been that specific, but you can totally get that specific. I know people that have broke their budget as specific as you can imagine. [Jennifer] Yeah, and I know having the app on our phone, the bank app has helped, because you'll check right there as we're checking out in line, making sure that we can afford that birthday gift or whatever it is extra that we were paying. [Aaron] If I have to transfer from savings or something like that. What's number 10? [Jennifer] Number 10 is what percentage of the budget should be allowed for food, assuming that they're talking about all food or just going out, I'm not really sure, but, [Aaron] If you're in debt and you're trying to get out of debt and you're trying to save money, you just probably should not eat out. It's way more expensive and if you're going somewhere that's cheaper than a restaurant, it's probably not healthy. Eat at home, it's cheaper, you can buy in bulk, you can organize it so your budget for food, our budget was always just food. And if we ate out, it came out of that budget, which hurt us because you have this eating out bill and then it took away from your groceries for that week. [Jennifer] Yeah, recently I was following someone on Instagram who posted a screenshot of a breakdown of what percentage of your budget should be for food, depending on your family size, and I thought it was really interesting. I don't remember exactly where she got it from but if you just Googled it, it would show up. [Aaron] Yeah, and the way you can do this is go grocery shopping, and figure out what your normal grocery shopping list is and that's your budget. If you need to break down your grocery shopping budget more and you can find, like, well we don't need to get cereals this time, or pick the things that are less necessary or figure out how to buy things in bulk, but definitely if you're trying to save money and get out of debt, grocery shopping, buying in bulk, freezing stuff is gonna be the best way to go and eating out should probably be put on the back burner for a while. [Jennifer] That's funny, back burner, because we're talking about making food at home. Don't forget about it, don't let it burn! Just kidding. Okay, number eleven. How much is a realistic amount to save each week? [Aaron] This is gonna be unique before we've seen a person's budget. To be honest, we didn't save a penny. [Jennifer] Until we were out of debt and beyond that. [Aaron] Yeah, my perspective on it is why are we saving money when we could be putting that money towards debt? Once we were out of debt, we started thinking about savings differently, but again, that's gonna be dependent on your income, where you're at, how much debt you have, and figuring out whatever percentage of your income can be saved, yeah. Number 12, my husband and I are in so much debt. We don't know how to budget. Any advice, we want to be debt-free and not living paycheck to paycheck. My advice to this couple is get on the same page, start talking about it, get real. We have to recognize that we can't just play with these things. If you need to stop eating out, there's areas that you're spending money that you shouldn't. If it means finding a better job, start looking. Maybe your second job you have is looking for a better job. If you're only making ends meet on this current job, you're not getting enough hours, look for a better one. Right now we're in the best economy if you're looking for a job. And I know that's easier said than done, but sometimes you just need to pull the Band-Aid off and realize, "Okay, this sore's not getting healed. "We need to sit down, we need to write down everything. "Every penny, where it goes. "We need to start selling everything we have. "We need to start just," boil your life down to what you need and scramble to get out of debt. [Jennifer] Also we shouldn't neglect the power of prayer. I feel like there have been so many testimonies from our friend's life and just our life of praying for our specific needs. What kind of job do you have and do you need that God could be fulfilling for you given the opportunity to open your eyes and show you and give you exactly what you need? [Aaron] And then start looking actively. Send resumes. Now don't tell your current job that you're doing that, because they might fire you, but that's what I would do. I would start looking today. Number 13, we have three boys. How should we decide what they can and can't do because of the budget? They love sports, music, et cetera. [Jennifer] Okay, so again, going back to the unity I feel like you and your husband, you and your spouse need to be on the same page about what the budget can allot for, where is there room to do stuff, and if the budget for that season doesn't, doesn't have room for those extra things, it's gonna be hard, but you have to be able to say no and you just have to explain to your family what that means. [Aaron] Yeah, and our kids are not gonna fall apart, become less of citizens in this country and immoral because they don't do sports. We sometimes have those draws of like "Well if they don't do these things, "they're gonna miss out on," but we have to remember, there's so many other ways that our kids will learn. Whatever skills they can learn in those sports or those activities. [Jennifer] And don't forget that they're also learning the discipline of being a good start with finances, and this is part of learning and they'll have to know that in life, there's seasons when you can't do as much, and that has to be okay. [Aaron] Think about this, that sports is like a team sport thing, right? Getting out of debt's a team sport. Your children are in your family, they're on your team, and they need to be a part of that. And you can bring them in and you can say "Well, guys, we're gonna go through a season "that's gonna be hard, but we're gonna do it together." [Jennifer] Yeah, here's the downside if you're not doing it together. Let's say, let's say mom is pushing for the team sports and dad's saying "Well, we can't afford it this time," what are the children gonna see? They're gonna see division in the marriage, they're gonna see-- [Aaron] Yeah, and they'll react to that. [Jennifer] And they'll react to it and then they also may start to favor the parent who's for them and for what the things that they want to do. [Aaron] Or worse become bitter towards the other parent. [Jennifer] Or become bitter towards the other parent. And we want to avoid that. At Marriage After God, understands the power of unity and doesn't lose sight of that. [Aaron] Yeah, and so being on the same page again, as a couple, so that our children see our unity and strength and they will learn more from that than they'll learn probably from any sport in my opinion. [Jennifer] Okay, number 14. What do you do for health insurance? We are self-employed and we'd love to hear what you do. [Aaron] For a long time, we were on, what was that company called? It was not, Samaritan's Purse is one of them, yeah, it was called MediShare. It's a Christian healthcare, it's a shared thing where you put money in and that money helps other people in their bills and vice versa. We did that for a while, actually. There's MediShare and then there's Samaritan's Purse and I know there's a couple others, but just look for Christian shared health plans. [Jennifer] Number 15 is how do you navigate financial stress as a team? What are some ways, practical ways, that we can help each other when there's financial stress? [Aaron] Lots of conversations about what's going on. Planning together, writing things down, prayer, and just constantly reminding each other that we're gonna get through it together, that we're gonna do it together, that we're gonna make choices together, and not getting off, out of hand and sneaking around and spending money over here or making choices over here behind each other's backs, but actually-- [Jennifer] Or arguing about it, right, in front of everyone. [Aaron] Or arguing about it, yeah, which has happened. But yeah, just that team, doing it together. Having the conversations at night, putting the strategies in place. [Jennifer] I think too, a huge win would be reminding each other of the future. We started out the episode, that later, living life later, what does that look like? [Aaron] We did this a lot. [Jennifer] Yeah, so envision for each other what that future looks like and enjoy that moment right then and there. [Aaron] Well and recognize like "Hey, what we're doing right now is gonna give us "something else, it's gonna give us something better, "the fruit it's gonna bear is gonna be good," and so that's such a good reminder, because we did that. Because it was so hard at times, right in the middle of it, you're like "Gosh, this is just too hard," to be like "Hey, but just know in a few years, "this is gonna be so far behind us, "and we're gonna be able to make choices "that we weren't able to make before, "and it's gonna feel so good and freeing," so yeah, as a team, just reminding each other of what it's gonna do, working hard at these things. We got a few more. Why don't you let us know what the next? Okay, so we got a few more questions. Why don't you hit the next question for us. [Jennifer] Okay, number 16 is what do you guys use for a budget? Which if they don't know, Aaron does most of the budgeting, which I like, because I don't really have the mental space right now to do it. [Aaron] There's two parts to our budget. I'm gonna be honest, we don't focus on our budget as much as we used to, as micro as we used to. But we still use a lot of the general disciplines, but when we were getting out of debt, man, I was looking at that thing every single day. [Jennifer] Yeah, heightenly aware. [Aaron] Yeah, so what I did is I just created a Google Sheet, a spreadsheet, or you can use Microsoft, what's it called? Excel. And I literally wrote down on the sheet every single thing that we spend money on. I looked at our grocery bills to see how much we spent on groceries, I looked at our gas bills to see what our average was each month, and then I rounded them all up a little bit, because if it was like one month this high, one month it was low, I rounded them all up a little bit, and then I took the total and then I broke down by actual things that we owed, like bills, and then right there we found out what our budget was. It was like every month, to live, we needed $1,800 or $1,250 or whatever it was. And that was phone bill, that was gas, that was literally every single penny we had to spend to live. And then anything that was left over, I broke up in percentages. 10% to tithe, or 12%, whatever our number was, and then how much of it was gonna go to debt, actually no, so then whatever was left over I broke up into allowance and to tithe and savings. But for a while, allowance and savings was zero and tithe was the only thing that we had extra. That's how we did it, and the second part of it was we opened up several different bank accounts. One was our bills bank accounts, so every penny that was owed to bills for the month went into that account and all our bills were paid from it. And then we had our savings account, our tithe account, and our allowance account. And based off the spreadsheet, we just put the money, it's like the envelope system that Dave Ramsey does but we did it digitally. That's how we budgeted. [Jennifer] Okay, these next few which we're gonna wrap up with are all the same, so I'm gonna read them all and then we'll try and answer them. 17 is how do you budget with kids with one income and a stay at home mom? Number 18 is I want to be a stay at home mom, but we are not sure we can afford it. What should we do? And number 19. Do you have any advice on seeing if you're ready to go to a one-income household? How do you prepare to go to one income with a second baby? All surrounding that, one income, stay at home mom, one kid or more, how do you budget? How do you do it? [Aaron] Well, strict. Get real strict. Frugality. Learning, finding all the tricks of the trade of how to save money, how to couponing, and where's the best place to grocery shop and getting hand-me-downs, clothes-wise and shopping at thrift stores if you need to. That's, to be honest I always think like "Why are we buying brand new clothes? "These kids grow out of them so fast." [Jennifer] Well we've saved a lot of ours. [Aaron] Yeah, we save our, oh, that's frugality. We buy something and then we save it, and all of our kids get the same clothes. [Jennifer] We needed new ones when Olive came along, because she's a girl. [Aaron] Just, there's so many resources out there. There's bloggers and YouTubers and Instagrammers that talk about this. And creating a strategy and praying through it, getting wisdom and advice, and then figuring out the process. [Jennifer] I think a really huge encouragement here would be if you're preparing to go to that one-income household and mom's gonna be staying at home or maybe mom's already home and there's another baby on the way and money just feels tight, in those seasons I would just encourage you to be reminded, both of you be reminded of your why. Why is mom staying at home? Because the ministry-- [Aaron] What's important for ya? [Jennifer] The ministry of raising children and managing a home and having attention there is so valuable. More valuable than having that extra income or having multiple streams of revenue just for the sake of building your guys' financial security, and I just want to encourage those moms who are at home who are just working so hard to be home with their kids and to have that type of lifestyle, even if it means forsaking an extra income. Find a way to make it work and be motivated because of that value. [Aaron] Yeah, and then going back to the living paycheck to paycheck, be praying and actively looking for a better paying job. Maybe it's gonna take some night school to learn a new skill, but work hard and let the family know that it's gonna be a hard season until this date when things will change, because I'm gonna be in school or looking for a new job or working a new job or a second job. And figure those things out. And I do want to say, our current world has made it exceedingly difficult to do family the way it's always been done. I just wanted to commiserate with that and I wanted to let everyone know to be praying through that and asking God to show them, and to reveal how they can make that happen in their home, if that's the desire they have. That's the end of our questions. [Jennifer] That wraps up the questions that you guys asked, and we just want to say thank you for sharing those questions with us. Hopefully we did them some justice and encouraged, send them some encouragement with how we answered them. [Aaron] Yeah. Before we pray for you guys, I just wanted to remind you that at Marriage After God, the whole reason we're doing this is that we want to please God. We want to chase after His will for our lives. We want to be used by Him. We want our marriages to be used to grow His Kingdom. And a Marriage After God doesn't neglect and doesn't aimlessly go through life financially. We do these things with purpose and I know it can seem hard, and it is hard, but that's what we're doing, we're doing hard things. And we're doing it by the power of the Holy Spirit, and so we just want to encourage you to press on, to begin to learn self-control and learn to beat your bodies so that you're not disqualified in this race. And know that we're doing it with you. [Jennifer] Okay, we just want to ask that you join us in prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for everything you give to us. Thank you for our finances and thank you for our jobs so that we can provide for our families, so that we can give back to you and be generous with others. We pray we would be good stewards of all that you give to us especially money. We pray we would be faithful to use our money the way you want us to. Help us to be united in our marriage in the way that we spend, save, and give. Help us to make financial decisions with wisdom and with wise counsel. Please help us to live debt-free, and may our lives be a testimony to others of your faithfulness. May we be people who seek to use our finances to build your Kingdom, in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you guys so much for joining us this week and we'll see you next time. [Narrator] Did you enjoy today's show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

“Is it possible… that Kundalini awakening could look like psychosis?” After ditching university, Kara-Leah Grant spent her twenties traveling the world in search of adventure, creativity and a tribe of like-minded souls. Sex, drugs, yoga and music festivals were simply part of the fun, until they weren’t. Diagnosed as bipolar after leaping topless onto a moving logging truck in the wilderness of British Columbia, Kara-Leah returns to New Zealand to heal her soul, face her past, and uncover the deep truths of her innermost being. GUEST LINKS - KARA-LEAH GRANT karaleah.com Sex, Drugs & (mostly) Yoga: Field Notes from a Kundalini Awakening by Kara-Leah Grant HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition FACEBOOK GROUP Shift Your Spirits Community BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT I asked her how bad it got when it really wasn’t fun anymore... Kara-Leah: That moment was waking up in a psych ward for the second time, so this is September 2004, and 4 weeks earlier I ended up in the psych ward as well. The second time I woke up, I remember so clearly I was in this single bed right beside the door and there were 4 beds to a room so it was me with other people. I woke up knowing that my fiancé had broken up with me 5 or 6 days before. Knowing that because he'd broken up with me, I now didn't have anywhere to live. Knowing that I was essentially in debt and I didn't have a job. Knowing that I'd been diagnosed bipolar. That I was back in a psych ward. That I was potentially seen as crazy. That my whole life had imploded. And knowing that, for the second time... The first time, it had been triggered by taking LSD and mushrooms and ecstasy and weed and all those things. But this time I hadn't taken any drugs. So it's a sense of waking up going, I'm crazy again and I can't blame the drugs and I've been dumped by the person that was supposed to be here for me. And feeling like hell was gracing my heart but I was so afraid of being vulnerable that I couldn't express it even. There was nowhere to go because I was surrounded by people in the ward and the room and the sense of total implosion of life and nowhere to hide anymore. Just nowhere to hide. It was a pretty painful moment in my life. Slade: So what switch sort of flipped in you to make you think, you know what? I'm gonna share this story with everyone. Kara-Leah: Well, I'd always been a writer and I had journalled my whole life. I had been working as a journalist in British Columbia where I was living. I was working as a waitress and as a journalist and as a go go dancer. And then I had quit waitressing because through writing full-time I'd written a screenplay that had won a national award. But I was really struggling. I was struggling massively. I wasn't able to pitch myself. I had a lot of stuff going on emotionally so even though I was theoretically freelancing as a writer, I wasn't making any money coming in. So when I woke up in the psych ward, I had a journal with me fortunately that someone had brought in and gave to me. She was like this angel. She literally showed up and she was like, I know that you write. And I thought that you would appreciate having something to write in. I didn't even know her that well, like an acquaintance of mine. So I had this journal that she dropped off for me maybe the first or second day I was in the psych ward. And I just remember writing in my journal and writing out everything that's happened. And at the very end of writing that diary entry, there was like this surge of knowingness, like this energy. I actually talk about this in the book, this knowingness or this energy came through several times in my life since, and I just found myself writing down, The sun was shining in in my life. So real. And it was just this, almost rebellious, You know what? Fuck you. You can't keep me down. All this shit that's happened to me, I will find my way back to the light. Just you wait and see. So that was me right at that moment. And I think that energy was what called me forth to find my way through. And I knew, even back then, that I would one day, that part of the journey was to share this story of mine with the public. Like it was really important to write about it because I was able to... I mean, it was such a gift to experience psychosis from the inside. To really witness what the mind was like, and that experience. And then to be able to recall it. And then to be able to articulate it in a way that other people could understand. So even then I had a sense of how important it was that I journal and write about my experiences of psychosis/awakening. It was though. Slade: So is it possible that what we would call psychosis or mental illness could also be a kundalini awakening? Tell me about that connection. Other people may be experiencing one or the other and wondering. Kara-Leah: Absolutely. Since then, my understanding from conversations I've had with different people and research that I've done, what can begin to happen for us is, especially if we're dabbling in a combination, as I was, of yoga practices and meditation practices and ecstatic dance practices combined with LSD or mushrooms or even weed, etc. All these plants' medicines, they're so powerful they really do impact our psyche and consciousness. And if you combine them with things like yoga and meditation and you haven't done the grounding work and the building of the witness of the container, and you haven't cleared out the psychological patterns from childhood, basically it blows your circuits, is one way to put it. It just blows your circuits. You're not really able to handle the amount of pure light and the amount of energy, of kundalini, that can start to move through the system. It's kind of like hooking up a regular old light bulb to 10,000 volts and expecting it to handle it. It just won't. You know, you've got to change your light bulb first. You've got to put in a 10,000 volt light bulb before you start channelling that much energy. But I didn't know any better. I know that there are so many people that are experiencing that convergence of awakening practices with plant medicines of various kinds without necessarily having done the psychological work necessary to stabilize the system and build strong enough channels to hold the flow. Slade: Mmm... That's a really great way of explaining it actually. I love that. And I mean, gee, what are the chances that we will play with magic if we run across it and don't know what we're doing? Kara-Leah: Ohmygod. It's happening so often. All over the place! People are doing ayahuasca... Slade: Yeah. Kara-Leah: Multiple times. And I don't necessarily have a follow up care yet... I don't necessarily have the constructs or the context to understand how one being works with what is revealed and what comes up in the unconscious. And so people are just left hanging so often, and they can dissolve. They can disintegrate. They can fall apart and not know how to navigate that territory. Slade: So how did you figure out how to recover from that? Or to retro-engineer the proper container, as you call it. How did you fix the container? Kara-Leah: So I was fortunate in that because I already did have the yoga and meditation practice, some part of me intuitively knew that what I'd experienced wasn't just psychosis and that I wasn't necessarily bipolar. That that was a western labelling. It was just this knowingness. So I knew that yoga would help me to pop myself back together mentally, emotionally, and right from the get-go, I was in the psych ward and I would go out on the lawn and practice yoga. That was my rock. That was the way that I built the container. Which is like the ability to witness oneself in action so that I was able to, rather than be identified with my thoughts and identified with my feelings, and identified with my body, and the sensations in my body, I was able to orientate to the witness that I am and still experience the thoughts and the feelings in the body but from a HELD place. So that I wasn't overwhelmed by the thoughts, or overwhelmed by the feelings. I was able to hold myself while I felt what I needed to feel. And while I learned how to observe my thoughts and then trace back to what was giving rise to the thoughts, so that I can uninstall or unprogram myself from the constructs of a lifetime and beyond, really. Like all the programming from childhood, from family, from school, from society. All the stuff that is NOT who I truly am. I just knew yoga was the way for me and I practice every single day. I was relentless in my practice of yoga. Slade: So you were in British Columbia though when you were in the psych ward? Kara-Leah: Yeah. I didn't know this at the time, but the experiences all happened during Lion's Gate, the astrological period of Lion's Gate that happens in August. And I was taken down to Lion's Gate hospital to keep at the psych ward at Lion's Gate hospital. It's interesting coincidences... Slade: Interesting! Kara-Leah: And what was even more intriguing was that it all got triggered when I was at Shambhala Music Festival and it was a Sunday morning. And I took acid that morning. Not a LOT, Maybe a quarter of a tab. I never took a lot. But I took acid and I went to the yoga class on acid and we went into lion's pose, which I've never done in my life before. I remember quite distinctly doing 3 rounds of lion's pose with lion's breath, and THAT was the moment that something in me went into the awakening process. It was like an excavation and I literally stood up in the class. I kind of looked at the teacher and I do recall her looking at me strangely but I was just like, I'm done. I've got what I needed from this. And I left the yoga class. From that moment on, I started to go through the awakening that eventually devolved into the psychosis of the next 5 or 6 days. So it was like, from lion's pose to Lion's Gate to Lion's Gate. Slade: Ooo... How long were you in that ward? Kara-Leah: So the first time I was there for just 3 days. They basically sedated me and... Because I'd gone into the ward that time speaking some kind of ancient language and doing prostrations. My body was going into spontaneous prostrations to the Sun god Ra. I mean, I'd never been taught this but it's just coming through my system. Like I knew how to do these things spontaneously. So the first doctor I saw, the psychiatrist, he was kind of onto it. Because he called it spiritual burglary. He's like, You've opened some doors you shouldn't have opened. He gave me some medication. Don't do that again. Don't take any more drugs. And oh, by the way, you're bipolar. Take this medication and see you later. So I was only there for 3 days. The second time which was exactly a month later on the new moon, both times, the second time, partly because it was my second time and there was no drugs that had precipitated it, I was there for 9 days. It took me longer to convince them I was sane enough to live out again in the community. Slade: Mmm... So at that point, you travelled back home to New Zealand, right? Kara-Leah: Yeah. I had no choice. I mean, I didn't have any money. I had nowhere to live. My fiancé had broken up with me. I needed to just come home. I didn't want to. I SO did not want to. I was leaving... I had lived in British Columbia for 7 years. I love that place. I love the mountains. I love the land. And I have amazing friends. I felt connected and I felt good there. I felt like I could be me there. Coming back to New Zealand, it was like slipping back into all the old constructs and all the old expectations and assumptions of who I was meant to be and how I was meant to act. Yeah, I didn't want to come home. Slade: Oh, I came home too. It took me a couple years from the time that I had my stroke to move back here. But I really did come home to just sort of survive, you know? To heal and to build back from square one. But that's of course when I started Shift Your Spirits. So we were experiencing that in parallel as well. I'm only just now realizing that. Because I didn't know you when all that was going on. I only know you as you started to build this online presence that you have and how we met. But yeah, my 2004, 2005 was probably very similar to yours in many ways. But it was like, oh, I'm back here?? Back to square one? Did you feel like that a little bit? Kara-Leah: Ohmygod. It was awful. I felt like I left the excitement and the adventure and the awesomeness and the aliveness of life, and I was back in this dead place where nothing was happening. And I was nobody and there was nothing. And it was like... My mom had moved so we lived in Dunedin when I was a teenager, which is like a university town of about 100,000 in the South Island. She's moved to this small mountain town of 400 people in the interim. So when I came back home, I was coming back to a place where I had no... It was completely different. It was a different house. It was a different town. In that respect it was actually amazing because the mountains and the lake, the nature was so beautiful, so powerful. And it was that landscape that really helped me to heal. Being in the mountains again of Queenstown, New Zealand is extraordinary, but yeah, I didn't want to be there. Did not want to be there. Slade: I credit the mountains with bringing me back as well. I came back to the Appalachians where I grew up and very, very powerful... One of the oldest geological features in the world, I have since learned. So they're very ancient mountains that have been worn down for just millennia, so there's layers and layers of magic here. The smokey mountains is how they're commonly known. So I had something similar going on where I almost had to choose to reconnect to the landscape and let go of whatever attachments that I used to have to it, and sort of re-define it in a new way and kind of romance this whole place I didn't want to be in but here I am, so how can I love it? Did you do something similar? Did you re-invent yourself in that way? Kara-Leah: Yeah. I just remember I was sleeping every day 'til like 2:00 in the afternoon. I was just trying to numb myself out as much as I could. And the only thing I had to numb out with was sleep really, because I wasn't taking any drugs or anything like that anymore. And I wasn't distracting myself with internet or movies. But I just remember having this sense of, I need to move. And so I started forcing myself... There's a trail around a lagoon. So I was like, right, I just have to get out. I've got to run for a hundred metres. And every day, there were these orange markers at 50m every interval around the lagoon. So I would run one more marker each day. And that was my way of forcing myself to be present and to kind of exist in the track of life again. And I remember really, really clearly that the day that I finally ran the whole way around. It was probably only 2km, maybe 3. It wasn't very far. But I was so ecstatic about the fact that I'd done it that I turned around and ran back around the whole way and did a double loop on that same day. That commitment to being in the landscape and running and walking the landscape was part of what helped me begin to heal. That and the yoga. But there's something about the physical movement, getting the endorphins and the serotonin going in the brain again, that really helped me begin that journey of healing. Slade: Oh yes! Thank you for saying that. I am very late to the game in discovering my athleticism. I didn't start working out until I was 41 and that was when I stopped smoking. I chose yoga as a replacement therapy for smoking. And so my connection and discovery of yoga is, I was trying to think, with a habit especially an addiction, what are you gonna put in that hole if you take it out? There's gotta be something else to go there. Some kind of replacement behaviour and I tried to think of what was the thing that was symbolically connected to smoking but that can somehow be healthy? So I came to the conclusion that it was the breath. And I just had this intuition. I'd done yoga before, as a smoker. It never stuck. But I instinctively knew, Oh yes! That's the thing. That's the thing that'll heal me and ground me in my body in a new way, and I was just passionately into it for maybe 4 years or so, doing it 5 days a week. I really do credit that with changing my relationship with my breath. It's crazy to think that I was still writing all the things that I write, and doing spiritual work and so I don't want people to think, like, Oh, you have to be perfect to be doing this kind of work. You don't. You just have to be on a journey of improving yourself. If you've got one plan to get to one orange marker around the lake, then you're ok. You're on the path. Kara-Leah: That was it. Having that sense of change every day, of aiming for something, achieving something, it gave me an anchor. Something to get out of bed for in a way. Slade: Well the whole idea that you said about the container and the metaphor of the lightbulb being plugged into too much energy is really cool because I actually have this thing called an energy reboot because so many of my clients will come to me really frazzled. They're spending so much time in their upper chakras. They're like always in the third eye, always trying to get that divine crown open. They're just way up here. If you could see me, I'm waving my hands above my head. It's a very top-heavy kind of energy. And they come in sort of burnt out and all over the place and I always say, you need to unplug and plug back in. And start at the bottom. And light yourself up from the root back up. To me, the way that I do that is through athleticism. Through really, really basic stuff like walking meditation. Even if you can't run around the lake, you can sure as hell walk around the lake. You know what I mean? Kara-Leah: Yeah it was a big part of my journey as well, realizing that I had just blown wide open through my heart and third eye and through the crown. All of that. And I was so blocked through first, second, third chakras and so that was a big part of why I went from awakening, feeling the oneness, the bliss, understanding life in such a deep way, into psychosis and right back into conditioned mind. And now it literally felt like going from being in heaven to going to hell. It was doing the hard work of recognizing, in order for me to experience that degree of openness and connection and bliss again, I had to clear out the lower chakras. I had to face my humanness and do the work of learning how to be with and meet reality as it was moment to moment. Slade: So let's fast forward a little bit and come into the present, fast forward this journey where you've taken all this to. Now you are primarily a retreat leader, correct? Kara-Leah: Yeah. I write books and I run retreats and I work with people online with mentoring programs and awakening programs. My primary thing is working with people in some way, supporting them on that journey, that emergence from, I kind of call it coming out of the matrix in some way. It's when people begin to wake up and things really begin to shift and change for them and they don't know. They need context. They need framework. They need tools in order to navigate that journey of emerging into a new way of being with reality. Slade: What are the patterns that you see people who are coming to you for this kind of assistance, support, what kind of patterns are you noticing in your clients? What are they bringing in? Kara-Leah: Hmm... Often what will happen is that people will begin to experience life in a new way. So they'll begin to become more aware of things but those things are still occurring. Like they'll begin to notice or become aware that, for example, that they're a people pleaser. Or that they let people treat them like a doormat. So there's a greater awareness of themselves in action. But they're not able to shift it or change it. And with that greater awareness, so often that comes usually judgement and shame and guilt and fear. So they come to me because they're starting to wake up and it feels awful because the judgement the guilt and the shame, and all those things get triggered. So a big part of what I'm doing with people is I talk a lot about anchoring into love and truth. Where I hold a space or a field of unconditional love in such a way that, however they show up, whatever they're experiencing, is completely okay. So that when they can feel that coming from me, they're able to start to feel that for themselves and they start to recognize that so much of their suffering is not because what's happening in their lives. Or not because what's happening inside of them, but it's because of how they are perceiving and how they are judging themselves. So once they feel me being an unconditional loving space for them, they can, it's almost like feel the imprint of that? So they can begin to feel their own unconditional sense of love for themselves as they are, with whatever is going on inside of them. Slade: Mmm... So for somebody listening right now, who's not in New Zealand, are you able to do this kind of work with people over the phone or over Skype or wherever they might be? Kara-Leah: Yeah, I work on Zoom, so I do a lot of work in session. I meet with people in the States, Canada. And I also do a retreat every year in Mexico, which of course is for mainly Canadian and American friends so that they can come. Slade: I didn't realize that you did them so close! Kara-Leah: I do! I do one in Mexico. And it's amazing because when people come on retreat with me, what I'm doing is I am very clear about setting up a super strong container on the energy and emotional and mental realm because what I've realized is that the stronger the container, the more held and supported and safe that people feel, it's like it activates them and it supports them to be able to let go, surrender and dissolve that which no longer suits them. It's almost as if, I mean I don't even do anything. Sometimes it feels like I don't DO anything on a retreat but of course what I'm doing is holding that strong container. And I set up a framework of basically explaining reality from a different perspective than most people perceive it. And they get it. They're like, Ohmygod. That makes so much sense. So then on the retreat, they begin to explore interacting with reality from that new framework. And they begin to see the benefits and feel the benefits of being in that new way. So it gives them an opportunity to step into and to be with themselves and be with reality in a different way so that, my intention is when they go back to their ordinary life, that they're able to bring that new way of being into their ordinary life. So it's not the kind of retreat where you just go away and you just chill out and then you go home again. It's actually about creating a new way of being from the inside out that you can take with you. Slade: What do you hope that you can contribute to the greater conversation about spirituality and personal development? Kara-Leah: My intention is to really help people learn how to be with the darkness and the shadow and the fears. Because what I was saying a lot especially in spiritual and new age circles is there can be this escape into the upper chakras. And this fear or unwillingness to be with the heavier, darker so-called negative things. And yet, the only way through into a very grounded heart-connected clear way of being is to get super comfortable with feeling the guilt, the shame, the fear, the anxiety, the depression, all those things, being able to BE with it so that you can move through it. So that's my intention, is to give people the framework and the tools so they know how to be with the challenging stuff for themselves. Which then means they can actually be with other people who are going through challenging stuff, and simply hold space for other people, so other people can then be with the challenging stuff. And so there's like a chain reaction of human beings being able to be with the hard stuff and be okay. Slade: The book is called Sex, Drugs & (Mostly) Yoga, Field Notes from a Kundalini Awakening by Kara-Leah Grant. Tell everybody where they can find you online and find out about your work and your retreats and all your stuff. Kara-Leah: So the best place to find me is on my website, which is KaraLeah.com. There's no hyphen. Even though my name has a hyphen, the website doesn't. So KaraLeah.com. And if you google me, you'll find me on Amazon. I've got a couple of other books and I'm on YouTube and I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. And I'm blessed with a unique name. I've never found anyone with my name so it's pretty easy to find me online if you google my name. Slade: That was great, Kara-Leah. Thank you for coming on the show. Kara-Leah: My pleasure, Slade. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about all this stuff.

I'm taking a different approach to solo episodes and the podcast. I am going to blog about the solo episode before recording it. This will allow me to collect my thoughts. As a result of this, I hope, that it'll make the solo episode much more smoother. Usually, I write down some points and then just riff off that. Because I'd like to write more I figured this would be one way to improve quality of the podcast, while also providing some more elaborate show notes. With that, let's get to the topic at hand.

I'm going live ... Oh, I'm live. I think I'm live. Here I am. Here I am, world. Look at this ugly fucking wall behind me. I think I could have a beautiful background. Wouldn't you? Oh, hi. Hi person. Hello person number one whose jumped on my live stream. What's happening? What is up? Beth, welcome. Welcome to the live stream in the hotel from hell. Alright. I've so many things that I could say. Joseph's announced himself by saying Joseph. Hi Joseph. Hey Leah. Background that I ... I hate this background, it's so ugly. It's the ugliest wall I've ever seen in my life. Poor Kelly, he's sitting over there, his head tilted... Okay, Joseph just gave his phone number. Can you send a photo of yourself before you give your phone number? And resume. Matt, thank you for asking if I'm well. I am actually well at the core, but I'm in an absolutely foul and shitty mood. I'm happy about my new yellow top, though. Although, I'm not sure that it's too much yellow potentially. What do you think? How much yellow do you think is too much yellow? But, I'm in like the most grumpy bitch-ass mood in the world. My poor best friend, Kelly, who's sitting right over there, hidden behind the camera, well to the side of it, basically has had to listen to me storm back into the room like an angry bear with a sore head, and just bitch about every possible thing. And it's all valid, though. As she just said herself, they call themselves the five star hotel, but they take care of none of the small details. And what I notice is, I'm used to being treated and taken care of in a very particular way. Which is to say, VI fucking P way, and everything should always be flow and smooth. Who said I always look awesome? Thank you. Looks like lime yellow. I don't mind a bit of lime yellow. Give me a second, and I'm gonna share this live stream over to my personal page, and that sort of thing. It's not even the little things. It's every fucking thing. Their heads are up their asses here. Shangri-La, Santa Monica. Do not stay here. And to make matters worse, I stayed here last month, and the same thing happened, and yet here I am again. Because I'd already pre-paid for this stay. And that was my mistake. Is my mistake is thinking that that meant anything instead of just cancelling it regardless, which is what I should have done. Thank you for all the comments. Shangri-La, Santa Monica. They have not got a single piece of their shit together. They probably need help taking an actual shit, that's how much shit they don't have together. But, the location is freakin' phenomenal, like you're just right here near the 3rd Street Promenade and the ... Like I'm looking at the ocean right now. The views are phenomenal as well. I don't believe they do know who I am, and I did even say to Kelly yesterday, I was like, "I know this is really wanky, but I'm really at the point where I'm very tempted to say, 'Do you realise I have over 100,000 social media follows?'" Or something like that. Because I feel like if you knew that, then maybe some treatment would be different here. But then I also feel like the problem is that they just literally actually don't have a clue, and they don't get it. Which is just one of those situations in life, where when you notice that somebody doesn't have a clue and they don't get it, like it could be somebody in your personal life, it could be a client, it could be a friend that's somehow transporting themselves along from previous phases of friendships, and they're not really keeping up with the next level new you, and nor should they have to, by the way, keep up with anything. But you've noticed that somebody or something in your life doesn't get it, because if you were being bitchy 'cause it's totally 'cause they're freakin' moronic. Or, they just have a different alignment, or a different value system. It's not about LA. I come to LA every month or two. Never in my life have I experienced such appalling overall, wonky standards. I'm not going to say like, bad service, because they certainly seem to want to be helpful. I just think they don't know what helpful means, or they're just ... Okay, they're at the door now. Maybe they heard me, maybe they're on the live stream. Anyway, when you notice that somebody didn't get it- It's okay, it's coffee. Which is another thing entirely, by the way. The reason that the coffee had to be called to the room, because we were told we would get a coffee maker in the room. And then we never did. Suck. You know, I'm like happy with anything. I just needed to get things off my chest. Anyway, you just eliminate them. That was the point that I was trying to make. That when you notice that somebody in your life doesn't get that you don't- ... have to kill them, that's the one I meant by eliminate. That's definitely not what I meant. You eliminate yourself out of their area, and out of their space. And you go and create your own new environment- ... and space. Where it's meant to be. Having a small moment of panic about the coffee. But actually, the reason that I got on this live stream was not even to talk about that. I just needed to get it off my chest. Oh, if I told you all the things, you would honestly start sending me gifts straight away. The only thing is you wouldn't be able to send them here, because they don't accept packages for customers here, which is another thing. So, anyhow, the reason that I've gone on this live stream is because I had as often happens, a tonne of audio messages from clients, which all related to a certain thing. And then I noticed that I was saying the same thing over and over again, so I was like, clearly I need to tell the whole world then. Do you love how over it I am that I just keep on bitching about the hotel while the guy's in the room? Thank you. Do you want to say hi to the people or not really? With my venom eyes? She's got venom under her eyes. Snake venom. Look at them. They look fabulous. But they look fabulous enough. She's a real person, I wasn't pretending that there's another person in the room. Sometimes I pretend. You never know. Ah, yeah, then my suitcase went missing. It was a whole ordeal. Honestly, I could talk for fifty minutes for all the things that went wrong at this hotel last month and this month. Oh, and then to make it even funnier, they apologised and said they'll send me a free bottle of wine, a bottle of house wine, right? But I accepted graciously, because I am a very gracious person, as you can see. And then like, the next ... Later that night, or whatever, I went downstairs, and the guys like, "Oh, I'm sorry again" and, "Did you enjoy your wine?" And I'm like, "It never came." Of course, at that point I was just like, I've embraced that it is what it is. But I've only got myself to blame, because I'm back here again. Like never again. Never again! You heard it here. Don't tag them in, because maybe they'll kick us out now, and we do have one night left, and we're just gonna sleep here tonight. Otherwise, we're gonna go crash with Chris Duffey in Venice Beach. Okay. Alignment. Here's what I said to a client today, and it came up with several clients. I said... She said to me, "I'm trying to figure out why I'm consistently not achieving this one particular goal," that she has in her business, right? And I said, and this is what I wanted to share with you, I said, "Well, if you're consistently not achieving something and yet there's this other area, this other big area that in this particular case I'm aware of for her and she's aware of them and we're both aware of, this other area that is relevant to your alignment and what you know what you're meant to be doing, and yet you're not taking care of it, you're not honouring it, you're essentially not pressing play in that area. Regardless of what your reasons are no matter how valid or not valid they are, then you're blocking your ability to receive to moving to flow to manifest all things. So, not pressing play in one area is equivalent to not pressing play in all areas. Being out of integrity or out of alignment in one area is the same as being out of integrity and out of alignment in other, even all areas. And so if you're noticing that you're feeling frustration like maybe your income's not going how you want it to go right now, or you're not signing up clients for these, or you're finding it difficult to receive [inaudible 00:08:11] maybe, or your list isn't growing, or maybe everything just feels kind of like hard going with money, with business, or maybe you feel like no matter what I do, my body doesn't change, or life doesn't feel fun or flow or whatever it is, right? If you feel that if a girl or a dream or something that you're meant to achieve ... Welcome to your first live. Hi there, you've missed the fun part already, but you can watch the replay. If you feel that a girl or a dream or something that you're wanting to achieve is just not coming to fruition and you really feel like, buy why, because I've been focusing on this for ages and I've been trying to achieve this for ages, and I've even been doing the work. The first thing, well one of the first things I would then look at, or at least what we're talking about today is, alright, cool, where ... you know, totally, supposedly, unrelated area of your life, are you not owning your shit? Or are you not following your own values? Or your own alignment? Or are you just not doing the fucking work or not pressing play, right? So for example, I knew that for as long as I continued to stay in my marriage, which as most people that know me know that I left sometime quite a while back now, several years nearly. But I was remaining in that marriage for quite a few years when I knew that we had to do something about it, right? I was conscious because I did know the stuff already. I knew that I'm definitely limiting creative flow and abundance in my business and in my life because I'm not in integrity and I'm not in alignment in this relationship. I'm not supposed to still be in this relationship. And I knew that, right? But, I was like, not ready, or whatever. I didn't choose to be ready. So I was conscious and I still didn't choose. And I think sometimes that's just is what it is, right? You can be like, "Yeah, I'm aware of what I'm doing." And then eventually of course, I got to a point where I felt emotionally able and ready to choose it and I made my decision, but maybe you don't even know this stuff, right? Maybe you don't even realise the powerful carry-on effect that occurs when you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing what's right for your soul and your values and your life, and you're thinking, well, it just makes no sense that my income's not growing or my business is not flowing, or whatever along those lines, because I am doing all the work. The simple solution is just, and I do this exercise pretty frequently actually, maybe every month or so whenever I think of it, to sit down and write out the word integrity at the top of the page and just write where am I not in integrity. And it can be the smallest little things. It could even be something so simple, and I've had this conversation with so many clients. This is really random. I'm going to give you a tiny example. Not washing your make up off your face before you go to bed at night. Like if that is something important to you, if it's not, it doesn't matter. But if you think that that's important, which I personally do, and then you don't do it because you're essentially, I don't know, in some sort of bizarre resistance about cleaning your own face, which for whatever reason is exceptionally common with women, I know that, then you're not in alignment. You're not in integrity. You're not honouring your own values in this case. So, that's something that I have done a lot, right? I'm like fucking going to bed with my face dirty and I don't care. Nobody can stop me. And it's these bizarre form of resistance that even the smallest things that are resistance against your own value system, are going to impact your ability to receive in all areas. And here's the reason why. And this will make total sense for you. I'm going to pause for effect. The reason is, it's a flow thing, right? In order to receive money with these, results with these, results in business, in money, in your body, in relationships, in all areas of life, we simply need flow. Flow is the pathway that allows you to receive. Now flow can sometimes feel bumpier. It can feel like turmoil or there can be purposeful pain as part of flow as well, by the way, but flow is still essentially a forward flow based emotion. So anything that's not in alignment or where you're not in integrity or you're not attending to something, you can look at it like it's essentially a road block to flow. It's like, okay, flow is me, going this way, doing its thing with these, and it just kind of happens because this is who I am and this is how I shop, and I travel down the path this way, and now I'm just allowing all these hurdles and road blocks and bumps in the road to either take me off path or stop me or distract me or I bump over them and I fall over and I hurt myself. And either way, I've switched out of flow. So if you want to switch back into flow, and you want to really know that you're showing up to get the results you want in a particular area of your life, then my advice to you today is to just take kind of like a broad step back. Take like a broad, big scope overview of what's going on in your life and just be honest with yourself. Where am I not in integrity? Where am I not in alignment? Where am I not honouring my own values? Where am I not taking care of myself? So you can look at where I'm not in integrity or where I'm not in alignment, but you could also look at ... you could flip it the other way and simply look at what are all the things that I would be doing if I was truly honouring myself. And I don't just mean like, fucking show up and hustle. That's not what I mean. I mean, everything can be [inaudible 00:13:11], can be thought of an adventure, can be all those things. Literally just had a baby about this. Still going to be what's in alignment and what's not in alignment. Alignment doesn't mean doing more like quote on quote work, the work is all the work. Anyway, the work is the work. I'm leaving. I'm going to go. Just like that. I'm in total flow and I could totally happily preach for another hour, but I have a client call right now with one of my amazing inner circle clients, so I'm going to leave you with that short message and I nearly thought I will wait until later to talk about it, but I thought you know what, because I only have like 30 minutes, but it was coming through right then, so I hit you with it, watch the replay, enjoy my little rant at the start. And I also want to quickly mention to you that Empress begins today. It is literally beginning right now today. Empress is my four week one-on-one. There are a few places still left. I'm still communicating with a few people over message. You can still sign up. You would definitely want to message me quickly now over on my personal Katrina Ruth profile. It's four weeks one-on-one with me. Empress. Claim your rightful place now. I don't have any more details that I can give you right now 'cause I got to jump off, but if you're curious and you've been feeling like it's time to step up and or you know that I'm the mentor for you and you're ready to go all in, or you think you might be, then just PM me and I will get you all of the details of all that and obviously investment and that sort of thing as well. Have an amazing rest of the day. Thank you for coming along real quick and don't forget, life is now, press play.

Today's episode probably isn't as big of a deal as it feels like to me. Or maybe it is. I don't know. What I do know and have known for a while is that change was called for, so I surrendered. I'd been feeling the momentum of inevitability behind me for the last five or so months, like a force of miraculous grace. I took my time, listened, and applied deeper trust than I've had to on any decision in my career to date. It's been the kind of transition where you question your sanity, because you're about to throw a wrench in something that works really well. I don't really know what to expect, but I know what I sense in my bones is coming and I've got to believe I'm ready for it, or it wouldn't be happening now. I officially decided to change the name of the show in the beginning of December. Because I'd recorded several episodes with the old name, I had to wait until today, 1/22 to make the announcement. And of course, because divine timing is always happening, it worked out that I got the extra little boost of faith I needed when Oprah blessed us with this sentence at the 2018 Golden Globes, "What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have." So, welcome to the new evolution of the podcast - Truth Telling with Elizabeth DiAlto. Have a listen to the episode to ring it in, and to hear a bit more about why, what this means for the show moving forward, and some other creations in the works for 2018. To our listeners, guests, and my team and teachers, I love you. Thank you so much. This is the epitome of co-creation, as not a single moment of the show would be possible without tremendous collaborative effort.

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Let's take a look at New Year's resolutions specifically for writers in episode 032 of the Write Now podcast. Make & keep your New Year's resolution. Let's be honest -- we are not part of the 8% of the populace that actually sticks to a New Year's resolution. For most of us, a New Year's resolution is lucky to last through the third week of January. And many of us, I'm sure, see New Year's resolutions as dumb, hypocritical, or useless. But maybe this year we can use the idea of a New Year's resolution to improve ourselves as writers. 8 tips for making and keeping your New Year's resolution: Keep it positive. Make it realistic and focus on just one thing. Make sure it's something you actually want to do. Establish a way to hold yourself accountable. Set baby-step goals and celebrate every time you reach one. Remember, you're establishing a new habit and that is hard. Set the stakes, if you need to. Start before January 1! (Yes, you can do that!) Remember to fail a lot. My New Year's resolution for 2016 is to write 100 words per day, 7 days a week. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. And I'd love for you to keep me posted, too. Contact me or send me an email telling me about your New Year's resolution. We'll hold each other accountable and make 2016 a year of amazing writing. Book of the week. This week's book is the complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Because I'd been feeling down and cranky and maybe just a little bit cynical. "Calvin and Hobbes" is a syndicated comic strip that ran in U.S. newspapers from 1985-1996 and, unlike "Cathy", "Family Circus", and "Rex Morgan MD", it wasn't terrible. In fact, it was delightful, and a source of constant and consistent inspiration for my young writer's mind. This strip follows the adventures of an imaginative boy named Calvin and his best friend, a stuffed tiger named Hobbes. But it's anything but childish. Bill Watterson has struck the perfect balance of sharp wit and scathing brilliance, raising the question over and over again of why we (whether child or adult) are constantly made to squash our creative impulses. Through "Calvin and Hobbes", Bill Watterson challenges the reader time and time again to live freely and creatively, and to make the very most of the time we are given. Keep up-to-date with my book-related adventures on Goodreads. Support the Write Now podcast! The best thing you can do to support Write Now is completely free -- simply tell your family, friends, and fellow writers to listen to it! But you can also help keep the Write Now podcast happily independent and ad-free with just $1/episode (or more or less, depending on how generous you're feeling): Or! There is also now the option to give a one-time gift or donation through PayPal! Simply type in any amount and you'll be on your way: Thank you! :D What's your writing resolution? I'd love to hear how you're challenging yourself in this upcoming year, and how you plan to stick to your goals. Let me know via my contact page, or simply email me at hello [at] sarahwerner [dot] com. I look forward to hearing from you! Get weekly inspirational emails. Confession time: I AM TERRIBLE AT EMAIL. However, that doesn't mean I don't try. So every Wednesday(-ish), I'll send you the inspiration you need to write (or maybe just get through your day). All you have to do is add your name to my email list! >> Subscribe to the Write Now podcast for free! You can listen to the full podcast episode using the controls at the beginning of this post. Or! You can listen and subscribe using your favorite app/website/podcatcher:          Help support this podcast on Patreon! >> The Write Now podcast is on social media, too.