Podcasts about capex

Attracting employees and providing support through human resources is key. Listen to Brett Landrum, Founder and Co-CEO of Procare HR, share how it's important to partner with an organization that's invested the capital to find the best HR solutions.Procare HR is an exclusive sponsor of Bridge the Gap.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Procare HR, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

My guest today is Michael Simanovsky. Mike is the Managing Partner of Conversant Capital, a real estate investment firm he founded in early 2020. Conversant aims to be the most flexible capital provider in real estate, investing across public and private markets as well as equities and credit. The firm will also incubate platforms where they see an opportunity to take advantage of a compelling theme that lacks existing business models for investment. We cover the most undersupplied part of the market, why he's building Conversant to be so flexible, and the surprising appeal of billboards. Please enjoy my conversation with Mike Simanovsky. Listen to Founders Podcast Join Colossus live in NYC with Patrick O'Shaughnessy and David Senra on Oct. 19. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors, and provider of Canalyst. Tired of calculating fully-diluted shares outstanding? Access every publicly-reported datapoint and industry-specific KPI through their database of over 4,000 drivable global models hand-built by a team of sector-focused analysts, 35+ industry comp sheets, and Excel add-ins that let you use their industry-leading data in your own spreadsheets. Tegus' models automatically update each quarter, including hard to calculate KPIs like stock-based compensation and organic growth rates, empowering investors to bypass the friction of sourcing, building and updating models. Make efficiency your competitive advantage and take back your time today. As a listener, you can trial Canalyst by Tegus for free by visiting tegus.co/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.  Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes (00:03:32) (First question) - Real estate investing through the lens of the capital cycle (00:06:50) - The capital cycle in practice (00:12:07) - Using evaluation of supply to determine where you are in a capital cycle (00:13:16) - Why real estate drew Mike in  (00:15:35) - The quality of investors in real estate (00:16:41) - What the US market needs most (00:20:26) - The range of returns in real estate (00:23:01) - Insights that stand out (00:26:45) - Starting a new company vs. building a portfolio of assets (00:28:46) - Key trade-offs and choices when building a firm (00:31:10) - Where things go wrong (00:33:59) - Best investment decision he ever made (00:38:06) - Philosophy on CapEx (00:39:52) - Misconceptions about real estate investing  (00:41:31) - Cold storage real estate (00:43:13) - The most interesting corners of the real estate market (00:46:13) - AI and its impact on the future (00:48:30) - Common investor missteps  (00:50:51) - Three guests Mike would invite to a dinner party  (00:52:34) - The most impactful questions to ask a real estate investor (00:53:17) - A defining moment of his career (00:53:17) - The premise of the platform approach (00:56:20) - Possible opportunities and an understanding of the current landscape (01:03:38) - Lessons Mike learned from basketball coach John Wooden's philosophies  (01:04:30) - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

Laurie Schultz, Principal and Co-Founder of Avenue Development and Viva Bene, discusses how they're integrating value-based care into their active adult developments with the launch of Viva Bene and how they're navigating this complex market.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Procare HR, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

One year on since US President Biden signed the landmark IRA into law, there's been no shortage of figures attesting to the cosmic transformation of the “Made in America” clean energy renaissance. Ehsan Khoman, Head of Research – Commodities, ESG and Emerging Markets (EMEA) at MUFG, discusses MUFG's latest ESG thought leadership report that provides a comprehensive assessment of what the IRA has achieved in its first year and what comes next. According to Ehsan, the energy trilemma pillars of affordability, security and sustainability, naturally dovetail with this goldilocks piece of clean energy regulation, with the data to date substantiating that we are in the early innings of a renewables capex supercycle – see here for the full report.

Better operations create better outcomes. Erin Hayes, President of Aline, discusses the success of the merger and features upcoming services offerings and data reports that will aide operators with benchmarks and improved data.Aline is an Exclusive Sponsor.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Procare HR, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

Joe DeSanto is a fractional CFO who specializes in providing part-time CFO services to businesses. He has a background in owning larger businesses in the production and post-production space in Los Angeles. Joe and his wife decided to make a change in their lives after having a child, and they moved to Florida. With their savings from real estate investing and other market investments, Joe was able to work part-time and supplement their passive income. His financial independence and early retirement mindset led him to consider himself semi-retired. However, his expertise in finance and managing businesses led to his former partners asking him to continue handling their finances as a consultant. This led to other business owners reaching out to Joe, realizing the need for a part-time CFO who could provide the same level of expertise at a more affordable cost. Joe enjoys working with his clients and helping them understand the importance of running their personal finances like a business. He started a blog to communicate his knowledge to individuals who may not be able to afford a CFO but still want guidance in managing their finances. Through his blog, Joe offers free information and courses, as well as one-on-one coaching sessions. His goal is to help individuals gain good planning skills for their own future at a reasonable cost. Overall, Joe's focus is on helping businesses and individuals achieve financial success and improve their overall financial well-being.Connect with Joe DiSanto: https://www.playlouder.com/Key Topics & Bullets:Primary Topic 1: Real Estate Investment and RiskAlmost making a real estate investment in Nashville for short-term rentalsProperty was subject to a lawsuit due to owner renting without a licenseCanceling the contract and getting money backLesson learned: Avoid risky or uncertain venturesImportance of compound annual growth in real estate investmentsPrimary Topic 2: Taking Control of Financial PlanningTaking control instead of relying solely on the financial industryPersonal investment strategy: diversifying portfolio between real estate, syndications, cryptocurrency, and stock marketAdjusting asset allocation based on market conditions and personal circumstancesExploring other investment products like life insuranceCreating a new asset allocation planImportance of educating clients about different investment options and savingsPrimary Topic 3: Financial Support and AdvisingThe speaker's role as a financial therapistAssisting with money management and avoiding mistakesHelping businesses with employee managementAssisting clients with organization and identifying areas of improvementAdvising clients to raise their prices, resulting in positive outcomesActing as a fractional CFOPrimary Topic 4: Financial Services for BusinessesSpeaker's background in owning businesses in production and post-production spaceTransition to offering financial services as a consultant and part-time CFOPassion for finance and running personal finances like a businessOffering coaching and courses on financial planningMission to help individuals manage their personal finances like a business and achieve financial independencePrimary Topic 5: Analyzing Real Estate InvestmentsImportance of analyzing the financials of real estate investmentsFactors to consider: cash flow, appreciation, CapEx, and tax implicationsThe current market is not favorableThe significance of

Curious about mastering deals in today's market? Get ready to dive in with Jorge Abreu as he unveils his strategies for using his construction and management company to steer his investment voyage. Hop on board and discover his tried-and-true methods!   Topics on Today's Episode Benefits of having a construction company  The power of partnership and syndication  Techniques for finding great deals  What it means to invest in a sleeper market Practical advice for new operators    Resource/Link mentioned  A CEO Only Does Three Things by Trey Taylor | Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover  About Jorge Abreu Jorge Abreu has invested in real estate for 16+ years. He began with small multifamily properties, moving up to 100+ unit multifamily units. Jorge wholesaled 250+ single-family properties and flipped 200+. He completed new development projects worth over $40 million.   He founded a construction company with $30+ million in annual revenue. Now an active/passive full-time multifamily investor, Jorge's Elevate acquired 7,737 units, exited 1,608, and held $550M+ assets.   Jorge is CEO of Elevate Commercial Investment Group and JNT Construction. JNT Construction aids multifamily investors with due diligence and renovations. He launched Elevate Real Estate Management, creating vertical integration. His Multifamily Coaching program assists others.   Based in Dallas, he owns properties across multiple states. He is skilled in deals, due diligence, CapEx, development, and equity. He is aiming for 10,000 doors by 2023 via partnerships and scalable systems. He focuses on Elevate team growth in 2023 for effective expansion management.   Connect with Jorge  Website: Elevate Commercial Investment Group   Connect with Us  Want to invest alongside the Kahuna Investments team? Save your spot in our upcoming webinar, where we discuss how you can join our Private Investor Club and get access to our deal rooms exclusively. Now's your chance to start apartment investing, so visit kahunainvestments.com/webinar to register!   Take the first step towards financial success by learning more about Kahuna Investments, and if your investment goals align with our formulas and approaches – book a short 15-minute Virtual Coffee call with us at kahunainvestments.com/coffee today!    Are you ready to experience the cash flow life? Just text “BOOK” to (480) 500-1127 to get a FREE copy of Corey's book, Copy Your Way to Success, and learn how apartment investing can change your life today!   Don't forget to download my Free Workshop Quick Start Video Series, and if you like what you have heard, please leave a review on iTunes.

Creating a 5-star hospitality experience is essential for happy residents and staff. Aaron Fish, Founder and CEO of Trestle Hospitality Concepts, explains the importance of simplifying the programs. Aaron is a BTG Ambassador.Check out Aaron's podcast, Tips From Trestle: The Senior Living Food & Hospitality Podcast.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Procare HR, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

If China economic woes become a true debt deflation cycle, it could export some of that disinflation to the global economy.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter, Global Chief Economist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, today, I'll be talking about the global implications of China's economic slowdown. It's Tuesday, August 29th, at 10 a.m. in New York. China's economic woes continue to be center stage. Our Asia team has outlined the risks of a debt deflation cycle there and how policy is needed to avert the possibility of a lost decade. As always, big economic news from China will get global attention. That said, when we turned bullish on China's economic growth last year, we flagged that the typical positive spillovers from China were likely to be smaller this cycle than in the past. We expected growth to be heavily skewed towards domestic consumption, especially of services, and thus the pull into China from the rest of the world would be smaller than usual. We also published empirical analysis on the importance of the manufacturing sector to these global spillovers, and the very strong Chinese growth and yet modest global effects that we saw in the first quarter of this year vindicated that view. Now the world has changed and Chinese growth has slumped, with no recovery apparent so far. The global implications, however, are somewhat asymmetric here. Because we are seeing the weakness now show through to the industrial sector and especially CapEx spending, we cannot assume that the rest of the world will be as insulated as it was in the first quarter. Although we have recently marked down our view for Chinese economic growth, we still think a lost decade can be avoided. Nevertheless, with Chinese inflation turning negative, the prospect of China exporting disinflation is now getting discussed in markets. Much of the discussion about China exporting this inflation started when China's CPI went into deflation in the past couple of months. Although the connection is intuitive, it is not obvious that domestic consumer price numbers translate into the pricing that, say, U.S. consumers will eventually see. Indeed, even before China's prices turned negative, U.S. goods inflation had already turned to deflation because supply chains had healed and consumer spending patterns were starting to normalize. For China to export meaningful disinflation, they will likely have to come through one of three channels. Reduced Chinese demand for commodities that leads to a retreat in global commodities prices, currency depreciation or exporters cutting their prices. On the first, oil prices are actually at the same levels roughly that they were in the first quarter after Chinese goods surged. And they're well off the lows for this year. And despite the slump in economic activity, transportation metrics for China remain healthy, so to date, that first channel is far from clear. The renminbi is much weaker than it was at the beginning of the year. But recent policy announcements from the People's Bank of China imply that they are not eager to see a substantial further depreciation from here, limiting the extent of further disinflation through that channel. So that leaves exporters cutting prices, which could happen, but again, it need not be directly connected to the broader domestic prices within China coming down. So all of that said, the direction of the effect on the rest of the world is clear. Even if the magnitude is not huge, there is a disinflationary force from China to the rest of the world. For the Fed and ECB, other developed market central bankers, such an impulse may be almost welcome. Central banks have tightened policy intentionally to slow their economies and pulled down inflation. Despite progress to date, we are nowhere near done with this hiking cycle. If we're wrong about China, however, should we start to worry about a global slump? Probably not. The Fed is currently trying to restrain growth in the US with high interest rates. If the drag comes more from China, well then the Fed will make less of the drag come from monetary policy. Thanks for listening and if you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

Value-based care is a hot topic in the industry and Alan Fairbanks brings an operator's voice to the table as he joins Serviam Care Network as President to lead the initiative.Listen to Alan on BTG Ep. 88.Join the BTG Newsletter - here. Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Procare HR, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

One of the biggest topics surrounding supply chains - if not the biggest topic - is the need to digitise.  We all love our Excel sheets (me too!) but they can only take us so far.  In an increasingly complex environment, we need to be able to gather better data - and analyze it faster.That means getting our business onto a a more advanced platform.  While most organisations acknowledge this - they also feel a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of adding a new massive undertaking.  Equally as daunting is the Capex commitment.And then there's all of the warnings that most digital transformations fail.Fortunately one of the biggest, but least acknowledged changes in technology is that it is actually getting easier and less expensive for companies of all sizes to get onboard.Today we're joined by Nick Foy,  the Founder, CEO, and Chief Evangelist of Silverdale Technology, which gives companies access to world-class processes, systems, and change management methods regardless of their size or budget.He has over 30-years of experience in business and technology leadership  for logistics and supply chains, at Amazon, Capgemini Consulting, ModusLink Corporation, 3663 First for Foodservice, and The Glenmorangie Distillery Company.Nick will be discussing:Why flexibility without structure is chaosHow to perfect the four essential parts of any mechanism in your businessesThe importance of choosing the right tech for your business vision Visit A Seat at The Table's website at https://seat.fm

Introducing NIC Academy! Ray Braun, NIC's President and CEO, shares about the new certification course focusing on the fundamentals of underwriting senior housing properties, and explains how this integrative capstone experience is perfect for both students and senior living professionals.Learn more about NIC Academy.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, procareHR, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

As the competitive cloud landscape is shifting, let's take a look at some possibilities of what AWS might look like after they cross the chasm. SHOW: 746CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:Find "Breaking Analysis Podcast with Dave Vellante" on Apple, Google and SpotifyKeep up to data with Enterprise Tech with theCUBEAWS Insiders is an edgy, entertaining podcast about the services and future of cloud computing at AWS. Listen to AWS Insiders in your favorite podcast player. Cloudfix HomepageDatadog Application Monitoring: Modern Application Performance MonitoringGet started monitoring service dependencies to eliminate latency and errors and enhance your users app experience with a free 14 day Datadog trial. Listeners of The Cloudcast will also receive a free Datadog T-shirt.SHOW NOTES:3 Steps into a 10k race (Episode 428 on Software Defined Talk)There's no AI without the cloud (AWS CEO Adam Selipsky - Decoder podcastWhat comes after Zoom? (Benedict Evans)Looking at Cloud hyperscaler CAPEX spending in Q2 2023 (Charles Fitzgerald)Amazon has over half of all ARM servers (The Register)IF ONLY 10-15% OF APPS ARE IN THE CLOUD, HAVE WE CROSSED THE CHASM?AWS is $85B/yr business, after 17 yearsAWS claims that 10-15% of IT is in the cloudAWS has attracted startups, and mostly competes against legacy IT companiesAWS MOATS AND WHAT MIGHT COME NEXT?Amazon/AWS has always made large CAPEX investmentsAWS claims to have the largest farm of GPUs, and ARM serversOpen source projects are moving to licensing that reduces competition from AWSAWS growth rate has been slowing since Q4 2021Innovation? Application Portfolio? Pricing vs. Profitability?AWS has done limited acquisitions and partners are kept at arms-length (vs. OpenAI / MSFT)AWS seems to be behind in the AI race, although still very early in the market maturityAWS doesn't have a large set of “owned/branded” applicationsWhat does a future AWS look like that is mostly infrastructure? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

Immerse yourself in our insightful discussion with Shane Thomas, an expert in asset management reporting, as we delve into the crucial aspects investors need to consider. Shane emphasizes the necessity of respecting investor capital and the significance of prompt, regular updates. Discover how a swift response to investor queries can enhance a company's image and why adopting the practices of larger institutional private equity firms can lead to substantial improvements in reporting. Learn about Catalyst Equity's dedication to delivering standard monthly reports and comprehensive bi-annual webinars to help investors make sense of their investments.In this episode, Shane Thomas offers precious insights on simplifying property management reports for the benefit of investors. He breaks down the essential elements of a potent report, such as sponsor commentary, profit and loss summaries, and CapEx updates. Shane highlights the importance of accurate, transparent reporting, and the need for an efficient report creation process.Our conversation also covers real estate investing and market forecasts. Shane provides strategies to enhance value for investors and alleviate stress for back-office teams. He shares his predictions for the multifamily market over the next 6-12 months and gives advice on how to seize investment opportunities. Understand why long-term holding is the most effective strategy and how homeownership costs affect the multifamily market. Don't miss Shane's personal morning routine and his belief in the power of surrounding oneself with success-oriented individuals in real estate syndication.Connect with Shane Thomas directly, visit his LinkedIn profile to network, gain further insights, and stay updated with his latest projects in real estate syndication. This is a great chance to learn from an industry expert and expand your professional network. You can find him on LinkedIn at Shane Thomas.Also, be sure to check out Catalyst Equity Partners' website for more detailed information about their portfolio, investment strategies, and value-add renovation projects. There's a wealth of knowledge waiting for you there. Visit Catalyst Equity Partners today!VISIT OUR WEBSITEhttps://lifebridgecapital.com/Here are ways you can work with us here at Life Bridge Capital:⚡️START INVESTING TODAY: If you think that real estate syndication may be right for you, contact us today to learn more about our current investment opportunities: https://lifebridgecapital.com/investwithlbc⚡️Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealEstateSyndicationShow

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What a year 2023 has already been! Check out these episode highlights featuring operators and thought leaders in our industry. Hear from Heather Tussing, Christy Van Der Westhuizen, David Eskenazy, Leon Grundstein, Anthony Ormsbee-Hale, Chris Hoard, and Dan Williams.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

In this dividend highlight from episode #117 of the KCREatingwealth Podcast, Dan jumps into successfully navigating several of the facets of managing capital expenditures in large multifamily! This was an AWESOME snippet that Dan shared after YEARS of institutional experience doing this for a REIT! Be sure to check out the rest of episode #117 to learn more! Check him out here! Instagram: @realvalue.dan Facebook: @Real Value Ventures Linkedin: @Real Value Ventures, LLC Youtube: @RealValueDan Company links: https://www.realvalueventures.com/ https://www.bpcmag.com/case-studies/dan-milinazzo-real-value-ventures/ ***Please visit our website to learn more about us and the power of syndications! *** https://kcreatingwealth.com ***Join our “KCREatingwealth Together” Facebook group to collaborate with tons of likeminded investors from all over and help each other change our lives for generations!*** https://tinyurl.com/ycerv4ra Follow me on social! Instagram: @Kyle.kcreatingwealth, @KCREatingwealth Facebook: @Kyle Curtin Linkedin: Kyle Curtin Biggerpockets: Kyle Curtin What equipment do I use? Blue Yeti USB Microphone: https://tinyurl.com/5n966aty Music: Straight Through by Groove Bakery | https://groovebakery.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ DISCLAIMER: I or any guests being interviewed on “The KCREatingwealth Podcast” are not responsible for any investment decisions that you make or capital losses incurred. We are not licensed tax professionals or any form of wealth advisors unless particular guest happens to be as such, and all investment decisions should not be made without receiving advice from a licensed professional.

In this dividend highlight from episode #117 of the KCREatingwealth Podcast, Dan tells us about the different aspects to keep in mind around the concept of "phasing" your capital expenditure projects and getting access to grant money from markets! There is so much more than meets the eye for both of these projects, and Dan shares another GOLDEN nugget that is super helpful for sponsors as well as smaller investors all over! Be sure to check out the rest of episode #117 to learn more! Check him out here! Instagram: @realvalue.dan Facebook: @Real Value Ventures Linkedin: @Real Value Ventures, LLC Youtube: @RealValueDan Company links: https://www.realvalueventures.com/ https://www.bpcmag.com/case-studies/dan-milinazzo-real-value-ventures/ ***Please visit our website to learn more about us and the power of syndications! *** https://kcreatingwealth.com ***Join our “KCREatingwealth Together” Facebook group to collaborate with tons of likeminded investors from all over and help each other change our lives for generations!*** https://tinyurl.com/ycerv4ra Follow me on social! Instagram: @Kyle.kcreatingwealth, @KCREatingwealth Facebook: @Kyle Curtin Linkedin: Kyle Curtin Biggerpockets: Kyle Curtin What equipment do I use? Blue Yeti USB Microphone: https://tinyurl.com/5n966aty DISCLAIMER: I or any guests being interviewed on “The KCREatingwealth Podcast” are not responsible for any investment decisions that you make or capital losses incurred. We are not licensed tax professionals or any form of wealth advisors unless particular guest happens to be as such, and all investment decisions should not be made without receiving advice from a licensed professional.

How is investing in hard assets can help preserve your purchasing power? In this episode of The Academy Presents: Real Estate Investing Rocks, we welcomes back Chad Zdenek. Chad explores the journey of getting into real estate and how it can lead to financial and location freedom. He investigates the differences between self-management and having a property manager.   Join Angel and her esteemed guest provides information on the advantages of living in a place with no income taxes, affording passive income streams, and investing in real estate and self-directed IRAs as a means of combatting inflation.         Tune in now as Chad shares with the listeners that investing in hard assets such as real estate can help preserve one's purchasing power as the cost of everything increases!   [00:00 - 01:07] The Challenges Of Investing In LA Angel welcomes back, Chad Zdenek! Collecting rent and replacing fridges when needed [01:08 - 07:06] Achieving Financial Freedom Through Passive Income Residents must meet certain requirements to be qualified renters Sticking to a business plan and modifying as needed is important Lenders were understanding during difficult times Changes in CapEx scheduling could have made it less horrible [07:07 - 16:51] Real Estate As An Inflation Hedge Real estate is the best get-rich-slowly scheme Tax savings can bolster disposable income Passive income shielded from taxes can be a big benefit to high-income earners Hard assets like apartments or self-storage fluctuate with the market and maintain the value [16:52 - 21:08] Closing Segment Chad shares how real estate is an inflation hedge as rent increases with the cost of everything else! Tune in to this episode to learn more about Chad!     Tweetable Quotes: “Real estate's the best get rich slowly scheme out there. You will get rich, but it will take time in most cases and I've actually witnessed that myself.” – Chad Zdenek   “The good thing about real estate is, we like to call it an inflation hedge, which means as the cost of everything goes up. So does rent and that helps preserve some of your purchasing power when the rents have to increase as well.” – Chad Zdenek   You can connect with Chad Zdenek through his: Website: CSQ Properties Instagram: @csqproperties Facebook: CSQ Properties Tiktok: @Chad.Zdenek YouTube: @csqproperties     Visit sponsorcloud.io/contact today and unlock $2,000 of free services exclusively for REI Rocks community members! Get automated syndication and investor relationship management tools to save time and money. Mention your part of the REI Rocks community for exclusive offers. Help make affordable, low-cost education summits possible. Check out Sponsor Cloud today!   LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to explode their business growth by sharing this episode.   Are you confused about where to start? Join our community and learn more about real estate investing. Head over to our Facebook Page, Youtube Channel, or website https://www.theacademypresents.com/jointhesummit36848306. Connect with Lorren Capital, LLC. for syndicated multifamily investments, https://lorrencapital.com/. To learn more about me, visit my LinkedIn profile, and connect with me.  

Mark Hamilton digs into the latest news in F1 including Lewis Hamilton's ongoing contract talks, Calvin Lo being outed as a financial fraud by Forbes, Red Bull's plans to slim their support of F2 and F3 drivers, Otmar Szafnauer's discussions about returning to F1, the potential for Mattia Binotto to return to F1 at Alpine, the collapse of talks between the F1 teams regarding giving Williams some financial leeway to invest in infrastructure (Capex), and more discussion about the power battle between the FIA and FOM regarding the addition of an eleventh Formula 1 team. Looking for unique and authentic F1 merchandise? Check out www.racingexclusives.com! Check out The RaceWknd magazine here! Title music created by J.T. the Human: https://www.jtthehuman.com/ Contact & Feedback: Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you enjoy podcasts Website: http://www.scuderiaf1pod.com Email: scuderiaf1pod@gmail.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ScuderiaF1Podcast Twitter: @ScuderiaF1Pod Facebook: Scuderia F1 Podcast To advertise on this show, please visit https://www.advertisecast.com/scuderiaf1 or email Overtime@AdvertiseCast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Don't miss out on the opportunity to attend the 2023 NIC Fall Conference! COO of NIC, Chuck Harry, gives a sneak peek into the event and shares what to expect from the upcoming 2023 NIC Data & Analytics Conference.Register for NIC Fall Conference.Register for NIC Data & Analytics Conference.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

In this episode of The 5G Factor, our series that focuses on all things 5G, the IoT, and the ecosystem as a whole, I'm joined by my colleague and fellow analyst, Todd Weiss, for a look at the top 5G developments and what's going on that caught our eye. Our discussion centered on: Major CSP CapEx Snapshot: Spotlight on AT&T, DT/T-Mobile, Verizon, China Mobile, Vodafone, China Telecom. Global CSP capital expenditures (CapEx) for the rest of 2023 and partially into 2024 have more clarity with the major CSPs providing mixed projections that indicate mostly flat CapEx growth. Notably, T-Mobile's parent, Deutsche Telekom, and Verizon have outlooks that respectively decrease CapEx 24% and 19% from 2022 to 2023 with Verizon cutting more in 2024. We investigate what the implications of the global CSP CapEx situation means for the 5G ecosystem in both the U.S. and other parts of the world.  T-Mobile Champions New 5G Carrier Aggregation Capabilities. T-Mobile is championing its new 5G carrier aggregation capabilities, which allows it to combine multiple 5G channels, or carriers, to deliver greater speed and performance. T-Mobile is now merging four 5G channels of sub-6 GHz spectrum – two channels of 2.5 GHz Ultra Capacity 5G, one channel of 1900 MHz and one channel of 600 MHz spectrum that is akin to combining four separate highways into a top performance superhighway. We assess the benefits customers can gain from the new capabilities, especially for 5G SA environments, as well as the competitive implications for the U.S. market.  Q2 2023 Earnings: AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Put Up Good Numbers. AT&T Q2 2023 revenues came in at $29.9 billion, up 0.9% year over year (YoY), Verizon reported Q2 2023 revenue of $32.6 billion, yielding a non-GAAP profit of $1.10 per share, and T-Mobile generated service revenues of $15.7 billion, up 3% YoY. We examine how each of the big three U.S. operators fared across key subscriber and financial categories and where competitive advantages are generated.

Amazon reports after the bell - and investors' eyes are on the cloud. Over the last 6 quarters, growth in its cloud business AWS has slowed significantly, to an expected 10% in tonight's report, and investors are anxious to know whether the slowdown has bottomed... or could head even lower. Another data point to keep an eye on – capex. Big tech companies that have already reported including Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta have all mentioned that big investments in AI have pushed up spending. Investors will be watching closely how Amazon's plays out. 

Dave Vellante (@dvellante, Cofounder & Co-CEO SiliconANGLE Media, co-host of @theCUBE) gives an update on the status of SuperClouds and talks about the recent SuperCloud 3 event. SHOW: 741CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwNEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:GCore - Global Hosting, CDN, Edge and Cloud ServicesUse promocode “CLOUDCAST” to receive a €100 credit on Gcore servicesFind "Breaking Analysis Podcast with Dave Vellante" on Apple, Google and SpotifyKeep up to data with Enterprise Tech with theCUBEReduce the complexities of protecting your workloads and applications in a multi-cloud environment. Panoptica provides comprehensive cloud workload protection integrated with API security to protect the entire application lifecycle.  Learn more about Panoptica at panoptica.appSHOW NOTES:2022 Look Ahead to SuperClouds (Cloudcast Eps.586)SuperCloud 3 (event)SuperCloud 2 (event)The Rise of SuperCloud (2021)theCUBE (homepage)Topic 1 - Welcome back to the show. You cover everything, but where are your main focuses these days?Topic 2 - For anyone that's new to Cloudcast, or new to this concept of SuperCloud (which has evolved over time), give us the high-level overview of the concept.Topic 3 - Let's dive right into SuperCloud, since you just finished the SuperCloud 3 event. What were the big trends within the event?Topic 4 - The new focus on AI seems to have shown a new light on the location of data, and how well isolated data (and models) are from other companies. How do you see the concept of SuperCloud playing with new AI demands around data locality? Topic 5 - It seems like nobody is going to be able to afford the CAPEX required to do AI (GPUs) at scale except the big three hyperclouds. They are all going through various levels of economic challenges. Do you expect to see infrastructure becoming an AI bottleneck soon? Topic 6 - Are you seeing any companies or technologies breaking away from the pack with regard to the SuperCloud capabilities? Topic 7 - Where are you focusing on the next SuperCloud event and research? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @thecloudcastnet

ABOUT VLADIMIRVladimir Rozanovich is the Senior Vice President and President of North America at Lenovo. He has over 24 years of experience in the technology industry and has held various leadership positions at AMD before joining Lenovo.SHOW SUMMARYIn this episode of Tech Sales Insights, Randy Seidl is joined by Vladimir Rozanovich to discuss the importance of perseverance in a down market. He emphasizes the need to focus on customers, leverage partnerships, change the narrative, and invest in people. He also highlights the value of as-a-service models and the role of sales operations in driving success.KEY TAKEAWAYSPerseverance in a down market requires focusing on customers, leveraging partnerships, changing the narrative, and investing in people.As-a-service models, such as Lenovo's TrueScale, can help reduce CapEx expenditures and provide flexibility for customers.Certain industries, such as born-in-the-cloud companies, are more inclined to adopt as-a-service models.Sales operations and analytics tools are crucial for driving informed decision-making and improving customer engagement.Lead generation and passing within an organization can enhance collaboration and enable more effective customer interactions.QUOTES"Perseverance in a down market requires changing the narrative and focusing on solutions and outcomes." - Vladimir Rozanovich"As-a-service models provide flexibility and help reduce CapEx expenditures for customers." - Vladimir RozanovichFind out more about Vladimir Rozanovich in the link below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-rozanovich-4234711/This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by: Sales Community: https://www.salescommunity.com/Sandler: https://www.sandler.com/

In this week's episode of the KCREatingwealth Podcast, I had an extremely enjoyable chat with an awesome guest! Dan is the owner and operator of Real Value Ventures! He has tons of knowledge through multiple facets within the real estate arena, including over a decade of institutional level construction management & capex planning experience through his W2 job, as well as being an active (and passive!) investor himself with 12 units in Eastern MA! In this episode, we chatted a TON about the intricacies of asset management on an institutional level vs the residential multifamily level and so much more! Definitely give this episode a second (or third ;) ) listen to really scoop all of the years of value that Dan shares with us today! Check him out here! Instagram: @realvalue.dan Facebook: @Real Value Ventures Linkedin: @Real Value Ventures, LLC Youtube: @RealValueDan Company links: https://www.realvalueventures.com/ https://www.bpcmag.com/case-studies/dan-milinazzo-real-value-ventures/ ***Please visit our website to learn more about us and the power of syndications! *** https://kcreatingwealth.com ***Join our “KCREatingwealth Together” Facebook group to collaborate with tons of likeminded investors from all over and help each other change our lives for generations!*** https://tinyurl.com/ycerv4ra Follow me on social! Instagram: @Kyle.kcreatingwealth, @KCREatingwealth Facebook: @Kyle Curtin Linkedin: Kyle Curtin Biggerpockets: Kyle Curtin What equipment do I use? Blue Yeti USB Microphone: https://tinyurl.com/5n966aty Music: Straight Through by Groove Bakery | https://groovebakery.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ DISCLAIMER: I or any guests being interviewed on “The KCREatingwealth Podcast” are not responsible for any investment decisions that you make or capital losses incurred. We are not licensed tax professionals or any form of wealth advisors unless particular guest happens to be as such, and all investment decisions should not be made without receiving advice from a licensed professional.

There is a growing impact that isolation has on seniors and social connection makes all the difference! Dave Blanchard, Strategic Business Development at Hamilton CapTel discusses on this week's episode of Bridge the Gap.Listen to Dave on Ep. 258.Hamilton CapTel is a sponsor of Bridge the Gap.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, Peak Senior Living, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. The Contributors are brought to you by Peak Senior Living. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT Using existing network infrastructure has long been talked up as an efficient way to manage and deliver digital signage solutions in large companies, but the concept has been clouded by concerns - like the cost of additional AV hardware and the impact of all that video on the company network. But we now live in a world where companies support countless video conferencing sessions with piles of users, with little or no latency. Other technologies have also caught up, and computing just keeps getting more powerful. Which is why I was interested in chatting with Shane Vega, VP of Marketing for the Silicon Valley software firm Userful, about his company's AV over IP solutions. The company has its roots in Calgary, Alberta and still does a lot of the R&D work there. Userful first showed up in digital signage circles talking about a different way, using software and endpoints, to drive video walls. But in the last few years it has been much more focused on a broader IP-driven solution that tends to start with control rooms and operations centers, but can also drive things like meeting room displays and digital signage around corporate campuses. There's been a lot of discussion about AV needs converging with IT interests, but from Vega's perspective, that convergence is already firmly in place. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Shane, thank you for joining me. Where are you today?  Shane Vega: I am in sunny Tampa, Florida, where although it's not all that sunny today, we've got some rain, but that's per the norm now.  Now, Userful is in Silicon Valley, but a lot of the developers are in Calgary, right? Shane Vega: Yeah, that's correct. All of our R&D, engineering team, and the like, they're all up in Calgary, Canada. So you're missing the Calgary Stampede this week?  Shane Vega: I am missing the Stampede.  But you know what, I believe they deserve a bit of some good time because they spend the majority of the time avoiding the minus 30-degree weather.  Yeah, I spent a number of years in Calgary, and it's an interesting weather city. Shane Vega: Yeah. You know it's bad when they've developed an entire infrastructure of walkways between buildings to avoid having to go outside.  Yeah, just like Minneapolis.  Shane Vega: Exactly.  All right, so we had a quick chat in the LG booth at Infocomm, and you explained what Userful was up to with its Infinity platform and AV over IP and AV as a Service and so on, and I've seen that. I will wholeheartedly admit I don't totally get it, but how you explained it to me was very interesting, and I thought this would be useful for a lot of people to understand the infrastructure and distribution side of digital signage.  We spend so much time talking about the content and business strategy and all those sorts of things, but behind-the-scenes stuff is awfully important, and maybe we could start out by just explaining what Userful is and does and where you came from because when Userful first came out, it was presented to me as video wall software, and I had a hell of a time wrapping my brain around what it was all about. But I know you guys have evolved quite a bit.  Shane Vega: Yeah. I appreciate that, Dave. To answer your question, Userful has grown exponentially in the last 5+ years. John Marshall, our CEO came on board about 7 years or so ago. My timing might be a little bit off, and when he came into the organization, we were a perpetual software company, so we weren't software as a service, we weren't selling subscriptions. We were selling perpetual software… You'd buy a license and then get that supported?  Shane Vega: Yeah, you'd buy a license then we support it for the duration of however long you wanted to use it, and the license for the software was pretty siloed, right? It was, “Hey, you can buy this operations center license.” Where, to your point, we were just managing content on a video wall.  And it was mostly control rooms, right?  Shane Vega: Mostly control rooms, almost exclusively for a time, and then we evolved into the digital signage world, and it was cloud-based digital signage exclusively. So what most folks are familiar with is hosting up in AWS, giving you some access to dynamic tools for creating templates and the like.  During Infocom, what we've launched and from the time that I just mentioned until about, maybe two and a half years ago or three years ago, we've pivoted the company from perpetual to subscription-based software as a service, and that's who Userful is. We are a software company, and we've been a software company tailored to the needs of the AV industry.  Most currently, we've just released our newest platform, and that's really been the biggest evolution, which is moving away from application-specific deployments into more of a platform approach for AV over IP and that is really the biggest breakthrough development that we've had here, because in the older version of our software, we were a monolithic code base. Again, we were just selling either the operation center software or we were selling some digital signage. Everything was monolithic. It was difficult for our engineering team to manage updates, firmware, bug fixes, and the like. We've now moved to a distributed code base that has given us exceptional flexibility with how we develop our software for the various use cases and applications in the AV industry. So if you think about what you've seen in the conversations you and I have had, essentially, and you hit the nail right on the head, this isn't just about fancy software managing content on a video wall. Can we do that? Of course, we've got feature sets for various different use cases, but there's also the infrastructure piece, and this was my “aha moment” through a different lens at Infocomm.  AV over IP has matured through the years from IP addressable matrix switchers where everything was still very much centralized into IP addressable nodes, encoders, decoders, transmitters, receivers, and all the different AV manufacturers out there have now standardized on this proprietary hardware version of AV over IP, and I started to ask myself the question: what is their value proposition in doing that? And I overheard quite a few folks during this past Infocomm talk about the value of this distributed architecture: enabling flexibility, scalability, augmenting workflows, the total cost of ownership being lower, and I sat there a little bit baffled because these are all the same things that we talk about at Userful and so it really opened up an area where I feel like we do need to evangelize a little bit more about how Userful do AV over IP differently, and that we don't necessitate all of the hardware infrastructure. We truly are a software platform, but because of the IT protocols that currently exist, that's how we developed our software. So when you think about Userful, I've actually positioned us a little bit more as an IT solution than an AV solution, even though our entire solution is built around the AV industry and its needs. The reason I say that is because we're literally a server, non-proprietary, and an endpoint, and that endpoint is software, so our uClient application. In between the two is network infrastructure. There are no end encoders, decoders, transmitters, receivers, and the list goes on. Because we are able to transmit content and aggregate content, meaning we can pull in sources of visual information and audio information into a data library or data store that we manage on our server and distribute that information to any destination or any screen and we do that all with IP protocols.  The same IP protocols, by the way, and this is how I usually get people to have the “aha moment.” If we were having this over a Teams meeting, Dave, or a Zoom meeting, we would be transmitting video two ways. In many cases, multiple participants from multiple regions of the world share two-way audio and video. We would be able to share content from our local computers into that meeting, and nobody would have to go out and buy a proprietary encoder and decoder to make that happen. So using that same infrastructure or those IT protocols that are currently at work, IP protocols like WebRTC for instance, we're able to build a solution that leverages those same advancements for the purposes of AV over IP. It's a bit of a mouthful, but that's what we're doing.  So you wouldn't have been able to do some of that 10-15 years ago because the network infrastructure is a lot of larger corporations hadn't really caught up with that, so you would flood a network if you were using a lot of video and so on, but things have changed.  Shane Vega: Things have changed substantially, and I would even say it's been not even 10-15 years ago, just 5-10 years ago, and the reason I say that is because there are the laws of engineering and physics like Butter's Law, Kryder's Law, Moore's Law, which talks about how rapidly the advancements of, let's say, fiber optic networks, which are doubling every nine months, the amount of bandwidth that you can get between the fiber optic cable or the amount of processing speed that you can get out of a CPU and how fast these advancements are happening.  What we're doing and the way that we're doing it is taxing the CPU of that server. It's also taxing the GPU of that server, the graphics card because those are the two major components that we use for our solution. If you think about just two years ago, Dave, our servers that we were deploying in the field were 8 cores of processors. Right now, I have a server that we've certified that's 192 cores of processors, so we're able to do exceptionally and exceedingly more on a single server, which is why we've actually built our solution to be a data center solution by and large, where you take a big beefy server, you put it in your data center, and you're virtualizing all of the traditional hardware that you would need, and you're managing a wide range of AV endpoints, whether it's digital signage, meeting rooms, operations centers, or what have you.  Is there a baseline for what you need in terms of the network infrastructure?  I'm definitely not an IT Architect, but do you need a CAT6E, or can you do this over Wifi, I don't know, and I suspect a lot of people don't know.  Shane Vega: Yeah, so it's a good question. So again, because we're optimizing for IT protocols, we're able to do a lot, right? From the screen to the switch, we're just really looking for that one-gigabit uplink, which is standard. Most folks are going to have that. From the server to the source to the server and all that infrastructure pulling into the server, we're looking for the 10 gigabit uplink.  So there are some requirements for the network, but nothing that is outside the realms of standard network topology. The real intricacies or the real areas where we get into some deeper discussions are when they have multiple networks that we have to traverse. When you start getting into DOD environments where things have to be air-gapped and there's no internet connectivity and when networks start to get a little bit more complex, that's where we have to begin to get a little bit more intentional about how we design it. Now that said, we haven't yet met a deployment that we couldn't meet the network requirements for, even though some of those were those complex ones. There were two things that particularly interested me.  The first was, as you laid out earlier, that you don't need all these encoders and other bits of hardware to layer into a network to make this happen. So you're cutting out conceivably a lot of capital costs and a lot of potential fail points, and I guess the other thing that intrigues me, and you can talk about that next is or after.  The first question would be the idea that you can use this for multiple aspects. I suspect there are control room data dashboards, and software platforms out there, but one of the things you talked about at Infocomm is that you can cascade this out to do all kinds of different things from operation centers to experience centers off of the same platform.  Shane Vega: Yeah, exactly, Dave, and to answer the first question, you hit the nail on the head with one of my areas of confusion when I was at Infocomm, and I heard people talking about the low total cost of ownership, and they were tying it to these encoders and decoders.  We don't require those things. So when I think about the total cost of ownership, I think about the hard work upfront costs that you don't need to have and the additional BTU output from all of that hardware that you would normally need, that's no longer going to be there, which is going to drive your HVAC costs, right? You don't have all the power consumption. So for green initiatives and companies who are looking to do things, and this is a big one moving forward, folks want to be more green, and get green initiatives going like lower carbon emissions, lowering power consumption by not having all that hardware is yet another total cost of ownership benefit for Userful.  Again, our encoding happens at the one server that we require in that Nvidia graphics card. The decoding is done by a piece of software we developed called the uClient application. Now, where that uClient application resides, we give you tons amount of flexibility. We have integrated it into certain endpoints like Web OS or Tizen or Android. And that gives us the flexibility to be able to load that client application in various different environments and use cases, depending on the display type if it's an LCD, if it's a direct view LED, and how we manage that.  In some cases, we do have a small appliance that you might need at the edge, and that would be one additional piece of hardware per display, depending on the display type, and that's an Android box that we load our uClient application onto if the display doesn't have the ability to integrate with our software.  So if it's a smart display that already has a system on a chip on it, conceivably you don't need that Android box?  Shane Vega: Correct. So now what you're left with, as I said, is just a server with software at the edge, and network infrastructure in between. So ongoing maintenance costs are substantially lower. Initial hardware costs are lower. Your total cost of ownership around all the things I mentioned earlier is going to be lower. Therefore, your refresh costs are going to be lower. Because with hardware, every three to five years, in some cases five to seven years, you're having to do a hardware refresh. It's always tied to CapEx because it's usually proprietary. They have to budget for CapEx renewals of all this hardware.  Because of Userful's deployment model, we can take on an OPEX model for those folks who would benefit from that because your hardware refresh can be built into your standard IT refreshes because you own the hardware. In many cases, as many as we can possibly, push for, we don't provide the server, we want the end user to provide the server, and that way, it gets built into your traditional OPEX refresh, and that way, the only recurring cost is the software.  To your next question about what we spoke about and the benefits of the platform. This is where our software really begins to shine, right? Because our platform is accessible through a web browser, so no proprietary software needs to be downloaded for a user to access it. You access our software through a traditional HTML5 web browser.  Once you access the software through a web browser, the first thing you're going to notice is we have six applications that any user can take advantage of. In most cases, folks aren't trying to eat the elephant hole, right? They'll have a use case like digital signage, or they'll have a use case like meeting rooms or experiential centers or what have you, and that's one of the reasons why we are licensing the server. We're licensing the CPU cores and the number of graphics cards that you need on that server so that if you have a smaller use case, your out-of-pocket costs are gonna be lower because you need a smaller server. But when you log in for the first time, you're gonna see, “Oh, I got this for digital signage, but I didn't know I could run my meeting room here.” or, “I didn't realize that I can do these artistic video walls,” or “I didn't realize I can incorporate these data dashboards from Power BI or Tableau as a native source and share those to any display that Userful is managing.”  The value is seen almost immediately, and so what we do is try to help people understand the peripheral or parallel use cases. So I use digital signage quite a bit, and I gave you this analogy regarding airports at Infocomm, Dave, where at least half a dozen times in the last six to eight months, I've had conversations with various airports, and most of them are pulling us in because they have an operation center. Airport operations center, or security operations center, or what have you, and they'll say, “Hey, we want the Userful software to run the content on these displays and video walls in the operation center,” and when we have these discovery calls, I'll typically ask, “Hey, have you guys thought about the advantages of using our platform to help you with the signage?” And I'm usually shot down rather immediately, and most folks know Airports are convoluted in the way that they deploy their technology. They got various different groups. They're typically siloed, but specifically the airport operations centers, I'll just say, “Hey, look, I get that, but let me just throw this use case out there and see if it lands and hits you as showing value.” You're in an airport operations center. Wouldn't you want to be able to manage the entire network of screens that are currently being used to show baggage, arrivals, departures, signage, and all your wayfinding screens? Would it not be valuable to be able to manage those as part of your airport operations, also, I've noticed in many cases, they'll incorporate security into their AOC. Some of them have independent security operations centers, but in either event, I would tell them. What happens if you have an incident at the airport? Wouldn't you want to be able to take over those screens from the command center that's responsible for monitoring and sending strategic messages to people, depending on what the situation is? If there's a fire, “evacuate.” If god forbids, there's an active shooter, “take shelter in place,” and be able to send strategic messages to various screens all from within your operation center? Well, you can't currently do that because you've got multiple systems driving all of these different AV endpoints.  If you had a single platform, it doesn't just give you the ability to scale your deployment, it gives you the ability to scale your workflow and become more flexible to augment those workflows where I can send strategic messages to screens, I can manage arrivals and baggage from my AOC, if that's such a thing that I need. In addition, we could help you with your meeting rooms. You can walk into a meeting room, and I can help you cast some content in a meeting room and have an impromptu meeting on a drop of a dime, as just a few use cases of what our platform can do. Sometimes, when you have these platforms that say they can do, in your case, at least six different things, there can be compromises. In other words, “Yeah, we can do all these things. That's just none of them are particularly deep, or maybe one of them is deep, and the other ones are so so.”  Do you get that question at all? Shane Vega: Ironically, no. We don't get that question. But it's a question most people should be asking David, and I'll tell you that when that does come up, and it's only come up a handful of times, I'm always very candid about what we can't do as well as what we can do. And there is truth in the fact that we are software as a service, and so there are certain applications that still have roadmap features, candidly, that we're going to continue to augment and build them out.  If you could probably imagine the top three or four of our use cases would be: operations centers, digital signage, meeting rooms, and data dashboards. We do those very well. With experiential environments, we manage those artistic video walls very well. Now when you talk about experiential environments, there are some things that some folks might want to get involved with, but we might have to have some deeper conversations, right?  And that really is around interactivity. Do you want multi-touch video walls, like in a museum for kids or something like that? Where we have some roadmap items to help ensure that multi-touch is what people would expect, where you don't want to have the lag, you don't want to have any of those issues when people are trying to have that fun experience as a child or what have you. So there are certain features that are still roadmap items, but what I will bookend that with is, before coming over to Userful, I worked with one of the larger AV firms globally, and while I worked there, part of my interaction with customers was, “Man, I wish I could do more of these things with a single solution, I have to farm it out to so many folks.”  But more than that, I would have feature requests for the stuff that was out there, and it was always in one ear, out the other. I don't care which manufacturer it was. If I went to some of these larger manufacturers and I said, hey, you really would benefit if you did this or this. It just didn't go anywhere, and then I had a similar conversation with the Userful back in about 2018 at a trade show, I said, look, your software is good, but it really needs these four or five things to really be a competitor in the space that you're looking to deploy, which at the time it was operation centers.  I'd say if it was six months, it was a long time. So within six months, I got a call from the then VP of Sales who said, “Hey, I want to have a meeting with you, Shane. We've incorporated all of your requests into our software,” and that really pivoted my approach to looking at users as, alright, these guys are the future of AV and, little FYI, we actually got that award at Infocomm, the Future of AV award.  But the reason for that was, look, if we're going to be software as a service, then we have to prioritize feature requests from our customers above our own market research or our own gut check, and so that's part of my role here at Userful as VP of Marketing is that I'm also over Product Marketing, which is over the roadmap, and so I get involved in customer calls quite a bit, and I'll hear some of these features that to your initial question is, “Hey, how do you go deeper with these applications?” I look for that feedback, and then I get to go back to the roadmap and go, “Hey, we need to prioritize this, this, and this feature. Push out the other features to the next release. Let's get these done because it's revenue dependent. We've got customers who would value this. Let's get it done!” We take that very seriously here at Userful, and we're at four releases a year, so you'll never have to wait all that long.  So you referenced Airports. I'm curious, in the context of third-party software development, if there's a software company that works in the Airport realm but isn't doing digital signage or some of the things you do, but they want to visualize information on displays, is there an API or something that they could develop to work with Userful or does it have to be Userful development to add that capability on?   Shane Vega: We have an entire program around API. So we do have our own API, currently, it's A REST API, so we can receive tons of different messages and calls to trigger certain reactions within our software. But additionally, that's got its own roadmap in and of itself. So we have our software application roadmap, and then we have our API roadmap where we're going to be developing even deeper integrations and capabilities including, but not limited to, even wanting to create possible easy configuration tools for customers who can use our API to do whatever they want, onsite. Are control rooms and operations centers the gateway for the initial point of contact, the thing that gets people interested, and then other things cascade out of that? Shane Vega: That has been our experience. We call that our land. So we're land and expand through our platform. Let's find the use case. Let's land where it makes sense, and then let's show the power of our expansion, and just because of how the company has evolved, operation centers have been kind of the tip of our spear, and it makes sense because operation centers will use two or three of our applications out of the gate, right? They'll use the operation center software, they'll use meeting rooms for war rooms or situation rooms. They'll also use our trends for dashboards and Power BI integrations, depending on what type of operation center it is, so they usually get value from several of our use cases and applications out of the gate. And if it's a large enough organization and we're typically targeting LDOs (large distributed organizations), they'll have multiple operations centers, which gives us multiple points of connection and interaction and engagement to open up opportunities to talk about the meeting rooms beyond your war room and situation room, or some operation centers are fishbowls, where they want to bring folks in their data center and they just want to use it as a showpiece to show their customers how well they manage their data, and so they might have welcome screens outside, and we'll let them know, “Hey, we can manage those welcome screens for you as well,” and that evolves into a larger digital signage strategy, corporate communications, so on and so forth. These large organizations, do they have separate AV and IT departments, or are they pretty much hiving into IT now?  Shane Vega: So more and more, IT is taking over, but what's happening is it used to be that they have AV specialists on staff, and by and large, it was for the meeting rooms, and in some cases, the digital signage where they had AV technicians or AV specialists on-site, and those were the guys were the gatekeepers to decide what technology gets deployed. Yeah, and get everything working before the meeting starts somehow.  Shane Vega: Exactly. “Who's got HDMI? Who's got DVI?” So to that point, people keep talking about the convergence of AV and IT, and I don't know why. That convergence happened years ago. People are now starting to realize that because of that convergence, the IT organization or the IT departments within these larger organizations are going to be the ones holding the budget and are going to be the ones responsible for managing any AV resources on the network. And so, we have intentionally built our product to cater to those IT stakeholders in the organization. When you say things like, “Hey, you can centrally monitor the entire platform from a web browser,” they really get that right. When you say, “We're an IT solution, we're not an AV solution, which means we're not going to put all this IP addressable hardware on your network,” a lot of the walls come down from their security concerns. You then begin to tell them that, look, you can augment your roles-based access control, and integrate with LDAP. Plus, we give you tools that are IT specific to help you monitor things like, what is the impact on my network? What is my current CPU utilization, or what's my current GPU utilization on the server that we're licensing? We give them all of those tools built into our software. So it's not just AV end-user tools that we're giving. We're also giving those IT tools that help the IT stakeholders manage deployments because we recognize these are going to be larger in scale. They're going to be responsible for a lot. Let's make it easy for them.  When you talk about AV as a service, it's a term I've heard for a while, but you guys go at it quite a bit differently from what you're saying.  Shane Vega: Yeah, we do, and Dave, I struggle with that, because we were flirting with the term AV as a service, and we started to use it quite a bit. But I know, coming from the integration world, that AV as a service historically meant we're going to just finance this stuff, right? We're going to get a leasing program, and we're going to build in the hardware, the software, the services, whatever we can into a monthly payment that makes it nice and easy for you guys. We approach it differently by saying, we are software as a service that's for the AV industry. Therefore, we are AV as a service, meaning, we don't have all that hardware that you have to purchase. You're truly able to deploy all of these AV use cases and manage an entire host of AV applications from within our platform. And we are a software that you pay for based on subscription, typically three-year plans.  That's what we mean when we say AV as a service. It's exactly that. It's a software as a service, which is which is the actual term, which is software as a service for the AV world.  This strikes me as something that probably has a learning curve, as every software platform does, but it is almost something you kind of have to ease your way into? Shane Vega: Believe it or not, not really, and I think that would be more pertinent if somebody was wanting to say, “Hey, I want to use your entire platform right now.” But as I said earlier, most folks are saying, “Hey, I want this operation center,” and they're familiar with Operation Center softwares. They know what they want. They know they want to be able to build custom layouts. They want to manage big, beautiful video walls. They want to be able to interact with sources with soft KVM functionalities so that they're not just visualizing the sources but they can engage with them because they've got tools, right? They got video management tools, and they've got access control, what have you, and so that software that we're providing isn't going to look and feel a whole lot different than a lot of the other softwares they're used to using.  Now, we do it differently. So the real benefit, rewinding all over to the beginning of this conversation, is, yes, we're giving you all these software applications and features, but it's the infrastructure that really differentiates us.  Along with removing different hardware components from this kind of a network, you're also removing potentially different software applications that you'd also need because you've got this stack of different things you can do?  Shane Vega: Yeah, exactly. To that point, Dave, when I showed this at Infocomm, when I gave my demos there, typically when you deploy an AV solution, let's call it digital signage, that's the background that you're most familiar with.  In digital signage, let's say, you use it for corporate communications; you'll have screens all over the office. In some cases, they'll want to be able to integrate that digital signage into their meeting rooms as well, and when the screens are in standby mode, they want to be able to have some of those corporate communications as part of the digital signage strategy, managing those meeting rooms. But when you go into the meeting room, they'll typically need some type of infrastructure to support those meetings and local collaboration. Usually, it's a network of AV infrastructure, HDMI cables, or what have you, go into some form of a matrix switch that's going to be some type of tablet controller that can give you the ability to manage what laptop is being viewed on what screen.  With Userful, because the software does so much, the screens that we manage are not tied to any one specific application, and that's really the beauty of it. So I can walk into a room where they're showing corporate communication. I can sit down, open my laptop, and immediately start a meeting by screencasting whatever's on my laptop onto the screen in that room without connecting a single AV cable. I could then open up my operations center software on that same screen and turn it into an impromptu war room or situation room where I'm pulling in multiple sources and building out customized layouts, and navigating through a crisis. So there are a lot of things that we can do, and it's not dependent on the screen, and, to your point, we've reduced not just the hardware need but the software as well.  All right, Shane, that was super interesting. I know much more about this space than I did half an hour ago. Shane Vega: It's been great talking to you, Dave. I appreciate it. 

This is Matt Reustle and today we are breaking down the vehicle auction giant, Copart. You may be unfamiliar with Copart but, at the time of this recording, the company has a $40 billion market cap. They operate in over 200 locations across the globe and they sell north of 3 million cars per year on behalf of their unique customer base. Copart is a unique story in a very concentrated industry where they likely have 50% market share. It's a story defined by evolution. Its founder, Willis Johnson, didn't merely adopt a junkyard mentality. He was born into it, molded by it. To break down Copart, I'm joined by Adam Mead, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Mead Capital Management. We cover all the angles of this unique industry giant. Please enjoy this breakdown of Copart. Access Adam's Copart writeup for free here. Choose the October 2022 Copart issue and use the code "Breakdowns" for 100% off.  For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.  ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus, the modern research platform for leading investors. Tired of running your own expert calls to get up to speed on a company? Tegus lets you ramp faster and find answers to critical questions more efficiently than any alternative method. The gold standard for research, the Tegus platform delivers unmatched access to timely, qualitative insights through the largest and most differentiated expert call transcript database. With over 60,000 transcripts spanning 22,000 public and private companies, investors can accelerate their fundamental research process by discovering highly-differentiated and reliable insights that can't be found anywhere else in the market. As a listener, drive your next investment thesis forward with Tegus for free at tegus.co/patrick. ----- Business Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Business Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @JoinColossus | @patrick_oshag | @jspujji | @zbfuss | @ReustleMatt | @domcooke Show Notes (00:02:32) - (First question) - An overview of Copart (00:04:16) - The size and scope of the market  (00:04:52) - The process of a vehicle entering into Copart's system  (00:06:36) - The other side of the marketplace, who buys from Copart (00:08:16) - Selling cars whole or dismantling and how this has changed from the early days of the business (00:09:55) - An overview of Willis Johnson's career, forming Copart and his involvement today  (00:13:26) - The financial structure of the business in the early days (00:14:59) - Copart's differences from the competition  (00:18:42) - Biggest drivers of supply. Accidents, natural disasters, wear and tear   (00:22:12) - Cashflow flow through, the economics for Copart (00:24:08) - Associated costs with regards to the sale and movement of vehicles  (00:26:12) - Average inventory numbers throughout the year (00:27:32) - The margin profile of the business on a normalized basis (00:29:29) - A breakdown of the CapEx budget on a yearly basis (00:33:42) - The major drivers of growth for Copart  (00:37:16) - The buyback history, stated goal and philosophy on dividends (00:38:38) - Historical and potential future risks to the business   (00:42:00) - The insurance companies' opinion of the business, net positive or net negative (00:43:37) - The framework investors use when valuing this business (00:47:17) - Lessons learned from the research and analysis of Copart  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ally Senior Living Founder and CEO, Dan Williams discusses the challenges communities are facing and the power that repositioning can have on their future.This episode was recorded at ASHA Mid-Year Meeting.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, Peak Senior Living, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. The Contributors are brought to you by Peak Senior Living. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

In the world of design, you run the risk of losing focus on the end goal, creating great experiences for guests. Here to offer clarity is a development and planning specialist who excels at creating multi faceted luxury experiences. Projects that were completed under his vision include Faena Miami Beach, and Public NYC. Joining the show is Senior Vice President at Cumming Corporation, Nicky Unkles! Nicky shares his insights with Host Dan Ryan as they explore what it means to create luxury, and ultra luxury, experiences. Takeaways:  True hospitality is a friendly reception of your guests. It means being authentic and sincere in your treatment of guests, anticipating their needs, and offering all guests the same experience, regardless if they are a CEO or an intern. When it comes to balancing the needs of the stakeholders, and keeping your project on time, it starts with having a defined process. It's important to stick to the process, but when it's necessary to deviate, ensure all parties know the impact on the timeline.  One of the biggest challenges for new hospitality projects during the pandemic was supply shortages. As budgets, timelines, and vendors had been set months in advance, it required a collaboration with procurement agents to find new options. A typical project lives or dies within the first few days. When you first sit down with a client, your job is to help put their vision onto paper. Creating a layout and budget that reflect that vision, and your ability to sell it, will decide success for your project, When you start a project, it's crucial to see it to completion. While potentially grueling, you'll quickly discover areas of improvement for the next iteration. Additionally, seeing a project from vision to closeout is invaluable experience as a designer. Covid changed both the hospitality industry, and what guests want from their stays. Today's guests want more service, and better experiences, with consistency as the keystone that holds the experience together. The core of your design needs to revolve around the guest's experiences. Certain design elements may seem like important additions, but if they won't impact the guest experience, those additions are an unnecessary use of time, money, and effort.  Quote of the Show:“The world of hospitality is forever changed. People aren't going to accept substandard anymore.” - Nicky UnklesLinks: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cumming_Group  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicky-unkles-9035b028/  Website: https://cumming-group.com/  Shout Outs: 12:48 - Aman Giri: https://www.aman.com/resorts/amangiri  12:51 - Canyon Equity: https://canyonequity.com/  16:22 - Faena Miami Beach: https://www.faena.com/miami-beach  16:24 - Public NYC: https://www.publichotels.com/  19:50 - Finlay Cumming 20:01 - Glasgow Caledonian University: https://www.gcu.ac.uk/  21:05 - Leher LLC 31:36 - Stan Bromley 37:08 - Zion National Park 41:10 - Six Senses: https://www.sixsenses.com/en  41:14 - Starwood Hotels 41:15 - 1Hotels: https://www.1hotels.com/  Ways to Tune In:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVmaW5pbmdob3NwaXRhbGl0eS5saXZlL2ZlZWQueG1s Amazon Music: ​​https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8c904932-90fa-41c3-813e-1cb8f3c42419 Transistor: https://www.defininghospitality.live/

Learn how the power of personal and professional brands can be leveraged with LinkedIn from BTG Ambassador and Contributor, Christy Van Der Westhuizen, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Legend Senior Living, as she sits down with guest host Sara Mitchell, President of Solinity Marketing.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. The Contributors are brought to you by Peak Senior Living. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

Our guest this week is an interior designer who has become a household name. She's an expert storyteller, creating compelling stories through both her design, and her appearances on screen. She's been frequently featured on HGTV as a host and mentor on “Battle on the Beach” and “Build it forward”. Joining the show this week is Principal and Interior Designer at Taniya Nayak Design, Taniya Nayak!Taniya sits down with Dan to dive into her background as a designer. She covers the ways that bartending helped her refine her design skills, the necessity of designing your spaces for a wide range of guest experiences, and how she got started as a host on HGTV. Takeaways:  For Taniya, hospitality means addressing all the small nuances of an experience. It means creating a warm and inviting space where you are thinking about every possible customer scenario.  Balancing operations and design is a delicate task as you will often need to choose between prioritizing aesthetics or cost. Ultimately, the choices you make need to revolve around the experience you are trying to create for your guests.  Creating an experience your guests want to evangelize is important because a guest's journey begins with a review. Their expectations of your space are set by what they read beforehand, and a bad review can set guests up with a pretense of your space. A quality product is the cornerstone of any successful business, but the presentation around that product determines your success. An ok product with great presentation will outshine a great product with lackluster presentation.  As a designer, you need to tell a story that relates to the guests in your establishment. Each element should correlate either functionally or emotionally to the story of why your guest is in that space.  As a young designer, it can feel demoralizing to not land a design job right out of college. Retail, customer service, and food service jobs give you firsthand knowledge into how those environments run, making your future designs for those spaces more effective.  For leaders in the design space, you need to create environments for your employees to thrive. Encourage communication, and make your employees feel comfortable being vulnerable. From their honest sharing comes opportunities for you to help them grow.  Quote of the Show:“I want to make sure that when the guest comes in, they are greeted by a warm and inviting space.” - Taniya NayakLinks: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaniyaNayak  Website: https://taniyanayak.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taniyanayak/  Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1892187  Shout Outs: 0:30 - HGTV 0:42 - Ellen DeGeneres 0:45 - QVC 0:46 - Rachel Ray 0:47 - Oprah 1:20 - Hotec: https://www.hotecglobal.com/  10:44 - Yelp 11:42 - Open Table: https://www.opentable.com/  12:37 - The Break: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1892187  17:13 - Danny Meyer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhmeyer/ 19:02 - MIT 21:03 - Boston Architectural College: https://the-bac.edu/   33:06 - Knock First: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401024/?ref_=ttpl_ov  35:28 - Baccarat Hotel New York: https://www.baccarathotels.com/ 37:16 - Craigslist 37:53 - ABC Family 38:14 - The New York Yankees: https://www.mlb.com/yankees  Ways to Tune In:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVmaW5pbmdob3NwaXRhbGl0eS5saXZlL2ZlZWQueG1s Amazon Music: ​​https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8c904932-90fa-41c3-813e-1cb8f3c42419

Sim Goldberg, Vice President at Meridian Capital Group, gives an insider look into the market and the five boxes every deal needs checked to turn into a transaction. This episode was recorded at ASHA Mid-Year Meeting.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, Peak Senior Living, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. The Contributors are brought to you by Peak Senior Living. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

To create truly epic experiences, you need to combine both people and place. Our guest this week is a visionary leader of both extraordinary people and projects. He's a Global Industry Group Champion in Entrepreneurs Organization and an Advisory Board Member for the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University. Welcome to the show, Founder of K2M Design, Scott Maloney! Scott joins Host Dan Ryan to dive into the value of collecting nos, how to create epic experiences for guests, and how networks like Entrepreneurs Organization have helped him on his journey. Takeaways:  Hospitality is about people and places coming together to create an epic experience where people are able to join to support dreams and desires. Some organizations are built to encourage the bonding of great minds. The Entrepreneur's Organization is the epitome of hospitality in the senses that it creates a safe and confidential space for the members to learn from other inspiring people and be encouraged by them  In the architecture and design space, hospitality means finding a compromise between a design being structurally sound and aesthetically pleasing. Being able to fulfill the safety requirements while listening to the vision will create loyalty from the building owner.  Accepting a project requires a deep understanding of expectations followed by fulfillment or overachievement. In a business that heavily relies on referrals, one experience can cost or gain many million-dollar contracts.  When trying to level up in size and costs of projects, it's not a straightforward job of increasing size, but instead, improving the effort and quality of your work. Increased job cost requires increased experience and added value by the business.  Development projects must be planned thoroughly before beginning for the sake of sustainability. Every change made will create by-products to be removed from the lot or funneled to another project and each decision needs to be made with intentionality.   Hospitality exists inside the organization. Care must extend to employees. Leaders and owners need to be there for coworkers, caring for each of them and making sure everyone is successfully collaborating.  Quote of the Show:“You know what you need to do, follow your gut cuz it's gonna get you a long way. ” - Scott MaloneyLinks: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmaloney9101/  Company website: https://www.k2mdesign.com/  Shout Outs: 01:20 - Entrepreneurs' Organization: https://hub.eonetwork.org/  07:44 - Bob Boykin 11:17 - Kevin Bacon 14:08 - Jack Daly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackdaly/  14:45 - Simon Sinek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ 23:26 - ULI: https://uli.org/  23:46 - Boykin Lodging: https://www.boykin.com/  24:43 - Paula Boykin 26:48 - Wayne Hoffman 37:59 - Habacoa: https://www.habacoa.com/  44:07 - Kent State: https://www.kent.edu/  46:41 - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Ways to Tune In:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVmaW5pbmdob3NwaXRhbGl0eS5saXZlL2ZlZWQueG1s Amazon Music: ​​https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8c904932-90fa-41c3-813e-1cb8f3c42419

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Think Multifamily podcast, where we break down the complexities of multifamily investing.  Today, we have a special treat for our listeners. We're joined by the master of multifamily himself, Mark Kenney, who will be providing us with exclusive insights into the benefits of coaching with Think Multifamily.   Have you ever wondered what happens when a Think Multifamily coaching client submits a multifamily deal for review?   Today, you get a sneak peek into that process. Mark will be discussing the crucial things he looks for in the deal analysis before making suggestions to the client about the acquisition. He'll discuss factors like the property's year, class, occupancy, and location to get a holistic view of the property. He'll evaluate the asking price and dig into CapEx - the money that will be spent on the property and how it's allocated between interior and exterior improvements.   Mark will walk us through the timeframe of the proposed rehab and the rent plan - is there potential to increase rents? He'll evaluate unit size because if units are too small, securing a loan could be challenging.   He'll also dive into the intricate details of loan information. He'll explore closing costs with different types of loans – conventional, bridge loan – and discuss the variations that come with different loan types. He'll examine other potential fees and the provision for working capital.   In addition, Mark will delve into T12 analysis, looking at factors like property taxes, insurance, industry standards, and utilities. Finally, he'll discuss how the member is structuring the deal and the splits between the general partner team and the passive investors.   Join us as we take a deep dive into the multifaceted world of deal analysis with Mark Kenney. This episode promises a wealth of knowledge for everyone, whether you're a seasoned investor or a newbie looking to break into the world of multifamily investing.   So stay tuned, Think Multifamily listeners. You won't want to miss this!   Let's listen in now.

Original Release on June, 15th 2023: With more Asian economies on pace to join the recovery path set by China, confidence in economic outperformance versus the rest of the world is rising. ----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Chetan Ahya, Chief Asia Economist at Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues bringing your variety of perspectives, today I'll be discussing our mid-year outlook for Asia's economy. It's Thursday, June 15 at 9 a.m. in Hong Kong. Asia's recovery is for real. We believe its growth outperformance has just started. We expect a full fledged recovery to build up over the next two quarters across two dimensions. First, we think more economies in the region will join the recovery path. Second, the recovery will broaden from services consumption to goods consumption and in the next six months to capital investments, or CapEx. We see Asia's growth accelerating to 5.1% by fourth quarter of this year. There are three main reasons why we expect this growth outperformance for Asia. First, Asia did not experience the interest rate shock that the U.S. and Europe did. Asian central banks did not have to take rates through restrictive territory because inflation in Asia has not been as intense. Plus, Asia's inflation has already declined and we expect 80% of region's inflation will get back into central bank's comfort zone in the next 2 to 3 months. The second reason is China. While China's consumption recovery is largely on track, we have seen downside in the last two months, in investment spending and the manufacturing sector. We believe policy easing is imminent as policymakers are keen on preventing a deterioration in labor market conditions and on minimizing social stability risks. Easing should help stabilize investment spending and broaden out the recovery in back half of 2023. Beyond China, India, Indonesia and Japan will also contribute significantly to region's growth recovery. India is benefiting from cyclical and structural factors. Cyclically beating healthy corporate and banking system balance sheets mean India can have an independent business cycle driven by domestic demand, and we are seeing that appetite for expansion translating into stronger CapEx and loan growth. As for Japan, it is in a sweet spot, having decisively left the deflation environment behind, but not facing runaway inflation. Accommodative real interest rates are helping catalyze private CapEx growth, which has already risen to a seven year high. And, in another momentous shift, Japan's nominal GDP growth is now rising at a healthy pace after a long period of flatlining. Finally, we believe Indonesia will be able to sustain a 5% pace of growth. Indonesia runs the most prudent macro policy mix amongst emerging markets. In particular, the fiscal deficit has been maintained below 3%, since the adoption of the fiscal rule and has only exceeded that in 2020 during the worst of the pandemic. This has resulted in a consistent improvement in macro stability indicators and led to a structural decline in the cost of capital supporting private domestic demand. The risks to our next 12 month Asia outlook are hard landing in the U.S., which Morgan Stanley's U.S. economists think it's unlikely and a deeper slowdown in China. But we believe China's recovery will only broaden out in the second half of 2023. And given this, we feel confident about our outlook for Asia's outperformance in 2023 vis-à-vis rest of the world. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

A father's story impacted one adult daughter's career trajectory. BTG Ambassador and CEO and Founder of Utopia Experiences, Sasha Dawn shares her story.This episode was recorded at ASHA Mid-Year Meeting.Sponsored by Accushield, Aline, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, Peak Senior Living, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. The Contributors are brought to you by Peak Senior Living. And produced by Solinity Marketing.Become a sponsor of the Bridge the Gap Network.Connect with BTG on social media:YouTubeInstagramFacebookTwitterLinkedInTikTokMeet the Hosts:Lucas McCurdy, @SeniorLivingFan Owner, The Bridge Group Construction; Senior Living Construction Renovation, CapEx, and Reposition. Joshua Crisp, Founder and CEO, Solinity; Senior Living Development, Management, Marketing and Consulting.

In this episode of "A Seat at The Table," host Jane Singer welcomes guest Jonathan Porter, the founder and CEO of PorterLogic, a low code application platform specializing in supply chain technology. The episode focuses on achieving end-to-end visibility in the supply chain and utilizing data integration, scenario analysis, and customized solutions.  Jonathan discusses the digitization of supply chains over the past decade and the recognition of the value of data generated from these digital systems. Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents an opportunity to leverage this data for optimizing inventory and shipping processes. He emphasizes the importance of identifying pain points and selecting the right system or technology to address them, whether it's a point solution or a costly ERP.  Integration strategy is highlighted as crucial for effective communication between supply chain systems. Tools like middleware and native integration, as well as companies like Zapier, provide technologies for seamless integration and data connectivity.  The episode also touches on the impact of the global pandemic, which highlighted the importance of investing in the supply chain. Flexibility and agility are emphasized in modern business landscapes, and technology can aid in decision-making and scenario analysis.  Jonathan shares insights on demand forecasting, highlighting the challenges of relying solely on historical sales data and offering alternative methods like competitor analysis and scenario analysis to estimate demand.  The episode concludes with a discussion on the challenges and advantages of legacy players and start-ups in the supply chain technology industry. The ultimate goal is to digitize supply chains for better decision-making and efficiency, and Jonathan's company, PorterLogic, aims to provide operational systems that fill existing gaps in niche industries.  Overall, the episode delves into the advancements in supply chain technology, the importance of data integration, scenario analysis, and customizing solutions to improve supply chain operations. Key Things You'll Learn:1. The importance of leveraging data and artificial intelligence (AI) in optimizing supply chain operations.  2. Strategies for identifying and addressing pain points in supply chain management systems.  3. The significance of integration and connectivity between various supply chain systems for effective communication.  4. Insights into the advancements and challenges of AI technology in the supply chain industry.  5. Techniques for predicting customer demand and making informed strategic decisions based on scenario analysis and data integration. USEFUL LINKS:Asianet Consultants:  https://asianetconsultants.comConnect with Jonathan Porter:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanpporter/PorterLogic website:   porterlogic.com  Visit A Seat at The Table's website at https://seat.fm

Hey Guys! This week we have Judd Arnold as a returning guest. Judd discusses why Tidewater is the best energy stock at the moment. He explores offshore opportunities, like VAL, RIG, and NE. Judd highlights the importance of liquidity and provides insights on finding post-bankruptcy ideas. He also mentions Pagaya (PGY) as an interesting company and shares additional investment ideas. [0:00] Why Tidewater is the best? [10:00] You are long CAPEX, not price. [15:00] Sub Sea 7 [25:00] Offshore opportunities ($VAL $RIG $NE) [30:00] Liquidity is King [40:00] Finding Post Bankruptcy Ideas [55:00] Pagaya $PGY [1:20:00] Other Ideas Finally, a big thanks to the following sponsors for making the podcast a reality! Mitimco This episode is brought to you by MIT Investment Management Company, also known as MITIMCo, the investment office of MIT. Each year, MITIMCo invests in a handful of new emerging managers who it believes can earn exceptional long-term returns in support of MIT's mission. To help the emerging manager community more broadly, they created ⁠emergingmanagers.org⁠, a website for emerging manager stockpickers. For those looking to start a stock-picking fund or just looking to learn about how others have done it, I highly recommend the site. You'll find essays and interviews by successful emerging managers, service providers used by MIT's own managers, essays MITIMCo has written for emerging managers and more! Tegus Tegus has the world's largest collection of instantly available interviews on all the public and private companies you care about. Tegus actually makes primary research fun and effortless, too. Instead of weeks and months, you can learn a new industry or company in hours, and all from those that know it best. I spend nearly all my time reading Tegus calls on existing holdings and new ideas. And I know you will too. So if you're interested, head on over to ⁠tegus.co/valuehive⁠ for a free trial to see for yourself. TIKR TIKR is THE BEST resource for all stock market data, I use TIKR every day in my process, and I know you will too. Make sure to check them out at ⁠TIKR.com/hive⁠. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/valuehive/support

In this episode, Anthony Wang, co-founder of ETFuels, describes his company's business model of using renewable energy to make green hydrogen, then using the hydrogen to make carbon-neutral methanol.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsAnthony Wang, a mechanical engineer by training, spent years as a researcher on hydrogen technologies. He worked with governments to develop policy and infrastructure plans — he was project manager on the EU's big hydrogen backbone project — and with private companies like Total and Shell to develop hydrogen technology roadmaps. He has authored or co-authored several industry-defining reports on hydrogen and been cited in countless publications.A few years ago, he decided to throw his hat in the ring and try to actually build hydrogen projects in the real world. All his research and contacts in the energy world led him to a very specific — and, to me, extremely intriguing — business model.ETFuels, the company he co-founded, develops projects that couple giant off-grid renewable energy installations with hydrogen electrolyzers; it then uses the resulting green hydrogen to synthesize carbon-neutral liquid fuels. (First up is methanol for shipping, but the company plans to branch out into other e-fuels.)This model somehow manages to implicate half the stuff I'm interested in these days — green hydrogen, markets for hydrogen fuels, off-grid renewables, coupling renewables directly with industrial loads — so I was eager to talk with Wang about it. We dug into the limits of “electrify everything,” the difficulty of transporting hydrogen, and the economics of e-fuels, among other things.This one gets fairly deep in the weeds, but if you find the real-world challenges of developing clean-energy projects interesting, you don't want to miss it. All right, then, with no further ado, Anthony Wang. Welcome to Volts. Thanks so much for coming.Anthony WangThank you so much for having me, David.David RobertsSo you were sort of recommended to me as somebody who knows a lot about hydrogen, about sort of green hydrogen, the markets. I know you've worked with public on policy roadmaps. I know you've worked with private companies on technology roadmaps. So I know you've given a lot of thought and sort of analysis to the green hydrogen phenomenon, the green hydrogen market. And you settled when you decided to start a company of your own, you co-founded this company, ETFuels. You settled on a very particular business model, which I just find sort of fascinating as it sort of implicates half the things I'm interested in these days in the energy world.So I wanted to just run through it with you and talk about why you made the choices you did and get into some of the bigger issues that way. So just for listeners' benefit, the idea here is you find a big piece of land somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. You build a bunch of renewable energy, mostly solar, maybe some wind. Instead of hooking the renewable energy up to a grid, you pipe it directly into electrolyzers and make green hydrogen out of it. And then instead of exporting the green hydrogen or selling the green hydrogen, you use the green hydrogen, combine it with CO2 to make methanol, basically, carbon-neutral methanol, which you are then going to sell to shipping companies. So that's a big puzzle. That's a big puzzle with lots of pieces put together. So I want to kind of start at the front end of it. My intuitive reaction to this is you're taking valuable renewable energy and then you're converting it to hydrogen, you lose a lot in that conversion, and then you convert it again to methanol and you lose a lot in that conversion as well. It sounds sort of inefficient.So the question comes up like, why not just sell the renewable energy? So why off-grid in the first place?Anthony WangFor us, obviously, it depends where you're talking in the world, right? So renewable energy, if you can get it connected to the grid, you're completely right, it's extremely valuable. I mean, you've seen what prices of power have done in the last couple of years in Europe and in the US. And if you can use it to electrify your vehicles or heat up a heat pump, that's a very good use of that renewable energy. That said, there are many places in the world where solar and wind, on a levelized cost of production basis, are the lowest cost sources of energy we have.And on top of that, most of these locations are not connected to grids. And so one question that always puzzled me a bit was everyone's talking about renewable energy getting cheaper and cheaper and being the lowest cost source there is. So why, why aren't we seeing that being reflected at all in, in the prices that we see a) on the wholesale market, and b) ultimately on our bills at the end of the month? And thought a lot about this, and I'm not an economist, but it does seem to me that while we've got very good at producing renewable energy in a very cheap way, I'd argue it's the cheapest that we've got.We seem to have made a lot less progress in transporting, storing and balancing that renewable energy in a way that meets the consumer when they need it, where they need it. We know also that the energy transition is going to put this massive strain on power grids. Today we transport about 20% of our final energy through the grid. And in a fully decarbonized system, I mean, depending who you talk to, that number should be going up to 60, 70, 80%. We should electrify as much as we can. But that also means that we need about three, four, five times the number of cables, transformers and substations.And right now the grid does not seem to be set up to deliver that. And so we wanted to marry that problem in a way with an opportunity that we saw in producing hydrogen. And obviously, when you lose 30% through energy, conversion losses. That's a huge deal if your power is super valuable. It's a lot less of a big deal when your power is virtually free, depending on where you are.David RobertsSo sort of to summarize that renewable energy itself at the point of production is super cheap, but all these balance of system costs, mainly transmission and distribution, end up boosting the cost anyway. So your idea is just to use the cheap renewable energy and avoid all those other costs. Basically just use the cheap energy directly and not have to pay those additional costs?Anthony WangYeah, exactly. And cost is quite a simple way of capturing it. But there's lots of other things right in projects it's also time. The biggest risk in developing renewable projects is often getting the grid connection permit. I think, not to bash too much on the grids, I've got lots of good friends there, but the numbers speak for this. So if you look at the US, I think the Berkeley National Lab found there's a two gigawatt backlog or 2000 gigawatts, sorry, of PV, wind and storage.David RobertsYeah. Terawatts.Anthony WangTerawatts, exactly. Which is like almost double of the installed capacity base today. And you see similar numbers in Europe. And the cost of interconnection, the deposits that developers are asked to put down are twice what they used to be. They can be almost as big as your CapEx of your solar project. So it's lots of things that have come together that are just making it very difficult to connect the phenomenal amounts of renewables that are available to the demand where it is.David RobertsSo, I'm curious how you see this playing out. Because the enthusiasm is for electrifying everything and as you say, that's going to mean like four or five times our grid capacity and nowhere that I know of is a shining example of how to build grid capacity that much, that fast. I don't know that anyone's doing it. So, do you think that is going to be a serious constraint at the macro level on electrifying everything? Do you think that's going to push a lot of activities to this sort of off-grid model?Anthony WangWe hope so. At ETFuels we're definitely pushing it. Look, I've got nothing against the electrify narrative. I think it makes total sense and where we can, we should. But the reality is that it's incredibly difficult. I mean, we're finding this ourselves. We're trying to develop projects which are in the middle of nowhere. And even there, permitting and consent can be a challenge. So, imagine building a transport cable that crosses the entire country. These transmission highways in Europe, we're talking about the European super grid. Governments are trying to kind of coordinate about who gets what space in the North Sea.We're talking about kind of hydrogen backbones that should cover the entire continent. And you can just see the political and practical implementation challenge of doing projects like that I think. I was working closely on a hydrogen pipeline project between Spain and France, these countries putting a pipe through the Pyrenees. I think now they've landed on kind of putting it through the Mediterranean Sea and said, you see presidents shaking hands about which pipelines should happen and then it still takes eight, ten, twelve years before they're actually implemented. So, I think it's a question of let's do everything as much as we can and whichever one gets to market first, you should have some merit to that.David RobertsRegular listeners will know that. I'm sort of fascinated by this question. We had John O'Donnell from Rondo, the heat battery company on and that's sort of his thesis of his company is kind of the same logic. The grid constraints are going to push a lot of renewables off-grid. Basically, they're going to be coupled directly with industrial applications and just skip all the grid stuff, which I find a fascinating trend. That's one of the reasons your kind of business model caught my eye. So then you're generating all this variable renewable energy which notoriously comes and goes, waxes and wanes, sort of out of your control and you're using it to make green hydrogen.So part of the conventional wisdom that I always hear is that's a bad match because electrolyzers need to be run a lot of the time to pay off. Basically to be worth the investment, they need what's called a high capacity factor. And if they're sort of tied to variable renewables, how do you think about that problem? Have you thought about putting anything in between them? This is the heat battery question again. Have you thought about putting anything in between them to smooth the supply of the energy to the electrolyzers? Or is a lower capacity factor just a cost you think is worth bearing?Anthony WangYeah, a really good question. Obviously when we started the business that was probably the first question that we looked into because obviously we're only doing this because we think that we have a commercially viable proposition and we can provide hydrogen at lower cost than what is currently available on the market. And fundamentally when you look at this equation, you're kind of balancing three variables, right? You've got on the one hand, your cost of power. Secondly, you've got the number of hours that you're able to run your kit on that power, which obviously is lower with renewables.And then the third is just the cost of the kit itself. So let's say the CapEx of the electrolyzer and the cost of balancing the power. And when we look at modeling this out across the year, there are places in Europe, in the world where your renewable energy wouldn't be producing often enough for this to be worth it, right? So if you only have a solar production model in the north of Europe, then it's probably not going to work. You can't run your electrolyzer for 1000 hours a year and hope it to make money but there are also places where it definitely can work.And you're seeing lots of projects these days which actually combine solar and wind together in these types of hybrid configurations. And that's useful, one because they're not entirely I mean, so wind is a bit more expensive, but it runs a bit more often. But then on top of that, depending on where you are and there are special deserts where this is particularly the case where the wind and solar production hours actually very anticorrelate very well, where you essentially have solar during the day and then wind which mainly blows at night, not exclusively, but mainly at night. And when you combine those two, you can get very, very steady profiles up to 5500 hours a year of essentially base load production.And when you spread that across an electrolyzer, and especially obviously today electrolyzers are still quite expensive, but going forward their cost will come down. You'll see that the numbers actually pan out very well. And when we've done the math, we come to conclusions where depending on the power that you're using but if you're comparing a hybrid solar wind project in, let's say, the deserts of Chile or in the Middle East or in Western Australia, you can easily get to production costs of hydrogen that are 40% lower than if you were using grid connected power, paying essentially wholesale prices in Northern Europe. So that's on the economic side.Then there's of course the question around can the electrolyzer even run flexibly?David RobertsRight.Anthony WangAnd this is a bit more of a technical question. Obviously, you've got different technologies. You've got PEM, so the Proton Exchange Membrane electrolysis, and you've got alkaline ones. PEM is more flexible. But even the latest kind of pressurized alkaline models are able to run flexibly depending on their ramp rate. The specific model, you may need to add a small battery in between. But in principle you don't need to run, especially if you got 6000 full load hours from your renewables. You're mainly looking at balancing on the kind of second to minute level and the technologies that are on the market today can handle that.So you don't need any additional storage. It's more of just a pure economic thing. If your power price is low enough and your hours are good enough, then you can make it work.David RobertsRight. So two things: You go to places where a hybrid renewable system can actually reach relatively steady production and then you go to places where the power is super, super cheap. So what about electrolyzers then? Let's talk about electrolyzers because you're saying you're going to produce green hydrogen that's cheaper than what's on the market. Is that purely because the power you're making it with is going to be cheaper? Or is there something about your electrolyzers that is special?Anthony WangYeah, and just to clarify, so when we say our green hydrogen is cheaper, I'm comparing to other green hydrogen projects, not the fossil hydrogen projects that are of course hydrogen that's on the market.David RobertsBrown or —Anthony WangYeah, exactly.David Robertsgray or whatever the hell.Anthony WangSo, that stuff's definitely cheaper at the moment. So for us, the innovation is not in the electrolyzer technology itself. We're not an equipment supplier or manufacturer with our own technology. Our development IP, I suppose, is in the integration of the different technologies. So we haven't really spoken about the methanol component, we'll get there. But what we essentially do is we find the optimal end-to-end project configuration that makes the economics work for the final offtaker. Because we start with what is the price that we need to hit for our final product, which is methanol, we'll talk about, it can be a bankable commercially viable product.And then we work backwards. So then we reverse engineer. Okay, what does that mean in terms of the electrolyzer size? What does that mean in terms of the hydrogen storage size? What does that mean in terms of the solar to wind ratio? What does that mean in terms of the battery if you need to add one? And so what we've done is we've optimized that end to end. And what you'll see is that you might have to do some slightly unintuitive sizing decisions from an engineering perspective. So that's kind of where our added value sits. And also just in terms of the development of those individual pieces of the project and pushing them forward at the same time.David RobertsYeah, I'm wondering how much now because even if you have a hybrid renewable system, I'm wondering how much sort of overbuilding you do to try to boost that capacity factor. Like are you overbuilding and throwing away a lot of power just because it's so cheap?Anthony WangYeah, we do a little bit of that. So maybe a couple of things. So a typical project for us, what that looks like we're actually developing in Europe and in the US. So in the US, a site will be very big, 8000 acres, which is 8000 football pitches. European ones, I think the American ones are half the size it's like 8000 ... Anyway, you get the point. It's huge. And most of that's earmarked for onshore wind. So about 6000 acres is onshore. Turbines are spaced far apart, so you need a lot of land. And the remaining 2000 acres is a mix of solar PV and the process plant itself.And that will give you about, I mean, these are rough numbers, but about 200 to 300 megawatt of onshore wind, one to 200 megawatt of solar PV. So you're looking at a combination of, let's say 400 renewables. And then we would probably put an electrolyzer that's around half the capacity next to that. So a 200 megawatt input electrolyzer. And that sounds like a very big delta. But actually, if you look at lots of the studies that have been done, they come to similar conclusions because you don't end up curtailing anywhere near half of the power you end up curtailing only a fraction of what you produce because there's only very few hours where both the solar and the wind are producing at peak.David RobertsRight.Anthony WangMaybe just to complete the picture of the project. So that produces about 20,000 tons of hydrogen a year, depending on your load factor, which is a lot of hydrogen. That's I think the equivalent of about 30'000 to 40,000 Tesla Model 3 batteries in a day that's getting produced.David RobertsSo the electrolyzer part to you is mostly just a commodity at this point. When you're looking at big cost centers like the big CapEx and OpEx costs, where are the big costs here? Like, are the electrolyzers themselves a big cost center or is it all down to kind of the cost of the power? Is that the biggest variable?Anthony WangIt's about 50/50. I mean, for us, we have kind of a renewables plant or part and then a process part, and it's about 50/50 between the two, the electrolyzer representing the main component of the process part. We've been doing a lot of, say, electrolyzer shopping in the last couple of months and you're probably wondering how that's going.David RobertsI am quite curious about what you're seeing out there in electrolyzer land.Anthony WangYeah, the reality is no one has actually built and constructed a 200 megawatt electrolyzer to date. It's not because electrolyzers are a risky technology, we've had them for hundreds of years. But at the scale that we're talking, we haven't really got that much experience. Even the biggest technology OEMs don't. And so as much as there is a big boom in the hydrogen space, I think for me personally, it's been quite a sobering experience being in the market, actually trying to procure these pieces of equipment because —David RobertsIs the hype getting a little out ahead of where the market is?Anthony WangObviously there's the hype and then there's the reality of getting things done on the ground. It's not that I'm disillusioned by what I've seen. It's more that you just realize that there are so many practical implementation considerations that you haven't thought of, right. Well, one is on pricing, obviously, because there's very little, very few of these projects have happened. There's not that much price liquidity and so no one really knows how much this stuff costs. Not even the EPCs who are meant to build this really know. So everyone's trying to figure it out. People are also aware that there are subsidies, so everyone's trying to make sure that they don't leave a penny on the table in terms of how they price their kit.And obviously you can imagine if everyone does that, then your economics go out the window. So that's on pricing and all the electrolyzer OEMs know the game and they're kind of looking to find a way to play into that. And then in terms of the actual technical and implementation challenges, ultimately this is going to be a process plant, right. This project is going to look a bit like a refinery. That means that every single valve needs to be lined up, every single power cable needs to be at the right voltage. And especially in our case, because we're off grid, for example, when you try to run your entire renewables to electrolyzer without — in the engineering terms, I think they call it like clock — you don't have a base frequency that you can follow, you end up having to create your own kind of grid stability. And that brings it with a bunch of challenges around frequency, voltages, harmonics.David RobertsRight? You're not getting any of those grid services. You kind of have to do all that yourselves.Anthony WangYeah, so turbines, usually they're connected to the grid, so they just follow the frequency of the grid. Whereas when you don't have that, you need to create it yourself and then your electrolyzer is there, kind of disturbing it a bit because it's not entirely efficient. And so there's lots of day-to-day engineering challenges that we need to overcome that, I at least, had not expected when we started this.David RobertsYeah, it does kind of seem like the mother of all optimization challenges you've taken on here. There's like so many variables moving at once. So you feed this cheap power into electrolyzers and just one last question about electrolyzers. Just from looking around in the market and your general sense of things, are you anticipating or do you feel like the sort of market is anticipating, substantial reduction in those costs or is that just kind of a fixed piece in the middle of this puzzle?Anthony WangYeah, good question. Obviously, when I speak with our suppliers, I always ask them because I hope that the prices that they give me today are not reflective of where they hope things will end up in the future. So today, they're obviously not pricing in that cost reduction. That said, all of them are very optimistic about the price reduction and usually, especially on the PEM side. I mean, when you talk to the PEM electrolyzer suppliers, they tell you that the reason they chose that technology is because it just has a lot more cost reduction potential.And you've got lots of levers there, right? You've got the raw materials themselves switching from the very precious ones to the slightly more common ones and that'll obviously reduce the cost. Then the second one is purely in terms of the design. So lots of the OEMs are trying to figure out ways to modularize not just the stacks and the core kind of arrays of the electrolyzer so the area where the hydrogen gets produced, but also the balance of system and the balance around that stack. So the purifiers, the transformers, rectifiers.David RobertsRight. All that stuff is still pretty bespoke at this point, right, for big electrolyzers?Anthony WangYeah, it is. And this is where the traditional OEM kind of equipment manufacturing model slightly overlaps with what traditionally an engineering company would have done. So the big EPCs would design stuff and engineer stuff to order rather than having prefabricated productized modules. But what you're seeing is that the intent is for electrolyzers to really follow what wind and solar have done, where in the future, if you need an electrolyzer project, you're not having to engineer for a year to find the right size of purifying tank. But you can just call up an OEM and they'll deliver you something that essentially comes out of a box.I mean, I'm simplifying, but that's the idea.David RobertsYeah, something containerized.Anthony WangYeah, exactly.David RobertsAnd if those cost drops manifest, will that be a substantial piece of making this kind of model viable in more places? In other words, is that a big lever or how big is that electrolyzer cost relative to say, the renewables on one side and the methanol on the other?Anthony WangYeah, we have our projections for this obviously. So we have our power part and our electrolyzer part. Obviously, we're more optimistic about the electrolyzer part coming down further. We don't expect renewable. I mean, there may be perovskite solar panels, you may have some thought on that, David, but on the renewable side, things will happen as they do. On the electrolyzer side, obviously, this is a huge part because when you think about that equation of cost of power, cost of the electrolyzer and then the number of hours as you reduce the fixed cost of your electrolyzer, the incremental impact of your cheap power just becomes even greater.So all the benefits that you get from going to the cheapest places in the world so your windy deserts just get magnified and you will get to a point where whereas today you use your power, let's say it's 50 kilowatt hours per kilogram of power that you need to make hydrogen. That efficiency conversion factor, when you reduce the cost of the electrolyzer, it'll make a huge difference to the economics for sure. We're very bullish on that and we're hoping that those costs come down but we're not relying on it. And our first project probably won't be benefiting from a lot of those cost reductions.David RobertsRight. And of course, there's also just scale and learning.Anthony WangYeah, of course.David RobertsJust the natural cost declines that come with more people buying more electrolyzers which I assume is going to be happening soon. So then you synthesize this green hydrogen and then the question is why not just sell the hydrogen? Why not sell the green hydrogen? It's pretty precious these days, a lot of people want it. Why not pipe or truck or however one carries hydrogen to customers? Why the third step?Anthony WangWhen we started this business we probably thought of two main challenges. One was excessive production costs and then the second was kind of the midstream transport challenges. And on the production costs, we've kind of covered that but to the midstream challenges. So maybe just as a bit of context. I spent my entire career in hydrogen and green molecules, working with power utilities, oil and gas companies. And at one point I actually led a project called the European Hydrogen Backbone, which was an initiative by the gas TSOs, the pipeline network operators in Europe to try to repurpose their pipelines from natural gas to hydrogen.I'm a mechanical engineer by training. I spent a lot of time doing hydraulic modeling of pipelines and compressors at the time, and I learned quite quickly that hydrogen is a relatively leaky gas. It's not the easiest to move around, and it's also the reason that we don't really transport or store it at large scale today. It's not that you can't do it. You can. But the economics and the practical details of implementing it become quite challenging.David RobertsYeah, just to pause there since you were just talking about having studied it, because I'm really interested in this question. When gas infrastructure companies talk about this, I've seen two things. One, I've seen mixing some hydrogen in, right, just sort of lower the carbon intensity. And then there's discussion of just turning the infrastructure over to hydrogen entirely. And my question is, just from an engineering standpoint, are those pipes ready for hydrogen? It seems like hydrogen is a lot harder to hold onto than natural gas. And there's thousands of miles of these pipes. Are they just going to work or is this going to be a thing where you have to go through the whole system and sort of fortify it?Anthony WangYeah, it's a good question. And I mean, just on blending and repurposing. So in Europe, the discussion is mainly on repurposing. So fully converting, not blending hydrogen into gas pipelines. I think it's a bit depending on the political environment where you are in Europe, blending is not really seen as a viable solution. The energy impact is tiny because hydrogen is less dense than natural gas. So when you blend like 10%, I mean, there's only a fraction of that on an energy basis.David RobertsYes, I mean, I think it's just a political fig leaf here. I'm sure it'll go away once the practical challenges become more clear here too, I think. But at least right now, natural gas companies are kind of waving it around as one of their "Please don't kill us" ideas.Anthony WangYeah, that's on blending. Just to clarify on the technical viability of repurposing, I mean, in Europe, they've actually done a lot of work on this and a lot of good work. I mean, the German TSOs have just had DNV GL, a very reputable engineering company, look at this and they essentially conclude that just on this, you do need to actually go through each single pipe and look at whether it's ready or not. So it does take a lot of work to do. But in Europe, the pipelines are in a very good state and you can repurpose them, but it will come at a cost. Mainly, at least currently, with the way that the codes are set up, is that you need to derate them. Which means that whatever pressure you are operating the natural gas pipeline at, if you want to operate it for purely hydrogen under the current safety standards, you have to lower the pressure. And when you look at the hydraulics of hydrogen, you really don't want to be piping it at low pressure because it just becomes very expensive. And so on the per kilometer or mile transported per megawatt hour, it becomes quite expensive.David RobertsIt's just more manageable at high pressure.Anthony WangWell, you want to store it at high p... So because hydrogen is a lot less energy dense than natural gas, to get the same energy content throughput, you need to compress it more and transport it at much higher velocities. So when you don't do that, you end up, kind of like, transporting hydrogen, but very slowly. It's a bit like a congested motorway. And so in terms of value for money, obviously you get a lot less throughput and capacity of transport. That's the main reason.David RobertsDo you think, I mean, in Europe, I suppose, is probably the most promising place of anywhere, that this is actually going to happen on a timeline that is meaningful? Or alternatively, are a lot of green hydrogen projects going to end up doing what you're doing, which is basically being off the hydrogen grid, converting hydrogen before you ship it out? I'm sure there'll be some of both. But how bullish are you on hydrogen infrastructure generally? Pipeline infrastructure?Anthony WangWell, we've not bet our company on it. That said, look, I mean, I wish them the best, right? Obviously it's a hugely ambitious project and I think that they're making progress. But ultimately I wouldn't want to for our projects and the ones that we're trying to raise financing for. The argument that you've got a business case because 5-10 years down the line there may be a hydrogen pipeline that comes in and it's the same for CO2 infrastructure, really. I mean, it's just not going to fly when it comes to raising debt financing for a project of this size.David RobertsAnd there's no practical way for you to build a pipeline even if you wanted to. So are there even alternative ways of transporting green hydrogen that are practical at all? Or is it pipelines or nothing?Anthony WangAt the scale that we're talking now — hydrogen is already transported in trucks and you can put it in tanks and stuff and that's usually compressed, you could liquefy it as well, but that's even more energy lossy. You end up having to compress it. So you pay for the compressors, which are expensive, or the liquefaction, and then it's again not very dense, so you end up having to pay a lot for the transport itself — and at the scale that we're talking, 20,000 tons a year, that's not something that you would want to be trucking around. Also from a safety perspective, I'm sure that's not ideal and lots of local authorities would not be very happy with that.David RobertsYeah, that's a lot of trucks.Anthony WangYeah.David RobertsSo it's just not practical, basically, at this point to build green hydrogen out in the middle of nowhere where the renewables are good.Anthony WangRight, yeah, exactly. And that's also why I think today most of the hydrogen projects that are actually getting somewhere and having traction are the ones that are near industrial clusters and by ports and next to an existing refinery, which makes total sense. Right. Decarbonize the existing hydrogen that you have. But that's not going to cut it when you're trying to integrate renewables from the best regions into where the demand sinks are.David RobertsRight. Yeah. Are there even exclusively hydrogen pipelines now? Is there much of that infrastructure now?Anthony WangSo it does exist. So there is what's already available and there are industrial clusters and there are pure hydrogen pipelines. They're mainly operated by the industrial gas company. So the Air Liquides, the Air Products of the world, but these tend to be quite small. So these are 10-20 inch pipelines that aren't meant to transport across long distances. These are mainly pipes to bring it from one side of the industrial site to the other or as a backup. I mean, they work, they're totally safe and people have experience building them. But at the scale that the natural gas pipeline companies are thinking, which is like 48-inch huge cross country type pipelines, we don't have anything at scale or that's commercially kind of running.But the TSOs, especially in Europe, are running pilots and trials. And I think there's one connecting Germany and France. There's a bunch of projects in the Netherlands. I know that the Dutch TSO is very active on this, so there's definitely stuff coming. But as to when and where exactly it'll be up and running, I don't know.David RobertsRight. And I'm thinking of the US. We have this huge hydrogen hub program. I'm sure you're familiar with it. It's a similar idea, building these huge industrial clusters. And I guess we're just going to have to build pipelines for all those in the US. Because there's not sort of curious about site selection for those too.Anthony WangYeah. As a principle, it's very difficult as an individual project developer to make a pipeline like this work. I mean, it really requires everyone to come together and the stars to align. And then you often need — this is why these companies are typically regulated, usually is, because that's the only way to finance it. And so I know we've looked at, for example, using pipeline transport, and as an individual company, there's no business case for building a pipe just for your own uses. It would have to be because you pool into it with other producers and off takers.David RobertsA little coordinated industrial policy to build that infrastructure. So you make the green hydrogen and then you combine the green hydrogen with CO2, basically to make methanol. So my first question about that is, where do you get the CO2? Because you've dodged the importing and exporting electricity problem, you've dodged the importing and exporting green hydrogen problem, but now you've got an importing CO2 problem. I guess my question is, how big of a problem is that? How available is CO2? How easy is it to get it where you need it?Anthony WangYeah, when we looked at this, it was like we kind of put the main energy carriers and commodities, we stack rank them electricity, hydrogen, CO2, methanol. Which one would you rather transport and which one would you rather store?David RobertsRight.Anthony WangAnd kind of where you end up is you really don't want to transport electricity if you've not got an existing cable network, you don't really want to transport hydrogen. CO2 is a bit easier. I mean, it's still not ideal. It's an industrial gas. You need to liquefy it. But it's better than hydrogen. Much better. But the best thing to transport in store is methanol because it's liquid at room temperature. So what we try to do is you try to bring everything into our sites and then make methanol there, and then ultimately transport the methanol out to a port and on the CO2.So we have two options, really. One is to work with industrial point sources and we try to work with companies who have either unavoidable process emissions so cement companies, or biogenic sources of industrial CO2. So pulp and paper.David RobertsSo this is carbon capture you're talking about CCS.Anthony WangYeah. So this is carbon captured.David RobertsIs there enough of that to supply you?Anthony WangSo, obviously, we've got quite a big carbon CO2 supply problem. So from an availability in the flu gases, for sure, obviously, I think you're asking about the carbon capture itself.David RobertsRight. Is enough being captured to supply a substantial market?Anthony WangInterestingly for us, when we started this, we looked at the market and said, okay, very few are actually capturing the carbon. But when we spoke to a lot of these potential CO2 capture companies and suppliers, to our surprise, lots of them already had been doing lots of engineering study and were very keen to implement this technology. The problem for them is they had nothing to do with the CO2. Interestingly, for a cement company, especially the ones that we spoke to in Europe, they're under such immense pressure with the EUTS, the European Carbon Cap and Trade system, where they're essentially, once that's in full swing, their product price doubles because it's one ton of CO2 per ton of cement.Cement sells for 50 euro per ton. So you can do the math. Right. So for them, they had to do something. So they've been studying this and looking to pull the trigger on some investment decisions.David RobertsI thought there were industrial uses of CO2. I thought there was a market there.Anthony WangYeah, CO2 is already used today for greenhouses, but at a very small scale. And usually, the CO2 is not coming from big industrial point sources, although there are some. So there's some ammonia plants that already capture CO2. So that's one is on the industrial point source. The other source that we think is a very good option and where we have lots of discussions, is with biomass, often anaerobic digestion. So if you look at RNG, what you have actually is a very pure source of CO2, because in the process of making RNG, what you do is you essentially purify RNG from biogas.And biogas is about 50% RNG and 50% CO2. So in the process of purifying RNG, you actually inadvertently purify CO2. But because there is no offtake for it, the CO2 is currently vented. People don't make a big deal out of it because it's biogenic CO2, right, because it comes from dairy manure or agricultural residue. But it's still right. It's CO2 that's vented into the atmosphere, which we could at that point, you're not really talking about carbon capture, right? It's just connecting it to a pipe because it's already pure. You don't need to scrub it or clean it.And that CO2 is a very good source for us because, a), it's very, very pure, so it's cheap, and b), it's obviously biogenic.David RobertsWell, if they were going to throw it away, if you hadn't come along, I would imagine they're willing to sell it to you quite cheaply.Anthony WangYeah, exactly.David RobertsSo in terms of just sort of absolute numbers, you're not worried about supply of CO2, you think you have enough CO2 to go on for a while or what's your outlook on that?Anthony WangYeah, so, I mean, just to give you an example, right, we have an agreement with Cemex, a major cement company, and their cement plant produces 450,000 tons of CO2. And one of our projects takes 150,000. So three of our projects are needed to decarbonize one cement plant, just to give you a sense of the scale. And then these guys have tens of these around the world, and that's just one company. So in terms of scale, we're not too worried about the CO2.David RobertsRight. So in terms of its availability in general, clearly there's a lot of it. But in terms of the mechanics of getting it to you, that's not a bottleneck at all. How does it come to you, by the way? Does it come to you in a truck?Anthony WangSo we use a combination of rail and trucks. So both CO2 and methanol, we rail and truck. Typically, what we find is that actually the CO2 producers or industrial facilities are again close to ports where traditional industries are. And so what we end up doing is we use the same infrastructure, so the same rails and same train rail, cars and trucks to import the CO2 and then export the methanol. And it's a similar principle where we use tankers. So you liquefy the CO2, put it on a train and then the methanol is already liquid and you export it out.And so that infrastructure all exists and it's just a matter of connecting to the right infrastructure.David RobertsAnd to be clear, you intend to only use captured CO2, not like natural CO2 from underground, because your sort of process is only carbon neutral if you're using the carbon that's been captured somewhere else.Anthony WangYeah, exactly. And I mean, there's lots of debate and discussion about what exactly is good CO2. Maybe that's a rabbit hole that we don't have time to dive into.David RobertsHave they made up a bunch of colors for that yet?Anthony WangWouldn't be surprised if they're getting to that stage. So in Europe they call it biogenic CO2, which ultimately means that it has to be CO2 with a short cycle. So it can't be CO2 that's from the ground basically. Right, but obviously, even with things like processed CO2, you can argue how green is that compared to if it was from agricultural residue? But then you can argue that some of the biomass that's being used today for power and heat production from wood in the Amazon forest isn't great either, so it's a pretty big topic.David RobertsOr direct air capture. Is direct air capture even enough of a thing for you to have thought about it? Or is that still just a gleam in somebody's eye, more or less market wise?Anthony WangYeah, it's not competitive at the moment, so obviously for us it'll be an option in the future. Today there is not nearly enough scale and it's not competitive enough for us to consider it. But I mean, I'm definitely keeping a close eye on it, but for now, we stick to the industrial point sources. Obviously, it would take out a lot of the transport considerations because we could power the direct air capture with our own renewables. So we could just put everything in the same location.David RobertsYeah, you could make your own CO2.Anthony WangExactly.David RobertsThat would add another piece to the optimization puzzle. You're going to have to bring AI in to deal with all this. So I think my knowledge of e-fuels is pretty sketchy, as I think most people's are. My understanding is that if you have hydrogen and CO2, there's a number of different fuels you can make. So of all the sort of possible fuel choices, why methanol? Is it easier, process-wise, to make it, or is it something about the market for it is better, or what are the sort of considerations?Anthony WangYeah, for sure. Obviously we had to pick one. We looked at the hydrogen market and if you look at where most experts think hydrogen will be used today and likely in the future, it's mainly as a feedstock. So it's for ammonia, methanol, steel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). And so those are the main kind of derivatives that we considered. Obviously we looked at the technical side, so we've talked a bit about the transport options and methanol kind of comes out on top. There ammonia, better than hydrogen, but still quite a toxic gas as well. We had to pick one to start with for our first project.But I would like to add we're called ETFuels, not ET Green Methanol for a reason, not only because the latter is not very catchy, but also because we see our off-grid production model as a way to scale into a multi-fuel future. But for our first one, we chose methanol. Again, partially for technical reasons, but also part of it was just timing, because this was around the time that the big Danish shipping company called Mersk made a huge announcement that they essentially committed to methanol as their decarbonization fuel of choice. And they had put in an order for eight methanol-fueled vessels at the time.This was a couple of years ago. Obviously, that number of methanol ship orders has grown exponentially since then. Last I checked, in the first half of 2023, methanol vessel orders represented 62% of the order book, outstripping all other fuel types. And so for us, the message from the shipping sector was clear. If we're going to decarbonize and do anything in the next ten years, it has to be methanol, because the ammonia engines just aren't ready yet. So that was quite an obvious one for us. And then on top of that, methanol is already an existing market of 100 million tons a year, used as a chemical feedstock for various plastics and chemical products.So that's kind of the main reason that we went with that fuel.David RobertsSo you chose methanol because it's easy to transport at room temperature and there's a relatively guaranteed market for it, but you think the model, there's nothing about the model that's going to prevent you from moving into other kinds of e-fuels.Anthony WangYeah, exactly. I think one of the reasons the model is attractive, the off-grid model, is because so much of the cost and learnings are applicable to other fuels as well. So obviously the renewables is the same, the hydrogen production is the same, and this is the notion of hydrogen as this platform chemical. And then the final part is, depending on which fuel you go with, is 15-20% of the total CapEx. But you could have a train for ammonia, you could have one for methanol, you could even have one for e-methane, which some people are doing, which is kind of e-RNG.And so for us, it's — obviously we bet on methanol as our first. We think the market is ready there, but ultimately, ammonia might have a big future in shipping as well. And ammonia doesn't have the CO2 problem. So for us, it's a really good way to kind of keep our options open.David RobertsIs making methanol out of hydrogen substantially more or less expensive than making ammonia out of it, or methane? Or are there substantial cost differences in that last piece of the puzzle?Anthony WangSo the main difference is — they're all a bit different. So obviously, ammonia, the big benefit is you don't need CO2. So whatever you were paying for the CO2, you're now no longer paying for.David RobertsBetraying some rank ignorance here, but how on earth do you make hydrogen into ammonia?Anthony WangYou combine it with nitrogen, so you take nitrogen out of the air, so you purify nitrogen and then you run it through a reactor. It's a similar type of synthesis reactor where you basically run your gases at a certain temperature over a catalyst. So for ammonia, it's called the Haber Bosch reaction. For e-methane, it's called the Sabatier reaction. I think the methanol reaction doesn't have a name, but they all have similar principles, which is you put it into a chemical reactor, hydrogen plus some other compound.David RobertsRight, so it's not no, it's very similar.Anthony WangI mean, there are obviously some technical, detailed process differences. So ammonia in terms of reaction, temperature in terms of how well it operates under fluctuating load. So all of these processes, whereas the electrolyzer is very flexible, most of these chemical reaction kind of chemical plants are a lot less flexible because you need to maintain the temperature and the pressure. And it's much more like a refinery than an electrical kind of process. And then for methane, when you're obviously methanol, the last step is distillation, where you have to separate the methanol from the water, whereas with methane, you're separating a gas from water.So there are some kind of nuanced differences. But in terms of the big picture, I mean, your renewables is the same, your hydrogen is the same, and the last 20% you can kind of flex that if you need to.David RobertsSo in terms of carbon-neutral methanol, for which there is this sort of nascent market just emerging, these shipping companies just sort of getting into this. Are there lots of competitors? Do we know? I mean, is there a good sense yet, like, what it ought to cost? I guess it's far from commoditized at this point. But how mature is that final market? Or is this sort of like everybody's figuring this out as they go?Anthony WangProbably more the latter. I mean, there are definitely competitors. I'd say most e-fuel announcements you see are probably around ammonia because it's just slightly easier because you don't have to source CO2, which is a challenge. So for us, it's a competitive advantage, I think, that we know how to source CO2 and we know our way around that market. On your question around pricing, so of course people are figuring it out. There are a couple of pilot plants. There's a few that have just started, kind of just taken an FID. Orsted has just bought one in Sweden where they've started construction, but they aren't producing yet, so no one really knows how much it's going to cost until it's operational.Obviously, we know, today we would be producing at a price premium to fossil methanol. But that'll be the benchmark is — how many times more expensive are you compared to either fossil methanol or the fuel that you're replacing. So in our case it'll be fuel oil for shipping.David RobertsYeah. I'm guessing you're a lot more expensive than fuel oil at this point.Anthony WangYeah. So at this point we're significantly more expensive. Obviously what gives us comfort is that we're well one is the cost reduction trajectory of the technologies and the learning that we think we will gain and two is our relative cost differential against our direct competitors which we see as green methanol. Right. So we don't think we will be directly competing with fuel oil because one obviously from a regulatory perspective those get treated very differently and all the incentives that a shipping company, especially in Europe, in the US you've got the IRA in Europe there's lots of incentives for fuel switching demand side kind of quotas and ways to benefit.So you only get those if you're to decarbonize fuel. And for us, what gives us comfort is not so much the comparison to fuel oil but the comparison to other green methanol projects. And for us the off-grid nature gives us this competitive pricing advantage because of our cheaper power and that's what allows me to sleep at night.David RobertsWell, one question I have is, what counts exactly as carbon-neutral methanol? Because, as Volts listeners know, because they listen to the hydrogen tax credit episode, the question of what is the carbon intensity of your hydrogen is far from straightforward. And there's a lot of debate now about whether to require it to be off-grid or exactly how to measure the cleanliness of the electricity going into it, et cetera, et cetera. It's a very complicated debate here in the US. I'm sure you're very familiar with it over in Europe too, you are very clearly making carbon-free hydrogen because nothing's more additional than renewables that you are building yourself to attach to your electrolyzers, right.So you clearly pass the bar. But is that same debate live in Europe? Because if people can use cheaper grid renewables I don't know, maybe that actually wouldn't give them a cost advantage. I don't know. But is there debate right now over what counts as e-methanol?Anthony WangYeah, for sure and really good point on the additionality I hadn't mentioned. Thanks, David. It's a big part of why we've chosen this model as well. It's the cost, it's a scale and it's the additionality on the debate around what is green methanol. So for sure, I think in the US it's a bit of a different discussion. There's not really so much a definition of what is green methanol because you make it compete with fossil methanol through the IRA, through the tax credit. In Europe, we've just had a big legislation passed called the Delegated Act for Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin.Anyway, lots of rules kind of were described in that one is for green hydrogen, which is the one that you talked about, which I think is the similar discussion in the States around additionality temporal correlation, geographical correlation, which we comply with. And the second one is around CO2 essentially how you carbon account for the CO2 in a fuel like green methanol. And the European policymakers agreed on that. So the commissioned parliament and so what we have is up until 2040 any CO2 is okay. So that's kind of what they agreed on. And then beyond that, you would need to be either unavoidable process or you need to be biogenic.But for now, their argument is because there is so much CO2 that's kind of going into the atmosphere that we're not decarbonizing — all of those sectors, for those sectors, you can capture the CO2 and use it and it'll qualify as a "renewable fuel of non-biological origin." That's what they call it.David RobertsInteresting. So as I'm thinking about a project like yours in the US in a post-Inflation Reduction Act world, I'm sort of slightly boggled at the number of tax credits or subsidies that you could rack up with this. You could get tax credits for building the renewables, tax credits for green hydrogen which are substantial. I think there's tax credits for using the CO2. I think there's tax credits for the e-fuels. Like every piece of this is going to get money showered on it from the IRA. I'm wondering whether that makes these projects more attractive.I mean it must. And whether you've been thinking about that. And two, just on a more general basis, how you think about subsidies and whether you need them and to what extent this business model relies on them.Anthony WangYeah, we founded the company before the IRA, before all these policy and incentive mechanisms came out. And we founded it because we believe there to be a commercially viable proposition without it. So we didn't create a business that relies on or is reliant on subsidies. I don't think that would make for a very good business.David RobertsWell, there are plenty of them.Anthony WangYeah, I guess so. But I mean, obviously now for us what this means is kind of accelerated our trajectory so we can do things much faster and basically just get going. And obviously we can't not go for them because it'll make us less competitive because our competitors are. In terms of which ones exactly, I mean, we take quite an opportunistic approach. Obviously in the US we'll try to play into the tax credits the extent to which you can, I don't know, what I would call "double dip" in the sense that get benefits from the US credits and then export your fuel to Europe and then get more benefits there from avoiding the EU ETS.I don't think that's entirely clear. I mean, I'd be quite personally, as a taxpayer—if I were a US taxpayer—I'd be a bit skeptical of that. And even as a European one, I'm not sure how comfortable I feel with importing US-made fuel subsidized with US tax credits and then getting another whammy on top of that in Europe. Yeah, but I think that's all to be identified in Europe. Obviously, you've got the innovation funding there's all the onsite measures, which I think are much better. Like for example, the renewable fuel quota. That's a very clean quota for ships where they just have to switch a certain share of their fuel to be green.And then you've got various other kind of incentive schemes, carbon contract for differences, which are meant to be a support mechanism for hydrogen production. And so we'll see for us, basically what it means is that our projects are even more viable than they were a year and a half ago.David RobertsHave you done the math yet on a project with all the IRA subsidies? Because the green hydrogen tax credit is ginormous.Anthony WangYeah, obviously we've done the math just to give you maybe cut some numbers. So the $3 per kilogram hydrogen tax credit translates to about $600 per ton of methanol. And just to give you a sense of fossil methanol, so methanol made from natural gas today, I mean, I haven't checked the latest numbers, but historically it's kind of traded at around $500 per ton. So that's only for your hydrogen. And then on top of that, there is potentially a CO2 credit, which again, the extent to which we can play into that, I don't know. But the CCU tax credit is $60 per ton of CO2.And in terms of when you translate that to methanol, you would get to around $100. You multiply by 1.5. So again, it's a lot of you add it up, you get to like a $700 per ton of methanol tax credit compared to the fossil price of $500.David RobertsIs that enough to erase the delta with the fossil kind?Anthony WangYeah, we'd be in the money for sure.David RobertsI mean, it would be wild to be on the market selling carbon-free methanol that is cheaper than the carbon kind.Anthony WangSo that raises the question is what you're paying fo, right? That's where it's different in the US than in Europe. In the US, essentially that's the mentality, right? You're not trying to sell some different product, you're just trying to sell the same product cheaper. And that's why you need these support schemes to make that work. Whereas in Europe you're essentially saying, well, it's green, so it's okay that it's more expensive, but you have to do it because it's green. So it's kind of a different mentality.David RobertsYeah, there are more sticks in Europe and we're all carrots over here in the US.Anthony WangYeah, but I mean, from a developer and financiers perspective, it's not clear which one is better because obviously with the renewables, the drawback in the States was that one year you had them one year you didn't. Whereas in Europe the demand side signal meant that you had a very kind of fixed base load of demand.David RobertsRight. Yeah, that's interesting. So, the final question is just, it does seem like to some extent this business model is a reaction not to technological factors, but to socioeconomic factors. So, for instance, the limits of the grid and the slowness of getting on the grid, the slowness of interconnection, the lack of hydrogen pipelines, these are kind of bottlenecks or pressures that one can imagine easing over time. Right? One can imagine the grid getting built out more. One can imagine green hydrogen, I don't know, I actually have trouble imagining green hydrogen infrastructure being built. But who knows, it could happen.So, I wonder if those became easier and they were less of pressure points, would some of the rationale for this business model go away?Anthony WangYeah, I'm not sure if I fully agree with that statement. Just from the perspective of — yeah, okay, there are challenges with the incumbents and the pace that they're getting things done. But for us, it's also fundamentally what is a more efficient way to run the energy system. It's not just because it's not being done, we need to find some loophole that can make it work. Fundamentally, you can ask the question if you had a renewable energy system or an energy system that was driven mainly by renewables, is it more efficient to overbuild your grid, to run all that stuff intermittently —I mean, I've been part of grid planning sessions in Europe and when you've got capacity factors of solar of 15% to 20% and wind of 25% to 35%, you have to build an enormous grid to balance that. By the time that you've actually built out the grid to kind of run your power system base load, your balancing cost, sometimes they call it balance of system, basically the cost of all the extra stuff to keep it running becomes quite excessive. So, I think a study by Imperial estimated that that cost would be 50 to 60 pounds per megawatt hour of just pure balancing costs. That's in addition to the renewable costs, which by the way are a lot less cheap in Europe than they are in Chile.And so, you very quickly get to power prices which are much higher than what we are paying today. And then you can wonder, wouldn't it be more efficient if you could import some of that cheap power, put panels where it's sunny or put turbines where it's windy and import the power. And then also the other thing is, does it even make sense to try to aim for this type of base load, supply driven system or should we be running more flexible assets? And in many ways, what we've got is just a flexible asset, right? It's an electrolyzer that follows the renewables.And so, the system benefit of an asset like that is quite big. So, I don't think I fully agree with your framing of the business model. I think there's more to it than just it's a way to bypass all of the slow incumbent infrastructure. But it's definitely a good question and I don't think anyone really knows the answer until we've tried both paths.David RobertsSo, you think that the limits of electrify everything are more than just incidental or contingent? You think we're going to run into these balancing cost issues and it's going to make more sense to run more stuff on liquid e-fuels?Anthony WangNot for everything, obviously. I wouldn't ever buy a diesel car and then hope to ever be able to afford e-diesel rather than an electric car. So, obviously there are time and place for everything. For certain sectors, though, I definitely think, I mean, I'd rather fuel my ship or my airplane with an e-fuel made where renewables are cheap than to try to do that next to Heathrow Airport in London or something like that. So, I think, as always, it depends and we're very targeted in where we go. We're not looking to sell e-fuel to heat homes or do anything like that.It's very targeted to the sectors which are hard to abate and don't have other options.David RobertsThis has been super fascinating. I hope listeners agree. I hope we haven't gone too far down the technical rabbit hole and lost people. But I find this, this is where all the sort of interesting issues in the energy world are hitting the ground, right? Like you're trying to actually do these things. And as, as you said, when you start trying to actually do things, whole different challenges arise and whole different sort of questions arise about optimization and stuff like that. So, super fascinating to walk through this with you. Thanks so much for coming on, Anthony.Anthony WangThanks for having me, David. It was a pleasure.David RobertsThank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time. Get full access to Volts at www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Welcome to the Think Multifamily podcast, where we demystify the world of multifamily investing.   Today, we're diving into an exciting and pivotal topic - sourcing deals.   Guiding us through this intricate process is our esteemed expert, Mark Kenney.   In this episode, Mark will shed light on the interaction between selling brokers and buying brokers and how we, as buyers, should engage with them. He'll take us behind the scenes and explain how commercial multifamily brokers differ from real estate agents who deal with single-family homes. Mark will also caution you about Confidentiality Agreements or CAs.   He'll share tips on dealing with brokers who may not be very reputable, and the implications of signing a CA that could potentially lock you into any deal in a submarket, irrespective of their agreement with the sellers.   We'll explore the alluring world of off-market deals, and Mark will provide insights on how these can fit into your investment strategy.   But who should sell your deal? What is the protocol for this? Mark will share an unwritten rule in commercial real estate that everyone should know about.   So whether you're an experienced investor or just starting on your multifamily journey, this episode is packed with invaluable information to help you navigate the broker landscape effectively.   Tune in to Think Multifamily and prepare to elevate your investing knowledge.   You won't want to miss this, so stay with us! Let's listen in now.

Each and every person, regardless of profession, is in the industry of hospitality. The interactions you have with everyone create ripples of hospitality that extend well beyond a single moment. To help you create big ripples, we're joined by an entrepreneur whose mission is to help others let their business-based superpowers shine. Joining the show this week is Host of the Podcast “Coffee with Kim” and Co-Founder of Bright Ideas Only, Kim Kaupe. Dan sits down with Kim to learn about why LinkedIn is the best platform to focus your energy on, how we are all in hospitality, and how to be more confident when evangelizing your own work. Takeaways:  Hospitality is the stone you throw into a pond and the impacts on others are the ripples in the water. It is also how people talk about you when you're not in the room, how you make them feel, and what people are walking away from interactions with.  Being the champion of your own accomplishments is difficult. Speak about yourself as you would your best friend. Don't be afraid to acknowledge accomplishments, highlight your skills, and be direct when asked about your career responsibilities.  Business awards, like the “40 Under 40”, can help further your professional goals and raises. Following in the thread of being the champion of your accomplishments, you can also nominate yourself for these awards without fear of being underqualified. If you only have time for one social platform, LinkedIn is the best. It's the only one that is crawled by Google so content doesn't get lost in the archives. As only 1% of LinkedIn users post, your content won't be lost in a heavily saturated feed.  Because LinkedIn shows what your connections comment on and like, it boosts the reach of any content you post, displaying it on a worldwide platform full of C-Suite Executives. Share your knowledge and content, whether you think it's valuable or not. If one person or a hundred thousand people find it important, you made an impact, changed their direction, or taught them something new. When running a business, you are pitching not only the product or service, but also yourself in tandem with your brand. By being succinct in describing your skills, you help the client more confidently make the decision to choose you. Quote of the Show:“Talking about yourself or sharing your knowledge will be like the very first pushup in the gym, but you have to keep going.” - Kim KaupeLinks: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimkaupe/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/kimkaupe?s=20 Personal website: https://kimkaupe.com/  Company website: https://www.brightideasonly.com/  Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffee-with-kim/id1612158856  Shout Outs: 14:23 - Shark Tank: https://abc.com/shows/shark-tank  15:08 - Brendan Fraser 16:09 - Ben Affleck 16:10 - Matt Damon 16:11 - Matthew McConaughey  16:17 - Sam Rockwell 16:36 - Glory Daze: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116422/  21:50 - Dolly Parton 21:51 - Oprah 21:54 - The New York Mets: https://www.mlb.com/mets  24:37 - Condé Nast: https://www.condenast.com/  28:16 - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com  30:28 - The Miami Heat: https://www.nba.com/heat/  33:21 - Gary Vee 41:11 - Daniel Roth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielroth1/  Ways to Tune In:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0A2XOJvb6mGqEPYJ5bilPX Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-hospitality-podcast/id1573596386 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVmaW5pbmdob3NwaXRhbGl0eS5saXZlL2ZlZWQueG1s Amazon Music: ​​https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8c904932-90fa-41c3-813e-1cb8f3c42419

Today's guest is Mark Kappelman.   Mark is a CFA® and CPA®, Co-Founder of RealEstateAccounting.Co, dedicated to helping property owners achieve financial independence by streamlining their real estate accounting processes. Join Sam and Mark in today's episode. -------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Cappleman's Background [00:00:41] The Niche of REA [00:02:40] Common Mistakes in Property Management [00:06:10] Bookkeepers vs Accountants [00:07:59] Best Practices for Property Management Accounting [00:10:14] Expanding Services to Property Management [00:13:27] Mark's background and how REA started [00:16:08] REA fills a need in the real estate market [00:17:11] How to get in touch with REA [00:17:39] -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Mark: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkappelman/ Web: https://www.realestateaccounting.co/?utm_source=reaco   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Mark Kappelman (00:00:00) - What our pitch always is to clients, which is, Hey, look, we're, we're cheaper than hire full-time. And most people don't realize, cuz we're 10 99 contractors. And what most people don't realize is, is you think you need a full-time accountant, but you probably do not need a full-time account. Mm. You know, we always say you need accounting outcomes, not an accountant. You need your bank recs done on time, you need your AP done on time, and you need the reporting out to your investors, uh, and clients on time.   Intro (00:00:28) - Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:41) - Mark Cappleman is a cfa, a CPA and co-founder of realestate accounting.co. They're dedicated to helping property owners achieve financial independence by streamlining their real estate accounting processes. Mark, welcome to the show,   Mark Kappelman (00:00:54) - Sam. Thanks for having me. Pleasure ab   Sam Wilson (00:00:56) - Absolutely. The pleasure's mine. Mark, there are three questions I ask every guest who comes in the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?   Mark Kappelman (00:01:05) - Let's see. I started by, you know, going to college and wasn't sure I wanted to be in business. Wasn't sure which major had a couple uncles said, Hey, accounting's the language of business, uh, you gotta understand how to read a p and l a balance sheet. So if you don't know what you wanna do, do accounting and you can come out with a cpa. Uh, so it's pretty good advice. I think in hindsight I did that, worked in the big four. Um, you know, read a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad, which is cliche for a lot of people, but it com there's a line in the book that says, you know, why not? Why climb the corporate ladder when you can own the ladder? And I was just, it totally threw me off. I was climbing the corporate ladder at that point. I wanted to get into real estate.   Mark Kappelman (00:01:45) - Um, my wife and I bought a single family home as a rental. Then we started flipping houses, you know, I left the big four cuz I couldn't do both. And then we started rehabbing property. So now we're rehabbing single families. We started rehabbing multi-families and then the process of doing that real estate was my side hustle. I outsourced my own accounting two different times and it just came back poor. The communication was bad. They didn't understand, you know, n o I and what to capitalize and what to run through r and m. And so then we started looking around to say, Hey look, who's just for focused on real estate accounting? Couldn't find anybody. And that was where we really got the idea for r e a.   Sam Wilson (00:02:23) - And you're absolutely right, you're absolutely right. There, there, there is a lot of, of misunderstanding in that space. You guys decided to form r e a, but yet you focus even more, I think, niche inside the accounting side of things than even what the traditional listener might think of when they think of real estate accounting. What is that?   Mark Kappelman (00:02:40) - Yeah, yeah. So really our niche is property management. Um, when we started the business, the thesis was we're gonna help fix and flippers just cuz that's kind of what I was at the time. I was rehabbing one house at a time, you know, we had draws we needed help with and we thought that was the target customer. We actually got in market, we realized the much bigger opportunity and the bigger problems to solve were for property managers, bank reconciliations, accounts payable, and the quality of financial reporting. I think any of your listeners that work with third party property management companies, they're probably getting a wide variety of the quality of financial information. And we get those financials, are they tax ready or not? Uh, and that's where we realized, hey, look, they're, you just can't afford many of these property managers. The margins are so, so thin they can't afford to hire high quality accounting talent. But if you work with a group like r e a, you may not need a full-time person, you might need a partial person. And we can bring that really high-end touch, um, at a fraction of the cost, maybe a fraction of the hours and deliver a better result.   Sam Wilson (00:03:48) - When, how much property did you have or were you managing of your own when you decided to launch r e a?   Mark Kappelman (00:03:56) - Yeah, I think today we're at 40 units. I think when we got the idea, so we launched four or five years ago. We were probably at like 30 units. Um, you know, I'm managing 30 units in Chicago today. Um, but yeah, right in that like 30 to 40 range.   Sam Wilson (00:04:12) - And what was it along the, the process of managing and owning your own properties that gave you this insight into the kind of disconnect between property managers and accounting?   Mark Kappelman (00:04:24) - I mean, I just, we outsourced our books twice. Mm. And I was like, you know, at the time I was accounting was a side hustle, right? I'm still working as an account and now I've left the big four. I'm working for this tech startup, so I'm doing accounting all day and then nights and weekends I'm trying to acquire multifamily and do deals. And then I also have to do the accounting for that, right? And I'm like, I just can't do this. And you know, I read the book I think is EMyth mm-hmm.  that's like, look, focus on re generation, outsource all the admin. So I'm like, accounting is admin to me in this real estate business, my daytime job, but it's still admin over here. So I outsourced it and it just came back super bad. And, and, and real estate, you know, you can go into accounting, but like when people say, are you into accounting? Well, there's a ton of different niches to that. And real estate's just one of them. There's very unique accounting things. Not everybody understands a closing statement, a refi. There's all sorts of things that you have to do. So we just realized there was a lack of specialists, um, and we went for it.   Sam Wilson (00:05:27) - Absolutely. And, and yeah, to your point, I mean, I've often wondered, you look at the property management companies and it's like the margins are thin. Yeah. There's . It's like how, how, how, how is this profitable? I mean, obviously it's profitable at scale, but it has to be at scale and then in order to do it at scale just means there's that many more moving parts. So clearly I'm, you're preaching to the choir here and telling you that you're solving a problem. But maybe let's talk a little bit about some of the mistakes or some of the problems that ownership groups have when working with their property management, getting reports on time. Like what are some, what are some things you see, uh, maybe the, maybe the breakdown in communication or some other kind of, uh, common mistakes that, that occur in those, in those relationships?   Mark Kappelman (00:06:10) - Yeah, I think, you know, time and time again of what we see is, so o one small step back, 70% of our clients are owner operators, meaning they're probably a syndicator or a wealthy individual, but more often a syndicator that is going out and buying the deal, but then also managing it. Okay? Mm-hmm. Okay. Um, and so the, the reason I bring that up and it, it, it, it relates to your question is that, you know, whether you're that person or you're a wealthy syndicator that's now hiring a third party property manager, that's probably the more common scenario. Sure. People don't want a property manager, they want to do the deals, hire a local property manager, right? The thing about lo in that case is you need to report on full financials back to your investors. You know, when you go out and raise money and do a deal, you say, here's what year 1, 2, 3, 4, and five are gonna look like.   Mark Kappelman (00:07:05) - And uh, here's my proforma and, and and my opinion, the good syndicators are reporting out either monthly or quarterly on here's actuals versus proforma. The reality is, is the books that your property managers keeping need to match, you know, don't need the, the basis needs to match in that. Like r and m needs to be properly booked to repairs and maintenance and not CapEx. CapEx needs to be booked properly. Um, the right things need to be above and below the line on noi. The property manager needs to add the budget into their system. The same budget that you gave, that you gave your investors otherwise, now you're doing a bunch of manual manipulation, uh, on your end and when your PM should be doing that. So I think, you know, it is just so often the accountants, I'm gonna say take a step back. So often the people working at property management companies are bookkeepers.   Mark Kappelman (00:07:59) - They're not actually accou