Podcasts about caroline it

Welcome to Life in the Leadership Lane where I am talking to leaders making a difference in the workplace and in our communities. How did they get to where they are and what are they doing to stay there! Buckle up and get ready to accelerate in the Leadership Lane! This week, I am talking with Caroline Cook, CRP, Director Business Development at CWS Corporate Housing and 2025CMARC President (Charlotte Metro Area Relocation Council President) How did Caroline get started in her career? What ledher to Corporate Housing and Leadership? What does Caroline share about relocating to different places while growing up? What does Caroline share about collaboration, creation, and growth? What does Caroline share about 2025 CMARC SpringConference? What does Caroline share about some of the educational topics during conference? What does Caroline share about sponsorships and getting involved? What does Caroline share supporting CMARC charitable organization “Nourish Up” during conference? What does Caroline share about making people feelwelcome at CMARC? …and more as we spend “Time to Accelerate” with afew more questions. Interview resources:Favorite quote from Caroline:“It's a beautiful experience knowing your competitors arefriends.” Connect with Caroline on LinkedInEmail CarolineLearn more about CMARCVisit Conference Website to Register and/or SponsorLearn more about the podcast host Bruce WallerCheck out Bruce's books Drive With Purpose: Move Your Career from Success toSignificance (#1 New Released book on Amazon) Life in the Leadership Lane; Moving Leaders to Inspire and Change the Workplace Find Your Lane; Change your GPS, Change your Career (“Book Authority” Best Books) Milemarkers; A 5 Year Journey …helping you record daily highlights to keep you on track.Subscribe to Bruce's Blog “Move to Inspire” Connect with Bruce on LinkedIn Connect with Bruce on TwitterConnect with Bruce on InstagramConnect with Bruce on FacebookGet relocation support for your next household goods orcommercial office move across the US by reaching out to Bruce at bwaller@goarmstrong.com or visit The Armstrong Company

Caroline Carey is a Soul Worker/Doula and the Founder of Middle Earth Medicine Ways, a way forward for embodied spirituality, mindfulness, conscious dance and creativity. As a mentor and coach for personal growth and development, Caroline has a unique understanding of the soul's journey through life and how many of today's problems stem from society's loss of spirituality. She empowers people to find this lost part of themselves and reclaim their natural strength by engaging with the soul. CHRISTINE AND CAROLINE REVEAL:How a child's light gets diminished over time. How we learn to please others and ignore ourselves.The importance of dropping the ego when being creative.What it means to truly be heard.Core wounds, solutions & conversation cures.That medicine doesn't have to come out of a packet. Why schools need "soul advisors."BEST MOMENTS:“A lot of mental health problems tend to come from people not feeling fulfilled.” -Caroline"The term 'authentic self' is a bit of a buzzword these days." -Christine“We are all born with a sacred contract. We come into the world complete with that.”-Caroline“It takes somebody with some expertise to be able to be with them, not try to fix, just to listen and say “I hear you.”-Caroline"When we let go our our ego, something will come through." -Caroline"There's a little child sitting there hurting, saying 'I just need you to hear me.'" -Caroline“Everything we're talking about is communication; communication with the self, with the world around us, our experiences, others.”-Christine“Most children today are put onto a school curriculum and everyone has to do the same thing.”-CarolineCONTACT THE HOST: EMAILINSTAGRAMTRAINING: Discount Code 1st 100: WELCOME50SHARE FEEDBACK / ASK A QUESTION - click“Send voicemail” on the side of the page.CONTACT CAROLINE: Podcast https://shows.acast.com/how-to-find-our-soul-purpose Membership: https://middleearthmedicine.com/mem-memberships/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@carolinecarey62 ABOUT THE HOSTChristine Mullaney is a TEDx speaker, Podcast Host, Public Speaking, Presentation and Pronunciation Coach, and Neurocultural™ Communication Trainer. Creator of the Phenomenal Presenters Masterclasses on-demand training platform, Christine has over 25 years of facilitation, training, management and business development experience in a variety of sectors across the globe.She is passionate about helping bilingual leaders develop the strategic thinking and communication skills that will catapult their careers. A nature-loving, intuitive coach, with deep roots in Celtic spirituality, Christine's work revolves around the Spiral of Awareness: of Self, the Brain, Language and Culture. Her approach will make you laugh and think, while nurturing natural confidence and communication courage.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2023, products or services no longer sell. Instead, it is the stories behind them that draw people in and allow them to connect with a brand on a much deeper level that drives conversions, loyalty, and revenue.In today's episode, we sit down with Caroline Langdon, a social media agency founder, and owner, to talk about the power of storytelling in creating social media content. We use real-life examples from the business world and Alexa's past clients to show you exactly what storytelling on social media looks like and how you can leverage it in your business - even if you are just getting started.Key parts of the conversation:[0:44] - Today's Topic: Leverage Storytelling On Social Media With Caroline Langdon[2:34] - What is the first thing Caroline does after meeting with a client[5:42] - How Alexa used storytelling in one of her most successful campaigns[8:09] - The power of storytelling in AirBnB's marketing[9:55] - Flipping an industry on its head with storytelling[11:38] - How to tell a story if you don't have prior clients[12:51] - The one thing you need to keep in mind when creating contentGreat quotes from the podcast:“To retain attention, you need to have interesting and thought-provoking content.” - Caroline“Stories connect us to emotions and shared experiences.” - Caroline“People want to see themselves as the hero of the story.” - Caroline“Tell the truth, but make it fascinating.” - Caroline“It is really important to know the audience that you want to speak to and the purpose of your message.” - Caroline“If you aren't telling stories, you need to hire somebody if you don't have that ability.” - AlexaResources:For all of our episodes, you can visit: https://thynktankcoaching.com/podcastFor comments or questions, email us at support@thynkconsultinggroup.comAlexa's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dralexadagostino/Passion to CEO program: https://www.passiontoceo.com/

What you'll learn in this episode: What characteristics make a gemstone special Why collectors usually have a few pieces that don't fit into the parameters of their collection Why old stones often have more charm than modern ones How to make trendy jewelry more timeless Which jewels have been the most memorable from Caroline's auction career About Caroline Morrissey Caroline Morrissey is Director and Head of Jewelry at Bonhams in New York. Her areas of expertise span diamonds and colored gemstones to 20th century jewelry. She has a particular interest in large white and colored diamonds. Since joining Bonhams in 2014, Caroline's exceptional sales include a diamond riviere necklace, which sold for $1,205,000 in June 2015; a diamond solitaire ring which sold for $1,807,500 in September 2017; and an unmounted Kashmir sapphire which sold for $1,244,075 in July 2020. Caroline discovered her passion for the jewelry business more than two decades ago, in a charming jewelry store in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she worked on weekends during high school. Her career started in the diamond industry in Antwerp, Belgium, and she has also held positions at the prominent luxury retailers Cartier and Leviev. Caroline studied a double major in Economics and Politics from the University of York, England. Photos: New York–Bonhams will present more than 200 jewels from the Estate of George and Charlotte Shultzon May 23, 2022, including more than 70 pieces from Tiffany & Co. Charlotte wore her jewels to receive Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John Paul II, and countless world leaders as San Francisco's chief of protocol for more than fifty years, serving ten mayors. She found her perfect match in George Shultz, a great American statesman who served as secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan and held four different cabinet positions under three presidents. Their personal collection will be featured in a dedicated sale at Bonhams New York that will celebrate their life of philanthropy and elegance. Below are a few photos of auction items.   Additional Resources: Bonhams Website Bonhams Instagram   Transcript: What makes a gemstone stand out from the rest? You can talk about color, shape and cut, but sometimes a stone inexplicably draws you in. That's the experience Caroline Morrissey has had many times as Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams in New York. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the most memorable jewelry she's sold; why collectors shouldn't be too rigid about maintaining a specific theme for their collection; and what qualities make a gemstone special. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my Guest is Caroline Morrissey, Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams. Welcome back. What are you normally attracted to? Why would it surprise you? Caroline: Well, I'm very boring. I like my jewelry to be simple. I have no problem with it being bold, but I don't want it to be complicated and bold. I find myself in a situation where I have a great appreciation for many gemstones, but that does not mean I would wear them myself—but doesn't mean I don't like them. There are all sorts of 1935-40's jewels that are slightly out of character, but at the same time I'm completely embracing them. This is, by the way, mostly in most dreams. I unfortunately do not have a fabulous jewelry box at home full of these jewels. But I mostly lean towards simple designs. If it can be a hundred years old, all the better. Sharon: Do you think they select jewelry because—what's the word they use? It is classic, like you're talking about, but 40, 50 years from now they'll still love it as much. Do you think people look at that, or do they go more with trends? Caroline: I think a lot of people go with trends and then they regret it. When I work with clients—I mean, it depends what the piece of jewelry is for. If they're adding to a collection and they're looking for a specific period, that's completely different. But if you've got somebody who's looking for an engagement ring or bridal or that type of jewelry, I do believe a lot of people fall into whatever is in vogue right now, and they don't realize, “O.K., everyone's different.” Like you say, in 40, 50 years' time, it will just be a style from the period. I always try and advise that there are very, very small changes you can make to many styles that will transform that piece of jewelry into a timeless and elegant piece. It can be a combination of modern yet traditional. You look at some of the pieces from a long time ago and transplant them to today, and many of them are still in fashion. They're timeless; they will never cease to be so. I think as soon as you point that out to somebody, it becomes so obvious, but I don't think that's necessarily what people always want going into it. It's hard not to want what is in style now. Sharon: Yes. It sounds like you have a secondary career with restyling jewelry, though. Caroline: Well, the design element of it is really fun. I don't think I'm that great at it, but I'm definitely going to offer you my ideas, just in case. Sharon: You've used the words collectors, collections. When you say a collector comes to you, is a collector like me, somebody who has a box full of jewelry? Or is it something where they have an emerald; they have a ruby; they have sapphires? What's a collection to you? Caroline: A collection, to me, is a group of jewelry. I feel that a collection has a different meaning to each individual. It could be a combination of pieces that you have inherited and pieces that have been given to you, perhaps pieces you've bought yourself. Then you could have a collector who has a collection within a specific genre. I will say that as hard as it may be, most people who collect for specific collections, whatever the time period, color, style might be, usually have a few pieces or more that fall out of the parameters for that collection, because usually they are drawn to something they can't say no to. So, a collection to me is literally whatever is in that jewelry box, and it doesn't need to match. Some pieces could be broken. There could be elements of one piece and a complete matching set of another piece, but what we can do? I very much enjoy going through that collection and sorting out what needs to be done, how it should be sold, what will work for the owner, because everyone has different needs. On top of that, everyone's jewelry, if you're on the selling side, is different, and it usually requires a little bit of work to be done. We've got to do some sleuthing, finding out what particular pieces are, if they started off life together, if they were married together at a later stage in their jewelry life. That's a really fun thing to do, and it can also help people find out more about where their jewelry has come from. It can be a really interesting road to go down. Sharon: That sounds very interesting. Tell us about some of your most memorable sales. Caroline: How about some memorable auction pieces within the sale? Sharon: O.K., great. Caroline: I've got some great stories for you. Sharon: Please, O.K. Caroline: I'm going to start off with the first one. It was a sapphire and diamond ring. This lady had bought the ring from an antique store, and she had been told the sapphire was synthetic but the mounting was a Tiffany mounting. It was a Deco, very beautiful yet simple Tiffany mounting. She bought it for $800, which was basically the cost of the mounting and the synthetic stone. She enjoyed it. Things happened with her life, and at some point, she had been told by someone that it might not be synthetic, this sapphire. That prompted her to call us. Long story short, we managed to lay eyes on the piece. We sent it to a lab, and it came back as an 8-carat Burma origin, no heat, no enhancements. Long story short, it went into a sale. They flew here and sat in the front row of the auction. It hammered for $200,000. Afterwards she came up—she was with a friend and was in tears—and thanked us so much, because her husband had medical problems, and this was going to make everything O.K. for them so that she didn't have to sell her house. That's a really special moment to be a part of, and she was so thankful. We didn't actually know the full story of how much all of this meant until the very end, but these things really do happen. Sharon: Wow! Caroline: I have another story for you. We had this brooch that was sent in to us. I'm going to try to be diplomatic here, but I don't think it had been cleaned in a very, very long time. It had been bought from a garage sale for $8. Anyway, long story short, it had a diamond, an emerald and a ruby under a carat, but it was really fine quality once it was all cleaned up. We had the diamond certified, and it came back as a VS1, so the highest color, completely clean, and an old stone. The emeralds came back Colombian with minor or insignificant inclusions. Again, very, very high quality. The ruby came back Burma, no heat. This tiny, little brooch sold for $35,000. Sharon: Wow! Caroline: It does not happen often, but it does happen, these stories. I suppose that's one of the amazing parts of being at auction, that you can be part of somebody's journey, whether it's from a garage sale and is a big surprise, or something that comes in and is an angel at a time of need. Sharon: Wow! The stories you're telling are the reason I like antiques, I suppose. Caroline: Oh, absolutely. I have more. It really does happen, and it's amazing. Sharon: It is amazing, and it makes you want to go out to every flea market and garage sale. I just don't have any kind of patience for that. Do you have people who say, “Only call me if you have an unset stone that you think is worth me looking at”? Or do they say, “I don't care what the stone is set in, give me a call”? Do you have collectors who just want the stone? Caroline: The thing is, in most cases, people need a stone to be set in a piece of jewelry to visualize it. Even if they don't expect to wear it or it's not their intention to wear it, just to view it as a piece of jewelry, it needs to be in some type of setting. It doesn't even need to be a nice setting. It just needs to be a vehicle to make that stone or stones into a piece of jewelry. I have clients who say to me, “If you have important colored stones, please call me,” and they will not care what those colored stones are set in. In many cases, they probably won't care how old the stone is. They are just looking for beautiful colored stones. I suppose based on what I have, they'll work out whether it's interesting to them, but in most cases in that scenario, the mounting is neither here nor there. They're looking at the stone. They don't care if it's in a ring or a piece of jewelry. Sharon: Do think they want to have the stone set themselves? Do you think they take it and have it put in a piece of jewelry themselves, or do they take the stone and put it in their safe and say, “That's nice.” What do they do? Caroline: Some people definitely do that. If they're going to put it in a safe, they're probably just going to leave it in the mounting it came in and put it in the safe and close the door. I suppose it depends on what the purchase is for, but auction is a secondary market, so you're not necessarily going to walk in and find your perfect stone in the perfect mounting, especially with diamonds. Most of our clients will first and foremost, if they're looking for stones, look for that stone. If they need to make any changes to the mounting or style, they will do that afterwards. Those people looking for jewelry, they're in a completely different category. The stones become insignificant to them because they're looking for a piece of jewelry, and they will oftentimes have a time period or a designer or a style in mind. If it does have stones in it, those stones will enhance the piece of jewelry, but the purchase will be about the jewelry versus the stones, if that makes sense. Sharon: Yes, it makes a lot of sense. What do you see as the market for stones for jewelry, or stones in general? You hear so much about changes with younger buyers. What's the market? Is it the same as always? Caroline: The market is strong at the moment; that's for sure. I will tell you the number of very, very fine quality, unenhanced, colored gemstones, there are not so many around, and those that are around are incredibly expensive. You can see that, in many cases, the younger generation can very easily be priced out. They want a Burmese ruby, but to get a nice one, they have to have incredibly deep pockets. So, what we're seeing now is—and I'll carry on with rubies as an example—they're going to make concessions. They might say they want a Burmese ruby, but in order to afford one, they're going to take a heated Burmese ruby. So, they're getting a few of the things they want, but not everything. On the flip side of that, there's this wonderful source of rubies in Mozambique. People are now saying, “O.K., I can still have a beautiful ruby, but instead of it being from Burma, I'm going to get an equally beautiful one from Mozambique and it's going to cost me less.” It might not have the cachet of a Burmese ruby, but that's the direction they want to go in. We're seeing people look for alternatives in quite a saturated market. We're seeing that spinels are coming up now, and more people are really interested in spinels. They're realizing what fabulous colors they come in and what bright stones they are. I see that really taking off in the next five to 10 years. Already in the last five years, spinels have made big tracks into the market, and I see that continuing. I think the new generation of buyers is a little more open to different sources and different gemstones than perhaps the previous generation was. Sharon: I think open is a good word. I think it's broadened. It's not just emerald, sapphire, ruby, but spinels and padparadscha seem like the big ones. Caroline: Padparadschas are sapphires. They are stones that have a very specific combination of pink and yellow for a padparadscha. A beautifully colored padparadscha that is clean and unheated with an ideal origin is very desirable, as we say, very, very desirable. Sharon: Yes, so I hear. That's one I happen to hear about. The spinels have broadened the market. It seems that now people are more open. Caroline: I think they're much more open now. They're willing to look at different styles and different colors and different minerals and realizing it can be fun. It's a good alternative; it's not a bad alternative. Sharon: Right, and it may be the only viable alternative, in a sense. Caroline: I think many people are realizing that. Because, like I said, to get a high-quality, Burma, no-heat ruby, first you've got to find it and then you've got to acquire it. I would say that the vast majority of people—and this is a very small stone—they're going to find that to be difficult. Sharon: Yes, you're the one who would know. Thank you so much for talking with us today. It's very, very interesting. I appreciate it, and I hope you have everything you want come across your desk. Caroline: Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure. Yes, I can't wait to do it again. Sharon: Thanks a lot, Caroline. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

TW: animal abuse, mentions of multiple types of abuse, suicide. Today's episode is a very informative look into cults, and stolen paintings. Caroline covers the developing story of The Garden, the differences between communes, religions and cults, as well as her own opinion. There is the understanding that this commune could be what they claim to be, however there are certain things that are concerning to some people. Caroline and Claire implore viewers to do their own research. This is a heavy topic, and both ladies understand how verified cults have mournfully impacted an innumerable amount of people all over the world. Claire takes us on a somewhat lighter journey of Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer a Painting by Frans Hals. This story includes 3 misfortunes, 2 Boys, and 1 solid mug of beer. Honestly, so thankful for Claire, and her constant rays of sunshine. Note from Caroline: It is important, especially for this episode, that we explain to you some of our sources in the description. I was able to gain a lot of information about the background on cults from some good goog searches. For the purposes of the commune described in this episode, I used information from these tiktok accounts listed below. I do not claim to be the first person to cover this story. These people did the work, as well as a few others. There are already some articles written by insider.com etc. I hope that my story today provides an in-depth timeline, information on cults, and the ability for viewers to form their own opinions, and do their own research. Thomaseddisonhatepage - Their name is Sumner, and they are lovely. They continue to cover the story as it progresses. Cultmaker- They also provide information on the commune, and provide updates on what is happening. They also make multiple tik toks informing viewers on the Rainbow Family, give information on what cults are, as well as information on Sundown Towns. BookofEdith- Same as the our other friends. They provide information on the commune, given updates, do their research, and also called immigration. Places to call if you're worried about your safety, or someone you love. Domestic Violence Support: https://www.thehotline.org/ - you can chat with someone online or call at: 1.800.799.SAFE Family Violence Prevention Center 1-800-313-1310 National Sexual Assault Hotline 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) Stop it Now! 1-888-PREVENT National Runaway Safeline 1-800-RUNAWAY (786-2929) Suicide Hotline 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) RAINN 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) For a more complete list of helplines go to: https://www.pleaselive.org/hotlines/ Stay safe, be good, and wear a mask. Website: https://bfguidetomoneyandm.wixsite.com/website Linktree: https://linktr.ee/bfguidetomm Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Caroline:Thank you so much for joining us. That wallpaper behind you is absolutely beautiful.Teggy:It's Dorothy Draper, who like did all of the interior design for The Greenbrier Hotel and The Beverly Hills Hotel.Caroline:Nice.Teggy:Yeah. You can still buy her wallpapers, which is fun.Caroline:Amazing. They're beautiful. I love stripes, all stripes.Jacqueline:I'm Jacqueline. I'm going to be co-hosting today with Caroline Morris. I did want to do a shout out to the vipHomeLink app, which is our sponsor, our main sponsor for this podcast, and also where me and Caroline work vigorously to help homeowners prevent any issues in the home and make living in their homes better.Jacqueline:Today we have with us Teggy French, fashion blogger and designer, who's going to be talking about all things home inspiration, home decor, home design, and how to make living beautiful easy on a budget. Welcome, Teggy. How are you?Teggy:Hi, I'm great. So nice to be here, thank you for having me.Jacqueline:Why don't you give us a little bit of introduction about yourself?Teggy:I am Teggy. I also go by the name of Alex, but Teggy was a nickname given to me in college, it's a play off of my maiden name, which was Tegenborg, and French is my middle name. I decided when I started my blog that I wanted a name that would translate into a business, should I decide to go that way. That's where Teggy French came from. I reside in New Vernon, New Jersey. I currently co-own a jewelry company called French and Ford, with my partner out of Dallas, and I'm getting ready to launch Teggy French, the clothing brand, on October 15. I'm still doing influencing, but now I'm starting to go into more of the design field, which is super exciting.Caroline:That's an inspiration to all. Could you share a little bit about how you got into the design space and what your inspiration is? We see the wallpaper and the fabrics behind you, it's so beautiful, but not necessarily every day. Could you share a little bit about your inspiration and how you got into the field?Teggy:I grew up with parents that spent every weekend going to auction houses or antiquing, and they loved to decorate. I mean, I probably changed my bedroom growing up like every six months. It was great having parents that nurtured that. My background in school was in acting and that didn't pan out the way I had hoped to, but with that, I still longed to have that creativity in my life. One day, someone was just like, "You should start a fashion blog," and I was like, "I should start a fashion blog." I came home and I did a lot of research and I literally launched the blog like 24 hours later.Teggy:I've always had an affinity for the 1960s, as you can probably tell. I think it was a time where people really took pride in the way that they dress. There obviously wasn't as many options, so wardrobes were much smaller, which I think is hopefully something we're now getting back into with sustainability of buying things that are going to be classic and take you through being able to wear it from the beach.Teggy:Through the blog, I just started to realize that people really responded to the 1960's style that I'm showing. There's not a lot of caftans on the market right now, so that's where I was like, "Well, maybe this is something that people would respond to." Instead of throwing on your workout clothes to go to the post office, why not throw on a caftan? Then my jewelry company started with a pair of bow earrings that I found at an antique store in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. I reached out to a woman I knew and I was like, "Do you think we can get these made?" and she was like, "Let me try it."Teggy:The bottom line of my story is just give it a whirl. If you're passionate about something and you have an idea, there's a way to get it done. I'm definitely living proof of that. I never thought that I would have two companies and be living my dream life five years after starting a blog. It's been a blessing, for sure.Jacqueline:I love the story about how you ... I was actually just down the shore. I was in Lavallette, which is near Point Pleasant, a little bit, not too far. But I love how you were in an antique store and you found these earrings and now you're creating this brand. Can you talk about antiquing in terms of creating a home space and finds that you've had or advice for people who want to start to bring antique and vintage home decor items into their space?Teggy:The biggest thing to just get over any hurdle of when it comes to home decor is be open to shopping anywhere and everywhere. I think a lot of times people think they need to go to one place and decorate their home in one color. It works and it looks pretty, but get a little creative, especially if you're on a budget. In Morristown, for example, which is near where we all live, there's the Market Street Mission. The stuff that they get is absolutely incredible. You can go every day and it's the thrill of the hunt. I have these beautiful chinoiserie pieces of art in my bedroom and they were $40 range. Then if you were to walk into a store, they would probably cost you about $2,000.Teggy:It's going antiquing, going to TJ Maxx, putting it all together. Then you invest in certain pieces, like maybe a sofa or something like that. But I spout that if you just manifest what it is you're looking for that the shopping gods will answer. You just have to be open to going to all different places.Caroline:I love decorating. This is my third apartment to decorate. My husband is very neutral, but the next, we're looking to buy a house and I was like, "I get my pinks and my blues and I don't care what you say. I get in an apartment it's a couple of rooms, but in a house, I was like, "I've given you three apartments of neutral, we can expand from here."Teggy:I bet you once you do it, he will actually like it. It's just getting out of the comfort zone.Caroline:I totally agree. Honestly, he wears colors. His suits are neutral, but his dress shirts, his ties, everything's so colorful. I was like, "Here we go to our bland apartment. Whoopideedoo."Teggy:[inaudible 00:06:47] stand out as the art, which is also quite [inaudible 00:06:49]. But it creates a space that you love, that's what I found. You would look behind me and be like, "Oh, she must be in Florida or California," and I'm in the suburbs of New Jersey. Some people might be like, "That doesn't go here," but there are no rules when it comes to fashion or decor. It comes from with it, you have to do what makes you happy. I'm like, "Well, Palm Beach and Palm Springs make me happy," so I'm going to create that world so when I'm in my home I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be. I am where I'm supposed to be, which is New Jersey, but you can have a little fun with creating an atmosphere to match maybe where you'd rather be.Caroline:Now, does your husband love it?Teggy:Well, it's funny. I painted the front hallway pink, and that was the first time he was like, "I don't want to live in an all pink house." Okay, I respect that, so I had it painted back to white. It does have to be a compromise. If you walk to the other end of my house, it's definitely more masculine. The living room and the sunroom are kind of Teggy World and then the other rooms are definitely more dark and a bit more Ralph Lauren-esque.Caroline:Okay. Yeah, my parents' house, I honestly tried to get up there to film today, but they're both home so it really didn't make that much sense, their bedroom is pink, the dining room is this jungle bright green, the ceiling is like a felt, not felt, like a velvet. It's so interesting.Teggy:Wow.Caroline:Then the library is this dark navy, like Ralph Lauren too.Teggy:Yes.Caroline:I guess it's all about compromise.Teggy:I need to see their house because that sounds fabulous.Caroline:My mom's similar to you, decorates the whole entire house like every couple of months. When we were growing up and she was just home with my brother and I, and my dad just, I think, gave her jobs and was just like, "Oh, you want to redo the bedroom again? Sure, whatever makes you happy." I had a bedroom change every couple of years too. It's just-Teggy:Gotta keep it moving.Caroline:Exactly. In your style that you wear in your style and your home, how do you draw those parallels to still be you?Jacqueline:What is your process for [crosstalk 00:09:13] a space? It's like you have the aesthetic that you love, you have a bit of a vision for a room, but how do you really bring that into action?Teggy:It all starts with color for me. I'll see colors that really speak to me. For my living room, for example, I walked into a store and they had this turquoise and this deep kind of marigold color. I never would have thought to put those together, but it really spoke to me. It was a bench that they had, and my living room at this point was all white velvet and yellows, and I brought the bench home and then it just turned into redecorating the entire room with that one piece.Teggy:My process definitely starts with color, and then from there, kind of laying out how the room is going to look. I'm a very visual person, so what I will do is if I find pictures online, I have this app called PicMonkey, where you can actually create a collage and I'll place all of the pieces of furniture and see how it feels. I do that a lot with outfits as well. It just makes things much easier with the way that my mind works.Teggy:Then once the furniture and everything is in there, that's where the fun really begins. Take your time with accessorizing and with artwork. I can live with a blank wall for like three years because I would rather happen upon the perfect piece of artwork as opposed to settle for something. I found this giant foo dog at HomeGoods on clearance for like $50.Caroline:It's so cute.Teggy:It's so cute. Also, I highly recommend having an SUV or a pickup truck. So the next lease you get or your next car you buy, definitely got a big car because you have to be prepared at all times. I mean, my dad and I will literally be driving down the road and we'll pull a U-ey and somebody's put something out by the garbage and we're like, "That's fabulous. We're going to take that and make it super cool."Jacqueline:You start with the color, then you create the space in terms of the flow with the furniture, and then the accessorizing is really that last part.Teggy:100%, yep.Jacqueline:That's helpful. That also makes me feel better because I moved into my new apartment back in April, and you can't see the wall that's in front of me, but I have a little dining area, it's kind of like a living room, dining room space and then I have an eat-in kitchen. I want to put artwork on these walls, but I don't want just any artwork so I've been holding off, holding off, so it's blank. I'm like, "I want something there, but I don't want it to be just anything."Jacqueline:The same thing I got rid of some of the artwork in my bedroom. I had just had it for four years, I wanted something fresh. I wanted more color, actually. I'm a neutral girl.Teggy:Okay.Jacqueline:[crosstalk 00:12:05], grays. I like the gold accents, but whites and grays with some gold. I'm trying to bring in more color, like I brought in some blue curtains. But my bedroom, I want to bring color in there too so I kind of got rid of my gray, but I don't have anything there yet. Knowing that it's okay to wait, that you endorse it, for the right piece makes me feel better, because I'm like I just don't want to put just anything in there because if I don't like it or if it's just trying to force itself in there, I'm not going to feel good in this space.Teggy:No, and now more than any other time, I think we're realizing our homes are our sanctuaries right now. We have to create an environment that we really love and that makes us zen. We're spending every waking moment in our homes, it should be a place that you've created that you really love. It's a good time to redecorate, that's for sure.Teggy:Don't be afraid of buying things and trying them out, and if they don't work, bring them back. I think a lot of people are afraid of that, like "Is it going to work? Is it not going to work?" but just throw it in your car, see if it works.Jacqueline:Yeah, I need to see it in the space. I'm really visual that way, I have to see it in the space or I don't know. I'm not as good at visualizing, I need to see how it really works.Teggy:Absolutely.Caroline:It's interesting. My sister-in-law and my grandmother-in-law, whatever they're called, both are artists. So we're not allowed to have blank spaces or they'll just bring a million pieces of art to us. It's beautiful, I don't want to ... It's like nice and everything, but I'm sort of like, "Oh my God, just let me have a blank wall for 10 minutes. My God, I don't need this."Teggy:That when you politely accept it, you hang it when they come over.Caroline:Exactly.Teggy:Because newsflash, nobody gets to tell you what to do with your own space. That has taken me 37 years to learn, to tell people, "No, this is going to be what I want."Caroline:Good to know. I'm going to take that with me. I'm going to tell them, "Teggy says."Teggy:Yeah. Sorry, are you living here? Hopefully not. I believe the answer's no, so thank you and let's move on.Caroline:That might be the best advice of this whole podcast.Caroline:I know you touched on this a little bit about the Market Street Mission and TJ Maxx and all those sorts of places, but can you share a little bit more on feeling fabulous on a budget? I mean, I think a lot of our listeners definitely like that space and splurge here but don't want to splurge on everything. How can you create your unique space without spending all this money?Teggy:Regardless of where you are, buying at the local thrift stores. Go on Facebook Marketplace. Also, don't be afraid, most thrift stores will give you at least 10% off of whatever the prices are marked, never feel nervous about negotiating prices.Teggy:It depends what your aesthetic is. If you don't have a big budget to decorate, go through books of time eras that maybe speak to you, for me, mid-century modern. Then you go on Facebook Marketplace, you do a search, and you'd be so surprised at the prices you can get. Sometimes people are even giving them away for free. You can go, and Benjamin Moore has the best color paints, there's like Fine Paints of Europe that is this beautiful, high-gloss lacquered paint. You just throw some paint on it and all of a sudden it looks like you've spent a fortune.Teggy:Then, again, TJ Maxx. I literally went into TJ Maxx and found Missoni pillows on clearance for its $13. Velvet, beautiful Missoni pillows. You just have to be open to shopping anywhere and everywhere. Listen, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, places like that are great, but they're expensive. Your living space should be a place that just makes you super happy, and I've found that I'm never happy if I've put myself into debt to have something nice.Teggy:But I remember, when I lived in New York City, I lived in this really teeny, tiny apartment. I had no money and the world's smallest bedroom, but I had a lot of clothes. So I went to Ikea, I got a plain white bed that had drawers underneath it to store everything and then I got their armoires and that's where I hung all my clothes. Then they painted the room a really fabulous color. That's another key, paint the room a super fun color and then you could just throw ... TJ Maxx has the best priced mirrors. A sunburst mirror that's gold on a navy blue wall looks amazing. Then I just got one giant piece of artwork. My little apartment was so cute and I did the whole thing for under a thousand dollars.Caroline:Wow.Teggy:Yeah. I mean, I don't believe that you have to have a lot of money to look like you have a lot of money.Caroline:That's fair.Teggy:Don't put yourself into debt because you think that you need to spend to create a certain life. It's not true. Some of the best items in clothing that I own are from Salvation Army, that cost ... I got a Pucci dress once for like $3. I know. Market Street Mission, I found a vintage Pucci dress for $7.Jacqueline:That's incredible.Caroline:I have to go there.Jacqueline:Yeah, we're not far.Caroline:Yeah, seriously.Jacqueline:We could go there.Caroline:Jacqueline, let's go one of these days.Jacqueline:I actually used to live like two blocks from there.Teggy:[crosstalk 00:18:04]. Let's say I'm carrying a designer bag and somebody is like, "I like your bag," and it's a Chanel bag or something, I'm like, "Thanks," and I get so uncomfortable. But if somebody's like, "I like your shirt," and I found it at TJ Maxx on clearance for $13, I'm so proud to tell that because it's way more exciting. I'm more proud that I found something for $13 and more embarrassed that I'm carrying something that I probably should not have bought.Teggy:That's what I really tried to do through Teggy French. Once a week, I'll do my under $100 picks because I think it's just important. Even if you can afford the expensive stuff, what's the point? It's all about creativity for me, that's where I get the most excitement.Jacqueline:I got a lot of things in my home on Facebook Marketplace. I love the thrill of negotiation. Right now, I'm at this IKEA table, it's like a tulip table. I spray painted the base of it gold and, I haven't done it yet, but I have some marble contact paper on the top. Because the one I love from West Elm is thousands, so I'm like, "How could I make this myself?" I got these cheap velvet chairs that look like the West Elm ones on Amazon for ... I think I got four chairs for like 150. I'm like, "I'm really proud of myself."Caroline:That's so funny because I've been debating whether or not I should get that table and chairs from West Elm.Jacqueline:Yeah, I love it. You'd be surprised, sometimes you can negotiate. I went to World Market, and in my living room area, I have these two little marble gold tables. I was able to negotiate the floor model as opposed to one in the back. They were originally, I think it was 600 for the two tables, they nest, and I took them all for 250 because he gave me the floor model.Teggy:See?Jacqueline:I have advice, I didn't even know it. But I was so proud of that. I wanted to be sustainable in my purchases. This is a rental, I'm not living here, so it's like I don't want to spend a lot of money because I'm moving in with my boyfriend down the road. It's going to change, we're going to have to turn things over.Jacqueline:Facebook Marketplace, I love it. I have a wine rack, I just stained the wood on there. I'm becoming such a DIY-er, it's incredible.Teggy:We have such a unique time in our life right now where we really can be creative, we have time to do that.Jacqueline:Yeah. I do love garage sales, but they're not happening as often I don't think right now with COVID. My dad never found a garage sale he didn't like, he'd always bring home something from a garage sale. I think I got that from him.Caroline:My mom is the bigg estate gal, estate sale gal. She always finds some great finds.Teggy:The vintage clothes you can find at those places are amazing. Also, become friends with realtors because a lot of times the realtors will know prior to these homes going on the market that they're going to be having an estate sale and they can get you in there.Caroline:See, that's what I need.Teggy:People at your favorite stores, because when it does come time to buying investment pieces, my shoe guy at Neiman Marcus, I'm going to be one of the first people he texts, "These are going to be going on sale," because we have a good relationship. It's always good to be friends with people.Caroline:Speaking of investment pieces, I know you're talking Neiman's and not furniture, but if you had a few things that you would say investment pieces for your home, what would you say that the splurge items would be?Teggy:The splurge items in my home have been my rugs. I go to J&S in Morristown and they have the best selection and they can work with your price point. I love Oriental rugs, and so that's been a great investment. I also invested in a Missoni runner for my hallway, which actually should have been twice the price, but they were able to do it somehow that they sewed it together to make it less expensive for me. So rugs for sure.Teggy:Then I always had this thing growing up, my parents were very into decor, but they did not have any comfortable couches. When we first bought our house, I was like, "I need to get the world's biggest L-shaped, comfortable couch." That was our first big investment piece. I do not recommend getting velvet if you're planning on having children that probably wasn't the smartest investment, but I look at it and it makes me really happy.Teggy:Then artwork. If there's an artist that you love, save up and buy one of their pieces because it's going to be something that's really special for you. If you study it, a lot of times they're going to go up in value. I have a painting that my parents bought in 1979, it was the first painting that they ever bought together. The value of it is crazy compared to what they bought it for. It's nice to be able to pass those things down.Teggy:Besides that, I'm looking at my lamps, I got those down the shore too. If you're looking to go antiquing, Arnold Avenue in Point Pleasant has great places, as well as Asbury Park.Caroline:Amazing.Teggy:But I got these for like a hundred dollars for two of them. Then I found them online and they were over a thousand dollars.Caroline:They're so cute.Teggy:It's mixing old with new, but you don't have to really invest in a lot. It's all about how you put things together. You can make things look like a million dollars, and secretly it was like $5.Caroline:You remind me a lot of my mom in her thought process as well.Teggy:Well, it's so sad because the auction houses have all really closed. Talk about exhilarating, with bidding on things. You know who has good stuff actually, which I was unaware of until recently? Walmart. Is it annoying if I get up and walk to show you guys stuff?Caroline:No, that's super cool.Jacqueline:No.Teggy:Actually, mostly online. I went to Walmart yesterday, oddly enough, and I got so many cute long T-shirts in the men's department. Okay, I needed two end tables for this space here. If you go on Jonathan Adler, these cost a fortune. I found them on Walmart for like a quarter of the price and they were delivered within two days. I remember I posted them on Like To Know It and they sold out immediately because people could not believe what I paid for them.Teggy:What else did I get there? Oh, these I got from HomeGoods, these ghost chairs.Jacqueline:That's awesome.Teggy:Then I just had them reupholstered. I get so many compliments. These were a hundred dollars each and then-Caroline:Your house is phenomenal.Jacqueline:I know.Teggy:Well, thank you.Caroline:I mean, I'm not surprised, but it's really ... Wow.Teggy:Thank you. I love it. I wake up every day and I'm just so grateful, that bar cart is from Walmart. It was a hundred dollars.Jacqueline:That's adorable.Caroline:Who even knew Walmart had furniture.Jacqueline:I think they're trying to step up their game.Caroline:Okay.Teggy:They've upped their game, big time. Go on Walmart and anything that you can find on Amazon you can find on Walmart. They outsource a lot from different people, but they're shipping super fast.Teggy:Then with bar carts, fill it up with all of the vintage glasses. Go to Market Street Mission and they have the ... Or if you need china, I got Fitz and Floyd stuff there yesterday, they had Royal Doulton.Caroline:Wow.Teggy:Amazing china for $150 for the whole set. But you just fill it up, I have my vintage poodles. These are all from TJ Maxx. That's another thing, if you see something at TJ Maxx that you love and they only have one of it, keep going to different ones throughout the state, because chances are that you'll find more. The Missoni pillows, I found in three different places on clearance.Caroline:Speaking of poodles, this is off script, but I remember a few weeks ago you were maybe doing a shout out for doodles.Teggy:Yes.Caroline:Did you ever find a breeder?Teggy:Oh my gosh. I have like a million breeders that people sent me, but no, I have not committed to one. Why do you have one?Caroline:Yeah, we got ours, she's a mini labradoodle and she's that apricot color.Teggy:Oh, that's my favorite.Caroline:She's so fabulous. Jacqueline's met her. I think we'd agree that she's pretty cute. She's right in Blairstown, New Jersey.Teggy:I went to Blair Academy.Caroline:Really? Okay, so yeah, you drive literally like two miles past the school and it's this little farm on your left.Teggy:Oh, I love that.Caroline:[crosstalk 00:26:56].Teggy:I love that information. I'm thinking of doing that for Christmas for our son.Caroline:Oh my God, you're going to be so in love. They're such a perfect size. I think she's maybe 17 pounds.Teggy:Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, because I have a Maltipoo now who's also apricot. That's my favorite color.Caroline:Aw, how cute.Teggy:He's 13 pounds, but he's eight years old and he's been very sick so I almost feel like it might be good for him to have a little friend around.Caroline:Yeah, definitely. I can send over the information.Teggy:Okay. That'd be great, thank you.Caroline:Yeah. All right, back to normal scheduled programming.Jacqueline:Dogs are important, they're part of home life. I think it's related.Caroline:Perfect.Teggy:That's true.Jacqueline:I was going to add, before we move on, when I was looking for things for my new apartment, a girlfriend of mine, she's really good at if you have an idea she'll put together a vision board and then she'll go out and find the pieces online. She's just really great at that. I'll tell her I like this thing, I'm inspired by this, and within an hour she has an Amazon cart for me of all the items that are [inaudible 00:28:02] versions of it or something like that. She's great.Teggy:She should start a business.Jacqueline:But looking through Walmart ... I know, she should do that, she's amazing. I guess they're doing a new collaboration with Drew Barrymore so they have a lot of really cute, mid-century items, home decor, and I was loving it. The prices are great.Teggy:The prices are great and the quality is really good. I have some of the Drew Barrymore stuff in my son's nursery because she did a little kids collaboration with them. It's all really well-made. You get it, girl. You guys have taught me a lot on this call, thank you. It's amazing.Teggy:But also, looking out at my pool right now, I have to get everything on a budget and I got these cement urns on Facebook Marketplace, two for $100.Jacqueline:That's a great price.Teggy:Then I got the vintage table and chairs on Facebook Marketplace for $500, which was a splurge. Again, if you looked on eBay or something like that, they would be more expensive. You've got to shop around, that's the case in point, you know? Get creative.Jacqueline:Let's talk about Splendor in, September. Can you talk about what it is for our listeners and your involvement?Teggy:Splendor in September is normally known as Mansion in May. It happens every other year. The Women's Association here find a mansion and they create a showhouse that designers come into. They have to apply with their vision and then they're selected to decorate a space within the mansion. The money goes to Morristown Hospital, which is such a great hospital here. We're so lucky to have it.Teggy:Yeah, people pay to go in and tour the house. Obviously, with COVID, Mansion in May was canceled, but the women from the Women's Association, they're rock stars and they managed to get everything in place so that it can happen. I got involved in it, I actually did just the designer sales space, which is where people go if they want to buy anything in any of the rooms. That's a great place too to get inspiration, is seeing what these designers did. A lot of times the stuff in the rooms are for sale.Teggy:I am not an interior designer by any means, but Mrs. [inaudible 00:00:30:23], from F. Gerald New, who I'm absolutely obsessed with and talk about inspiration and style, you guys should stop in and see her because she has the perfect bouffant, she's always dressed immaculately and she has the most incredible personal style as well as interior style. She recommended to them that maybe it would be fun for me to do a space because I have Teggy French. There was this 1950's wallpaper that was equestrian themed and I could not bear to part with it, so my space was all based around that specific wallpaper. Then everything in the room was a bargain. I got to go to all the vintage shops and you can buy all of that.Teggy:But the house is spectacular, so I highly recommend to anybody listening, either go and visit or do the virtual tour because it goes towards a great cause. It's definitely inspiring if you're looking to redecorate a space in your home. The mansion is open for tours starting on the 8th.Caroline:That's so exciting, I can't wait to see it.Jacqueline:[crosstalk 00:31:22], checking it out.Teggy:Yeah, it is really exciting. The house is for sale, it's on Van Beuren Road. It's listed with Weichert Realtors, with Mary Horn, and so if you love the house, it can be yours. It's a phenomenal, phenomenal home. Literally, you drive up and you just feel like you're stepping back in time. There's actually a picture of the couple that lived there in the 1960s that I put into my design space. She's wearing a fur and he's dressed in his riding clothes. Again, like all of that 1960s, you just look at it and it's just like, "Ah," people were so chic.Caroline:Yes, I love that era. I think it's pretty phenomenal.Teggy:Me too. Maybe we lived in the 1960s, who knows?Caroline:Yeah, like a past life version of ourselves.Teggy:Exactly.Jacqueline:I was a big Mad Men fan.Teggy:Was that not everything, the fashion in that show?Jacqueline:It was incredible. My grandmother worked at an advertising agency in the '60s.Teggy:She [crosstalk 00:32:25].Jacqueline:So we watched it together. She really liked Don Draper, as did I. Complicated as he was and all, I mean.Teggy:He is a spectacular specimen, that Don Draper.Jacqueline:Yeah, but the clothes and the decor are fabulous, and juxtaposing Betty with Megan and their different aesthetics, super cool, super fun.Teggy:That's another great example, is watch old shows and old movies and get out those books. That's what it's about. Anything that speaks to you, tear pages out, Pinterest it, whatever it is. I really do believe in the power of manifestation, if there's something you're looking for, write it down in a journal and think about it and it just might come to you.Jacqueline:I actually recently went to Graceland, which is just like a time capsule. I don't have a lot of color, but if I show ... I'm trying to bring color in a little bit more.Teggy:Oh, it's fabulous.Jacqueline:I'm starting to play with it, but I walked through Graceland and his front seating area has beautiful blue peacock stained glass and then these white couches with these dark blue accents. I'm like inspired by it, so [crosstalk 00:33:44].Caroline:Get some plants, Jacqueline.Teggy:Yes, you've got to bring Graceland to New Jersey.Jacqueline:It is a time capsule. It is so cool, I was in awe.Teggy:Isn't it?Jacqueline:Except for the carpeting in the kitchen. I don't know if I can get down with that.Teggy:No, that's like shag carpeting in bathrooms. It's like, "Mmm."Jacqueline:Yeah, no. Yeah.Caroline:It's not great.Jacqueline:I was phenomenal. This was so much fun. Thank you so much for coming on and speaking with us.Teggy:Oh my gosh, anytime. It was so much fun.Caroline:Well, thank you, Teggy, so much for joining us. We can't wait for listeners to hear this.Jacqueline:If they want to follow you on Instagram, check out your blog, where should they go?Caroline:[crosstalk 00:34:21].Teggy:@TeggyFrench is my Instagram and that's where I do most of my stuff, as well as TeggyFrench.com is my blog, and then French and Ford is the earring line. Yeah, we'll be launching our first real, legit line of Teggy French caftans October 15. It's going to be a Very Teggy Christmas, is the theme.Caroline:I love that.Teggy:Yeah.Caroline:I can't wait to buy something.Teggy:Oh, good. Yes, I want to see you both in caftans next week.Jacqueline:You got it.

Welcome to the vipHome Podcast where we talk about all the things homeowners need to know.Glenn:Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I always love to talk about bugs and pest control, and it's not something that a lot of people love to talk about. So I'm happy to be able to share my love of bugs and pest control with your viewers.Glenn:I got into this uniquely as a lot of people do in our industry. It's not necessarily the industry that people say, "I want to be the bug killer when I grow up," or "I want to play with bugs when I grow up." But actually, when I was very little, I did have a pet, scorpion. We found it in the garage. My mom was hesitant at first. It was just a little scorpion. We put it in a fish bowl and it turned out to be the best pet we ever had-Jacqueline:No way.Glenn:... because it didn't need to be walked, you didn't need to take it... Bathroom breaks weren't a problem, vacations weren't a problem, all of that. I went on to college. I was going to be a pediatrician. Lost the thought about having anything to do with bugs and got to college and I had to take an elective class for my degree. I took an entomology class and had this realization that I can play with bugs for the rest of my life as a job.Glenn:Went down, changed my major. Again, my mom wasn't thrilled, but she's happy now. I'm gainfully employed. She was a little worried at one time. I went through college, I ended up taking some time in between. I got a bachelor's and a master's in entomology, but I took some time in between and I worked in a virology lab for a while, making vaccine components and stuff, and came back to the entomology.Glenn:And did the master's degree and fell into the industry doing structural pest control type stuff. Then I worked at a regional company in the Atlanta, Georgia area, and times past, some things happened at that company. They got acquired by a larger company. I decided it was time to step up to the big leagues and come to the biggest. So I'm happy to be where I am today.Caroline:Can you share a little bit about what entomology is? I know it's the study of bugs maybe.Glenn:Yeah, so I can elaborate. Entomology actually lumps in a lot of different things because we seem to be the catchall for things that other people don't want. Entomology by definition is the study of insects, and insects are six legged, three body segments, stuff like that. Spiders don't technically fall into entomology by definition, but we lump them in because they're the closest thing to the study of in that aspect.Glenn:In the pest control world, entomologists get lumped into rodent control, other wildlife, snakes, just the full gambit of things that come that... I see Caroline's shaking. Yeah, it's the stuff people don't want.Caroline:Yeah. I don't really mind bugs so much and spiders are fine, but you introduce the snake to the crowd and whoa.Glenn:I'm not a snake person myself-Caroline:Oh, good.Glenn:... but I will happily take a tarantula and put it on my face. So I'm still weird.Caroline:Okay.Glenn:There's entomologists, and then there's normal people, and I fall into the entomologist category.Jacqueline:What's a day in your life look like for you?Glenn:We get a lot of specimens sent in that either our operations have trouble figuring out what it is. We get a lot of Facebook requests for pest IDs, customers, random fans of Orkin that follow us on social media platforms. We'll post a picture and say, "Hey, what is this? Hey Orkin man." We're the behind the scenes Orkin men and women for that matter. We have a nice team of Orkin women that are employed here.Glenn:So that is one big aspect that we do is pest identification. It's really critical to the pest control process to know what you're trying to control. The second thing that we do is we problem solve. If there's unique situation going on in the field that an operation is having trouble with, or maybe it's a pharmaceutical plant that has something going on, that it's just highly sensitive.Glenn:We can go out, we can assess the situation, we can provide recommendations for solving those type problems. The last thing that we do is really assist our field operations in writing protocols so that they have the best... We evaluate equipment, we evaluate products and we write the protocols to help them have the best tools, and the best knowledge, and the best process to solve these problems the easiest way for them and the best for our customers.Caroline:Can you share a little bit as we go into the late summer, early fall, what pests really become problems? I know you said that you're solution-oriented, but before calling Orkin or before calling a pest service, how can you prevent some of these pests from doing harm?Glenn:And harm is what we're trying to prevent. I think the harm isn't necessarily... There's obvious harm that they could do to people, some pests, but there's harm to homes. And that's the target that we're thinking about today is as weather cools off, we get into these cooler months, shorter days, these pests try and find someplace to go. They're trying to escape the cold weather. They're trying to find someplace to bed down just like we do during the winter months, we want to stay warm and cozy.Glenn:So there's really two major categories of things that we could be facing. Rodents are a huge one. Rodents try and migrate into homes, businesses, whatever, during the fall months so that they can survive the winter months and breed at the same time. The second category, and we'll get into what can we do about it in just second. The second category is what we call occasional invaders. And these are things that don't typically feed or breed in homes, but try and escape things like the cold, the hot.Glenn:They're looking for water, they're looking for some kind of food resource, and they just happen into the home by accident. So call them occasional invaders. Some of the occasional invaders that we might think of would be boxelder bugs. Boxelder bugs, I get hundreds of friends asking what these red and black looking bugs are that come in mass to the side of their house or whatever.Glenn:They're predominantly black, they have some red markings on them. When they're young, they're almost exclusively red with some very little light black marks, black legs and stuff like that. So they're just really bright and striking in color and people just see hundreds of them all the sudden on the side of their house or whatever. And it's just a common occurrence. A lot of things will kill them, they'll go away, but you want to try and keep them from coming inside.Glenn:Stink bugs or predominant.Caroline:We get a lot of them.Glenn:Yeah, Caroline mentioned she was from the New England States. That is a huge area for the brown marmorated stink bug. It's an invasive species. If you think of what home plate looks, a home plate shape, pentagon shaped, but that's more of what it's like. They call them marmorated, that means speckled or patterned in color. And they're this brownish pattern on their body. They call them stink bugs because if you touch them, they release this chemical that stinks and it's a repellent to other insects and other predators.Caroline:I have a question on stink bugs.Glenn:Yeah, [crosstalk 00:08:01].Caroline:... if it's a myth or a rumor, but I heard that if you kill them, that that stink actually attracts their friends, so you get more.Glenn:While we find it offensive, that smell can be an aphrodisiac to other stink bugs. It has some pheromones in it, so they will use it to aggregate, they will use it to find each other. It also has some antibacterial qualities. So I'm not saying that we should take stink bugs and clean our hands [crosstalk 00:08:38] from COVID-19 or anything, but it does help them protect themselves from other microorganisms that might cause them illness.Glenn:One thing that I don't want your viewers to do is suck them up in their vacuum cleaner. If you suck them up in the vacuum cleaner, that smell, that stink can get in the vacuum cleaner and it is really hard to get it out. So it's better to trap them, throw them outside, get them with a cup and a piece of paper and take them out, or just grab them with a Kleenex or something like that.Glenn:The Kleenex will keep the oil from getting on your hands. You can wash your hands afterwards, but they don't bite or anything. So it's something that you can just grab and get rid of and not ruin your vacuum cleaner.Jacqueline:Would you say that there are insects that you would recommend or would be okay with using a vacuum to clean up, if you will?Glenn:Yeah. Another occasional invader that we think about as ladybugs. Ladybugs, I highly recommend sucking up in the vacuum cleaner because-Jacqueline:Okay.Glenn:... if you smash a ladybug like on your wall or on your curtains or whatever, they'll release this orange stain. It's similar to the stuff that a stink bug would release. It's a chemical that they exude to try and ward off predators or whatever, but it will stay in wallpaper. It'll stay in paint, it'll stay in fabrics. So by sucking them up with the vacuum cleaner, it doesn't let them scotch that out and stain the surface.Jacqueline:All right.Glenn:Most bugs, it's not a problem to suck up in the vacuum cleaner. It's really the ones that we think about like stink bugs that have this pungent odor associated with them that we don't want to do that.Jacqueline:That makes sense.Caroline:I always remember as a kid, when I found a ladybug, I was so excited and my mom was like, "Oh no, you don't want ladybugs. That means something's wrong or an infestation of sorts." So-Glenn:Ladybugs are actually very beneficial. To have them in your garden is amazing. They eat aphids, which are pests of plants. They suck the plant juices, ladybugs actually eat those. So they're really good to have around. Yeah, you don't want them inside. They will die inside. Other parts of the country, in like the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, those areas, they actually get really, really, really bad infestations of ladybugs.Glenn:So like the stink bugs that we were talking about, or boxelder bugs that we get in mass in these areas, in your area, my area, Atlanta, Georgia, Southeast, they get mass infestations of ladybugs. And those lady bugs can die in the attic, in the wall voids, in places where you can't get to them as easy. And those bug carcasses for lack of better term can attract other pests. There's other pests that feed on dead bugs, so you can get secondary pest infestations from having dead bugs in your house.Jacqueline:That's good to know.Caroline:Yeah. Maybe my mum was right in [crosstalk 00:11:46].Glenn:It's never good to have bugs in your home unless they're pets. The first thing that I would say to tell homeowners to do is walk around your house. Not just walk around and say, "Oh, the bushes look pretty," or "The roses are nice." That's wonderful to do, but look for things that don't look right. Scratch marks, bent gutters, top shingles. Those types of things are things that are indicative of another problem, something's happened to make that happen.Glenn:And those are oftentimes things that we're looking for when we go out and do an inspection. We have a little more trained eye, so we see things that a homeowner may not see. But fixing those type things or looking for a soffit vent or an eave that has scratch marks on it may indicate that there's been a squirrel trying to get in, a raccoon trying to get in. Some other type of rodent trying to get into the attic space. And that's that first side that a homeowner might see.Glenn:For occasional invader type stuff, sealing cracks and crevices, putting up screens on windows, making sure the screens are tight. Caulking around plumbing lines, your cable line comes into your house somewhere, making sure that caulking that's around it is good and tight. In your air conditioning, HVAC lines, making sure those are sealed around them. Any kind of penetration from the outside to the inside of your home should be sealed up really well.Jacqueline:About two years ago, I had squirrels in my walls. I lived on the top floor. I was on the third floor of a three story apartment complex. And I guess, I don't know how they got in through the roof. Somehow there was some kind of opening and it was my bedroom wall and they were living in. And yeah, there was just some opening and I guess they had sealed it and they had gotten rid of the... They were squirrels, and then the squirrels tore it open again and came back in.Jacqueline:And it was just something they were in the trees and they crawled into the house as it got colder in late September, October, and-Glenn:Any branches that are overhanging, touching, bushes touching the home, any of that, the more that can be cut away from the home helps pests from being able to jump or just walk right onto the house. If your bushes are 12 to 18 inches away from the foundation of your home, like cutaway on the backside from the street, you can't tell. It still looks beautiful, but it keeps ants from being able to walk from the bush onto the house and get in or something like that.Glenn:Same with the trees overhanging keeps squirrels from dropping on. There's cockroaches that nest into trees that drop onto the house and will come in through the soffit vents and that type stuff. So all of that that you can keep cutaway is a really good preventive tip as well.Caroline:I feel like we need all the preventative tips that we can get.Caroline:How often do you think or would you recommend like Orkin services or pest control services over the course of a year? Is it seasonally, or twice, or-Glenn:If you're going to employ the services of a pest control company, I would have them come... Typically, they're going to come monthly, bimonthly or quarterly.Caroline:Okay.Glenn:And a lot of that is dependent on what region of the country you're in. If you're in a really cold climate, you may not need it as often, so they may come quarterly. But it is important that somebody is looking year-round because there's different pests that will come in the fall, then the spring, then the summer, then the winter, whatever. So your home is really under constant attack from stuff trying to get in, from keeping mosquitoes away, or keeping the rodents out in the fall, or protecting from the spring emergence of a lot of different pests.Glenn:That's their big... It starts getting warmer, they start growing their population sizes, they start moving around more because it's warmer outside. So it really is important that somebody is looking on a regular basis. Depending on what you want to have them look for or how you want to do that, companies are more than willing to come out on a onetime basis or come out on a regular basis.Caroline:Do mosquitoes count as under your control?Glenn:Mosquitoes are actual insects, so yes.Caroline:I get horrific mosquito bites. No matter where I am, just a million of them.Glenn:My wife is the same way. It bites her and she immediately gets like a big red welt that shows up. I fed mosquitoes in college [crosstalk 00:16:28]. I don't react the same way, and-Caroline:Okay.Glenn:... that's an important thing to remember when people... I'm not going to knock on the doctors because I wanted to be one, but you cannot diagnose what kind of insect, or bug, or spider, or whatever bit somebody by the skin reaction.Jacqueline:Oh.Glenn:It's absolutely impossible. Everybody reacts differently. We use bedbugs as an example, some people react to bedbug bites, some people don't. Some people react to mosquito bites, some people don't. So the red mark that you get on your skin, the swollen red mark is an immune response to the saliva, to the histamines, whatever that the bug bites you and injects, and everybody's body reacts differently to those.Glenn:We hear all the time, "Oh, well, that's a spider bite. My doctor told me it was a spider bite." Your doctor can't tell you. Your doctor's seeing an immune response to something. It could have been a bedbug, it could have been a mosquito, something else, a tick. It could have been a lot of things and produce that same reaction. It's important that you pay attention. If something does bite you, try and get a picture of it.Glenn:Try and throw some tape onto it, something, catch it because that helps people in determining what to do about that particular bite.Caroline:My horror story for the day was going to be, I was at the sleepaway camp in a tent, sleeping in a tent and I had this huge, huge welt in the crease of my arm. And it ended up being a spider laid an egg or some eggs in my arm.Jacqueline:No. No.Glenn:I would put potentially disagree.Caroline:I think that was more of the story, but it was like a huge-Jacqueline:Oh.Caroline:... thing.Glenn:Glenn:Where was the camp?Caroline:West New Jersey.Glenn:West New Jersey. I do not know of any spider that lays its eggs underneath the skin of a human. There are other things that will not necessarily lay their eggs in your skin. There's like almost nothing that does that. But there are things that when they bite you, you'll get like an abscess type underneath the skin from the reaction that your body has to it. And sometimes the easiest thing to do is pull that like pocket out surgically.Caroline:Yeah, that's what they did.Glenn:Awesome.Caroline:And it's funny because I think I was like seven at the time. So I think what seven-year old knows the word abscess? You know what I mean? I think it became a story. I tell that back to my mom, she's like, "You have eggs in your arm, come on." So that's a story though.Glenn:My mom told me that if I eat watermelon seeds, I'd grow a watermelon in my belly.Caroline:I know that one too.Glenn:That's not true either.Jacqueline:I had something, I was... This is a little bit unrelated to honing homes, but I guess it was a summer home. My stepfather's from Sweden. We moved to the States and was living here for a while, but he maintained this little cottage he kept in the Swedish countryside. So in the summers, we would go over and visit his family and then we'd stay at the house for a few days. So I don't know if you have experienced Scandinavian bugs, specifically ticks.Jacqueline:But I was playing outside and I had... I guess a tick landed on me and it burrowed into my skin. And I had to have my stepdad take tweezers and pull the tick because it was not just on my skin, but i-Glenn:Buried.Jacqueline:... that. The craziest... I can't. I remember it clear as day because we don't have ticks like that in America to my knowledge. Maybe we do, but I'm not entomologist so I don't know. But I remember having to lay down, men pull the tick out from inside of my... It was inside. Oh my gosh.Glenn:Yes, all ticks feed that way. So all the ticks-Jacqueline:They go inside of you?Glenn:Yeah. They burrow into your skin and that's how they feed. Ticks actually make... Part of their salivary enzymes, the proteins in their saliva make almost like a tube in your skin and it helps the flow of stuff into their mouth.Jacqueline:[inaudible 00:21:17].Glenn:Yeah. Their head actually does bury into your skin though. There's also a fly, we don't have them in the United States. They might have them in South Texas or something. It's called a botfly. The botfly will lay an egg under your skin and it lives there.Caroline:Maybe that's what I had.Glenn:I'm trying to say this in a nice way. It lives there until it hatches out. Then it just falls out of your leg or something.Jacqueline:Oh my gosh. I don't ever want to go where those are.Caroline:Oh wait. While we're on this rare bug, spider, tick, our content managers, Susie, the one who brought these glorious questions for us wanted to know or to quote, she said, "The CDC has seen a rise in tick-borne diseases. So the best way to avoid a tick to make sure your home and lawn have as few ticks as possible. Do you have any..." I guess I read that better, but anyway, ticks, and homes, and ways to prevent them is the gist.Glenn:Uniquely, I moved into my house like five years ago now. I moved down a little bit closer to work and everything and diagonally across the street from me is another entomologist. We're like 0.0001% of the United States is entomologists and there's two on a street of like 15 houses or something.Caroline:Are you guys best friends.Glenn:We do talk a lot, yeah. Not many other people will talk to us, so we talk a lot. He is actually a tick specialist at CDC.Jacqueline:Wow.Caroline:Well, do you want [inaudible 00:23:08] our podcast?Glenn:Right. I'll talk to him. There is definite evidence of new ticks getting introduced into the United States, more and more tick-borne disease that people are being exposed to. So it is extremely important when homeowners go outside their house to wear repellents. The CDC website is a great resource for that. They have recommendations, they update their recommendations based on their research on tick biology and behavior to the best repellents.Glenn:There is also additional guidance there for kids, women who are expecting, all of this that we don't have time for this broadcast, but your viewers could go read if they're in one of those special categories or want the latest recommendation on repellents. The biggies that people need to think about for making their home less hospitable for ticks, cut their grass. Tall grass is notorious for ticks climbing up them.Glenn:They do what's called like flagging and they'll stick out their front legs like this as they... Their back legs will hold onto the top of the grass stick. They'll stick out their legs like this, and as you walk by and your pants leg, or your dog, or whatever, they'll grab onto it and go with you. It's important that you keep grass cut short so they can't do that. So tall grass is a no, no.Glenn:The other is creating what we call ecotones in the yard. So if you have a wooded section of your yard and then there's grass that goes right up to it, put like a gravel barrier in between. That harsher break between the wooded area and the grass is a huge deterrent to ticks being able to cross. So it keeps your lawn better protected from anything that might be coming through the woods. Deer will transport them, so getting deer attractive plants out of your yard, things that they might be feeding on.Glenn:If you have a garden in your yard that is attracting animals in, putting netting up around that to keep the deer, the bunnies or whatever from coming in will benefit not having ticks deposited into your yard that are looking for some kind of host. The point Jacqueline made about taking it out, it is important that you remove a tick properly. You don't want to touch them with... People will put lotion on them, put oil on them, put...Glenn:There's all these things about, well, when they can't breathe, they'll let go. They'll touch them with a burning match or something like that. All of those are horrible recommendations.Caroline:To your skin? A burning match to your skin?Glenn:To the tick because they think it will make the tick let go. The tick actually, their mouth part's scissor or saw down in as they're burying in. They put in a numbing agent, so you don't feel them burrowing in. But it's not like they're holding on like a dog to a tennis ball. They can't just let go. So if you touch them with something or you stop their ability to breathe, what they typically will do is spit.Glenn:They push fluids from their body in as they're letting go, and it takes them a while to work their way back out. But the saliva that they would inject into you is what potentially has the pathogens in it. The Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the Lyme disease, Powassan virus, all of those different things that they transmit are salivary transmitted. So if you smother them, if you burn them, if you do all of these different things, it could actually increase your chances of getting infected by whatever they might have.Jacqueline:Oh my God.Glenn:The best thing is exactly what they did to you Jacqueline, grab it with tweezers as close as you can to the skin, pull straight out. It will remove it. They make tick removal devices and stuff that do that same kind of motion. You can get them at retail stores, online retailers, huge ones, whatever, we'll have those types of devices. Regular tweezers will work just as well.Caroline:How big is a tick?Glenn:About size of an apple seed? They're not very big.Caroline:Oh. Yeah.Glenn:If I do this, it's really big. If I do this, it's really small, but about size of an apple seed. Somewhere in that neighborhood is what you're going to look for for the adult size. The young, what we call instars, the larval stages of them, the babies can be really, really small. You may have heard the term seed ticks. Those are baby ticks that haven't grown up yet. They can be as small as like a period on a piece of paper or something and white or clearCaroline:Oh.Glenn:Really hard to see. They're less likely to be transmitting any disease at that point because they haven't gotten to where they fed on infected things, deer or boxes, or whatever that are carrying these different viruses. It's really just the irritation that you get at that point. The other tidbit I would say on the removal is when you remove it, make sure you got the whole thing.Glenn:If you've broken the head off in your skin because you pulled it an angle or didn't pull straight out, you can get some secondary infection type stuff going on. If that happens, go see your doctor. You're not going to die from that, but you could think that I have Lyme disease because I've gotten this further red, circular infection type thing. And it's really that you just didn't get the tick out completely.Caroline:Oh dear.Jacqueline:We'll let Susie know.Caroline:You had mentioned earlier that you had a scorpion as a pet. Good for you. Glad you didn't have to walk it. Can you share how common, if you didn't want them as a pet, the commonness of them in your home and what you do if one is in your home?Glenn:If you get a scorpion in your home, you-Caroline:Run?Glenn:No. Actually the majority of the scorpions that we have in the United States that would get into a home are not that venomous. I will mention that difference-Caroline:Well, a little.Glenn:We do have some in the Southwest that are fairly venomous. I wouldn't necessarily push them to deadly, but it would be bad. We have some bad yellowjackets, we have some bad wasps. It's not that it's completely uncommon for us to have things that can make us sick when they sting us. I do want to mention the difference between poison and venom.Glenn:Poisonous means that if you eat it, like a poisonous plant, you get sick from it. Venom is injected and you get sick from it. So insects, I can't think of a poisonous insect. People eat insects around the world as a source of protein. They eat spiders, they eat scorpions, they eat all kinds of things. Venom them injected snakes, scorpions, yellowjackets, all of that is what we're talking about.Glenn:When we say something is venomous, it means that it's going to sting you, bite you, whatever, and make you sick.Caroline:Got itGlenn:What you should do around your house, scorpions are notorious for getting into rock piles, gravel, woodpiles that you might have around your house. So elimination of those things, if at all possible. Or if you have gravel around your house, we often recommend you put gravel around your house as a barrier. A lot of insects don't want to cross that barrier, so it's a good barrier for other things.Glenn:Scorpions like it though and they'll nest in them and hide in them. So it's a little bit different. We talked about sealing your home up really well, caulking, sealing gaps and cracks. Door sweeps can be really good to keep scorpions out. So making sure that if you're inside your home, look towards your front door, or your back door, your basement door during the middle of the day, the bright sunny time of the day.Glenn:And if you see light coming around your door, something can get in it, some kind of pest. Scorpion can smash really flat and get in, so making sure that that door sweep, the brush, the rubber, whatever touches, the doorframe, it doesn't have to scrape your floor all up. That's too far down. But when the door is sealed, closed, that you don't see light coming around it. Extremely important.Glenn:If they do get inside, I don't recommend people like, "Oh, I'm going to throw it outside. I'm just going to grab it by the tail." Trained professionals do that, other people don't. Okay? They can sting you. Most of the ones that we have that people would run into, it would be like a bee sting, but nobody enjoys being stung by a bee either. So scoop it up with something. Scoop it up in the dust pan and just throw it out the front door.Glenn:Or if you really don't want to let it live, flush it down the toilet. It'll be fine. It's not going to clog your pipes up and it's not going to come back later and haunt you in the middle of the night or anything like that. It's just going to [inaudible 00:32:42]. Hairspray is another good knockdown for a lot of pests. If you spray stuff with hairspray, it clogs up their breathing holes and they don't last very long.Caroline:That's a little sad. I don't [inaudible 00:32:58], but that seems a little sad.Glenn:It's just something that people tend to have on hand that will work.Caroline:Okay.Glenn:I don't recommend... This is not pest control for, you're going to quarterly go around your house and spray with hairspray. It's if you get a wasp in the house that you're worried about, hairspray can knock it down and get it.Jacqueline:I have wasp that likes to come visit, so that's helpful. Normally I just ask him to leave and who does leave. He's actually pretty nice. And he comes back and I'm like, "Can you go?" And I open the door and then he leaves. But then every once in a while, sometimes he comes back and then I just ask him to leave and he leaves again. So I guess, I don't have to do that to him, but if he gets aggressive, then I have [crosstalk 00:33:44]-Glenn:You should name him.Jacqueline:I should name... He's growing on me because he's respectful.Glenn:Another tidbit for your homeowners to think about is if you get like ants in the house-Jacqueline:I have a lot of ants.Glenn:Yeah.Jacqueline:I can't [crosstalk 00:33:59]-Glenn:Obviously, they're coming in for some kind of source. They're coming in for something sweet, they're coming in looking for water or something like that. Using something like Windex, some kind of glass cleaner, it will help to break down the trail pheromone that they have and can help stem them from continuing to come into that same place.Jacqueline:That is great news. Right before this call, I don't know why... I moved to a garden level, ground level apartment from a third floor, so I had the squirrel problem last time. Now I have ant problem and I just sprayed with Windex before this call because I'm like, "Maybe this will do." So that's great news.Glenn:Yeah, it'll kill the scouts and it'll help to remove that trail pheromone, but it is not necessarily a solution. Look where they're going, try and find what they're going to, follow the little trail.Jacqueline:[crosstalk 00:34:52] my kitchen. Maybe water.Glenn:Honestly, I feel for you. As a renter, you have a little less freedom than a homeowner does to do things. Like you mentioned the screen on the front door that needs fixing. I would even say that your homeowners might be in a similar situation right now. A lot of people are out of work right now because of the pandemic. A lot of people may be out of work for a period of time after the pandemic.Glenn:They don't necessarily have the funds to fix the screen right now or something. They're paying their bills, they're buying food, they're trying to survive during this. So doing little things can help. If you can take a piece of thread and try and pull it together, something to get it closer together. Put some saran wrap over it, suppressant seal on both sides and squeeze it together.Glenn:It's not going to be as attractive, but it might keep Mr. Wasp friend from coming in as easy in those situations. When something gets better financially or in your home, or if the landlord comes around eventually, then potentially call us out to say, "We can help you out in this way." We get it. We've seen the struggles that people have had during this with continuing service and we're working with them to keep themselves pest free while this is all going on.Glenn:So it's a good point that you make that renters may be in a situation that they can't do the structural modifications that a homeowner can. So the little tips and tricks like Windex, like hairspray, those may tide you over until you can get some professional help.Jacqueline:Yeah, That's all really helpful.Caroline:One of our common segments that we do with a lot of our guests is homeowner horror stories. Maybe you could share a story.Glenn:The homeowner horror story that I would bring up, luckily is not my home and it involves bedbugs. Bedbugs really need to be managed professionally. I never recommend a homeowner try and control bedbugs themselves, and this homeowner had. It had gotten way out of hand. They had tried their own home remedies.Glenn:It was to the point that when you walked in, there were bedbugs on the ceiling and they were dropping on your head as you walk through the room because they could sense the carbon dioxide that you're breathing out and everything and they were trying to find a food source. The biggie that I would say is, don't try and do that. The other thing that I will say drives me bonkers, but it doesn't drive me bonkers.Glenn:It just upsets me, when people just randomly use some kind of a product in their house that they don't really understand, that they don't apply correctly. There's a huge move to use diatomaceous earth. It's a naturally occurring product that will kill bugs. It's slow to act on bugs, but people way over apply it.Glenn:True application of diatomaceous earth or DE as it might be mentioned in places is so light that you don't see it on the surface. It's like dust that you might wipe off your TV or your entertainment center. What I've seen is that people will put it out in like piles. They're sitting amongst this dust that becomes then a respiratory hazard for them, and that's exactly what had happened in this situation.Glenn:It looked like they had taken powder, it was DE, but just everywhere. Their couch was covered in it, their carpet was covered in it, their bed was covered in it and it could not have been good for their health. Not that the bedbugs were, but their treatment was actually detrimental to them as well. That's my homeowner horror story. If you get bed bugs, sooner than later, try and get some professional help.Caroline:Would you see a bedbugs or would you had bedbugs?Glenn:They're about the size of an apple seed as well.Caroline:Okay.Glenn:And what you're probably going to notice first, if you don't react to the bite is things that look like black spots on your sheets, like ink blots type things. And that's actually their fecal material. It's blood that has gone through their body and it's concentrated so much that it dries black. So that's what you would see is these little black spots. Sometimes their shed skins because they shed their skin as they grow.Glenn:But the first indication is going to be that blood spotting, fecal spotting on your sheets and stuff.Jacqueline:And what causes them?Glenn:People pick them up from travel, from going to camp, going to the sleepaway camp and coming back. Going to a soccer camp, going to college, going to... Anywhere that you travel. Hotels might have them, airports, wherever. You might pick some up and then bring them home and they get into your house. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not that your home is dirty. It's not that you have done anything wrong.Glenn:And that's why it's important to let people know, let the professionals know as soon as possible so that we can come out and remedy it. The longer it goes, the more expensive it's going to be, and the harder it's going to be. So quick and easy at the beginning.Jacqueline:Wow.Caroline:I'm literally going to leave this call, go check my dog for ticks and go change my sheets. It's a wake up call.Glenn:If I do have one or two last minutes that I can-Caroline:Definitely, definitely.Glenn:... mention something. If you do go and seek the help of a company to help you out, seek out somebody that uses integrated pest management. Integrated pest management is a system where it's a process. It's an ongoing repetitive process where you assess the situation, you implement some kind of control measure, and then you monitor the situation for any new activity. And any new activity is then assessed, implemented, and monitored.Glenn:It's a way to solve problems in a proactive measure, so implementing these things like ceiling cracks and crevices and adding doors sweeps are things that are implemented to add length of time to not having pest problems. You're solving the problem before you get it. And it is something that we do at Orkin.Glenn:It's something that is very common in our industry, but there are some people out there that just come in and spray stuff. That isn't necessarily the best way to have a proactive pest program in your home.Caroline:Good to know. Anything else? Any last minute tips or tricks?Glenn:Get somebody to come take a look. Most companies, we do... Most other companies as well do free inspections. So call us out, let us do a comprehensive inspection. We might see something that you haven't noticed yet. Maybe it's the squirrel in your wall or that we may make a recommendation that we could really help you out with some mosquito control and knock down your potential for getting some mosquito-borne virus, exposing your children, or your family, or something.Glenn:So some are quick tips and tricks that we might give you in person, but it's harder for us to do that without seeing your home and your situation in person.Jacqueline:Really enjoyed this.Caroline:Good.Jacqueline:I learned so much.Caroline:[inaudible 00:42:20] bugs.Jacqueline:Yeah, I didn't know how I'd have so much fun talking about bugs.Caroline:Okay.Glenn:That's what happens to people. You'll be a pest control person soon. I'm bringing you in.Jacqueline:Oh good. Oh good.Caroline:It would be great to have you on again. This was great. And I think our viewers and our listeners will be just as impressed by all the bugs knowledge that we were. So, Glenn, thank you so much and we'll chat with you soon.Speaker 1:Get more answers to your homeowner questions by subscribing to the vipHome Podcast available anywhere podcasts are found.

Jacqueline:Well, thank you for speaking with us all, we're very excited to have you on.Laurie:Thank you.Jacqueline:You may not be familiar with our podcast, but this is a vipHome Podcast. And our mission is to help equip homeowners with everything they need to know when it comes to safety and optimizing their living space and just to live comfortably in their homes. So we started beginning of the year and we're just starting to get some momentum. So it's really exciting to have you on and talk about your experience and your great career, helping homeowners make the most out of their spaces.I don't know if you've met Caroline before.Caroline:Hi, I'm Caroline.Laurie:Hi Caroline.Caroline:I work on our partnerships team here at vipHomeLink and we're so excited to have you, and I think we're going to have a great conversation.Laurie:Thank you. It's great to be here. Jacqueline:Why don't you take us through a little bit about your career, what they'll know about Trading Spaces, but how you got into design and your time in Trading Spaces and what you've been up to recently?Laurie:Design was a mid '20s choice for me. I have a degree in journalism, broadcast oddly from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and immediately went to work out of school for CNN in Atlanta. And my very best friend was an interior designer. And the only way sometimes to see her on the weekends and designers will understand this or to see her on the weekends was to trail behind her, helping her work because she was always loaded down, being low man on the totem pole with trying to go get fabrics, textiles, find things for clients. And so I would just kind of trail along behind her. And I was an art history minor. I had studied abroad. I loved architecture. I moved a lot as a child and my mom always had a beautiful aesthetic that I just kind of took for granted, but I appreciate beauty and love beauty. And she would send me off to like, "Hey Laurie, see this swatch. Can you just go try to pull some things?" I'm like, "I don't know what I'm very," she's like, "Just do it, just do it."Laurie:And I'd come back and she'd be like, "Wow, I wouldn't have put that together, but I like it." And so this was like 1996. So I'm like, "Okay, well." So I started speaking to some professionals in the field that I was in Atlanta, Georgia, and they all said, "Are you tied to Atlanta?" I said, "No." Are you tied to anything? "No, I'm single." And they said, "We suggest you go to graduate school, go to school, go to school. Don't just come to work for us. If you are free and can do that, go." So I applied to several schools and my dream school became the New York School of Interior Design. Every side it really was a classical training and it catered to a lot of people. The median age was more mid '20s. People coming out of investment banking or whatever career they were in really making that shift.Laurie:And it just seemed like the perfect fit. So I was New York bound and I graduated from there, working for an architecture firm. Life takes interesting turns, I end up back in the South in Mississippi and oddly the same best friend who I would trail around behind gave me a call one day and said, "I just got the strangest phone call." And I said, "What?" She's like, "There is a production company in Knoxville, Tennessee who has bought the rights to a British show called Changing Rooms." And I said, "I know that show." Because one of my best friends in New York was from London and her mom would send over the sea every week, a VHS tape of Changing Rooms and I became completely addicted to it. So here I was with this kind of, I hate to say how important advantage of knowing the rules of the show two days, two sets of homeowners, a $1000, get it done.Laurie:And I said, "Heather, did you say you're going to audition?" Because they were literally looking up designers in the yellow pages. There was no internet. I mean, remember this is like 1998. There was no searching, no Google search. They called her in the yellow pages. She was like, "Laurie, I hate to have my photo taken, I'm not going to do a television show, but I've giving them your name." Because she knows I broadcast journalism. I had done theater classes in New York, she's like "I told them, I knew this. I have a friend whose background is so interesting." And they're like, "Wow, we haven't spoken to any designers who had a television broadcast background." So long, long story long. I ended up there three weeks later auditioning. I will never forget it walking into this sea of people from all over the country.Laurie:And yeah, this was the beginning of 1999. And it was very edgy to wear a little black framed glasses, whether you needed them or not. And I just couldn't look more different than everyone in that room. I had big red hair and I was probably wearing bright green and the Southern accent was back. I was like, "Oh, my." But I remember looking across the room and thinking, "Well, things could be worse. I could be that guy." And it was Frank violet. Who's our older castmate who I love and adore and who we recently lost. I don't know if you've heard that Frank passed away a few weeks ago, but what a dear man, but oddly enough, it was the odd couple that was chosen for the very first episode. So we shot The Pilot in 1999 and the show would be nominated for a Primetime Emmy three years later.Laurie:Our one claim to fame is that we beat Oprah Winfrey in ratings one for a little pocket of time, four o'clock it's just like this little engine they could, and it was just a phenomenon and none of us saw it coming. So when we would have the ability to reboot a couple years ago and come back, I think it's just overwhelming the entire past came back because every single one of us has eternal gratitude for that show and how it propelled our careers. And some people have remained in television. Pennington who remains a huge superstar with extreme home makeover. A lot of our castmates stayed in television. I stayed home to raise kids. That was my personal choice.Laurie:At the time that Trading Spaces ended, my son was four and my daughter was two and it was just getting to be too much. I traveled for four years with nannies and behind the scenes doing all that craze, I had an infant and I was pregnant on the show twice, just a whole lot of juggling. But that's the story in a nutshell, it really is. I'll never not consider it a miracle in my life. Because I know the odds, I know that industry and I never took it for granted. That's for sure.Caroline:That's such an exciting story. I feel like when I graduated from school, I had no idea what to do, but also never no one ever directed me. I kind of ended up here just by some false turns along the way. But interior design is amazing. And the fact that you got to show from a friend like, "Jacqueline, come on, hook me up more with different things."Laurie:I know, and then that led to, I was able to write a book called Discovering Home. I had a lighting line. I had a textile line. I mean a lot of doors opened with that. So I'm yes, I am eternally grateful. And currently I'm doing some consulting. I've recently moved to Nashville, Tennessee. So I'm kind of a newbie here finding my way, but I'm working for an Italian tile company, writing a blog on design @atlasconcordusa.com. If you all want to log on, I do a monthly blog. It's just a lot of beautiful imagery and hopefully good information. So more about beautifying home although who knows, maybe we'll talk more about eco-friendly here, there are a million topics we could cover.Caroline:Could talk a little bit about beautifying homes and what you sort of think if you're talking to maybe a first-time home buyer or somebody who's buying a home again, but has in many years, what you would suggest is sort of the first places to start in terms of beautifying your home. And also what you think the most standout points are? I think for our readers, our viewers, I feel like everyone's sort of in a different stage and just hearing tips on what to you would make something beautiful, but also if you're selling, what would make something also a little bit more beautiful to the gamut than just yourself?Laurie:Right. Well, everyone when you're looking for a home, what are the three things? Location, I realize you want to account for that. For me, things that I know I personally, when I was just searching for this home that we're in here in Nashville, ceiling height is always nice because of natural light. So I'm always looking for as much window light, natural light coming in, things to look for, which also become very eco-friendly is natural light. Hardwood floors are always a nice thing to look for, tile as opposed to synthetic rugs and carpets that may have the VOCs, things that are going to emit toxicities in the long run in your home. I just hate to say good bones, but it kind of is. What are your visual access? I think so many people don't look at the whole picture when you're standing in the entry. What are you looking? Are you looking through the home? Do you look at a blank wall? Is there a window with a pretty view of the backyard? What are you seeing through that view? Is it straight up a staircase? What interests can you bring at each visual axis? How do the rooms flow from one to the next? Are they symmetrical? Are they asymmetrical? Is that going to be a challenge? Are there architectural elements that maybe weren't great choices that you may need to rearrange or pull out, depending on your budget, some people can come in and say, "Oh, I'm just going to blow through it." "And great. I wish I could," but and I have plenty of clients that do, but through looking for something in the mid-range and really know that your budget is more conducive to repainting, maybe putting in some architectural elements like bookshelves, enlarging some windows.Laurie:It is amazing what taking a window from mid-height to see it, ceiling to floor will do. I mean, absolutely transform a space. So lighting, lighting, lighting over and over again, lighting. I mean, as you know, you are designer, you can have the most beautiful art, the most beautiful textiles and this beautiful rug, but if you're just constantly in the dark it's tough.Jacqueline:What are some lighting elements that people could add into their space? So say they don't have the budget to expand their windows. Are there ways that they can bring in light or enhance natural light other ways?Laurie:Absolutely. If you can bring in and have some incandescent or recess lighting put in, although I'm very mindful to say, please, please, please don't make your ceilings Swiss cheese. I've gone into so many homes where it's just and it's just crazy. There was no rhyme or reason people just started poking cans in the ceiling. I'm not talking about that. The best places for that kind of lighting are in task. Because they're more task lights. They're going to be a more harsh light, but in the kitchen down a hallway an entry if it needs a little spot, in addition to a ceiling fixture, but in living spaces, I really, really love to look for hanging fixtures and it doesn't have to be something crazy expensive. I can't tell you one of my favorite fixtures has come out of a flea market, just cleaned up spray, painted a whimsical color and put in a living room ceiling and it's fantastic. So I mean, you can find those pieces on a budget and again, I cannot express enough the importance of a dimmer switches.Laurie:These are very simple things to add to your home. I think a dimmer switch costs 899 at Home Depot. And while you have an electrician over, if you are installing just a few incandescent or cam lights, or ceiling fixture, it is very simple to have them, put it in. I have a dimmer in every room in my house because I can either bump it way up in the day. And then at night I don't come into a fishbowl. You just dim it down. And that just sets a mood just to complete, immediately it's like I can exhale "Huh, okay." Yeah, this is my nurturing space not an abrasive light. I still love lamplight I'm a stickler for incandescent, sorry all the people with their LED but I just love a good old fashioned bulb.Laurie:It's warm and I became so paranoid and I know it's so energy efficient, forgive me, forgive me. And I went and I bought boxes and boxes of light bulbs when everyone said, "They're going away forever." I was like, "No." But the the incandescent, the LED has changed significantly in the last five years. And it is not a cold light anymore. It's on a blue light. It is a warmer light. So it really has become much better bulb and it is important for energy efficiency. But I had a darker corner in a rental house that we ran a couple of years ago. Because we just had a couple of years in Memphis and we knew we weren't going to be there long. And I couldn't, it was a rental.Laurie:I wasn't going to do anything to it, but lamplight even going and getting one of those cans that sits on the floor and pivots, I stuck one behind a pretty standing plant and it just put a glow in the room that was nice and subtle. And I could just switch it on and off with a light switch because the outlet was attached to the light switch. I put it on a dimmer as well. I did have some dimmers installed, because it was an inexpensive fix and it makes all the difference.Jacqueline:I'm going to do that, because I'm really particular about my lighting, but I haven't found a way to manipulate it.Laurie:Yeah, I am telling you and then also if you have a great pair, Lance, and you're just kind of tired of on whatever, it's amazing what a new lampshade will do, to completely change the face of a lamp. There are so many specialty stores now and lampshades were so difficult to find 10 years ago and now you can go in and just buy them at so many home stores in boutique stores and looking for a paper parchment as opposed to a silk shade and the light that, that gives off, parchment is going to give this nice warm glow and it's very crisp, clean more modern, fresh look. I love the juxtaposition of a parchment shade on an old ceramic kind of boss like lamp. So there are ways to play and manipulate even with the fixture itself.Caroline:That's great. How do you think, so we just talked a little bit about lamps and lighting. So when you think about lamps and lighting, I feel like I also think about like colors of walls or wallpaper. How do you think all that sort of ties together and what do you think the best colors are or maybe for selling or buying a home? What would you love?Laurie:Well, I think if it's your longtime home, I really, really dislike the word trend because home is a reflection of you. So your favorite color may not be my favorite color, what soothes and comforts you, may not soothe and comfort me or the next person or whatever, but that home at the end of the day is your nurturing place. And so if a certain color, if you love yellow then I say, you should have a yellow room and make your home gloss. It will be gorgeous. So I know color intimidates so many people and it can be intimidating and I myself have even, looked different at four o'clock than it does it 9:00 AM the swatch I just painted on the wall.But again, my biggest recommendations for paint and it is an amazing way to make immediate impact. Let's not deny it. I happen to love my green dining room I'm sitting in, but because that is comforting to me, but it's like a celery color and I went through five different colors to find this color. One was too bright, too dark, you have to, and I know it's more work, but do a two-by-two swatch, two coats, line them up, look at it at different times of the day, that is just or do your poster boards, whatever you need to do. But that is the way to do it. Key things to look for low to no-VOC. Now they have this green sealed certified. It is so much more accessible to find these nontoxic paints for your home and the colors are rich and beautiful.Laurie:And also if you fell in love with a textile often I will start with a piece of inspiration. Let's say you have a gorgeous thermos with multi-colors in it. And that's kind of your reference point that you're beginning when you notice that the one unifying color with your textiles in your rug and this vase and or lamps or whatever you're putting in the space, what is the one color that is going to just easily serve as a backdrop? Maybe the slight vein of celadon or whatever. You can take that and have it color match exactly with technology. So, I mean, it's now more so than ever, color is less and less intimidating to research and find wall coverings are big time back. I love that wallpaper's back.Laurie:I love the adhesive wallpaper that you can peel and stick yourself. If you're in a rental property, it does no damage to the wall. I mean, you can have a graphic, accent wall and do it yourself. I mean, that's so amazing, so these they're great ways to make impact. And if you're reselling just don't paint the whole house beige, try to find just a more, yes. I mean, neutral does sell more because people walk in and see a deep red dining room, they may think, "Oh, I don't want to deal with that." Whatever it's paint, but yes.Caroline:My parent's house looks like just from the snippet, I can see of yours looks exactly like this. They have a mint green dining room and a yellow living room. So it's looking like at my parents.Laurie:Oh, I love it. Yeah. I'm a color girl, but more pale colors. I have a lot of art that I've been fortunate enough to collect and love. And so I tend to go for more toned down, unless it just is a piece that requires a super vibrant deep wall but yeah. Jacqueline:You mentioned the technology matching color is easier than ever before. Are there other ways that technology has influenced design or you as a designer or how you approach designing a space?Laurie:Absolutely. I mean, when I was in design school, I'm still dating myself everything was hand drafted and drawn. I mean, CAD was maybe just coming onto the scene, but it was not used by anyone at that point in design other than just strictly architects and usually commercial space. But there's so there's so much software now. I mean, I know that there are apps that you can get on and take a picture of your wall and see the color, choose a color whether it's Benjamin Moore or I think Sherwin-Williams, I know has an app where you can literally choose from their fan book, press it. And it'll superimpose that color on your wall.Laurie:And I know that's not the same as what we said with the poster boards and seeing it in a certain light is certain time, but at least it gives a visual of, "You know what? I thought I liked that color, but now it's feeling a little overwhelming seeing it visually on all the walls." I mean there are programs that you can get on and take dimensions of your room and furniture dimensions, and it'll put it into floor plan for you. I mean, I know that there are wonderful resources out there, so yes, I think that's entirely different. And on top of that, just retail alone in the last five to 10 years, I mean, I can remember first shopping for the show and I don't know if target even had a home division. I mean, it's just so much is accessible to us. I honestly, I found it challenging more challenging coming back to Trading Spaces 10 years later, because there was something almost less overwhelming buying in that particular $1,000 budget.Laurie:I would go into a flea market and find some unique piece or whatever, and trying to plan it from a distance and not having the time to shop it because we have to do this in less than 48 hours. And it was kind of a double-edged sword because it's like, there were so much online that I'm like, "Oh, I'm a little overwhelmed because what if it doesn't ship in time?" Everything I did I was like, "We're just the good old fashioned flea market. It used to be or the rummage sales." And so almost like there's so much in retail now that you've gotten rid of, but there are less and less of those places where you can really find unique objects and character filled objects. But I mean, but retail has so many beautiful things now and any kind of genre and look I just think it's completely changed. I've watched the industry completely change.Caroline:What would you consider a big design dome? I feel like, I mean, again, I know it's preference and you would say like, "Oh, you really like color and maybe suggest not neutrals," but what are something big that you'd be like, absolutely not, never and no matter what?Laurie:Well, just from a logistics and it's a mistake I've seen, I've made it, other friends have made it, just not having correct dimensions, really making sure that the pieces you're ordering, if you're ordering are going to land correctly on in the space and not be too large, really understanding scale and proportion is just an absolute must. Another big, no, no, I can't tell you how many times, speaking of scale and proportion that I would get a piece and think, "Oh, it's going to be perfect and I'm working this time crunch and then it wouldn't fit through the front door." Like we were in an odd shaped, complex and the door was too narrow and I'm like, "Oh, my word I should have checked that." I can't tell you my very first job working for a designer. I made this huge mistake working for a very high-end client.Laurie:And I went over there and I was working on her kitchen and her living room. And I looked in it first she had said they were going to make their bar counter height. But in the last minute I heard bar height, there were still because they were in for construction and I didn't verify and went off old measurements and ordered these crazy expensive that were on back order counter stools. And they were supposed to be bar stools, totally varying height. My bad, these are big design no-nos. I don't know if that's the kind of thing you're asking, but the scale dimension, because you confine on this beautiful sofa on the planet, but is a nine foot sofa going to be too overwhelming for your space.Laurie:Really get in there with a tape measure, if you have graph paper and you're doing it yourself, cut out little pieces of furniture, lay it out. Do you have at least three feet of wall clearance, around pieces, you don't want to close off the living room. For instance, you may have a sofa floating in front of a fireplace, but have you just totally blocked the entrance to the room? You want a seating arrangement to be inviting. You want it to be accessible. You want to pay attention to traffic, traffic patterns I like to call them because you want the house to flow. Yeah.Caroline:That's so funny that you bring up your bar stool or counter stool. Sorry we tried to do with all of our guests a segment on homeowner horror stories. I feel like that one might count for ours.Laurie:Well, in the grand scheme of life and in the climate we're in now, you must feel silly saying that, but if someone's paying you to order the correct thing. You need to make sure you have your measurements correct.Jacqueline:So talking about scale and because I'm not great with depth perception, for whatever reason. You talked about graph paper in the space, what are other things you could do to kind of get a sense of the fit and the shape? Because I feel like for me, I often underestimate or underestimate how much space, what are other steps that someone could take in that design process to really help them understand or feel the scale that has to be?Laurie:I mean, the good old fashioned ways to spend a Saturday, rearranging your furniture. Push yourself, take a chair from your bedroom that you think is great. It may be great, fireside, whatever, I don't know. Just if you can bring some friends over, don't try to do it yourself and just spend an afternoon kind of just playing that's great. If you don't have the ability to do that, I'm telling you I'm so old school, but I still get graph paper, one squares of foot. I get my tape measure out. I know exactly my living room is 15 feet wide by 20 feet long. And then I know my sofa is a seven foot sofa, four feet deep, whatever. And I cut out and I place and if I play, I know that a coffee table should be at least 14 to 16 inches from the edge of the sofa to be able to get by carefully.Laurie:So I measure that out on the graph paper, playing all the putting together design is a puzzle it really is. It's puzzle it's problem solving and it's making it work for you and your family. And so sometimes every it's kind of like the pros and cons. I mean, technology is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. But also that might be intimidating to some people, I don't know how to work a CAD system, how am I supposed to do that? So just good old fashioned scissors and tape measure and going one squares a foot, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it.Jacqueline:Yeah, now that's really helpful. That's great.Laurie:Good.Caroline:What would you say is some of the most challenging parts of doing design work for a client? I mean, I could tell you exactly what I want in a home and so how does that relationship work and what do you see some challenges are?Laurie:Well, I think the most challenging things probably begin as a less established designer. Maybe people aren't familiar with your aesthetic, maybe you're trying to figure out your aesthetic as a designer and so maybe someone comes to you and they have a certain style that maybe is tough for you to for instance, they're super traditional and you're more of a mid-century girl. So it's really a reach, to get to their aesthetic. But the more you mature as a designer, the more your portfolio expands. I really highly recommend interviewing your client on the front end or them interviewing you and having a thick skin. There are going to be people who say, "That's just not my look." And not to say that a designer can't step out and do something totally different. I hope they can't. And then what they're always used to.Laurie:But when it's a good pairing, maybe they've come to you because they've seen something of yours that really spoke to them, that helps get you on equal setting from the beginning, at least, now that's not always the case. I have said this on the show for years, and I still say it all day long. I always have a client bring me inspiration pieces. So for instance, maybe they saw a room I did, and they loved it. Maybe that's what, "I like this room. Can you do something similar?" "Okay. Yes. We're not going to replicate it but let's make it yours."Laurie:So bringing me something that speaks to you, I've had a client bring me, a Verano, sorry, Murano glass, old ashtray from the 1940s. That was their grandmother's, but he was gorgeous kind of amber coating with gold fleck, rich, kind of creamy tones and glossy. So a little bit of glamor and it wasn't like we're going to make a room look exactly like this object, but I wanted to hear from them. What feeds you? I knew then we were going to put some gold accents in the room. We were going to get some gold leafing.Laurie:She loved mid-century, but maybe a little bit more 1940s with just a little bit more glamor in it. So I exposed her to some French pieces and what was going on in the States at the time and she loved a very modular, low slung sofa that we gathered from that even though the piece was very curvaceous. So, I mean, just having them bring in, it can be photos, it can be torn out magazine pages. I don't care. It can be downloaded from Instagram, but I'd just like to see something that spoke to this client, because ultimately I'm creating a home that is a reflection of them, not Laurie, but them. So listening is terribly important. And if you find yourself going off path with the client, you start to feel like you're not connected. Bringing back that inspiration piece becomes a great touchdown to say, "Okay, what were we trying to achieve? Let's back up."Caroline:Wonderful. That's so helpful. This has been greatJacqueline:So do you find that, when you work with clients room to room, you start to see their aesthetic come to life, or do you find that it can really change for a client? Or what does that look based on your experience?Laurie:Well, depending on what they've, I've gone into homes where the people have lived there for 15 years and they're just trying to freshen up. So yes, I can get a much better snapshot about what makes them comfortable, what colors they're drawn to. And we have all these discussions too, because there are some clients that have lived in a home 10 years and say, "We're just sick of it. We never really liked it to begin with. Now we have the budget to address it. So let's start from scratch."Laurie:So I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I do think people change, they may love traditional, but to me there's a new traditional now. It's more vibrant and it's more eclectic in it, or transitional. It brings in modern art but yet may still have a floral textile on a club chair under a very modern piece. It's kind of like this freedom of so much goes now than it's like, "Okay, fine. I went to design school, I understand the rules of symmetry and proportion, but then now I kind of want to break them up a bit," because that's going to bring healthy tension.Laurie:I love to call it healthy tension into a space. I think the head of design school instructors said every room needs a touch of black. Even if it's just one little piece, it's just anchoring there's a thing called well, it's a triangulation rule in design where if you are working with an accent color, that's maybe even subtle, it should appear three times the space. Odd numbers are incredibly important in design. You may hear when you're accessorizing you should have groups of threes, it's more balancing. But triangulation, there may be a bold cerulean blue, that's splashed through an abstract painting over the mantle, and then you maybe pick it up in a pair of lamps across the space.Laurie:And then for that really bold blue to really take shape as an accent, maybe it throws or you've discovered in a lumbar pillow, on a slipper chair across the room. It's just something scientific about this triangular formation that roots an accent wall or accent. It can be an accent wall and accent color into a space. So those are just little tips. How did I even get on that? I don't even know what you asked me. Sorry about that. How did I get to the triangulation? What was the question?Jacqueline:Finding a motif throughout a space through a home but I guess creating a motif within a room, with that-Laurie:Why don't you have a room that's adjacent to another one for instance, y'all all comment and you can see just a sliver of my living room through them, and sitting in the dining room, the soft green. I don't know if you can see, but there's, I have a slipper chair where I'm pointing to it way back there that green appears nowhere else in that living room, but I chose it because visually it connected this space, which is so open to that space. It connected the two spaces. So they're not disjointed. Does that make sense?Jacqueline:Yeah. Absolutely.Laurie:Yeah. So just one for paying attention to that visual access and flow, and I don't want one room next to another room that they don't make any sense together. Let's do something to make that imaginary thread kind of go through the entire house, what's that one thing that's kind of in it's better if it's subtle. It doesn't have to be over. It doesn't mean you have to paint every room in your house white and stick there. Because it's just so anyway, if that makes sense.Jacqueline:Great. Well, I think I'm wrapped for questions. Caroline, do you have anything else you want to ask?Caroline:Yeah. And maybe we sort of, we probably went through this kind of throughout the whole thing, but what in your humble opinion, would you say are some things that would increase a home's value? If you can come up with three sort of quick tips or tricks on that I think would be, and then I too, I'm out of questions.Laurie:Absolutely. I think things that increase the home's value is addressing the flooring. I mean, when you have a newly refinished, floors that are in great shape that a homeowner didn't have to come in and completely readdress all the flooring that can get overwhelming. So if you have hardwood I mean, of course it's difficult but you may say once you've moved, you'll have them refinished or whatever, anything you can do to motivate a buyer. I think kitchens are just big pluses, but then there are a lot of kitchens that aren't done correctly. And then you think, "Oh, I've just having to pay so much for this house. Because they just redid their kitchen and I don't like of it."Laurie:So that's why in kitchens, I try to make sure I guess just things that I personally do in a house when I move in, I don't care for soffit space. So those cabinets open space. If I can have cabinetry that goes clean the ceiling, I think that's a great change you can make to a kitchen. Again, great task lighting countertops, marble quartz is so wonderful, kind of newer on the market in the last 10 years, I'd say, but less porous than marble and other granites, clean countertops, fresh countertops. Bathrooms, kitchens tend to be just, if you can get those redone, that takes a lot of burden off people, a potential buyer. So flooring.Caroline:So flooring bathrooms, kitchens.Laurie:Yes.Caroline:I'm actually in the market for buying a home and I have to say those are the three things that I actually was maybe not so much flooring, but my fiance and I don't have the time to redo a kitchen.Laurie:To get a kitchen. Right.Caroline:It sounds like impossible task. I don't know how people do it. So I think I would agree with those as well.Laurie:Yeah. I hope I don't have to move any time soon, but the two things, I mean, I addressed paint throughout the house because it was dated. I had the floors refinished because I thought if I ever move, there'll be in great condition for resale. And I went into the kitchen and I extended the cabinetry to the ceiling because, and it made all the difference, all the difference. And I think just visually, if this house has to go in the market, those two things that I updated a bathroom upstairs.Caroline:Wonderful. Well thank you. You're such an amazing guest. Thank you for your time.Laurie:Thank you. Well, this is a treat. Call me back. We'll talk more.Jacqueline:I can talk to you for hours.I was just going to have you tell everybody where can get in contact with you. I know that you talk about your blog, where they can find your blog if you're active on social media, how can we continue to follow you after this podcast?Laurie:Thank you. Okay. Hold on. Let me think of everything. Okay. Well, I'm writing a design blog for atlasconcordusa.com. I really hope that people will log on to that and enjoy it. I'm having so much fun doing it and I have a website. If you're trying to reach me personally, you can email me through that. It's LaurieHsmith.com. And then of course I love Instagram. Come follow me, Laurie Smith official on Instagram so thank you so much.

Caroline: Hi, I’m Caroline Springer and welcome to our next session of Radical Faith. We have a Radical Faith podcast as part of our Get Sellers Calling You podcast with Beatty Carmichael. Professionally, Beatty is the CEO of MasterGrabber, the creator of Agent Dominator and a top marketing expert in the real estate field for many years. And personally, for many years, he has been a Christian and loves to talk about the Lord and that’s where the vision of this podcast came from. So I’m just going to pass it over to him to give a little disclaimer about the Radical Faith podcast and kind of what his idea is behind it. Beatty: I’m not sure I would call it a disclaimer, but maybe it is. The whole idea about Radical Faith is this has nothing to do specifically and directly with real estate business. It has everything to do with living your life as a passionate Christian. So this is all going to be about my Christian philosophy or theosophy if you call it that. So if you don’t want to hear it, you can delete this podcast out and just listen to the podcasts focused on how to build a real estate business, but we are going to talk about Christ today. That’s my disclaimer. Back to you. Caroline: We always chat a little at the beginning about the world we live in and how we have to give a disclaimer, but I think it is good. It excites me so I’m like, “All right, let’s jump in.” This is going to be about the Lord and nothing else. So I’m okay with that. Beatty: Part of that chat we were having is normal Christianity. So I definitely kind of want to bring that onto this call a little bit. The focus of these calls is what I call “normal Christianity.” If I were to ask you, Caroline, what do you think the typical Christian’s view of “normal Christianity” is? Is it healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, doing miracles or is it being a good person, not saying curse words, going to church on Sunday and reading your Bible? What is normal Christianity? Caroline: Yes, I would think sadly in the “normal” or maybe average Christian’s viewpoint, for those who claim to be Christian that’s what they would claim: being a good person, attending church, like you said, not saying curse words, living a chaste life, reading your Bible, praying before meals. The more Radical type of lifestyle is something that a lot of people may think is just preserved for certain people or that’s not really a thing anymore. I think that seems too far-fetched for them to believe that it’s something we’ve been invited into now. Beatty: True. So let me ask you. Who is our model for how to live as a Christian? Caroline: Jesus. He is our model. Beatty: Did he consider what he modeled to be normal or to be radical? What do you think his perspective on it was? Caroline: That’s a good question. Beatty: Let me ask that question another way. He is modeling for us how we should live, right? Caroline: Right. Beatty: Does He expect us to live anything but what He considers normal? Caroline: No. I think He was saying He only did the things He saw His Father do and he models for us a life like that so we can follow that. So I think His expectation was for Him to be paving a way for us to walk the way He walks. So I guess that would be normal for Him and normal for us. Beatty: Okay, so then how did He walk? It says, I think in John 14:22, don’t quote me exactly, but somewhere in John 14. It says, “Truly, truly whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and greater works will he do because I go to the Father.” Jesus is living out the works that we should do. If I were to ask, “What were the works that Jesus did,” what would you tell me? Not saying curse words? Read the Bible? Or something different? Caroline: I think something more. Like you said earlier, healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, parting the way, making a way for Heaven to invade Earth. That was His life. Beatty: Therein lies the topic of Radical faith. Most people think it’s radical. Jesus thinks it’s normal. Now we are not going to talk about today how to raise the dead or heal the sick. We might get into the sophics, but I think more than anything else it’s really understanding what we are called to do as a Christian. How are we called to live and those things that we consider in our 21st century nature to be radical, I think Jesus considered normal. How do we go back to what is normal and not what is myopically considered radical. That is where I want to kind of lean us into this call. Can I take the lead real quick and just kind of get this thing started? Caroline: Absolutely. Beatty: For those of you who have been listening in on our podcasts, you’ll kind of see this pattern. Caroline takes the lead in the interview process on the marketing stuff. I end up taking the lead on the radical faith stuff because she becomes my guinea pig just to use as a sounding board. On all the marketing calls, she has an outline of the direction we are going on the calls. But on the radical faith calls, she is totally blind, so she doesn’t know what I am going to bring up or what I am going to ask her. So we are going to put you on the spots a few times and see what your thoughts are. Okay? Caroline: Oh, good. Beatty: Oh, good. It’s just like normal. We are going to be normal on this call. The last call that we did on radical faith, we are been going through this series of what I call what is faith. We are trying to lay this foundation of what faith really means. On the previous call we started to talk about that faith comes hearing and hearing from the word of Christ. And then we started to look into that faith emanates from Christ. It emanates from His word. We then dissected the two most common Greek words that are translated into our English word: word. Those are… Caroline, do you remember those two Greek words by chance? Caroline: Logos and rhema. Beatty: Do you remember what the difference between logos and rhema are? Caroline: Oh goodness. Wasn’t logos more like a word and rhema was more like something you received and heard? Beatty: Exactly. So logos is simply a word that embodies an idea. In other words, Jesus goes out and preaches the Word to people. He is generally telling them truths. Rhema is when Jesus tells Peter: “Walk on the water.” Okay? Or tells Peter: “You will deny me three times before the cock crows.” Peter remember the word that Jesus told him. Or the angel that comes to Mary and says, “You are going to have a child.” And she says, “Be it done to me according to your word,” according to your rhema. Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word or the rhema of Christ. So in our real loose definitions. This is not a scholarly definition, this is more what I would call a, “how do you live” definition. A loose definition of rhema is something that God points directly at you. A real simple kind of understanding, Caroline, have you ever (I know you have) been reading your scriptures, reading the Bible and a passage stands out like God is talking directly to you. Have you had that happened to you before? Caroline: Absolutely. I have a lot of times where I will be in kind of conversation with the Holy Spirit. Later on, I will hear or read something in the Bible and it’s like the confirmation of what the Holy Spirit was just saying. There are a lot of times when things were highlighted. I feel like the Lord does that a lot for reassurance or confirmation. Beatty: Well, He does that a lot with me too and when that happens that, in general, what we call rhema. That is when the Holy Spirit is speaking directly to you. That is where we were when we wrapped up our Radical faith call. What I want to do is pick up from there and kind of try to wrap up this section before we run out of time. One of the things that we find about faith and this what I will call Radical faith is the idea or the truth that faith cannot exist by itself, that it is always accompanied by works. There is a passage in James, James 2:17 that says: “Even so faith if it has no works is dead being by itself.” So you kind of get this picture that faith cannot exist by itself. It’s sort of like the body without oxygen. It just dies. That body and oxygen have to go together. Faith and works have to go together. It says a couple of verses later. It’s talking about Abraham and it says, “Faith was working with Abraham’s works and as a result of the works faith was perfected.” So here is the question for you, Caroline. What does it mean that faith is perfected by works because, growing up in church, you always hear that we are saved by faith, not by works. Then we read this thing in James, you say you have faith but I have works and I’ll show you my faith by my works. So what is all this mean? What is the separation between faith and works? How would you describe that? Caroline: To me, whenever I’ve had conversation with people about that with grace and works and how they all go together. To me, works comes as a natural outcome of your faith and what you believe. Your faith also partners with that to also give you the strength and belief to be the foundation of your works. So it’s not like your works are an outcome of striving but your works are an outcome of beliefs and trust and pursuing the Kingdom. It’s a completely trajectory comparatively with those that, maybe some people struggle with feeling like they have to prove and work their way to the Lord or earn their salvation, which we know, scripturally, is not true. But I think that is just the natural question to struggle with for a lot of people. I think God’s intention in James is that it doesn’t have to be something that is conflicting, it can be something that can actually partner a lot easier and your faith is going to naturally push the works and your works are naturally going to cause you to increase your faith. Beatty: So let me see if I can make a real simple illustration to kind of tie this together. I want to invite you to a party. In fact, I am going to give this party in your honor. It’s going to be over at my house. It’s going to be Thursday night at 7:00. Can you come? Caroline: Sure, yes, I’d love to. Beatty: Is that a commitment? Caroline: Yes. Beatty: So now you have just given me your rhema. “I will be there.” So now, Thursday at 7:00 comes up and you are all excited because I’ve told you that we are going to get a caterer. We are going to invite all the people from church, all the people from the neighborhood and all the people from everywhere. And it’s going to be a great big party. And we are going to have child care so you don’t have to worry about Jethro and it’s going to be a wonderful time with your favorite foods and you are all excited. “This is my party.” Now you come over to the house. You come over at 7:00. You drive up to my house and you notice something strange. There are no cars out there. “Okay, well, I’m not sure what’s going on.” You have this question mark. You come up to the house and it’s kind of dark outside. There are no lights on. There are a couple of lights in the room but it’s not like it’s lite up. You look inside; there is no one there. You right the doorbell, ding dong. No one. You ring it again, ding dong. You are just about to walk away from my door and you hear these steps, boom boom boom, and it sounds like someone is coming up some steps and you see me running around the corner. I’m in my exercise clothes and I’m all hot and sweaty. I come to the door and open it. As soon as I catch your eyes, you see my expression go, “Oh my gosh!” You know that expression I’m talking about? Caroline: Yes. I imagine that you are trying to say that you forgot. Beatty: I didn’t forget. I say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you would be here. I never made any plans for the party.” Now what happens to you at that point? Are you happy or are you sad? Caroline: I imagine you would be sad and disappointed and questioning why you didn’t think I would attend. Beatty: Yes, you would have all these questions. Did I just sin against you? Caroline: That sounds so intense. I guess for the purpose of the illustration, yes? Beatty: So here is what happens. Let’s now analyze this a little bit more. You gave me a rhema and I did not act in works upon that rhema. Do you follow me so far? Caroline: Okay. Beatty: Faith is perfected through works. Faith is what we believe in. Faith comes by hearing the rhema of Christ. So if we hear Christ’s rhema and don’t believe it then we never act on it and therefore faith is never perfected because our works did not carry it out. Make sense? Caroline: Yes, that makes sense. Beatty: So in this illustration, how can your faith be perfected by works? Because if I had faith that you would have shown up then my works would have demonstrated that faith. I would have called the caterer. I would have called all the people. We would be having a great party. We would have a special parking space right up front to protect a special parking area just for you just o you could come right to the front door. All of this. But the fact that I did none of it means that my faith was never perfected because I never believed it. It’s not that I work for my faith; it’s that my works emanate from my faith. So here are a couple of truths that we can learn about this. Number one, our works are a demonstration of our faith. We do not produce works to have faith. We generate works because it emanates from our faith. Faith comes first and faith naturally births the works in our lives because we become as we believe. As a man believes, so he is. In fact, I heard a preacher this past Sunday hit on that comment quite a few times. Do you remember anything like that? Caroline: Yes, I do. Beatty: So it all kind of ties together. And here are a couple of other things we can take out of this. So you come to the door and I go, “Oh my gosh. I didn’t believe you. I thought you were lying to me. Therefore, I didn’t make any plans at all.” Now you are feeling dejected and rejected. You are frustrated. “How dare you? I planned my whole week around this. It has taken two hours to prepare for this. I’ve been making myself look beautiful. I’ve been telling all of my friends.” Now you are really upset at my aren’t you? Caroline: Yes, it sounds like I would be. Beatty: Yes, you would be. What happens then is that you turn away. You hop back in your car and you drive home. And now I have lost the blessing of your presence and fellowship with you because I did not believe. Now, this is what the images between us and God are. When the Lord gives us rhema and I’m not talking about something huge like step off a mountain and I’m going to hold you up, okay? I’m talking about just anything where we fail to trust the Lord and we know that we don’t trust him because our actions prove that we don’t believe just like in that example. Then what happens is that all of God’s amazing blessings that he had in store for us fall through our fingertips and we don’t even receive them because they are only received by faith, not by works, but it’s our works that demonstrate our faith and therefore, that’s how our faith is perfected with works. Is all of this kind of making sense? Caroline: Absolutely. I think that was a good step-by-step explanation with that scenario about the definition and how that works. It’s a funny scenario. I think it’s a great example and explanation. Beatty: Okay, cool. So now let’s talk a little further on this, if we can. A simple takeaway. Your faith is always displayed by acting on God’s word. If you don’t act on it, you don’t really believe it. This is the essence of what I call “radical” faith. It should be normal. By the way, was there ever a time in Jesus’ life where He did not act in works based on His faith in what God had directed or told Him to do? Any time?  Caroline:  No. A time when He did not act based on what the Father told Him to do? No, He didn’t.  Beatty: So when He raised someone from the dead, was that Him acting by faith? Caroline: Yes. Beatty: Okay. If we use this definition of faith. When He healed someone, was that acting by faith? Caroline: Yes. Beatty: And did He raise them from the dead? Did He heal them or was it the Holy Spirit doing that work? Caroline: It was Him. The Holy Spirit came later. Beatty: Matthew and Acts both say that it was the Holy Spirit working through Jesus that performed the miracles. Acts says that it was God’s power working through Jesus of Nazareth that did all of these miracles. In other words, that Jesus was modeling for us; this doesn’t take any of His Deity away, I’m just saying that the scripture says that the Holy Spirit is what raised someone from the dead. Healed somebody. We even see this in scripture that God commands, but it’s the Holy Spirit. You have God the Father as the ultimate authority and all power. He designates His authority to Jesus and then Jesus delegates authority to the Holy Spirit. In fact, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will open your mind to all of these things and He will not speak anything to you that I have not commanded him already to speak. Are you with me or did I just lose you? Caroline: No, I’m here. Beatty: Maybe I’m going too deep in this. Let me pull back out before I get too deep. So faith is displayed by acting on God’s word. Jesus displays living by faith and, when you live by that faith, you act on His word then amazing things happen. I want to tell a personal story. We all kind of get caught into this because we get our eyes on the natural rather than our eyes on God. Jesus always kept His eyes on the Lord. He said, “Everything I do is what I see my Father doing.” He’s always looking at the Father first. Go back quite a few years, this is 2002. We are running and making a lot of money the first part of 2002. We’ve got a large corporate account that is scheduled to leave on June 1 and as soon they leave, we are going to be upside down. We are going to lose huge amounts of money, more money a month than most people will earn in a year. We hit June, we start to go upside down. The first month or two, I’m okay. By the third or fourth month, somewhere in there, I start to panic. Oh my gosh, I’m scared. Because I look in the natural. Just like Peter walking on the water, he looks at the wind and the waves and he gets scared. I’m looking in the natural; I get scared. We start to batten down all the hatches. Everyone is put on forced payroll reduction. I take the biggest cut of everyone. My number two man takes the second biggest cut and everyone else takes a bit cut as well. We are trying to weather the storm and we are losing money month after month. Now, it’s January 2003. Now, we’ve been unprofitable, losing money for about six months. Do you get the picture so far? It’s desperate, dire circumstances. Right? Caroline: Right. Beatty: So I’m out there on my day of prayer. I take a day off and say, “Lord, I am going to meet with you.” I’m out there. It’s now the end of January, just a couple of days before the end of the month and I’m on the golf course which is where I take my day of prayer. I don’t play, I just walk and pray and talk. I’m asking the Lord, “Lord, when are you going to let up? Do you know what the Lord told me? He asked me a question. “Do you really believe I can take care of you?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “If you really believe, how would you act differently than you are acting right now?” So what I said is, “Well, if I really believed it then I would put myself at full pay and I would put all my other people at full pay.” He said, “Then why don’t you do it and trust me?” Okay? This is what I’m talking about with radical faith. It makes no sense, but it is trusting the Lord. It is doing what Jesus said. Jesus trusted the Lord and He never feared. Why do we fear? Because we live in the natural. So I did. I put my eyes on Him instead of on the circumstances and I called my number two guy at the time, his name was Walter and I said, “Walter, put me and everyone else back at full pay, retroactive for the full month” because everyone had gotten a short paycheck midmonth. And so he did. Two days later, payroll hit. We lost a lot of money because that was a lot of money that we didn’t have. But here’s the cool thing. The very next month, we made a profit and this is a small business, we had a $20,000 swing on our bottom line, $20,000 more on our bottom line than we had the month before. And I looked at the P and L and I couldn’t find it even to this day, I’ve go back to that P and L multiple times and there is nothing there where we had a lot more revenue, less expenses. I don’t know how it happened, but it happened. And, for the next string of months, we were profitable. What changed? What changed in all that? Do you know? Caroline: Your faith. Beatty: Yes. I acted on my faith. Faith is perfected by works. That’s what this is meaning. So for those of you guys listening out there, what are you afraid of that you know God has said, “Trust me.” If you really believe God’s word to be true, how would you act differently than you are acting right now? And whatever that is, do it, because that is what James is talking about. Faith is perfected by works. Faith without works is dead. Therefore, you cannot believe unless you are going to show that belief through your works. Pretty fascinating isn’t it? Caroline: It is. That was a really inspiring story too. I think it also makes a better definition of that verse and that challenge explaining how faith and works go hand and hand. They are not in opposition of one another. Beatty: No, they definitely are not. We are going to go just a little bit over on this call but I have some points I want to wrap up with. So what faith really is, Caroline, it is seeing from God’s perspective. See, when Peter was walking on the water he was looking at Jesus seeing Jesus’ perspective and he was walking then he looked from His perspective into the waves and he gets scared. And in the very same situation he has two completely outcomes. One outcome by perfecting his faith through works. The other outcome by getting afraid and stop working by faith. Okay? The same thing happened with me, just reversed with the money. So when we see what God sees then we believe as God believes (if you want to use the term “God believes”). When we see as God sees then we get to believe as God believes and then when we act on that belief that is when our faith is perfected. And the challenge that we run into, and this is why it is so tough. Let me ask you a question instead of making a statement. Are we more spirit being or physical being? As a Christian? Caroline: Spirit being. Beatty: Okay. Where do we spend all of our time, focus and our sensory senses? Physical or spiritual? Caroline: I guess physical Beatty: Yes. So here is our problem. We are more spirit beings living in the spirit or should be, but where we actually live most of our time is in the physical because we have physical bodies. We have our sight, sound, hearing, everything, taste, touch is all physical. It’s easy to lose sight of spiritual truths because we get to see everything in the physical. This is where the challenge comes from. But if we can overcome and look in the spirit realm, both figuratively and literally. We look in the spirit realm figuratively and spiritually by looking at God’s truth and his truth trumps the physical. Okay? It is what it is. I want to give you some examples. I want to give you some passages and some scriptures and show you how this plays itself out in the scriptures. The first one comes from 2 Kings, Chapter 6. This is Elisha and his servant. This is actually where we get the term “chariots of fire.” There is a battle with King Aram. King Aram is the enemy king and any time he makes a move against the Israel king then Elisha is telling the Israel king what is going on. So the Israel king gets to adjust. It may have been Judah, but I think it’s Israel. And now, that is where we pick up. “This enraged the king of Aram. He summoned his officers and demanded of them, “Tell me! Which of us is on the side of the king of Israel?” “None of us, my lord the king,” said one of his officers, “but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom.” “Go, find out where he is,” the king ordered, “so I can send men and capture him.” The report came back: “He is in Dothan.” Then he sent horses and chariots and a strong force there. They went by night and surrounded the city. When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” (Just like me. On my goodness, we are losing money, what do I do?) the servant asked. And then Elisha, who sees from God’s perspectives says, “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, LORD, so that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. Here is the point on this, once the servant saw from God’s perspective, which is in the spiritual realm, he was no longer afraid. Does that make sense? Caroline: Yes, that does. Beatty: Let me give you another example. Say it’s the 27th of the month, and this is personal for you and Wes, it’s the 27th of the month and you guys have $2,000 of bills needing to be paid and you don’t have the money. You don’t know where it is going to come from. You’ve run out of money for the month and you still have $2,000 left to pay. And this is critical. Maybe this is your mortgage. Okay? You are at risk of losing the house if you don’t pay it. So you are going to pray and ask the Lord to help you out, is that right? Caroline: Right. Beatty: Okay. So when you pray and ask God to send it, how solid is your faith that He is going to send you that money in the next two or three days? Caroline: Pretty solid because we just seen Him be faithful time and time again. He’ll be faithful again. Beatty: Let me ask you, would you put Jethro’s life on it? Do you believe it that much? Caroline: That such an intense question. I don’t know that the Lord would ask me that. Beatty: I know He wouldn’t but the question isn’t, how much do you really believe? Do we believe in essence, trusting that He is going to do something or do we have an absolute, unequivocal, absolutely $2,000 is going to show up in the mailbox or someone is going to bring it to me within the next two or three days. Caroline: That’s a good challenge to ask yourself. Beatty: I’m leading somewhere. I’m always leading somewhere with these questions. So the question is, we pray and we ask, but do we really believe. We trust, but do we really believe that $2,000 is going to how up in the mail in the next two days? Okay. So now, let’s look at it from God’s perspective for just a moment. One month ago, your mortgage company paid your taxes your taxes and insurance out of money from escrow. And they realized that they collected $2,000 more from you over the last year than was needed. So they processed a $2,000 check. It was mailed two days ago and you are about to get it today. Okay? That is God’s perspective. You know that that check is coming. You know all these details. Now when you pray and ask God for $2,000 do you have a different level of confidence that he is going to provide it. Caroline: Absolutely. You would have the whole scope. Beatty: So what changed? Caroline: You were placing yourself in Heaven’s perspective to see where the Lord is coming through. When you have the whole scope, your prayers change. You have faith and confidence. You can see that He will be faithful and He’s coming through. Beatty: In God’s perspective, everything changes. I think we talked about this a few times back that it’s all about seeing from God’s perspective. That’s what I am talking about here. This radical faith is seeing from God’s perspective. Elisha’s faith was not scared at all because he could see from God’s perspective. Once God opened the servant’s eyes to see from his perspective as well, he was no longer afraid. When we get our eyes focused on the natural, we become afraid. When we keep our eyes focused on the Lord and his truth, which is His perspective, then if we believe it, we are no longer afraid ourselves. The only way that we can demonstrate our belief is to act on it. That’s kind of how all that works. So that’s what faith is. Next time we will start on the topic I call, “Getting out of the boat.” We are laying the foundation now and now the next set of calls we going to start to get where the rubber meets the road and it’s going to be a lot of fun. You want to close us out real quick? Caroline: Sure. Well Beatty, thank you so much for your time and sharing all the revelation and wisdom that you received from the Lord. I think this really was a great and challenging call. I’m excited to hear next time about getting out of the boat and just continuing on in our conversation. I think we are going to wrap up. I don’t think we are doing a question and answer for this call. With that being said, Beatty, if you don’t have anything else, I think we are wrapped up. That’s all we have for today. Beatty: Great. Thanks a lot. Y’all have a great day.   If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please tell others about. Also, be sure to get our step-by-step training on how to double sales and referrals from past clients and sphere of influence. It’s absolutely the easiest way to grow your business fast and it’s completely free. You’ll find it on our website at GetSellersCallingYou.com. Thanks for listening.   P004

Have Questions or Comments? Please ask your questions in the comments section below. We attempt to respond to ALL questions or comments. Listen via YouTube video if desired   Caroline: Hi, I’m Caroline Springer and welcome to our next session of Radical Faith. We have a Radical Faith podcast as part of our Get Sellers Calling You podcast with Beatty Carmichael. Professionally, Beatty is the CEO of MasterGrabber, the creator of Agent Dominator and a top marketing expert in the real estate field for many years. And personally, for many years, he has been a Christian and loves to talk about the Lord and that’s where the vision of this podcast came from. So I’m just going to pass it over to him to give a little disclaimer about the Radical Faith podcast and kind of what his idea is behind it. Beatty: I’m not sure I would call it a disclaimer, but maybe it is. The whole idea about Radical Faith is this has nothing to do specifically and directly with real estate business. It has everything to do with living your life as a passionate Christian. So this is all going to be about my Christian philosophy or theosophy if you call it that. So if you don’t want to hear it, you can delete this podcast out and just listen to the podcasts focused on how to build a real estate business, but we are going to talk about Christ today. That’s my disclaimer. Back to you. Caroline: We always chat a little at the beginning about the world we live in and how we have to give a disclaimer, but I think it is good. It excites me so I’m like, “All right, let’s jump in.” This is going to be about the Lord and nothing else. So I’m okay with that. Beatty: Part of that chat we were having is normal Christianity. So I definitely kind of want to bring that onto this call a little bit. The focus of these calls is what I call “normal Christianity.” If I were to ask you, Caroline, what do you think the typical Christian’s view of “normal Christianity” is? Is it healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, doing miracles or is it being a good person, not saying curse words, going to church on Sunday and reading your Bible? What is normal Christianity? Caroline: Yes, I would think sadly in the “normal” or maybe average Christian’s viewpoint, for those who claim to be Christian that’s what they would claim: being a good person, attending church, like you said, not saying curse words, living a chaste life, reading your Bible, praying before meals. The more Radical type of lifestyle is something that a lot of people may think is just preserved for certain people or that’s not really a thing anymore. I think that seems too far-fetched for them to believe that it’s something we’ve been invited into now. Beatty: True. So let me ask you. Who is our model for how to live as a Christian? Caroline: Jesus. He is our model. Beatty: Did he consider what he modeled to be normal or to be radical? What do you think his perspective on it was? Caroline: That’s a good question. Beatty: Let me ask that question another way. He is modeling for us how we should live, right? Caroline: Right. Beatty: Does He expect us to live anything but what He considers normal? Caroline: No. I think He was saying He only did the things He saw His Father do and he models for us a life like that so we can follow that. So I think His expectation was for Him to be paving a way for us to walk the way He walks. So I guess that would be normal for Him and normal for us. Beatty: Okay, so then how did He walk? It says, I think in John 14:22, don’t quote me exactly, but somewhere in John 14. It says, “Truly, truly whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and greater works will he do because I go to the Father.” Jesus is living out the works that we should do. If I were to ask, “What were the works that Jesus did,” what would you tell me? Not saying curse words? Read the Bible? Or something different? Caroline: I think something more. Like you said earlier, healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, parting the way, making a way for Heaven to invade Earth. That was His life. Beatty: Therein lies the topic of Radical faith. Most people think it’s radical. Jesus thinks it’s normal. Now we are not going to talk about today how to raise the dead or heal the sick. We might get into the sophics, but I think more than anything else it’s really understanding what we are called to do as a Christian. How are we called to live and those things that we consider in our 21st century nature to be radical, I think Jesus considered normal. How do we go back to what is normal and not what is myopically considered radical. That is where I want to kind of lean us into this call. Can I take the lead real quick and just kind of get this thing started? Caroline: Absolutely. Beatty: For those of you who have been listening in on our podcasts, you’ll kind of see this pattern. Caroline takes the lead in the interview process on the marketing stuff. I end up taking the lead on the radical faith stuff because she becomes my guinea pig just to use as a sounding board. On all the marketing calls, she has an outline of the direction we are going on the calls. But on the radical faith calls, she is totally blind, so she doesn’t know what I am going to bring up or what I am going to ask her. So we are going to put you on the spots a few times and see what your thoughts are. Okay? Caroline: Oh, good. Beatty: Oh, good. It’s just like normal. We are going to be normal on this call. The last call that we did on radical faith, we are been going through this series of what I call what is faith. We are trying to lay this foundation of what faith really means. On the previous call we started to talk about that faith comes hearing and hearing from the word of Christ. And then we started to look into that faith emanates from Christ. It emanates from His word. We then dissected the two most common Greek words that are translated into our English word: word. Those are… Caroline, do you remember those two Greek words by chance? Caroline: Logos and rhema. Beatty: Do you remember what the difference between logos and rhema are? Caroline: Oh goodness. Wasn’t logos more like a word and rhema was more like something you received and heard? Beatty: Exactly. So logos is simply a word that embodies an idea. In other words, Jesus goes out and preaches the Word to people. He is generally telling them truths. Rhema is when Jesus tells Peter: “Walk on the water.” Okay? Or tells Peter: “You will deny me three times before the cock crows.” Peter remember the word that Jesus told him. Or the angel that comes to Mary and says, “You are going to have a child.” And she says, “Be it done to me according to your word,” according to your rhema. Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word or the rhema of Christ. So in our real loose definitions. This is not a scholarly definition, this is more what I would call a, “how do you live” definition. A loose definition of rhema is something that God points directly at you. A real simple kind of understanding, Caroline, have you ever (I know you have) been reading your scriptures, reading the Bible and a passage stands out like God is talking directly to you. Have you had that happened to you before? Caroline: Absolutely. I have a lot of times where I will be in kind of conversation with the Holy Spirit. Later on, I will hear or read something in the Bible and it’s like the confirmation of what the Holy Spirit was just saying. There are a lot of times when things were highlighted. I feel like the Lord does that a lot for reassurance or confirmation. Beatty: Well, He does that a lot with me too and when that happens that, in general, what we call rhema. That is when the Holy Spirit is speaking directly to you. That is where we were when we wrapped up our Radical faith call. What I want to do is pick up from there and kind of try to wrap up this section before we run out of time. One of the things that we find about faith and this what I will call Radical faith is the idea or the truth that faith cannot exist by itself, that it is always accompanied by works. There is a passage in James, James 2:17 that says: “Even so faith if it has no works is dead being by itself.” So you kind of get this picture that faith cannot exist by itself. It’s sort of like the body without oxygen. It just dies. That body and oxygen have to go together. Faith and works have to go together. It says a couple of verses later. It’s talking about Abraham and it says, “Faith was working with Abraham’s works and as a result of the works faith was perfected.” So here is the question for you, Caroline. What does it mean that faith is perfected by works because, growing up in church, you always hear that we are saved by faith, not by works. Then we read this thing in James, you say you have faith but I have works and I’ll show you my faith by my works. So what is all this mean? What is the separation between faith and works? How would you describe that? Caroline: To me, whenever I’ve had conversation with people about that with grace and works and how they all go together. To me, works comes as a natural outcome of your faith and what you believe. Your faith also partners with that to also give you the strength and belief to be the foundation of your works. So it’s not like your works are an outcome of striving but your works are an outcome of beliefs and trust and pursuing the Kingdom. It’s a completely trajectory comparatively with those that, maybe some people struggle with feeling like they have to prove and work their way to the Lord or earn their salvation, which we know, scripturally, is not true. But I think that is just the natural question to struggle with for a lot of people. I think God’s intention in James is that it doesn’t have to be something that is conflicting, it can be something that can actually partner a lot easier and your faith is going to naturally push the works and your works are naturally going to cause you to increase your faith. Beatty: So let me see if I can make a real simple illustration to kind of tie this together. I want to invite you to a party. In fact, I am going to give this party in your honor. It’s going to be over at my house. It’s going to be Thursday night at 7:00. Can you come? Caroline: Sure, yes, I’d love to. Beatty: Is that a commitment? Caroline: Yes. Beatty: So now you have just given me your rhema. “I will be there.” So now, Thursday at 7:00 comes up and you are all excited because I’ve told you that we are going to get a caterer. We are going to invite all the people from church, all the people from the neighborhood and all the people from everywhere. And it’s going to be a great big party. And we are going to have child care so you don’t have to worry about Jethro and it’s going to be a wonderful time with your favorite foods and you are all excited. “This is my party.” Now you come over to the house. You come over at 7:00. You drive up to my house and you notice something strange. There are no cars out there. “Okay, well, I’m not sure what’s going on.” You have this question mark. You come up to the house and it’s kind of dark outside. There are no lights on. There are a couple of lights in the room but it’s not like it’s lite up. You look inside; there is no one there. You right the doorbell, ding dong. No one. You ring it again, ding dong. You are just about to walk away from my door and you hear these steps, boom boom boom, and it sounds like someone is coming up some steps and you see me running around the corner. I’m in my exercise clothes and I’m all hot and sweaty. I come to the door and open it. As soon as I catch your eyes, you see my expression go, “Oh my gosh!” You know that expression I’m talking about? Caroline: Yes. I imagine that you are trying to say that you forgot. Beatty: I didn’t forget. I say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you would be here. I never made any plans for the party.” Now what happens to you at that point? Are you happy or are you sad? Caroline: I imagine you would be sad and disappointed and questioning why you didn’t think I would attend. Beatty: Yes, you would have all these questions. Did I just sin against you? Caroline: That sounds so intense. I guess for the purpose of the illustration, yes? Beatty: So here is what happens. Let’s now analyze this a little bit more. You gave me a rhema and I did not act in works upon that rhema. Do you follow me so far? Caroline: Okay. Beatty: Faith is perfected through works. Faith is what we believe in. Faith comes by hearing the rhema of Christ. So if we hear Christ’s rhema and don’t believe it then we never act on it and therefore faith is never perfected because our works did not carry it out. Make sense? Caroline: Yes, that makes sense. Beatty: So in this illustration, how can your faith be perfected by works? Because if I had faith that you would have shown up then my works would have demonstrated that faith. I would have called the caterer. I would have called all the people. We would be having a great party. We would have a special parking space right up front to protect a special parking area just for you just o you could come right to the front door. All of this. But the fact that I did none of it means that my faith was never perfected because I never believed it. It’s not that I work for my faith; it’s that my works emanate from my faith. So here are a couple of truths that we can learn about this. Number one, our works are a demonstration of our faith. We do not produce works to have faith. We generate works because it emanates from our faith. Faith comes first and faith naturally births the works in our lives because we become as we believe. As a man believes, so he is. In fact, I heard a preacher this past Sunday hit on that comment quite a few times. Do you remember anything like that? Caroline: Yes, I do. Beatty: So it all kind of ties together. And here are a couple of other things we can take out of this. So you come to the door and I go, “Oh my gosh. I didn’t believe you. I thought you were lying to me. Therefore, I didn’t make any plans at all.” Now you are feeling dejected and rejected. You are frustrated. “How dare you? I planned my whole week around this. It has taken two hours to prepare for this. I’ve been making myself look beautiful. I’ve been telling all of my friends.” Now you are really upset at my aren’t you? Caroline: Yes, it sounds like I would be. Beatty: Yes, you would be. What happens then is that you turn away. You hop back in your car and you drive home. And now I have lost the blessing of your presence and fellowship with you because I did not believe. Now, this is what the images between us and God are. When the Lord gives us rhema and I’m not talking about something huge like step off a mountain and I’m going to hold you up, okay? I’m talking about just anything where we fail to trust the Lord and we know that we don’t trust him because our actions prove that we don’t believe just like in that example. Then what happens is that all of God’s amazing blessings that he had in store for us fall through our fingertips and we don’t even receive them because they are only received by faith, not by works, but it’s our works that demonstrate our faith and therefore, that’s how our faith is perfected with works. Is all of this kind of making sense? Caroline: Absolutely. I think that was a good step-by-step explanation with that scenario about the definition and how that works. It’s a funny scenario. I think it’s a great example and explanation. Beatty: Okay, cool. So now let’s talk a little further on this, if we can. A simple takeaway. Your faith is always displayed by acting on God’s word. If you don’t act on it, you don’t really believe it. This is the essence of what I call “radical” faith. It should be normal. By the way, was there ever a time in Jesus’ life where He did not act in works based on His faith in what God had directed or told Him to do? Any time?  Caroline:  No. A time when He did not act based on what the Father told Him to do? No, He didn’t.  Beatty: So when He raised someone from the dead, was that Him acting by faith? Caroline: Yes. Beatty: Okay. If we use this definition of faith. When He healed someone, was that acting by faith? Caroline: Yes. Beatty: And did He raise them from the dead? Did He heal them or was it the Holy Spirit doing that work? Caroline: It was Him. The Holy Spirit came later. Beatty: Matthew and Acts both say that it was the Holy Spirit working through Jesus that performed the miracles. Acts says that it was God’s power working through Jesus of Nazareth that did all of these miracles. In other words, that Jesus was modeling for us; this doesn’t take any of His Deity away, I’m just saying that the scripture says that the Holy Spirit is what raised someone from the dead. Healed somebody. We even see this in scripture that God commands, but it’s the Holy Spirit. You have God the Father as the ultimate authority and all power. He designates His authority to Jesus and then Jesus delegates authority to the Holy Spirit. In fact, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will open your mind to all of these things and He will not speak anything to you that I have not commanded him already to speak. Are you with me or did I just lose you? Caroline: No, I’m here. Beatty: Maybe I’m going too deep in this. Let me pull back out before I get too deep. So faith is displayed by acting on God’s word. Jesus displays living by faith and, when you live by that faith, you act on His word then amazing things happen. I want to tell a personal story. We all kind of get caught into this because we get our eyes on the natural rather than our eyes on God. Jesus always kept His eyes on the Lord. He said, “Everything I do is what I see my Father doing.” He’s always looking at the Father first. Go back quite a few years, this is 2002. We are running and making a lot of money the first part of 2002. We’ve got a large corporate account that is scheduled to leave on June 1 and as soon they leave, we are going to be upside down. We are going to lose huge amounts of money, more money a month than most people will earn in a year. We hit June, we start to go upside down. The first month or two, I’m okay. By the third or fourth month, somewhere in there, I start to panic. Oh my gosh, I’m scared. Because I look in the natural. Just like Peter walking on the water, he looks at the wind and the waves and he gets scared. I’m looking in the natural; I get scared. We start to batten down all the hatches. Everyone is put on forced payroll reduction. I take the biggest cut of everyone. My number two man takes the second biggest cut and everyone else takes a bit cut as well. We are trying to weather the storm and we are losing money month after month. Now, it’s January 2003. Now, we’ve been unprofitable, losing money for about six months. Do you get the picture so far? It’s desperate, dire circumstances. Right? Caroline: Right. Beatty: So I’m out there on my day of prayer. I take a day off and say, “Lord, I am going to meet with you.” I’m out there. It’s now the end of January, just a couple of days before the end of the month and I’m on the golf course which is where I take my day of prayer. I don’t play, I just walk and pray and talk. I’m asking the Lord, “Lord, when are you going to let up? Do you know what the Lord told me? He asked me a question. “Do you really believe I can take care of you?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “If you really believe, how would you act differently than you are acting right now?” So what I said is, “Well, if I really believed it then I would put myself at full pay and I would put all my other people at full pay.” He said, “Then why don’t you do it and trust me?” Okay? This is what I’m talking about with radical faith. It makes no sense, but it is trusting the Lord. It is doing what Jesus said. Jesus trusted the Lord and He never feared. Why do we fear? Because we live in the natural. So I did. I put my eyes on Him instead of on the circumstances and I called my number two guy at the time, his name was Walter and I said, “Walter, put me and everyone else back at full pay, retroactive for the full month” because everyone had gotten a short paycheck midmonth. And so he did. Two days later, payroll hit. We lost a lot of money because that was a lot of money that we didn’t have. But here’s the cool thing. The very next month, we made a profit and this is a small business, we had a $20,000 swing on our bottom line, $20,000 more on our bottom line than we had the month before. And I looked at the P and L and I couldn’t find it even to this day, I’ve go back to that P and L multiple times and there is nothing there where we had a lot more revenue, less expenses. I don’t know how it happened, but it happened. And, for the next string of months, we were profitable. What changed? What changed in all that? Do you know? Caroline: Your faith. Beatty: Yes. I acted on my faith. Faith is perfected by works. That’s what this is meaning. So for those of you guys listening out there, what are you afraid of that you know God has said, “Trust me.” If you really believe God’s word to be true, how would you act differently than you are acting right now? And whatever that is, do it, because that is what James is talking about. Faith is perfected by works. Faith without works is dead. Therefore, you cannot believe unless you are going to show that belief through your works. Pretty fascinating isn’t it? Caroline: It is. That was a really inspiring story too. I think it also makes a better definition of that verse and that challenge explaining how faith and works go hand and hand. They are not in opposition of one another. Beatty: No, they definitely are not. We are going to go just a little bit over on this call but I have some points I want to wrap up with. So what faith really is, Caroline, it is seeing from God’s perspective. See, when Peter was walking on the water he was looking at Jesus seeing Jesus’ perspective and he was walking then he looked from His perspective into the waves and he gets scared. And in the very same situation he has two completely outcomes. One outcome by perfecting his faith through works. The other outcome by getting afraid and stop working by faith. Okay? The same thing happened with me, just reversed with the money. So when we see what God sees then we believe as God believes (if you want to use the term “God believes”). When we see as God sees then we get to believe as God believes and then when we act on that belief that is when our faith is perfected. And the challenge that we run into, and this is why it is so tough. Let me ask you a question instead of making a statement. Are we more spirit being or physical being? As a Christian? Caroline: Spirit being. Beatty: Okay. Where do we spend all of our time, focus and our sensory senses? Physical or spiritual? Caroline: I guess physical Beatty: Yes. So here is our problem. We are more spirit beings living in the spirit or should be, but where we actually live most of our time is in the physical because we have physical bodies. We have our sight, sound, hearing, everything, taste, touch is all physical. It’s easy to lose sight of spiritual truths because we get to see everything in the physical. This is where the challenge comes from. But if we can overcome and look in the spirit realm, both figuratively and literally. We look in the spirit realm figuratively and spiritually by looking at God’s truth and his truth trumps the physical. Okay? It is what it is. I want to give you some examples. I want to give you some passages and some scriptures and show you how this plays itself out in the scriptures. The first one comes from 2 Kings, Chapter 6. This is Elisha and his servant. This is actually where we get the term “chariots of fire.” There is a battle with King Aram. King Aram is the enemy king and any time he makes a move against the Israel king then Elisha is telling the Israel king what is going on. So the Israel king gets to adjust. It may have been Judah, but I think it’s Israel. And now, that is where we pick up. “This enraged the king of Aram. He summoned his officers and demanded of them, “Tell me! Which of us is on the side of the king of Israel?” “None of us, my lord the king,” said one of his officers, “but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom.” “Go, find out where he is,” the king ordered, “so I can send men and capture him.” The report came back: “He is in Dothan.” Then he sent horses and chariots and a strong force there. They went by night and surrounded the city. When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” (Just like me. On my goodness, we are losing money, what do I do?) the servant asked. And then Elisha, who sees from God’s perspectives says, “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, LORD, so that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. Here is the point on this, once the servant saw from God’s perspective, which is in the spiritual realm, he was no longer afraid. Does that make sense? Caroline: Yes, that does. Beatty: Let me give you another example. Say it’s the 27th of the month, and this is personal for you and Wes, it’s the 27th of the month and you guys have $2,000 of bills needing to be paid and you don’t have the money. You don’t know where it is going to come from. You’ve run out of money for the month and you still have $2,000 left to pay. And this is critical. Maybe this is your mortgage. Okay? You are at risk of losing the house if you don’t pay it. So you are going to pray and ask the Lord to help you out, is that right? Caroline: Right. Beatty: Okay. So when you pray and ask God to send it, how solid is your faith that He is going to send you that money in the next two or three days? Caroline: Pretty solid because we just seen Him be faithful time and time again. He’ll be faithful again. Beatty: Let me ask you, would you put Jethro’s life on it? Do you believe it that much? Caroline: That such an intense question. I don’t know that the Lord would ask me that. Beatty: I know He wouldn’t but the question isn’t, how much do you really believe? Do we believe in essence, trusting that He is going to do something or do we have an absolute, unequivocal, absolutely $2,000 is going to show up in the mailbox or someone is going to bring it to me within the next two or three days. Caroline: That’s a good challenge to ask yourself. Beatty: I’m leading somewhere. I’m always leading somewhere with these questions. So the question is, we pray and we ask, but do we really believe. We trust, but do we really believe that $2,000 is going to how up in the mail in the next two days? Okay. So now, let’s look at it from God’s perspective for just a moment. One month ago, your mortgage company paid your taxes your taxes and insurance out of money from escrow. And they realized that they collected $2,000 more from you over the last year than was needed. So they processed a $2,000 check. It was mailed two days ago and you are about to get it today. Okay? That is God’s perspective. You know that that check is coming. You know all these details. Now when you pray and ask God for $2,000 do you have a different level of confidence that he is going to provide it. Caroline: Absolutely. You would have the whole scope. Beatty: So what changed? Caroline: You were placing yourself in Heaven’s perspective to see where the Lord is coming through. When you have the whole scope, your prayers change. You have faith and confidence. You can see that He will be faithful and He’s coming through. Beatty: In God’s perspective, everything changes. I think we talked about this a few times back that it’s all about seeing from God’s perspective. That’s what I am talking about here. This radical faith is seeing from God’s perspective. Elisha’s faith was not scared at all because he could see from God’s perspective. Once God opened the servant’s eyes to see from his perspective as well, he was no longer afraid. When we get our eyes focused on the natural, we become afraid. When we keep our eyes focused on the Lord and his truth, which is His perspective, then if we believe it, we are no longer afraid ourselves. The only way that we can demonstrate our belief is to act on it. That’s kind of how all that works. So that’s what faith is. Next time we will start on the topic I call, “Getting out of the boat.” We are laying the foundation now and now the next set of calls we going to start to get where the rubber meets the road and it’s going to be a lot of fun. You want to close us out real quick? Caroline: Sure. Well Beatty, thank you so much for your time and sharing all the revelation and wisdom that you received from the Lord. I think this really was a great and challenging call. I’m excited to hear next time about getting out of the boat and just continuing on in our conversation. I think we are going to wrap up. I don’t think we are doing a question and answer for this call. With that being said, Beatty, if you don’t have anything else, I think we are wrapped up. That’s all we have for today. Beatty: Great. Thanks a lot. Y’all have a great day. P024

  Geographic Farming – how to make REAL money Part 7 – The Best postcard marketing 1 – self selection This is the Get Sellers Calling You marketing podcast for real estate agents and I’m Beatty Carmichael. For simple to do, proven marketing strategies focused exclusively on finding sellers and getting more listings, visit our website at GetSellersCallingYou.com. And now, let’s begin our next session of Get Sellers Calling You.   Caroline: Hi, this is Caroline Springer and welcome to the next session of Get Sellers Calling You with Beatty Carmichael. Beatty is the CEO of MasterGrabber, the creator of Agent Dominator and one of the top marketing experts in the real estate field. Today we are going to be continuing on in our topic of how to make money in geographic farming. This is a series of calls that we’ve had on that. This is actually going to be our last one. We are going to wrap up and talk about postcard marketing. Beatty: We’ve covered all of the other topics. Let’s see, the topics we’ve covered, if I go from memory, we have talked about: How to select a farm and the process to make sure that your selection is dead-on accurate so you make the most money from it. We’ve talked about how to select the mailing list because there are lots of options and opportunities for the types of mailing lists you are looking for (it depends on what you are trying to do). We then talked about 10 different things you can do within a farm that are low cost but allow you to start touching it. We talked about one other thing but I forget what that was and then today we are going to talk about postcard marketing in that farm because that is generally the concept that most people think about when they think of geographic farming and it is a very effective approach to touching and persuading people to choose you. Caroline: Thank you for that. That was a good, little refresher. Just a reminder for those of you who are on our live call, we do have the lines muted and we will open for questions and answers at the end of the call. But yes, thank you Beatty for that refresher. I think this really has been a content rich series on the best ways to make money with geographic farming and I’m excited to continue on with postcard marketing that really works and kind of get into the nitty gritty of some of the differences. I know that maybe some of our listeners have tried different ways so I’m sure they are going to be interested to hear the differences and what you have seen be successful. Beatty: Yes, you know, it’s interesting, I remember when we first started doing geographic farming (this is going back to 2012 / early 2013) and I was inquiring to realtors who were thinking about using us and we were talking about the services we offer, I would always ask them, “Have you ever done geographic farming before?” And I would say probably half or two thirds of the people answered “Yes.” Then I would ask them, “Was it successful for you?” And how many of those people do you think answered yes? Caroline: Oh goodness. Maybe less than half? Beatty: Try maybe less than 10%. So your comment that maybe people have been out there and done postcard marketing before…. What we find is that most people have tried geographic farming and they failed. And they failed because geographic farming is all about process. It’s all about doing the right things, the right way consistently and most people pick a farm and mail a couple of postcards and they spend money and they don’t really have a strategy. They don’t really know what they are doing and, therefore, it fails. This is, I think, our sixth podcast call focused just on this one topic because there are so many opportunities to fail which means there are so many opportunities to succeed. And today, as we talk about the postcard, this is really where the rubber meets the road. The first thing? You’ve got to pick the right farm. Then, the second thing, you’ve got to touch it right. This call would be, I would think, number two in significance in terms of importance in making a geographic farm work. So this is going to be a fun call. Caroline: Well good. I am excited to hear and know I’ve learned a lot and I know our listeners have too. The questions that they have at the end of the call have been really good to hear as well. So just starting off with postcard marketing that works, I think it could be even beneficial, since there are some realtors who haven’t even tried geographic farming, do you want to explain the two difference types of postcards that people typically send? Beatty: Let me rephrase your question. It’s not two types of postcards that people typically send. Most people typically send neither of the two most important types of postcards. So we are going to talk about the two types of postcards that are the ones that you really ought to be sending and what most people have done in the past that just didn’t cut it. I’ve got to tell you. So let me back up and let me Paul Harvey the rest of the story. So that less than 10% of the agents I’ve spoken with when I ask them, “Was geographic farming profitable for you?” and they said “yes,” I always ask them, “What type of postcard marketing did you do?” And 100% of everyone who said that it was successful for them did the same type of postcard. And that is a Just Sold postcard. So if you got nothing else out of this call, if you just wanted to hang up right now, even though we are only a few minutes in, you could say, “I can send out Just Sold postcards and I’ll at least make it profitable.” What I’m going to talk about in these two types of postcards take the Just Sold postcard and leave it in the dust in terms of the results you can get. So you can do Just Sold postcards—most people don’t—but those who did consistently made money, but now we are going to take it leaps and bounds further down the road of how much money you can make from the same farm. The two types of cards I want to talk about today: one is called a direct response card. Internally, we call it our self-selection card. The other is what we call an inside reality card. Basically, the self-selection card that are direct response cards are designed to identify someone who is thinking about selling. Let me ask you a quick question, Caroline. If you were a real estate agent and you could drive down the road in a neighborhood that you are wanting to farm and you would know with relative accuracy which homes were actually going to go on the market in the next six to twelve months, do you think that would give you a leg up in being successful in that farm? Caroline: Absolutely. I think that would be every realtor’s dream. Beatty: Okay, so if you knew who it was, what would you do differently than what you would normally do marketing to that farm? Caroline: I would think those would be the only homes I would be sending cards to and knocking on the door and keeping my face in front of them all the time so that I could be sure that would choose me to list their home. Beatty: Gotcha. So you would up your game in how you touch them? You would touch them more consistently and, what I would like to suggest, more expensively. Your time is worth money. You probably give them more things that cost more money because you know that that is a hot target. That’s one idea. Let me ask you another question. Let’s assume for a moment that you are a really good real estate agent because most of the folks on the call probably at least feel that they are if not in fact that they really are at the top of their game. So let’s assume that you are a top-of-your-game real estate agent. You’ve been selling real estate now for 10 or 15 years. You are in the top 5% or 10% of all agents out there. Let’s assume for a moment that you are going to sell your home. If you were that agent—take the commission money aside; don’t worry about how much money you will make or save from your own commissions—but if you were going to sell your home and you are a top-of-the-game agent, would you choose yourself personally, or do you think you would choose another agent? Caroline: I would absolutely choose myself. Even like you said, commissions aside, I’d be confident that I could do it and that nobody could do it better than me. Beatty: There you go. Okay, so you would be a fool to choose anyone else based on what you know about yourself. So let me ask you a question. If all of those people in the farm were as confident about you and your ability as you are about you and your ability, would they choose anyone else besides you? Caroline: No. If everyone knew what a great agent I was and how hard I work and what a great realtor I am and my marketing and how tirelessly I would work to make sure their home was sold, if they knew that reality was the truth, they wouldn’t hire anybody but me. Beatty: Exactly. So that is inside reality. So now we just kind of defined: What is a direct response card? It identifies those people thinking about selling. What is an inside reality card? Its purpose is to get them to believe about you as you believe about you. Because once they believe about you, they would go nowhere else. So this is why I say these are the two most important cards because they allow you to suck listings out of that farm right up front and long-term start to claim most every listing that starts to come out once we can persuade them. So that’s why these are the two most important cards. Yes, you can start with Just Sold postcards, but if you focus on direct response to identify sellers, you focus on inside reality to persuade them, then at that point you’ve got a game changer that makes your farm really, really profitable. So that’s what I kind of want to go into on this call. And hopefully, we can wrap it all up on this one call. Otherwise, we will continue this call into next week if we get going too long. From there, which card would you like to talk about first? Caroline: Let’s talk about the direct response card. Beatty: Let’s talk about direct response. In marketing there is a concept known as self-selection. Okay. And self-selection is where you use marketing, you send it out to a crowd and you let the people in the crowd select themselves if they are applicable to what you are offering. Does the name self-selection make sense now? Caroline: It does. That was a clear explanation. Beatty: Self-selection is a direct response card that is focused on getting that prospect to select themselves as someone who is thinking about selling. So the question then is, how do you do it? Here is a real basic overview about marketing. There are four steps to marketing and direct response. You have interrupt, engage, educate and offer. Interrupt is a headline. Engage is typically a subhead. Educate is you explain what you are doing. The offer is you give them a chance or opportunity to go get whatever it is that you are talking about. So the way this works in doing this within a postcard environment is there are typically three types of offers. The most important part of all of this, once you get your farm identified, is your offer. Let me see if this makes sense. As a seller, you are thinking about selling your home. And I’m going to send you a postcard about planting beautiful flowers. Does that hold your attention as a seller? Does that cause you as a seller to respond any differently than someone who is not thinking about selling? Caroline: No. I might be interested personally, but not as a seller. Beatty: If I send you another postcard that is talking about how to determine what your home would actually sell for in today’s market, as a seller, does that grab more of your attention than it would if you were not thinking about selling? Caroline: Oh, absolutely. I would very much be interested to know what the value would be. Beatty: So now we have just established what an offer is. An offer is whatever I’m offering you to try to get you to respond. If I offer how to plant pretty flowers, it doesn’t do anything in separating you in self-selection, self-selecting you from everyone else. So what I want to do is take my offer and I want to narrow it down to something that a seller is interested in. Now what do you think a seller is most interested in? What type of offer do you think they are most interested in knowing? Caroline: I think they would be most interested in knowing the value of their home and how much it would sell for or maybe how much the homes around them are selling for. Anything that would guarantee them more money for their home or anything along those lines. I think they would definitely be interested in that. Beatty: Yes, so survey says, “You are pretty close.” That is not the top thing they are interested in but that is definitely on the top of the list. Now the reason I say that is because I have to put this out there. Every time I talk with agents, especially these high-producing agents who have been in the business for years and do a lot of volume. When I ask them, “What does a seller want to know” they’ll respond, “The only thing they want to know is ‘How much is my home worth and how fast can you sell it?’” And I beg to differ. This is where most agents are a little myopic. They get tunnel focused. When you start to look at this from a different perspective, you start to understand something different. Let me suggest a couple of things. Are you more interested in knowing what your home is worth or are you more interested in picking an agent who can get you the most money for your home?” Caroline: Oh definitely in an agent who can get the most money for my home because maybe they could get even more than what the market says it is worth. Beatty: Right. Or, just the opposite, you may pick an agent that gets you less than the market says your home is worth. This is just a simple example that things are not always what they seem to be. You’ve got dig deeper and understand what is it about that seller that really will toot their horn? Just as it relates to self-selection cards and the direct response, “How do you identify sellers,” we’ve done over 21 split A/B marketing tests trying to understand how you can improve that game. I wish we could go into it. We’ve found things that will consistently would get 4X and 5X and 8X higher response rates. Fonts, font colors, headlines, what the card looks like and all kinds of things. When you start to add it all together, then what you have is something that can produce a lot of results. Let’s then reel this back in and I want to talk in terms of three different offers that we have found to be most effective. Let’s talk about ‘How much is your home worth?’ We’ll call it the ‘home valuation’ approach because that is typically what most agents have access to; they have home valuation websites and there are some great companies out there that will mail postcards that say, “Find out what your home is worth. Go to this website.” It’s a great way to do it. They are very effective. And I don’t want anything to come out in this dialogue to make it sounds as if I’m poo pooing that idea because it is very effective. But here is the challenge that we have found. In certain areas, based on the culture of the community you are targeting, we have found where that home valuation approach, “Hey find out what your home is worth, go to this website or call this number” doesn’t generate quality leads. Let me ask you. Are you and your husband thinking about selling your home in the next year? Caroline: No, we are not. We love our house and are planning on staying for a while. Beatty: Okay, great. Would you like to know what your house is worth right now as your most valuable investment that the two of you own? Caroline: Yes, I would like to know. We’ve done some additions and some renovations and I would be interested to know that. You are right, I’m not interested in selling, so I would be a waste for a realtor. Beatty: So you would respond to finding out what your home is worth because you have interest, but you would be a false lead. So this offer, the home valuation, gives what is called a false positive lead. Some are false and some are positive. You have start to filter through them a little bit more. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means you have to be aware. Real quickly. You’ve got to track your responses. If you are doing direct response to apply the self-selection approach, you’ve got to be able to track who is responding. The great thing that the home valuation websites do is that they make it really easy. You don’t have to have any special technology. You just buy your home valuation website service and put your own domain on it. Mine might be YourHomeValuesWithBeattyCarmichael.com. Whatever yours is: vestaviahomevalues.com. Anything like that. It’s just a simple domain. Then people go there and they enter their address. So if I mailed you a postcard, you would enter your address and it would give you generally what your home might be worth. When you enter your address now I know which address was entered. So that tells me that you might have interest in selling, but it’s still a false positive lead. Then as I go deeper into that home valuation website, I can make adjustments. I can say, no I have four bedrooms instead of three. We have three bathrooms instead of one. So you start to make adjustments on improvements you have done and then it starts to update your valuation. Then there is finally a place where you can request a professional competitive market analysis. What is happening in this home valuation website is that it’s taking you into a funnel. The further you go into it, the more likely you are to be thinking about selling. Are you following the logic process on that? Caroline: Yes, I am with you. Beatty: Okay, so that is why the home valuation website can really be a great, simple approach because it brings people into it and it can be real effective. But it’s not the only approach. In our testing, we have found one approach that actually beats everything else hands down. Would you like to guess what that offer is that wins far greater than the home valuation website? Caroline: Can I guess since I know? Beatty: Well, let’s see, do you know? You can guess and if you know, let’s test your internal knowledge of our products. Go ahead. Caroline: I know that with our customers that our most popular and most successful card is a card sending out to potential sellers that you have clients who are ready to purchase a home in a certain amount of time. We call it the ‘I have a client’ card. That would appeal to someone who is actually looking versus me who is interested in the valuation of my home but not interested in having a buyer come knock on my door. Beatty: That’s right. It’s what we call the ‘I have a client’ approach. As we talked on some of the previous podcasts, the whole idea came from a friend of mine. He was telling me that he had a client who wanted to buy on this one street, but he couldn’t find a house that he liked. When you are looking at just one street, you don’t have high turnover rate either because there aren’t that many homes there. So this agent, his name is Rob, he got creative and he wrote a letter. “Dear Homeowner, my name is Rob. I’m a real estate agent with such and such brokerage. I have a client wanting to live on your street and he has been looking for a year or two and I’m trying to help him find a house. If you have interest in selling your house, would you please call me immediately?” It’s just a straight-forward approach. But what it did is it got him a listing. It wasn’t the house that the buyer wanted, but it got him a listing because he shook the bushes and the low-hanging fruit fell out. You can take the same approach with a postcard. We’ve tested a lot of copy and we have copy that we’ve copyrighted. The general idea is that you can send out a postcard that says, “I work with all kinds of buyers and many of them are looking in your area (call the area by name – say they are looking in the Garden Heights community, if that is the neighborhood) and they haven’t found a home yet. I’m trying to help them. If you are thinking about selling, would you contact me immediately because I may be able to get your home sold immediately.” Now you have something that will shake the bushes. It causes those people who are low-hanging fruit to then respond. Since they call you, you now know who they are. You can take that concept, Caroline, and you can expand it. Watch this. Let me test your knowledge on this. When a homeowner is thinking about selling, when are they most likely to call a realtor? When they are six months away from selling and they are just pondering it or when they are ready to put their home on the marketing and actually get it sold? When are they more likely to contact a realtor? Caroline: Well, I’ve heard before the six months. I’ve heard that one before. I could be wrong but that’s what I’m going to go with. I could be wrong. Beatty: Survey says, no, you missed it. Here is what happens. Have you ever gone into a store and the sales rep comes up and says, “Hi. May I help you” and you say, “No thank you, I’m just looking.” Have you ever had that happen? Caroline: Yes, that happens all the time. Beatty: Are you actually in the store looking for something specific? Sometimes? Caroline: Sometimes, yes. Beatty: Have you ever just given that knee-jerk response, “No thank you, I’m just looking.” They walk away and then you chase them down and say, “No, wait, hold on, I’m looking for this item, where can I find it?” Have you ever done that? Caroline: Yes, I have. Beatty: Here is what happens. It’s human nature. We have a knee-jerk response that says, “I don’t want to engage a sales rep because I don’t want to be bothered” even if you have interest, you say, “No thanks.” What we find typically, when someone contacts an agent saying, “I’m thinking about selling my home,” that agent usually gets a signed listing agreement within seven days of that initial phone call. What does that tell you? Does that tell you that that homeowner just decided today, “Hey, I was just thinking about selling, let’s call an agent” and within seven days they have a listing agreement? Or do you think that homeowner has been planning to sell for months and they are now finally getting around to calling the agent because they are finally ready to do something about it? Caroline: Maybe that is the stat that I’ve heard. They’ve been planning and thinking about it for six months but then they don’t call until it is time to list. Beatty: That is exactly right. What happens then when you use the ‘I have a client’ approach and you say, “Call me,” you are only going to get those people who have been thinking about it and are now ready to go on the market. But, you miss everyone else, which is a greater number of potential listings, those people who are thinking about selling six or twelve months down the road. The way that you can then capture, not only the low-hanging fruit—those thinking about those going right now and those thinking about possibly selling in six or twelve months—is by changing the, what we call, the call to action. Rather than “Call me,” what I would put on that to keep it real simple is use a call-capture number. This is a toll-free voicemail number that captures the caller ID. You can simply put on the postcard, “Call this number and hear specifically what my buyers are looking for and then if it matches your home, contact me as soon as you are ready to actually sell.” So now, if that were the approach, do you think that these people who were thinking six or twelve months out would likely call that phone number to see what type of homes his buyers are looking for? Caroline: Absolutely. If it’s a sure thing to call and find people who are looking, I think they definitely would. Beatty: Right. As long as it’s free and as long as I don’t engage a sales rep, I’m more likely to respond. This is what we have found over the years in generating leads. What we are technically doing here is generating seller leads within a geographic farm. You can use a call capture number, put a recording on it, and now you get the caller ID of everyone who is responding. Now you know who is likely thinking about selling because they actually took the effort to respond to see. We do it a little bit differently. Ours is a little bit more accurate, but it accomplishes the same thing. When we send out those types of postcards, we have some special technology we program into our system and we actually send them to a website. That technology that we program will pinpoint with laser accuracy the exact address that they are responding from. Now we can send out postcards that say, “Hey, just go to this website to find out what my buyers are looking for.” As soon as they go there, we now know which address is looking and we notify the agent. The key is if you make the identification a stealthy process, where they don’t know that you will know who they are, you are going to get a lot more people freely responding because they don’t want to engage a sales rep right now. That is the second type of self-selection card you can do using the offer of ‘I have a client.’ Now we have one more. We are almost out of time but let’s go ahead and rap this one up and then we will finish this section. There is one other thing that we have found. Ponder for a moment, Caroline. Let’s say that you and Wes were thinking about putting your home on the market. If you were going to put it on the market in three months, what are some of those things that you might be thinking about in terms of getting it on the market? Tell me the process. If you were going to put your home on the market, what are the things that you are going to do to prepare your home? Caroline: We would evaluate our budget. What can we spend? Maybe we would do some quick little fixes here or there. Maybe we would do is a little renovation that wouldn’t cost too much but would maybe give us a lot more money when we sold the house. We would probably be thinking about that or even switching out fixtures. I know hotspots are bathrooms and kitchens, so anything in there that might make it more appealing, we would do small things like that. Beatty: Okay, perfect. So now, would it be helpful if I’m the realtor for me to tell you specifically the things in your house that you want to invest money in that would get you back a greater sales price in a short amount of time or would you prefer just to guess on your own? Caroline: I would definitely love to know from a professional, because that is what they do all the time. I would love that. Beatty: Then, as a professional, if I were to offer you—someone who is thinking about selling—a list of maybe the top five things that you ought to be doing around your home to get it prepared to go on the market, would that hold interest? Caroline: Absolutely. That is something that I would definitely click on. Beatty: Okay. Now, if you were not thinking about selling your home, would that hold interest? Caroline: No, I don’t think so. Maybe, but definitely not as much so as if I was. Beatty: Okay, great. Now we have another self-selection process. That is giving information to the seller on things they can do to make sure their home is ready to sell for the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. The way you do this is make a list. As a realtor, if you were to advise a client who wanted to put their home on the market in three months, what are the things they should be focused on right now? Make a list of what those things are and then figure out the most important things: The 20% of things that will produce 80% of the results. From there, call it the ‘Top 7’ or the ‘Top 3’ or the ‘Top 5,’ whatever the top number of x number of things to do to get the most money out of your home when you get it on the market. Now you have this free report. What you can do is mail out a postcard: “If you are thinking about selling and you want to get the most money out of your house, I put together a list of the top 5 things that are most valuable to generate the quickest sale with the highest sales price. Get it now. You can go to my website.” They go to your website and maybe they have a form fill that they fill out so you can identify them. Or “Call this toll-free number to request the form.” They call your call-capture number. You put a message on that that says, “Leave your name and address or email address and I’ll mail it to you.” Or, if you do what we do, “Go to this website.” When they go to the website, our technology pinpoint accurately identifies who they are. Some way, you give them a call to action that then leads them to where they request that information. When they go to that call to action, then you identify them. That’s three ways that you use the direct response approach to identify sellers: What’s your home worth? I have a client and a free report. If you do that in a geographic farm, then what will happen (and we’ll talk about this next week) is, if you have the right culture within a farm already, then you will start identifying sellers right off the bat. We’ve had so many clients that when they just started with that approach in a geographic farm, they would get two or three or four listings within the first month or two—I mean Boom Boom Boom Boom—because those are compelling offers. Then, as you nurture the farm longer, you start to pick up more. The biggest thing in geographic farming that kills most people is that they run out of money before they can successfully complete farming it. This approach, using self-selection, gets you cash right up front because you can start turning in transactions and then it pays for the farm. That is one way that you start making a lot of money. Let’s do the remaining part of this next week and we’ll talk about inside reality cards then. Does that work with you? Caroline: Yes, that works great. This is really good and informational. Now we have a whole different card to talk about. We can talk about that next week. We are out of time. Beatty, thank you so much for your expertise and your time in sharing today. I do think this was a really great call and I’m excited to continue on next week. Before we close out the call do you have anything else that you would like to share? Beatty: I actually do. Obviously. There are a lot of things that you can do. I love what a friend of mine said. He’s a top realtor and one of his slides, when he talks to a seller—because you know sellers in a hot market are thinking ‘should I sell the home myself or should I hire a realtor’—one of his slides says, “If you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur.” This kind of hits the nail on the head because there is so much that goes on. A story that comes to mind is there is this old, very successful businessman. His young, hotshot employee has been with him a few years comes to him and says, “Boss, I’ve got good news and bad news.” He says, “Start with the bad news.” “Okay, what’s the good news?” “I’m starting my own business. I’m going to do the same thing that you’ve done and I’m going to be a competitor against you.” And the old businessman just sort of leaned back in his chair, looked the young buck in the eyes and said, “Well, that’s fine, but just remember two things.” He said, “What’s that?” “I taught you everything you know, but I didn’t teach you everything I know.” There is a lot of content here and this is just scratching the surface. So if it’s overwhelming and you want help then let me encourage you to go to our website: AgentDominator.net. This is where we do all of this stuff for you. You can hire us. You pay us a fee. We provide the professional expertise and the other thing that we do, which is really cool, is that we actually guarantee your sells or we give all of your money back. So there is really no financial risk, it is just a matter of outsourcing and letting us do what we do better and then you do what you do. If you have an interest in that, then it’s AgentDominator.net. Back to you, Caroline. Caroline: What we are going to do is wrap up the call. For those of you who are on with us on the live call, if you have questions that you would like to ask just hold on. As soon as we wrap up, we’ll do a short question and answer time with Beatty. That’s all we have for today. Thank you again and thanks Beatty for sharing. Beatty: Thanks and you have a great day. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please tell others about. Also, be sure to get our step-by-step training on how to double sales and referrals from past clients and sphere of influence. It’s absolutely the easiest way to grow your business fast and it’s completely free. You’ll find it on our website at GetSellersCallingYou.com. Thanks for listening.   P023  

如何用take表示接受的意思？Take作为一个万能词，随着说话语境的不同，”take”总和变色龙一样，随着语境的变化，有着各种各样的意思。今天我们来学习一个短语take in，它有理解，接受的意思。但是根据不同的语境变化，take in的意思也会有不同 ，我们来看看下面的例子吧。Example One:Mary: There's something I want ot talk to you about.有些事我想对你说。Joseph：Of course.当然。Mary: And just warning you, it might be a lot to take in.先提醒你，这事可能很难接受。Example Two:Joseph：I'm so sorry. This is so much to take in right now. Can I have a litle time?我很抱歉。只是这一下很难接受。可以给我点时间吗？Example Three:Mickey: And I, I'm sorry if I upset you.如果我让你不开心了，我很抱歉。Caroline: It's a lot to take in.我要慢慢消化太多东西了。Take in 在不同语境下的意思：1.They plan to take in$ 1.6 billion. 他们计划要收入16亿美元。2.The kind old lady offered to take in the poor homeless stranger.那位好心的老太太愿意收容这个贫困无家可归的陌生人。听力理解：1.This plot does not take in water. 2.There are just too many things for the eye to take in. 翻译：1.这块地不需浇水。2.那么多品种，让人都看花眼了。

如何用take表示接受的意思？Take作为一个万能词，随着说话语境的不同，”take”总和变色龙一样，随着语境的变化，有着各种各样的意思。今天我们来学习一个短语take in，它有理解，接受的意思。但是根据不同的语境变化，take in的意思也会有不同 ，我们来看看下面的例子吧。Example One:Mary: There's something I want ot talk to you about.有些事我想对你说。Joseph：Of course.当然。Mary: And just warning you, it might be a lot to take in.先提醒你，这事可能很难接受。Example Two:Joseph：I'm so sorry. This is so much to take in right now. Can I have a litle time?我很抱歉。只是这一下很难接受。可以给我点时间吗？Example Three:Mickey: And I, I'm sorry if I upset you.如果我让你不开心了，我很抱歉。Caroline: It's a lot to take in.我要慢慢消化太多东西了。Take in 在不同语境下的意思：1.They plan to take in$ 1.6 billion. 他们计划要收入16亿美元。2.The kind old lady offered to take in the poor homeless stranger.那位好心的老太太愿意收容这个贫困无家可归的陌生人。听力理解：1.This plot does not take in water. 2.There are just too many things for the eye to take in. 翻译：1.这块地不需浇水。2.那么多品种，让人都看花眼了。

如何用take表示接受的意思？Take作为一个万能词，随着说话语境的不同，”take”总和变色龙一样，随着语境的变化，有着各种各样的意思。今天我们来学习一个短语take in，它有理解，接受的意思。但是根据不同的语境变化，take in的意思也会有不同 ，我们来看看下面的例子吧。Example One:Mary: There's something I want ot talk to you about.有些事我想对你说。Joseph：Of course.当然。Mary: And just warning you, it might be a lot to take in.先提醒你，这事可能很难接受。Example Two:Joseph：I'm so sorry. This is so much to take in right now. Can I have a litle time?我很抱歉。只是这一下很难接受。可以给我点时间吗？Example Three:Mickey: And I, I'm sorry if I upset you.如果我让你不开心了，我很抱歉。Caroline: It's a lot to take in.我要慢慢消化太多东西了。Take in 在不同语境下的意思：1.They plan to take in$ 1.6 billion. 他们计划要收入16亿美元。2.The kind old lady offered to take in the poor homeless stranger.那位好心的老太太愿意收容这个贫困无家可归的陌生人。听力理解：1.This plot does not take in water. 2.There are just too many things for the eye to take in. 翻译：1.这块地不需浇水。2.那么多品种，让人都看花眼了。

Hey rebels! Are you overwhelmed with work and sometimes think, “Maybe I should hire someone?” Well, we are thinking about it too! In this episode, we chat all about hiring: how to know if you are ready to hire, what kind of person you should hire, how hiring is an investment and even how to handle payroll. We truly think that you should think of hiring as an investment in your business’ growth and use it as a time to move your business forward. We also chat about tasks and how to keep a running list of things you can delegate. This was a highly requested episode so we hope this gives you some ideas on when and who to hire and how to make the most of it. Quote Love We do not all have the same 24 hours! - Kelly Keep track of things you want to do, but don’t have time for. - Caroline You have to start acting like a CEO. - Kelly If I did it all myself, I was going to drown. - Caroline It can be as long a partnership as you want. - Kelly If you are doing all the things, you aren’t doing one thing well. - Caroline Think of hiring as an investment in your business. - Kelly An investment is growth! - Caroline   Links Gusto When you run your first payroll, you will get $100 so it's like 2 months free! Follow us on instagram (@creativebizrebellion) and use hashtag #creativebizrebellion for a shop shout out!!! Enroll in our FREE course:  The CBR Rock Your Shop Summer Challenge! If you have a second please jump over to iTunes and leave us a review! Click on the link and then click on “view in iTunes” to leave us a review.  We give you all the virtual fist bumps.  Thank you! JOIN THE REBELLION! Signup for our newsletter and get our fave list of Instagram hashtags FREE! YOU CAN FIND KELLY ONLINE AT: www.helloworldpaperco.com www.kellyparkersmith.com www.helloworldstamps.etsy.com YOU CAN FIND CAROLINE ONLINE AT: www.carolinecreates.com www.carolinecreates.etsy.com SHOW YOUR REBEL SPIRIT WITH SOME AWESOME GEAR FROM THE CREATIVE BIZ REBELLION SHOP: www.creativebizrebellion.com/shop *This post does contain some affiliate links*

Hey Rebels!  In this episode Caroline and Kelly talk all about Calling in Sick.   As a business owner, the hardest thing in the world is to take a sick day.  When you work alone at home, there is that internal pressure to work and get shit done.  Caroline and Kelly talk how they struggled at first and never would give themselves time off when they were sick.  We are allowed to take time off, isn't this why we wanted to work for ourselves?  In this episode, Kelly shares her story of how she struggles with Crohn’s Disease on a daily basis and why its is important to take a day to rest and get well so you feel better and are more productive with your work. Kelly was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease in 2006.   Kelly was very sick and in and out of the hospital for 2 years.  She was very weak and a single mom at the time so she had to find something that would make her feel better. Kelly went to several doctors and kept getting more opinions because she did not want to give up until she found out what was going on.  She finally found one she was happy with and in 2008 she started IV meds for her disease.  Do this day she is still on them.  Kelly takes what she calls “liquid gold” every 6 weeks which takes 4 hours at the hospital and is administered through an IV.  Crohn’s Disease can cause many different symptoms in each individual case. Kelly struggles with joint pain everyday, must watch stress levels and stay away from certain foods that cause flare ups with the disease. Working from home has really helped her with her symptoms and feeling better.  She is know able to focus more on her health and is able to take the time to rest when her body tells her so!   “When days get hard and I feel bad it is nice to have the chance to just rest and call it a day” -Kelly. Kelly’s Tips for handling sick days: Have a built in turnaround time for your business Set up an autoresponder for email Communicate with your customers and be honest, they will understand. Take a day to rest and get well so you feel better faster and be more productive with your work.  If you don’t feel good, you are no good to anybody -Kelly As a business owner the hardest thing in the world is to take a sick day -Caroline It is really about giving yourself grace -Caroline Everyone and everything will survive for 24hrs -Kelly Follow us on instagram (Creative Biz Rebellions) and interact with us for a shop shout out!!! If you have a second please jump over to iTunes and leave us a review!   Click on the link and then click on “view in iTunes” to leave us a review.  We give you all the virtual fist bumps.  Thank you! JOIN THE REBELLION! Signup for our newsletter and get our fave list of Instagram hashtags FREE! YOU CAN FIND KELLY ONLINE AT: www.helloworldpaperco.com www.kellyparkersmith.com www.helloworldstamps.etsy.com YOU CAN FIND CAROLINE ONLINE AT: www.carolinecreates.com www.carolineannhull.com www.carolinecreates.etsy.com

In this first episode of the new year Caroline and Kelly talk all about Goals and Resolutions for your Businesses. This is a great way to start the new year by focusing on a few goals.  Caroline and Kelly Share what their big goals and resolutions are for the year. Kelly’s Goals/Resolutions Get involved in the local scene-shows/events to attend Launch product line with my artwork-patterns Record 60+ podcast episodes Implementing and following through with monthly topics Find new revenue streams   It’s super scary, but really exciting -Kelly Put it in a folder, it will be there when you are ready -Kelly   Caroline’s Goals/Resolutions More automated business Personal Goal:  Write a book this year!! Make my ideas from my marketing plan happen No more being overwhelmed-Big resolution for Caroline this year Increase revenue streams Learn to paint for real!   Having a marketing plan is amazing -Caroline It's good to challenge yourself creatively - Caroline Please share your goals and resolutions with us! Creative Bug Class Follow us on Instagram and interact with us for a shop shout out!!! If you have a second please jump over to iTunes and leave us a review! You can find Kelly online at: www.helloworldpaperco.comwww.kellyparkersmith.com www.helloworldstamps.etsy.comwww.helloworldpaperco.etsy.com   You can find Caroline online at: www.carolinecreates.comwww.carolineannhull.com www.carolinecreates.etsy.com