Podcasts about caroline you

I don't do New Years resolutions, but there is something I have been doing! Have you ever picked a word of the year? Over the last 5 years the Lord has been giving me a word every year and today I'm sharing what that has looked like, how I pick it and what God has taught me through it! I'm also telling you what next years word is, listen in! This is the last Episode of Season 3 but the Podcast will be back for season 4 on April 26 2024! Until then you can catch up on the episodes you may have missed! Thank you all for listening! Your Host, Caroline You can find the show notes on my website along with all the links to listen to the podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠marriedrogersneighborhood.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow and interact with Caroline on social platforms at: Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@RealHouseWivesoftheKingdom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Real House Wives of the Kingdom Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ You can subscribe ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to receive updates on coming content  (We promise not to spam you) You can sign up ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to enroll in our online Pre Marital Guidance course for more marriage Biblical Marriage Encouragement you can FOLLOW: Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@marriedrogersneighborhood⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@Married Rogers Neighborhood⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@marriedrogers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clubhouse: @marriedrogers YouTube Channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Married Rogers Neighborhood⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast Music Composed and performed by Jamie Miller If you would like more information on Jamie's Song Writing and performing services you can ask Caroline on any of the above platforms listed for her official contact info. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/housewivesofthekingdom/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/housewivesofthekingdom/support

Welcome to the Wellbeing and Career World podcast, I am delighted to be chatting with executive coach and career strategist who has helped 100+ experienced professional women to make powerful and aligned career moves they thought were 5+ years away. Caroline is committed to helping women reclaim their career and leadership mojo with her Emergence Experience so they can accelerate their impact, income and satisfaction! On today's podcast, we will be chatting about "Investing in yourself" A very warm welcome to the podcast Caroline Rae.   Caroline answers some of the questions asked below during the podcast or answers questions as part of the conversation.   I gave a brief introduction about your background, Can you let listeners know more about your background? Our topic today is "Investing in yourself", Can you explain what is Investing in yourself? Are we talking about spending money on our appearance, materialistic goods or is it something else? Are there any benefits in Investing in yourself? What about negatives, is it selfish to invest too much in yourself ? Have you any strategies which can help an individual find a healthy work life balance, but also achieving career goals? I am gonna put you on the spot with this one, we see a lot of layoffs lately in certain industries. Employees who have given their time and energy to that company for many years probably feel let down. How can you pick yourself up after this? Is it best to lower expectations,  enjoy it while it lasts and do it for the money? Lets get down to the business side Caroline:) You have some excellent feedback from your clients, can I ask if I was to contact you tomorrow looking for an Executive Coach and Career Strategist. What is the process and how can you help me achieve my goals? What suggestion would you have for any Man or Women in their Middle aged years who are wanting to change career or find a new challenge?  Where can you be found on social media?   Contact Caroline: Website: https://www.carolineraecoaching.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_carolinerae/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolinesrae/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carolineraecoach/ About Caroline: https://www.carolineraecoaching.com/about/   Disclaimer: This podcast and website represents the opinions of Wellbeing and Career World and our guests to the show and website.  The content here should not be taken as medical advice, financial advice, career advice, Life coaching, sports coaching, and is for informational purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions or Aviation/Aerospace Employer, Employer, lawyer Regulator, organization for questions related to you. Views and opinions expressed in the podcast and website are our own and do not represent that of our places of work. While we make every effort to ensure that the information we are sharing is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors. Privacy is of utmost importance to us. This website or podcast should not be used in any legal capacity.  No guarantee is given regarding the accuracy of any statements or opinions made on the podcast or website. In no way does listening, reading, emailing or interacting on social media with our content establish a, coaching session, employment interview, wellbeing advice, employment advice, doctor-patient relationship. financial advice. Wellbeing and Career World is based in Dublin, Ireland. If you find any errors in any of the content of this podcast or blogs or would like to get in contact , please send a message to wellbeingandcareerworld@gmail.com This podcast is owned by "Wellbeing and Career World Podcast” If at any time you want to play or stop the podcast, it is at your own discretion. The podcast may contain conversation or opinions you may find unsuitable or against your opinions or beliefs, if you feel you may be uncomfortable, stressed, anxious, worried, concerned, upset, insulted by any of the podcast, we recommend you do not listen to the podcast.

Kris has been practicing for over 45 years in counseling and psychology with a specialization in psycho-spiritual crisis, trauma, and women's empowerment. Most recently, Kris has become a Certified EMDR therapist integrating EMDR with Transpersonal therapies, with a focus on addiction and spirituality.We will be talking about addiction and spirituality with an emphasis on high functioning addiction and the path that leads us out of it – the path to spirituality.Here are a couple excerpts from our discussion:“People can develop addictions to a range of things. In addition to substances, there are many things a person can develop an addiction to, unfortunately. For instance, in people can develop process addictions, which are compulsions to engage in specific behaviors. The person may engage in these behaviors, even if it brings emotional, mental, or physical consequences.“ – Lydia“Many people with addictions deny religion or spirituality because they have heard that there is a spiritual element to recovery, and they do not feel that they can function within a spiritual framework. What they fail to realize is spirituality and addiction recovery go hand in hand.” - Caroline“You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.” - Swami VivekanandaMay you always be one with your horse,  Caroline

Prize-winning poet and playwright Caroline Bird reminds us that “we're all poets when we're asleep. Writing is trying to find a way to dream while we're awake”. On Bob Dylan: “You always hear him choosing the dark side of the road”; “What I love is that his songs are full of denial. Whenever the emotion gets too real, he runs away” and “He's so naïve about love”. On Mr. Tambourine Man, first heard at age eight: “It goes past the point where he's trying to find a truth”. On Dylan's lyrics: “He holds the pain lightly in order for it to resonate”. On a characteristic she shares with Dylan: “Writing is like dancing on hot sand. You can't stand still”.Simon Armitage said of Caroline: “You don't know if a bullet will come out of the barrel or a flag with the word 'BANG' on it”. We do know that we've rarely had more fun recording a podcast.Caroline Bird was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics. A two-time winner of the Foyle Young Poets Award, her first collection, Looking Through Letterboxes, was published in 2002 - when she was fifteen. Her 2020 collection, The Air Year, won the Forward Prize and was chosen as a Book of the Year by The Guardian and The Telegraph. Her most recent book, Rookie: Selected Poems (2022) is taken from her first six poetry collections. Caroline's plays include her version of Euripedes' The Trojan Women, The Trial Of Dennis the Menace, Chamber Piece, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Iphigenia Quartet and Red Ellen.WebsiteTwitterTrailerEpisode playlist on AppleEpisode playlist on SpotifyListeners: please subscribe and/or leave a review and a rating. 

This episode features a conversation with Caroline Casey and Neil Milliken. Caroline is the founder of the Valuable 500, which is a Leadership Initiative to make sure CEOs buy into disability inclusion and that disability and accessibility is part of the global agenda. Neil is the Global Head of accessibility at Atos. His role is to deliver better technology for customers and employees embedding inclusive practice into the processes of the organization. Neil delivers strategy and services working with a wide range of clients helping them to develop policies, processes, and technology solutions to meet the needs of their staff and customers. In this episode, they discuss how to engage the C-Suite to drive accessibility, how to influence board and senior executives to recognize the business value of accessibility, the role of top management in defining and managing the organizational strategic accessibility plan for all aspects of the employee and customer experience, why KPIs matter, and more. Transcript:  HOST: Please welcome Caroline Casey and Neil Milliken.  Caroline is the founder of The Valuable 500 which is a leadership initiative to make sure CEOs buy into disability inclusion and that disability and accessibility is part of the global agenda. Neil is the Global Head of Accessibility at Atos.  His role is to deliver better technology for customers and employees, embedding inclusive practice into the processes of the organization. Neil delivers strategy and services working with a wide range of clients helping them to develop policies, processes, and technology solutions to meet the needs of their staff and customers. Today they will be discussing How to engage the C-suite to drive accessibility. They will touch on how to influence board and senior executives to recognize the business value of accessibility, the role of top management in defining and managing the organizational strategic accessibility plan for all aspects of the employee and customer experience, why KPIs matter and more! NEIL: Caroline, welcome, and thank you for joining us. Diving straight in, Valuable 500 does require this CEO commitment, but you make it easy for organisations to engage because you are not actually asking for too much to begin with, because you want to set the barriers to entry relatively low.  You are talking about board reporting and a single commitment, and ideally, most of the companies have at least one of these things that they are already doing.  That approach has attracted some of the world's largest organisations to join, which is fantastic, but what do we now need to do to raise the bar? CAROLINE: A few things with that one, as of this afternoon, just before I came on, we are at 394 companies around the globe, and that's companies that employ over 1,000 people, and we represent 31 countries, 56 sectors, and I think it's just under 14 million employees.  It is incredibly powerful.  So, the question is: What do we do with that power, right?  So, the Valuable 500 was originally established to get the attention and intention of the CEOs.  It's like the missing piece so that we could scale some of the great accessibility initiatives, leadership, and actually disability business inclusion that exist in a business, and the reason we're not seeing accelerated change, or the joining of the dots or the scaling is because the leadership wasn't necessarily aware. And you know, we had a stat that said that 54 percent of our leadership and our C-suite, around the globe had never had a discussion about disability. So, our job was to originally break that circuit with a critical mass of 500.  Now, we are nearly there.  So, our job now which we will announce in about a month will be how do we activate this community led unsupported by the CEOs and what we provided for them is a transformational change program and that change program will look at three internal aspects of the business that we want the CEOs to ensure there is movement on. One is around leadership itself, the second is about culture and the third is brand and then we are going to ask the community of the 500 to really use their collective influence to change the appalling situation around the lack of research and data, representation particular business and disability representation and lastly reporting because it is a dastardly state of affairs. So that is the transformational program. Do not think that now they are in the community and we've got them in, that the CEO no longer becomes accountable, they do, they must stand above the program of work each company will do. So, the CEOs often have absolutely no idea, or the leadership have no idea, what this, what really good looks like. And I would never push a CEO, with the exception of maybe a few, onto a stage. People like Christopher Panowyk, I'd ask you and who are you referring to and who are your partners.  And it is one of the reasons, the IAAP, are very much one of our partners in phase 2.  The businesses are looking to each other to know who you are working with.  And it is the right experience, it is the right people, and it is the right partnerships that we need to start highlighting, because then we will see the work being done correctly. NEIL: Like you already highlighted there are very few people in positions like myself, or Daniel A. Flurry, or with direct access to the CEO. That does need to change because the complexity of the programs that we are going to have to run if we will be successful is immense and requires this kind of really serious amount of corporate oversight and influence and power within an organization for it to work because it is great to give someone a title but if that is the title without real power and influence and ability to make stuff happen then the programs will fail. So, I think its… CAROLINE:   And the right financial investment. I cannot name – we've had three requests, in the last, since last Monday and I mean really big organizations and one is about the biggest event in the world. They came to us saying we really want to be the most inclusive and most successful event and Company, where do we go? The very first thing that we will push back on and say, “well number one are you prepared to invest in this? Number two, are you prepared to have the person to whom will run the program have direct access to the leadership? Because, if you are not prepared for those two things do not bother.” We must absolutely invest in visibility with the leadership, and you must invest financially, and you must develop your team right through the organization and that pipeline of expertise and you need to bring that talent into your business and that is where we make the link between employment and the intelligence in the business. Do you have that intelligence in your business, do you have people with different lived experience, who have skills around accessibility to help formulate the strategy and deliver for you? So, they are quite surprised and come back and say “OH!” You're like, “Ya, this is big move stuff, this is really different to the conversation we had before COVID”.  NEIL: A CEO sponsored initiative, where you've got someone that's appointed, who needs to be accountable and, therefore, an expectation to have some kind of measure of success and be able to demonstrate that success, so this is something that the SLiA program has been actively engaged in and what KPIs should we have internally for our programs, how do we measure these things. I think this is work that some of us has done within our own organizations, but we wanted to look at how we can harmonize this and there will always be sector by sector stuff that will differ.  What works in a tech business might not work in a manufacturing organization, but what are the KPIs. Also, not just how do we as accessibility professionals look at KPIs because we want to look at much greater granularity than the CEOs. What do you think are the things the CEOs are wanting to see and also, what can we educate them as to things that are important to see, rather than, because sometimes they might be interested in the wrong things? CAROLINE: You as a community the first most important piece for me, is you are the only people because you're the people the expertise needs to set one standard, honestly, and I understand we need to have the differentiation between industry, I get that, but it really is you guys coming together and you telling us how and what are the things that we need to see. I cannot tell you because it's not my area of expertise, but we can help bring you is this community, this enormous, very unique community, first time built in the world, is that will you tell us what it is, you know better. So, that is the first piece. The second piece from our side of the house is we have to really help business understand and this is where the leadership are listening. This is really about risk proofing our business. This is taking it from niche to normal. The horse is bolted, we are off, right now. What the CEO and board need to understand is the delivery or the effect, direct and indirectly, on the shareholder value of their organization and on their brand and on the CEOs personal brand if they do not get this right. Now, what we also explained to CEOs and leadership, we do not expect you to know it all. We expect you to admit you do not know it and go out and get the help and go out and invest in the advice. Like you have done in other issues. When that lands, Neil, that is the biggest barrier right now because there is still is competing agendas that a business has but the issue of accessible and inclusive design touches every aspect of every agenda and every function and every part of the value change and that is the piece the CEO needs to understand and what I am saying is the opportunity with this, in this community right now, is you are the most powerful people because of COVID and businesses now are wanting to avoid what happened with Domino, for an example. Before COVID and now with COVID they are like, well and that is what we need them to understand. The measurables, the KPIs you need to deliver to us. We need to open your head and you tell us what to measure.  NEIL: I want to talk a little bit about transparency as well. I think this is important to talk about, as you said, our successes, our failures. We are really proud within my own organization of our corporate social responsibility programs. We report on CSR, sustainability, decarbonization, and we do this in a way that is combined reporting. So that means, we do not just report our financial results we include all of these extra financial measures in our annual report, and that has a material effect on our share value. The stuff that we are doing, actually, really does influence the value of our company.  As a company that grows through acquisition, the stuff out in public now, talking about who we are buying next. The impact of these programs on our share value impacts our ability to grow. However, for the most part, all of these metrics and all of these indices, GRI, CDP, all of these major Dow Jones sustainability index. They have a little section about disabilities which should effectively, doesn't give you any metrics, just says “tell us some nice stories”.  CAROLINE:  This is one of my passion points. And you know this. This adage, what we do not measure does not get done or Paul Polman, who is the Chair of the Valuable 500, “what we measure we treasure” he says. I am absolutely incensed when people say, “oh but it's just so complex" and “it's just so difficult”. Internally we talk about representation of employees who have a direct connection to disability. We use the legislation as a reason not to. And, when we've seen companies like Channel 4, Microsoft, and MNS actually get around that with anonymous census. This is about intention and it's one of the tools that we will be bringing to the Valuable 500 community and asking them all to do is an anonymous census around this. We can hack this problem. The second one that absolutely drives me mad is how can we say we believe in sustainability if we don't believe in inclusion and how can you say you believe in inclusion if you do not do disability. The staff that are always buying around with, with the Valuable 500 is 90% of our companies claim that they are committed to inclusion and diversity but only 4% consider disability. And maybe that is a very low figure, but how do we know otherwise because we are not seeing any reporting and if you look at diversity and inclusion indexes, in 2018 Makenzie did the Global Report on Diversity and Inclusion. Was disability there? No. When you can touch with them you asked “why, why was it not there?” and they said disability is not a driver of business. Wow! That stuff really bothers me. When we did the Tortoise Index which was founded by James Harding, it was really hard but they put five metrics to begin with and that makes me excited because if we can get these metrics in, if we can start and I'm not saying they're all right, but if we do not put them in because it's too hard to get them all right, we are going to self perpetuate the problem. If you look at what the fortune companies are doing now with move to measure around racial representation we need to do that and we need to do and we need to do, and we need to do, so it is one of the big passion projects of phase 2 of Valuable 500 is there will never be a sustainability index, a responsibility index or a diversity and inclusion index that it is acceptable anymore, not to have disability metrics.  NEIL: And you know I'm fully behind this too because it is one of my passions is sort of the economic of accessibility and sustainability. They are intertwined. These are really important things. The examples set by the Tortoise Index is important. We need to continue to work on getting our influence as users and contributors to these other indices to make them understand the importance of reporting on these things and then that helps us benchmark and helps CEOs benchmark as well so not only does it actually give power to us as the strategic leaders in accessibility because suddenly the measure of what we are doing impacts on value of the organization, but we can measure ourselves against other organizations and then you can objectively say when someone asks you “who are doing this well”, you can say, "By these measures X company is doing it well, Y company is doing it well in this aspect." So on and so forth and at the moment, all we are doing is giving people anecdotes and I think we need to move well beyond anecdotes to evidence based stuff. HOST: The International Association of Accessibility Professionals currently offers six certifications. IAAP Certifications are indicators of your commitment to the accessibility profession, industry, and community. View the certification overview page on our website to learn more!  NEIL: We have a question which says we got the buy in at CEO level, but the rest of the C-suite wants to take a more measured approach, they are sceptical of business benefit, this is reflecting what we just talked about. So, how can we as the accessibility leaders help broker that and approach that bureaucracy and unblock the C-suite blockers? And I understand why there are these blockers and I have addressed them myself and there are an awful lot of initiatives going on in an organization, at any one time. Someone in the C-suite position is going to have lots of plates spinning, so it is really making, I think, make them clear of the benefit to them and shaping what their contribution can be that fits in with what their trying to do in the business so that we are not loading them up again or working counter to what else they are trying to do in the business. I think those are some of the things we can proactively do, but are there other things that you have seen that also work to melt what one would call the permafrost of middle management? CAROLINE: Firstly, in the shadow and the light of the leader, and of, leaders make choices, and those choices create cultures. It's not my quote, but I steal it every time. If the leader and this is why the Valuable 500 exists, one of the reasons, if the leader does not say I care about this then, the rest of his or her C-Suite is not going to give a hoot about it because they want to shine in the shadow, and the light of the leader, that, or in the light of a leader. So, the first part from our perspective for phase II, it is not the CEO, it is the CEOs responsibility but under each of those buckets of reporting, leadership, and culture, and brand, the CEO needs to give us access to the CMO, the CHRO, the CTO, everybody. The CEO is making sure his C-suite team, his leadership team will deliver for her or for him to make sure that the work gets done because you are absolutely right whoever is just said that. But the CEO goes yeah and then it goes to the CHRO it gets shoved under the table. So, the next phase of the Valuable 500 is trying to crack that, for the CEO, for her team, to make sure she has the support and backing of her C-suite. And I think that is really, really important because I have unfortunately seen when a CEO leaves office and you think you have this Valuable 500 company and then suddenly it's gone. And that is discretionary and that is what bothers me because discretionary is not strategic. The last piece I would say, once again for your skill area and for the strategic level which you operate, accessibility is not about disability. It is about everyone, and I think that is starting to land now so when we take it just out of the box where it has been tagged with for quite some time, disability and maybe stretched to age, it is now about everyone. It just has to happen, like health and safety has to happen in a business. It is that simple. NEIL:  I think there was a comment about McKenzie previously where they have not done disability as diversity, but they've done a lot on age. And there this both crossover and disconnect between how businesses and analysts view the aging society and disability. If we live long enough, we will all become disabled (Laughs).  CAROLINE:  That is true!  NEIL:  And we are all, for the most part, COVID aside, living longer so this will happen to everyone. When we have discussions at my organization with the public sector and governments, they are understanding this and understanding that they need to do stuff and plan for this. As service providers, as companies providing stuff, consumers, who are the people that have the money? It's older people, they are much more likely to be disabled, therefore yes, it is a business driver. What we do need to do is make that mental connection for businesses between age and disability and business opportunity. I think that there is some work to do there, but I think that is progressing somewhat. I think the work that you are doing and that the work with the ratings agencies and a lot of the marketing work, it feels very different now to how it felt two years ago. There is engagement, there is an understanding that it has to be done, and it is almost like watching people that hadn't engaged before suddenly roll their sleeves up is enormously gratifying. I think, it's not just happening in my organization or in the Microsoft's, or the Salesforces, but there are more and more organizations taking those steps, recognizing that it is something that they can no longer pay lip service to and ignore. There is legislative reasons for doing it, there is profitability reasons for doing it, there is organization, cultural reasons, lots and lots of reasons but it has become compelling and they have realized that.  On the other side of that, that is actually driving a different issue which is a skills gap. It is something that IAAP is here to help address but there is a real shortage of skills in the people that can run the organizational programs. A bit like we had the real shortage of skills in people that could run sustainability programs 10 years ago and actually finding people that have the right balance of both technical skills and the ability to navigate complex organizations. These big organizations that are your members, are very complex. It is difficult and even at a lower level finding the technical skills to get the people to do the technical expert work, is a challenge. How can we engage with the wider community both in education, and vocational training to start bringing up the skills? Some of them will require specialists but we also need to do it in the wider education field. Is that something that CEOs can influence? Or is that something that we need to go to our government partners?  CAROLINE:  Of course it is, did we not see this happen before? When we started seeing the digital revolution happened and you saw companies like the big Googles in this world and the big Microsoft in the world, invest in the skills of countries and their education systems. I'm living in a small country, we have some of the biggest tech giants in the world (Laughs) And have very, very big premises and very big offices here for lots of reasons. Therefore, that is the way in which they were able to say that this is a pool of talent, do they have the skills and training that we will need to give them jobs? So yes absolutely! This is my point. Who are the most powerful leaders of the planet right now? It is not politicians, right? We know that. The most powerful leaders on this planet are business leaders, let's be honest, when they come together, they can actually make anything happen.  We know the technology is there and we certainly know the intelligence is there, the desire is there for so much of this. The biggest opportunity and the biggest barrier to any of this is the 6 inches between our ears. That is about accessibility. It is the intention and the will to do this and to see it as a long game, to see the full pipeline, Neil, you are absolutely right. If every business, right now said “OK, this is it, front and centre, we're going to invest in it”. Do they have the people to fill the positions? Do they have people coming up to fill the positions? I do not imagine they would. It really is the influence and powers in the hands of business, and they do affect policy, they do affect the UN, look at UN Global Compact and you think about that. They do have the chance to affect the education system, and the pipeline coming up and they should be investing in that pipeline and that should be where their philanthropy is and many of them do that.  NEIL:  The question from Rob as well which is saying he is four rungs away from a CEO but what approach would you take to getting involved, to be able to advocate?  First of all, the stuff that we just talked about but maybe you go and find the person that you know influences them. Do you think you have a better chance of having a conversation with their number 2 or their direct management team that can influence them and start building that relationship? I know I had to go through multiple tiers of relationship building in my organization to be able to get to the point where I could go and directly talk with the CEO. And now we directly report to the board. And that did take time.  CAROLINE:  And not look like a threat to someone else.  NEIL:  Absolutely, you have to frame it in a positive way. This is of mutual benefit; it always has to be about mutual benefit. Risk reduction. You can talk about the penalties and risk but it is about doing this reduces the risk, it is a benefit to us as an organizations, it also can be profitable, it will make us more usable, blah, blah, blah but framed it in a language and wrap it in the topic that is important to that individual and that might be different from the person in the leadership team that reports to the CEO than the CEO but once you start having the conversation with that person they can tell you what floats the boat of the CEO and that's how you start progressing those conversations. It is definitely a long game, and you have to be prepared for a few knock backs along the road. That said, as Caroline previously stated we are in a far, far better position at the beginning of 2021 than we were even midway through 2020. Things have changed, there is a recognition amongst leadership of humanity of their workforce, of vulnerability of their colleagues. The understanding of the need for flexibility so businesses are having to invest in changes and infrastructure. Now is the time to strike and say, "While you are doing this make it accessible. We can help you be more effective; we can help you engage your employees remotely." Listen to the language talked and play it back to them with an accessibility message.   CAROLINE: The other thing I would say is don't underestimate the leaders of all these businesses trying to do the simple thing of going on these platforms whether they have a visual impairment, a hearing impairment, a dexterity impairment, which most of them don't, they are struggling, and for the first time they are going oh, ask them to take off their glasses and do it you have a whole other thing. There is kind of an experience our leaders maybe not have had to have before and that is where you can fill that gap, that is the sweet spot. Go in with the confidence. You have something to offer and not just as a quick fix but strategically to offer this business and it has been proven because the businesses that had already invested in this were the businesses that thrived throughout COVID.  NEIL:  Can board members also influence CEOs?  CAROLINE:  What I would say, is board members are probably in one of the most unique positions. If you are a board member, sitting on a board saying “Where do we stand on accessibility? Have we done an accessibility audit? What is our performance around disability business inclusion?” No CEO can tell you that they are not going to give you that information. That is a board member's right. So, yes, use it well.  NEIL:  I can absolutely tell you that our board do influence our CEO. It gets back to me that they have been asking questions, so if you happen to have a relationship, by all means develop relationships with board members too, find your path, it will be different for each business but absolutely, yes, if the board is interested in this topic make use of it because they absolutely will influence your CEO.  CAROLINE:  Can I take that from you, because having sat on boards if I ever get an email from anyone in the company as a board member, I have to bring that to the CEO and I would, so that is very good play, thank you.  NEIL:  I think it has been great fun chatting and I hope everyone in the audience has found this useful. I hope that you will join us on our journey towards strategic leadership.  HOST:  The International Association of Accessibility Professionals understands how important it is to have reliable resources to turn to when developing your skills as an accessibility professional. We provide several resources in a variety of formats to both members and non-members. View the Resource tab on our website to find out more about Educational Webinars, the IAAP Career Center, the Educational Training Database and Speakers Bureau, and more!

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.

Jeff:Welcome to the VIP Home podcast where we talk about all things homeowners need to know. Today we're speaking with Pete and Megan from Powerhouse, which is a TV show produced with Alliant Energy. Welcome to you both.Caroline:Tell us a little bit about Powerhouse and how it started back in 1996. How did you guys get started?Pete:Well, thank you, Caroline and Jeff. It's great for Megan and myself to be with you guys today to talk about this. We're going to be coming up on 25 years for Powerhouse and Alliant Energy started this back in 1996, because it wanted really to educate its utility customers about the importance of energy conservation and safety, but also to help us save energy dollars. They started the Powerhouse program looking at energy efficiency. It's a 30 minute program that airs in six markets across the Alliant Energy service territory in the upper Midwest on Saturdays and Sundays. Megan and I are very fortunate to be hosting it for the past 24 years.Megan:I have a theater background. Pete is in broadcasting, so we kind of have different background experiences. The cool thing is, is that Pete and I have known each other almost all our lives. We grew up across the street from each other.Caroline:Wow. That is so awesome. No wonder why you guys work so well together.Pete:The number one question we get asked, because again, we know each other so well and play off of each other. They do think we're married. We're married, but not to each other. We're learning and that's the great thing about Powerhouse is that we're sharing the insight that we see in terms of helping customers be comfortable in their homes, be knowledgeable and save dollars and save energy and be more efficient when it comes to energy in the home.Megan:The interesting angle that Alliant has chosen to take it is that Pete and I are kind of speaking for the consumer. We're speaking for the customer. We ask the questions that our audience would want to hear. We don't present as though we know everything. We've learned a lot over the years through this process.Caroline:At VIP HomeLink, our goal is to make the homeowner's lives easier. Although we're homeowners, we don't know everything. That's why [inaudible 00:02:05] wonderful guests like yourselves is so wonderful for us and our bran and to just share knowledge of home ownership with everyone. We like to look into homeowner horror stories, sort of those stories that no one really wants to talk about, but maybe a few years down the road, you get a good laugh out of it or you're frightened to even think of that it might happen again. Do you guys have a story like that, that you could share with us?Pete:One of our first years here at the house that I live in, one of our segments was blowing in insulation up in the attic. Oftentimes, Megan and I, we have the do it yourself projects, and I was helping with our expert to blow in insulation up in my attic. I'm maybe not the most agile or gifted in terms of home projects and I stepped off one of the joists in the attic and put my foot through the ceiling in my house as I was blowing in insulation. I did get the insulation and my attic is much better insulated, but I had to repair the ceiling in one of the bedrooms because I was a goof and slipped off the joists and put my foot through the ceiling.Jeff:You pulled the Chevy Chase from Christmas vacation where he's up there [crosstalk 00:03:10] himself and he just....Pete:Absolutely. Yeah. I did that. That's a bit of my own horror story that I did on one of our shoots.Megan:The crew and I have gotten a lot of mileage out of that through the years. There's a, sometimes they put together a blooper reel and that's kind of fun. Maybe this is just a horror story to me, but they were trying to kind of figure out what the show was going to be and looking back, Pete and I did some things that I can't believe we did. Pete was in the shower for one episode. I was in a hot tub in a bathing suit for one episode.Jeff:Got to get those ratings. I mean, it's [crosstalk 00:03:50].Megan:Oh my gosh. To me, that's a horror story. Then there was another shoot that I remember where they shipped us off to Wisconsin for a catalog shoot. We had all these products that were for sale in helping you be more energy efficient. One section was all about grilling. Well, they do these things so far in advance. I think it was February in Wisconsin and Pete and I are wearing shorts and T-shirts and trying not to breathe so you couldn't see our breath. We were freezing. That was a horror story too.Caroline:I used to intern at a magazine. We did the reverse as well so we were doing Christmas in July and everyone was in [inaudible 00:04:30]. I remember all the models being like, "This is horrible." That is a horror story in my opinion because I [inaudible 00:04:37] serve chilli. No. No. Too much.Jeff:I actually do have a horror story. We bought a condo in Hoboken, fourth floor walkup. I decided, hey, I'm just going to replace the switch. How hard can that be? I watched YouTube videos. I thought I can do this. How hard can electrical work be really watch the video. I did it. I brought my wife in for the big reveal and I turned it on and then you just see like go up the wall and just like burn all the way up. I was like, "Oh my God." Yeah. From that point on, I was not allowed to do any DIY, especially electrical work. We had to do another chandelier in the dining room. I got my very smart, downstairs neighbor who had an engineering degree. He came in and he wired it all. I was just like, "Oh God." Horror stories abound when it comes to electrical work, I can only imagine.Caroline:I feel like that was such a good segue to start talking about how somebody could start their home energy efficiency journey.Pete:We talk about insulation and over the many years of Powerhouse, doing a home energy assessment, we've had professionals that come in and do it. You can also go around your own house and do an assessment. The whole thing about is, is keeping in the wintertime, keeping the warm air in your house and in the summertime, keeping the cool air in your house. Again, not allowing vice versa. Insulation is certainly a great place to start. Attic insulation is a great way to check and make sure you do have enough insulation above you because the warm air rises. If you don't have enough insulation in your attic, that's the first place. We always say, when you do that assessment, start there. Then your walls, making sure that you have enough insulation in the walls, which may be a little bit more difficult.Pete:Again, on Powerhouse, we have a the do it yourself projects, but we also, we'll bring in the experts and the true professionals. We are not the experts. We're sharing the insight and the knowledge. That's the fun part for us. I've learned so much about taking care of our home, being comfortable, energy efficiency. It's the insulation in the walls, making sure that you have enough there even around gaskets, your plugins, making sure that those, it really starts with the insulation in your attic, your walls and in the floors.Jeff:Installation, that sounds like a professional job. What about DIY? Are there simpler things that I can do that are just easy? I run to the hardware store and do myself.Pete:Yeah. You can spend maybe 50 to 75 to a hundred dollars caulking, weatherstripping, going around and checking windows because windows obviously are the biggest source where if you've got gaps in the framing, get a caulking tube and a caulking gun and seal around the windows, weather stripping on the floors. During the wintertime, keep the warm air in from getting outside. Those are very easy things that you can do yourself. We talk about that on Powerhouse. It seems like that's one of those shows every year that we get into, as we get into the winter season.Megan:Led light bulbs. That's newer technology, and those can make such a difference. We always encourage homeowners. It's a little bit more of an investment, but it really pays itself off. What you want to do is you want to take those few lights that you use most frequently, or that are hard to reach, those pain in the neck lights and replace those because they do last much, much longer.Jeff:The technology has gotten a lot better over the past decade I'd say. The one thing about led lights in the beginning was just the look of them. They had this like hospital quality to them, very I'm in an office and it starts flicking of that florescent. Nowadays, I mean, I replaced a lot of our lights, not all of them, but a lot of them with the Phillips hue so it's all smart connected. You can adjust the very, my wife has a very specific setting that she likes the kitchen on and it's called Mrs. White or whatever. It's very customizable and the quality of the light I feel has just completely changed over the years.Pete:The LEDs, the upfront costs are much more than the old incandescent bulbs, but LEDs and the thing that we, Megan and I, have stress on Powerhouse is again, how much longer they last in terms of years for a bulb. We often talk about putting LED bulbs, just start replacing the ones that you have to replace more often that are easy access. As you said, the design has gotten much more friendlier. The lighting's much better. LED bulbs, 95% of the energy goes into the lighting with LED bulbs, which is certainly much different than the old incandescent. Only 5% of a LED is going to energy usage. That's the big thing. It's longer lasting and much, much more energy efficient with LED bulbs.Jeff:We moved into the house and we had all ... all the ceilings were kind of the cheaper ... I don't know if they were LEDs, but they were a certain type of white that, like I said, it was like a hospital flicking on all the lights. I don't know if I'm light sensitive, but it was just like, they had to go. We put them all in a box and gave it back to the builder who redid the house and then made the investment in the smart LED bulbs. Because not only is it customizable, but you can put them on timers, you can reduce your energy consumption that way and make sure at the end of the day, they turn off all the lights and all the lights are off. You don't leave the one in the basement on by accident. I thought that was a really a plus, but downside, they are expensive.Caroline:Do lights on dimmers count, like if you dim your light, does that count as energy efficient? I mean, my fiance definitely has some bulbs that are the LED, but not all, but we have every one on a dimmer.Megan:My guess would be that it would be using less energy.Pete:I would think. The one thing that you do have to make sure that when you buy LEDs, that they do allow for dimming. I mean, you go to your hardware store, you do have to make sure that they are built for dimmers.Caroline:Can we touch a little bit on appliances and energy efficient appliances and how that affects your overall efficiency?Megan:When it comes to your appliances, there are a handful that you really need to maintain well and use appropriately because they use the bulk of your energy. That would be your refrigerator, your dishwasher, and your washer and dryer. Of course, maintenance is important on all three of those things. With your refrigerator, you want to keep the temperature at 40 degrees and the freezer at zero, that's going to be an energy efficient path and still get the job done. Also, I'm going to sound like your mother for a second, but you don't want to leave the doors open. Know what you want out of the refrigerator before you go in there. It takes a lot more energy then to re cool the unit if you stand there with the doors open. Don't forget about the vent and the coils down below the refrigerator. Every year, check that out and clean that out with your vacuum cleaner.Megan:Or if you have a pet, you'll want to do it more than once a year. Check that because that keeps the flow running efficiently. You also don't want to overcrowd your refrigerator. They're designed to basically be full, not jam packed because then the circulation doesn't work. When it comes to the dishwasher, there are a couple of things you can do. You can use the eco settings that are built right into the dishwashers that we buy today and only run it when it's full. Some people are in the habit of doing it every night, whether there are four cups in there or it's loaded and do wait until it's full because you're going to use not only less energy, but you're going to use less water. Another tip is to put it on the air-dry setting. That's going to save you energy too and rinse your dishes off.Megan:Even though the new dishwashers can sense how dirty your dishes are, but do yourself a favor and rinse them off because you're going to get a cleaner wash and it's going to require less energy to do that. To the point that I made about the dishwasher, you also want to take into account when it comes to your washer and dryer. Do full loads. Doing a couple shirts at a time is not going to save you any energy at all. Wait until you have an appropriate load and also use cold water. It'll get your clothes just as clean. Make sure that you clean out not only your lint catch, but also your dryer vent too. That can cause big problems. If you have anyone who is ill in your house, of course, you want to make sure that you put it on this sterilize setting.Pete:In normal times, we talk about washing with cold water, but if you do know that you've got some sick people in your home, in that instance, we do recommend washing with hot water during that time. Megan mentioned cleaning that lint filter in your dryer, but also the duct coming out of it. One of our viewers reached out to us after one of the shows we did and said that he got out his vac and cleaned up the vent coming out of his dryer. It was like a new dryer he said, because it actually dried the clothes much more efficiently. One of the common things that we talk about with your furnaces is changing that filter vent once a month. Most people don't. It's about making sure your furnace is running efficiently and if you've got a dirty filter, it's not going to run efficiently and you're going to use more energy and you're going to use more dollars to run that furnace.Pete:That's one of those things that I always stress. Keep track on your phone, hey it's time the first of the month to change my furnace filter. The other thing that we also recommend is having a service plan. Have your heating and cooling system checked once a year. That's a well worth it 50 to a hundred dollars service call, but to make sure that your furnace, that your air conditioner is running efficiently, again, we'll save over the years, save energy dollars for you and your home.Jeff:It's interesting you say that. VIP HomeLink is an app, and it's basically for people who they have a home, they want to stay on top of these things, but we all know it's easier said than done. You say, "Oh, I'm going to do this." Then life gets in the way. The app is there to actually send you reminders. You put the information in on exactly what your HVAC system is. You can log in your what filter you need, and it'll send you notifications every time you need to change the filter, every time you need it serviced. It'll actually keep you on point there, because like I said, it's one thing to say, "I'm going to do this." It's another thing to actually do it.Megan:A lot of times we tell our viewers, mark a day or think of a day on your calendar and do that monthly. Now, your app sounds luxurious, and I'll certainly look into that, but in a simple way, if you just think the first of the month, I'm going to check my filter.Pete:Probably the one thing that we've done over the years on Powerhouse is if people haven't, it's a programmable thermostat. I know on some of your other podcasts, you've had a smart home, the programmable thermostat. Maybe it's a Nest that you can control off your phone, which is so nice that you can set back at night, turn down that thermostat and save, turn it down 10 degrees. Over a year time and 10 hours, I think you can save something like 10% on your heating bill. There's really savings and again, that's what, here on Powerhouse, we're about. Saving energy, but also helping our customers and our consumers save energy dollars. Megan and I have put in more programmable thermostats over the years. That's another small investment. They can be as simple as maybe a 25 to a $50 investment. Again, you can go up and get Nest and have everything programmed off your iPhone, which is wonderful. That's significant savings in energy and energy dollars.Caroline:I know Ruth is a very smart home tech kind of guy.Jeff:I like the gadgets. When we moved in, that was the first thing I did was let's get the Nest thermostats. Let's get all the security stuff. Let's get all hooked up and you put eco mode on. It kind of just keeps it at a comfortable ... It's not blowing air on you, but Nest will remind me even when to change my HVAC filter, which I didn't know when I bought it. I mean, it's an amazing device.Pete:It really is. Again, I think that's one of the other things here on Powerhouse that Megan and I are very fortunate is to learn about the new technology all around our house. We've done shows on things in terms of reminders with a smart home, to change the filter, to setback your water heater. Some people might be away for a while and they can set back that. It is amazing the technology, the changes that we've seen over the past 24 years of Powerhouse. It all comes back again to helping that homeowner be more comfortable saving energy and saving energy dollars.Megan:Right now it's, we're approaching summer and here in the Midwest, it's really, really hot. That's another thing. If you can program that with your phone, program your air conditioning. You don't have to have it run all day with a programmable thermostat. You can set that to kick in before you get home from work, before you get back from vacation. One of the things that you can do to maintain your air conditioner is to clean it off. We had an episode where I got to do that, and I had no idea that I could do that myself. Of course, I had a professional walk me through it. You just go outside and you have your air conditioner, make sure that it's turned off at the electrical panel.Megan:Then you take your garden hose and you spray it all the debris off the outside and inside the compressor, spray the fins on the inside carefully, starting at the top down so you don't force any debris in there. That's something that you can do that's really, really simple. Another thing is to make sure that you've got airflow around your air conditioning compressor. A lot of people have landscaping and things like that because they want to hide it. Well make sure you keep it trimmed away so you have about a foot, at least a foot around there for circulation.Jeff:I thought I read that it's not a good idea to put a cover on an air conditioner because it can create mold problems or mildew or something like that. Dumb air conditioners, you can go and you can cover it with like an air conditioner cover, which they sell. I assume there's a need and a reason for that, but then I also read you don't want to cover it.Pete:You just got to make sure again, debris and everything's clear. To me that would be the benefit of having it covered, but then you also have to check to see if there's anything that may have crawled up or may have gotten on the fans. Just be aware of that.Jeff:Some resident chipmunks in there.Pete:Sure.Jeff:I did have a dryer vent [inaudible 00:18:54]. I think somebody moved the dryer and it popped out of the wall, but it's so big that we couldn't see behind it. You don't want to scratch the floors and all that. We only knew something was wrong because we'd run the dryer and then it would get really humid and the hallway started fogging up and it turned out that somebody must've moved it and it popped out off the wall. All the wet steam was basically not going where it should. It's just going into the room and we have a small room. That was an issue. We called the professional.Jeff:They came over and charged me four or five hundred bucks to really ... I mean, I was like, "Oh my God, is that really necessary? Can I not do this myself?" He had a whole thing, it goes all the way up to the roof, I guess. He had to put this thing together and clean the whole thing because I guess dryer vents are a big source of fires. There's something like 15,000 fires a year, the NFPA says are caused by dryer vents. It's a real problem. You got to stay up on top of it or else you can put your family at risk.Pete:I think that's a good point. Megan was mentioning cleaning the coils on your refrigerator. I mean, you don't need to do that, but once a year, but again, making sure that that vent is connected properly. That it is again, blowing that hot air and getting it out of your home. Making sure that the vent is clear there and then go on outside where that vent actually vents to the outside, making sure that's clean out there. I just last weekend went and checked mine. I wanted to make sure that I didn't have any issue, but you're right. A dryer vent fires, I hate to say, can be more common than you think, but a little bit of maintenance can help save from a fire. Also, just the overall, again, the efficiency of your dryer operating.Megan:Speaking of vents, I'm going to reverse the season, but if you have a gas fireplace, they vent outside. I know it's important to make sure that they are covered and that when you're not using it, the six months that you're not utilizing it, things can get in there. Animals can get in there. Debris, all of that kind of stuff so in reverse, that's something that you want to make sure that you check out and have a professional look at. Always. We always recommend a seasonal tune up on those appliances, on your air conditioner, as well as your fireplaces and your furnace. That's another vent issue, right?Jeff:I have a gas fireplace. That is definitely now on the top of my list because you know what? I was outside and I was trying to find the dryer vent exhaust, and the guy said it was on the roof. Then there's another vent. I was like, "What is this?" It's the gas fireplace vent. Now I know.Caroline:My parents had a horror story. They were using, I guess their fireplace once. I don't know. [inaudible 00:21:45] not really sure. Then one day there was this squirrel in the bedroom because I guess the fireplace vent wasn't closed all the way. It was just start of fall into winter. There was just a squirrel in the house. If that doesn't count as a horror story, I don't know what does.Jeff:A squirrel in the house counts as a horror story. I've had that in that apartment that I told you about in Hoboken. I had a squirrel. I was home and I walked into one room and my dogs are there and they just start going bananas. I go in the other room and the squirrel had come in the bathroom and walked into the bedroom and the dogs discovered that. It was just going around in a circle, just like on the ceiling. I literally just closed the door and then freaked out. Then I was like, "Okay, I got to do this. I'm not going to trap an animal right now at this point in time." I just opened the window and left. Then I came back like four hours later, just hoping it was gone. Thank God, it was gone, but not after peeing all over my head.Megan:I think I'd rather have a squirrel than bats.Pete:On Powerhouse, again, we've had episodes again, where chimney sweeps, the importance of making sure your chimney is clean and again, having a professional come out and clean your chimney. We've had episodes where they talked about the chimney sweep, talked about different animals that have been found and maybe have been dead there. That also takes me over to cleaning your ducts, your duct work in your house, occasionally is a good thing to do. If you have a lot of pets, it is worthwhile, but again, make sure your duct work is cleaned. It's about efficiency and making sure again, your appliances are operating efficiently. Just like we know with your car, you have an oil change and a checkup with your car. You need to have a checkup of your house system to making sure that it's operating properly and efficiently. Cleaning your ducts, D-U-C-T-S, and making sure that again, that it's functioning efficiently.Caroline:These are amazing tips. We were talking about outside home efficiency so can we just touch a little bit more kind of beyond the AC unit or whatever the real term is for that, and just kind of touch base on some other outdoor efficiencies that would help along your journey?Megan:Well, I think with landscaping, this goes back to the air conditioner, energy.gov says that you can save up to 50% of your energy if you shelter your air conditioner. Shade it with a bush, a tree, of course, distanced. If you think about it, we run more efficiently when we've got a little bit of shade when the heat is pouring down on us. Your air conditioner is no different. Call a professional, make sure that everything is operating smoothly and I will just reiterate what Pete said. The system of your house is designed to be efficient and all your appliances are designed to work well, but we have to do our part and take care of them as well.Pete:Plant that tree to shade your house, your overall house can make a difference. Just a little bit of shade on your house can cool the house so that the sun isn't beating down on it. That's another opportunity. Again, we've done that numerous times on Powerhouse. Come out and plant a tree and again, obviously again, think safety when you're going to plant a tree. Call to make sure you're not digging into a power line. Look up and make sure you're now also not going up into power lines above that might be up there. We always stress safety on any, do it yourself projects on Powerhouse.Caroline:People like Jeff Ruth here might take things into their own hands when they should be calling a pro.Jeff:Felled enough trees in my day that I know to call a pro.Megan:One thing that can make a real difference in your energy usage is how you plug in all of the things around your house. You think about all of the cell phone chargers that we have on the small end, but then we also have our home office. We have all kinds of little appliances, toasters, things like that, that we don't use all the time, but they are always drawing power. We call that phantom power. That phantom energy can really add up, up to 10% of your utility bill. That's huge. I have a prop for you. This is a smart strip. What this has is different plugs here that will remain on if necessary, like say your wifi router. You don't want that to go off. There's a designated place for those items, but for the things, video game systems, things like that, that you don't use all of the time, your DVD player, things like that you can put in here. Then it actually will sense when you're not using it and shut those things off.Caroline:That is an amazing product.Jeff:Yeah. We're going to definitely recommend because I need one. I'm going to find one, we're going to recommend it to the listeners and give some links out there so you can find the right one for you.Pete:With your ceiling fans during the summer, they are pushing the cool air down. You want to make sure it's spinning the right way to push down. In the winter months you want to pull the warmer air up. Remember when you're out of a room, I remind my family to turn off ceiling fans if you're not in the room.Jeff:Is that because money doesn't grow on trees?Caroline:You mentioned the right way. There's clearly a wrong way. Is the right way for cool air counterclockwise or clockwise or [crosstalk 00:27:25]?Pete:Well, again, making sure you can feel it when you turn it on. Is it pushing down? I mean, you can feel it pushing down. Make sure it's spinning that way. I'll let the listeners check themselves, okay?Caroline:Perfect. Perfect. Your website, discusses home energy assessments. What would that entail and how does a homeowner know that they're ready for such an assessment?Megan:On the Alliant Energy website, we offer an energy assessment and you enter all of your specific information in there, and it's really basically a checkup for your home. It offers recommendations of ways that you can improve and it's something that once you make those improvements, you can then watch your utility bill and see how things change after you do that. I would say every five years, you can revisit it too. If you've done any other home improvements, you can plug those in. It just kind of keeps things up to date. It's not unlike your app actually. You can keep all of that in one place as well.Jeff:We have a lot of things in common. I'm definitely excited to check out more about the Alliant Energy assessment. Can you tell us a little more about where to find that and how to, is it for just people in the service area or can anybody go and get tips there?Pete:Most utilities, again, I think around the country are offering that. I would always say to your listeners to check with your utilities for what kind of services they provide in terms of a home energy assessment. I think most energy companies today are trying to be good citizens of our Earth and are looking at ways to make sure your home is energy efficient and offering that. I would say check that. One of the things that we stress on Powerhouse is energy star rated appliances. When you're going out to look for new appliances, make sure they have that energy star on the product.Pete:Maybe you've got that second old sort of a beverage refrigerator or beer refrigerator that maybe is 20 years old, but it sure keeps those beverages cold. That's not always the best use of that old refrigerator because they really burn through energy. A fridge that's about 15, 18 years old, it might be time to look at a new refrigerator because they are so much more energy efficient here today than just 15, 20 years ago. You can save again, a lot of energy dollars that you're paying to keep those beverages cold.Megan:Another service that Alliant energy offers is a refrigerator recycling program. To Pete's point, you want to check with your utility company and see what services they offer, because you might be surprised.Caroline:Thank you for all these tips. I mean, I'm so enlightened. Knowledge is power they say.Megan:People are sheltering in place and their home a lot more. Their utility bills are creeping up because of that. With the use of the home office, kids playing video games, all kinds of things, homeschooling, using your computer more than you might have before. People are cooking a lot more. There are ways that you can use your kitchen a little bit more efficiently, and that is to scale down your appliances, especially as we're approaching summer. Grill outside. It's a common sense thing. Use your crock pot, a slow cooker, toaster oven, they use so much less energy than torquing up your oven.Megan:Also, you can scale down how you use your stove top as well. You want to make sure that you use your cookware appropriately by using the right pan size so you're not wasting energy by extra heat coming up. Also, put lids on things. That's going to speed up your cooking and it's going to use less energy too.Caroline:I know my fiance doesn't quite get the toaster oven versus the oven. I'm really trying to help him out there. It also got so warm that the toaster oven is, it seems a bit quicker, but it also doesn't make the whole place like it is outside.Jeff:I think one of the best wedding gifts that I ever got was the Breville toaster oven. It's like-Caroline:I just said that, for our wedding.Jeff:It's great. I mean, I use it every day.Megan:It's fast, quick, easy. You can watch it happen and it doesn't heat up the kitchen.Pete:Brilliant. Again, appreciate being able to, Caroline and Jeff, to talk with you guys and share tips with your listeners. As we like to say, always as we finish an episode of Powerhouse, with these tips and ideas and saving energy, we can make your house a power house.Megan:A powerhouse. Visit our website, Powerhousetv.com. There are loads of tips on there.Caroline:Thank you so much, Megan and Pete. It was so lovely to have you both. We hope that we can partner again soon. Our missions really align in that we really have a lot in common. We'd love to have you guys back on the show one day.Pete:Thank you.Megan:We would love it. Thank you.Jeff:Thanks guys. Have a good one.Caroline:Have a great day.Megan:Thanks. You too.Jeff:Bye.

Caroline:Hi, Rebecca. Thank you so much for joining us today at the vipHome Podcast. We're going to talk about realty, a little bit of your entrepreneurial side, and just learn a little bit more about you and how you've been so successful in the industry. So thank you so much for joining us.Rebecca:Awesome. Thanks for having me, I'm excited to be here.Caroline:So I guess we should start with a little bit about you, how you got started in the industry and where you've seen the most success to date.Rebecca:Yeah, so I just celebrated my five year anniversary in real estate, which it doesn't feel like five years. It feels like maybe three.Caroline:That's so exciting though, what an accomplishment.Rebecca:Yeah, and I'm excited about it. It's been a crazy five years. I never had any intention of getting into real estate. I went to college to be a high school math teacher, and I love math to this day. I'm such a math nerd. I love calculus and the whole thing. And then I just realized that teaching math, high school math wasn't for me. So after I got out of college, I worked, I was a store manager for a while. And then I worked at an insurance company as an account manager for a couple of months. And that was not me at all. I took a couple months off and my mom actually suggested I get into real estate.Rebecca:I had lunch with her one day and she was like, I think you might want to consider it. And I'm like, the commission is kind of freaking me out a little bit. And, I had watched my fair share of HGTV, which is about the extent of my knowledge about real estate. But, I got in touch with my broker who I've been with since day one with McDowell homes, which is an independent company here in Cleveland. And I heard about her business and the real estate world. And I just took a leap of faith. I jumped right in and that was kind of it. So I don't have any really fun stories about how I got started. I don't have any family in the business. I didn't have any agent friends that I knew. I kind of just had to figure it out, but it's worked out. It's been really fun. I can't see myself doing anything else, so.Caroline:That's so cool. I started in finance as well. I was a finance major and went into analyst work and all of that. And here I am in partnerships. So I feel when you think something's right and then you're like, maybe it's not. So, that's wonderful. So here at vipHomeLink, we are really focusing... I mean, our app as a whole is about home management, making home ownership easier. But with that, we're also looking from, our consumers and our customers to make sure that they're always sort of the forefront of what we're working towards in our goals. Can you share a little bit about how your clients, I mean, obviously selling homes, you need clients, but what that relationship is like and how you kind of keep that relationship over the course of time?Rebecca:Yeah. With my team, it's really important that we essentially just treat our clients as our friends and, they become our friends to where we spend a lot of time with them. We chat with them. So keeping that relationship alive, and that's from day one. We might meet a client from day one and we treat them as a friend. And so, that relationship is really important with my team. It's five star service from start to finish, and chatting with them, and we continuously spend time with them. We do pop buys, social media is really huge in keeping in touch with them, once things are over.Rebecca:And providing some sort of value to them from day one, even after the transaction, whether it's real estate related value, whether it's just, anything. Anything that they need, we want to be a resource and we want to be a friend. And so I really make sure that I'm doing that and my agents are doing that too. And so that's why they feel comfortable referring us other business or doing a second or third transaction with us, because we're able to provide that value and we treat them more as friends. It's not just about real estate, especially with this whole pandemic, we've reached out and said, how can we help you? It's not about real estate needs. It's just about how can we help you, whatever it is. So we're really-Caroline:Yeah. I feel like when we just hopped on the phone a few weeks ago at this point, I was like, wow, she is so nice. I would want to work with you. So, I mean, I definitely see the friendly side to you and to your success. My fiance and I are actually looking to buy a house, we're trying to figure out what town to go in and anything like that. Do have any, I mean, I know Cleveland is different than New Jersey, but do you have like tips for first time home buyers or suggestions that you kind of share with them to make their home buying experience a little bit easier?Rebecca:Yeah. Obviously as a new home buyer, it's very intimidating. You're making a very large purchase, sometimes the biggest purchase you'll ever make, right? And so, it's really intimidating, you kind of sign away everything, all your very personal information you're giving and taking that leap of faith into home ownership.Rebecca:And so we really try to navigate each step of the transaction from the preapproval process to the home searching process. We hold your hand every step of the way, as far as all of our clients, whether they're a first time buyer or maybe they've been around the block when purchasing homes, or maybe they haven't purchased a house in 10 years and they aren't familiar with the process right now. We navigate everything from start to finish with them so that they don't feel like they are left in the dark.Rebecca:Any questions, we're always available. We have our phone all the time. And I think that's really important because if you don't have that open communication, your client is going to feel alone. And it's very scary at times, and so, really navigating every step of the transaction, even just if they're panicked a little bit and just talking to them as a friend, like I said, even just, it's going to be okay, let's talk about it, let's go grab a coffee and, whatever. Just to kind of ease their mind a little bit is... And, I didn't realize what it was like until I bought my first house. And I was like, oh my gosh. And so it's really helpful to kind of go through that personally, just to be able to understand what they're going through and really be able to hold their hand.Caroline:Yeah. I think that's so helpful. We put two offers in on a house, or two separate houses and they both went into bidding wars, and we ended up not getting either of them, which is fine. I mean, whatever, a little sad, but our realtor was such a support during that, because they were like, you don't have kids, you're not trying to get your kids into a school system before September. And I have to say, it was such a confidence booster for me, knowing that it wasn't me who lost the house. It was just the nature of the industry. So I give you guys so much credit because, I mean, I'm personable, but I don't think I could be as supportive as somebody whose like, oh, you lost this house, but, we will find you a new one.Caroline:I think that would be, so it's definitely a talent that you have. So, I found you on social media and we sort of got to talking that way. Can you share a little bit about how social has encouraged your business and kind of made you stand out a little bit? I'm sure in Cleveland, if people search you, you have a huge Instagram following, and can you share a little bit about how, A, that has changed, I guess five years, maybe it hasn't changed that much, but how you see that maybe growing in the future?Rebecca:Yeah, absolutely. So, basically how I got started, my first year in the business, I had a pretty solid first year. I was rookie of the year at my company. I had a decent amount of sales, but I was still obviously trying to navigate, figure it out. I was going to listing appointments, buyer consultations up against agents that have been around for 15 plus years. They were a lot older than I was. I got my license at 24, I'm 29 now. And I really realized pretty quickly that, even though I was connecting with the clients and, getting the sales, I still needed to figure out something longterm that was going to work for me, that was going to make me stand out.Rebecca:And so when I started the Instagram, it was a hobby. I had really no intention of making it what it's become today. I love real estate obviously, and I love photography on the side. So it was kind of the perfect place for me to share my love for both of those. And so while I didn't have any intention of making it any real sort of impact for my business, I realized as I was growing the Instagram and spending time on it, that that was the Avenue I was kind of looking for, right? To stand out amongst these agents that were going up, they had big book of business behind them, and I really didn't. So as I realized, that was the platform I was looking for. I know social media, I was able to share things, and things about my business, things about my personal life.Rebecca:I started utilizing that more and more. And so now majority, almost all of my business comes from there. A lot of the speaking activities and things like that, I own a speaking consulting business that I launched last year. So, a lot of that stuff comes from the Instagram to referral business from other agents, not agents on my team. I met them from Instagram, builders, developers, I have relationships with are from Instagram too. So, I do spend more time on that because it really is a majority of my business.Caroline:That's really cool. Can you tell us a little bit about, you said you had a speaking engagement service. I think I got it wrong, but can you share a little bit about that too, and how that kind of, it keeps you on top of your game for a realtor and, maybe it's a passion, but can you share a little bit more about that?Rebecca:Yeah, absolutely. So I launched my own speaking consulting business last year at the beginning of the year, it's [inaudible 00:09:46] Seminars and Consulting. So, I really never, ever thought I would have a... Own a business where I am publicly speaking in front of large crowds. I took a public speaking course in college as a core class. I don't even know how I passed it, because I got in front of those people and just was freaking out. I didn't know what to say. So it was really unintentional. I started getting asked to speak at conferences and things about Instagram for your real estate business. The first one I ever, I traveled to New York and I got, it was a paid speaking engagement. I did two Instagram classes while was there, and I felt like I had to take this opportunity. They were paying for me to go, they were paying for my travel.Rebecca:They were giving me a fee too, and it was a great opportunity to get in front of a ton of agents, and kind of share my knowledge about Instagram and building a business through social media. So I had a really successful first trip, and then when I shared that online, I got asked to go to another trip and then another trip. And it was more and more to where it just made sense for me to launch a business. And so now I travel, I mean, not right now, obviously with everything kind of going on, but last year I did a lot of traveling. I went to LA to speak, Key West Florida, I was in Oklahoma. I mean, I was in a lot of different places to speak about utilizing social media for your real estate business. And some other things mixed in there too.Rebecca:That's not the only thing that I speak about. And then this year, I had a lot of trips planned, I've done all of them virtually thus far, but I love that side of it. It's fun. I love teaching agents. This is just, it's a tough business. There's an 80% failure rate for first year agents. And it is, yeah, it is a hard business to get into. And if you don't bust your butt and hustle, it's really hard. And so I love being able to teach other people how they can take their businesses to the next level. And then the consulting side of it is just a one on one with a client. If a realtor comes to me and they say, I want one on one help from you, to help build my social profile or whatnot, then I work with them one on one to help their businesses grow.Caroline:You are a woman of many talents, that is so impressive. How do you think... Sorry, how do you think social media and the pictures that you post kind of influences people to engage with you? I mean, there's so many accounts out there nowadays and people, and not every house is so Instagram ready, but you can't necessarily just post your good listings versus you're not as good listings. So how do you think the power of a photo really changes from photo to photo?Rebecca:Yeah, that's a great question. So this was something I realized kind of earlier... Well, I guess it took me a little bit to realize this, but when I first started the account, I was just posting house, house, listing, sale, inspection, just straight up houses, basically what you kind of expect from a realtor. And then when I started sprinkling in a little more personal, or not necessarily personal, but other things in there, I started realizing that my engagement levels were higher on those types of posts. People know that I'm a realtor, they expect me to be selling houses, but they want to know the other aspects of my life and my business. And especially through social media, that is a place for you to show who you really are and connect with people personally, because my goal on there is for people to get to know me and my personality so that they trust me enough to reach out to me, to want help with real estate.Rebecca:And so now I share, I really never share my sales. I might share a couple of them on my Instagram story per se. I'll sprinkle my listings in here or there, but it's not about that. I now share stuff that's more personal to me. My followers, I know love my travels and that's something that's really important to me and I love doing, so I share a lot of that. I share a lot of behind the scenes stuff for people to get to know me, anyone that knows me knows that I am a big coffee drinker. I love my coffee. And people know that from following me on social media. In fact, one of the conferences I went to at the end of last year, I was back in New York speaking. And I had two sessions, and in between the sessions, three different realtors, who'd been falling in Instagram, brought me coffee.Rebecca:And I had one really dark one, here's one with a lot of creamer in it, because they knew without even getting to talk to me in person, they knew from my social that I love coffee. And so it's a really great place for you to share more about you personally. I think some agents kind of drop the ball with that when they're just sharing houses or they're just sharing home inspiration or things like that, because you don't really get to show your true personality and who you are. But it is important to share a mix of different things on there, so you can connect with different types of people.Caroline:Yeah, definitely. I feel like I've done a similar reach out that we, how we got connected, similarly with other agents and a lot of them are so focused, which is great. I mean, it's their job on selling homes and making sure that what they're selling is out there, but you definitely see sort of a staleness in that sort of relationship with them because that's their only focus. And I feel like it's such a common question in a job interview, be like, what do you do outside of work? I think that sort of carries over to when you're posting on Instagram as well. So I mean, nowadays with COVID and sort of this pandemic, things are more virtual. Can you share a little bit about how that's affected your business and how you've kind of transitioned into that sort of house selling mode?Rebecca:Yeah. To be honest, when we all were needed to be quarantined at home and things really kind of started to changing, my business and my team's business didn't really shift where it was necessarily coming from, because the majority of that was already coming from social media anyways. In fact, when things shifted, our business that actually got busier because more people are online, right? They're sitting at home, they might not be working, they're scrolling their phone, they're scrolling Instagram, they're scrolling Facebook. And so there were more people. And so we shifted obviously how we were doing things, virtual presentations, all electronic signing versus maybe before it was, some electronic signing.Rebecca:So, the way that we interacted with the client was obviously shifted, but where the business actually came from did not shift for me and my team just because that's where it was kind of already coming from. So that was really nice for us, that we didn't feel like, okay, now we have to panic and figure out where our business is going to come from, because a lot of it was already through social. It was more so just adjusting how we were doing buyer presentations, listing presentations, phone calls, electronic signing, like I said, all of the mechanics per se, is really, more so, what changed for us.Caroline:Got it. Well, that's good for business. So I mean, that you're all of a sudden not changing, but with that, virtual, you said e-signing and stuff like that, how are home inspections done and the different sort of, before you say yes, I want this house to put an offer in. And then to them actually signing on the dotted line, did that process change at all? Or were inspectors allowed in the houses, or how did that sort of work?Rebecca:Yeah. So in the state of Ohio, real estate was deemed essential pretty early on. So that being said, we were able to do showings. We obviously had to follow CDC guidelines, wear the masks, sanitize, a lot of the sellers were leaving the lights on and doors open before we got there. So limited, the touching and things like that.Rebecca:Inspectors were allowed in the home, photographers were allowed in the home. We just have to make sure that we're obviously social distanced if they're there. We had some sellers who asked that only the inspector come to the inspection and not me and not the client. As long as we had that in writing from the seller, we were able to do that and just send an inspector there. But otherwise, we were deemed essential. So we were still allowed to show. Now, I did have quite a few clients that really didn't want to meet in person. So, there were a lot of FaceTimes, there were a lot of virtual showings, a lot of virtual open houses. I still haven't done an in person open house, and so a lot of that is virtual. But we were really able to navigate to where it worked out for everyone while we were still being safe.Rebecca:And luckily for us in the state of Ohio, we did fight for it to be deemed essential, which included the inspectors. Some of the appraisers were not wanting to go in the houses. So they were either doing, you could send them photos or they might even do a drive by. So, that changed a little bit, but luckily for us here, we were still able to keep the businesses going, title companies as well, to where the transactions and the showings didn't have to necessarily stop.Caroline:That's so lucky. I feel like here we're, I think most of the real estate that I've looked at is all virtual and then anything sort of beyond that is as well. Whether it's you going in and FaceTiming, but so that's great. Kind of while we're on the topic, can you share a little bit about Cleveland real estate and how you sort of see that differ across the country? I mean, you do a lot of engagements in different parts of the country with different realtors. So can you just, do think there's a difference, or can you share a little bit about how you may be when you're speaking to somebody in New York versus Oklahoma, you would maybe change your engagement pitch?Rebecca:Yeah. Great question. So anytime that I've done a virtual presentation right now with kind of with everything going on, I really try to just keep it very general to how you can keep your business alive through social media. So that if one state's essential and one's not, I'm making sure that it's... You can do it for anyone, basically. Because a lot of the presentations I do, sometimes they open them up to realtors anywhere, and obviously every state's different, everyone's doing things differently and some realtors weren't comfortable, even if they were deemed essential, they weren't necessarily comfortable going into those houses, which is okay. You have to make that decision for yourself and everyone has to do it the way that they're most comfortable with.Rebecca:So, when I share how to kind of keep their businesses going during this pandemic, it's really stuff anybody anywhere can do. It's all on social media, it's video and different things like that. And there are also things that you can do after things kind of go back to more of a somewhat normal. There are things you can do for your business forever, moving forward. So, that's kind of what I did, and then I would chat with agents per state. I recently did one for Colorado and they just recently kind of started opening back more. Whereas in Ohio we've been essential for a while and things like that. So I really just try to keep it general for everybody so that everybody can use what I'm saying, no matter where they're at.Caroline:That's so helpful. I feel like I would love to, not that I'm a realtor, but I feel like you could just really captivate the room. So one of our segments in our podcast is homeowner horror stories. So maybe you can share a few or one that may be from the realtor side that you're like, oh my God, this is crazy. So do you have a few stories or a story that you could share, sort of that was horrific?Rebecca:Yeah. So my first year in the business, I was showing a couple a house and it had an alarm and I did not get to the alarm in time. I'm scrambling to get the alarm code, and I just didn't turn up, which happens. You might not know where it is or you might be trying to pull it up on your phone. Your wifi is not going as fast as you need, you didn't write it down. So the cops showed up at the house, because the alarm went off, right? So, I'm like, great, I gave them my ID. I gave them my business card, fine. Well, it turns out that there was a warrant out for my buyers.Rebecca:So, that was one of the crazier ones that I have ever had happen to me. So ever since then, if there's an alarm in the house, it is written down, I confirm where the alarm system is so that I can get right in there to turn it off. But yeah, that's probably the craziest thing that's ever happened to me. I have a lot of crazy stories and weird finds that I've seen in houses, but that one definitely takes the cake.Caroline:Did they arrest the buyer?Rebecca:They did take the buyers, so I did not get the sale. That was not a sale I got. Yeah.Caroline:I was going to be like, oh, there was a squirrel in the house or something. Oh my God, that's so crazy.Rebecca:It was crazy. So I haven't had anything quite as crazy happen since then, but yeah, that's up there.Caroline:That's crazy for a long time, in my opinion. That would... Wow. Okay. Okay. So, kind of pivoting from horror stories, do you have some wisdom and advice for homeowners? I know we started touched on this in the beginning, but just some quick tidbits that you would be like, this is what you need to know, and this is what somebody did. And I have suggested a temporary one moving forward, I think. We've spoken to realtors, but everyone has different thoughts and opinions. So, if you just had a few quick pieces of advice and some wisdom, that would be great.Rebecca:Yeah. Especially if you're buying for the first time, there are certain things that you might not realize with home ownership. And we kind of talked about this before, which is why this app is so awesome to me, but making sure that you know with your mechanicals, how often they should be checked. We see a lot of times when we go to the list, that maybe they had a furnace or AC that might've been a little bit older, but they never bothered to get it serviced. And so now it might have some issues, or might need replaced. And so we kind of put them in contact with the right people that they can call to get it serviced, different things like that. A lot of them like to be updated on their market just to see what things are going for in their neighborhood and stuff.Rebecca:And they'll call us about that. So we'll keep them updated on that. We provide basically any type of contact anyone would need. A roofer, a contractor, it's always really nice to have a list of people that you can give a call, because you never know what could happen. I mean, you can move into a brand new construction house and a couple of months later, something could bust, and it happens. So we want to really be a resource for that and just keeping those things in mind.Rebecca:And then also during, this is more so during the buying process, not necessarily after they've already bought, but it's important to realize that you don't necessarily need to spend what you necessarily have been pre approved for. Especially if you're a first time buyer. Sometimes you see you're pre approved for 300,000 and then, oh, well, this looks great, and look at this house. And, it's important to realize, you do want to make sure that you're prepared if something were to break or, for saving purposes. And so we, we try to make sure that our clients are comfortable with what they're spending and know that, we might be able to find them just as nice of a house that they're looking for, not at the absolute max of their budget, so.Caroline:That's super helpful. I feel like going through it myself currently, where we are, because we're outside of Manhattan, the prices are just insane. Especially for a first time price. I look at them and I'm like... And my parents always are like, put 20% down, blah, blah, blah, such a parent thing to say. And that's kind of what we're looking for, but anything that is in our price range is either top of the price range, but it needs no works on the outside or is lower on the price range, but needs a lot of updates. So we're currently in the struggle of, do you pay a little bit more to do a little bit less or vice versa?Rebecca:Right.Caroline:So I think that's great advice because, for me, I would not want to do that much work, but it also, I don't need to spend every dime just to get, that picture perfect house either, so.Rebecca:Right.Caroline:I guess we'll see what happens, but, can we touch a little bit about the preapproval process? I know it's a pretty easy process, but can you just share a little bit of insight on that and sort of how that helps moving forward, before they actually put an offer onto a house?Rebecca:Yeah, absolutely. So we really make sure that our clients, before we even start the home search process, that they get a preapproval. Number one, we want to make sure that they are able to buy obviously, and they want to know, we don't want to waste their time and the seller's time leaving the house and everything. So, we get them in touch with a lender, we see what finance programs are best for them and what their price might look like. And that might differ per area that they're looking at.Rebecca:We have some areas here that have really high taxes and so, their price point might fluctuate. So we put them in touch with a lender that we have, that can get them pre approved fairly quickly. And we aren't able to submit offers without that preapproval in hand, and especially right now, things are moving fast. There's all kinds of multiple offers situations, I'm sure you've seen that as a buyer yourself. Things are moving very quickly, a lot of multiple offer situations, and they won't even consider, even if you're not in a multiple offer situation, sellers usually won't consider an offer without a preapproval because they don't want to take their home off of the market for someone that they don't know is qualified to buy a home.Rebecca:The other thing that's really important is making sure they know what they're pre approved for, because what we don't want to happen is they think they might be pre approved at a certain price point, we show them that price point, and then maybe they're only pre-approved a little bit less than that. And now their expectations are too high and it's harder to get them to know what it is that they can buy. So it's really important that we make sure of that, and some people get a little bit freaked out with the preapproval process. It's scary, you're giving a lot of personal information to somebody that you don't know, right? You're giving your credit score, you're giving your taxes and your earnings and everything to a complete stranger over the phone, and it's very scary. And so we really try to hold their hand and let them know the importance of it. And, let them know that they're not going to be able to buy a home unless they're able to get pre approved, and willing to do that.Rebecca:And we make sure we put them in touch with a trusted lender, someone that we've had good experience with before, we have in house lenders that are fantastic. So it's really, really important if you are a buyer, that you take that first step and get pre approved before you've even stepped foot in a house.Caroline:Yeah. When we were just looking and we had a person to do the preapproval, we just weren't a hundred percent sure. And then all of a sudden, we were like, okay, we're going to do a preapproval, then we'll put an offer in on the house, then we were so excited. And, before we blinked the house was already gone and I was like, oh, so do it in reverse order next time.Rebecca:Yeah.Caroline:How long does a preapproval last? Are you doing it for every house that you're putting on offer on, or are you doing it for a period of time, or does that differ by state as well?Rebecca:Yeah, we don't do one per house. Now, we will have the amount changed on the preapproval per what it is that they're offering, but usually they last 90 days. And then, if you haven't found a house by then, you'll want to get back in touch with a lender. They'll just run everything again really quickly. You don't need a fresh one per house that you put an offer in on. If the first house happens to not work out, you just want to make sure if there's a difference in price that the buyer is still able to buy depending on the different price point. But yeah, I mean, once you get the preapproval, my lender usually gets it done pretty quickly on the phone. He emails me the copy of the preapproval, it has the type of financing. If they need it to sell their home, it has the home sale contingency on it, has the amount on it. And that way, everything's ready to go when they're ready to put an offer in.Caroline:Wonderful. That's cool. I mean, yeah, I'm going through it now. So it's always nice to just hear a difference in the, not even opinion, just from somebody else. We don't have one realtor, we've been pretty steady with one, but we've been looking into different areas of New Jersey. So the realtors are sort of staying, I guess, in their location. So we're getting sort of dual advice from two different people. So it's been a time, that's for sure. So, I'm kind of just about at the end of my questions, but I know we really like to ask our guests who have used our app, vipHomeLink, kind of what they like about it and what they would sort of recommend to their clientele. We think it's super helpful, it keeps everything on track, whether you're just putting in some information or you're really using it to track your maintenance and management updates. But can you share a little bit about, if you've used it and what you liked about it and why you would recommend it?Rebecca:Yeah, absolutely. So, as I told you when we first chatted, I was super fascinated about this, because we see so many buyers who purchase a home and then these certain things they forget about, and it really, it's more money out of their pocket at the end of the day, if they forget to get a furnace service, just because they feel like it's in good working condition, or maybe it's newer. And then, if they're not getting it serviced regularly, they might have to replace it a lot sooner than they thought or it might buy, so I think it's really great. And everybody has a smartphone these days. So, why wouldn't you have the app?Rebecca:It's just such a great place to put everything, reminders. If you have a great paint color and you want to keep track of the paint color, and then, you get new furniture two years later and it nicks your wall, and you're like, oh my gosh, what paint color? It's all right in there for you. So you don't have to... Because otherwise, what I would have done is chipped the paint off my wall, take it to the Lowe's, have them match the paint. And now I have a big nick in my wall. And so this way it's really nice, it's really super great. And it's great for realtors too, because it's really a cool gift that you can offer to your clients. So if you do closing gifts, we do closing gifts for all of our clients, just giving them the app for a year or something is a really great gift idea and it will take so much off of their plates.Rebecca:And then as far as the homeowners that are watching this, I think everyone should have one. And I actually had a conversation with my mom the other day, I sold my brother and his wife a condo, maybe two years ago. And my mom was having a conversation with them and asked him if he'd ever had the furnace serviced since he bought it. And he was like, no, it works fine. And I was like, listen, he needs to get this app because he's going to pay for that. And he's going to be mad that he didn't go ahead and do something. So, it's really a great thing to have. I think everyone needs to have it, and for the realtors that are watching, it's a really great gift that you can offer your clients.Caroline:Ah, thank you so much. We really do appreciate that and we agree, everyone should have it. So, yay. But that's kind of wraps up a lot of my questions. Did I miss anything? Did you want to add anything? I want to make sure that we got it all.Rebecca:Yeah, no. I mean, hopefully this was helpful for the buyers that are watching out there. I know a lot of the markets right now are crazy. It's not just Cleveland, it's everywhere. So, make sure that you are chatting with your realtor upfront, just to kind of know what you have to look forward to, the transaction, everything. And for the realtors that are following, make sure you're having those conversations with the clients, because I think sometimes they're thrown if they put an offer in and miss out and, we're seeing a lot of that. So, but hopefully this was helpful for everybody.Caroline:Yeah. It was wonderful. Do you mind just sharing where people can find you on Instagram and a little bit more about you and then we could wrap up?Rebecca:Yeah. So, I'm mainly on Instagram, as we've kind of talked about, my Instagram handle is Rebecca.Itali.realtor. So you can go ahead and just follow me on there, and then my contact information is on my profile. So if you just click contact, it'll email me directly. It'll call, if you want to text me or anything directly, I'm not quite as active on Facebook. So, I'll just give my Instagram stuff, because that's usually where you can find me, so.Caroline:Perfect. Thank you so much. Well, Rebecca, this has been wonderful. We'll chat soon, and thank you again for your time.Rebecca:All right. Thanks for having me, take care.

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

启你无障碍交流之旅，提高口语+听力+发音，重磅推荐《看美剧学英语》共156节正课（更新中）+N节赠送+纠音辅导+后期测试打卡。让零基础的你也能直达流利听说哦！《听力阅读专项提升》开阔你的英语视野，提高听力+发音+阅读能力，激增单词量。共125节正课+赠送，适合碎片化学习。（内容中含两本KO姐推荐的原版英文书）Caroline: You can afford to open the diner for one night. 就免费开放一晚，你还承受得起吧。You can't put a price tag on those kind of emotional rewards. 帮助别人，情感上的满足是无价的Han: Yes, I can. $18 for 16-pound turkey, and I will need many of them. 可以 一只十六磅重的火鸡要十八块，而且到时候得要很多只。There--price tag. 瞧，都是"有价"的。1月BGM：Empty Space查看完整的文本请关注公众号（esposts）点左下角【口语单词】搜索E190127分享免费纠音打卡中国年主题已经开始，有意者请加纠音小助手的【微信：Lvss66】

Who is Karen Rontowski: Karen is a Leo with Gemini rising. And also a comics/tarot reader/Reiki master/Paranormal investigator and wore our the “/” on her computer. Places to find Karen: Karen Rontowski Instagram Podcast: Paranormal Karen Web series Paranormal Karen Favorite Career Highlight: Late Show With David Letterman What Karen learned about Caroline: You should always bring a sweater Who is Caroline Myss: Caroline Myss is an American author of numerous books and audio tapes, including five New York Times Best Sellers: Anatomy of the Spirit, Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Sacred Contracts, Invisible Acts of Power, Entering The Castle, and Defy Gravity. A note from Lisa: Caroline Myss was my best friend while going through my divorce. I listened to every one of her audiobooks over and over again. I am forever grateful for her virtual hand to hold. How to show love to Project Woo Woo: Click here to buy Lisa a cup of joe.   This episode was also supported by Amazon. Click on this link --> Amazon any time you need to make an Amazon purchase. A small percentage of your purchase will support the show (no extra cost to you).  I receive an affiliate commission from some of the links above. Go get your free be happier than all your friends morning routine over here --> Project Woo Woo Listen to Lisa's other podcasts at Love Bites & Honestly Lisa

Hey rebels! Ever wondered what we do all day? Well in this episode, we give you an inside peek to our days and how we manage our crazy schedules. We chat about working with kids, how Caroline homeschools and works and how “superfocus time” and prioritizing your to-dos is mega important. Quote Love Be the kind of person who gets up in the mornings. - Caroline You do what you have to do. - Kelly Don’t feel guilty about taking a break! - Kelly Whatever stage your business is in, it has to work for your life. - Caroline You can do more work in less time. - Kelly   Are you intimidated by PR? Do you want to see your name and products out there but don't know where to start? We hosted a live workshop with Brittney Lynn on June 27th, and you can view the replay here!  In this workshop, we are talking all about PR for products and arming you with the tools to get some PR. Catch the replay of the workshop along with all the slides and the accompanying mini-workbook right here! Follow us on instagram (@creativebizrebellion) and use hashtag #creativebizrebellion 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.carolinecreates.etsy.com

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! Ever wondered what we do all day? Well in this episode, we give you an inside peek to our days and how we manage our crazy schedules. We chat about working with kids, how Caroline homeschools and works and how “superfocus time” and prioritizing your to-dos is mega important. Quote Love Be the kind of person who gets up in the mornings. - Caroline You do what you have to do. - Kelly Don’t feel guilty about taking a break! - Kelly Whatever stage your business is in, it has to work for your life. - Caroline You can do more work in less time. - Kelly 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 running a business for introverts!  Running a business is so different if you are an introvert versus being an extrovert.  Not sure exactly which category you fit into?  Click here to find out!   Extroverts listen...this is nothing against you.  If it weren't for you, we introverts wouldn’t learn all the amazing things from you online!  Being an introvert and a business owner can be very exhausting!  We are all different people with different personalities.  Kelly and Caroline give great tips and tricks for all business introverts on how to handle it all!  What great tips can you do to help you run your business and get out there to meet new people without feeling so overwhelmed and exhausted at the end?  No matter what type of personality you have, what is important is doing things that make you comfortable so you are able to run your business more efficiently!  Cheers to all those introverts running businesses!! Quote Love from Caroline & Kelly The Key to running a business is to do what makes you comfy -Caroline I love helping other people-one of my fav things -Kelly Find ways to connect with people that works for you -Caroline You don’t have to share everything to be successful -Kelly   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*

This week, we bring you the second of two shows we'd recorded live at Wordstock, Portland's book festival. It's sparkling hour with three witty truth-tellers. But first, we wanted to check in: how're you feeling after the election. Artists Respond to TrumpPortland hip-hop sensation Aminé hit the stage of "The Tonight Show" Tuesday, adding some politics to his viral song “Caroline”: "You can never make American great again / All you did is make this country hate again." His voice joined the chorus of artists protesting in the streets, making visual art about the election, and other kinds of work. In fact, many Oregon artists are rethinking what their work has to say in a divisive political season. We check in with a few of them.Maria Semple - 6:40The world of Maria Semple's imagination is a glowing place. Her characters rocket off on madcap adventures; they collide at high speed; they teeter on the edge of emotional cliffhangers. Some passages crackle with the comedic snap she honed writing for TV shows like “Arrested Development” and "Mad About You," but at the center of her stories are quiet emotional truths. Semple’s last novel was the New York Times best-seller “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” — a merry chase on the trail of a formidable heroine. This year she’s back with another kind of caper, "Today Will Be Different.”Alexander Chee - 21:28Alexander Chee’s new book, “The Queen of the Night,” is a waltz through a kaleidoscopic 19th-century world of opera, romance and intrigue that the New York Times called a "post modern bodice ripper." It follow the journey of a 19th-century American girl from a circus to a brothel to the service of France's empress to the glamorous life of a star soprano. Chee tells us how he interwove his own characters with historic giants of France’s Second Empire, like Verdi, famous courtesans and the Emperor Napoleon the Third, as well as his own journey from boy soprano to novelist.Rabih Alameddine - 34:48Rabih Alameddine possesses the kind of multifaceted mind we all aspire to. His career has spanned engineering, painting, and writing, and his six books keenly bridge the Middle East and the West, religion and sexuality, history and pop culture. In "The Angel of History," Alameddine mixes many different currents to tell the story of a young Yemini-born gay man who weathers San Francisco’s AIDS epidemic through an unusual relationship with Satan and a gaggle of saints. Alameddine talks about the gray areas between good and evil, Satan as a protagonist, and the importance of remembering the past, particularly the hardest moments, in order to move into the future.

Being a boss and a mom can be a little crazy.  Caroline and Kelly dive into a discussion about the back to school craziness.  Caroline home schools her kids and Kelly’s sons started high school and kindergarten this year.  Between orientations, first days of school, sports practices, carpooling, worrying about what’s for dinner, and home school lessons, how does your business not take a backseat to the looney toons schedule? Having a plan and giving yourself grace is key.  Listen in to find out how Kelly and Caroline handle on the craziness and also what they do when they have an epic mom fail. You have to be very intentional about your time. - Caroline You don’t have to be on 24/7 - Kelly I’m trying to give myself more space. - Kelly You just physically can’t do it all.  - Caroline Sometimes you will not get everything done and your to do list is a mile long, but just give your life a little perspective and realize that the next day isn’t so far away and we promise it will all get done.  Deep breaths. LINKS Kelly’s Monitor NotepadTrello

No. 45“你终于还是来了呀！” – 邀你说英语经典台词【句子】Caroline: You made it! 【Vampire Diary】S1E1【发音】[ju:] [meɪd] [ɪt]【翻译】你终于还是来了呀！【适用场合】比如说你邀请一个朋友去参加婚礼，一开始他一直告诉你，想去但是有其他事情，真的不好意思。但是婚礼现场你还是最终见到了他，是不是特别惊喜！“哇，你还是排除万难来了啊！”这个感觉。或者生活中，很难做到的事情，我费尽周折终于做到了，也可以说：I made it. 或者I finally made it. 特别满足兴奋又自豪。欢迎加瑶瑶老师微信：teacheryaoyao 邀请你进入全英文口语交流群不定期开展【英语发音+新概念】培训