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Service excellence emerges when businesses solve problems others avoid tackling. This week I spoke with Zohra Shroff from Sealink Logistics, a freight forwarding company that started in 2005 from a one-bedroom apartment in LA. Zohra joined the family business in 2006 and has helped grow it into a comprehensive logistics provider. Our conversation walked through the complete journey of shipping a container from Houston to India. Zohra detailed every step of the freight forwarding process, from initial customer vetting through final container return at destination. Their technology platform allows customers to book shipments, track cargo, and manage payments through their mobile app, maintaining this edge for over six years with live tracking and monthly rate updates. Their approach evolved from simply moving freight to becoming a complete logistics partner handling sea freight, air freight, and domestic transportation under one portal. When customers face problems like container mix-ups or space constraints, Zohra's team works directly with steamship lines to resolve issues rather than leaving customers stranded. This service model applies to any business where customer problems become your competitive advantage. When others walk away from complex situations, stepping in to solve them builds lasting relationships and premium pricing power. The freight forwarding industry reminded me that behind every simple transaction sits a web of coordination most people never see. Zohra's passion for helping customers navigate these complexities shows why service businesses thrive when they embrace the hard parts.     SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I explore Sealink's journey as a logistics company founded in 2005, emphasizing its deep family roots and innovative approach to the shipping industry. I discuss the complexities of the international shipping process, including filing shipping instructions with US Customs and securing an AES number. We highlight the challenges and financial implications for shippers when consignees refuse to pick up shipments, emphasizing the importance of financial due diligence. In our conversation, we examine the role of freight forwarders and the critical importance of service levels and customer support in the logistics industry. We delve into Zohra's entrepreneurial journey, from the jewelry industry in India to co-founding Sea Link in the U.S., illustrating the courage and determination required for such ventures. She provides insights into maritime routes and their impacts on transit times, including the choice between the Panama Canal and the Cape of Good Hope.   Contact Details LinkedIn - Zohra Shroff (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zohra-shroff-383276172/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Sealink International Inc GUEST Zohra ShroffAbout Zohra TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Good morning Zohra. How are you today? Zohra: Good morning, I'm well. How are you I? Dave: am good Now. Are you calling in from San Francisco, or is that just a background you have? Zohra: No, it's just a background I have. Dave: Where are you calling in from? I am San. Zohra: Antonio Texas. San Antonio Texas. Dave: Yeah, soft spot for me. I went to high school in a suburb of San. Zohra: Antonio, oh, that's really nice. It's a great city, you know, small growing, not too big yet, but I guess eventually getting there. Dave: Yeah, Now are you a native of San Antonio. Zohra: I've been here almost 22 years now, so I think I am. Dave: Okay, and what about originally when? Zohra: are you from? Originally from India, Migrated to the US in the early 2000 and came into Jersey. Stayed there for a couple of years and then moved to San Antonio, Got married and moved to San Antonio. Dave: That's awesome. Zohra: So been here since then. Yes, so it's home now. Dave: That is great. So my wife is a native Texan. I'm what I choose to call a naturalized Texan. We have a saying. I got here as quick as I could. Zohra: I think I can say that now too. You know it's been wonderful, and it's home now. So yeah, it's great. Dave: That is great. So tell me about SeaLink. When did the company start? What prompted it to start? Who started it? Kind of a whole story. Zohra: Sure, sure, definitely. So. Sealink was started by Shaizad. He is my cousin and the forwarding business has been in our family for three generations now. Okay, india. And then my father took it over in the early 80s and 90s and then Shaizad joined him as well after he graduated from college. So he worked in the Indian market on at that point we used to do a lot of brick bulk vessels and we used to do containerized vessels as well. So that's how it all began. And then when Shaizad moved to the US I want to say in 2001, he was working for one of the forwarders and stuff for a few years and then he decided that we should, that he should start on his own. So he started Sealink in 2005 from LA, from his one bedroom apartment, just handling freehand cargo that our sister company back in India was anyways consigning to different agents in the US. And so then we took over that business and that's how we started. And then from there we are here today, grown to a fully export plus import oriented forwarder. So I think that's awesome. Dave: And when did you join the company? Zohra: I joined very early on 2006. So it was yeah, not very late on, so started in 2005. I joined in. I think we were September 2005,. If I'm not mistaken, I think I joined March 2006. Dave: Okay, so Shaizad gets credit for the first six months. Zohra: Yes, Shaizad gets credit for it. Dave: But you get credit for all the growth starting in 2006, right? Zohra: I wish I could take all the credit, but he is a visionary. He is a visionary and without his vision or without his farsightedness on you know what like, we don't want to just be called a forwarder. I don't like saying Sealink is just a forwarder. Because of that, because of his vision, I think we are so ahead of the market in terms of our competitors also and in terms of our vendors also, like overall, I think, for the shipping industry. I think we have it one notch up at, I think, at any given point. You know, just because we have because of his vision. I should again say that, because of Shaizad's vision of not only moving freight but making sure that we are giving service with the service industry and also making sure that we are making sure that we are giving the standard of service with the competitive rates at all time, and I think that is one thing that puts Seelink above. Of course, our technology is our greatest selling point. We've had our app I think so for over six years now six to seven years and you can do everything on our Seelink app you can book, you can give your documents, you can download an invoice, you can download an invoice, you can pay an invoice. You can track and trace your cargo. You can do everything on that app so you are not stuck to see that. Okay, what is going on on my shipment? You know where is my shipment. Why do I need to like hassle bustle and call somebody and someone's not answering the phone? So we have live tracking and tracing that shows on your website that your that your shipment has been delayed or there is a vessel delay or there is a longer transshipment hold. All of that information is available on our app, ready to go. Every month we update our rates so the customers know that in February, if my rate from place A to place B was $500, then we know that March 1st that rate is either going to be $400, depending on the market, or $600. So they have visibility of all of this, which is giving them ease of business. They can make their deals. They can look and then get a figure that, okay, you know what, my freight is going to be so much and my material is going to cost so much. This is what I need to do and this is how I can sell. So we give them all that information. Also, not only we are providing a sea, water services or sea services, we are even providing air freight, we are providing domestic, we are providing trade services. So, for example, if I have a customer who wants to move from Atlanta, atlanta into into Moondra, so I have a rate through the vendor from Atlanta to Moondra to Mundra, so I have a rate through the vendor from Atlanta to Mundra. But if he has a facility in Duluth, atlanta, and then wants to get into on the rail, so we provide that drage service as well. So he can put in his zip code that I need to pick up from so and so zip code, take it to the rail and then it'll go out, you know. So we provide that part of draGE as well, which is really helpful for our customers if they want to go ahead and offer that to their suppliers or to their clients as well. So everything is under one portal and easy access. That's what I can say. Dave: That sounds great. So even though I've been in this business for 20 years, working with exporters, I never really understood how the freight moved. So what I would love for you to do is let's imagine that I'm a brand new scrap broker, scrap metal broker, and I have my first load ready. It's in a container and it's at the Port of Houston. And so let's just imagine like, help me just understand all the steps. So I call you up and I say, zohra, how I've got this uh load of uh of scrap metal at the port in houston and I need to get it to uh, um, what would be a good, a good port in india. Zohra: That that, mundra, let's say. Dave: Let's say, so, walk me through like all the things that that like, just walk me through all the steps that have to happen okay. Zohra: So initially, if I'm onboarding a new scrap customer, we we have an onboarding process that goes into place. You know we we run their credit scores. We, you know, ask for references, we make sure the company is in good standing. Because we do all these thorough checks? Because in the end we don't want a long standing container in some other country where then Seelink is responsible. So we have a thorough vetting process. So it's not like you know, somebody didn't just come to me and say, hey, you know what, I want to move one box of scrap and please help me. It doesn't work like that anymore Because you know there has been so many people who have not done the right thing while moving metal scrap. You know they say that it is metal scrap, but they load something else and it happens. It's just the way the industry is right. So, first and foremost, when we onboard a customer, there is a whole onboarding process. We go ahead, we make sure that the customer is vetted completely. For some reasons, if there is no scores, we ask them for their financials, three years financials and sometimes we even ask for a deposit, depending on the situation of the customer. That's how our onboarding process works. Once the onboarding process is done, then they can go on the website or the app and they can see what port pairs they are moving this freight on. Now, for example, if they are buying from Houston and they want to move from Houston to Moondra, they will plug in on my website Houston to Moondra 120 footer metal scrap and they will see all the steamship lines that I have rates on. It could be MSC, maersk, capagloid, you know all of these top three, four lines where I can say that, ok, this is what your price will. If you want to ship with Maersk, your price is A. If you want to ship with MSC, your price is B. It will give them the transit time. Some of the shippers are very, very, very, very concerned about the transit time. Shippers are very, very, very, very concerned about the transit time. It depends on what they're shipping. If they're shipping ferris and it is, like you know, maybe five boxes they might not be very concerned. But if they're shipping non-ferris, they might be like okay, zohra, I need a 45 day transit. So then I'm telling them okay, choose Maersk or MSC, because their transit is somewhere between 45 to 46 days, you so so let's say so. Dave: Let's say I pick mursk mursk. Zohra: Yes, so then you go on my app and then you hit book. Once you hit book, I get a notification saying abcd has made a booking request from houston to mundra for next week's cutoff for 120 footer. I come inside, I come into play, my team goes ahead, makes the booking on Maersk and turns it around and about. I want to say we want to try to keep it under two hours, so we go ahead and we send a booking confirmation that has all the information of this load. So, the customer exactly knows that, okay, this load needs to get picked up, the empty container needs to get picked up at Bayport Terminal. Okay, once the trucker picks it up at Bayport Terminal, they go to their facility, they get it loaded If the customer is doing their own trucking. If the customer says, or I don't have a trucker in Houston, do my trucking, then I'll offer him, I'll say give me your zip code in Houston, I'll give you a dredge rate and then I can go pick up, schedule your trucking. So I will schedule the trucking, get the container loaded, bring it back to the port, return it loaded at the port and then from there it will sit on the port on the day of the cutoff and then from there we will go ahead and make sure that it gets loaded on the ship. There. We will go ahead and make sure that it gets loaded on the ship. Now, that is where the whole process is working in terms of getting this container into the port. Now, once it's into the port, then it is the customer's responsibility to go ahead and send me shipping instructions. Who is he shipping to? Who is his shipper? Who is his consignee? What is the container number? What is the weight. What is the weight? What is the seal? Dave: is there a name for that set of documents? Zohra: yes, it's called shipping instructions the shipping instructions. So those shipping instructions are given to, given by the, the customer, to us. We go ahead and we put it. Dave: I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I just really want to make sure understand yeah so those instructions? Is that done electronically through your website? Zohra: We can do it electronically. There are lots of customers who send us emails also, so, however, they are comfortable. Dave: Okay. Zohra: If they feel comfortable, there is a way on our website to go ahead and save their shipper and consignees as well, so they can just click, click and say that, okay, this is my shipper, this is my consignee, and then they just change the container name or the container number and weight and seal number. Dave: Okay, so I've given you the shipping instructions. Zohra: Yes, Now you've given me the shipping instructions, I'm going to go back and send you. I'm going to put everything on the BL and I'm going to send you a draft bl. I'm going to say, hey, this is what your draft, a draft bl will look. So you will go ahead and get a draft bl from ceiling and you will check everything your shipper, your consign what is bl? a bill of lading okay yes, the bill of lading, but this is a draft copy, okay, so we, so we can still make changes. If you say, oh, you know what, I don't want to write metal scrap, I want to write heavy metal scrap. So can you edit that for me? Or if your consignee says you know what, I want to add a notify party, so we're going to be like, ok, we'll add a notify party. So we send you a draft copy and stuff like that and we tell you that, okay, please look at it thoroughly, this is what your draft, this is what your bl is going to look like. Okay, so once they check everybody is in order, we go ahead, we take and we file those shipping instructions with the us customs. We tell them that, hey, this person is shipping this cargo from here to here. These are the details. And then we file the entry into the US Customs. They come back with an AES number for us where it is that OK, you know what. The customs has approved your shipment. This is your AES filing number and now you're good to go. Dave: And what does AES stand for? Zohra: It's an automated uh-oh export system export uh automated export documentation okay, yeah yeah. So it's like uh, it's like an ams that you file from the import side, and where does the and then the uh container number? Is that going to be? Dave: in shipping instructions yeah, so it'll still end up on the bill of lading. Zohra: Yes, yes, everything. All this information, shipper consignee, container number, weight, seal, what commodity you have shipped. Everything will appear on the bill of lading, All of this instructions, so everybody has clarity on what has shipped, who has shipped and where is it going. Dave: Okay. Zohra: Also, and if Seelaling has done the trucking for this customer, then I'm not even asking him for the container number because the trucker will give me. He's my trucker, so he's going to be like hey, I pulled this container number. Once I load it, I'll give you the weight and seals. So once we send out the draft BL, it is approved, we go ahead and we send all the information to the Steam ship line, whichever vendor you chose, and we file everything. Dave: We ask the Now where does it, I'm sorry. When does it ship? From being a draft to being a final After the customs process? Zohra: After sailing, after sailing. So once the customs is processed, we have all our information. Once the shipment is sailed, then the steamship line will be like okay, your shipment has sailed, Everything looks good. This is your original bill of lading. Dave: And sailed is a reference to 200 years ago, right With ship that sails Does it? Just mean it's departed the port. It has departed the port, yes. Zohra: So once it is sailed and then after, I think most of the time, they give us a draft in two days of sailing. The original bill will come out in two days of sailing and then from there, once we have the original bill, the customer does have a choice that if he wants a complete set of original bill of ladings, so that means that's a paper copy, or else he wants a telex, which would be an electronic copy. And then he can say that oh, you know what, I don't mind, my consignee doesn't mind a telex release. So if you can go ahead and update this to a telex release, and is the telex? Dave: is it truly going through the old telex system or is it just being electronic? Zohra: It's through the old telex system or does it just mean electronic? It's just meaning electronic. There's no funny how the language just stays around. Right, yeah, okay, all right, so go ahead. Yeah, so once. So then they have a choice to either have some of the guys if they have an lc, they would like the obl so that way they have control on the cargo, they have control on the money, and then they release the bills once they get paid and if they are confident, if they are a regular shipper and a regular consignee, they might go in for a telex release which is just electronic Gotcha. Dave: So then it leaves Houston, and I'm guessing does it go through the Panama Canal. Zohra: Depends on the routing. Some go through the Panama Canal, some do not, so it just depends on what route the steamship line is taking. Dave: I'm just curious. So if it's going from Houston to Moondra, I mean it's got to get around South America. Zohra: Yeah, yeah. So it would go through the canal and if not, because of all the issues that we're going through now, a lot of steamship lines have been routing it to the Cape of Good Hope. Dave: So they've been going that direction, that direction Around Africa. Zohra: Okay, yes, yes, so that makes it a little bit transit longer, but just the safety was more important at that point. Dave: So a lot of routes. Zohra: At least it's a predictable amount of time even though it's longer, and so if it goes, around Houston to Mondra by the Cape under Cape of Good Hope. Dave: How many days does that typically I? Zohra: think it added. I think it added 15 days to the transit. Dave: So what would that? Be total transit so about 60 days about 60 days. Zohra: Yeah, so I think first it was 45 days and then it became 60 days when they were doing, uh, the cape of good hope. Um, I and you know what, sometimes it even is a little bit shorter. I did see a couple of vessels that were doing 55 days also. So I think it just depends on you know how, how how delayed the vessel is, or if there is any any issues on any transshipment ports and stuff like that. So sometimes it's hard to say if it's going to be like anywhere between 40 to 60 days okay, so now it's on the water, is there just no activity at this point? Dave: is there any? Zohra: hopefully you don't want any activity, you just want everything to be good. But there are things that happen, like you heard about the Baltimore issue that happened early last April. I want to say it's going to be a year that everything was good to go. The vessel was ready to sail and it hit the bridge right and that was disastrous and that lasted for six months. Containers, fellers, fell in the water and you know some got damaged and then you know those things. Yeah, we don't want those things to happen, but of course it is. It is an inevitable. Like you know, hazards happen sometimes, so you would want that. Dave: Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. I know you know this really well and so I'm sorry I have to keep stopping you for such basic questions. Zohra: No, no, not at all Do the containers these days. Dave: Do they have any electronic tracking on the containers? Zohra: Some do and some don't. Okay, so the ones that do like. Dave: Is it RF tracking or a different type of electronic tracking? Zohra: I don't believe they have an RF tracking. Most of our containers do not have a tracker because the lines will only give us 10 plus old, 10 plus year containers to load scrap, I see. So we don't get the nice fancy containers. So, most of us are not trackable. Okay, so my scrap load, load. Dave: It's not being tracked but it's on the boat it's on the boat, and so it's sailing, and then now it shows up in mundra. And what happens now? Zohra: so once it shows up in mundra, the steamship line that you have picked is going to send an arrival notice, five to seven days, to your consignee in India or your forwarder in India, whoever you have put on the BL instructions, so you will get an arrival notice. Dave: Now will you be? Will you be the forwarder in India? Zohra: No, no, we do have our own office in India, but most of metal scrap moves on a master bill, so there is really no requirement of a forwarder per se needed when your shipment reaches destination. Dave: They just need a broker and they can clear their shipment and pick it up at the port. Okay, so the ship arrives, and then that starts the arrival notice. Time clock. Zohra: Yeah. Dave: From the time it's actually lands. No, so the arrival notice you will get from the time it's actually lands? Zohra: no, so the arrival notice you will get five to seven days before arrival. So it gives you it gives you ample of time to say that okay, you know what my shipment is coming in. Let me get my docks ready and file it with the Indian customs. Because you can file, I want to say, four days before your shipment is arriving. Dave: So you're not scrambling, and how do we know that the ship is five to seven days away? Zohra: Is there tracking of the ship? Yes, yes, you can track it. Dave: Does the captain get on the radio? Call Zohra. Yeah, hey, I'm about five days away. Zohra: Yeah, no, so the shipment can be tracked on the steam ship lines website also, and plus on ceilings, on ceilings website as well. so you, will see, definitely that your shipment is arriving in three days or five days. If there is a delay, it will blink red and say that hey, there is a delay. And then when you get your arrival notice from the steam ship line, also it will have a date of arrival. It will be like, okay, you know this shipment is arriving on so and so date, so you are prepared that. Okay, you know what. My shipment's coming in five days. Let me get all my documents ready. Dave: Let me have it send it to my broker, you can start and you can start the process with the india customs four days before. I want to go four to five days before so that way, when the ship lands, the you can you already have your entry done and you already know that. Zohra: You know there are no holds of customs and you've paid your freight and you can go along and say that, okay, you know what, I just need the ship to berth. Once they unload my containers, then you know I can just send my trucker to go pick it up. Everything will show green released. You know, unless they have not paid ceiling, then I'll hold the cargo. Dave: Yeah, okay, and help me understand, because I'm an accountant by training. Help me understand the payment of the shipping. At what point do I pay for the shipping? Zohra: Okay, so we have. I want to say 90% of our customers are cash customers. So, when they need their original bill of lading after sailing. We generate an invoice after two days of sailing most of the time, because the line will give us a BL and an invoice in a couple of days. We go ahead, we generate that, we give it to the customer and when he wants to release his shipment he makes a payment to us. So whether it is an OBL or a DELEX, it doesn't matter. When he will tell me okay, zohra, he can go on my website and say release bill. He can go ahead and it will show him that you owe so-and-so amount for this shipment in order to get your release. He can go make a payment and then within 24 hours he will get a release from us. Dave: Okay, Because without that release will the Indian customs not unload. Zohra: No, the Indian customs doesn't really have any control on that. The Indian customs is only getting involved, saying, okay, I have a vessel that has 200 containers coming into India. I need documents to just make sure that it is what they are claiming it is. So they don't have anything to do with our BL release. They only work with customs release. So if I said that I have moved metal scrap and if there is battery in that box, that's a flag for the US customs and I mean for the Indian customs and they will be like I'm going to hold this box. So at that point that box is on a customs hold. Customs will not worry about a BL hold. There are two types of hold. One is a BL hold where either I or the steamship line is holding it for payment, holding it for payment, and then the customs hold is because there is an exam or there is some kind of uh inspection they want to do on the container or if they find some misdeclarations and stuff like that okay yeah, okay, yeah and then, so it shows up, it goes through customs. Dave: Uh, the freight forwarder there puts it on a truck, yeah, and then the truck goes to the warehouse or wherever they need to originally drop. Zohra: They go ahead, they unload the goods off the container. They make sure everything is weight and the weight is matching to what they had claimed it was. Sometimes the weight has shifted or sometimes they feel like, okay, the weight is less, then internally they will file a claim. It doesn't happen a lot, but some things sometimes do happen. And then, once the shipment has been unloaded, they have to make sure it is their responsibility to return the empty container back to the depot. So, once this empty container is returned back in India, that's when my shipment is closed here. Dave: That okay, you know what. Zohra: My empty container has been returned. This has been picked up. Everything is good, payment is good. We are good to close this file. Okay so one file can be open anywhere from 45 days to 60 days, okay, and then if you have issues with that shipment, then it can go longer. If the consignee refuses to pick up the shipment, the consignee abandons, you know, the shipment and says, oh, I don't, I don't have money to pay for it, I can't pick it up. That's when we get into different problems. You know that. Okay, then we need to figure out what we want to do and we all have to keep in mind that every country, every destination country, gives you a few days of free days. So when my shipment arrives in India with my contracts I have 14 free days. So for 14 days I'm not going to get billed for that container sitting at the port. But on that 15th day the clock will start and then, you know, all those charges for demurrage will start occurring for port charges, and then that becomes an expensive, you know, charge that will be billed back to the shipper here because he will have to take accountability of why his consignee didn't pick up the shipment or whatever happened. Dave: You know, and this is part of why you do your financial due diligence on the customers, because you need to make sure that they're a solid business. Solid business, the customer is going to pick it up. Yeah. Zohra: And sometimes we do the due diligence on the shipper part and you know we don't really know what the consignees are in different countries. So now we've started even collaborating with the US customs and you know we run the consignees also through our AES system and if there is like a faulty consignee, then that gets flagged in our system. This is something very new that we have started and we are proud to say that now we are going to run them also to make sure that you know what. There is utmost ease in this process, you know, not to say that when I run the check he's a good consignee and then in the 30 days or the 60 days of the transit something went wrong. Right, I'm not saying that's not going to happen, but at least at the time of the shipment we know everything is a green check, you know. So that's one extra step that we have started taking now, because of so much long standing in different countries are happening due to consignee abandonments. You know, people not paying the banks, lc issues, frauds, people have said that, oh, they are going to do it and then they don't do it. So because of that we are trying to do this extra check where at least the shipper is also at ease. We are also at ease at the time of shipment, and we have this great tool that the US customer is offering us, and so we've started using that as well. Dave: Okay, yeah. So let's instead imagine that this first container is by a friend of mine. Let's say he tells me oh Dave, these freight forwarders are just so expensive, I'm just going to do this all myself. Sure, I would say to them good luck, yes. I would say good luck, because this sounds like an impossible thing to try to do on your own Virtually impossible. Zohra: So a lot, a lot of customers or BCOs that I can say is like the direct shippers, like, of course, the Walmarts and the targets they have, they have a shipping department that does this, of course. But if you have, like, a small trader who's sitting out of Houston or probably New York, it is not worth his headache to do this, because there are lots of small nitty gritty things that are happening along the way, like, for example, I gave you this booking, okay, from Houston to Moondra. Now you have arranged for a trucker, the trucker is trying to pull an empty and my booking is not on file. Okay you are sitting and making a phone call to that line saying, oh, my booking is not on file. I have a trucker. Your trucker is charging you $65 because he's in line for an hour, gets to the terminal and the booking is not on file. I have a trucker. Your trucker is charging you $65 because he's in line for an hour, gets to the terminal and the booking is not on file. They're not going to let him wait there. He will have to go back in the line. So doing business with a forwarder is bringing you ease of these kind of kinks that are going to cost you financially. It is going to cost you a $65 dry run fee or a $65 detention fee for that guy to turn around and stand back in the line With us. We go ahead and we make sure that their booking is on file. Most of the time the depots are filled with containers. And again, I'm not saying that things don't happen. Of course things happen. But if you are a guy who's moving five to seven boxes a week, you don't have the time to sit and call for every booking and say, hey, is my booking on file? Is my trucker standing there? Do we have chassis, you know? Do the container depots have containers mounted on chassis? Do I have to take my own chassis? What's going on, at least with with us? We are telling them okay, your pickup is here, your booking is on file, go ahead, send the trucker again. Sometimes, when the trucker is there, some things happen. Then we can go ahead and fix it. I just feel like, because we are, our relationships are so much more deeper with the lines, you know what we can try to solve problem faster than someone trying to do this first time on their own or even if they've been in the business. Because these are painstaking things you know, like getting appointments to return. Like APM terminal in New York, it is a nightmare right now. It is a nightmare to get an appointment to return your box. So think about it. It. You pulled a box, you loaded it. Now you need to return it and your trucker is trying to get an appointment right and everything is showing full. Your cutoff is tomorrow. So you know those kind of hassles come in, which all come with the financial costs, and I'm not saying that you know what. Every time we will be coming to the rescue, but I feel like we have. So we have a good leverage to come to solve your problems, to make it easy to ship for you guys. You know our job is to make it easy to ship and you can have, you can have, you can be stress-free and you can concentrate on the growth of your business instead of worrying about how one container is going to move. You know yeah now, that's where we come in well, you've sold me. Dave: When I, if I ever get into the scrap metal business and ship to mundra, you'll be the first call thank you now I understand this now. This may be shocking, but I understand that there are other freight forwarders besides Sealink. Oh yes, oh yes, but help me understand, though I imagine that on the surface it's funny. Every business like when you're an outsider, it looks like a commodity, right, you know, it just looks like they're all the same. So if you don't know anything about, I don't know whatever like, let's say, farming equipment. To me, all farming equipment looks the same. I'm sure there's differences between them. Some do better at some things than others. Some are more expensive, some are cheaper, and so I'm sure that it's like that in the freight forwarding world. So give me an example that it's like that in the freight forwarding world. So give me an example. I'm sure that from time to time you get a call from somebody and says Zohra, my current freight forwarder dropped the ball once again and I'm fed up with them. I want to start using you all. Let's think back to maybe an example of that. And of course you don't mention the customer name or the prior freight forwarder. But what's a typical fact pattern that makes them shift from somebody else to you all? Zohra: so in in all these years of of me being at ceiling, the the majority people turn back to us is because of service levels. If there is a problem, I'm not going to run away. I'm going to sit with my customer, explain to them that this is an issue and we need to work together. It is going to cost. Let's come to that understanding that it is going to cost. Am I going to do my very best to make the cost minimal? Yes, yes, of course, though I know that the customer is at fault or the trucker is at fault, it doesn't matter. But we at Sealing believe that we are not going to haggle our customers when they are in problems to make a quick buck. We're not going to do that. We are never going to do that. So we make sure that if a customer is stranded like I'll give you an example right now, I have a situation I have a booking from A-Line Okay, and we got a container loaded. Okay, we got a container loaded. When the container got returned at the port, we got an email from the A-Line saying hello, this container doesn't belong to us. So then we started digging. We started digging, we found out that my customer had used another forwarder's booking for a line that ceiling doesn't work with. Okay. So there are seven, eight vendors we work with and two, three vendors we don't work with. Okay. So now I have a situation where I have a container loaded sitting in the port which my line is saying Zohra, I can't move it, it's not my box, I can't on hire this box because they won't let me. Though it is a partner box, they won't let me. You need to go to this line and figure out what you want to do. Now, zohra or ceiling doesn't work with this line. And my customer is frustrated because his forwarder, who gave him this booking, is saying oh, I can't do anything. You pulled a box now and my booking I gave it to somebody else so that booking is full. Now okay so now he has no space to accommodate this box here, okay, okay. So I'm not going to tell my customer. Oh, you know what? You got a booking from another forwarder on a line that ceiling doesn't work with. You figure out your stuff, because this container here is already accumulating demurrage, sitting sitting on the boat, which is $250 a day. So now yesterday what I did is I called the line that I don't work with and I gave them the whole rundown. I gave them the container number. I told them see, this is what is going on. I understand we don't work with you guys, but can you go ahead and help us? So yesterday they said okay, you know what, we can help you all. We are going to try to see we can reach out to the other forwarder and increase his booking and make sure that this can get returned at that point. Would that that other forwarder should have taken that step to help his customer, who is also my customer, but because of the service failure, or because maybe he doesn't, he was not able to understand how to problem solve this or troubleshoot this, or probably he just didn't have the resources to do it? I don't know. But if my customer came to me and is stranded. I am going to offer that help. I'm not going to be looking here to make a quick buck and say, hey, I don't work with this guy. Pay these 200 demurrage or go ahead and dray out the container. Pay $900 to dray out the container and then go back reloaded in my Steam Ship Lines box. Dave: I see so what happened in that scenario? Zohra: So now today I mean this is very live. This just happened like two days ago. So now today, hopefully you know, the line that I'm not working with has talked to that forwarder and hopefully we have increased his original booking and now we can attach this container to his booking. Go ahead and tell that line. Okay, please move this. Tell my customer. Go ahead, I have increased your booking. Please go to your forwarder, submit your shipping instructions and make sure your container gets on water on the next vessel. You will have some demerit charges which you will have to settle directly with the port, so they had to find space on the line that owned the container. Yes. Dave: Okay. Zohra: Yeah, the line that owned the container. So right now, because of so much of vessel shiftings, right, every vendor in the market whether it is Maersk, hapag, lloyd, zim, msc, all these lines are relocating services, they're readjusting services. Someone is coming into a new alliance, someone has come out of an alliance. There are lots of new vessels come into the market, larger ships come into the market, so everyone is adjusting a lot of vessels. So that is why it is very space, a space constraint. Right now. There are blank sailings, you know, to make sure that these new services are well adjusted for april. So, uh, so that is why there is this space issue. If there was no space issue, right, there wouldn't be a problem I see the other forwarder could pick up the phone and get it right right and the containers are owned by the shipping lines yes, the container. Dave: That's why, when I see a railroad when I'm sitting at a rail stop yeah comes by. Zohra: I see the maersk yeah, the big blue, because that's one of their containers yes, a musk or any, or a costco hat bag, they they all they all own their containers. Yes, correct, wow. Dave: So how, uh, it sounds like you have to work 168 hours a week, I mean, if you're in the service business yeah, tell me if I'm wrong, but I think moondraw is on a different time zone. Zohra: Yes, yes, yeah it's almost end of working day for them right now. Actually, before this, I was on my india office call. We have our own office in india as well, so we have a call with them once a week to just see what's going on, how's business, what can we do to support from here. So they were already, like you know, getting ready to go home, because it's almost eight o'clock in the night over there so is it safe to assume that you, that eight to five is not the sole hours that you work? there is no eight to five in this industry. No, there isn't. Dave: No, I mean my business you know, is to somewhat the same way. I mean, what I tell my clients is all you need to know about the ic disc is my mobile number. Yeah, that's it. That's all you need to know. Just call me, I'll take care of it. Zohra: Yeah, that's how we are, that's how we are. Customers call us, whatsapp us, email us and we try to service. We try to service. We are in the service industry. We believe our service is, is on top and if, and and I'm not saying c-link is the cheapest, I'm not saying that even at but we thrive on it because we know that. You know our customers, and hats off to our customers. Their support has got us here and they are willing to pay us an extra $25 for what we offer. We offer the app, we offer the service. All my sales reps are very in touch with the customers. They just don't sell and then you never see them. It's not. That doesn't work here. You know we do trade shows. We see our customers there make it a point at least two times a year. We are seeing our customers. We have FaceTime with them. So it's not like you're going to like have a salesperson. Dave: They sell you a rate and then they are gone. It's not going to be like that. Zohra: Your point of contact is your salesperson. Of course we don't want our salespeople to get in operations which they don't. Their work is to sell. But customer is not going to feel like isolated saying that, oh you know what. So, and so was my salesperson at ceiling. They sold me a rate and now have all these problems and I don't know who to go to. You know that problem will never arise. Like you say that problem will never arise like you say that, uh, your cell phone number is what they need for us. It's just just email email me or email one of my reps, and you will get a response, like I can promise that well, you all have a booth at the rima san diego show. Dave: I'll be sure to stop by, will you be wow? Yes, I'm gonna be there I'll be sure to stop by. Oh, that'll be awesome, yeah, we do rima every year? Yeah, we've been doing it for the past several years now okay, yes, so uh, uh, wow, I can't believe how the time has flown. Zohra: Yeah, it's um, it wasn't that bad, like I thought it would, I know. Dave: So, so a couple, so last couple questions what? What do you enjoy the most about your job, like what's the most satisfying part of your role within C-Link. Zohra: Helping my customers. Dave: Okay, I had a feeling that was it? Zohra: I really, really find it satisfying when I see an email saying you know, thanks, Zohra, you saved my life, you know, or you know like. Dave: Chad, he's our sales director. Zohra: You know, thanks, zohra, you saved my life, you know, or you know, like Chad, he's our sales director. You know he'll send out an email saying, okay, you're a miracle worker, not to me, but to my teams as well, right, because sometimes it's, it's very frustrating to get small things done right, and when that small thing gets done, then everything flows. So I feel like once you get them that ease, that, okay, now their cargo is going to flow. I feel, I feel satisfied, my teams feel satisfied, right. So I think, just helping out and making sure we are there, that's, you know, that's, I think, is very important, because if you're missing in this chain, your customer is just going to be stranded, you know. Dave: Yeah, no, that makes makes sense. So last two questions. So one's kind of serious and the last one's fun. So the serious one is um, if you could go back 20 years, and what year did you say you came to the uS? Zohra: I came in 2000. Dave: Okay, so if you could go, if you had a time machine and you could go back and you could give advice to yourself back in the year 2000, what advice or pep talk or insight, would you tell yourself? Zohra: you tell yourself that I should have started this earlier. I did. Dave: I don't know why I waited till 2006, okay, so yeah that you know that's the answer that every client gives yeah, that they, they didn't start the business, or they didn't do this because they were afraid or there was risk or whatever. And the advice they always, almost always, give is don't be afraid, take the risk, do it. Zohra: Yes, yes, I agree. So I'll give you a little background. So before I joined Shaizad, I was working at a wholesale jewelry place. We had, you know, huge wholesale and we had a lot of mexican um imported jewelry. You know, we used to sell a lot like. It was a very different, different field altogether. We used to supply to all the big stores and stuff like that. And then when shazad started this, you know, he told me he's like I don't know if I can, like we'll be able to afford a salary, or you know how it's going to be, because I'm just starting and and and we don't know. You know how it's going to work because right now I don't have overhead expenses. So think about it, right. So, like I said, he's a visionary, right. And he just told me one thing he's like I promise you that you will not regret, right. And at that point I feel he, he was all. He already taken the risk, he had already taken the risk, he had left his job at at another forwarder and taken the risk to start this. And when he told me that you know you won't regret, I just I just took the leap of faith and said you know what? This is it. If I think I would have like thought a little bit more and said, oh, I won't. I don't know how I'm going to replace my income or what's going to happen. I don't know if this is going to work. I feel like maybe we wouldn't be here. So I think sometimes you just take that leap and then leave it up to the big man up and I think it all works out with your hard work. But you have to put in the work, I feel. Dave: Sure, that is great. Well, my last question, a fun one. So in Houston we have a thriving Indian community and I have a lot of great Indian restaurants to choose from. So two questions. One if you want really good Indian food in San Antonio, do you have to go to your kitchen? Zohra: Or are there some good Indian restaurants in San Antonio? Actually, now there are a couple of good Indian restaurants in San. Antonio, I can say that you know. Dave: Because I'm guessing the Indian population in San Antonio is a lot smaller than Indian. Zohra: Yes, it is a lot smaller, but I can now say if you would ask me this five years ago, I would be like nothing my kitchen but, now I can say actually we just went to one day before yesterday and it was pretty nice. Dave: So yes, yeah, I think I am heading to Houston, uh, next week. Zohra: so I'm going to make it a point to go to one of the nice restaurants Indian restaurants to know, get some food, that's great, which I think. Dave: I think the yellow curry is my favorite. What's your favorite curry? Zohra: I think I'm not very fond of curries, but I think I'm not a big. I'm not a big curry person, so, but I think my favorite Indian food would be biryani. Dave: Okay. Zohra: Yeah, the rice with the meat. Yeah, yeah, I think that that is awesome. Dave: Well, Zohra, thank you again for coming on the show sharing your story, the SeaLink story and uh and sharing your passion. It really comes through that you and uh and Shaizad both have a passion for serving your customers, and that's really. It's always fun to hear that somebody's just really enjoying what they do. Zohra: Yes, yes, thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for letting me talk about sealing, and I hope that whoever listens to this, you know, comes to us and uses us. Thank you. Dave: That sounds great. You have a great day. Zohra: You too, you too. Special Guest: Zohra Shroff.

In this episode of the IC-DISC show, I speak with Tim Loney about his transition from airline industry professional to IT services entrepreneur. He shares his path from working at Continental Airlines through major mergers to establishing Solutions Information Systems, explaining how his experience with severance packages motivated his shift into entrepreneurship. We discuss the importance of business continuity planning, particularly for companies in hurricane-prone areas. Tim tells me about a Houston client whose facilities experienced severe flooding, highlighting how proper data recovery systems made a crucial difference in their ability to resume operations. Managing sensitive data is a key topic in our conversation, as Tim's company works with high-net-worth families, family office sectors, as well as companies in a variety of industries. He explains how word-of-mouth referrals have helped build trust with these clients who require careful handling of confidential information. The conversation turns to Tim's approach to business acquisition, where he focuses on purchasing IT firms from retiring owners. He describes his method of maintaining and growing these businesses post-purchase while sharing insights about how remote management tools have transformed IT services over the past 35 years.     SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I discussed Tim's career evolution from working in the airline industry with Continental Airlines and American Express to establishing his own IT services firm, Solutions Information Systems, in Houston, Texas. Tim shared insights on how his managed IT services company has established a national presence by utilizing robust remote management tools and enterprise-class processes. We explored the importance of business continuity and rapid data recovery, highlighted by a story of a Houston-based company that faced severe flooding and required effective disaster recovery solutions. Tim's firm specializes in managing sensitive data for high-income families in construction and family office sectors, emphasizing the importance of trust and credibility built through word-of-mouth referrals. We discussed Tim's strategy for acquiring small businesses from retiring owners, focusing on enhancing the value of these businesses post-acquisition to ensure continued growth. Tim reflected on his entrepreneurial journey from modest beginnings, emphasizing the significance of diversifying income sources and the evolving importance of data protection in the digital age. The episode concluded with an exploration of the evolution of office communication over the last 35 years, showcasing the technological advancements that have redefined the IT industry.   Contact Details LinkedIn- Tim Loney (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sis-tloney/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Solutions Informations Systems GUEST Tim LoneyAbout Tim TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hey, good afternoon, Tim. Welcome to the podcast. Tim: Hi, Dave, good to see you. Dave: So where are you calling in from today? What part of the world are you in? Tim: I'm in Houston, Texas, just north of Houston, in the Tomball area. Dave: Okay. Tim: Up in our corporate headquarters for the company. Dave: Okay, and now are you a native Houstonian. Tim: I am not. I'm not a native Houstonian. I should be probably classified as a native Houstonian because I've been here for about 35 years or more. Dave: Okay. Tim: But my background is I migrated from Canada the day before my 21st birthday. Dave: Oh, you did. Tim: Yeah, I became a permanent resident here in the United States. And what caused you to want to do that? The economy was pretty bad in Canada at that time and I was working for a commercial airline that had gone through a severance package and they released me with my severance package and I said you know, maybe I should try another country, not just a job, but maybe another country. Dave: Okay, so when you came to Houston then did you stay in the airline? Tim: business I did. I worked for one of the large international airlines called Continental Airlines at the time, which has since been acquired by United Airlines. Dave: You know, to this day I can still tell a legacy Continental flight crew from a legacy United flight crew. Very different cultures, very different cultures, or, as I say, the Continental folks are nice and the United folks are not so nice. Tim: Correct, yeah, I was there during the heavy competition years between Continental Airlines and United. I was actually there in the process with Continental Airlines during a very large merger and acquisition of multiple carriers. We acquired Frontier, people Express and New York Air and put them all under the umbrella of Continental Airlines. So I was there during those years. Dave: Okay, so were you there in the late 90s. So were you there in the late 90s. Tim: I was there from 1985 to 1990. Dave: Okay, yeah, I was only asking because I'd worked at an executive search firm in the late 90s and we worked with Continental during their like, go forward initiative or move forward initiative. Tim: Yep the go forward plan with Gordon Blithoon. He was Yep. Dave: Yep, that was it. So then you left the airline business. What did you decide to go do then? Tim: So I left the airline business and I went to work for one of the largest credit card companies in the world called American Express. Dave: Okay, I think I've heard of them. Tim: Yep and because I had a lot of automation knowledge of how the airlines work. From an automation standpoint, American Express was interested in me and understanding the automation behind the airlines and travel agency systems and they brought me in to be a systems person for the airlines to help them in kind of standardizing a lot of procedures within American Express. Dave: Okay, well, that sounds like a fun opportunity. Tim: Yeah, very rewarding, very educational. I learned so much during my term at American Express. Dave: Okay, but you decided that at some point you wanted to unfurl your wings and see what you could do on your own. Is that right? Tim: unfurl your wings and see what you could do on your own. Is that right? Yeah, you know now that I look back at it. You know I was. I grew up in a family where you were encouraged to go work for a large organization and a big fortune 100 firm, and through your entire life, and leave with a gold Rolex watch and have a great retirement plan. Dave: Yeah. Tim: But as I followed that path, I found myself continuing to get severance packages over and in my experience with the Fortune 100s I received three or four severance packages and those packages kind of educated me on that. It was maybe not the right gig for me and, you know, I was smart enough to be able to exit out of the Fortune 100s and do something on my own, and that's when I decided to start my organization. Dave: Okay, and what's your company called? Tim: So my company is Solutions Information Systems Solutions IS to abbreviate it and we are a managed service provider of IT services across the United States, managing about 175 customers across the US oh wow. Dave: That's interesting. I would have thought you'd have your clients would all be in the Houston area. I guess this newfangled internet thing lets you serve clients remotely. Is that, I guess, how it works? Tim: Yeah, yeah, and we can talk a little bit about what makes us so successful, but the ability to manage and monitor and remediate issues remotely has come a long ways over the years that I've been in IT. Now it's pretty much if you can't do that, why are you in this industry, right? So yeah, and you know it's a lot of like the entire work from home program that the whole world has kind of moved to. We have that ability to do exactly all of that stuff, not only from our corporate headquarters, but remotely as well. If one of our employees needs to work from home, they can do remotely as well. If one of our employees needs to work from home, they can do that as well. So it requires a massive tool set, and I'll refer probably to our tool set a lot, because that's what makes us successful, right Is the tool set that I've been able to put together and build a toolbox full of tools to be able to manage, secure, maintain these infrastructures that we're responsible for. Dave: Well. Tim: I thought IT service firms were. Dave: I thought that was a commodity service. I thought they're all the same. Tim: Oh no, there's quite a bit of difference in how these managed service providers operate and I'll tell you, I would consider us probably in the top 100 nationally and probably the top three in our region of service providers, and the reason I kind of give us that grade and that's a grade that I've given us is that we've been at this for 25 years. I started this practice 25 years ago. I started this practice 25 years ago and over those 25 years I not only brought in enterprise class processes and procedures from my 10 years at American Express, but I've improved upon those processes and procedures over those 25 years. Dave: And we continue to improve on those processes. Okay. Well, what? Yeah, I'm guessing that you're. The clients tend to stay with you for a pretty long time. Is that like until they sell or go out of business or some significant event occurs? Absolutely. Tim: Yeah, and that and that's the type of client that we want to have in our portfolio, right? This is not a consumable product that you go and buy once and go away this is a partnership with our customers. Dave: It really is. Tim: You have to think about the IT infrastructure of any business out there. It's number one, a foundational piece of the business, and it is an instrumental piece in continuing to do business right. A lot of conversations I have are around data protection and security, and that's a lot of what we do right Is how do we protect the data that the customer has and how do we make sure that it remains secure and that nobody compromises that data or extracts that data or modifies that data that's on their infrastructure. Dave: Okay, and I'm guessing you're not trying to be the low-cost provider. Tim: We are not the low-cost provider. I wouldn't say we're the most expensive organization out there, but we are in the higher side, and the reason that we're the higher side is we bring a huge value to an organization. There is a lot of components within the IT support model that our lower competitors don't provide or don't understand, and those are the weaknesses within an organization that will cost them considerable damage to an organization if they get exposed right. Dave: Yeah. Tim: And then kind of go through those if you want to cover some of that stuff. Like let's just give an example of a business continuity plan right. If a company doesn't have a business continuity plan, that should be something that they should have in place, and they should have worked with their IT service provider or internal IT team to make sure that they've got a business continuity plan. If they don't, when an event happens, it's a total dumpster fire right, because they don't know what to do and they're very disorganized and it takes them an extremely long time to be able to recover, if they recover at all. So that's one example. Another example is compliance. There's a lot of compliance that's out there and that compliance is in place for a reason. Compliance is in there because somehow something got compromised and this is a compliance requirement that you now have to be in compliance with. It may be an access control compliance thing. It might be a reporting compliance to a legal agency. Dave: So talk to me about the first thing you refer to as the disaster recovery plan or the disaster recovery and business continuity. Okay, so my listeners love stories, so could you give me an example, like of one of your clients you know anonymously, that maybe went through a situation or maybe a company who was not a client but after they had an issue they hired. You guys give us a sense of like the elements of a really good you know continuity plan. Tim: Sure. So I'll give you an example. I had a neighbor that was in my neighborhood that you know. We would see each other at the neighborhood community pool. Our kids would play together, you know weren't real close to them. But you know you get into the conversation of having hey, what do you do by? The way, and you know, I told him I ran a managed service provider, an IT service firm, and we manage customer networks and we keep them secure. Dave: And he goes oh, okay, okay, Well, we got a guy. Tim: We got a guy he's good, he's been with me for five years. At that point, and you know, and wow, that's great. Well, if we need anything we'll call you, right, the conversation went away and that was about 15 years later. So the guy had been working for him for 20 years managing his stuff, managing his infrastructure, managing his backups, making sure again going back to data protection and security making sure that everything was safe and secure and we could recover it. Well, lo and behold, 20 years later he calls me up it. Well, lo and behold, 20 years later he calls me up, not him, but his wife calls me up, and his wife, you know, worked in the business for a period of time but it exited out. She called me up. She said by the way, I still have your cell phone number. I'm wondering if you're still doing IT, was their question. Dave: Okay. Tim: And I returned back and I said absolutely, I'm still doing IT. What's going on? She goes well. He was afraid to call you because he's embarrassed and we were in a very bad situation. This is a second generation builder supply company, probably doing annual revenue about $10 to $15 million in annual revenue. Dave: I said OK, what's going on? Tim: And she goes. Well, we've been ransomed and our data has been held for ransom and we don't know what to do. And our IT guy doesn't know what to do and he is really stressed out. And so the next step was is like well, I can jump in and I can help you. Let me know if you need my assistance. But these type of scenarios we've worked with before and we know how to be able to either negotiate with the criminals and negotiate the ransom to a point where you can actually pay it. If that's your only option, that's your worst option. But if we can recover your data from some sort of backup, we can go through the recovery process. Kind of summarize it we spent that particular client was not a client at the time and so they didn't have any of our backup or recovery procedures in place. They didn't have any kind of policy in place. They didn't have retention policies, they didn't have off-site backups. They had a lot of things. They didn't have offsite backups. They had a lot of things that were missing in that internal IT person's procedure. So what happened was is we came in and we immediately got on site and determined that they were using tape backup, and this is like way tape backup had expired like a long time ago. They had tape backup, they had ancient equipment, it was really. They obviously had put no money investment into their IT. Okay, the recovery for that client was about a week and a half and we were able to recover about 90% of their data. So it comes down to what we call RTO or recovery time objective. The recovery time objective is how long will it take us to recover your network based on our backup and recovery procedures? That particular customer we were able to get back up. Like I said, it was an extended period of time that they were out and they weren't able to do stuff. They were writing sales orders on paper and going back to a paper process. So they could continue their business, but we did get them back up and operational. We got them recovered and they became a customer and today we run very successful trials of the recovery system, as well as continue to make sure that their data is protected and secure. Dave: Did they end up paying the ransom they? Did not Because you got them close enough to 100%. Tim: We got them close enough where they had physical paper backup of the information that they were able to put back into the system. Dave: Okay, now help me understand the other end of that spectrum with somebody who was a current client that something like that happened to, and what was the difference as far as how long it took before you had them up and running? Tim: Well, you know, our current clients knock on wood have not experienced that. Dave: Because they've got a tighter IT infrastructure. Tim: Right, we've got the security and controls and again going back to the tool set to detect and have early detection of these type of events before they happen. So we have the security operations center that is constantly monitoring the security of the networks and the access to the networks and they look for anything that's kind of out of order. Dave: When something's out of order. Tim: then we identify it. We either isolate that system or we investigate it further and see is this a normal procedure that should be going or not? A normal procedure and a lot of this stuff is becoming part of AI now. Part of the AI capabilities is to be able to identify those things very early and stop them before they get any further into the network. So prevention is obviously a whole lot better than remediation. Right and that's what companies hire us to do is to prevent anything like that, a catastrophic event, from happening. Dave: Okay. Well, what about something that's more like a hurricane hits and wipes out their building? I assume you've had some kind of like natural disaster kind of thing where you've had to enact a continuity plan. Tim: Yep, yep, yep, absolutely so. Hurricanes here in the Gulf Coast of Texas, with the Gulf Coast of Texas being in a hurricane zone, we've had customers that their facilities have gone underwater. So one particular customer was on the south side of Houston and their facility went about five feet underwater. They, interestingly enough, had the server on a brick, thinking it was high enough. Well, it wasn't quite high enough, it was a foot off the ground, but it needed to be five feet off the ground. So that server went underwater and it was on when it went underwater. So it shorted out a lot of the components on the server, in which case, you know, they were like we don't know what to do In that scenario. We actually brought the hardware to our facility and we found out what component had failed and we replaced that component on the system and we were able to recover that system oh, wow, okay yeah, that's what we always want to do, is we want to try to use local recovery as much as possible just because of bandwidth or um, no, because of the time it takes to get the data transferred over from a replication process right. Gotcha If you're dealing with terabytes of data. You have to transfer that terabytes of data from either our data center facility or a cloud infrastructure, and that can be time consuming. That can be hours, if not days, depending upon the data. Okay, so some great stories. I mean, obviously we've had events happen. It's not uncommon for events to happen, but how we handle those events and how quickly we can recover from them is critical to a business to continue business for our customers and they can get back to business and be doing what they're doing selling things, manufacturing things, distributing things, whatever it is Okay. Dave: And are there any particular industries that you have, like you know, kind of particular expertise in where you know you would say that people in this industry might look out to you for yeah? Tim: There is. We're a very horizontal organization so we do have multiple industries that we play in. So we do play in the construction industry A lot of construction firms are in our portfolio, but also kind of an area where we've proven to have not only expertise in what we do but also the trust factor is in family offices. Dave: Oh, really Okay. Tim: Yeah, either high income families or ultra high income families. Obviously the privacy of those organizations, the privacy of the families, absolutely critical, and then the data that they're working with has high confidentiality. So, you know again, if that information was to leak out of the network or leak out of the system, then it would be a serious issue. So we've dealt with some of the highest wealth families in the world, oh interesting. Yep Obviously can't name them, but some brands that you would know, some organizations that you would know. It's amazing when I look at our portfolio, the amount of business like when I'm driving around town and I see companies around town and I'm like been in that building, worked in that customer, handled that particular customer, things like that. So yeah, you know, it's our high income or ultra high income. Families are probably a good percentage of our business. Okay, because they have multiple entities that we can support, consistent across all of those entities. So it's very standardized the way we do our business and very proceduralized so it makes it easy for them to understand. They get a quarterly report that provides them with the details and data that they know what we did for them previously and then we also forecast with a forecasting budget in the October November timeframe to provide them with a forecast so they can budget for their future IT needs and know what they're going to need replaced in the future. Dave: Okay, so was this just a case? You happened to stumble across, you know one of these family offices and then you know they run in the same circles and we're just got around that you guys were the go-to folks. Tim: I will say it has helped right In the. You know, in that particular market referrals are a huge thing. Our first family office we did stumble across. We didn't know we were working with an entity, one of their businesses, and then we, you know, they introduced us to another piece of their business and then they introduced us to the family office. You know we're having troubles with, you know, my buddy, my other firm over here, and we'd like you to kind of help in that area. So that expanded out quite a bit. And you know, again, there couldn't be. Our organization has to be the most trusted organization as a vendor that any company is going to hire, right? Sure, because you have to think about the access to the data that we have. We have access to absolutely everything. We're the administrator of your network, right? We have access to your email account. We have access to your email account. We have access to your employees' email accounts. We have access to your data, your financial data, your payroll data, your bonus data, all of the data that's out there on the network we have full access to. So you have to trust our team to the utmost in order to keep that information private, and I always approach a customer with. We're here responsible to secure and maintain that data. We're not here to look at what that data is. We don't know what that data is. Okay. Dave: Well, that's interesting here. I thought I figured you picked up that first client when you were on your mega yacht at the Cannes Film Festival. It didn't work that way. Tim: Huh, no it didn't work that way. No, it didn't work that way. I don't have a mega yacht and I wasn't at the festival, so okay, okay, yeah, not that I don't enjoy that stuff. I do have a house over at tpc, sawgrass and the players club and I do enjoy the country club life. You know I probably have the least expensive house in the neighborhood but I do enjoy the life. Dave: So nice, nice, I like it. So what do your clients tell you that makes your firm unique, like folks that have moved from another firm to yours, then they've been with you a while and I imagine you'll have a conversation hey, how's it going from your end? Are we meeting your expectations? I imagine you have conversations like that. What are they? What are? Are there any common themes? When they end up comparing you to the prior provider, they had, or how does that go? Tim: Yeah, there's a couple of scenarios there on why customers come to us and leave their current service provider right. One of the biggest things that I found with a customer that may be using a smaller service provider is they are really good at the tech stuff. They're not good at the business or the accounting side of the business, sure. So there's a delay in billing or an inaccuracy in billing and it's all of a sudden they get a stack of invoices three months later for work that was performed that they have no idea whether it got performed or what, and so there's a huge problem with the office operations of those particular service providers. So there's a pain point there and they're like I'm done, they come to me and they go, I'm done, this guy doesn't bill me. And then he bills me all at once, and then I got to try and back that information back into my financials and it totally screws up my forecast and my monthly reporting. So that's one reason that customers come to us. The other one is they don't get a response or the response is like unpredictable. So when they call in, they may get the guy right away, they may get the person like return their call the next day or three days later, so response time is really huge. I have a service desk here that is operated 24 hours a day, so our first level response is within minutes. So if you call my office, you'll get a response within minutes. If not on the first ring, it'll probably be the second or third ring. Dave: Oh, wow. Tim: Yeah, very rarely does any of our calls sit on hold or back up in the queue, so that's one way that customers come to us. The other way that customers come to us is that we have acquired eight other companies in the past 25 years. Dave: Oh, wow. Tim: Yeah, we completed our last acquisition in 2024. And we've gone out and found other service providers that may be struggling. They may not have the right business acumen to be able to run the business, so they're either marginally making money or they're losing money because they don't have the standard operating procedures that we have in place and the true business acumen to be able to run the service as a company. They've got customers, they're doing the work, they're getting paid, but they're not profitable. So we end up with firms like that that have come in through acquisitions. Dave: So yeah, I can see that and that's probably where your American Express background was helpful. Right Because you've had exposure to, you know, enterprise grade operations billing HR. Right operations billing HR right To where? Because American Express strikes me as just a well-run, well-oiled machine? Tim: Absolutely yeah, and I will say yeah, I will give them credit for that. You know it was a great run over there for 10 years and I learned not only about you know my job role and continuing to build on my experience in my job role, but how a company operates from a branding perspective, in branding your organization and keeping that brand consistent, but also in standard operating procedures and standardized deployment of systems. Right. I always refer back to not only my American Express days but the Southwest Airline days of standardization. If you can standardize the particular piece of your business that you're running, then it makes it so much easier. So we have standard software applications that we put out from a security tool set. We have standard equipment that we sell out to our customers, all on the Dell platform. My team is trained on the Dell hardware. They're trained on the tools that we use. The security tools, the management tools and all of those things integrate together to make a successful business. Dave: And again it goes back to enterprise level policies and procedures and way things that are, you know, repeating things that are successful you know, repeating things that are successful, okay Well, it sounds like like the first two parts of your success just seem mind blowing to me how you thought of this. But answer the phone when clients call and invoice timely Wow, I mean that's, that's quite a that's quite as. I mean I can't believe, to be honest, that you shared that secret sauce with me. I mean, my goodness, I mean that's. If you're not careful, there'll be other companies will start answering the phone and invoicing timely with that, you know inside knowledge. Tim: Yeah, I hope that we can improve the rest of the service providers out there, right. Dave: Sure. Tim: Competition is good. I like competition. It keeps us going. It gives us something to work towards as well. Dave: Yeah, so you talked a bit about some of the acquisitions and it sounds like you're kind of in a place where you're always open to the right acquisition. What are kind of the ideal characteristics of like the ideal acquisition? I'm guessing you're not going to try to acquire like E&Y's consulting group. I'm guessing you're looking for smaller operations than that. Tim: Yeah for sure you know. So an organization, the organizations we have acquired, have been anywhere from a half a million dollars to two million dollars in revenue. Those organizations the owners may be getting older, they may be getting ready to retire and they're not sure what they want to do with their business. What they do know is that they don't want to continue to run it Right and that it's marginally. They're making the same amount of money or less than if they had a corporate job Right. So it's sad to see, because they love what they do right and they want to place their customers in with a firm that has a similar culture, that takes care of their customers and really make sure that they're doing the right thing for their customers. So a firm that might be in a half million dollars to two million dollars in annual revenue, or the firm might be a five employee firm or smaller, and that they're getting to that point where they're kind of tired of running the organization and they'd like to transfer. They've taken care of their customers over the years and they've made relationships with those customers over the years and they like to put them with an organization that will take care of those customers and make it a seamless transition for the customer base sure, and I bet, I bet these sellers would probably be shocked if they were able to come in and look at the finances of their business like two years after you've acquired it. Dave: Right, because I'm guessing? Tim: Historically, yes, I will tell you, in probably at least half of those transactions that we've done in the either 12-month or 24-month payout period, they've made more money in that 12-month or 24-month period than they've made in the last three to four years. Dave: Oh, because that earn out ends up being a function of how much you bill over those 12 to 20. And you dramatically increase the revenues, so they're automatically getting participation in that. Absolutely. If they'd known that they would have sold to you 20 years earlier. They just wanted to work for you had their payout and then just become an employee. Right, they want to come out way ahead. Exactly, yeah. Tim: Yeah, now it's really good to see that. I mean, you know, that's one of the things that my competitors don't do. They try to come in and offer this ridiculous number for a business and then the earn out. They beat them up on the earn out and end up with anything. They end up with an initial payment and then maybe they'll get an earn out, maybe they they'll get an earn out, maybe they won't get an earn out, but they're going to tell them how horrible their organization was and how bad the customer base was and how it's not profitable and you know, it's just not how I do business. Dave: Yeah, and I'm having done. Did you say eight acquisitions? Correct, yeah, I'm guessing you've done enough now. That now you have the ability Correct? Yeah, I'm guessing you've done enough now that now you have the ability, the same way that I understand you know when Berkshire Hathaway acquires a at that same point. Now You've got enough success stories that you can point to those as another differentiator, right? Tim: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We're not at the Berkshire Hathaway point, but we got a couple under our belt and a couple of examples that we can refer back to and have some validation around our acquisition process. Dave: Yeah, because I'm just like, as I'm just playing through some hypothetical numbers, like you know, if a company had, say and you don't have to confirm these, but say a company was doing half a million in revenue, the profit is say you know 50 grand and you buy them, is say you know 50 grand and you buy them, and it wouldn't surprise me if, like, two years later, you know that revenue number doubled and the profitability number like quintupled probably, and or you just you know dramatic increase. Just because you know I mean, quite frankly, you just have a better run business model but they had you're able to plug them in and so that's absolutely our goal. Tim: Yeah, and so your win isn't so much we like to see play out right. Dave: Yeah, and so your win isn't like other folks where you promise the moon and then you figure out all of these ways to not pay them. It sounds like your process is just like hey, because in your mind, being a strategic buyer, that business is worth way more to you. You know two years later, once you've done your magic to it, that business is worth way more and so you're okay paying them on an earn out, on a growing revenue number that maybe they didn't even contribute to, because at the end you know, as a I mean like on the front end you might pay, say you know, one times revenue, let's say just to pull a number out but by the time you get to the end of it, if the business is doubled and the profitability is quadrupled, you really ended up paying only one third or one half revenue. And so all of a sudden, whether you know found a way to squeeze them to where the imputed value you paid was one third annual billings or it was half of annual billings really doesn't matter, because the real value for you is like, year three after the earn out. You've got this great profitable book of business that you know you didn't pay much for in comparison to what it's worth two, three years later in your enterprise. Is that right that's? correct, yep, absolutely but the reason you didn't pay much, though, in in all honesty, was because the business wasn't very valuable. Tim: And it really wasn't right. Dave: Yeah, I mean they had owner value. Tim: Street value had a zero valuation on it right. Dave: Yeah, they had probably owner concentration risk. They may have had customer concentration risk, poor processes systems. You know the type of company that you know. There weren't people beating their door down to buy their because, effectively, you're just buying a job. If you bought that business, all right. How much do you pay for a job? Most people don't want to pay very much for a job. Now, what do you look for in an employee, just like you know the most techie person you can find. Is that really all that matters? Tim: No, it's not necessarily you know the most skilled technical guy out there, right? So one of the strategies that we have and maybe I shouldn't share that because my competitors may hear it, but we are a strong supporter of our veterans, so we have veterans that work in our organization. We're probably a 75 percent veteran organization. Dave: Oh, wow, ok yeah. Tim: Yeah, and we enjoy that. They come to us with technical skills and abilities but we build upon those we really do Right and we develop those particular individuals to be much better at what they do. But having our veterans on our team has been hugely successful from a reliability standpoint, as well as a dedication standpoint and the understanding to be able to follow orders as given, right Okay. So that's how we've been able to do that and our retention rate is extremely high. I would say that our culture is very good. We're very family oriented. We're very you know when work has to get done, work has to get done. But we also realize that the family comes first and there's family things that come in the way that need to be addressed. Right. You can't. Your kid gets sick. You have to go take care of your kid, you can't be at your job, right? Those kinds of things and being able to balance that. That was one of my challenges at American Express. I was a new father in my ninth year at American Express and I realized that, even though it was written in the book and preached on the values of the company, when it came time to actually exercise that it wasn't as flexible as I had hoped I was like you know. This is another reason I kind of need to get out. I need to raise my daughter and I need to, you know, and I plan to have other children. So family values and longevity of employees, it makes a huge difference you have to think about. If you have an IT guy in your organization and they're only there for a year or two years, they've gained a little bit of knowledge about your business and how it operates and what computer systems are, what systems and software you're using in your business. They get intellectual knowledge right that walks out the door when that employee leaves or you release that employee. Dave: Yeah. Tim: With maintaining our staffing. I've got people on my team that have been with us 15 plus years and they have a history of our customers that is like you can't buy that right. Sure, you've got that knowledge of that network, of when it was built, like we've built some of these companies, so we know it from day one and what we've done to different applications and how we've modified them over the years. So just having that knowledge be maintained with your service provider is huge, so, and we can go back and look at you know, oh, here's a ticket from 15 years ago that I worked, that I resolved this issue, wow. Dave: And how do you know? You know, cause it sounds like the company has been growing both organically and through acquisition. How do you know when it's time to hire? Do you wait till? Like people are working a hundred hours a week in complaining and quitting. Tim: Is that? Dave: the point you say oh geez, we probably should get somebody hired and we should probably hire in a hurry. The first person we come across Is that your growth strategy? Tim: for your people? No, definitely not, definitely not. So we have a lot of KPIs in the business that we can measure the performance of our organization, and mainly that's around resource utilization. Okay, so we have a lot of tools in our toolbox that give us an indication of when an employee is overloaded or when they have too much on their plate, so we can shuffle that within the business and be able to see who's got the workload and who doesn't have the workload, be able to move things around within the organization. But then we can also look at our utilization levels and, number one, make sure that we're profitable with those utilization levels but also staff appropriately to those utilization levels and know when it's time right. It's like okay, we acquired a company with five big customers and we didn't get any employees with it. Do we have the bandwidth or do we need to increase our staffing? So we really have a lot of KPIs around measuring that to make sure that we don't stress our existing resources and we balance it out that our people are profitable but they're not overworked. Dave: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And then how do your new employees come to you? Is it referrals from other employees mostly, or no, we do have. Tim: I sit on the board for one of the technical colleges and I use that technical college as our you know more or less recruiting platform. We find the best of the students. You know the kids that are shining. You know they kids that are shining. You know they're showing up on time for their classes, they're interested in developing their skills and they're really, you know, the top students in the tracks right Okay. Yeah, and then we recruit them out of there. We recruit them in at our first level, our entry level, on our service desk team and we build them up in our organization over a period of time, so lots of opportunity for them to grow once they come into our organization. Dave: Yeah, that sounds like a great way to bring new folks on. You can train them the way you want trained with your processes and systems. Tim: And then keep them right. Keep them you can give them a growth path and keep them so that they can be. They can get better at what they do, get a higher compensation, be successful in life. There's nothing makes me happier as an owner than to see an employee grow from where they came in the day they started with us to being successful in life. Buying a home buying a car, having a family, all of those kinds of things right, those are really important for me. They're kind of like energy for me to see a person develop over the course of their career with our organization. Dave: Some of my guests. When I ask them, like what's the most satisfying or gratifying part of the job, it seems to fall into two categories. It's either the satisfaction they get from serving the customer or the satisfaction they get from watching their team grow. It sounds like you're probably more on that watching the team grow and that and then they. I think it was Herb Keller that had the idea of take care of your employees, and your employees will take care of your customers Absolutely. Is that right, that your satisfaction comes more from taking care of the employees, and then the happy customers are just an expected outcome? Tim: Yeah, that is a result, right, absolutely. So you know, when I started started this organization, I started in the spare bedroom of my house. Oh okay, I had two analog phone lines. One was for my phone and the other one was a backup phone line, but it was also used for my dial-up internet to be able to help, oh wow, remote into into customers. Right, and looking back, I walk in now to our operations center and we have a pretty impressive organization and a pretty impressive facility that we own. And walking in now I'm like, holy crap, what the heck did I build? Dave: right that's awesome. That's super satisfying right, super yeah I can imagine well I cannot believe how the time is flying by. I always tell my guests it's like the fastest hour of their life is being on the podcast. Tim: How are we going to fill that hour, Dave? Dave: Yeah, I know. So I've got just two questions just to wrap up. If you had a time machine and could go back and give some advice to like your 25 or 30 year old self, what advice might you give yourself? Tim: Ooh, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. What do I give myself? I probably would have started my organization sooner. Dave: Bingo. That's the answer that 90% of the people have. Tim: Yeah, I would have started my organization sooner. I needed that enterprise expertise, but I would have started it sooner. Dave: Sure, yeah, it's yeah, because the funny thing when you're an employee and if you follow the career path that your family suggested is actually they think it's a low risk, safe career path. But it's actually a high risk path because you have a customer concentration issue, meaning you have one customer, your employer and, as you learned three or four times that if they decide they don't need you anymore, you basically lose 100% of your income. They don't need you anymore, you basically lose 100% of your income. So it's actually less risky to have you know, even if you're just doing like consulting and all yours, just like a contract employee working 10 hours a week for four different companies, doing whatever. I find that that's far less risky, because if one of the companies doesn't need you, then you know you've only lost a quarter of your revenue. Tim: Yeah, I call it a scenario of I get hired multiple times a month. I hope I never get fired, but occasionally I get fired. But it should have an impact. I like it Well. Dave: so here's my last question. So you're a naturalized Houstonian, like I, am Tex-Mex or barbecue. Tim: Ooh, I like both really well. But yeah, tex-mex thing. If I don't have Mexican at least once a week, I'm going through withdrawals okay, so Tex-Mex? Dave: yeah, now, one person answered that question. I borrowed this from somebody else. One person answered it. They told me about a Mexican restaurant that has great brisket and they make like brisket enchiladas and brisket tacos and brisket quesadillas and he said that was like the best of both worlds there. And I thought, boy, that sounds like it. Tim: Yeah, there's nothing better than a brisket taco, for sure. Dave: That is awesome, I make some of those myself. That is great. Well, hey, as we wrap up, is there anything? I did not ask you that you wish I had Tim. Tim: No, I'd like to close by saying I shared with my team today and I'm always trying to come up with something that I share with my team every day and today I came up with solutions as a defense system designed to protect the most critical assets of your business the data. I like to just kind of close with solutions I as a defense system designed to protect your most critical assets your data, think about think about if your business lost access to its data, regardless of the circumstance. If they lost access to the data, what would that do to your organization? That's what we protect from. That's what we protect from. That's what we protect from happening. Dave: Yeah, Charlie Munger talks about the number one key to recognizing a great business opportunity is finding a company who's riding a wave that's only going to grow and increase over time, Because really all they have to do is just stay on the wave. Well, that certainly has applied to you, right? Because 25 years ago you probably had some companies that said ah our data is not that important. You know, I've got a Rolodex with all my clients' phone number and email, and you know, so the importance of data has only increased during that time, right? Tim: Oh yeah, it's dramatically increased yeah. Dave: Well, it's also. Tim: Everybody trusts that data will be there when they're ready to use it. Dave: Yeah, well, and also the other fact is digitization right 25 years ago, most of their data may not have been digital, it may have been analog or paper or whatever, but now virtually everything is digitized, which makes the data even more important. Tim: I go back 35 years in this industry and when I go back and look at it, I replaced the inner office envelope. Oh yeah, people would type up a memo on a typewriter, put it in an inner office envelope and put whoever was going to and put it in their outbox and the mail guy would come by and pick it up. I replaced that guy. That's true? Dave: Well, that is awesome. Well, Tim, I really appreciate your time. This has really been fun and you've really given me kind of an insight into what makes a really well-run IT services firm operate. So I really appreciate your time. Tim: Yeah, I appreciate your time as well, Dave. Always good to chat with you and good to catch up and appreciate your time today as well. Thanks so much. Dave: All, right, yeah, you too. Special Guest: Tim Loney.

Today Dr. Dave and Dr. Liz welcome Alec Atkinson, founder and CEO of Harvest React, to discuss side hustles for married couples. Alec shares insights on starting and managing side hustles, the importance of financial freedom, and the impact on relationships. He provides valuable advice on avoiding scams and ensuring both partners are on the same page. The discussion also highlights success stories and the potential benefits of e-commerce side hustles. About Alec Atkinson: Alec Atkinson is the founder and CEO of HarvestReact, a social media marketing and e-commerce company he founded in June 2021. HarvestReact helps people thrive in e-commerce, having hundreds of clients in its flagship program. Before his entrepreneurialjourney, Alec served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints inChicago, Illinois, from 2019 to 2021. Alec graduated from BYU in Business Strategy this pastDecember. Alec also helps oversee the deployment of capital for two niche hedge funds and a family office in the private banking world. Insights: Alec: You can feel encouraged to pursue a side hustle, as it can be a great opportunity. Be careful and vigilant, seek best practices, and educate yourself thoroughly. Once you're ready, dive in and enjoy the journey. It might be challenging, but it will be either rewarding or a valuable learning experience. Find the benefit and joy in everything you do. Dave: You might find the idea of side hustles for couples intriguing, especially if you enjoy thinking about new ideas and taking them to the next level. While the creative process can be exciting, it's important to remember that it's not for everyone. People have different personalities and risk tolerances, and side hustles can sometimes cause stress and strain relationships. It's crucial to be on the same page with your partner, do your homework, and work as a team to ensure a successful and enjoyable experience. Liz: There are ways to pursue a side hustle and to do it fairly safely, where you can really minimize some of the risk. If it is in someone's heart and mind to really find ways to access extra money and finances because you have a dream for your family, I'm all about it and it sounds like Harvest React would really be something to look into. Alec Atkinson Links: https://harvestreact.com/ Email: alec@harvestreact.com   Visit our site for FREE relationship resources and regular giveaways: Strongermarriage.org Podcast.stongermarriage.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strongermarriage/Facebook Marriage Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/770019130329579Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strongermarriagelife/ Dr. Dave Schramm:http://drdaveschramm.comhttp://drdavespeaks.com Dr. Liz Hale:http://www.drlizhale.com

In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, I chat with Jane Howze, founder and managing director of executive search firm Alexander Group. Jane shares her remarkable transition from commercial lending and law into this male-dominated industry. Her insight into culture, growth, and talent acquisition provided invaluable counsel for aspiring leaders. We explore nuanced career shifts and hiring new teams, emphasizing integrity's strategic importance. Jane highlights fact-checking credentials for ethics and vetting, referencing a shocking case of credential fabrication. Our conversation sheds light on work evolutions, from mentorship changes to communication innovations over the years.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jane Howze shares her career transition from a commercial lending officer and lawyer to the founder and managing director of the Alexander Group, a top retained executive search firm. We discuss the early challenges Jane faced in a male-dominated industry and her experiences at Korn Ferry, emphasizing her success in executive search. Jane and I reminisce about shared history at Korn Ferry, including nostalgic and entertaining stories from the early days of our careers. li>Jane emphasizes the importance of integrity during career transitions, particularly when handling professional references and avoiding misrepresentation. We touch on the strategic advantages of honesty and the repercussions of fabricating qualifications, as highlighted by a CEO's false claim of a computer science degree. The episode covers the evolution of workplace dynamics, mentorship, and the practical advice Jane offers for aspiring paid board members. Crazy industry tales are recounted, such as an adventure with a $700 car in LA and setting realistic client expectations in executive search scenarios. Jane provides insights into networking and career strategy, especially relevant during the Great Resignation and for those aiming for public company board positions. We explore Dave's innovative client communication strategies and the impact of networking, as well as the significance of crafting a board-specific resume. The episode concludes with a light-hearted exchange about "tours of duty" within a firm, comparing it to conscription, and reflects on the demanding but rewarding nature of our work experiences. Contact Details Email (jhowze@thealexandergroup.com) LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhowze1950/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About The Alexander Group GUEST Jane HowzeAbout Jane TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hi, this is David Spray and welcome to another episode of the IC Disc Show. My guest today was a very special guest. Jane Howes is the founder and managing director of one of the world's top retained executive search firms, the Alexander Group. Jane was actually my boss two different times about 25 years ago. As we talked about on the episode, she was both the greatest boss I'd ever had and my least favorite boss I ever had, sometimes in the same day. Jane has a wealth of knowledge on all aspects of culture building all aspects of culture building, firm building, growing a firm, picking the right people. We also took some stories down memory lane back from the days we worked together and when the firm was very young. This episode has a lot of great information for any executive or business owner who has any hiring responsibilities. Finally, if you've ever considered becoming a board member, jane has some great insights and tips on how to start your career as a paid board member. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Jane, welcome to the podcast. Jane: Well, Dave, it's wonderful to be with you. Dave: This is so. I was so excited for this, so I think I've told you this before. Jane, you were my all-time favorite boss and my least favorite boss, sometimes in the same day. Jane: And probably sometimes within 10 minutes of each other right. Dave: Perhaps, but you're the only boss I ever had twice. So I had left. I was gone a couple of years and then I was in a spot where I needed some contract work. This was before Uber, so I couldn't just go start driving my car around and you all were gracious enough to have me come back and it was wonderful. But I just want to thank you for all the opportunities you've given me, all that you've taught me. I've learned. I learned so much about business, communication, ethics, client service, so that served me the rest of my career. So thank you, jane. Jane: Dave, when you came back the second time, I was like our ship has come in. Dave Spray is back for more punishment, more reward, and I just feel really honored that our paths have crossed, because you could have been a great, you were a great recruiter, could have and still could. Dave, You're the best. Dave: Well, that's very nice of you to say so. Yeah, I enjoyed a lot of my time at the firm, so where are you calling in from today? Jane: I am in our Houston office today. As you know, we have offices in California, new York and DC. As you know, we have offices in California, new York and DC, but I will work out of Houston until it gets too impossibly hot to work out of Houston, as you know, and we'll head west. Excellent, well, that sounds great. Dave: Now, are you a native Houstonian? Are you one of those rare people born here that lives here? Jane: No, what's the saying? I got here as soon as I could, but I am from Birmingham Alabama and went to college in Memphis, tennessee, and my roommate from college was Houstonian and back in the day, you know, the Galleria had just been built and Houston was just this huge boomtown and I was glad to come here back in the infancy almost. Dave: Wow, and what did you do for work when you got here? Jane: I worked as. Are your listeners mainly in Houston, or are they scattered all over? They're all over the country in Houston or are they scattered all over? They're all over the country. Yeah Well, I worked for the largest bank in Houston and I was a commercial lending officer and attended law school at night. And then the story goes I practiced law and I left Houston and went to California and practiced law and then came back. So you know, kind of roads lead back to Houston. Dave: Ultimately, Okay, and then what? Did you just like have a dream or a vision or something that you needed to leave the law business and get into executive search? What prompted that? Jane: Well, a lot of practicing law, as I'm sure your listeners know, a lot of it is very compliance oriented, very regulatory oriented, and I'm not a regulatory kind of person. And I had gone from being a commercial loan officer, where my job was to deal with people all day, to being stuck in a law library reading compliance regulations. Oh my goodness, this is not good, this is not my personality. And read an article in Fortune magazine about Korn Ferry, the largest executive search firm in the world, and it was like the proverbial bolt of lightning went off. Dave and I was oh my gosh, I would be fabulous at this. I need to go work for Korn Ferry. And they had an opening back in Houston. So I left the practice of law in California and joined Korn Ferry in Houston. Dave: Wow, and you were, and I'm guessing that you were one of many women at the firm. I'm sure, right, this was the 80s executive search. Jane: Let's see there were 200 partners and two women, and the minorities were all in the Hong Kong office. Dave: Okay, I mean diversity was achieved, but there were like six men in the Hong Kong office. Jane: Okay, I mean diversity was achieved, but there were like six men in the Hong Kong office and that is not a knock on Korn Ferry that the executive search business was oh, we want to give a CEO search to somebody we've served in the military with, or somebody that we go hunting with, or somebody on our bowling, you know that kind of thing, and women just weren't in that place then. So it was definitely an early time and a good time to get into executive search. In retrospect at the time it seemed a little challenging. Dave: And you. So how did it go, did you? Was it all you hoped it would be? Jane: You know, the minute I started recruiting I was happy I knew I had found my calling. Before I got into search, I had always been one of the people that said I'd love to introduce you to this person, I'd love to fix you up with this person, and so I finally got in a position that you got paid for it which is great by two partners from KPMG who wanted to do recruiting of C-suite positions for their KP clients, and K wouldn't let them do it. So they formed Korn Ferry, and so I was lucky. It was kind of the early days of Korn Ferry they were maybe 15 years old by the time I joined them and global, so it was a really great move to learn the search business. Dave: You weren't there too long, right Before you felt the need to unfurl your own wings. Jane: Yes, that is true. I was wow. There are not many women partners here and I know I'm good at this and I know I can be successful at this. So, dave, I hooked up with another woman at Corn Ferry and the other big search firm is Russell Reynolds and we were like, well, let's start our own search firm, and I don't know that I would have done it by myself. But we started, really got going in 19, which is 40 years ago now. I feel like I'm the oldest living person alive still doing it. But we started and back then you didn't have the internet to do research and our first client was Grant Thornton the public accounting firm and the number two person at Grant met us and we went walking in their offices and there were no women audit partners then, or tax partners, and we went strolling in and he goes. Well, I believe in you all and I want you to help me build the firm. I'm going to do acquisitions, I'm going to do partner searches, I'm going to do campus recruiting, and we rode along for over 50 searches and practice acquisitions in our first years, which made it really a great foundation upon which to build. Dave: Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome, and that's been 40 years ago. Jane: Yeah, Dave, I probably tried to recruit you back in the days you were at Arthur Anderson. You were probably one of my recruits, even not knowing it. Dave: Yeah, you never know, you never know. And one of the is that when you started, the billing by the hour approach, or did that come later. Did you do that from the beginning? Jane: We started because, having been with a law firm where you're basically selling your time, we thought, well, we're going to be a different kind of search firm, we're going to bill by the hour. And it proved to be a great thing. And, dave, we were so cheap that people would go, you'll do, you'll take over all our campus recruiting for $50 an hour. And we were like, oh great, well, here's 10 colleges we don't want to go. You guys go, just do our recruiting for probably 10, 12, 13 years, which made it challenging because not everybody wants to fill out timesheets to the 10th of an hour, which we were. Dave: Yeah, no, but I remember when we would talk to potential clients, that was part of the pitch and the fact that they could do we could do all a card search for them. It's wrong as the source candidates, you know, we would just do that. And the other thing I loved was the independence that gave, because I know there were times that right late in the search we had three finalists and they would say, hey, we identified somebody on our own, can we throw them into the mix? And of course we were very receptive because we were just paid by the hour, like we didn't care. Whereas I think a lot of other firms, especially if there was a success fee component you know, would be very resistant to that, so I always thought that was great. What caused you to move away from that? Jane: Just the cumbers of it or just the greater tendency to do fixed. But you know, we started out doing lower level positions and as we built our reputation we were, frankly, we were leaving. Frankly we were leaving. We weren't great timekeepers and we kind of thought, well, let's still provide a win for our clients Because the big search firms you are obligated to pay the fee. Even if they find their own candidate, you're obligated to pay the fee. So what we decided was we will do a fixed fee. We will tell the client at the beginning of the search this is what your fee is. So it's not really tied to the compensation but the complexity of the search. So, for example, if we were doing a search in Fargo, north Dakota, in December, that might be a harder search. You know, with the pain in the bottom 10% of compensation ranges, that might be a harder search than doing a search in December in Florida, for example, or with the time. So we just pivoted I think it was in 2001 that we'll give you a fixed fee for the search, but it will be less usually than a third of total comp. So even if you put your own candidate into the process, you're still paying for it, but you're paying for a process, not a candidate. So we still had a competitive advantage. And it's interesting. Here we are today, in 2024, and some of the other search firms are now doing what we do. Some of our biggest competitors are going. Well, we'll give you a fixed fee if the Alexander Group's giving you a fixed fee. So it's interesting how it's turned out. Dave: But you were a disruptor in a number of ways in the industry. Jane: I mean it didn't seem like it at the time but now that I see other firms doing the same thing to try and compete effectively, they don't want to. They'd rather just get a third. But one of the things we tell our clients when they retain us is for your budgeting purposes, you're going to know how much the fee is and we'll have no reason to present the most expensive candidates because our fee is already in your budget and we're just going to be on your side of the table trying to find the best person at the most cost-effective salary compensation package. So I think it's a win and it's something that has worked for the clients. And you know the thing that and I know you know this we said it when you were there and we still say it 85% of our business every year is the same people and we're really proud of that because most search firms their repeat business is 6%. And why is that? And you know we laugh and say, well, we have an unstable product. You know and you know there's so many things that can go wrong when you're dealing with people, but we try and provide very I want to say a really strong relationship focus. I mean I tell clients. I don't want to just see you one time. We want a long-term relationship with you and that's really important to us and I think it makes a difference and I think the clients feel like we really care about being part of their team and that's really important to us. Dave: Yeah, that's great and I did experience that, and life's just more fun when you have happy repeat customers and clients Instead of people you try to squeeze for every last dollar for one time transaction. Jane: And you're well. I hope we don't have to see each other again. Right, you know it's like no, we want to be around for the long haul and I know you know this because but our first client from Grant Thornton, who's now 88 years old, is still a friend and a client and a mentor of the firm and we wouldn't really have it any other way. That means a lot to us. Dave: You know, one of the most valuable lessons you taught me was when I went into your office after I worked there about a year and a half and I just said, jane, I don't think this is for me and I don't know what I'm going to do, but I just want to set expectations. And you said hey, as long as you continue to do good work, you can stay. You know, as long as you want, right, I mean, just keep doing good work. And then the other thing you told me do you remember what you told me? You said, and it was very, it was good advice, but it was also clever on your end too. What did you tell me? Jane: I told you, no one will remember the job that you did, but everyone will remember how you leave. Dave: Yep, yep, that's so true and it's such simple advice, right? Because you work someplace for years and then all you really have to do to even make up for mistakes you made is just end on a really high note, right, you could have been a average employee, but just end on a high note and they'll all say, oh yeah, that change, she was great. She was great. We loved having her around. Jane: No, I remember that Because I mean I tell people I was not the best lawyer in the world, but I left, left. Like how do I transition my clients? How do I help train the new person? Can I be available after I'm gone? If I need to come in on a Saturday to help out? And I tell people when I make speeches no one will. You could be really bad at your job, but you can be a good, a great departing employee if you aren't a current employee. And that is just so true. And you know today, you never know when you're going to need a reference. Today, with everything so transparent, even if you don't give somebody as a reference, people will look on LinkedIn and say, oh well, I'm going to call this person and see how Betty was as an employee. So you're going to be found out, good or bad. So you might as well be the best ex-employee you can possibly be. Dave: I love it. Yeah, I know one of the things we did when I was with the team was we would do reference checks, and I think we would oftentimes do them even before the offer was extended. I forget. I think we did it both ways. Sometimes we did it subject to reference checks, sometimes we did the references first and I was always surprised. Every so often you'd find out people lied on their resume or exaggerated. But I imagine with social media and such, that's probably all gone away, right, nobody tries to get away with that anymore, I suppose do they? Jane: You know, dave, it's really interesting. Somebody asked me the other day what surprises you the most. That happens today, that happened 20 years ago. And the answer is exactly as you say. People still try and fudge. They'll say, well, I received an MBA when they did the coursework but didn't write the final paper. Or they'll be credit short of a college degree. Just last month we weren't at the final stages. But we try and check educational background and someone had on their resume they had on their LinkedIn received a bachelor's degree. And we check and there's no bachelor's degree. And they say, oh well, but I was only four hours short and I go. But four hours short does not a degree make, and I'm always surprised that. And people will have maybe a year gap where they're unemployed. And it's okay with COVID and all the changes that we have all gone through as a country, as a business community, it's okay that you have gaps, but it's not okay to misrepresent the gaps and sometimes you'll have people go. Oh well, you know, it was during COVID, I'll just kind of fudge it a little bit. And you're always going to be found out almost every single time, and I'm always surprised that people still do it, though, but even at the highest levels, dave, they still do it Like even like at the C-suite level, you mean. Yeah, at the C-suite level. You know, I wrote an article as a commentator for MSNBC 10 years ago because the CEO of, I think, hp said he had a degree in computer science, but it was a degree in history, you know, which is a pretty big difference. And I wrote an article saying and this was even before the proliferation of social media 10 years ago and I said you will be found out. This guy did, and it was very public and it was he got fired from H. It was a big deal and I was like do not let it stand. If you fudged, go fix it, fess up. Dave: The irony was, if he was, you know, at that level, he probably had graduated at least 25 years earlier. So the irony was his degree had no nothing to do with his current level. Yeah, nobody cared, except that he lied about it. If somebody lies about something that can be checked. What are they lying about that can't be checked, right? Jane: Exactly Well. And the other thing is, when you think about somebody's personal branding, wouldn't it make a great story? Hey guys, I don't know. I had a history degree and look how good I am. I'm running HP now and I had to leave the hospital. But to say he had a computer science degree. I mean it made no sense. But people do that still and I always tell people I know some of your listeners are small businesses where they don't have huge departments but one of the most important things you can do is do background checks and reference checks, unofficial and official, because people they never will stop doing it and no matter how many commentators tell them don't do it, they do it. Dave: Well, you know, I guess it's time for me to go update my LinkedIn. For all these years, jane, I've been telling the world that I was the CEO of the Alexander Group and you worked for me, so I think I'd better go fix that before it backfires. Jane: Well, you know, people always say how did you get the name the Alexander Group? And we, truly the name Alexander kind of has a masculine kind of connotation and you know, even when you were with us, dave, we would get calls once a week going Mr Alexander, please, yeah, and so so. So I think you just, I think not only did you say you were CEO, I think your name you've been passing off your name is David Alexander, right. Dave: That could very well be and I learned so much about presentation because, you know, when I was there, a lot of the the recruiters were young, you know, fresh out of college. The recruiters were young, you know, fresh out of college, and you know you and John did a great job of mentoring these folks and developing them. But it was always so interesting that, you know, we had a pretty casual environment and back then you would leave a message for a candidate and they would call back the main switchboard. I don't know we've, I don't think we even had direct dial numbers back then and they'd call back and switchboard. I don't know, I don't think we even had direct dial numbers back then. And they'd call back and here's this scruffy 23-year-old unshaven guy wearing, you know, birkenstocks to work, named you know Tom, let's say. And when the person would call back and they'd say, yeah, tom Smith, please you train the receptionist to say, oh, hold on. May I ask Mr Smith, you know who's calling you? know, just to I mean there's no harm in saying Mr Smith because that is his name, but why say, oh yeah, let me see if Tommy Boy's you know done, you know done having his afternoon tequila shot, right, I mean there's no use in. Jane: No, it was all about. It was all about the, you know, because we were so small in Scruffy and the other thing we would do would be to say I'd train the receptionist to go never say Mr Smith is not at his desk. Dave: Right, he is not at his desk. Jane: Right, he is not in his office and I will have one of his assistants call you back. Dave: Nice, nice, one of them. I like that. Jane: I know, I mean, you know, I just am blushing, thinking about what we did to make ourselves sound substantial. And there's Tommy Smith back in the back office, sound asleep at his desk, you know. Dave: Exactly. Jane: And sometimes I go, oh well, and sometimes you know candidates would call back. Well, is Tommy Smith calling me? And if I happen to be at the office late at night, you know some of it is the smoke and mirrors of making yourself sound like you're Well, I remember when I would like when you or John would be like traveling. Dave: I would try to book the mother BD. Right, you're interviewing folks in Kansas City, what other companies are headquartered in Kansas City or just other things. And one of the things that the things I did that I learned a lot about this is that even though you and John were based in Houston, if I was trying to set up Houston appointments, I would act as if you and John were based in San Francisco, like I'd say oh, you know Miss Howes will be in, you know she'll be in Houston for two days next week. You know she'll. she won't be in the San Francisco office, she'll be in the Houston office for two days Now the reality is you were going to be there for two weeks, but you were going to be there for those two days and it was what's the biblical saying you can't be a prophet in your own homeland. And I think it's still true to this day that expert from out of town and they rearrange their schedule for the person from out of town. Jane: Well, you know, there's a Buddhist saying that says the visitor from afar brings knowledge and I like that. Dave: I like that. Jane: And you know, sometimes I get asked to talk to college students about how our young people, about how do you find jobs, and my clients, kids, want to know how do we find a job. And I don't I'm not a career counselor but what I tell them is the further like if you went to NYU, say you're going to have more success calling NYU alums in Houston trying to get them to help you than you will in New York City. If you're a University of Houston graduate and you're in San Francisco, there's probably only 20 of you in the whole town and all people are hardwired to help people who come from afar. If there's a limited population and it goes kind of with that thing of being unique, like you know how many people come from Houston to San Francisco for a meeting. 20 years ago I mean it happened, but it wasn't every day that a head of human resources got that phone call right. Dave: In my business that it's easier for me to get an appointment in Syracuse, New York, if I'm going to be up there for business anyway. It's easier to get that appointment than it is with somebody in Houston, Because in Houston they're just like I'm busy this week, you know. Call me next month, you know, because you're so available. It's just like it seems like if you're meeting somebody for dinner, the closer the restaurant, the more likely you are. The closer the restaurant, the more likely you are to be late, or the more likely I am to be late, because if I'm driving 30 minutes I'm going to allow 45 for traffic and stuff, but if it's three minutes away, I'm going to leave two minutes before the dinner and then exactly a stoplight pot ad and then the parking lot's full and yeah no, it is, but it is something about the further something is away. Jane: And I remember one of the ways I built up our and some of our first clients. Most of our first clients were California companies because California had more. They were more used to women in doing C-suite searches. But you know, I was in California every two weeks for probably 30 years and I would call and go well, I'm from Houston, I'm a woman-owned search firm, I'm going to be in LA, can I come see you? And we got a lot of great clients like Wells Fargo, warner Brothers, yeah, a lot of McKesson company, because they were like oh, the visitor from afar they're coming to, they're coming from Houston and they're women in the search business Great, they're coming from Houston and they're women in the search business Great, you know. And I I spent a lot of time where people would go well, I have time tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock and I'm going to be there. And I quickly hung up the phone and called United and called Continental Airlines and started booking that airline ticket as fast as I could. Dave: Yeah, I do remember my listeners love stories. What are some stories of just interesting or amusing or candidate screw up things that come to mind where, yeah, I don't know a candidate showed up intoxicated or a candidate showed up and forgot to put pants on that day, you know. I don't know a candidate showed up intoxicated, or a candidate showed up and forgot to put pants on that day. Jane: You know, I remember way back in the early days one of my first big searches was a senior lending officer for a regional bank here and the candidate was great and it was. I was so excited and so I called the CEO of the bank after the interview and I said Rex, how did the interview go? He goes, jane, he didn't come. I said he didn't come. What the hell? Why didn't he come? He said, oh, it was okay. He drove through the teller window and passed a note to the teller to pass to me that he wouldn't. He changed his mind, you know, and you just go, who drives through the go in for the interview but drives through and says will you give this note, handwritten note on a scrap of paper I'm not coming. And so that was kind of the early days. A second story, and I mean it's crazy what we did back in the early days but one client wanted us to live in LA and take over all their staffing for it. This is when we were hourly billing and we were pretty cheap and they said, yeah, we'll get your room at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA. We want you there for a month and we're trying to figure out how to save money, because back then, you know, we just wanted to be and so we bought Dave a $700 car so we wouldn't have rental car charges, and we called it the gray ghost. It was a delta 80 and we drove this car and I am embarrassed to tell you, and I hope your listeners will think we were really creative rather than really cheesy but when we were done with the car, when we finished the search and the client actually is still a client in other iterations we just left the car at a Friday's Marina Del Rey and that was it, because it was on its last legs, you know, and we just that was it. We just left the keys in the car and that was it. Dave: That was it. We just left the keys in the car and that was it. You know you reminded me of something. A good friend of mine owes you his job because you just reminded me of something and I know I learned this from you. So it's really good friend of mine. Cpa, a classic, stereotypical CPA, introverted, not very outgoing but very technically sound, and he was working at a public accounting firm and he was kind of stuck at the senior level. He couldn't get promoted to manager, which usually happens after like five years. And there's a firm in town that I knew a guy there and they were looking for like a first year audit manager. So he was perfect for it. Looking for like a first year audit manager, so he was perfect for it. And so the three of us met for a drink at Papa Do's on Westheimer, over in the Galleria. But I told him ahead of time. I said Pete, he is. I'm just going to tell you right now, he's not Mr Personality. If you're looking for a glad handing, you know, outgoing salesman type, he's not the right guy for you. And so, of course, what did he say? No, we're not looking for a salesman, we're looking for a manager, right, somebody technically solid. So we met and afterwards we had a good time. And afterwards I said so what'd you think? And he said I'm glad you told me that he wasn't Mr Personality, because I was kind of prepared for it. And he did the same thing when they met with the people at the firm. He told them on the front end hey, this guy's not Mr Personality, but he's really smart. I think he can do the job. And 30 years later he's a senior partner at this Houston CPA firm and I know I learned that line from you. Now let me just tell you this person's not Mr Personality. Does that sound like something you might've said for? Jane: Yeah, well, you know what I mean. Part of what I look at a recruiter's job, an executive search person's job, is you tell the client what's wrong or what's missing, because they're smart and they're going to get it themselves. And if you tell them, you are adding value, you're being a consultant and you've managed expectations. So when we do a search, we write a paper, basically a report. These are the things that might not exactly fit, but these are the things that overcome what you are looking for. And which reminds me of one more story. I remember doing a audit partner search, for I think it was Grant Thornton up in St Louis and it was in Chicago actually, and so, as you recall, we would fly to the cities, park ourselves at a hotel restaurant and just sit there and make that our office. It was pretty soon, and so I got to O'Hare sitting down and my 3 o'clock appointment comes up at one o'clock and I go buddy, you're here a little bit early. He said, oh, yeah, yeah, I've heard great things about the Alexander group and I'm just going to sit at this next table and watch you in action. And I'm like, well, buddy, that's just not going, not gonna. And mentally I'm thinking well, buddy is no longer a candidate, but he wanted to sit and listen in on every other interview so he could get some good tips of how to interview himself, and anyway not a bad idea if he had just simply kept that information to himself. Right and not done it when I'd already started the interview. You know, I mean, I kind of lost two candidates right in one sitting. You know, you can't make this stuff up. Dave: That is something. I got a question somewhat related to search. Some of this conversation is about executive search. Right, we probably should have at least maybe a third of it about search. What about board members? So you know, I've got clients who ran, built, ran, sold $50 million revenue successful privately held companies, sold $50 million revenue, successful privately held companies. And they maybe think, yeah, I might like to be serve on a board. Now for somebody to be on a public company board do they need public company experience? Jane: You know, Dave, I think the question as I'm kind of rounding third base in my career and a lot of my peers are in their 60s and they're finishing, They've sold their private company, they retired from a public company. They, for whatever reason, they say well, you know, I'm going to retire, I'm going to, I want to be on a board. Can I get on a board? My answer is always this yes. However, it's a question of how much time do you want to spend to get on your first board? Once you get on one board, even if you're a private company executive, can you get on a public board, Asterisk, if you're willing to really work hard on at that. The average board tenure is 10 years. Board positions don't really turn over that much of a healthy company. So people get on a board and especially if it's a public board, there's incentive comp, there's options. It's not a hard gig for a lot of companies. So the answer is yes. And then what do you do if you want to get on a board? If you want to get on a board? Probably 70 percent of all board positions are not gotten through search firms. Does that surprise you? Dave: Maybe, yeah, maybe some. It's the network, the network of the other board members. Jane: Yeah, yeah, because people will say, oh well, I know somebody I'm going to, I'll go back to my UT alum group and see if they, you know, kind of knows around there. Or I'll see if, oh, I know a guy that works at Goldman Sachs, Maybe he knows somebody. I know a friend that's a part retiring from Ernst Young and I'll ask her. And so there's a lot of you know, with the call for diversity, search firms are becoming more involved but and doing more and 30% is still a lot to be putting out to search. But so the things that if any of your listeners are interested, I tell people, If any of your listeners are interested, I tell people, do a board resume. A board resume is different than a job resume. It's talking about your experience assessing risk, building a company, governance compliance, things that a board member would look at, governance compliance things that a board member would look at and the board members not looking at the details of you know, do you get two weeks or three weeks for vacation? They're looking at what's our strategic plan, the being the boss of the ceo, representing shareholders. So you want a board, one page board resume that talks about what you've done. That would be analogous to that. And then you really want to get on. A not-for-profit board Helps because, especially if it's big enough, there will be other corporate people there and you will make contacts. But it's really about making contacts. A lot of investment banks they don't use search firms when they take a company public. They have databases, they go through their contacts. Bankers know people. It's all about the three sources. I would say. If any of your listeners are saying I want to be on a board one day, do you know anybody in investment banking, private equity, public accounting, M&A law firms anybody like that and tell everybody you're looking for those recommendations. And then the last thing is a lot of your listeners are successful people who've had roles in companies that are entrepreneurial in nature, and a lot of them I know people that have taught an entrepreneurship class or a lecturer at Rice University here. And there's a lot of smart kids who are starting businesses. Let's not forget Google, Facebook, some of these companies that started from college kids, and I think that's a great avenue to think about when, if you're thinking about ways to get on a board. Dave: I like it. That's really cool. Well, speaking of rounding third base, I can't believe how the time has flown by. I have just a couple other questions for you. One is I've heard about this great resignation. For you One is I've heard about this great resignation. What has been your experience? Is this trickled up to the C-suite and the board level, or is this a problem that those people are having to deal with? People lower in the organization? Tell me about the great resignation from your perspective. Jane: Well, one thing hasn't changed. If you look at CEOs of Fortune 500 companies that are recruited from the outside, I would say they have a 50% chance of being there two to three years out. And why is that? Culture fit so the top. You will always have CEO changes, especially if they come from outside and they don't fit with the culture. What I think we are seeing and we see from our clients is post-COVID. There's been so many obvious changes but a lot of things that aren't obvious. People don't want to relocate as much as they might have pre-COVID. Why is that? Well, covid scared people in terms of my parents I've got to take care of my parents, I may have to have my kids at home for high school, and do I want to go to someplace new and have something like that happen? So I think you're having that we're coming out of. But you're also having middle range employees who aren't as loyal, and you know I always tease that a lot of the younger people today. If they have a bad Monday, they may be somebody someplace else by Friday. So I think there's not quite that dickiness of what you grew up with and I grew up with. Hey, you know we want to. You know we don't want to be a quote job hopper and I think people today don't care if they're job hoppers quite as much. And there's not that people are more willing. I think in COVID accentuated that where they're more willing to take risk. And, you know, maybe I'll be without a job for a month, two months, and yeah, I think we're seeing that. And what I tell small businesses that you know be focusing on long how do you make a culture that will keep people invested long term? And there've been a lot written on that and it's different for every company depending on where your location is and what your employee mix. But I think that's a really important thing that everybody's got to do in a bigger way. And also, lastly, dave, the emphasis on mental health, something that has changed dramatically in the last three years, where you know we've got to take care of people financially. And also, how are they doing? Because so many people were isolated during COVID and had mental health issues and people talk about that more, which we never did back in the day. You just bucked it up and, you know, kept making those source calls, dave, you know. Dave: For every six you made, you got to check off a tenth of an hour of work. Jane: Exactly. You had to make a left message with 10 people to get that six. I had it backwards. Dave: It was even harder than I remembered. That's why you get so excited if somebody answered the phone because that, even if you only talk 30 seconds, you got to put them down as a yeah, no, that's right they go no, I'm not interested and you go, that's OK. Jane: Awesome, ten minutes ahead here. Dave: That is great. So so I think the two questions left, so one. Is there anything that I did not ask you that you wish I had? Is there anything we did not talk about that you think we should have? Jane: No, you're a really good interviewer, Dave, which? Dave: I learned it from you. I learned it starts with interviewing candidates and it translates to other things. Jane: Well, I'm, you know, I'm really honored to be here, dave, because the people that you serve and that you do work for. I think it is much harder to run a smaller private company than it is a big company, because you've got to have employees who are multifaceted, You've got to have employees who have an entrepreneurial mindset, you've got to have employees who have an entrepreneurial mindset. So my hat is off to the work you do the clients that you serve, because it is a hard business. Dave: Well, I appreciate that. I love serving entrepreneurs, that is for sure. So here's the last question. This is a curveball one you may remember. When you asked if you need to do any preparation, I said no, we're just going to talk about your life story and you don't need any prep. But I promise you one curveball, and here it is. Are you ready? If you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 or 28 year old self, what advice might you give yourself? Jane: Yeah, oh, that is a great. That is a great question. Don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff. Dave: Okay. Jane: And the things that you worry about about 90% of them do not materialize. Dave: Was that? Was it Mark Twain or Will Rogers? I always get their two quotes conflated. But one of them said I'm an old man, man, and in my life I've known a great many. I've known a great many difficulties, most of which never came to pass, or something to that effect yes, that's right. Jane: And Mark Twain, as you will recall from our time together, said I didn't have time to write a short story, so I wrote a long story, right? Dave: Exactly. Yeah, I learned a lot about incise writing and just I'm always amazed that people that just the simplest stuff that I never picked up in English class. Like you know, bob is a person who does XYZ, he's not. It's not Bob that does something, it's Bob. Bob's not a that, he's a who. Jane: That's, that's right and word choice, and. But you know I, you know I sound like a geezer, but you know stuff like that is. I mean a lot of people today really don't know that. I mean even you know I see at the executive ranks a lot of people who, who just, and you know, I think one of the things when I talk to people early in their career is learn to write, learn business writing out there. I mean especially now with Zoom and you can do business with people by email A lot of people. And if I get a resume from somebody that doesn't spell check or anything else. Dave, one final story, and it's so good and it reminds me. It does remind me of you for obvious reasons, but I don't know if you remember that we sent a letter out one time when you joined, maybe when you rejoined us, and we said Dave is from you know, arthur Anderson, a leading public accounting firm, but we left out the L of public. Do you remember that? Dave: I remember that does sound familiar. I remember somebody saying well, I don't know what it is, but we want some right, that's funny because, yeah, when you send out as many, as much written correspondence as the firm has for so long, it can't try as you might, it can't all be perfect. Just like I'm amazed when I read, like a bestselling book that sold 20 million copies and you find a typo. You're like but you know, when I talked to an author about that they said, yeah, there's, you know, 100,000 words in here, like you, just sometimes they slip through the cracks. Jane: Well, Dave, I the thing I remember about you and I always feel like I can learn something from everybody, even though there's an you're younger than I am. But even back when you were really young and with us, you were so effective at client communication and getting business. And do you remember that? You are the ones that taught us that people are hardwired to want to help, but you have to give them a way to help you. And you would come up with a list, Like, do you know people from any of these five companies? And people would look at and go, oh yeah, I can help you, I do know somebody from here. And what a great way to teach someone how to develop their own clients as to teach the client how to help the potential client or source how to help them. Dave: Well, that's one of the benefits of being a bad employee who changed jobs every year is I was exposed to a lot of things. I learned that in the financial services business and what made it so powerful was because in the financial services business you're always trying to get you know referrals to folks and if you just say, hey, jane, you know who, do you know who's looking to buy life insurance, probably nobody comes to mind. Nobody, because nobody's come up and said hey, I need life insurance. Do you know anyone? But what I learned in that is still helpful today. But instead, if you give somebody a list of 10 people and you say, jane, I'm going to be calling these 10 people next week, I'm just curious, can you tell me, is there anyone on this list you think's particularly great or you think really highly of? And they'd say, oh sure, let me borrow your pen. They check off the before names, you're like great. And then I would say, hey, by chance, if you happen to talk to them before next week, will you tell them I'm going to call them and they, of course, would say, sure, I haven't talked to this guy. I went to law school in five years. It's unlikely I'm going to talk to him this week, but sure, I'll tell him, okay. And then, finally, jane, when I talked to John Lamar, is it appropriate to mention that you know that we had a conversation? You know that he came up in conversation? Sure, yeah, no problem. So then, when I would call the person, it was so easy. Hey, john Lamar, by chance did Jane Howes tell you I'd be calling? No, how's Jane doing? I haven't seen her since law school. Boy, she's really wonderful, I like Jane. And so, yeah, you know Jane. Huh, yeah, I haven't known her a long time. I haven't known her as long as I've known you. Meaning I've met her for 10 minutes, but all of my dealings with her were first rate, all of them. And then just say, hey, you know, jane had some nice things to say about you and she thought we might benefit from knowing meeting one another. You know, know, when are you? It was amazing how well that. But it all started with just having a list to start with, because there's a difference between if somebody like, let's say, that conversation went poorly and john lamar called you back and said, hey, why'd you have? that dave spray guy call me. Well, if you can say, I didn't tell him to call you. He already had your name. He was going to call you anyway he just asked me. Jane: Anyway, great guy, yeah right. Dave: He just wanted to know if you were a jerk or not. And apparently I was wrong because you're gonna give me a hard time. All I did was say you were a nice guy and and now you're giving me a hard time, but yeah and and dave. Jane: What I remember the funny thing was john lamar are my 30 year partner. He went to a meeting with you and he said jane, dave pulled out the list. And I said he pulled out the list. And he said yes, and it worked and we just like we were so nervous about the list. But, Dave, it really worked. Dave: It is funny. And the irony is, the time you pull the list out is when the meeting doesn't go well. You know, like it's a brief meeting and they're like no, my best man at my wedding is a partner at Horn Fairy. That's where all of our search goes. We'll never give it to anyone else. Well, now you have nothing to lose by pulling out the list. I mean, if they on the spot want to sign you up for some searches, well, just keep the list in your pocket. But and the irony was the worse the meeting goes, the more helpful. Jane: They would seem to be right because they kind of feel bad that you flew away from houston. Dave: You flew all the way from houston out to see them and they can't help you. So now, sure, I'll look at your list. I'll give you some. Jane: But it's true, the list, dave, I mean that is a course in business development and we were like God, that list is not going to work. But it works, it absolutely does. Dave: Well, and you know when I first used that this shows what how I approach business development when I was in the financial services business right at Arthur Anderson attorneys were my best prospects. So this was like 1990, excel hadn't even been invented, they were using Lotus one, two, three. And I bought the Martindale Hubble legal director. You remember this thing? The blue, yeah. Maybe it was an yeah, but it was a blue thing and what I did that I was so proud of myself. I went through that and I created a spreadsheet and I knew one attorney in Houston and he was like a second year attorney at some place and he went to U of H and I played basketball with him and I went and I had lunch with him and I pulled out the graduates from like the top 20 law firms in Houston and I'm sorted by year in college. So the first list I gave him was all of the people who graduated from law school, the ones in his start class. And then I gave him a list of all the other U of H grads who were like a couple of years older to a year younger Same thing, who do you know? And then I made the call to them and then, jane, it got to be so crazy. I would go to like V&E and I would be there like I'd have like 12 meetings in a row, like, and they would literally walk me from one office to the next and they'd be like, hey, so who's next on your list? Oh, bob. Oh, he's a hoot, yeah, you'll enjoy meeting him. And so they would escort me into the office. It was like it was this introduction from one stranger to another one, but then the new person I would meet with. So you know, lauren introduced me to a guy who started with him that went to UT, so I would have all the other UT guys at his firm and at the other firms in town and it just exploded. Like in three or four months I was like the guy for all the third year attorneys at Baker Botts and V&E and Fulbright, but anyway, that is so fun, but it works, dave, and it's something you know. Jane: 15, 20 years later I still remember. Quote the list. Dave: Yeah, yeah, some great times. So, jane, thank you so much for not only inviting me to the 40th anniversary party that was just spectacular. Seeing some of my former colleagues, that was just great and just having the ability to be friends with you and your husband and John Lamar all these years is very special. I like to say there's only one ex-girlfriend I keep in touch with and there's only one ex-employer I keep in touch with, and that's you all when you are a VIP favored status. Jane: you work for us twice and we keep hoping that phone will ring the third time, dave, and it'll be the charm. Dave: Yeah, you never know. And I would jokingly say I did two tours of duty which you know doesn't really sound very complimentary to the firm. I must say, tour of duty has a certain negativity to it in a way, you know, conscription drafted. Jane: Yes, it's. At least it's not like prison sentence. You know I'll give you that. Dave: That is awesome. Well, Jane, I could talk all day to you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate everything. Jane: Oh, my pleasure, Dave. How much fun this has been. Dave: It has been have a great day. Jane: Thanks, Dave Bye. Special Guest: Jane Howze.

In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, I sit down with estate planning expert Jonathon Morrison. Listen in as he shares strategic guidance for business owners worth $10+ million on safeguarding wealth in the changing tax landscape. With the looming December 2025 deadline, Jonathon explains trust structures and exemptions that can freeze business value to minimize estate taxes. From revenue crunching to complex legislation, his expertise cuts through financial jargon. For those growing rapidly or concerned about legacy, this conversation provides nuanced counsel on leveraging sophisticated legal mechanisms.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jonathon Morrison, an estate planning expert, discusses strategies for business owners to preserve their wealth and protect it from potential estate tax changes expected by December 31st, 2025. We examine the importance of proactive estate planning for business owners, especially those with assets ranging from $10 to $100 million, to minimize estate tax implications. Jonathon emphasizes the benefits of sophisticated trust structures that can 'freeze' a business's value for tax purposes while providing robust defense against unforeseen events. The conversation covers the urgency for business owners to engage in estate planning before the anticipated decrease in estate tax exemptions in 2026. We explore how transferring business ownership into special trusts can help business owners maintain control of their assets while reducing their taxable estate. A case study is presented, demonstrating how strategic valuation discounts and transferring minority interest to a gift trust can result in significant estate tax savings. Jonathon outlines his unique business model, which includes direct engagement with clients, flat fee structures, and comprehensive annual reviews, to provide personalized estate planning services. The episode touches on the financial benefits of estate planning, such as savings on estate taxes and protection of inheritances from creditors, lawsuits, and divorce. During the podcast, Jonathon shares his personal background, including his passion for car collecting and his roots in Arizona. We delve into the complexities of funding designs for gift trusts, stressing the importance of optimizing both the trust structure and the funding strategy for maximum effectiveness. Contact Details Email (jmorrison@frgalaw.com) LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathonmorrison/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Frazer Ryan Goldberg and Arnold LLP GUEST Jonathon MorrisonAbout Jonathon TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hello, my name is David Spray and welcome to another episode of the IC Disc Show. My guest today is Jonathon Morrison, a senior partner at the law firm of Fraser Ryan Goldberg in Arnold. Jonathon is a highly specialized estate planning attorney for people with large estates, Jonathon has a unique approach and covers a variety of different strategies. I think the biggest takeaway is that if you believe in hyper-focused specialists and you own a privately held business, then Jonathon is probably the guy for you. We covered again a number of different strategies and the urgency of December 31st 2025, why that's so significant for estate tax planning and he also encouraged everybody to address this year rather than waiting until next year. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Jonathon, welcome to the podcast. Jonathon: Thank you, David. Thanks for having me. Where are you? Dave: connecting from today. Jonathon: I'm down here in Scottsdale, arizona. I'm a senior partner with Frazier, ryan, goldberg and Arnold. We're the largest trust and estate firm in Arizona. I'm a senior partner focusing on advanced estate planning for large, complex estates. Dave: Awesome. So I know you went to Arizona undergrad. Are you from Arizona? Jonathon: Yeah, I grew up here, all 18 years of my life in the same house. I've got a nice-. Dave: You're like the only one. You're the only that's right, a lot of yeah. Jonathon: Yeah, so I went to U of A studied finance accounting, and then I went up to law school in San Francisco. I lived in the heart of the city for about 11 years and met my wife, and then we came back to raise kids here in 2015. So I've got a six-year-old Jack and a three-year-old Rose. Dave: That's awesome, and I love Scottsdale. I go there every January for the Barrett-Jackson auctions. I always enjoy being there. Jonathon: Well, you probably saw my bio I am a car enthusiast, collector, track driver. Oh, I didn't realize. I didn't realize that. I know cars are like kids, you can't really have a favorite. But if you did have a favorite, what's your favorite? Over the years I've had a lot of cars, but I primarily drive and collect bmws, porsches and ferraris. Dave: Okay, yeah do you have a 2002? Jonathon: no, I don't have a classic 2002, mostly modern stuff. Okay, all the modern sort of m2s, m3s. I usually I only have about three or four cars at a time, unlike a lot of guys, but I swap them every six, twelve months I'm changing them in and out understood, so I drove a tesla model s plaid three years ago and my enthusiasm for gasoline engine just kind of went away. Dave: I always said I was brand agnostic and powertrain agnostic. So at one point I had the Tesla Model S Plaid, I had a Camaro ZL1 convertible six speed and I had a Jeep diesel Grand Cherokee which I had a special order to get the three liter diesel. So I'm like three brands, three propulsion types, but I'm down to actually one vehicle for the first time in a long time, a Rivian R1S, which is by far the best vehicle I've ever owned. My biggest concern with them is just whether they're going to be in business in another year or not. Jonathon: Right, right. It's like Fisker they keep coming in and out and I just saw news today they're not doing well. Yeah, I've never driven the Plaid, although my one of my Ferraris is faster than that Plaid, believe it or not? Oh wow. Dave: That's great. Well, we'll have to talk about it more and I'll be sure to look you up next January on Scottsdale, please do so. We're going to talk about estate planning and I know enough to be dangerous. My listeners and clients are privately held business owners with enterprise values between probably $10 and $100 million. The business represents the majority of their net worth and I understand there's some things going on that have some deadlines that create some urgency, so why don't we get into it? So just start wherever you want to. Jonathon: Sure, yeah. So those clients are really my clients, mid-market business owners for the most part. My practice, again, we call it advanced estate planning. What that means is the net worth, including business real estate, is high enough to warrant planning beyond just the will and living trust, powers of attorney, the core estate documents that everybody needs. Once you get to a certain wealth level or income level, then you need to start focusing on advanced planning, which encompasses we joke all the acronym planning, all of those acronyms you hear about in the estate and gift world. So for mid-market business owners, right now generally you're looking at $10 million minimum enterprise value. That warrants a good look at estate planning. We have the urgency at this point it's not as urgent quite yet which is the time to catch us because there's a limited number of Jonathon Morrisons in any state other than, you know, california I practiced up in Silicon Valley for about a decade or Manhattan you know there's about 50 of us, but in most of the smaller any other state there's maybe five, maybe that really you know, do this day in and day out. It's like a heart surgery. I've done this over 500 times transactions, design, implementation, and you've got to have at least 200, 250 reps before you really know what you're doing, mastering the vehicles themselves and then being able to distill it and communicate it to clients and be able to then get it done very quickly without you know. Business owners they hate this stuff. This is complex, it's annoying. They don't want to talk about death and taxes. They want us to operate their business. So I've done a very unique model that we can get into a little bit. I wanted to focus on the urgency, but a very unique model that's really custom tailored for busy business owners that need to get this done quickly, with high quality and low stress. But the urgency back to the urgency. So I think most of your listeners probably know that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Trump tax reform, is going to expire or sunset as of January 1st 2026. Dave: Okay, Less than two years. Jonathon: Yeah, yeah. So you know a year and nine months and as part of that, in the estate planning world, really the biggest change, perhaps the only significant change, is the reduction in the federal gift and estate tax exemptions. Okay, what are those? Well, right now there are all-time highs, okay, there are all-time highs, okay. Right now you can gift during life or at death up to $13.5 million if you're single, without any gift or estate tax. Or if you're married, you can give to about $27.2 during life or at death, and above that, if you go over that, there's a 40% gift tax. If you gift during life or at death, a 40% inheritance tax paid by your children, and so that exemption amount is scheduled to be cut in half on January 1st 2026. We don't know quite yet the number. It's probably going to be somewhere around 7 million for a single and 14 million for a married couple. So significant amount less that you can gift to individuals children, grandchildren, anybody else in 2026, unless you lock in that exemption before then. So upon so. Let me just interject one second. Dave: So just understanding numbers that I do. If you consider a population one, everybody within a state over 27 million is group one and group two is everybody between 13 and 27 million of a state size. I'm guessing that group two is probably way larger than group one, even though on absolute dollars there's folks from 26 million all the way to billions. But I'm guessing is that assumption correct that a multiple of people who needed to worry about exceeding the exemption, those number of people, are now being multiplied. Is that right? Jonathon: Yeah, once exemptions go down. You've got a lot of people now that have to worry about estate taxes. So in 2026, there's going to be a lot more people that need my services. But between now and 26, it's really. You know, if I had to pick a number, it's somebody that either already has about 10, $15 million or more, because you're doubling every 10 years, assuming the rule of 72. Yep, those people need to look at this planning. But, more importantly perhaps, are a lot of your listeners. These are business owners and their businesses are on fire. They're just going out there. Ebit is jumping every year. Multiples might be getting higher and so between now and their death they might be in their 40s, 50s, 60s. They got a long life expectancy. They're likely going to have a lot of them over $100 million net worth at death. That's when you have to measure this tax. You file a federal estate tax return within nine months after death and the government wants valuations and they want to see what you're worth and there's a 40% tax imposed at that time and that's due within nine months. There's a huge check that gets written. The good news is a Harvard professor famously said the federal estate tax is optional as long as you plan for it. I don't care what you're worth If you've got 20, maybe 30 years to live, unless you're like over a half billion dollars of net worth. I can usually wipe out the federal estate tax through proactive planning and I've got, like I said, a finance and accounting background. I've got financial models that I run free of charge all up front to show you Like I just did one for a $100 million business owner and it showed that he had about 20 million of other assets. But it showed and he was 55, it showed that if he was willing to transfer 60% of his business into the special kind of trust that we were going to wipe out his $200 million projected estate tax in 30 years it was going to go to zero and he had totally stabilized cash flow and liquidity between now and year 30. So the name of the game is to figure out how much do we need to transfer, and you got to run financial models. Most attorneys don't do that, but for a business owner there's so much that we can do because we can value the business at less attractive values at the time of gift number one. So valuations in the tax code say the valuation firm has to look at it from a discounted cashflow perspective, not a strategic buyer perspective. I just had a $600 million company that just sold a year ago. We got a value to $80 million because it wasn't valued from a strategic buyer standpoint. So if you come to me and you're 80 and you've got $100 million of cash, it's a lot harder to wipe out the estate tax versus a business owner that's got a EBIT of $5, $10 million. But they're in their 50s. We can transfer some of that business out and rely on a number of other mechanisms to wipe out that estate tax and get asset protection while they're living Very easily. They keep total control over their estate if you do it right and the business so I'm intrigued. Tell me more do it right and the business. So I'm intrigued, tell me more. Yeah, I'll tell you the exemptions going away when you run the financial models out 30 or 40 years for a lot of your business owner clients. Okay, there's, the exemption is prompting a lot of this planning and I'll explain one of the reason. But the exemptions are going down. It's use it or lose it. Okay. So let's say you've got a nice boring balance sheet $50 million stocks and bonds. Okay, single guy, you guys should definitely gift his $13.6 million exemption before 2026. We'll talk about you know, just gift it to kids. I've got a special vehicle that's done over 200 of these without an audit, making the cover of the state national state planning journal in May. So you've got a trust receptacle. If you do it right, that client could gift $13 million and keep total control and access while they're living. Again, if you know what you're doing and that irrevocable trust is designed from the outset correctly, which a lot of them aren't, I call that the optimized gift trust. So, again, that's a boring $50 million cash, stocks, bonds. So, business owners, we got the exemptions going away. That's prompting some of this. Here's the more important impetuses for reasons to act. Number one, the business keeps going up in value. We want to freeze that appreciation on that business, gift it out of the estate. So all that post-gift appreciation on the business when they sell, all of that is soaked up off balance sheet. You don't your clients, my clients are too wealthy and we don't want them getting any wealthier because there was creditor and lawsuit exposure while they're living and then at death the government takes the estate tax. So the sooner we can get a client before the business takes off, transfer some or all of that business to that special type of optimized gift trust. Get them all the control, but start building wealth off balance sheet. Rockefeller famously said you want to own nothing but control everything. If you do it right, they won't own that business anymore but they can control and access that gift trust in so many different ways. The IRS has lost so many cases in the last several decades. That allows us to pack those optimized gift trusts with so many cases in the last several decades. That allows us to pack those optimized gift trusts with so many controls. So again, number one urgency is really the fact that a lot of business owners are going to continue to grow their business and we want to shelter it. The second major reason is we have a lot of legislative risk right now. I mentioned how over the last 40, 50 years, the IRS has pretty much been on the losing end of all the cases in estate and gift. In the old days you couldn't pack that much control in these gift trusts. The IRS has lost cases or given up or acquiesced in rulings that now, if you do it right, these gift trusts that you put in your business or other assets into, there's pretty much nothing we can't. It's technically irrevocable if you don't own it anymore. But if you do it right, like you'll see in my paper, my materials for the gift trust, they have so much control In 2021, they almost patched it. Remember that building back better bill yeah. A lot of its owners were worried about. While there was a little piece nobody was paying attention to except for us in the state and gift tax eight pages it would have killed all of these flexible trusts that we use. Any quote, grant or trust would have been abolished unless you got it funded before Biden signed it into law. So I did 160 deals, $3 billion of gifts, those 18 month period. It didn't pass because remember there were two senators, manchin and Sinema, that didn't vote for it but with and this is covered in my paper in the journal they could. There's always rumors they could take another stab at trying to kill off Grand Tour Trusts. We also have interest rates that could keep going up. A lot of what we do leverages those interest rates. So there's a lot of headwinds in the near future, next few years perhaps. And the lowered exemptions this is sort of the golden age of estate planning. That's kind of fleeting because they're trying to kill off the trust. Exemptions are going down, interest rates are going up. If you're a business owner, this is the time to act. If you haven't already, okay. Dave: Yeah, because I'm assuming, since you're talking about valuations being discounted cashflow, that these higher interest rates are creating bigger discounts. Jonathon: That's part of it, I mean the major reason for interest rates being relevant is you can gift assets to these types of trusts. But you're limited by that exemption $13 million. There's another way you can actually get up to 10 times that amount in these trusts and that's the so-called sale to a defective grantor trust. What does that mean? It means I put $13 million of cash in this trust. I can then actually transfer another 130 million 10 times in exchange for a note back to me. Okay, that note. The IRS requires a minimum interest rate pretty much tracks the 10-year treasury. So the higher the interest rate, the more this trust is feeding back into your name, your taxable estate. So we want low interest rates, we want to be able to-. I see, a couple of years ago we were lending so much money at the 1% interest only 30 year fixed Right Gift trust is arbitraging and we froze that client's estate at that note value with 1%. So there's other strategies like GRATS and CLATS that are interest rate dependent. But bottom line it's one headwind is. So why don't we talk a little bit? So we talked about sort of the urgencies, business value going up. These cool trusts that we've been using for decades might be gone soon. If you don't get it done, you'd be great to put it in under everything we've ever seen. So this is the time to act. Now let's talk about the importance of that gift trust being flexible. Okay, I developed this thing in 2020. I call it I just I call it an optimized gift trust. Okay, it's. If you know any of my gift trusts and many of your podcast listeners, I've probably heard of idgits or generation skipping trusts or dynasty trusts or slats, all these things. All those things basically mean is, hey, they're features of a gift trust that give you either tax benefits or retained control. So what if you create a gift trust and you just put all those things into one? I call it a hybrid. It's nothing new. If you go to Manhattan or Silicon Valley, they're not going to call an optimized gift trust. It's just how we do it there. But you go to smaller markets like where I live, phoenix or it isn't even a small market but there's attorneys that aren't just getting. They're just not getting enough repetitions over the years. So these gift trusts a lot of the ones I review locally, for example just don't have the maximum strengths and controls that your business owner client can have if they're gifting. And it's a big deal because if you run the financial model, the majority of wealth is going to be in these gift trusts. If they're not done from the outset, you might never be able to get that money back or change the beneficiaries or access it or do many, lots of different things. And I clean up bad, irrevocable gift trusts all the time. So in 2020, I developed this thing called the Optimized Gift Trust. Three page in out overview. I got a seven page frequently asked questions. I try to productize things. I've done this 500 times. I try to take all this complexity and put it into a nice, easy to go package for business owners that are way too busy, and so this gift trust has all the bells and whistles and I mentioned. I was just asked by the National Estate Planning Journal, the top journal in my field. I made the cover back in 2020 with a different product. This one, in May 2024, in a couple of months will be on the cover, the full legal citations. It was peer reviewed, everything. There wasn't a single change. So it all checks out, never been audited. It's audit defensible as well. We've got an army of lawyers here at this firm, about three or four of them that are former IRS trial attorneys that can defend it. But my point is is these business owners need to make transfers here soon and you better darn have your gift trust within that 60 page document. It's irrevocable, meaning you can't change it, the terms of that trust, once it's done, and so if it's not optimized from the outset, that can be a big problem. So, yeah, you really want a flexible, accessible trust. If you do it right, the business owner, literally there's no downside. We can get it back in four or five different access points make changes, especially if they're married. You can include slot powers, spousal life access, trust powers which give the marital unit even more control. So that's the again number one, the urgency to act, and the number two, making sure you've got a strong gift trust to receive that gift and make changes down the road. Dave: Okay, yeah, that sounds that makes a lot of sense. So could you give us maybe a case study example, like anonymously. Sure, you know just to kind of give some color to some of this yeah, sure. Jonathon: So I mentioned I have a unique process and as part of that, what I do is I prepare. I built out this financial model. Okay, if you go to any of the top I mean, I haven't found a bank yet that I really like their financial model. Even the top banks in the world. They've got these financial models that will illustrate what it looks like to gift into these gift trusts and they'll run it out 30 years and it'll show you cash flows and tax savings. But all the models I've reviewed are really developed by financial people, not estate and gift attorneys like me. So about 10 years ago I developed this bespoke model. It's Excel-based and we can input all you know. I basically have it custom tailored to what I like to do. So I put in spending, you know assets, asset performance, business assumptions, how long you're going to live all of these things and you put in. Really, it's determined. The goal of this is to output for me. How much does my client need to gift into this gift trust to cause it so that they I joke die poor? We want them burying life. If you get sued, you don't own it anymore. That objective, the competing objective, is we don't want them to put too much in the gift trust, because the IRS doesn't like if you're poking and prodding and grabbing the assets out of there. Ideally they'll never need to touch it. Okay, we've got all these access points that they need to get back in emergency Great, but I want to make sure that they haven't given it away too much. They've still got plenty of liquidity, stabilized cash net of expenses, net of taxes, net of spending over here. So that's the output. So you wanted a case study. You wanted a case study so I just did one of the sample model. That's client business owner. He's got about $5 million of liquid assets, cash stocks, bonds. He's got $10 million of investment, real estate. He's got a $5 million home. So you know 20, 25 million, but the bulk of his net worth is in the business. It doesn't have to be that way. A lot of business owners have a lot less. But the assumption was it was you could sell the business to a strategic for $100 million in two years. We went and got a valuation, looked at the company from the worst possible lens defensively low top valuation firm, looked at EBITDA, looked at the markets and also applied minority interest valuation discounts. So a lot of times we're gifting minority interest in the company to the gift trust. You get further discounts Bottom line. It's not atypical for a $100 million company to be valued at maybe $20 million when all the discounts are applied. Okay enterprise discount, maybe down to 40, and then maybe another 40, 50% discount on that for minority interest. So we put all this in the model. He's spending 750 grand a year and then you've got inflation adjustments and everything. But the model showed that if he gifted 60% of the shares in his company to this special gift trust, that over the next 30 years, rather than his estate just growing, I think he has about $500 million in 30 years on these assumptions, causing a $200 million inheritance tax at death 40% of 500. By gifting that 60% interest we froze his estate tax. I think about $15 million. So he always had about $50 million in his hands. But all but because he had that sweet spot, all of that future value, even when the business is sold and reinvested, we froze his net worth at about 50 over here and effectively, because of all the thing that's going on, the gift trust was worth $450 million at death. That gift trust is not only exempt from 40% of state tax at his death but it's generation skipping, meaning it's totally out of, permanently out of the federal 40% gift inheritance tax for generations. In Arizona we got 500 years Depends on which state you live in or you set it up but we wiped out $200 million state tax and it made sure he had plenty of money to spend. Totally accessible gift trust if he ever needed to access it Controlled the business units that he gifted away. We can still make changes to beneficiaries or give it all to charity or some of the charity. Down the road he could borrow from the gift trust all sorts of stuff. His wife could take distributions out, so that's a great. I mean this is a very common example of the power that state attorneys that know what they're doing can do for a business owner for relatively small fees very small fees compared to that type of savings. Dave: Sure, and I presume that's where the word optimized comes in, because you're talking about that modeling and you're kind of trying to find that sweet spot of him having enough cash flow, enough control, right? Is that kind of what the optimization means? Jonathon: You hit it on the head. There's two optimizations okay. The first is making sure that gift trust has optimized his retain and control right. We've given as much as the irs case law allows with minimal risk. We're not going over the edge and there's a ton of stuff we can pack in there. So if he needs to do anything with the gift trust, we've got that optimized. And then the second thing is making sure exactly that the transfer into trust I call it the funding design, how it's transferred. Is it a gift? Is it a sale? For a note back, are we loaning additional assets? Modeling that out so that the funding design is optimized? I have to put a disclaimer in here. I'd say 95% of trusts and designs that I review probably less than that are totally optimized. There's a lot of attorneys out there that are going to seminars. They're reading about certain gift trusts, especially SLATs, spousal Life Access Trusts and they think they can get on their computer and go on some document program and start pushing buttons and making it work. This is dangerous. I didn't know what I was doing until probably about 200 transactions. I was at the top firm in Silicon Valley took public Apple, google, facebook, amazon, tesla and I was training for 10 hard years before I knew what I was doing. So making sure that your gift trust is prepared by somebody that specializes in the field has done it many times, and not just the trust being done right. Maybe you can get those buttons right if you're pushing them. The funding design is much more complex and I don't know many attorneys that can the no numbers backwards and forwards. They usually rely on the financial advisor usually doesn't really know how to apply their financial modeling to estate planning. It's just, it's a concern. So, anyways, that's enough of that disclaimer. But yeah, you got to optimize the trust and the funding design, which is my journal article 15 pages, goes into everything I'm talking about in detail. Dave: No, thank you very much. That is very helpful and we'll want to link some of that information that I'll get from you after we finish recording. Jonathon: Excellent, yeah, happy to. I'll share the overview. Frequently asked questions and I'm not sure if I can share that journal article. It's in the final peer reviewed draft but once that comes out, I'm bulk of their wealth is in the business. Dave: Now what about? So is it safe to assume that, say, somebody has a? They have a business that's worth $5 million. They have another $3 or $4 million outside the business. They don't anticipate huge growth in the business. Do they have a need for this planning? Jonathon: Yeah, I think I mean. Again, it depends on what the value of the business If you pass away, the IRS is going to require a valuation of that company within nine months If you're over the exemption amount again in a couple of years. Here you know, exemption is $7 million for single, $14 for married. So yeah, I think if the value of the company and all the assets are $10 million or above, I think it's at least worth a conversation. There's a different design for a $15 million contract individual or couple than 100 million dollar. You might, for example, you know a lot of 20 or 30 million dollar cases I come across not all business owners. But, like the design there is, you want to consume one spouse's exemption you don't need and then preserve the second spouse's exemption. So gift out of that spouse's exemption, lock, lock that in at least before 26. Right, partial forfeiture of the other spouse there's lots of things you can do. But yeah, I think I'd say it's probably closer. You know, 15 million is kind of net worth level all in real estate business. If you die tomorrow it's worth talking about and running it, you know, and see if it's worthwhile. Dave: Yeah, and because, like you're saying, one of the biggest risks of that scenario is, let's say, this hypothetical person is married and you know, let's say the exemptions drop in 27 to what you're thinking they will be, yeah, but let's just say, though, that the year before. And then let's say he dies in 2029, but let's say the year before he dies he just has a huge year, a record year, yeah, and then the business gets valued. Within nine months of when he dies, he might have a surprise valuation, right? So so, like that's, another piece of it too is you're locking in this valuation at the most conservative value and it sounds like postmortem. Some of those tools may be limited. Jonathon: They're gone. Yeah, once somebody passes away, we can't do any estate tax savings for them. Yeah, you're right, locking in low valuation. So, for example, I just I represented these famous restaurateurs and you know definitely a couple hundred million dollars of restaurants. 2020 happened and all the restaurants shut down and I remember I was just I tried so hard they ended up not pulling a trigger. I said look guys, I said your value of your restaurants because of the COVID pandemic is like probably 20% of what it used to be. Nobody knows how long this pandemic's going. I said let's get these restaurants transferred out of your estate at a depressed gift value. By the way, we got a file the only filing for this is a one-time gift. Federal gift tax return said hey, here's our valuation, irs, here's what we transferred. There's only there's a less than 1% reported audit rate on those. Okay, IRS has three years to challenge the value. If they don't which they never do then you've cleansed that gift and that valuation At death. Right now, there's almost 100% chance that an estate tax auditor at least somebody's going to look at it from the IRS. They might not do a full audit, but somebody's going to look at it. So if you've got attractive valuations, especially if it's a depressed year on your EBITDA. For whatever reason, that's the year to get it in. It's like buying low, selling high. Similar you want to transfer that into the gift trust. When it's low, use a minimal amount of your exemption and soak up all that post-gift appreciation out of the estate. Two more things. Life insurance is a big deal. It's not something I sell, but for business owners it's just good estate planning. Dave: Yeah, just to have the liquidity to pay the estate tax. Jonathon: Exactly yeah, because there's a section of tax code the good news that says if you pass away and more than 35% of your estate is trapped up in a business, or even if you're a real estate professional, real estate business can qualify and you get to pay that estate tax actually over up to 15 years. Okay, section 61. Here's the problem. The IRS wants liens. You've got now IRS as your partner or you died and your partner's now the IRS liens and all the headache. So here's what I tell clients. I say look, I can, if you live long enough, I can almost certainly wipe out your estate tax without you ever having to, you know, lose control or give up a penny, essentially. But until, like, if you've already come to me, you've got a hundred million dollars, say well, or a business worth a hundred, say it's going to take some, there's some time component. Can't immediately wipe out the death tax, but there's a time component, usually by like year 10, 20, we're getting close. So buy a big old policy of life insurance. We get it into the gift trust, irre. We get it into the gift trust, irrevocable life insurance trust or an islet, at least the death benefit isn't getting included in the estate. And then if you get a flexible life insurance policy, you can always scale down that death benefit as I'm doing my job over the years in the estate tax. You can reduce that death benefit, but if you have an unexpected death, at least we've got some liquidity to get the IRS out of the way and you don't got liens on the business for 15 years, right, yeah, so that's critical. We've got a few more minutes, unless you have something else, I want to talk about my process, yeah, so again, this is very unique. Attorneys drive me as crazy as they drive most businesses. What's the complaints about? In fact, in 20 minutes I'm going to present to all my attorneys here at the firm on best practices, on efficiencies and productivity, because I've got all these systems down. But what are the knocks? Right, attorneys, they never get back to you. They don't use email, hourly billing, some range, you know. I remember a famous quote. You know some attorney said oh, it's going to cost I don't know $5,000 to $10,000. And it was a construction, a builder, and I remember the builder said wait a second, I can quote a $20 million project down to the penny and you can't quote a darn estate plan to give me a $5,000 to $10,000 range. Anyways, hourly billings, all this talking over their head. It takes five meetings to get anything done. It's complicated. So I solved all this Five years ago. I went to just kind of revamp the whole model and I do a number of things. First, I don't have any junior lawyers. Okay, you think it's hard to hire in your industry for your business? Try the neurosurgery of the law in a small market it's impossible even find senior lawyers that are really good at this at the advanced planning. So it's driving me crazy. You know quality control and delays, where who's on which client stuff comes back. It's a mess. I got a red line in it, lots of control lock with control, caseload control and quality control and delay. So I'd only use no junior lawyers. I take a limited number of cases. I charge a premium fee but I joke that you buy my brain. You don't buy some 30 year lawyers. Brain number two it's a flat fee model. I've got a scheduled flat fee model, almost always tax deductible against the business income as a legal expense get. You get a 40, 50% discount right after that One-time fee. So we go through this process and we get it set up. Most people they need a will trust update. They need the optimized gift trust. Maybe they need this other charitable trust for income tax planning. But if you do it right, the structure is simple and it's easy to operate. At the very end of my process I've got an instruction manual. I call it. It says, hey, the lawyer set all this stuff up, but here's how you operate it. Copy the CPA, copy the investment advisor. Here's six pages. Here's what you did. Here's how to operate it. Let's have annual reviews. I don't charge for annual reviews. I don't charge for phone calls. After they've done it, they want to add some minor assets in there. We don't charge for that. You get a one-time fee and you'll get all these hourly billings. And then the third thing that I do that's pretty unique, although probably in the next two years I'll be buried, so I don't know if I can do this part always, but right now, when it's slow years, we don't have a tax law change. If I have a conversation with a new prospective client 30, 45 minute call I then get all the information I need. I work for free initially, come back about four weeks later with a full roadmap recommendation about 10 pages. So here's your objectives, here's your background. Here's exactly what I would do if I were you. Include a diagram, include those financial projections. I give it all away for free, picks me maybe eight, 10 hours, but because I've it all away for free, it takes me maybe eight, 10 hours, but because I've got all the processes, it usually takes other lawyers a lot longer than that. And then it has the fee, quote one-time fee. I'd say three out of four times people say maybe one of that. People say I like this lawyer. I see I've gotten to know him, I've gotten to see his work. I like the plan and here's what it costs one-time fee. He's not relying on junior lawyers. He's going to get this done in three phone calls, maybe two, and so they like to probably get to sample the process without having to pay 20 grand in hourly fees find out this lawyer isn't going to do it. Dave: Yeah, lots of that is really. And the thing is, even if they took your roadmap to another attorney, unless they had your level of expertise, they really couldn't execute on that roadmap anyway, right. Jonathon: Yeah, that's the thing I joke. Sometimes I say I can give you the key to my Ferrari, but I don't know. It doesn't mean you can drive it right, you could turn it on, but you're not going to know how to really use it. So that happens every now and then and I'm straight up I say look, if you shop this around, you can probably get it for half a third of the cost. Dave: But you're going to get a junior lawyer. Jonathon: You're not going to get somebody that's done this 500 times Top firm in Silicon Valley. You know you're not going to get it in two or three. I mean you just I'm doing all the drafting over time. I mean iron sharpens, iron, you get those reps. Senior lawyers are lazy, they're just sourcing business and sending it down the hall to a junior and they don't know what's going on in those documents. And if it's not done right. You're building a house for all of your wealth $450 million my client projected. If that trust isn't done right, we have client, like a lot of our clients myself, we'll spend 20, 30 grand on a kitchen remodel. But I have clients that say wait a second, I don't want to spend 50, 100 grand on this, I can get it done for 15 or 25. And I'm like do you know how important this is? This is not the area to skimp. You want to experience lawyer drafting because you can't change it later if it's not done right. Dave: Yeah Well, and then the fact that it's a, fact that it's a, it's an upfront payment. Jonathon: Like you know that they get the annual reviews for you know, right? No ongoing billings and you're working? Dave: yeah, there's huge value. It's unique it shouldn't be unique. Jonathon: In my industry it sounds like you know most industries they've come a long way. The law is still behind the times, at least in the state. Dave: Yeah, the law and in the accounting profession too. Yeah, right, so the other thing that I think people don't realize is that folks really don't need a pure custom estate plan. My sense is they need a standardized plan, right? Because I'm guessing that all of those 500 estate plans you've done fall into a small number of categories, fact patterns, right. Jonathon: I agree. There's probably about five fact patterns. You've done enough. You know this is this bucket, this is the design and then when you go through, there is customization, right, Once we go through I send out the draft gift trust. It goes out with an explanatory memo. There's 15, 20 custom decision points usually that we go through. So there's customization. But generally you're right, the design, the funding design, most of the time goes in four or five buckets. Dave: Well, it's the same reason that you know, for better, for worse, a Toyota objectively has better big build quality than a hand-built exotic car because of the repetitions and the standardizations and the perfection, and you know six Sigma, you know defect measurement, and now so I can appreciate the value of starting with a framework that's proven. I mean even just something as simple as you know when you're, if you start with standardized documents that you can search and replace, you know stuff with you're far better off than just starting with a clean slate or something that's very different than what you're going to end up. Jonathon: You're right. Yeah, I mean my process, my documents I put hundreds of hours into and I'm constantly. That's again, a benefit of doing it myself and not relying on junior lawyers is I'm constantly tweaking my forms. At least once a week there's something in a memo or something I'm going to add this or change this, and so you're constantly improving it. That happens at a lot of law firms, but again, it's usually junior lawyers that are updating, doing all that, and you don't have senior lawyers doing this over and over. Dave: So yeah. Jonathon: And again, the times suck for business owners. They, like you know, you know when I've done. Probably each of these cases takes me I don't know 10, 20 hours, all in right. If you multiply that by my billable rate, you know it's more expensive. You're buying the premium of making sure something that's been done. You know, optimized right and so yeah there's a premium. I have a buddy that jokes, or he's always asking me well, I've got this document model, this software that I can just push the buttons, like you know. Why are you charging so much? Like I said, it's so much more than just even if you get a good document. It's the funding design, it's being able to immediately respond with answers, being able to simplify complex things like we've had during this call, and spit it out in a digestible, understandable format. It's the process. It's the backend instruction manual and the front understandable format. It's the process. It's the back-end instruction manual and the front-end memo. It's all of that. That's where the value is. And again, I'm going to tell my lawyers in about 10 minutes. I'm going to talk about all this with them, because lawyers don't do this right. They don't do it. Dave: Yeah, they're really paying you not for your time, but for your expertise, knowledge, best practices, all of that. Well, hey, I know we're running up against our time limit. If somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to reach out? Linkedin email phone. Jonathon:Email's best. jmorrison@frgalaw.com. So Frazier Ryan, goldberg, arnold, f-r-g-a-l-a-wcom, and again reach out say hey, here's my situation. Heard you on the podcast and I've got a forum process. I respond here's all the materials, here's where I think hop on a 45-minute Zoom. A paralegal usually gathers some 10 minutes of information before that. We'll run the numbers on the fly. We'll look at the stuff on the fly and see if it makes sense and I tell clients look, I make a good living. I say if this doesn't work for you, I'm happy to talk myself out of a job and tell you doesn't. But if it does, you know let's get going. Because there's so much there's no other industry that you can get thousand to one return. I mean $200 million of estate taxes saved for less than a hundred grand. No other any good financial advisor knows to run to the estate attorney, cause that's where the that's a low hanging fruit, it's the best money you can spend. And then making sure we also make sure all your kids inheritance protected from creditors. Lawsuits and divorce like that may be more important than the tax savings. Making sure that the kids inheritance is well-managed and protected, even if they have control over it. We can do it, so it's all protected so a lot of there's a lot of benefits to what I do. I love what I do and it's easy to sell because it's something I believe in. Dave: Yeah, there's a lot of. Well, Jonathan, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking time out of your day. I know you have a meeting to get to, so why don't we wrap it up and again, thank you so much for your time and have a great day. Jonathon: Thank you Wonderful, appreciate it.

In this episode of The Optimal Path, Ash Oliver discusses the future of user research with expert Dave Hora. From his beginnings in research back in 2011 to his key roles at companies like Plangrid and Instacart, Dave has been at the forefront of driving innovation through research. Now, he's here to share his thoughts on what's next for user research—discussing the growing demand for user insights, how to integrate research practices throughout the product lifecycle, and the opportunities of AI tools.Tune in to uncover how we can seize the moment and define what's next. About Dave:Dave Hora is the founder of Dave's Research Co., where he helps product leaders launch new product lines with the right mix of data, insight, and common sense. He began professional research work in 2011, eventually starting the practice as the first research hire at six companies, including PlanGrid and Instacart. He now works with companies across the globe and writes extensively on the topic of research and its co-evolution with the product practice. Connect with Dave:You can connect with Dave on LinkedIn Resources:The Future of User Research Report by MazeUser Research and Its Inevitable Evolution by Dave HoraWhither UX Research? by Peter MerholzThe UX Research Reckoning is Here by Judd AntinEmpathy: The importance of how we speak about ourselves, Maze Disco Conf presentation by Kyle OsborneThe next frontier for research: Building organizations that learn by Behzod SirjaniJust Enough Research by Erika HallBad research doesn't stink by Carl Pearson, PhDThe Mistake Almost Everyone Makes When Doing User Research by Behzod SirjaniFostering a culture of organizational learning with Roy Opata OlendeThe Democratization of User Research is a Red Herring by Peter MerholzThe Nature of Order by Christopher W. AlexanderThe Timeless Way of Building by Christopher W. AlexanderA Pattern Language by Christopher AlexanderInterviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights by Steve Portigal Follow Maze on Social Media:X: @mazedesignHQInstagram: @mazedesignHQLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mazedesignTo get notified when new episodes come out, subscribe at maze.co/podcast.See you next time!

In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, Eric Miller from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EX-IM) provides valuable insights into how this 90-year-old institution supports American exporters through strategic financial services. I also learned that EX-IM is one of just two governmental agencies that is an actual profit center. ​ Before joining EX-IM, Eric worked for a privately-held exporter that was a customer of EX-IM. His expertise both inside and outside of EX-IM sheds light on crucial products like export credit insurance, export financing, and financing for foreign buyers. These solutions can alleviate common hurdles inhibiting international trade growth. ​ We also talk through some real-world examples of these various EXIM solutions. This is a must-listen episode for any company doing substantial direct exports.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Eric Miller from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) discusses the role of the bank in aiding exporting companies with financial services, operating without costing taxpayers. We delve into how Ex-Im Bank and the Small Business Administration (SBA) offer loan guarantees and insurance to boost companies' borrowing capacity. Eric shares insights into export credit insurance and how Ex-Im Bank's products can help resolve common financial challenges in international transactions. The discussion covers Ex-Im Bank's new domestic project finance product, designed to support projects that have a significant export component. We touch on the requirement for a U.S. majority in product content, aiming to foster manufacturing and job growth in the United States. Eric explains the importance of services, like engineering and architectural services for foreign projects, requiring a U.S. majority for cost. We discuss government resources that can aid businesses in exporting, such as tax incentives and the Gold Key service provided by the U.S. Commercial Services. The episode highlights the STEP grant, a federal program managed by states to support companies with export-related expenses. Eric and I settle the Tex-Mex vs. BBQ debate with an appreciation for both, adding a lighthearted twist to the episode. Contact information for Eric Miller is shared for listeners who wish to connect and further explore export financing options. Contact Details Email (eric.miller@xmexim.gov) Phone Number (713-306-7969) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Export-Import Bank of the United States GUEST Eric MillerAbout Eric TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hi, this is David Spray. Welcome to another episode of the IC Disc Show. My guest today is Eric Miller of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, colloquially known by the acronym of XM. More useful takeaways for privately held exporting companies than any guest I've ever had. We talked about the history of the XM, its purpose and the four service offerings that they have for privately held exporting businesses. We also talked about three other governmental arms that can also be of value. The other interesting thing about Eric is he actually was a customer of XM early in his career when he was a minority owner of an exporting business. So Eric's a really dynamic guy. He's really passionate about serving exporting companies and he really understands what it's like to be in the shoes of their customers. I really recommend you take a listen to this one. It's really valuable hey good morning Eric. Welcome to the podcast. Eric: Thank you, Dave. It's a pleasure to be here. It's an honor. Thank you. Dave: Well, the pleasure is all mine. So where are you connecting from today? What part of the world are you in at the moment? Eric: The great state of Texas. I'm in the Houston area, born and raised in Texas and been all over the world, but this is home. Oh, that's awesome. Dave: In fact, I think you even stayed close for college, right. Eric: I did. I'm a Cougar alumni, so a proud Houston native. Dave: Awesome, so I'm really excited to have you on. You are with the Export Import Bank of the United States, correct? Correct so we also go by XM Bank, sorry. Eric: Yep. Dave: So tell me about XM, tell me about the kind of the history of the organization and why it exists, and then we'll get it. We'll see where the conversation goes. Eric: Yeah, no, it's a good question. I'm biased, of course, working here, but I think it's one of the most fascinating government agencies that exist. We're set up in the executive branch of the federal government. We've been around for 90 years. Most people haven't heard of us. We are small. We've got anywhere between 400 and 500 people as a part of the agency. Most are headquartered in Washington DC, but we do have a dozen regional offices scattered throughout the US and all the major cities. I cover the Houston office and in doing so, I work with exporters in the great state of Texas and help them export more US made products and services. That's really what we're about here at XM Bank is supporting our US companies that are exporting a US made good or service. We're on the finance side of that help. There's other government agencies. Throughout the whole process of a transaction, whether it's finding buyers, whether it's financing a transaction or even getting grant money to help you export. There's other support, but EXIM is specific on the finance piece. Dave: Okay, and so does EXIM. At the end of the day, you know, does this cost taxpayers, you know, billions of dollars to have this thing in place. Eric: Yeah, that's another good question. So you know, we're one of the few agencies historically that have actually built a surplus of money for the taxpayer. In other words, we're using less than we're making and we send money back to Treasury. It changes year to year, but historically, if you look over the past you the past 20, 30 years we're generating a surplus and sending that back to treasury, so costing taxpayers billions of dollars. No, we like to operate a little differently than a government agency. We are an independent government agency, which means we're not inside a cabinet, but we are set up in the executive branch and we like to say we run at the speed of business Internally, we're very efficient, we're very effective and we're very aggressive, trying to reach out to US companies and get them involved in helping them. Dave: Well, that is awesome. I think it sounds like just a win, right. It's a win for the taxpayers. It's actually a profit center, if you will, for the taxpayers. It's good for the exporters, it's good for the country. Am I correct? I think the only other government agency I've ever heard of that's a profit center is like the Patent and Trademark Office. Have you heard that too? Eric: I think you're right. Now, I haven't researched that myself, just in passing and conversations I've heard of the same and there might be one or two others out there. But yeah, it's an unusual feat of a government agency to kind of generate that surplus for a taxpayer and send it back to Treasury. We do charge, you know, fees and that's how the agency itself makes and brings in money. We charge fees for our different products and you know we have products like export credit insurance. To just kind of dive into what we do, yeah, let's do that In export credit insurance to just kind of dive into what we do yeah let's do that In export credit insurance. So let me take a couple steps back. When an exporter engages in international business, when they find a foreign buyer in a country and they say, hey, here's what I sell, whether it's a product or service, there's always a sticking point. If you will product or service, there's always a sticking point if you will in the negotiations, when it comes to money flow. And what I mean by that is the exporter will say, hey, I'll ship my product or I'll do the service, but go ahead and wire me money before I ship it. And then the importer, the buyer there's always a reluctance to say well, I don't want to wire you money, because what if you close your doors? I never hear from you again. So when there's a new relationship and there's a transaction that's trying to occur, money, the movement of money, is always a sticking point. Who sends it first? And exporters lose a lot of deals because of this. I speak to exporters on a daily basis and every week there's at least one that says I wish I would have known about this. It would have helped me with the last negotiation I had with a foreign buyer who said you know, ship me the product on open account and I'll pay you 60 days later. I wasn't comfortable with that as an exporter so I closed the door and lost the deal. So XM gets involved and we say no, go ahead. And you know, if they're asking for credit terms, go ahead and provide that to them and we will back you up on the payment. We will insure that receivable from default. So if something goes wrong and the foreign buyer doesn't pay back the exporter as intended, we will insure it. They put a claim into us. So when I say claim, just like any other insurance policy, right, you're driving a car and you get to an accident, you file a claim. Something goes wrong with the house, you file a claim with the home insurance provider. We're no different. We're an insurance provider on foreign receivables and the government gets involved in this space because you know, david, look at the trade deficit. Last year we're nearing a trillion dollars. Most years, from year to year in the last 10 years, it's getting worse and worse. So what I mean by that is we're bringing in way more than we're sending out, and what we have found through our research as a government agency is the number one reason more US companies are not sending more product abroad is the number one reason is fear. They are fearful of what that process looks like and the government gets involved. Then we say let's take away that fear. We'll put the risk on our shoulders as it relates to credit insurance. Go ahead and give your foreign buyer terms or open account. We'll shoulder the risk and if they don't pay you, we'll pay you. And we want to help the trade deficit. We want to as a government agency. We want to stimulate US manufacturing. We want to create jobs through exports. That's really what the mission is here at Ex-Im Bank. Dave: Okay, yeah, no, that's really good. And do you specifically underwrite each customer? You know each foreign customer, or is there just you guys? Just use some general parameters. Eric: Yeah, no, it's a good question, like what does that process look like? So we have four different credit insurance policies. We can do everything from hey, we'll underwrite every buyer if you're not comfortable with it. Or hey, we'll give you a policy where you can do your own underwriting according to our credit standards but give you that autonomy inside your company to do it without coming to us every time there's a buyer. So there's different approaches. Most exporters like the autonomy because they can approve a credit right then and there, rather than sending us the paperwork and then us process it and then get back to them. So it just depends on timeline. But yeah, we can do either. Dave: And does the policy insure 100% of the invoice or is there a co-insurance piece where your customer is taking some of the risk? Eric: So the coverage will be anywhere from 90 or 95%, depending on which policy. Most of them are in that 95% range, but some of them are in the 90. Okay, they have the option. Dave: Yeah. So it's enough that as long as the company's got decent margins right, if their margin's greater than 5% or 10%, then their risk is just if a deal goes bad. They didn't make any money on that deal. Eric: That's a fair way of looking at it? Dave: Yep, but they have enough skin in the game that they do want to make a profit on that transaction. They want to all that trouble. So they have a motivation to not, you know, sell to people who you know they have serious concerns about their ethics or integrity or ability to pay. Eric: Exactly, and that's really what it's all about. Hey, I've got a new relationship and you know, name a country. They're asking for open account. And open account, you know, most people are comfortable with that in the US. They have a recourse in mind. Hey, if I don't pay, here's the process where I can recoup. But that all goes away when you send it to a foreign country. Like you know, how do I even get my money if I don't? I'm dealing with a different legal environment, political currency, culture, I mean. The list goes on and on. So that's where, wherein lies the fear for the exporter. And there's government agencies, both local, state and federal, all of them. We want to surround the exporter, prop them up, take away the fear, shoulder the risk and get them comfortable in international business. Dave: Okay, so you may mention the one person you were talking to that said they wish they'd known about XM because they kind of lost this deal. Do you have another case study, if you will, or example and obviously you don't have to mention the specific company by name where everything did work out kind of a success story, where maybe they were not exporting much but with this credit insurance it really helped them materially increase their sales? Do you have any examples like that, just to help people further understand? Eric: Oh yeah, we have a whole list of resources on our website. There's a section dedicated to success stories of all the different companies and we like to diversify the industry and the product and we've got you name it and it's probably up there. One that just immediately comes to mind is a company and they've been kind of a strong advocate of Ex-Im Bank. They're called BuzzBalls and it's alcohol manufactured here in Texas in the Dallas area, and they were very successful domestically. I mean, you can find these little alcohol glasses basically in any kind of retail store in the US. But as they looked abroad they wanted to de-risk a lot of their open account with distributors and really I think the last I heard they either doubled or tripled the revenue by focusing on foreign buyers, distributing it to the distributors, the foreign distributors giving them credit to pay and Ex-Im Bank insuring the risk. I mean, it's just one interesting example that you know, if little cups of alcohol can move abroad, mostly anything can. Dave: Oh, that's great, I love that and thank you for that. Thank you for that example. So now let's say that a company is contemplating exporting and let's say they have this large potential order you know large for them, you say it's a $5 million company annual revenues and suddenly they have this pay for the materials from their supplier and they maybe don't have enough working capital to do that and maybe they're in a spot where you know a traditional bank loan or line of credit. They're maybe, just maybe what you'd call not bankable. What happens then? Does the whole process just fall apart? You know they've got the credit insurance but they don't have the cash to buy the goods. What happens then? Eric: Yeah, that's really the second big problem in international trade. So the US banking system in general is challenging to help US companies fill export orders, and what I mean by that is, in your example, a $5 million revenue company. It can even be bigger than that, it could be 20, 30, 40. The problem with a lot of US companies is when their foreign sales start to get significant and they go to the bank and say, hey, I need a line of credit, not just for my domestic business, I need it for my international too. There becomes a problem in the banking system. There's this view that it's high risk and, as bankers tend to be more conservative and shy away from risk, so most times US companies have problems getting the money they need to fill these export purchase orders. So government gets involved, Ex-Im gets involved and SBA also has a product similar to the Ex-Im bank. It varies according to the banker who wants to use the product, but the idea behind it is we become a guarantor of repayment to the lender. So in your example, $5 million a year company, $2 million foreign sale that we're going to insure they walk that over to the bank and they say, hey, I got insurance on the receivable. Great, it's a $2 million deal. Now I need a million bucks or whatever as a line of credit to build all this stuff or go out and buy it. The bank will say, okay, where's it going? Oh, it's leaving the country. I can't help you. But when you come back with a US purchase order, then we can get serious in our talks. The company is stranded and they can't get the money, the capital they need to fill these orders with working capital. So we get involved and we say, hey, if they're presenting financial statements and the financial statements merit the ability to borrow what they're asking for a million, whatever it is and you're only saying no because it's an export, go ahead and give them the money that they need that they're asking for again, as long as it meets the credit standards, and we'll co-sign, we become a repayment guarantor to that line of credit so they can have access to the money that they need to fill these foreign buyer purchase orders. Guarantees and insurance is really kind of what we're about here at Ex-Im Bank to enable this cross-border trade. On the finance piece, Now, with that line of credit that we guarantee, they could also use it to issue bid bonds or performance bonds or standby letters of credit. Because another problem in our banking system is when a exporter bids on a foreign tender, that tender sometimes will say hey, if you want to bid on this, you got to put up a performance bond or a bid bond and that kind of weeds out the non-serious suppliers versus the serious. And when they want to supply that bid bond and they go to the bank, put the equivalent amount of cash in your account, I'll escrow it and then issue the bond. And then the exporter you know has this confused look. And well, I don't want to pay for my own deal and block my own cash. So under the XM line of credit you can actually use borrowed money to issue those bid bonds, performance bonds, standby LCs at a reduced cash collateral, so you're not tying up your cash. Dave: Interesting. Eric: And what's the? Dave: typical I think the term like if you're factoring an invoice, it's called. I think it's called like the advance rate, like what percentage you could borrow, like on the you know the purchase order or the invoice that you create. What's that percentage? You know, through the XM financing. Eric: So we put it into two categories pre-export and post-export. Okay, pre-export is the working capital right, the inventory, work in process, finished goods. So under that you could borrow a 75% advance rate. Then post-export, once it becomes a receivable, you could borrow 90. So it's pretty generous advance rates and typically it helps exporters fill these purchase orders much easier if we weren't involved. Dave: Yeah, Cause I think I was a CFO of a company many years ago and we were growing rapidly and we're using factoring and the. It seems like the advance rate we were able to get on the factoring for domestic sales, let alone international, was only like 70 or 80%. So, and even I think I'm told that even if a company has a line of credit that they're backing with inventory and domestic receivables, that still a typical kind of advance rate is really only like I think, about 80. And so you're talking about an even higher, if I'm using the correct term, than what a traditional bank would provide to a traditional bankable customer for a domestic sale. Is that accurate, based on your knowledge? Eric: Yeah, very accurate. And sometimes you know I go back to the example of US banks don't like export orders, and they don't. Sometimes they will give an advantage. They've got a traditional line of credit set up for domestic. They may say we'll let you borrow 10, 20, 30% advance rate on the export stuff. With our guarantee we can expand that to 75, up to 90. So it could be that we expand the borrowing base or just let alone get them access to it for export orders, with our guarantee. Dave: Okay, yeah, this is really valuable and I can't wait to get the word out to our contacts. So, on the working capital piece so how does that work then? Is the process that they call up their bank and say, hey, do you guys do anything with XM and they just work purely through their banker? Or do they call you up and say, hey, we need some working capital? We don't really have a big banking relationship. Can you recommend somebody? Help me understand the logistics? Eric: of it, Absolutely. Yeah, it's a good question. We recommend starting with us. It's very easy to get lost in the banking system and trying to figure out who to talk to about getting the setup. A lot of time exporters will speak to their local relationship manager and they start talking about XM working capital and they're like you know who's XM? I don't, I don't even know what you're talking about. Slow down, so it's more efficient to start with us and if they're working with a bank that is in our lender network, we can go directly to the right person and connect them with the exporter to have those conversations. If they're working with a lender that is not inside our our network, we can still locate a lender to set up kind of a XM specific line of credit if that's something they want to pursue. Dave: Okay. Eric: Okay. Dave: Now this is really valuable. Does the bank have any other service lines besides the foreign receivables insurance and the working capital? Eric: We've got a couple others. One of them is called foreign buyer finance. Okay, this is a real interesting one. This is when a US company is selling capital equipment to a foreign buyer and when that capital equipment quotation gets to the foreign buyer, what we see often is they'll go to their bank. In some of these emerging markets, developing countries, the buyer will go to the bank and say, ok, you know, I got a quotation for, let's say, you know, john Deere equipment, ag equipment or Caterpillar, construction equipment or mining equipment, whatever. They go to their bank and they say I need to borrow to pay the US company for the equipment. And when they get a term sheet from their local bank, if you're familiar with international business and international finance, the cost can be much higher than what we're used to paying in the US as far as cost of capital Cost of capital I've seen even triple and quadruple in some of these developing markets. And then the buyer the deal falls to the wayside because the buyer can't afford to pay the bank all this cost associated with the capital. So in situations like that and kind of high cost capital markets, we can get involved and find a lender, as long as we've got good audited financial statements and they meet credit standards, we can find a lender to give that foreign buyer a term loan, a three to seven year term loan, of which we guarantee repayment of to the lender, to buy that US made capital equipment. So, in simple terms, we can finance a foreign buyer when the foreign buyer is buying US made equipment, and what we have found is the US companies that really know this product inside and out use that as a competitive advantage. They're saying, hey, sure, on one hand, here's my quotation for the equipment and on the other hand, I can get you finance if you need it. And I can get you finance if you need it. And the companies that do that well, I mean their sales shoot through the roof because now they become this finance facilitator for foreign buyers to access cheaper capital, which we've even seen companies where maybe they're 10% higher on the bid than some of the other countries, but they're saving them 15% on the finance. Dave: Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, I can see that that's really clever. I was familiar with the first two pieces, but I really was not familiar with that. I mean, yeah, that's a real competitive advantage. I mean it makes you wonder how a company in I don't know pick your country, brazil, that you know is trying to compete Like how do they compete when they can't? I'm guessing that they probably don't have the same type of capability to offer you know these, you know more attractive financing rates. Eric: So, yeah, that's a great point XM Bank we're also referred as an export credit agency, eca. So every developed country in the world has the equivalent of us. Out of, let's say, roughly 200 countries, there's 120 of us representing the nation of each country. So what we know is, as it relates to international business, there are, you know, foreign. When there's foreign competition in the tender, sometimes that foreign competition knows about their local ECA also. Right, so they could be offering the same thing. Hey, I can get you, you know, finance through my local ECA. You know name, a country, country. So we want companies in the US to be aware of how we can help them and support them, just like other member countries of partner ECAs do, because it's a competitive advantage and if they're not aware of it, it's a loss really for the exporter. And I mentioned four products. So we went over export credit insurance, the working capital getting the foreign buyer a loan, and then the fourth one. It came out about a year and a half ago. It's a new product that we're super excited about and it's really domestic project finance where there's an export nexus. And what I mean by that, david, is let's take an industry, let's take LNG. When an LNG liquid natural gas. When liquid natural gas projects in wherever let's call it Texas, when they go live and you've got a solid entity set up for the purpose of building an LNG plant maybe there's corporate shareholders, maybe there's individual shareholders, whatever it may be when banks take a look at this and they see that it's a domestic project finance structure meaning the off of any kind of contract will repay the loan Bankers don't like that. Bankers don't like project finance. If we look at a project where there's an export nexus and what we define as an export nexus is 25% of the sales will be exported we could potentially be a lender or a loan guarantor to that domestic project as long as there's going to be 25% foreign sales, and we could go down to 15% if it's a small business, so we can involve oh, that's really cool. Dave: Yeah, because I mentioned the bank is going to say, yeah, it sounds like a great opportunity. Go find some investors to fund this and then, once you start exporting the LNG, give us a call. We'll give you some working capital and you'll work with XM to ensure the receivables, but until then, hey, it's on you. Eric: That's it. That's the problem. That's where a lot of these projects get stuck in the banking system as it relates to traditional banking. They can't get the money they need to lift this project up, and it could be a great project, but yeah, banks like to see history right. I want to see your balance sheet income statement, cash flow last three years. Let me underwrite it Well, there is none. It's a new project and we're building it. Well, we can't help you Go find some investors, and that's typically the conversations. So, instead of these deals disappearing, as long as there is solid offtake agreements, we can look at that, potentially to repay the loan, and we do that on the foreign buyer side too. Dave: Yeah, and to be fair to the bankers I know many bankers and have great relationships If a bank is paying 5% for a deposit and they're lending it out at, say, 8%, by the time they pay their fees and stuff they really don't have a lot of margin left. So you know they have an imputed default rate. You know that they can tolerate of like half a percent, right, maybe 1%, right. I mean, that's just their model. Eric: Margins are thin, you're right. Dave: Yeah, and they're probably even I'm guessing even prohibited from saying okay, yeah, we'll finance this deal for you, but this is high risk. So instead of a 7% loan, it's gonna be 30%. I mean, the banks probably aren't even allowed to do. There's probably usury laws or something. Am I correct in that? Eric: Yeah, yeah. So they would definitely view the risk differently as a domestic project finance. But I would say, even more so, the regulatory issues involving domestic project finance probably prohibit the lenders from doing that. Dave: Even oh yeah, yeah, that's right. I never thought about that. Eric: There's definitely some challenges in that space. I never thought about that. There's definitely some challenges in that space. Dave: Yeah, that makes sense because really, from a holistic perspective, you would say hey, bank, this isn't your sweet spot. This is like venture capital, risk capital. Let them find a lender, like a hard asset lender, that'll charge a much higher rate, or let them raise equity capital to finance this. This isn't what you're designed for, mr First National Bank, Exactly. Eric: Okay. Dave: What are some of the limits, minimum maximums for these different products? Let's start with the credit insurance. Is there a minimum size that you all have insurance? Is there a minimum size like that you all have? I mean, I'm guessing if somebody has a hundred dollar foreign receivable that they want to insure, probably doesn't really make sense for everybody. So is there a minimum size? Is it a hard minimum or kind of a soft minimum? Eric: Yeah, that's a great question. So we don't have a minimum per se, documented minimum, but yeah, it's got to make sense right To go through the process. So I mean, we've insured receivables as low as a couple thousand bucks, so that's for credit insurance. For working capital we also don't have a minimum, but that's set by the lender. So we say hey, as long as the lender will do the loan, we'll take a look at the guarantee and most lenders that we have spoken to we probably would say that the minimum with most lenders is around a half a million for a working capital line of credit. And then on the foreign buyer side, again it's got to make sense to the lender. We don't have a minimum. Most lenders, I would say the minimum I've seen where a US lender would give a loan to a foreign buyer is also around a half a million. Maximum, no maximum, but anything above 25 million has to go to our board. The largest we did in the bank's history was in Mozambique, for an LNG facility was 5 billion. Oh wow. Dave: And then are there limits on the working capital and credit insurance, similar limits that require board approval. Eric: Anything above 25. Yep, it's the same 25 number, correct, which it's. You know it's not prohibitive, it just adds another layer to the process. Yeah. Dave: And even again, even if XM wasn't involved, I know a lot of banks, just you know, when loans get above a certain amount they want to syndicate them with other banks, just for their own risk. And I think a lot of times those syndication amounts for a medium-sized bank will start in that 10 to $25 million, as I understand it. And then what about the domestic projects that have 25% export expectations, any minimum or maximums there that you've seen? Eric: So I would say there's no hard set minimum, but the soft minimum I'm seeing is probably 5 million plus and the reason for that is the SBA, the Small Business Administration, also a federal government agency. They have similar products that go up to five, so this will take it past five and we don't want to compete with another government agency. They have similar products that go up to five, so this will take it past five and we don't want to compete with another government agency, so it's five below. Sba might be a better fit. Five above we're probably the only game in town. Okay, zero to five, taking some notes on this Five plus. Dave: You know, one of the other interesting things is we've had this conversation that if you think people have never heard of XM, they're even, I think, less likely to have heard of the ICDISC program. You know we specialize and what's interesting is how is the number of parallels? I mean, the thing that I can't, you know that blows me away is how logical everything is with XM. Like you know, there's a, you know there's a perhaps a belief that some government programs, agencies that there's no real logic to it. It was just it was some negotiation in Congress and they had just some arbitrary rules. But you know, as I kind of look at these, they just all seems very logical, right? And you know, like you know, above a certain amount you need board approval Again, just like in a bank, right, when they're doing a $25 million loan, it's probably got to go to a loan review committee or something. But the other thing is there's some similarities between XM and the ICDISC and one of them is the 51% US content. Can you explain how that works with XM, because I think it's pretty much the same as ICDISC. Eric: To my knowledge it is also yeah. So it goes back to really the mission right Creating jobs through US exports, and we want to stimulate US manufacturing. So we can't support a trade where you know Houston companies buying from China and sending it down to you know name a country in South America. There's no value add for the country. So Congress basically put a policy to the agency that says anything that we support has to be greater than 50% US content. So another way of saying it's just 51%. Right, majority of the product has to be US content, and the way that we calculate that is we look at the cost. So if they're selling a widget that they sell for $100, but it costs $70, we're going to look at the $70 and say $30 of that, 70 needs to be US content. So that's really we look at the cost and the majority of the cost needs to be US made, whether it's product. Dave: Or another way of saying it is no more than $36 foreign cost Yep, that makes sense. Eric: And if it's a service, by the way, sometimes we get these service questions, by the way, because sometimes we get these service questions where, hey, you know, I'm an engineering company designing, you know, a refinery plant for a foreign buyer. How do I look at that as far as US content? So what we do is we say, okay, start with your invoice. Right, whatever you're billing out, if it says engineering services or CAD drawings or whatever, take that and then look at the cost and greater than 50% needs to be US citizens or green card holders as part of that cost for services. So we basically look at the citizenship of the provider for evaluating US content and the cost. Dave: Yeah, and that's somewhat similar to the ICDISC really only includes two types of services that are eligible engineering services and architectural services for foreign construction projects or services that are an integral part of the sale. You know, like if you sell a product for a million dollars and there's a $200,000 installation service, as long as that's an integral part of the, you know the project that qualifies, you know that service does. But yeah, that's interesting. So let's say somebody says hey, you know, eric, I really like the sound of this and I'd like to talk to you. But you know, I just feel like you know, you're probably a lifelong government employee. You probably want to work right out of college. You don't know what it's like to sit in my shoes. You don't know what it's like to have been on the private side. You know having these foreign customers. What would you say to them? Eric: Yeah, so being a government employee is new to me also, yeah, so after college I started at a company and worked there for a decade, grew into sweat equity. I was a part minority shareholder and I was a customer of Ex-Im Bank for 10 years. Yeah, we were a company that exported capital equipment all over the world, but with a concentration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Okay, and we grew rapidly with the help of Ex-Im Bank. We used all the products of credit insurance, the working capital, getting the foreign buyer a loan and that really became a competitive advantage to the company. Because we looked at ourselves saying, hey, we're an equipment supplier, but so is the other hundreds of companies around, if not thousands of companies. How do we make ourselves different? And the finance became very important to that conversation, because you can Google, search equipment companies in the US and you're going through thousands of pages trying to find an equipment supplier. But not everybody is saying, hey, we have financial solutions too. If you need them, we can get you a loan. We can sell to you an open account with our insurance. We can get the capital we need to fill these export purchase orders. We can get the line of credit that we need to send bid bonds and performance bonds to some of these large tenders. So, going back to your question, I've been at Exxon for seven years, but the majority of my career was in the private sector and being a minority shareholder of a company that used the bank that I work for now to grow a small business. Dave: What a great story, like it would seem like you have the perfect background for your role I mean, you're actually a customer for your role. I mean you're actually a customer. So the private companies that you're trying to help you really do understand what it's like to be in their shoes. Eric: I think most employees that work here at ExxonMobil found we're very service oriented. We like to help. We like to help. It's fun for us to help. It's fun for me to help. The best part of my day is meeting small business exporters, helping them become aware of all the resources that are available to them to become more competitive and grow, like we did when I was with that company. Dave: Yeah, it's just amazing how similar our days are. That's also the favorite part of my job is when I get a phone call from somebody and they say hey, you know, bob said I should call you. You know we're. Our exports have really grown a lot, and there's this thing called ICDISC and you know, tell us about it, are we the right fit? And it's great to be able to help them. Oh, I was just going to ask you something. Oh, what about indirect exports? Do they qualify under an indirect export? Eric: Great question, yeah, so under the working capital it does. So if you have an exporter that's selling to you know name a major company, let's say a major oil and gas company who in turn is exporting that out, we call that an indirect export. That does qualify them to get the capital they need to fill that order. Dave: Yep, Another parallel with the IC disk. The IC disk is the same way. Yeah, Most of our clients are actually indirect exporters. So some of the products would not be as beneficial, you know, like the credit insurance, for example, because they don't have any foreign receivables. But you know, they don't have any foreign receivables, but they still may have use for some of the other products. Okay, so I've got just a couple more questions. Eric: Well, first off, is there anything we didn't cover that you wish I had? I would say there's other government resources that every exporter should know. Dave: Okay, what are those? Eric: Yeah, so one of them is the US Commercial Services. They're a part of the Department of Commerce and they've got an office in every major city in the US. I think there's a hundred, if I remember right, a hundred US Commercial Service offices scattered throughout the US. If you're in Houston, there's one in Houston. Great folks, we work with them closely. They've got some really good products as well for exporters. One of them is called the Gold Key, and the Gold Key it basically connects buyer and seller. So once the agency understands the company, they met with them. They understand the company, they understand what they're selling. They have to be what's called export ready. So an existing business that's already selling, let's say they're successful here domestically and they want to export. You know, let's say that to the, to our closest neighbors, first Canada and Mexico. But they're like hey, I don't, how do I even do that? How do I find a buyer, how do I find a distributor in these countries? That's really the first step in kind of the. The maze of exporting is first you got, you have to have a buyer. We're kind of second to that right. Once you have a buyer, then it's money talks and then we get involved. But even before us. The commercial services can get involved and under the gold key they can find distributors, partners, buyers in foreign markets. Wow, yeah, under the gold key. So they basically, once they understand the business, they work with the embassy in that country and say, hey, I've got, you know, bob, here's his company, been around for 10 years, successful in the U? S, but they want to start with Mexico. And can you find them buyers, can you find them distributors? And they try to play matchmaker. So they generate a list and they recommend going to the country that you want to export to shake hands, stare them in the face, sit down with them physically, because that's another important thing in international business you can't just stay behind the phone or email. You really have to go to these places. Dave: Wow, so that's amazing. Now the bad news, Eric, is you and XM may have just dropped to number two as far as my favorite government agency. I mean, depending on where a company is, that might be even more valuable, right? Because without the customers, they don't even need the other products of XM. That's really cruel. Eric: That's right yeah. I mean they need a buyer before they come to XM. They need a foreign buyer and commercial services can help with that. Dave: So be careful. You're about to list some other agencies and may further knock you down on the priority list, so be careful there. Eric: That's OK, we're here to help. So you know. Another problem with small businesses you know I'm selling domestically. You know successful I'm selling domestically. You know I'm successful. Maybe I'm running on thin margins. I don't have the capital that I need to go into all these countries and spend all this money and cross my fingers that I get business. And I just don't want to spend that kind of money and risk that kind of money because I need to keep my lights on and pay employees first. So there's something called the STEP grant S-T-E-P grant. Dave: STEP grant. Eric: It stands for statewide trade export promotion, so most states participate in it. It's federal money given to the states who in turn give grant money to companies who are looking to export, and they can use that grant money for travel you know, hotel, stay, airfare. They want to do website translation on their website from you know English to Mandarin and Spanish to. You know capture half the world. They want to. You know create design, create print flyers. You know any kind of marketing collateral that will aid them in promoting their company to foreign buyers. This is a reimbursable grant, which means you apply for it. You can say, hey, I want to go to Mexico, my airfare is going to cost this, my hotel is going to cost this, conference in Mexico is going to cost this, and all together it's going to be $10,000. So you apply for it and then, once approved, you can get up to 75% of that back. Dave: So you have to actually spend the money. Eric: First you got to spend. That's the key thing there. You got to spend the money, but you got to get it approved. Once it's approved, then you spend the money and then you come back and give them your receipts. Dave: Wow, that's pretty cool. Does that fall under one of the federal agencies? Is that kind of the ultimate umbrella, or is it really more of a state by state program? Eric: In Texas the Department of Ag is administering the fund and I think it does vary state by state on who holds the money and approves it and disperses the money, and I may be wrong, but I think it goes up to $10,000. It's either $7,500 or $10,000 max amount that can be approved. Okay, you can apply every year. Some companies do that. Okay, and what else? Are there some other? The SBA, small Business Administration Sure, most people know them for domestic business, but they also have an export arm called the OIT, which is Office of International Trade. So they have export finance products just like we do. They're not competitive to one another. They're slightly different in various aspects. They can get you working capital, usually for smaller loans, or they can get you something called an international trade loan and what that is used for is like, hey, I need to buy some capital equipment to go into my factory and it's going to cost a million bucks and it's going to generate export sales, that kind of finance structure. Dave: Is the structure kind of the same, or does the borrower have to put up a bigger percentage? Or do you know? Eric: For the international trade loan. I think it's similar. They guarantee the lender just like we guarantee the lender. The international trade loan I think it's similar. They guarantee the lender just like we guarantee the lender and lenders. You know, we like to say the lender makes the decision because our guarantees are slightly different than one another. So some lenders will say, hey, I'm more comfortable with XM, or hey, I'm more comfortable with the SBA, or hey, this is above $5 million. The only one you could do is XM Bank. So it's really up to the lender to evaluate the guarantee and what fits them best. Dave: Well, that is awesome. Any other government agencies that you tend to work with regularly those are the big ones. Eric: They'll always be in the same circles the SBA, the commercial services, and ourselves in the same circles, promoting as much as we can to our communities. Dave: That's awesome. Well, this has been so informative. I really appreciate the time. I just have two more questions, and they're really kind of fun ones, okay. So the first one is if you could go back in time and give advice to yourself, like right, when you were graduating college, what advice might you give to yourself? You know, with the benefit of hindsight, you know, if you kind of go back in time. Eric: What advice might you? Dave: give to yourself. You know, with the benefit of hindsight, you know if you kind of go back in time what advice might you give to yourself, you know? Things to do instead, or do sooner, or what comes to mind. Eric: That's a really good question, you know, going back in time, I would say, for the company that I worked for and some of the things that I don't like to say did wrong. But if we could repeat it and how we would do it differently. When the business grows and we grew fast our operational costs also grew fast and I think if we were better controlling the operational cost when there was a dip in revenue, there wouldn't be so much growing pains or slowing pains. I think getting a better grasp operationally on a business when it's going through the growth phase is key to its long-term success, because a business is not always going to accelerate up. There's going to be peaks and valleys and as long as you manage the operational cost of the company, it can get through. You know look at COVID right Nobody predicted that how many businesses went through all kinds of painful experiences. So that, going back in time, just from a business standpoint, I think that would have been super helpful in our judgment and assessment of looking towards the future. Dave: Okay, I really like that. Well, we just have one left, and this one's even more fun. Don't think about this, I just want. It's kind of a snap answer. Okay, so you're a native Texan, right Native Houstonian, tex-mex or barbecue. Eric: Oh, I got to go with Tex-Mex. I love barbecue, barbecue. Oh, I gotta go with tex-mex. I love barbecue, but you know the chips and queso and salsa and guacamole. Dave: I don't think everything competes with that. Yeah, I, I asked this question of all my guests and and I had two answers that were interesting. One answer was if it's, if I know that the food is going to be average, I, I absolutely would take the Tex-Mex, because Tex-Mex has more tolerance for averageness. Ok, they said. But if it's going to be world class, then they would take the barbecue. But they don't want mediocre, tough, dried out brisket. Ok, so I'm like, well, that's a good one. And then I had a guest telling me about I forget the name of the place, but it was a place that had like brisket tacos or brisket enchiladas, and they basically said both, they'll take both. Eric: There you go. I like that. Dave: Yeah, I am with you. If people want to get ahold of you, what's the best way to reach out? I know you're on LinkedIn. Are you very active on LinkedIn? Eric: Not super active on LinkedIn, but I'm very accessible Cell phone, email, office phone. You can always get ahold of me. Dave: What's the email address? Eric: So ericmiller M-I-L--LE-R X-M-E-X-I-Mgov gov. Dave: So eric.miller@xmexim.gov and if they want to just call you, what's the best number to reach you? Eric: at 713-306-7969 awesome. Dave: well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on here. This may be the most information dense episode I've ever done for an exporter. Usually it seems like we've got one or two good nuggets, but we may have a dozen takeaways, so thank you so much for making time out of your day and this has really been fun. And don't be surprised when this goes live if you don't have a few folks reaching out to you. Eric: I look forward to it. Thanks for having me. It's been an honor. Special Guest: Eric Miller.

On today's episode, Dave and Liz are joined by Clay and Sonja Arnold, relationalcoaches and communication experts, to discuss safe conversations - what they are and how couples can use them to decrease negativity and foster more connection in their relationships. Timestamps: 0:00 – Introduction: Who are Sonja & Clay Arnold?2:23 – What exactly is a safe conversation & how did it get started?4:56 – Sentence Stems - phrases used to keep us from triggering negative responses6:09 – “Is there more about that?”8:28 – Make an appointment to talk with your partner first; ask “is now a good time to talkabout [blank]”11:03 – Why is effectively listening to our partner so difficult to do?14:04 – Couples should strive for zero negativity in their conversations16:25 – Owning your mistakes & making repairs quickly19:05 – Address the negativity in your relationship; don't ignore it because it'll just stack up22:33 – Imago Therapy - what it is & how it affects who we choose to marry24:56 – If our spouse grows, we grow26:48 – Conflict is growth waiting to happen29:01 – Don't ever stop having fun with your partner31:37 – Empathy is about trying to connect with your partner & find out what they're feeling33:26 – Always be willing to learn35:15 – Sonja's takeaway: Don't feel like you're lacking because of your struggles. Don't struggleby yourself. Reach out. Don't go it alone.35:39 – Clay's takeaway: Be willing to learn and grow individually and in your relationship36:10 – Liz's takeaway: Ask your partner if it's a good time to talk about something and thenstart with a compliment36:50 – Dave's takeaway: Own your bad - your behavior, your attitude, and your drama About Sonja & Clay Arnold:Relational coaches for 22 years, Sonja and Clay have worked with individuals, families and couples around the world. Theirs is an integrative, neuroscience-based approach for life planning and inter-personal growth for relationships of all kinds. They offer workshops and consultations with clients including business and religious leaders, coaches and therapists, medical professionals and more - the strategy being that by providing skills to one person, a ripple effect will occur as people practice the skills in their work lives, congregations, families and communities. Sonja and Clay have been married for 43 years and have 4 grown children and 5 grandkids. They live with their grand dogs in Arlington, Texas. Certifications include: Safe Conversations® Senior Trainers, Life Coaching Institute Senior Trainers, Tony Robbins Mastery University graduates, Amen Clinics Brain Health and the Well Life Coaching Certification. Sonja graduated with a degree in Education/Deaf Education and Clay in Communications/Pastoral Counseling. Insights: Sonja: Conflict is growth waiting to happen.Clay: We have to feel safe enough to connect in order to really communicate.Dave: You don't necessarily avoid conflict but you bring things up and handle them incompassionate ways. Watch your temper, your tongue, and your tone.Liz: Some things we experience in marriage are really painful and I wish we could X them out. But perhaps then, we'd missed the magic and the meaning and the growth. Invites:    ●    Before starting an important conversation with your partner, ask if it's a good time first. You could say, “is now a good time to talk about [blank]?”. If they say it's not a goodtime, schedule another time in the near future to have that conversation when he or sheis ready.   ●    Create a code word to use when things start to get negative in a conversation between you and your partner. Clay and Sonja Arnold use the word “marshmallow” to signal when either of them is feeling triggered and something needs to change. Talk with your partner about a phrase that could work for you.    ●    Don't forget to have fun with your partner. Keep dating them long after you're married. This nurtures the space between you and creates more enjoyment in your life together. Sonja & Clay Arnold Links: https://www.heartlifecoachingdfw.com/ https://safeconversations.com/   Visit our site for FREE relationship resources and regular giveaways: Strongermarriage.org podcast.strongermarriage.org Facebook: StrongerMarriage.orgInstagram: @strongermarriagelifeTikTok: @strongermarriagelife Dr. Dave Schramm: https://drdaveschramm.com https://drdavespeaks.com Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/DrDaveUSU Facebook Marriage Group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/770019130329579 Facebook Parenting Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/542067440314642   Dr. Liz Hale: http://www.drlizhale.com/ See our website for privacy information.

Video game acting is a unique art form that requires strong acting skills & an imaginative approach to storytelling. Anne is joined by special guests Dave Fennoy & Randall Ryan to discuss all things Game VO. Voice actors must bring their characters to life in a way that's authentic & impactful for players. Believe it or not, the average age for video game players is 40 years old, and these people have been playing games for 15+ years. These players are seeking a high level of story sophistication & depth of character when playing games. For a voice actor, Game VO recording is often a solitary and non-linear process due to logistics, but it still requires a deep understanding of the character you're playing, the world they inhabit, and their relationship to other characters. Invent as you go. Know your character, the world, and how your character would react in the moment. As with any genre, it's best not to overthink things too much before recording, but instead trust yourself as an actor and allow yourself to get creative during the session itself. And if you want to work with the pros, stay tuned for a unique opportunity to relax, recharge, and level up your game VO skills with Dave & Randall…   Transcript    It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.   Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am pumped to level up my BOSS knowledge about Game VO, and I am so excited and honored to have the best in the industry, Dave Fennoy and Randall Ryan. Dave is a renowned voice actor and instructor based in LA with a vast portfolio of work in commercials, narration, TV promo, animation, and of course video games. He's best known for his character, Lee Everett in the Walking Dead Game, and has voiced characters for more than 500 games on some of the industry's biggest titles. And IMDB has named him one of the 20 best male game voices of all time.   Randall Ryan began his career as a musician in touring rock bands, and today is an award-winning composer and producer of gaming and commercial music scores. He co-founded Hamster Ball Studios back in 1995, where he's been directing talent and producing game audio for more than 20 years and has since contributed to numerous high profile video game titles. Also, co-host of Let's Talk Voiceover podcast and still performs the occasional live gig and thinks dogs make the best people. And I of course, think cats, but maybe that's for another podcast discussion, Randall, I'm not sure.   Randall: Who's your animal spirit podcast?   Anne: There you go. Guys, thank you so much for joining me. I am so excited to talk to you today,   Dave: Oh, it's our pleasure. Happy to be here.   Randall: Absolutely.   Anne: So what I love, BOSSes, is that I have both sides of the glass here today so that we can get a really comprehensive view of game VO as it exists today. So I'd like to start off with Randall and ask you as a casting director, can you give the BOSSes an idea of the game VO market as it stands today, let's say, compared to 20 years ago when you first started?   Randall: Well, yeah, that's almost an unfair comparison. I think what I would say is 20 years ago, games were just kind of coming into their own as even an art form. And now as I think a lot of people know, it is the gorilla of the industry. I mean, last year games sold more than film and music combined.   Anne: Wow.   Randall: Which is just amazing. And the other thing that I see that's very different from 20 years ago is 20 years ago, it was certainly the wild west when it came to voice acting. It was often like the person of the cubicle next to the developer, and they were just throwing some voices in. And if they hired actors, there was not a lot of, I don't know if I would use the word respect. It just wasn't really truly a real part of -- VO was an afterthought. And I think the difference is, is now is not only has gaming VO reached a really high place as art form, but the thing that I really see and, and it's the reason that I think you don't pay attention to game voice as your own peril if you're a voice actor, is it is changing every other genre.   Commercials are different because of gaming acting, and even for the people that don't know it that are writing copy, they've been growing up with games. They've been playing games, and they, and they also see other commercials that have been going to more gaming acting principles. And so even if they don't know that, that's where that creative is driving from -- bottom line is that is where that creative is driving from. So even if you're not going to be in games, I think it's really important as an actor to understand what it takes to be a VO game actor. It's kind of like, even if you're gonna be on film, you really need to understand theater. You need to understand all the principles of it. It's very much the same kind of thing. You may not wanna be a Broadway actor, but you don't study theater kind of at your own peril. I think it's kind of the same idea.   Anne: Well, probably if I had to count the amount of times you said acting --   Randall: Yeah. Well   Anne: Right, in that response? So acting is so very important. Not just I think to game view, but just to voiceover in general, especially now. And I'd like to ask you, Dave, let's talk a little bit about acting and your thoughts on why it's so important that voice talent today really have that acting prowess. Dave: You know, when we talk in the general world of voiceover, acting is important, but it's more important when you are looking at video games. We become a good actor in voiceover to be able to be ourselves or a character similar to ourselves for commercials and narration, or even TV promos. But we're looking for something wider range, a much wider range of who these characters are and with a different purpose. If you're doing TV promos or commercials, your job is to get people to buy a product, watch a TV show.   As an actor in a video game, your character drives the story forward. Whoever your character is, whatever it is they are doing, they are part of a story, not part of trying to sell you something or get you to do a particular act. And what the audience for video games is now, one, they're averaging about 40 years old, and they've been playing video games for 15 to 20 years. And they want an adult experience, and they don't mean adult like chicka chicka wow wow.   Dave: But they're looking for cinematic performances, which means more subtle, more real. Your performance has to fit into the world that these games are in. It's not about your voice, no matter what your voice sounds like. It's about can you let this character inhabit you and bring this character to life with just words on a page and a microphone? And there are various techniques that really are founded in acting principles that'll help you get there.   Randall: And, Anne, I'm gonna add one thing to what you said too. You are right that your primary job in a commercial is to, I guess you could say, is to sell a product. But really in essence, even as an actor, is that really your job? Your job is still to inhabit that scripts, and, and this is where I think some of the changes are coming from. And so in the same way that there are certain people who are spokespeople that the whole celebrity thing has happened, but a lot of times you're putting the celebrity in because people like them. They aren't really selling --   Dave: Because people like them and believe them.   Randall: And believe them. Absolutely. And so people are putting him in there not to actually sell. You know, did Matthew McConaughey sell Lincoln? He didn't. He drove around and said some talking. But he's playing in essence, even though it's him, he's playing this character. And I think even in commercial, to understand what that character is supposed to be that the writing is, you still have to be that character more now than you ever did before.   Dave: Which brings us back to your point, Randall, that learning to be a good video game actor or good actor will help you across the board in voiceover.   Anne: Yeah. I'm just gonna say, with my experience working with students for not just commercial, but a lot of the long format narration, like corporate narration and explainers and, and medical, I mean, even then there is a role. It may not be as dynamic or as long played out as, let's say, a video game, but there is still that acting that has to come into play. And I'm gonna talk about how important I think it is, especially now with the advancements in technology. But I wanted to ask you about the story. Okay, so the story for a video game is a lot different than, let's say, a story that's laid out in front of you.   So like a story, if you're assuming that you're gonna be in a commercial, you're gonna be selling a product, there's a character backstory you can develop. Like you want it to end up that the person agrees with you and says, yes, this is a great product for me. If it's corporate narration, it's kind of a nicely wrapped up little story about a corporate story about their brand. But with video games, it's ever changing, and it's not necessarily all laid out in front of you. And I was gonna also do the example of an audiobook where you've got the entire book and the story's laid out in front of you. But yet with a video game, do you know the entire story right away? Or is it something that develops?   Dave: Chances are you will never ever see the entire script. The video game industry is very secretive. We have all in the video game industry signed hundreds of NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, because they're very secretive. They don't want anybody to know or share what's going on in their game. So even when you audition, sometimes you have to sign an NDA before you can even do the audition or send it in with your audition. And you're gonna get a few lines of whoever this character is, maybe a little bit about the game itself, but never "this is what the entire storyline is and this is what happens." You will never see that script. If you're an actor in a movie, in a play, in a television show, you'll see the whole script. You'll know your character's arc. Being a character in a video game is much more like being who you are. You have certain tendencies, a world, a belief system. But when you walk out the door every day, you don't know what's gonna happen to you.   Anne: That's a very different skillset, I would think. Because each and every time you are getting that script or that little tiny portion of it, you're either developing the scene, the backstory, and the emotion. And so that's like constant, like I would think acting requirement for that just is through the roof .   Dave: Well, you developed the character in that audition. But when you get there, say you did five, maybe ten lines, now you've got 100, maybe 500 lines. And some of them may be paragraphs or monologues. And it's a matter of being in character and going with what is this character thinking, feeling, doing, being, who are they talking to in this particular moment in time?   Randall: Yep. God, there's so many things that that just brings to mind, but, well, what is Mark Dale's quote, a mutual friend of ours, he's a director in London. Yeah.   Dave: This is the exhaust of the acting engine.   Randall: That's one. And then he is got that little spy thing, which I think when you're talking about how do you deal with a video game character, that to me is like, yes, that's actually it.   Dave: One of the things Mark likes to talk about is the spy who is in another city, another country, another place using a different name, dressing different, pretending to be this other person. And his life or her life depends on how well they roll with the punches, roll with a different situation, somebody else asking them particular questions, and it's constant improvising in character.   Randall: Yes.   Anne: I love that. That's such a different way to look at that. Okay, so when you're talking about how to, I guess, evolve that character is sometimes the story -- well, I imagine you would know this -- developed as you also developed the character and then the story might change?   Dave: Well, you know, it's interesting. Uh, during the Walking Dead game, sometimes I would arrive at the studio, and the script got there 20 minutes before me. So yes, actually sometimes the writing is right there with you. So sometimes they wouldn't have been able to tell you anyway because certain things hadn't been written yet. Especially in something that's ongoing, episodic like that, but whether they know it or not, you as an actor are not going to see the entire script. You are gonna live this character moment by moment. So you are living in the world of, what am I reacting to? What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What am I doing? Who am I talking to? And what's that relationship? Which we do as actors anyway, but now it's moment by moment.   Anne: Now Randall. So then in terms of directing a talent, right? What is that like for you? Because you also probably don't get the script right away either, and so you're directing and so what's that process like?   Randall: Well, I usually get it a little bit sooner than the actors, but you're right. It's not like I've been sitting there with it for months or weeks or anything like that. So everybody has got a different philosophy. I guess I'll tell you mine, but I think most directors I talk to will probably tell you something very similar to this. I think this is true of other genres, but video games, it almost has to be true. You cannot go in with this voice in your head or character in your head. Like, this person is going to be like this. It has to be a collaborative process, because you haven't, as a director, haven't had time to absorb all the stuff. But even if you did, even those occasions where you do, writers write, and there has to be a translation, and that actor is coming in with sometimes, you know, you're looking at Dave says 500, sometimes you're looking at maybe 500 lines for that character. You're looking at thousands of lines of script, and we're not gonna put people together, ensemble. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I, you know, I know that's a sticking point for a lot of people, but there are a lot of reasons that's probably not gonna happen anytime soon.   Long and the short of it is I have to trust the actor. So the actor and I both have to be working together to come up with this character. They come in with an idea, I come in with an idea, the writer comes with an idea. At some level check your ego at the door. We're gonna work this out as we go. And that's a lovely process when it works well because once it starts clicking, everybody's discovering, and that's where you get this magical performance that you couldn't have scripted it like that. But that also really derives more than anything else from actors who are comfortable with this, who aren't thrown by change, who are able to invent as they go.   And I think so much of that invention is that understanding what Dave said, where are you? What happened before you got here? What are you reacting to? How do you feel the other person? These are acting principles, but I think they're also just mindset principles that you have to get into as you're observing humanity and everything else. And some people do that extraordinarily well.   Dave: You know, one of the things I find working with students is generally they don't realize how much time and effort they need to spend in discovering everything about this character and everything about a particular scene that they're gonna do. I like to tell people, well, look, we've got words on a page or screen and a microphone, and we have to stay on mic and we have to read the words. An actor on stage, an actor on set has memorized their script. They are in costume. They have another actor that they're bouncing energy off of. There is blocking, they're gonna move from this place to this place. They know what the action is that they're going to do and they can do it. Once again, we're reading words on a page in front of a microphone.   But we have to bring the same level of acting to those words that are on a page through that microphone. And the only way to do that is to put yourself in the place of that actor, say on set, on scene.what am I wearing? You know, what does it look like around me? Am I sitting, am I standing? Am I walking? This person I'm talking to, what's my relationship with this person? Where are they in relationship to me? Or where are they when there's more of them in relationship to me? What just happened, I mean, in the last couple of seconds, that I'm saying or doing what I'm doing, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling? It's that type of preparation and using your imagination that brings you to believable performances.   Anne: So Dave, when you're creating your character, before you're going into record -- and that might evolve, right, as you do that -- what sort of steps are you taking to envelop that character in a believable way for the script that you have?   Dave: Well, just the things I was talking about, you wanna take in the whole script. Too many people I think wanna start, oh, what are my lines? Oh, is my line, my line. Bullshit. Bullshit. My line, my line.   Dave: And we wanna start with the big picture. If there is a description of what the game is, take that in. Video games are very much like movies. As a matter of fact, they're like 70-hour movies. And whatever genre you can think of, including romcom, for a movie, there is an analogous one in video game. So where does this game live? What kind of world does it live in? Then who is your character? And as much information as they give you, take that all in. Now I realize sometimes it's three paragraphs of information about your character and then five lines. You can't fit everything about that character into those lines. But you can find how this character would react in this situation. What is their worldview? Create that. One of the things I suggest to people from time to time is before you read the lines, read the character description, and then ad lib the character, talking about himself based on those descriptions. He was born here, his parents died, he was kidnapped, he was made a slave, he met a wizard. Tell your story, but without reading it; just off the cuff, improvise it based on the few things that are said there before you get into the script. And once you're in the script, you gotta pay attention to all the alternate lines besides your own and the stage direction. I'm amazed how often actors will -- they'll get their lines, but the alternate lines and stage directions they ignore. All of those are clues that you've, you've gotta take in.   Anne: Yeah. I say actually to my students that even for like something that may seem dry or boring like a corporate narration, the words are there for a reason. Somebody was paid to write those words, and every word has to have a meaning. And I think that there's so many people that just rush in to their studios, and like you were saying, just line by line, and they don't take in the whole story or try to imagine the story, that moment before. There's a moment before even I think in every piece of voiceover copy, there's a moment before. And I think if you can take the time, right, to develop that story, it will help. Let's talk a little bit about -- because I know you've got something happening, Dave, at Voiceover Atlanta, an efforts class, I think, or an X-session.   Dave: Yeah.   Anne: Let's talk about maybe not necessarily efforts, but body and how important your body is to be able to, I guess, express better acting.   Dave: Your body informs your voice. Once again, it doesn't start here. It starts with all of this. It starts with the look on your face. It starts with your honest reaction, your honest thinking, and those thoughts, those feelings will trigger a physicality that makes what you're saying come out in a certain way. Randall had mentioned something, we are translating the written word into the spoken word. They are not the same thing. I actually go so far as to tell myself, look, I'm not that into the words. They're not the most important thing. If you're crying or screaming, and there's a dialogue that's going on through it, and I can't quite understand what you're saying, for me, that's okay. Because what I really wanna understand is what this character's going through in this particular time. Now, if it's something very vital that has to be said, that leads to something else, yeah, we'll want to hear.   But voiceover 101, you wanna sound like you're smiling. What do you do? Put a smile on your face. You wanna sound like you're a little more important? Stand up just a little bit straighter and suddenly there it is. You wanna seem like you're a little bit more tired or something? Let your body relax, and there it is. How a character with a limp, or with a hunchback, or with a injury to their face, how they're gonna express themselves, or they're of a certain age and, and the voice has gotten tired from smoking and drinking alcohol -- these are what we're trying to find.   A lot of people will say, well, I'm putting on this voice, but why? There's nothing wrong with creating a voice, but why? How does this voice serve the character? What is it about this character that that voice is there? So your physicality, if you're somebody, maybe your head's off a little side from an old injury, or maybe you're that guy that's really tough and you're always got your chest out and ready for action. That's what changes your voice. Not something that you're putting on, but something that you allow to happen based on so many other things: your thought, your feeling, your action, your relationship and who you are, what your natural physicality or the natural physicality of that character is.   Randall: When you're talking about the body and you're talking about the voice -- I'll pull all three of these together, what I think at least is kind of simply -- you are acting in your emotions have nothing to do with your character voice. That voice that you put on is a filter. And where people get confused -- because historically this would happen. That voice that you're doing is somehow your character, and then that becomes caricature. That's not true. That voice is a filter. And when you talk about body parts, all the things that Dave just talked about, you could be the age you're at, and if you've got a hip injury, or you've got a limp, or you've got a lung issue, it's gonna sound a certain way.   So all you're doing after that with that voice is, it's a filter. If it's a guitar, it's, you're just turning the overdrive up a little bit on the distortion. But what you play is still gonna be what you play. It might make you play a little bit differently,'cause you got a little more sustain if we're gonna use the guitar thing. But ultimately you're gonna play what you play. And that's, I think the mental process it has to be. You are acting that emotion, you are acting that injury, you're acting that malady, you're acting that physical trait that you have. And then if it calls for it, change your voice placement, change your register, change your nasality, you know, all of that stuff.   Anne: Now Randall, you mentioned something earlier that I wanted to ask you, about when you're recording the characters, they're not typically done in ensemble format, right?   Randall: Right.   Anne: And typically the talent is recording from their studio or in a studio with you. Right?   Randall: Yeah.   Anne: Why is that? Why is there not -- because I would think if you're bouncing off other characters it might --   Randall: Yes, there would be. And sometimes you get that opportunity, but there are two reasons really. One, you have non-linear stories. In a movie and a TV and something of that nature, you have a beginning and an end. So it actually becomes very easy to say, well, we'll put these actors together -- we'll say a movie more than a tv. 'cause I think for TV set, you know, everybody shows up the same time. But we know we're gonna need you on these days 'cause you get at all your scenes that these people and they're gonna need you on these other days. When you have 50 characters that are all speaking. And when you have interactions with any and all of them, the time to actually do that, the logistic issue to do that is almost impossible. And that's one of your absolute biggest reasons right there. When it really comes down to logistics, if I'm going to have Dave come in and do 500 lines, do 1000 lines, and in those lines he's got soliloquy lines, he's got 20 that are interacting with this one person, you just can't really pull that together in the same way. And the other thing in a movie that's different than, than a video game is there's all this back end -- of course movies are more than just about filming, about having the actors there. But that is so much of a focus, where in the game there's all this other stuff you have to construct. You know, think about a movie. If you actually had to construct the world in which you live, now make it non-linear, now make it so that there're branching storylines, or that if you go this way this happens, it actually becomes logistically almost impossible to do.   Anne: That makes a lot of sense. Now, in terms of, let's say the flow of what you do as a director, once you cast something, is it mostly just when the actors available they record their lines? I mean there's gotta be so many things, I would think that the story's gotta be there, right? The game writers have to have the story written. and then you have to get all of the characters to record their lines. And then -- so tell me a little bit about that process.   Randall: Well, that's a big thing. I'll try to make it kind of short. So one of the things you really have to do is at some point you gotta lock the script down. And trust me, that can sometimes be an issue. But you just do, you have to lock the script down, and you have to get everything that you're going to get. Of course there has to be some when the actor's available, if I, if an actor not available for a week 'cause they're on set doing something else, of course you can't use 'emthen. But really that becomes the puzzle piece that comes on this end of scheduling everybody. Dave, I've got this time on Monday and Tuesday. I don't have anything till Thursday. Do any of those fit with you? Bam. You lock it down, you, you do that.   The other thing that is also different about games that -- I mean as budgets go up, maybe this will change, but at least for now, again, some of it is logistics and some of it is budget -- I cast Dave to do a role. By the way, when Dave shows up, sometimes he knows ahead of time, but a lot of times it's like, hey, there're probably gonna be a couple more, just letting you know. And he shows up and because you've got soldier numbers 1 through 10 and townsperson number 1 through 20, it's like, Dave, can you pick up a townsperson? Can you pick up a soldier? By the way, they can't sound like the character that you're actually in here to do. You know? So that's another thing that happens all the time.   Anne: Yeah. And I always like for talent to understand what happens like outside of their little bubble of just voicing something. And so that's why I think it's wonderful to have the two of you there, 'cause it can kind of see how you really have to work together in order to produce and do something successfully together. So it's good to know like what you have to do as a producer or director. And of course the talent has to really, I think, be able to perform pretty much on demand, is what I'm thinking. That's what it's sounding like to me.   Dave: Exactly pretty much on demand. . And it's interesting from my perspective, whether I'm in my home studio or I go into another studio, there will be a producer there, the writer might be there, the director might be there. And I, I think the director's job is, the director's the person who knows how to communicate with actors. The writer may be able to tell you, well this is what's going on and so forth. But they have a tendency to keep talking too much, and they're more invested than they need to be to get the performance you want, whereas the director is your guide. When you are at home doing your audition, you are your own director. You have to make choices. But when you arrive on your gig or the gig arrives at your house, and you're on camera there, now you have somebody to take some of that weight off. And maybe they've listened to your audition and said, well you know, you made a good acting here, but that was the wrong choice. What actually is happening is this, and our job as actors is to be able to create the thought, feeling, attitude, movement of a character, and if it's something different, it's up to us to just make it different.   Anne: I love that you said that cause there's so many people I know that seem to be afraid of making that decision whether it's right or wrong and committing to the acting, because they don't necessarily know what's happening and so therefore they just play it safe.   Dave: And beyond playing it safe, they don't really know. They haven't made a definite decision. And the person who is listening to that audition come in, it doesn't say anything to them. You're probably going to do better making wrong strong choices than no choices.   Randall: Absolutely. Or safe choices. Absolutely.   Anne: I love that. I love that. I got so excited that you said, 'cause I was just like totally connecting with that. Let's talk a little bit about talent that might wanna get into video game voiceover and maybe the demo, which I think is probably an important part of helping them maybe get their foot in the door. Let's talk about what's important in a game demo.   Dave: It's interesting. We were talking about this with each other just the other day. I always liken video game acting --I always tell my students, look, I want you to think of yourself as a character actor. When we think about character actors, and even movie stars who started as character actors, there's something about them, the way they speak, the rhythm of it, their look that we have a reaction to, an emotional reaction to. And every one of us has some of that. You may not feel like you are ABC to yourself, but people who encounter you, that's what they see. So we wanna find out who you are, and now we wanna display that character, that you, the truth of you in a variety of characters from a variety of times in a variety of places with a variety of points of view. So we might be in space, we might be medieval, we might be futuristic, we might be post-apocalyptic, we may be a doctor, a lawyer, a soldier, a wizard, a swordsman, a thief. We wanna bring all these characters with dissimilar energies, dissimilar worlds together to demonstrate all the things that you can do.   Randall: Yeah. Be authentic first. I mean, I like to listen to a demo. I have a 1 and a 1A. 1 is be authentic. That has to be it. I have to stop listening to you as an actor 'cause there's time for that after the demo's done. When I hear a snippet, whatever your 12 seconds or whatever the time is with that character, ideally, and I know you, you can't always do this, but ideally when that clip stops, you're like, no, wait, what happens? 'Cause you got invested in it, you know? And then the second thing is a certain amount of versatility. Now, I think unfortunately to most people, versatility they think means different voices. And it is true that that is part of it. There's no question that you have to be able to demonst --'cause if there're gonna be three characters in a game, I can't hear the same voice. So yes, you do have to be able to learn to change your register, to change your voice placement, to change accents, to do all this other kind of stuff.   But ultimately it really comes out of your attitude difference and your emotional difference. And being -- if you're hyped, if you are just in this manic place, your voice is just gonna sound different than if you are at the bottom of the well depressed, even being the same person. So find those things, not just the emotions of them, but what does your voice do when it does that? How are you delivering things in a different way when you find that? And that's where you get all this variance and you hear different people out of it. So that is definitely 1A. If you, if you're a one trick pony, if it's a good trick, you might get booked a lot, but you're just gonna up your game and up your bookings the more legitimate tricks you can show. I probably shouldn't use the word trick. The more legitimate shades of yourself that you can show, the more legitimate shades of what you do, the better it's gonna play for you.   Dave: And let me just say this, there are people who can do lots and lots of accents, lots and lots of different voices, and sometimes that can kind of hurt you on your demo. If you've done so many different things that they don't come away with a sense of who you are.   Randall: Right.   Dave: You might not remember the name of so-and-so who did all these voices. None of them were the same. They may have all been really good, but you don't remember who this person is.   Randall: Right.   Dave: So I always say, look, start with who you are and keep coming back to who you are. You may have some in different accents and different voices, but start with you and keep coming back to you.   Randall: Yep. I agree.   Anne: So is there a time period -- I know that I work with so many students that are new, and they always wanna know, well, how long will I have to study? Or how long will I have to do this before I can create a demo? If you had to give your experience, how long would it take for someone to -- I don't even wanna think that it's all about the demo because really it's about the acting. Right? And it's about who you are as a voice actor. How long should a student expect to study acting in video game VO? Is it the same for everybody? Is there a length of time that you think, oh, after five years, this will be great? Or after one year, what do you guys think?   Randall: Absolutely depends on the person. I think mentally, if you're talking to people who are getting into the business or are wanting to get into, even just, I've been doing commercial, I wanna do video games. Even if it's that, so somebody who has been working. I think if you mentally think two years of hard work, that's a good baseline. Now there are gonna be people who have all the tools that they need, and in six months they're just rocking and rolling. There are gonna be people that after two years, they're just now starting to figure it out. And it's gonna take 'em five. How do you know? But I think you need to be mentally prepared. Kinda like if you start a business up, I think this is gonna take me a $100,000 in a year. Double it or triple it and then you're probably safe. I think it's the same thing.   Dave: And in so many ways, I think people getting into voiceover and not just for video games or animation, but for the various genre, each of the genres calls for something a little different. There are some rules of the road for all of them. I just think when you get to video games especially, from the smallest whisper to the loudest shout, from characters who very much might be like the disc jockey you used to be, or to the used car salesman that maybe you remember -- you're gonna see all those kinds of characters. If you come with some characters, with some idea of playing like you were when you were a kid, when you were playing cops or robbers or spaceman and aliens -- whatever it was, you weren't judging yourself. You were having a good time. And you put yourself completely into it.   One of the big things I see with a lot of grown up people who now suddenly wanna do this, or maybe they've wanted to do it for a long time, but there's a timidity. Oh, I'm a little, I'm a little scared. I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't want anybody to think this is silly or -- you gotta give yourself to it and that holds people back. Your ability to read can hold you back. Because especially in video games and voiceover in general, we are reading in the moment. We've gotta take the words off the page and connect them to somebody. So I have run into people who've come to me, not often, but a couple people, I've said, look, you don't need me. You've got this. Get your demo done, you can do it with me or somebody else. But you're ready. There's some other people I've worked with for a long time, and I see improvement, but it's slow. But if that's where you really want to go, and you are getting better and getting better, stay on the road.   Randall: Yeah.   Anne: Yeah. It's a journey. It's a journey. So you guys have an exciting event coming up at the end of April I saw for Game VO. Tell us a little bit about that.   Randall: Well, this really came out of an outgrowth of Dave and I; we talk a lot. We've known each other for a long time. And one of the things that we have not seen along the way is what I would call a throughput. There's nothing wrong with this. In fact, there's some wonderful things to do this, but you go to most conferences or retreats or whatever you want to call them, and there's not a real throughput. You get the promo person, you got the commercial person. And there's, there's some real value to that, you know, especially if you're working in multiple genres. But what we don't see anybody doing is, okay, we're gonna strip this down to the basics and take you through -- you know, you don't get to cherry pick. We're gonna take you through this whole thing. Okay. You went to drama school and you're like, and you wanna roll your eyes? I don't know about going back to drama school.   I had a student, I shouldn't even call him a student, an extremely well known voice actor who took one of my recent two-day workshops. And when I saw his name on there, I was like, really? Well, that's interesting. I wonder why he's doing this. And you know, the thing that was really interesting is there was a technique that really truly went back to original acting. And this is a guy who's a drama school, totally trained, accredited, all this other kind of stuff. He's done so much other stuff that he literally had -- now it was easy to getting back in there, but he had forgotten to some degree like, no, you have to start here. He's got all these voices that he can do. He's a wonderful actor. You know, if you had mentioned your name, maybe he'd be like, really? Well that's the point. Somebody like that even didn't have that beginning. So all this throughput we have not seen. And so the idea that we wanna do is take people all the way through what it takes to really truly be a video game voice actor, from let's start with basics of acting all the way up to we're gonna do sessions, and you can't skip the steps along the way. You've gotta do this to this, to this, to this.   Dave: I have to echo the same thing, that I've worked with students who have been on camera, on stage. And for them, the world of voice acting is completely different. And because they're used to memorization, and being in costume, and having another actor that they're working with, they are lost all too often when it's words on a page and a microphone. And sometimes it's just coming from this genre to that genre. If you're doing promos, TV promos, you can have a style. If you're a narrator, you can have a style. If you're doing commercials, you can have a style and work and do very well. With video games, style isn't gonna carry you but so far. You have to be an actor.   Randall: It's a bigger thing. You know, it's, it's actually a bigger thing. You can't have a style.   Dave: Style can be this big, but if you're gonna be an actor --   Randall: No, that's true. It's a range. It's not just a style, it's a range.   Dave: Yeah. And learning how to connect to that, to your range.   Anne: And now, so when is this event and how long is this event?   Dave: Well, it's called Game VO Mexico 2023. It is happening in Akamal, Mexico. That's on the Yucatan Peninsula. And it's the 27th through the 30th of April.   Anne: Okay. Three days.   Randall: Three days.   Dave: Three days.   Anne: All right. Three days of intensive classes, sessions?   Dave: Intensive classes, sessions, and it's gonna be fun. And in one of the most beautiful places in the world. We were doing some location scouting a couple of months ago. I was down there with Randall, and we went to a restaurant, and that night they said, oh, come back and watch the sea turtles make their little baby walk to the sea. It's those kinds of --there's iguanas around and toucans. You'll hear the monkeys in the tree. I mean, it's, it's an amazing place and it's very much outside of your norm. I don't know about you, but have you ever been someplace, you got outside of your house, outside of your city, a different place, and suddenly you could think differently?   Anne: Oh yeah. It'll change your life.   Dave: This is gonna be one of those places, one of those events that you'll be able to shed some things that have been holding you back and embrace some things that are gonna carry you forward.   Anne: I love it. So end of April, where can people find out more information and sign up for this?   Randall: Well, it's the website. It's gamevomexico.com. So just like it sounds.   Dave: Gamevomexico.com.   Anne: All right. Awesome. And for the BOSSes out there, you guys are going to give us a special coupon?   Randall: That is correct.   Anne: Just for the BOSSes. So if you guys want to, you are definitely getting a discount.   Randall: It's a $500 discount. So it's, it's basically 10%. It's a sizable discount.   Anne: That's awesome. Woo. So a $500 discount, you guys can go to that website and enter a coupon code, VO BOSS, to get that discount. That's amazing. So gamevomexico.com. Coupon code VO BOSS to get that discount. And how can BOSSes get in touch with either one of you? Let's say Dave, if they wanna get training?   Dave: Oh, I'm so easy to find, they can email me at davefennoy@mac.com. They can go to my website, davefennoy.com and get in touch with me, and they can check me out every Wednesday at 6:00 PM Pacific for Ask Dave Fennoy anything. I promise I will talk about this.   Randall: This is true.   Anne: Yay. And Randall, what about you? How can people get in touch with you?   Randall: The two easiest places, and I say easy because I've got the long email addresses. My company, what I do the direction through, is Hamster Ball Studios. So it's Randall, randall@hamsterballstudios.com. But on the other side, the stuff that I do as far as teaching and coaching and consulting, I probably shouldn't say coaching 'cause I don't, you know, Dave's the one on one guy. I'm more big macro, big picture, hey, wow, dude. But it's randall@thevoicedirector.world.   Anne: Awesome. Thank you, guys, so very much. This was so informative, so wonderful, and we so appreciate that discount. BOSSes, check that out. Gamevomexico.com. Use that code of VO BOSS, get yourself a discount. BOSSes, I want to ask you a question. Do you have a local nonprofit that is close to your heart? Did you ever wish that you could do more to help them? Well, you certainly can. And visit 100voiceswhocare.org to learn how. Big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect and network like BOSSes like us three today. Thank you, guys ,so much again, find out more at ipdtl.com. Everyone, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.   Randall: Take care, Anne.   Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voBOSS.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

John McMahon and John Kaplan welcome Dave Tiley in this latest episode of Revenue Builders. In this conversation, Dave shares his journey of being a serial entrepreneur, growing and selling multiple successful startups, and how it led him to become a private equity investor. He discusses his experiences running and growing businesses and developing his “good to great” approach along the way. With this approach, Dave and his firm Align Capital Partners get radically honest about what's working in their companies and what is not benefitting the end goal. Applying this philosophy to culture, accounting, sales and talent is what enables them to help the companies they work with graduate from just good to truly great. Additional Resources:Support Restore Addiction Recovery in fighting the opioid crisis: https://restoreaddictionrecovery.com/Visit Align Capital Partners Website: https://aligncp.com/Connect with Dave on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davetiley/Listen to More Revenue Builders: https://www.forcemanagement.com/revenue-builders-podcast HIGHLIGHTSDifferences Between Venture Capital and Private EquityInvesting in the Middle MarketVC Funding for StartupsThe Future of Venture-Backed CompaniesThe Importance of Both Revenue and Earnings Growth in Private EquityThe Different Types of Private Equity InvestmentsThe Importance of Company Culture in AcquisitionsThe Importance and The Benefits of a Good Leadership TeamInnovation and Culture are Key for Successful CompaniesThe Importance of Company Culture in Hiring New EmployeesThe Importance of a Good Sales ProcessThe Differentiator Between Good and Great SalespeopleThe Benefits of Good to Great for Small BusinessesThe Importance of a Company's Mission StatementTaking Risks and Betting on Yourself QUOTESDave - Keep your mind open to new opportunities: "What I would encourage people is financially, they get rewarded no matter what, and it's usually a pretty life-changing event, and that's why we really focus on the journey, not the exit. It's that journey, because they just, they quiver just got richer and bigger, because they've done now a private equity exit, and that just makes them more right open and the door opens for other opportunities." Dave - You can learn in every situation: "I just want to tell people, man bloom where you're planted. Everyone was trying to think, Well, I gotta get to the next three jobs, or I gotta get over here. I gotta get over here. And they're missing the blessing of what this job can give you. Because I think you can learn something in every situation." Check out John McMahon's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Qualified-Sales-Leader-Proven-Lessons/dp/0578895064

We have done three inbetweenisodes so far on healthcare stakeholder collaboration. In sum, there are two major issues that patients have with our healthcare industry, and both can only be solved for if healthcare stakeholder collaboration happens: Patients falling into care gaps and winding up with bad downstream consequences Patients not being able to afford their care This show, we are moving on to talk about an actionable solution here to the care gap problem—the very ubiquitous issue of patients with some pretty serious health issues who remain either undiagnosed or not on optimal treatment or follow-up. Our team at Aventria Health has a big success story that I would love to share relative to care gaps and how to think about solving for them at the local, regional, and national level. Spoiler alert here: What we're talking about in this healthcare podcast, which we call our Groundswell Solution™, improved the usage of best-practice clinical guidelines for patients with end-stage liver disease by 23% nationally. Also keep in mind that what is fast becoming a major factor in developing liver disease is obesity, and the incidence of liver disease is growing. As aforementioned, we are talking about an Aventria Health Group Groundswell Solution, which is the idea of getting diverse stakeholders who are enthusiastic to be empowered as part of a team to help solve for gaps in care and really improve patient outcomes. It definitely takes a village, and if we can find ways where different organizations can work together to contribute and leverage strengths along shared priorities, then great things can really happen. Before we kick in to the show here, let me bring up the miracle of the commons. This is cool. This was a term that was coined by Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom, by the way, won the Nobel Prize for this work. She saw how humans have such an amazing capacity to work together through what she called design principles and come up with some really unique and inspiring solutions that benefit everybody. You can connect with Stacey and Dave on LinkedIn. If you are interested in contributing to Groundswell, please complete this short questionnaire.  Dave and Stacey are co-presidents of Aventria Health Group, a consultancy working with clients who endeavor to form collaborations with payers, providers, Pharma, employer organizations, or patient advocacy groups. They are also co-presidents of QC-Health, a benefit corporation finding cost-effective ways to improve the health of Americans. Each week on Relentless Health Value, Stacey uses her voice and thought leadership to provide insights for healthcare industry decision makers trying to do the right thing. Each show features expert guests who break down the twists and tricks in the medical field to help improve outcomes and lower costs across the care continuum. Relentless Health Value is a top 100 podcast on iTunes in the medicine category and reaches tens of thousands of engaged listeners across the healthcare industry. Dave is a 30-year veteran helping clients work at the intersection of payers, providers, pharmacy, Pharma, and medical device companies. He is an accomplished strategist, providing innovative customer marketing, access, quality, and health intervention solutions for large clients and has directed the development of numerous industry-leading campaigns in primary care and specialty markets. Dave has helped dozens of clients achieve top rankings in their respective categories. He is also an active member of the Pharmacy Quality Alliance.   03:03 How can areas of improvement be flagged in such a fragmented patient care journey? 04:06 What is “the miracle of the commons”? 04:54 How is the miracle of the commons being used at Aventria and QC-Health? 07:51 What is Groundswell, and how does it utilize the miracle of the commons? 11:13 “Is the answer, then, to drive more knowledge and more awareness?”—Dave 11:35 “What about using technology to provide curated, highly targeted information that can support them at the point of care?”—Dave 13:25 “You want to identify where these gaps are across the full spectrum of the journey.”—Dave 15:08 “This is something that is not commonly happening on its own.”—Dave 16:40 “Done in the right way, people are excited … to improve care and improve outcomes.”—Dave 18:50 “Our aim is really to meet people and teams where they are.”—Stacey 19:35 “You don't have to know how or why or where—merely that I think this outcome is not what it could be. That's the place to start.”—Dave 20:01 “You have to understand the different goals of the different stakeholders.”—Dave 21:14 “If we can do the right things the right way, then we can serve many masters.”—Dave   You can connect with Stacey and Dave on LinkedIn. If you are interested in contributing to Groundswell, please complete this short questionnaire.    Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast How can areas of improvement be flagged in such a fragmented patient care journey? Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast What is “the miracle of the commons”? Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast How is the miracle of the commons being used at Aventria and QC-Health? Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast What is Groundswell, and how does it utilize the miracle of the commons? Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “Is the answer, then, to drive more knowledge and more awareness?” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “What about using technology to provide curated, highly targeted information that can support them at the point of care?” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “You want to identify where these gaps are across the full spectrum of the journey.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “This is something that is not commonly happening on its own.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “Done in the right way, people are excited … to improve care and improve outcomes.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “Our aim is really to meet people and teams where they are.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “You don't have to know how or why or where—merely that I think this outcome is not what it could be. That's the place to start.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “You have to understand the different goals of the different stakeholders.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast “If we can do the right things the right way, then we can serve many masters.” Our host, Stacey, and Co-President Dave Dierk discuss the miracle of the commons on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast   Recent past interviews: Click a guest's name for their latest RHV episode! Merrill Goozner, Betsy Seals (EP387), Stacey Richter (INBW36), Dr Eric Bricker (Encore! EP351), Al Lewis, Dan Mendelson, Wendell Potter, Nick Stefanizzi, Brian Klepper (Encore! EP335), Dr Aaron Mitchell (EP382), Karen Root, Mark Miller, AJ Loiacono, Josh LaRosa, Stacey Richter (INBW35), Rebecca Etz (Encore! EP295), Olivia Webb (Encore! EP337), Mike Baldzicki, Lisa Bari, Betsy Seals (EP375), Dave Chase, Cora Opsahl (EP373), Cora Opsahl (EP372), Dr Mark Fendrick (Encore! EP308), Erik Davis and Autumn Yongchu (EP371), Erik Davis and Autumn Yongchu (EP370), Keith Hartman, Dr Aaron Mitchell (Encore! EP282)    

This week we're exploring the fascinating and controversial topic of flat earth theory....again. This ancient belief, once relegated to the fringes of society, has seen a resurgence in recent years thanks to the power of the internet and social media. On this episode, we'll take a deep dive into the history of the flat earth movement and examine the arguments made by its supporters.  We'll explore the evidence (or lack thereof) supporting the idea that the earth is not a globe, but rather a flat, disc-shaped plane. Whether you're a believer or a skeptic, you won't want to miss this revisit. Join us as we challenge our assumptions about the world around us and explore the flat earth phenomenon. Did we change our minds? *Intro sound clip features comedian Dan Cummins If you have any questions or topics you'd like to see the society cover, please reach out at Contact@hushhushsociety.com   You can find all our audio, blogs and drop sweet ratings at www.hushhushsociety.com Find our Video Content on our Rokfin Leave us a review on Apple, our website, Podchaser or GoodPods You can grab Hush Hush merch and help support the show on Patreon Link up with the society on social media:   Facebook   Instagram   Twitter    Join our Discord and chat with us   TRANSCRIPT Flat Earth 2   [00:01:00]  Dave: Greetings, Hushlings. Welcome back to the Hush Hush Society Conspiracy Hour. Mike: Where we journey into the world of conspiratorial mysteries and dark truths Dave: I'm Declassified Dave Mike: and I'm Mystery Mike and as though is we're joined by our fellow globetard Slick Fronk Sanders. Fronk: The Earth is probably round how you doing? Dave: it's going. Are things going around today? Mike: Quick question flat Earthers. How do boomerangs work on your flat plane? Fronk: Boomerangs are flat.  Dave: that got him. If you didn't notice today, we returned to the great debate in this episode. Is the Earth round? Is the Earth flat? Fronk: Hushling's, uh, in case you weren't [00:02:00] aware, we visited this topic in season three and completely shat all over the flat plane and we believe we should revisit this mother of all modern conspiracies, seeing as though it's such a big part of conspiracy culture. Dave: it's getting even bigger, even though you guys probably most definitely are gonna take a second dumping in this one. Mike: not as bad as the first. Dave: Not  Fronk: Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Mike: we've discussed how there are different phases to being a flat earther. I'm guess I'm still in stage zero and we were in stage one in May of 2021. let's go up around to stage two But before we search for the horizon and fall off the flat plane and search for God in the sky under the spotlight sun, you can always find us on our social medias, Facebook, [00:03:00] Instagram, and Twitter Dave: You can also find everything hush hush society on our website, www.hushhushsociety.com. From episodes to links to merchandise, and the ability to drop a review or leave us a voicemail. We hope we get some after this episode. Mike: Hmm. Please do. Dave: Yeah. Fronk: And we keep mentioning that we are now also a video podcast. You can not only. To us, but you can watch us, you can see our faces. You can get that expressional action that you might not get from just an audio recording. And to find those episodes, you just gotta go to Rock Fin. It's, it's very simple. Rock fin.com. There's even an app. And in the search bar you just put in Hush Hush Society. You'll find us nice and easy. And there you can find all of our videos. you hit the notification button. You get notifications when our videos come out. Check it out. Mike: And just one last thing before we move on to the flat plane, we just [00:04:00] want to give a quick shout out to our newest patron, Gabrielle May. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Fronk: Just in case you're new to this, we're gonna do a quick little recap for you on what Flat Earth theory is, and essentially, in a nutshell, the earth is flat rather than round. Pretty self explanatory, although it's made its appearance throughout history. The theory gained popularity around 2009 and has continued to grow ever since. Dave: It is regarded as one of the most controversial conspiracy theories in existence. Why claim that our earth is flat and not a globe easy? That's because it looks flat and feels flat and is surrounded by 200 feet of ice blocking us from traversing across an infinite plane or falling off the edge. Sounds correct, right? Fronk: I mean, yeah, that's what I've been made to believe. That's that's what it seems like Mike: Yeah. Riding on the back of a turtle through the cosmos, but the cosmos [00:05:00] doesn't exist, so where's the turtle going? Anyways,  according to believers, NASA and the ruling elite protect the ice walls from people attempting to climb over and fall from the disc. Can't make it up. They also believe that earth's gravity is an illusion, and that objects are driven up by a mysterious force called dark energy, rather than spinning and being stuck to a surface, Fronk: But on the other hand, there are countless photographs, videos, and images from astronauts and the International Space Station that kind of seem like evidence to show that the Earth is round. But these are not considered real evidence and are allegedly faked by the government or the ruling elites Dave: Now before we move on, flat, earthers already pissed off at our description in the beginning, Fronk: probably. Dave: we wanted to pull you in, but we'll make it as [00:06:00] fair as possible with some of the talking points that we're going to go over.  Now, Hushlings, there is the flat Earth Society as well as thousands of others from around the globe in groups. In addition to independent researchers, even though there is evidence to contradict some of these arguments, they are dismissed as fabrications of around earth conspiracy, along with stars, planets, galaxies, space, and gravity, all being a part of the facade of where we live. Mike: That is my biggest thing when it comes down to a debate between a flat earth and someone who believes that we live on a globe, is that it always results. In a flat earth are saying, well, that's what you've been told. You've been lied to. You're believing a lie that's being told to you, which is the old faithful of all conspiracy theorists, is that you're being lied to. That's all well and good, but at what point do you turn around and say, the [00:07:00] science is being lied to you. Nasa, we know lies to us. We know they fabricate images. We know what they do. But again, that's more of an argument that NASA is filled with bunch of liars. But at what point do you look at it maybe there is evidence that it's a globe or maybe there is evidence that it's a flat plane. There has to be a certain cutoff point where you stop saying, well, you're being lied to. That's what they want you to believe. That's what they're fabricating the science. They're fabricating this. They're fabricating that. How, and this has always been my issue, how do you talk to a flat earth and say, what piece of evidence would it take for you to say that it's a globe Dave: Pictures. Mike: pictures? , but then you show them a picture of this is what our earth looks like. It's a globe. Or you show them video or you show them anything. Well, that's been fabricated. It's always like this deniability to go against what they believe in. Like you, you have to deny [00:08:00] it. You have to deny it because it shakes the entire foundation of what their belief system is, especially when it comes to a flat earth. But then they always revert back to, that's what the Bible says. That's what the Bible says. I'm sorry, we, we've been over the Bible many times. We all know that it's been changed a thousand times and it's a book.  Fronk: not only that, but that's what they're making the Bible say. That's what certain people are interpreting the bible to say, and you can make the Bible say a lot of different things depending on how you decide to interpret it as a person. And if you're interpreting it as, they're telling me about the flat earth and so be it, Dave: This episode is gonna focus a little bit more heavily on some of the things that Mike and Fronk just mentioned, talking about NASA and the why would they lie and why would they fake and indoctrinated us as kids to believe that it's a ball. , and these are major [00:09:00] talking points that I've learned over the last year and a half since we've done this, other than just the physical evidence. We have the physical evidence if you're going to go by the, mainstream. we'll go through a bunch of stuff. I think we'll talk about religion too. So Mike, save those nails, buddy. Mike: We'll look into some of what we just listed and more throughout this episode, and it strongly suggested you listen to our first crack at this crust to understand where some of the historical beliefs come from and a lot of other things about this theory, mainly the science. But let's give this another oscillation, shall we? We're gonna literally hit some of the proposed theories and then firmly spit some facts. be prepared to, uh, confirm or deny your belief. Fronk: Before we completely dive into the flat plane, we're gonna talk about the planet as we've been taught in a traditional sense. Our Native [00:10:00] Earth is a terrestrial rocky planet, correct? Yes or no? I mean, whether it's flat around truth,  It has a dynamic and active surface with mountains, valley, canyons, you name it. All the different geographical structures and a variety of other features. It has water covering 70% of its surface, as well as harboring thousands of life forms, and it has a unique orbiting satellite arm. Dave: it has a circumference. Remember this number Hushlings 24,901 miles. And it shares our solar system with eight, sorry, Pluto, eight other planets and is rotating at around thousand miles an hour while orbiting our home star. Now this is where flat Earthers start to deny our existence on a spinning ball. we're orbiting around our sun at 67,000 miles an hour, all while zipping around the center of the Milky Way, roughly at [00:11:00] around 490,000 miles an hour. And the biggest claim, you can't feel it.   Mike: Well, that's just what we're taught in school. Unfortunately, most of us didn't escape the clutches of the Rockefeller Education System. There's that name again. Yep. He created the General Education Board in 1902 at the cost of 129 million. It's a lot of money back in 1902. It's a lot of money today and provided major funding for schools across the nation and was very influential in shaping the school system. Also, he's quoted as saying, I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers. Sounds like my pause. Fronk: And that speaks some deep truth because school does indoctrinate the nation into the trap of society. Once you hit like 10th grade, you're already filling out college applications, colleges that you're gonna be in debt to for the rest of your life, that you're gonna have to work for the majority of [00:12:00] your life to pay off for that job that you'll be working for the rest of your life. And it's this endless cycle. So that's definitely perpetuated by some global elitist. I get that to an extent, maybe the indoctrination portion of it. Dave: Well, from the beginning. Which classroom have you ever been in that didn't have a globe?    Fronk: In 1928, John D Rockefeller Jr. Financed an expedition to the South Pole as a British secret service. Agent Rockefeller knew perfectly that no South Pole existed, but people were curious about the true shape of the world. From 1956 onward, Antarctica was completely controlled by the Pentagon. Hence the Antarctic Treaty. And anybody visiting this chunk of land without permission was shot on site. Admiral by who we've talked about extensively, died mysteriously in 1957 and perhaps had a timely demise before he could tell the truth about what the South Pole. Mike: When it comes to the[00:13:00] Antarctic treaty and being shot on sight, who is shooting these people on sight? Fronk: Snow snipers. Those drones from Star Wars that landed on Hoth Mike: , that's a lot of land to patrol in order to watch for people.  Dave: remember. Antarctica is 5.2 million square miles as well. Mike: That's what doesn't make sense to me. You're gonna be shot on sight and that's another part of the Antarctic treaty that I also don't understand. Who is physically stopping you from going there? The only thing that's physically stopping you from going to Antarctica is it costs a lot of money. To either charter a boat that would go there. most people don't go there. Most charter boats don't go there. You could do a flyover, but that's only partial. Who is physically stopping you besides your bank account? Dave: I did see a video recently of some guys on a boat that were stopped. I think they were stopped by the New Zealand Navy [00:14:00] or the Australian Navy, and they were turning him around and you can see like. Ice in the distance or something like that. And I don't know if there was just like an iceberg that was out there that they were near, but the allegations on TikTok was got turned around at the bottom of the world, cause I believe it's, there's some degree, and I'm gonna sound uneducated saying this, but I don't know the degree, I think, but there's some degree at the bottom of the world. That you can't go. But the Antarctic treaty, it contradicts itself because the Antarctic treaty was supposed to be a demilitarized zone. No military stuff. No commercial, nothing. It was supposed to be strictly for research. Fronk: So why is the Navy there? Of who? New Zealand? Dave: It was either New Zealand or Australia Fronk: So what is the New Zealand or Australian Navy doing there? Dave: Well, they're close to Antarctica Fronk: Yeah, but isn't a non-military zone. Dave: But there's only military scientists maybe not all military scientists. You got like, Noah [00:15:00] scientists and stuff, and I'm sure NASA is down there, the Nazis, they're all down there. You know, you  got everybody. Antarctica looks like a continent to me, and there's a lot of pictures of it. And are they fake? I am. I'm not on the plane, so I don't know. . Why would it matter and why would they lie? The largest argument of why these elites would lie to us is most likely there's more land, more resources, maybe even unlimited resource. And lands beyond the ice shelf or walls, as well as the suppression of how powerful of beings we are, which can kind of be a different argument that has nothing to do with flat earth as well. thoughts on that? Fronk: I could get behind both of those points to an extent in the shoes of a flat Earth, for example. Yes. If you told me that there was unlimited resources, we're talking oil, we're talking the purest water in the world. We're talking minerals that are used to power the world's [00:16:00] electronics, whatever, energy generating methods that we might have unlimited supply of that which would completely destroy not only the US dollar, but the world economy, which is what the alleged elites thrive off of. And if it's not money that they thrive off of it is leaching our fucking energy. And we've talked about that a lot. And if we were to unlock some sort of crazy. Secret about ourselves or humanity as a whole. That might be incredibly enlightening to a lot of people or disturbing. I could see it going either way, but if, if a bunch of people woke up and they were incredibly enlightened, that could be bad for the reptilian negative energy blood suckers. Dave: I don't think it would go well for anybody. I think we always do ask this question a lot when we talk about this as is, would it change our everyday lives? And we usually say no, but it would, because we [00:17:00] probably have a massive economic shutdown. religions would collapse. There'd probably be some type of total anarchy that would happen and then we'd have our own epiphanies of being like, not really upset that I was wrong, but shit I was lied to as well, part of the Doy group. And that would be a shitty day. would it end everything for me? No, it would change everything for sure. But I think the unlimited resources part, I could see somebody hiding that, , we did talk about Admiral Byrd and Admiral Byrd went through, supposedly into the hollow earth, could he have misinterpreted and gone through a crack and found more land. Who knows? In the writing The Iron Republic, written by EW Barrington and published also in 1902, another one of that year with the education system. It was published in Florida Magazine, and it said that an explorer went through a crack in the ice walls and found an advanced civilization after being lost for over a month at sea. So that [00:18:00] means he went through the ice walls and there was more ocean,  Mike: Have there ever been any, any pictures or video of the ice wall or beyond it? Fronk: Uh, people take pictures of. Ice shelves and try to say that they're the ice walls, but at the same time, those could very well just be ice shelves or very large icebergs Mike: Makes sense. Makes sense.  Dave: I wanna see a flight going around the whole whatever, 76,000 miles it's supposed to actually be. Just banking around the whole rim. But you can't go there because the military will shoot you down in a de militarized. Mike: I still think that there's plenty of ways to get there. And we talked, who do we talk with? That had went to Antarctica? Was it Mark Fronk: on a cruise with like their father. Yeah. Mark O'Connell. Yeah. Dave: Yep. Mike: O'Connell said that , he went to Antarctica with his family. Dave: San Diego Padre's pitcher's there right now.  Fronk: Yeah, but he, he also mentioned that it was like the only [00:19:00] part of Antarctica that they'll let a civilian on and it's like this tiny little peninsula and they've got the little, novelty pole.  Like you could go up and touch it and take a picture with it. Yeah. And they got little stuff, penguins and shit. Dave: could it just be a simple explanation why we don't bring people there? One, you'll die  Fronk: , yes, it's very extreme terrain, there's tons of extreme terrain that we're allowed to go to that you would probably die in if you weren't very well equipped. Mike: Yeah, it makes sense that the only reason that they would be stopping people from going there, besides the massive, endless amounts of resources that they're hoarding from us, would be that they just don't want people going out there and fucking dying.  This brings up another allegation that even the word extraterrestrial means extra terra or more land. Trying to hold some weight to the notion this has been taught to us. We see in the film The Next Level by David Weiss. [00:20:00] He meets with an older woman named Ruth. She's 102, God bless her, from Connecticut, who was in tears claiming that she was taught flat Earth in school, in Hamden, Connecticut, and now feels vindicated and better because of his truths. Dave: she was like, lost it. Mike: like real, real emotional about it. Dave: Yeah. Really emotional about it Mike: Okay. We just mentioned the Rockefeller education system and him saying that he doesn't want a nation of thinkers. He wants a nation of workers. , in the 1920s, if she was taught that the earth was flat, She would've been learning from that education system. Dave: True. Yeah, but I don't think that there's actually, I've looked and looked and looked and couldn't find any definitive evidence that was saying that they actually taught that in schools. Because even in 2022 curriculums across the country are not the same, even across the [00:21:00] same states, depending on the size of your state, they're not the same, especially when you get to advanced levels like college professors are teaching what they want within that curriculum, How in 1920 were they all taught the same thing when there was still tons and tons and tons, tons of schools. , that's the thing that gets me,  she's 102. Could she have just been like, yeah, I saw that once and she saw it on a cartoon in the seventies while she was in her sixties,  Fronk: nonetheless, I do find it difficult to wrap my head around because it was David Weiss who did that interview or whatever, and he brings up a lot of stuff about flat Earth. I listen to a bunch of his talks and shows that he went on to and whatnot, and he brings up all of these points and , he tells people to just, look into it. You gotta look into it yourself. You gotta do your research. , you go to do this research and obviously if you're looking into stuff like this, you're not going to [00:22:00] Google. You're not using Bing, like the go to search engine for anything that you can't find is duck, duck go. And he's been saying that Duck, duck go is starting to censor things of this nature. So, like Dave, I went looking for what the global education was like in the 1910s, the 1920s, and. Again, like you said, no definitive proof. Is it a censorship thing or is it the fact that it was just not taught as flat in the 1920s? Dave: There's also allegations that say that, it was the thirties and even in the sixties through certain education systems. , I almost bought David Weiss's app now. David had contacted us and let us know how he thought about us. I think in the next level, , it almost looks like somebody's trying to sell something and maybe this woman really did feel vindicated Ruth if she's still alive or not. but I don't know, check out the next level. It's an interesting take on flat earth and [00:23:00] there's a bunch of other proponents that I'd never even heard of that have some interesting talking points. Mike: my beef when it comes to David is he did reach out to us. He reached out to us a couple times, especially after our flat Earth episode. And essentially just berated us through email it's the usual argument that I, especially for some odd reason am on the receiving end of arguments with flat earthers is just yelling and anger and just being pissed off consistently. and he was not too happy, as Dave said with how we covered it in our talking points. He said, oh, it's the same talking points. Well, it's the same talking points with flat Earthers too. you talk about the Bible, you talk about nasa, you talk about, it's like, it's, it's the same talking points because we're talking about the same fucking topic.  Of course we're gonna have our sides to it and of, and flat earthers are gonna have their sides to it. It's just the way that it is. That's how you have constructive. [00:24:00] Conversations that go back and forth with conflicting beliefs. Dave: I feel like it's a lot of frustration that , you're just not getting it. Fronk: I feel like he rails Coke and like smashes Globes in his free time, like buys globes from Goodwill and just fucking destroys them in the parking lot and then drives home  Dave: beats them with Louisville slugs. Just smack. Smack.  Mike: I can't wait for our next email correspondence after this one. Fronk: dude. It's not gonna be an email. It's gonna be a voice message and he is gonna be all fucking jacked up out of his mind.    Dave: Before we move on to like the major talking points we gotta talk about what Mike mentioned earlier where a lot of the stuff that is talked about goes back to biblical cosmology and creationism.  Mike: Yeah. And that's always been my biggest talking point with discussions with flat Earthers is explain it to me I will give you my counterpoints and you'll give me your points and we can go [00:25:00] back and forth, but complete your, persuasion of trying to make me see that it's a flat plane. Complete your argument without using the Bible. Every single fucking time. Every single time it ends in, well, it says this in the Bible and it says this, it always ends up being that let's put it this way. I've never met a flat earth that wasn't also at the same time a Bible thumper. Dave: I've met two types. I feel like there are conflicting points to, flat earthers even they step on each other's toes a little bit. They might not, not get along, but I think there are some folks that definitely don't believe in the biblical cosmology and it's just a physical thing. But every time you go back to, if it's a physical thing, that's a structure that's not a planet. It brings me to the question, even a non-religious person. It brings me to the question, well then we're talking about who created it, [00:26:00] not just the science of planets and, gas and particles coming together for, from a accretion. We're talking a whole different thing. Now. We're talking about, well, if it's a structure , and this is not what we think it is and this is not what I think it is, then it had to have been manufactured structure. We build structures. using that type of verbiage, brings even me to being like, , now we're in the religious realm or the faith realm. Fronk: You want me to blow your mind right now? you know what's easier than creating a whole universe writing fucking lines of code. Bam, bam.  Mike: Yeah, there it is. There it is. We should just bring all arguments of flat earth back to simulation theory. Fronk: That's where I, that, yeah. Prove to me that it's even physical and then maybe I'll consider whether, the shape is round or flat. Dave: Let's talk about curves. Fronk: Right. All right. Let's talk about the voluminous crevices and curves that our mother Earth provides. Right. The idea of a flat [00:27:00] earth stems from a number of viewpoints, and the most fundamental is to rely on one's own sense, to determine the true nature of one's surroundings. The world appears flat. Clouds, bottoms look like they're flat. Water looks like it's flat, and the sun moves. The stars are always the same positioned exactly how they always were, and all of these sensory cues indicate that we do, in fact, live on a flat. Dave: I'm not an astrophysicist and I'm not a  Fronk: Are you  sure?  Dave: Maybe, maybe, maybe in my other existence, the 500 of 'em. I'm a failed astrophysicist, but I do have a telescope and I've had it for quite some time and I'm pretty good with it. And it's Fronk: the fuck? Dave: eh, the stars not moving. I know that there's a difference between absolute, uh, motion. A difference between [00:28:00] relative motion, and I'm pretty sure that the way that the stars move, but their whole argument is, is that since everything's spinning at astronomical speeds every night, we would see different stars because we're just whipping around and seeing different things. So why are the stars the same? And it does get you thinking, well, why are the stars the same? Well, I'm not a professional astronomer, so I can't really explain that. But I would say it has something to do with relative motion where everything's moving in conjunction instead of just this vortex of insane speeds..  Fronk: In my peanut globetard brain, I'm more so thinking the speed of light and how long it actually takes for the light from the stars that we're seeing to travel here. I mean, yeah, we've been seeing the same stars for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, but at what point were those stars emitting that light? How long have those stars been dead for, and how long is it gonna take for us to see new stars again? [00:29:00] I can't answer any of those questions for you, but I'm pretty sure that's. Dave: Valid point. Mike: Also in the grand scheme of time, humanity has been around a fucking blink in universal time. again to Fronk's point here, we're seeing the same stars because we're living 80 years and that's it. As opposed to the billions and billions and billions of years that the universe has existed and that that light has traveled and those stars have either been born, exploded, died, and disappeared. , we're seeing nothing, nothing. Dave: Well, that goes back to you being an insignificant being and that being suppressed. There's that argument. We'll have that later. We'll fight about it. Mike: there, there won't be an argument. We are insignificant beings.  Even if you took it back to a creationist argument, we are fucking insignificant. We are insignificant, we're [00:30:00] nothing. If we were something we would still commune with Gods, we would still commune with universal spirits. We would be. Something more than fucking meat sacks traveling through the world going, oh, I wonder what job I'm gonna have next, that I'm gonna work fucking 40 hours a week at and pull in a menial salary and take care of my 5.2 fucking kids, and then eventually retire at the ripe old age of 70 years old. And that's my life. How special am I Dave: Well, that's the system that you're locked in. Mike: system or not? Even if I had no job, even if I was just wandering, enjoying my life, going to these wonderful, exotic places, just doing everything that I wanted to do. At the end of it all 70 to 80 years, that's what I get. That's fucking it. in those 70 to 80 years, when am I seeing God? When am I [00:31:00] seeing a hint of any extraterrestrial, any, any extra dimensional, any religious, fucking spiritual guide? Anything. Anything.  when I'm not, fucked up on drugs, Dave: psychedelics. Fronk: God tier moment. Mike goes, have you ever given an ant food? Throw that bitch in there.  Dave: A lot of people see that as negative, and I don't really see it as negative that we're that insignificant. It's kind of the same argument that I make about the flight paths, which we'll quickly touch on is, well, the, the plane has to keep dipping down to keep going. Have you seen how small a plane is to how big the earth is? Mike: That's one thing that they don't understand is fucking perspective. You don't understand  perspective.  Dave: I'm glad you brought that up because what Frankie said a couple minutes ago about viewpoints perspective, seeing, if the clouds appear flat, water is flat, that's called using an empirical approach or an approach that relies on information [00:32:00] on your senses.  What's your feeble little human garbage eyes can see? And if you can't see the curve, then it doesn't exist. They use mathematics. I am. Stupid with math. The math is if the earth is round, there should be a degree of curvature, eight inches per mile squared. one mile would be eight inches, two miles, 32 inches, three miles, 72 inches, four miles, 128, and so on.  128 inches is about 10 feet of curvature. So that would be, four miles away now? 10 feet. A considerable amount when you're looking at a boat on. Water the water line to the top, say, let's say an aircraft carrier is probably 60 to 90 feet. You'd have to be at least around 20 miles to not just see the flight deck of that ship going over the horizon.  Then you got the whole, you got the bridge, you got everything else. You got all the radar you're probably looking at 120 feet at least to the top of, all of the structures on that ship. How many miles is that? . That's the thing. Another thing with the insignificance is [00:33:00] that we're tiny as fuck. Like how can we see anything? If you're five foot 10 and you're looking at something how far are you actually gonna see Mike: but what about the Zoom, Dave? What about the Zoom? Some of those cameras, they can zoom way, way, way, way in. They take those cameras and they zoom, zoom, zoom, and they go, well, that city is 150 miles away. There's no way that I should see it because of this curvature. And this camera is picking it up perfectly. So how do they work? Dave: I think they use the Chicago skyline for example. And I didn't do the experiment and look on Google Maps , and see the different distances, but you gotta remember the Sears Tower, whatever the fuck it's called now, it's like well over a thousand feet tall. and they're like, well, you can see the whole thing you. In those pictures that are shown as examples, you cannot see the entire Sears Tower. There is hundreds of feet of displacement in Chicago. Like New York has a [00:34:00] very tall fucking skyline. But you could still see those buildings and they're there, and on top of it, you're getting atmospheric disturbance. You're getting a layer of almost a mirage layer.  Mike: Dave was just going over the math of the entire situation, it's 67 feet per 10 miles. Now, before we move on, we have to mention that there are ball earthers or globes or globe tards that do argue that this equation is misused by flat earthers. And is the equation of calculating a parabola, not a full sphere. Dave: The guy who said that this is Misused was something that was found on the Michael Stata podcast and apparently himself and another guy that were on there, one was like an F 18 pilot, and then he's got certain hundreds and hundreds amount of hours as being a pilot. he had mentioned that the equation was misused and used the parabola as an example, that you're talking [00:35:00] about something like this instead of something that's a full circle even if you're talking about it on the curve, , it's still a parabola, even on that surface. Even though the equations are right and the math is right to calculate the curvature of the earth with its circumference that's known.  Might not be accurate. And uh, who did that? Aristophenes did that. And I know Flat Earthers is gonna say that guy didn't even fucking exist. which maybe he did, maybe he didn't. That was 2000 years ago. Who knows? Fronk: just to be fair to the flat earthers, right? We can't nitpick what false history we believe and don't, we do tend to say that history could have been falsified many times. If history has been erased at any point in time there is the possibility that this dude was made. Mike: using this model, a person standing on a spherical surface with eyes five feet, 11 inches above the ground, can [00:36:00] hypothetically see the ground up to about three miles away, but a person at the top of the Eiffel Tower at 896 feet can see the ground up to 36.6 miles away. Dave: Well, they're higher in altitude, Mike: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.  Dave: but the argument is that you can't see using the calculation, you wouldn't be able to see because it's dipping. I think the argument is wrong, and I'm not a mathematician and I'm not good at math, but from what my I see is that almost like some of these people are seeing it smaller than what it is. I don't think they're really getting how big this thing is and how small we are. So even at a 900 feet, Yes, you can see almost 10 times as much in distance, but you're also almost a thousand feet in the air,  Mike: Again,  perspective.   Fronk: If the degree of the [00:37:00] curvature is found to be the same everywhere on earth's surface, and the surface is in fact large enough, the constant curvature demonstrates that the earth is a. Now what about water? James Underdown, executive Director for the Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles worked with the Independent Investigations Group, a nonprofit dedicated to investigating exceptional claims using scientific methods. A boat based target with horizontal stripes was used in one of these tests. Dave: He's quoted as saying we sent a boat out on the water, and the farther it goes, the more the stripes disappear. That was supposed to demonstrate the curvature of the planet, but most flat earthers disagreed generating considerable debate. The biggest reason for these arguments with flat earth, obviously it comes from flat Earth, Dave(David Weiss), and it's all about perspective, as we said. The ground would never obscure distant objects on a flat earth. It should be possible to see all the way to the edge of the [00:38:00] world, right? That is the question that we would be asking. The answer we get is the atmosphere is opaque. Now, using the vernacular atmosphere is almost a conundrum in itself, and you ask, well, why did you use that? Well, we don't have another word for it.  Mike: Why not just make up a word like you fucking make up your own beliefs?  Just fucking do it. Just do it. . Make up a new word. It's very easy. It's done every day.   [00:39:00] Ad break [00:40:00]    Mike: Let's move on to another major fight in this, the position of the sun, sunrise and sunset. In case you were wondering, the sun is always above the Earth's surface in both models, Yet in the flat model, it travels in circles around the Earth's north pole, which is also, its. The seasons are caused by the expansion [00:41:00] and contraction of these circles. What about latitude?  Dave: What about latitude? I mean,  that would  Mike: about latitude  Dave: right? Mike: Hmm. Dave: The largest circumference of latitude on this planet would be the equator. Correct?  Mike: Yep. Dave: And then you have the tropic cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. The midpoints. I don't know that seems pretty, easy to explain. Maybe I'm just stupid. Could  be,  Mike: Globetard Dave: yeah. Fronk: Fucking idiot. Do some research Mike: Look into it. Fronk: where, show me where, show me where I could read about this that isn't on the app.  Mike: In the Bible, Fronk: Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Here we go with the fucking Bible again. Mike: and books from the  17 hundreds  Fronk: They considered the sun to be much closer than 93 million miles and possibly even as far as 3000 miles or as close as 300 miles and moves in a circle or a helix pattern because the earth is supposedly accelerating upward, obviously toward the sun [00:42:00] at 9.8 meters per second because they don't believe in gravity, and that explains gravity away. with that being said, the sun must also be accelerating in the same direction as this hypothetical earth vortex. Make sense? You guys got that? Dave: instead of us spinning with things spinning around us and us spinning around something else and then that spinning around something else, which is relative there's a really big graphic that's always shown on every documentary, every video, and it's like the sun being shot out of a. With everything else just like around it, it looks like a DNA strand, most globe tards, know that that's not how motion works with celestial bodies. that one got me and always gets me, is every time that's shown. I'm like, oh God.  Fronk: other astronomical bodies moving in such a pattern? We have like really high powered telescopes Mike: Because space is not real.  Fronk: [00:43:00] Oh, shit. I forgot. I'm, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You got me.  Okay. All right. All right. Right. All right. Dave: no space. No space. We have to remember that throughout this whole episode, there's no space. Fronk: Yes. Yes. Mike: if you take space out of the equation, introduce God in the Bible, and just ignore all known fucking science for the past like 300 years, you can be a flat earther. Fronk: wait is it no space or it's just the sun and the moon and the earth, or , is it None of that and it's just plain earth with our spinning moon, sun clock sort of thing happening, Which one is it? Do flat earthers believe either the barrel bore theory or the plate theory? Dave: Everything's contained in a system. Fronk: It's one in the same Dave: and everything above us is, I guess, the abyss, because there's a lot of arguments that, like with this Artemis program, whether it's fake or not, we'll talk about NASA in a little bit, but whether it's fake or not, Rockets [00:44:00] don't work in a vacuum apparently. but they're actually using, their own inertia to move in a vacuum. But I guess things don't work that way according to some. That brings us to sunrise and sunset. I don't want to get too far into this cuz this can take hours and hours and hours to argue about, let's talk about sunrise and sunset real quick.  Fronk: Unlike a bunch of these other points, the day and night cycles are actually kind of easily explained on a flat plane. The sun theoretically would move in circles above the North Pole. Or around the North Pole, and when it's over your head, it's day, and when it's not, it's nighttime. The light of the sun is then confined to a limited area on the earth, right? Because it's right above you. This claim never held any weight for me in particular because it can be debunked with science.  On top of this, all of the planets and stars aren't actually what they appear to be like [00:45:00] big rock balls in space or giant balls of gas, but they're actually luminaries. Yet. We also hear a lot of people say, well, we don't know what they. Dave: Stars and planets are one of the biggest things that cannot be explained yet. We can explain them with telescopes. We've been talking a lot about movement. We have to talk about heliocentric model, which is the one that we supposedly live in and not the geocentric model, which is the one that flat earthers live in. When we are confronted with the question of how the earth is able to orbit the sun, and it's not a sphere it's pretty simple. The earth actually doesn't orbit the sun, as we've been saying. This is so, because instead of the sun being the center of our solar system, our planet is actually the center of our solar system or controlled environment. Mike: In reality, we have Helio Centrism, also known as the Heliocentric Model. It's the astronomical model in which the earth and planets revolve around the sun at the center historically, [00:46:00] Helio Centrism was opposed to geo centrism, which placed the earth at the center. now we've hit the firmament. Fronk: In the cosmology of the flat earth. The disc shaped planet is covered by a dome whose edges stopped just beyond the roughly 145 foot high ice wall of Antarctica. And these stars are fixed on this dome while the sun and moon, which are only about 31 miles in diameter, revolve about a 3,100 miles above the earth. Dave: Now, as we said before in biblical cosmology, the firmament is a vast, solid dome or semi solid dome created by God during his creation in the first six days To divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear, which surrounds the earth or frozen water, I've heard this a lot with the biblical cosmology stuff, is that it's explained during day one, day two, day three, and they even say in the Bible, God created the firmament. I [00:47:00] believe it's on ver bran's headstone, as we've mentioned previously. I think it's a lot of wordplay and interpretation,  Mike: We also mentioned back in Hollow Moon, if you've listened to that episode about the Zulu tribe, where the firmament or atmosphere rained down to earth.  Our flat earthers saying that the sky is liquid possibly. Clearly, we know that the Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon and 0.1% of other gases. Dave: Now, quickly, recently, I've heard a lot of arguments in quite a few different shows and videos not just one proponent, but multiple proponents on this theory. And a lot of 'em will say, well, the atmosphere itself is just a different version of water as it is up in space, a whole different version of water. Because they use the example of if you go to the deep oceans or certain lakes, there's different [00:48:00] salinities of water. You'll have heavier water on the bottom, different pockets of water. the atmosphere works the same way and they say, because it has the same elements in it. Now, if our atmosphere is made up of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, yes, there's hydrogen in that, because if we need water, we need H two O, which does happen in the atmosphere, Fronk: shit. That's why they sent U-boats to space it's water. Dave: oh. Fronk: Oh, Dave: That's it.  You got me.  Mike: done. We're done.    Final thoughts, boys? Fronk: Thank you Hushlings. Dave: Yeah, that's it. Mike: Okay, so we're talking about the firmament currently. Now I just want everyone to know the actual definition of a firmament. So the firmament is the vault or arch of the sky. The firmament isn't necessarily something that is physical. It is something that is viewed. the [00:49:00] arch from one horizon to the other is the sky. That is the firmament. So when everybody's saying, oh, firmament, they're talking about the firmament, they're talking about something that's physically there. No, that's a viewpoint. The firmament refers to horizon. To horizon. The arch of the sky as you see it from one end of your viewpoint to the other Dave: Makes sense. There's a lot of that too, where it said that you're, uh, you have a personal viewing bubble and I think that's misinterpreted as what you're actually, what you can see you go up a 1500 foot mountain, you look around, you can see 360 degrees.  Mike: that's your firmament. Dave: that's your firmament. Fronk: One bar from Suicide Boy's last album. One of them goes Dome. So good. I think she think the earth is flat mouth like the fucking firmament. She got my eyes rolling back. There you go.  Mike: it says it all. Fronk: [00:50:00] It says it all, it says it all your, your mouth has a firmament. Mike: Show me what that firmament do. Fronk: land ho. We have hit the ice walls and the absence of the poles along the edge of our local area exists a massive 150 foot ice wall. This ice wall is on the coast of Antarctica, and The wall is absolutely gargantuan, made up of solid water, ice that surrounds our world and holds our world's oceans in.   And the South Pole does not exist, whereas the North Pole is just a giant mountain called a hyperly that you can't visit. Dave: The ice walls were discovered by Sir James Clark, who was a British naval officer and polar explorer who was amongst the first adventure to Antarctica in an attempt to determine the position of the south magnetic pole between 1768 and 1779. [00:51:00] Upon confronting the massive vertical front of ice heat famously remarked. Mike: "It was an obstruction of such character as to leave no doubt in my mind as to our future proceedings for we might as well sail through the Cliffs of Dover as to penetrate such a mass. That's what she said. It would be impossible to conceive a more solid looking mass of ice. Not the smallest appearance of any rent or fisher. Could we discover throughout the whole of its extent and the intensely bright sky beyond it, but too plainly indicated. The great distance to which it wreaths, southward " Dave: apparently it took him three years or so to do one of the journeys and he circumnavigated the globe at 77,000 miles. what if he did it three times and did [00:52:00] 77,000 miles? That's the one thing that I've always thought is that, was it one trip  Fronk: And he just didn't know Mike: But again, in the 18 hundreds, let's say that this guy goes and he encounters an ice shelf, would he not think that was an ice wall? Dave: yeah, Fronk: like, oh shit. Well this is the edge of the world I suppose. Mike: there's no going past this. My ship can't go through that. Dave: I mean, yeah, that would be logical. Mike: I think this is what we said in the first one, a lot of these arguments for a flat earth revert back to like this 18 hundreds knowledge. Let's look at this book from the 18 hundreds. Look, they mentioned the firmament. Let's look at this. they talk about ice stones and blah, blah, blah. Fronk: The future is a lie. . The truth lies in the 18 hundreds. Reject modernity, Now all of this would of course, imply that Antarctica isn't at all what they say. And we've [00:53:00] mentioned this quite a bit about the Antarctic treaty already and the Antarctic bases and all of the secrets that they hide and you can't go there. You're not allowed There. Only scientists. Yeah. That's where they're hiding the edge of the.  Dave: Let's board a plane real quick and try to go to Antarctica. I know we say we can get there by ship, but two major arguments about airplanes with the flat earth theory is one, there's no round trip flights to Antarctica. And I think we covered this briefly in our first one where we had said, Antarctica fucking sucks. And that's probably why there's no round trip flights and how a lot of the Southern Hemisphere flights cannot be explained. And I believe we went over that a lot in our first episode. And I still stick by all of what I thought about that. Now, the other question that comes up with this theory  one, can you see curve in a commercial aircraft? And two, the aircraft always has to be pitching nose down after a [00:54:00] certain amount of time. Those two arguments come up major in this theory. So I wanna get your thoughts on do planes always have to tip downward as you're flying? Cuz you've all been on flights before, Fronk: No, the plane isn't nose diving or it doesn't feel like it anyway. It doesn't seem like it's nose diving by any means. Dave: but you would feel it. You can feel drop in altitude when you're starting to descend and you feel that, whew, almost that weird weightlessness when they drop a couple hundred feet or a thousand feet pretty quickly. You can feel turbulence, obviously. , I don't think that it necessarily pitches downward after a certain distance because I think, like I said earlier, planes are tiny and the earth is huge. So I don't think there's that much effect of a plane having to move when it's floating on top of a surface of air. Fronk: If a plane pitched downwards while at like max [00:55:00] altitude, wouldn't it just start losing altitude? Wouldn't you just be going towards the ground or am I being peanut brained? Dave: If planes were going in the straight path following the Earth's curve, then they would fly off into space. That's what they say. And I think it's simpler than that. Planes fly in a certain area from 35,000 to 50,000 feet, especially commercial aircraft in a certain layer of air that's thinnest. Which is why they can move as fast as they can, but I don't believe that they're pitching because they're so tiny that everything is going to appear flat at 35,000 feet cuz the earth is so big. Mike: , they're maintaining a certain altitude from the ground, so they're not pitching anything. They're just going with the natural atmosphere of the earth. Dave: Gravity.  Mike: Yeah.    Dave: The plane thing never, never made too much sense to me, especially with the flying off into space. If you didn't compensate for curvature, it's because the Plains Center [00:56:00] mass is always perpendicular with the ground and the plane is so insignificantly small. That you will not notice those changes. You notice left and right banks on planes, , you take a direction moving towards another city, you see it, you feel the whole plane go and you're looking towards the ground. If you're ascending, you feel that inertia you're getting pulled up into the air, especially on takeoffs. Or if you're descending, you feel that, oh, the pilot goes, we're gonna be descending in a couple minutes, and all of a sudden you feel that that drop, you feel that motion left, right, and vertical but you don't feel those nudges that they say that they're doing. So I don't think that that happens. I just think the center mass of that plane is fighting against gravity to keep it up. It's a boat in the sky. Mike: even if they did, that's a continuous compensation. So it's not like they're flying a certain distance and then going, oh, well I'm eight inches above where I was before. I need to adjust. Even if that was the truth, they would just make manual [00:57:00] adjustments as they went. So over that period of time, a half inch, a quarter inch, whatever you wouldn't even be able to tell in the first place if that was the case. Fronk: And that would only be if you were flying like across the world. I'm sure it's even less so if you're flying from somewhere on the east coast down to like Minnesota or something, it's gonna be even less noticeable if you're traveling somewhere that local. Dave: You're only traveling a couple hundred miles. Fronk: Yeah, exactly. Mike: I'm sure the figures are out there, but how many flat earthers are from America versus from the rest of the world? Dave: Good question. Mike: just wondering. Dave: I don't know the answer to that. I would say there's a lot in America. America is a very conspiracy driven country at the moment, and flat earth boils down to every other conspiracy. If you believe wholeheartedly in this, you believe everything else, the lies, everything is fake. Your entire [00:58:00] existence is fake. that's from what I get Fronk: That sucks. And then, and then from that point where do they go with that? They yell at other people about it or We're gonna briefly go over the eclipse aspect of flat earth theory. Now, we all obviously know what eclipses are. That's when the moon aligns with the sun and the earth and blocks out the sun. You know the deal. and remember that the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun. It's also about 400 times closer to the earth than the sun is. Is that coincidence that this astronomical phenomenon happens? Uh, Dave: Well, I can tell you from the flat earth side that that is almost impossible.  Mike: It's pretty impossible either way. Like it's pretty coincidental. I will give it to them that when you're talking about the sun and the moon being these like perfect distances and these perfect sizes and these per that's intriguing to say the least. I will give them. Dave: Which we did go over[00:59:00] Hollow moon theory if the moon was placed here, it was placed here on purpose, but then that would give weight to some type of, maybe not creationism, but some type of external control or external observation, which I think all of us are on the fence with that.  That could be, it could not be, Mike: Again, prove to me that any of this is real Dave: So there's two types of eclipses. There's solar and lunar eclipses. Now, the way solar eclipses work is that the moon orbits in between the sun and the earth. And when that occurs, obviously the moon blocks out the sunlight. You see the corona bought a bing. You have a solar eclipse, and the moon also casts a shadow on the earth. Now, a lot of the times it's told that the moon can't cast this little tiny pin prick shadow that goes across the earth. But if the moon is relatively 200,000 miles away, why couldn't it?  Mike: According to flat Earth theorists, this astronomical phenomenon is [01:00:00] actually a glimpse of a mysterious shadow object that orbits the sun and occasionally passes in front of the moon. From our point of view, could it be planet X Nibiru? No. This object is known as the anti moon. That's new Dave: another random object in our solar system. We could go on and on about eclipses, but we have to talk about one of the biggest fallacies of our education system. Gravity, Mike: not real. Dave: not real. Now, one of the most well agreed upon theories is general relativity. And it is the theory of gravitation developed by our boy Albert Einstein, who was apparently a conman according to flat earthers. And between 1907 and 1915, he figured all this out. The theory of general relativity says that an observe gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of space time. Gravity is still just a theory to us. I guess we can all be on the fence [01:01:00] on it cause we really don't get it. And I think scientists have , admitted that they don't get it,  Mike: Well, didn't recently they say that they had to like rework that entire thought process for some discovery that they had found that the theory of relativity had to be, had to be rethought or it was not necessarily wrong entirely, but partially, I guess., it had to do with the way that a black hole was working, where for the first time they saw a star coming out of a black hole. Fronk: Yeah, I saw that it was being regurgitated. They saw light coming out of a black hole. That's right. Mike: Things are happening, man. Whether you believe in space or not, it's. Pretty wild. Fronk: Newton's love gravitation states every point Mass attracts every single other point mass by a force acting along the line intersecting both points. I don't know what that means. The force is proportional to the product of the two [01:02:00] masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Exactly. That's what I've been saying this whole Mike: Sounds about right. Thanks boys. Well, what is gravity? According to this theory, it's stated that the earth isn't pulled into a sphere because the force known as gravity exists in a greatly diminished form compared to what is commonly taught, which is that we're being pulled down to the center of the earth while. The flat Earth is constantly accelerating up at a rate of 32 feet per second squared or 9.8 meters per second squared. As we had previously mentioned, this constant acceleration causes what you think of as gravity, but it's actually caused by a universal accelerator known as dark energy or Etheric wind. Never heard of Etheric wind. That's interesting, Fronk: time's that post Taco Bell shit's my etheric wind. Dave: [01:03:00] Furthermore with this we hear words like density and buoyancy a lot in these theories arguments, which is why things fall to the ground that are heavier and explains rockets, which are thought to actually be filled with helium and have a pyrotechnic show. that proves that all things fall at 9.8 meters squared.   Dave: All right boys, we're getting towards the end of our flat earth expedition here. But we have to go back in the sky. That brings us to rockets and satellites. As we just mentioned. Proponents of flat earth theory believe that satellites totally exist, but cannot be seen from the ground and are actually held in the atmosphere by helium balloons. Hence why NASA is the largest consumer of helium and they sometimes crash into the planet, which we call them weather balloons. And I guess that would explain the weather balloon phenomenon.  Fronk: Satellites in low earth orbit are constantly fighting gravity. According to science, some are geographically fixed and keep their [01:04:00] orbit by balancing two factors, their velocity, which is the speed required to travel in a straight line and their gravitational pull to the earth. To resist the stronger gravitational pole, a satellite orbiting closer to the earth requires more velocity. And of course, we're not going to get out of this debriefing without a little bit of NASA sprinkled in that bitch. Mike: Yes, good old nasa, our friends over there, professional cgi. It's widely assumed that humans have never left the Earth's atmosphere. In fact, we've never left earth and entered space because we lack the ability to do so in the first place unless you're a Nazi and a U-boat. Most of what society has been taught about space is completely made up or greatly exaggerated. By the government and or the elites. There's also the claim that humans have never landed on the moon. I'm with that, and that the infamous moon landings witnessed by the entire world in [01:05:00] 1969 were a sham. Fronk: Okay. I'll give them that. A major claim is that any pictures from the Apollo 11 mission that show that our planet as a sphere in the distance were fabricated by the government and nasa and NASA's mission is not to hide the shape of the earth or trick people into thinking it's round or anything else of the sort. Dave: Well, that's what NASA says, right?  We obviously know that there's some type of space travel conspiracy, whether it's more advanced or it doesn't exist. Possibly Nasa's mission is to create the illusion of space travel in order to, cover for the military, and their dominance in space. One thing we forgot to mention that I thought of real quick when you guys were talking is the quick notion on gravity. There's a lot of flat earthers that will say, well, can you jump, when you jump off the earth, you a hundred, 200 pound person jumping off the earth. Do you come back [01:06:00] down? And was it easy to jump? Then why is gravity so strong? Fronk: that's the whole argument of like, why does Gravity hold our planet's, oceans On  Dave: Yeah. Yeah. If it can  hold all this water and all this mass,  why can you jump off your roof and hit the ground? Mike: Because there is a different pull depending on the mass of the object.  Dave: Mike wins a gold star Fronk: gold sticker for you. Mike: boys, let's get into our final thoughts. Everything that was on Reddit, we've been through, we've done this whole thing. I wanna know the final thoughts as we get into stage two of becoming a flat earth. are we now believing that gravity is not real? The sun is a, lamp and uh, and we live on a flat plain, surrounded by an ice wall. Dave, are you a flat earther? Dave: No. sadly, I am not a flat earther. I think it's an [01:07:00] interesting theory that opens up a lot of more conspiracies and there are some valid questions, but I think a lot of it has to do with our lack of actually being able to see things because we are restricted beings. Uh, the one thing about flat earth theory that I find really fascinating is the suppression of information, the hidden things. And I think that's the conspiratorial part that really pulls me, believing that it is a different shape or an infinite plane or a snow globe, or, flatterers is gonna get so mad at me for saying that because we don't believe it's a snow globe. It doesn't look like a pancake. They all have different theories and a lot of it goes back to religion. A lot of it goes to creationism. A lot of it goes back to every other conspiracy you've ever heard of. So for me, still, I still think we live on a planet. the definition of planet is what we live on. Is it a perfect sphere? I think that's proven that it's not a perfect sphere.[01:08:00] I'm not a scientist, but I've done research and research and research and supposedly it takes up to two weeks or so to become a flat earth. I've been doing this research since like the end of July, and I'm still not convinced. wanted to give it a fair shake. Didn't wanna be a douche bag. Would invite any flat earth to come on and talk to us. We'd love to have you on, but You didn't get me yet. Mike: I will take my final thoughts, a complete left turn here. I don't care. I don't care whether it's a giant paella pan or if we live on a dodge ball. I, I don't care. I don't care. Maybe it's the blue pilled part of my brain that still exists. I don't give a shit. It doesn't change anything. I'm still gonna wake up in the morning and have to go to work, have to pay my taxes, and eventually I'm gonna fucking die. That's just the way that it is. I don't care if we live on a flat plane, I don't care if we live on a globe. It's just the way that [01:09:00] it is. but I don't think that we live on a fly plane. I'm just gonna say that I don't think that I, I do think that there is a lot of cover up of our former history. That much I believe is true. I do believe that NASA is filled with a bunch of liars and they do fabricate things including, setting up these videos where they're watching astronauts float around, but the water stays in a cup. That's an interesting one. , I do think that they do composite images together and they are a bunch of liars that I completely agree with. . I love you whether you're a flat earth or not, but no, it's a no for me. Fran, give us your final thoughts. Did you become a flat earther in this episode?   Fronk: No, I didn't. , I'm not gonna go off on a limb and say that I tried to give flat earth theory, the benefit of [01:10:00] the doubt, but I tried to stay open-ended, especially towards like the beginning of the episode. I was just trying to like see it from both sides and I still do to an extent. And you're right in saying that their best argument is the space shit and nasa, but, that can't be all you're going off of here, because that, lends to so much other shit besides just the shape of the planet.  And not only that, if you're like sold on the shape of the planet, then you've been deceived. You know what, I'm gonna pull a flirter and tell you what you've been taught on. The internet is wrong, and it's all code. You've been tricked into thinking that what we live on is physical and that it has shape. There is no shape. I've never even been out of the country. You can't even convince me that Australia's real, let alone the, the, the fucking shape of the  Mike: you're partial flat earther because they don't believe that Australia is real either. Fronk: [01:11:00] Oh, no. Australia's not real Mike: listen, if you're in Australia and you, uh, you live there full time, reach out to us. Send us an email. Even better a voicemail, because I just want to hear the accent. Send us a voicemail and say, Hey, yeah, I exist. I'm here. This is a real place. Dave: Clearly they exist. They're number three on our Spotify Mike: That's right. Thanks Australia. Fronk: No, I, I never tried to doubt Australia. It was a metaphor, but Dave: Our Hustralians down under, Mike: That's hilarious. Dave: , if we offended you we're sorry. Well, I partially am. Mike: I, I, listen, I tried this episode. I think that I was better than the first episode. I didn't sit there and say anybody was an idiot or any of that stuff. like I said, you believe what you wanna believe, but on, at the end of the day, I don't think that it really matters. Fronk: And if it makes you feel [01:12:00] special, by all means,

Sunday 8-14-22 Episode #26The Cedar Point Podcast On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/293404496252369/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 8-7-22 Episode #25The Cedar Point Podcast On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/293404496252369/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 7-31-22 Episode #24The Cedar Point Podcast On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/293404496252369/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Searchlight - Journey ft. [ K S R ]Kutiman - Fresh HazwKokoroko - Age of AscentLil Silva - Leave It (feat. Charlotte Day Wilson)Butcher Brown - UnbelievableDomi & JD Beck - Not Tight (feat. Thundercat)Greg Foat - The InvestigationKaidi Tatham - Funky FoolCorey Hart - Sunglasses At Night (Jean Jacket Mix)Deborah Jordan & K15 - Running (Simon S Re-Edit)The Pro-Teens - DoomsdayMain Source - Live at the BarbequeKing Most - Wind ParadeDe La V Gun Starr - Bruk Da DawnBlack Moon - Who Got The Props (EXCEL Sample Edit) The Jazzual Suspects - The LickThe 45 King - PineBonobo - Day by Day (feat. Kadhja Bonet)Alex Isley & Jack Dine - Love AgainHelsinki Headnod Convention - Roslingian Aspect (Applejac's Unhooked Generation Remix)Ron Trest - Melt into you feat. Alex Malheiros Black Star - So be itInkswel & The Snaglepuss - Mystical Magic feat. Lee Scratch Perry & Elf TranzporterThe Frightnrs - You, StillThe Pro-Teens - DoomsdaySven Wunder - Sun-Kissed (Original)The Bamboos - Nothing I Wanna Know About Mave & Dave - You are deliciousKatalyst, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad - Summer SolsticeSly5thAve & Roberto Verástegui - PoincianaNatalie Duncan - Hearts In A Cage (4hero Remix) [m]ERIC HILTON - Earth ShipMica Paris - I Should've Known BetterJ.Rocc - All I Wanna Do (Remix) (ft. Steve Arrington)B. Bravo - Midnight RiderPlantlife - Rollerskate Jam (SE) (MM Edit)STR4TA - Night FlightMELONYX - UjjayiBrian Jackson - Little Orphan Boy (Two Soul Fusion Downtempo Remix)Tortured Soul - Your Body Doesn't Lie (Fka Mash Re Glitch Radio Edit)Kiko Navarro feat. Nader Behravan - Sounds Of My BreathAdmin - Step Into LightThe Sunburst Band feat. Angela Johnson - Face the Love

Sunday 7-25-22 Episode #23The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>New poster shirts...CP continue to take my money!>>>Fence watch 2022 has gone vertical and more beach themed posters have been added to the wall>>>Pass holders are receiving e mail for CP perks >>>Major brawls at theme parks have caused some to implement chaperon policy...could that be coming to CP? And>>>Ride of the week And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/363549722596501/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Isaac Birituro & The Rail Abandon - Fún Tony feat. Dele SosimiDJ Bemi - ArriwoJKriv, Phenomenal Handclap Band, Nic Hanson - Try AgainAnushka - Bad Weather (STR4TA Remix)S-Tone Inc. Body & Soul Remix)Peter Matson - Call and Answer (feat. Ibibio Sound Machine) [Faze Action Remix]B. Bravo - 10/10 (feat. Sally Green)BRETTINA VS INCOGNITO - Simple Pleasures Ski Dub Remix)Herbie Hancock - Ready or Not (MM Edit)Helsinki Headnod Convention - Beats Not Beatdowns (Particle Ray's Music Not War Chant Mix)JKriv Ft. Toribio - Shoulda Been Me (Alton Miller Remix)Louie Vega - I Hear Music In The Streets feat. Unlimited TouchNicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella - New World Shuffle (DJ Spinna Galactic Soul Remix)Agent K - Feed The CatBishop Willian Murphy - It's Working (Applejac's Unhooded Generation Re-Touch)Brian Jackson - All Talk (Opolopo Extended Remix)DJ MITSU THE BEATS - Right Here feat.DweleDwele - Money Don't Mean a Thing (Atjazz Remix)Renegades Of Jazz - Just Stirred feat. Laura Vane & DieslerEast Coast Love Affair - ConfrontationsOn - Southern freeezMind Street ft Andrea Love - Celebrate (Souldynamic Remix)Anthony Nicholson feat. Miles Bonny - Nucleus Scene 1 (Yoruba Soul Mix)Ezra Collective - Victory DancePhillip Malela - Tiba KamoMave & Dave - You are deliciousCaptain Planet - Mirage (feat. Taj Bethel)Katalyst, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad - DaybreakThe Sunburst Band - Let's Do It in StyleAnomalie - Come Running to MeDJ Epik, Disco-E & Sally Green - CaptivateRED ASTAIRE - Saturday LoveSuzanne Sheer - GodlyFlying Lotus - You Don't Know (ft. Devin Tracy)Satya - Oakland (Clean)Inkswel & Colonel Red - Make Me CrazyMoor Mother - Woody Shaw feat. Melanie Charles

Sunday 7-17-22 Episode #22The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>Flooding and Power outages hit the park!>>>Build A Bear has some new merch >>>Is the VIP lounge worth it?>>>New fencing around Breakers Express...what does it mean?And>>>New Food at the parkAnd more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/1220394038737035/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 7-13-22 Episode #21The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>Owning a boat and having a slip at CP>>>Famous Daves on Fire >>>The best restaurant...not at the park...but on the property >>>Is the Rugaroo and Corkscrew underrated? And>>>Why they don't have CELLPHONE POUCHES on every coaster?And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/775717173601923/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 7-3-22 Episode #20The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>What rides might CP get from the other soon to be closed Cedar Fair theme park?>>>Camping Tip; how to save over half!>>>We review the new Peanuts Store on the midway and the new shows!>>>Has Hugo's food gone down hill?And>>>Fence Watch 2022 UPDATEAnd more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/718073612784898/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 6-26-22 Episode #19The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>We review the new show at CP>>>Is there a new coaster coming?>>>Some special CP Insiders join Us >>>No more CP PoliceAnd>>>One of CP sister parks has a coaster issue And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/293404496252369/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 6-17-22 Episode #18The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>What is the main draw at the park>>>Is it time to build another coaster?>>>Will $5.00 gas hurt attendance?>>>What's your favorite live show?And>>>A special Ride Audio Surprise! And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/394979322649982/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 6-13-22 Episode #17The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>Fence Watch 2023...what is CP Building next?>>>Coastermania was a disaster! >>>Pic taking allowed on some rides >>>Does CP have a labor issue?And>>>How is Frontier nights going?And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/591647702378700/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

When we find any kind of success in our business, we tend to stick to what we know to keep ourselves in the black. But sometimes to reach those levels of success we started out looking for, it takes a whole change of perspective. My guest this week is Dave Zajdzinski, and he's all about sharing his superpower of scaling our business to reach those superhuman numbers we all hear about. One part of that perspective shift is ridding yourself of that limiting belief that you as the rainmaker need to do everything yourself, or that your clients expect and demand to do business with only you. Having a team is about building truest, not only with your associates but with your clients as well. Dave and I have a great conversation about what scaling looks like, how we apply it to our teams, and what it's done for our business and our work/life balance. Listen in! About Dave Z:   Dave Zajdzinski brings 13 years of real estate experience to home buyers and sellers throughout Arizona. He has helped hundreds of sellers and buyers meet their real estate goals and is consistently ranked one of the top realtors in the Valley. As a Certified Distressed Property Expert, Dave specializes in short sale transactions as well as traditional home sales, from raw land to multi-million dollar properties.   Quotes and Takeaways:   “What I want to do is deliver is an amazing experience for our people. I've realized that I can do that through other people. But instead of making it so that somebody else handles all of it, you still retain control of it when you are using a showing partner. You're delivering a high-quality experience for that client, and that's what they really want. It's really all about what the consumer wants.” – Dave   Using this system, I tell people that this will inspire you to go prospect. Once the process becomes so much more enjoyable, it'll inspire you to get more clients.” – Dave   “It's just a mindset shift. When you find out that this is an option then how do you execute it? When do you execute it? How do you build that right model? I'm a big believer in the process, so I'll only build with somebody who wants me to help them build a team, because there's only one way I'm going to do it.” - Dave     You can reach out to Dave though his team's Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/ZTEAMAZ/

Sunday 5-27-22 Episode #16The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>Is there a new coaster being built?>>>Holiday weekend. Will it be too busy to visit? >>>Does the park need a traditional log flume ride? >>>Cash free park. Good concept, but is it worth all the issues? And>>>Michael reviews the new resturant And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/1358927191183878/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 5-13-22 Episode #15The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>We review opening weekend >>>We also review the new Farmhouse restaurant >>>Is Steel Vegencance open?>>>What's the most under appreciated ride in CP?And>>>Castaway Bay Preview And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/556414295832707/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 5-6-22 Episode #14The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today: >>We were live on a rainy Ohio State Day! >>Congrats to Cedar Couple...#2 on Tik Tok last week! >>And Cedar Couple got married last week! >>CP Announced wild frontier nights And >>We go over our CP Tips and Tricks!And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/684332146122818/ Orlisten wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Friday 4-29-22 Episode #13The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>Bulldozer watch 2022>>>Pics going around on social media of cars from top thrill dragster being removed...what does it mean?>>>Season pass holders lawsuit>>>Donny P wants to be burried at CP when he dies!And>>>Have you ever gotten stuck on a ride?And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/405817037747135/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Friday 4-24-22 Episode #12The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>Guest: Cedar Couple Brady and Caitlin of Tik Tok Fame. They win all the games!!!>>>CP Fence Watch 2022 is undereway. There's a fence around where Oceana Stadium was...what's that about?>>>CIP Lounges for Season Pass Holders...worth it?>>>New Options for overnight stays at CPAnd>>>Orlando amusement park FREE FALL accident report released And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/385919900064535/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Check our Dave's book, Lesson Planning for Language Teachers, at https://amzn.to/31HJtpkWhat happens if the important decisions about planning get left to coursebook writers rather than teachers? How much of the coursebook should schools tell teachers to use? And what can you do if your school doesn't let you deviate from the prescribed materials? Dave Weller, author of “Lesson Planning for Language Teachers” and friend of the podcast discuss.Ross Thorburn: Welcome back, Dave.Dave Weller: Hurrah! Nice to be back.Ross: Thanks. Dave and I were having a conversation a couple of nights ago, and we got talking about teachers uses of materials, right?Dave: Yes, perhaps in the over‑reliance of materials in the classroom.Ross: It reminded me of this quote from Ian McGrath, who says, "It's been argued that if teaching decisions are largely based on the textbook and the teacher's book, this has the effect of deskilling the teacher. If the person doing the teaching cedes to the textbook rights have responsibility for planning, he or she gradually loses the capacity to exercise the planning functions."He says, "The teacher's role is trivialized and marginalized to that of a mere technician." [laughs]Dave: It seems over my many year's teaching and training, one observation is that when I see teachers who have been encouraged to use, only use and teach from the materials they have. They seem to develop habitual actions in the classroom that they do without thinking without reflection. There is definitely a parallel there between the quotation from the graph that you read.The teachers executing their plan without really understanding or taking into account some of the learners. [laughs]Ross: At the same, it's quite obvious from a management point of view, why is a school you'd want to provide as much support as possible for your teachers? Both in terms of maybe getting teachers to teach as many hours as possible. You could minimize the planning. You want to ensure some minimal level of quality.Dave: Exactly. It comes from a good place to provide more materials, and more support is a wonderful thing for the schools to want to do. Especially from the terms of the quality of the class that the students have. At least if you know the teachers are using materials and following a strict pattern, then at least the students will reach some minimum level.It seems to be that there's a limit to downsides of perhaps hiring newer or less skilled teachers. It also can limit the upside, I believe, of letting those teachers then develop over time, because they're not allowed to.Ross: Absolutely. Over the next few minutes, how about we talk about how to find that balance between giving enough support, and then just limiting teachers to technicians?Dave: Sounds good.Ross: Great. From what you were describing earlier, obviously every teacher starts off as a new teacher, and every teacher, therefore, needs a lot of...Dave: I was born ready, Ross.[laughter]Dave: Not everyone's Dave Weller, though, are they?Ross: Obviously, there's an advantage to new teachers getting a lot of support, isn't there?Dave: Absolutely, yes. We often forget how intense an experience it is for teachers who travel halfway across the world. They're dealing with culture shock, new environments, new colleagues, and they're thrown into the classroom, the day after they arrive, when they still [laughs] have jet lag.In those situations, there's a lot to be said for the school providing a lot of support for those teachers until they can find their feet.Ross: I guess typically, what might that look like to describe so we're all on the same page here, something that's becoming more and more common in my experiences is giving the teachers not even like a recipe book, but like a PowerPoint or something to follow that your job as a teacher is to flick through this.You don't even necessarily even have to read the instructions because they're already on the PowerPoint for you. You might have suggested timings for just about everything, really almost like idiot‑proofing, teaching.At the extreme end, I've had managers asking me, "Can you write a script for the teachers?" The teachers, all they have to do in the class is read out the script. It's impossible for anyone to teach a bad class.Dave: That's interesting. Remember, that's with technology. Back in the day, I remember, when I first started, you were given the course book, and that was it. You had to pick things from there. You were given a certain guideline. Maybe each unit takes three lessons. There were six pages, so you do the math.[laughter]Dave: You went from there. You had a lot of autonomy over what to choose, how to sequence a lesson, you can move things around. You did have to rely a lot on your more experienced colleagues, which perhaps taught that course. Before, to give you ideas, it encouraged a definite interaction and collaboration, the staff from the people sharing ideas.Then I remembered a few years later, when maybe an update happened, course books are suddenly accompanied by teachers notes. First, people, the experienced teachers didn't use them at all. I just flicked through and pfft.[laughter]Dave: You turned your nose up at the book. We found that newer teachers would arrive and be very, very interested in pulling it out and teaching those lessons, as is until they became used to it. Then they found that they began with collaboration with input from their more experienced colleagues.They had more interesting ideas to try newer ideas, and they saw the benefit and the effectiveness of those in class. It naturally moved away from the teacher's notes. It's like training wheels on a bike, I guess.Ross: Obviously, the issue here is if the training wheels remain forever, then...Dave: Or mandated.Read the rest of the transcript here

Friday 4-15-22 Episode #11The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>CP was on Jeopardy!>>>Coastermania is coming!>>>How you can get free CP Tix>>>Frontier FestivalAnd>>>Secrets only employees know And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/675994846960412/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Sunday 4-8-22 Episode #10The Cedar Point Podcast What We Talking About Today:>>>Opening Day is less than a month away!>>>CP Quietly adds a $99 pass>>>Sandusky is getting a roundabout...how will that affect CP traffic >>>Park Pet PeevesAnd>>>Dave's coaster of the week And more!!!On the show:Andrew Z, Donny P, Molly, Nicole, Michael, Dylan and Dave You can watch the VLOGCAST here:https://www.facebook.com/andrewzonline419/videos/293404496252369/ ~Or~listen wherever you get your podcasts ***APPLE PODCASTS:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cedar-point-podcast/id1608893281 ***GOOGLE/GOOGLE PODhttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNTQxMTA3My9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkCASTS: ***SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jugneKWYc31aE3acPQZCu?si=hF8oamWBTpuQIKzrWsz86Q ***I HEART RADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-cedar-point-podcast-92434163?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true ***AMAZON MUSIC:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ba1a395f-c411-4004-85ce-3124fef6ba57/cedar-point-podcast?ref=dm_sh_i5WRc3pSncsCeGQatcC1HtLjZ Help us out by: SubscribeDownload (not just listen!) Rate (5 stars if you like it!) Review - Spread the word!

Mix #1Mamas Gun / Good love / CandelionJosephine Jones / Candy man / BrockIvory / Warm love (DJ Duckcomb edit) / TuskJennifer Yen / Together again / EMI Mix #2Mave & Dave / You are delicious / KalindaEva Pilarova / Leto leto / Supraphon La VO soutirée : diabolique reprise du Purple Haze de Jimi Hendrix en version psico cumbiaMeridian Brothers / Niebla morada / Soundway Mix #3Kauan Marco / Balança, Zé Carlos / Gop TunShen & Les Shendys / Je ne suis que musique / Disques DéesseRafael Cancian / Besos libres / Razor-N-TapeMirdza Zivere / Zozefino (Guest edit) / Cuts Mix #4Gianni E Donatella / Guarda l'amore / Disco SegretaLjupka Dimitrovska / Sta je tu je / JugotonLes Dynamites / Pop oud #2 / BatovGülden Karaböçek / Mehmet Emmi / Türküola La Bougie Wonderland : un joyeux anniv' à Cécile Duflot, Francesca Testasecca (Miss Italie 2010) et Wangari Maathai (Prix Nobel de la Paix en 2004)The Lumineers / Birthday / Dualtone Mix #5Matt Berry / Beatmaker / Acid JazzUrsula Ricks / Sweet tenderness / Jai AlaiL'Orchestre Du Montplaisant / Weeds / Catapulte

The trade association is made up of approximately 300 wood product manufacturers. From start to finish, BC Wood deals with manufacturing CLT (cross-laminated timber) and mass timber products all the way to high-end finish products.With 18 years of experience under his belt, Dave has seen a number of changes in the forest industry, from the perspective of both manufacturers and consumers.For one, the “wood pile” is getting smaller for a number of reasons, including considerations around sustainability, logging, and the management of old growth (trees that are at least 200 years old).Trends come and go, but as long as a manufacturer focuses on doubling down on the key strengths of wood (such as its ability to be manipulated in a wide variety of forms) while seeking to find innovative ways to buffer its weaknesses (such as its level of softness), that manufacturer will go far.Finally, Dave speaks on the future of the wood industry. He says that there is a universal push to look beyond profit and implement initiatives such as finding solutions for sustainability and partnering with the First Nations.Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn:[03:01] About BC Wood[08:11] Soft woods versus hard woods[10:35] Why the wood pile keeps getting smaller and smaller[21:12] Dealing with ultra-high-end residential clients with termite problems[28:26] Changes in trends around wood applications among clients over 18 years[34:23] Competitive pressures faced by BC Wood today[36:16] Dave's wanderlust[38:22] BC Wood's overseas locations[42:20] What Dave has learned from his travels[48:59] The future of the wood industry[52:04] The future of the tradesConnect with Dave Farley:Website - https://bcwood.com/Connect with Build Magazine:Website - https://www.buildmagazine.com/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/buildmags/?hl=enFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/BuildMags/Key Quotes by Dave:You're seeing a systematic change in the forest industry as we move forward into the next few decades. The wood pile, as we call it, keeps getting smaller, and a lot of that has to do with issues around sustainability, logging, and old growth (the 200-year range depending on the species).Fire treatment is going to become a big issue. Anything that can help in terms of treatment of product is going to have really good market opportunity. Finally, I think there is going to be really good market opportunity on thermally-modified wood.If you can take the key strengths and the key elements of wood, including the ability to manipulate it in a variety of forms, and you combine that with the weaknesses of wood such as its softness, and create innovative products, we create value in the marketplace.

The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: Answering Dave Ramsey's Most Popular Questions Today, I'm talking about the 5 things that will make you wealthy.  Dave Ramsey asserts that if you do these 5 things, you will win with money 100% of the time. What are these 5 things he's so confident about?: Have a written plan…a budget (no one accidentally wins - at anything…you need a game plan or you're gonna lose) You gotta get outta debt. Dave: “When you don't have any payments you know what you got? Money!” Don't spend everything you make. This is one of those good rant segments, because Dave really puts that knife in the wound and says if you're not happy with your job or your income, then don't be stagnant. Move on and move up. It's a free country and you can work elsewhere if you need more income to pay your bills Save money! Dave: ”You're gonna be broke until you save and invest money” The problem with your investments is not your fees or your returns, is that you don't have money. “100% of people that build wealth save money…on purpose, a lot!”  And the last thing to help you win with money is to be generous…but it takes doing the first 4 right to get to the point where you can be generous in a meaningful way. I don't really have much to add here, other than the higher your income is and the more conscientious you are about your spending, saving, and getting out of debt, the less you need a budget. But you still need a plan for you money. What are you working toward. What are you saving this money for? Having a purpose and making a long-term plan will help you stay on track and not lose sight of what matters most to you.  That's it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast.  --------- >>> Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2DI2LSP >>> Subscribe on Amazon Alexa: https://amzn.to/2xRKrCs >>> Visit the podcast page: https://truenorthra.com/podcast/  ---------- Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance

Hello! You've just stumbled into a conversation that's already in progress.  This is Ask Me Everything and this week we asked:   If you HAD to be one of the classic movie monsters, which one would it be and why? Listener Question from Dave: You crash off the winter river bridge and die, you now haunt your apartment.  A new young couple moves in that LOVE ghosts-- but you hate them.  Your caseworker says you have to get rid of them on your own.  How do you scare them away? What villain in a kids show/movie was surprisingly dark? Someone tells you that there is one cryptid that absolutely exists.  It's now indisputable.  Which one would you assume it was? Court Appointed Question: You are turned into a vampire.  At one point would your personality cease to evolve? Follow us on Instagram @askmeeverythingpodcast or give us a call at 818-252-9641 to play along and answer the questions yourselves!   

Another trip through the 60s one record at a time playlist was The Rolling Stones - Lets spend the night together The Everly Brothers - It's my time The Move - flowers in the rain Buddy Holly - Brown eyed handsome man Sam & Dave - Hold on I'm Coming The Rolling Stones - Paint it black Sam & Dave - You dont know like i know Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames - Getaway Connie Francis - My heart has a mind of its own Bruce Channel - Mr Bus Driver The Animals - I'm Crying The Foundations - In the bad bad old days (before you loved me) The Rolling stones - Honky Tonk Women The Ronettes - Baby I Love you Billy Joe Royal - Hush St Louis Union - Respect 60 Minutes of your love - Homer banks The Rolling Stones - I cant get no satisfaction The Kinks - Tired of waiting for you The Everly Brothers - cathys clown Del Shannon - Keep searchin' (We'll follow the sun) The Hollies - Searchin' The who - my generation Nancy Sinatra - You only live twice The Who - Shout & Shimmy Booker T & the mgs - Green Onions The Upsetters - Return of Django The exciters - Tell him The Everly Brothers - When will i be loved The Rolling Stones - Get off of my cloud Johnny Tillotson - Poetry in motion Leroy van dyke - walk on by Petula Clark - The other mans grass Peter starsted - where do you go to my lovely The Everly Brothers - So Sad

Dave is involved in a number of ventures outside of construction, including serving as CEO of Main Street Ingredients (MSI), a manufacturer of ingredients for use in ice cream, frozen desserts, cheese, bakery items, nutritional beverages, and confections.He has also worked for Kraft Foods and is partnered with sports nutrition brands Soul & Science and Kill Cliff.Listen in as Dave and Brad go down memory lane to speak on the various personal and professional obstacles that they have had to overcome through the years, from economic setbacks during the Great Recession to Dave's battle with cancer.Dave also touches on his love for people and how this passion influences his style and decision-making framework as a serial entrepreneur.Brought to you by Pella.Topics Discussed:[02:42] When Dave began his professional career in Arizona[10:51] How to maintain positivity as an entrepreneur and leader[14:37] How Kraft's R&D develops ideas for products[18:00] Partnering with other big food brands such as Ben & Jerry's and Unilever[26:47] What inspired Dave to establish MSI[32:34] Moving to Arizona in the 2000s and meeting Brad[42:49] Brad's personal challenges in 2011 and finding success in business[54:38] Dave's work with Kill Cliff[01:00:57] Soul & Science's products[1:08:11] Looking forward despite battling with cancer[1:18:37] What Dave does for funConnect with Dave Clark:Website -Instagram -Facebook -Pinterest -Connect with Brad Leavitt: WebsiteInstagramFacebook HouzzPinterestYouTubeKey Quotes by Dave:You don't [build companies] by yourself; you do it with people. It's not only about finding opportunities but finding and putting the right staff in place to get the job done.You always look at what your company value is but you also look at what lies ahead of you. If you have a path to really get into bigger things, you first have to find a way to get to that next step.You have to be your own advocate, but you also have to listen and learn. You can't be a know-it-all.

Enjoy part three of this classic episode series where Andrew Warner from Mixergy interviews Russell on the ClickFunnels startup story! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you enjoyed episodes 1 and 2 of the interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club where he was telling the Clickfunnels startup story. I hope you are enjoying this interview series so far, and I hope also this motivates you guys to go over to the mixergy podcast and subscribe to everything that Andrew does. Like I said, he is my favorite interviewer and I think that what he does is second to none. So I hope that you guys enjoy him as well, and go subscribe to the mixergy podcast. But with that said, I'm going to queue up the theme song, and when we come back we will start into part 3 of the Clickfunnels startup story interview. Andrew: I actually got, I did see, I don't know, I didn't see the video you mentioned, but I did see what it looked like. Here's one of the first versions. He compared it to Clickfunnels, he said, I mean to Lead Pages. He said, “Look at how Lead Pages has their stuff all the way on the left, all the controls.” Oh you can't see it. Oh, let me try it again, let me see if I can bring up the screen because this is just, it's just too good. Hang on a second. I'm just constantly amazed how you're able to draw people to you. So this is the article from Lead Pages, this is the first landing page from Clickfunnels, this is what he created before, this is what you guys did together. This is your editor and h e said, “Look, if you're on Lead Pages, their controls, their editor is all the way on the left and it's just moving the main content to the right, which is not looking right. And I prefer something that looks like this, with a hundred pixels on the left, a hundred pixels…” I go, who knows a hundred pixels, it's like you, what is this? Russell: Dylan is obsessed with that type of stuff, it's amazing. Andrew: Obsessed. And you draw people like that. You draw people like Dave, who is just phenomenal. Dave, the traffic and conversion event that he was just talking about, is that the one that you went to? Dave: The one after that. Andrew: The one after that. Okay, we'll come back to that in a second then. So this became your next version, you brought on a new partner, and then you did a webinar with this guy. Who is this guy? Russell: It's Mike Filsaime, one of my first friends online. It actually wasn't a webinar, it was a live event. He was doing a live event in San Diego and he was like, “You have to come and sell Clickfunnels.” And I was like, “Nobody's buying Clickfunnels.” We had a free trial and like, we couldn't give it away. It was crazy. And he's like, “Well, you're on this website, you're picture is there, you have to come and sell Clickfunnels, and I need you to sell it for at least $1000.” Because the way it works, if you speak at someone's event, you sell something, you split the money 50/50. So he's like, “It needs to be at least $1000.” And I was all bummed out. I didn't want to do it. And the event actually started, but they were streaming it live online, so I was actually sitting at our office in Boise, watching it as I'm putting together my slides to create Clickfunnels, and then flew out to the event. And then we had a booth, and I don't know if I told you this, we had a booth and Lead Pages had a booth right across the little hallway, skinny hallway. And Todd's wife was manning our booth and then Lead Pages was right there, and it was so funny because she was not shy at all about talking about Lead Pages. She's like, “Yeah, we're like Lead Pages except for way better. We can do this and this.” And the other guy is sitting there like, right in front of her as she's telling them everything. And it was..anyway, I digress. It was pretty funny. Andrew: By the way, she's still at it. I saw a video that you guys created, you were talking to her and she goes, “I will be Clickfunnels.” I go wait a minute, you still had that fire, okay. So you were at that event. Russell: So we're at the event and there's probably, I can't remember, 150-200 people maybe in the room. So I got the slides up and Dylan was there and he was like, when we got to the funnels he was going to demo the editor, so I did the whole thing, showed the presentation and we demo'd Clickfunnels and at the end of the thing I sold. And I've been good onstage, but by far, that was the first time in probably 8 years that I'd seen a table rush, where people are stepping over the things, jumping around, trying to get to the back to buy as fast as they could. Andrew: What did you say to get them to want to do that? Russell: We made a really, I mean we gave the presentation, and gave a really good offer at the end. They get a year of Clickfunnels for free, plus they get training, plus they were going to get all these other things for $1000. Andrew: It was $1000 training and a year of Clickfunnels for free, and then they become long term members. And it was also called, Funnel Hackers? Russell: Funnel Hacks, yeah. Andrew: Funnel Hacks. And that's the thing that became like… Russell: The culture. Andrew: This culture, this tribe. It wasn't just they were signing to learn from you, they were becoming funnel hackers. That's it. Russell: I mean, that wasn't planned though. It was like, I was trying to think about a sexy name for the presentation, so I'm like ah, Funnel Hacks. And somebody owned FunnelHacks.com, and I'm like, I'm still doing the presentation that way. And then later we made t-shirts that said, “Funnel Hackers” and then now we got 4 or 5 people have tattooed that to their bodies, it's really weird. But anyway, that's what happened. We did that and we sold it and I remember going to dinner that night with the guys who were there, and Todd and his wife and everything. And we were all excited because we made some money finally. But I was just like, “You guys don't understand, like I've spoken on a lot of stages, and I haven't seen a table rush like that.” And I remember back, there was a guy, he passed away a couple of years ago, his name was Fred Catona. And he was a radio guy. He was the guy who did the radio commercials for, do you guys remember, it's got the guy from Star Trek, what's his name? Audience member: Priceline. Russell: Priceline. He did the Priceline radio commercials and made that guy a billionaire. And he told me when we were doing the radio ads, “This is what's going to happen. We're going to test your ad and if it works, I'm going to call you on the phone and let you know you're rich. Because if it works, it means you're going to be rich.” So I remember going to dinner that night and I told the guys, “Just so you guys know, we're rich.” And they're like, “What do you mean? We made $150,000.” I'm like, “No, no, no. The way people responded to that, I've never seen that in my life. We're rich.” The response rate from that, I've never seen. Andrew: And then you went to webinar after webinar after webinar. Russell: On the flight home that day I'm texting everybody I've ever met. “I got a hot offer, this webinar crushed it. We just closed whatever percent of the room at Filsaime's event. Who wants to do it?” And we started filling up the calendar. Andrew: And the idea was, and you told me you did 2 to 3 some days. And the idea was, they would sell somebody on a course, and then their members would then hear how your software and your funnel hacking technique would help up what they just bought and then they would sign up. You're still excited, I can see it in your face. And then this thing took off. And then you started doing an event for your culture, your community, and this guy spoke, Tony Robbins. Russell: Oh yeah, there's Tony. Andrew: One of the first ones. Was he at the very first one? Russell: No, he came to the third one, was the first one we had him come to. Andrew: Yeah? Why do an event? Why do your own live event? Russell: So we've done events in the past. I know events are good, but I'd sworn off them because the last event we did, I think we sold 3 or 400 tickets and less than 100 people showed up and I was so embarrassed. I was like, “We'll never do events again.” And as soon as this, as soon as Clickfunnels launched and it was growing, everyone's like, “We want to do a meet up. We should do an event.” All the customers kept asking. And against my, I didn't really want to do it, but at the same time I was launching my book, and I had won a Ferrari in this affiliate contest so I was like, “What if we did an event and we had the Ferrari there and we gave it away and then we're…” we had other ideas for giving away other cars and it became this big, exciting thing that eventually turned into an event. And that was the first Funnel Hacking Live event in Vegas, and we had about 600 people at that one that showed up. And that's where it all kind of, it all started. Andrew: And it built how much, how many people are you up to now? Russell: Last year we had 3500 people and we're on track to have about 5000 at this year's event. Andrew: 5000? Yeah. Russell: Those aren't free tickets. Each ticket's $1000, so it's…. Andrew: So how much is that in total revenue? Russell: From the event? Andrew: Yeah. Russell: So ticket sales, last year was $3 ½ million, this year will be over $5. But at the event we sell coaching so last year we made $13 million in coaching sales at the event as well. Andrew: Wow, would you come up here for a second, Dave? Do you guys know Dave? Yeah, everyone knows Dave. You know what's amazing… {Audience catcalls} Andrew: That's amazing. Dave: I don't know who that is. Andrew: A catcall. I saw a video, you guys have this vlog now, a beautifully show vlog. You guys went to sales force's conference, you're looking at the booths and in the video, do you remember what you did as you saw the different booths? Dave: I think that one I went and asked what the prices for each of the booths were. Andrew: Yes, and then you multiplied. And he's like, you're not enjoying the event, you're calculating ahead, how much. “10,000 that's 100,000….” It's like wow, right. You do this all the time? Dave: Yeah. It's a lot of money in an event like that. Andrew: And you think, and if this was not your event, you would be doing the same calculation trying to figure out how much they brought in today. Wowee. Alright when you went to sales force did you calculate how much money they probably did from their event? Dave: We were doing that the whole time, absolutely. Andrew: You saw the building, you had to know… Dave: Oh my gosh. 61 stories. Andrew: Why? Why do you guys want to know that? Why does, how does that… I want to understand your drive as a company and I feel like this is a part of it. Figuring out how much money other people are making, using that for fuel somehow. Tell me. Dave: I think it actually goes back to Russell and his wrestling days. We had the experience of going to Chicago right after that, and super just exhausted. And it was one of those things where he literally landed, we walked down and we're underneath the tarmac and all the sudden Russell goes from just being totally exhausted to a massive state change. Where he's literally right back where he was with his dad and he and his dad are walking that same path to go to, I think it was Nationals. And I saw Dan Usher, who was doing the filming, capturing that moment and it's that type of a thing for Russell. Where all the sudden it's the dream, where as soon as you see it, it can then happen. And Russell's just been amazing at modeling, and again the whole idea as far as just going at a rapid, rapid speed. I mean it's “Ready, fire, aim.” Andrew: It's not you gawking at the sales force, what's the sales force event called? Dave: Dream Force. Andrew: Dream force. It's not you gawking at how well Sales Force's event, Dream Force is doing, it's not you having envy or just curiosity, it's you saying, it's possible. This is us. That's it. Dave: It's totally possible. Andrew: It's totally possible. We could get there. And when you're sizing up the building, you even found out how much the building cost. Who does that? Most people go, “Where's the bathroom?” How much does the building cost? Dave: There's a number. Andrew: It's you saying, “We could maybe have that.” Dave: We can have that, yeah. Andrew: Got it. And so let's go back a little bit. I asked you about Traffic and Conversion because the very first Traffic and Conversion conference you went to, you guys were nobodies. Nobody came and saw you. Dave: We were put out in North 40 pasture, way, way far away. Andrew: And some people would say, “One day I'll get there.” you told Russell, “Today we're going to get there.” Dave: Well Russell wanted, he was speaking and so whenever you're speaking at an event, it's important that you fill a room, like this. And there's nothing worse than having an event and having no one show up. It's just the worst feeling in the world. And so he's like, “All we need, I gotta find some way of getting people into the event. I wish we had like some girls who could just hand out t-shirts or do something.” And I was like, we're in San Diego, that's like my home town. Russell: Dave's like, “How many do you need?” That's all he said. Dave: It's just a number. It comes down to a number. How many do you want? So we ended up having, within an hour or so we had 5 girls there who were more than happy to dance around and give out t-shirts and fill the room. Andrew: and the room was full? Dave: Packed. Andrew: Packed. And why wouldn't you say, “One day, the next time we come to Traffic and Conversion, the tenth time we're going to do it.” Why did it have to be right there? Dave: It's always now.   Andrew: It's always now. Dave: It's always now. Andrew: It's always now. It's never going to be the next funnel, it's never going to be the next product launch. I'm going to do whatever we can right now, and the next one, and the next one. That's it. That's who you are. Dave: That's how it works. Andrew: And now you're a partner in the business. $83 million so far this year, you got a piece of that. Dave: Yes. Do i? Russell: Yeah. Dave: Just checking. Andrew: Do you get to take profits home now? Dave: We do. Andrew: You do, you personally do? Dave: Yes. Andrew: Are you a millionaire? Dave: Things are really good. Andrew: Millionaire good from Clickfunnels? Dave: yes. Andrew: Really? Dave: Yes. Andrew: Wow. And you're another one. I was driving and I said, “What was it about Russell that made you work for him? What was it?” and you said, “I've never seen anyone implement like him.” Give me an example of early days, something that he implemented…you know what, forget that, let's not go back to Russell. As a team, you guys have gotten really good at implementing. Give me an example of one thing that you're just stunned by, we did it, it came out of nowhere, we could have been distracted by funnel software, we could have distracted by the next book, we did this thing, what is it? Dave: You're here on this stage with JP, and this was what 6 weeks ago? Andrew: and this whole thing just came from an idea I heard. You use Voxer. Why do you use Voxer? Russell: I don't know. Andrew: Because you like to talk into it. Russell: Yeah, and you can fast forward, you can listen at 4x speed, you can forward the messages to people really easily, it's awesome. Andrew: and it's just train of thought, boom, here's what I think we're going to…No, it's not that. I heard it's, “I have a secret project…” Russell: “I'll tell you guys about it later.” And they all start freaking out. “Tell us now.” Andrew: “Secret project. I don't know what it, it's going to be exciting.” They don't know what it is, going to be excited. Russell: Do you know how it started, this one? I was cleaning my wrestling room listening to you, and you were, I don't know whose event it was, but you were at the campfire, it sounded like. And you were doing something like this and I was like, I want my own campfire chat to tell our story. And then I was like, “Dave, we should do it.” And now we're here. So thanks for coming to our campfire…. Dave: That's how it happens. Andrew: And that's exciting to this day. Alright, thank you. Give him a big round, thank you so much. You know what, I didn't mean for this to come onstage, but I'm glad that it is. This made you laugh when you accidentally saw it earlier too. Why is this making you laugh? What is it? Russell: So we're not shy about our competitors, even when they're our friends. So one of the companies we're crossing out is his. That's why it's funny. Andrew: It's one of my companies. That's Bot Academy there. It's also a company I invest in, that octopus is ManyChat, I've been a very big angel investor and supporter of theirs. I'm not at all insulted by that, I'm curious about it. You guys come across as such nice, happy-go-lucky guys. Dave asked me if I want water, I said “Dave I can't have you give me any more things. I feel uncomfortable, I'm a New Yorker. Punch me, please.” So he goes, “Okay, one more thing. I'm going to give you socks.” So he gave me socks. Really, but still, you have murder in your eyes sometimes. You're crossing out everybody. This is part of your culture, why? Russell: It comes back, for me its wrestling. When I was wrestling it was not, I don't know, there's different mentalities right. And I did a podcast on this one time and I think I offended some people, so I apologize in advance, but if you're in a band and everyone gets together and you play together and you harmonize, it's beautiful. When you're a wrestler you don't do that. You know, you walk in everyday and you're like, those are the two guys I have to beat to be varsity. And then after you do that, you walk in and you're like, “Okay who are the people I have to beat to be in the region champ, and then the state champ, and then the national champ?” So for me, my entire 15 years of my life, all my focus was like, who's the next person on the rung that I have to beat? And it's studying and learning about them and figuring their moves and figuring out what they're good at, what they're bad at so we can beat them. Then we beat them and go to the next thing, and next thing, and next thing. So it was never negative for me, it was competition. Half the guys were my friends and they were doing the same thing to me, we were doing the same thing to them. I come from a hyper competitive world where that's everything we do. And I feel bad now, because in business, a lot of people we compete against aren't competitive and I forget that sometimes, and some people don't appreciate it. But that's the drive. It's just like, who do we, if I don't have someone to, if there's not someone we're driving towards, there's not a point for me. Andrew: And even if they're, even if I was hurt, “I accept it, I'm sorry you're hurt, Andrew. I still care and love you. We're going to crush you.” That's still there. Russell: And I had someone, so obviously InfusionSoft was one of our people we were targeting for a long, long time and I had a call with Clayton and someone on his team asked me, “Why do you hate Infusion Soft so much?” I was like, “I don't, you don't understand. I don't hate, I love Infusion Soft. I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for Lead Pages, I'm grateful for….” I told them, have you guys seen the Dark Knight, my favorite movie of all time? And it's the part where Batman and the Joker are there and Batman is like, asks the Joker, “Why are you trying to kill me?” And the Joker starts laughing and he's like, “I'm not trying to kill you. The reason I do this is because of you. If I didn't have you, there's no purpose behind it.” So for me it's like, if I don't have someone to compete against, why are we playing the game? So for me, that's why we're always looking… Andrew: It's not enough to say, it's not enough to just say “we're playing the game because we want to help the next entrepreneur, or the next person who's sick and needs to create…” no, it's not. Russell: That's a big part of it, but like, there's something… Andrew: Yeah, but it's not enough, it's gotta be both. Russell: My whole life there's, the competition is what drives me for sure. Andrew: And just like you're wrestling with someone, trying to beat them, but you don't hate them. You're not going to their house and break it down… Russell: Everyone we wrestled, we were friends afterwards. We were on the same Freestyle and Greco teams later in the season, but during, when we're competing, we're competing and everyone's going all at it. Andrew: Everyone's going all at it. That's an interesting way to end it. How much more time do we have? How much more time do we have? I'm going to keep going. Can I get you to come up here John, because I gotta get you to explain something to me? So I told you, I was online the other day, yeah give him a big round. I was online the other day, I don't even know what I clicked, I clicked something and then I saw that Russell's a great webinar person, everyone keeps telling me. Well, alright, I gotta find out how he does it. So I click over, “Alright, just give your email address and you can find out how..” Alright, I'll give my email address to find out how he became such a great webinar presenter. “Just give a credit card. It's only $4.95, so it comes in the mail.” It comes in the mail, that's pretty cool. Nothing comes in the mail anymore. Here's my credit card. It goes, “Alright, it's going to mail it out. Would you also like to learn how to use these slides? $400.” I go, no! I'm done. Russell: Welcome to the funnel. Andrew: Welcome to the funnel. I'm done. But I'm going to put in Evernote a link to this page so I don't lose it so I can come back. I swear. I did it. And this is my receipt for $4.95. Don't you ever feel like, we're beyond this? We're in the software space now, we're competing with Dropbox, we're not competing with Joe Schmoe and his ebook. And you're the guy who sold the, who bought the ad that got me. John: I know. Andrew: I asked you that. Do you ever feel a little embarrassed, “We're still in the info market space.”? John: No, I think it's the essence of what we do, of what Russell does. We love education. We love teaching people. I mean, the software is like the backend, but we're not software people. I mean, we sell software, but we teach people. All these people here and all the people at all of our events, they just want to learn how to do it better. Andrew: I don't believe it. John: Okay. Andrew: I believe in him. I don't believe in you. I believe that for you it's the numbers. Here's why I don't believe it. I'm looking in your eyes and you're like, “I'm giving the script. I'm good, I'm doing the script.” I see it in your eyes, but when I was talking to you earlier, no offense. This is why he does what he does. When I was talking to you earlier, you told me about the numbers, the conversion, how we get you in the sales funnel, how we actually can then modify…That's the exciting part. Don't be insulted by the fact that I said it. Know that we have marketers here, they're going to love you for being open about it. What's going on here? What's going on, keeping you in this space? John: Okay, from my perspective. Okay so, initially it was self liquidation on the front, which is what I was telling you. It was the fact that we were bootstrapped, we didn't have money to just like throw out there. We had to make sure we were earning enough money to cover our ads. And Russell had all the trust in the world in me, I don't know why he did, but he did. And he's just like, “Spend money, and try to make it self-liquidate.” I'm like, “Okay.” So we just had to spend money and hope that we got enough back to keep spending money. Andrew: And self-liquidate means buy an ad today and make sure that we make money from that ad right away and then software. John: Yeah. Andrew: And then you told, and then software's going to pay overtime, that's our legacy, that's our thing. And you told me software sucks for selling. Why? John: Software sucks, yeah. Andrew: Why? Everyone who's in info, everyone's who in education says, “I wish I was a software guy. Software is eating the world, they're getting all the risk back.” I walked through San Francisco; they think anyone who doesn't have software in their veins is a sucker. John: I asked the same thing to myself, you know. I was running ads, I'm like why can't I just run ads straight to the offer? Why do I have go to these info products? I want to get on the soft…. And then I was like, I feel like it's kind of like marriage. Like it's a big thing to say like, “You probably already built websites, but come over, drop everything you're doing and come over here and build websites over here on our thing.” And it's like, that's a hard pull. But “Hey, you want to build webinars? Here's a little thing for $5 to build webinars.” Now you're in our world, now we can talk to you, now you can trust us, now we can get you over there. Andrew: Got it. Okay, and if that's what it takes to get people in your world, you're going to accept it, you're not going to feel too good for that, you're just going to do it and grow it and grow it. John: Yeah. Andrew: What's your ad budget now? See now you're eyes are lighting up. Now I tapped into it. John: We spend about half a million a month. Andrew: half a million a month! John: Yeah. Don't tell the accountant. Andrew: Do you guys pay with a credit card? Do you have a lot of miles? John: Yeah, we do. In fact…. Andrew: You do! How many miles? John: In fact, the accountant came into my office the other day and said, “Next time you buy a ticket, use the miles.” Andrew: Are they with Delta, because I think you guys flew me out with Delta. John: Yeah, American Express is where we're spending all our money. Andrew: Wow. And you're a partner too? John: Yeah. Andrew: Wow, congratulations. John: Thank you. Andrew: I don't know you well enough to ask you if you're a millionaire, I'm just going to say congratulations. Give him a big round. John: Thank you. Andrew: Wow, you know what, I actually was going to ask the videographers to come up here. I wrote their names down, I got the whole thing and I realized I shouldn't interrupt them, because they're shooting video. But I asked them, why are you, they had this career where they were flying all over the world shooting videos for their YouTube channel. I'm sorry, I forgot their name, and I don't want to leave them out. Russell: Dan and Blake. Andrew: They were shooting YouTube videos, they were doing videos for other people. I said, “Why are you now giving it up and just working for Clickfunnels all the time? More importantly, why are you so excited about it?” And they said, “You know, it's the way that we work with Russell.” And I said, do you remember the first time that you invited them out to shoot something? What was it? Russell: It was the very first Funnel Hacking Live we ever had, and probably 2 weeks prior to that, one of our friends had an event and Dan had captured the footage, and he showed me the videos. “Did you check out my Ven Video?” I'm like, “Oh my gosh, that was amazing.” And I said “Who did it?” and he told me. So I emailed Dan and I was like, “Hey, can you come do that for Funnel Hacking Live?” And he's like, “What's Funnel Hacking Live?” So I kind of told him, and he's like, “Sure.” And it was like 2 weeks later and he's like, “What's the direction?” and I was like, “I don't know, just bring the magic man. Whatever you did there, do that here.” And that's kind of been his calling card since. He just comes and does stuff. Andrew: Bring the magic. He wants to have those words painted on the Toronto office you guys are starting. Literally, because he says you say that all the time. And the idea is, I want to understand how you hire. The idea is, “I'm going to find people who do good work, and I'm going to let them do it.” What happens if they wouldn't have done it your way? What happens if it would have gone a different direction? Russell: I see your question, and I'm not perfect. So I'm going to caveat that by, some of the guys on my team know that I'm kind of, especially on the design and funnel stuff, I'm more picky on that, because I'm so into that and I love it. But what I've found is when you hire amazing people like Todd for example, doing Clickfunnels. The times I tried to do Clickfunnels prior, build it was like, me and I'm telling developers, “here's what to do and how to do it.” And like there's always some loss in communication. With Todd, he's like, “I know exactly what I would build because I want this product too.” And then he just built it and he showed me stuff. And I'm like, “That's a good idea.” And he's like, “I did this too.” And I'm like, “That's a good idea.” And it's so much easier that way. So when you find the right people, it's not you giving them ideas, it's them coming to you with the ideas. And you're like, “that is a good idea. Go do it.” And it just makes, takes all the pressure off your back. So for us, and it's been fun because I look at, man, the last 15 years of all those different websites and the ups and the downs, the best people have always stuck. So we've got 15 years of getting the cream of the crop. It's kind of like, I'm a super hero nerd, but it's like the Avengers, at the end of, when Clickfunnels came about we had this Avenger team of people. And we're like, now we've put in our dues, now it's time to use all of our super powers to do this thing, and it all kind of came together. Andrew: Build it and build it up. And then as you were building it up, you then went to Sales Force. You guys invited me, you said, “Hey Andrew, we're in San Francisco, you're home town. Do you want to come out?” I said, “I'm going to be with the family.” And you said, “Good. Being with the family is better than hanging out with us.” But I still said, “What are you guys doing in San Francisco at Sales Force?” Because sales people don't need landing pages, yet you guys will probably find a way for them to need it. Then I saw this, this is the last video that I've got. There's no audio on it. I want you guys to look at their faces as they're looking up at these buildings, walking through the Sales Force office. Look, they're getting on the motorcycles in the lobby. They're looking all around like, “Oh gee.” Counting the buildings that are Sales Force labeled. Look at that! What are they doing? Not believing that this is even possible. And then just stopping and going, this is dream force. This is your dream. What did you get out of going to sales Force's event and seeing their office? Russell: Honestly, prior to Sales Force, I was kind of going through a weird funk in my business, because it was like, again there was the goals. So it was like, okay, we're going to do a million bucks, and then we did that. And then it's like, let's make 10 million a year. And then 50, and then this year we'll hit a hundred. And like, what's the next goal?  A billion, because a hundred million, 2 hundred million is not that big of a difference. And it was just kind of like, what's the point, what's the purpose? We've grown as big as any company that I know. And then last year, Dave and Ryan had gone out there and they were telling me stories like, “There's 170,000 businesses here.” And they were telling me all these things, and it sounded cool, but I didn't, and they were going crazy. You have to see this so you can believe it. But there's something about the energy about seeing something that makes it real. So this year I was like, I want to go and I want to see Benioff speak. I want to see the thing, the towers, I want to just understand it, because if I understand it, cool. Now we can reverse engineer and figure out how we can do it. So for me it was just like seeing it. I think in anything, any, as entrepreneurs too, if you're people believe that you can do it, you'll do it. If you believe you can lose weight, you'll lose 3eight. If you believe you can grow a company, and I don't feel like I believed that the next level was possible for us until I saw it. And then I was like, oh my gosh, this is not ridiculous. Benioff's not, none of these guys are any smarter than any of us. It's just like, they figured out the path. It was like, okay let's look at the path. And then let's look at it and now we can figure out our path. Andrew: And seeing it in person did that for you? Russell: Oh yeah. It makes it tangible, it makes it like, it's like your physiology feels it, versus reading a book about it or hearing about it. It's like you see it and you experience it, and it's like it's tangible. Andrew: I told you, I asked people before they came in here, “What are you looking for?” and a few of them frustrated me because they said, “I just wanted to see Russell. I just want to see the event.” I go, “Give me something I could ask a question about.” But I think they were looking for the same thing that you got out of there. And I know they got it. I'm going to ask them to come up here and ask some questions, and I want to know about the future of Clickfunnels, but first I've got to just acknowledge that, that we are here to just kind of pick up on that energy. That energy that got you to pick yourself back up when anyone else would have said, “I'm a failure of a husband, I can't do this.” Go back. The tension that came from failing and almost going to jail as you said, from failing and succeeding, and failing again. And still, that is inspiring to see. I want to give the whole Clickfunnels family a big round of applause, please everybody.

The gang stumbles into a summer camp along their way to Vega, an Eldath Summer Camp! Sponsored by Armor by DAVE- You should be fashionable when kicking Evil's ass! Special Thanks to our Patreon Supporters: Robert Speewack, Kit Curtis, Shelby Boggess, Paris Arrowsmith and Dixie Ross! You can support us at our Patreon @: https://www.patreon.com/savethed8pod Additional Soundscapes: Forested Cliff/ Forest Night by: Michael Ghelfi --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/savethed8pod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/savethed8pod/support

After being saved by Mr Green, Orc at Law; the gang reaps the rewards of Kragls's second dive into contracts and obligations. Sponsored by Armor by DAVE- You should be fashionable when kicking Evil's ass! Special Thanks to our Patreon Supporters: Robert Speewack, Kit Curtis, Shelby Boggess, Paris Arrowsmith and Dixie Ross! You can support us at our Patreon @: https://www.patreon.com/savethed8pod Additional Soundscapes: Medieval City/ Panicked Crowd by: Michael Ghelfi --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/savethed8pod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/savethed8pod/support

Welcome to The Psychologists Podcast, where we talk about all things psychology through a very personal lens.Dave Englund, MAI, SRA, AI-GRS and his wife, Joanne Englund, CPA reflect on Dave's Benjamin Button-like journey back to college as a 65-year-old. What factors impact our biggest life decisions? Is it ever too late to finish unfinished business? And is doing extra credit genetic?Honorable Mentions:-“You don't know what you don't know”-Is it really true that ANYONE can (or should) go to college?-Matching law-Paper? ceilings -Shame and motivation-MAI designation in real estate appraisal (it's a big deal) https://www.appraisalinstitute.org › our-designations-“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”-Don't go to college till you're ready-How your reason for going to school impacts your approach in the classroom-1974 vs. 2021 college pressures-Curiosity pulls, pressure pushes Memorable Moments:“I was taking a history course when Confederate statues were finally being taken down; I was in government class during an impeachment trial” (Dave)“You have to answer the right question…not, Do you feel like going to college and studying for 4 years and taking tests? That's not the question. The question is, Where do you wanna be?” (Joanne)-Dave Englund lives in Austin with his wife Joanne. He is a commercial real estate appraiser with 35 years in the business, and currently works as a commercial review appraiser for Frost Bank. Joanne is a CPA and works as a Senior Auditor for Travis County. Their hobbies are hanging out with each other and spending all their money on DIY home and yard improvement projects.-Gill Strait PhD and Julia Strait PhD are both Licensed Psychologists (TX) and Licensed Specialists in School Psychology (LSSPs, TX). They are alumni of The University of South Carolina School Psychology Doctoral Program (Go Gamecocks).Gill is a teacher, researcher, and supervisor at a university graduate psychology training program.Julia is a testing psychologist at Stepping Stone Therapy in Houston, TX: https://steppingstonetherapy.org/strait/ Instagram: @drjuliatx https://www.instagram.com/drjuliatx/?hl=en

The Maniac's wait until night and venture into the illegal fighting arena under the prison where they meet the enigmatic Mr. Profit and a few other faces left over from Season 1! Sponsored by Armor by DAVE- You should be fashionable when kicking Evil's ass! Special Thanks to our Patreon Supporters: Robert Speewack, Kit Curtis and Shelby Boggess! You can support us at our Patreon @: https://www.patreon.com/savethed8pod --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/savethed8pod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/savethed8pod/support

Ancient Words.....Michael W. Smith. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him: “Forgive 
all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer 
the fruit of our lips (Hosea 14:2) Dave: Good morning Baba, I am here again and this time I have a lot to say. You know it is the beginning of another year, I have written my goals and I know you will grant them. BABA: I thought you learnt your lesson? Dave: What lesson was I supposed to have learnt, Baba? There were many knocks last year so I don't know which lesson you mean. BABA: I move by my word not yours. The word that carries life is mine. For you to produce, you must take my words and speak them. Your goals must come from Me. Dave: The Bible is full of your promises; they were spoken to men of old. How do I know which one I can use? BABA: You have My Spirit; I quicken your heart remember? Dave: I know, but many times I am confused. Take for instance, we go to church and the pastor pronounces all these wonderful blessings. I claim all of them only to find that only a paltry few come my way. You know this can be frustrating. In fact it made me think that some of the promises are meant for a few. BABA: Your issue is you do not know how to appropriate My word. Dave: What do you mean by that? BABA: Look at it this way: there are lots of goods in the market but it is the one you buy that goes home with you. Look at the word like that. I have so many precious promises for you; I am Almighty, I love you and want you to have everything you need but you must take or receive them before they can be yours. Dave: I do not understand. If you are Almighty, can't you just give them to me? BABA: I already did. If you have money in the bank and you are hungry, what should you do? Dave: Go get money from the bank to buy my food. BABA: Good! Here, you have all you need but faith is the currency and your faith is expressed in words. Your words will trigger action. Dave: So how do I make sure I do not short-change myself this year? BABA: Simple, come to me with my word. Your senior brother Jesus never did anything without consulting me. His words were echoes of mine. He heard me, He saw me act and He did as I desired. You should do the same. Take the word I have quickened to your heart and bring it back to me, that is your weapon of exchange. Dave: You lost me there. Baba: I will give you an example. David my servant loved me so much and he thought where I lived was not befitting so he decided to build me a house. I saw his heart and sent him a prophet with my word. He was grateful and he came back to me with the words I had promised him. When you do that, you seal the deal; you ensure it comes to pass. You prove that you understand the dynamics and you show that you are ready for the life. (2 Samuel 7:2-29) Beloved, which word of God, are you anchoring your faith this year? What has God spoken to your heart? , take those words back to God in prayer. Remember, He said we could come and reason with Him. He said we could command Him concerning His work. The word of God that came to you at specific times in your life is not accidental. It came for a purpose; if you missed it before, you ought to make sure you do not miss it this year. As for me, I read the words aloud when I can; I read the same portion of scriptures from different versions of the Bible. My discovery, the word of God is alive and always has something new to reveal every time I engage therein. Sometimes, I record the scriptures in my voice, and I play it back when it is not convenient to read. I even deployed the ‘Talking Tom' to help me with some of the words, to add spice to the whole experience. All of this effort is to make sure I do not miss out on God's plan for me. I know we are just starting; my strategy is to take it a day at a time. I advise you to pace yourself and let the word of God assume the life it should in your life and situation

EAFH35: Tracy and Sabrina Shares Social Justice Experiences in an Interracial Family Dr. Dave: Tracy Trace and her daughter Sabrina. Welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcast. How are you guys doing today? Tracy: You go first Bri. Dr. Dave: She's like ... Sabrina: I'm good. How are you all? Dr. Dave: You good?… The post EAFH35: Tracy and Sabrina Shares Social Justice Experiences in an Interracial Family appeared first on Leaders share how-to practices - KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast on GrokShare.com.

Do you ever pay much attention to your feet? Our feet are our first point of contact with the ground, and we walk around on them all day. But most people just wear shoes and call it a day. And if you’re a runner, then all the more reason to maintain good foot health! So how do we take care of our feet? Dave Liow, an exercise physiologist and holistic movement coach, joins me in this episode to discuss feet and how to optimise foot health. We talk about some common foot conditions, and he also shares advice on selecting the right shoes and improving foot mechanics. For runners and everyone else, don’t miss this episode and learn how you can achieve good foot health!   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics.   Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Find out how to take better care of your feet. Discover the benefits of going barefoot. Learn how to select the right shoe for you.   Resources Holistic Movement Coach on YouTube The HMC Footy Show, foot exercises on YouTube How to start looking after your feet on YouTube Exercises for bunions on YouTube Holistic Movement Coach website   Episode Highlights [03:29] Why Feet? When he started looking at movement, Dave noticed that the feet were one of the areas trainers had no idea about. People have 28 bones in the feet and 55 articulations from below the knee. Over a third of the bones here are in the feet, which tells us how important they are. It’s an area largely being neglected by movement experts and professionals. [05:45] What Shoes Do to Our Feet So much space in the brain is devoted to our feet and hands, and if you walk around with sensory deprivation chambers on them, you’ll lose that space. The bottom of the foot (plantar fascia) is extremely precarious, full of reflectors that send information to your brain about how you’re moving and interacting with the ground. By wearing shoes, we break that link. [09:56] Improving Foot Mechanics and Foot Health Keep your feet out of shoes as much as possible. Whenever Dave has the chance to go barefoot, he does. By going barefoot, you are giving as much information to your feet as you possibly can. Shoes provide a lot of support for your feet. Not wearing shoes will improve your feet’s strength. A healthy foot is a mobile foot. If you can’t do a lot with your toes, it shows you need to do some conditioning on your feet to make them smarter and stronger. Plantar fasciitis is one of the most common foot problems runners encounter. Listen to the full episode to learn more about some of the most common foot conditions! [17:21] Bunions and How They Affect Your Foot Health The exact cause of bunions is up for debate, but there is certainly a genetic and environmental component to it. A bunion is when your big toe starts to go in and some calcification forms around the joint. Bunions cause compressions in the foot, leading to problems in the nerves between the bones of your foot. There should be adequate space between your toes, allowing your foot to move and breathe. This also applies to your footwear—your shoe should have a wide toe box to give your toes enough space. You can do foot exercises for bunions to prevent the need for surgical treatment. [24:10] How to Deal with Plantar Fasciitis Typically, people who have plantar fascia issues will feel the bottom of their foot locked up, especially in the morning. Increasing your running distance too quickly and incorrect foot mechanics are common causes of plantar fasciitis. Icing the foot takes some of the pain away. Applying light pressure on the affected area can hydrate the tissues and make them healthier. Adding the right kind of load to it will help line up the fibres and make it strong again. Movement issues can disappear if you keep your body balanced. [29:55] On Running Shoes Dave and Lisa talk about a shoe that reportedly takes 4% of your running time. More track records are broken lately due to the improvement in the technology used to create running shoes. These new shoes are all about sports and performance, not health. There are different types of shoes for different purposes. Being barefoot all time can also cause issues because what goes on your skin can absorb what goes on it. [37:11] The Truth about High Heels When you add an incline to your heel, it lifts you and pushes you forward, breaking your kinetic chain. To avoid falling on their faces, people who wear high heels adjust by pushing their posture forward and arching the lower back more. When you’re in high heels, you’re effectively pointing your toes. This shortens the calf muscles, which can end up reducing the motion in your ankle, pulling you into pronation, and collapsing the arch. Wearing high heels often can change the way your muscles work. [44:21] Supplementation for the Cartilage and Joints Dave reads up on what he thinks is useful and what’s not, and he uses it on an individual basis. A decent multivitamin is a good place to start. Dave is a fan of probiotics and fish oil. However, if you’re sensitive to histamine, do your research first before taking probiotics. He also recommends working fermented food like kimchi and sauerkraut into your diet if it suits you. [51:08] Dave’s Take on Orthotics Dave thinks if you have a foot without a structural issue or a neurological deficit, you can do without orthotics. Orthotics provide support and are often prescribed to block motion. Foot mechanics change when you have your foot on the ground versus in the air. A lot of the mechanics that are put into orthotics aren’t done in a closed chain, which changes the whole way the foot works. If you think you may need an orthotic, consult first with someone who knows how they work and can give you proper advice. Dave takes a holistic approach when it comes to foot health [1:00:06] Dave’s Experience with Reflexology There are different types of reflexology, but it’s often associated with feet. The idea is your body is represented in smaller areas of your body that you can access. Dave has tried reflexology on himself, and it worked well. He particularly had some good results with the sinus points around the toes, which help to clear the sinuses. He finds it relaxing, because looking after your feet is looking after your whole body—it’s all connected. [1:02:52] How to Select the Right Shoe Be careful of the marketing of shoe science. In reality, it isn’t the shoe that makes the difference. Pick a neutral shoe that feels good. Research shows the more comfortable your shoe is, the more efficient you are. Get the lightest and the most minimalist shoe that you are happy with.   7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘I’m constantly dumbfounded by how little care people have taken on their feet’. ‘The foot and the ankle are a huge player in my model and certainly one that I think having a very big impact on how people move well’. ‘Shoe choice doesn’t start and finish when you’re done running—it’s throughout the day’. ‘Be careful where you expose your feet to because it will go in you and then we'll take it into your health. There's time and place for everything’. ‘It’s not about speed and power… It’s keeping everything as best as you can in optimal performance and stopping things before they fall down the cliff and being in that preventative space’. ‘If you think you can get everything out of your diet, even if you’re eating organic, you probably can’t… So certainly, some supplementation is useful’. ‘It’s not the shoe that does the running; it’s the person that does the running. Technique and conditioning and looking after yourself and your health has much more effect than a shoe ever will’.   About Dave Liow Having mentored many coaches and trainers in New Zealand and Australia, Dave Liow is following his passion for sport and health and love for teaching. As a health professional, exercise physiologist and the founder of the Holistic Movement Coach Programme, he is constantly striving to find ways to be healthier and move better. You may connect with Dave on LinkedIn or Facebook. You can also visit his website or watch his YouTube videos to learn how to take better care of your feet.   Enjoy the Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know how to achieve good foot health. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Full Transcript of the Podcast! Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits this week. So I have two guests. Dave Liow this time. Now Dave is a repeat offender on the show, and I love having him to guest. He is one of my great mentors. And I hope you're gonna get a lot out of today's session.  Today, it's all about feet or so. This is one for the runners out there for sure. But also for just optimizing your foot health and also the whole kinetic chain, your feet where you connect with the ground obviously, and it affects your whole body. So we go to a deep dive into looking after yourself in regards to your feet. For the runners out there, it's all about playing for charters and bunions and picking the right running shoes. But there's also a whole lot of need for people to just have—want to know about good foot health.  Before we head over to the show, Christmas is coming. So if you want to grab one of my books, or one of my jewellery pieces, I’ll love that. You can head over to lisatamati.com. All the things are on there. And we're gonna be having a little break over the Christmas period. Maybe one, maybe two weeks from the show. I'm not quite sure at the stage, depending on the team's requirements over that period. So I hope you do have a good time of the Christmas. If you're listening to this afterwards, I hope the New Year's starting off really well for you. Before I go over to the show, just a reminder, I do have a couple of places left. We're nearly full on our one-on-one consultations, health optimization coaching. If you have a problem that you'd like to get help with, whether it's a high performance, whether you're a top athlete and wanting to get to the next level, whether you're wanting to work on your mindset, or maybe you've got a really complicated health challenge that you're just not getting any answers for, or you're having trouble sifting through all of the information and getting the right stuff—then please reach out to me, lisa@lisatamati.com. Right. Now over to the show with Dave Liow from the Holistic Movement Coach.  Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone. Welcome back. Today I have the amazing, the incredible, awesomest, Dave Liow on the show. Dave, welcome back, repeat offender.  Dave Liow: Hi Lisa. Lisa: I'm super stoked to have you today. Dave Liow: For the podcast you mean, right? Lisa: You’re a repeat offender for the podcast. Coming back to give us more. Not an offender in any other way.  Dave is an expert that I've had on before and he's definitely one of my mentors. And he's been to—Neil, my business partner for many years. And he is a mentor to many of the coaches and top trainers in New Zealand and Australia. So that's Dave's background. And you've got a background in physiology, don’t you Dave? Dave: Yes.  Lisa: You have a company called the Holistic Movement Coach. And will you—we're going to talk today about feet. People are like, ‘Wow, that's really interesting topic to talk about’. But it is. It's really, really exciting. Last time we had you on the show, we talked about the science of life, and that was one of the most popular episodes. So I'm really…  Dave: Great! Lisa: …happy to have you back on and to share some more of your absolute amazing wisdom. So today we've picked feet. What are we gonna to talk about, Dave? What are we going to share about feet and what you need to be aware of? Dave: Well feet’s one of those interesting ones. So from—as a movement professional, which is really my background. Though, being a holistic movement coach, if you just look at movement, you're gonna come unstuck pretty soon. So when I started looking at movement though, one of the things that I noticed that was one of the areas that were neglected were feet.  So we're seeing or looking at people's lumbar spines all the time and come to wideness not losing link from the top of the head. But a lot of trainers and movement professionals weren't even looking at people's feet. They had no idea what was going on, underneath those shoes of theirs. So for those of you who might think about maybe the back, whatever. Imagine if someone was wearing a big potato sack over their whole body, and you couldn't see where the spine was at trying to train them. So trying to work with someone and get them to move well without looking at their feet is to me just crazy.  Lisa: Yes, nonsensical. Dave: Yeah. And we've got 28 bones in the feet. So 28 bones, and we've got 55 articulations from below the knee. Lisa: Wow. Dave: So over a third of the bones are in the feet there. So that tells you about just how important that area is there. We have a look at the muscles that run down below the knee too. We've got 50 muscles. So added it, 276 ortho muscles, I think that's about right muscles. We have 50 below the knee so that shows you just how important there is. And it's an area that I think has been largely neglected by moving professionals. Lisa: Yes, it makes the total amount of sense. And we are on them all day, and we just shove them in a pair of shoes. And sometimes those shoes, you know, like ladies' high-heeled shoes, and tight shoes, and badly shaped shoes and don't do a lot barefoot—going out barefoot. Let’s start there, let’s start like—what does shoes do? When we put a pair of shoes on our feet? What sort of things are we taking away from our brain? Like, I always liken it to going around with a pair of gloves on my hands all day. I'm not going to be able to paint a picture and initiate anything, am I? Because I've just taken away all my proprioception and my ability to coordinate those fine motor controls with my hands. So we get that sort of analogy but actually, we do that to our feet all the time. Dave: And that's a wonderful analogy, Lisa. And so the representation in your brain of your body is called homunculus. So your brain has representations of all your different body parts. And some body parts are represented very, very—have a very large representation in the brain because they may have a lot of sensation and require a lot of fine movement.  So there's a huge representation in your brain of your face because if you look at the number of expressions you can do, and the articulations you can do with your tongue, your lips—there's a lot of area in the brain devoted to the face. Same with the hands as well. So you look at the fine movements you can do in your hands, isn't it? And how pink your hands are say compared to your elbow. It's incredible how much space in the brain is devoted to the hand.  Now one other is the feet. The feet have a massive representation in the brain as well. But with that, though, we know the brain is plastic. It can evolve and it will adapt to whatever environment you're putting it into. If you're walking around with that, the gloves on your hand, or in this case as one of my mentors Phillip Beach would say, ‘With sensory deprivation chambers on your feet’… Lisa: Wow. Dave: ‘…you will lose that representation in your brain’. And the bottom of the feet is extremely propiocept. Isn’t it? So many on that plantar fascia, that part of the foot there, is full of receptors which send information up to your brain. Giving you information about where you are, how you're interacting with the ground, and how you're moving. And without that, and by breaking that link there, there's a price to pay. Lisa: Yes, yes. And we just willy nilly wear shoes from the day we're born, pretty much. And if we're lucky in childhood, we might have run around bare feet a little bit. But most of us have got his feet and shoes all day. So you're saying that the—what did you call it? the munculus? Dave: Homunculus. Lisa: Humunculus? Dave: Homunculus.  Lisa: I never heard one before. I did, like, hear the representations. Like I don't know where I picked this up, some podcasts, some ways, something. If you have two fingers that you tape together for say a month. Dave: Yes. Lisa: When you untape them, you are unable to move them separately because the brain has wired them as being one unit. Another example of this is where people—they lose a limb. The brain still has the representation of that limb, even though the limbs are gone and they feel the pain of that limb. And this is like, the brain is like, ‘Hey, why? Where's my arm gone? Where's my leg gone’? or whatever.  And we're doing this to much lesser degree but when we don't need our toes and our things wiggle and wobble and do the proprioception. Okay, and we can improve our performance. Now, as runners are listening to us, let's talk about a little bit why this is important for runners to be able to sense the grounds and have good proprioception. So what are some of the advantages of having good—taking good care of our feet and maybe going bare feet a little bit. Dave: Oh, massive. One of my buddies, one of the things he has around feet—he has a lot of background in horse training. And he says, ‘No foot, no horse’. If you have a horse which damaged his hoof, then that's pretty much the end of that horse. They can't do a lot. And for you being an ultra-runner, Lisa, I'm sure you understand when your foot goes wrong.  Lisa: Oh, yes. I'm in trouble.  Dave: Yes, you are, you're in a lot of trouble. So I'm constantly dumbfounded by how little care people have take on their feet. I work on my feet every day without fail.  Lisa: Wow.  Dave: I'm certainly not an ultra-runner. I'm not the same class as you guys. But the amount of care that I take on one of my major movement teachers… I know this time when I lift… Lisa: So okay, what are some of the things that you would do to improve your foot mechanics and your proprioception and stuff? I mean, obviously, it's a little bit difficult with our podcasts and we can't show. I’ve got some video but… Dave: So there's that saying, ‘use it or lose it’. If your foot’s in a sensory deprivation chamber, you're gonna lose it pretty quick. So I like my foot to be out of things as much as possible, though... Lisa: Like right now? Dave: Yes. Quite a surprise, no shoe. Yes, I don't really wear shoes much. I wear [10:14 unintelligible] more than other shoes. If I'm running off-road, I'll certainly—and on concrete—I’ll wear some shoes. And we'll kind of talk about the shoe design a bit later on. But whenever I can go barefoot, I will. So if I can give as much information to my feet as possible—that's going to keep them smart, but also gonna keep them strong because shoes add support. That's what they are.  Lisa: Yes. Dave: You will not believe how much support shoes add. And you'll notice when you take them away, if you try and run barefoot, if you've been wearing sickly shoes with a lot of stability that added in there. So by going barefoot a fair amount of time, you get a very strong foot as well. So that doesn't come down to running shoes. And I guess we'll talk about running shoes in a bit.  But if you're wearing running shoes all day, even when you're not running, well, you're adding support there 24/7. I understand that some people might want more support when you're running, when you've got high forces going through your feet, but walking around and running shoes all day or highly-supportive shoes. You're basically walking around with. Lisa: Crutches. Yes, and making yourself lazy. You're making yourself lazy. Yes. Dave: Yes, right. So you're certainly going barefoot as much as possible. Now I do a lot of work at night to make sure that my foot’s mobile. A healthy foot is a mobile foot. So one of the things that they’ll often say is ‘the foot is not a hoof’. A hoof is rock solid and hits the ground and off the coast. So look at what you can do with your hand. Okay, you should do an awful lot with your toes as well and get them moving. So if you've lost the ability to do that, it really shows that you need to do some conditioning work on your feet and get them smarter and stronger.  Lisa: And if you don't, this is where some problems come up. If you can wiggle your toes and all that sort of stuff, you can prevent issues like yes—let's look at a couple of a common running problems that people get. Things like plantar fasciitis is a biggie, or even going up the leg a little bit. Like shin splints, and the problems in the calf, in the Achilles. Are these coming from the feet at all? Dave: Well, they’re coming from running. And there's some sort of mechanics going on there. But think of the foot, that's your first contact with the ground. When that goes wrong, everything in the chain will [12:37 unintelligible]. And if we think about something like a marathon, you've got 30 to 50,000 impact on the ground. That's a lot of race. So something's going wrong. This repetition over and over and over again. That's gonna end up breaking you.  And we're talking about forces, which you can't—two to five times your body weight depending how you're running. Now that’s a hell of force, a hell of a repetition. If something's not working right there, you will pay the price. Will you pay that price? Well, it depends.  But if we look at running injuries, straight off the top. Probably 15% of those will be at the knee. So the knee is normally the one that pays the price. But you know, I often say this in my lectures. Knee’s a dump. I knew that they kind of extracted and they've been—they have a little bit of rotation. But you see that one too much. And they have a little bit of sideways motion, but you don’t want too much of that either. So the knees are dump. So it's not only the knees fault that the knee gets some problems. It's normally the foot and ankle, or it's normally the hip, that's normally where I'll go.  And if you're a runner and you're getting knee pain, I'd be looking at either the foot and ankle. After the foot and ankle I will be looking at their hips straight away. There's something going wrong in those areas there. So about 50% of people will get knee pain more common in females than males by a long shot. Now, we look at kind of around, kind of Achilles as well. That's another area that can get a fair bit of problems as well. That's probably around… Lisa: That's mum, as usual. Ringing in the middle of the podcast. Dave: Calling mum. So around 10% of people get Achilles issues. That's another really common one and that's more a male thing. So that's the case, the 40 plus male is that actually the shoe. But then you'll get your IT band and touch that, which is probably around like 5% of the injuries. [14:32 unintelligible] can be in the foot or your tibia as well. And that's probably around 5% too.  So those are the main injuries. You'll see that getting running back, but knees if I was gonna go after one injury in running, knees are normally the one that pay the price. And there's certainly a big relationship between the foot and the knee. Ginormous. Lisa:  Right. So it's not always go up. Mechanics of the knees is the actual problem is down, or above, or below.  Dave: Yes. Almost always. Unless you've had an impact at the knee? Yes, you can treat the knee and always look at knee because if people come and see you for a knee injury, if you start playing the beat straight away, they'll go, ‘Well, hang on’.  Lisa: ‘What's this going on’? But it does make sense that the kinetic chain and the linking together and trying to find out where the original problem was coming from. Not just where—because like Neil's always said to me, ‘You know, like, if you've got a problem with your ankle, it can affect your shoulder’. And I’m like, ‘How does that work’? You know? Dave: Absolutely. Yes. Where it goes, nobody knows. Lisa: And how do you trace it back? How do you trace up a back problem to the ankle? Or the piriformis? Dave: If you know what it should look like and it doesn't look like what it should look like, well, what happens if you change and make it look more like it should? How does that change things? And that's normally in a nutshell the approach that I'll take. I guess that’s where you need to have a reasonable reference library of saying that, nothing more than my fair share of runners. And I'm sure you have too. I mean, if you feel someone running down the street, now you go, ‘That's not a very experienced runner’, or ‘Oh, boy, that's very experienced runner’. Well, you know that because you've seen so many runners.  So having that, I guess, experience in that database to draw from, and then understand the mechanics, and really add into it what you got. And I know what you gotta do in your Running Hot business. Well, you understand your body and you understand running technique, you can put that together and solve some wonderful problems.  Lisa: Yes, absolutely. But it is like a bit of a counterintuitive thing. I had a guy like, ‘Oh my piriformis’. Like Neil said to me the other day when he saw me, ‘Oh my God. Your bunions are getting really out of control. We got to do something about that’. And I'm like, ‘Oh, is it’? Sometimes you don't notice the things because you're just seeing them every day. You know? So let's talk about—let’s say some specific type of things that we are looking at. So let's look at bunions for that. What are bunions? And what effect can they have on the mechanics of your feet and up the body? Dave: Yes. So bunions—the quarter bunions is up for debate. There is certainly a genetic component to it. So either your mum probably has bunions. I guess. Lisa: Yes. Yes. Yes, you're right on money.  Dave: But that there’s also a big environmental part to it as well. So bunions, when your big toe starts to go in, then you'll end up with normally some calcification around that, well, that first joint—the joint in the big toe—that's probably a better way of saying it, around there as well.  What that does too is compresses the foot. The big toe goes sideways compared to it goes to the next [18:02 unintelligible], that compresses the foot, as well. So we get a lot of compression in that foot. They cause a number of problems. In between those bones in your foot. You've got a lot of nerves that run through there. So when those toes get compressed together, those nerves can get very irritated. Next, become very, very painful.  So and probably just as a little sideline here, if you were to pop your hands just in front of you there—if you're driving a car, listen to this, it's probably not such a good idea. But try this later on, you just put your hand down and look at your hand. So notice the space between your fingers there, that you put your foot down and have a look at your foot, you should also see space between your toes as well. Spacing’s really important to allow that room for the foot to move, to breathe. And also to get those space for all those straps in your foot to go. Lisa: And that’s with you naturally just having the foot there and not trying to spread them but just... Dave: Just naturally you should see space between your toes.  Lisa: Oh, wow. Dave: That you see a nice wide foot there. I love it. I love a good wide foot. Yes, so compression in those toes. And that can be a footwear choice thing too. So if you have shoes, and we've talked about toe box, that's the front part of a shoe. So we go out the toe box, this area through here. So the step front pair of shoes give a wide toe box in a shoe design that lets the foot spread out versus one that narrow and pushes the toes together. Lisa: Gosh. I should know about that. Yes. A lot of the shows that I get, I get sponsored by some brand or whatever. And then like I couldn't wear them.  Dave: Yes, the kiwi foot. Yes, and also this is a column that does this as well.  Lisa: Yes.  Dave: And with me, I've got a nice wide foot. I will not wish you for the narrow toe. It caused me nothing but problems. So footwear choice can be one of the things they also drive a bunion.  Now the other part too is that, when you've got that big toe and that big toes moving sideways, rather than going through the foot, you will often go inside the foot and fall into it. You get more pronation than what you normally have. So we lose the arch of the foot because the way the foot’s designed to move is your desire to move through and move through the big toe.  So, when we talk about the cycle of walking and running, we even have a phase of that called toe off. Because that's a really important part with a big toe pushes off. So if your big toe is going sideways, it's going to be—when you can't go through the toe, we’ll have to go around the toe. And that will cause a lot of wear and tear that can, after a while, that will start to break that foot down.  Now that may require you to drink, unless you do some exercises. In Sydney, we have some real bunion experts and my team, some of my guys love working with bunions. And you can certainly bring that foot back if you have surgery to repair bunions. So if you don't do the work, well the same thing is going to happen again. You just go straight across and they'll end up having to cut your foot open. Lisa: Yes, yes. Dave: My mum had bunions. But I gave her a little exercise program, and I'm pretty sure that's on my—that may be on my YouTube channel.  Lisa: Okay, we might get the link off here.  Dave: And yes, if not, I'll put it on there. And yes, she had some exercise to do for bunions. Her bunions pain disappeared and my mum's in her 70s. So you can certainly reverse that and have her feet are straighter. I’ve had some people come back from their podiatrist and I go to say, ‘What the hell have you been doing? What have you been doing? Keep doing it. Because your toes are straightening, and your foot in better condition’. Lisa: So you can sometimes avoid surgery. Wow, that's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. Dave: Well, and even if you have surgery, if you don't do the follow up, you're gonna end up having it again. It’s a huge amount of work with a huge amount of things you can do to help out your bunions. Lisa: Okay, that's really good because I have—got a very neglected bunion. I've always like, ‘Oh, it’s not causing me major troubles yet’. You know? Now I'm thinking, ‘Shoot. I need to address it’, because it's getting, like, Neil noticed that last time I was with him, it's getting worse. And I'm, ‘Oh, this is it? I thought it was the same old, same old’. Neil exclaimed no. And I've got troubles with piriformis. And I'm like, ‘I've been looking at piriformis trying in working on that’. And that could be, could be, could be, might not be, could be a knock on the feet there. Dave: So thinking about how that could relay. If you've got that bunion here, and your foot’s falling into pronation and it’ll take the knee with it, and it will take that whole hip and will rotate in and everything will rotate in there. What stops it? Well piriformis can stop that. So if piriformis is having to make up for a foot function issue there, well, that's worth working.  If you release piriformis, and get that guy—well, now you've got nothing holding your foot together. So where's that guy next to the public often deal on the spine? That's probably where we're going next. And then it could be somewhere else too, or it could travel to the knee. Lisa: Yes.  Dave: So, you know, we talked before about finding the source. Fixing the foot would be a really useful one. And if you're still on your feet, a fair amount, which knowing who you are, you certainly want that contact with the ground. Lisa: Yes. Yes. Yes. Dave: Sort it out. Lisa: Like paying attention to the little changes that are happening in your body because sometimes you think, ‘Oh, no, you know, it's all the same’. And then you don't see changes in your own body when you don't, when you see yourself every day, or your loved ones. Or sometimes you just like got your own little blind spots. Okay, so if we can dig that video out, we'll put that in the show notes for sure.  Let's talk about plantar fasciitis because this is a major problem. One of the most common running problems, especially the people who have up the distance very quickly or done some things here, what is plantar fasciitis and what can we do to deal with it one? Dave: So the left part of fascia is a layer of fat or connective tissue that goes right along the bottom of the foot. And as I mentioned before, that has a lot of receptors on it. So it's very rich in receptors, though can get extremely painful. And typically people who have plantar fascia issues will get out of bed and they'll try to put their foot down, and take a snack, or walk, and start walking, and the whole bottom their foot will be locked up. It'll take a while for that to loosen up so they can use that foot.  More often, you'll get that around the front of the heel, so none of them pointed the heel back in towards the centre of the foot. And sometimes that'll run up in bands as well. Now, the change in volume too quickly is your number one culprit which you mentioned. And that centre area. But certainly some foot mechanics can also have an issue there as well. So the plantar fascia is—in your foot, you've got well, definition you got 50 muscles that run below their knee—all could help control that foot. Your plantar fascia is there, it winds up, and plucky when you bend your big toe. It helps wind up that panic factor to help make the foot rigid to make it to leave so you can push off it.  That's one of the—there’s sort of two main functions of a foot. The first one is to allow the foot to splat is my technical term. Hits the ground and conforms to the surface that it goes to, number one function. Second one is it becomes a rigid lever so you can repel off it. Well, that's pretty much what a foot does. If you have kind of with a narrow down.  So we've got an issue there with that timing between backing and becoming a rigid lever. And the plantar fascia is wearing it somewhere there. Now there's—we can look at the plantar fascia, and you can try and treat the plantar fascia. But there's a lot of layers of muscles and a lot of timing that happened before that plantar fascia that’s been beaten up. So there's something gone wrong with the timing of how you're going from flat to rigid lever that's causing that.  And particularly if you overload into that. So if you've increased your volume too much, that's often the last well, kilometre, or 1000 footsteps that broke the camel's back. So I want to look at what's happening with the ankle and the foot, and I'm always interested in the big toe when it comes to plantar fascia. Lisa: Right, so that's your big lever. Point, really big toes when you push off and you get that elasticity sort of wound up. Dave: Massively important part that big toes. The amount of bones you have in that big toe, and for those of you with bunions, or pinchy injuries in that big toe joint as well. That's a really important one to get looked at. That can have a massive effect on everything up the chain.  Lisa: Wow. Yes. And what can you do about it? Are there some exercises that you recommend? Like, you might have fascia release, you make your ball rolling, that type of thing for the actual plantar fasciitis itself, the stretching and icing, and all that jazz? Dave: Icing can be nice, and that takes some of the pain away because it’s very painful. Having some light pressure in those areas too can help hydrate the tissues and get them healthier again. Because during—if you have some sore spots in their plantar fascia, often they won't have the hydration and the movement, because it's still layers and layers of tissue. Now, if you can get those moving better and hydrated, that will heal better.  Adding some load to it can be useful too, you just need to be careful where you are in their injury spectrum. But it actually does require some loading because the loading will help actually line up the fibres and get that strong again. But it needs to be the right type of loading starting slowly and building up. That sort of mechanics. In big toe, you'd be wanting to have a look at and also what's happening with the ankle. Check that you've got enough dorsiflexion to get into more. How much can you bring your ankle? If you've got a restriction on the ankle and a restricted big toe, your plantar fascia—well, everything in the foot but the plantar fascia, may end up wearing that one. Lisa: Yes, yes. And there's a couple of tricks to do with the dorsiflexion that I can link to another video there that Neil's done. Where you can push that—I’ve forgotten it—talus bone. Where you pushing it back into—because sometimes there’s some sort of a line. Yes, this one,  this one. Trying to find the words. Dave: Restoring their ankle dorsiflexion will be critical. I think that the foot and ankle, I'll look at three main zones in the body. In terms of my model for looking at movement. If you get the torso moving really well, that's very important for rotation. If you're running, you get the pelvis and hips moving really well, that would be my second zone. And the third zone would be the foot and ankle. So if you can get those three zones working well, normally I take 85% of the movement issues will just disappear. Right? And so the foot and ankle are a huge player in my model, and certainly one that I see having a very big impact on how people move well or done don’t move well. Lisa: Yes. Now, that's really good. So the torso, the pelvis, and the feet. So working on those areas in trying to get things balanced.  Dave: Yes, well, the big thing on that that's where I missed them.  Lisa: And those are the three areas—the key areas—and obviously it's the score a lot of work Dave but yes. It's everything from drills and exercises and it's what we do, what you do.  Let's look at now, for runners, talking about running shoes, and buying running shoes, and picking a shoe that's good for you and what you're doing. You were showing me some running shoes before and for people on the podcast, you can't see, but says Kipchoge ones, what do you call them? What are those shoes? Dave: So these are Nike's Zoom Fly shoes. So for those of you who are listening to this, rather than watching it, so this is the shoe that Kipchoge wore to get his sub-2-hour marathon. And they have fibre placement, which have an awful lot of recoil. And also, it is over four centimeters of foam here, but the foam has incredible amount of recoil.  Lisa: Wow.  Dave: So the theory is these will take 4% of your running time.  Lisa: Wow, that’s messed up.  Dave: There’s actually a spreadsheet, which I got hold up to. We can actually look at your running times and calculate how much of a difference it would make to your running performance. And yes, I mean, who wouldn't pay for 4%?  Lisa: Yes. Dave: Mostly runners, my straight line runners, will compete in these. And you'd be a magnet to, if you want to run fast on straight lines. These are extremely high and extremely unstable. If you wouldn’t run on trail with these, no way.  Lisa: Like the HokaOnes, you know, like really deep into the thing that a big sole...  Dave: No, these are high. And they're incredible amount of recoil. They do push you very much, your forefoot style. So what I’ve noticed for days, I totally didn't want to like these. Lisa: Cause you want more people to go bare feet. Dave: I ran in them last week. This is ridiculous.  Lisa: Ridiculously good.  Dave: The speed and ease is something else. And certainly most of my runners who run straight liner, competing in these and certainly in the meantime and now, unless athletes have sponsors, those are the shoes they are picking up. And why wouldn't you if you can—I mean getting 4% improvement in performance is there's something else, even with training. If you can get that by paying for it, why wouldn't you? Lisa: So basically, it's elasticity that they're using. It’s the spring, it's the coil, it's the ability to bounce you off the ground, it's like being on a trampoline. So you're gonna get more force.  Dave: Right.  Lisa: Taking your foot. Dave: Well, yes. The energy is returned a lot more efficiently. So you'll notice that there's a whole host of track records been broken lately, and then closed the marathon. And yes, the technology had a big part in playing it. I think that the next Olympics, the shoe feature extremely heavy. And a lot of a lot of other manufacturers are using this technology now. And they have a lot stricter with the technology they can use in those events now. So there's the level playing field.  Lisa: If you want to level the playing field, it's a thing—if we start having an unlevel playing field, and that's where it becomes a bit problematic.  Dave: And they're recouping broken now. And there'll be more broken with this sort of new technology coming through. Lisa: And from a foot health perspective, are they okay, in that respect, or you just didn't want to like them?  Dave: No, it's not about—it’s sports. Sports is not about health. Lisa: Performance is not about health. No Dave: No. Lisa: It should be but it depends… It’s not always the case. Dave: That's the point, though. I mean, if you wear these around all throughout the day, why would you do that? And having four centimeters of foam between you and the ground can  be put to sleep. So look, I would—if I'm wanting to do a fast run and I don't really do much of that anymore—but if I was doing a faster training run with them, with a buddy of mine who runs pretty quick, I would definitely wear these.  I'm walking all day barefoot. I'm doing full exercises throughout my day. I'm waking up my feet all the time to look after my feet in-between. So you know, this foot choice, shoe choice doesn't stand finished when you're running. It's throughout the day. And that way, you'll choose a different type of shoe. If I was wearing a shoe during the day, my normal shoe would be something that's very minimal, which allows my foot to feel the ground and do things, if I need to wear footwear. Lisa: Yes. And sometimes you don't, you know?  Dave: Yes. And I think that's an important thing too. We've always—there's always extremes. Yes. So I'll see the odd person is taken to the extreme, and they'll go barefoot all the time. And I think you need to be careful of that too. So from a health point of view, yes. So where I live, you wouldn't run—I have run some trails barefoot but there are sharp rocks around there. But also we have snakes there which is a bit of a problem. So I've done the odd barefoot run, but it makes you pretty nervous. The other part too, is what goes on your skin, goes in you. Lisa: Yes, me too. You talked about that on—what was it on? Something you were talking about the other day. You were talking the skin and your feet.  When your lectures that I was learning from you, right? And you were saying how your daughter was barefoot, which was great, but you went to get some picture with the car.  Dave: Yes.  Lisa: And she wanted to run across the full court bare feet and you said, ‘No, put your shoes on’. Dave: Yes. Gotta have shoes. If you go into public toilets, or you're going on a forecourt of a petrol station, if you're walking barefoot on those, those chemicals are getting into your thing.  Lisa: Yes. So also, if you're walking barefoot too, and certainly in Asia and I have an Asian background, you bringing into your house when you go in there too. So be careful where you expose your feet to, because it will go in you, and then we'll take it into your house. Lisa: Yes. Dave: So yes, there's time and place for everything. Lisa: Yes, yes, that's so true. And this is where some other minimalist shoes come in. So and like, social etiquette and stuff, you don't—you can't go to the gym without some sort of footwear on. Most places will tell you off. Well, gym maybe. Dave: My gym, we actually have a gym shoes off policy, right? If we want people to move well, we need all the sensors working well. So we want as much information from those shoes from those feet as possible. So people understand where they are on the ground. Then we have covered where people put their shoes in.  And now not everyone is trying to barefoot. And we have some people who have some structural foot issues who do require some footwear, as well tend to move well. So, if you drop a dumbbell on your foot, having a shoe isn't really going to help you. But as one of my main etiquette contains the meat. Lisa: And most gyms prescribe that you have to have shoes on when you go to them. They do. And these social situations, you can't go to the opera with bare feet. It's not cool. And that brings me to ladies in high heels. What are we doing to our bodies when we wear… Dave: Oh boy. Lisa: …lovely, elegant? We look very elegant in high heels. What the hell are we doing to ourselves? Dave: Okay, so yes, you mentioned that word kinetic chain before. And the idea there is when you change one part, it will change something else with. That's what a kinetic chain does. Okay, a closed kinetic chain. So when you add an incline to your heel, and lift yourself up there, that pushes you forward. So if you have a stiletto on or something very high, you’ll fall on your face unless you adjusted. So where will you adjust? You'll normally do that by pushing your pose forward, by arching your lower back more. So often, the problem that you'll see with high heels will be it changes up the chain.  As well as that when you're in high heels, you're effectively pointing your toes. So if you're in a flat shoe, you'd have been in your ankles. In a high heel, your toes are pointed more. So what that does is that will shorten the calf muscles. And that’s why, if you look at a woman in high heels, she has more definition in the calves because those calf muscles are shortened up. But if you're wearing high heels an awful lot there, what that will do is shorten up that calf, it may make it harder for you to bend that ankle again, which will cause you some different issues, and for those of you who are a bit more technical minded too, peroneus longus, okay, will be one of the muscles which is a part of the action which will be shortened. The peroneus longus comes around a riff underneath the foot and a wrench into the base of that big toe. So it pulls you down into pronation so it collapses the arch. So if you've been wearing high heels an awful lot, that peroneus longus can shorten, which can end up reducing your amount of bend in your ankle and also will pull you into more pronation. Apparently, the good thing that allows you to splat, but remember we also want to make the foot rigid after that so it can repel often.  But if you end up mucking around with muscles, and changing the way they work, and certainly by placing a high heel, and you're certainly going to do that, that will do that. And it will change the way the peroneus longus works and wears out the muscles, which will change that timing, that intricate timing that we need to have in the foot. Lisa: Wow. And so ladies, keep your high heels for special occasions and not everyday use if you can. And I mean I—working with mum and she was in the bed for a long time, bedridden. Drop foot, you know, same thing basically. But just on a horizontal because she couldn't stand so she couldn't get that dorsiflexion happening, and then I was not aware of it at the time that this was a problem when it was happening, and I caught it quite late. And then we had to have her in a boot to try and straighten that out and now she's got a rigid ankle pretty much. So she's got no dorsiflexion, therefore she can't roll over the front of your foot and off nicely. So her whole gait is more flat footed. And these things knock on very early. And then it happens quite quickly that you start to get dropped foot.  Even if you think about life, wake up in the morning and that first time the foot hits the floor, and you've got like, ‘Oh yes, stuff. Stuff on the calf muscles feeling scuffles within the Achilles. And this is a—getting onto the Achilles toe’. If you're getting that initial stiffness when you get up in the morning, there's something brewing and maybe start to look at it. Achilles is a good—that's a good indicator that so step in the morning. How are you feeling? If you're bouncing out of bed and you can get out of bed and run down the hallway and you find you've got nothing, then you probably, not too bad. Dave: I think that's a great point here. You should wake up feeling reasonably good. I mean it’s not a margarine commercial. You shouldn't jump out of bed, ‘Hey. Hello world’. That's probably the only thing you'd be happy about if you're eating that stuff. But that's a whole other conversation.  I had a professional athlete who I was working with, and we were talking one morning and was actually helping, deciding—standing up, deciding we were gonna go with him. And he said, ‘Yes. So how things young is young? What’s your story? I didn't have a car stand up. And then I go, ‘Sharon district’. About 40 minutes later, I'm ready to move. That's normal, right? ‘No, no, that's not normal. Your body normal is not being in pain and struggling to move. That's not normal..  Lisa: Oh but it's age, Dave. That's the next thing, he’ll tell you. It’s just normal aging. Dave: So now I think too, you know. Let’s you've got a—sorry for those of you who are in different hemispheres. But a classic car in the southern hemisphere was a Ford Cortina. Now imagine you've got a 1984 Cortina in your garage, and it's chrome. It's beautiful. And you've looked after it wonderfully. That car drives fantastically in your own town, you think this is the best car ever. But if you take a 1980 Ford Cortina, and you don't maintain it, and you just drive it hard, you won't have it here today.  Lisa: Yes.  Dave: Okay. So if you've got a classic car, it can run really well. But you need to put some extra care and maintenance into it.  Lisa: Absolutely. Dave: That's all it is. So, but you can have a young—you can have a new sports car. You can trash it's probably gonna be a little bit better. But yes, so the older you are, the more keen you’re taking care of your classic car. Lisa: We fit into the classic category now.  Dave: That's another spin on that too. You know, ages is one thing.  But I kind of look at these young athletes, I think you're—you can you can keep up with me. You haven't got the experience I've got. Play that card. It's not there's not just physical is a lot more that goes on to it. And take a look at the outer world. And know that certainly, the more of a mental game that's required, the better it suits your experience.  Lisa: Yes, in Roman times, like, it's not about speed and power after a 100k, it sort of starts to come down to… Dave: Yes. Lisa: So yes, it is. It's an attitude for life. There's a number of rounds on the clock, but it's keeping everything as best as you can in optimal performance and stopping things before they fall down the cliff, and being in that preventative space. And that's what we're both all about. And that's why you’re taking good care of your joints, and your muscles, and your hydration, and all of those exercises is really, really key. Let's talk a little bit now around, what's your take, I'd like to hear just on general and for joints and cartilage and stuff? Things like sulfur, MSM, conjugated salt, and so Glucosamine, that sort of supplementation for cartilage and joints you know anything about this? If it’s a cool thing or not? Dave: It's really cool at one of my key areas. Look, supplements are strange one. And certainly my take on that really changed over the last few years. And now if you think you can get everything out of your diet, even if you're eating organic, you probably can't. So there's certainly some supplementation useful. I'm very big on getting an evidence base on that though.  So there's this push where we've almost seen our science as lying now. We need to be able to do our supplementation, to what you want to choose. But what I found now is basically you become a victim to marketing now. So there's a fine line between the two. So I read up on what I think is useful, and what's not, and I use it on an individual basis. But I'd like to cover the basics first, and often think that we're thinking they're tasting things like curcumin. Another problem with curcumin by the way, as well some other some other supplements here when you're not even looking at the basics. So do the big rocks first. Lisa: Yes, I'm big on those pretty you know those ABCD. Selenium, zinc, magnesium-type base. Not sexy, but very essential for genetic functions. Yes. Dave: A decent multivitamin is probably a bloody good place to start, and then you can start fine tuning from there. Sure. I take a few other things, as well. I'm a big fan of a decent probiotic, and veering those probiotics around. I think that's really important. And I use that as a food source as a supplement. I do like my fish oils. I think there is a part to play in that.  Lisa: Yes. Those are wild. Dave: Wild, wild, wild small fish is the way you want to go and watch out for the processing on those as well, they can get... Lisa: Very very important to get the right fish source, you get right fish source ,and you'll be doing the opposite to what you need to kick the company out especially... In our next conversation. I know we're getting a bit off topic but probiotics, I've done quite a lot of study around the probiotics, and some of the problems of probiotics, and has domains, and causing inflammation and allergic reactions. Have you found any one in particular that you'd say, ‘Yes, that one's been really good for a lot of people’. This got a good clinical base to it? Dave: Yes. There's a few brands that I tend to like. These… Lisa: Deep in here without any proof on that question, but I was interested for myself because I'm looking at our probiotics. Dave: Syntol is a brand I quite like. Syntol, S-Y-N-T-O-L iis a brand that I've used for probably the last decade. That's an industrial strength one which works really well. Also Bio-Heal is another one, which I think is a pretty decent one. And the reason I like those brands is that they don't need refrigeration. And the Syntol is more spore one so it can be a bit bitter as well. Lisa: Yes. Because it's got to get through the digestive, the stomach, the action, into the lower. And I know like the science in this area is still a very much an evolving space. And a lot of this, I have had a couple of clients been on probiotics that you get out of off the shelf or supermarket type thing. They ended up with histamine reactions and things like that because they do have often—so if you're sensitive to histamine and you might want to check it out a little bit more, and just be toe in the water and find out. So it's a little bit hard to know because I think the jury's still out in some regards. But I think but the spore based ones… Dave: Yes, there seems to be built in there. I feel like most fermented foods, they won't suit everyone, for sure. They served me really well. So I make my own kimchi. I make my kombucha. I make my own sauerkraut. Do some water kefir as well. I often use a little bit of fermented foods to help my gut work. And every culture and everywhere in the world has some form of fermented food. And we realize as developing communities that we need to look after our gut health needs, and we didn't have refrigeration was probably the other thing as well. Then those are very health giving. And it still exists in most cultures today, and it's certainly something that I'd recommend if it suits you to work into your diet. Lisa: Yes, and that is where I know—working with the PH-316 epigenetics programme that we do that there are certain biotypes. And one of them that can miss to watch the amount of fermented foods because it can again—cause histamine problems in inflammation in the body—so that is a bit of a bit more a personal genetic thing too, as rather than across the board.  But to be fair, I think that's everything needs to be personalized nowadays. And we've got a lot I wouldn't say we've got an all sass but there is a lot of science around what type of thing for what person and which genes, for which foods, and I don't think it's by any means perfect yet. The science behind it, but we can get a bit of an idea on some of these things. So just because it's healthy for Dave doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be healthy for Lisa, you know? So a little bit of experiment, and I'm a big experimenter, versus showing one of my athletes into my pantry. And it looks more like a cumulus isn't well supplement shop rather than a...  And I don't take on things all the time but I'm always experimenting on my own body, and trying to optimize, and to see what sort of things are having which effect and then trying to take note of it, and keep track of it, and trying to work out. A little bit hard when you keep chucking 100 variations at things. It's not exactly a clinical study where you do one variation. But… Dave: Eating is one.  Lisa: Eating is one. Yes, exactly. And keeping testing. But back to the whole foot scenario talking that—I mean, you and I can end up in bloody all sorts of areas. What's your take on orthotics? I wanted to ask that again. Jury's out of my mind on orthotics and I'm not sure. Dave: That’s a real polarizing one. I'm gonna make myself unpopular with some people here, but here's my take on it. I'm not—I'm not a [51:17 unintelligible]. If you have a foot that hasn't got a structural issue, or a neurological deficit, you can work without orthotics. Okay, so orthotics add support, and they will normally block motion. Okay, that's what they're pretty much designed to do.  So normally, when they describe orthotics, they'll look at, ‘Okay, there's too much motion. We will block that motion so that the foot can do its thing’. You block motion, some way though. What we know is that motion will be taken up somewhere else. And in that closed chain, where that motion goes will often have problems.  So let's have a look, if you've got a foot that doesn't dorsiflex well, so the ankle doesn't bend well. Now what will happen is the only way you can bend their ankle now is to roll inside or to over pronate. That's the only way you can go there. But rather than go through the foot, you go around the foot now. So what may happen is, if you have no thoughts to stop that pronation, go, ‘What's happened now’? Okay? Now you can't pronate the foot, you can't work at the ankle, what's going to go next? You may end up taking up a knee. But now you'll end up with a knee issue, when you may come in with a foot issue. You may end up with a knee issue, or it may end up going into the hip or the lumbar spine, or as far as into the neck, which is a common thing or even to the head.  I've seen from people who've had a foot issue and they get hit out when they start hitting the pavement because it goes right through the chain. And that's it ends up tearing them up. So when you enter [52:53 unintelligible], if you've got a painful foot, it can be very useful temporarily to change what's going on, or a structure or neurological deficit. Otherwise, think of a crutch.  Okay, if I break my leg, ‘Oh, I want to break around my knee without smashing my knee to smithereens. I want to break around my knee and I want to wear crutches to start with’.  Now, oh boy that feels so good having extra support in there. And I've restricted that range around my knee because it's too painful to move. But 10 years later, I wouldn't want to be still be wearing that same brace on my knee with a crutch. And I wouldn't want to go in there each year and get that brace changed a little bit and realtered. So I look at some of your thoughts that come into me and I look at that foot and I look at your foot and I go, ‘I have no idea’. I kind of—foot mechanics is tricky stuff. But I've put a fair bit of work into it. Like I understand how feet generally work, I think. I look at that foot and I look at that person, and I think, ‘I can’t see what’s that relating to at all’. I don’t know what you’re seeing, but that's not what I see.  And there’s a few things around some of the theory of orthotics which are a little bit tricky around foot mechanics change when you have your foot on the ground versus when you—whether your foot in the air.  Lisa: Of course.  Dave: A lot of the mechanics that are put into orthotics aren't done in a closed chain, which changes the whole way the foot works. Though, there is some stuff there. I've had piles of orthotics thrown away over the year. I have products come into me and I go, ‘What?’ And I'll test them. It'll take people with them, without them, and they'll go better without them. I had some people that do need them though, because they had some neurological issues for their head structural foot issues, where their foot is broken beyond repair, where it does need some help.  And making good orthotics, definitely—for those of you who maybe have a diabetic foot or have had some issues around there. Some of the orthotics I've seen that have come and have been worked about and are amazing, though there is some there are some amazing work on orthotics. And that's probably my outtake on this one. So finding someone who's very good at that, and looking after a foot in trouble is a real skill. Lisa: It is. I've got a friend, Lisa Whiteman, who owns a China podiatry clinics, right, throughout New Zealand, and their stuff is next level. But the science and technology that they have in order to get the right things for that. So if you're thinking of doing it, make sure you go to somebody who really knows this stuff, and not just any sort of orthotic. And test it, and try it, and see whether you're getting something through up the train, fix that. And question with the immediate, long term—I've never had any benefit out of an orthotic. And I've only got, again, one anecdotal in me.  But we're not—like dealing with someone like my mum with a neurological problem, and limited dorsiflexion. I am considering the next opportunity I get to take down to Wellington to go and see my friend and go into her clinic and get her an assist, that might be, for example, a situation where something like that could be called for, because she's lost that motion and the ankle, so we haven't got it to work with. Dave: So we do have problems from the bottom up. So the foot can cause a problem going up, but also it can probably be going

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Ross and favorite guest Dave Weller talk about ethics in English education. What problems are caused by charging for teaching? What are the ethics of observing teachers? Is it fair to expect teachers to prepare for classes in their own time?Ross Thorburn: [laughs] Hurrah. Welcome to Dave Weller.Dave Weller: You just stole my thunder.Ross: [laughs] I know. What can I say? Regular listeners will understand the joke.Dave: Hello everybody.Ross: Welcome back, Dave.Dave: Thank you.Ross: Today, I thought we could talk about something that is much needed and often much lacking, which is ethics in English education.[laughter]Dave: A deep topic.Ross: Isn't it? I don't know about you, but I've definitely found that most of the schools that I've worked in, not always, but in some ways, been ethically lacking.It's something that we don't often talk about, maybe. Certainly, we've not talked about in this podcast before. It's something that teachers often talk about in teachers' rooms, right? With problems about the ethics of schools. I thought it would be interesting of us to debate here.Dave: Absolutely. People listening, it depends which context you're teaching in, but every teacher I've ever spoken to has a story or several stories to tell about unfairness, discrimination, prejudice. Definitely, there's issues in the industry with ethical behavior.Ross: Maybe, it's more important in teaching, for a lot of teachers that get into teaching, because it should be a net-positive profession. It might be different to some other higher-paying jobs that are more financially motivated, whereas teaching, very few people will get into it to make money, right?Dave: Oh, def.[laughter]Ross: Too late now.Dave: You can't.[laughter]Dave: Is it too late to change my...Ross: I think it is at this point, Dave. We want to play a little quote from David Brooks -- who's got a great book on this topic -- talking to Sam Harris.Sam Harris: What are the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues?David Brooks: The eulogy virtues and the resume virtues are things I, more or less, took from a guy named Joseph Soloveitchik, who was a rabbi in the mid-20th century. He said we have two sides of our nature.One side, which is about conquering the world and being majestic in it. Those are the resume virtues, the things that make us good at our job. Then the eulogy virtues are the internal side of ourselves, the things they say about us after we're dead, whether it's being courageous or honest, or capable of great love.We live in a culture that knows the eulogy virtues are more important. We all would rather be remembered for our character traits rather than our career, but we live in a culture that emphasizes the career parts. We're a lot more articulate about how to build a good career than how to build a good person.Our universities, in particular, are much more confident in talking about professional rise than a moral or spiritual rise.Ross: I would say that's probably also true in our industry, at least, in all the training courses I've worked on. I don't ever remember ethics or the ethics of education ever coming up on them. Obviously, we spend a lot of time talking about how to become a better teacher, but not better in terms of character, better in terms of ethics teacher.Dave: I would agree. It's interesting. I remember the old Greeks used to do several subjects like the triumvirate of rhetoric, logic, and ethics, because they saw it as inseparable from being able to lead a good life.Actually teaching ethics to the young citizens of the time was imperative. They would have thought it very strange not to do so. Yet, it's something missing. Well, I never got taught ethics. Probably why I am why I am now.[laughter]Ross: I thought we could start off with what are the ethics of charging people for education. Obviously, both you and I, pretty much our entire careers, we've worked a little bit in government schools at some point, but mainly it's been paying customers.What would you think are some of the ethical issues or problems there?Dave: Any ethical question, you have to look at all the variables behind it. You have to look at people's income, their wealth, what they are currently studying, government schools, their need, the company that's providing the education, its standards for their own teachers.I think that the context is inseparable. To say in general terms, it's quite tough.Ross: At least, I can see there being some advantages of having education in the private sphere rather than the public sphere. In theory at least, there should be more...In general, there should be more pressure on providers to deliver a better service, because you're getting all this pressure from your competitors.Dave: If government schools and services were perfect, there wouldn't be any need to have private education in the first place.Ross: I can see, maybe, the difficulty there. It's like who do you decide to sell to, or when do you decide not to sell things to people?I've had friends and colleagues who've worked especially with adults. People who they know can't afford an English course, or maybe they're working in a job where English is not going to benefit them very much, or they know that this person doesn't have the study skills. Most people are, maybe, encouraged to take out a large bank loan to pay for something.Dave: Even if the school or institution that's selling the courses, it depends if they do so ethically. If they have a different payment plan so you can pay monthly rather than in a yearly lump sum, which makes it more affordable. If they are offering to people who they think won't be able to complete it in time, or they have other pressures.Even how good their teaching is, which methodology do they follow? Is it up-to-date and evidence-based? If they follow an outdated system because it's easy to market, they'll definitely get more sales.Also, you need to look at the school's retention. What are their results? Can they show that they've helped learners to learn?Ross: You touched on something there, this idea of rewarding teachers for, for example, students signing on, re-signing contracts in private language schools, or demo conversions. Students come to a trial class and they've paid, or they've not paid.That, I think, is an interesting ethical question, of whether that is something that should be rewarded, obviously something that should be punished. Is that a good way of judging people?There is one side of that in that if your students have signed a year contract and they've stayed with you for a year, and they want to re-sign again. That probably does, in aggregate with a lot of people, say some positive things about you. Maybe, if they don't, it says some negative things about you.There's obviously another side to that as well. You're starting to judge teachers by how much money they're generating rather than how much learning they're generating.Dave: Precisely, because learning is such a long process. If a teacher is purely entertaining, they're going to get a very high re-sign rate. That doesn't mean learning happened.Learning is hard. You have to really think. You're perhaps frowning as you grasp a new concept. That is leading to a teacher not getting as high re-sign rate because the students don't want to think in class.The teacher could be technically brilliant and really adept at helping the students to learn. If that teacher is disincentivized from that behavior and think, "Well, actually I earn a decent salary. I enjoy where I'm living, and I want to stay." They could well change their behavior to increase whatever rate they might be being judged on, especially if it's a financial one.Ross: Then you can imagine that being a vicious circle as well, where you would promote the people that get those metrics rather than the metrics of learning, which are harder to measure. That reinforces that whole paradigm, doesn't it? That what we want is re-signs and money rather than learning.Dave: Precisely. This is a problem that I had years ago when I first became a DoS. Before all the technology that we're talking about, I was struggling with the idea of how to measure academic quality. It's really hard to do, because the only way you can do it, as far as I can see, is to directly observe it.We don't have any standard algorithm of what makes good teaching or what makes good learning, because it varies so much depending on the variables of the teacher and the students involved, that is only by direct observation you can see.It affects so many other business metrics within a school. It can affect sales. If you're doing class, you get referrals. It can affect your retention, your service department. You can measure it through the effect it has on other things, but that is a very tricky process and needs a lot of data.If you have a manager that's very business-focused, and you're an academic head, then trying to prove that becomes a real battle. I see that getting worse if the right things aren't measured. With online, with all the extra data coming in, people could well take the easy solution and make those simple correlations.Ross: It's like the old management saying, "What gets measured gets managed." It's a lot easier to measure re-signs or conversions than to measure learning, which is still a bit of an abstract idea and very, very difficult to actually assess.Dave: That's actually a Peter Drucker quote, and he has an extension to it which most people don't say, which is, "...but make sure you measure the right things."Ross: Ah.[laughter]Ross: Oh wow, there we go. Moving on, let's talk a bit about teachers. I know this is something that you wanted to talk about. Schools in general often ask teachers to do a lot of work, and preparation, and marking classes in their own time, right?Dave: If a school is upfront with how they pitch the job to teachers, then I think it's fine. I think a lot of schools don't mention what their expectations are of work upfront.They might say, "The job is this many hours per week for this salary." Then when the teacher starts work, they find out, "Oh, there are also office hours you have to attend. There are extracurricular activities you also have to be present for. There are team building activities which are compulsory." The list goes on. I'm sure [chuckles] our listeners can add a lot more to that.Suddenly, what was thought to be a 40-hour a week job turns into 60 or 70, when, as you say, you add in preparation, marking, and even the horrible situation where teachers are buying supplies from their own pocket as well.Ross: It's almost like schools are taking advantage of the good nature of teachers, of wanting to do good things for their students.I remember my dad, growing up, in my childhood, I remember him. So often the living room floor would be strewn with these cut-out bits of old exam papers which he was copying and pasting to turn into new tests for students that they hadn't had before.Maybe, teaching is different from other professions. Whereas if you're in sales or something and you're putting in many extra hours, you're probably doing that, partially at least, in the expectation that you're going to get more money. Whereas teaching doesn't have that.It's almost that the more you care about the students, the more time you're putting in, but you're not necessarily going to get any financial reward for that.Dave: There's a saying in England, in the NHS, they say it runs on goodwill. They do take advantage of the empathy that staff have. I do think that is very similar in the teaching profession as well.Ross: I also wanted to ask you about the idea of more and more surveillance in classrooms. When both you and I started teaching, there was very little oversight. Maybe, your DoS would come in and observe you. I don't know, for me once a year if I was lucky. Maybe, it could last.[laughter]Dave: That explains a lot, Ross.Ross: It does, doesn't it? Now in offline teaching you often have cameras in classrooms. Even more interestingly, in online teaching, you have not just cameras -- because obviously everything is on camera.Everything that you do in every single class can be watched back both by parents and the people measuring the quality of classes, and more and more companies investing in AI to monitor teacher behavior.Generally in public life, at least, people have a real aversion to facial recognition, whatever authority's using technology to track their behavior, their movements, and everything. I've not really heard anyone talking about this with teaching.I'm not sure if I was a teacher now, full-time, especially an online teacher, and I knew that everything I said was being recorded and monitored with AI. I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with that.Dave: First of all, the first thing that popped into my head there is the idea of privacy and intention. Privacy concerns from the students, and I'm assuming they would all sign waivers so that their recordings could be used and reused for training purposes, and shown to other people. That's where the intention comes in.If all this data is used with ethically-sound principles in mind, I can't see too much of an issue with it. If you're using it to improve their learning, to personalize resources, materials, and lessons, so they're better able to learn, then that is the positive side.Ross: It'll be interesting to see how that changes as the technology moves on and we get to a point when technology knows every single word you've said in every single class to every single student. There's a record of that. There's even a record of every single facial expression that you might have made in every single class. I think all that's coming.Dave: The immediate problem with that, though, is assuming good intentions. You could still run into pitfalls.If you have, say, the ability for AI to recognize engagement through facial expression --Will it be leaning forward in the chair, smiling, eye contact with the camera, however you judge those metrics? That's equated with a good class because they're engaged and more likely to re-sign. That's a business metric rather than a learning metric.A teacher's rewarded for that, then you could go back to the idea of edutainment. The teacher is encouraged to be entertaining rather than help the student to learn. Interestingly, that data could also be used in aggregate to see what really works and what really doesn't in teaching.That is very exciting, but it has this dark side which I think we need to be very careful of. I've not really heard any discussions or anywhere else about the potential pitfalls of this. It's really nice that you're raising people's awareness now.Ross: You heard it here first, folks. [laughs]Ross: Thanks for coming on again, Dave. Do you want to give the blog a quick plug?Dave: Sure. If you want to read more about these topics, then please visit www.barefootteflteacher.com.Ross: Great. Dave, thanks again for coming on.Dave: You're very welcome.

In this bonus episode, Dave discusses ugly Christmas sweater contests, pie days and the sinking ship he works at.Interested in the discussion? Share your thoughts here at Spreaker in the comment section or tweet them @dumbwithdave.Don't forget to also share this episode on your other social media platforms.Connect with Dave!

In this bonus episode, Dave discusses ugly Christmas sweater contests, pie days and the sinking ship he works at.Interested in the discussion? Share your thoughts here at Spreaker in the comment section or tweet them @dumbwithdave.Don't forget to also share this episode on your other social media platforms.Connect with Dave!

Phil’s guest on this episode of the IT Career Energizer podcast is Dave Malouf. Dave a Consultant, Coach and Educator. His mission is to help designers and design teams reach their value potential for the organisations they work with. He has been a designer, a design leader, and a former professor of design. And brings this to bear with frameworks and methods to help professionals level up. He is a co-founder of the Interaction Design Association, the co-founder of several conferences as well as a writer, a globally sought after speaker and workshop facilitator. In this episode, Phil and Dave discuss the likelihood of having multiple careers, why you can unintentionally become a zealot and why having an insatiable curiosity can drive your career forward. Dave also talks how significant a part of your life your career is and why understanding people is such a useful skill.   KEY TAKEAWAYS: (5.19) TOP CAREER TIP You will have multiple careers in your life. Being open to that reality helps you craft your story for yourself. It’s important to acknowledge that you will have those career shifts. Dave believes that he has had multiple careers even though they are all broadly within the digital product and service design field.   (6.41) WORST CAREER MOMENT Dave talks about his first real management moment. This was at a time when he was shifting from being a web designer and learning about more traditional design practices. Dave feels that, although not deliberately, he was becoming zealot due to having passion for what he was learning whilst leading a team. However he wasn’t taking his team along on the learning journey with him. He learnt that it’s important to make it meaningful to them and help them to join the journey.   (9.36) CAREER HIGHLIGHT Dave says that the greatest success in his career is happening right now. He has managed to find a voice for himself and at the right time. Amplifying his voice and story has been successful for him as well as finding his strengths through understanding himself better.   (13.00) THE FUTURE OF CAREERS IN I.T Dave says that it’s a digital world, for good and for bad. You can work in the field of information technology in any shape or form and impact any part of the world. Dave then talks about working in cloud computing for Rack Space and the volume of e-commerce running on their servers. However he subsequently learnt that organisations as varied as Cern and Notre Dame University were also using their platform.   (15.21) THE REVEAL What first attracted you to a career in I.T.? – It wasn’t a conscious decision. Dave discovered the world of computers in the early 1990. He bought his first laptop and was thrown into the world of CompuServe and AOL and became addicted to it. What’s the best career advice you received? – Go to where you’re going to find joy in your life because work is a significant part of your life. Also find the right manager that will help you to develop your career What’s the worst career advice you received? – Dave says that he has received criticism about having a number of short term engagements on his resume. However he doesn’t believes that it has been a strength of his career, providing learning opportunities and a range of experience. What would you do if you started your career now? – Go for a Design MBA, providing a formal background to business. Dave says that he is particularly interested in business operations. What are your current career objectives? – Stabilising his relatively new consultancy practice and making it a solid business What’s your number one non-technical skill? – It’s all about people and understanding who people are. Dave applies it to building relationships and navigating politics. How do you keep your own career energized? – Conferences is a big part of this. Attendance, creation and teaching are all factors What do you do away from technology? – Dave says that he loves to travel, which being a consultant and a conference speaker enables him to do.   (26.44) FINAL CAREER TIP Stay curious. The mentees he loves the most are those who have an insatiable curiosity. They apply it to skills about also to learning about themselves.   BEST MOMENTS (5.27) – Dave - “You will have multiple careers in your life. Being open to that reality helps you craft that story for yourself” (8.01) – Dave - “No matter how impassioned you are about something, you can’t lead people by pulling them” (11.22) – Dave - “Sometimes we need to be true to our strengths to become really successful” (15.11) – Dave - “What excites me about a career in I.T. is that you get to decide where you want to have an impact in the world” (18.05) – Dave - “Don’t look for a job, look for a manager”   ABOUT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil Burgess is an independent IT consultant who has spent the last 20 years helping organisations to design, develop and implement software solutions. Phil has always had an interest in helping others to develop and advance their careers. And in 2017 Phil started the I.T. Career Energizer podcast to try to help as many people as possible to learn from the career advice and experiences of those that have been, and still are, on that same career journey.   CONTACT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil can be contacted through the following Social Media platforms: Twitter: https://twitter.com/philtechcareer LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/philburgess Facebook: https://facebook.com/philtechcareer Instagram: https://instagram.com/philtechcareer Website: https://itcareerenergizer.com/contact Phil is also reachable by email at phil@itcareerenergizer.com and via the podcast’s website, https://itcareerenergizer.com Join the I.T. Career Energizer Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/ITCareerEnergizer   ABOUT THE GUEST – DAVE MALOUF Dave Malouf is a Consultant, Coach and Educator. His mission is to help designers and design teams reach their value potential for the organisations they work with. He has been a designer, a design leader, and a former professor of design. And brings this to bear with frameworks and methods to help professionals level up.  He is a co-founder of the Interaction Design Association, the co-founder of several conferences as well as a writer, a globally sought after speaker and workshop facilitator.   CONTACT THE GUEST – DAVE MALOUF Dave Malouf can be contacted through the following Social Media platforms:  Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/daveixd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmalouf Website: http://davemalouf.design

As all of the 60MW team have come from various other podcasts, we thought that it was a shame to lose some of the content that we recorded earlier in our podcasting life. Hence a new lease of life for them in our ‘remastered’ shows. (we use the term ‘remastered’ with tongue firmly in cheek, as these shows have not had the audio tweaked in any way at all, but do feature new introductions). The remastered Spotlight shows will feature a mixture of Chris, Ben, and Tina chatting about movies that were originally recorded and released for The Same Coin. This episode is about the 1992 movie Sneakers, and was originally released in December 2013 and features a new introduction by Chris. (Who mixes up our Soundcheck shows with our Spotlight shows...we DO have a lot of different shows though! Dave) You can leave comments/questions about this episode HERE on our reddit community page. You can also help support us by either buying from Amazon UK through the links on our website, and/or treating yourself to some merch from our shop (keep an eye on our Twitter account for regular offers on money off and free postage). Thank you for listening.

In the United States, millions of residential properties are owned and rented out by individual landlords, not professional property managers. Why not protect yourself from painful experiences with tenants, have peace of mind, and leave it to the professionals? Today, I am talking to Dave Holt of SureVestor, which provides Scheer Landlord Protection. This insurance plan financially protects landlords and property managers from tenant-related risks. SureVestor is at the forefront of leading a trend that can significantly help grow the industry. You’ll Learn... [01:45] Passion for Property Management: Dave joined NARPM nearly 30 years ago and has gone through its entire chain of command. [02:51] Reasons why Scheer Landlord Protection was brought to America: Significant growth impact on property management industry in Australia Way to make, but not lose money Opportunity to turn self-managed landlords into professional property managers [05:22] Is the United States ready for similar level of growth? Whether companies grow exponentially, or at their own pace, insurance can help them get there. [07:06] Can't control what happens in people's lives; when bad things happen to good tenants, property managers experience frustration and stress. [08:05] Who’s to blame? Things happen that create a financial burden; Scheer Landlord Protection covers income loss for landlords and property managers. [09:32] Malicious Damage by Tenants: Insurance covers holes in walls, cabinets ripped off walls, sand poured down drains, etc. [09:47] Blanket of Coverage: Indirect and direct benefits create safety for all parties. [13:45] Property manager requirement helps insurance company mitigate risk. [16:33] Competition: Focusing on criteria of quantity over quality. Most property managers don’t have an insurance license; be compliant and legal to protect industry. [22:40] Tiered Pricing: Clients know the cost to be protected. [24:58] FAQs: How do I market this to my owners? How can I implement it? Follow SureVestor’s steps to success. Tweetables Scheer Landlord Protection: Grow exponentially, or at your own pace. When bad things happen to good tenants, property managers get stressed out. For most landlords, rental property is their most expensive investment. Scheer Landlord Protection: Covers malicious damage, eviction costs, and loss of rent. Resources SureVestor Dave Holt’s Email Dave Holt’s Phone Number: 612-465-0421 SureVestor’s Blog National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) California NARPM Terri Scheer Lloyd's of London The Iceberg Report U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz   Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. I have a guest today named Dave Holt. Dave is here talking with me about landlord protection insurance from SureVestor. Dave, welcome to the show. Dave: Thanks, Jason. I appreciate it. Jason: I just got to see you at CALNARPM in your British soldier outfit that you had there. I want to connect with you a little bit here. Give us a little bit about background on how you got into this industry and into this space. Dave: Yeah, you bet. I've been in property management, that's really my industry. I've been in the business for over 30 years. I started managing for HUD back in the mid-80s, got introduced to property management in single-family homes, and started my fee management company in the late ‘80s. That's where I ran into a fledgling organization that was just starting out called NARPM. I got involved with NARPM early on. I actually started in 1990. I've been a member ever since and gone through the whole chain of command there. Property management is my passion. Throughout that whole process, I've met with thousands of property managers throughout the years. Like you, Jason, always looking to see how we can improve the industry and came across an opportunity. We're actually teaching over Australia. Both my partners, Kevin Knight and Todd Breen, had taught over there. We came across a product that was over Australia and had been there for 25 years. We're wondering, "Why isn't that here in the US?" Actually, long story short, joint ventured with the creator of the product from Australia, Terri Scheer, it still sells under her name over there, Terri Scheer insurance. She has since sold her business over there. Now, has joined forces with us to bring the product here to the US. Jason: Awesome. My understanding of that is that this product has significant impact on the growth of industry as a whole in Australia. Dave: Yeah, that's very true, that's one of the reasons why we wanted to bring it here, it's not just something, "Hey, here's something that we can make money doing," that really wasn't the crux of what we bought it here for, and you hit it on the head. What we look at in our industry here in the US, it's 15 times the size of Australia. When you look at the number of properties that are owned here by individual landlords, it's over 15 million single-family homes that are actually owned and rented out, a small fraction of those is handled professionally by us professional property managers. If we have an opportunity to bring a product here that can help drawing those self-managed landlords to us as professional property managers, that's what we're looking to do. Over in Australia, that actually happened. About 15%, increased in the business for professional property managers because the beauty of this product is that it's only available for landlords that are professionally managed and we did that intentionally, we did that over in Australia as well. Those self-managed landlords have to come to us as professionals in order to get this product. Hence, we're looking to be increasing the number of properties that are managed by us, professionals. Jason: Now, I have heard stats thrown around like the property management industry in Australia grew about 25% in a single decade. I don't know if that's accurate, but that sounds pretty incredible. I also have heard that they have about 80% of single-family residential is professionally managed. Dave: That's right. Jason: Here in the US, according to the [...] report, we're at about 30%. If the industry here could grow in a decade to maybe about 25%, that would mean that we would pretty much double in size. I don't think there are enough management companies in the US right now that can handle that level of growth. That would mean we either need to double the amount of companies that exist now—that's a lot—or each company would need to double in size. I think that would be incredibly painful for most business owners. Dave: Maybe, maybe not. Obviously, your DoorGrow hackers are looking to be growing that's why they're part of your endeavor. It's not that they have to grow exponentially, but they can grow at their own pace. Certainly, it's something that, if they can use the insurance to help them get there, that's what we're all about, and looking to help them do. Yes, we saw it happen over Australia, we don't see why we can't replicate that here. Jason: Let's break this down, and help people understand. Maybe we start from the point of, how do you sell this product, but let's first talk clearly of what is it. What is SureVestor? What is this insurance product? Then I would love to get into basically talking about what's in it for the homeowner? How do you sell this to them? We get into those two things, and then I think the light bulbs will start to go on, and they can start to see how this can be a facilitator of growth here in the US. Dave: You bet. It's probably better to start from my experience as a property manager. Obviously, we're all property managers. Really, the frustrations that we've experienced, as property managers over the years, is when bad things happen to our good tenants is really the situation. It's very stressful. We know that we do a professional job of screening our tenants and getting the best quality tenants for our landlords, but we can't control what happens in people's lives, whether it's a job loss, a divorce, a death in the family—things that can happen in someone's lives that create a situation of financial burden. Now, all of a sudden, if they're renting a property, they may be more inclined to skip or stay there, and not pay the rent, and now, we have to evict them as professionals. It's very painful. For a lot of us in the single-family space, those owners owned one property. If something bad happens to their tenants, and now all of a sudden they're out of three months of rent because of it, that's a lot of their income. A lot of them say, "You know what, this isn't for me." They decide to sell or worst, they blame us as the property manager because we're the ones who screen the tenants, and they say, "It's your fault that this happened. I'm going to somebody else." In either case, we've lost the business. If we had a product, which we do now, through SureVestor and sure landlord protection insurance, that covers the loss of rent for those type of things; a tenant skips, they have to be evicted, they are victims of violence—we've had that happen as well—or there's a death of a sole tenant, or murder, or suicide. I've experienced all of those over the 30 plus years of business. That rent then is not paid, and our landlord is out of money. Us, as property managers, most of us are charging our management fee based on the rents collected, and if that rent isn't collected, we're not getting paid either. This insurance covers all that. It covers it for the landlord. It covers it for the property managers as well. Then, there are some additional benefits. Malicious damage caused by the tenants, that's something that we've experienced as well. They punched holes in the walls, ripped cabinets off the walls, they pour sand on the drains, things that are malicious, there's coverage for that. There's coverage for theft and damage due to theft. There's the eviction fees and legal offense if the tenant brings it to trial. There's the covering of the sheriff cost if you have to get a writ and go through that whole process. We even have lockbox coverage for a digital lockbox. For property managers who are now doing self-showings, many times, they get some pushback from their landlord clients about doing that because of, "Well, what happens if." Now, there's some coverage for that as well and then, rekeying of the locks after those covered events happen. It's a way where we can, with the insurance, make that landlord whole and also make us whole as property managers. One other thing too, a lot of us as property managers are guaranteeing our tenants for some period of time. If something does happen to that tenant and they breach the lease, we will re-lease the property for nothing, for no charge, for our landlord. Now, when you have insurance that covers the loss of rent, the malicious damage, the eviction cost, and those types of things, you now have the security deposit available to cover your re-leasing fees among other things. Jason: There could be divorce, job loss, death of a family, violence, malicious damage, malicious damage theft. Then things like, eviction fees, legal fees, writ fees, lockbox coverage, rekeying after theft. It really creates this safety for all parties involved. Dave: Absolutely. When you think about it, for most of our landlord clients, their rental property is the most expensive investment they have. They get dwelling coverage because that's all they know. They get dwelling coverage to cover the catastrophe-type of damage, the fires, and things that can happen to the property. The things that happen more frequently are the things that we're covering—the loss of rent because a tenant skips, they maliciously damage the property and the other things that we went through. Why wouldn’t they get coverage to give them that peace of mind, so when those things happen to their tenant, now, they're protected as well? It gives them an overall blanket of coverage, that gives them that peace of mind so now, they can rent their property with confidence, and hopefully, stay with us as property managers longer because they don't have to have that fear of, "What if?" Because now they're going to have coverage for that. Hopefully, draw in more landlord clients that might have that fear. Some of them decide, they just want to sell to begin with because they go, "You know what? I can't afford a loss. I can't afford one of those situations that happen, and now I'm out of rent, and I've got a mortgage to pay." It's a way where we can keep new owners and a way where we can attract new owners as well to us. Jason: Yeah. Creating this blanket of coverage sounds really significant and important. If it's not there, then even having a rental property investment can be a risk. Maybe it's a risk that a lot of property owners are either ignoring or aren't aware of if they're actually involved in real estate investing. There's a lot of self-managing homeowners that are like, "Oh, it's easy. I just need a tenant." Famous last words. Then they start running into problems, but even for property management business owners, you don't want to be the fall guy or gal for those problems when they happen, you want your business to be healthy. Since this is so important, to have this blanket of coverage, as you call it, and it has such an impact in Australia, is this something that only property managers have access to, why don't people just go and get these policies directly and self-manage, how's this driving people towards property managers? Dave: We have purposely set it up where individual landlords have to go through a professional property manager to get this coverage. If a landlord goes on to our page and looks at the, "For landlords," it actually, guides them through the process and says, "Do you have a professional property manager?" If they don't, we actually find one for them. One of our property managers at SureVestor and we refer them to them and get them new business that way, as well. Jason: The requirement of them to have a property manager probably also helps the insurance company mitigate their own risk. Dave: You got it. Absolutely. Over in Australia, it's been around for 25 plus years. Now, it's open to individual landlords over there now because it's a more mature product. Starting out, our underwriters wanted to kind of mimic the initial process that Australia took, which was making it available only for landlords that were professionally managed, that's something that really resonated with us, not just because of the underwriting of it, but more so, to help bring in the self-managed landlords to us, as professionals, and help us grow our businesses. Jason: Alright. I'm going to give you an opportunity to throw stones at the competition a little bit. The competition is anything that people might perceive as something similar or reason not to use something like SureVestor. Are there competitors that just go direct or don't have that sort of stipulation that you have to use a property manager, and have some sort of insurance-like product? Dave: Yeah. I'm not aware of it. There are some startups that are happening now. Obviously, when something’s out in the cosmos, we're not the only ones thinking about it, there are certainly other companies out there that are starting, I know a couple of them. I'm not necessarily sure that they're going direct to the landlord or not, one might be, but that's just because my thinking would be, "They don't see the risk." But we know our business, and we’re property managers-first, and so we want to be helping our colleagues grow. One of the ways to do it is to make it only available for landlords that are professionally managed. We know that we do things professionally. A lot of self-managed landlords, they don't follow the same criteria. Some of them do, but a lot of them just do the, "You look good," the feel test. Say, "Oh, yeah. He seemed like a really nice person. Go ahead and rent my property." Then they find out it's not so safe after all. We decided not to do that. We wanted to have it available just for the landlords that are professionally managed. I can't comment on any competition that's doing it, why they do that, other than, they just want to try to get as many as they can, they're focused on the numbers. That's not our intent. Our intent first is to provide a great product to our property management colleagues that can help them retain landlord clients, and help them bring out new ones. Jason: Right. I would imagine that since you've got these different parties involved, you've got property manager, you've got renter, you've got homeowner, and then anybody else could get into the mix in any of the drama that ensues with all of these—this really reduces the risk for all parties. I imagine there's products out there that look similar on the surface, but somebody's getting the short end of the stick, I think that would be dangerous. Regardless of who that is, it's going to end up as a problem for everybody. It makes sense that you guys are doing it right, focusing on making sure that this, really is, the best option for everybody involved and that a professional manager is involved in this process. That's exactly right. We have vetted this thing over three-and-a-half years. It started from the foundation and make sure that we had everything in place to make sure that our industry is covered, and we're providing the best quality to our landlord clients. That takes a lot of work getting that together that's why we have the world-renowned, Terri Scheer, started this. This whole thing. I mean, every single company has mimicked what she's doing, if there are any copycats around because she was the first. We have Lloyd's of London as our underwriters. The first and the largest insuring entity syndicates in the world covering this type of thing. It gives us more security and backing for our landlord clients and our property managers. The thing that property managers, when they're looking out what other competition there is out there, they've got to be really careful when people are saying, "Hey, you can monetize this, you can make money as a new revenue stream," and so forth. Most property managers are not licensed in insurance. In insurance, similar to our property management industry, is very heavily regulated. If you're doing things that look and sound like insurance, for example, you have certain programs whether it's guarantees or other types of protection programs that you're making money off of, that can be construed as selling insurance. If you don't have a license that can be an issue. Everything that we're putting together is legal. The ways that we're making this available for landlord clients, and for property managers, and even starting to create processes where they can benefit better from it, that's what we're all about—to make sure we're protecting our industry. Jason: Yeah. This is a common thing. A lot of property managers, especially the more entrepreneurial ones, get really creative, and they're thinking, "Man, I got this great idea for this new gimmick or this new thing. I can sell this guarantee, this warranty, this protection." It's almost like insurance. It works almost like insurance. There are some significant red flags that they could be putting themselves into some serious legal liability. Dave: That's exactly right. Jason: They're basically, doing insurance without a license. You need to be careful. You guys help them do it the right way. Now, you had mentioned, they're doing it to generate revenue. Now with your service, property managers can make some money too, right, they're not just lowering risk? Dave: When we're saying making money, the benefits are more indirect than direct. For example, as I mentioned, when the rent isn't paid, the management isn't getting their management fee. When the insurance is covering the rent, now the rent is paid because of the insurance, the property manager collects their management fee. Yes, that's a direct benefit, that's income to them. Most of the property managers have some sort of guarantee for the tenants, as I mentioned. When something bad happens, and they have to re-lease the property, that's a lot of out of pocket for them. Now, when the insurance is covering that loss of rent, that deposit doesn't have to go those things which it typically, does. Now, you have that deposit available to pay the re-leasing fee that the tenant would otherwise owe you as a property manager. You're making money indirectly through that. Here's another idea, Jason, that a lot of property managers, including myself, we'd gone to tiered pricing. What tiered pricing is that you have different levels of pricing for your landlord clients. Usually, your first tier is leasing-only, your middle tier is your traditional management, so it's an a la carte, you're paying for whatever service you get, your management fees, your lease fees, your inspection, your evictions—all that stuff is an additional cost. Then you have your top tier and the top tier is an all-inclusive or mostly inclusive, type of tier. You can charge more for that tier. What property managers are doing is they're paying for the insurance in their top tier, and so it makes that top tier more valuable in the eyes of, obviously, of the landlord client. That landlord goes, "Well, I mean, I can pay this amount and know what all of my costs are. I can get the insurance to cover in the event of a bad thing happening to my tenant." That's a more predictable result for an investor. They know that cost, they know that they have the protection, and that gives them that peace of mind. That's a process that a lot of property managers are going to. In the top tier, even though you can't upcharge the insurance, you can charge higher to be including all of your charges, all of your fees, into one. Jason: Got it. They fold it into that. Makes sense. In that situation then it becomes an additional value add that allows them to sell their services at a higher price point. Dave: You bet. The insurance help do that and they make more money, you bet. Jason: There you go. Alright, awesome. Dave: Lastly, we are in the process of creating a way where we can legally compensate the property managers. It's something that they're not prepared at this point, to go through in detail, but I would welcome property managers to contact me. I'm more than happy to go through that process with them. Jason: Cool. Okay, great. What are some of the most common questions that you're getting from people that are maybe skeptical or concerned? What are some of the initial questions that property managers might ask about this? Dave: The first is, “How do I market this to my owners? What do I do?” Obviously, we got two parts of that: we have our current owners, and then we have new owners. What we have done is put together the steps to help them with their current owners, for one, and help them bring in new owners. As property managers ourselves, we know we're very busy. We have a hard time implementing things because we are very busy. We get sucked into the day-to-day grind of property management. It's probably what's happening right now. It's the last day of the month. Most property managers are out there doing their move out inspections, move-ins, and doing all that kind of stuff, they're busy. Trying to implement a new thing is always a challenge. We know that because we're property managers too. We've created those steps to help them do it. We've done it for them. We have all the email templates that they send to their current clients, for example. We have the schedule all laid out so that they can just send them out. We have what's called an opt-in, opt-out form. The beauty of that is it gives them a tool—a risk management tool—to use where they can send that out in the email. Just like here, "I'm opting in," and this is for the owner, their landlord client. "I'm opting into this coverage, and this is what I want." It's directing to the property manager, or it's saying, "No. I'm not interested at this time." Now, the property manager has a form. Six months later, when their tenant has to be evicted, and they've opted out with that coverage, if that landlord is coming to the property manager complaining about it, they can say, "We did our duty of care. We told you about this insurance. You opted out of it, don't blame me." We have that. We also have the disclosures and opt-ins that they use in their management agreement. Personally, even if my BDM, my Business Development Manager, who's talking to brand-new owners hasn't mentioned anything about the insurance, they see it in my management agreement. It's already laid out, and we have that addendum of it available for them and their management agreements. That's part of it. The next part is the whole part of bringing on and using it as a point of difference for their new clients. We have scripts that they can use to help in that initial conversation. Again, we have the information that they can use in their property management agreement both—if they're just doing regular pricing, and if they're doing tiered pricing—so we have both. Then we have the marketing information that they can embed, and put on their website with video clips and so forth. We've done all of that for them, so they don't have to recreate it. Our last step is on all implementation. We walk them through the steps of implementing it all. It's really quite simple. A lot of the marketing too, we have what we call a WDIFY, we-do-it-for-you process, and we can even help them do a lot of that marketing as well. Many of your DoorGrow hackers may recall Darren Hunter and Deniz Yusuf because they were at your event just last year. They have put together, since they know this insurance intimately, both of them being from Australia, they have helped put together a whole orientation for BDMs on how to be better at utilizing, not just the insurance, but utilizing tools to help draw new accounts to them. We have that on our site, on our blog site. It's a whole 45 minutes of them going through with their best practices and how to utilize the insurance as that point of difference to draw in new business for them. Jason: Cool. Dave: There are just a lot of tools that we have to make it simple for the property managers because again, we know it's challenging for them to get things implemented. Jason: The number one challenge in any new software, or any new system, or any new tool, is adoption. It sounds like you guys really helped lubricate that process, make it smooth, and make it easy. That's one of the biggest challenges, or complaints when people get into some new system or some new tool or service is, they just don't have the level of support that they need. That's one of the biggest challenges. It sounds like you guys really put a lot of energy and effort into making sure that they have what they need in order to succeed. I mean, the first challenge, making sure they've got the right vehicle, it sounds like—with the backing of Lloyd’s as an underwriter and everything—this is like the premier vehicle for this. Then the next question that a business owner would have is, "Well, can I do it? Is this possible?" It sounds like you've got the support, the tools, and the resources that they need. The last concern that people might have is what about external factors? What about the market? Could this go away? Could the government impact us? These sort of things. Are there any potential challenges there? It sounds like you guys have dealt with this stuff to make sure everything's compliant and legal. Dave: There's really no concern there. We just expect that to become more commonplace like it has been over in Australia. For those in your group that aren't familiar with Australia, we consider it almost advanced in property management. I say that because they are even more heavily regulated than we are, it just draws to making them more professional, and so they've got to do things to protect themselves and protect their owners. They're always thinking of new ways. Hence, why this insurance started 25 years ago or so. In a government, in a country that is very highly regulated, it's done nothing but expand. Over here, I don't see it going away. I see it expanding. I see it becoming more commonplace, especially as we're seeing after the global financial crisis, more and more, not just individual investors, but huge hedge funds coming in and buying real estate. Rental property, compared to homeownership, is increasing. As that continues to be the trend, more and more investors and landlords, in general, are going to want to protect themselves, and protect their investment because as I mentioned, it's the most expensive investment that a lot of them have, they want that peace of mind, they want more consistency, and predictability. When you have an insurance product like this, that they can get for as little as $1 a day, I mean, come on, it's a no brainer. We really think that this will become more commonplace. It's already in the insurance industry that's very highly regulated. The things that we go through as far as auditing and making sure that everything's done right is a continual process. We have vetted this to make sure that it is done right and protecting our landlords and protecting our property management colleagues. Jason: Love it. Most of the vendors that we handed out awards to for our DoorGrow Awards for 2018 were because they were the best in class, they were the leaders in a competitive space, that they'd gotten the most attention inside of our DoorGrow Club Facebook Group, they consistently were seen as a leader. We gave SureVestor an award, and it was for this reason because I do see this could be a game changer for the industry. We gave SureVestor, for 2018, the Game Changer Award, was what we called that award. I think, really, SureVestor's at the forefront leading a trend and a movement that I think is going to be happening here in the US, that I think can significantly help the industry, and help grow it, and help lower the risk of investors, and help bring people to the property management space. Property managers lower risk and SureVestor helps lower risk, I think combined, it really can give the property management a much better name here in the US, where people, having managed their biggest asset or investment ever—or whatever you want to call it—that they might ever be dealing with, and keep that risk low. Dave, great to have you on the show. I appreciate you coming on and sharing this. How can people get in touch with SureVestor? What's the next step for people that are listening or watching this later that are interested in finding it out more? Dave: You bet. Thank you. They can go to our website, real simple, surevestor.com. They can contact me as well, daveholt@surevestor.com or they can call me 612-465-0421. Happy to walk them through, happy to guide them through the process, and answer any questions they have. We're just looking to provide a great product to our industry. We really appreciate what you're doing as well, Jason. We think DoorGrow is really on the number. We're happy to support it anyway we can. Jason: Awesome. I appreciate it. Always fun for me to connect with other vendors and other people in the space that have a similar vision and mission for the industry, of helping it grow. Let's change it together. I appreciate you coming on, Dave. Thank you so much. I will let you go. Dave: Alright. Thanks again. Jason: That was surevestor.com. They don't pay me anything. I just think it's exciting. People probably wonder sometimes. Anyway, check them out. If you are not inside of our Facebook group, you're probably missing out on the best tools and the vendors. You're probably missing out on some great fee ideas. You're probably also not super connected to DoorGrow. We would love to help facilitate the growth in your business. I would love to be your coach. I would love to be your consultant to help you do what I've helped lots and lots of clients do which is, add easily, 100 extra doors to your business. If that sounds interesting to you, make sure you reach out to us at doorgrow.com and get inside our community, our Facebook group, community connected to this. Become a DoorGrow hacker. That is by going to doorgrowclub.com and you can join us there. Until next time, everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn, and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Dave Woodward helped shape the entire affiliate program at ClickFunnels. He's a personal mentor, friend, and brother.   It's long overdue that I invite him to come on Sales Funnel Radio to share his wisdom...   I'm really pumped about this. Frankly, it's been in the planning for, like, seven months now…   I have wanted to get interview Dave Woodward  for a very, very long time.     If you guys don't know anything about him, he is one of the backbones of ClickFunnels...   … so you’re in for a treat.   I think it was October-ish 2018, just after the 30-Days Book went out. I was approached by ClickFunnels to write a chapter for a NEW book...   And, NEWS FLASH…   In case you’re slow to catch on ;-) this is me, announcing the release of the NEW Affiliate Bootcamp Book!   And of course, in true Steve Larsen fashion, I'm gonna over-deliver bonuses to the hilt, so you’ll wanna buy the book through my link…   THE NEW AFFILIATE BOOTCAMP BOOK   The book asks the question:   “How would you retire as a ClickFunnels affiliate in a hundred days?”   I spent pretty much all of my Christmas break writing my chapter.   ...it's NOT straight theory kinda stuff.   This is A LOT of the strategies I’ve used to crush it in affiliate contests.   So, I'm really excited about this.   For the 30-Days Book, I interviewed Russell…   For this one, I thought I would interview one of the backbones of Clickfunnels and the reason why:   Stuff gets done   There's an affiliate program that's run well.   The Dream 100 program is killin’ it.   ...and the name of that individual is Dave Woodward. He's a beast. He's the man...   Dave has become one of my favorite people on this planet, a mentor, a friend, a brother, and I look up to him like crazy.   I care dramatically what Dave Woodward thinks about me.   Maybe I shouldn't... I'm NOT supposed to say that, but it's true.   I really appreciate him, and everything he's done for me, and my family.   I am very, very excited, and completely, (in full transparency), extremely honored, to have our guest today.   This has been an interview I have been planning, and looking forward to, for a little over a year and a half now. I'm excited and to be completely honest, a little bit nervous.   I have tremendous respect for Dave Woodward. - tremendous respect.   If you guys don't know who Dave is, you should!   INTRODUCING DAVE WOODWARD   Dave is one of the cornerstones and keystones of all of ClickFunnels, and why it works…   ...please take that from a guy who sat across, and watched, and was very much a part of the intimate workings of what ClickFunnels is, and how it works.   Dave is one of the reasons why ClickFunnels is where it is.   He is one of the reasons why relationships are the way they are.   And,  in my honest opinion, the reason why Russell can even get his message out there…   I have a ton of respect for Dave and for what he does.   He has gone from a friend to an incredible mentor to me. I so appreciate and love him, and I'm very honored to interview him today.   Dave, thanks for being here.   DAVE: Well, I'm extremely honored, and I'm very nervous myself, so that makes two of us.   Thank you for allowing me to come on your show. I have such huge props for you, and I just admire all your work, and everything that you've done…   No one implements like you implement.   I love seeing it, you're such a role model to my kids, it's just fun, and I love seeing the impact that you're literally having across the entire world... so, it's an honor to be here. STEVE: Oh thank you very much, man. I'm glad to have ya.   Now a lot of people may not know….   Dave sits, literally across from his seat, he literally is looking into Russell's office - I mean he's like right there…   There's this tradition, (at least when I was there), it looked kinda like this…   So Dave and I, right, we're working, Melanie's there, we're getting our stuff done. Usually, there's some music going.   We're sitting around, and then all of a sudden Russell goes,”“UHHH!”   Which means…   “Get up and run to my desk.”   So Dave and I, would get up and run over to Russell's desk, and we'd basically watch the zeroes and ones God pour down wisdom into Russell's marketing brain…   https://media.giphy.com/media/3JSGn9bSDpzAFutb6W/giphy.gif ... and gold would just fall out. Dave and I, would both try to keep up, while at the same time validating, “Oh my gosh, that is a cool idea, better catch on to it...”   ... it's like really, really fun. One of the funnest environments. I miss it terribly.   Now, but a lot of people don’t know that you had a history with Russell and, pre-ClickFunnels. Right?   I mean, what were you doing before coming into ClickFunnels?   HOW DAVE MET RUSSELL   DAVE: I had my own marketing consulting agency for years.   In fact, I actually met Russell…   So, I come from the direct response marketing days…   Old Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer, copywriting type of stuff... years and years and years ago.   And at the time I had a lot of clients who were in either the insurance, the health field, or else mortgages.   A lot of them were trying to figure out this whole online thing… (this is like 2007, 2008).   And it was that point where I thought, I gotta figure out this whole internet stuff. I've got too many clients who are wanting information about it.   I'd been on Russell's list, I'd been on other lists, and Russell was coming to do a seminar in affiliate marketing, not far from where I lived in Southern California…   So I thought, “Oh great, I'll just go, and go and listen there.”   I'm a huge believer of either working your way in, or buying your way in. And I've always preferred buying your way in, if it's at all available, it's faster. So it was Russell and Stu McLaren, and Russell got up and said:   "Hey, you know what? If you guys would like to take us out to lunch or dinner or anything, to just kinda pick our brains, go to the back and sign up."   I literally jumped out of my chair, ran to the back, and I signed up for EVERY breakfast, lunch, and dinner that Russell had.   I'm like, “The guy's either gonna hate me, or we're gonna become friends through this thing.”   I wanted to get to know him better, and so I literally signed up for EVERYTHING!   I'm sure when he first got it he was like, “Who in the world is this Dave Woodward guy? What have I gotten myself into?”   I can guarantee you, Russell would never do that now. You could never take him to lunch or dinner, but he was just getting started.   … and so we created a deep friendship.   I ended up setting up his 10th anniversary for Collette. They flew down to Southern California and went out to dinner, then flew to Catalina...   Russell is more than a friend, he's like a brother.   He's probably, in all honesty,  the closest friend I have aside from my wife.   There's nothing I wouldn't do for him.   Over the years, we've had the opportunity of doing a ton of different projects together, some in the real estate niche, some in the network marketing niche, some in the fitness niche.   Some made money, some lost money.   My very first product was with Russell - it was Legendary Marketers.   STEVE: No way.   DAVE: Yeah.   STEVE: Oh, I didn't know that was. Cool.   DAVE: And so, that was the very first product that I ever did...   Again it was one of those things where I saw, just his desire to help others grow, and, at whatever the cost. Just, just pour so much into people, and I was just drawn to him…   … and we've just literally become lifelong friends.   When we started ClickFunnels, I was still in Southern California. I was flying up here every other week, and Russell was like, “You just need to move up here..”   I'm like…   Dude, listen, we've been through a lot of things over the years, and NOT all of them have worked…   Before I uproot my family, I wanna actually make sure this whole ClickFunnels thing is actually gonna take off.   And then, as you can tell right now, it'll be three years this August.   So we moved up here after ClickFunnels was up and running for about a year and a half.   STEVE: I remember that. Only because it was like two months before, you flew in, that's when I moved my family up.   Russell was like, “You know Dave Woodward?” ...and I had just started seeing your majesty in the inner workings of ClickFunnels - all the stuff you're doing with Dream 100, the affiliate stuff…   … and Russell was like,  “He's gonna move on up,” and I was like, “No way, that's awesome.”   You moved up, and I kid you not…   We were already kind of naturally high energetic people, you, and I, and Russell, but the overall energy, it was like one plus one equals twelve when you came in!   I was like, “This is awesome,”...it's not a classic business office…   We were running around barefoot in t-shirts, shorts... music going all the time…   it's such a fun place to work and try to change the world also.   So, how did you end up doing stuff for Russell's people - the affiliate manager was your first role, right?   DAVE: Actually, no. I was in charge of all our business development. So one of the pieces of it was the affiliate plan.   STEVE: That's right, my bad.   DAVE: Yeah, so, what happened was, so …   My coming into ClickFunnels, (as far as, one of the things), we were at TNC, (we’ve just come back from TNC 10, so this must have been TNC, like five, or six), and it was ClickFunnels' first booth, at TNC, and they had put us in the far back corner…   I was like, “This just sucks. We can't do this. No one's gonna see us.”   Russell was actually speaking at TNC, and he was like, “Gosh, I just wish we had some way of getting attention to us, no one's gonna come to us…”   ...because it wasn't in the main ballroom…   He was like,  I wish we could just get some of those like showroom girls, you know, event girls, whatever it is.”   I'm like, “Dude, you're in my city. This is San Diego. I promise you, I will get you some girls.”   And sure enough, within about two hours, we had about five girls there, basically handing out t-shirts and directing people where to go...       And that's, I guess when Dillon and Todd were like, “We definitely need him more full-time than he is currently,” and that's how it started.   STEVE: Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. There have been multiple times where you've done stuff like that. Russell flies in, you fly in, you know.   Guys, Dave, Dave is the one that protects Russell emotionally when we travel as well. Multiple times, just protecting him.   Making sure, “Hey, we need to get somewhere,” or making sure Russell is where he needs to be, and protecting him from people who may be, respectfully, somewhat of a time suck.   There are just so many stories that are just popping into my head.   Oh my gosh…   You guys flew in once, and Russell didn't have any time to sell, or didn't get order forms, and you literally, in the lobby…   What's this story again? It's awesome.   DAVE: A friend of ours, basically in the health space, flew into Denver…   I love to sell, which is weird because for years I hated selling. It was like the worst thing in the world.   I would never, ever sell. I would never associate myself with selling...   … NEVER, dirty, bad!   But, I remember, we flew in, and I was sitting there talking to the promoter, and he basically said:   “Well, you know what, I thought we were gonna have more time. we ran over, we only really have about 25, 30 minutes, and you can't sell”   I'm like, “Dude, we flew all the way to Denver. We're not here NOT to sell.”   And he says, "No you really can't sell."   So I said, "Well, how much time do we have?" He said, "Well, you've only got 30 minutes."   I'm like, “Well we need at least 45.” He said, "Okay, 45 minutes."   I said, "If I just have a little tiny offer, would that be okay?" He said, "Yeah, but I don't want a full pitch." I'm like, “No problem.”   So I literally went into the little business center, and I created an order form on the computer they had there, (I'm sure it's so completely non-compliant)...   It was, honestly, just name, email, address, phone number, credit card - that's it.   It was printed off black and white and there was nothing fancy to it. I don't even know if they knew what they were buying.   But, just like Russell does, he was able to get up and he spoke... I could tell the promoter at the back was just getting antsy.   He's like, “You gotta hurry, you gotta hurry, gotta hurry.”   I'm like, “Russell let's just go a little bit faster.”   So, all of a sudden, he gets to the pitch.   He's like, “Listen, I don't have time to go through this, but you're gonna get this, this, this, this, and this…   ...and if you want, Dave's got some order forms, just take the order form and give them to us, and we'll process it.”   I literally had someone come back there and grab it out of my hand, write on it, and slap it down right in front of Russell on the stage.   Usually, we get table rushed at the back, but we had this massive podium rush. Everyone went to the front, and it was hilarious.   We out the room and we just laughed.   It's those types of moments, where I'm like, “No matter what it takes when you have an opportunity, we're gonna sell...”   And we sold, and it did very well.   STEVE: You guys knocked out the house, is what I heard. Just blew it out on a whim. I mean, come on! That's the kind of team that you guys are. It's just awesome.   Hey, so I wanted to ask a little bit about this Affiliate Book that's coming out - you have such unique eyes from where you are, and where you get to sit.   I know you get to work a lot with:   Biz Dev   Bringing in new Dream 100 people   All the affiliate stuff as well   … what is this New Affiliate Book, by the way?   DAVE: Oh, it is super, super cool… so this whole idea behind affiliate marketing ... First of all, for those of you who aren't familiar with affiliate marketing, it's probably the easiest way to get started online, because you don't have to have your own product.   You are literally promoting someone else's product.   And for us, they're promoting ClickFunnels.   We have a whole bunch of front end products because it's really hard to promote just a free trial -  one of those was 30days.com. Another one is OFA…   If you're not on OFA, my gosh, the One Funnel Away Challenge, Steven is just crushing it -  so you definitely need to be in that.   We had so much success with 30days.com - the idea behind that summit was, Russell went out to a lot of our Two Comma Club award-winning people, like Steven, and basically said:   “Hey, if you were to lose everything, and all you had was ClickFunnels, and your marketing know-how, what would you do in the next 30 days, to make money?”    ..and they put together a 540-page book, and it became a front-end for the One Funnel Away Challenge.   Well, as we were looking at that model, it became super, super successful, and we realized...   Steven actually helped build out Affiliate Bootcamp, which has been the primary product we've used to train our affiliates over the last year and a half, and we're at a point right now where we're trying to think…   If we were to update it, how would we do it best?   And we thought, instead of us doing it…   Why not reach out to the people who've been the most successful doing affiliate marketing inside of ClickFunnels, and have them tell their stories…   ... and use somewhat of the same premise as the 30 Day Book…   Not necessarily, if you lost everything and only had 30 days, but, “If you were to start over as an affiliate, what are the things that you would wanna do?”   What are the different things that would actually provide the greatest return in the shortest amount of time?   Because for a lot of affiliates, it's like, “Ah, I've got my own job, I don't have a whole bunch of time, ” and it was just fascinating.   Bailey Richert is the one who basically put it together for us, she went out, and interviewed 17 of our top affiliates…   I was literally talking to her today, and she goes, “You know, Dave, the 30days.com was really cool, but the real secret sauce was on the back end after you bought the product you got behind the scenes of their actual funnel…”   She said, "I don't know what it was with these affiliates? They literally gave every single thing on the front end."   So those people who actually get involved in our New Affiliate Launch, or Summit are going to get the very best of 17, (we may actually get to 20, but 17 right now), people who have literally been crushing it as an affiliate for ClickFunnels sharing EVERYTHING:   YouTube strategies   How to do an offer?   What is a bridge funnel?   How do you build a list?   How do you build a product that ties into your list to provide even greater value so that people fall in love with you, as well as the new product that you might be introducing them to?   So, the whole idea behind this is really to have a person create their own product/ business on the front-end without having to create all the products, (and everything else), on the back end...   … and NOT have to worry about the support.   So, I'm so excited about it...  because it’s literally going to be the BIGGEST game changer for us.   Currently, Steve, we have five people who have done over a million dollars in affiliate commission so far.   Five people who have hit the two comma club as an affiliate for ClickFunnels.   STEVE: Oh man.   DAVE: It's just insane.   You know, when we first started this thing, we came up with this idea of the dream car…   The idea behind it is, if you got a hundred people, we'd pay $500 for your lease or purchase of your dream car.   At 200 people, we'd pay $1,000.   I thought, “No one's ever gonna get to 200 people!”   ...and now we have people who have thousands of affiliates...   Thousands of ClickFunnels accounts because of it.   So the idea behind affiliate marketing:   It's the easiest way to get started online.   This new affiliate summit is literally gonna give you, truly, the step-by-step program from 17 of the top affiliates that we have.   They're gonna break down, NOT only just affiliate marketing, but how they actually get traffic, how do they actually build an offer, how they build a bridge page.   And you’ll actually see some of their actual bridge pages, as well.   We were sitting there trying to price this thing out, and I'm like, “You understand this is like a $500 product,” and Bailey's like, “Yeah, but summits only sell for like $47 to $67.”   And I'm like, “Oh my gosh, alright, we'll do it, whatever price.”   I don't know what price point we're gonna settle at  - somewhere between $47 and $97, I don't know...   But it's people like you, Stephen, who literally said, "Alright, let me show you exactly what it really takes. Let me go through and break it down step by step, how you actually can make tens of thousands of dollars a month, as an affiliate."   And I know we pay you a pretty hefty cheque, just in affiliate commission.   STEVE: Yeah, it's, uh ...   And what's funny everybody, is that it's kinda on the back-end of my business and it's just because of the strategy.   I gotta tell you, I loved writing the 30 Days chapter, but the affiliate chapter... oh my gosh, I took all of Christmas, like three or four days, to write that thing - it was beautiful.   DAVE: Well actually Bailey, (just between you and I), even though anyone who listens to this will now know it, Bailey actually said yours is the best one…   … honestly, because it was so detailed, Stephen.   The way you did it, she actually wants to lead with yours to set the stage for the other ones...   Because of the way you talked about:   Bridge Funnels   Offers   Bonuses   I mean, you were our top affiliate for 30days.com, and it was just crazy. And, I've seen you do that multiple times, even in our One Funnel Away Challenge.   And the crazy thing about the One Funnel Away Challenge was you came in dead last and didn't start until like three days left. It was crazy.   STEVE: That 10X Secrets thing...   DAVE: That's what it was.   And you were right in the middle of OfferMind, I think. Was that it?   STEVE: Yeah, yeah.   DAVE: And I was asking you to teach some of our speaker training, and you had no time. No time at all. And yet, to see you come in, and use this strategy that you now taught in that chapter, it was just brilliant to see.   The thing that I love most about the chapter that you wrote, is your chapter actually goes in through, literally, step by step…   It's how you teach -  you're so very methodical in teaching practical steps - literally, it's ‘paint by numbers.’ It's the easiest way you can do it…   I mean, step one, step two, step three.   And because you've been through it, you lived through it, and you started with nothing…   ...and NOW, you're one of our top affiliates!   It's just neat that you were so kind and so generous with spending as much time as you spent on that chapter.   It's probably going to be one of our leading chapters.   STEVE: Oh man, I appreciate that a lot.   Well,  what can somebody do ... What's a favorite way ... I mean, you have such a unique area that you get to see all these different affiliates…   If somebody’s new and doesn't have much of a following, what should they be doing if they want to become an affiliate?   DAVE: I think, it goes back to, probably your secret sauce, and that's publishing.   I think, honestly, and as much as people hate it, I think it’s one of the coolest things.   People wanna find someone they can connect to, so documenting your journey as an affiliate, is probably the best thing that you can do, because later you’re gonna be able to sell that journey.   And it may take a little bit of time, but if I was a brand new affiliate, just starting off, I would start publishing on a regular basis.   You could pick:   Dotcom Secrets   Expert Secrets   30 Days   ….I don't care which product you want.   I would literally go in, I would make it your own, I would teach what you learn, on a Facebook live, on an Instagram story, whatever it might be, and refer people to it:   “This is what I've learned.”   Because people love understanding the take a way that you got and seeing how that you're actually using that.   So, I think that's probably one of the things that I would look at.   Where MOST affiliates go wrong is, they think they're just gonna take the affiliate link and just promote it directly, and that's why I love your chapter… because you were so anti that.   You're like, “You can't do that! Let me show you what you can do.”   And I think, as an affiliate just getting started, just pick one thing…   And, again, as you mentioned before, just go all in on it. Study it. Make it your own.   And that way when you're teaching it, people are going, “Oh, that's how that works. Oh, okay, now I understand,” and then people can connect with that… and they'll love the journey as well.   STEVE: Oh man, that's awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time.   You know, I have such respect for you, and what you do, and just love your family -  my wife and I talk about you guys a lot.   We love your sons, they're all awesome and incredible - we just love your family and everything that you guys do.   And I really mean what I say,   I really believe that half the reason Russell can do what he does is that he’s got you in his corner, just fighting battles he didn't even know about.   You know what I mean?   Just going to bat, getting all the dirties away that are out there trying to take advantage, you know, stuff like that.   It's just this role that is like so, I don't even know, it's special. And it's fun to see it.   DAVE: Thank you.   STEVE: So I just, anyway. Any parting advice or words before we end up here?   DAVE: You know, for me, I think the one thing I would tell people is just don't give up.   I think the hardest part for affiliate marketing, or even for a lot of the online marketing is just, you have a dream out there, and you see it, and you want it so bad…   ... and yet things don't go exactly the way that you want.   You can joke around about this idea, being one funnel away, but you truly are…   You just don't know which funnel that's gonna be.   And so, I would just say:   If this is what you wanna do, don't let anything get in your way.   It's possible, things happen... it doesn't go as fast as you want, I'll let everyone understand, I'm totally transparent...   It never works as fast as you want   ,...but for those who stick it out, you get to this little corner and you literally hockey stick and life takes off for you.   I saw the same thing with you last year, where you got going and you’re putting forth all this effort, and all of a sudden you get to this little corner, and you literally hockey stick, and life just takes off for you.   And I think the problem is, most people aren't willing…   Again it's that, 99 yards does not a touchdown make…   You gotta be willing to go all the way   As long as you don't quit, and just realize that you're in that phase of learning…   There are two parts…    You have the:   Learning phase   Earning phase   Too often people wanna jump into the earning phase, without paying their dues in that learning phase.   If you'll spend the time in that learning phase, the money that will come later in life - it's just crazy. Astronomical.   STEVE: Oh, man. Well, thank you so much. You're a friend, a mentor, a brother, and just, I love and appreciate you. Thanks for being on.   Awesome episode, right?   Hey, bear with me for just a moment while I tell you about makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com.   Probably one of the most fragile phases of being an entrepreneur is that tender spot where you have just enough cash coming in to get excited, but expenses also increase a little while you take on new tools and new systems, new teams.   It can be heart pounding, and frankly, nerve-wracking.   Well, one of the ways I've kept ownership of my companies and NEVER picked up any debt or used any of our family finances to grow the business, was through affiliate marketing.   My first dollar online actually came from affiliate marketing, ONLY a few years ago.   So I often get asked the question:   “Steve, how can you have been bootstrapping this and scraping by so hard just a few years ago, but now have a business that makes millions in revenue?”   … that's a fair question.   So besides having kick butt products, when I've needed to get some extra cash for an expensive project, I have a very specific method of affiliate marketing that gets me paid to sell other people's products.   You wanna see how I do it? Just go to makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com.   ClickFunnels actually wants to know how I've been doing this as well…   So I just wrote a chapter in ClickFunnels new book called Affiliate Bootcamp... and if you wanna see my chapter, and be shown how I treat affiliate cash in my business, just go to makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com…   You'll get a bunch of other cool stuff from me - like, the actual Make Affiliates Great Again Funnel…   The one you're gonna see there - it’s pre-built - it’s awesome - and you can download it.   You also get my audio chapter on how I create affiliate offers. You get the actual video of me training my team on how to build Make Affiliates Great Again - it's crazy valuable.   Plus you also get several my other stage speeches.   How I launched my affiliate offers…   And you'll even get a discount ticket to OfferMind… + the Make Affiliates Great Again Mini-Course…   Is it okay if I over deliver???   If you want ALL that for free... plus other things, literally just sign up at makeaffiliatesgreatagain.com... and then, sign up for the New Affiliate Bootcamp through my affiliate link. Go figure.   My friends, get rich, give back.

On today’s episode you will hear part 3 of 4 of Russell’s interview with Andrew Warner about the Clickfunnels start up story. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this part of the story: Hear how selling Clickfunnels at a Mike Filsaime event got Russell his first ever big table rush at the end of his presentation. Hear from both Dave and John about how they feel about Russell and what they do for the company. And find out how going to Dream Force this year, renewed Russell’s passion for growing his business. So listen here to find out more about the Clickfunnels start up story. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you enjoyed episodes 1 and 2 of the interview with Andrew Warner at the Dry Bar Comedy Club where he was telling the Clickfunnels startup story. I hope you are enjoying this interview series so far, and I hope also this motivates you guys to go over to the mixergy podcast and subscribe to everything that Andrew does. Like I said, he is my favorite interviewer and I think that what he does is second to none. So I hope that you guys enjoy him as well, and go subscribe to the mixergy podcast. But with that said, I’m going to queue up the theme song, and when we come back we will start into part 3 of the Clickfunnels startup story interview. Andrew: I actually got, I did see, I don’t know, I didn’t see the video you mentioned, but I did see what it looked like. Here’s one of the first versions. He compared it to Clickfunnels, he said, I mean to Lead Pages. He said, “Look at how Lead Pages has their stuff all the way on the left, all the controls.” Oh you can’t see it. Oh, let me try it again, let me see if I can bring up the screen because this is just, it’s just too good. Hang on a second. I’m just constantly amazed how you’re able to draw people to you. So this is the article from Lead Pages, this is the first landing page from Clickfunnels, this is what he created before, this is what you guys did together. This is your editor and h e said, “Look, if you’re on Lead Pages, their controls, their editor is all the way on the left and it’s just moving the main content to the right, which is not looking right. And I prefer something that looks like this, with a hundred pixels on the left, a hundred pixels…” I go, who knows a hundred pixels, it’s like you, what is this? Russell: Dylan is obsessed with that type of stuff, it’s amazing. Andrew: Obsessed. And you draw people like that. You draw people like Dave, who is just phenomenal. Dave, the traffic and conversion event that he was just talking about, is that the one that you went to? Dave: The one after that. Andrew: The one after that. Okay, we’ll come back to that in a second then. So this became your next version, you brought on a new partner, and then you did a webinar with this guy. Who is this guy? Russell: It’s Mike Filsaime, one of my first friends online. It actually wasn’t a webinar, it was a live event. He was doing a live event in San Diego and he was like, “You have to come and sell Clickfunnels.” And I was like, “Nobody’s buying Clickfunnels.” We had a free trial and like, we couldn’t give it away. It was crazy. And he’s like, “Well, you’re on this website, you’re picture is there, you have to come and sell Clickfunnels, and I need you to sell it for at least $1000.” Because the way it works, if you speak at someone’s event, you sell something, you split the money 50/50. So he’s like, “It needs to be at least $1000.” And I was all bummed out. I didn’t want to do it. And the event actually started, but they were streaming it live online, so I was actually sitting at our office in Boise, watching it as I’m putting together my slides to create Clickfunnels, and then flew out to the event. And then we had a booth, and I don’t know if I told you this, we had a booth and Lead Pages had a booth right across the little hallway, skinny hallway. And Todd’s wife was manning our booth and then Lead Pages was right there, and it was so funny because she was not shy at all about talking about Lead Pages. She’s like, “Yeah, we’re like Lead Pages except for way better. We can do this and this.” And the other guy is sitting there like, right in front of her as she’s telling them everything. And it was..anyway, I digress. It was pretty funny. Andrew: By the way, she’s still at it. I saw a video that you guys created, you were talking to her and she goes, “I will be Clickfunnels.” I go wait a minute, you still had that fire, okay. So you were at that event. Russell: So we’re at the event and there’s probably, I can’t remember, 150-200 people maybe in the room. So I got the slides up and Dylan was there and he was like, when we got to the funnels he was going to demo the editor, so I did the whole thing, showed the presentation and we demo’d Clickfunnels and at the end of the thing I sold. And I’ve been good onstage, but by far, that was the first time in probably 8 years that I’d seen a table rush, where people are stepping over the things, jumping around, trying to get to the back to buy as fast as they could. Andrew: What did you say to get them to want to do that? Russell: We made a really, I mean we gave the presentation, and gave a really good offer at the end. They get a year of Clickfunnels for free, plus they get training, plus they were going to get all these other things for $1000. Andrew: It was $1000 training and a year of Clickfunnels for free, and then they become long term members. And it was also called, Funnel Hackers? Russell: Funnel Hacks, yeah. Andrew: Funnel Hacks. And that’s the thing that became like… Russell: The culture. Andrew: This culture, this tribe. It wasn’t just they were signing to learn from you, they were becoming funnel hackers. That’s it. Russell: I mean, that wasn’t planned though. It was like, I was trying to think about a sexy name for the presentation, so I’m like ah, Funnel Hacks. And somebody owned FunnelHacks.com, and I’m like, I’m still doing the presentation that way. And then later we made t-shirts that said, “Funnel Hackers” and then now we got 4 or 5 people have tattooed that to their bodies, it’s really weird. But anyway, that’s what happened. We did that and we sold it and I remember going to dinner that night with the guys who were there, and Todd and his wife and everything. And we were all excited because we made some money finally. But I was just like, “You guys don’t understand, like I’ve spoken on a lot of stages, and I haven’t seen a table rush like that.” And I remember back, there was a guy, he passed away a couple of years ago, his name was Fred Catona. And he was a radio guy. He was the guy who did the radio commercials for, do you guys remember, it’s got the guy from Star Trek, what’s his name? Audience member: Priceline. Russell: Priceline. He did the Priceline radio commercials and made that guy a billionaire. And he told me when we were doing the radio ads, “This is what’s going to happen. We’re going to test your ad and if it works, I’m going to call you on the phone and let you know you’re rich. Because if it works, it means you’re going to be rich.” So I remember going to dinner that night and I told the guys, “Just so you guys know, we’re rich.” And they’re like, “What do you mean? We made $150,000.” I’m like, “No, no, no. The way people responded to that, I’ve never seen that in my life. We’re rich.” The response rate from that, I’ve never seen. Andrew: And then you went to webinar after webinar after webinar. Russell: On the flight home that day I’m texting everybody I’ve ever met. “I got a hot offer, this webinar crushed it. We just closed whatever percent of the room at Filsaime’s event. Who wants to do it?” And we started filling up the calendar. Andrew: And the idea was, and you told me you did 2 to 3 some days. And the idea was, they would sell somebody on a course, and then their members would then hear how your software and your funnel hacking technique would help up what they just bought and then they would sign up. You’re still excited, I can see it in your face. And then this thing took off. And then you started doing an event for your culture, your community, and this guy spoke, Tony Robbins. Russell: Oh yeah, there’s Tony. Andrew: One of the first ones. Was he at the very first one? Russell: No, he came to the third one, was the first one we had him come to. Andrew: Yeah? Why do an event? Why do your own live event? Russell: So we’ve done events in the past. I know events are good, but I’d sworn off them because the last event we did, I think we sold 3 or 400 tickets and less than 100 people showed up and I was so embarrassed. I was like, “We’ll never do events again.” And as soon as this, as soon as Clickfunnels launched and it was growing, everyone’s like, “We want to do a meet up. We should do an event.” All the customers kept asking. And against my, I didn’t really want to do it, but at the same time I was launching my book, and I had won a Ferrari in this affiliate contest so I was like, “What if we did an event and we had the Ferrari there and we gave it away and then we’re…” we had other ideas for giving away other cars and it became this big, exciting thing that eventually turned into an event. And that was the first Funnel Hacking Live event in Vegas, and we had about 600 people at that one that showed up. And that’s where it all kind of, it all started. Andrew: And it built how much, how many people are you up to now? Russell: Last year we had 3500 people and we’re on track to have about 5000 at this year’s event. Andrew: 5000? Yeah. Russell: Those aren’t free tickets. Each ticket’s $1000, so it’s…. Andrew: So how much is that in total revenue? Russell: From the event? Andrew: Yeah. Russell: So ticket sales, last year was $3 ½ million, this year will be over $5. But at the event we sell coaching so last year we made $13 million in coaching sales at the event as well. Andrew: Wow, would you come up here for a second, Dave? Do you guys know Dave? Yeah, everyone knows Dave. You know what’s amazing… {Audience catcalls} Andrew: That’s amazing. Dave: I don’t know who that is. Andrew: A catcall. I saw a video, you guys have this vlog now, a beautifully show vlog. You guys went to sales force’s conference, you’re looking at the booths and in the video, do you remember what you did as you saw the different booths? Dave: I think that one I went and asked what the prices for each of the booths were. Andrew: Yes, and then you multiplied. And he’s like, you’re not enjoying the event, you’re calculating ahead, how much. “10,000 that’s 100,000….” It’s like wow, right. You do this all the time? Dave: Yeah. It’s a lot of money in an event like that. Andrew: And you think, and if this was not your event, you would be doing the same calculation trying to figure out how much they brought in today. Wowee. Alright when you went to sales force did you calculate how much money they probably did from their event? Dave: We were doing that the whole time, absolutely. Andrew: You saw the building, you had to know… Dave: Oh my gosh. 61 stories. Andrew: Why? Why do you guys want to know that? Why does, how does that… I want to understand your drive as a company and I feel like this is a part of it. Figuring out how much money other people are making, using that for fuel somehow. Tell me. Dave: I think it actually goes back to Russell and his wrestling days. We had the experience of going to Chicago right after that, and super just exhausted. And it was one of those things where he literally landed, we walked down and we’re underneath the tarmac and all the sudden Russell goes from just being totally exhausted to a massive state change. Where he’s literally right back where he was with his dad and he and his dad are walking that same path to go to, I think it was Nationals. And I saw Dan Usher, who was doing the filming, capturing that moment and it’s that type of a thing for Russell. Where all the sudden it’s the dream, where as soon as you see it, it can then happen. And Russell’s just been amazing at modeling, and again the whole idea as far as just going at a rapid, rapid speed. I mean it’s “Ready, fire, aim.” Andrew: It’s not you gawking at the sales force, what’s the sales force event called? Dave: Dream Force. Andrew: Dream force. It’s not you gawking at how well Sales Force’s event, Dream Force is doing, it’s not you having envy or just curiosity, it’s you saying, it’s possible. This is us. That’s it. Dave: It’s totally possible. Andrew: It’s totally possible. We could get there. And when you’re sizing up the building, you even found out how much the building cost. Who does that? Most people go, “Where’s the bathroom?” How much does the building cost? Dave: There’s a number. Andrew: It’s you saying, “We could maybe have that.” Dave: We can have that, yeah. Andrew: Got it. And so let’s go back a little bit. I asked you about Traffic and Conversion because the very first Traffic and Conversion conference you went to, you guys were nobodies. Nobody came and saw you. Dave: We were put out in North 40 pasture, way, way far away. Andrew: And some people would say, “One day I’ll get there.” you told Russell, “Today we’re going to get there.” Dave: Well Russell wanted, he was speaking and so whenever you’re speaking at an event, it’s important that you fill a room, like this. And there’s nothing worse than having an event and having no one show up. It’s just the worst feeling in the world. And so he’s like, “All we need, I gotta find some way of getting people into the event. I wish we had like some girls who could just hand out t-shirts or do something.” And I was like, we’re in San Diego, that’s like my home town. Russell: Dave’s like, “How many do you need?” That’s all he said. Dave: It’s just a number. It comes down to a number. How many do you want? So we ended up having, within an hour or so we had 5 girls there who were more than happy to dance around and give out t-shirts and fill the room. Andrew: and the room was full? Dave: Packed. Andrew: Packed. And why wouldn’t you say, “One day, the next time we come to Traffic and Conversion, the tenth time we’re going to do it.” Why did it have to be right there? Dave: It’s always now.   Andrew: It’s always now. Dave: It’s always now. Andrew: It’s always now. It’s never going to be the next funnel, it’s never going to be the next product launch. I’m going to do whatever we can right now, and the next one, and the next one. That’s it. That’s who you are. Dave: That’s how it works. Andrew: And now you’re a partner in the business. $83 million so far this year, you got a piece of that. Dave: Yes. Do i? Russell: Yeah. Dave: Just checking. Andrew: Do you get to take profits home now? Dave: We do. Andrew: You do, you personally do? Dave: Yes. Andrew: Are you a millionaire? Dave: Things are really good. Andrew: Millionaire good from Clickfunnels? Dave: yes. Andrew: Really? Dave: Yes. Andrew: Wow. And you’re another one. I was driving and I said, “What was it about Russell that made you work for him? What was it?” and you said, “I’ve never seen anyone implement like him.” Give me an example of early days, something that he implemented…you know what, forget that, let’s not go back to Russell. As a team, you guys have gotten really good at implementing. Give me an example of one thing that you’re just stunned by, we did it, it came out of nowhere, we could have been distracted by funnel software, we could have distracted by the next book, we did this thing, what is it? Dave: You’re here on this stage with JP, and this was what 6 weeks ago? Andrew: and this whole thing just came from an idea I heard. You use Voxer. Why do you use Voxer? Russell: I don’t know. Andrew: Because you like to talk into it. Russell: Yeah, and you can fast forward, you can listen at 4x speed, you can forward the messages to people really easily, it’s awesome. Andrew: and it’s just train of thought, boom, here’s what I think we’re going to…No, it’s not that. I heard it’s, “I have a secret project…” Russell: “I’ll tell you guys about it later.” And they all start freaking out. “Tell us now.” Andrew: “Secret project. I don’t know what it, it’s going to be exciting.” They don’t know what it is, going to be excited. Russell: Do you know how it started, this one? I was cleaning my wrestling room listening to you, and you were, I don’t know whose event it was, but you were at the campfire, it sounded like. And you were doing something like this and I was like, I want my own campfire chat to tell our story. And then I was like, “Dave, we should do it.” And now we’re here. So thanks for coming to our campfire…. Dave: That’s how it happens. Andrew: And that’s exciting to this day. Alright, thank you. Give him a big round, thank you so much. You know what, I didn’t mean for this to come onstage, but I’m glad that it is. This made you laugh when you accidentally saw it earlier too. Why is this making you laugh? What is it? Russell: So we’re not shy about our competitors, even when they’re our friends. So one of the companies we’re crossing out is his. That’s why it’s funny. Andrew: It’s one of my companies. That’s Bot Academy there. It’s also a company I invest in, that octopus is ManyChat, I’ve been a very big angel investor and supporter of theirs. I’m not at all insulted by that, I’m curious about it. You guys come across as such nice, happy-go-lucky guys. Dave asked me if I want water, I said “Dave I can’t have you give me any more things. I feel uncomfortable, I’m a New Yorker. Punch me, please.” So he goes, “Okay, one more thing. I’m going to give you socks.” So he gave me socks. Really, but still, you have murder in your eyes sometimes. You’re crossing out everybody. This is part of your culture, why? Russell: It comes back, for me its wrestling. When I was wrestling it was not, I don’t know, there’s different mentalities right. And I did a podcast on this one time and I think I offended some people, so I apologize in advance, but if you’re in a band and everyone gets together and you play together and you harmonize, it’s beautiful. When you’re a wrestler you don’t do that. You know, you walk in everyday and you’re like, those are the two guys I have to beat to be varsity. And then after you do that, you walk in and you’re like, “Okay who are the people I have to beat to be in the region champ, and then the state champ, and then the national champ?” So for me, my entire 15 years of my life, all my focus was like, who’s the next person on the rung that I have to beat? And it’s studying and learning about them and figuring their moves and figuring out what they’re good at, what they’re bad at so we can beat them. Then we beat them and go to the next thing, and next thing, and next thing. So it was never negative for me, it was competition. Half the guys were my friends and they were doing the same thing to me, we were doing the same thing to them. I come from a hyper competitive world where that’s everything we do. And I feel bad now, because in business, a lot of people we compete against aren’t competitive and I forget that sometimes, and some people don’t appreciate it. But that’s the drive. It’s just like, who do we, if I don’t have someone to, if there’s not someone we’re driving towards, there’s not a point for me. Andrew: And even if they’re, even if I was hurt, “I accept it, I’m sorry you’re hurt, Andrew. I still care and love you. We’re going to crush you.” That’s still there. Russell: And I had someone, so obviously InfusionSoft was one of our people we were targeting for a long, long time and I had a call with Clayton and someone on his team asked me, “Why do you hate Infusion Soft so much?” I was like, “I don’t, you don’t understand. I don’t hate, I love Infusion Soft. I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for Lead Pages, I’m grateful for….” I told them, have you guys seen the Dark Knight, my favorite movie of all time? And it’s the part where Batman and the Joker are there and Batman is like, asks the Joker, “Why are you trying to kill me?” And the Joker starts laughing and he’s like, “I’m not trying to kill you. The reason I do this is because of you. If I didn’t have you, there’s no purpose behind it.” So for me it’s like, if I don’t have someone to compete against, why are we playing the game? So for me, that’s why we’re always looking… Andrew: It’s not enough to say, it’s not enough to just say “we’re playing the game because we want to help the next entrepreneur, or the next person who’s sick and needs to create…” no, it’s not. Russell: That’s a big part of it, but like, there’s something… Andrew: Yeah, but it’s not enough, it’s gotta be both. Russell: My whole life there’s, the competition is what drives me for sure. Andrew: And just like you’re wrestling with someone, trying to beat them, but you don’t hate them. You’re not going to their house and break it down… Russell: Everyone we wrestled, we were friends afterwards. We were on the same Freestyle and Greco teams later in the season, but during, when we’re competing, we’re competing and everyone’s going all at it. Andrew: Everyone’s going all at it. That’s an interesting way to end it. How much more time do we have? How much more time do we have? I’m going to keep going. Can I get you to come up here John, because I gotta get you to explain something to me? So I told you, I was online the other day, yeah give him a big round. I was online the other day, I don’t even know what I clicked, I clicked something and then I saw that Russell’s a great webinar person, everyone keeps telling me. Well, alright, I gotta find out how he does it. So I click over, “Alright, just give your email address and you can find out how..” Alright, I’ll give my email address to find out how he became such a great webinar presenter. “Just give a credit card. It’s only $4.95, so it comes in the mail.” It comes in the mail, that’s pretty cool. Nothing comes in the mail anymore. Here’s my credit card. It goes, “Alright, it’s going to mail it out. Would you also like to learn how to use these slides? $400.” I go, no! I’m done. Russell: Welcome to the funnel. Andrew: Welcome to the funnel. I’m done. But I’m going to put in Evernote a link to this page so I don’t lose it so I can come back. I swear. I did it. And this is my receipt for $4.95. Don’t you ever feel like, we’re beyond this? We’re in the software space now, we’re competing with Dropbox, we’re not competing with Joe Schmoe and his ebook. And you’re the guy who sold the, who bought the ad that got me. John: I know. Andrew: I asked you that. Do you ever feel a little embarrassed, “We’re still in the info market space.”? John: No, I think it’s the essence of what we do, of what Russell does. We love education. We love teaching people. I mean, the software is like the backend, but we’re not software people. I mean, we sell software, but we teach people. All these people here and all the people at all of our events, they just want to learn how to do it better. Andrew: I don’t believe it. John: Okay. Andrew: I believe in him. I don’t believe in you. I believe that for you it’s the numbers. Here’s why I don’t believe it. I’m looking in your eyes and you’re like, “I’m giving the script. I’m good, I’m doing the script.” I see it in your eyes, but when I was talking to you earlier, no offense. This is why he does what he does. When I was talking to you earlier, you told me about the numbers, the conversion, how we get you in the sales funnel, how we actually can then modify…That’s the exciting part. Don’t be insulted by the fact that I said it. Know that we have marketers here, they’re going to love you for being open about it. What’s going on here? What’s going on, keeping you in this space? John: Okay, from my perspective. Okay so, initially it was self liquidation on the front, which is what I was telling you. It was the fact that we were bootstrapped, we didn’t have money to just like throw out there. We had to make sure we were earning enough money to cover our ads. And Russell had all the trust in the world in me, I don’t know why he did, but he did. And he’s just like, “Spend money, and try to make it self-liquidate.” I’m like, “Okay.” So we just had to spend money and hope that we got enough back to keep spending money. Andrew: And self-liquidate means buy an ad today and make sure that we make money from that ad right away and then software. John: Yeah. Andrew: And then you told, and then software’s going to pay overtime, that’s our legacy, that’s our thing. And you told me software sucks for selling. Why? John: Software sucks, yeah. Andrew: Why? Everyone who’s in info, everyone’s who in education says, “I wish I was a software guy. Software is eating the world, they’re getting all the risk back.” I walked through San Francisco; they think anyone who doesn’t have software in their veins is a sucker. John: I asked the same thing to myself, you know. I was running ads, I’m like why can’t I just run ads straight to the offer? Why do I have go to these info products? I want to get on the soft…. And then I was like, I feel like it’s kind of like marriage. Like it’s a big thing to say like, “You probably already built websites, but come over, drop everything you’re doing and come over here and build websites over here on our thing.” And it’s like, that’s a hard pull. But “Hey, you want to build webinars? Here’s a little thing for $5 to build webinars.” Now you’re in our world, now we can talk to you, now you can trust us, now we can get you over there. Andrew: Got it. Okay, and if that’s what it takes to get people in your world, you’re going to accept it, you’re not going to feel too good for that, you’re just going to do it and grow it and grow it. John: Yeah. Andrew: What’s your ad budget now? See now you’re eyes are lighting up. Now I tapped into it. John: We spend about half a million a month. Andrew: half a million a month! John: Yeah. Don’t tell the accountant. Andrew: Do you guys pay with a credit card? Do you have a lot of miles? John: Yeah, we do. In fact…. Andrew: You do! How many miles? John: In fact, the accountant came into my office the other day and said, “Next time you buy a ticket, use the miles.” Andrew: Are they with Delta, because I think you guys flew me out with Delta. John: Yeah, American Express is where we’re spending all our money. Andrew: Wow. And you’re a partner too? John: Yeah. Andrew: Wow, congratulations. John: Thank you. Andrew: I don’t know you well enough to ask you if you’re a millionaire, I’m just going to say congratulations. Give him a big round. John: Thank you. Andrew: Wow, you know what, I actually was going to ask the videographers to come up here. I wrote their names down, I got the whole thing and I realized I shouldn’t interrupt them, because they’re shooting video. But I asked them, why are you, they had this career where they were flying all over the world shooting videos for their YouTube channel. I’m sorry, I forgot their name, and I don’t want to leave them out. Russell: Dan and Blake. Andrew: They were shooting YouTube videos, they were doing videos for other people. I said, “Why are you now giving it up and just working for Clickfunnels all the time? More importantly, why are you so excited about it?” And they said, “You know, it’s the way that we work with Russell.” And I said, do you remember the first time that you invited them out to shoot something? What was it? Russell: It was the very first Funnel Hacking Live we ever had, and probably 2 weeks prior to that, one of our friends had an event and Dan had captured the footage, and he showed me the videos. “Did you check out my Ven Video?” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that was amazing.” And I said “Who did it?” and he told me. So I emailed Dan and I was like, “Hey, can you come do that for Funnel Hacking Live?” And he’s like, “What’s Funnel Hacking Live?” So I kind of told him, and he’s like, “Sure.” And it was like 2 weeks later and he’s like, “What’s the direction?” and I was like, “I don’t know, just bring the magic man. Whatever you did there, do that here.” And that’s kind of been his calling card since. He just comes and does stuff. Andrew: Bring the magic. He wants to have those words painted on the Toronto office you guys are starting. Literally, because he says you say that all the time. And the idea is, I want to understand how you hire. The idea is, “I’m going to find people who do good work, and I’m going to let them do it.” What happens if they wouldn’t have done it your way? What happens if it would have gone a different direction? Russell: I see your question, and I’m not perfect. So I’m going to caveat that by, some of the guys on my team know that I’m kind of, especially on the design and funnel stuff, I’m more picky on that, because I’m so into that and I love it. But what I’ve found is when you hire amazing people like Todd for example, doing Clickfunnels. The times I tried to do Clickfunnels prior, build it was like, me and I’m telling developers, “here’s what to do and how to do it.” And like there’s always some loss in communication. With Todd, he’s like, “I know exactly what I would build because I want this product too.” And then he just built it and he showed me stuff. And I’m like, “That’s a good idea.” And he’s like, “I did this too.” And I’m like, “That’s a good idea.” And it’s so much easier that way. So when you find the right people, it’s not you giving them ideas, it’s them coming to you with the ideas. And you’re like, “that is a good idea. Go do it.” And it just makes, takes all the pressure off your back. So for us, and it’s been fun because I look at, man, the last 15 years of all those different websites and the ups and the downs, the best people have always stuck. So we’ve got 15 years of getting the cream of the crop. It’s kind of like, I’m a super hero nerd, but it’s like the Avengers, at the end of, when Clickfunnels came about we had this Avenger team of people. And we’re like, now we’ve put in our dues, now it’s time to use all of our super powers to do this thing, and it all kind of came together. Andrew: Build it and build it up. And then as you were building it up, you then went to Sales Force. You guys invited me, you said, “Hey Andrew, we’re in San Francisco, you’re home town. Do you want to come out?” I said, “I’m going to be with the family.” And you said, “Good. Being with the family is better than hanging out with us.” But I still said, “What are you guys doing in San Francisco at Sales Force?” Because sales people don’t need landing pages, yet you guys will probably find a way for them to need it. Then I saw this, this is the last video that I’ve got. There’s no audio on it. I want you guys to look at their faces as they’re looking up at these buildings, walking through the Sales Force office. Look, they’re getting on the motorcycles in the lobby. They’re looking all around like, “Oh gee.” Counting the buildings that are Sales Force labeled. Look at that! What are they doing? Not believing that this is even possible. And then just stopping and going, this is dream force. This is your dream. What did you get out of going to sales Force’s event and seeing their office? Russell: Honestly, prior to Sales Force, I was kind of going through a weird funk in my business, because it was like, again there was the goals. So it was like, okay, we’re going to do a million bucks, and then we did that. And then it’s like, let’s make 10 million a year. And then 50, and then this year we’ll hit a hundred. And like, what’s the next goal?  A billion, because a hundred million, 2 hundred million is not that big of a difference. And it was just kind of like, what’s the point, what’s the purpose? We’ve grown as big as any company that I know. And then last year, Dave and Ryan had gone out there and they were telling me stories like, “There’s 170,000 businesses here.” And they were telling me all these things, and it sounded cool, but I didn’t, and they were going crazy. You have to see this so you can believe it. But there’s something about the energy about seeing something that makes it real. So this year I was like, I want to go and I want to see Benioff speak. I want to see the thing, the towers, I want to just understand it, because if I understand it, cool. Now we can reverse engineer and figure out how we can do it. So for me it was just like seeing it. I think in anything, any, as entrepreneurs too, if you’re people believe that you can do it, you’ll do it. If you believe you can lose weight, you’ll lose 3eight. If you believe you can grow a company, and I don’t feel like I believed that the next level was possible for us until I saw it. And then I was like, oh my gosh, this is not ridiculous. Benioff’s not, none of these guys are any smarter than any of us. It’s just like, they figured out the path. It was like, okay let’s look at the path. And then let’s look at it and now we can figure out our path. Andrew: And seeing it in person did that for you? Russell: Oh yeah. It makes it tangible, it makes it like, it’s like your physiology feels it, versus reading a book about it or hearing about it. It’s like you see it and you experience it, and it’s like it’s tangible. Andrew: I told you, I asked people before they came in here, “What are you looking for?” and a few of them frustrated me because they said, “I just wanted to see Russell. I just want to see the event.” I go, “Give me something I could ask a question about.” But I think they were looking for the same thing that you got out of there. And I know they got it. I’m going to ask them to come up here and ask some questions, and I want to know about the future of Clickfunnels, but first I’ve got to just acknowledge that, that we are here to just kind of pick up on that energy. That energy that got you to pick yourself back up when anyone else would have said, “I’m a failure of a husband, I can’t do this.” Go back. The tension that came from failing and almost going to jail as you said, from failing and succeeding, and failing again. And still, that is inspiring to see. I want to give the whole Clickfunnels family a big round of applause, please everybody.

GUEST BIO: Dave is a computer programmer and was an original signatory and author of The Manifesto For Agile Software Development.  He has also co-authored several books, including “The Pragmatic Programmer”, and was a co-founder of the Pragmatic Bookshelf. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Dave Thomas is Phil’s guest on today’s show. He is a well-known programmer who works in numerous programming languages, in particular, Elixir, Ruby and agility. Dave is one of the original signatories and author of The Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Over the years, Dave has published several other books and is a trainer. Currently, he is also an Adjunct Professor at the Southern Methodist University. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (0.45) – So, Dave, can you expand on that brief introduction and tell us a little bit more about yourself? Dave says that fundamentally he is a programmer. For the past 45 years he has enjoyed coding and has done it practically every day. Most of the other things, he does really just to make a living. For example, he published more books when things crashed in the early 2000s. Even then, he spent time writing the various bits of infrastructure, he just could not stay away from the code. (3.08) – Are you still involved in the pragmatic? Dave says that about 18 months ago, with Andy’s agreement, he stepped back a bit on the day-to-day stuff. He had other things he wanted to investigate and basically did not have enough time to do so. Right now, he is almost like a Victorian gentleman scientist exploring things on his own. But, he has spent about a year shuttling from one thing to another. He is now focused again. (4.21) – Phil asks Dave to share a unique IT career tip. We work in the fastest changing industry that ever existed, so you need to keep up. You can’t know everything, but you can look at what is coming up and pick a few things that are likely to make it. Then spend a bit of time learning and researching those. (5.20) – A lot of people say my employer does not give me time to do that. Dave’s response is that is not your employer’s job. It is your career - you need to invest in yourself. If you do not, you and your skills will slowly become irrelevant as new technology replaces what you are good at. (6.11) – Dave is asked to share his worst career moment and what he learned from that experience. After 45 years, Dave has understandably had quite a few bad career moments. At least, things that felt bad at the time. But, usually he learned a lot from those situations. So, in the end, many of those experiences turned out to be positive ones. When you are working in such a malleable format it is very easy to mess things up. However, with a bit of discipline and patience, it is also very easy to fix the problem. (7.29) – Phil asks Dave what his best career moment was. Dave explained that, like most people, he has a need to create. So, when he finds his “software expressing me” he gets a lift. A great example of this is the Prestel videotext system, from the 1970s. Dave was involved in writing a front end so that people could find flight availability and book them via travel agents. One day, Dave was walking down a High Street, looked in a travel agents window and saw his software running. Seeing that brought home the fact that what he was doing really was making a difference. (9.53) – Dave explained that whenever he publishes a book, he also goes to a bookstore to see it on the shelf. Seeing a physical manifestation of your work helps you to fully appreciate what you have achieved and is very fulfilling. (11.11) – So, Dave what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers in IT in particular? For Dave the fact that in IT you are shaping the world, literally. You cannot do much, these days, without IT. We can do great things with IT, which is exciting. In the very near future our coding will become part of the fabric of life. Now we code things that mainly happen via a screen or browser. In the future, our work will become an ambient background to people’s lives. That is a phenomenal responsibility, but incredibly empowering. (13.31) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? When Dave did his A-levels he took them a year earlier, so had no work to do at school. Fortunately, he was not allowed to simply leave. Instead, his school sent him across the road to take the first-ever A-level UK programming classes. They were using Basic, with a teletype paper tape punch, but Dave was captivated by the work. He had planned to study math, instead he studies software at university and begun his IT career. (15.31) – What is the best career advice you were given? Dave’s first job was working for a startup. They were asked to produce a coupon compiler, by a client. The director of that company had quite a bit of technical understanding, but there were some important gaps in his knowledge. So, at some point in the meeting Dave said – “No, you’re wrong. That’s not right” blah, blah. There was a deathly silence. At which point his boss stepped in and moved things along. Afterward the meeting he apologized. But, his boss said “No it’s OK, you did the right thing, just not in the right way.” That incident stayed with him. It made Dave realize that we should not be saying yes all the time. Instead, we have to find a way of saying no without putting people’s backs up. (16.43) – If you were to start your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Dave replied “It depends”, but he would probably not go to college or university. Instead, he would look for a company that ran a good apprenticeship scheme and join. He would then spend 5 to 10 years flitting across different areas. At that point, he would reflect on those years and work out the thing that he enjoyed the most and work in that field. Phil agreed that was a good approach. People tend to forget that taking a job is not a lifetime commitment. In the early days, it is probably only an 18-month commitment. Nobody expects any more from you, so it makes sense to take advantage of that fact and move around until you find something you love doing. (19.15) – Phil asks Dave what he is currently focusing on for his career. Dave says “changing the world”, kind of. Right now, he has two main aims. Firstly, he wants to encapsulate and share what he has learned. He is on the board of a company that teaches genuine software skills to 8 to 14-year-olds. These days, coding literacy is as important as any foreign language. The other objective is to simplify software development. Things do not have to be anywhere near as complicated as they are now. Dave believes we can make software development far easier and is working on doing exactly that. (21.25) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Dave says that enjoying learning has helped him tremendously. Being able to move across industries and learn your client’s jobs, how they work and what their problems are all helps you to build software that solves the real problem, rather than just meeting the spec. (22.46) – Phil asks Dave to share a final piece of career advice. Dave says that you need to “remember to make it fun.” You need to look forward to going to work, at least most of the time. If you feel that way you will do a good job. BEST MOMENTS: (3.06) DAVE – “You just can't keep me away from the code.” (3.39) DAVE – “I've been almost like a Victorian gentlemen scientist for the last two years, just exploring stuff on my own.” (5.38) DAVE – “The most important tip is to invest in yourself. To keep yourself current, spend some time and a little bit of money on a personal level, just to make sure that you're still relevant.” (7.24) DAVE – “I honestly think it's an important thing to learn that if you break it, you can fix it.” (9.54) PHIL – “I think seeing what you produce in action is self-fulfilling, in some ways.” (13.07) DAVE – “The most exciting thing to look forward to is a future where we can really genuinely make the world better.” CONTACT DAVE THOMAS: Twitter: https://twitter.com/pragdave @pragdave LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-thomas-53aa1057/ Website: https://pragprog.com/

I’m awful when it comes to building websites and any other tech wizardry. The learning curve is steep, and things can get pretty complicated, quickly. But when someone introduced me to the drag and drop funnel software, ClickFunnels, I was hooked immediately. I bought everything they had to offer and began building and refining my funnels until they worked! Today I have Chief Revenue and Business Development Officer Dave Woodward of ClickFunnels joining me to talk about their 6 figure success story, and what went into the massive and sustained results they’ve been getting. We talk about company culture, paid advertising and of course we get into some juicy conversation about funnels as well.   In This Episode What is the best way to approach funnel building? Why competition isn’t really a concern for Clickfunnels Why company and product culture matters so much Cutting your teeth on a practice business Who has a longer attention span, humans or goldfish? What is the most fun funnel to launch?   “I’ve never had more fun in my life doing anything” - Dave “You’re only one funnel away” - Dave “Where are we going? How do we want to effectively outclass the market?” - Jess “There’s nothing wrong with getting started and learning it” - Dave “It’s all about evolution” - Jess “We are the number one consumer of our products” - Dave “Not everybody's opening just email” - Dave “I believe a lot of people feel like they always have to start with the lowest price point first” - Dave “It’s about reverse engineering the process. Make life easy for yourself” - Jess “There’s other people who have gone before me who have already had success” - Dave   More ClickFunnels   The Dotties! https://smartleaderssell.com/the-dotties/   More Jess! https://smartleaderssell.com/the-dotties/ http://bit.ly/SLSGroup https://jessicalorimer.com/supersize-your-sales https://jessicalorimer.com/list-building-legend Content DisclaimerThe information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.Disclaimer: Some of these links are for products and services offered by the podcast creator

Ho Ho Ho and Merry Holiday's Greetings-Mas from the Morale Bros!Today we've got Meghan, star of season 2, and our former lover Bachelor, Dave from Season 1 to talk about the great ideas the Morale Bros have for finding a date to your company's Christmas party.Hold on tight, because this one is full of holiday cheer and a tiny bit of sexual harassment (directed at Dave)You can see the full list on our website:Our List!Please follow us on Twitter @MoraleBrosLeave a 5 star review, and we'll give you a sweet friendship hug.xoxo-The Morale Bros --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/moralebros/message

KERI: Hey guys, it’s Keri TV, and we have a very special guest here today.  This is Dave White, who is a big real estate investor, and also happens to be my father.  So excited to have him here for our special episode.  We were talking about this when we were in Palm Desert last weekend, about proposition 10 and proposition 5 and what it means.  I said, hey dad, will you film an episode with me?  So here we are.  KERI: As you know, the mid-term elections are coming up on the sixth of November.  It’s really important to get out there and vote, of course, whatever your views are.  We thought it was important for us to share a little bit about what these propositions mean in regards to real estate.  For our clients, this is our PSA.  First of all, we have proposition 10, which is the repeal of the Costa-Hawkins rent control act.  That is one of the propositions among the ballot.  Dave, tell us a little bit about what that means and what that means to homeowners. DAVE: Well, Costa-Hawkins brought rent control in.  Rent control is not really what everybody thought it was supposed to be.  It’s supposed to help the housing prices.  It’s been proven that rent control doesn’t help that at all.  Now, with Costa-Hawkins, every property is now going to come under rent control.  Your single-family home, your condominium, and your townhome.  The other sad thing about this is, at the present time, with the current system we have, when you rent your property, if your property’s under rent control, you rent it out for 1200 a month, and the other units in the building might be renting out for 2000 a month, in the current system, if those people paying 1250 move out, we can now rent that unit for the 2200, or whatever. KERI: Market value. DAVE: Market value. KERI: Right. DAVE: When they get rid of Costa-Hawkins, they’re going to make it so that if those people move out of that unit paying 1250, the next person coming in only has to pay 1250 as well. KERI: What about people who can’t really afford to live in buildings like this?  They’d love to live in a place for 1250.  Wouldn’t that be considered a good thing? DAVE: Well, it would be a good thing if all the people who couldn’t afford it could get into those buildings.  What happens is the lucky few who do end up in one never move out of them.  Now, all of a sudden after ten, fifteen, or twenty years you show up and here’s the guy renting the unit or the girl pulling up in their nice Ferrari. KERI: [laugh] DAVE: It’s an actual fact.  It’s supposed to be for low-income people.  The system just doesn’t work as it is.  It’s sad.  The lack of housing is caused because of supply and demand.  When you’ve got more supply than demand, as in other states, where the vacancy factor’s fifteen percent, what happens there is the landlords are having to offer moving expenses or one month free to get people into their units.  But out here in California, where it’s probably four percent, there’s no need for landlords to offer anything and everybody’s squirming to get into the unit. KERI: What happens when there are people paying low rents the other units get pushed up even more in costs, because there’s nothing available to rent.  When these people stay in these units and they never move out, it stops the flow of inflation in society and values going up, because property owners don’t want to have buildings where people are paying low income, because it doesn’t increase their value.  They tend to become slum lords, because they want market value rates and market value renters in there. DAVE: The other thing that happens is if you can only get 1250 dollars a month for your unit, which should be getting 2200, then it’s not even worth leasing it out.  You’d probably take it off the market. KERI: That’s exactly what happens.  Yeah. DAVE: Values drop.  When the value drops, that means there’s less property tax coming in.  What happens to the streets and everything the city has to look after when there’s less money coming in? KERI: With these new laws going in, it’s actually going to cost the taxpayers more money because they’re paying for these new rules.  If property values are decreasing, the city’s going to lose money.  There’s actually less money going towards emergency services, schools, and it actually will not create the low-income housing that they’re saying that it will. DAVE: Back East, many years ago, they brought rent control in.  All the students decided they wanted to get low-income.  What happened?  All these students never moved out of the units.  All of a sudden, they decided, this doesn’t work.  They changed the rules and got rid of the rent control. Now all those people who have been there for years finally went and bought homes and moved out of the apartments. KERI: Yeah.  That’s another thing that’s so important.  It happens a lot here in Santa Monica.  Someone will be paying 800 or maybe 1200 for a one-bedroom or two-bedroom, or even 2200 for a two-bedroom near the beach, they don’t have motivation to move because they’re getting such a good deal.  Then what happens when ten, twenty, or thirty years go by, sure, they’ve been living with low-rent, they don’t own anything.  They haven’t built any equity.  They don’t have anything to show for themselves.  You could be in a place that has grown five hundred, seven fifty, in equity and have a great retirement or invest in other buildings that make you more money.  Isn’t the whole goal to one day be sipping margaritas on the beach?  Right dad? DAVE: Two years ago, I met a guy on a party on a boat. KERI: Oh. DAVE: That’s what you do, right, when you have real estate? KERI: That’s what you do. DAVE: Anyway, I talked to this guy and he said I’d like to buy something.  He was sixty-two years old.  I said to him, well, what do you own now?  He said, I don’t own anything.  Unfortunately, I got caught up by rent control. KERI: What did he say? DAVE: He said, I got tied up with rent control. KERI: Caught up with rent control, did you hear that?  Tell us more. DAVE: Because he thought he was on a great bargain because he was only paying a thousand dollars a month. KERI: Right. DAVE: For this unit in Santa Monica that everybody else was paying 3000 dollars a month for.  He said, I watched all my friends who couldn’t get into rent control go out and buy homes and he said, now, they’re all worth a lot more money than me because their homes have gone up in value. KERI: There’s nothing wrong with paying a low rent, of course.  But the long-term game is to make money, to invest, and to retire.  The short side of that vision is that rent control’s a good thing when in fact it decreases property values, it lessens the money going to the government, and it creates slum lords. DAVE: It creates a shortage. KERI: And a shortage. DAVE: Who is going to build more buildings when you can’t make money on them?  Because the other thing that we haven’t made a way yet, when or if Costa-Hawkins gets voted out, that means that now the government can come in and tell you how much you can rent your home out for, your unit.  They can decide what you get for it. KERI: So, you know how your relator tries to tell you what price you should rent one of your units or your houses?  Now, instead of listening to the advice, you’re going to get told.  Well, this is what you can rent it for and we don’t care what you think.  So, does that sound like a fun thing for anybody?  Probably not.  Of course, do your research, investigate everything you can about proposition 10, but when it comes to real estate and building equity and building wealth, which is what we’re proponents of, we’re saying vote no on proposition 10. DAVE: Hey, let’s imagine that prop 10 doesn’t pass, we’re going to go and buy another building! KERI: [cheer] Yay!  We’re going to buy a building.  To summarize, we vote no on proposition 10, because we want to keep our property values increasing, we want to keep the market stable with the right market value rents and we don’t want to increase our taxpayer dollars, do you?  Now, the other proposition we want to highlight that has to do with real estate and our clients, of course, is proposition 5.  This is super exciting because right now, as it exists, if you are 55 or older, you can take your tax basis with you one time for one move.  What this is going to do is allow people that are over 55, plus people who are disabled or victims of natural disasters to take their tax basis more than once and for any price point.  This is super exciting because of all the people that get stuck in their homes because they can’t afford another twenty grand a year on taxes.  Dave, tell us a little bit more about why you think we should vote yes on proposition 5. It’s yes, right?  Yes on 5? DAVE: Yes, it is. KERI: Okay, yes on 5. DAVE: Like 10 is bad for real estate, 5 is excellent for real estate. KERI: So good for real estate.  DAVE: It is. KERI: And old people. DAVE: Right. KERI: We like old people. DAVE: But remember one thing.  When you purchase your home for 200,000 and your property tax is below, they only go up one percent a year. KERI: I calculated a hundred grand.  1800. DAVE: Okay.  But the problem is when you go to buy a house that’s a million dollars, now your taxes are going to be way up there.  That’s what stops a lot of people from selling their homes.  Here’s the other thing that hurts the older people like me.  We can’t sell.  We’ve got this big house that’s got a pool and huge gardens, and we’re wasting all our money. KERI: Unused bedrooms. DAVE: Now, with prop 5, we can sell, move to a beautiful home on the beach, and only pay the low taxes.  The biggest change with this is, the way it is now, you can only do this once. KERI: Once. DAVE: You can move once and get the property tax saving.  The other big thing is, in the old way, if you sold your house for a million and you had to buy something, you could only go three percent above.  Now you can go and pay whatever you want for a house. KERI: Yeah. DAVE: You could pay two million, if you wanted to. KERI: Which is so great.  Yeah. DAVE: Well, the big thing is, most people, when they’re older, they’ve paid their houses off.  So, it’s all cash. KERI: All cash.  Cash, cash, money.  That’s the thing too.  They can take all that cash, buy something with cash, and then they only have a low property tax.  Say they bought their house for a hundred grand.  They’re selling it for a million or a million five.  They move into a cool condo on Ocean Avenue or a little house somewhere nearby.  They’re not paying anything monthly, which is the whole point, because they can’t afford it, and the property taxes don’t change.  Their lifestyle remains the same.  You get to have mom and dad around for raising the grandkids.  It’s also really great for people who are disabled, same thing.  They need to move into something that works for their disability, whether it’s one-level or smaller.  Then, the other factor is for people who are victims of natural disasters that happened this year.  Floods, fires. DAVE: Grandkids?  I’m excited to hear grandkids.  Grandkids, wow. KERI: Get excited dad. DAVE: Sounds great! KERI: Got to get married first.  Anyways.  Sh.  So, we know that proposition 5, a vote yes on proposition 5 will help even a lot of our clients who are trying to buy a property, and there’s more people that would sell if they could take their tax basis with them, and then these awesome young couples or young couples with babies could move into their houses, to their four and five bedrooms with pools.  So, overall, it will stimulate the economy, stimulate housing, open up inventory which we all know, we’ve had a shortage of inventory, right? DAVE: Right.  Let’s help these older people that worked all their lives to support the community they live in.  Let’s help them out, now that they’re old and retired and enjoy life. KERI: Yes!  And help the disabled and help the natural disaster victims.  Proposition 5!  Vote yes!  Again, if you have any questions about proposition 5 or proposition 10, do your research.  We always vote for real estate wealth and real estate economy and your wealth, and that is why we are giving these tips today on Keri TV. DAVE: Fantastic. KERI: Fantastic.  Thank you for joining me.  

Panel: Dave Kimura Eric Berry Nathan Hopkins David Richards Special Guest: Jason Swett In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks with Jason Swett who is a host of the podcast show, Ruby Testing! Jason also teaches Rails testing at CodeWithJason.com. He currently resides in the Michigan area and works for Ben Franklin Labs. Check-out today’s episode where the panelists and the guest discuss testing topics. Show Topics: 0:00 – Sentry.IO – Advertisement! Check out the code: DEVCHAT @ Sentry.io. 1:07 – I am David Kimura and here is the panel! Tell us what is going on? 1:38 – Jason: I started my own podcast, and have been doing that for the past few months. That’s one thing. I started a new site with CodeWithJason.com. 2:04 – You released a course? 2:10 – Jason: Total flop and it doesn’t exist, but I am doing something else. 2:24 – I bet you learned a lot by creating the course? 2:34 – Jason: The endeavor of TEACHING it has helped me a lot. 2:50 – Tell us why we should drink the Koolaid? 3:02 – Jason: What IS testing? Good question. Whether is it is manual testing or automated testing. We might was well automate it. 3:25 – If we are testing our code what does that look like? 3:34 – Jason: Not sure what you mean, but I am doing tests at a fine grain vs. coarser grain. 4:00 – Show of hands who has...? 4:19 – What different tests are there? 4:20 – Jason: Good question. One term that one person uses is different to a different person. Let’s start with unit tests vs. integration tests. Jason dives into the similarities and differences between these 2 tests (see above). There are different tests, such as: featured tests, acceptance tests, etc. 5:45 – What tests are THE best? 5:50 – Jason: Good question. The kind of tests you are writing depends on what type of coverage you are going for. If I had a sign-up page for a user, I would... 7:36 – What anti-patterns are you seeing? What is your narrative in teaching people how to use them? 8:07 – Jason talks first about his background and his interaction with one of his colleagues. 8:58 – Question. 9:00 – Jason continues with his answers from 8:07. 9:32 – Jason: Feel free to chime-in. What have you done? 9:42 – I often ignore it until I feel bad and then I say: wait-a-minute I am a professional. Then I realize I ignored the problem because I was acting cowardly. 10:29 – For me it depends on the test that it is. One gem that I found is: RSpec RETRY. 11:16 – Jason: The test is flapping because of something is wrong with the database or something else. Since you asked about anti-patterns let’s talk about that! Rails and Angular are mentioned. 13:10 – Do you find that you back off of your unit testing when you are using integration? 13:22 – Jason: It depends on the context we are talking about. Jason talks about featured testing, model-level testing, and more. 13:58 – What is your view on using MOCKS or FAKES. What should we be doing there? 14:10 – Jason: Going to the Angular world I understand Mocks better than now. There was a parable that I think is applicable here about the young and the old fish. 16:23 – Jason continues talking about testing things in isolation. 16:36 – Question.  16:39 – I have been looking for an area to specialize in and I wrote an eBook. (Check out here to see the articles and books that Jason has authored.) Then I was looking around and I wanted to see what people’s issues are with Rails? They have a hard time with testing. I wanted to help them feel competent with it. 18:03 – In your course you have how to choose a framework. I know Ruby has several options on that front – how do you choose? 18:24 – Jason: There are 2 factors to consider. Jason tells us what those two factors are. Jason: Angular, React and Vue. 19:52 – Panelist: I had a conversation with a beginner and we were talking about the different tests. He said the DSL really appealed to him. The surface area of the AI made it approachable for him. 20:27 – Jason: I wished I had figured out DSL out a little better. Understanding the concept of a block. The IT is just a function and you can put parentheses in different areas and... 21:01 – That makes sense. Let’s revisit the Tweet you wrote. 21:35 – Jason: There are certain use cases where it makes sense. Where Gmail was the thing out there. At some point the Internet formed the opinion that... 22:39 – Old saying: Nobody gets fired for using Microsoft and then it was IBM. Nothing wrong with those things if that’s what you are trying to do. Sometimes we make decisions to not be criticized. We try to grab big frameworks and big codes so we are not criticized for. 23:48 – Jason: I think developers have this idea that OLD is OUTDATED. Not so. I think it’s mature, not necessarily outdated. I think it’s a pervasive idea. 24:31 – I think it suffers a bit when all the mind shares get lumped into one thing. The panelist continues... 24:53 – Jason: I don’t know if I like this analogy. 26:00 – I agree with that sentiment. It’s crazy that the complexity has become so pervasive. 26:18 – I think of SPAs as... 26:37 – Jason: Going back to the Tweet I wrote, I am pulling in JavaScript but I am preferring to sprinkle Java into Rails. 27:02 – Absolutely. I think that’s where we agree on. Late in 2017 we had the guest... “Use JavaScript sprinkles.” 27:49 – Panelist chimes-in. 28:37 – Jason: That make sense. Use your preexisting... I am afraid of committing to a single framework. I don’t have anything against JavaScript but I am afraid of using only one thing when something else becomes fashionable. 29:30 – Have you found that Java sparkle approach is easy to test? 29:38 – Jason: I think it’s easier. Client server architecture... 30:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 30:41 – Shout-out to the Rails team! What other testing frameworks are there? What if you are not the developer but you are the Quality Assurance (QA) person. They have been given the task of testing on the application. 31:30 – Jason: So someone who is not a developer and they want to test the application. I don’t want to get out of my role of expertise. I did talk to a QA engineer and I asked them: What do you do? All of his tests are manual. He does the same stuff as a Rails developer would do. 32:52 – Panelist talks about pseudo code. 34:07 – Jason: I am curious, Dave, about the non-programmer helping with tests what is the team structure? 34:23 – Dave: You will have one QA per three developers. 34:44 – Jason: If you have a QA person he is integrated within the team – that’s what has been the case for me. 35:02 – Dave: It’s a nice thing to have because we need to crank out some features and we have a good idea what is wrong with the app. We can go in there and see if our application is good, but they are combining different scenarios to do the unit tests and see what they are lacking. They are uncovering different problems that we hadn’t thought of. 36:07 – The organization has to have the right culture for that to work. 36:35 – If it’s a small team then it will help to see what everyone is doing – it’s that engagement level. If the team is too large then it could be a problem. 37:15 – Jason: Engagement between whom? 37:27 – Both. Panelist goes into detail about different engagement levels throughout the team. 38:10 – Jason: Yeah that’s a tough thing. 38:49 – It’s interesting to see the things that are being created. Testing seems to help that out. We are getting bugs in that area or se didn’t design it well there... We see that we need some flexibility and getting that input and having a way to solve the problems. 39:32 – Jason: Continuous deployment – let’s segue into this topic. 41:17 – Panelist: Do you have recommendations on how often we should be deploying in that system per day/week? 41:40 – Jason: We would deploy several times a day, which was great. The more the better because the more frequently you are deploying the fewer things will go wrong. 42:21 – More frequently the better and more people involved. 42:45 – Jason continues this conversation. 42:51 – Panelist: Continuous integration – any time you were say to forgo tests or being less rigid? 43:14 – Jason: I don’t test everything. I don’t write tests for things that have little risks. 43:56 – I think it is a good segue into how you write your code. If you write a code that is like spaghetti then it will be a mess. Making things easier to test. 44:48 – Jason: This is fresh in my mind because I am writing an app called Green Field. 46:32 – Uniqueness Validations, is mentioned by Jason. 47:00 – Anything else to add to testing a Rails application? 47:08 – Jason: Let’s talk about 2 things: walking skeleton and small stories. This book is a great resource for automated testing. Last point that I want to talk about is small stories: continues deployment and continuous delivery. If you make your stories smaller then you are making your stories crisply defined. Have some bullet points to make it really easy to answer the question. Answer the question: is this story done or not done? Someone should be able to run through the bullet points and answer that question. 50:02 – I am in favor of small stories, too. Makes you feel more productive, too. 50:14 – Work tends to lend itself to these types of stories and running a sprint. 51:22 – You don’t have to carry that burden when you go home. You might have too big of a chunk – it carries too much weight to it. 51:47 – Book the Phoenix Project. Work in progress is a bad thing. That makes sense. You want to have fewer balls in the air. 52:17 – Anything else? 52:22 – Jason: You can find me at: CodewithJason.com also Twitter!  52:45 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:01:50 – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Erlang Ruby Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails Angular Single Page Application (SPA) RSpec – Retry Ruby Testing Podcast The Feynman Technique Model Book: Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests (1st edition) Jason Swett’s Twitter Jason Swett’s LinkedIn Parable: Young Fish and Old Fish – What is Water? Jason’s articles and eBook Jason’s Website Sponsors: Sentry Get a Coder Job Course Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: David This is Water The Feynman Technique Model Nate Taking some time off Pry Test Eric Fake App Ruby Hack Conference Dave Brooks Shoes Jason The Food Lab Growing Object-Oriented Software

Panel: Dave Kimura Eric Berry Nathan Hopkins David Richards Special Guest: Jason Swett In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks with Jason Swett who is a host of the podcast show, Ruby Testing! Jason also teaches Rails testing at CodeWithJason.com. He currently resides in the Michigan area and works for Ben Franklin Labs. Check-out today’s episode where the panelists and the guest discuss testing topics. Show Topics: 0:00 – Sentry.IO – Advertisement! Check out the code: DEVCHAT @ Sentry.io. 1:07 – I am David Kimura and here is the panel! Tell us what is going on? 1:38 – Jason: I started my own podcast, and have been doing that for the past few months. That’s one thing. I started a new site with CodeWithJason.com. 2:04 – You released a course? 2:10 – Jason: Total flop and it doesn’t exist, but I am doing something else. 2:24 – I bet you learned a lot by creating the course? 2:34 – Jason: The endeavor of TEACHING it has helped me a lot. 2:50 – Tell us why we should drink the Koolaid? 3:02 – Jason: What IS testing? Good question. Whether is it is manual testing or automated testing. We might was well automate it. 3:25 – If we are testing our code what does that look like? 3:34 – Jason: Not sure what you mean, but I am doing tests at a fine grain vs. coarser grain. 4:00 – Show of hands who has...? 4:19 – What different tests are there? 4:20 – Jason: Good question. One term that one person uses is different to a different person. Let’s start with unit tests vs. integration tests. Jason dives into the similarities and differences between these 2 tests (see above). There are different tests, such as: featured tests, acceptance tests, etc. 5:45 – What tests are THE best? 5:50 – Jason: Good question. The kind of tests you are writing depends on what type of coverage you are going for. If I had a sign-up page for a user, I would... 7:36 – What anti-patterns are you seeing? What is your narrative in teaching people how to use them? 8:07 – Jason talks first about his background and his interaction with one of his colleagues. 8:58 – Question. 9:00 – Jason continues with his answers from 8:07. 9:32 – Jason: Feel free to chime-in. What have you done? 9:42 – I often ignore it until I feel bad and then I say: wait-a-minute I am a professional. Then I realize I ignored the problem because I was acting cowardly. 10:29 – For me it depends on the test that it is. One gem that I found is: RSpec RETRY. 11:16 – Jason: The test is flapping because of something is wrong with the database or something else. Since you asked about anti-patterns let’s talk about that! Rails and Angular are mentioned. 13:10 – Do you find that you back off of your unit testing when you are using integration? 13:22 – Jason: It depends on the context we are talking about. Jason talks about featured testing, model-level testing, and more. 13:58 – What is your view on using MOCKS or FAKES. What should we be doing there? 14:10 – Jason: Going to the Angular world I understand Mocks better than now. There was a parable that I think is applicable here about the young and the old fish. 16:23 – Jason continues talking about testing things in isolation. 16:36 – Question.  16:39 – I have been looking for an area to specialize in and I wrote an eBook. (Check out here to see the articles and books that Jason has authored.) Then I was looking around and I wanted to see what people’s issues are with Rails? They have a hard time with testing. I wanted to help them feel competent with it. 18:03 – In your course you have how to choose a framework. I know Ruby has several options on that front – how do you choose? 18:24 – Jason: There are 2 factors to consider. Jason tells us what those two factors are. Jason: Angular, React and Vue. 19:52 – Panelist: I had a conversation with a beginner and we were talking about the different tests. He said the DSL really appealed to him. The surface area of the AI made it approachable for him. 20:27 – Jason: I wished I had figured out DSL out a little better. Understanding the concept of a block. The IT is just a function and you can put parentheses in different areas and... 21:01 – That makes sense. Let’s revisit the Tweet you wrote. 21:35 – Jason: There are certain use cases where it makes sense. Where Gmail was the thing out there. At some point the Internet formed the opinion that... 22:39 – Old saying: Nobody gets fired for using Microsoft and then it was IBM. Nothing wrong with those things if that’s what you are trying to do. Sometimes we make decisions to not be criticized. We try to grab big frameworks and big codes so we are not criticized for. 23:48 – Jason: I think developers have this idea that OLD is OUTDATED. Not so. I think it’s mature, not necessarily outdated. I think it’s a pervasive idea. 24:31 – I think it suffers a bit when all the mind shares get lumped into one thing. The panelist continues... 24:53 – Jason: I don’t know if I like this analogy. 26:00 – I agree with that sentiment. It’s crazy that the complexity has become so pervasive. 26:18 – I think of SPAs as... 26:37 – Jason: Going back to the Tweet I wrote, I am pulling in JavaScript but I am preferring to sprinkle Java into Rails. 27:02 – Absolutely. I think that’s where we agree on. Late in 2017 we had the guest... “Use JavaScript sprinkles.” 27:49 – Panelist chimes-in. 28:37 – Jason: That make sense. Use your preexisting... I am afraid of committing to a single framework. I don’t have anything against JavaScript but I am afraid of using only one thing when something else becomes fashionable. 29:30 – Have you found that Java sparkle approach is easy to test? 29:38 – Jason: I think it’s easier. Client server architecture... 30:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 30:41 – Shout-out to the Rails team! What other testing frameworks are there? What if you are not the developer but you are the Quality Assurance (QA) person. They have been given the task of testing on the application. 31:30 – Jason: So someone who is not a developer and they want to test the application. I don’t want to get out of my role of expertise. I did talk to a QA engineer and I asked them: What do you do? All of his tests are manual. He does the same stuff as a Rails developer would do. 32:52 – Panelist talks about pseudo code. 34:07 – Jason: I am curious, Dave, about the non-programmer helping with tests what is the team structure? 34:23 – Dave: You will have one QA per three developers. 34:44 – Jason: If you have a QA person he is integrated within the team – that’s what has been the case for me. 35:02 – Dave: It’s a nice thing to have because we need to crank out some features and we have a good idea what is wrong with the app. We can go in there and see if our application is good, but they are combining different scenarios to do the unit tests and see what they are lacking. They are uncovering different problems that we hadn’t thought of. 36:07 – The organization has to have the right culture for that to work. 36:35 – If it’s a small team then it will help to see what everyone is doing – it’s that engagement level. If the team is too large then it could be a problem. 37:15 – Jason: Engagement between whom? 37:27 – Both. Panelist goes into detail about different engagement levels throughout the team. 38:10 – Jason: Yeah that’s a tough thing. 38:49 – It’s interesting to see the things that are being created. Testing seems to help that out. We are getting bugs in that area or se didn’t design it well there... We see that we need some flexibility and getting that input and having a way to solve the problems. 39:32 – Jason: Continuous deployment – let’s segue into this topic. 41:17 – Panelist: Do you have recommendations on how often we should be deploying in that system per day/week? 41:40 – Jason: We would deploy several times a day, which was great. The more the better because the more frequently you are deploying the fewer things will go wrong. 42:21 – More frequently the better and more people involved. 42:45 – Jason continues this conversation. 42:51 – Panelist: Continuous integration – any time you were say to forgo tests or being less rigid? 43:14 – Jason: I don’t test everything. I don’t write tests for things that have little risks. 43:56 – I think it is a good segue into how you write your code. If you write a code that is like spaghetti then it will be a mess. Making things easier to test. 44:48 – Jason: This is fresh in my mind because I am writing an app called Green Field. 46:32 – Uniqueness Validations, is mentioned by Jason. 47:00 – Anything else to add to testing a Rails application? 47:08 – Jason: Let’s talk about 2 things: walking skeleton and small stories. This book is a great resource for automated testing. Last point that I want to talk about is small stories: continues deployment and continuous delivery. If you make your stories smaller then you are making your stories crisply defined. Have some bullet points to make it really easy to answer the question. Answer the question: is this story done or not done? Someone should be able to run through the bullet points and answer that question. 50:02 – I am in favor of small stories, too. Makes you feel more productive, too. 50:14 – Work tends to lend itself to these types of stories and running a sprint. 51:22 – You don’t have to carry that burden when you go home. You might have too big of a chunk – it carries too much weight to it. 51:47 – Book the Phoenix Project. Work in progress is a bad thing. That makes sense. You want to have fewer balls in the air. 52:17 – Anything else? 52:22 – Jason: You can find me at: CodewithJason.com also Twitter!  52:45 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:01:50 – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Erlang Ruby Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails Angular Single Page Application (SPA) RSpec – Retry Ruby Testing Podcast The Feynman Technique Model Book: Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests (1st edition) Jason Swett’s Twitter Jason Swett’s LinkedIn Parable: Young Fish and Old Fish – What is Water? Jason’s articles and eBook Jason’s Website Sponsors: Sentry Get a Coder Job Course Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: David This is Water The Feynman Technique Model Nate Taking some time off Pry Test Eric Fake App Ruby Hack Conference Dave Brooks Shoes Jason The Food Lab Growing Object-Oriented Software

Panel: Dave Kimura Eric Berry Nathan Hopkins David Richards Special Guest: Jason Swett In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks with Jason Swett who is a host of the podcast show, Ruby Testing! Jason also teaches Rails testing at CodeWithJason.com. He currently resides in the Michigan area and works for Ben Franklin Labs. Check-out today’s episode where the panelists and the guest discuss testing topics. Show Topics: 0:00 – Sentry.IO – Advertisement! Check out the code: DEVCHAT @ Sentry.io. 1:07 – I am David Kimura and here is the panel! Tell us what is going on? 1:38 – Jason: I started my own podcast, and have been doing that for the past few months. That’s one thing. I started a new site with CodeWithJason.com. 2:04 – You released a course? 2:10 – Jason: Total flop and it doesn’t exist, but I am doing something else. 2:24 – I bet you learned a lot by creating the course? 2:34 – Jason: The endeavor of TEACHING it has helped me a lot. 2:50 – Tell us why we should drink the Koolaid? 3:02 – Jason: What IS testing? Good question. Whether is it is manual testing or automated testing. We might was well automate it. 3:25 – If we are testing our code what does that look like? 3:34 – Jason: Not sure what you mean, but I am doing tests at a fine grain vs. coarser grain. 4:00 – Show of hands who has...? 4:19 – What different tests are there? 4:20 – Jason: Good question. One term that one person uses is different to a different person. Let’s start with unit tests vs. integration tests. Jason dives into the similarities and differences between these 2 tests (see above). There are different tests, such as: featured tests, acceptance tests, etc. 5:45 – What tests are THE best? 5:50 – Jason: Good question. The kind of tests you are writing depends on what type of coverage you are going for. If I had a sign-up page for a user, I would... 7:36 – What anti-patterns are you seeing? What is your narrative in teaching people how to use them? 8:07 – Jason talks first about his background and his interaction with one of his colleagues. 8:58 – Question. 9:00 – Jason continues with his answers from 8:07. 9:32 – Jason: Feel free to chime-in. What have you done? 9:42 – I often ignore it until I feel bad and then I say: wait-a-minute I am a professional. Then I realize I ignored the problem because I was acting cowardly. 10:29 – For me it depends on the test that it is. One gem that I found is: RSpec RETRY. 11:16 – Jason: The test is flapping because of something is wrong with the database or something else. Since you asked about anti-patterns let’s talk about that! Rails and Angular are mentioned. 13:10 – Do you find that you back off of your unit testing when you are using integration? 13:22 – Jason: It depends on the context we are talking about. Jason talks about featured testing, model-level testing, and more. 13:58 – What is your view on using MOCKS or FAKES. What should we be doing there? 14:10 – Jason: Going to the Angular world I understand Mocks better than now. There was a parable that I think is applicable here about the young and the old fish. 16:23 – Jason continues talking about testing things in isolation. 16:36 – Question.  16:39 – I have been looking for an area to specialize in and I wrote an eBook. (Check out here to see the articles and books that Jason has authored.) Then I was looking around and I wanted to see what people’s issues are with Rails? They have a hard time with testing. I wanted to help them feel competent with it. 18:03 – In your course you have how to choose a framework. I know Ruby has several options on that front – how do you choose? 18:24 – Jason: There are 2 factors to consider. Jason tells us what those two factors are. Jason: Angular, React and Vue. 19:52 – Panelist: I had a conversation with a beginner and we were talking about the different tests. He said the DSL really appealed to him. The surface area of the AI made it approachable for him. 20:27 – Jason: I wished I had figured out DSL out a little better. Understanding the concept of a block. The IT is just a function and you can put parentheses in different areas and... 21:01 – That makes sense. Let’s revisit the Tweet you wrote. 21:35 – Jason: There are certain use cases where it makes sense. Where Gmail was the thing out there. At some point the Internet formed the opinion that... 22:39 – Old saying: Nobody gets fired for using Microsoft and then it was IBM. Nothing wrong with those things if that’s what you are trying to do. Sometimes we make decisions to not be criticized. We try to grab big frameworks and big codes so we are not criticized for. 23:48 – Jason: I think developers have this idea that OLD is OUTDATED. Not so. I think it’s mature, not necessarily outdated. I think it’s a pervasive idea. 24:31 – I think it suffers a bit when all the mind shares get lumped into one thing. The panelist continues... 24:53 – Jason: I don’t know if I like this analogy. 26:00 – I agree with that sentiment. It’s crazy that the complexity has become so pervasive. 26:18 – I think of SPAs as... 26:37 – Jason: Going back to the Tweet I wrote, I am pulling in JavaScript but I am preferring to sprinkle Java into Rails. 27:02 – Absolutely. I think that’s where we agree on. Late in 2017 we had the guest... “Use JavaScript sprinkles.” 27:49 – Panelist chimes-in. 28:37 – Jason: That make sense. Use your preexisting... I am afraid of committing to a single framework. I don’t have anything against JavaScript but I am afraid of using only one thing when something else becomes fashionable. 29:30 – Have you found that Java sparkle approach is easy to test? 29:38 – Jason: I think it’s easier. Client server architecture... 30:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 30:41 – Shout-out to the Rails team! What other testing frameworks are there? What if you are not the developer but you are the Quality Assurance (QA) person. They have been given the task of testing on the application. 31:30 – Jason: So someone who is not a developer and they want to test the application. I don’t want to get out of my role of expertise. I did talk to a QA engineer and I asked them: What do you do? All of his tests are manual. He does the same stuff as a Rails developer would do. 32:52 – Panelist talks about pseudo code. 34:07 – Jason: I am curious, Dave, about the non-programmer helping with tests what is the team structure? 34:23 – Dave: You will have one QA per three developers. 34:44 – Jason: If you have a QA person he is integrated within the team – that’s what has been the case for me. 35:02 – Dave: It’s a nice thing to have because we need to crank out some features and we have a good idea what is wrong with the app. We can go in there and see if our application is good, but they are combining different scenarios to do the unit tests and see what they are lacking. They are uncovering different problems that we hadn’t thought of. 36:07 – The organization has to have the right culture for that to work. 36:35 – If it’s a small team then it will help to see what everyone is doing – it’s that engagement level. If the team is too large then it could be a problem. 37:15 – Jason: Engagement between whom? 37:27 – Both. Panelist goes into detail about different engagement levels throughout the team. 38:10 – Jason: Yeah that’s a tough thing. 38:49 – It’s interesting to see the things that are being created. Testing seems to help that out. We are getting bugs in that area or se didn’t design it well there... We see that we need some flexibility and getting that input and having a way to solve the problems. 39:32 – Jason: Continuous deployment – let’s segue into this topic. 41:17 – Panelist: Do you have recommendations on how often we should be deploying in that system per day/week? 41:40 – Jason: We would deploy several times a day, which was great. The more the better because the more frequently you are deploying the fewer things will go wrong. 42:21 – More frequently the better and more people involved. 42:45 – Jason continues this conversation. 42:51 – Panelist: Continuous integration – any time you were say to forgo tests or being less rigid? 43:14 – Jason: I don’t test everything. I don’t write tests for things that have little risks. 43:56 – I think it is a good segue into how you write your code. If you write a code that is like spaghetti then it will be a mess. Making things easier to test. 44:48 – Jason: This is fresh in my mind because I am writing an app called Green Field. 46:32 – Uniqueness Validations, is mentioned by Jason. 47:00 – Anything else to add to testing a Rails application? 47:08 – Jason: Let’s talk about 2 things: walking skeleton and small stories. This book is a great resource for automated testing. Last point that I want to talk about is small stories: continues deployment and continuous delivery. If you make your stories smaller then you are making your stories crisply defined. Have some bullet points to make it really easy to answer the question. Answer the question: is this story done or not done? Someone should be able to run through the bullet points and answer that question. 50:02 – I am in favor of small stories, too. Makes you feel more productive, too. 50:14 – Work tends to lend itself to these types of stories and running a sprint. 51:22 – You don’t have to carry that burden when you go home. You might have too big of a chunk – it carries too much weight to it. 51:47 – Book the Phoenix Project. Work in progress is a bad thing. That makes sense. You want to have fewer balls in the air. 52:17 – Anything else? 52:22 – Jason: You can find me at: CodewithJason.com also Twitter!  52:45 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:01:50 – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Erlang Ruby Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails Angular Single Page Application (SPA) RSpec – Retry Ruby Testing Podcast The Feynman Technique Model Book: Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests (1st edition) Jason Swett’s Twitter Jason Swett’s LinkedIn Parable: Young Fish and Old Fish – What is Water? Jason’s articles and eBook Jason’s Website Sponsors: Sentry Get a Coder Job Course Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: David This is Water The Feynman Technique Model Nate Taking some time off Pry Test Eric Fake App Ruby Hack Conference Dave Brooks Shoes Jason The Food Lab Growing Object-Oriented Software