Podcast appearances and mentions of david sure

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: ... Wait, our models of semantics should inform fluid mechanics?!?, published by johnswentworth on August 26, 2024 on LessWrong. This post is styled after conversations we've had in the course of our research, put together in a way that hopefully highlights a bunch of relatively recent and (ironically) hard-to-articulate ideas around natural abstractions. John: So we've been working a bit on semantics, and also separately on fluid mechanics. Our main goal for both of them is to figure out more of the higher-level natural abstract data structures. But I'm concerned that the two threads haven't been informing each other as much as they should. David: Okay…what do you mean by "as much as they should"? I mean, there's the foundational natural latent framework, and that's been useful for our thinking on both semantics and fluid mechanics. But beyond that, concretely, in what ways do (should?) semantics and fluid mechanics inform each other? John: We should see the same types of higher-level data structures across both - e.g. the "geometry + trajectory" natural latents we used in the semantics post should, insofar as the post correctly captures the relevant concepts, generalize to recognizable "objects" in a fluid flow, like eddies (modulo adjustments for nonrigid objects). David: Sure, I did think it was intuitive to think along those lines as a model for eddies in fluid flow. But in general, why expect to see the same types of data structures for semantics and fluid flow? Why not expect various phenomena in fluid flow to be more suited to representation in some data structures which aren't the exact same type as those used for the referrents of human words? John: Specifically, I claim that the types of high-level data structures which are natural for fluid flow should be a subset of the types needed for semantics. If there's a type of high-level data structure which is natural for fluid flow, but doesn't match any of the semantic types (noun, verb, adjective, short phrases constructed from those, etc), then that pretty directly disproves at least one version of the natural abstraction hypothesis (and it's a version which I currently think is probably true). David: Woah, hold up, that sounds like a very different form of the natural abstraction hypothesis than our audience has heard before! It almost sounds like you're saying that there are no "non-linguistic concepts". But I know you actually think that much/most of human cognition routes through "non-linguistic concepts". John: Ok, there's a couple different subtleties here. First: there's the distinction between a word or phrase or sentence vs the concept(s) to which it points. Like, the word "dog" evokes this whole concept in your head, this whole "data structure" so to speak, and that data structure is not itself linguistic. It involves visual concepts, probably some unnamed concepts, things which your "inner simulator" can use, etc. Usually when I say that "most human concepts/cognition are not linguistic", that's the main thing I'm pointing to. Second: there's concepts for which we don't yet have names, but could assign names to. One easy way to find examples is to look for words in other languages which don't have any equivalent in our language. The key point about those concepts is that they're still the same "types of concepts" which we normally assign words to, i.e. they're still nouns or adjectives or verbs or…, we just don't happen to have given them names. Now with both of those subtleties highlighted, I'll once again try to state the claim: roughly speaking, all of the concepts used internally by humans fall into one of a few different "types", and we have standard ways of describing each of those types of concept with words (again, think nouns, verbs, etc, but also think of the referents of short phrases y...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: ... Wait, our models of semantics should inform fluid mechanics?!?, published by johnswentworth on August 26, 2024 on LessWrong. This post is styled after conversations we've had in the course of our research, put together in a way that hopefully highlights a bunch of relatively recent and (ironically) hard-to-articulate ideas around natural abstractions. John: So we've been working a bit on semantics, and also separately on fluid mechanics. Our main goal for both of them is to figure out more of the higher-level natural abstract data structures. But I'm concerned that the two threads haven't been informing each other as much as they should. David: Okay…what do you mean by "as much as they should"? I mean, there's the foundational natural latent framework, and that's been useful for our thinking on both semantics and fluid mechanics. But beyond that, concretely, in what ways do (should?) semantics and fluid mechanics inform each other? John: We should see the same types of higher-level data structures across both - e.g. the "geometry + trajectory" natural latents we used in the semantics post should, insofar as the post correctly captures the relevant concepts, generalize to recognizable "objects" in a fluid flow, like eddies (modulo adjustments for nonrigid objects). David: Sure, I did think it was intuitive to think along those lines as a model for eddies in fluid flow. But in general, why expect to see the same types of data structures for semantics and fluid flow? Why not expect various phenomena in fluid flow to be more suited to representation in some data structures which aren't the exact same type as those used for the referrents of human words? John: Specifically, I claim that the types of high-level data structures which are natural for fluid flow should be a subset of the types needed for semantics. If there's a type of high-level data structure which is natural for fluid flow, but doesn't match any of the semantic types (noun, verb, adjective, short phrases constructed from those, etc), then that pretty directly disproves at least one version of the natural abstraction hypothesis (and it's a version which I currently think is probably true). David: Woah, hold up, that sounds like a very different form of the natural abstraction hypothesis than our audience has heard before! It almost sounds like you're saying that there are no "non-linguistic concepts". But I know you actually think that much/most of human cognition routes through "non-linguistic concepts". John: Ok, there's a couple different subtleties here. First: there's the distinction between a word or phrase or sentence vs the concept(s) to which it points. Like, the word "dog" evokes this whole concept in your head, this whole "data structure" so to speak, and that data structure is not itself linguistic. It involves visual concepts, probably some unnamed concepts, things which your "inner simulator" can use, etc. Usually when I say that "most human concepts/cognition are not linguistic", that's the main thing I'm pointing to. Second: there's concepts for which we don't yet have names, but could assign names to. One easy way to find examples is to look for words in other languages which don't have any equivalent in our language. The key point about those concepts is that they're still the same "types of concepts" which we normally assign words to, i.e. they're still nouns or adjectives or verbs or…, we just don't happen to have given them names. Now with both of those subtleties highlighted, I'll once again try to state the claim: roughly speaking, all of the concepts used internally by humans fall into one of a few different "types", and we have standard ways of describing each of those types of concept with words (again, think nouns, verbs, etc, but also think of the referents of short phrases y...

On this episode, my guest is David Bacon, a California writer and documentary photographer. A former union organizer, today he documents labor, the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights. His latest book, In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte (COLEF / UC Press, 2017) includes over 300 photographs and 12 oral histories of farm workers. Other books include The Right to Stay Home and Illegal People, which discuss alternatives to forced migration and the criminalization of migrants. Communities Without Borders includes over 100 photographs and 50 narraatives about transnational migrant communities and The Children of NAFTA is an account of worker resistance on the US/Mexico border in the wake of NAFTA.Show Notes:David's Early YearsLearning about Immigration through UnionsThe Meaning of Being UndocumentedNAFTA and Mexican MigrationThe Source of Corn / MaizeBinational Front of Indigenous Organizations / Frente Indigena de Organizacaions BinacionalesThe Right to Stay HomeAndres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) CampaignThe Face & History of Immigration in the USAImmigration Reform and AmnestyThe Violence of Fortuna Silver Mines in OaxacaSolidarity, Change and OptimismHomework:The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican MigrationIn the Fields of the North / En los campos del norteIllegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes ImmigrantsCommunities without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of MigrationThe Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico BorderDavid's Twitter AccountDavid's Official WebsiteTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism podcast, David. It's an honor to have you on the pod. To begin, I'd like to ask you where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you there. David: Well, I live in Berkeley, here in California, and I am sitting in front of my computer screen having just what I've been up to today before talking with you. Chris: Hmm. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for your work. Perhaps I could ask you what drew you to the issues of labor and migration.David: Sure. Well, I come from a kind of left wing union family, so I knew about unions and workers and strikes and things like that from probably since before I can remember. And so I was kind of an activist when I was in high school, got involved in the [00:01:00] student movement in the 1960s at the University of California, got involved in the free speech movement, got tossed out by the university, actually, and wound up going to work after that, really, because I got married, had a daughter, and I got married, had a daughter, and, I needed to get a job and, you know, worked for quite a while as a a printer in the same trade that my father was, had been in went back to night school to learn more of the, of the trade, how to do different parts of it, how to run presses and so forth and then got involved, this is, you know, in the late 60s, early 70s got involved in the movement to support farm workers, really, and I was one of those people, you know, if you're my age, you remember this, if you're younger, you probably don't, but we used to picket supermarkets to try to get them [00:02:00] to stop selling the grapes and the wine and the lettuce that was on strike, and we would stand out in front of Safeway and other supermarkets with our red flags with the black eagle on them, And ask customers, you know, not to go into the store, not to buy the products that farmworkers were on strike against.And I got really interested in. I'm curious about the workers that we were supporting. You know, I grew up in Oakland and so I didn't know anything about farm workers, really. I didn't know anything about rural California, rural areas, didn't speak Spanish didn't know much about Chicano, Latinos.Oakland's a pretty diverse city, but in the area of Oakland where I grew up in you know, in our high school, you know, the students were African American or they were white, and that was a big racial question in, in school when I was in high school. So I grew up not knowing any of these things.[00:03:00] And Because I was involved in, you know, standing out in front of these stores and supporting workers, I, you know, began wondering, who are these workers that we're supporting? And eventually, I went to work for the union. I asked a lawyer friend of mine who was in their legal department if they needed any help, and of course he said yes.I went down to, Oxnard and de Santamaria began working for the union, originally taking statements from workers who had been fired because of their union activity. I didn't know much Spanish, so I had to learn Spanish on the job. Fortunately, you know, the workers were very patient with me and would help me learn, help me correct my still bad pronunciation and bad grammar.And, and I began to learn. And that process has been going on ever since, really. That was a, that was a formative time in my life. It taught me a lot of [00:04:00] things. It taught me about, you know, the culture of. farm workers who were mostly Mexican in those years, but there were still a good number of Filipino workers working in the fields.That eventually led me to the woman I eventually married, my wife, who was the daughter of of immigrants from the Philippines from a farm worker family. So I learned about that culture and I began learning about immigration, which I hadn't really known anything about growing up. Why people come to the U.S., what happens to people here. I, I saw my first immigration raid. When I was an organizer, I later became an organizer for the union as my Spanish got better. And I remember going to talk to a group of workers that I had met with the previous night, who were worked up in palm trees picking dates.And I went down to the date grove, this was in the Coachella Valley, and there was this big green van, and there were the [00:05:00] workers who I'd been talking to the previous night being loaded into the van. I was just You know, really shocked. The van took off. I followed the van all the way down to the Imperial Valley, to El Centro, where the detention center was.Stood outside the center trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. What am I going to do? What's going to happen to these people? And that was sort of an introduction to the meaning of being undocumented, what it meant to people, what could happen. And that made me an immigrant rights activist, which I've also been ever since, too.But also, over time, I got interested in the reasons why people were coming to the U. S. to begin with. You know, what people were finding here when people got here was very, very difficult work, low pay, immigration raids, police harassment, at least, and sometimes worse than that, poverty. You know, Why leave Mexico if this is what you're going to find?[00:06:00] And it also made me curious about the border. And so that also began something that has continued on in all those years since. I eventually went to the border, went to Mexico, began getting interested and involved in Mexican labor politics, supporting unions and workers in Mexico, you know, doing work on the border itself.After the Farm Workers Union, I worked for other unions for A number of years and they were generally reunions where the workers who were trying to join and we were trying to help were immigrants. So the government workers union, the women in the sweatshops sewing clothes or union for factory workers.And so my job was basically to help workers organize and. Organizing a union in the United States is like well, you know, people throw around this word, you know, this phrase class war and class warfare pretty freely, but it is like a war. You know, when [00:07:00] workers get together and they decide they want to change conditions and they want to you know, get the company to, speak to them and to deal with them in an organized way.They really do have to kind of go, go to war or be willing to, for the company to go to war with them. You know, really what people are asking for sometimes is pretty minimal, you know, wage raises or fair treatment at work or a voice at work. You know, you think, you know, what's wrong with that. But generally speaking when employers get faced with workers who want to do that they do everything possible to try and stop them.Including firing people and harassing people, calling them to meetings, threatening people, scaring people. You know, there's a whole industry in this country that consists of union consultants who do nothing but, you know, advise big companies about how to stop workers when they, when they try to organize.So that's what I did for about 20 years. Was help workers to get organized, form a union, get their bus to sit down and talk [00:08:00] to them, go out on strike, do all those kinds of things. And eventually I decided that I wanted to do something else. And I, I was already involved in, you know, starting to take photographs.I would carry a camera and I would take pictures of what we were doing as workers. We would joke about it, kind of. I would tell workers, well, you know, we're going to take some pictures here and you can take them home to your family and show them, you know, that you're really doing what's right here and 20 years from now you'll show your grandkids that, you know, when the time came, you stood up and you did what was right and people would joke with each other about it.And I discovered also that you could use them to get support for what we were doing. You know, we could get an article published in a newspaper somewhere. Some labor newspaper might run an article about us. You might get some money and some help or some food or something. But after a while, you know, I began [00:09:00] realizing that these photographs, they had a value beyond that.And that was that they were documenting this social movement that was taking place among immigrants and, and Latino workers, especially here on the West Coast of people basically trying to. Organize themselves for social justice in a lot of different ways, organizing unions for sure, but also trying to get changes in U.S. immigration laws, immigration policies those people who are citizens and able to vote, registering to vote, political change. You have to remember that if you go back to the 1960s or 1970s, Los Angeles was what we used to call the capital of the open shop. In other words, it was one of the most right wing cities in America.You know, the mayor Sam Yorty was a right wing Republican. The police department had what they called the Red Squad, whose responsibility it was is to go out and to deal with [00:10:00] people that wanted to change anything or to organize and Unions or strikes or belong to left wing political parties or whatever.And today, Los Angeles is one of the most progressive cities in the United States, and it has to do with what happened to those primarily Central American and Mexican and workers of color, women, who over time got organized and changed the politics of Los Angeles. And so, you know, I was really fascinated by it.This process, I was involved in it as an organizer and then later as a somebody taking photographs of it and writing about it that and so that's, that's sort of the transition that I made for the last 30 some odd years. I've worked as a freelance writer and photographer, basically doing the same kind of thing.I look at it as a way of organizing people, really, because the whole purpose of writing the articles and taking the [00:11:00] photographs is to change the way people think, and make it possible for people to understand the world better, and then to act on that understanding, which to me means trying to fight for a more just world, a more just society.And so. That's what, that's the purpose of the photographs, that's the purpose of the writing, is to, is to change the world. I think it's a big tradition in, in this country, in the United States of photography and of journalism that is produced by people who are themselves part of the movements that they are writing about or documenting, and whose purpose it is to sort of help to move forward social movements for social change.Chris: Amen. Some of the stories you were mentioning remind me of my mother who also worked for a labor union most of her life. And I was definitely still very much concerned with the state of affairs. I should [00:12:00] say that you know, I'm incredibly grateful as well to have a man of your stature and experience on the pod here to speak with us your work Has definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things I hadn't seen living here in southern Mexico, in, in Oaxaca.And one of these, these books, which I'd like to touch on a little bit today, is entitled, The Right to Stay Home. how U. S. policy drives Mexican migration. And we're actually at the 10 year anniversary of the publication of this book. So I feel honored to be able to speak with you in this regard about it.And, you know, it's, for me, someone who was a backpacker and a tourist, and then later a resident of this place, of Oaxaca, to come to understand much more deeply the complexities and nuances around migration, and especially in the context of Mexican migration to the United States. [00:13:00] What's left out of the conversation as someone who grew up in urban North America and Toronto, Canada very much on the left in my earlier years, in terms of organizing and, and and protesting, the, the, the dialogues and the conversations always seem to be around the the treatment of migrants once they arrived and, and not necessarily, as you said, why they left in the first place, the places that they left and the consequences to the places that they left.And so I guess to begin, I'm wondering if you could offer our listeners a little bit of background into How that book came to be written and what was the inspiration and driving factors for it? David: The book came to be written to begin with because I began going to Mexico and trying to understand how [00:14:00] the system of migration works in the context of the world that we live in, you know, people call it globalization or globalism, or you could call it imperialism.So I was trying to understand that from the roots of first having been involved with people as migrants once they had arrived here in the U. S. I was trying to understand Well, two things. One was why people were coming, and also what happens to people in the course of coming. In other words, the journey that people make.Especially the border. The border is the big And the border has very important functions in this because it's really the crossing of the border that determines what the social status of a migrant is, whether you have papers or not, whether you're documented or not, which is a huge, [00:15:00] huge, huge distinction.So as a result of that, and as a result of kind of listening to people listening to the movement in Mexico talk, about it, investigating, going to places like Oaxaca. I first wrote a book that tried to look at this as a system, a social system. It's really part of the way capitalism functions on a international or global basis in our era because what it does is it produces Displacement, the changes that are, you take a country like Mexico, and this is what the first book, the first book was called Illegal People.And what it looked at was the imposition on Mexico, for instance, it starts with NAFTA, the free trade agreement. In fact, the first book I ever wrote was about the border and was called The Children of NAFTA, the [00:16:00] North American Free Trade Agreement. But this book Illegal People, what it really tried to do is it tried to look at the ways in which People were displaced in communities like Oaxaca.And of course, for Oaxaca, Oaxaca is a corn growing state. It's a rural state. Most people in Oaxaca still live in villages and small communities. Oaxaca's a big city, and there's some other cities there, but, but most people in Oaxaca are still what you call rural people. And so NAFTA, among the many changes that it imposed on Mexico, one of the most important was that it allowed U. S. corn corporations, Archer Daniels Midland Continental Grain Company other really large corporations to dump corn in Mexico at a price that we were subsidizing through the U. S. Farm Bill, our tax money. In other words, we're, our tax money was being [00:17:00] given to these corporations to lower their cost of production.And that allowed them to go to Mexico and to sell corn at a price that was so low that people who were growing corn in a place like Oaxaca could no longer sell it for a price that would cover the cost of growing it. That had an enormous impact on people in Oaxaca because what it did was it forced people to basically to leave in order to survive.It's not that people were not leaving Oaxaca already before the agreement passed. There were other reasons that were causing the displacement of people in rural communities in Oaxaca. A lot of it had to do with this relationship with the U. S. even then, but certainly NAFTA was like pouring gasoline on all of that.And so three million people was the estimate that in a period of 10 years were displaced as corn farmers in Oaxaca. That's a huge percentage of the population of Oaxaca. [00:18:00] And so people were forced to go elsewhere looking for work. People went, you know, to Mexico City. You know, Mexico City, the metro system, the subway system in Mexico City was built primarily by workers who came from somewhere else.A lot of them from Oaxaca. Who wound up being the low cost labor that the Mexican government used to build a subway system. They went to the border, they became workers in the maquiladoras, in the factories that were producing everything from car parts to TV screens for the U. S. market. And then people began crossing the border and coming to the U.S. as either farm workers in rural areas of California or as low paid workers in urban areas like Los Angeles. So one of the big ironies, I think, of it was that here you had farm work, farmers who were being forced off their land. And remember that these are corn farmers, so [00:19:00] the Domestication of corn happened first in Oaxaca, and the first earliest years of domesticated corn, thousands of years old, have been discovered in archaeological digs in Oaxaca and caves near Oaxaca City to begin with.So here we have people to whom the world really owes corn as a domesticated crop, who are winding up as being wage workers on the farms of corporate U. S. agribusiness corporations in California, Oregon, Washington, eventually all over the United States. That was the migration of Oaxacan people. And so you could sort of see In this, as sort of a prism, what the forces were, what the social forces at work are, in other words, that in the interests of the profits of these big corporations, these trade agreements get negotiated between [00:20:00] governments, okay, our government, the U.S. government negotiates with the Mexican government, but that's like David negotiating with Goliath, or the other way around, rather, you know, The agreements are really imposed. It's not to say that the Mexican government of those years was opposed to it. It was a neoliberal government too, but the power in this negotiation is held by the U.S. government. And so that trade agreement in the interest of making Mexico a profitable place for, you know, Archer Daniels Middleton to do business gets imposed on Mexico. And then as a result of that, people get displaced and they wind up becoming a low wage workforce for other corporations here in here in the U.S. In fact, sometimes they Wind up working for the same corporation Smithfield foods, which is a big producing corporation [00:21:00] went to Mexico. It got control of huge areas of a valley called the Peralta Valley, not that far from Mexico city. And they began. Establishing these huge pork or pig raising facilities.In fact, that's where the swine flu started was because of the concentration of animals in these farms. Again, displacing people out of those communities. And people from the state of Veracruz, where the Perote Valley is located, many of them wound up getting recruited and then going to work in North Carolina at the huge Smithfield Foods Pork Slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina.So that sort of tells you a lot about how this system works. It produces displacement. In other words, it produces people who have no alternative but to migrate in order to survive. And those people go through all the things that people have to go through in order to get to the United [00:22:00] States because there are no real visas for this kind of migration.And them wind up being The workforce that is needed by the system here, Smithfield Foods or other corporations like them in order for them to make high profits here. And in the process of doing this, I was developing a a relationship with a very unique organization in Mexico, in Oaxaca, a part of which exists in Oaxaca, called the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, which is the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations.And this is an organization that was actually started by Oaxaca migrants in the U. S., in Los Angeles, and then expanded both into the Central Valley here in California and then expanded back into Mexico in Baja, California, where there are also big corporate farms where primarily Oaxaca, people from Oaxaca are the workforce, and eventually chapters in Oaxaca itself.[00:23:00] And so I would got to be friends with many people in this organization, and I would go and take photographs at their bi national meetings, they would have meetings in Mexico where people could come together and and talk about their situation. And, you know, I began, obviously, listening to what people were talking about.And, People developed this, I think, very kind of path breaking, unique analysis of migration in which they talked about a dual set of rights that migrants need and migrant communities need in this kind of world. And so, What they said was, on the one hand people need rights as migrants where they go.In other words, people, when they come to the United States, need legal status. People need decent wages, the ability to organize, you know, an end to the kind of discrimination that people are subject to. But, [00:24:00] people also need a second set of rights as well, which is called the right to stay home. And that is the title of the book, The Right to Stay Home.And what that means is that, People need political change and economic and social change in their communities of origin, which makes migration voluntary. So these are communities that are so involved in the process of migration that it would not make any sense to say that migration is bad, because In many cases, these are communities that live on the remittances that are being sent by migrants, by members of people's own families who are living and working in the United States.So the discourse in these meetings was sort of on the order of saying that people have the right to migrate, people have the right to travel, people have the right to leave, but they also have the right to stay home. They have the right to a decent future. A young [00:25:00] person who is growing up in Santiago, Cusco, Oaxaca in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, for instance, has a right to a future in Oaxaca so that you can make a choice.Do you want to stay and have a decent life for yourself in Oaxaca, or do you want to leave and hopefully have a decent life for you and wherever you go, whether Baja California or California or Washington State? So in order to have a Right to stay home. What has to happen? What do people need? It's kind of a no brainer. People need well high farm prices to begin with. They need the ability to raise corn, tomatoes, Whatever crop it is that they need and sell it at a price that is capable of sustaining those families and communities. People need education.They need healthcare, but people also need political change because the Frente Indígena is a political organization. And so it was fighting [00:26:00] against the domination of Oaxaca by the old PRI, the party of the institutionalized revolution, which had been running Mexico for 70 years, trying to find a government that would begin to push for those kinds of social rights.And that was you know, a very important kind of eye opening for me was to hear people talking about the right to stay home, so much so that I said, you know, we need a book about this. So we're not just describing the system itself, how it works, but we are talking about what are people's responses to it?What do people think should happen here? And this was one of the most important developments of it. And it was not just. The people in Oaxaca, the more I did work on trying to investigate it and document it, there's part of the book, and also this was being done in people's [00:27:00] voices, the main voice in the right to stay home belongs to Rufino Dominguez, who was one of the founders of the Frente Indígena, who was my teacher in this, and so at one point they did knock the PRI out of power in Oaxaca and elected a governor, Gabino Cuei, who turned out to be not as good as people had hoped that he would be, but he was not the PRI.And he appointed Rufino, the head of the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants. So here was Rufino who had, was a left wing radical who spent his whole life opposing the government in Oaxaca, who then joined it for a while until he could no longer stomach what was going on there and had to leave.But. Pushing for that kind of political change in Oaxaca. There's another part of the book that talks about the miners in Cananea near the border with the United States. And their Effort to try to. win justice from this huge corporation that [00:28:00] was basically intent on destroying their union. And when they were forced out on strike, those miners also had to cross the border to Arizona to become workers in Arizona to survive.Again, you know, you see how the system is working here, but they also were talking about what kind of political change has to happen in Mexico for the right to stay home. to become reality. And that movement in Mexico grew strong enough so that, you know, after The Right to Stay Home was published, some years after, since it was, as you said, 10 years ago that Andrés Manuel López Obrador campaigned.He went all around the country speaking in every little tiny village that Mexico has, practically, in the course of four years. And one of the main things he talked about was the right to alternatives to forced migration. And I was there in Mexico City in the Zócalo when he took office. He finally won it.I don't want to go into all the things that had to [00:29:00] happen for Andrés Manuel López Obrador to win an election and become president of Mexico. But in his, in his inaugural speech as he was being sworn in, he talked about, we are going to make Mexico into a place where Mexicans can be happy living, where you don't have to go to the United States in order to survive, and I think you can talk about the, Things that the Mexican government has not been able to accomplish in the last four or five years.But I think one thing is beyond question and that is that that has been the main direction of the policy of the government of Mexico in that period of time because that's what got him elected. was this idea that, as he said, we are going to reject the liberal, neoliberal hypocrisy of the last six administrations in Mexico, meaning no more trade agreements like NAFTA, no [00:30:00] more opening Mexico up to U.S. corporations to come in and make money and as a result of which everybody's going to have to leave, that there had to be some kind of different direction in Mexico. So, in a way, I think that. Maybe that book, The Right to Stay Home, was like a little grain of sand that joined with other little grains of sand like it in helping to move forward that process of political change, because it happened on really on both sides of the border.Gosh, millions and millions of Mexicans who are living in the United States. So the process of political discussion that goes on about the kind of government Mexicans should have happens not just in Mexico, it happens here too. You know, part of Mexico is here on this side of the border. So you know, the book, and the book actually was published in Spanish and in Mexico as well too.So I think that it talked about things that were very important to people. [00:31:00] At the time, and that people are still debating about what has to happen in order for the right to stay home to be a reality. And I think it's something very important for people in this country to listen to and to think about as well, too, because in all the debates about migration that happen in here in the U.SThere's not a lot of attention that's paid to this whole idea of the two sets of rights, what has to happen. You know, certainly, you know, there are people like Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party that just, you know, never going to talk about anything like this. But even among Democrats, even in the Biden administration, you know, it's really too much about how to manage the border, you know, which basically boils down to how many people are we going to detain and deport.Rather than thinking about what kind of [00:32:00] world do we want to live in. Therefore, what kind of places migration going to have in it? ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's it's been fascinating reading and rereading this book in, in, in part to be able to give voice to not just migrants and not just migration issues in the places that people move to or migrate to, but also in the places that they, that they leave behind and the voices of the people that they leave behind.And you know, I think for. Many North Americans, especially those who are first or second generation citizens of those countries of Anglo North America, of Canada and the United States, that these are, these are the stories these are the voices that that maybe they haven't heard of in their own families as well.And so, you know, you started to mention a little bit about this. the kind of superficiality, perhaps, if I'm, if I can say it in that, in those terms, of the [00:33:00] political conversation around migration in the United States, in Canada, and perhaps even in Mexico. And so I'd like to ask you about the reception and perhaps the fallout Once the book was published, and I'm curious how the declaration to the right to stay home or the right to not migrate has altered at all the political or social social landscape in rural Mexico, you know, at least in terms of the people that you know in these places.And also if there was any response, any, any ground shaking movements as a result of the book coming out among activists in the United States. David: Well, I think that the book contributed to an important change. In the immigrant rights movement in the United States here, because, you know, having participated in that movement as an activist [00:34:00] for, gosh, 40 some odd years now, maybe more, Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 with the so called amnesty law.Which not only gave amnesty to undocumented people, but also made it illegal for undocumented people to work in the United States after that and started the whole process of the border militarization. In fact, you know, the negative parts of that bill were so bad that many people like myself opposed the bill, even if it had amnesty in it, saying that it was not a this was not a good deal.And I think that over time. You know, history has proven that we were right not that amnesty was unimportant and not worth fighting for, but that the price that we paid turned out to be much higher than people were willing to give it credit for, you know, at the time. But what was also really missing from that debate, for instance, in [00:35:00] those years, was any sense that we had to really deal with and think about the causes of migration and the roots of migration, the displacement.It was really all about the status of people when they were here. You know, should it be legal or illegal for people to work? Should people get papers or should people not get papers? And that was a very limiting Conversation, because what really, what it really meant was that it could not acknowledge the fact that the migration from Mexico is not going to stop.For instance, the, in that, in that bill, the, the qualifying date for amnesty was January 1st, 1982, meaning. That if you came before that date, you could apply for the amnesty and get legalization, and if you came after that date, you couldn't get it. For people migrating from [00:36:00] Oaxaca, for instance, almost everybody came after.So all the Oaxacans who came to the United States, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people really hardly anybody. Qualified for amnesty because of that bill, which is one reason why legal status is such an enormous question for the Oaxacan community here in the U. S. So it, the, the discussion of that bill didn't acknowledge that and also by setting that date, it was, I think, very cynical because Mexico had what was called the Peso Shock in 1982, where the economic crisis in Mexico got so bad that Mexico had to devalue its currency.And what that meant was that thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico lost their jobs and had to come to the United States. And by setting that date, January 1st of that year, what you were really saying is, none of those people are going to qualify for amnesty. So they were [00:37:00] already here. But also it didn't acknowledge that, you know, in the, that, that bill set up a a commission to study the causes of migration, supposedly.And that commission came back and recommended the negotiation of a trade agreement between the U. S. and Mexico. And it said, well, in the short run, maybe this would result in the displacement of a lot of people, but in the long run, it would lead to the economic development of Mexico, and then people would have jobs and they wouldn't have to come here.Well, that was another very, very cynical kind of thing, because the negotiations of NAFTA started not long after the report of that commission, and in fact, NAFTA did lead to the displacement of millions of people in Mexico. There were four and a half million migrants from Mexico living in the U. S.when NAFTA went into effect and by 2010 it was [00:38:00] 12 and a half million people. So an enormous increase in people and the rise in Mexican living standards. Never happened. Well, that's not true. When López Obrador finally came into office he began taking measures to raise wages and raise the living standards in Mexico, which previous administrations had resisted bitterly because they wanted to attract investment.And things have started to improve economically for workers and farmers in Mexico a little bit. But up until then, so being unable to face the roots of migration and its connections to corporate America and the way our government was on the one hand producing migration or doing things to produce migration on the other hand making The status of migrants, illegal criminalizing it here.It was a really, a very difficult debate for people in [00:39:00] the immigrant rights movement. As a result, a lot of organizations said, well, MSD, we need MSD. Let's just forget about a lot of other stuff. Let's just get down to seat on what we paid a really bad price for it. Today I think there is a lot more discussion in the immigrant rights movement about what happens in Mexico and Central America in particular that causes people to come to the United States.I think still there's not enough of a willingness to deal with the economic part of it. the poverty. So these days, the way it gets dealt with is mostly by talking about the violence in Honduras. For instance, San Pedro Sula, which is called the murder capital of the world. You know, I wrote a whole article about how did San Pedro Sula become such a violent place to begin with?And what did it have to do with U. [00:40:00] S. companies going and growing bananas in Honduras? But in any case it gets put down, I think too much to violence, to the exclusion of the causes of the violence. What is the, what is the root cause of violence in Central American countries? The Civil War in El Salvador was fought about who was fighting on what side, what kind of changes were people proposing.The more you unpeel it, the more you look at it, the more you see that this is really, again, about the economic and political relationship between the U. S. and China. Those countries. And so I think that books like Illegal People, like The Right to Stay Home, played a role in trying to get us to look more at this as a whole system, what produces migration, and then criminalizes migrants here.I think that it's a very [00:41:00] limited accomplishment. Because we still have an extremely unjust immigration system. You know, we all hated Trump and the detention centers and, and his racist orders. But the reality is, is that we have more people crossing the border this last year than any other previous time in our history.And we have thousands and thousands of people living in detention. In the United States in detention centers and in detention centers on the Mexican side of the border. And this is under a democratic administration. So, I think that we have to be real about how limited our impact has been up to now.But, having said that, I think it is still a big advance for us to be able to talk. in this country, in the United States, about the roots of migration, and also be able to reach out to organizations and people and communities in Mexico and talk about, well, [00:42:00] okay, what is our, what should our relationship be?Well, how do we work together? How are we going to be able to try and change this system together? I think those efforts are kind of only starting, really. I don't think there's nearly enough of it, but I think that's the future. That's where the change is going to come from. Chris: And I can't stress enough, you know, how devoid of complexity and nuance most any political conversation has these days, and that most people don't go looking for it, in part because You know, most people haven't been taught.So, you mentioned a little bit earlier, as you wrote in, in your book, The Right to Stay Home, about the consequences of mining companies, as an example, in, in Mexico. Foreign owned mining corporations. And Here in Oaxaca, it's very well known that these corporations undertake geological testing without the [00:43:00] consent of communities, that they lie to the communities about concessions when trying to push their way into the territory, and then sponsor community violence by dividing the people against each other through bribery, corruption.Intimidation, threats, and sometimes assassination. And so, I'm curious, first, if you could offer a little bit more of what you've seen in this regard, and secondly, why do you think that in this example that, you know, Canadians, in the context of the one particular mine here in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, is a Canadian owned mine, why they have no idea that this is happening on foreign soil in their names?You David: know, I wrote a long article about San Jose del Progreso in the Vice Centrales in, in Oaxaca, and Fortuna Mine there, which is a Canadian, Canadian company. And I think this is [00:44:00] another way of seeing what this kind of, just to use shorthand, this free trade arrangement between the US, Canada and Mexico, what it really means for people on the ground.Mexico in previous administrations changed this mining law so that it became possible. And the purpose of to make it possible for foreign corporation to get a mining concession anywhere in Mexico and develop a mine without having to get the consent of the people who live in the community around it.Basically saying that, you know the Mexican government was entitled to sell off these concessions regardless of what the people there thought about it. And so the purpose of this was to, again, attract foreign investment into Mexico. This is part of the neoliberal policy that says [00:45:00] that the economic development policy of Mexico should be to sell pieces of Mexico to foreign investors, to foreign corporations.And supposedly this money is going to make life better. For people in Mexico well, first of all, it's a very corrupt system, so the selling of mining concessions involves, you know, millions and millions of dollars that wind up in the pockets of those people who grant the concessions. So it was a source of enormous corruption in the Mexican government in granting those concessions and in passing that change in the law to begin with.And then in fighting for changes in the legal system, the free trade set up, those mining corporations could then, basically, it gave them not only a kind of impunity against communities that protested about it, but in which they could even sue the Mexican government. If the Mexican government tried to stand in the way and say, well, you [00:46:00] can't develop the mine, then the mine could sue the Mexican government and say, well, you deprived us of potential profits and you owe us millions of dollars.And there were decisions like the metal cloud decision that allowed for this kind of thing to happen. So what this meant is on the ground, you have mining mining concessions sold and mines being developed all over Mexico. In the face of local opposition, and the mine in San Jose de Progreso is a really good example of that, where you have a Canadian company that comes in and says, okay, we are going to, in fact, they weren't the originators of the mine, they basically bought a mine that had been played out by previous owner.And so we are going to dump a lot of money into this and we are going to make it a producing mine and the impact on the community. We don't really care. And so the impact is really enormous. You know these are open pit mines. They're a scar on the land. They [00:47:00] contaminate the water, the aquifer, so that these farming communities can no longer support themselves in the same way.In order to develop the mine, what they do is they divide the communities. And so, as you said, in San Jose de Progreso, they bought off the town's, the town's government who basically gave the company permission to do whatever it wanted to in spite of local opposition. Then when local opposition got organized to, to oppose it, the company cooperated with the with the local leaders that it had bought off to basically go after those leaders in a very violent way.So, Bernardo Vazquez. who had was from this community. He had actually gone to the United States and become a farm worker in Petaluma, in California. And then seeing what was happening in his community, went back to San Jose de [00:48:00] Progreso and to and began leading the opposition. And he was then ambushed and assassinated.Other people in his, around him were also killed, and then the violence went both ways. People on the other side got killed. And so this whole community became a warring camp, camps against each other. You know, I remember when I visited there, there are two taxi companies in this community. There's a taxi company that's associated with the People who are pro mine and the taxi company is associated with people who are against it.And you better not get into the wrong taxi because you could, some terrible things could happen to you. I took pictures of these threats that were spray painted on the walls of, some of the irrigation canals there, Bernardo Vasquez, your time has come, you know that was before he was assassinated.A lot of the people who work in the mine come from somewhere else, some of them from Canada[00:49:00] but it takes a few of the jobs in hand somehow. to certain people in the community there as a way of buying them off and giving them a stake in the continuation of the mine. And so what happens is that you have a community that's a continuing, a continuous war with itself.And this happens all over Mexico. In fact, it's not just Mexico, this is happening in El Salvador, it's happening in Guatemala, and actually mostly by Canadian companies. So you ask, do people in Canada know about this? I think there are some journalists like Dawn Bailey who have Canadian journalists who have tried to write about it, and tried to make people in Canada aware of it.I don't think that most people in Canada have the faintest idea of what those corporations are doing, and that's because I think the corporate media in Canada has very little interest in showing that, partly because, you know, they have the same basic set of economic interests that the mining corporations themselves do.[00:50:00] Probably share, same shareholders, who knows? In any case That's something that could happen and that should happen if people in Canada became more aware of what these companies were doing and then began taking action in Canada to try to restrict them. I think it would have a big impact on the ability of these communities in Oaxaca to survive.I think that San Jose the Progresso is going to be a war with itself and this continuing political violence is going to happen. Until the company, basically until the company leaves, really. I don't see any other solution, I don't see how the mine can continue operating there under any ownership and not have this war taking place there.So, but I think that the way to get that company to leave is for people in Canada to take some action in cooperation and in solidarity with the people in that [00:51:00] community. So, maybe by Organizing delegations from Vancouver or Toronto down to San Jose del Progreso would be a way of helping that to develop.That's possibly something that might happen, but basically you need that relationship in order, I think, in order to stop this from happening. Chris: Hmm. Thank you. Yeah, and you know, of course it just ends up contributing to migration, right, and exile, displacement within those communities. And and so I'm curious, what do you think the right to stay home or the right to not migrate can offer us as modern people, as citizens or migrants in the context of the current crises and perhaps the crises to come?You know, you mentioned that Immigration the numbers, the number of people coming into the United States over the last year has just been unprecedented. The number of migrants [00:52:00] flowing through Oaxaca, for example, in Southern Mexico right now is unprecedented and it really seems, you know, like.not just my opinion, but in terms of statistics and predictions and all of these things, that it's only going to get more unprecedented. So I'm curious what you might, what you might think that this, this declaration, the right to stay home or the right to not migrate, might offer us going forward. David: Well, I think it offers us something to fight for.That it gives us a vision of what a future could and should look like in the communities where displacement is taking place. In San Jose de Progreso, for instance, the right to stay home means a community that's not at war with itself, which means that the mining operation has to end. But, Ending the mining operation doesn't necessarily mean that people are [00:53:00] going to have an educational system or a health care system that's capable of meeting their needs.So you need political change in Oaxaca, San Jose de Progreso, and Mexico in general, that is able to deliver those things. For people. I think we could take that same thing and and look at people coming from Venezuela. There are a lot of Venezuelan migrants who are crossing Mexico coming to the U.S. border. On the one hand, the U. S. government is sort of a little bit more friendly. to Venezuelan migrants, although it's still doing whatever it can at the border to try to keep people out. Because, you know, this gets used in the media in the U. S. as a way of saying, well, this is the proof that the socialist government in Venezuela is incompetent and corrupt and ought to be removed, which has been U.S. policy for a long time. But in reality, the economic problems in [00:54:00] Venezuela would certainly be a lot less if Venezuela wasn't subject to the U. S. sanctions regime, which is basically sought to strangle the Venezuelan economy. And so the people who are leaving Venezuela, whether they're middle class people who are, you know, fed up with the problems of Caracas or whether they're poor people who have you know, have to migrate in order to survive those are due to U.S. policy again. So really, the right to stay home means in the United States that people in the United States, progressive people especially, have to seriously take a look at what the impact of U. S. policies are on the people that are being subjected to them, and to begin with, cause no harm.That would be a good starting place to stop those policies that are actively producing migration. You know, the people who drowned in the Mediterranean, those 600 people who [00:55:00] drowned in that horrible boating accident, who were they? A lot of them were Afghans. A lot of them were Iraqis. Why were they leaving?What were they doing on that boat? They were the product of that U. S. war. Now, I was a very active, you know, opponent of, of the war. I went to Iraq twice to try to make connections with trade unionists and other people in Iraq who were trying to fight for kind of a progressive nationalist solution to the economic problems of Iraq in the wake of the occupation to end the occupation.But you know, that's kind of what we need. We need to take responsibility for the impact of what this government has done. When we take a look at what the, what is going to happen to the people of Palestine and Gaza, [00:56:00] Under the bombardment, you know, if people were able to leave Gaza, there would be literally hundreds of thousands of people going wherever they could.And the Middle East simply in order to get out from under the Israeli bombs. And those bombs are coming from where? They're coming from the United States, that military aid package. You know, you cannot have a military policy and a military aid package the way the U. S. passes them without its having enormous impacts on migration, on the displacement of people, and at the same time it also Produces impacts here in the U.S. that we also need to take a look at and see what the relationship are. You know, people migrate in the U. S. as well, too. We have factories to close when Detroit stopped being an [00:57:00] auto manufacturing center and the Factories in Detroit closed, the car factories, thousands and thousands and thousands of auto workers became migrants in the U.S., going from city to city to city, looking for. So the price of the economic crisis that exists for us isn't felt just by people in Mexico or Palestine or Iraq. It's felt here in the United States and in Canada too. These problems They require a political solution, you know, they require us to organize ourselves in a way that is strong enough to force political change on our government here, so that it takes responsibility for the past devastation.And the past displacement and also stops doing the things that are going to keep on causing it in the future. And then I think we can think about kind of repairing the world. I think we have to repair the world, too, after this. But the first thing we have [00:58:00] to do is we have to stop hurting it. We have to stop the damage, and that means having enough political courage and enough political power to make our government do that.That's a tall order. That's a tall order. I don't think it's something from today to tomorrow. But it's a long process. You know, I'm a, I grew up during the anti Vietnam War movement and the civil rights movement, and I saw this country at a time when it was possible and when we did it. So I'm the optimist.I believe that it's within our power to do this. But looking at where we are right now, I think we have a long way to go. And so, you know, if what I do contributes is granito de arena to it, you know, a lo mejor. Chris: Thank you so much, David. Yeah, it's definitely really, really important to hear words such as yours in a time of deep nihilism.[00:59:00] And, and also the absence and I think the disregard of, of Elder Voices in our midst and in our movements. So, I deeply appreciate your willingness to speak with me and, and to our listeners today. And just finally, before we depart, how might our listeners find out more about your work?How might they purchase your books? David: I have a blog and a lot of what I write and the pictures that I take are up there and I put them up there pretty regularly. And so the way to find it is to Google my name, David Bacon, and the blog is called The Reality Check. And so if you Google that together, you'll find it and that's how you can connect.Chris: Thank you so much, David. David: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Today on the IC-DISC show, join us for an insightful discussion with Laurie Barkman, a renowned CEO and author of The Business Transition Handbook. As the acclaimed Business Transition Sherpa, Laurie sheds light on the reality that all business owners will exit someday. We explore the challenges of selling a business, like why most small businesses don't sell successfully and the potential pitfalls of an exit. We also discuss relying on experienced advisors and how understanding taxes and markets can aid planning. Laurie shares invaluable advice on navigating this critical phase successfully. This episode is a must-listen for any business owner planning to navigate their business transition.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Laurie and I discuss her journey as a CEO and author of The Business Transition Handbook, providing insights into the realities of business transition. She highlights the hard truth of selling a business and how eight out of ten small businesses fail to do so successfully. We talk about the common pitfalls of business transition, the five "D's" that can disrupt a business, and the value of creating a satisfied client base. Laurie explains the unique challenges law firms face during business transition and offers her strategies for a smooth transition. We delve into the importance of a clear exit plan and the different options business owners have when transitioning their business. Laurie advises focusing on three primary goals during business transition: business, personal, and financial. We discuss the analogy of business transition planning to having a sherpa guide you through a treacherous terrain, making the process seem less daunting. Laurie emphasizes the significance of accountability in business and the benefits of having industry expert conversations during transition. We explore the upcoming online course based on Laurie's book that she plans to launch in the first quarter of 2024, aiming to reach a wider audience of entrepreneurs. We discuss the importance of having an experienced network of professionals to help businesses reach their goals and create a successful transition plan. LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About The Business Transition Sherpa About The Endgame Entrepreneurship Course GUEST Laurie BarkmanAbout Laurie TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) David: Hi, this is David Spray. Welcome to another episode of the IC Disc Show. My guest today is Laurie Barkman from Pittsburgh. Laurie is a really fun and interesting guest. She just released her first book entitled the Business Transition Handbook, and she is called in many circles the business transition, the idea being that a Sherpa guides somebody on a journey over a period of time rather than just a one-point event in time. Laurie has an impressive background as a former CEO of a large privately held company. She has a bachelor's and an MBA, and we talked about mistakes business owners make when they're transitioning their business. We talked about the sober reality that 100% every last business owner is going to exit their business and the question is will it be on their terms or someone else's? So there is some great advice and information for any company, any business owner who is looking to exit their business at some point, and I think you'll get a lot of value from this. Good morning, laurie. How are you today? Laurie: David, hey, great to see you, I'm awesome. David: That is great. Now, where are you located today? Laurie: I'm in the great city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. David: Yes, now are you a native of Pittsburgh. Laurie: I am not. I am not. I'm an adopted daughter of the city. I'm originally from Albany, New York. David: Okay, so Ithaca wasn't too far to go for you. Laurie: That's right, it was not. It was only about three hours away. David: Okay, and then what brought you to Pittsburgh? Laurie: After graduating from college, my husband and I moved around Pennsylvania with different corporations. I was with Aigner Sol Rand Company and I was with a division in Shippensburg and after four years decided to get my masters, get my MBA, and decided to move to Pittsburgh. My husband had gotten a nice job with McKinsey and company and here we are. Okay 25 years later. David: You got your MBA in Pittsburgh, right at Carnegie. Laurie: Mellon. I did at Carnegie Mellon okay. David: Well, let's dig into this. So the business transition Sherpa. Where did this nickname come from? Did you come up with this yourself, or did somebody else give you that title? Laurie: You know, it's kind of an amalgamation of things. I remember talking to my husband about a trip that he and I had taken in 1997. We did a trek, we did a hike, and this idea of somebody guiding you and stuck with me. And as I was thinking about what I'm doing, working with business owners, it's not just one moment in time, it's over a period of time, and I really feel like my role is to be a guide. I don't have all the answers. I have a path, I have tools and, just like a Sherpa and the great work that they do, it's that same idea is we're on a journey together. Entrepreneurs build their business, sometimes on their own, but most likely not. Entrepreneurs are building their companies with other people, and so when they get to this other side of the mountain, so to speak, and thinking about their next chapter, why would they go about that by themselves? And I want to be the person that helps guide them. David: Yeah, I love the description of what you do because it picks up the fact that it's a journey, it's not a point in time and it's tough to do by yourself. In my experience I've just closely held small to medium sized business owners. Only sell a business once right, that's right. Laurie: We can regret things in our experience. We can regret what we do and wish we did something differently, or we do not take an action and we regret not taking that action. And my book the whole reason I wrote the book the business transition handbook was to help people proactively so that they don't have regrets. It's a very big, lofty goal to not have regrets in life, but if we can be proactive and we can understand what it takes to build a more valuable, transferable business and then understand what resources we might want to have on our side. I like to say, David, you can't do exit planning when you're exiting. It's just too late. So if you give yourself a time and space to work on having a more valuable, transferable business, the good news is that it's going to be a lot more fun to run your company. It's going to have an economic benefit to you and then in the future you'll have more options. You'll have more valuable options too. David: Yeah, I really enjoyed reading your book. In fact, behind you there, I believe, there's a blown up cover. Yes, it is. Laurie: That's right. Yeah, it was really interesting to write the book. I guess I could say it's my first book. I don't know that I'll have a second, but this, no matter what, is my first book and it was challenging, but at the same time, it was fun. It was like a giant puzzle. Once I mapped out what I believe the big pitfalls are right. So the subtitle of the book is how to avoid succession pitfalls. Each chapter in the book and I don't know if you picked up on this as you were reading it but each chapter is a pitfall. What do you want to avoid? And so what I tried to do was put myself in the reader's seat, the entrepreneur's seat, and how I developed that perspective was from my own experiences, client experiences and then integrating case studies and other learnings from my podcast. I have a show called Succession Stories that you will be a part of soon, and there are so many valuable things to learn from other people's wins and losses and challenges, and that's what I have always sought out to do with my show. The show is about three years old at this point and when I was writing the book, I had, I think, about 120 recordings, so that's a lot of knowledge and content. And what was so fun for me, david, was I was going back into the archives of a discussion. Every show I have has a transcript and of course I don't remember everything. But when I would write a chapter and I would need a case study, I had space for a case study in that particular spot, for a particular topic I would think, okay, which shows, should I go back to dive into those transcripts and then find these golden nuggets and I it was just so interesting to have the recall in writing of oh yeah, you know, she said that was an amazing conversation, and you, my memories are not long, right, we have so many, only so much storage in our brains, exactly. So it was really cool to go back to that body of knowledge that I had created, and I began to appreciate that body of knowledge even more. I think this case studies bring the book to life. I'd like to hear what you think about that, but that's that's what I hear from my readers is they love the, the learning and the concepts, the business concepts in the book, and they think that it's like me having a conversation with them by sharing these case studies and stories along the way. David: Yeah, I agree there were a number of. I mean, there was a lot of great stuff in there, but some of the particular ones I kind of wanted to dive in with you on is so this is a little bit of a quiz to see how much of your book you remember Do. When somebody, when people, decide to sell their business, do they just automatically sell it or do some portion of them? Are they unable to sell the business? Laurie: There's a mix, as you can imagine. Yeah, what percentage are you? David: able to actually sell it in the small business space. Laurie: It's a surprisingly low number. You know the statistics out. There is that every two out of 10 companies in the lower middle market actually sell. So that leaves eight out of 10 not selling. And you could ask, well, why is that? And there's a lot of reasons why. Sometimes along the way we have the five D's kind of pop up, or always also known as the 60s. These D's are taboo things, sometimes we don't want to talk about them, but they're real and we do need to talk about them. It could be the debt of an owner. It could be divorce disaster like COVID you know we put it in that category or disaster like fires and the business or the market has experienced is something traumatic it could be. Did I say divorce already? Divorce is another D. So these D's are something we can plan for. We don't want them to happen but we do need to be prepared. So if we're not prepared for the 60s, they can really wreak havoc on a business. Particularly death. The death of an owner can throw a business into a tailspin and I did cover that at some you know level in the book with a couple of episodes, snippets of people who had experienced that. The other reason why businesses don't sell, david, is because they're just not transferable. If they are so owner dependent and owner centric, that can be a really big reason why it won't sell and it's hard for owners to see that. You know, sometimes owners think that they are the secret sauce. I have a business assessment that one time I'm marketing. The owner of a marketing firm took this assessment and she said oh my God, she goes. I didn't realize I was standing in the way. She thought she, you know, she's a photographer, she's the creative, she's got the client relationships and she realized at that moment oh my goodness, I am making my company less valuable. So there's a pivot in our brains when we recognize some of the elements that help create a more transferable business and companies that have an owner who don't necessarily see the business as an asset, they see it as a job or they see it as a piggy bank. Those are different things, because if you see your business as an asset, you're going to want to create value in that asset over time. You're also going to want to protect that asset. If it's a job, right, I just accepted what is. And it's not growing, it's staying the same. Maybe you're not reinvesting in the business. You're not reinvesting in yourself or your people. And let's just jump to an example. I have a client who, in his favor, had very loyal people Once he got to his sixties, as did his key employees, and everybody's looking to retire. Buyers looking at that business said oh my goodness, how transferable is this business when all the key people are going to retire at the same time? So he had saved money, so to speak, by not bringing in new people, kind of underneath and over a period of training. So he recognizes that now, but it's too late. David: Sure, yeah, I was having this conversation yesterday with a group of CEOs and we were talking about enterprise value, increasing it, owner dependency, and there's a guy that owns a small boutique intellectual property law firm and they were asking him how sellable law firms are in general and he said not very and from his perspective that he said there's things he could do to make the business run without him better. But his model that he really likes to work with his clients directly, he doesn't like an associate between them and so that in his and a couple of his clients are actually in the room and they're like, and he's like, yeah, if I had like some associates that could potentially lower the fees to a client, you know, because there's more leverage in the client. So like no, we'd rather pay more and have you. So I've noticed in professional services there's this tradeoff between what. If you really want to have delighted clients, sometimes that's at odds with making your business the most valuable. And I know my business is like that. I mean I've got huge owner dependency issues because I am the key relationship, but I've gotten peace with the fact that it's just not very sellable and I like being a craftsman and just like it hit. Laurie: Yeah, and that isn't that the important thing. If you recognize it and are accepting of it, hey, you know what? That's okay. Not every business is going to be an asset to sell to another buyer and that's totally okay with the law firm. Just to circle back, because I do have some professional experience with law firms, one of the catch 22 things about law in particular is the code of ethics that they have to abide by. David: The non-competence, the non-compete. Laurie: Yeah. So if a lawyer leaves a law firm, they you know there's certain restrictions on when they can inform their clients and taking their clients with them, and I know there's lots of gray areas. I'm not going to talk about all of the nuances there. My point is that with law firms also there could be other types of professional services that run into this, but in law in particular what clients will say is that they hire lawyers, not law firms. Yeah, and so when you're tied let's just like you're talking about with that particular partner that the clients are willing to pay more because they want to work with that particular partner it could be highly likely that client would jump and go with them, no matter where they are. That can be particularly concerning for an acquiring firm, knowing that they may have some stickiness to certain clients and then they may not have other stickiness. So it really is dependent If there's a firm that's acquisitive and looking at buying other professional services, whether it's law or any other profession. I work with engineering firms quite a bit and in engineering firms there might be contracts but those contracts are not assignable and it might influence not only the type of transaction that we would do, whether an asset sale or entity sale, but it also would influence potentially on the transition for the sellers and how long they might want to stay, or the buyers might want them to stay under either an employment agreement or consulting agreement. It could also influence whether or not there's an earn out. You could structure an earn out, for example, if the buyer wants to structure an earn out to ensure a certain percent of those contracts are assigned over whatever time period or year and a half. So it could influence it in a big way. David: Talk to me about, and thank you for that. Talk to me about what you enjoy most, about being a business transition or not. I shouldn't say A, but the business transition, Sure. What are some of the aspects of that in working with those companies that you just find particularly satisfying or rewarding? Laurie: One of the things that I experienced as a CEO of a privately held company was the loneliness and being in my own head and having big questions and not really knowing where to go. I find that I bring kind of this EQ, if you will, of smarts and know-how and experiences and questions, and then I bring excuse me, the IQ around that, then the EQ, which is more of the emotional side. I've always been a kind of person that people confide in. Obviously, this is a highly confidential type of scenario but, I talk with my clients about the business. for sure, that's the practical side of everything, but we also talk about the personal side. We have to talk about them because remember earlier in our conversation I talked about regrets and there's some alarming statistics out there about experiencing regrets at least one year after the sale. I'm kind of on this mission to help business owners find clarity, and find clarity in a way that makes sense for them, for their family, for their stakeholders, which includes employees and other shareholders and their communities that they serve. A lot of people feel after a transaction that they let so-and-so down. Maybe they let their employees down, maybe they let their communities down. I had a guy in my show whose family business fourth generation chlorine cleaning product was sold in grocery stores and he could not walk down the aisle anymore. He couldn't bear to see that product under another name or by another. He said, yeah, there was a pride. We used to the small town and we had our name on the baseball team and people knew who I was. The identity that this particular person had his family name was on the company. Identity is a really big part of it, david. People go through almost like a withdrawal If they're not excited about what's next, this pull factor, what's pulling you forward to your next thing? If we're not excited about it, it can be really. You can imagine worst case scenarios. Those things do happen. But the in-between space is not that great either, for what makes me feel that I'm helping entrepreneurs? I've always orbited entrepreneurs with a great respect for the risk that they take. I've come to know family businesses as a category. Also. There's the founder-led, family-led, privately held company. I've worked in venture backed, so no offense to venture backed folks, but they're not really a focus for me. I'm really focused on call it the bootstrapped or family-led companies where they're the everyday entrepreneur making it happen. The sense of clarity clarity on three core types of goals is where we focus business, personal and financial. There's a lot of work to be done there. I think that's what makes me motivated, makes me feel appreciated by my clients. They are awesome people. I work with some amazing people that are doing really wonderful things for their community, for their family. They have excellent intentions. They just don't know how to put it all together. I don't either. I don't have all the answers, as I said earlier, but what I do have is I have an awesome Rolodex and I have an awesome way to bring professionals together and collaborate and help my client assemble a business owner transition team advisory team to help them make big decisions along the way. Again, this clarity is the number one thing that I think my clients benefit from. David: Yeah, no, that's really important because, as you talk about in the book, unfortunately 100% of the business owners are going to exit the business, just like 100% of us are going to exit this earth. I was thinking when you were talking about that fourth generation gentleman who couldn't walk down the grocery aisle, but it's one of those things, but it wasn't like he really had. He must not have had a great way to avoid that, because he wasn't going to run the business forever. So you come into what are the options? Basically, if somebody's not immortal, what are the options to exit a business? Because there's several paths, right? Laurie: Yeah, absolutely. Just to finish the statement with 100% of business owners are going to leave one day, there's a big however, you know. However, very few are planning for that day To leave on their terms, and when we have a plan, we're more likely to achieve it. That's just how it works, right. That's why we do strategic planning for businesses. So why don't we do strategic planning for our exit or our transition? And that's really the main advocacy I have in the book is let's have a process, let's have an understanding of what it takes. So to your question I think I address it quite a bit in one of my favorite chapters, which I think is chapter six, which is who should own your business after you, and it shines a spotlight on the different kinds of buyers. When I do workshops, david, I do webinars and I do in-person workshops, and I put up this slide and I have essentially three columns and I go through some examples of each bucket three buckets and people's eyes light up, they take out their camera, they start taking photos of this one particular slide and it is enlightening because we hear about certain kinds of buyers and we don't know that there might be other options out there and maybe not every option is a fit. So what I advocate for is let's understand what are some exit options for your company and which ones might be a better fit than others, and why let's prioritize those and let's come up with option A, b, c and if option A doesn't work out, then we know we've got an option B. It's just like in any negotiation If you have the power to walk away, then you know you're going to get the right deal for you. It's when you don't feel that you have any other options that you feel pinched. So that's why back to the conversation about the five or sixties if an owner passes away and the company is going in a tailspin, with employees leaving and the spouse doesn't know what to do, and they've inherited this company. They've never worked in it, it's a mess and the buyers come out like sharks and there's chum in the water. We want to avoid that. We want to avoid that. So, yeah, I mean we could talk about what. Who are the different kinds of buyers, if you want. David: Sure, yeah, because I mean, I, just off the top of my head, we've got passing it on to the next generation selling it to the employees. A third party buyer? What are some of the other options? Laurie: Yeah, let me just frame it out and that way, visually, I'm kind of working left to right as I talked about these three columns and I put it in that order for a reason. So the first column is strategic buyers, the middle is financial buyers and the one on the right is related buyers. So the examples you mentioned, family and managers would be in the related buyers category. Typically speaking, that is going to be more of a fair market value type of approach to valuing the business, of what price you might expect for your business, and if you kind of go left on that chart then the price expectation should go up right. David: Strategic generally not always generally speaking, will pay the most. Laurie: And why is that? Well, and also, what's a strategic? So a strategic is an entity, it's a company, it could be a competitor, it could be a marketplace vendor, it could be a customer, it could be an adjacent industry to yours where they want to make moves, either geography wise, or into your industry, if they're not part of it yet. So those are strategic and, typically speaking and this was my experience going through a pretty big M&A transaction with a third generation company that we were acquired by a Fortune 50. And, believe me, they had an M&A playbook and when they're that big and they've done that many transactions, so for us it was understanding what's the fit, what will this look like? And for them, I'm sure, in their financial models, it was about leverage what assets do they keep, what employee teams might they cut and how do they gain some cost leverage? And so that's typical where these pieces of the business might be kind of bolted into something else. Maybe it's standalone, maybe it's bolted in, but that's typically why strategic can pay more, because on the back end, as they're modeling out their financials, they know what costs they're going to take out. We don't necessarily know that, but that's what they're looking at. Financial buyer most often we think of private equity firms, and private equity groups will invest on a time horizon roughly five to seven years could be longer and they'll want to buy low, sell high, and so in between, they're investing in that business to improve it, they're putting in management teams and they will take a larger entity, maybe keep it as a standalone and that would be a platform deal. And a platform deal may eventually have other firms acquired to tuck underneath it. Those acquisitions we call tuck ins or add ons. And because they are taking assets and putting them into something larger, you could say, oh well, that kind of sounds like the strategic. And the answer is, yeah, kind of does. So that's why, in a private equity deal, the hybrid, as we might also call it, could, from a multiple standpoint, look more like a strategic offer. So that's just a little financial nuance there. But typically speaking, private equity groups are going to be the biggest, you know, the biggest buyers out there. There's still a lot of dry powder and another big category that I like to spotlight. Well, there's two others I would put under this financial bucket. One is family offices might be investing in privately held companies in different asset classes. So, for example, I had a family office. Second generation was on my show and he talked about what he and his father's investment thesis is. And they're focused on warehousing, like storage, you know, storage unit for consumer storage so you can rent one for a year or whatever and put your stuff in it. So he liked they like that asset class because it has a recurring revenue model to it. And that's just one example. And what's really interesting, if you compare the time horizons for these investments, well, a family office is looking for a buy and hold, more likely than buying, selling a short period of time. So, as I said earlier about fit, this is where it's really important. If the seller doesn't want to be in a situation where it could be sold to the one fish and gobbled up by another. They want to be held for like a longer period of time and perpetuity. Then maybe they should look to you know, talking with family offices who are doing acquisitions in their space. So that's a category that is kind of under the radar and I just put a spotlight on in the book. And then the third one are ESOPs, which is a you know, think of it like an almost like a 401k program for your people. When they retire from your company, they're incentivized to stay, and when they retire they will get a distribution check, and so an ESOP is an interesting option for some other companies Again, not a fit for everyone, but it might be a fit for companies of a larger size with enough employee base, where, again, you're going to have a liability at some point to pay these people, so you have to be able to fund that. But what happens in that transaction is that the company becomes a tax-free entity, and so that's a real incentive, you know for companies to reinvest and acquire others, and it can be very positive for the culture too, yeah. David: I know quite a bit about ESOPs because you were kind enough to introduce me to Mike Silverman and in fact he and his partner, Matt were, I guess, in my podcast a few episodes ago and it's really interesting on some of the ESOP opportunities. And I'm glad you brought up the family office because, right, people don't think of that. Laurie: But when? David: I think about the. What I think of philosophically is the super family office. I think about Berkshire Hathaway's acquisition targets. But the problem is I think now they're up to where. When I started reading Warren's annual letters, they were looking for businesses with enterprise value, I think of like 25 million and up, and I think the last I checked it's half a billion or a billion and up. Just because $25 million companies don't move the needle for them. But yeah and it's kind of like their sales pitch is similar to the family office sales pitch. So I guess one way to think of it is, if you like being an aquire of Berkshire Hathaway but you're smaller than a half a billion dollars, then maybe a family office might make sense. But even then when you think about Berk acquisition requirements. They want a business that runs independently of them. They do not want to manage the business. So you're right back to. A business that can run without the owner is more valuable for everybody. Laurie: Yeah, they have the portfolio largely independent of each other. They've kept the brands, I think, pretty separate because they appreciate the brand and the competitive moat, as they like to call it, around that business. I think they look for companies that have a competitive market differentiation, so it makes sense that they don't muddle the water. David: Yeah. Laurie: Yeah. David: Have there been any positive surprises from writing the book that you didn't anticipate when you wrote? Laurie: it Surprises. Let me think about that. I think just the reviews have been so delightful and meaningful to me and I guess I just didn't think about it. I don't know that it's a surprise, it was just. Maybe I could say a surprise and delight just to see how this book is helping people or how they've shared told me that it's helping people. I think that has been a really lovely outcome. As an author, you put good in the world and you hope goodness comes back, or you hope that it's helping, but you don't really know unless people tell you, and so that's been really great, I would say. The other is with my clients. I have my clients and meet with them on a regular basis and I have clients that are reading the book and then when I meet with them they're like, yeah, I just read chapter five, let's talk about it. So this combination of I'm not going to quite do this myself, I'm going to read the book, I'm going to get knowledge, but I still want to work with someone to help me along the way, was really reinforcing that what I expected. I expected that, frankly, and I think it's important. I do think people can go through this book on their own and at some point in this call give, I'll give the listeners an option to how to make the most of it, but you can do it on your own. You can. What I think is human nature is we want someone to hold us accountable, and that's, I think, not again not necessarily a surprise, but very reinforcing. That is true and that's why just a kind of a pre announcement here I'm going to be creating an online course from the book so that it can help more people in a different way, and hopefully they'll watch the videos and they'll read the book, and I, what I'm aiming to do is reach a wider audience of entrepreneurs, not just the people who are, you know, three to five years out. This is really a book, I think. If you are beyond startup phase but you're growing your business, why not read this book and understand what it's going to take to create a more valuable exit when you're ready? So it's exciting. I'm planning to launch it in the first quarter of 2024. David: Oh, that is exciting. If somebody is interested in learning more about that is do you have any place for them to go yet, or are we too soon? Laurie: We are too soon, but that's a great idea. I should put up like a waiting list or something on my website, but the businesstransitionhandbookcom is the website page for the blog BusinessTransitionHandbookcom. Yeah, the businesstransitionhandbookcom is a page on my site, so they'll see all other pages too, but this is the landing page for the book, so what I might do is put up I'll put up a blurb at some point about awaiting this for the class. And yeah, no, I'm excited about it. Like I said, I aim to reach more people and help more people with it. David: Yeah, and you know that accountability is interesting, because one of the things I see with our clients is that one of the things that's interesting about our clients is that 90% of them have revenues between 10 and 100 million probably somewhere in the light of your clients and the vast majority of them do not borrow money. They've been financially successful enough. They've been able to, you know, internally find growth and because of in that, in addition to other reasons, and most of these also, it's a single shareholder, they don't have a board, and so these clients have zero accountability, like their only accountability is like to their family, to make sure that you know the monthly income is what they're hoping it would be. But you know, they don't have a bank to be accountable to, they don't have a board, they don't have other shareholders, so I can see where that accountability is something that they could be really helpful for them, that they don't really have anywhere else. Now, of course, they may have done that on purpose. Maybe they didn't really like being accountable. You know they were an accountable employee and then they borrowed money from the bank to start a business, so maybe they don't really like me. What do you think? Laurie: I have a client that's about 120 million revenue business in the call it food production space and he's very purposeful, has very good intentions for transition with his daughter over time and really wants to see her be successful in the company and grow with the company. And his partner, to his credit, said hey, not real name. You know, joe, you're going to want we should do a new operating agreement. You know your daughter's in the business now. She's doing a great job. We need a new operating agreement. And this operating agreement was sitting on my client's desk coffee stains. You know he literally had it in the corner of his desk. He told me he was there for nine months and then I met him in a workshop and then that was it. He said oh, that's it, I have to do something. I can't just keep looking at that document. And of course in the transition it's more than just the operating agreement. But it was so many other things too and he just the accountability was really good for him. He needed that. He really did because he had the intention to do it. It just was, you know, backburner and it was never the thing to do when all these other important things are common. Adam. David: Now that makes sense, and I just want to be clear businesstransitionbookcom or businesstransitionhandbookcom. Laurie: I just want to make sure I had it. Yeah, that's okay. It's the title of the book. Yeah, oh it's the. David: Okay yeah, I'm looking at the book. Okay, yeah, that is easy note to remember. What do you enjoy the most about your podcast? Trying to switch gears a little bit. Laurie: I love talking with people on my show about what's worked for them, what they've learned and what they would do differently and if I have an entrepreneur. I have two kinds of entrepreneurs that come on the show. One type is looking in the rearview mirror and that's where they'll get the lessons learned right. We really learn a lot from others where it just didn't quite go the way they would have liked and when they have successes, of course we learn a lot from that too. So that's one type of entrepreneur. The other type of entrepreneur is looking forward and I've started to have more conversations with entrepreneurs and I'm asking them questions about their legacy and how their intentions are for their transition and legacy, if they're open to sharing it. I've had a gentleman came on my show. He's in the HVAC space and he had let his company, his partner, know his intentions to retire in three years and it was almost like this huge weight was lifted off his shoulders and now that it's out there, they can create plans, they can work on things and it's a little bit freeing to do something like that. Other people who aren't quite ready to say what it is they want to do. We talk a little more generally about what's important to them as they think about transition and leaving a meaningful legacy for their stakeholders or family or employees, and I'm really enjoying those conversations. I also talk with people who are experts in the industry on some particular topic, like tax advisors, financial advisors, legal advisors, and those conversations are wonderful because then, as I build my Rolodex of professionals that are able to be the best fit for my clients, it's a wonderful way to do business development and people who listen to the show have. You know, not every listener becomes a client, but I have had listeners reach out. They've listened to succession stories for a year, two years, whatever it is, and they reach out and they said Lori, a longtime fan would love to talk with you. And the resources that are available from the show are on my website, like business assessments and different articles and knowledge articles give plenty of videos and ask to help people learn about different topics. So I feel like this body of knowledge. You know this thought leadership type of approach where if people listen, they learn about me, they learn about what would they do, and then maybe they want to follow up. You know is pretty exciting. So I really like that. I like when I hear from my audience. They tell me what's an interesting topic to them or questions they might have, and I think the learning is really the main thing. I'm a continuous learner I always have been and I find that with every show I'm learning something. You know, I'm learning something every time and I just love that. David: Yeah, and I've probably listened to half of your episodes. I suppose and you know that episode you have with Mike Silverman was really memorable that you know have had to introduce several clients to Mike, and so I think having the advisors on is also a great idea and that's kind of how you fit short of on my show, right? We're not talking about the ICDisc program at all, but you're somebody who my clients outside the ICDisc may find value to this conversation and yeah and I'm like you I love to hear, to hear, people's stories on the Colby. I'm an 8643, which I don't know. If you know the Colby, I do know the Colby. So I'm. That's what's called high fact finding. Okay, so I lead with the fact finding. So for me, I'm always more comfortable, you know, asking questions than answering them. Maybe that's from childhood trauma, where I was forced to answer too many uncomfortable questions by my parents. I don't know. Well, I can't believe how the time has flown by. By the way, what's your website? Laurie: My website is thebusinesstransitionsherpacom. David: Oh, okay, I like it. Laurie: Thank you, you know. I just wanted to mention David, because if your listeners are finding this topic helpful, that's good, you know, and then they probably might be wondering well, what's the next step? Or you know how do I sort of take small nibbles as opposed to biting off a whole arm, and I would recommend that. You know, I don't want people to feel overwhelmed, I want them to feel reassured that we have a process and we'll work with them to meet them where they are and I guess the you know. The next thing would be to reach out and whether they are in a mode of transition and planning, which is what I'll call pre-M&A right, not that they have to sell, but just conceptually. And then, for folks who are anticipating selling to a third party or a family member, you know that transaction somehow some way. So I'm a certified Mergers and Acquisitions Advisor and can help steer them on that path, from the practical side as well as the emotional side, to get a deal done that makes them happy. Okay, I like it. David: If people want to reach out to you, is LinkedIn probably the best way. Laurie: Yeah, linkedin's a great way. Let me know that you heard me on the show. That would be awesome, and I think, david, you'd probably love to know that too. And they could reach me on my website. As you said, the business transition Sherpa, there's a spot to book directly with me. We can connect via Calendly. David: Okay, and then what's the website for the podcast? Laurie: Successionstoriescom is the name of the show and again, you can find it directly on my website in the podcast section. All the catalog of the shows are there, but it's in every type of platform, so if you're Apple or Spotify or whatever you like, you'll find it. David: That's great. So here's the surprise question I promised you. Laurie: So I have two questions left. David: And so here comes the surprise one. So if you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 year old self, what advice might you give? Laurie: I think I should have bought a business. David: Okay, so you would have encouraged yourself to buy a business. Laurie: Yes, when I was 25 and I was graduating from my master's program. It was all about the next great tech startup, yeah, and creating that from scratch. And that wasn't me, yeah. But I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't feel like that was me in that mold. And I think now I'm more attuned to entrepreneurs through acquisition, you know as a category, and I didn't mention them, but they also would fall under the financial buyer category and there are many of them out there, not just in the US but around the world, who are interested in being part of that succession plan for a founder next generation leader. David: If you do you ever listen to the my First Million podcast. Laurie: I'd spent a while, but I'm familiar with it. You like that. David: They had a guest on recently. That is probably certainly my top five favorite podcast interviews ever and it's about a woman Sarah I forget her last name, but she was getting her MBA and decided she was going to buy a business with and she had zero money. She was going to buy a business you like these real estate advertisements? Buying real estate with no money down. She was going to buy a business with no money down and it's just a fascinating story of the process she went through through in just an astonishingly wonderful interview that I couldn't recommend highly enough. So apparently she was able to somehow go back in time and give her a 25 year old self that advice because she managed to pull that off. That's very cool. Is there anything we didn't cover that you wish we had? Laurie: Well, I think just to reiterate for people that when time is on your side, you can make an impact on your future and give yourself the space to work on your business and not just in your business. That would probably be my main advocacy and surround yourself with people that can help hold you accountable to the process and meet you where you are. So if they are just thinking about it, trying to figure it out, trying to understand what's their business worth today, yeah, that's a great place to start to. You know, try to figure out and model. Where are you now, where do you want to be and what's the gap and how are you going to get there? David: That's awesome, Laurie. I really appreciate your time on the show and I appreciate you taking the time to be on here. Laurie: Well, David, thank you for having me. I know this is my second time around you and I talked on a different show. We did. David: Yeah, we did. Laurie: It's lovely to be back with you and reconnect, and I'm just so glad that you are sharing this content with your audience, and I appreciate you, thank you. David: Yeah, it is my pleasure. Well, I hope you have a great day. Laurie: You too. Special Guest: Laurie Barkman.

In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, I chat with Mark Wade, founder and president of Echelon Virtual Family Office. Mark shares insights into virtual family office services, tailored for those with substantial wealth not needing a standalone family office. We also discuss premium-financed life insurance structures and how they serve individuals with several million dollars in assets. Mark outlines the origins of virtual family offices, tracing back to the Rockefellers. We learn they now cater to those with $10 million or more in assets. Additionally, Mark describes optimizing value when selling a business through pre-sale coordination, marketing strategy, and deploying post-liquidity event assets. We conclude by examining indexed universal life insurance advantages and investing in index funds, real estate, and small businesses. Overall, this informative episode underscores wealth management options and leveraging life insurance through Mark's insights   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In this episode I chat with Mark Wade, the founder and president of Echelon Virtual Family Office, How He provides services to wealthy individuals who need family office services but do not justify having a standalone family office. Mark elaborates on the concept of a virtual family office, highlighting that it originated with the Rockefellers. He explains that these services are typically available to those with a net worth of $10 million or more. We discuss the process of leveraging life insurance through premium financing, with Mark emphasizing that the coordination of various financial professionals and providers is key to unlocking a business's value. Mark and I delve into the process of pre-sale value creation, marketing to potential buyers, and the deployment of assets after a liquidity event. We explore the struggle of successful business owners in transitioning from their roles after a liquidity event, and the satisfaction derived from making a difference in people's lives. We discuss the concept of premium financed life insurance and how Etch-A-Lan uses it strategically. Mark describes the process of bank financing with collateral and contribution, explaining how clients can sign a personal loan and provide collateral. We discuss how despite a higher interest rate environment, the strategy of bank financing remains potent due to policy flexibility. Mark and I examine the benefits of indexed universal life insurance and the advantages of investing in index funds, rental real estate, and small business ownership. Finally, we celebrate the power of self-confidence and the wisdom gleaned from financial experiences. LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Echelon Wealth Strategies GUEST Mark WadeAbout Mark TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) David: Hi, this is David Spray, and welcome to another episode of the ICDisc Show. My guest today is Mark Wade, the president and founder of Etch-A-Lan Virtual Family Office. They work with families who have a need for family office services but whose net worth does not justify having a standalone family office, so they serve these families and add a lot of value. We had a great interview talking about some of the things they do to add value, and then we also talked about an interesting structure that they are familiar with around leveraging life insurance through premium financing in what he describes as a quote modern structure. I have some familiarity with premium finance life insurance but Mark's approach is really interesting. We also talked about things he wish he had known when he was younger and advice he would have given himself. So this is a great episode for really anybody who has accumulated several million dollars of wealth or more who's interested in learning more about the options available to them to manage their wealth. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Good morning, mark. Welcome to the podcast. Good morning. How are you today? I am great. So where are you calling in from today? What part of the world are you in? Mark: Today we're calling in from sunny Venice, florida, on the Gulf Coast. David: Venice. Okay, what's the nearest large city that Venice is near or larger? Mark:20 miles south of Sarasota Okay. David: Excellent. I love that. That's the largest city. I love that part of Florida. So I'm kind of a sequential learner. I like to kind of start in the beginning. Are you a native Floridian or are you from somewhere else? Mark: I was born and raised in Newark, new Jersey, and lived my childhood in New Jersey and, as I, when I graduated college. Since then I've been all over the country, coast to coast. I've spent part of my corporate career, my earlier corporate career, west of the Mississippi, headquartered out of Florida where, I'm sorry, out of California, where I ran west of Mississippi for one of the major brokerage firms, and then, when I went independent in 1999, relocated back to the East Coast again. So I'm currently a Florida resident. David: Awesome. Yeah, so I'm a Texan and it's like Texas and Florida seem to be like kindred spirits. You know the similar philosophies on a lot of things, and with a fair amount of Gulf Coast Beach front. That's right. So talk to me about echelon virtual family office. What's the history? What made you start it? Who are you set up to serve? Tell me the story. Mark: Yeah, great. So echelon virtual family office really started in 19 as a state and succession planning firm. Okay, business owners have been our focus for many years, though we do serve some at this point quite a few C level corporate executives, upper level corporate executives and retirees from both the business world and the corporate world. So echelon virtual family office is an evolution of that original practice. And you know, as a virtual family office, most people have heard of the Rockefellers and they've heard of the Vanderbilt's and you know the Rockefellers got it right and unfortunately, the Vanderbilt's didn't, and they meaning the Rockefellers really came up with the concept of a virtual family office. You want me to just give a brief run down to what a family office does. Yeah, please do that for those that might not have heard of it or not that familiar with it. So the Rockefellers figured out years ago that instead of sourcing a variety of outside professionals, instead of going to outside attorneys and accountants and real estate people and mortgage people and bankers and so on and so forth, you know, john Rockefeller figured out that he could just go ahead and hire all those people inside, because he created enough wealth in order to do that. Nowadays, by the way to create your own family office. It makes sense when you have about 250 million dollars of net worth, okay, so below that, a family might employ the services of a multi-family office, which is where a variety of people, a multitude of people, who typically have about 50 million and larger, would use the same services of a family office. That is a for-profit family office. So some of the people from the private family office one day said, well, we could do this and earn a living at it as a standalone company. So they created a multi-family office and for the last 10 years, myself and a mastermind group that I belong to there's about 220 of us now we started working on this concept of bringing family office services. So it's really all of those core services that everybody knows accounting, legal real estate, banking, mortgage, investment, so on and so forth. Everyone's familiar with those. But some of the more esoteric ones are some of the more more specialized ones, like personal security, trademark law, international banking. So some of the more sophisticated family services not end to include some of the tax driven ones, but you know specific types of tax strategy. You know we are able now to source those on behalf of our clients and provide a network of national experts that are part of our virtual family office and bring those down to clients. We say typically a business owner or or a retired executive or an existing corporate. We are able to bring that down to where it really starts to make sense for individuals at about the $10 million level. Okay, we figure at about a $10 million level we can really start driving some what we call true and meaningful value to the bottom line. We can start making a huge difference for those families in a variety of different ways and to provide some economies of scale to it, because you know when they're, when these specialists are part of our virtual family office, they're used to deal flow from us and so they give our clients some consideration. So that's the idea from 250 million to 50. Okay, pretty much the same types of services that were offered to the people that 250. David: Okay, no, thank you for that. That makes sense, and so it sounds like you just identified a need in the market in that 10 to $50 million network range where the this virtual family office made more sense for people there who was more attractive than a multifamily office structure. Is that about right? Mark: Yeah, clearly, once, once you. So I should tell you we have clients today that are 5 million because they have specific needs that we can address expeditiously and cost effectively. So we have clients that are smaller than 10 million. Typically your clients are 10 million net worth and larger and we have them all the way up to 165 million. So but you kind of write the way you described it we're able to bring under a family or an individual with with less than 50 million. We're able to bring them those family office services that only you know the private family offices used to be able to source in the past. David: Okay, so I love stories, so could you give us, like, think of the and obviously you don't need to share the name of a client, but, you know, think of a client where your service really a difference. Can you just one come to mind? You can kind of give a little bit of the background, what their pain point was, how you were able to make a substantial improvement in their situation. Mark: Yeah, so you know, but you know so it's relevant to a wider swath of people, instead of talking about the exceptional ones I won't do that I'm going to talk about. I'm going to talk about what we commonly see. Okay, that sounds good Because it may be more relevant to, like I said, to water swath of people, and so I cannot remember the last time we had somebody show up if they have ever shown up and they have had all their financial work done, all their legal work done, coordinate and I'm talking about their personal and have coordinated that successfully with their business or corporate world, because it's the marriage of the personal and business, financial and legal affairs. That's where the real, that's where the real magic happens, right, okay? And when you think about it, when was the last time, dave, when was the last time somebody sat down and said to you, dave, I just exited a meeting with my accountant and my attorney and my banker and my pension plan manager and our insurance specialist and we just sat down and talk for hours about me. It just doesn't happen. And so it's the coordination and the direction of all that effort from those various providers that's what drives, I like we say, the true and meaningful value for our clients. So I'm going to you know, I'm going to say that in the areas of wanting to unlock the value, I'm going to say that for a, if they're a business owner wanting to unlock the value, the equity they've created in their firm, whether it's for further investment, for personal investment or because they're looking to succeed, they're looking to transfer the ownership, they're looking to take a strategic sale to an outside buyer, whether it's a internal sale to employees or a succession to family members. You know there's a tremendous amount of value that's derived from that process. Okay, so I'm going to say that in the pre sale, value creation and unlocking that value, and then to the in the process, marketing of an entity to the alright. So now I've collected this. Let's just put a number on a 1020 million dollars or whatever the number is. I've gotten my liquidity event. Now what do I do? And it's not just, it's not just the deployment of the assets, it's really now, what do I do? I mean, I can't play golf every day. I can't go around the world vacation all year long every year. What do I do? It's the next step is what's their next, what's the next project for them, because oftentimes that's what it is. Successful business owners find it extremely difficult to just turn off the computer and walk away. David: Sure sure, of course, of course. Okay, well, thank you. Well, that is helpful. What? What do you find the most satisfying about you all with the company? Mark: That's a great question, Wow. Well, you know, Dave, this is the only thing I've done for 44 years. Over 44 years. I've only ever done what I do today. Okay, and as a lot of your associates probably are able to say, we don't do this anymore because we have to do it for the money. We do it for a lot of other reasons too, and part of which is it's kind of in our being and who we are and it's how we self fulfill, right, and a lot of the drive behind doing what I do today is making a difference. That sounds kind of corny, but it really does. After 44 years of doing tax strategy and financial advising and business exit strategy and retirement planning and all the different planning subspecialties that fall into that. We don't do it just for the money, Don't get me wrong. It's nice to be paid well, but it's the impact that we have and the lives that we affect, oftentimes for people we will never meet, because they're people in the future. They're the heirs of people that we'll never meet and lots of times it's the heirs of the clients. They'll never meet them either. So knowing that we have had that kind of impact that's, an intergenerational impact is 100%. What does it for me nowadays? And it's solving oftentimes these complex and comprehensive problems that you really have to have a lot of time in the barrel and a lot of experience and a really deep bench of people to rely on. Those complex and uncomplicated problems oftentimes are the ones that make or break a family's future. So helping to walk clients through that process it's painting a renaissance picture from the standpoint of you have an idea what it's going to end like. You have an idea of where you're going. But the interrelational family dynamics take you left and right and sometimes it backs you up and sometimes it moves you forward. But going through that process it's so rewarding to see the impact you've had on a family. And oftentimes it's problems that some families don't deal with and oftentimes it's issues that a lot of families deal with. Sometimes it's we have to deal with substance abuse issues and helping our clients get the right help there. I mean we've had opportunities where well, just recently this Afghan war, the withdrawal out of Afghanistan we had a corporate client where we shipped a couple million dollars overseas and a couple of talented and rough guys parachuted into Afghanistan to pick up this guy's daughter who was doing a medical mission for the local population somewhere in the hills and this whole thing kind of exploded quicker than they can expect and a couple of guys wanting to rescue this woman from Afghanistan. Right down to helping our clients prepare their children to accept this kind of responsibility themselves in the future. Wealth comes with its own issues. Many of our clients are self-made people. Many of our clients created their wealth or increased family wealth, and so now how do you prepare your children and grandchildren to carry that on? So there's just a variety of things that we get involved with by introducing our clients to the appropriate specialists in those areas. Like I said, we have over 60 in our network now. David: Okay, well, thank you for that color. I'd like to drill down into a subject that I know a little bit about, but your firm seems to have a little different approach to that. I would just like to talk about that's premium financed life insurance. So can you start by, for listeners that aren't familiar with it, what it is and kind of what the purpose of it is, and then kind of get into the strategy that you all take. That's maybe a little different than some others. Mark: Yeah. So you know, people think about life insurance and they say, oh, I don't like life insurance or I don't believe in life insurance. And we get it because, let's face it, the only people that really want to want life insurance are oftentimes the ones who can't have it. Right. Right, they find themselves in a position and they say, oh man, I really should have life insurance because this is a problem. Now, for whatever their reason health or otherwise they don't qualify for it anymore. But in all other cases that I can think of, you know, life insurance is just a tool. Right, it's just another tool. Keeps on mark what's the good life insurance versus the bad life insurance? And we say, well, oftentimes it's not a matter of what's good life insurance or bad life insurance, it's policy. Design is oftentimes a critical factor, but more often than not, if we just say life insurance is a tool, you know it comes down to the mechanic Okay, Okay, do you use the life insurance in the proper way or what it was intended, and do you design the policy correctly, meaning the agent and the tax specialist. Do you design the policy correctly? Do you own it correctly? Do you fund it correctly? And then, later on, do you access the money correctly. So let's go back to that third one, the funding element. If I know that it's a tool and life insurance does many things, it's kind of like a Swiss army knife. What do we need for it to do today? Well, today we need a death benefit or, you know, maybe we're going to need it for a. You know? You know, some of the largest owners of life insurance are their Fortune 500 companies and banking institutions. You know banking institutions and Fortune 500 companies. They own this stuff because it's part of what they call their tier one capital. And in the banking world, the bank's tier one capital is that money that has to be the safest and the most protected. And so what do banks use for that? Oftentimes they use life insurance. They use, boldly, bank owned life insurance. Okay, in the corporate world, they use Koli corporate owned life insurance. So if we know that it's just a tool and we know that how you pay for it is very important and it circles back to your premium financing, you know what are the ways you can do it? You can pay for your life insurance out of assets, you can pay for your life insurance through a corporation and those where that's applicable and that becomes less and less effective nowadays, but nevertheless, there were still great opportunities to do that, or you can have somebody else make the premium payments for you, and that's where premium finance, life insurance, comes in, and oftentimes it involves it involves having arrangement with a banking institution, and the banks love this because, from their perspective, financing your life insurance policy is a guaranteed investment. Yeah, and it's where the obvious reason why none of us is leaving here without passing away Right, you know, at some point we're all going to pass away, so it's a guaranteed investment for them. So banks are typically very interested in financing these life insurance policies. Banks have gotten significantly intelligent. They look for certain types of policies that do certain things with the right provisions and the right protections for them and own the proper way. So premium finance there's a lot of different types of premium finance out there and there have been different scenarios for years. They come and go as the markets shift and the wind shift, along with interest rates and so forth. But one of these purposes that we see life insurance our clients really warming up to the concept of premium finance nowadays is in the wealth creation process. So we know life insurance provides a death benefit, and oftentimes you can get the bank to provide financing so you can buy more death benefit than you might be able to or might want to pay for, or on your own. Sure, but another more popular way nowadays well, maybe equally popular, but certainly has risen in popularity is in the wealth creation process, whereby you can have a bank, add additional premium dollars to your premium dollars and those monies accumulate inside that policy for you on a tax deferred basis. Right, because insurance companies they get treated especially from all other corporations in the world, so that money multiplies inside the policy for the benefit of the owner and eventually the beneficiaries at some day. But as those policy values grow and grow, because part of it's your money and a much larger part is the bank's money in there, you get to earn money on the bank's money and it's really an arbitrage between interest rates, right, it's how much is the bank charging me to borrow the money versus how much can I earn on that money. And so we've been, you know we've been really fortunate. You know, over the last two decades I have tremendous positive arbitrage on the on those premium dollars and our clients have enjoyed tremendous policy cash value increase, which then they have been able to borrow on the back end, which is one of the preferred ways to do it to borrow your own money out and pay yourself back, right, right so. So the various flavors of being able to borrow that money. Some financing scenarios where you sign a personal loan at the bank and you provide collateral and the bank can call you at any time and say, hey, you need to increase that collateral because markets have moved against you and we need more money to shore up our policy, cash value. And then there are those type of policies out there Now the newer designs. The financing scenario says hey, for the first five years you put up half and we'll put up half, so let's use a $50,000 premium. So for the first five years, david, you put up $25,000 a year and we, the bank, will put up $25,000 a year and at the end of five years your commitment is done. You don't have to put any more money into this policy. But for the next five years so from years six to 10, we'll put in the $50,000 on your behalf. We'll add that additional premium dollars on your behalf. So it works out typically between where the bank puts in about just approximate numbers. It depends on age and health. Well, the bank might put in 70% of the premium dollars, you might put in 30. And then at the end of 15 years, so a five year period, a five year. So the first five year period you share in depositing premiums. The second five years the bank puts in the premium dollars, and then the third five years that money just sits there and marinate and percolates and hopefully continues to grow like it has over the last couple of decades. And then at the end of 15 years the bank will say, okay, we're going to take our premium dollars back now with the interest that has accrued. You get everything else left in the policy. So that is an extremely popular scenario that has worked incredibly well for our clients and it's amazing the wealth that can be accumulated inside these policies to access later on, either through withdrawal while the client's alive or typically what's more effective is a policy loan while the client's alive, a loan that the client presumably will never pay back, and when the client passes away it just comes out of the death benefit. So here's the beauty. The beauty is these more, these newer, more effective designs. The client signs no loan for the bank's premium contribution. The client puts up no collateral for the bank's premium contribution. The policy itself is all the bank needs, and the way of collateral Got you. The bank has what's called a collateral assignment against it. Well, it's all sees, all yours. David: Yep, and then so would this be like a 10 pay policy, like there's contractually 10 years of payments. Is that typically what it is, or is that payment duration dependent on market forces? What's? Mark:the tip that 10 year structure is the typical structure. The only reason why it would be different is if the client wanted it to be different. Really couldn't be shorter. David: Because of the modified endowment contract. Mark: Yeah, well said, you can only get so much cash into those things in a short period of time. So that's the whole. Yes, to front load the deposits as quickly as you can. Well, not violating any tax code. Tamar defer, so yeah, so that's exactly right. So it must be 10 years. You could fund it in five years, but then you wouldn't get the other five years of the bank's contribution Exactly Right and you'd likely hit the Mech parameters if you just funded it for five years, right? It's possible. Yeah, it depends on depending on health and age. Yeah, and because these policies are flexible, you can always adjust the death benefit to make it work. Yeah, but the real magic there is in the bank's share of contribution to that policy. Yeah, five years you share. You put money in. The bank puts money in the second five years only. The bank puts money in the third five years. It just continues to grow and at the end of 15 years the bank takes their money out and it's all yours. There's sums that have been accumulated in these policies has been astronomical, really. It's a very effective way to do it without having to commit you know collateral or sign a bank loan. Yeah, the bank uses the policy as the entire collateral required. David: Yeah, no, it's really an interesting approach. You'd mentioned how effective that had been the last 20 years because of that positive arbitrage between interest rates and earnings. So what are the thinking? How's that? Mark: going to change. David: Now that we're in a higher interest rate environment and, at least for the time being, a lower earnings environment, it seems like that arbitrage has flipped the other way. How does that still work then, in that scenario? Mark: Well, here's what we know. We know that some of the smartest people out there in the finance world work for insurance companies and banks. Right, these people? They don't lose money. Insurance companies don't lose money typically, at least not in the life insurance business and to my knowledge, no banks have ever lost money financing any of these policies. So really, that just leaves the policy, the holder, right, the person who's going to benefit from the actual policy itself and their heirs. And I can tell you this the insurance companies they don't underwrite things that are not going to work and the banks will not invest their capital in things that are not going to work. Yes, interest rates have risen precipitously and nobody knows in the near term what will happen, because it's everything's a speculation. Today, you know, the expectation is maybe they're going to bump rates up one or two more times before they start reversing course and hopefully by the end of 2024, they see rates coming down. But it's all speculation, it's all just what we hear from the experts. But long term, I can tell you, over rolling 10 year periods still, what's one of the safest, what's one of the most consistent places that you can have capital. You know great dividend paying stocks. You know the wonderful corporations of America. You're the small business owner who is competent, effective and willing to assume some risk of owning his own business has always been a tremendous way to do it. Rental, real estate, you know, other than those three things, what do you really have? So you have to deploy capital somewhere and, that being the case, having and, by the way, the type of policies that have proven to be most effective or effective today in this area. You know these indexed universal life policies. The underlying investments are tied to an investment index. Most typical ones are the S&P 500 and NASDAQ. You know, even in times of tremendous pressure on these markets, every academic will tell you and everybody who's in the securities business will say, it's just hard to beat the long term returns on America's best companies. They continue to grow for a reason. David: Yeah, well, that's why I think it was Warren Buffett that advised his heirs to just put all the money in index funds, because when you look at the cost and performance, and yeah I mean, it turns out that it's really hard to beat the market over a long period of time. Mark: We did have that thing called the lost decade. You know, just look at where we are today from then. Yeah, look at where the market sits today from where it was in 2008 and 2009. It's just staggering, right. So these type of policies, it's like it's a great marriage because you can participate in the upward climb of the underlying markets, of the S&P 500 or NASDAQ or whatever next, or in these particular policies. You can participate in that, but you don't participate in the loss, and by that I mean the effect of the market can only be positive on your policy. These policies are protected against a loss due to a market value adjustment, due to a down market. Your policy, your policies, are going to earn zero or some positive return and you're not going to lose money because the market went down. Right, hold out a negative market value adjustment, a downward market, a guarantee against a negative market value adjustment and B just to re-go, there's our video back and B. They know you're going to pass away at some point and the worst case scenario is they're going to collect when you pass away. Yeah, if you die in less than 15 years, they'll collect. That's correct. That's correct. So it's a win for the banks and, of course, the insurance companies always make money, sure. So the downside when we look at this is what else would we do with our money? The opportunity costs, yeah. What else would we do with our money if we didn't have it invested into America's greatest companies, if we didn't invest in our own business and our own abilities, or an investment in real estate? And if you remember, in 2008 and 2009, the stock market and real estate plummeted at the same time. Right, it was the first time what we call the uncoupling of those assets. Typically, real estate goes up and the market goes down. Market goes up, real estate Typically, there's some, there's their link in some way shape. Well, this time they were linked. All right, they both went down dramatically. David: Yeah, okay. So I can't believe how the time has flown by. I've got just a couple more questions before we wrap up. What do you wish you knew when you were 25? Wow, I wish. Or if you could go back and here's the way I meant to phrase it If you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 year old self, knowing what you know now what advice? And that you give yourself Confidence. Mark: Okay, what do you mean? Knowledge? Well, have confidence in yourself. Okay, have confidence. Have confidence in your ability to learn. Always learn, continue to learn and expand your mind. Don't draw yourself into this cone of specificity. This world has changed so many times. Have the confidence to be flexible. Have the confidence to step out and do different things. Expand your knowledge. And then the other thing is you oftentimes don't know what you don't know right, and sometimes it only comes with experience and the wisdom comes from the experience that you've been. You know those experiences that you've endured along the way. Don't let that deter you. Dick Vitale has a great new book out called Never Give Up. Yeah, it's kind of. It's kind of his story about persevering. I'm fortunate enough to be in that book. Oh, you are. I have one of the chapters in that book. I co-authored one of the chapters along with Dick Vitale, so it's it's. It's a little bit about my story of never giving up. So have the confidence. I didn't know that I'd be able to do all the things I can do today when I was 20 or 25 years old. Okay. David: Just don't know. Sure, no, that's great. I love it. Well, as we wrap up, is there anything that I didn't ask you, that you wish I had asked you? Mark: Well, I think we covered a couple of extremely important topics. You know, we do have three other entities in addition to Echelon Virtual Family Office, echelon Asset Protection, echelon Resource Teams. So there are a couple other companies that we could talk about at another time, if your audience is interested. David: Okay, well, that sounds great. Well, mark, I really appreciate you taking time out this morning to talk to me. I really love your story. I love the advice you give to yourself. I really enjoyed learning more about this more modern structure of premium finance, where there's maybe not quite as much leverage upside, but there's a lot less downside for the participant in terms of no personal guarantee and no collateral posting required. So thank you for that insight and just for your time and your enthusiasm for what you do. So thank you. Mark: David, thanks so much. It's been a pleasure being your guest today and I wish you well in your podcast, continued success. Thanks, mark. Special Guest: Mark Wade.

In today's episode of the IC-DISC Show, we chat with Jerry Vaughn, founder and president of J Gault, a company revolutionizing business financing. Jerry explains how J Gault enables Main Street businesses to reap corporate credit opportunities by leveraging their EINs and NOT having to provide a personal guarantee. He shares insightful stories of entrepreneurs who, thanks to J Gault, secured lower interest rates and increased funding despite lacking revenue history or business plans. As Jerry describes, J Gault's approach prepares companies for economic uncertainty while ensuring they emerge stronger. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to scale up or a small business owner pursuing growth, this discussion with Jerry Vaughn illuminates the transformative potential available by accessing business credit innovatively.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS The episode features a conversation with Jerry Vaughn, the founder and president of J Galt, a company revolutionizing business financing. Jerry explains how Main Street companies can leverage their Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) to build corporate credit and access competitive rates. Real-life examples, such as Randy, a contractor from North Carolina, and a real estate investor from Texas, demonstrate how J Galt has helped transform businesses by improving their funding. Jerry emphasizes that J Galt's approach is not just about securing funding, but also preparing businesses for unpredictable events and ensuring their resilience. One of the major benefits of J Gault's approach is allowing smaller companies to avoid personal guarantees when accessing corporate credit opportunities. The company offers a membership program that provides lifetime support, including cash flow management services, business valuation assistance, and exit strategy planning. There are rules for "fundability" that businesses need to adhere to, such as having a business bank account, a registered phone number, a website, and a corporate email address. Building company credit on the EIN number and avoiding personal guarantees is a secret to accessing cash flow, according to Jerry. Jerry mentions that the mission of J Gault goes beyond merely selling—it's about serving and educating entrepreneurs and small business owners. The episode emphasizes that just because a business is labeled small doesn't mean it has to stay that way. With the right financing strategies, businesses can scale and grow. LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About J.Galt Finance Suite GUEST Jerry VaughnAbout Jerry TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) David: Hi, this is David Spray and welcome to another episode of the IC-DISC show. I had a great guest on today, jerry Vaughn, who's the founder and president of J Gault, and for those of you who are big and Rand fans, you may recognize that name. It's inspired by the character John Gault from the book Atlas Shrug by Ayn Rand. So J Gault is a disruptor in the business financing world and basically they allow main street companies privately held, closely held, small to medium sized companies to get access to the same corporate credit opportunities that large public companies have. And one of the biggest benefits of this approach is it allows smaller companies to get rid of the personal guarantee. I know for many of my clients that's one of their big frustrations is they really don't want to be personally guaranteeing business credit, business debt. Oftentimes it's because their spouse isn't keen on using their house as collateral for a business loan. So it's a great episode. We talk about a variety of different things some stories about customers of theirs. They have a membership program and it's really a great service that I find to be really intriguing. So I hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did. Good morning, jerry. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Jerry: I'm doing fantastic, David. I appreciate you having me on today. David: Well, my pleasure. So where are you calling in from today? What part of the world are you in? Jerry: A big metropolis of Indianapolis, Indiana. David: Ah well, one of your suburbs, I think, has the most roundabouts of any city in the country, carmel. Jerry: Yes, Carmel. Carmel in California and Carmel in Indiana just like the candy you would eat. David: Sure, have you been through any of those famous Carmel roundabouts? Jerry: Actually, where I live, carmel Fisher's, nobleville it's the city sister city is a roundabout. Yes, I actually like them. At first I was like what is this? But actually it moves traffic and sufficient as long as the people in front of you know understand. David: Yeah, I actually heard a podcast with the mayor of Carmel, because something like Carmel accounts for more than 50% of all the roundabouts in the US. It's a crazy number. And he was talking about all the benefits and he said the only drawback. He said there's a few times during the day, like peak traffic times, where it's arguably a little less efficient. But he said the other 23 and a half hours a day it's far more efficient because you never have to wait for a stoplight. And he talked to me have you ever been driving in the middle of the night and you come up to a stoplight and there's no traffic within a mile any direction? But technically you're supposed to wait for the lights to turn. Jerry: That is correct technically. David: Technically correct, I find. If it's three o'clock in the morning, I ask myself have I had any drinks this evening? And if I have, then I'm going to wait for the lights to turn. If I hadn't had any drinks that night, then how much trouble can I get into? Jerry: That is exactly right. I do the same thing. I'm like, well, there's nobody anywhere, you sit there and it feels like it's been 10 minutes, probably been a couple. But I'm like, really, why am I sitting here to stoplight? David: I know so are you a native of Indiana? Jerry: I am. I was actually born in Hoopston, illinois, but we grew up in a western city in Indiana, so almost to the border. But I've grown up as a Hoosier most of my life, okay. David: Nice Bye, folks, and fun Bye. Get into your business. So the name of the company resonated with me immediately because there's a character in one of my all-time favorite books by the name of John Galt and there's a famous phrase from the book called who is John Galt? Now, is this just coincidence, this JGalt, or is there any connection? Jerry: Well, I'm glad that you brought that up because it doesn't stand for Jerry Galt, I can tell you that. So we couldn't use John Galt because it's obviously patent and has a huge following. But it is off the premise of the book Atlas Shrugged by Anne Rand. So who is John Galt? The whole story of the government takeover, small business and controls and regulations and all of that and that fish, you know book that was written by a Russian immigrant that understood communism, came over. She saw it in the 1940s and she said what is going on? I'm saying the same stuff right here. So she wrote that fictional book in the 50s, as you know. But it's kind of a big deal and it's coming out and there's a big following and people get it. But yeah, you're exactly right, it is John Galt. David: So it's probably actually not a bad filtering process, because I find that there's three types of people in the world. There's people who've read Atlas Shrugged and think it's one of the greatest artistic works of all time. There's folks who've read it and think she's the devil and it's the worst thing ever written. And then there's folks who've never heard of it. So I find that people tend to follow one of three camps. There's not many people that are like yeah, I think I read it, I think I vaguely remember something about it. So it's probably a good self-selection process, right? Because the people who read it and think it's the most evil book ever written probably aren't the mindset of your ideal customer. Jerry: I'm guessing it's pretty close right, but it's surprising on how many people know, even myself. As we name the company, you know your particular activation system in your head, just like when we buy a car. Right then, after we buy a car, you start driving around like man. Look at all the people that bought the car I have this is great following my lead. Now, they were already there. I see who is John Galt stickers on the back of bumpers and on the back of their windshield. I've just it blows me away. But you're exactly right. Most of the entrepreneurs, because we are working only with main street business owners. Okay, small and medium-sized companies, not the wall street companies. So those are the people we're serving and most of them all of us that own businesses and have done that get the challenges and the works and we're just trying to do the best we can to serve the communities and then build a profitable and a great company with our services or products. David: Sure no, I like it. So her book, the Fountainhead, I have a slight preference for, like I mean they're my two favorite books, you know fictional books ever written, for sure. But I have a slight preference for the Fountainhead but only because the individualistic aspect. I assume you've read the Fountainhead too yes the individualistic aspect of the Fountainhead just resonates a little more. There's a great line in there where work has to sell an architectural commission to a committee and the committee all wanted to make changes to it and his sponsors, like they're minor, go for it. As you, you know, recall, he like can't do it. But he had a great line in there where he was talking, I think, to his, his buddy, his Irish construction buddy, explaining why he didn't get it and he said you know, I've never sold a project to a committee and that really resonated because that's how I've always been in my career. It's like you know, if I meet the entrepreneur and I have a conversation and it's a fit, good things happen. But when it's a committee, I don't seem to have much, much luck. Jerry: I'm glad you brought up this. One of my favorite things and that's when I you know it's amazing, it's. I agree with you. Both those books are in my top favorite fictional books ever written. But I think there's a lot of great content, especially for the entrepreneur, of what you have to do. I mean, if you're not a disruptor, if you kind of stay under a ceiling and you're like, hey, I'm not going to change where you work, I don't know what your thoughts are, but I kind of say that if you're an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur, normally you're kind of a freak. Right, you're looked at as a freak in the industry and I think that's well put on the committee. I'm not here to appease the committees, I'm here to disrupt the industry on how Main Street and business owners will get funding, not just through how the traditional style is. So that's not our company. So I think the whole Atlas shrugged and Fountainhead there, even though they're fictional books, there's a lot of great content and, I think, some kind of rules of engagement for the entrepreneur. David: Yeah, I was just before this. I had a call with a colleague and he really had very little familiarity with Ann Rahn's work and early heard of it, so he had just bought the audible for Fountainhead. So I'd recommend you start with Fountainhead, so we'll see how that goes. Jerry: That's excellent. David: So talk to me. So what are you guys doing to help those you know privately held, closely held you call them Main Street businesses. You know what's kind of your sweet spot, revenue wise? I get it's probably a broad one, but like for us, like 90% of our clients have revenues between 10 million and 100 million like what's your sort of sweet spot where most of your clients fall in? Jerry: I'd say 250,000 to 450 million a year. David: What if you had to narrow it down a little bit? Go ahead. Jerry: Your sweet spot today, david, is probably somewhere in that. I'm going to say 10 to 25 million is our sweet spot. You get to the 100 and 250 million dollar companies. They do have a lot of cash flow and they've got profits and they've got, you know, banks that give them lines of credit even though they're personally guaranteed. So it's a little harder to get in the door. But we're getting in the door with those now and they're seeing what's going on. But our sweet spot today would be that 10 to 25 million. David: Okay, that is helpful. And the reason I narrowed you down here is because our audience who CPAs and attorneys who have clients, when you say 250,000 to 450 million, it doesn't quite resonate. When you say 10 to 25, now all of a sudden they can think of their clients, or in the 10 to 25 range. So talk to me and you kind of touched on it talk to me about this whole personal guarantee thing and there's probably, I'm guessing, some history behind it. So what's the story? And talk to me about this personal guarantee thing. Jerry: Yeah. So when we say we're disruptors and I just want to make sure that your audience understands you know the 250 to 450. When you look at your EIN that tax number that you get from the IRS that's just like your SSN to building personal credit. Your EIN can build company credit. Your company has its own credit score and its own report and so does your personal social security number. So when you give that broad scope just for your audience, you get someone that's just starting out with a startup or they're cranking out 20,000 a month. It just gets hard to try to get funding without why bank revenue statements, tax returns, business plans, revenue looking at your personal credit just to try to get the operating budget to be able to run your company and then to grow and scale and seize opportunities to grow and scale, because we all know as entrepreneurs that when you have an opportunity in front of it, it's not like you can plan and then just hit exactly when it happens. When you need to seize an opportunity, you don't have 60 to 90 days to qualify for it. So we look at what Jay Galt's main premise is and our advantage and really how we impact that entrepreneur in the world is what we do is we focus on the EIN and to build credit on that. It's actually very simple. Has nothing to do with revenue, has nothing to do with what your financials, your tax returns or how long you've been in business. It's just about taking that tax number and making it fundable so you can get access to corporate vending and lending, and your rates are typically 0 to 5%. I mean, we're getting people vehicle and equipment loans at 1.9%. Corporate credit cards are 0% on three to 12 month terms, right, not just on balance transfers. So that's the power. That's how your Wal-Mart's and Googles and Amazons and your Apples of the world are able to do what you and I, david, have no problem with paying interest, as long as it's a positive arbitrage. What we can't do is pay 30% to 50% in interest when we're only making 25% to 35% in money. So how you flip the script is you got to get access and get your company fundable so you can get access to banks' monies to leverage that at better rates in terms, so you can grow in scale without going into what Debt risk or paying too much in interest where it's not a profitable proposition. We see that every day and I know you do, david, right. People get in these small little bridge loans and if they don't get them paid off they'll come out or close on your mortgage. David: And then the other aspect of it then is when the underwriting is done on the company's EIN, there's less of a need for personal guarantee right, because they're under the business Right Typically that doesn't even come into play your credit score, your personal inquiries or what your credit score looks like. Jerry: That has nothing to do with building company credit is vanilla. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, you're a Democrat or Republican, what your religion is, because it's a tax number. There's no bias on that number. Where that can come into play on your personal credit, right when you walk into a bank. But it doesn't have that when you're looking at a company's index, because a company is not a man or a woman or a Democrat or Republican or a certain type of it. It's where your Social Security is tied to an individual. Your EIN, that tax number, is tied to the company. David: Okay, Well, that sounds good and is the motivation for your customers trying to get rid of the personal guarantee or trying to get better interest rates on borrowing. Jerry: Most of the time they get tired of the personal guarantee business. Right, you're married, you're watched like you're not putting the house on the line, right, exactly so if you want money, they always have you check a box and do a little initial where, hey, we're going to give you the money because we believe in you and you believe in your business. We just need you to check the box and this is just a what. This is just a normality. But if something would happen we know that's going to happen. If something would happen, you understand the banks right. Since we're giving you money is we'll have access to your 401ks, your kids college funds, your second home, your cars, your current home, your family's living underneath. That's just a technicality. So a lot of them want to get out of the personal guarantee business or they don't grow in scale because they don't want to risk tying up their personal assets to leverage to their company's funding. So that's the first thing. But getting corporate capital on your EIN, you're going to get 10, 20, 30, a hundred times the amount of money on your company. Then you're ever going to get on your SSN because you're only going to stretch that personal credit bubble so far, because then they're looking at underwriting risk on you personally. They look at the company's revenue, but the company has nothing to do with it. If you don't have a corporate credit. They're always going to look at your EIN first, but there's usually nothing there, so they always revert what Back to revenue bank statements, underwriting risk, ar balances, invoicing. So there's a lot that goes into that. So you can see how complex that gets and how it can. What limit you on getting and seizing opportunities and then, more importantly, getting better rates in terms of run the operation, so you can leverage the bank's money because, david, you and I get this right. I'd rather use the bank's money than my money. I'd rather take my money and put it in vehicles that does what with my money. David: No, that really makes a lot of sense. So what's the disruption you're doing is basically bringing this Wall Street credit access to Main Street businesses. Is that? Jerry: education Right. First thing we do is I was asking an owner. I said, hey, what's your personal credit score? And they always answer right, 720. What's your company's credit score? What do you think I get most of the time? David: Right, no idea what are you talking about. Jerry: Right. So we have a seven step blueprint, but we're all about education. We're not here to sell anything, we're here to serve. So, just like in the whole Atlas Shrug with J Galt, john Galt, right, we're here to serve and connect with people and give them education on things that they don't know. It's not the CPAs or the accounting firms fall. It's not the bankers, it's not the tax attorneys. That's not their job of what they do. What J Galt does is we do the same thing. People understand personal credit. They just don't understand company credit and how easy it is to get there. There's just a secret set of rules. So our job is to educate you on the seven step blueprint of how you can get your company fundable, so you, as the owner, can survive storms. Right, you don't have to worry about the four things that can take the legs out of a business economy. You and I do. We have control over economy, david. Nope, how about inflation? Nope, does that impact us? Sure, sure it does. How about a government regulation? David: No control, almost no control, I mean in theory. If you're part of a lobbying group, you know you might fit very little. And what's the fourth one? Jerry: Yeah, but then you're going to have to have some capital to have some of these lobbyists for it, right, they're not free, sure. And then the second thing is just a you ever. I don't know if you've ever experienced one of these at all, david, but you ever heard of a pandemic? David: I think I have. I think we had one of those like a hundred years ago. I heard about it 1918, I think we had one. Yeah, I think it was, if we had anything close. Jerry: I know you and I have never experienced one of those lately right. But, even on that it's a cripple of business. Some it's a lot of businesses actually did a really great job. Sure, a lot that it really affected there's over. You know, 60% of businesses haven't even made it back to pre-pandemic revenues today because they raise the prices, inflation's there. I mean you've got a lot of things going against you. So how do you survive that and how do you get through those things? How do you prepare for the storms and survive the storms? And it's really about if it makes sense for the business on you moving forward and getting to the goals or solving the challenges, but it's really about getting fundability on your company. That's the answer to that question or challenge. It's the most vexing problem with small and medium-sized businesses today is getting cash blow. David: Okay. So I love stories. I think they educate well. Do you have a story or two of, like, a client of yours that you could talk about anonymously and maybe kind of set up what their scenario was before they met you? What's their scenario like now that you can be mined? Jerry: Yes, we have a guy that's in the contracting business out of North Carolina. We'll call him Randy, okay, but he came to us and we actually approached him and we had a conversation. But he's been in business for almost eight years doing well, has access to his local Chevy dealer, his local bank, where he deposits his money, and his credit score wasn't bad. He said, oh, I know how to do this. I have a Dun and Bradstreet number, right, that's the largest credit bureau, like TransUnion is on our consumer side, Dun and Bradstreet is on the business credit side because there's business credit reporting agencies and there's personal credit reporting agencies, right? Well, personal credit reporting agencies nothing to do with your company. It's the business credit reporting agencies to have everything to do with your company. So that's another tip that I'll give your viewers out there and listeners today. Right, Okay, so, but with Randy as we were having the conversation, with Randy as we were having the conversation, David, he understood it, but he really didn't, because where he was going and putting his deposits in, he just thought this the way it was and he actually was doing pretty well. He had a credit line recommendation about 67,000 on his company. We ran his company credit report After four months and just getting his EIN fundable the same Chevy dealer that he's been buying his vehicles for the last eight years. He's been getting anywhere between a nine and 15% rate. Wow, After four months, with Jay Galdin focusing on his company EIN that tax number he would walk into the same Chevy dealer and got his lowest vehicle right About a $51,000 van for 1.9% interest rate. Wow, and that's impactful. He looked at me and he goes Jerry, I can buy five of these vans now instead of just one at a time, right, Because that interest rate is so impactful. So it's just about he's still going to pay interest, but 9% or 1 or 2%, which one's better for a company, right? So that's one success story. And that was just after four months of it's all intentional work. It doesn't take a lot, by the way, just so if you're asking. It only takes two to three hours a month to do this. I didn't say a day or a week per month, but it's like going to the gym, David. I mean, you're a healthy guy, right? You can sign up for a membership just because we're paying for a membership to the gym. Do we get six pack abs and do we get a healthy heart just because we pay a membership for a gym? David: Unfortunately not. Jerry: Or is there a thing you just take three pills a day and you can get physically healthy there? David: you go, that's what I'm looking for. Yeah, that's what we're selling today. Jerry: We're living an immediate gratification world, right, we want food today. We got DoorDash. We want same day shipping. We want our stuff today, and that's the world we live in. But to get access to that it does take the hustle and muscle. It doesn't take a lot, but you're going to have to do the work. It's just like taking a walk every day for 30 minutes is so good for our health and our heart and it's hard for us to find time to schedule it. But just like this, you have to put in the work if you're going to get your company f*****g and funded right. So that's one story. Second story is we have a real estate investor guy down in Texas and he's been in business for over 20 years. I mean he's a Texan, I mean you know Texas, I mean it's the Republic of Texas, I mean it's his own country. I mean you know what I'm saying there, right? I do, I do. I know you have some clients down there as well. So when I look at Texas, this guy had really a big ego, been doing a great job, very successful. He has over 105 properties, okay. So he's a big deal, okay. I'm not going to mention his revenue because some of my taggamer I was just saying, here he is. So he came to us and he couldn't get funded and he thought our program was full of it. Right, he says this is just sounds too good to be true. I don't. I've been doing this. I've got bankers, I've got a fractional CFO, I've got this figured out. I don't see your help. So then we got into asking about personal credit and company credit as company's credit score and he thought he had a good company credit score. So we ran the report, went through it. Here's the thing he had some blemishes, but here was the big problem on fundability. He'd been in business for 20 years and moved to a lot of different locations and it filled out a lot of paperwork. We're all busy. When you're an entrepreneur and you've got a hundred and over a hundred properties, I mean you're busy. Sure, you've got a lot of stuff going on. So he would have filled out the Dunn and Bradstreet and he put WM period with the secretary of state. He was listed as William. Well, you and I know that WM, period and William mean the same thing as humans, right, right, your cross references WM period and William. What does it say? A mismatch and it's an automatic decline. He also didn't have his phone number. Listen to this, folks your phone number can't be a cell phone number. It has to be a landline or a VoIP service. Now, the VoIPs can be what. It can be transferred to your cell phone number David, let me ask you a question When's the last time you use 411 or your area code in 5551212 to look up a business number 30 years, do you know? If your business landline or void number is not registered with 411 National Directory, it's an automatic decline for corporate funding. David: I did not know that. Jerry: So that's another secret rule. So this is some education that David and I are providing to just things like that Having a website or landing page, having a corporate email address. Your number has to be listed. You have to have a business bank account. There's just a little thing. And why is that, folks? Over 80% of small businesses fail in the first five years because of cashflow. Well, if you don't look like a real company, you don't have a phone number, you don't have the business bank account, merchant services, you don't have a corporate email it's a PO box. You can't use a PO box. Well, I have a UPS store, david. It's a fancy PO box. It's still a place where you don't live and they can't access you. So a home address can be used, even though I don't recommend it, because now they'll know where your family lives and lives the whole entire world. But you can do things and get systems and processes put in place. It's all about fundability. On the company, no different than you are personally, it's just a lot easier to get personal credit because there's over 4 million people using it to finance their lifestyle. However, on businesses, they tell us that we can be protected from lawsuits as a limited liability corporation and we'll get funding. Here's the only problem. We never signed up for the credit bureaus that report our business payments so we can build fundability with the corporate vendors and vendors, right? No one told us that. So when you go to deposit your money in the bank, david, what happens? They try to get you money. They look at you and they just said, hey, here's a business credit card, we can get you a line of credit, but we just need you to do what with it personally. Gary, you got to get it fundable and you got to find lenders and vendors that report. And this Texan okay that once we got his name right, got his phone number listed and he had a couple of blemishes that he wasn't aware of we were able to get him all of these commercial real estate loans with no guarantors, not leveraging his other properties. He was able to get corporate millions of dollars in corporate in less than a year, all on his company now, which is a couple of fundability rules and a couple of secrets that he wasn't available on how to turn his company in standing on his own two legs financially just by the fundability rules, the corporate credit bureaus and using vendors to report in the lining up so he can get access to the same things he was doing now, but he was personally guaranteeing everything leveraging his other properties or his name to continue to grow his real estate company. David: Yeah, and I imagine does that also mean that in theory, if he wanted to, if each project if he wanted to have as a separate entity, he could avoid that cross collateralization issue. Yes, because that's the other problem I understand there is that all 105 of those properties are all cross collateralized. So if he has one project that somehow just goes belly up or property that it risks the other 104 properties Correct. Jerry: And if you get it on your company, then it doesn't put that into play, because when you're using personal credit, they're always going to leverage those. Because you are, you're putting those other properties as a the guarantee against the loan for that new property. If it does go belly up or doesn't do as well as you thought, that happens, right. When you're in real estate, I mean, most time you have wins but there are losses. You don't have to put your other properties in jeopardy. Do those things on corporate credit. It's no different than if you guys remember Donald Trump, right? He opened up that huge casino, used $3 billion of the bank's money and then after two years it failed. I don't think Donald Trump wants anything to fail. He doesn't invest in things that are going to fail Just didn't work out because of economy, location and where the world was at the time. Well, he was able to walk away from that. Did it affect his personal credit? Nope. Did he have to give up any of his personal assets in that deal? I doubt it. No. Two weeks later, he bought a golf resort in Doral, florida, right, sure? So, without affecting anything with that. So that's the power of corporations. No different than I'll tell you another story. Remember Home Depot and Lowe's and LA Fitness? Right, those are all Wall Street corporations, right? Stock L's stock owned, and all of that During the pandemic. They were able to be open. You can only have 50 people in the store right, they were able to do that. But what about the local hardware guy in town? They had to be shut down. The local mom and pop fitness place? They had to be shut down. So there's a difference and that's why we talk about this. Jay Galt, we're here to give the power and advantage back to the main street business owners by building fundability so their corporation has the cash flow, the access because this is all about getting ready access, cash and capital for you to take on those storms, to survive those storms and to grow and scale. Walmart, sam Walton, would not have been the world's largest retailer if he didn't figure out corporate credit. He would still be in Benton, arkansas if that was the case. So now, obviously, then he went stock, went public as an IPO, so that made it a moral difference for him to get there. But he would have never got to that position if he wasn't able to scale that. Take advantage of the back in the 80s. Remember when he took down Kmart? Right, but it was through cash capital, corporate funding that allowed him to do the advertising and get belly up and take on the big giant. Now he's the big giant. So just consider that that just because you're labeled a small business owner doesn't mean you have to be small. What if you wanted to franchise? What if you wanted to grow and scale? What if you wanted to buy your own property and land and build your own manufacturing facility, get bigger into the corporate real estate market, be a truck driver and become a regional or national player? If those are things that you want to do and you just have an access, you're having problems accessing cash flow. The secret is building company credit on the tax number, that EIN number and getting out of the personal guarantee in the personal inquiry game. David: No, it makes sense so well. Thank you for those several stories. That illustrates it. So how does Jay Galt come into the picture? What's your role in helping these companies other than education? I'm sure there's more to it than that. How does your service work? Jerry: We're a SaaS company, which stands for Software as a Service. We have a robust platform that has seven-step blueprint inside of it that walks you step by step. But, more importantly, we have a white glove concierge service, kind of a do-it-for-you. But there's certain things you have to do. We can't use your bank lines of credit, your credit cards, and you don't want me to do that in your business, but we help you fix blemishes where to go to fix them. So we provide a coaching service that goes behind the SaaS platform so you're successful in your journey. So imagine getting a dedicated coach. They're not out of the Philippines or India. That's great for customer service. I think All of our credit analysts and our finance analysts. We have a whole back office advising team that helps our members. So we are a membership. There's a one-time fee that you would pay and when you come into that you get lifetime support from Galt through our SaaS product, the Getting Business Credit. So you have access to all of the corporate lenders and vendors that actually report. And our secret sauce is we won't work with your Put-Em-In Our Business Finance Suite unless they report to the credit bureaus. That'll help you for a robot, mobile and credit and if they don't show us the underwriting guidelines, because it's important to know what boxes must be checked before you apply for a loan, because in the corporate vending and lending world, if you get denied, you have to wait six to 12 months before you can reapply and that can really slow down momentum when you try to grow a business. So you don't have. That's not how consumer credit works, but that's how corporate credit works. So we have that. We also help with cash flow management. We really define ourselves as cash flow management experts getting you access and leveraging banks money at better rates and terms, understanding cash flow so you don't get into what expense or debt trouble, and then giving you a business valuation. David, this is the power. 98% of small business owners have never had a business valuation or appraisal done. So they're in the head and heart. They know what their company's worth, but you'll know exactly what it's worth, how to ensure it properly and where to invest your time. You'll get clear, sound facts about your company so you can invest your dollars and your time in the right parts to continue to grow the asset that you're building and properly protecting it, allowing you to do what Plan for an exit strategy and those are typically $10,000 on average. We provide that every year to our members with JGault. So we're really here with our three columns of getting corporate financing, access to lenders and vendors that report, understanding your cash flow management as you grow in scale, and then having your business valuation so you know the value, where to invest in it and to plan and know exactly if you want to sell it, when is the time to restructure, when is the time to sell it or if you're passing it down to one of your kids to run. Eventually you want to make it a generational company. Now you'll have corporate credit belt where they can walk into the seat, you can ride off into your retirement years and know that the corporate funding is going to be there for generations to come. So the legacy you can leave behind by building that company we passed on to generations, your kids, the grandkids and so forth and so on. David: No, it sounds great. So what should people do? Is their next step? If they're interested in learning more, Go to the website. What's kind of your first entry point for potential new customers? Jerry: I would highly recommend that you do that. David, I'm fine with you sharing my for your audience. It depends on how big that audience is my personal but I would go to jgaltio. That's J-G-A-L-T. No period, Just jgaltio and then you can check out our services and what we do and if there's more questions, there's a place where you can connect and have a private consultation if this is something you want to talk more about. David: Okay, that sounds great and that's jgaltio. Jerry: Yes. David: Okay, what is we're wrapping up here? Is there anything? I didn't ask you that you wish I had asked you? Jerry: Wow, that's a great question. You did a great job. I mean, obviously I can understand why you have a successful podcast out there, david. Well, you're too nice. Oh, no worries, I mean, you've been doing this a long time. The only thing that I would share with American entrepreneurs out there today is we're really passionate, and just me as an owner, my goal is not to sell something. I have four companies. The only reason why Cole and my partner and I started jgalt was to serve and educate. But there's more than education. It's all about impact. So if there's something where you're wanting to grow an asset and you want to get there, we're here to have an intelligent conversation, a consultation, if you will, about where you're at, where you're wanting to go, and about 80% you didn't ask this. So does everybody want jgalt? Of course we're going to think everybody needs jgalt right, it's our company. Same thing with yours, david. I'm sure you feel the same way. If you're exporting products, you will find a better guy right Outside the country. So we're really great at what we do. But only about 80% of the companies we talk to every week take advantage of jgalt services, because it's not for everyone. So there are depends on where you're at and what you're trying to accomplish. That's why we're kind of looking at ourselves as the doctors of business credit. It doesn't make sense for everyone. It may not make sense today, or it may not make sense at all If you're just have a side hustle or something in your house that you're just doing is just to make some additional income to pay off debt or something like that. We're truly looking at companies that are looking to grow and scale and really be disruptors, like us, in the product or the services that they're offering across the United States. David: Well, thank you for adding to that. So, as we wrap up, that's Jerry Vaughn with jgaltio Jerry, this has really been fun and I think there's a lot of great value that your company provides for small to medium size privately held companies. So I really appreciate you taking time to come on the show and share some information. Jerry: Yeah, you're very welcome. It was a pleasure to be on it, david, so thank you so much again for having me on my pleasure.

David Colebatch, CEO at Tidal.cloud, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how Tidal is demystifying cloud migration strategy. David and Corey discuss the pros and cons of a hybrid cloud migration strategy, and David reveals the approach that Tidal takes to ensure they're setting their customers up for success. David also discusses the human element to cloud migration initiatives, and how to overcome roadblocks when handling the people side of migrations. Corey and David also expand on all the capabilities cloud migration unlocks, and David explains how that translates to a distributed product team approach.About DavidDavid is the CEO & Founder of Tidal.  Tidal is empowering businesses to transform from traditional on-premises IT-run organizations to lean-agile-cloud powered machines.Links Referenced: Tidal.cloud: https://tidal.cloud Twitter: https://twitter.com/dcolebatch LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcolebatch/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey:  LANs of the late 90's and early 2000's were a magical place to learn about computers, hang out with your friends, and do cool stuff like share files, run websites & game servers, and occasionally bring the whole thing down with some ill-conceived software or network configuration. That's not how things are done anymore, but what if we could have a 90's style LAN experience along with the best parts of the 21st century internet? (Most of which are very hard to find these days.) Tailscale thinks we can, and I'm inclined to agree. With Tailscale I can use trusted identity providers like Google, or Okta, or GitHub to authenticate users, and automatically generate & rotate keys to authenticate devices I've added to my network. I can also share access to those devices with friends and teammates, or tag devices to give my team broader access. And that's the magic of it, your data is protected by the simple yet powerful social dynamics of small groups that you trust.Try now - it's free forever for personal use. I've been using it for almost two years personally, and am moderately annoyed that they haven't attempted to charge me for what's become an essential-to-my-workflow service.Corey: Have you listened to the new season of Traceroute yet? Traceroute is a tech podcast that peels back the layers of the stack to tell the real, human stories about how the inner workings of our digital world affect our lives in ways you may have never thought of before. Listen and follow Traceroute on your favorite platform, or learn more about Traceroute at origins.dev. My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Every once in a while at The Duckbill Group, I like to branch out and try something a little bit different before getting smashed vocally, right back into the box I find myself in for a variety of excellent reasons. One of these areas has been for a while, the idea of working with migrations on getting folks into cloud. There's a lot of cost impact to it, but there's also a lot of things that I generally consider to be unpleasant nonsense with which to deal. My guest today sort of takes a different philosophy to this. David Colebatch is the CEO and founder of Tidal.cloud. David, thank you for joining me.David: Oh, thanks for having me, Corey.Corey: Now, cloud migrations tend to be something that is, I want to say contentious, and for good reason. You have all the cloud providers who are ranting that cloud is the way and the light, as if they've just found religion, and yeah, the fact that it basically turns into a money-printing machine for them has nothing to do with their newfound advocacy for this approach. Now, I do understand that we all have positions that we come from that shape our perspective. You do run and did found a cloud migration company. What's your take on it? Is this as big as the cloud providers say it is, is it overhyped, or is it underhyped?David: I think it's probably in the middle of this stage of the hype cycle. But the reason that that Tidal exists and why I founded it was that many customers were approaching cloud just for cloud's sake, you know, and they were looking at cloud as a place to park VMs. And our philosophy as software engineers at Tidal is that customers were missing out on all the new capabilities that cloud provided, you know, cloud is a new paradigm in compute. And so, our take on it is the customer should not look at cloud as a place to migrate to, but rather as a place to transform to and embrace all the new capabilities that are on offer.Corey: I've been saying for a while that if you sit there and run a total cost analysis for going down the path of a cloud migration, you will not save money in the short term, call it five years or whatnot. So, if you're migrating to the cloud specifically to save money, in the common case, it should be for a capability story, not because it's going to save you money off of what you're currently doing in the data center. Agree, disagree, or it's complicated?David: It's complicated, but you're right in one case: you need to work backwards from the outcomes, I think that much is pretty simple and clear, but many teams overlook that. And again, when you look at cloud for the sake of cloud, you generally do overlook that. But when we work with customers and they log into to our platform, what we find is that they're often articulating their intent as I want to improve business agility, I want to improve staff productivity, and it's less about just moving workloads to the cloud. Anyone can run a VM somewhere. And so, I think, when we work backwards from what the customer is trying to achieve and we look at TCO holistically, not just about how much a computer costs to run and operate in a colo facility, look at it holistically from a staff productivity perspective as well, then the business case for cloud becomes very profound.Corey: I've been saying for a while that I can make a good-faith Total Cost of Ownership analysis—or TCO analysis—in either direction, so tell me what outcome you want and I can come up with a very good-faith effort answer that gives you what you want. I don't think I've seen too many TCO analyses, especially around cloud migrations, that were not justification exercises. They were very rarely open questions. It was, we've decided what we want to do. Now, let's build a business case to do that thing. Agree, disagree?David: [laugh]. Agree. I've seen that. Yeah, we again, like to understand the true picture of total cost of ownership on-premises first, and many customers, depending on who you're engaging with, but on the IT side, might actually shield a few of those costs or they might just not know them. And I'm talking about things like in the facilities, insurance costs, utility bills, and things like that, that might not bubble up.We need to get all those cards on the table in order to conduct a full TCO analysis. And then in the cloud side, we need to look at multiple scenarios per workload. So, we want to understand that lift-and-shift base case that many people come from, but also that transformative migration case which says, I might be running in a server-ful architecture today on-premises, but based on the source code and database analysis that we've done, we can see an easy lift to think like Lambda and serverless frameworks on the cloud. And so, when you take that transformative approach, you may spend some time upfront doing that transformation, or if it's tight fit, it might be really easy; it might actually be faster than reverse-engineering firewall rules and doing a lift-and-shift. And in that case, you can save up to 97% in annual OPEX, which is a huge savings, of course.Corey: You said the magic words, lift-and-shift, which means all right, the gloves come off. Let's have this conversation.David: Oh yeah.Corey: I work on AWS bills for a living. Cloud cost and architecture are fundamentally the same thing, and when I start looking at a company's monthly bill, I can start to see the architectural patterns emerge with no further information than what's shown in the exploded bill view, at least at a high level. It starts to be indicative of different things. And you can generally tell, on some level, when companies have come from a data center environment or at least a data center mentality, in what they've built. And I've talked to a number of companies where they have effectively completely lifted their data center into the cloud and the only real change that they have gotten in terms of value for it has been that machines are going down a lot less because the hard drive failed and they were really bad at replacing hard drives.Now, for companies in that position who have that challenge, yeah, the value is there and it's apparent because I promise, whoever you are, the cloud providers are better at replacing failed hard drives than you are, full stop. And if that's the value proposition you want, great, but it also feels like that is just scratching the surface of what the benefit of cloud providers can be.David: Absolutely. I mean, we look at cloud as a way to unlock new ways of working and it's totally aligned with the new distributed product team approach that many enterprises are pursuing. You know, the rise of Agile and DevOps has sort of facilitated this movement away from single choke points of IT service delivery, like we used to with ITIL, into much more modern ways of working. And so, I imagine when you're looking at those cloud bills, you might see a whole host of workloads centered into one or two accounts, like they've just replicated a data center into one or two accounts and lifted-and-shifted a bunch of EC2 to it. And yeah, that is not the most ideal architectural pattern to follow in the cloud. If you're working backwards from, “I want to improve staff productivity; I want to improve business agility,” you need to do things like limit your blast radius and have a multi-account strategy that supports that.Corey: We've seen this as well and born-in-the-cloud companies, too, because for a long time, that was AWS's guidance of put everything in a single AWS account. The end. And then just, you know, get good with IAM issues. Like, “Well okay, I found that developer environments impacted production.” Then, “Sounds like a skill issue.”Great, but then you also have things that cannot be allocated, like service quotas. When you have something in development run amok and exhaust service quotas for number of EC2 get instance info requests, suddenly, load balancers don't anymore and auto-scaling is kind of aspirational when everything explodes on you. It's the right path, but very often, people got there through following the best advice that AWS offers. I am in the middle of a migration myself from the quote-unquote, “Legacy” AWS account, I built a bunch of stuff in 2016 into its own dedicated account and honestly, it's about as challenging as some data center moves that I've done historically.David: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the cobwebs build up over time and you have a lot of dependencies on services, you completely forget about.Corey: “How do I move this S3 bucket to another account?” “That's the neat part. You don't.”David: [laugh]. We shouldn't just limit that to AWS. I mean, the other cloud providers have similar issues to deal with through their older cloud adoption frameworks which are now playing out. And some of those guidance points were due to technology limitations in the underlying platform, too, and so you know, at the time, that was the best way to go to cloud. But as I think customers have demanded more agility and more control over their blast radiuses and enabling self-service teams, this has forced everyone to sort of come along and embrace this multi-account strategy. Where the challenge is, with a lot of our enterprise clients, and especially in the public—Corey: Embrace it or you'll be made to embrace it.David: Yeah [laugh]. We see with both our enterprise accounts that were early adopters, they certainly have that issue with too much concentration on one or two accounts, but public sector accounts as well, which we're seeing a lot of momentum in, they come from a place where they're heavily regulated and follow heavy architectural standards which dictate some of these things. And so, in order for those clients to be successful in the cloud, they have to have real leadership and real champions that are able to, sort of, forge through some of those issues and break outside of the mold in order to demonstrate success.Corey: On some level, when I see a lift that failed to shift, it's an intentional choice in some cases where the company has decided to improve their data center environment at the cost of their cloud environment. And it feels, on some level, like it's a transitional step, but then it's almost a question that I always have is, was this the grand plan? So, I guess my question for you is, when you see a company that has some workloads in a data center and some living in the cloud provider in what most people call hybrid, is that outcome intentional or is it accidental, where midway through, they realize that some workloads are super hard to migrate? They have a mainframe and there is no AWS/400 available for their use, so they're going to give up halfway, declare victory, and yep we're hybrid now. How did they get there?David: I think it's intentional, quite often that they see hybrid cloud as a stepping stone to going full cloud. And this just comes down to project scoping and governance, too. So, many leaders will draw a ring around the workloads that are easy to migrate and they'll claim success at the end of that and move on to another job quite often. But the visionary leaders will actually chart a path to course that has a hundred percent adoption, full data center closure, off the mainframe, off AS/400, you know, refactored usually, but they'll chart that course at a rate of change that the organization can accept. Because, you know, cloud being a new paradigm, cloud requiring new ways of working, they can't just ram that kind of change through in their enterprise in one or two years; they really need to make sure that it's being absorbed and adopted and embraced by the teams and not alienating the whole company as they go through. And so, I do see it as intentional, but that stepping stone that many companies take is also an okay thing in my mind.Corey: And to be clear, I should bound what I'm saying from the perspective that I'm talking about this from a platonic ideal perspective. I am not suggesting that, “Oh, this thing that you built at your company is crappy,” I mean, any more so than anything else is. I've never yet seen any infrastructure that the people running it would step back and say, “This is amazing and perfect.” Everyone thinks it's a burning dumpster fire of sadness and regret and I'm not entirely sure that they're wrong.I mean, designing an architecture—cloud or otherwise—on a whiteboard is relatively straightforward, for a junior employee, even. The problem is most people don't get to start from scratch and build that thing. There's existing stuff that needs to be migrated in and most of us don't get the luxury of taking two years of downtime for that service while we wind up rebuilding it from scratch. So, it's one of those how do you rebuild a car without taking it off the highway to do it type of questions.David: Well, you want to have a phased migration approach, quite often. Your business can't stop and start because you're doing a migration, so you want to build momentum with the early adopters that are easy to migrate and don't require big interruptions to business. And then for those mission-critical workloads that do need to migrate—and you mentioned mainframe and AS/400 before—they might be areas where you introduce, like, a strangler fig pattern, you know, draw a ring around it, start replicating some services into cloud, and then phase that migration over a year or two, depending on your timeline and scale. And so, we're very much pragmatic in this business that we want to make sure we're doing everything for the right reasons, for the business-led reasons, and fitting in migrations around business objectives and strategies is super critical to success.Corey: What I'm curious about is when we talk about migrations, in fact, when I invited you on the show, and it was like, well, Tidal migrations—one thing I love about calling it that for the domain, in some cases, as well as other things is, “Huh, says right in the tin what it is. Awesome.” But it's migrations, which I assumed to be, you know, from data centers into cloud. That's great. But then you've got the question of, is that what your work looks like? Is it migrations in the other direction? Is cloud repatriation a thing that people are doing, and no one bothered to actually ever bother to demonstrate that to me? Is cloud to cloud? What are you migrating from and to?David: Well, that's great. And we actually dropped migrations from the name.Corey: Oh, my apologies. Events, once again, outpace me.David: Tidal.cloud is our URL and essentially, Corey, the business of migration is something that's only becoming increasingly frequent. Customers are not just migrating from on-premises data centers to cloud, they're also migrating in between their cloud accounts like you are, but also from one cloud provider to another. And our business hypothesis here Tidal is that that innovation cycle is continuing to shrink, and so whereas when I was in the data center automation business, we used to have a 10 and 15-year investment cycle, now customers have embraced continuous delivery of their applications and so there's this huge shift of investment horizons, bringing it down to an almost an annual event for many of the applications that we touch.Corey: You are in fact correct. Tidal.cloud does have a banner at the top that says, “Tidal Migrations is now Tidal.” Yep, you're correct, not that I'm here to like incorrect you on the name of your own company, for God's sake. That's a new level of mansplaining I dare not delve into.But it does say, “Migration made modern,” right at the top, which is great because there's a sense that I've always had that lift-and-shift is poo-pooed as a bad approach to migrating, but I've done it other ways and it becomes disastrous. I've always liked the approach of take something in a data center, migrated into cloud, in the process, changing as few things as possible, and then just get it stable and working there, and step two becomes the transformation because if you try and transform while it moves, yeah, that gets you a little closer to outcome in theory, but when things don't work right—and their computers; let's not kid ourselves, nothing works right—it's a question now of was it my changes? Is it the cloud environment? Is there an unknown dependency that assumes things in the data center that are not true in cloud? It becomes very hard to track down the why of these things.David: There's no one-size-fits-all for migration. It's why we have the seven-hour assessment capabilities. You know, if one application, like you've just talked about, that one application might be better to lift and shift than modernize, there might be real business reasons for doing that. But what we've seen over the years is the customers generally have one migration budget. Now, IT gets one migration budget and they get to end a job in a lift-and-shift scenario and the business says, “Well, what changed? Nothing, my apps still run the same, I don't notice any new capabilities.” And IT then says, “Yeah, yeah. Now, we need the modernization budget to finish.” And they said, “No, no, no. We've just given you a bunch of money. You're not getting any more.”And so, that's what quite often the migrate as a lift-and-shift kind of stalls and you see an exodus of talent out of those organizations, people leave to go on to the next migration project elsewhere and that organization really didn't embrace any of the cloud-native changes that were required. We'd like to really say that—and you saw this on our header—that migrations made modern, we'd like to dispel the myth that you can either migrate or modernize. It's really not an either/or. There's a full spectrum of our methods, like replatform, and refactor, rehosting, in the middle there. And when we work backwards from customers, we want to understand their core objectives for going to cloud, their intent, their, “Why cloud?”We want to understand how it aligns on the cloud value framework, so business agility gains, staff productivity gains, total cost of ownership is important, of course. And then for each of their application workloads, choose the right 6R based on those business outcomes. And it can seem like a complicated or comprehensive problem, but if you automate it like we do, you can get very consistent results very quickly. And that's really the accelerant that we give customers to accelerate their migration to cloud.Corey: One thing that I've noticed—and maybe this makes me cynical—but when I see companies doing lift-and-shift, often they will neglect to do the shift portion of it. Because there's a compelling reason to do a migration to get out of a data center and into a cloud, and often that is a data center contract expiry coming up. But companies are very rarely going to invest the time, energy, and money—which all become the same thing, effectively, at company scale—in refactoring existing applications if they're not already broken.I see that all the time in my work, I don't make recommendations to folks very often have the form, “Oh, just migrate this entire application to serverless and you'll save 80% or more on it.” And it's, “That's great, but that's 18 months' worth of work and it doesn't actually get us closer to our business milestones, so yeah, we're not going to do that.” Cost directly is very rarely a compelling reason to make a migration, but when you're rebuilding something for business purposes, factoring cost concerns into it seems to be a much better way to gain adoption and traction of those ideals.David: Yeah, yeah. Counterpoint on that, when we look at a portfolio of applications, like, hundreds or thousands of applications in an enterprise and we do this type of analysis on them with the customers, what we've learned is that they may refactor and replatform ten, 20% of their workloads, they may rehost 40%, and they'll often turn off the rest, retire them, not migrate them. And many of our enterprise customers that we've spoken to have gone through rationalizations as they've gone to cloud and saved, you know, 59%, just turned off that 59% of an infrastructure, and the apps that they do end up refactoring and modernizing are the ones where either there's a very easy path for them, like, the code is super compatible and written in a way that's fitting with Lambda and so they've done that, or they've got, like you said, business needs coming up. So, the business is already investigating making some changes to the application, they already want to embrace CI/CD pipelines where they haven't today. And for those applications, what we see teams doing is actually building new in the cloud and then managing that as an application migration, like, cutting over that.But in the scheme of an entire portfolio of hundreds or thousands of applications that might be 5, 10, 20% of the portfolio. It won't be all of them. And that's what we say, there's a full spectrum of migration methods and we want to make sure we apply the right ones to each workload.Corey: Yeah, I want to be clear that there are different personas. I find that most of my customers tend to fall into two buckets. The first is that you have the born-in-the-cloud SaaS companies, and that's the world I come from, where you have basically one workload that's 80% of your application spend, your revenue, et cetera. Like, they are not a customer, but take Datadog as an example. Like, the Datadog monitoring application suite would be a good example of this, and then you have a bunch of longtail stuff.Conversely, you've got a large enterprise that might be spending $100 million or so every year, but their largest single application is a couple million bucks because it just has thousands upon thousands of them. And at that point, it becomes much more of a central IT planning problem. In one of those use cases, spending significant effort refactoring and rebuilding things, from an optimization perspective, can pay dividends. In other cases, it tends not to work in quite the same way, just because the economies of scale aren't there. Do you find that most of your customers fall into one of those two buckets? Do you take a different view of the world? How do you see the market?David: Same view, we do. Enterprise customers are generally the areas that we find the most fit with, the ISVs, you know, that have one or two primary applications. Born in the cloud, they don't need to do portfolio assessments. And with the enterprise customers, the central IT bit used to be a blocker and impediment for cloud. We're increasingly seeing more interest from central IT who is trying to lead their organization to cloud, which is great, that's a great sign.But in the past, it had been more of a business-led conversation where one business unit within an enterprise wants to branch away from central IT, and so they take it upon themselves to do an application assessment, they take it upon themselves to get their own cloud accounts, you know, a shadow IT move, in a way. And that had a lot of success because the business would always tie it back to business outcomes that they were trying to achieve. Now, into IT, doing mass migration, mass portfolio assessment, this does require them to engage deeply with the business areas and sometimes we're seeing that happening for the very first time. There's no longer IT at the end of a chain, but rather it's a joint partnership as they go to cloud, which is really cool to see.Corey: When I go to Tidal.cloud, you have a gif—yes, that's how it's pronounced, I'm not going to take debates on that matter—but you have a gif at the top of your site a showing a command line tool that runs an analyze command on an application. What are you looking at to establish an application or workload's suitability for migration? Because I have opinions on this, but you have, you know, a business around this and I'm not going to assume that my strongly-held opinions informed by several weeks of work are going to trump, you know, the thing that your entire company is built around.David: Thanks, Corey. Yeah, you're looking at our command-line utilities there. It's an accompanying part of our product suite. We have a web application and the command-line utilities are what customers use behind their firewall to analyze their applications. The data points that we look at are infrastructure, as you can imagine, you might plug into VMware and discover VMs that are running, we'll look for non-x86 workloads on the network.So, infrastructure is sort of bread and butter; everyone does that. Where Tidal differentiates is going up the stack, analyzing source code, analyzing database technologies, and looking at the schema usage within your on-premises database, for example, which features and functionality are using, and then how that fits to more cloud-native database offerings. And then we'll look at the technology age as well. And when you combine all of those technology factors together, we sort of form a view of what the migration difficulty to cloud will be on various migration outcomes, be it rehost, replatform, or refactor.The other thing that we add there is on the business side and the business intent. So, we want to understand from leadership what their intent is with cloud, and there's some levers they pull in the Tidal platform there. But then we also want to understand from each application owner how they think about their applications, what the value of those applications are to them and what their forward-looking plans are. We capture all these things in our tool, we then run it through our recommendation engine, and that's how we come up with a bespoke migration plan per client.Corey: One of the challenges I have in the cost arena around a lot of these tools that oh, we're going to look at your various infrastructure-as-code situation and see what that's going to cost you for a given change. It's like, sure, that that's not hard from a baseline of I want to spin up ten more EC2 instances. Yes, that is the tricky part of cloud economics known as basic arithmetic. The problem where I see is that okay, and then they're going to run Kubernetes, which has no sense of zone affinity, so it's going to wind up putting nondeterministic amounts of traffic across a AZ boundary and that's going to spike data transfer in some use cases, but none of these tools have any conception as to what those workloads look like. Now, that's a purely cost perspective, but that does have architectural approaches. Do you factor things like that in when you move up the stack?David: Absolutely. And really understanding on a Tidal inventory basis, understanding what the intent is of each of those workloads really does help you, from a cloud economics basics, to work out how much is reasonable in terms of cloud costs. So, for example, in Tidal, if you're doing app assessment, you're capturing any revenue to business that it generates, any staff productivity that it creates. And so, you've got the income side of that application workload. When you map that to on-premises costs and then later to cloud costs, your FinOps job becomes a lot easier because now you have the business context of those workloads too.Corey: So, one of the things that I have found is that you can judge the actual success of a project by how many people who work at the company claimed credit for it on LinkedIn, whereas conversely, when things don't work out super well, it's sort of a crickets moment. I'm curious as to your perspective on whether there is such a thing as a migration failure, or is it simply a, “Oh, we're going to iterate on this in a new direction. We've replaced a failing part, which turned out, from our perspective, to be our CIO, but we have a new one who's going to move us into cloud in the proper time and space.” We go through more of those things than some people do underwear. My God. But is there such a thing as a failed cloud migration?David: There absolutely is. And I get your point that success has many fathers. You know, when clients have brought us in for that success party at the end, you don't recognize everybody there. But you know, failure can be, you know, you've missed on time, scope, or budget, and by those measures, I think 76% of IT projects were failing in 2018, when we ran those numbers.So absolutely, by those metrics, there are failed cloud migrations. What tends to happen is people claim success on the workloads that did migrate. They may then kick it out into a new project scope, the organizational change bit. So, we've had many customers who viewed the cloud migration as a lift-and-shift exercise and failed to execute on the organizational change and then months later realized, oh, that is important in order for my day two operations to really hum, and so then have embarked on that under a separate initiative. So, there's certainly a lot of rescoping that goes on with these things.And what we like to make sure we're teaching people—and we do this for free—is those lessons learned and pitfalls with cloud early on because we don't want to see all those headlines of failed projects under that; we want to make sure that customers are armed with here are the things you should consider to execute on as you go to cloud.Corey: Do you ever run an analysis on a workload when a customer is asking, “So, how should we go about migrating this?” And your answer is, “You should absolutely not?”David: Well, all applications can go to cloud, it's just a matter of how much elbow grease you want to put into it. And so, the absolutely not call comes from when that app doesn't provide any utility to the business or maybe it has a useful life of six more months and the data center is going to be alive for seven. So, that's when those types of judgment calls come in. Other times we've seen, you know, there's already a replacement initiative underway by the business. IT wasn't aware of it, but through our process and methodology, they engaged with the business for the first time and learned about it. And so, that helps them to avoid needing to migrate workloads because the business is already moving to Salesforce, for example.Corey: I imagine you're also relatively used to the sinking realization that customers often have when they're used to data center thinking and you ask them a question, like, “How many gigabytes a month does your application server send back and forth to your database server?” And their response, very reasonably, is, “Why on earth would I know the answer to that quest—oh, God. You mean, that's how it bills?” It's the sense of everything is different in cloud, sometimes, subtly, sometimes massively. But it's a different way of thinking.So, I guess my last real big question for you on this is, moving technology is relatively straightforward but migrating people is very challenging. How do you find that the people and the processes that have grown up in data center environments with people whose identities are inextricably linked the technology they work on, being faced with the idea of it is now time to pick up and move these things into an environment where things that were incredibly valuable guardrails in a data center environment no longer serve you well?David: Yeah. The people side of cloud migration is the more challenging part. It's actually one of the reasons we introduced a service offering around people change management. The general strategy is sort of the Kotter change process of creating that guiding coalition, the people who want to do something different, get them outside of IT, reporting out to the executives directly, so they're unencumbered by the traditional processes. And once they start to demonstrate some success of a new way of working, a new paradigm, you kind of sell that back into the organization in order to drive that change.It's getting a lot easier to position that organizational change aspects with customers. There's enough horror stories out there of people that did not take that approach. And quite rightly. I mean, it's tough to imagine, as a customer, like, if I'm applying my legacy processes to cloud migration, why would I expect to get anything but a legacy result? You know, and most of the customers that we talk to that are going to cloud want a transformational outcome, they want more business agility and greater staff productivity, and so they need to recognize that that doesn't come without change to people and change the organization. It doesn't mean you have to change the people out individually, but skilling the way we work, those types of things, are really important to invest in and I'd say even more so than the technology aspects of any cloud migration.Corey: David, I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me about something that is, I'd say near and dear to my heart, except I'm trying desperately not to deal with it more than I absolutely have to. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?David: Sure. I mean, tidalcloud.com is our website. I'm also on Twitter @dcolebatch. I like to tweet there a little bit, increasingly these days. I'm not on Bluesky yet, though, so I won't see you there. And also on LinkedIn, of course.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:29:57]. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.David: Thanks, Corey. Great to be here.Corey: David Colebatch, CEO and founder of Tidal.cloud. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment that you will then struggle to migrate to a different podcast platform of your choice.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

This is a unique episode. Short and sweet. Since David and Paul really don't have a chance to introduce themselves in regular episodes, they thought it might be good to take an opportunity to do so in this episode.After introductions, they share announcements regarding the future of this podcast.Episode Links:Mastering The MarketplaceHosts:Paul Maher is General Manager of the Commercial Marketplace Service Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.David Starr is a Principal Software Development Engineer in the Commercial Marketplace Services Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Mastodon.Transcript:DAVID: Rebooting the podcast with your hosts, Paul Maher, and David Starr.Welcome to the Azure for Executives Podcast, the show for technology leaders. This podcast covers trends and technologies in industries and how Microsoft Azure is enabling them. Here, you'll hear from thought leaders in various industries and technologies on topics important to you. So I'm sure you've noticed that the Azure for Executives Podcast has been on a bit of a hiatus for a few months. Well, we're back. And we're back with some really great news, which I'll leave for a few minutes as we kind of settle into this episode. Now, this is a unique episode, as it'll be pretty short and sweet. We don't have any guests today. But instead, you get my co-host, Paul Maher, and me talking a little bit about the show and our futures. Since we don't really have a chance to introduce ourselves in regular episodes, we thought it might be good to take an opportunity to do so in this episode. So after introductions, we'll have some announcements regarding the future of the podcast. Paul, why don't you talk a little bit about what you do at Microsoft and maybe some of your passions?PAUL: Thanks, David. And it's great to be back. And it's nice to have the opportunity, as you said, to actually introduce ourselves. We spend a lot of time talking to our guests, so it's a fun opportunity to say hi to our listeners. And so, just a little bit about myself, I mean, I've worked in various business and technology-related leadership roles throughout my career with some of the largest companies worldwide across multiple industries. But for the past few years, I've really been focused on cloud across many different roles and initiatives. So you could call me kind of really the cloud evangelist if you will. But currently, at Microsoft, I lead the commercial marketplace services organization. And my focus is really on helping businesses transform by moving to the Microsoft Azure Cloud and growing sales through the Microsoft commercial marketplace. So great to be here, great to have the opportunity to introduce myself to the listeners. And, David, maybe you want to take the opportunity to do the same.DAVID: Sure. Thanks, Paul. I'm a Principal Software Development Engineer here at Microsoft, and I live in the same organization as Paul, and that is the commercial marketplace services team. And, Paul, if you think back, you hired me directly. And I was about number seven in the org at that time, if you'll recall. And --PAUL: That's right. Lucky number 7, David. Lucky number 7.DAVID: [laughs] Indeed. And we have a pretty good-sized organization now, so we've grown quite a bit over the last four years, which is how long I've been with the team, four years and counting. So I'll tell you that this is my second stint at Microsoft. And my first go-round was working on Visual Studio. For those who might use Visual Studio on the show, may not be you but people who work for you; I put a feature, or I was part of a team, I should say, a good-sized team that put a feature called CodeLens into Visual Studio. So that was a good piece of work. And today, instead, I focus on working with partners for the commercial marketplace, as you've heard, a pretty good focus on the commercial marketplace in our past episodes. Well, what that means is that I take consults. These are sort of one-time answer questions for partners who might be struggling a little bit with their onboarding or work with partners in a longer-term engagement to get them from start to finish and get their products onboarded to the commercial marketplace. So that's the essence of what I do. I work with partners in that context. And my little side project baby I have to mention, is Mastering the Marketplace. That is a resource where you or your technologists on your team can go to learn more about how to do that implementation. And we have videos and code and hands-on labs to grow skills, so all that good stuff to help you get going. And the URL for that will be posted in the show notes. I'll say here it's aka.ms/masteringthemarketplace. With that, Paul, what's the big news that we were talking about?PAUL: So the big news, even though we are part of the Microsoft commercial marketplace organization and that's our day job and our priority, we've taken a step back. And we feel like broadening the focus of the podcast here to include all topics Azure will be really relevant and interesting to our listeners, and executives, and leaders who are looking to move to Azure. So with a goal of making sure that folks who tune in and listen can get the best experience and the best knowledge exchange from tuning into the podcast, we'll be broadening the reach of the podcast to cover all things Azure which I'm super excited about. Historically, we made the decision to have a singular focus on the show. But I think the new format will really benefit everyone and really be applicable to a diverse audience. So I'm excited that we're expanding our remit, expanding our scope, and excited about the topics that will be upcoming in future shows. So with that, I mean, David, do you want to talk a little bit about the new format for our listeners?DAVID: Sure, Paul. And just to reiterate, I'm really excited too about where the show is going. I think we're going to have a really good dearth of topics and be a show that is more of a resource for technology decision-makers, so as we said, with regard to format, but as we said, our focus will be broadening. And while our audience demographic of leadership positions within technology organizations remains the same, our show topics will include specific technologies, patterns and practices, recommendations, and guidance on how to get the most from Azure, particularly as it relates to your business processes, your business goals, and how to achieve your technology goals. Our intent is to bring experts to the show and share real-world experiences to help you be successful in your technological adventures.PAUL: That's great, David. So with that, carrying on then, now we understand a little bit about that new format where we're broadening the scope. We have lots of good stuff in terms of thinking about all things Azure patterns and practices, recommendations. What I'm excited about is that it's really hopefully going to be a consumable digest for all listeners to learn about all things Azure. Specifically, David, is there anything you are excited about the future of the show?DAVID: You bet there is. I'm excited to talk with some of the great guests we've got lined up and learn from them about many aspects of using Azure, how they've implemented their solutions, how they've perhaps even changed their business to work with cloud technologies, and how they drive new business and enable technologists in their organizations. And I won't give away any spoilers here, Paul, but I will say that I'm glad to be back producing the show. So to the listeners, whether you're a long-time listener or someone who's just joining us for the first time, I'm positive that you'll enjoy the diversity of conversation. I have to tell you, Paul, I listen to a bunch of other podcasts. I don't listen to us really after [laughs] we've produced the show. But I love podcasts myself, technology ones in particular. And I especially like them for my morning walks to and from my gym. And for me, that means I like about a 25 to 35-minute episode, which is what we'll target for the show going forward. We'll try and keep it within those bounds. Now, speaking of excited about the show, how about you, Paul?PAUL: Yeah, I'm super excited, David. I mean, I'm looking forward to rebooting the show. It's been a little while. I've enjoyed the summer time off, but now it's time to get back to business. Just to reiterate what you've said, David, I think a 25 to 35-minute sweet spot is great. I think it's long enough for the content to be meaningful but not too long, where it becomes a little bit of a challenge to get through the contents. So we're excited about that.  We've carried forward the learnings from our podcasts, and we've listened to the listeners. And so excited about the format, excited about the timings. And I hear you about...I hate hearing my own voice also [chuckles], but I encourage the listeners to tune in and listen. But what am I looking forward to as we reboot the show? Well, number one, of course, it's all about the listeners, so I'm super excited to reconnect with our listeners. Thank you for following us so far, and excited about what we'll bring in the future. Of course, in the fast-paced technology world that we all live in, I'm excited to learn about the latest advancements from our guests, of which it's a changing world, of course, but most importantly, really sharing practical hands-on guidance with our listeners. So hopefully, we're helping our listeners achieve their goals and accelerate their path to success. My hope with the podcast ultimately is that we're providing in that 25 to 35 minutes bite-sized consumable content that is really clear in terms of the delivery but also actionable. My goal is that the conversation doesn't stop with the podcast. That's the beginning of the conversation. So that's what I'm excited about, David. And then so with that, I mean, David, as we look to close things out, is there anything you'd like to share on logistics?DAVID: You bet. Let's talk about how we're going to move forward producing the show. We'll be working to hit a cadence of an episode about every two weeks or so, and to be honest, that's about all either of our schedules can tolerate for getting episodes on air. And beyond that, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, and all those other podcast aggregators and hosts. Also, you can get to us on our homepage easily by going to this URL: aka.ms/azureforexecs. And we post every show there, and you can listen to it through a web page if you choose. And that's our landing page for the show. So I encourage you to head over there, where you'll be able to see show notes and be able to subscribe to the show in various ways. Just click the Listen & Subscribe button. So speaking of show notes, I want to add for this episode, we're going to obviously include links to some of the things we've talked about and also to Paul's social accounts and to my socials as well. And I'll tell you, you know, even though I'll probably post a Twitter account, I stepped away from that lately [laughs]. I don't know why. I really like it when people hit me up though on LinkedIn and talk about the show, give me some feedback, tell us what you'd like to hear in future episodes. So hit me up on LinkedIn, and my LinkedIn profile will be in the show notes. So really looking forward to moving forward and to hearing from you as we reboot the show and have a different path forward.PAUL: That's awesome. So not only are we rebooting the show, David, I hear we need to get more social. So be on the lookout for us dialing back up and being more social on LinkedIn and our Twitter accounts. So with that, let's stop the introductions and get on with the first show in the new format. Thank you so much to our listeners who have stuck with us over the years, and welcome hopefully to new listeners. It's great to have you here. We're delighted you're all joining us, too, for the Azure for Executives Podcast. And with that, on with the show.DAVID: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Azure for Executives Podcast. We love hearing from you. And if you have suggestions for topics, questions about issues discussed on the show, or other feedback, contact the show host, David Starr or Paul Maher, through the social media links included in the show notes for each episode. We look forward to hearing from you.

In the studio, today is David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. David has focused on making MCB the best it can be. Learn about the concept of disability as a qualification, the Accessibility Technology Survey, the entrepreneurial program developed with NIB, and dig into the 32 reallotment projects MCB has done over the past few years.   David is the Idea Guy and shares a lot of information in this brief 30-minute conversation.   Find out more about what is happening at MCB:     MCB Home Page 2020 Reallotment Project Summary 2021 Reallotment Project Summary   Listen Here   Full Transcript {Music} Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. Thanks for joining me today, David. How are things going in Massachusetts?   David: Going very well. Looking forward to a great 2023. And thanks for having me again.   Carol: You bet. Me too. I love this 2023. I have my little resolutions for this year. You know, I really want to be intentional. That's one of my things. So I know I had you on the show over a year ago and we were talking about some of your great employment strategies during National Disability Employment Awareness Month. And you have had so many cool initiatives going on in your state that I think of you as the Idea Guy. I put you and Joe Xavier from California up there as two bold leaders in VR that we can all learn something from. Now, I know you've been keeping your head down and really looking forward focused on making your agency the very best it can be. And it also seemed like you were having some just really amazing employment successes for customers during COVID. So now more than ever, we need to take some serious steps to address the problem of spending VR dollars and improving outcomes. And you started looking at the problem when you first started at MCB and you hit the ground running. So let's dig in. I know we have lots to talk about. So David, can you remind our listeners about yourself? Where did you come from and how long have you been at MCB?   David: Sure. Well, I'm a consumer of MCB also, and being legally blind from a young age. I remember getting VR services back when I was in junior high school and high school. So that's really my first impression with MCB was as a consumer, as a young man. But since joining MCB in 2018, I came over from the Office on Disability, where I was the director of the Massachusetts Office on Disability. So when the MCB position opened up and got an opportunity to serve. And, making great strides for these past five years and looking forward to hopefully more time to be able to get our people employed and help lead our people to more independence and self determination.   Carol: That's awesome. So can you tell us a little bit about MCB? Like, how many staff do you guys have and how many customers are you serving currently?   David: Sure. So we're one of the first blindness agencies in the country. We often argue with Connecticut, if they were first, we were first, but we were established in 1906 with one of our first commissioners being Helen Keller. So we have a long history and track record of providing services for people with blindness throughout Massachusetts. We currently serve approximately 24,000 people in Massachusetts with all types of services. Massachusetts is a little bit different than many of the other states. We don't provide just for VR services, and that's not to diminish VR services, but we also provide what we call our services or social rehabilitation services and deafblind extended support services. So we serve people who are blind and deafblind and people with blindness and then additional significant disabilities. So that adds up. Our 24,000 people and our range of blindness really is the whole spectrum. So everybody from hi partial and legally blind like me all the way to somebody who has no light perception at all. And we know from the data that we've collected that actually there's probably more people at MCB as consumers who have visions closer to me than vision, closer to somebody who has no light perception at all. So we've got some data that's going to be coming out that I would encourage everybody to look at. We did an assistive technology survey recently with all of our consumers that really reveals information that I think people will take notice of because many times people were thinking that, oh, well, your consumers, they can't see, so they're not on the Internet or they're not taking part with this technology. And our survey really sheds new light on that. So stay tuned for that. You can check that out on our website, Mass.gov/MCB. It's really going to be an important survey when we reveal these results. It's going to be eye opening for people.   Carol: Well, cool. Yeah. Shoot me a note when that comes out. I'm really interested in seeing that. Do you also serve individuals like starting as babies? Like because some programs I know do that. We did not in Minnesota but I know some start very young with kids.   David: Yeah in Massachusetts we serve people from birth to death. So cradle to grave with all of our services and the social rehabilitation services that we provide are really geared around independence and self determination. So we will start providing services as soon as somebody gets that mandatory report of legal blindness and they're declared, which we are the keeper of, that we register somebody as legally blind after their doctor, their eye care provider, has provided us with that record. And then we get the services flowing, whether it's teaching Braille or providing assistive technology, orientation and mobility, training, all of these core services, we really believe getting those in place first.   Carol: Yeah   David: That's really going to help in terms of VR. It's setting the bedrock so people are already independent and self determined and then can focus on their career goals.   Carol: Yes. So smart. You've got the foundational pieces in place and early, you know, you're getting at the students early, which is incredible. That is great. That is great. So I really liked your getting grounded in that three part framework. You talk about it and I was reading it again on your website about the Path to Prosperity is Paved with Perseverance. Can you tell me more about that?   David: Sure. Carol, thanks. Really. I first said that publicly during the commencement address that I gave for Lesley University's Threshold Program. Lesley University has a great program for people with intellectual disabilities where they provide a college like experience. And back in 2017, when I was director of the state's Office on Disability, I had the great opportunity to be able to provide the commencement address there. And that's really where I first laid out that I believe the path to prosperity is paved by perseverance. Or what does that mean? I think that becoming employed is not a one step thing. There are many steps on that path on your career journey. So we really try to instill in to our consumers here at MCB that there is no get rich quick scheme. This is not a one click approach like so many of us are conditioned today through these devices and through technology. Just one click in your in. Getting a career, getting employed, getting your job, getting on that path to prosperity takes many steps. You got to hang in there because it's not easy. If it was easy, it would be done easily and everybody would do it. Everybody would be a multimillionaire. It takes many steps and depending upon your disability or in mass commission for the blind on your blindness, there's such a spectrum. And really we have to work with everybody individually because everybody is in a different stage in life. And some people are aging into blindness. Some people, it comes upon them quickly. Some people have it from a young age, some people come to it at mid age. It's so different for everybody. And we really just want to make sure that people are clear what the expectations that we're going to be with them through their journey along this path and that it does take time. All good things come in time. So that's really what the path to prosperity is paved with. Perseverance is about that you've got to persevere. These are challenging things. The very essence of being a person with a disability. Disability comes with challenge, It does. And so we try to get people to accept their disability, accept that challenge and then help them work through it. And so I believe in people and I believe anybody can become employed. I think work matters. I think it goes to the identity of a person. If I were to see you in the grocery store and we would have strike up a conversation, invariably one of the first questions that you or I would ask each other is, Well, so what do you do? And if you're employed, you're going to tell me about your job because it goes to the identity, it goes to who you are and what you're accomplishing. So work matters. Our consumers matter, and that's why we want to try to get them employed, because there's so many contributions in our community that we're trying to bring out for the benefit of our consumers, but also for the benefit of society. I really believe that our people have a lot to give and you've got to hang in there. That's part of being on the path to prosperity.   Carol: I think that is one of the cool things with blind services. It's very foundational. All the things that you have to learn. And I remember being at Minnesota blind and just seeing that, especially with people that came in that were new to their vision loss and it happened abruptly. Something happened, an illness or something overnight almost, and you wake up and you can't see and everything changes. How you read, how you get around in the world, how you get around in your home and your clothes and like how you do everything and having to learn all those foundational pieces first and getting that acceptance and then working on work skills because you can't just launch right into that when somebody goes, I don't even know if I'm wearing the orange socks with the black suit. I don't know what I have on.   David: One of the initiatives we've been working on and we keep advancing is something that I came up with about ten years ago that I've been trying to encourage people in VR to embrace, and that is the concept of disability as a qualification. I really believe that the lived experience that our people have to learn to problem solve around is a qualification in and of itself. Let me give you an example. If I were to take somebody with good vision and ask them to cross a busy intersection, they probably wouldn't think twice of it. Right?   Carol: Right.   David:  But to take one of our consumers who can't see and ask them to cross an intersection, the skills involved and the intestinal fortitude involved with crossing that intersection. You know what? I want that person on my team, if they're going to be able to go out and have the intestinal fortitude to be able to do that and then the demonstrated skill to be able to do it, because that takes sophistication, if that life experience does not qualify you for some type of role that deals with problem solving. How many employment opportunities are there out there for people who are good problem solvers, for people that have a solid backbone and won't just roll over? Right?   Carol: Right. I love that you say that.   David: Those are qualifications, those matter.   Carol: They do matter. So I'm just going to say a little thing about me. When we were in Minnesota at the blind agency, all of the leadership team and the VR counselors, the staff, you had to go through six weeks of sleep shade training, so you were under sleep shades for six weeks. And so doing that as a new director myself, having that experience, it's just a taste, but we did go to one of our Adjustment to Blindness Training Centers. We had the experience of the classes all day under sleep shades. I still remember at the end of the day, walking out. I had my cane. I was still had my sleep shades on. I'd taken them off and I got in my car. I scared a lady that was across the street. She's like, That blind lady is driving now, but getting that very firsthand experience about that problem solving that goes into everything you do during the day that is so interesting and very applicable to the world of work, for sure.   David: Yeah. So that's why we're pushing disability as a qualification. We believe that those lived experiences are going to help employers and a really good qualifications for employees.   Carol: Yeah, that's very cool. Very interesting thought. So I want to take you back to 2020. You asked for reallotment dollars, but you had some very specific initiatives you wanted to accomplish and in fact, you were dealing with the pandemic and you wanted to figure out your role in pioneering a path forward in a post-COVID recovery. So talk to me about what went into that 2020 that ask for reallotment dollars and kind of how you framed up all of those initiatives.   David: Sure. Well, we wanted to make the best use of our time knowing that we were not going to have the community interactions and be able to travel freely like we had been doing. So we said, let's study this and let's come up with some things now, some of the things we had put in motion, some of the plans that we had put in motion were prior to COVID. So it seemed that we were prescient on some of them, like our ad campaign we did, What's Your Vision? So now we've been on Massachusetts television with our announcements, not just public service announcements, but paid ads to be able to get the message out to employers, Hey, we've got candidates for you and get the message out to our consumers that, hey, we'll work with you to get on this path to employment. So there's campaigns like that. But then we followed it up. Once we knew COVID was in there and we did our Quest for Independence, which is a graphic novel which is aimed at not only the consumer, but people in the consumer's sphere of influence, their brothers, their sisters, their fathers and mothers and guidance counselors and people there so that those people can understand the path to employment that we lay out in the process that we do. So it starts at pre training and goes through all of the steps along the way and we make it like a questing journey. We made it like kind of cool and try to put it in a format that people of Pre-ETS age would be more apt to buy into. So many of the VR documents are black and white text only small print, like who's reading that? Who's consuming that? Certainly not a 15 or 18 year old person that we're trying to get interested in the workforce. So whether it's things like that or whether it's studying Disability as a Qualification that we just talked about or trying to do some of the other surveys that we put together, we really tried to make the best use of our time. I think in all total now we're up to 32 or 34 reallotment projects that we've done over the past three or four years.   Carol: Oh my gosh!   David: Yeah. We've really tried to make good use of our time and build the catalog of information. And all of this is available to VR people if they want to visit our website again, Mass.gov/MCB. All of the re allotment projects are out there. We have studies on the Built Environment in the Workplace. We have studies on Disability as a Qualification on Assistive Technology. So many different topics we have data on as well as these ad campaigns. We did one with Sleep Machine recently. We worked up 16 different types of consumers and interactions that it's not a one size fits all approach. We really got it into 16 different approaches, so it tries to suit all of the different demographic areas, and that's a VR approach that we took so many different projects that we encourage people to find out more on our website.   Carol: I know you did a lot of data analysis. There were a lot of projects around different data analysis, so maybe talk about one or two of those and how you used that data to now kind of inform your programming or whatever you're doing now at the agency.   David: Well, the assistive technology one is a perfect example like. When I came to MCB and I said, I want to do a survey, they kind of like chuckled and I'm like, Why do you want to do? And I said, Well, how many of our people have email or how many of them use the Internet? I remember distinctly without naming names, but some really veteran VR people saying, none of our people use the Internet Commissioner or they don't do this. Well, come to find out that 70% use it daily. That right there was like informing our programming because no longer was I going to allow this myth to be put forward that our people don't use the Internet. That's just not so. Now we've got to make sure that we're making these sites accessible. So a recent proposal that I've been working on is a registered apprenticeship program for our consumers who are blind. Who better to make these websites accessible than people who are already using screen reader technology? So we're trying to get two registered apprenticeships, one in making web pages accessible, and then the other for making other online things accessible apps and forms and documents online and things like in the electronic space. So we're working right now with the Department of Labor, but we're also seeking other states. You need five states to be able to make a cohort to do it. So if people are interested in joining our cohort, please contact us and let us know if you want to join in this registered apprenticeship program that we're going to be launching soon.   Carol: That's super cool and very smart and needed. I mean, there's a lot of sites, a lot of websites in a lot of trouble because they are not accessible. I love that you did the Assistive Technology survey. I've thought for years, like the invention of Apple and the iPhone and all of that single handedly changed just information for people who are blind, visually impaired because that device is accessible and it was built-in. There's so many cool apps now and things out there that our folks are using now. I know you also contracted out for your comprehensive Statewide Needs Assessment and that that isn't necessarily new. A lot of states do that because it's much easier to contract with someone than do it yourself. But what was different about that particular assessment and how do you use the information that you got from that?   David: Yeah, again, I think that was the one where we put it out there and the awarded bidder I think was the public consulting group. So they're a pretty big firm. They had worked in other states before. I think one of the things that they had worked in was like Indiana. And so we work with them. Obviously our sister agency, MRC, we wanted to make sure that we were kind of on the same page as well. So I think that helped and really it helped strengthen the things that we already knew we were doing well. They really came in and were able to look at that and say, Yeah, you know what, you should probably keep doing that. Did identify some areas and we've made some adjustments as well. And I think now in this post COVID world, we were prescient that we were trying to already get our people to be able to work remotely, whether it be our staff, who a significant amount of our staff are actually our consumers also, which were very prideful in that they'd been remote prior to COVID. And so now the trends in employment with less and less people in an office environment, we really were again, a little bit ahead of the curve in trying to predict that We think that's where the workforce is going. There's going to be more and more opportunities that are away from an office environment. So if you can work online effectively, that's just going to increase opportunities for our consumers.   Carol: Oh, I agree 100%. So how has all of this helped your numbers? Like where are you at today? Do you feel like have things moved up or are you getting customers back? How about people getting into employment, all these different initiatives? Has it led to some success and outcomes?   David: Yes, it has led to success and outcomes. Our numbers are up generally across the board. There's a couple of exceptions, but things we really like to talk about is the nature of the jobs that we're able to help our people navigate into. And just to be clear, we are very up front with our people. People like, get me a job, get me a job. We're very upfront with them and say, we can't get you a job. We can help you get you a job. We don't get anybody jobs. Our consumers get themselves jobs. We're there to help and build value and work within whether it be any of the networks that we develop with stakeholders or using the existing public systems or education, whatever the case may be. It's consumer driven, it's consumer informed, and it's consumer driven. We make that clear that really we're just a partner in this, and it's up to the consumer to be able to make the final decision. One of the things that I think is very successful is that there's more choice than ever before. I think our consumers were faced with maybe one opportunity, and if they didn't take it, it was like, all right, let's start all over again. Or, you know, now let's go on another six month search. Now our consumers are being presented with multiple offers, multiple opportunities. That's a really good sign. Another really good sign is the nature of the jobs that they're getting. We're now going past just the entry level job or the base job, and we're into more management. Some of our placements are six figure placements. These are consumers that many of them have been with us for a while, but some are fairly new. So like before, this is where I think our ad campaign is really helped us because consumers who maybe hadn't approach MCB before are now approaching MCB. So we're doing our best to reduce the stigma of what it means to join MCB. So many people before who were low vision, high, partial, legally blind...   Carol: Yes...   David: ...didn't really feel that they were. Well, I can see I'm not really blind. Well, if you're legally blind, then you're entitled to the services. And so people with existing track records of employment that they've been in the workforce for 20 years and now they've lost their vision. Before, many of them were just leaving. And then we would find out five years later, well, I left because I was depressed or I left because I couldn't do the job. Now we get to them more quickly and actually work with them and the employer to let them know, Hey, we're there for you. We're there to provide these reasonable accommodations. We're there to emphasize the great skills that you have. So many of these things can be remediated now with technology. So we're seeing six figure placements. We're seeing management level placements. These are all very encouraging signs. But again, they didn't just happen overnight. It's the culmination of all of these programs working together. And most importantly, let me just give a great shout out to our counselors, our VR counselors develop these relationships and work with these consumers. And really, they're part of the secret sauce here, sitting at their kitchen table with them and their families and letting them know that we're going to be there with them. I think that's irreplaceable. And you can create whatever program you want and fund it however you want. At the end of the day, that needs to happen. Without that, I don't think we'd be having the success that we're having.   Carol: I love that. I know your PSA campaign was really clever because I had looked at the ads. Very cool. Are you still continuing to do that? Is that still going on?   David: Yeah. So we're looking at another reallotment project to fund another ad buy. We're going to have a dialogue with RSA about it. I think we can show that we got results from it and if we can, I'm hoping that they'll say that that's a good use of the money. You know, right now we've gone through some change. We've had a significant aging of our MCB workforce. We've had retirements of people that have been at the agency for 40 years, 38 years, 39 years. So I think COVID really helped in a way where it gave people a pause to be able to adjust. And that's not only our consumers and our counselors, but really like the whole workforce. And as a result, many people are saying, you know what, it's now time I've put my time in and it's time to give it up to the next generation, which is good. But it's a challenge because now we spent a significant amount of time trying to backfill these positions and like something with orientation and mobility. I think one of our O & M people we got from California, another one from Michigan. So hunting around trying to find talent can be challenging and we're certainly not trying to raid other agencies or muscle other competition out because Massachusetts is the state where the cost of living is quite high. We want to make sure if we're getting people here, that they're positioned for long term success. So we've definitely been trying to navigate some of that, as I think many of my colleagues can probably resonate with on at their state level.   Carol: Oh yeah, that is the hot topic of the day. The mass retirement and kind of exodus of people out of VR. I know when I was at Minnesota, this is, you know, ten years ago I walked in the door in HR hands me a list saying I think it was over 50% of the staff were eligible to retire in the next three years. I just went, what? And they did, you know, people did because people have been with the agency. They all started together. They'd been there 30, 40 years together. And they all went. And then that just got exacerbated by the pandemic. People going out the door for sure. If people are wanting to find your PSA information, is that also on your website still?   David: It sure is. And it's on our YouTube channel as well. When I came to MCB, we had no social media. Now we've got Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and our own YouTube channel and all of these avenues that we've gotten such great input from our consumers and their families because, yeah, it's about serving the consumer, but it's also about serving their families because that's oftentimes the people that are working with the consumers just as much, if not more than our counselors. So it's about empowering the whole consumer. And what I mean, the whole consumer, I mean, it's their extended family. It's their spouse or their son or their daughter or their niece or their nephew. They're aunt, their uncle or their friend or neighbor. It takes a village. And we've had good success with that approach.   Carol: Great. It absolutely does take a village. Can you give that website address one more time?   David: Yeah, sure. It's. Mass.gov/MCB. So, its Mass dot gov. Forward slash m c b.   Carol: Excellent! Yeah. Because I know you have a lot of really good stuff out on the website, so I know you are always thinking you don't ever stop. You're on to the next thing. So what's up on deck next for MCB?   David: Yeah, I think we just need to continue to now emerge from the pandemic and continue to assimilate so many new staff that we've got. I mean, I think of our 130 staff, about 40 of them are new within the past couple of years. So there's a big assimilation going on, number one, but really making sure that our community feels safe to get back out there and independent and self determined, ready to go. That's job one.  Is getting that adjustment to blindness, that acceptance of blindness, continuing to find new consumers to be able to provide the services to. Then once we do that, then at the tried and true, it's wash, rinse, repeat on what our counselors and what VR has established so well. It's mentoring and then interning and then interviewing and then getting a job and then staying upwardly mobile in that job and trying to move up into management or entrepreneurial. And one of the new things we're working on that we piloted last year successfully with National Industries for the Blind is this entrepreneurial program. We really believe that that is the future for many of our consumers that are interested in a small business opportunity, and that is establishing an e-commerce presence online where you own your own thing and you're really an entrepreneur at that point, selling products and services online through their accessible platform. For years, we tried to get our consumers interested in selling on Amazon or eBay or these other e commerce platforms. But the platform itself, the app, the technology itself was not accessible to screen readers working with the national industries of the blind and tremendous credit to them for investing a significant amount of their time and resources into making an e commerce platform that is accessible for screen reader technology. This is a huge opportunity for people with blindness who are interested in being their own business owner online in the e commerce space. Like I said, we piloted last year. We proved the proof of concept. We have another class now going in. I would encourage anybody who thinks they have a consumer interested in this space to contact national industries of the Blind. Mention the pilot with Massachusetts that we've done. They'll know what you're talking about and get your consumers enrolled because this really is the future and it's a great opportunity.   Carol: Yeah, I thought that was a super smart idea when I was reading because that was one of your re allotment projects was to study it and to look at it and to figure that out so that can actually be a viable option for your customers.   David: That's right. We didn't just rush in horns first. We studied it, we spent time, looked around, conferred with NIB, and NIB has done a great job. Like I said, they've really made a major investment here and using their Ability One shops that they've had, they have such a tremendous network of providers and vendors that many of the products, I think it's about half of the products are actually made by blind people also. So it's almost like a double win when you really get down to it. To be able to sell these products online. We're very optimistic about it. Good things start humbly and that's where we started. We started with the first class. I think we started with 12 people. Then it went to 6 because some people didn't have the screen reader skills necessary that you would need. Then from the 6,, 3 of them dropped out because they didn't want to own the lemonade stand. They just wanted to work the lemonade stand right there from the 3. It went to 2 and then 1 ended up actually seeing it all the way through and becoming profitable. So we've proved the proof of concept. We just now need more consumers. So if you've got consumers in your area, let's get them going.   Carol: Well, it always starts with 1. You need one, you know, and then there's 2 and then there's 3 and it keeps moving up. That's great. At least it gives another opportunity. And it really is the gift that keeps on giving. You know, when you look at using those reeallotment dollars, it doesn't just benefit you. In Massachusetts, the work that you're doing can benefit the whole country.   David: Yeah, I really think that, Carol. And if people again go to Mass.gov/MCB, look at the, again now, I think it's either up to 30 or 32 different real allotment projects that we've done. There's quite a bit of information in there from studies to these campaigns to the Quest for Independence guide that we did, all of these different things. they're there for everybody else to be able to use. If we've had success, you can just kind of repurpose it and have success in your area with it.   Carol: Well, and your quest to  independence. Guide You've been being very modest about it, but that is hilarious because it's a comic book and you're the superhero. In it. It is the coolest thing. I thought that was the most clever thing I had seen in that Pre-ETS space.   David: Well, thanks, Carol. If it leads to one more employment, then we'll be pleased.   Carol: Yeah, that's cool. So, David, I know there's a lot of new directors across the country like you were a few years ago. What kind of advice would you give them as they're wrestling with ways to effectively spend their funds?   David: Yeah, it would really be, Don't just settle for what has been done previously. I've found the people at RSA to be very supportive, to be willing to listen, and just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean it can't be done. Find out what your consumers need and then figure out how to backtrack that to these federal dollars to be able to get them the resources that they need to be successful, whether it's a small business enterprise or Randolph Shepherd or they want to go to kind of a more traditional route of getting employed, whatever the case may be. There's a program that can be crafted to individualize everybody so that they feel like the job they're getting is the job for them, because that's what we want you to spend so much time getting somebody in the workforce. We want to make sure these people are staying in the workforce, staying gainfully employed, because again, we really believe that independence and self determination, that's the thing that you've got to get through so that people can long term stay viable on their own.   Carol: Well, well said. Thanks so much for being on the show today. I've been a big fan of yours for a long time and I just really wanted to get your message out to our listeners and have folks look at your website and the very cool things you can do. I know there's a synopsis of all of your projects so people can get a really good sense of what you did and what you learned. I think it was brilliant, so I wish you the very best of luck in 2023 and thanks for joining me today.   David: Carol, Thanks so much. You do such a great job. I appreciate you. Thanks for everybody for listening. And please contact us if we could be a support in any way.   Carol: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

He's here, he's there; Dr. Hillman brings drug safety everywhere! So given the rules and regulations he needs to follow, the title “vigilante” could be nothing but ironic.We chart David's progress through choosing pharmacology as a subject to study, and settling on pharmacovigilance as a career to pursue. Listen: The Bollywood beats come courtesy of Cambridge-based artist Anish Kumar whose music you can also find on Bandcamp: anishkumarmusic.bandcamp.com, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.Watch:Subscribe to our YouTube channel now for all future recordings. Episode transcript[Background intro music playing is "Nazia" by Anish Kumar]Parmvir: Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the 2Scientists podcast, where inspiring scientists share their work with you, wherever you like to listen. Today we come to you from a rather unique spot, rather than a cafe or bar we are camped out in Kensington Gardens in London, because it's a glorious day and our podcasting equipment allows us to do that. But enough about me and us, we are here today, of course I am your host Parmvir Bahia here and we're here with David Basanta, but we also have with us another David who is very special to me, he is an old friend of mine from my PhD program, and we shared much time and much swearing over experiments together at University college London. How are you David Hillman? David: I'm doing well. Thank you. It's, as you say, it's a, it's a lovely day and, it's nice to be back with old friends. Parmvir: Yes, yes. Of course everything rotates background to COVID and whereas we would normally see each other once a year. It's been three, four, possibly? David: Three, I think that's yeah.Parmvir: Miserable. David: Yeah. Sad times we shall have to make up for it. Parmvir: We will, we will. There's a bottle of Cava with our name on it. Once we've done with this. David: And onion rings. Parmvir: And onion rings. Yes. Fancy Marks and Spencer's one's though. So let's start at the beginning. I'm not talking about like, where were you born kind of thing. Although you can mention Kidderminster if you'd like. So as I understand it, we had a relatively similar track as undergraduates. So you did a bachelor's in pharmacology, correct? David: Yeah, that's right. Parmvir: So tell us why, why pharmacology? David: So this is gonna age me, age us.So I, for my A levels, so for my senior school exams, I, studied chemistry, biology, and maths, and I wanted to study something at university that combined chemistry and biology. And so this is the bit that will age us. So back in the day, if you remember, you would go to the, career advice department who were trying to help people to steer people towards what options they might want to pick at university.And they had this huge telephone directory effectively, which, mapped together people's different, combinations of A level courses and then gave you a list of options that you could, study at university. So I was sat in this little tiny room with this career advisor person, and they were basically running through this list of different courses.And when they came to pharmacology, they'd already mentioned pharmacy, which, you know, most people know what it is, but then they said pharmacology and I stopped them and said, well, what's, what's the difference? And they actually gave a pretty good summary. They said, it's more the biology of medicine. It's more the, the research and development of new medicines. They said it's potentially a controversial topic because it's the pharmaceutical industry is itself sometimes controversial and there's other aspects to the industry, which are, challenging sometimes. But yeah, that's how it started. So I picked a few different pharmacology courses, one of which was King's College London. I was always very practical, so I liked the idea of doing a year in industry at some point. So I chose a sandwich course like you and yeah, so that took me to KCL all that time ago. Parmvir: Mm. So I didn't realize how similar our tracks had been, because I also did biology, chemistry and maths, and I wanted to do something with the chemistry and the biology.And I got put in that direction by David: did you pick it out of the phone book as well? Parmvir: I did. What was it called? There was a name for it. David: It was pretty like a UCAS publication. Parmvir: Yes. It was just, it was enormous. David: Yeah. Parmvir: But yeah, in any case, I also, I did a sandwich year and I got to go and hang out in Germany for a year, which was fun.But yeah. So obviously after that you came to do a PhD at UCL where we were, well, I was a year ahead of you, I think. David: Yeah. You were. Parmvir: Why? Why did you do a PhD? David: So well for the reasons that I guess a lot of people do them, which is that I wasn't sure what to do next [both laugh] and a PhD seemed like a good way to string it out for another few years before I figured that out.But the reason I landed on UCL was that when I did go and do my year in industry, which like you was for a large pharma company, I worked in a lab looking at some non-clinical safety models. And we were using electrophysiology techniques at the time that was sharp electrode electrophysiology.Parmvir: You're gonna have to explain what electrophysiology means. David: Oh, don't make me do that. It's been 20 years [Parmvir laughs]. Oh, it's basically where you take either isolated cells or tissues and you put tiny, tiny electrodes into them and measure the changing currents across cell membranes. And as you put different drugs on, you can look at different effects of those drugs how they affect the electrical signals that you can measure.And really it's ions moving back and forward across membranes by little things called ion channels. So yeah, so I'd done sharp electrode electrophysiology there. I went back to university to finish my last year, and then the question came up about what to pick for a PhD. And I thought, well, although I hadn't enjoyed electrophysiology, it's something that I had started to, I guess, gain an interest in. Plus I had some skills that in that area. So, yeah, so I found a course, rather a PhD studentship at UCL, which seemed to fit the bill. It was looking at using a slightly different electrophysiology technique, so patch, clamping in a different area, but I thought it was something that I could use what I'd learnt in my year in industry Parmvir: I gave you some of these questions beforehand. David: Yes, because I'm incapable of spontaneous reaction to questions [Parmvir laughs]. Parmvir: Actually, I loved it so much that I have to read out your description of what your memory is like. David: I was quite proud of that. I coined that yesterday. I used to think of my memory as a lobster pot. Parmvir: All right. So you said I've just come up with a good analogy for my recall memory. It's like a reference library. You have to put in a request and then go away for a bit. When you come back, I'll have retrieved something from the vaults. Hopefully. David: Yeah, exactly. Parmvir: But aside from that I wanted to say this might be something of a loaded question, but what did you think of your PhD experience?David: You know, I really, I look back on those years with fond memory. Now it's partly because looking back, you edit out all of the stress and anxiety associated with doing a research project like that. I remember at the time when I first started UCL ran some induction courses where they pulled together PhD students and other postgraduate students from all sorts of backgrounds and John Foreman who you'll remember who was the Dean of students at the time, he gave a little introduction to UCL, but also gave some interesting advice let's say and pointers.And one of the things he pointed out in that session was the high degree of mental illness that is encountered by students in general taking these types of courses because they are stressful. And you often feel like you are kind of on your own. Driving your own research project forward. Sometimes through difficult times. So I do remember that in particular, but you know, what I remember mostly is just how impressed I was with all of the people that surrounded me because our department was not particularly flashy in its kind of presentation, but there were some seriously impressive people there.So I always like to think of our lab in the sense of, you know, it was run by effectively by Dennis and, and Guy when we got there. But before then it had been run by Don and before then it had been run by Bernard Katz who was a Nobel laureate. So it felt like we were the either grandchildren or great grandchildren of a Nobel Laureate and the whole department was a bit like that. It had a lot of very understated people who were world experts in their, in their field. And I always felt like the dumbest person in the department. But that didn't bother me too much because you know, being surrounded by all this greatness and even just, you know, the little glimpses of things you would see at the kind of coffee breaks and in the corridors, some of those memories still live with me, you know. Bearing in mind, this was back in what, between 2001 and 2005.So very, very early days of smartphones, things like trios and things like that, which seem antiquated now. But I remember coming across two old professors, so probably in their seventies or eighties comparing their smartphones and that like little microcosm, are the things that I loved about the department.Parmvir: Actually, I mean, I think you're, you're definitely selling yourself short. Like nobody would say that you weren't smart enough to be there. And I think one of the things that kind of ties into the, the mental health aspect is that we all felt that way. David: Yeah. Parmvir: Except we didn't express it to anyone else. It's, it's utterly ridiculous. How can we all be the least smart person in the room that's just not possible. David: Yeah. Parmvir: And after that, we all got our PhDs anyway, so, you know yeah. David: I certainly have no regrets about it. And I look back on those times with, with very fond memories, for sure. Parmvir: Yeah. Just talk briefly about what you did for your project and what the difficulties were.David: So the lab that I joined, so which, which you were a part of as well, their specialty was calcium activated potassium channels. And over time, the lab had looked at these ion channels in various different settings. The project that I was given was looking at these channels in vascular endothelial cells, which was a cell type that no one in the lab had ever studied before.Parmvir: Mm. David: So one of the biggest challenges that we were hit with straight away was that no one in the lab could really help that much with firsthand experience of how to obtain these cells, how to isolate them, how to culture them, how to grow them and really how to manage those cell types. So you might well remember that, the first, probably nine months of my PhD was just spent trying to culture these cells. Parmvir: Mm-hmm David: and it started with you know, available tissue from rats and other small mammals.But then eventually we were not having success with culturing cells from those models. So I switched onto pigs and, you know, I'd done a bit of reading that, you know, these vessels, because they were much larger the blood vessels, it was easier effectively to culture cells from, so I looked in the phone book and I found the address of an abattoir out in the middle of Essex.And there began my weekly trip for getting on for two and a half years to the deepest, darkest corners of Essex to go and retrieve pig, coronary artery cells once a week. Parmvir: Yeah. And essentially you suffered because these things were so flat. [David laughs] And when you're trying to, so you, for anyone who's listening, you have to picture trying to get a very, very fine tube onto something that is incredibly flat, and essentially you need this thing to form a vacuum seal and that just wasn't gonna happen. David: No, so, you know, vascular endothelial cells, they're the cells that line blood vessels, which is why they're, they're very flat. They're like tiles almost on the inside of veins and arteries.And you know, with other cells in the lab that were being looked at like the ones that you were looking at, like DRGs and like neurons and things like that, you know, you were basically putting the, the electrode down onto like a ball. Parmvir: Yeah. David: So the gap between the bottom of the dish and the top of the cell was who knows, 10, 20 microns, something like that. The cells that we were looking at, they flattened themselves out so much, they were about one micron, I think we estimated and therefore the tiniest vibration in the room would destroy the cell. And yeah, so the first stage was trying to culture, the damn things, and that was extremely challenging. It took a long time, but nine months of the way through managed it, and then began the whole pain of trying to get electrical recordings from them, which turned out to be as difficult. Parmvir: Yeah. So one of the things, I don't know if we ever talked about this, but what did you aspire to do after you'd done your PhD originally?Like, did you have any kind of idea? David: I mean, I think I was always headed into the pharmaceutical industry, which is where I landed up. In my undergrad degree in, I think my either first or second year, I did a very nice course, which was a kind of practical introduction to the pharmaceutical industry and from very top level, how drugs are developed and how pharma companies are organized internally and how the research progresses. And that, I'd always found that interesting. I mean, I find the entire pharmaceutical industry absolutely fascinating. And still do to this day. It's such an amazingly complex industry. And so, yeah, so I think I'd always been heading in that direction. Sure enough, the PhD certainly made me decide I was done with bench science [Parmvir laughs]. So, you know, by the time you've spent three plus years plodding along with these experiments that have a success rate of one in 50 sometimes. Parmvir: Yeah. David: You know, days and weeks without getting any data, and towards the end, still being in the lab at three o'clock in the morning, trying to get something to work and breaking more and more glassware as time goes on [Parmvir laughs]Yeah, I decided I was done with bench science, although I loved being in the labs, I loved playing in the labs. But I was never that into the kind of reading of the scientific papers and that sort of thing. Once it came down to maths and things like that, I wasn't so engaged. I needed to see practical things. Parmvir: Yeah. I feel like at some point we realized we were both some kind of engineer at heart rather than David: Yeah. Maybe Parmvir: scientist, David: maybe. Parmvir: It's more like, how does this work rather than trying to answer a bigger scientific question. David: Yeah. Parmvir: But obviously you were, you were a little bit scarred by your experience there, and you ended up going off in, I guess, a very different track from what the standard academic education leads you towards. So I think at this point this might be a good place to put your disclaimer in. David: Yes. So I work in the pharmaceutical industry and over time I've worked for, and with a variety of different companies.Any of the content that I describe today are my opinions and my opinions alone, and often they're really based off things which are in the public domain. In fact it's all based off things that were in the public domain and also some of the education that I've received, because actually, even after I finished my PhD, I then years later went on to study a, another academic course specifically in pharmacovigilance and pharmacoepidemiology.Parmvir: Oh, where did you do that? David: London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Parmvir: Oh. David: And it's interesting because it's a short course and I felt was a very valuable course. It's a course where regulatory authorities also send their people to learn too. Parmvir: So there's a lot of questions I can ask next.But one of the things that your job description throws up is this word "pharmacovigilance". What does that mean? David: Okay. So somewhere because I'm not gonna do it justice from memory, I'm going to read out the WHO definition of pharmacovigilance. It doesn't roll off the tongue, unfortunately, which is why it's never quite there in my head.So per the WHO: pharmacovigilance is the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects, or any other medicine, or vaccine-related problem. So essentially it is the process and the science relating to drug side effects. Now as you'll remember from pharmacology days, very early on, you're taught that all pharmacologically active substances, if it applies to the human body have side effects. The same side effects are not encountered by every person.And you know, some of the side effects might have obvious clinical manifestations. Some might not, you might get side effects, never know you've had them. And of course they vary massively in severity. So when you are looking at a medicine, particularly one that you're introducing to kind of general use in humans, you have a trade-off to make because you have an expected therapeutic benefit, but you also have to be mindful of potential side effects, particularly serious side effects and how much tolerance you have for those versus the good that the drug is supposed to do.And achieving that balance is one of the big challenges that's faced in drug development.Parmvir: So what you do really, it kind of comes at the end of the whole process of clinical trials and so on for given products, right? David: It actually starts right at the beginning of clinical development.So. Parmvir: Oh, hang on, I have to ask David's question: does that make you a Pharmacovigilante? David: [David and Parmvir laugh] I've often wondered the same thing myself. But yeah, so pharmacovigilance takes off really where toxicology leaves. So before you can put a drug into clinical development, by which I mean development in humans, drugs first have to go through preclinical development and that's where all the various toxicology studies are run.Parmvir: Can you quickly define toxicology for us? David: Sure. It is really focusing on the well, the potentially toxic side of medicines. So before you put a drug anywhere near a human, you want to be absolutely certain that it doesn't cause various catastrophic side effects in humans.So, for example, you need to be confident that it doesn't cause cancer. You need to be confident that it's not gonna cause a heart attack immediately, or cause a stroke immediately or things like that. So as per regulations in pretty much every country in the world, before you put a drug anywhere near a human in a clinical trial, it has to go through a standard set of tests.And there's various ways to achieve that. You know, sometimes those are tests using computer simulated models. Sometimes they are using individual cells or cultured cells or tissues. And sometimes as is well known in the industry they're using animal models and these are legally required tests.So every drug that goes through the process has to go through these. So that's done before it gets to clinical development. And then you start with phase one clinical trials which are studies on, usually on healthy volunteers and they're very small trials. They involve perhaps a few tens of patients. And the only purpose of those trials is to look at the safety and tolerability of the drug. So this is the first time you're putting the drug into humans. There is a bit of an exception to that. So although these are usually conducted on healthy volunteers, for some drugs, including, for example oncology drugs. Those drugs are usually along the more kind of toxic end of agents, so it's not ethical to put those into healthy volunteers. So sometimes those studies are conducted in a patient population. So once a drug moves into human studies into phase one, from that point, really for the rest of the lifetime of that drug as a human medicine pharmacovigilance is involved. So all the way through the phase one, two and three studies and then once the drug goes onto the market, pharmacovigilance continues.So the companies or the pharmaceutical or biotech companies that are developing these assets have a legal requirement to collect and analyze this data on an ongoing basis pretty much forever. Until that drug is eventually, perhaps if it's lucky enough to get to the market, until it's withdrawn from the market, perhaps many decades later.Parmvir: Very good. And I think that there are probably some very topical things that have come up recently as a result of COVID 19, which is important to consider when we're talking about these things, in that we are not just relying on these clinical trials that have gone out to ensure that these things are safe, but once they're out there that you have to continue to get feedback from people who are taking these to ensure that they continue to be safe in the long term, right?David: That's true. So, you know, ordinarily in clinical development, once you get through phase 1, 2, 3, and if you are lucky enough to have a drug, which is sufficiently efficacious, tolerable to go to market, then yes, you know, the drug's released to market and you continue to monitor for this stuff.Vaccines are in a particularly special category because they are drugs that are given to healthy people. Mm yes. And so therefore the benefit risk balance is more complicated in some ways, because , you know, it's, it's hard to consider the benefit to the individual of taking a product when they don't yet have that disease.So now there are other drugs that are in a similar category, other drugs that are given to healthy people. This is where I can ask you some questions. So what, what do you think those other drugs include? Parmvir: Oh, goodness. Um, I'm trying to think off the top of my head, what they might be. David: Yeah. It's very unfair. Parmvir: All I can think of at the moment are the other vaccines. David: Okay. So, Parmvir: but there are lots of prophylactic things. Yeah. Yeah. I can't think of anything David: Contraceptives. Parmvir: The obvious prophylactic. Yes. David: Drugs used for travel. So things like anti-malaria tablets. Parmvir: Oh yeah. David: Drugs used for things like smoking cessation Parmvir: mm-hmmDavid: stuff like that.So again, these are all drugs that are generally given to healthy people. So, you know, and this is where benefit risk balance comes into sharp focus, because if you have a drug that has been developed to treat a very hard to treat cancer, let's say, then when you consider benefit risk balance you know, if these patients are effectively going to die without a treatment, and this is the only treatment available, you might be able to accept that a drug has a one in a hundred chance of causing a fatal stroke. Particularly if that drug is given in hospital and these things can be, can be managed. If however, you are developing a cough medicine, then your tolerance for any type of dangerous side effects is basically zero, and of course, many drugs elsewhere on that scale. So yeah, benefit risk balance is a key part of what has to be looked at during drug development. And yeah, as we say, vaccines are particularly challenging. Often these days when a new drug is developed the clinical development and the studies don't stop necessarily when the drug is released for marketing. So, often as a condition of the marketing authorizations that are granted for these drugs, there have to be continuing studies to look at safety. These are called post-authorization safety studies. And so there's ongoing collection of data in a rigorous way to keep monitoring for various things. Either new things that we didn't know about the drug before, because of course when you're in clinical development, your number of patients is normally quite small Parmvir: mm-hmm David: so you're less likely to spot very rare side effects. You wouldn't usually detect a one in 50,000 probability side effect in a clinical trial cohort. Parmvir: Yeah. David: But sometimes these post authorization safety studies allow you to pick up more of that and enable you to characterize some of the side effects that you do know about more in detail.Parmvir: Yeah. So David B here asks essentially how long do these things go on after the drug's been on the market? For example, is there still pharmacovigilance for aspirin? David: Yes. Every single drug that has a marketing authorization out there it is the law in pretty much every country in the world that all safety data that becomes available to the marketing authorization holders, that's the company that owns the rights to the drug and effectively sells the drug, they're required by law to collect process, analyze and report this data. Now as drugs age, the natural reporting rate for some of these drugs drops so the probability of a physician or a pharmacist or a nurse, or even a patient reporting a side effect probably drops over time because theses are not new medicines anymore, but even so, any data that is collected has to go through that process, which is the pharmacovigilance that we were referring to earlier. In addition to that, all companies with marketing authorizations have to look at scientific and medical literature. It all has to be reviewed, so in European requirements, including the UK on a weekly basis, companies have to trawl some of the big literature databases, such as PubMed and M base, they have to trawl that information for any articles on their drugs. And any indication of side effects or other similar challenges. Parmvir: So how is this information collected and processed? Cause you've said obviously doctors, nurses, patients, they will all report certain things. Mm-hmm how do you kind of get them to a central place and cataloged and how do you decide what are actual side effects versus David: So if we think about the front end of the process, most pharma companies out there will have medical information help lines. So these are help lines that are set out there so that healthcare professionals. So that's the physicians, the, the pharmacists, the nurses and others but also consumers can contact the company for more information about the medicine and also potentially report adverse events, side effects. In parallel to that the same thing's going on with the regulators. So in the UK, for example, we have the yellow card scheme, which these days is a web portal system where anyone can go in and report side effects of medicines they're taking. In the us, you have the MedWatch scheme, which is very similar. Most companies around the world have similar things. Plus you've also got ongoing clinical trials, clinical studies, so data is coming in that way too. We've got data coming in from literature that I've mentioned. The regulators, when they receive stuff directly, they often pass that information over to the pharma company.So essentially all this information is coming towards the pharma company. It all gets directed to a pharmacovigilance department. And then we go through the process of processing that data. And so that data comes in from everywhere around the world where the drug is available for patients to take both in clinical trials and on the market.So the process basically consists of firstly translating the data, if it needs to be translated that gets captured into a safety database and there are various commercial safe databases out there. This is where companies collate all the information received on their drugs. And it goes through a process whereby data is kind of standardized it's put into standard terminology in a way that is compatible with the regulatory requirements. A narrative is constructed. So we write a story of what's happened to the patient from beginning to end. We look at various things like if the information is available to us, you know, what other medications were the patients taking? What's their medical history? What was the sequence of events? So what was the time to onset if possible, if we have that information between the patient taking the drug and them reporting the side effect, what the clinical course of the side effect was, so did the patient recover? Was any adjustment made to the the, the dosing or any treatments given? And so all that gets written up, we then decide what other information do we need to know?And then there's a feedback loop to go and ask the reporter if they'll provide additional information. Usually we ask for more information on more serious adverse events. We don't wanna overburden the reporters. Now reporters in clinical trials, so physicians involved in those, they're legally obliged to help with that process. Spontaneous reporters that we refer to, which is just where any healthcare professional or consumer contacts, the company, that's a voluntary reporting system, so we can ask them for additional information, they don't have to provide it, but we have to ask the questions anyway. So the information gets pulled together. It then goes, usually goes through a medical review, so we have kind of scientists pulling the data together. And then we have physicians reviewing the case, making sure it makes medical sense. And then depending on the seriousness of the case and other attributes, that case might have to be reported out to regulators worldwide.And a lot of the reports which are serious, have to be reported out within 15 days of what we call day zero, which is the first day anyone in the company became aware of the report. Parmvir: Mm-hmm. David: But to give you an idea, the large pharma companies are dealing with potentially tens of thousands of reports a week that are coming in on all of their products. So these are vast systems that are set up and they have to be set up to be able to meet all of the regulatory requirements in terms of timelines, for reporting. So the data's coming in, the expedited reports are going out in the format that the regulators require. We also have to pull together what we call aggregate reports. So these aggregated analyses of data over time for newer drugs, for example, those are submitted in Europe every six months. And then over time as the drug gets older, the gap between reports gets longer. And then also we're doing something, what we call signal section, which is where we are analyzing the data. And we're looking for trends in the data. Where we think we've got patterns we're starting to then look into researching those patterns a little bit more, you know, if we start to see, for example that I don't know that we are getting what appears to be a disproportionate number of nose bleeds, let's say, in a patient cohort, we would, you know, do background research on, well, you know, is there a plausible biological mechanism that we know about through the development of the drug? Was there stuff seen in the animal studies or even the human studies that might indicate that there's a, there's a root cause here.We'll look into confounding effects. Are all these patients on other drugs, which actually are likely causing that? And yeah, so kind of an appraisal is done: what's going on? Is it likely to be caused by something else? And if not, you know, we, keep on looking and those conversations then have to be shared with the regulatory authorities.And over time, what you'll see is the labeling of the product, the professional labeling which in Europe, including the UK, is the SMPC, the summary of product characteristics, which is a bit like the instruction manual for the product, which is available to healthcare professionals and the simplified version of that PIL those little leaflets you find inside of packs, those eventually get revised on an ongoing basis to accommodate the new knowledge that we are gaining on the side effect profile of the drug. So this is an ongoing process and it happens throughout the entire lifetime of the, of the drug. Parmvir: But yeah, so here's a subject that no one's talked about for a little while. COVID 19 David: mm-hmm Parmvir: [laughs] Obviously I know there's probably a collective groan from people listening right now, but it seems like a relevant subject, given the conversations around safety that people are having with regard to the vaccine. So do you know if there's been like a major uptick in these reports by individuals, of side effects from the vaccines, or do you take account of the fact that so many billions of people essentially at this point have received at least one shot of the vaccine versus how many reports you get coming in?David: Yeah. So this is one of the big challenges, and one of the things I should have said about drugs like vaccines is because they're given to such vast numbers of people, it becomes a particular challenge to differentiate between things which are being caused potentially by the vaccine and other things, which unfortunately are just bad luck of being a human being.And by that, I mean, so years ago when I was doing one of the academic courses we were being taught about the vast amounts of research that had to be done in terms of epidemiology before the HPV vaccines were released. So these vaccines were being released for use in teenage girls, and at the time it was felt that there was perhaps an insufficient understanding of the general health of that population, including things like what is the probability of a freak occurrence that a teenage girl is going to have a stroke or something like that? Things which we think of as of course, they're exceptionally rare, but they do happen.Parmvir: Mm-hmm David: and I'm talking about in untreated populations. Parmvir: Yep. David: But of course, you know, some of these patients are also on birth control and things like that, that also have other risk factors associated with them so my understanding is before the HPV vaccines were released, a huge amount of epidemiology research was done so that when the new vaccines were released, we knew that we would expect, and I'm just gonna make up a number here that, you know, one in 500,000 teenage girls would have, I don't know, some kind of fatal event which would just naturally occur, you know, even without them having the vaccine. And so that's similar for other vaccine rollouts as well. There has to be a good understanding of the background events of other things that, people will have happen to them, which have nothing to do with the medicine that you are giving.So, you know, that data is kept available and kept an eye on by the regulatory authorities and also the pharma companies. We don't have background rates for everything, so being prepared for what might come and then, you know, there perhaps isn't so much panic when the first case comes in of a patient that has one of these catastrophic events but if you start to see more than that, that's when you start to perhaps get more interested in: is this really being caused by the vaccine or the drug of interest. So, yeah, a lot of upfront work has to be done before you even put the drug out there. I mean, in terms of the COVID vaccines and the treatments, because of the high degree of public interest and scrutiny a lot of these drugs when they were first given and the vaccines were first given, so adverse events, side effects were tracked through post-authorization safety studies. So actually a lot of people, when they got their first doses, consented to have maybe a follow up call from an investigator who would ask them about various side effects that happened. So in addition to all of the natural spontaneous reporting that was coming in, there were very large cohorts of past study data coming in which is a robust way to look at these things. I know as well, there were legitimate questions about, you know, the COVID vaccines in particular were produced fairly quickly compared to the usual 10 to 15 years in development of, of a product. But you know, there are various reasons for this. So vaccines are perhaps one of the medicines where it's more possible to template out the product and therefore switch out components. But they still have a product which is similar to other products that have previously been used. But also, the COVID era in terms of vaccine development and treatment development was, in my opinion at least a completely unique event in terms of drug development so far. If you think of drug development as a kind of universe, or I'm gonna use some wonky analogies here, but let's say as galaxies, which have solar systems within them that have planets within them.So if you think of the galaxy of drug development you have all of these different stakeholders involved. You have the pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies and the service companies that support them, that's one area. You have the regulatory authorities but you have many other stakeholders.You have patients, of course they're the most important. For chronic diseases you might have patient advocacy groups. But also, you know, you guys are part of this universe as well, because you are the ones doing basic research, which is the foundation on which all, you know, all of this is, is ultimately built. So you have universities and other research organizations. You have the funding bodies that sit behind those that decide where the research money goes. And then out the other end of the process you have ethics committees that are involved in approving clinical trials. You have payers. So these are the organizations that ultimately pay for medicinal products in the UK, for example, that's the NHS. Parmvir: Yep. David: In the US, that would be insurance companies. Parmvir: Yeah. David: You have many other stakeholders. So you have obviously healthcare professionals at the end of the day, new drugs have to be woven into the fabric of medicine. And so you have to bring HCPs along with you. There are the learning bodies as well in relation to HCPs, the kind of professional bodies.So that's really at a kind of galaxy level, these are all the different solar systems. And then within them, if you look at the pharmaceutical biotechnology and service provider solar system, within those you have an incredibly complicated set of different skills departments, functions, you have the functions that are doing discovery.So these are the early days of, development where, you know, biologists and chemists are working out, you know, what are the new therapeutic targets we can look at? Then you have the clinical development division. You have the patent divisions, you have the regulatory affairs functions. You have the pharmacovigilance functions. You have the medical affairs functions, you have the medical information functions [Parmvir cackles]. There are, and I'm going to miss out many, many. You have the, the bio stats folks, you have the medical writers. And then of course you have the manufacturing, which is in itself a completely different, you know, specialized world.So yeah, you're dealing with a very complicated process with lots of things which are interlinked. But for me, if you think of all these things, like if you use layout or different compass, let's say, and I'm talking about the compass you use to check direction, not the ones you used to draw circles [Parmvir laughs] and if you scatter them all out they'll all be pointing at different directions. You know, all of these different entities have their own priorities. Because of course the industry as a whole is developing many different medicinal products for different reasons. I think when COVID came along, it was like drawing a magnet across the top of all those compasses and it got all the needles to point in the same direction.So you had governments who had a clear incentive to try and support the development of treatments. So you had governments putting up money, which was perhaps slightly unusual. They were putting money into basic research, such as the type of stuff that you guys do. They were putting money into diagnostics, which are critical for things like COVID.They were putting money into the development of vaccines and into treatments. And then of course, you know, you have the pharma companies where there was a scramble to try and develop something, to help humanity in its hour of need. You had the regulators with a lot of focus on them you know, and everyone watching their, every move and trying to ensure that you know, as many processes that often might take months, or perhaps even years were made as efficient as possible.Parmvir: Mm-hmm David: And it was a unique point in time because everyone was lined up with the same objective. So it meant, for example, that, you know, parts of the industry, which are normally a nine to five job, became a 24/7 job. Parmvir: Yeah. David: For a short period of time.And there was a huge amount of collaboration, which happened between the different stakeholder groups, you know regulatory authorities offered perhaps free scientific advice to companies that were developing this stuff. They met very regularly with companies that were in development. They gave a lot of advice as to what their expectations were when the data was received by them. They shortened some administrative pathways let's say which usually take a lot of time. They prioritized resource. So there's resource specifically waiting for this data to come in. And so, yeah, a lot of normal processes were adapted so that things could be done as efficiently as possible.And the outcome was that, you know, these drugs went through the entire process in a much more efficient way than would usually be encountered. I think another thing as well is with things like vaccines, the side effects that we anticipate to see, including the rare unusual ones ordinarily these manifest within, you know, days or weeks.It's not something that usually we anticipate things to occur years later. So there was that aspect too, but yeah, it was a, it was a unique time. Parmvir: Yeah. And actually this is a good throwback to Dr. Carina Rodriguez's podcast because she ran one of the clinical trials for the vaccine in children at USF where I work.David: Oh, fascinating. Parmvir: Yeah, so she talked about some of the things that you mentioned as well. David: I should say I was not involved sadly in any of the COVID vaccine development, but you know, it was fascinating to watch and actually to see my profession become a talking point in the news every day. Parmvir: Yes. David: It was very interesting to see all of this play out.Parmvir: Yeah. So actually, that's probably a good point to pause and ask you, what do you actually do? David: Okay. So [everyone laughs]. So as I've kind of indicated the process of pulling in adverse event data of coding it, which is the term we use for tidying up all of the data, putting it into a safety database, writing those narratives, getting the medical review, getting the important cases out the other end to the regulators, writing the reports, doing the signal section.These are very complicated processes and every company will develop them slightly differently. You know, small biotech companies, they might only have one product. It might only be approved in one or two countries. A top five pharma company will have hundreds of products authorized in many countries around the world. But all of these processes are put together in compliance with extremely strict regulations. Regulations that as I said exist in almost every country in the world and actually the regulations kind of cross over in the sense of, if you have a product that's authorized for marketing in the UK and the US, for example you know, the UK requires you to collect all the data and analyze it as does the US.They also require you to collect the data from each other's territories so companies are in the middle of the very complicated regulatory framework, which is a little bit different in each country, but fortunately is harmonized through some international bodies and international terminology. But building pharmacovigilance systems is complicated and it has to be done right. Firstly, for the obvious reason that we want to protect patients it's in no one's interest that that that patients are not protected. But also, you know, the penalties for not complying with these complex regulatory requirements are severe. And so my job really, as a, let's say senior leader within a pharmacovigilance department is to make sure that we build the right structures.And for these companies that we that we keep an eye out on all the areas, which are potential challenges and that companies are being compliant with the legislation to which we're all held. And so, so yeah, so building pharmacovigilance systems, I think is the simplest way I can describe it.Parmvir: It sounds pretty heavy and pretty complicated. David: Yeah. I mean, if you look at the larger pharma companies, if you add up all of the resource that they put into pharmacovigilance that they're legally required to put into pharmacovigilance, to service the needs of their products. A lot of things are outsourced these days, if you the count everything that comes from the outsourcing organizations as well, the big pharma companies have thousands of people like me involved in the processing and analysis of this data. So it is a big area, and that is all we do. You know, we are not involved in any other aspect of the drug. Not involved in the sales and marketing, for example, with the product, that's almost the complete opposite side of the company to us, all we do is you know, work in this very professionalized, very standardized discipline, which is pharmacovigilance. Parmvir: So David has a couple of questions. So first one should be relatively quick, which is that, is there a regulatory authority that is the gold standard? David: [David laughs] This is a very politically sensitive one.There are certainly some regulatory authorities who, particularly in some of the larger markets who are let's say more prominent. So examples would be the US FDA, the food and drug administration that is the drug regulatory authority for the United States. In the UK, we also have an extremely prominent regulator, the MHRA they're one of the oldest regulators, I believe in the world. So that's the UK medicines and healthcare products, regulatory agency. But you know, every country has its own regulator and whilst there are some who put themselves out there, perhaps as world leading regulators, there are just as many others that are doing the same important job for their countries. The European Union and European Economic Area has a slightly more complicated system because they have a coordinating regulatory authority, which is the European Medicines agency, the EMA, who many of you all have heard about in news reports, particularly during the COVID situation. But at a national level, you also have all of the national regulators who are working in tandem with the EMA. Parmvir: Okay. So this sounds quite different from, obviously it's very different from what you were doing during your PhD. David: Yes. Parmvir: He also wants to know, how did your PhD work, prepare you to do what you do now. David: If I could sum it up in one phrase, and this is a phrase which is overused, but I think in this case, it is really true: problem solving.Parmvir: Mm-hmm David: because it's interesting, you mentioned earlier that you and I we're almost engineers. Well, I went from becoming a physical engineer, at least in a lab environment to a process engineer. And, you know, I always used to think very naively when I was doing the basic research with you, I used to think, look, we are solving problems that no one knows the answer to. This must be the hardest job in the world. [Parmvir laughs] We're not solving manmade problems. Manmade problems must be so easy to solve. But no manmade problems [Parmvir laughs] are also particularly challenging. And when I say manmade problems, you know, I'm not talking about problems that someone is deliberately created, it's just, you know, logistical challenges, and just the challenges caused by working in, you know, different regulatory envionments with different sets of requirements and how to build processes that meet all of the requirements at the same time. And react to events, of course, because it might well be that you've had a product that has been ticking along nicely for a long time. And then suddenly there is a safety concern with the product. And if that safety concern is in the public domain, you will be deluged with reports in relation to that product called stimulated reporting. And you know, of course sometimes companies will be subject to class action lawsuits particularly in the US. So they might also receive large volumes of reports all in one go. All of those reports have to meet the same legal timelines, but now suddenly you've got 10,000 reports landed on your desk. Each one takes four hours to process and they're all due to the regulators in 15 days. So yeah, it is challenging working in a hyper regulated environment. Parmvir: Essentially these are problems that come about because we are humans. David: Exactly. Yeah. Parmvir: And we have to somehow live together. David: Yeah. Parmvir: So I had a couple of questions from my little sister and these might not be directly related to your work, but they are related to the fact that you work within an environment that involves clinical trials and patients and so on.And so Sukhy wants to know are side effects from drugs, usually the same for healthy people versus patients. David: This is a great question and cause me a little bit of head scratching. I think, I mean, the answer is it depends, I think by and large. Yes. But there will be some exceptions and those exceptions include things like some of the oncology treatments, because obviously there is an interaction often between the drug and the tumor, for example, so in a healthy person you can't emulate that because there is no tumor. So an example would be a phenomenon called tumorlysis syndrome which can only occur when there's a tumor to react to the particular drug. But by and large, yes, we extrapolate safety data from healthy individuals initially, which is why the earlier phases of studies are done often in healthy volunteers with some exceptions. But yeah. Then when we move on to phase two and then phase three, phase two and three are conducted in patients that have the indication of interest, I have the disease that we're trying to treat.Parmvir: So another question she had: how do you know people who are not healthy will be able to tolerate the drugs given that initially that they're tested on healthy people?David: So the first thing I would say is I'm not an expert in the design of clinical trials, but as I said, as you go through phase one which are the trials that are normally on healthy patients, you actually start out with a tiny, tiny dose. So you have an idea of dosing from your animal studies, but the data isn't always transferrable. But you take the maximum tolerable dose in animals, including in the most sensitive animals. And you then cut that by huge factor by perhaps 500 fold. Parmvir: Right. David: So you start out with a tiny amount and then you escalate up the doses to see how the patients are tolerating the drug, not the patients subject, I should say. So these are healthy volunteers usually. Parmvir: Yep. David: So that's phase one, but yeah, then of course, when you go into phase two, you're dealing with a different patient population. I don't know exactly how that's always done, but of course, you know, trials are put together by experts in the field. And they involve, you clinicians whose expertise is this particular area of medicine.Parmvir: Yeah. David: And of course it's not just the physicians at the pharmaceutical company and the biopharma company and the scientists, I should say as well. Also, this stuff is going to regulatory authorities, it's going to ethics committees, all of whom will have their own areas of expertise. So, you know, protocols are designed around the patient and to ensure the patients are not put at unnecessary risk.Parmvir: Ah, sometimes David sends me one of those questions that really makes me giggle. And this is if regulations are so important and onerous, how do I start my own biotech in the garage? David: [David laughs] Well, it's interesting, you know, companies don't necessarily have to be that big themselves to get started, but what they will need is a lot of help.Parmvir: Yeah. David: So what you'll see these days is you know, new biotechs starting up. But they rely very heavily on outsourcing. So they will partner with service providers with contract research organizations, with contract manufacturing organizations, all sorts of other parties that have the expertise that perhaps they aren't able to pull together themselves.But yeah, there are some companies out there, particularly smaller companies in earlier development that are, you know, pretty small might have 20 people in the company. Parmvir: Yeah. David: But they will need to rely on the help of many others, because going back to the kind of universe description that I gave, you know, there are so many specialized areas that you need to have covered in order to pull together everything you need, both to run a clinical trial. and also to submit a marketing authorization application. And then also keep your product compliant with all of the legal requirements that are out there.Parmvir: It's a lot.David: It is a lot, and you know this is why drug development is so costly because it needs a truly vast number of specialists involved. And, you know, quite a lot of physicians as well. And also, you know, most drugs that enter drug development don't make it all the way through the other end, so the end costs of medicinal products also have to cover the cost of the drugs that didn't make it.And plus companies only have a certain period of exclusivity before their drug becomes generic, i.e., other companies can start making it. Parmvir: So this is purely from a personal perspective, from your point of view: what do you think about the fact that obviously you have these companies who have put so much money developing these things, which were designed to treat a global pandemic. And yet we found that for example, like entire continents, like Africa still don't have a lot of people vaccinated against COVID 19, and those companies will refuse to open up the patents to allow them to be able to get people to stay healthy. David: Yeah, it's an area that really I'm not really sufficiently qualified to talk on. And I'm not just saying that, you know, through not wanting to put my foot in my mouth, but particularly with some of the vaccine technologies that were used, they were not simple medicines to manufacture. So not simple to manufacture, not simple to store, not simple to distribute. And sometimes I guess, it is perhaps a legitimate concern of a company that if other companies start making their same drug to a lower quality, that can have ramifications elsewhere. Now I'm not saying that that was the reason behind some of what you mentioned. Now there was a vaccine that was developed the UK vaccine which was specifically developed from the outset to be made available in developing world countries, let's say, and specifically to be made available at cost. And even the way that product was designed, it can be manufactured and stored at fridge temperature Parmvir: mm-hmm, which is a big deal. David: Exactly. It is a big deal, you know, those are all very important components to consider. A vaccine that could be used in those environments. But even, I remember because I vacuumed up all of the documentaries I think on television, Netflix, everywhere else about all of the challenges that were being faced. And, you know, there were even things that you just wouldn't think about, which was, you know, because the mRNA vaccines had to be stored at -80 [degrees Celsius], there wasn't enough minus 80 freezers in the developed countries, let alone figuring out how to develop and ship these to other countries with different climatic conditions.And so you even had the manufacturers of that type of equipment, having to up their game and suddenly churn out much more equipment than they previously had. So, yeah, there's no simple answer. I mean, historically there've been other challenges in the past with other types of drugs, such as the HIV medications. In the end access to those drugs was resolved through very careful dialogue between companies, regulators others. Access issues, I believe to those drugs, and again, this is just basically what I see on documentaries and other things; where are access problems these days, they're not in relation to the drug supply chain they're in relation to other things like people not wanting to come forward and receive treatment because of the stigma associated with things like that.Parmvir: So in short, do you enjoy your work? David: I do. I mean, I can honestly say that in my work every day is different. I'm very privileged in my job to support a number of different companies that are developing different products with a very wide variety of indications. And also, you know, just when you think you've seen it all worked with a wide variety of medicinal products, suddenly something completely new will come along. For example, we are now on the precipice of many commercial gene therapies coming out. Parmvir: Ooh. David: And you know, those products have some different considerations. Perhaps some of these interventions are irreversible Parmvir: mm-hmm.David: So, you know, what happens if patients do start developing something rare and unexpected. You have patients surviving a lot longer than was originally envisaged so, you know, are there other things which come about you know, as a result of the underlying disease that just no one had ever seen before. And yeah, many other types of technologies and the regulations are always having to evolve to take into account of these new therapies and the challenges associated with them.Parmvir: Well, it sounds like you will continue to live in interesting times. David: Yeah. I don't think I'm going anywhere anytime soon . Parmvir: Well, thank you so much for your time today, David. That was fantastic. And yeah, as I say, we kind of thought of you as soon as we started thinking about the safety surrounding things like COVID vaccines and knew that was your jam.So yes, we very much appreciate your time today. David: Okay. Thank you very much. [musical interlude]David: So I mentioned earlier that at an early point in my PhD, I switched to studying vascular endothelial cells that were harvested from pigs. So essentially these were pigs that were being slaughtered for the meat industry. And so I had to look through a phone book and identify an abattoir that I could go to and get the tissue that I needed to do my experiments so obviously this all had to start somewhere. So I put in a call to an abattoir in deepest, darkest Essex. And I gingerly made my way on the train to this place, which of course was in the middle of rural nowhere. And unfortunately the first day that I picked to go, it was snowing. Now we don't get vast amounts of snow in Southern England, but this was a decent sprinkling of snow. So I arrived in this quiet rural destination and I walked across various fields. I think I'd perhaps just got GPS on my phone, but it was very early days. And I was lost in fields of white in no time at all. So I ended up putting in a call to, the guys, to, come and pick me up, which they very kindly did. So then, you know, at that time I really didn't know what a coronary artery looked like so what I decided to do for that first trip was I just collected the fresh hearts that they were able to bring out the processing facility. So these were kind of warm pig hearts, freshly harvested from animals. I think I had three hearts or something like that. And so I had a large polystyrene box with me with some ice in it. And I think they were kind enough to give me the ice, as I put these hearts inside bags and put them in the box and then started making my way back to London. And of course, you know, this being a cold day, the heating was on, on the train, and so as I was sat on the train, in fact, I think it was when I got onto the tube, I suddenly became horrified that my polystyrene box was starting to leak water. And of course I knew, but no one else knew on the tube that within that water were bags, perhaps not secured, very tightly containing hearts and containing probably a fair amount of blood.And I suddenly started sweating that this puddle that was starting to pull around my polystyrene box on the floor of the tube would suddenly start to go pink and then red. And then before I knew it, I would be in serious trouble. So it was just one of those situations where the tube journey seemed to get longer and longer, and I was sweating more and more and then it got to the point where I felt that I couldn't wait any longer, so I kind of dashed outta the tube at the next station went up what was perhaps one of the longest escalators on the underground and managed to just get out the other side before I caused perhaps a fake terrorist incident or something like that. I was trying to think about how I would explain that I'd got three hearts in my polystyrene box and a set of scalpels bearing in mind that pig's hearts are very similar size to human hearts as well. So, yes, I managed just about to get to the lab. I clearly looked quite distressed, I suppose when I got back to the lab. So I started telling this story to my PhD supervisor, Dennis, and uh a retired professor that had come into the department, Don. And before too long, the two of them were crying with laughter at my story.So, um, so yeah, so that was my very first trip and yes, never, never forgotten.[musical outro]David: Our lab, when we first joined, it was quite old and a bit dog eared. And there was one particular chair in the office, which was, I mean, it was like a typical office swivel chair, but it had definitely seen better days and it was extremely uncomfortable. And when we had lab meetings, no one wanted to sit on this chair. And so Parmvir and I nicknamed it, Beelzebub's stool.

David Friedman has more than 15 years of experience starting and leading technology companies in the real estate industry. In 2018, he co-founded Knox Financial, which offers a smart and frictionless way to turn a home into an investment property, manage that investment property, and secure the appropriate financing for a new home. Prior to Knox, Dave founded Boston Logic, and served as the company's CEO for more than a decade. At Boston Logic, he led the company in becoming a leading provider of real estate brokerage software. David sold Boston Logic in 2016 and continues to sit on the board. Today, David shares how his company facilitates the converting a primary residence into a cash-flowing rental property while allowing you to tap into your equity to purchase a new property. Episode Link: https://knoxfinancial.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by David Friedman, who is the co-founder and CEO of Knox Financial, and David's going to be talking to us today about anyone who's considering moving out of their primary and converting it into a rental, all the things you need to be aware of, and some of the revolutionary products that Knox financial is putting out to help assist with that process. So let's get into it.   Really quickly, everyone, before we get in today's episode, I wanted to give a shout out to the Roofstock Academy, and encourage everyone to come check us out at roofstockacademy.com. It is a one stop shop for Investor education. Whether you're just getting started or you're scaling up a crazy big portfolio, we probably got something for you. The Academy consists of both automated lectures, access to private slack forums and dedicated one on one coaching sessions, depending on which program you opt to leverage, come check us out roofstockacademy.com. We look forward to seeing you in there.   David, welcome to the show me and thanks so much for taking the time to come on and hang out with me, I appreciate it.   David: It's a pleasure to be here, thanks.   Michael: Oh, of course, so I know a little bit about your background. I know a little bit about your company. But for those of our listeners who are just joining us and maybe don't know the name, David Friedman, can you give them a little bit of background, who you are, where you come from, and what is it you're doing in real estate today?   David: Sure, so my name is David Friedman. I'm originally from New York, where I live in the Boston area, I am the father of three kids, the husband of one woman.   Michael: Important to clarify…   David: That's the picture I got, buddy… wasn't worried wondering, I'm a skier. I'm a cyclist, I like to hike. I like it when I swim in a natural body of water as often as possible. Other than that, what am I doing today? So I'm a CEO, and one of the founders here at Knox financial, and we are trying to change how homeowners build wealth. When you move, you have the best investing opportunity of a lifetime, which is to keep that home as a long term investment and we've built Knox around making that investment opportunity possible for millions of families.   Michael: David, that's awesome and it's funny because it's something we talk a lot about at the Roofstock Academy about how so many landlords became like accidental landlords. So tell us a little bit about a why you think it is so advantageous for folks to keep the rental property to keep their primary home as a rental property and what is Knox doing to help facilitate that transition from?   David: Sure, so it's not why we think we're a data company, the data just tells you the story. So when before we launched Knox, I lived a life experience and then I will, I'll tell you the experience, I'll tell you that the data supports that. I'm like, in the majority, I'm just a normal dude, which is. So when I got engaged my wife who I mentioned earlier…   Michael: Just the one wife…   David: Just one, and it wasn't random, like we didn't just like you know, I didn't arrive in the mail, right, like, like we dated and stuff. So we get engaged one day, again, wasn't random and we realized we have too much stuff to fit in her place or my place, we need to buy a bigger place. So we go and do that and I go to put my 20s bachelor pad on the market for sale and I think to myself, this is the worst decision I've ever made. What am I doing? Why am I selling the best investment I've ever had. So just the math, I put down $100,000 When I bought that property, and I was going to turn that $100,000.10 years later into $350,000 when I sold it that I'd never ever in my life made that much money on any investment and I know that as the south end of Boston, which is a downtown neighborhood if you're not familiar with the City of Austin, and I knew the value is going to keep going up I am going to turn this into a an investment property I'm to keep it as a rental and at the time I was building another software company that made software for real estate brokerages and I thought I know enough people who do this professionally I can figure this out, I can turn this home into a rental and I thought about all the things that have to do and it gave me a headache can pass every five and I need new insurance.   That's fine a renter probably need to open up a new bank account and probably a credit card to make sure my expenses are really like walled off from like, like, you know, take my wife out to dinner. All that stuff as like alright, screw it and I sold it. So four years later, that same property sold again the new owners only held it for four years and they sold it for another $200,000 more than I had sold to them for. And I saw this because Zillow sent me this evil email about it and when I saw that I was like, oh my gosh, Somebody sold $200,000. To me, I was gonna keep that property as an investment. What the heck did I do here and I'm a kind of guy who likes to make fun of myself and I told all my friends that I made this huge investing mistake and they all said, same exact thing happen to me, I am new to them. I own this home in Seattle, I don't own this in Brooklyn. I lived in DC, I lived in Houston and everybody said, yeah, every time I searched that home on Zillow, I get depressed and I said, this is exactly this is my life. So I'm a data nerd. So we pulled the data and we learned two things in the data. First of all, this is true. For the vast majority of homes in America. If you look back, we look back 10, 20, 30 years, 40 years, took the average home in America and you index into Case Shiller and you can't look back much further than that, because Case Shiller didn't exist. Case, Shiller had to invent it chipchase actually was down the road here in Wellesley, the guy. You look at the data, and every the vast majority of homes in America, when people move out of them, they keep them as long term investments, not only are they great investments, they vastly outperform public markets. Alright, so you index that home with some very, I shouldn't say vary with some conservative leverage, right?   So the nice thing about real estate is that the latter allows the average person to get a levered return, which you can't get the public markets. So when you index that home with some mortgage on it, not a crazy mortgage to some mortgage on it, too and the performance of that principle, to that same principle invested in the public markets, the real estate, absolutely clobbers, the public market. So that moment when you move, these people have this opportunity, we figured out to have own a better investment than then the alternative they could do with their down payment overseas with the principal there and then the next question is, do they have the money for the down payment? The next step is this transaction possible and the data shows once again that the vast majority of families in that home upgrade when they moved from, say, the first or second home they've ever owned into it, their second or third primary residence? Do you have more than enough equity and or savings to make the down payment on their new home and not sell the home, everything, so it's so long way of answering your question, I don't think this is this is a great investment. The data says this is a fantastic investment and we're in the business of showing people how it's done and making it possible for them and we've created some lending products around it and a whole bunch of other services, so that's how we do it.   Michael: That's awesome. So getting back to what you said a moment ago, and talking about your own personal story, you were saying that in order to convert, if you wanted to keep your initial place as a rental, you would have had to refinance, get new insurance, yada, yada, yada, was the purpose of the refinance to grab that equity for the new down payment because you didn't have that savings in cash…   David: For a lot of people… So I was in a very lucky position, I just created a new family with my fiancé soon wife, and we pooled resources and had enough to make the down payment without having to sell or refi, the old home. But the other thing is, I had actually lived at home for a while I bought it my 20s, I lived in it for a decade, if you look at the holding patterns of people who buy homes in their 20s, that's actually a pretty long hold and when you, when you when you hold the home for that long, it's very common for people to have an awful lot of equity, but also that their financial position has changed, right? So that marriage to my wife is a common change in financial position, the amount of w two in the household with, you know, more than doubled, because my wife, my wife's a successful woman, but also like we can combine our savings. She at one point in Oklahoma prior to meeting before we met, she didn't anymore, she'd sold that so she had a down payment. So there's all sorts of reasons why one's financial position might change. But there's, the longer you're holding that home that you're living in, the more likely you are to have plenty of equity in that in that property that you can tap…   Michael: Makes total sense and how do you chat with people around because I know you said in the vast majority of instances it like it makes sense for people assuming they have the down payment, like keeping the home as a rental or as a long term investment. What about everyone out there that says, you know what, David, my monthly mortgage is five grand a month I use 20% down and my home is only gonna rent for 3500 am I going to be in the hole 1500 bucks a month, like how does that make sense?   David: That doesn't make sense. So, so we walk people through this math all the time we build proprietary investment analysis software. If you have a $5,000 a month mortgage, and then you got to pay taxes, insurance maintenance, you know, allowance for vacancy all that on top of that, and you're only going to make $3,500 a month in rent, we would not recommend you put that home on our platform. There are, I would say, some edge cases like some people are looking for tax advantages and some people are looking for. There's markets like, I can look at the Austin market or let's take Tampa set the curve for the fastest growing market last its 12 month and a 12 month look back. In the last year, prices are going up 30% a year. So if you're losing 1500 bucks a month, over 12 months, that's 18 grand if the home went up in value 100 grand in that year, that's not a bad trade off.   The question is, can you shoulder that or one things we do is we offer a sort of specialized flavor of a home equity line of credit, where you can actually tap the home's equity over time to cover that negative cash flow. So this is part of the alchemy we do with people is can we make this property not impact your day to day spending habits or your quality of life while keeping it and realizing the benefits of owning that property. If it was net negative cash flow by that much might not work. That's a pretty rare scenario, though. If you have a $5,000 month mortgage and $3,500 in income potential, there's something weird going on in that local market, we rarely see misalignment that numbers that large effect, it's usually the other way around, just that we see $3,500 a month and carrying costs and $5,000 a month in rent projected. That's a that's a pretty standard scenario on our platform.   Michael: Love it, so talk to us a little bit about what the platform does and how it all works.   David: Sure, so you put your you set up your home for the platform and first of all, we package everything into one simple success fee. So we don't charge you for a place a tenant, we don't charge you to collect rent, we don't charge you for renewals, we would charge you for legal, none of that. Before it comes on the platform I should have mentioned we're going to help you tap that equity, so we might be writing what we call a keep loan, so that's a that's our own lending product that helps you tap the equity in your home in a flexible way. It's kind of like a HELOC but you know, if you sign a HELOC, before you move out and you move out, you're technically violating the paperwork you just signed. So we've got sort of like a HELOC. That will you don't mind if you move out or even if you have already moved out. So we can give you a second lien flexible line of credit against the property you're no longer living in, which is a hard product to find, so we can get some of that equity, it turned into the down payment on the new home, use it for prep work, or just keep it for writing up the ups and downs of cash flow, that's fine and then we're going to turn that property into a passive investment. So we're going to put a tenant in there, collect the rent on your behalf into your account in our system, pay out your expenses and if the tenant has a problem, they're gonna call us and we're going to deal with it. So we're basically doing the financial side of things, the welfare, the finding the right insurance, that's important. So risk mitigation is incredibly important. Our insurance team is going to find you the right policy, because the policy had when you live in it, they'll work no more. That's a homeowner's policy, you know, landlords policy, and, you know, the KNOX Insurance Services Division of our company is going to put that in place.   Michael: And so what is that all cost someone because I mean, it's like what you said that you don't charge for rent collection? I mean, you don't charge that, like, it's mind boggling, because that doesn't exist anywhere on the marketplace anyone who invested in a property will tell you the same. So what do you charge it, it's got to be something…   David: We work on… Yeah, we've worked on a success fee, it's 10% of rent that actually passes through our system. So it's kind of like a payments model. It's kind of like working with stripe, where like some percentage of the payments that go through stripe, they keep we do the same thing. So we collect $1 of rent, we keep a dime and then in full disclosure, we make our money off of the market for the financial products that we do. So like our loans are bought by third parties, and they pay us for that our landlord policy is our we're representing larger carriers, we're not an insurance carrier. So representing, say, travelers or somebody like that, they pay us for that, just like they would pay any insurance broker and then also some of our clients are actually decent percentage of them work with our lending team to not only tap the equity in the home they're moving out of but also find the mortgage for the home they're moving into. So that's another way that we make money. So we make money as an insurance brokerage, selling or brokering normal mortgage transactions.   Michael: I love it, David, this is so cool like anyone who's watching this and see me like getting giddy smiling ear to ear. So question for you. Do you only work with folks that have moved out of their primary residence or do you have a market for just your traditional landlord that owns property that wants to utilize your services?   David: So we do work with traditional landlords. We're kind of picky on it, to be honest. So your home actually has to pass an inspection by us as a virtual inspection. So you'd have to like you know, open up your door, but you'd have to walk us around and we're going to need to take a look at the foundation and we're going to need to take a look at the major appliances and system. So we are careful about which homes we actually accept in our platform because we find that a lot have traditional rental units are? Well, they're expensive, they're expensive to operate and we would generally not recommend that our clients keep those units as long term investments. So we look at them and tell our clients very honestly, this is a good investment or it's not and if it's not right now, we try to advise them on what investments need to be made in order to turn that home into a good long term property investment. So actually happy to talk to any landlords out there who are like, oh, I like what Knox is doing and I want to tap my equity and all that good stuff. Just be aware that we, we don't, you can't just sign up any home to the KNOX platform. It's not Airbnb, for example, you can't just come along and put a home up there.   Michael: Got it, got it. Okay, well, I mean, in your experience, what are some of those things that you have seen or advise folks against in terms of what makes a great rental property? If someone's listening to this? It's like, oh, man, I totally want to sign up. What are some things that they should be aware of that they can do practically?   David: Oh, gosh, the first thing I would say is deferred maintenance. You know, we're not big fans of deferring maintenance way out into the future, you know, invest in the property now make it livable, it'll get better rent, you'll be happier. As an owner, fewer surprises. Yeah, that's absolutely bullet number one. The next thing is, I should have started this health and safety, just like, you know, we will absolutely get will actually take properties and incident off our platform. If the owner won't authorize a repair that we think impacts health and safety. That's just not a that's a, there's no, there's no exception to that for us. The next is, yeah, so if you've got like, really old floors, like smudged walls, cracked windows, things like that, you know, definitely better off doing that as soon as possible and ahead of time, and certainly, as they come up. You know, we have a client who said, you know, I bought this property 15 years ago, that time, they told me, I needed a new roof, they were wrong, I've patched it five times it works out, we're like, no, we're gonna, that's that's just…   Michael: It does doesn't work…   David: I know, you know, I know you've had this, this is lucky experience with all the patching, you've been dumped. That's not how we would want to run things, it's really what's gonna happen is one day, the people in the top unit, that building, you're gonna go on vacation, and they're gonna come back, and there's going to be like, you know, $100,000 of damage to the building and you've, you've just been lucky, you've been on the, you know, the edge case here. So that's, that's deferred maintenance is obviously number one. The next thing is, if it is a landlord own property, who are the tenants and what have you done, to make them happy? Sometimes they're just unhappy, like, the tenants are unhappy with what's gone on and not only that, the property, what we find all the time, we inherited properties from landlords who've been self-managing the property is that they, the tenants are underpaid and rent, the tenants know it too and then you go in there and say, okay, we're going to turn this into a performing asset for you and the tenants sort of balk at the, the rate that they should be paying and so we try to like the market, oh, you're just totally unaware of what market rent is and the major mistake that's made by so many, so many owners is they become friends with their tenants and, you know, let's be honest, money is a touchy subject for most of us.   So going in there and saying, yeah, I know, you've been living in this piece of property they own and I think there's sort of a parental aspect to being a landlord, like you're putting a shelter over somebody's head, you're responsible for that shelter. So it's kind of a, you know, a little bit of a parental role you're playing and they have to go in and ask them for more money. So you're touching on these two touchy, touchy subjects? So yeah, we look at these portfolios like a deferred maintenance. You you've had tenants in there a long time. They're not paying market rent. Oh, when they're month to month on their leases. Oh, yeah. You signed a lease originally a long time ago, but now you haven't raised rent and the lease is like totally lapsed and now we want to go put those tenants through, like, hey, we're going to make this official we're going to put you to market rent. Oh, but by the way, we've got the owner refusing to upgrade the place and make it nicer. We avoid those situations we actively avoid them.   Michael: That sounds like a losing recipe.   David: Yeah. You look at the let's look at the exact opposite institutional owners, right. So you look at the guys like tricone or pick your favorite. The first thing they do is go in and renovate almost every single unit and they also they standardize them. The other thing I could go on nothing that landlords do is they, you know, they, when they get in, they try to find like cheap units and all those guys, the big institutions are actually looking for premium units they want. They want families that move in, and, and stay and plant roots and send their kids to school and care about the property. Because they get to know the neighbors and they want to plant the flower bed, you know that that's the tenant that they're going for. Versus Hey, how can I, I want to own eight units that are all, you know, half the price, the average in the market and turnover every other year, right, yeah.   Michael: It's yeah, it's a totally different investment thesis overall.   David: Totally.   Michael: Yeah, David, so if someone is right, on this transition point, what makes Knox a better alternative to just a local property manager? Why would someone reach out to you?   David: Yeah, so we use local property managers to be clear. So we don't actually employ actually, we have one guy on w two, who like, you know, carries a hammer route. So the vast majority of what we do is local maintenance. Right, you know, we operate in seven states, like there's no, there's no way well, it's not No way. But like, we did not have all those people on our staff. So you know, with us, as far as that goes, like, we are using local people, and there is actually no difference between us and the political person to swing a hammer drive in this group. When you look at all the pieces it takes to make this investment work. Knox is providing it all under one roof in a way that aligns our incentives with the owners, and we're actually putting risk behind it. So we're actually putting our own risk on the table along with yours, in that, for example, with the lending. So we're making it possible for you to access your equity to make the investment work and we're also doing you know, find the insurance. We're doing the bookkeeping, making sure you're deducting things on your taxes properly. I think a lot of not so, a there's a vast difference.   Michael: It sure sounds like it. So what states do you all operate in?   David: Massachusetts, Georgia, Texas, with three major cities in Texas, actually and then Florida and Arizona. Love it and I should say Massachusetts, we also I forgot to the Boston Market also includes Southern New Hampshire and all of Rhode Island.   Michael: Okay, okay, perfect. When are you coming to California?   David: That's a great question. It's on our list, I'll tell you it's we actually, to be honest, expand by Metro. So when we, when we expand into Texas, we did you know, to three cities of Dallas, Houston and Austin, and then with Austin, San Antonio is basically a first cousin market. So we do San Antonio as well, sort of considered that the whole the same media market. So California would be like, hey, let's pick a city in California. That's expanded to there but as we do it, we're gonna get the licensure for real estate insurance and lending in the state and then we'd probably go from, let's just say we started with, yeah, LA, we then do San Diego, and then the Bay Area, and Sacramento and the major markets California   Michael: Love it. Well, I know you'll have a waiting list. Whenever you ultimately do get out here, my name will be right there on it.   David: Appreciate it.   Michael: No, of course, that's awesome. So for all the folks out there that can't take advantage of Knox. What are some things that they can be doing looking out for as they're looking to make this transition or considering the transition? Do they have to go piecemeal it together for themselves or are there other Knox like folks out there that you could recommend?   David: No, you have to piecemeal it that's like the big part of it is what we are doing is putting a lot of this under one roof and then the lending is sort of our unique sauce, because it is a loan that you can't really get elsewhere where you can't get elsewhere. What are some things they should look out for, you know, I own several pieces of investment property myself, only one of them did not have to make some cash investments in in the first year or two. So the first thing I always tell people is just be aware, there's like a period of turning that property into an investment. Even if you've lived in it. Somebody else is gonna move in your property and they're gonna they're gonna use the space in a different way and they're going to discover things that are not up to 100% and they're going to call us and say hey, this is an outlet that doesn't work and one outlet that didn't work well was behind the bed when you were living there. Now there. It's where their desk is where they're working from home, right so be prepared for some upfront maintenance costs that is totally to be expected and tenants often You will just pick up the phone or you know, go on online and say, hey, this is broken, expect it to be fixed. Whereas you when you were living in the house might have just lived with the, you know, that problem, whatever it was for a while and said, I'll deal with it later, just expect that there's going to be a few things that are going to happen, things will come along. Yeah, it's very normal for a property be cash flowing less in years one and two than it is down the road. That's the that's the one surprise that I try to make people aware of ahead of time.   Michael: That's a great, a great tip. Something that I heard is, is kind of a good way to go about it too, is to actually go pay for like a home inspection as you would when you're selling or buying a piece of property as you're moving out to just see, hey, what are the issues that are going to be found, because like you mentioned, you're not going to notice the outlet that's not working behind the bed, to the inspector, that's what they're looking for.   David: Oh, man, if an inspector actually tested every outlet in the house, that would be one heck of an inspector. So here's what I'll say. So we do this, this video in intake of a home. So we actually collect 200 points of data, we get everything down to the year making model of your dishwasher. So what I recommend doing, if you're doing this on your own is really go and look at all of the major things in your home and there aren't that many, right. So every major appliance, every major system, the roof, the foundation, you know, a dozen things, right? Fridge, dishwasher, hot water, heater H back, things like that and just look at when they're hot, close, they are the end of their useful life, right roof last 25 years founded, I mean, the foundation and look, there's no cracks are probably good hot water heater decades and just on a piece of paper and a spreadsheet, just put the name of everything the model number, and when the warranty runs out, or when it should expire, right, and you'll just get an idea of what is coming down the road and don't be afraid of that because remember, it really you're investing in this for the long haul, you're investing in it because you think the home is going to keep going up in value every single year or over a long period of time, it's highly, highly likely to continue to go up in value and because the rents gonna keep going up what your costs are fixed inflation, hedges, all those good reasons, don't be afraid of it, just be aware that those things are gonna happen and say, okay, I'm actually expecting in the next five years, this extra $12,000 in expenses and just put at the back of your mind set.   Okay, here we go. Done and if you're really good, an ear market and say, okay, I'm gonna have the hot water heater replaced and nine and a half years instead of 10 and I'm not going to wait for it to like, spring a hole and have water over the basement. That would be that would be the plan I would I would make. The last thing I would say is really I would say is if you're doing this on your own, be really careful about your tenants. You know, do the background checks, don't just trust your instinct. Look at what their employment is not just how much they make, what do they do for a living. There's a big difference between having people who have non steady employment versus I don't know, a police officer who's in the union has incredibly steady and flip employment. So don't rush into the tenant selection. It's a little bit of work but again, if you're doing it yourself, set yourself up for the long haul pick somebody who you think's gonna be around a while, who has very steady employment next year when you raise the rent three, five in this market seven 10% they're going to be able to afford it because they're gonna get a they're gonna get raised.   Michael: Yeah, no, that's such a good point. I was just on a podcast this morning and someone asked me like what the biggest mistake was and I said exactly that rushing intended decisions, because you're like, oh, crap, I gotta get these expenses paid for with the rent, and you can end up in painting yourself into a corner very easily.   David: Yeah. Sometimes our team will tell an owner, hey, I have an application, I can show it to you. I don't think you want to take it. Now, this does mean that I don't have I don't have a backup for you today but you know, waiting another 15-30 days it could be to for somebody else better is a recommendation and here's why and we have that conversation with the customer and say the owner and hopefully they are … got along, yeah.   Michael: No, that's great. That's great, David, one final question for you. Okay, so two final questions for you ones like information. One was a real question. What are your thoughts on Home Warranty?   David: What are my thoughts on Home Warranty, that's a great question. We hear more complaints than we hear praise is my answer to that. I never bought one myself and right and all that said, we have considered offering one that we create. So that is, you know, I like it. I like the concept of a home warranty. I think the execution for most of the major home warranty companies as anecdotally has been is…   Michael: …less than…   David: …doesn't live up less than thank you.   Michael: Yeah, perfect. David are people that want to learn more about you reach out find out more about Knox, where can they do that?   David: https://knoxfinancial.com/   Michael: Easy enough. Well, David, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate you coming on and can't wait to see you out in California, man.   David: Pleasure, thanks. Appreciate your time, Michael!   Michael: You got it, take care…   All right, everyone. That was our episode a big thank you to David for coming on. Super, super, super, super cool stuff. After we finished recording he and I were chatting a little bit more about some of the products that he's working on and there is a lot more to come. So stay tuned, of you are thinking about moving out of your primary or selling it definitely consider keeping it as a rental and potentially Knox financial might be able to help you out with that. As always, thanks so much for watching, and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

Today I'd like to share with you the recording of a live interview I did yesterday with Brandon Pecharich from Promo Corner, in which we discussed The Four Levels of Content. If you need to get clients on social media, this will explain how to do it. It's available below as video, audio or text. I hope you find it helpful. Brandon: Hey everybody, Happy Tuesday! I hope you're having a super productive week out there. You are watching Express Training Bites here at Promo Corner. You're probably watching it on Promo Corner's Facebook Page, Promo Show's Facebook page or maybe Promo Corner's LinkedIn or YouTube. So we are on all types of different social media. And we have today on Express Training Bites an industry icon. Somebody who I have looked up to as a sales professional in the industry. And it is Mr. David Blaise. Thank you so much for being here today. And you're actually going to be speaking about something that you spoke about in January at Expo. Is that correct? David: Yeah, it was part of what we covered at Expo. At Expo, we were talking about just this whole idea of migrating people from social media into your sales funnel, essentially, and how that happens. Because it's not like throwing spaghetti against a wall and hoping it sticks. There's actually some strategy to it, methodology to it. If you choose to go in that direction. Brandon: That is awesome. That is such a huge and valuable piece of content that we've got here today on Express Training Bites. So for people that don't know who you are -- because this industry is constantly evolving and there's new people almost every day -- why don't you take a couple of minutes and kind of introduce yourself, David? David: Sure. David Blaise from TopSecrets.com, also SmartEQP.com. I've been in the promotional products industry since 1988. I feel like I should be sitting down instead of sanding up , but, I've just been in the industry for a long time. Love the industry. Started speaking at some of the major industry trade shows back in 2001. I've spoken at nearly every one of them since. I was at Expo in January. And that's what led to this discussion. You know, in the early days of the training that I did, a lot of it was related to people who were just getting started in the industry. And we created a training program called Getting Started: How to Launch a Wildly Successful Career in Promotional Products Sales. And to this day we have new people who are coming in and they go through that training. And within about six or seven hours, they're pretty much grounded and up to speed, so that you wouldn't be embarrassed to have them stand in front of a prospect and represent your company. But over the years, what I've found is that a lot of the training that I do, particularly for private groups, I love interacting with people who have been doing it for a long time, who may be running into different struggles that they hadn't encountered before. And to say, "okay, where do we go from here?" One of my favorite trainings that I did, of all time, was I was hired to speak in front of a group of people who've been in the industry for 25 plus years. And this was easily 10 years ago. I was quite a bit younger myself. The people that I was speaking to were older, and we were trying to figure out what am I going to talk about to these people? And, we finally decided I was just going to bring a flip chart and go around the room and say, "okay, what's the biggest issue you're dealing with?" And we just did that. We went around the room and it was fantastic. Because when you're able to interact with people who understand the industry and who know the ins and outs, but who perhaps have gotten stuck in a tunnel or funnel or somewhere it's, "I'm so used to doing things a certain way." You lose sight of the fact that there are a lot of different things that are going on. The industry has changed. And the things we do to interact with people have to change as w...

Dads are constantly flooded with messages to be helpful and supportive to their birthing partner, but where are those specific tips on how to do just that?Cue David Arrell. David has developed a passion for everything surrounding birth with his main focus centered around helping dads learn the things he wished he knew when he became a dad for the first time. According to his own words, “I am just a dude who has been through this journey.”With his very specific dad tips as well as big ideas, David's advice will take your birth support partner from feeling clueless, guilty, and overwhelmed to feeling hopeful, empowered, and inspired. When both partners learn to be a strong team during pregnancy, their bond during labor and throughout parenting will thrive even more.And the tip that gets 100% of his recommendation? “Dude, Hire a Doula.”Additional linksThe VBAC Link on Apple PodcastsDavid's website: Welcome to FatherhoodWelcome to Fatherhood: The Modern Man's Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and FatherhoodFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Meagan: Happy, happy Wednesday everybody. This is Meagan and Julie. You are listening to The VBAC Link. You are going to be excited just like we are for this episode today, so make sure you are somewhere where you can hear all the words, and honestly, you probably want your birth partners to list them as well. We have David Arrell. He is an author, entrepreneur, consultant, and men's coach currently in Colorado. We have actually had quite a few special guests in Colorado which is really fun. He is passionate about coaching men on how to more fully embrace and embody help, masculinity, and especially through the powerful modalities of partnership. His most recent work-- now I can't speak.Julie: Sorry.Meagan: You're fine. --in this area is a book and we have the book. We are so excited. It's called Welcome to Fatherhood and I really like it because it is like “WTF”.Julie: WTF.Meagan: Through the whole thing, it's the modern man's guide to pregnancy, childbirth, and fatherhood better known as WTF. So this is really a big deal because in so many ways, and I even talk about this with my doula clients. There are so many things in pregnancy that are so woman-focused or birther-focused, right? We kind of forget sometimes about dad and his role. That's, as the doula, so important for me not to forget that and make sure that dad doesn't feel that because I remember the day in my second labor. I remember my husband had to sleep on the couch in the corner and everyone coming in not addressing him, not talking to him, not saying anything that's happening, not asking him has an opinion on anything, and it only revolves around me, and so I just think this is so awesome. A lot of dads enter childbirth clueless not because they don't want to know, but because people don't include them, right?And then fatherhood. I also know that as a mom and my husband, we've had times where I'm like, “No. I am doing it right and he is doing it wrong.” I remember someone saying, “You are both doing it right. You are doing it your way,” and I loved that. So I am really excited to talk to him today and get to know more about his book, and the role, and the fourth trimester coming back home, and how to give these tips to these dads because they need them.Julie: I was just going to jump in and say, “I love this,” because David, our guest today, literally wrote the book for dads about the fourth trimester, what to do when you get home with baby, well, I mean, it is for pregnancy, and childbirth, and fourth trimester, right? So that's the first three months after the baby is born. It's from a dad‘s perspective. He gets it. He has been there. That's what me and Meagan really like about it because, at The VBAC Link, we are doulas, but we have also had VBACs. We have been there. We get you. I feel like he is right on our level, but talking to the dads because yes, like Meagan said, dads, a lot of time, get forgotten. I wish my husband would've had something like this back when we started into parenting because he was completely oblivious about pregnancy, and birth, and everything. I dragged him to a HypnoBirthing class but that's about it, and now he knows way more about birth than he ever thought he would ever have dreamed to know about, but this is going to be really helpful. So we are excited. We have asked our social media followers questions. We have some questions for him. Review of the WeekJulie: But anyway, before I keep talking, holy cow. Let me read a Review of the Week.This is from Natalie in San Diego. It is on Apple Podcasts and she says, “I am SO thankful I found this podcast. I've always wanted a vaginal birth and felt like I could never get one after my C-section in 2018. I started listening to this podcast when I got pregnant (currently 28 weeks) and then I asked my provider if I was a good candidate and she said, ‘No.'”Dang it. Oh my gosh. Sorry. That kind of caught me off guard. That was probably a little bit of an inappropriate laugh. That's what I do when I get caught off guard. I laugh inappropriately. All right, let's see.“She said, ‘No,' so I resigned to the fact that I would need a RCS with this pregnancy and stopped listening for about a month but the nagging feeling that I could ask more questions and advocate for myself more just never went away. I started listening again and realized that so many women switch providers late in the game so why couldn't I? After requesting my post-op report and asking my OB more questions, I realized that I am a good candidate and that she just wasn't supportive, so at 26 weeks I switched to an amazingly supportive provider here in San Diego, hired a doula, and signed up for HypnoBirthing!” Hey, speaking of HypnoBirthing…“I'm doing everything I can to educate myself and am so hopeful for a VBAC this April or early May.”Oh my gosh, maybe like right now.“I wouldn't have had the courage to do any of this without the stories from the women on this podcast so thank you!!!”Do you like my commentary? I don't think I can read a review without jumping in and putting my own thoughts into the review. Anyway, talk about being long-winded. Okay so, thank you for the review. We love reviews. You already know that if you haven't had a chance yet, please go leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google or Facebook. Wherever you leave us a review, it will help us reach other people, so if you enjoy the podcast and think everybody should have a listen, definitely go ahead and give us a review in whichever is in the easiest place for you to do so.Q&A with David ArrellMeagan: Okay, David. We are excited to dive in with you. We have questions and all these things that we want to ask you, but I would love to invite you to share a little bit more about your book because I know I just went right through it. But tell us more. What inspired you to do this?David: Sure. Thanks for having me on, ladies. I really appreciate it. I think part of my inspiration was the gap that I experienced as a guy who has really committed to trying to be that “helpful and supportive partner” and I thought I was doing all the things. As our first pregnancy, and then ultimately the labor and delivery, and then that first experience for us of that fourth trimester, I have looked back and I realized there are so many opportunities where I wish I had done some things a little bit differently, but I realized I didn't get the information, or the education or the encouragement that I felt would have helped me be that much more helpful and supportive for my wife during her pregnancy, and childbirth, and coming back home. So I looked around and even the birth classes I took, the amazing doula we worked with, which I will circle back to later, and some of the books I read, there just wasn't that sort of succinct, clear sort of discussion of some of the things that are really important for us guys to really get a better sense of. And also, just some specific things like, “Hey, guys. Really think about doing this,” or “If you did this one thing a little bit differently, you might have more success.” So that was my main inspiration. It was to pave the path a little easier for the guys coming after me who are going to be going through their own sort of pregnancy adventure.Meagan: Love it. Love it. You know, I have a client, a husband, who started a podcast. Kind of the same thing. He was just like, “After the first birth experience, I just realized there was so much more that dads needed to know,” so I love what you guys are doing. This is going to be awesome. So are you ready for the list of questions? Julie, I don't know if you want to go back and forth, but we have a list of questions that some of our followers have asked. Julie: Yeah.Meagan: if you don't mind, I would love to jump into those.Julie: Let's do it.David: Sure. Let's jump right in.Meagan: Perfect. Okay, so number one is: Best advice for husbands to support wife in labor? I know you talk about pregnancy a lot in your book too. You talk about all of it, all the trimesters, but we are going to jump right into labor. Best advice for husbands to support their wives in labor?David: Sure. The way I describe that journey though, going into labor, is if the pregnancy is a rollercoaster going up the hill, slowly working its way to the top, once you realize, “Oh wow. We are really in labor,” that's when that rollercoaster crests the hill and goes zooming down the other side. It's a very different sort of immediacy for all parties concerned.The main thing I tell the guys out there is Big Idea #10 in the book. The book has Big Ideas and Dad Tips. But Big Idea #10 is that your new mantra is to be attentive, be calm, and be competent. At the end of the day, regardless of all the other things going on, if you as the dad, the partner, perhaps the most important support partner in the room here, if you can maintain that mantra and really be attentive to mama and all of the things that are happening for her whether it's holding a hand, or rubbing a brow, or adjusting a position for more comfort, or be calm.There are definitely times I know in my wife's childbirth and some of the guys I talk to also where things get a little active, but still, for us guys, we have to be calm. We have to be that rock in the storm of the emotions and feelings for our partners to connect to. And then being competent. This comes down to feeling like you have done the work ahead of time with the education and the practice where you feel pretty good about what your role is, what it's not, and how to really show up as that competent person throughout this process. So that's the mantra. Be attentive, be calm, and be competent.Meagan: Yes. I love that. You know, something that happened in one of my labors-- I have had three babies and my third baby, my labor was 40--Julie: Are you going to tell the story about the pillow? You should tell the pillow story.Meagan: Oh no, but I should. 42-hour long laborDavid: Wow.Meagan: My husband had a not-so-supportive moment where I was doing my thing in my zone. Sometimes we moan. That's what we do. Our uterus is the strongest muscle in our body and it's contracting around a baby really hard. It doesn't feel awesome so you have to work through it, right? He totally shoved a pillow in my face and told me to muffle myself because he and the other kids were trying to sleep.Julie: I think that Rick needs a copy of your book.Meagan: I know. But there was a moment in my labor and I had been laboring for a really, really really, long time, and what had happened that I just still to this day will remember the feeling that came over me. All he did was touch my back and lean into me, kind of just grazed around my head and my shoulders, and it was a complete moment of, “I am not alone in this,” even though I knew I wasn't alone. I had a great team. Just that touch was exactly what I needed and like you said, it could be a touch of a brow, or an adjustment, or just being there. It was just amazing. So I would not disagree at all with that.David: I'm glad he bounced back. That's good. That's good.Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Between that and then when he looked at me and was like, “Remember, this is what you wanted.” I was like, “This is not what you say to me right now.”David: Well, that's the trick. So many of us guys get these-- the general vibe is we are told to be helpful and supportive.Meagan: But you don't know how.David: But we are not given explicit instruction beyond that and so we guess, and then we guess wrong, and we get frustrated, and so that's exactly it. It's the different challenges that we go through and the learning curves that can be really steep sometimes.Meagan: Absolutely.Julie: Yeah. I get that. Do you know what's so funny? While you were just talking, we are actually going to make the link to where you can go and buy David's book Welcome to Fatherhood and the link, I just had to say this because it is so funny. The link is going to be thevbaclink.com/wtf. So we will make it super easy for you to go and find his book.Meagan: I love it.David: Exactly. That sentiment is very popular.Julie: I mean, yes. You started at Tip #10, right? So I am just like, “Yeah. It's really good stuff.” I haven't read all of it, but I have skimmed through it and I have had my husband skim as well and there is some really good stuff here. So we are going to put it in the show notes. This is normally what we would do at the end of the episode, but I just had to say it. I am making the link right now. So anyway. Great stuff.I remember my husband felt helpless too. For my Cesarean birth, he still says it was the scariest moment in his life. Watching me on the operating room table, not knowing if I was okay, not knowing if baby was okay and I'm sure he would have really appreciated this type of advice to help him because men instinctively have this nature to support their partners and fix the problem, right? They want to be strong and they want to be able to comfort them, and childbirth is such a foreign concept that it can really-- what are the words I'm looking for? It can really just, it's not familiar to you. So you don't really know what to do and it can cause birth partners sometimes to feel a little hung up, and uncertain, and unsure, so just giving them these tools, like you talked about, and telling them what to do-- yeah. You are supposed to be supportive of your wife during labor, but this is how you do that. I think it's so valuable. It's so valuable. So I really appreciate that.Oh, next question. I guess that's on me.David: Well, let me jump in with one quick thing here.Meagan: Sure.David: One of the challenges as guys I have seen happen in my experience and some of my buddies is that we get into the labor and delivery and like you mentioned, it's overwhelming, it's a novel experience, but then also, that sort of fix-it vibe just doesn't work. There's nothing for us to fix. Our partners are maybe going through some pretty intense experiences and sensations, and we are just sort of supposed to be-- you know, we feel very helpless sometimes. I remember at one point, my wife was squeezing my head really hard and she was really having a challenging series of contractions there and I just felt so helpless. And so that's where I think this mantra comes in, but I definitely wanted to touch base on one other thing. I think it's one of the Dad Tips that I am very strong on. Most of them are recommendations, but this one, I am very strong on and that's Dad Tip #7: “Dude, Hire a Doula.”Julie: Yes.David: That would get 100% of my recommendation energy. Some of them are 60, 70, does this work for you? But dude, hire a doula. That doula is going to be your wingman too. Not just your partner's, but your wingman to really help you. They can give you some tips. They can give you some direction. They can help normalize some of the beeping and some of the other things that are going on. Again, I can circle back to this a little bit later, but that's definitely what will help you focus on your job which is to be that supportive partner. Most dads out there are not birth professionals, so you can just focus on your partner and your mantra, and let your doula really help adjust you as necessary. So I didn't want to skip over that Dad Tip #7: “Dude. Hire a Doula.” Please.Julie: I love that you said that. It reminds me of an article I read a long time ago. I think it was called, Just Hire the Damn Doula. It was a blog.David: Perfect.Julie: it was a dad‘s perspective and he was just like, “This is why you need a doula. Do you know what to do when she is at 4 centimeters and she's only been there for three hours? No, you don't. Do you know how much blood is normal? No, you don't. Do you know what positions to do to help or what labor positions to help encourage baby to descend? No, you don't know that.” He was just like, “You just need a doula.” Anyway, that was a really broad explanation of the article, but I love that. As a doula myself, I make my clients' partners be present at their prenatal visits because it's really important to me to not only get to know the dynamic of their relationship so I can better strengthen that during the labor process, but also so I can get to know the dad and how to support him because doulas are also for dads. I know a lot of times they think, “Oh yeah, doulas are just for the mom, but we are here just as much for you guys to help you know how to best support your partner. The best feeling in the whole world is right after the baby is born and then the dad comes over and gives me a great big hug and I am totally not a hugger. Like as I doula, I can put my hug face on and I can hug if people want touch and stuff, but by nature, I am not a hugger. But when a dad comes and grabs me off my feet-- I just remember this one particular moment. He spins me around and he is like, “Thank you so much.” This was after a VBAC birth and I was just like, “Wow. This is really cool.” It is just really extra special when the dads say those kinds of things.Every dad is a little bit different, but I really appreciate that you say that. I think it's important because a lot of times, dads think that doulas will replace them, but really, a good doula will really work on enhancing your relationship in knowing how to better support your wife. Okay, ready for the next question?David: Sure.Julie: All right. So I don't know. We kind of have already talked about this. I think there might be some overlap a little bit in some of these things, but you have got lots of great tips and advice in your book, so I am sure that we are not even going to scratch the surface into that, but the question is: What do you tell men to do to support women during pregnancy?David: The subtitle of the book is “Better connected, better prepared.” And so I think that focus really helps shape some of the suggestions that follow in that envelope and that's what is so important. I think some of the dads out there-- I know for me, that connecting bit was tricky because my experience of pregnancy is sort of like it's happening over there whereas, for my wife and every other person who has been pregnant, it's literally the biggest deal ever. It's like, “No. This is now. I am already a mom. I am monitoring my vitamins, and sushi, and which cheese I should eat,” and all of these different things. That sense of motherhood is very real but whereas for us dads, a lot of times, we don't think we are dads until the baby gets here.So one of the things I think that's important to remember is that both of those truths are true for each person, but for us dads, there is plenty of opportunity for us to reach over and really try to better connect with mama and her experiences, and just knowing how real and important that is, is a great first step to putting that as a top-tier priority rather than just sort of like, “Oh yeah. We are pregnant and the baby will be here in a couple of months,” kind of thing.So there are so many things you can do as the dad to really get in there. I mentioned hiring a doula is a great thing, a birth class where are you are excited and you want to take on that. You're just as excited about the birth class as mama is. That's a great way to really foster that connection where you are going through that together and learning about it together. Another thing I like are some of these pregnancy tracking apps where-- I know my wife and I really enjoyed each week, as the pregnancy progressed, sitting down and watching the five or ten-minute little video about what's happening this week. Some of them are pretty funny. They compare the size of a growing baby to French pastries or random, exotic animals, and so we would laugh about how baby is the size of a hedgehog this week or the size of a croissant, a big one.So those things where you're really connecting with mama and really doing your part to get really on the inside of her journey as well, all of those things are great ideas because at the end of the day, the goal is to really have that relationship be really strong and vibrant as you are going through the delivery, and then you come home for that fourth trimester because now you're parents together. Now is not the time to figure out how to be a team. Being a team starts during that pregnancy.Meagan: Yes, yes. Love that. I love that. If you can walk in as a team, into parenthood, it's just going to set yourself up so much better.Julie: And can I just say, dad? Even if you don't love the whole “baby is the size of a kumquat” thing, just pretend you do.David: Exactly.Julie: Just pretend.David: Exactly.Julie: Just fake it until you make it.Meagan: Or if the class that you are taking is HypnoBabies or HypnoBirthing and you're like, “Oh, this is really weird,” try your hardest to get in there. I know sometimes it is far-fetched or far out there and it's like, “This is so strange,” but this is something that she may have picked that resonated with her to help her cope through this labor journey, and crazy enough, it will connect. Like when you said, “Take childbirth education classes,” it will connect you two together so much more and help you in all stages.Julie: I love it.David: Exactly. It's funny, I've heard some dad say, “Well, I am not having a baby, you are.” Like, discussing this with their partners about these different things and you know, not that they are adamant about it, but that's their reality and I'm like, “Yeah dads. I get it.” Having a baby is a huge deal. I mean, it's easy for some guys to think, “Well, that's how all of us got here. There may be one or two test-tube babies running around, but we all got here this way,” and it's like, well, this is the first-time experience or second-time experience for your partner. This is a very huge deal. Don't look at it in the abstract. Look at it in the concrete. Your partner is excited and enthusiastic, as are you. It's meaningful. It's a little bit scary. There's a lot of uncertainty. Really get in there to be that supportive partner by connecting with her and her journey rather than sort feeling like you need to stay on your side of the fence in your journey. So that connection piece is so important.Julie: Great life advice too.Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, seriously. You know what? Are you going to write the next one on marriage? Because all of these tips-- this is also how to have a really great date. Julie: We're taking notes. I'll give it to my husband. I'll be like, “Read this. Just kidding.”David: That all becomes so much more pressing once baby gets here. I am a terrible illustrator but if I had any skill, I would have drawn a little series of two stick figures: mama, dada, and then a little small tiny baby stick figure. This is what you think it's going to be, and then the second one would have been the same size mama, dada, and then this giant Michelin Manbaby illustration like, this is the impact of a new baby on your lives. It is not this third thing that joins you.Meagan: It's not tiny.David: No. It's just the middle and the center of everything.Meagan: Yes.David: So now is the time to forge those teammate bonds.Meagan: Love that.Julie: Yes, absolutely.Meagan: Love that. Okay, so this is a hard one because sometimes I know it can be daunting when you are in the birth room and in labor and stuff, but it says: Do you encourage men to stand up for their wives' wishes during labor and birth? And I'm going to add on to that one and say: If you do, what do you feel like is the best way for a dad to say, “Okay. I know she didn't want this. I am going to try to make sure that we go about this a different way”?David: Well, my first answer is yes, absolutely. Dad is the main support person looking out for the bigger picture. I know there were times in my wife's-- especially with our first baby where she couldn't hear anybody else in the room. She couldn't see anybody else, hear anybody else. It was sort of that fugue state that some women go through and she needed me to basically repeat everything that the doula was asking or our OB was asking.So yes, you need to be fully connected there. This circles back to-- I mentioned a doula already, but having that really trusted birth team where both mama and dada can really feel like their birth team is on the same page with you. They are looking out for your best interest and baby's best interest obviously as well. But that birth team coming in, as I mentioned before, most dads aren't going to be birth professionals, but that's where that birth team comes in.So to whatever degree you can start with that team, really be all on the same page. We have gone over the birth preferences. We understand where we want to go with this whether it's what types of pain management we want to use, with breathing, or massage, or etc. But there are times where things might get a little tricky.Like for example, during our first birth, we had a very low intervention birth, no pain medications, and at one point, my wife was struggling a little bit. They wanted to put an oxygen mask on her face and she did not want that. She was trying to swat it away and I felt like I needed to go with her wishes rather than whatever the nurse was trying to do. And so I gently removed the oxygen mask from her face. I looked at both our doula as well as the OB and I am like, “if she doesn't absolutely need this right now, then it's only going to cause her more duress and anxiety to be fighting off this mask which is not what we are looking for.” And they both agreed. But that was on me to not just sort of automatically go with whatever is happening, but to remind them of what our plan was.So again, absolutely stand up for those wishes during the labor and birth. The more you are on the same page with both your wife or your partner and that birth team ahead of time, the easier it is for you to do that because you are not worrying about somebody coming in and trying to change the birth plan, or there is a shift change and a new OB comes in and they have a different idea or they haven't read your birth preferences, so the more you're clear about that as a team, I think the easier it is for us guys to be less focused on being an intervention blocker and more focused on being that supportive teammate with our mantra of being attentive, and calm, and competent, focusing on our birthing partner and being supportive for her.Meagan: Yes. I love that. So tell me, I am trying to think how to ask this. What tips would you give for those dads who are very medical-minded? and trust-- I don't want this to sound negative. My husband is very much like, “What the doctor says, we do because the doctor is the professional. He went to school. He knows it.” But then there are also times where I am like, “But that's really not what I want and I have researched differently.”He told me that he felt like I put him in a really hard place because he was like, “I feel like I was against you and the doctor because I believed what the doctor was saying but you wanted something more. I wanted to make you happy, but I wanted to do what he said because I was worried.” Do you know what I mean? What tip, if you have any, specifically for that type of situation where we have got a dad who doesn't know how to navigate that feeling that they have?David: I think you hit a really, that's a really perfect space because that's where it can be so tricky for us guys. Especially if we have had some experiences in the past where doctors have been helpful or if we have had experiences in the past where they have been unhelpful. We are bringing our own stuff into this equation also. And I think, I know doulas are explicitly focused on the non-medical aspects of all of that birth, but having a doula with you where you can at least have a consultant. It's okay in about 98% of the circumstances to say, “You know what? I need to think about this for a minute.”Julie: Yes.David: I mean, if it's not an emergency, emergency, then you can always ask for a few minutes. You can try to speak with your partner depending on her level of awareness, and consciousness, and interest in the topic, and your doula as well, or even phone a friend. But you usually have time.Sometimes I find that those circumstances relax a little bit when you create some time around them to really sit with it and check-in with your partner. “I know our birth preferences. We wanted to do A. They are really recommending B. What should we, can we wait a few minutes? Do we need to decide now?” Because things can change pretty quickly in a birth and sometimes waiting, things sort of tend to clarify both whether it's the circumstances shift, or the answer that you are working with shifts, or your agreement around the answer shifts.So I would say, look for more time to let things settle or simmer a little bit more before you make a decision. If you don't need to make it right that second, then look for some time. That will usually help the consensus clarify where you're not feeling like you're being pushed into making a decision because nobody likes that sense of being rushed into a decision especially if it doesn't need to be made right that second.Julie: Yeah.Meagan: Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Time. Okay.Julie: Absolutely. Great advice.Meagan: All right, Julie. You are on the next question.Julie: All right. These last two made me chuckle. Okay.How do you convince your husband to read this book and be a better support?Meagan: Yeah.David: You know, that's a great question. I joke sometimes that-- this material, I started offering in a workshop format, an in-person workshop.Julie: That's cool.David: The challenge was that the guys who most needed the workshop were the ones that were actually the most oblivious to the fact that they needed the workshop.Julie: Yeah.David: So well, I think there are a couple things I will mention. One, this book is not like many of the other books out there. Some of the books out there are 500 pages. They are very encyclopedic which is great for the guys that really want to get into those details of the changes mama is going through, the developmental trajectory of baby, but for guys who aren't interested in that, it's just all starts to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. It's like, “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” And they're like, “God, what am I supposed to do? Where is the part where it says, ‘do this?'”Julie: Yeah.David: So that's the book I wrote. These are some specific things you can do at various times in the pregnancy, and labor, and even the fourth trimester. All the dad tips. There are 28 of them in there, but each of them are very specific for that time period. Dad Tip #, randomly, #2 is knowing the baby's age in weeks. The baby is not four months. You probably wouldn't know it at five weeks, but they are 12 weeks, or 15 weeks, or 17 weeks. That is relevant early on, but that falls away once you are in labor and delivery. It doesn't matter how many weeks you are at this point. So those are very specific things. That's what the book is built on. It is built on these very specific dad tips as well as these big ideas that helps shape your understanding.I joked with you earlier that one of the early subtitles I was playing around was, “All the things I wish I did better the first time.”Julie: Yeah. I know. We could all write a book like that.David: Right. Right. But that's kind of the goal is like, I want the guys out there to have a chance to read this and their list, which, there will be a list of things they wished they did better the first time, or even the second time, or third time. I want that list to be shorter than mine.So that's where it is coming from. It's not another, “You are doing it wrong” kind of book and it's not super encyclopedic. It's short. It's sweet. It's pretty much to the point. It's written by, I am just a dude who has been through this journey. I talk a little bit. It's straight talk. I have done a great job in not cursing on the podcast, but there are some curse words mixed in there, a little salt and pepper, because when us guys get joking around, sometimes our language flows a little bit more freely.That's how the book is written. It's not preachy. It's not, again, like I mentioned, not a “You are doing it wrong” book. It's like, “Hey man. Yeah. This is challenging. It's tough and sometimes it's really hard.” One of the early big ideas is what I call the “Dude Zone to Dad Zone and Avoiding the Dud Zones”.Meagan: Yeah, I was going to say I saw that in there. “Avoiding the Dud Zones”. Yes.David: Yeah. The two dud zones I talk about-- I talk about the journey you are on. I tell the guys, “You don't know it, but right now you're on this journey from the dude zone to the dad zone. The dude zone is when you're hanging out. You have your relationship. You have your job and all these other hobbies and cool things that are priorities for you, and now that you are going to be, you are a dad, but you're going to be a dad when the baby gets here, as these expectant fathers are thinking, but you need to move into that dad zone,” which is shifting some things around, looking at things a little bit differently, re-prioritizing a couple things and during that pregnancy journey, things are really tricky for us guys because we know we are supposed to be helpful and supportive. We don't know what that means and we bump into doing it wrong a lot.We are guessing. We are sort of like, “Well, I don't know.” We are trying to figure it out, and so the two dud zones I talk about are Wimpy Town on the left and Jerkville on the right. Wimpy Town are the guys that just gave up on trying to figure it out and they basically say something to the effect of, “Just tell me what to do and I will do that.” They are defeated. They have given up on trying to figure out because they're just tired. They are just frustrated with guessing wrong but that's not really a good place to be. No expectant mama wants to have to tell her partner what to do, and when to do it, and all of that kind of stuff. That's not a good teammate or good teamwork there.And on the other side is Jerkville. Those are the guys that occasionally will be like, “You know what? I don't know what to do. I'm guessing. You do it. I saw a zebra pop out a baby last night on a nature show and the zebra was running around five minutes later. I don't quite understand what's going on here.” They get a little testy and defiant. That journey to the dad zone, you can bump into those dud zones a lot.There were many times I felt like I had one foot in Wimpy Town and one foot in Jerkville and I was like, “I don't know what to do. I really want to be great and to be an awesome partner, but last night this worked and then tonight, the same thing is the worst idea ever. I am trying to remain connected but it is just really tricky.” So that's where I am coming from. A lot of what I am trying to offer here is specific tips to help these guys make that journey from the dude zone to the dad zone with fewer slips into those dud zones. So that's another reason I would say, give it a shot out there.Julie: Love it.Meagan: That's awesome.Julie: That's great. Yeah. I am going to add in a little question before Meagan asks the last one and we wrap it up. What about the dads who are less assertive? I know for some dads, it's harder for them to stand up for their partner in the birth room. It's harder for them to tell the doctor that they want to do something different even if they agree that they should do something different. Everybody's personalities are different, but what advice would you give for those dads who are less confrontational but who want to be a solid, strong support for their wife?David: That's a really good question.Meagan: Yeah. Would time still be the suggestion or do you feel like there is a different approach for those guys?David: I think time is always a great first place to start because then you have a chance to marinate a little bit and think about what the question is that is being asked of you or the suggestion. You have a chance to speak it over, talk it over a little bit with you. Ideally again, this gets back to that doula and having a great doula as your wingman. This is a great resource for us guys to discuss some of these things and also to check in with our partner and see how they're feeling. Sometimes, something that is very clear in the birth plan or the birth preferences, as things progress, your partner may change her mind also and you don't want to be adamantly holding the ground against something that your partner has now shifted her opinion on too.So that's where having those conversations-- but it's tricky. I am not an OB. I am not a midwife. I am not an auto mechanic. I am not going to argue against these people too strongly when they are specifically trained to do these things and I am not. So it's really hard because most of us guys who aren't birth professionals don't really feel like we have too strong of a leg to stand on when push comes to shove.Julie: Yeah.David: We want our partners to be safe. We want our babies to be safe and that's what the experts are there for ideally. That's what their focus is too. So I still think time is your best first resource to ask for, and then to just confer with your partner and confer with other people on your birth team. “What would you do if this was your partner? What would you do if this was your baby?” could be some good questions to ask back or “What are some other options?” But at the end of the day, sometimes you have to make a decision and you just have to make the best one you can at the time with what information you have.Julie: Yeah. Totally. Yeah, I guess that was kind of a bad question. It had already been answered, but I think maybe you gave a different perspective from it and we learn by repetition, right? All right, Meagan, you are up. Last question.Meagan: Yeah. So one of the questions is: Are men actually reading your book? And I can almost guarantee that the answer is, “Yes”. But yeah, do you feel like you have had a good turnout from your book?David: Yeah. So far, it's been pretty exciting. The book just came out in the fall of last year and one of the funny things about this is, assuming that they purchased a book somewhat early in the pregnancy, they are just now getting into the actual experience of having labor and delivery, and that fourth trimester. The sales have really been taking off recently which is great, but I have been starting to get some feedback from some of the guys out there and from some of the mamas too. I've gotten a couple thank you emails recently.Meagan: Awesome.David: I have gotten a couple more that said, “I probably should have taken you more seriously earlier in the journey.”Julie: Aw snap.Meagan: That's awesome feedback though. You are like, “Yeah, okay. I am writing something really good here.” Yeah.Julie: You're like, “Heck yeah. I'm so legit.”David: I got one. It was like, “It's 3:00 a.m. I am working at one of your Dad Tips. My baby was crying. They are finally asleep in my arm and I am typing this on my phone with one hand, but thank you so much for this tip. This was great, some of the suggestions. I have looked back at the book also in some of the earlier chapters and I was thinking, ‘Yep. Should have done that. Yep. That would have been better.'”So ultimately, at the end of the day, it's the guys out there who have had a chance to go through the pregnancy journey and now their buddies are going through their own pregnancy journey and their friends are asking them, “Hey, what kind of tips or advice do you have for me?” A couple of guys have said, “My first step is going to be to read this book and I am going to give them my copy.” And I am like, “That's great. Pass it on.” Let the information get out there and make these birth experiences for all parties-- mama, dad, and baby too. Anything any of us can do to make that a little bit smoother and easier is great.So yes. Thankfully, they are reading it out there. Some of the mamas too. I got one email from a mama recently who, she had glanced through the book in preparation whether she should recommend it to her husband or not and she said she learned a lot about how he was looking at the pregnancy that she was able to be more, I don't wanna say compassionate, but--Meagan: Understanding.David: Understanding, yeah. Like, “This is hard for him too. He is not only over there or not connecting with me, but he has got his own journey and a lot of this is new.” You can't hold somebody accountable for something they haven't been trained to do or informed about. So she was able to be a lot more understanding and workable in connecting with him and his journey too which I thought was awesome. I thought, “That was unexpected but great.” Teamwork makes the dream work.Meagan: Seriously though. That's what I'm saying though. So many people are focused on what mom is doing. Mom is carrying baby. Mom is growing. Mom is doing this. Her boobs are getting big. You know, all these things, but it's not like, you know what? Dad is struggling seeing her in pain. Dad is struggling seeing her not sleep very well. Dad is struggling with the fact that soon there's going to be a child to take care of. You know? There is so much. And so I love that, that she was like, “I was able to understand his point of view too.” That is really cool. That is really, really cool.David: Yeah, that was neat. I really liked that one because, at the end of the day, the parenting partnership is what's really going to be coming into play here, and whatever we can do to strengthen those bonds coming from both the mom's side and the dad‘s side, that just makes that family unit so much stronger to work with those fourth trimester challenges, of which there can be many.Julie: Yeah.Meagan: Yes.David: So build those bonds now.Meagan: Well, and I just want to touch back on what you said, there is so much in your book that talks about things before baby even comes. And so Father's Day is in June? When does this air?Julie: This is airing on June 2. When is Father's Day?David: Awesome.Meagan: Okay, see? Father's Day is not June 2. It is after. This is a great Father's Day present. So I am just going to quickly go over a couple of the chapter titles. “The Dad Instinct” which, in my opinion, is awesome that you are calling it that. It seriously made me so happy when I saw that because we always talk about mama's instinct, mom instinct knows best. Guess what? Dad's instinct knows best too. So “Dad's Instinct”, “We Are Pregnant: Through the First Trimester”, “The Second Trimester: Setting the Table”, “Third Trimester: Giddyup Cowboy”. Oh yeah. That's when all of the complaining happens. “Labor and Delivery: The Time is Now”. “Welcome to Fatherhood: The Fourth Trimester”.And then he's got tips and gift tracker spreadsheets, oh my gosh, go-bag essentials, birth plan topics, big ideas. I mean, there is so much in this amazing book. So ladies, grab this book for your husband. Read it together. Read it together.Julie: thevbaclink.com/wtfMeagan: WTF, yes.Julie: Alive and active. I just tested it on my browser. It is on Amazon, both paperback and audio versions.Meagan: Which is awesome. Are you the person reading it?David: The Kindle is available, but the audio version is not yet available.Julie: Oh sorry. I saw Kindle. Yeah.David: That's okay.Julie: No, sorry.David: Yeah, Kindle is there. I did do the audio and I am waiting for that to get a little bit more polished up with some of my coughing and whatnot taken out, but that will be available soon too. So we are almost there.Julie: We can relate.Meagan: Awesome.Julie: Yay.Meagan: Okay ladies, Father's Day is coming up. Definitely go grab this.Julie: Perfect. All right. Was there anything else you wanted to add before we cut you loose?David: No, this was great. I really enjoyed coming on here chatting with you ladies. Everything around birth is something I am super passionate about and like I said, anything out there that is helping people have a little bit easier, smoother journey is fantastic. So thanks again for having me on. I really appreciate it.Meagan: Thank you for joining us.Julie: Yeah, absolutely. It was fun having you on. All right, ladies, we are going to drop the link to his book in our bio, so go ahead and click on it there.Meagan: Do you have social media, David?David: I have a Facebook page that is pretty not active. I have been getting a lot of requests to get on Instagram and do some fun live videos, but I am a little bit behind the curve on that. So hopefully I can get that soon. But the website has tons of great resources on there. It's just www.welcometofatherhood.com.Julie: Perfect.David: Like you mentioned, the birth plan, the gift tracker spreadsheet, and all kinds of cool stuff. So you can always reach me through there too and send me emails. I love emails. I love questions and comments so please send them on in.Meagan: Awesome.Julie: Perfect.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Head over to thevbaclink.com/share and submit your story. For all things VBAC, including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan's bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Accountability, integrity, commitment. These values provide the lens through which ALPS realizes its vision. To live these values requires a culture of authenticity, a place where people can be true to themselves. In this episode of ALPS In Brief, ALPS President and CEO David Bell meets with ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte to reflect on how the company navigated the pandemic, the success of which David credits to the company's healthy culture and its ability to remain transparent. Join them as they discuss the implications of 2020 and their effect on ALPS in 2021. Transcript: MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Hello and welcome. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, and you're about to listen to the next episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. Over the years, David Bell, the CEO of our company and I have got together and chat periodically about what's happening internally, looking at vision and just trying to share some things. And the point of it has been... I think it allows you as the listener and our insureds to learn a little bit more about us each time. And I also hope to have the discussion of vision and what ALPS does, in this regard educate lawyers as to the value of, and a little bit about the process of creating a corporate or a firm vision. So before we jump into it, I'd like to spend a little bit of time here and introduce David a little more formally than I have in the past. David Bell is the president and CEO of ALPS Corporation and ALPS Property & Casualty Insurance Company. David joined us here at ALPS in 2012. Prior to that, he was previously with Allied World Assurance Company, and that's a publicly traded global reinsurance company. David was a founding executive and served as the chief operating officer. After graduating from the University of Montana in 1996 with a degree in finance, he began his career with the Chubb Corporation. David also co-founded and serves on the board of Grateful Nation Montana, a first of its kind in the nation organization that provides tutoring, mentoring, and college education for the children of Montana soldiers killed while on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also appeared on NBC Nightly News, Fox & Friends, and numerous other television and radio outlets talking about the need to make funding education for the children to fallen soldiers, a national priority. And that's just an outstanding and excellent organization David has been involved with you. I'd also like to share that that David has recently been appointed chair of the board of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center. This is a center that promotes better understanding of Asia and of U.S. relations with Asia. And we'll talk about that a little bit here shortly. So David, always a pleasure. Welcome to the podcast. DAVID BELL: Thank you, Mark. I appreciate you taking the time. I always enjoy our conversations about life and business. MARK: It has been fun and I've been surprised, pleasantly surprised and I'm sure it's... these visioned podcasts have had a lot of attention over the years, so it's always a pleasure to get back into it. I thought I would start out. In a prior podcast we set up 2020 and going into 2020, we had a vision and a strategic plan and things were rocking and rolling. And then, the rest of the world, we got hit upside the head with an unexpected global pandemic. I would... Let's start out. How did ALPS survive? How did we do in terms of how did this impact the vision? Let's just explore the impact of all of this. DAVID: Sure. Well, certainly 2020 was not what any of us envisioned. As we began the year, this time, last year, the year threw us a lot of curve balls and the nation and families and everyone, curve balls. And it's been an interesting, at times tragic example of what can happen unexpectedly. But in terms of the company, 2020 was and is closing to be a very good year both in our strategic objectives, largely having been accomplished, not withstanding COVID and our financial objectives as well. And so I think it gave us an opportunity to put some of our core values into practice. They look great on paper and they were fun to talk about when they're not being tested. But a lot of what COVID included necessitated really leaning on those core values as our employees had unexpected needs, as our insureds had unexpected needs and how we had to kind of plan for those and around those and line up in partnership with our different stakeholders. So it was definitely an interesting year. Now, I certainly feel grateful and for us as an organization, that we are not in the type of business that would have been directly in the cross hairs of some of COVID more problematic after effects. And that's frankly... it has as much to do with luck as it hasn't to do with anything else. So, 2020 almost saying with the tone of guilt was a really good year for the company. MARK: Did it impact where we go in 2021? Did it make some changes in terms of how you approach the corporate vision, the strategic plan? DAVID: In terms of the strategic and financial milestones and our vision of where we're taking the company, I really don't think that it played a meaningful role in any detours. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). DAVID: I think it did forever change the landscape of a lot of aspects. Internally, I think the way that we had to rearrange our business, where we did it from- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... to how we handled the various different circumstances that our employees had and have had to co-exist with. Some of those changes will be permanent and so I think that it certainly wasn't a business as usual year by any stretch of the imagination. But I do think we will emerge better in a lot of ways as a company. And I can't really think of any ways that we would come out of 20 and into 21 weaker. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). DAVID: And that was... Again, I attribute a lot of that to the fact that we just aren't in the many types of businesses that have had such a profoundly problematic impact. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: And I think our employee base... I'd like to believe that our employee base is stronger in 21 than in 20, because we experienced some pretty profound things together. And I think for evidencing that core values comment, when people have an opportunity to see some of those values put in action, I'd like to believe that they emerged from the other side of that with a stronger bond with one another and more confidence in the organization that they work for. MARK: Well, let me comment about that because speaking as one of these employees that has gone through all of this, I absolutely agree with you. My own personal experience was such that, this transition to the remote work setting for all of us for quite a while, we had to accelerate new tools, using Microsoft Teams as an example, and the communication ability and in terms of just being able to see each other talk. I felt closer now to everybody in the company than I have in... I'm coming up on 23 years here. So it really is... I do want to underscore that it's been a good thing. Initially my response was, everybody's coming. Wow, this is... We've got to get used to it. I used to walk into our world as some of us there have been remote all along, but now it's, I truly do, I feel much closer as part. Okay. Maybe a quick moment, since we're on the topic, do you want to share a summary of your own observations about what we saw in terms of the population we ensure that we are in service to? Any thoughts about that? DAVID: Sure. I mean, we've seen the results of COVID impact our insured firms at both ends of the extremes. For some firms they have seen overall, the COVID dynamic result in more business and more growth. MARK: Right. DAVID: On the other end of the extreme, particularly when the courts are closed and the economy is frozen up, there is not the commerce occurring that creates billable hours. And it has created significant challenges in... and has created a great deal of fear financial and otherwise by particularly some of the smallest firms. And so we've had to... We've reacted based on what our insured partners are coming to us with. We came out for example, for those that that found a reduction or virtual for time, virtual elimination of billable hours revenue, right? We came out and had opportunities to postpone premium payments. And well before the state regulatory bodies entered the scene and started to require insurance companies to do that, we did it. I'd like to think because it was the right thing to do. MARK: Right. DAVID: Right away when we saw that it was going to be necessary, it was clear in the very early stages of COVID, that this was going to create a problem for blocks for lawyers and a problem paying premiums, both because of financial constraints and because of just the tactics of being in a whole office and not being worried, your mail comes and all of that type of stuff, so that part of it was interesting. And I think the survey results that we've gotten back as we survey our insureds based on their experience that they've had with us each year, would suggest that our folks here who bring a great deal of compassion and empathy, many people, and I hope so lawyers themselves, had been in the shoes of our insurance. And so, I'm pleased that by all accounts, it seems we've done that well. On the landscape of what our insureds are seeing from a claims perspective, we definitely saw what I call a significant reduction in the volume of claims. MARK: Yes. DAVID: And we've actually seen a reduction in the severity of the claims that we did get. And so, that will clearly be a temporary phenomenon, right? MARK: Yeah. DAVID: When commerce has stopped and the courts are closed, then it's... You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that you're going to have at least a temporary lull in claims activity. Now the big question is, as this thing ramps up, will it hockey stick up? And as businesses fail coming out the other end of COVID, and tragically as marriages and other institutions fail, we effectively "make up" for lost ground on the claims picture. I think that there are pretty reasonable predictions on both sides of that ledger but it's an interesting dynamic to be looking at- MARK: It is. DAVID: ... and talking about. MARK: Yeah. Well, time will tell on that one. When I think about how ALPS has survived or navigated through the pandemic thus far, and seeing wins and losses in terms of some of our insureds from struggling in some ways, and profiting very much in other situations, I really start to believe that the... One of the ways that we navigated this so well, was because we had a solid strategic plan. We had established core values that people understand and live by. Our culture is important. And so to the degree that sharing some of the insights about what we've done, I guess I'd say... How do I say, I'd like to talk about some of this stuff as a tool, as a way to give firms that may be struggling a little bit, one path to try to move forward and come out of this. So if we could take a little bit of time, just briefly, let's start with this whole concept of core values. Can I just... What does that mean to you and where do they come from? And perhaps let me share,folks, the core values that drive us, that David has talked about already here today, as are driving some of this conversation. We ask, is this the truth? Is it fair? Does it benefit our people and the company? And does it help us make a profit? So, those are our core values. So again, David, how do we get to them? Why are they important to you? DAVID: Sure. Well, I think the core values are kind of the went through, which we all hope everything else that we're doing is filtered. And we didn't hire consultants to- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... I'm sure these could be worded differently. I'm sure there are core values that could be added and there are ways that we could word the ones that we have better. I've been in the learning sessions that many people listening to this, have been with great companies that have come up with very different ways to approach this and I'm convinced that there's no right or wrong way to do it. I felt like there was a lot of the golden rule kind of baked into this. MARK: Yes. DAVID: And our stakeholders include the people inside this company who labor every day on our common mission. It includes the people who we insure, right? We make a promise to transfer the risk of something bad having happened, the financial risk of something bad having having happened from their balance sheet to our balance sheet, right? MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). DAVID: And so we need to make that promise clear in the contract. We need to represent it accurately. We need to fulfill it justly when our claims attorneys are working on the claims. And we need to have the financial stability to be able to fulfill the promises as well. And then of course we do have shareholders too, and so we have kind of different stakeholders. But I think these four points which we've repeated so many times, I think most people probably know by memory. But is it the truth? It's kind of self-explanatory- MARK: Yeah. DAVID: ... a bit self-evident. I do believe that relationships are the headquarters to everything, including financial and business transactions. Without a healthy relationship, it's very difficult to get anything else constructive done. And without truth, it's almost impossible to have a healthy relationship. If you have reason to believe, but the person on the other end of your negotiation or discussion is being dishonest. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). DAVID: I mean, I can't imagine how you can have anything constructive come out of that. And so we have to ask ourselves, is it the truth? Is what I'm telling my employees the truth? Is what our people are telling our insurers the truth? Right? MARK: Right. DAVID: And so that is in some ways, so obvious that it could be glossed over, but boy, is it essential in just everything that we do. The second one is, is it fair? Is it fair? Is it equitable? That's trickier because it's obviously a subjective question, right? Fairness to one is not seeing the same as fairness to other, and so when I look at that is, it's kind of thinking about it from my own perspective, as a leader, as a flawed human being who brings the bias of my experiences that I've had in my own life, into my decision-making. Many of those biases being unconscious, right? And so, the question that I ask for me and the decisions that I'm making, and then I would ask others is, are you in pursuit of fairness and of equality? And it doesn't mean that you'll be perfect all the time. It doesn't mean that everybody... When you feel that you've done something fair, it doesn't mean that everybody else will feel that way. In fact, I think a truism of leadership and arguably one of the ways that you can know whether you'll be successful in leaders, if you're comfortable with the fact that something that you believe is the right thing to do, will not be shared by other people who are important to you. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: We're just going to have people who believe differently about this. But I think if we say, Hey, look, I'm trying my best, I'm going to be truthful and transparent. I'm happy to explain the reasoning for what I'm doing. And I'm using my best efforts to seek fairness and equality. I think if there's a genuine, recognized effort to do that, there's room for shades of gray, as people have their own interpretations. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: That's number two. Number three, as you pointed out, is, does it benefit our people and the company. By the company, obviously it means our insureds- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... and the various people, right? But we don't want to do something to serve people outside this company that hurts our own people. And we don't want to do something that helps or enriches our own people at the expense of folks externally, who we serve as well. And that's also a prioritization question, right? I mean, there's a lot of things to distract us. There's a lot of places that we can spend time and money. And I think sometimes we just need to ask ourselves, is what we're about to do going to benefit our people and the company? Because if the answer isn't an unqualified yes, maybe that's not the best allocation of time or financial resources. And then fourth, which I include unapologetically but also intentionally include last, is, does it help us make a profit? MARK: Right. DAVID: We're a for-profit business. Our ability to fulfill the promises that we make now and in the future, is entirely dependent upon us being a profitable company that is financially strong. But that being said, it's not profit above all else. There are clearly numerous ways that this organization could have, and could today make a lot more money than it is making. And if this were number one, there might be an organizational temptation to do that. Profit is important. It is not the most important. MARK: Right. Yeah. DAVID: And I think if you do everything else well, profit will come. It might not come as much or as fast as some people would like but it is a function of where it sits in your order of priorities. MARK: What I like about this, and it's something I've learned as a result of my experience as an ALPS member. I think a lot of companies, when you sit down and they talk about core values, and they list, these are the things we value and it becomes this thing you put on the wall and you want to advertise, and sort of pound your chest a little bit. These are not things that are symbols. What I like about these values, I've transitioned from a list of things that we value, to a list of things that enable us. They become the lens if you will, of how we view the vision, how we view who we are, how we view what we're trying to do. And I think that distinction, at least for me was very, very important. And I just share that with all of you listening, to approach core values from this perspective of, how do we want to set the view of where we are going? Of who we are? That's what core value is. It's defining us, not defining what we value in the sense of making a profit or... and that's important but we value diversity. And again, I'm not trying to dismiss any of that as relevant, but in my mind, there's a distinction there, I've set up the food for thought. Culture, let us just take one or two minutes. How is culture important in this process from a CEO perspective? DAVID: I've actually evolved as I've gotten older in years and had more experiences, made more good decisions and made more poor decisions, and lived with the consequences of both. I've always been a very metric driven person and would probably define my default management style as in a kind of a KPI terms, right? Key Performance Indicators. I've recognized over the years that if you had to pick, culture is frankly not only more important than the financial metrics, but the financial metrics are more dependent upon a healthy culture to produce them over the long-term, then the people realized that, then I probably appreciated it in the early chapters of my profession. And I'm really... We've hired quite a few people in the last year or two as the company continues to grow and expand in different parts of the country and write more business and in States all around the country. Culture, I think is sometimes the most misunderstood word that's commonly used. And people say, well tell me about your culture. And I say, I can give you kind of my culture speech, but if you want to know what the culture... If people have the opportunity to come to the company, we're not all but most of the employees are based and you walk around, the question that I've asked people to observe for themselves without any ability by me to influence it, is walk around, look at the way that people engage with one another, do their mannerisms show that they are genuinely interested in the discussions that they're having? Are they smiling? Are they able to have a little fun? Are they self-deprecating? Is their energy... Is it a library or look at where it feels like a professional salt mine? Or is it a place where there's vibrancy and laughter but it's also professional and it's very intentional. And so I think that if you have an organization where people feel safe, which has a lot to do with these core values, right- MARK: Right, right. DAVID: ... They feel safe because it's not politicized, there is an expectation that what you hear is honest. Then I think it gives people the ability to be their unguarded cells and be comfortable. And to me, that's culture, that's the culture you want. Because that's where you start to get true performance out of folks- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... because they feel that they can spread their wings, take some risks. And sometimes the risk for somebody who's just putting themselves out there to suggest something, where that might be not in their default picture. MARK: The way I describe this as again, a member of the ALPS family, culture in my mind... A healthy culture encourages, enables, allows, et cetera, mutual investment so that all of us regardless of position, are able to increase to invest in what we're doing as a group. But the organization also invests in us. It's a two-way street. And perhaps it's another way of saying, I think, culture when it's really working, is the... So I've talked about the lens. Core values is the lens that we look at vision, all this. The culture is living the vision. It is walking the talk of what our values say at our... and it is moving towards something, a common goal. Now, I'd love to hear your comment on vision planning in general. ALPS is a corporation. We don't all sit down, all of us and get together. And what's the vision. How do we get to our vision? Can you just give a brief overview of the process? What does that look like? DAVID: Sure. I mean, I think in order to have a vision that you can communicate in order to get the people who you depend upon to make the vision a reality on board, you first have to have a very clear and honest reckoning with where you are right now, right? You can't portray yourself as something other than what you are, or other than the state in which you are in. And so when you say this is who we are, this is where we are. And then this is where we're going. And this is why, right? Because I think, in private enterprise too often, the objective is more. MARK: Yes. DAVID: More is a lot of things, but sustainably inspiring to an employee population. It is not, right? People need to understand what's in it for me? Why, should I be as excited about the vision casting and where we're going? You've told me where we are, you've shown me where we're going. You've outlined some way station milestones in between here and there. Tell me why I should be fully bought in to this pursuit, because it is easier to just do what we're doing right now. Well, and not really venture out with all of the risks and work that are involved with going out onto the vision timeline. And so, I think one of the key approaches is to bring clarity to what those points look like and bring transparent explanation for the reasons, because you are asking people to do more and, or do different than what they are doing right now. MARK: Right. DAVID: And people need to know why they should do that. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I can also share, it includes, sort of measurable metrics. It's one thing to say, well, my vision is to be the most profitable family law firm in greater Montana or something. But if you don't have a pass, we need to sit down and I can assure you folks, we do. That's part of this strategic planning process. David, I want to give you a little bit time, if we still have some time to talk about the Mansfield Center. But before we get to that, can you just... Share what you feel comfortable sharing. What does the future look like for ALPS? DAVID: Sure. We are- MARK: In terms of your long-term vision? DAVID: Yeah, well, so ALPS, it's got such a great three decades of history. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: It started in the wake of the S&L crisis, when there was a genuine crisis of a complete lack of availability for legal malpractice insurance, particularly for the smallest firms. MARK: Right. DAVID: Right? ALPS was one of a handful of kind of white Knights that were created by State Bars in order to solve this problem. Obviously the market has evolved in different cycles over the last three decades. The crisis went away. We've had times when it's been very, very competitive and at times where has been very problematic from a loss perspective. And so, what ALPS has always been is, a direct carrier, a direct insurer of legal malpractice, the GEICO or Progressive, of lawyers malpractice. And it's far more common to have these commercial lines of insurance traded through brokers or agents. And I do believe that brokers and agents provide an important value proposition- MARK: Oh, yes. DAVID: ... for midsize and larger commercial risks in general. But they add a very significant cost as a percentage of the full transaction. And so I think one of the reasons why we've been as successful as we have been particularly in the last five to 10 years, is because we've been able to take the economics that traditionally go to brokers and agents, and share those economics between insureds and the company, really more to the benefit of the insurance. We didn't make this up. It's how Progressive and GEICO- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... permanently disrupted the Personal Lines Industry several decades ago. So, we are not pioneers, I think we've done things differently- MARK: Yeah. DAVID: ... and in many ways done things better as it relates to Commercial lines. But that's been our journey. So, in brief, Mark, to answer your question, the States that we are not in, we need to be in, now there are only a very small number of States that we have no appetite to be in, right? But for the 47 States where we do have an appetite, the States that we're not in, we need to be in. The States that we are in, we need to have critical mass in. MARK: Yes. DAVID: There are States where we're in, but we're not a substantial player. I mean, there are States where we are the undisputed largest- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... LPL carrier by policy count in the state. And there are multiple States where we are that. But there are also a lot of States where we have a very small market share. We need to have critical mass. And then eventually, as we gain more critical mass in places where we don't yet have it, we can start to look laterally and offer products other than legal malpractice. Right now we do legal malpractice, Cyber and EPL, Employment Practices Liability. But our attorneys who buy from us, arguably, the most important risk transfer product that they buy, they trust us directly with. And so we can bring to them offerings of other insurance products whether or not our balance sheet specifically is protecting or not, that's a step. And then eventually, we have ambitions to get into other lines of commercial business beyond legal malpractice. It could be accountants, it could be miscellaneous errors and emissions. I mean, we are now... What I'm describing now, I would put in the intermediate to long-term time horizon- MARK: Yes, right. DAVID: ... not in the short to early intermediate. But those are... When we have vision, I have a timeline illustration that I'm sure both of you and I are picturing in our minds right now, because we've both seen it, that shows for the purpose of employees. These are the steps along our path, going to this place, here is why we're doing this. This is why we think it's important. And I think just as important as that, and I guess, I think the next observation that maybe the final one that I'll offer will kind of wind in almost all of your questions. For me, I think it's important to acknowledge what we are and what we aren't. I think some companies love... And I'm not criticizing this, it works for them. They create almost a cult like atmosphere right there, where you just bleed the color of the company. And I think that that's great and cool, and for some companies. I don't believe that for what we do, right? We are a lawyer's malpractice insurance company, right? So we are not ending homelessness, we are not feeding- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... hungry kids, right? To be sure, the money that we're making enables us to be generous to others- MARK: Absolutely. DAVID: ... and that is a significant priority for us. I think we've had the ability to do a lot of really wonderful things- MARK: Yeah, yeah. DAVID: ... with that, but our core business isn't digging wells in impoverished nations. And so, I think it's not only okay to me, it's important to say, this is a job, a career, it's a place to labor alongside of people who you trust and hopefully who you enjoy. And I think the reason why people at ALPS, why we have so little turnover and why by all of our measuring techniques, people seem to have a very positive perspective of being here, because they can get up and look in the mirror and whether or not legal malpractice was necessarily the job they dreamt up when they were a wee lad, they can nonetheless look in the mirror and say, "We're doing great work." Right? MARK: Yeah. Yeah. DAVID: We create our product honestly and ethically, we sell it transparently. And the instructions that we get from the top on down is, if we owe it we pay it, if we don't know we fight it. We don't really have to get much more complicated than that, right? MARK: Right, right. DAVID: If we've made this promise, keep it. If we haven't made this promise, then we have a responsibility to the other stakeholders to dig in. And so we do dig in and do battle, on occasion. So, that I think is an important aspect of who we are, because it lets people feel... It lets people contextualize the purpose of their role here. I tell people often that I view, I love my job, I love the people who I work with. I look forward to it every day. It is not my life. I take vacation. I largely view the time that I spend here as giving me the means and the ability to do other things, and with other people who I care deeply about. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: So, if you are here 24-7, and on the weekends, you should not be- MARK: Yeah, I agree. DAVID: ...right guys? This should not be your life. MARK: Right. Yeah. DAVID: It should be an important part of your life because of the hours we spend together. But it should not define who you are and it definitely should not be your identity. So, those are kind of, some of the aspects of life under the ALPS umbrella. MARK: Yeah. We're kindred spirits in this regard. If we have a little bit of time and if you need to go, David, you need to go, but I would love if you have a few minutes, you were sharing prior to starting lists, the Mansfield Center. And I suspect a lot of people really have no clue what the Mansfield Center is, and what incredible stuff is happening here in Montana. So, I would love if you could just give a few minutes and share what you'd like to share and fill us in a little bit about what's going on with the Mansfield Center. DAVID: Sure, sure. I mean, I've been on the Mansfield Center Board for probably 15 years. Mansfield Center was created... Mansfield Center and the Mansfield Foundation was created by an Act of Congress, actually. MARK: Oh, wow. DAVID: Senator Mike Mansfield was, I think still to this day, the longest serving Senate president in U.S. history. He and I actually probably don't share ideologically many of the same priorities, but that's the beauty of this whole thing. I mean, Mike Mansfield was... He had kind of epitomized the good old days of bipartisan friendships, deep lasting friendships with people who felt very strongly in opposition politically to aspects of Mike. I recently became the chair of the Mansfield Center Board. Mainly I had a ton of time for the Executive Director. She's wonderful. And I believe that we're in a very... We all know that we're in a precarious time in our country. We all know the dangers that are around us. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: But I also think that there is a national yearning for bipartisanship, for civility, for cooperation. And the Mansfield Center is an ideal national and regional too in the Rocky Mountain West, but national vehicle to channel those types of things. So for example, we have, Dr. Fauci coming up in event that we've planned. We've got the chair of the Problem Solver Caucus, chairs. And if you're not familiar with the PSC which goes under "new labels" sometimes, it's worth a Google. PSC, Problem Solver Caucus, 50 Republicans, 50 Democrats in the house. They are a force now, four key legislation really needs to involve the Problem Solvers Caucus. And you have... It's just such an under-reported wonderful example of what is actually going on, which is, the two chairs, a Republican and a Democrat, who probably don't agree on anything politically, but when you listen to these two people talk, it's very clear that they definitely trust one another, that they, I think soundboard and value the opinions of one another as much, or in some cases more than the members of their own party. And so, they are opportunities, I think to harness this yearning. I just did a call with the U.S. Chamber. I'm also on the board there, and the Mansfield Center. And so, my hope over the next 24 months, is to try to play some small role in tethering together organizations like the Mansfield Center and the Chamber and the Bipartisan Policy Center. And these organizations who have this, we have to work together mission, because I think there is an opportunity right now even where people, even who aren't interested in politics, recognize that we have to start to treat one another better. We have to start respecting the opinions of people who we don't agree with more. We have to talk about things. And so, that's why I'm currently kind of somewhat jumped in the deep end of Mansfield Center activities. I think that there's a good opportunity, and I'm privileged to be a part of it. MARK: Well, I'm really pleased that you shared all of this. I absolutely agree with you in terms of the political situation we're in and the amount of discord is going on just crazy. But just hearing this, it brightens my day. I mean, it so does, it's just... I can just speak as a citizen at this point and say, it's hard, it really is hard, to find the bright spots of hope. And this is one, so I really appreciate. DAVID: Yeah, hopefully we'll see more example. I believe that media, social and mainstream, is the greatest threat to our nation's mental health that exists today. And so I just, I hope that there will be more and more opportunities to witness the current examples of healthy bipartisan dialogue that's going on and more, perhaps just as important, lots of opportunities to create, make, and be a part of new ways for people who have been camped for a long time to extend a hand, to be friends. It doesn't mean you have to agree. MARK: Right. Yeah. DAVID: Right? It just means that you have to just listen for a bit and maybe a little give and take, negotiations. Everybody listening to this podcast, they're likely in a profession where negotiation is a central part of what they do. And give and take is an absolute essential ingredient. We need more of that- MARK: Right, right. DAVID: ... political discourse as well. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: It should not be whoever's in control when the pendulum swings that way, as an absolute. So thank you, Mark for that. MARK: Well, you're welcome. And thank you. This is where we're going to need to leave it folks. I know David has got quite a busy day. David, it truly, it's always a pleasure to get together and spend a little time chatting. I thank you for fitting us in today. Folks, I hope you found something of interest and value in this podcast. And as always, if any of you have any additional thoughts about podcast topics or something you'd like to hear about, someone you'd like us to try to visit with, please don't hesitate to reach out. You may reach me at MBaaS, M-B-A-A-S @alpsinsurance.com. So that's it folks. Bye-Bye. Thanks again, David. DAVID: Thank you.  

In this episode we have David Young from RCN Capital tell us all about the world of private lending: what it is, how it works, who might want to use it, where the money comes from and how it differs from traditional lending.  --- Transcript: Tom: Greetings and welcome to the remote real estate investor. In this episode, we're going to be talking about what investors should and need to know about private capital. We're connecting today with David Young of RCN capital to answer all of our questions. Alright, let's do it.   -Theme song-   Tom: Awesome David. Well, first off, thank you so much for joining us. And, why don't we start by telling us a little bit about yourself.   David: Thanks to Tom and Michael for having me, really appreciate the opportunity. Yeah. My name is David Young. I'm the director of business development with RCN capital. We are a direct private lender headquartered in South Windsor, Connecticut, just outside of Hartford. And we do lend nationwide. I'm actually located personally in Boston, remote to the office as are some of our employees. And my background is pretty diverse, prior to arriving at RCN where I got to RCN in 2014, the company started in 2010 in response to the previous financial crisis. If you will, now, we're certainly going through another challenging period, but if you go back to the 2007/2008/2009 nine meltdown RCN was started in response to that, and I'll get to that a little bit more. So my background is spreads across a variety of things. I graduated from the United States military Academy. At West point, I was in the army active for about seven and a half years upon leaving the service. I took on a variety of roles, many of which were oriented around sales business development. I had executive level positions as a division vice president as well. I also ran a small business in central Massachusetts as a VP running a outbound and inbound call center and a variety of other roles spread across a lot of different types of skills and levels of experience that cover a lot of different ranges of medical, home improvement financing, and several others as well.   Tom: All right, that's great David, let's jump right into the meat of questions around private lending. So a lot of remote investors, they like to invest with debt, lot of great benefits to investing with debt. And there's this decision right of private capital versus more traditional loans that you would get in your personal home mortgage. Why don't you break down some of the differences between private capital and a more traditional mortgage?   David: Sure. So, you know, the more traditional route of a mortgage say going to a bank of America or Wells Fargo and applying for your typical 30 year mortgage is certainly an option and might be the best option for somebody depending on their particular situation. In fact, private lending essentially exists and evolves in response to those that can't be served by the traditional sector. So it's filling a gap that isn't being met in the traditional sense. So, you know, a traditional mortgage may be suitable if there are no issues to consider in terms of, you know, damaged credit, if there's not an extreme or even a high sense of urgency in terms of time and being able to complete a transaction in a very rapid amount of time, perhaps if there is no issues with, you know, citizenship, you know, private lending, a lot of the firms such as ours will work with foreign nationals, you know, with traditional mortgages or other, you know, hoops, if you will, that you have to jump through. There's a lot more that goes into the underwriting with a traditional mortgage in terms of looking at income verification, tax returns and so forth. So, but again, it may be the right route. Generally, the rates are going to be lower and a traditional mortgage, as you see right now, 30 year mortgages are somewhere in the low to mid threes and on private lending, you're not going to be able to get that low, but that's because you're being represented in a different asset class and there's different variables that come into play. So why would somebody pursue a private loan in terms of making a real estate transaction? That could be a variety of reasons. Let's just look at a typical fix and flip, if you will. Timing might be very critical. Somebody might be analyzing an asset that they want to move on and they need to line up financing on that. There may be competition for that particular asset, perhaps there is perhaps there isn't, but either way investors tend to feel a sense of urgency when they identify something that they want to acquire and then renovate and eventually flip. So private lending, generally speaking is going to give you a much faster response time. In other words, you can link up private lenders, such as RCN capital and fairly quickly get through the process and get approved and actually get funded on that loan. Why? Well, there's generally a lot less that goes into the underwriting and there's general early, a lot less in terms of a regulatory issues and traditional banks, you know, going back to the bank of America in order to administer and process your typical mortgage, there's a lot of regulation involved. There's a lot of issues that they have to consider. They're not necessarily the ones that are thrusting that upon you. Those are things that they must comply with, private lending, not as much, for example, we're not at least in RCN and many others as well. There's no check on tax returns. There's no check on income verification in terms of you don't necessarily have to have a W2 type wage job in order to be approved. And it certainly wouldn't hurt, but you don't necessarily have to have that private lending, particularly if we look at hard money fix and flip, you know, residential real estate where RCN focuses on non owner occupied residential it's asset based. So the focus is on the asset itself. And then other key factors tend to be the experience of the borrower. So how many transactions have the borrower has the borrower completed? We tend to look at the last, most recent 36 months by verifying if their name is on entity that completed a transaction. And then there's going to be a look at other things like credit score. But for example, in private lending, there are requirements or expectations on a credit score typically lower. In fact, maybe even much lower than in traditional mortgages case in point right now, just in response to the COVID crisis. In some tightening of lending standards across the board, both traditional and private lending, a lot of your traditional banks have really ratcheted up their standards and expectations. Credit score minimums have gone way up liquidity requirements, et cetera, that in and of itself is going to bump a lot of people over to the private lending space and private lending. Currently at RCN Capital, the minimum FICO is 650. If you look across all of our product categories, you're not going to find that at a Wells Fargo. So speed, credit requirements, the ability to be perhaps a little bit more creative with an approach and how to go about getting something done and being rewarded much, much more so for the asset itself. So is this a good deal that you're going for? You know, that's going to be a very high concern to a private lender. Yeah, nd the experience that you bring to the table. So do you know what you're doing? Do you have the experience, do you have the liquidity to accomplish it? That is what really matters as opposed to what, you know, a Wells Fargo or bank of America is forced to look at.   Michael: That's a really great point. Yeah, I was just going to ask you, you mentioned it in passing hard money is private capital and hard money. Are those two synonymous or do they really differ?   David: Yeah, that's a great question. Now again, I've been with RCN since 2014. Initially I wasn't directly on the real estate side, but a lot has changed as RCN originated in 2010. What private money consisted of in hard money was what a lot of people I hear now refer to as you know, kind of the old school where, you know, you know, a guy who might know a guy who could get you alone. And then when we say asset based, I mean, it's, there may, there may not even have been, and this still exists today, by the way, we compete with this and RCN where leverage, LTVs loan to values. If you will, to keep it simple, tend to be lower and you're more old school had money, maybe even no doc may not have require barely any documentation. And certainly not necessarily an appraisal or even running a credit score and for the purposes of just adding it to a file. So now when you kind of, it's almost, you know, a point of contention or even something that people joke with each other about in the industry where, you know, hard money has really evolved into a much bigger and more sophisticated ecosystem where more money comes in, where there's more requirements like just looking at the FICO, FICO requirements, FICO minimums. A lot of that is tied to where the capital is originating from to fund these loans. So there's institutional capital that helps. And not in all cases, there are funds. Well, there are private investors that buy loans directly, but institutional capital tends to come with certain expectations. The FICO is one of those where you have to check the box. If you will, the old school, if you will hide money, probably shrug their shoulders at that. Um, they're not concerned with that. They're not necessarily concerned with an appraisal. They want to see the asset and they're going to protect themselves by, in all likelihood having a lower level of leverage, lower LTV we had prior to COVID essentially the whole private lending, hard money space fix and flip space was getting, you know, leverages, you know, up to 90% or even higher with some particular vendors out there where you were getting 90% of LTV, plus a hundred percent of the rehab funding to close a loan on a flip, as an example, someone doing your so-called old school, hard money. I mean, I haven't heard of anybody doing that high of leverage in that space, but it's still out there. There's those people that, whether it's a lot of times it's speed, somebody will close alone very, very quickly with minimal underwriting work done aside from looking at the asset itself. So there's still a market for that, but there's a lot to your question, a lot of crossover or kind of a lot of blending they're one and the same in some ways. And then they separate from each other as well in different segments of the marketplace, depending on who you ask, different people have different interpretations as well.   Tom: One piece you touched on is room for, I don't know is creativity is the right word, but there's a little bit more variability in the different products in that it's just, there's way less regulation I'd say on it. Would you mind touching on that on some of the different products that, and maybe one of the more popular products specifically as a remote investor that you guys originate?   David: Yeah. One of the ones that really took off, uh, heading into COVID and we've now just activated it again is our 30 year long term rental. Okay. So this is a 30 year fixed, fully amortized loan, much like what many people are familiar with with your traditional 30 year mortgage that we talked about a couple of minutes ago. So 30 year fixed non owner occupied residential. We have that available on one to four units. This really came into play. It. This really took off like a rocket, uh, in March of roughly in the spring of 2019. I don't remember the exact date when we launched it, to be honest with you up to COVID. This thing was already approaching 40% of our originations at that point. And it gives people a lot of flexibility. We could look at portfolios of assets, so you'd have investors out there with say they had 10 single family residences and they had 10 different financing situations on each one. Maybe two of them were with a particular guy. I know a guy who knows a guy who gave them a bridge loan a couple of years ago. Maybe one of them was with someone else. And there was just all spread out everywhere. The 30 year longterm rental, you could take a whole portfolio and roll it into one transaction and get that entire portfolio into a 30 year fixed fully amortized mortgage. At that time, back in February, you know, rates were getting as low as four 449 on that, which is very low for non owner occupied resi. So you had that, you had the ability to look at those assets. So you may have one particular, if we stick with that example, one house perhaps was not cash flowing as strongly as the others. You weren't necessarily penalized for that. You weren't necessarily told that that one couldn't join the party, so to speak. That one was weighed against the portfolio as a whole. So we could look at the whole portfolio, also look at the investors level of experience, their level of liquidity and take all of that into account to make a decision. We have an executive committee at RCN Capital that looks in each and every transaction and they can exhibit, you know, a certain amount of creativity, if you will, at any point in time to see if the transaction truly makes sense, as opposed to trying to run that through a large bank, traditional bank could potentially be an entirely different experience.   Michael: That's so cool. David, it's something I talk a lot about with students in the Academy about portfolio loans. It's something that I've used on the commercial side of things, and I think it's the best thing since sliced bread. So I've always thought that they existed for single families, but that's great to hear that they do indeed. So anybody listening that have spoken to me within the Academy about getting, go for portfolio loan, go call David Young at RCN Capital.   Tom: in coming up with what the rates are. Is there a little bit of a discount for larger pools, larger portfolios, or how does that typically work?   David: Yeah, that's a great question. So we have generally, you'll see, uh, and right now, as listeners are hearing this, uh, allow me to emphasize if I can, that things are changing very quickly. So in terms of pricing as a whole rates points and whatnot, we saw a very high level of liquidity is kind of sloshing around the system, heading into a COVID and then things really tightening up seizing up even, and then starting to now loosen up. We've seen changes on almost a daily basis over the last couple of weeks here at RCN capital. So the way those rates are determined, you know, in terms of the price at anything is which is, you know, in large part driven by supply and demand as things seized up and there was less or no liquidity for this paper and the secondary market, it became very difficult to price it, you know, because we didn't know what it was trading at when there was a lot more trading volume and activity on this paper and the secondary. Then you could determine pricing a lot more clearly. Furthermore, you had a lot more of the competitors actually active and lending in the last couple of months, people have pulled back. So we don't necessarily know what this company over here is doing because they've completely ceased lending at this current time. So a lot of that is supply and demand driven, how much volume and activity is there for this paper behind the scenes. And then that results in, you know, subsequent pricing that the retail sees factors that we look at from an underwriting standpoint, and to determine kind of how to bracket that again, back to experience and also the size of the loan. So generally speaking again, pre and post and kind of while we're still with COVID here for the time being, it's a little different, but generally speaking, more experience and a higher loan value dollar absolute dollar value would generally lead to better pricing to the retail client. And through our wholesale channels. My role primarily is with our correspondents that work on our private lending platform, other hard money lenders, private lenders out there in the community that are looking to leverage our infrastructure to grow. We also work in that capacity as well, but the pricing, the borrower's experience and the size of the loan, we have systems in place. Whereas the loan exceeds a certain amount in dollar terms, you may get some relief in terms of the yield. There may be some relief in terms of the origination, but those would be the two main things experienced in the loan size.   Tom: Got it. And for the kind of ongoing ownership, you know, so there's a secondary market where you guys are selling the mortgages that you guys originate from the experience of the person who was getting their loan originated, or do you guys ongoing service them after you, it, of the loan,   David: Yeah, depending on the product, but actually RCN Capital. What we have here is, is pretty unique in the industry. And I leveraged this a lot with our wholesale partners when they're looking to find somebody to work with in terms of a capital partners that we have essentially everything in house now, right now, a lot of folks are remote. In fact, almost everybody is given the scenario, but if you'd look past that for the current situation, when we talk about servicing the loans, yes, we have our own servicing team at RCN capital. A lot of lenders in this space are set up with a situation where they're outsourcing that, which is fine. That's a decision. A lot of people make. We actually did that ourselves for a certain amount of time and decided to internalize that and make that organic to RCN, to place that amount of value on the customer experience. So yes, we're doing that, not all do that, that also holds true for another good example is our legal team. A lot of these transactions involve, you know, somebody originating and kind of setting the table if you will. And then the actual closing of the loan document prep and so forth, working with attorneys, which that can be intimidating and frustrating as a whole to a lot of people that is sent out to some other entity to conduct that business where we have that internally. So we have that an entire legal staff. That's all they do all day long is work on legal issues, closing stock preps, et cetera. We have our accounting team, our marketing team and everything actually in house in RCN. And that really helps as well. Not only does that help the retail client by providing them, they get a loan from us that they're to get an exceptional level of service, everything under our control. If there's a problem, we identify it, we fix it. But also with our, you know, our B to B or our wholesale partners, if you will, other lenders brokers, when they choose to work with us, they have that entire team, all organic to RCN capital to support them and help them grow their business by using our infrastructure and platform.   Michael: Great. David kind of a specific question for you around some of our CMS product, but anytime someone's using hard money, they want to get out of it as soon as possible because it's typically more expensive than traditional lending. So do you guys have any type of prepayment penalties that would prevent someone from getting out or is that really too specific of a question it's kind of on an ad hoc basis based on the product?   David: No, that's a great question. It depends on the product. I'll walk you through each of them here briefly. So on our long-term rental. Yes, we do encourage investors to be, you know, fully aware and committed to the asset for that exact purpose. You know, long-term rental and holding of that asset. There is a five, four, three, two, one step down. In other words, you can choose, you know, at what level you are, what time period and what penalty would be associated with that if you were to try and refinance out of that loan. So, you know, obviously that's a big decision to make that you have to be aware of that on our midterm product, which actually now is presenting all kinds of interesting opportunities for investors. It's a two years of interest only we call it a two plus one and already has built in an option to extend for a year. We have this available on one to four units, multifamily five-plus and mixed use, as long as it's at least 51% residential by square footage. On that product, there's a six month prepay penalty. So if you think it through, if you were to enter into that product to interest only for two years, perhaps you have an asset that you do want to rent, but you're not entirely sure you could change your mind. You may try to sell it. You make, you know, you may rent it for a year. And then at that point, you may want the flexibility to see if you want to do something different with it. The two plus one with only a six month prepay gives you that exact flexibility because after six months you could theoretically enter into a new transaction to get out of that one without a penalty applying. So there's that on the short term, I won't get into specifics on that. It can be on a case by case basis, but there's nothing to dissuade you from completing your project as quickly as possible. You know, as a lender in particularly with the yield component, you know, there's origination, which are the economics kind of front loaded to the front of the transaction. And then there's the yield component in terms of collecting the actual payments as each month goes by. So there can be challenges that a lender or a transaction ends up being very short. There wasn't much time to collect yield, but again, we don't want transactions that drag out for long periods of time and have to ultimately potentially approach modification as well. So on a 12 month, you know, a flip, if you will, our transactions show that, you know, investors are not penalized for, you know, being expeditious and efficient with their work. And we also have incentives to, you know, not, uh, enable them or make them feel like they should consider trying to extend it or go past a certain point. We try and we want to position them so that the project is done efficiently. According to the data that we have that shows, you know, what success looks like.   Michael: Awesome. Kind of taking a step back and looking more high level at private lenders. I mean, you touched on it briefly, but who where's this money coming from to fund some of these loans?   David: That's a great question. When you let's compare it to conventional, you know, just here in COVID, this, this could go in a lot of different directions, but in COVID what we saw was the federal reserve came in and really just threw the kitchen sink at everything essentially. I mean, they've, they've done things that are truly unprecedented that that's cannot be overstated, but one of the things they did is something they've done before. They certainly did it as part of so-called QE, quantitative easing since the 2009 crisis, which was to come in and provide a backstop to mortgage backed securities MBS. Now, even just saying that they're going to do that can have a huge effect regardless of how many they ultimately buy, but those are the traditional mortgages that are originated from, you know, you know, Fannie Freddie type stuff from a bank of America type of transaction that are sliced and diced into exotic securities, and then sold the fed comes in and says, look, we'll back up those, you know, we're gonna, we got your back on that, that helped that particular sector kind of spring back from the depths of the COVID crisis, if you will. And private lending, you know, we don't have such a backstop from the government. So this money is coming from, you know, private capital sources. However, there's been a big evolution, you know, for a period of time, a lot of this was from a private, you know, private investors, private investors would form funds. So you might form a fund with a group of investors that has, you know, I don't know, $20 million together. And then that funds purposes to invest in these various private lending transactions in whatever area that they choose to focus on. So they're out there lending and recycling that cash and doing their thing. And that's with, you know, that amount of money that they've been able to put together. There's also one off transactions that occur when an originator may take a loan and say, look, here's a loan. We have, do you want to fund this? So they take this loan, it's a 500 K transaction. They present it to that particular investor and they get a yes or no answer. And it's funded that way. RCN can help in those scenarios where you run out of capital and then you can come and jump on our platform. If you happen to be in one of those positions, any of the listeners out there. And then as the industry grew, you know, you have yields here that are pretty juicy compared to traditional. You look right now. Uh, if I pulled it up, I know from looking recently, uh, the 10 year note is what around 0.7%. So you're lining the government money for 10 years, for .7% annualized. A lot of institutions are, you know, they have to do that, but if you can lend as an institution into the private lending sector for loans that are collateralized by real estate and get five, I don't know, I'm just throwing these numbers out there. A lot of pricing is bounced around, I don't know, five, 6% versus less than one on government notes, government bonds. Then that's certainly a decision that you might want to take a look at. So a lot of that, I think yield differential investor demands for yield, the thirst for yield. You've had interest rates just being destroyed down to nothing. You have negative interest rates in some parts of the world. A lot of folks speculate, you know, rates could even be driven negative here in the United States. So pension funds, you know, other people that manage money institutions, there's no yield. It's very difficult to get yield secured and then incomes private lending, where you have these loans that are backed by hard assets. And as the ecosystem grows, becomes more mature. You have more underwriting standards, you have more eyes looking at it. You have more ability theoretically to, uh, make better loans, uh, minimize the faults and kind of feed the whole beast, if you will. Institutions look and they say, Hey, that's pretty juicy yield. I wouldn't mind getting some of that. And then you have that type of money coming in institutional level. So say, you know, you have funds, people put funds together, you have private investors to do one off transactions and then institutional capital.   Michael: Super great description.   Tom: That's a great overview. I'd love to learn a little bit more about the different types of customers and the different flavors of customers that use private capital. So there's individual investors, perhaps there's syndications, I'd love just to learn a little bit more of the different kinds of avatars or profiles of people that use private capital.   David: Right, yeah. So back to our discussion on experience. So when RCN creates products and underwriting standards, generally speaking, that experience factor is huge. So we do lend to people that have no experience. In many cases, those are, you know, kind of a mom and pop, maybe, you know, an individual that's looking to get involved with their first flip transaction. And that person might be someone that could come from a variety of backgrounds. It may be somebody that was working with someone else on these transactions actually executing the labor, the work, you know, watching a project, go from A to Z with their own eyes, and then deciding that they want to dive in on their own. Maybe it's a husband and wife, couple that are, you know, have a little side hustle going on. So you've got that. You certainly have the mom and pops. Then you have the call it a small business. If you will, maybe that tends to have multiple projects going on at one time, they may have their own crew in terms of contractors and a more sophisticated setup in terms of having a, you know, a playbook on exactly how to execute a transaction and already having the resources lined up or even on their own staff, you have that. And then you have even bigger organizations that are doing this in big numbers. You know, maybe they may have 20, 30, 40 transactions going on at any given time. They may, you know, they talk in terms of flips. In many cases, they may flip a couple of hundred houses in a given year. You have that as well. We're also seeing, you know, more activity and more interest in the multifamily space. So multifamily five-plus units, you know, these are small balance apartments. Generally. I know in Boston and other areas on the East, you see these spread throughout the communities, a building that may have eight, 10, 12, 16 units. You know, there's estimates, there's about 10 million of these out there in the country. And those are starting to get more activity as well. And for those, you know, that's probably a project that's going to require more than just a couple of guys working together on a side gig and some more sophistication. So you see a variety of different flavors out there. You see people that have made this, their, their living. This is how they make a living. This is their job. This is their career. This is everything. So we've seen different variations.   Tom: Awesome David, I think people hear private capital or private money tossed around a lot, like we were saying before, and you've given us such a great overview and background of kind of the institutional side of things, if you will, but from a private lending perspective, if I'm looking for money and I happen to know someone that has some extra, could I just go ask them to lend it to me and I think work out some kind of agreement with them, or do I have to go through maybe the more traditional channels of private money?   David: Yeah. I mean, we have actually specific to my role. We have investors lenders, if you will, that were doing exactly that. Or maybe they may even still do that, where they are providing kind of one off direct transactions between themselves and an individual investor out there looking to flip a house or what have you. So to your question, can you do that? I mean, there's nothing that I could say that's could literally stop somebody from doing that. There may be other things to take into consideration in terms of making sure everything is within compliance. I mean, the compliance is certainly looser on the private lending side than it is on traditional, but you want to make sure that you're working with, you know, it may be worth considering to take a look at working with an established organization or entity. That's been doing this to ensure that all documentation is done correctly, to ensure that all procedures are done. They'd probably be, it's in their vested interest to help you, help you to look at the project and make sure it makes sense. And there's ROI available there for you to capture, obviously to be able to pay back, pay them back and make the monthly payments. So I, yes, you can still, you know, there's nothing stopping someone from, I suppose, from approaching an individual saying, Hey, do you think you could give me X amount of flip this house? And that's kind of how it all got going, you know, looking at, you know, maintain a certain leverage level minimum or no doc, you know, obviously securing with a lien, putting that money out, collecting interest, only getting it paid off and then getting the balance back, you know, your principal balance back. So there's nothing per se stopping you. I think there's other things to consider in terms of, you know, working with an established entity that, you know, has a strong reputation has done this before, and they may have a lot more options. You know, you're kind of guy on the corner of the street, if you will, may have certain options that might fit certain people, but you go to a lender such as RCN Capital, and there may be more choices there for you that might be a better fit to your situation after you take a complete and thorough look.   Michael: Okay, great.   Tom: That's awesome. I think we're, we're getting close to covering all the questions we have. I guess another question, practical question is geographic footprint. So do you guys have any limitations on where you originate loans?   David: Yeah, that's an excellent question. Anyone that's curious, it's a better description than here in me, you know, yap about it would be to go to rcncapital.com and see if I can get some traffic to our website. Here are capital.com and scroll down to the bottom. You'll see the map and that will show, but yeah, we can originate and close loans in the entire country everywhere except for a few States, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Vermont. So the bulk of where the business is and where the volume is not nothing against those other locations where we're not currently able to do that. We have that covered. So any investor that is looking to do whether it's activity locally, or perhaps even dabble in other areas, you know, another benefit of an established entity such as RCN capital is the fact that we have that footprint nationally already. So we're already established in those areas. If you have something in Tennessee, great, but you may also have something in Oklahoma, we can do both of them. So we've got a pretty well covered.   Tom: My last question has to do with a product that I'm not that familiar with, but very interested. I'm just not sure I'm interested. If you guys carry it like a revolving credit where you can add properties in and out of a facility, do you guys offer any type of products like that? And this is a self serving question. Just something that I've heard about and just interested in learning more about,   David: Yeah. I mean, what I can say on that and thank you for that. It is a great question for investors with a certain level of experience, you know, a strong level of experience. If they get connected to RCN Capital and a loan officer, they can certainly take a look at pursuing what we would call a line of line of credit in the precise definition of that is probably not the best description, but we, it comes up a lot in the, in that, in those terms. And people use that to describe it. It's not exactly what it is, but we could potentially consider and look at that for someone with a certain amount of experience in the sector and has that documented and demonstrated. And what that could look at like is just use a million bucks to keep it simple. Perhaps someone being granted exposure of a million dollars every 12 month period, every annual designated period at certain terms. And in that case, they're, you know, why would it benefit them? Why would they care about that? It could be improvements in terms of speed and efficiency. If the borrower's already underwritten, ie. the entity, you know, on these short term loans in particular can only lend to a legal entity. So if that entity and the owners of it are already underwritten, then that's all locked and loaded. And now you're presenting each asset as you identify it and decide to move on it into the mix from an underwriting standpoint. So you still have to follow procedure, you know, appraisals and whatnot, but you've got some of the things out of the way to expedite the process and make it more efficient and make it a cleaner experience for your high volume, high experience clients. And that also would take into account. You may be able to add more fuel to the more logs on the fire in terms of supporting your own case, by adding in, like, if you have other things that contribute to your liquid net worth, you could provide that to perhaps support your case. If you're trying to obtain a certain amount of exposure that you're granted annually, you could look at doing things like that on.   Michael: Tom you gotta get on that.   Tom: I know. Yeah, definitely.   David: It sounds like, Tom was thinking about that one,   Tom: For sure. Yeah. Okay Michael, do you have any other questions?   Michael: I think that's it for me that this has been awesome.   Tom: David, this is great. Yeah. So we're going to end this David with a couple of what we call quick fire questions, and these are just general investing philosophy. It's great having smart guests, such as yourself, come on the show and just love your thoughts on this either or type of question. So are you ready to do it?   David: I'm ready unless you got a bunch of trick ones in there. Tom: All straight forward ones. All right. So consolidation or diversification. David: You want me to give a quick answer? Speaker 4: All quick answers, all quick answers. Yes. You can say both. I'll always... Speaker 1: I'll say both, I always tend to, when I, if I may, when I identify a trend, I tend to favor something. If it depended on my belief in it, I tend to consolidate, I'll give you an example, crypto. I can consolidate Bitcoin. I don't need to mess around with the others, but in other scenarios, I might favor diversification. Tom I think a good way to say that is either shallow and wide or deep and narrow. David: Yeah.   Tom: Deep and narrow, I like it. High property taxes or high income taxes?   David: Neither   Michael: That's the best answer we've had yet. Tom: High rent growth or low vacancy?   David: Probably say low vacancy. On that type of thing, I like to play it more safe.   Tom: Yup. Yup. Cashflow or appreciation?   David: I'm going to say cashflow. Cause I look at real estate as the primary benefit to me is a hedge against the inevitable destruction of your purchasing power over time. So I feel like that will happen when a hired asset, if it's chosen properly. So I'll go for the cashflow. If you pinned the two against each other.   Tom: Debt or equity?   David:   From the standpoint of real estate, debt.   Tom: Love it. Single family or multifamily? David: Tough to go against SFR right now.   Tom: I like it. Alright. Last couple of questions. Turn key or massive project?   David: How cheap did you get it? Being realistic, turnkey. You know, assessing my own situation.   Tom: Yeah. Midnight oil or early bird worm?   David: Early bird worm   Tom: Text message or email?   David: Neither. No, I'm kidding. I'm either, probably either.   Tom: Alright. And the last one kind of an off the wall, olive oil or butter?   David: Well, I do like that butter that is allegedly made with olive oil. Tried that on a steak and that worked out pretty well, but..   Tom: I know what you're talking about.   David: Yeah. It's olive oil or butter with olive oil. I'm not sure what brand it was, but I tend to use olive oil fairly consistently. So I have to be true to myself and to you and this excellent show we're on.   Tom: Awesome. Well, well, that's it. You made it through the quickfire questions. Want to give you a chance to yeah. Where can people find you get a hold of you and get ahold of RCN?   David: Folks can find the company at rcncapital.com, blue and white colors there. If you're Googling around looking for it, usually you'll find it. You can link up to myself. You could certainly shoot me an email if you'd like a first initial, last name dyoung@rcncapital.com. You can hunt me down on LinkedIn as well. Love to make connections with folks and expand the network and learn from people. So those are probably the best ways to get ahold of me and the company.   Tom: Awesome. David. Well, thank you so much for coming on.   Michael: David. Thanks so much. This was great.   David: Thanks guys. Really appreciate you having me and I'd love to do it again. Appreciate it. Thanks.   Speaker 1: Thanks again to David Young for answering our questions. Today's episode was brought to you by Roofstock Academy and we're running a special promotion right now. For a limited time you can receive a $100 discount with the promo code JULY4. With Roofstock Academy we have all these benefits: coaching, on demand lectures, the tools, the SFR paybook, on and on, but the Roofstock Marketplace credits just got that much sweeter. So initially it was a $750 credit when you buy, now it is a $2500 credit. So you buy Roofstock Academy and for your next 5 transactions you will $500 back at the close of your transaction. Happy Investing!       

Twenty years ago David Wood was ahead of the curve in the coaching space thanks to a workshop that led him to delve into the emotional aspects of business leadership. He is here today to discuss ways owners can use emotional intelligence to overcome the hurdles and valleys of growing a business. David is a high performance life and business coach, working solely with established entrepreneurs. He got his start on Park Avenue at the age of 23 and thought he had it made as a consulting actuary. A mandatory personal growth workshop made him realize that he was clueless about anything emotional in business. Today he uses his knowledge in his own business, Play for Real, to help entrepreneurs and business leaders push through tough scenarios with themselves and others and help them to do great things. David also is a coach trainer, mentor, author, and host of the Tough Conversations podcast. Episode Highlights: Reasons why David is speaking with us today. How he takes surface level goals and delves deeper into them. What questions entrepreneurs should ask themselves in order to get through any growth challenges in their business. David's focus on goal setting. The difference between a coach and a therapist. Why people seem so eager to move to the next thing when a sale is over. Quick coaching tips for business owners. The 4-step approach David suggests for sellers and buyers. How David's techniques can help your business and improve your life. Transcription: Mark: So a few years ago Joe I wrote a blog post on the Quiet Light blog and you can actually look this up and it's called I made a bad website acquisition. It was about a business that I bought and made some mistakes with and subsequently sold later on. At the end of that little ownership period that I had with that; it was a really small acquisition, we're talking a very small five figure level here but at the end of that period I hated that business. I hated it so much because it wasn't making any money. It was taking a bunch of my time. The logistics were a bit of a pain. And I got to the point where frankly I was willing to get rid of it for just about anything. And when we talk about the soft side of a transaction a lot of times people want to talk about the financial side and the metrics and the numbers and the financials; how do you actually juice that multiple, how do you get the value as high as you can? But so much of what we do is on that other side and that is the soft side of the transaction and understanding the arc of an entrepreneur's ownership of the business and how are you going to feel when you sold that business as well. And look before you turn it off and think this is all soft gooey stuff; this has a real impact on valuations. And I know you talked to David Wood about this, he was a business coach, because he really kind of keyed in on that as well. Joe: Yeah I know it has a tremendous impact. I like to say don't let the business outgrow you. That's generally why people sell because they've got a certain capacity and the business outgrows them; they get sick of it, they get frustrated, trends change, and they sell which is exactly what not to do. So working with a business coach like David who spends a lot of time with people in the e-commerce world helps you understand what your own personal goals are in business and in life. They're combined when you're an entrepreneur. And helps you get through those valleys and over those hurdles as you need to. David is a good friend of Ezra Firestone. I met him at Blue Ribbon Mastermind. Brad and I and Chris were there so I heard him do a fantastic presentation and I just had to connect with him afterwards and have him on the podcast. I think he can and will and has through the podcast I listened to he imparted some great wisdom when it comes to operating a business within your own capacity. Mark: Let's hear it. Let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got David Wood from Play for Real with us. David is actually a high performance life and business coach. I met him at Ezra Firestone's Blue Ribbon Mastermind event in; where were we David? St. Petersburg, Florida. David: Yeah. Joe: In January of 2019. I'm sorry 2020. David is a good friend of Ezra's and he did such an amazing presentation I wanted to have him on the podcast. Welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast David. David: Hey thank you. I'm happy to be here. Joe: Well, I'm glad you're here. We don't do fancy introductions so why don't you go ahead and give the people listening a little bit of background on yourself and what you do. David: Sure. Well I thought I was successful and I was at the age of say 23 because I was working on Park Avenue. I grew up in our country town in Australia. And here I am on Park Avenue consulting with Sony Music for the next song and I thought I pretty much got it made. I was a consulting actuary and for people who don't know what that is, we deal with financial projections going say 50 to 100 years into the future. Joe: Wow. David: And so my job was risk assessment but then I lucked into doing a personal growth program and I nearly didn't do it because they were all smiling way too much and they all wore nametags. I'm like this is very cult-y. I don't know about this but I didn't let that stop me and they cracked me open. They had me realize that I'd gotten great at systems and logic and results but I didn't know anything about vulnerability. I knew nothing about deep connection with other people and how to really influence people. Emotional Intelligence was something I hadn't even heard of. So the first half of my life was about business and results and success in that line of work and then the last half of my life has been about researching the more I still call it hippie woo-woo stuff like the touchy feely stuff. How do I make eye contact with someone? How do I be vulnerable? How do I deeply connect? So the people who come to me don't just want their business to be better. You can get a lot of business coaches for that. And they don't just want a part of their life to be better. They want everything to be to be better than it was before. So that's the short version of; oh I didn't say to in that course I got to coach somebody. Someone was really stuck about something that was destroying her marriage and I was able to hold space for her and her life changed and I got hooked. I was like this is amazing. I just spot the patterns and see what's missing and make a suggestion and she ran with it, totally revamped her marriage and her life, and I was like I can do this more than as a hobby? And this is back in ‘97 and it turned out yes you can. People were just starting to consider coaching as a career. So now I've been doing it for 20 years and I don't see any sign of stopping. Joe: You were ahead of the curve then and you're doing pretty amazing stuff now. You didn't mention that you wrote a book, that you're on stage quite often, you're on 70 podcasts last year, then Loosening Jack Canfield or John Gray did the inside cover of your book or things of that nature. You're pretty well connected with high level people but you deal with a lot of entrepreneurs as well in your coaching business, is that right? David: Yeah I'd coach entrepreneurs mainly for the last 20 years. Now I'm doing more corporate stuff, some vice presidents and also some prison work and working with prison inmates so I'm expanding but I'm an entrepreneur at heart. So I love working with entrepreneurs who are already doing great things. I don't work with just startup. You have to have a track record of success and then let's; how do you go further? Joe: The people listening are probably saying well why are we on the podcast together; why are you here? David: Yes. Joe: And when we list a business for sale oftentimes someone will say; a buyer, well if it's so great why are they selling? Or we always ask the question why they're selling. And more and more often what happens, people, is that a business outgrows the individual. And what we want people to do is understand first and foremost who they are, what they're capable, what their likes are, what their dislikes are, what drives them, what fills the cup and makes them happy. And that's a lot of what you do in your day to day work, David, is that correct? David: Yeah. Joe: Okay. David: Yeah I get people who have got surface level goals. They come to me like they want to be a better leader. They want to learn how to manage their team or something like that. And that's fine. Let's start there. But then I want to know what's really going to have you be happy. And some people know and they just don't think it's possible or they haven't put time and attention on making it happen. Some people haven't really asked themselves the question; how could my life be better? And that's the sum total of my initial sessions with a client; how can your life be better? Sometimes it's a business goal. If my business increased by 30%, that would do a lot for me financially and my family and then my life would be better. Okay maybe I'll buy that. But normally there are other things like what if my relationship with my partner was deeper? What if my kids opened up to me and talked to me about their life? What if I had the health that I wanted? So yeah I like digging into those questions like how could it be better? Joe: How can the people listening today sort of figure out what questions to ask themselves? Imagine we've got an audience that it's got a healthy mix of entrepreneurs that someday may sell their business. They're learning about buying and selling and preparing the business for sale. And then the other half of the audience might be those that are thinking you know what I'm going to buy one of these someday because they're unhappy in the corporate world or they've sold one and they don't want to take the risk of building another so they're choosing to buy. But let's focus first on those people that are struggling with the business that they have; they've grown it, they bootstrapped it, it's growing like crazy, and they're just trying to keep up. How does one identify what their own comfort level is with the size of the business or the staff or the growth? Because a lot of what we deal with are people that wait too long that things get pretty miserable because it's grown to the point where it's beyond their comfort level. They don't want to manage people. Mark and I had this conversation this morning and he's like we're doing an organizational chart here at Quiet Light Brokerage and I'm in a particular place mark and we're all in different places. The key center of our organization is the advisors; our team of advisers. And I'm straddling a couple of areas, Mark is straddling a couple of areas and we said to each other we have the right as entrepreneurs to do what makes us happy. We want to choose that path. How does one identify what it is that makes them happy? Is there a is there a process that that they would go through in terms of goal setting or asking questions of themselves and I will just stop rambling now answer that question help me out. David: So the question is how can people identify how they can be happy; what are the right questions they can ask themselves? And I love this, on 75 interviews last year no one's really asked me this question. So what I did is I went straight to my website and I'll read out some of the questions. I have a life assessment that anyone can take. And if you like we can give it to people at the end of the show. They can go and fill it in but I'll read out some of the questions. I have people in this assessment rate your life areas out of 10; business career fulfillment, wealth and money, your key relationship, health and peace. I even include relationship with yourself; like how much do you like yourself. So these are a few of the areas, there are a few more which I don't want to steal all the thunder. I'll leave some for people to find when they go and fill it in. And I have people rate them out of ten and that helps them look at oh wow this area is really a three; like my health and peace is a three, what's going on there? Or my relationship with my partner is like a six. Is that really okay with me? Like am I really going to leave the rest of my life at a six? So that's the first point and then I have people rate coaching areas; how about how are you doing with real goals? I'd like to talk about; and you heard this in my presentation at Ezra's Blue Ribbon, GPA, goals planning and action. So out of ten how are you doing with setting real goals, having a real plan, and taking real action? A lot of people would like to be more focused. We're kind of like a monkey on crack when it comes to getting work done. How about your daring, your caring, your decisiveness? So you rate these out of 10 and by the way this form doubles as prep if anyone wants to do a session with me. I use this as an intake because I want to go straight to wow you're doing great here, here, here, here, and here are three areas that look like they could be doing better. Which of these do you want to focus on? Joe: I think the real goals thing is amazing and critical and so obvious that everybody should be doing it but I don't think they do. I read decades ago; right David, we both got some gray on the chin that Harvard; I took a little class at Harvard, half the kids wrote down their goals and half didn't. Those that wrote down their goals were something like ten times as wealthy or successful and happy as those that didn't. One of the things that we're trying to do here and having you on is part of that mind shift. I want people to stop asking the question how much is my business worth, how much can I sell my business for, I'm ready to some business how much can I, how much can I? Instead set goals and say in three years I want to sell my business for X and then reverse engineer the pathway to that and understanding, gaining the knowledge on valuations and setting goals to that pathway exit. Are you working with people in terms of that goal section of their life whether it's personal, with their partner, with their business, with whatever it is that is weak on that scale and helping them with goals or do you just sort of act in a way almost, and what's the difference between a therapist and a life coach and a business coach in this situation? David: All right we've got three areas I want to address here. We'll see if I can track and remember all of them. The first one… Joe: I won't remember them all so don't worry about it. David: The first one is for me I like your process in this many years I want to sell my business for X. I think that's missing a key step. I would say firstly how do you want to feel in three years? It's incredible; and you can do this when you're doing a New Year's visioning session if you ever do that kind of thing. Like don't set goals first, set feeling goals. I want to feel this. And then you can set some goals that will help you feel that. I want to feel at peace. I want to feel deeply in love with my partner. I want to feel joy as I walk down the street and look at strangers. Those aren't some bad goals; actually this came off the top of my head. And then all right to feel like that what would I need to be doing? And I looked at well I love coaching. I've wrote this down; it was three or four years ago, I need to be more coaching and training because I'm inspired when that happens and I want to feel inspired. It's like oh wow I didn't know that. So it is a goal. So first step, how do I want to feel, secondly what do you need in your life to feel that and there might be a financial component to that. All right I need at minimum this amount of money to support these goals that are going to have me feel good. And you probably found this when you coach your clients, it might be less money than you thought the minimum. They have done some studies that show that first; I don't know how much it is 50 or 60 grand can really do a lot to provide happiness in the year and after that it drops way off because you need your own food and you want shelter and you want some basic peace. But after that that poor show that extra trip or vacation isn't going to do that much at all. So that's the first thing. And then there was a second component. I know I remember the therapy component but what was the other component to your question? Joe: I told you I wouldn't remember David. Come on, I'm serious. I meant it. David: Oh that's right. I wanted to say some people come to me ready with goals. They're like I know what I want I'm just not getting there fast enough. So we might do brainstorming or we might have to strategize a plan and they might just need some accountability to put attention on it. All right every week I'm going to do it. Other people it might take three to six sessions to peel the onion and to just uncover. They may not know yet. Like people would come to me with I want this this and this, six months later we've uncovered that; I'm working with an executive right now who finally has seen that he's really arrogant and he thinks he's smarter than everybody else which may be true but it's not serving him. He didn't come to me with that but it's a merge and it's impacting all of his relationships not just at work. Joe: Did he come to that realization and share it with you or did you go you know you think you're; how do you come about that realization? David: Well, sometimes I might gently point it out and I have that privilege because they're paying me. So I can say you know I think I have some feedback that might not be easy to hear but it might be very valuable, would you like to hear it? You're never going to get a no from someone who's paying you to hear your idea. But he came to me. He said you know what I think I can be a bit of a jerk and we; actually this was really fun. Sometimes you get to have fun in coaching. I said to him there's a chance. I know this is hippie woo-woo but I think you could really make a big difference for you if you're willing. It comes from the Himalayas and you're willing to trust me on this. He said all right. So I took him through this Himalayan chant. It starts with; maybe you've heard it, it starts with Owa Tajer Kiam and we did this and we kept on going and he got faster and faster saying it with me until he realized he was saying oh what a jerk I am, oh what a jerk I am, oh what a jerk I am. And when he finally got it he laughed so hard and that's part of my style is let's bring some humor to it. Yeah, you can be a jerk, so can I. When I'm frustrated I'll use my intelligence to belittle the waiter and they may not even know. And then I'll feel bad about it. But we're getting off track. So some people have a sense of what they want, other people it's going to take some time to uncover and I find that really fun and fascinating. And then you said how is coaching different from therapy. It's very contentious. A therapist will argue about this but once I heard this metaphor a therapist will help a man with a broken leg to walk again and a coach will help that man to run the four minute mile. Joe: Okay. That's not mental therapy though that's physical therapy. How do you differ from somebody sitting down and saying I'm unhappy with my life? David: Well the metaphor is more about someone who's really, really struggling to go from bad to okay versus helping someone to go from okay to good or from good to great. Joe: Okay. And you're the okay to good or good to great. David: Yeah, that's my target market. Now there are coaches who might be willing to work with someone who's really struggling financially. For example if someone's got a lot of historical stuff trauma and baggage from that; and I'm one of them, I have no judgment about that. That's not me. I would say a therapist could spend time with you to help you unpack and bring up all those feelings from the past and like that. I'm more interested in what do you want and what are you going to do about it and there is some overlap because sometimes people have limiting beliefs. And I've got one vice president who said I think I've got some limiting beliefs that are holding me back, can you help me with those? I'm like yeah we can bust those open. But I'm not going to do a lot of how was it when your father treated you this way and whatever; that's not my style. I'll refer someone to a therapist if it looks like there's some old stuff that's really holding them back. And a disclaimer and a plug for therapists there are some therapists who will work with people who are doing just fine and help them go to great. So it's a broad brush painting with right now. Joe: But I got to tell you in the future audience you may hear me say how do you want to feel in three years when you sell your business instead of what's your financial goal. What do you want to exit for? Inaudible[00:21:40.0] a combination of both. Because I've got to tell you people are this is their baby they've built it up and sometimes they're sad to sell it. But I'm interviewing people right now for the purposes of writing a book. Yes this is the second time I've mentioned this on the podcast and I will not be obnoxious and plug it all the time but it's fascinating. The idea is when that wire hits your account and you can do it with your phone now and you see all of those zeros in your bank account for the first time, what was that feeling like is the question that I asked. And the feeling was okay, that's good. Now I've got to get to work and helping with the transition of the business and keep going. It wasn't champagne popping and jubilation and things of that nature. And do you think that's because; and I heard this literally at three out of the five interviews that I've done so far. Do you think that is just because they're caught up in time focused on the work at hand versus setting a financial and feeling goal when someone exits their business? David: I think the question is why are people so quick to move on to the next thing and they're not celebrating and enjoying? Joe: Yeah I guess so. Thank you. You do a better job of reframing my questions than I do. Thank you. David: My pleasure. Firstly tell me do you have a working title for your book? Joe: I do. We talked about it. That's right. David: I think there was one line you said and like oh you got to hold on to that line. I can't remember what it was. Joe: We did. I've settled on; and this is the part where I'm either an idiot or brilliant. I sent out two title options; I already said it to everybody here, one was Incredible Exits which is a series we use here on the podcast for people who have sold their businesses. And the other was Exitpreneur. David: That's the one I remember, yeah. Joe: That's the one that stuck. Right. So I think probably 24 out of 25 people said Incredible Exits, go with it, it's just that. David: Do you remember the book title that I suggested? Joe: Yes Making Exit Sexy Again or something along that lines. David: No, that might be the subtitle but you said to me something like the real money is in the something. Joe: It's when you exit the business. Yeah the real money is when you exit. And then yes… David: It was nothing like where the real money is. I forgot what it was but I was very excited about it at the time. I really am. Joe: We're Making Financial Sexy Again that was the subtitle that you suggested. David: Your financials; because you said the real money is in the financials and people might get that and so you can make it sexy. Joe: Or eyes bleed. Well I ended up settling on The Exitpreneurs Playbook with the whole goal of setting a goal and reverse engineering your pathway to that. But we might add some feelings in that goal. David: Yeah. So speaking about reverse engineering I'll comment on why I think we're so quick to skip over the celebration but firstly I want to tweak or reframe something you said. I agree with you it would be good to ask them how do you want to feel when you sell the business. So that's great. I think that would be a good move. And what I'm talking about that I want to clarify it is much broader than that. I'm saying how do you want to feel in your life generally. Joe: Yeah. David: And so just for listeners to make sure that that's clear; how do you want to feel generally when you wake up, as you go about the day, when you go to bed. How do you want to feel and what kind of activities and things actually have you feel that and then reverse engineer the life of that. And you may find that money would be a component and that's where Joe can come in and help you maximize what you get for your business to support what you've already created in terms of your life goals. Now why I think we're so quick to skip and I'm one of them once a while this is I say why we are quick to skip the celebration and I got this from Dan Sullivan I think; a Strategic Coach. So we're looking forward, that's how we're oriented. We're looking forward and we constantly see the gap between where we are and where we want to be. And that's great that's the ego's job because it wants to put food on the table. But when we do that all we're going to see constantly are gaps. We're constantly going to see what there is to do and it can be overwhelming and we miss the celebration. If we want to feel good and acknowledge ourselves for how far we've come we have to turn around. Metaphorically look backwards and see how far we've come and that's the gain. So he talks about Gain and Gap and I'm always like all right that was good. Now what's next? And I have to slow down and even say to people we're celebrating or I'm going to pop some champagne or we're going to dinner or dinner's on me because I want to really acknowledge this win in my life that for example my health has been pretty rough for quite a while and I went out three times last week to go and be with people and get limbic connection and that's a win. So we can slow down and celebrate that and say wow look how great that is instead of looking forward to go there's still so much to do health wise to heal. So does that answer your question? Joe: It does. Thank you. Have you got any quick tips for those that are too afraid to hire a personal and business and life coach; have you got any quick tips in terms of somebody that's caught up in that grind every single day just trying to keep the wheels on the bus and not run out of inventory and deal with the coronavirus now and tariffs and so on and so forth? How do they kind of slow down and focus and appreciate what it is that they've got so that they can look forward with a clear vision? David: Yeah well I would recommend filling in the life assessment at PlayforReal.life. It'd take you five or 10 minutes and it's great information to have about your life. And then you can see oh maybe I want to work on the real goals, I'm going to sit down and do an hour session with myself and set some specific measurable targets that will have me feel great. So that's one thing. I like to talk about truth and daring in particular. Joe: I played that as a kid. David: Yeah well that's Truth or Dare. Joe: I know, I know. David: I like truth and dare. I don't know if those are quick tips but I think the more we speak out truth the better life gets the more attractive we get. We might rock the boat a few times and have some teething pains but I think… Joe: So speaking the truth to those around you, to yourself, is a daring thing to do? David: Most of us have grown up learning to hide things. We learn it covertly and subconsciously. We're like I'm just going to keep all this stuff in here and I'll show the world what's safe. And I get that and sometimes that's appropriate. But nine out of 10 times I think it separates us and a great leadership move and personal growth move is to share the things that are a little edgy. Hey when you said that I felt disappointed or I notice I want us to feel better working together and it feels strange and I don't know what it is to talk about it. Joe: It's hard to initiate that. David: Yeah. Joe: How do you initiate that? I remember I was a kid; I was in my 20s and I was volunteering at this theater in Portland, Maine and doing a massive renovation. It was going to end up being a concert venue and I volunteered to work my tail off so that I could become an employee of the company when it finally opened. And I got that opportunity and it really pissed off somebody else and we weren't done yet. We still had another three or four weeks and that person he could have been bumping into me with his shoulder because he was so upset he would have. It was that kind of you know mental stare and whatnot and finally I just said hey what have I done to upset and offend you? And it was hard for me to figure out what to say but it worked and we became friends afterwards oddly enough. And so I did; I was truthful and confronted him I dared to and it worked out very well but it's very hard to do. David: Yeah. Joe: How do you bridge that gap and say it? David: Well the biggest obstacle is most people aren't even aware of those troops that are swimming around in their subconscious. They're just like that guy's a dick. Or that I don't like her or I'm just not going to work with him again. He's unreliable, right? We don't even see that I could speak up and possibly change this. So that's the first thing is become aware of it. And I'm working on an app called it; that will help you do a true thought to try and work out oh what are the truths that I could say if I felt courageous? Secondly once you work it out say it's like that guy and you're feeling like things are strained and you want to bring up the conversation, the thing that gets in the way is lack of clarity. You're not aware yet what your hope or intention is like what's the good that could come out of it? You haven't generated that yet. So it's a bit murky. You're not totally clear what you're afraid of. It's probably something like he might get defensive or it might be really awkward and might make things worse. But that's not clear in the mind. So I have a free download on the on the website. It's called A Four Step Tough Conversations Blueprint and the worksheet will help you get clear, it'll even ask you is there a request you could make; something they could do that would improve the situation? so you get clarity then you're going to be much more likely to have the conversation because like oh now I know what's going on. Before I was just this jumble of I just didn't like what was happening. Then once you got the clarity you can follow the four steps which give you to them in a nutshell. You asked permission, don't just dump the conversation; can I talk to you about something for a few minutes? You share one hope and one fear. My hope is that we'll feel more connected after it because I'm feeling like things are a little strange now my hesitation is I might make it worse. But are you willing; can I share the issue? And then three you share the issue and make your request. My request would be just that you let me know what's going on or if there's any way I can improve the situation. Joe: You make it sound very easy. David: Well I've had a lot of practice doing them and talking about it and the worksheet really does make it a lot easier. I'm not saying you're not going to feel uncomfortable and I'm not saying there isn't risk. That's what makes it a little bit exciting but your chances of it going better are much clearer because you'll have the steps. You can even take a printout with you and say I wrote down some talking points because I wanted to do a good job at this. And then the step four; super important, is get curious and listen. How is this from your side? What are you experiencing? Do you have a better idea than what I do? And then you shut up and you listen and then you'll work it out together. Joe: I love it. Can you summarize for us as we're wrapping up and running out of time how is it David that this is helpful for people in business; the entrepreneurs that are here in the audience? David: Oh my God. It's helpful for everyone but specifically in business you want your staff to be motivated and empowered. I had my assistant quit out of nowhere. She did only three things that weren't working for her and she didn't have the training as most people don't know how to speak up. She didn't even consider a conversation was possible. So by you learning these techniques and practicing it you can model it for others so that you can have more communication among your team. You become more attractive as a leader. You're going to build more loyalty that people want to work with you. They will have a sense that they can trust you. You'll have more customers because your energy is going to shift. And they'll be like oh wow; like Ezra, right? I say one of the reasons that people go and pay and be part of Blue Ribbon Mastermind is because of who Ezra is and how he shows up. And he's learned how to have these conversations and speak truth. So if we had more time I could probably go into 10 more benefits but here's one final benefit. You will feel better and you will like yourself more if you're speaking truth. Joe: Yeah that's a pretty huge benefit, that's called being happy. So I'm going to go ahead and download it myself. I know you and I are going to chat personally next week and I'm very confident that I will actually become one of your clients and maybe we'll have you back on and talk about my personal experience and how we went through that process and what it's made; a difference for me, in my life here at Quiet Light Brokerage. All right. Any last minute thoughts and then of course again the URL at how people reach you if they want to touch base and possibly have a coaching session or just learn more from what you do on the website. David: Yeah. Thank you. So my last thoughts are you're doing great; wherever you are, whatever you're doing, life is incredibly complex. I'm going to do a rant sometime on this. Things are designed to break down. That's how it's going to work. And you made it this far. You're doing great. You don't need anything else. That's the number one thing. Secondly there's always room for more; for things to be better. That's the game I'm playing. How I do better and get the most out of this this life. And so if you want to practice speaking a truth more maybe having a few tough conversations I think that'll help. Setting goals and really we didn't talk about laser focused action but those are some things that can help. My invitation, if people want to find out more or get in touch with me PlayforReal.life is my website and there are three cool things you can do at that site all at the same link. One you can download this blueprint if you want to have a blueprint; a roadmap for your tough conversations. Secondly I have my own podcast if you want to listen to me as well as Joe. I've got Tough Conversations with David Wood, you can subscribe at the website. And the third thing if something resonated for you on this call and you'll like I want life to be better. I want business to be better and if you think you might be coachable like you're open to input see if you qualify for a discovery session. If you qualify I don't charge for that one because it's fun and too because it's how I find the right people to work with long term. We'll actually dive into your life and business and create a plan. And if you want to implement it on your own, keep me posted. Let me know how it goes and if we both believe that coaching can have a big impact we'll talk about setting up coaching and that's all at PlayforReal.life. Joe: All right. Well I'm looking forward to it myself David. Thanks for coming on the show I appreciate it. And I hope you can help a lot of people in the audience just be happier in life and happier and more successful in business. Thank you very much. David: My pleasure Joe. Thank you. Links and Resources: Play For Real David's Podcast  

Lesson 24.6 认识全世界的朋友David：Hi, Could you tell me how to get to the Summer Palace?Sherry：Sorry, I'm not from here.David：Thanks anyway.Sherry：Not at all. I'm heading to the Summer Palace too. Do you want to go together?David：Sure, I like making friends. My name is David. Nice to meet you.Sherry：I'm Jerry. Nice to meet you, too.David：All right, Sherry. Let's go.David：你好，请问颐和园怎么走？Sherry：不好意思，我也是刚到这儿的。David：谢谢。Sherry：不客气，我也要去颐和园。一起走吧？David：好，我喜欢交朋友。我叫大卫，很高兴认识你。Sherry：我叫杰瑞，我也很高兴认识你。David：嘿，Sherry，走吧。跟Lily一起说英语去旅行的训练营即将开营啰！有144节线上课程，针对24个不同的旅游场景循环加深强度，课后你还可以缴交自己的录音还有老师亲自帮助你纠正不好的发音，让你立即开口说英语，在家学习也好像在世界各地游走！现在报名到公众微信帐号guilvte或是Line ID：flywithlily，回覆训练营，跟我们一起学英语环游世界去！

Lesson 24.6 认识全世界的朋友David：Hi, Could you tell me how to get to the Summer Palace?Sherry：Sorry, I'm not from here.David：Thanks anyway.Sherry：Not at all. I'm heading to the Summer Palace too. Do you want to go together?David：Sure, I like making friends. My name is David. Nice to meet you.Sherry：I'm Jerry. Nice to meet you, too.David：All right, Sherry. Let's go.David：你好，请问颐和园怎么走？Sherry：不好意思，我也是刚到这儿的。David：谢谢。Sherry：不客气，我也要去颐和园。一起走吧？David：好，我喜欢交朋友。我叫大卫，很高兴认识你。Sherry：我叫杰瑞，我也很高兴认识你。David：嘿，Sherry，走吧。跟Lily一起说英语去旅行的训练营即将开营啰！有144节线上课程，针对24个不同的旅游场景循环加深强度，课后你还可以缴交自己的录音还有老师亲自帮助你纠正不好的发音，让你立即开口说英语，在家学习也好像在世界各地游走！现在报名到公众微信帐号guilvte或是Line ID：flywithlily，回覆训练营，跟我们一起学英语环游世界去！

Lesson 24.6 认识全世界的朋友David：Hi, Could you tell me how to get to the Summer Palace?Sherry：Sorry, I'm not from here.David：Thanks anyway.Sherry：Not at all. I'm heading to the Summer Palace too. Do you want to go together?David：Sure, I like making friends. My name is David. Nice to meet you.Sherry：I'm Jerry. Nice to meet you, too.David：All right, Sherry. Let's go.David：你好，请问颐和园怎么走？Sherry：不好意思，我也是刚到这儿的。David：谢谢。Sherry：不客气，我也要去颐和园。一起走吧？David：好，我喜欢交朋友。我叫大卫，很高兴认识你。Sherry：我叫杰瑞，我也很高兴认识你。David：嘿，Sherry，走吧。跟Lily一起说英语去旅行的训练营即将开营啰！有144节线上课程，针对24个不同的旅游场景循环加深强度，课后你还可以缴交自己的录音还有老师亲自帮助你纠正不好的发音，让你立即开口说英语，在家学习也好像在世界各地游走！现在报名到公众微信帐号guilvte或是Line ID：flywithlily，回覆训练营，跟我们一起学英语环游世界去！

David Dylan Thomas David Dylan Thomas studies human behavior to develop better content strategies. His cognitive-bias hacks help you tame counter-productive thought processes to create less biased content experiences. David and I talked about: his evolution from filmmaker to content strategist the introduction of content strategy as a discipline at Think Company how awareness and knowledge of cognitive biases can inform content strategy the origins of his Cognitive Bias podcast cognitive biases that content strategists need to be on alert for: the framing effect, for example how insidious and persistent cognitive biases are: "Even when you're aware of a bias, you'll probably still do it." how to slow down your thinking to have a fighting chance at eliminating bias in your work how to apply the scientific process to design and content strategy how the "Red Team, Blue Team" method can identify problems with your content strategy, before you ship it the importance of evidence-based design the benefits of a good content strategy (internal process improvements, etc.) the percentage of UX work that is done for internal processes vs. for end users - about 50:50 in his experience the three rules of productive discourse and how they can improve your strategy work how content strategy hacks like the "eight-up exercise" can build genuine buy-in from collaborators an innovative resume-blinding process to remove bias from your hiring process David's Bio David Dylan Thomas has developed digital strategies for major clients in entertainment, healthcare, publishing, finance, and retail. He serves as Principal, Content Strategy at Think Company, helps organize Content Strategy Philly, and teaches content strategy for Girl Develop It Philly. The founder of Content Camp, he previously consulted at the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy and is the creator, director, and co-producer of Developing Philly, a web series about the rise of the Philadelphia tech community. He is the creator and host of the Cognitive Bias Podcast and has given standing-room-only presentations at TEDNYC, SXSW Interactive, and the Wharton Web Conference on content strategy and emerging content trends. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/ZtT62UBykXY Transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 27 of the content strategy interviews podcast. I'm really psyched today to have with us David Dylan Thomas. Dave is principal of content strategy at Think Company in Philadelphia. And I'll have Dave tell us a little bit more about his background. David: Sure. So, I got into content strategy in a very weird way, though I don't know that there's a normal way to get into content strategy, but the content part, I guess, came from being a film maker, going back to when I was in high school and just editing together movies with two VHS recorders. Very old school. And then around 2000, I started getting into distance education. Working for Johns Hopkins University's Center of Talent and Youth program. So, college level courses delivered on CD-ROM, no less, to junior high and high school kids who tested really well for writing. I kind of fell in love with the web then, because it could connect people from all over the world. Then the content strategy part really started when I got to Philadelphia and I was working as an online editor in chief at a publishing company. Basically, the online presence of four or five different print magazines and trying to figure out what is going to stay in print, how to move this stuff from print to web, what's going to be web exclusive. All of this strategizing around content. So even though my title wasn't content strategy, that was very much the activity I was engaged in. David: And that followed me through when I was in the non-profit world, at a foundation and helping out grantees with their content. But again,

Last week the ALPS team gathered for a discussion about the company's vision this year and beyond. Afterwards Mark sat down with ALPS CEO, David Bell, to continue the conversation about vision and why it's imperative for every business, from a large corporation like GE to a solo law firm, to truly understand why they are doing what they are doing in order to give clarity to their vision and in turn, spark intentional action.  ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte. Transcript MARK: Hello, this is Mark Bassingthwaighte. I'm the Risk Manager here at ALPS. And welcome to another episode of ALPS in Brief. We're here at the historic Florence Building, in downtown Missoula. And I'm delighted to be able to introduce our guest this afternoon, David Bell, CEO of ALPS. David, can you take just a few moments and tell the audience a little bit about yourself, your background. DAVID: Sure Mark, thanks for including me in today's podcast. I've had the privilege of being at the helm of ALPS for almost six years. I've worked my entire career in the insurance industry, both domestically and abroad for small companies and large, and in some cases turning a small company into a large one. It's such a blessing and a privilege to have the opportunity in 2012 to come home to Montana, and also to take the leadership of ALPS. We've accomplished a lot of great things together since then. MARK: You sure have. David Bell:       More importantly we have a lot of exciting things on the horizon for the company and for its people, and for its policyholders and stakeholders. MARK: Well let's talk about that a little bit. We had just a great meeting today, getting the company together and looking more long-term and developing some vision. Would you just take a couple moments to share your vision, what are we doing here at ALPS, where are we going? I'd love to share this with our listeners. DAVID: Sure. We're at an exciting inflection point for ALPS. Having changed our regulatory structure and begun to move into the states remaining that ALPS has not been in historically, and really take the value proposition that has made ALPS successful over the past 30 years, and double and triple down on that. Today's meeting that included everyone in the company in various offices from the east to the west coasts, really set the vision for us together on our culture, on our financial metrics, and what we're striving towards, and how we're measuring ourselves, and also really the why. The why we do this vision. Why we do this together, why we do this for our customers, and what we hope to accomplish with all of the hours that we spend together, growing in the same direction and fighting for the same goal. MARK: I've been with the company now, 20 years. It's just been such an exciting time in recent years, to see the growth and the direction ALPS is moving in. And I'd kind of like to pivot the conversation, just a little bit and look at the value of vision for businesses in general, to include solo and small firms. In my experience, in terms of doing some consulting risk management, vis-à-vis, these kinds of things over the year. At times, you do find attorneys, for lack of a better description, sort of spinning their wheels, and there's not a lot of growth. I would just be interested in your comments in terms of the value of vision to helping a lawyer move forward, and in the context of any business. There's nothing magical about vision, whether it's GE or a small solo. Do you see where I'm going? Your thoughts, your comments. DAVID: Sure. Well I think one of the reasons why we had the meeting we had today, coming off of a fantastic year in 2017, was, I felt frankly wanting at the end of '17 in messaging our accomplishments. But yet I'm recognizing that we close a year where we have the highest and first in almost every category, the highest revenue ever, the highest surplus ever, one of the lowest claim frequencies ever. The business is as healthy and vibrant as its ever been, and it's three decades. But yet, I felt like the year-end wrap-up of accomplishments was missing something, and I feel, and this is where I'm accountable, that what it was missing was some clarity and vision beyond the budget. Did we beat budget, did we not beat budget, right? That is a component piece of a plan, and part of a vision, but it's not the vision itself. Nor is a mission statement, or a several sentence tag line that identifies your values. That's important, and we have that, but that's not the vision. The vision really comes down to the why we do what we do. And doing a little more than last year, a little more revenue, a little more profit, that's good, and it's necessary, but it's not the why. And if it is the why, it's frankly hard to seek inspiration over the long-term, if that is the why. And so today at ALPS, and I suspect the same is true within the story of a solo practitioner or a moderate or large size law firm. The why we do what we do, is as important as how effectively, ... how much money we make, in doing what we do. And so for us, the vision of why, really comes down to solving the problems for our customers. Doing it in a way that honors our core values. We write transparent, easy to read policies. We apply claims in a fair, honest, and transparent way, and we're proud of that. We can all look in the mirror knowing that we've both created and effectuated something that we can be proud of. But within these walls and the people that are working together, this is a giant relationship potpourri. Everybody is interacting, everybody comes from different life experiences. They have had accomplishments and they have been wounded in different ways, and they bring all of that in those experiences to work. And work, we're complicated people and when we put a lot of us together, we're exponentially more complicated. So reminding ourselves of the why we're doing what we're doing, becomes really important so that it's not just we did a dollar, now we've got to do two dollars. We're doing it for each other, we're doing it for a certain mission, and we can seek inspiration from that. And Ideally, what we come up with is something that makes us excited to do what we're doing. We don't do it for a job, we do it because we really enjoy it, and we enjoy the people we do it with. MARK: And I love that. That's just fantastic. Can you, sort of the last topic I'd like to explore with is, ... I'm a lawyer, so it's a hypo here, and I've come together with a few other lawyers, and we're starting a small firm here. We may have a couple employees, this kind of thing. Maybe we've been in practice for a year or so, and we're still struggling, just, again finding direction, finding success. And so we reach out to you just as, if you will, even just as a business consultant, and somebody who just has a tremendous amount of experience here. How would you, ... well David, I appreciate the value of vision, but how would I go about this in a small setting? Do you have some thoughts, or some general, just advice to the business side of this? Because I think lawyers spend a lot of time, ... we're taught how to practice law, and the education we have is a great education, but we're not taught how to run a business. There is this business aspect, this business side. And if we're not successful with the business of law, we're not, ... you see where I'm going? So do you have any thoughts to share on just a couple of day-to-day tips, how might I go about? DAVID: Well anybody who has a law firm is a better expert than I am at this, at the moment, on how to run a law firm. But I would suggest that like any business, as it pertains to lawyers and law firms, which is an industry we know quite well, and we see them succeed, and we see them fail. We see them dissolve, we see them merge, and we see them become phenomenally successful in a lot of cases. I do think that it is important that those who run a law firm, it doesn't matter whether it's a solo practitioner, or a 50-person firm, really thinks in isolation about, I am a legal practitioner, I strive for excellence in my understand and application of the law. That's critical, that's really hard to be a great lawyer in a law firm if that's not a commitment. I also separately, to your point Mark, separately, I also have a business. And that business needs to be run like a business, which means I need to be sensitive to the fact that my time is billable hours equals money. There's only so many hours in the day. There are both efficient ways to spend that time, and inefficient ways to spend the time. And if I don't take some time understanding the difference between the two, it will lean towards inefficient, and will become financially stressful for the business. So there is the legal practitioner of, and there is the business manager, and there also is the why. Because, why am I doing this? And the practice of law, is one of the most noble pursuits around. Different lawyers practice different types of law, and that are involved in different areas of law. But the fact that you are bringing your expertise to someone who doesn't have it themselves, and who would be disadvantaged, in some cases are literally lost without you, that's a great fiduciary responsibility that you're undertaking. There's a lot of inspiration that can be naturally born in the why of why I'm doing this, from that. But I suspect, and listeners can just reflect for themselves to what extent this might be true for their practice, that you do have to pursue the why intentionally, and pursue the most noble of the why option. MARK: I absolutely agree. In follow-up to that, is it important that, ... so again, I've got this small firm, they're three, four, five of us, whatever we have, is it important that each of us, as lawyers practicing in the firm, and perhaps to include our staff, does the why need to be uniform? Do we all need to have sort of a similar vision if the firm's going to succeed? Is that something you would encourage and advise? Do we sit down and have these kinds of conversations? Or is it more of a personal thing? Do you have any thoughts on that? DAVID: This is one guy's opinion, and I can't say that this is the right one. But my opinion is that you don't actually have to have the same why, with your contemporaries and colleagues in the firm. But I do think it is, the why needs to be known and discussed. And to the extent that there are differences, and in some cases there can be enormous strengths harnessed from different whys. As long as the whys are complementary. And as long as the whys are not in conflict, and that they can not just coexist, but that they can work off of each other. And so, I don't know that they need to be the same, I think it could be great if they are exactly the same, but I think it can also be great if they're not the same. But I don't think if can be great if it's just an unknown. An uncoordinated, every man or woman for him or herself, and we'll just see how it works out. If you want to just see how it works out, then you're not going to know how it's going to work out. MARK: Well this kind of circles back to what we were talking about earlier today. It seems to me there's this a difference in terms of having a vision and having clarity of vision. We, as business partners, if we all understand the whys of each other, and understand where we're trying to go, we can have some clarity of vision. And I think that lends itself to success in the business side. DAVID: And purpose. Success and purpose, where you wake up and say [crosstalk: 12:26]. MARK: Well yes, exactly. DAVID: We've said here before, we have a wonderful business and a noble profession. This is not, ... we aren't feeding kids in Africa and so the inspiration that can be garnered from that type of a business, isn't the same as this business. So you have to, ... so often, people wake up one day, and they lack meaning, or they lack purpose in life. And we should all guard ourselves against that. But we don't all have to be in this wonderful philanthropic non-profit profession in order to feed and fulfill that side of us. But if we aren't watching for it, then one day it will just confront us when we wake up. Whether the crisis actually happens in midlife, or happens at some other point, that's often times when the crisis comes personally. MARK: There's some food for thought. Listen David, it has been such a pleasure. I really appreciate your taking the time to visit with the listeners here on the podcast. And I hope at some point in future, we can get together again and explore some other topics. To those of you listening, thanks again. And please if any of you have any thoughts or ideas or things that you'd to hear in future podcasts, please don't hesitate to reach me at mbass@alpsnet.com. That's it, thanks for listening. Good bye.

David Belove, CEO at Prodly, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss investing in the channel, compensating your channel sales reps, and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Jen: Hi everybody, welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer here at Allbound, and today I am joined by David Belove, who is CEO at Prodly. Most recently he served as Vice President of Sales Operations and Productivity at Nitro. Welcome David. So good to have you on the show today. Can you share a little bit about yourself and about kind of some of the roles you played in sales operations?   David: Well, first of all, I've had three distinct careers. I started out as a marketing professional and then I had a sales career, and now I'm refocused on sales operations. So that spanned almost three decades. So I've been making that transition from marketing to sales to sales operations over the last 10 years, I would say.   Jen: That's great.   David: I'm just going to stay in that process so I moved from selling hardware to software and now I'm to the SaaS software.   Jen: I love that, you know, you've had experience in the marketing side, sales, sales operations. I think it's great today to have that breadth of knowledge. You know when it comes to SaaS… you mentioned that you are at Nitro, you had roles at Apttus and eFolder and Cloud9 Analytics. You're pretty well-versed in SaaS sales at this point and I'm curious, you know, over the course of your career, what are some consistencies that you've seen that have really created successful SaaS partner channels? Because selling SaaS through partners and with partners can be different from selling traditional software or hardware even?   David: So, several things come to my mind. One of them would be that, vendors in particular but also that channel partners have to have a super clear picture of their go-to-market strategy. So if you think about go-to-market strategy as where you define your market segmentation. And then the way you pursue these segments, you've got to have a really clear picture in mind so that everybody knows what their role is. And the goal is to avoid sending conflicting messages to your partners and to your direct sales team. You want them to play nicely together. So for example, at Nitro, partners play a pretty clear role. Nitro has Geographic and that's a small company, has geographic and language coverage limitations. And so partners are absolutely crucial in many parts of the world. But also, you know, having a clear picture of which verticals you can cover yourself and which vertical partners have to have expertise to cover for you, or situations like integration. If your product involves integration with other products, partners are going to be really important. It's really hard for a vendor to cover every different instance from an integration perspective. So, in all three of these cases you would have a really clear ROI, and that would make it much easier to explain what your partner's role is in. But that's one point, it's understanding the roles.   And then, the second point would be making sure that you have dedicated marketing and sales resources assigned to the channel. And it's kind of hard because, most especially when you first get going, and in particularly in a SaaS environment where direct sales tend to be the first approach to the market and dedicating these resources is kind of hard to justify. It's an investment because the bookings are probably going to be coming from the direct sales initially and so you're kind of betting on the [come?] that the channels gonna contribute. But if you don't have dedicated channel marketing and channel sales resources you'll never gonna make any progress.   So, one quick story - at Apttus, we were very interested in signing up SI's to help us with not only opportunity generation but implementation. And so we kicked off the program but we didn't have the implementation training programs put in place, and so nothing really happened. We were disappointed with the results. Once those training programs were put in place everything at the top of the funnel started to fall in place.   Jen: That makes a lot of sense. I was really kind of like really curious about… you made a kind of statement about how channel can allow a SaaS organization to not pivot but to kind of expand into another part of business that maybe they couldn't previously move into. Like, whether that's moving from targeting small and medium size businesses to enterprise or going the opposite direction enterprise down to a more of an SMB market. I know that there's... It's one thing to say, “Okay, let's bring on this partners and they're gonna have this expertise so they're gonna get us into these deals or they're gonna get us into these opportunities.” I wonder if you can share a little bit about what makes that kind of a shift or taking event into that kind of opportunity successful. What does an organization need to do in order to really embrace that kind of opportunity to expand beyond a target market that they've already sort of claimed?   David: Yeah. Well, it's tough but it would be similar to expanding into a new geography or if you are expanding your product line, those are both examples of investments that you have to make. Well, expanding your go-to-market strategy to include channels is similar. You've got to be willing to invest, putting in place that dedicated channel resources and training programs and being willing to essentially share the market with your partners is critical.   Jen: What else do you think is really critical for a channel leader who's working on maybe building out or exchanging a channel partner program? Maybe there's… there's a lot of folks we talk to who, you know, they've got these channel partner programs. They sort of were created almost organically, maybe not a lot, maybe not very intentional, and now they've got these program and things are maybe a little bit out of whack or a little bit out of sync. What do you think are some of the most critical elements that a leader should consider when going into... I mean, I hate to use the word "repair," but really optimize their channel program?   David: You know, I think there are various reasons why things break down or need to be optimized, to put it in a positive way. One would be having vague agreements with your partners. If partners are not fully committed to your program, if you don't understand their motivations, there's going to be a problem. The second thing is making sure that you're properly motivating them. Do you have a compensation program for them that makes sense? I mean, moving into SaaS is hard for everybody. Especially if you are transitioning from software, to perpetual software, to SaaS, all of the sudden your revenues are stretched out over a longer period of time. Well, the same thing happens to the channel. They're going through this transition where instead of booking everything upfront, now their revenues are booked over a long period of time, or recognized over a long period of time. So understanding that there's going to be some shared pain there, and making sure that your partners are willing to accept that pain that transition is critical. And not everyone is willing to do that and so you've got to pick your partners carefully. I think one critical role or one idea is to focus on partners who get it. Focus on partners who have accepted the SaaS model and are compensating their sales people that way and are making the transition themselves.   Jen: Yeah. I think that's really a good advice because you really got to work, you know, with you and your partner, vendor and partner have to work as a team together. You really wanna make sure those partners are really on the same page that you are for certain… that makes a lot of sense. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about... you know, it's so interesting to me, I sort of started sorting this sentence okay, and how do I frame this? So when I think about sales operations, this is a very growing field right now. I feel like I'm seeing more and more organizations invest in sales operations.   David: Yup.   Jen: And I'm really focusing on being productive, being efficient, maximizing resources. You know, probably a lot of this has to do with things like growing technology stacks, things like geographically dispersed workforces. So I looked at sales operations professionals as being the fixers in an organization, right? So, it's like, here's what we wanna do…   David: Yeah.   Jen: … and like, all right? Like, we got to go to this, it's like you're an engineer, like help kind of construct this and make sure we think kind of stays inline. So I'm sure you've seen a lot of challenges. I'd love to know about some of the big challenges that you've seen when it comes to management and collaboration of direct and indirect sale programs. People talk about channel conflict a lot. We talk about, you know, how do you continue to have harmony between your direct and your indirect efforts. But you probably see the pain more than anybody else in operations?   David: Yes. Like you've said, we're often tasked with straightening it out, because in some sense we're the Switzerland in that situation where…   Jen: Right.   David: … we, you know, supporting both the channel group and the direct group. But it comes down to a couple of things. One is we have to be able to integrate a channel into the CRM system, so to speak, with the sale stack. And so, it's an extra complexity when you've got to be able to measure channel leads and channel bookings, and be able to integrate that with the direct channel, and know how things are attributed. So do these come from a channel partner or does it come from a direct source? Which one was inbound, which one was contributing? So there's lots of attribution issues. There are CRM tracking issues. And then there are sales process things like, how do you roll out a new price book? You can't forget the channel.   Jen: Right.   David: You're gonna have probably two price books instead of just one. And these are things that a lot of times that SaaS providers are not accustomed to. So, during the integration, and thinking about the channel, whenever you make changes and whenever you plan a new enhancement is really important. The second aspect is in terms of compensation. How do you compensate your channel managers? And a lot of times you have to think about these in terms of their contributions. Is the channel the source of the opportunity or is the channel manager essentially reacting to an opportunity that a direct sales person has located or essentially playing matchmaker. In those two cases, you might want to pay them a different amount of money or a different percentage of the deal. So compensation is an issue, integrating the pipeline, the funnels of the two channels, direct and partners. So there are lots of implications.   Jen: Do you have any war stories you can share with us? Anything maybe that you've experienced that was a major lesson learned or at times maybe you painted yourself into a corner?   David: Well, I think the one that comes to mind would have to do with compensation where their quotas have to be aligned with the quotas of the direct team. And there you have to decide whether they're gonna share that quota or not.   And so, I've seen on a couple of occasions where the quotas for the channel team were aligned more towards run rate business. Say a large number of small deals, and then a large deal comes in. And maybe that large deal is a million dollars or more, and so the channel person blows out their quota but the direct team doesn't. So whoever is in the compensation plan need to be carefully architected to ensure that you don't have a channel manager totally blowing up their number but the direct team doesn't.   Jen: Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. Have you ever experienced any challenges where like internal struggles with revenue share with partners? So you talked about compensation for the channel, the channel manager who works for the vendor.   David: Right.   Jen: What about for partners? Is that something that you've experienced, you know, challenges in that area as well? I find that a lot of people… they're not sure like how much should we be spending, like how much should we be giving and there seems to be like some philosophical battles that I've seen people sort of face when it comes to that.   David: Yeah. There's a couple of different challenges. One challenge would be that the vendor doesn't wanna part with a piece of their SaaS revenue stream.   Jen: Right.   David: And so they'll try to get the partner to accept some sort of a finder's fee or a fixed upfront fee and then forgo the annuity. And of course, if a partner accepts that then they're really not participating in the best part of the SaaS business. And so they're not going to be as committed to you as they would be if they had annuity for an ongoing revenue stream.   Jen: Right, right. So if you want your partners to bring you SaaS business you should be expected to pay them as such, and pay them the commission, is that what you're sharing?   David: That's right.   Jen: Yeah.   David: Yeah, and it should be not some sort of a fixed finder's fee, so to speak upfront. But we want them to share in the ongoing revenue. And of course a lot of SaaS companies are very direct sales oriented and they see that as a major sacrifice for them. So that's something that everybody has to work through. It's the idea that partners should be sharing in the revenue stream. And so that's one scenario. And then, another scenario would be where partners are having to shift their role in the sale from a software model where they're making their money by doing provisioning and the licensing and installation and upgrade, and things like that, to providing more of a strategic consulting role, where they're helping their client with business transformation and with integration and security. And that may be… I mean, I don't think that's new to many established partners today, but five years ago that was a major transformation.   Jen: Right.   David: So essentially they have to upgrade their value to their clients to take into account the difference in the way a SaaS product is delivered, versus a software product.   Jen: I'm just curious also, over the course of your career, and you have mentioned kind of like three decades of working in marketing and sales, and sales operations, let's just go back five years ago, you know. I mean technology has advanced in the last five years but not so significant. So what's a piece of advice that you would have told yourself five years ago based on what you know now about sales, about the channel, about business, just wondering what you'd like to tell yourself in the past?   David: Well, just to kind of keeping at the theme of this conversation, I would say that five years ago I still probably had some doubts about how the channel would participate in SaaS.   Jen: Yeah.   David: I think I was still unclear about that. But so I would reassure myself, my younger self that SaaS is something that the channel can participate in, must participate in, and that there's a major role there. Like I've said, it's gonna be different in many cases. They're gonna have to develop a more essentially business expertise, meaning expertise in their vertical expertise, in system integration, in security; things that are more difficult than just focusing on the delivery of hardware and software.   Jen: Right. And perhaps there's a role that the vendors can play in helping to coach their partners and bring them along for the ride, and treat them like that natural extension of their sales and marketing teams that they have and truly partner together…   David: Yeah.   Jen: … so those partners aren't kind of felt like left off in an island by themselves.   David: Yeah. So I think this has been going on but essentially the partners contribute their vertical expertise and their integration expertise. Well, the SaaS vendors can share their expertise in how you manage a SaaS business. How do you pay SaaS sales people? How do you make this transition from selling software to software as a service? That's something that vendors have been forced to go through and to figure out and they can share that with their channel partners. That's essentially comes right like a franchise where the franchisor is teaching the franchisees how this sort of business works, how the model works.   Jen: Right, right. Here you go, right. Here's the kit, here it is in the box, right. Here's everything you need to know in order to be successful. I think that's a great example of franchisers have been doing this for decades, really setting their franchisees up for success. I think there's definitely a lot we can learn from that model for sure.   David: Yeah. There are many of examples of channel partners now that do understand SaaS and are making that transition but there are ongoing lessons to be learned that vendors can share.   Jen: Always, always. Well, David, before I let you go, it's been great talking to you about sales operations and the role of operations in and the channels in SaaS, I do have… at the very end of all my podcast I ask some more personal questions just so we can get to know you a little bit better. Our listeners feel like they get a little bit more of a glimpse into your life. So I got four really simple questions as long as you're willing?   David: Sure. Fire it up, Jen.   Jen: All right, all right. So first question is what is your favorite city?   David: My favorite city, other than my hometown of Los Altos where I've lived for most of my life, I would say it's Santa Fe, New Mexico.   Jen: Oh, nice. I haven't been there yet. But it's one of the places I really like to go. What do you like about Santa Fe?   David: Well, the atmosphere is amazing. For example, if you go in the summer time, the monsoon clouds build up over the Rio Grande Valley and they charge across the valley and move to Santa Fe, you'll get a 3 P.M. rain shower. And then the whole thing kind of dissolves into bright blue skies again.   Jen: Yeah. Sounds a little bit like the way some of the storm that get into Tucson, Arizona. I went to college there and have amazing, amazing lighting storms. Where amazing monsoons where it just keeps pouring rain and the streets would be flooded and we'd be trudging that from class, with like water up to your knees. And all of the sudden, it just stop and the sun was out and skies are blue, and it look like it had never rained.   David: Yeah. Like nothing happened.   Jen: Yeah, unbelievable. It's really cool, nature is amazing. Second question for you, would you consider yourself an animal lover?   David: Oh yeah, for sure. My dog is sleeping on the couch next to me here.   Jen: What kind of dog do you have?   David: A Goldendoodle.   Jen: Oh, very cute.   David: Yeah. She's looking at us now, “Are they talking about me.”   Jen: Yeah, that's right. Okay, next question, Mac or PC?   David: Well, I started out as a big Mac fan and I still first use iPhones and iTunes and all that. But I'm pretty accustomed to using a PC at this point. One short story is that my parents were one of the first distributors for Apple computer.   Jen: Wow.   David: This was in the 70s. They were the distributors from Mexico.   Jen: Wow, that's crazy. So you had a Mac early on, you had an Apple computer early on?   David: Yeah.   Jen: That's interesting. A lot of people I talked to when I ask that question they said, “Well, it was always PC. And then they started working for this company, and they gave me a Mac, and now I'm using Mac.” So I haven't heard a lot of people share the opposite way around. It's interesting. My last question for you is, if I were able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to?   David: Oh gosh. This is really hard. I would say Venice.   Jen: Nice. Have you been there before?   David: I have been to Venice once before, and I remember to this day getting off of the train and looking out across the Grand Canal and seeing the gondolas, that was just magical. I think I would want to go back.   Jen: Excellent, excellent. Well, I would love to join you. I've been to a few different places in Italy but I never made it to Venice, so my only knowledge of Venice is basically like the Venetian in Las Vegas, which is really embarrassing to admit I don't know why I just said that. But that's all I can picture in my head besides pictures in books. So, one day I'll get there as well. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. It was a pleasure just chatting channel with you. If any listener would like to reach out to you personally, maybe to dig in, ask you a few follow up questions about your experiences, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?   David: I would say, just ping me on LinkedIn @davidbelove, BELOVE. And yeah, I'll respond that way.   Jen: All right, perfect, easy enough. Well again, thank you David. I really appreciate your time and thanks to everyone else for tuning in and we'll catch you next week for all new episode.   Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to the Allbound podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resourcecenter@allbound.com. And remember, #NeverSellAlone.

Interview with Marketer David Dunworth About Branding and Leadership Discover How You and Your Teams Represent Your Brand Learn how nonprofit leaders, boards and staff create negative brand recognition.   David Dunworth has been involved with nonprofit for many years and knows how branding and marketing are an integral piece of connection to stakeholders. He is a life-long learner and an expert in marketing. He's an International best selling author. His site is http://marketingpartnersllc.com     Read the Transcript for the Interview Hugh: Greetings, this is Hugh Ballou. My special guest tonight is David Dunworth. My co-host Russell Dennis is also here. Russell has been on this journey with me many times. I appreciate your being here, Russ. David, he will interject some questions along with me. We pose the topic tonight of “Profit is not a dirty word.” Whoa. Before we get into that, I am going to ask you to tell people maybe three or four sentences about your background and why you should be talking about this topic so they can get some context on who David Dunworth is. I know you, and you have a lot of gifts to share. We are doing a snippet of those tonight. You and I have talked about how I encourage people to go away from the word “nonprofit” even though we understand that to describe the sector. It puts this in this scarcity thinking mode that we can't make a profit. Speak a little bit. I am going more toward social benefit or social enterprise or tax-exempt charity. There are ways to describe us by not saying what we are not. What are we? David Dunworth, welcome to this interview. Say a little bit about your background, especially on this topic on branding and profit. David: Sure. Thank you, Hugh. Thanks, Russell. Glad to be here. My name is David Dunworth. Like Hugh said, I have a few things I am aware of based on my history. After the Vietnam War was over, I went to the public sector in the private club business. From 1971 to 1997, I was in the private club business. I ran officers' clubs and NCO clubs. When I got out, I stayed in the private club business. During that time, I worked with the board of directors for the Michigan Cancer Foundation, the Leukemia Society of America, the North Carolina Health Center, a few others. I am not a foreigner to what I like to call social enterprises, but the bulk of my experience is marketing. I work with some nonprofits. In fact, I work with one in Fort Collins, Colorado, and another one in Florida. We talk about profit. We have to talk about profit in the charity business because that is where sustainability comes from. You can't constantly be fundraising and burning it all up. You have to make enough revenue to build some reserves so that you have money that you can count on in those lean times. As you know, it gets leaner and leaner and tougher and tougher as more and more charities and social enterprises come to life. Everybody is fighting for similar dollars. Marketing and the word “profit” have to go hand in hand. To give you an idea, up until five or ten years ago, most of the large national social enterprises were relying on their “brand”, their label, their logo to be their representative. A couple of the big ones, the American Heart Association and others, started building some directives and policies around their brand control and brand messaging. The key to the whole thing in my opinion is that most of today's charities don't really understand the word brand. Brand is a lot more than just the logo or the picture or whatever it is they believe they stand for. It looks like you want to interject something. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Detroit Horse Power founder and equestrian, David Silver, is interviewed by Romy. Learn about the passion for children behind the vision and the expansive potential impact of this great social enterprise! http://bonfiresofsocialenterprise.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DetroitHorsePower_1.png () http://bonfiresofsocialenterprise.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/63.jpg ()   Full transcript Romy: Let's get started. David, will you first tell us about Detroit Horse Power? Then, we'll dive back into the history. David: Sure. Detroit Horse Power is a nonprofit I started to expand opportunities for kids who live in the City of Detroit by teaching them valuable life lessons through riding and caring for horses. Our long-term goal is to combine this powerful youth development opportunity with vacant land revitalization by building a new urban riding center on some of Detroit's vacant land, the unused space in the city. We've experienced significant population decline over many decades, and it's left a real burden on communities and turning that burden into a community asset. It's a really exciting opportunity for our long-term plans. Romy: That's good. Right out of the gate, we got two really cool social missions. Here we go, the youth development with caring for horses and rehabbing the vacant land. I know you've got a background in horses because we've talked a lot. Will you take us back to how this evolved? David: I grew up as a competitive horseback rider in Westchester, New York. The sport I grew up riding in is called Three-Day Eventing which is actually an Olympics sport. I was fortunate to have a supportive family and a horse of my own. We were able to get a lot of training, traveling, and competing, and setting goals, and working hard to achieve them. It wasn't until later, I ended up taking a bit of a break from horses to make the most of my college experience. I went to Dartmouth. Then, I moved to Detroit in 2012 through Teach for America. As I was seeing the tremendous needs for our kids in the City of Detroit who have so many obstacles stacked against them whether it's unstable neighborhoods or families moving around a lot or not able to meet kids' needs, I saw a real important need for more safe and enriching space outside of school that are giving kids skills that set them up for future success. All of this was going on while space I had from my childhood experience with horses allowed me to reflect on the powerful ways horses have shaped who I am today. Things like the confidence that comes with riding, responsibility for another living being, and perseverance to not give up when things get hard. There’re so many powerful life lessons that horses can teach us. It became a natural next step for me to combine this powerful background in my story with my passion for expanding opportunity for Detroit to use. Romy: That's good. Before we go further into the social mission, what made you think about staying in Detroit to do it because there’re not horses walking around the city? David: It's a unique opportunity. First of all, I feel very fortunate to have been placed in Detroit. I didn't know very much about the city, and I don't have any family in Michigan, but I feel a very strong connection with the City of Detroit and the hardworking people who are doing incredible things to build a strong future for residents. What became the most compelling opportunity, in my mind, is horses combine the research-based therapeutic effects for at-risk youth, among other populations, in need with a large space requirement. They're big animals, and they take up a lot of space. In most cities, that would be a deal breaker because most cities don't have large amounts of open space for a large riding center. In Detroit, that actually really matches a big need that's going to help build a strong foundation for all of the Detroit to have a strong future. Where this wouldn't be possible hardly anywhere...

Panel David J. Soler (twitter blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:04 - David J. Soler Introduction Relationship Marketing & Sales Podcast davidjsoler.com 01:54 - Building Relationships and Getting Referrals Trust, Likability, Credibility + Value (TLC+V) Handwritten, Personal Notes 13:39 - Trust Integrity Reputation Consistency 23:52 - Unconventional Marketing ‘Wow' Factor Before, During, and After Items of Value 30:11 - Referrals 32:10 - Meet Your Clients 34:31 - Appreciation and Encouragement 36:37 - Relationships Over Business Picks Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money by Rabbi Daniel Lappin (Curtis) Ladda Buttons (Curtis) Freelancing Rules of Thumb (Eric) Apple Developer: for WWDC Videos (Jeff) Mac Pro (Jeff) httpie (Reuven) Reversing PDF Documents (Reuven) Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing by Elisabeth Hendrickson (Chuck) The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy (David) Next Week Freelancers Show: LinkedIn with Wayne Breitbarth Transcript DAVID: Are we live on the show? Are we broadcasting...or just setting up? CHUCK: I'm just doing some quick sound checks and then we'll get going... DAVID: Okay, great! CHUCK: Which is just me watching the volume meter while everybody talks. So, go ahead. REUVEN: Ohh! Is that what secretly happens? [laughter] REUVEN: And here I thought you're just trying to get us to be friendly. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 66 of The Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Good morning! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner is trying to connect. I guess the wiring in Atlantic Ocean got cut; somebody wrong it over or something. I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we have a special guest and that's David J. Soler. DAVID: Hello everybody! Thanks for having me! CHUCK: No problem. Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? DAVID: Sure! My name is David J. Soler, I am the host of the Relationship Marketing and Sales Podcast. You can learn more about me at davidjsoler.com. I am here to share and answer new questions that I can that you guys want to ask! CHUCK: Awesome! Now, I know David because we're in the same Mastermind Group, so we talk twice a month and he has helped me with quite a bit of marketing stuff. The thing that really kind of got me excited about getting you on the call besides your podcast, which is awesome, you've had some great guests, too. I think my favorite is the one with David Siteman Garland. DAVID: Yeah, it was blast. He's just a real smart guy, online entrepreneur, and just lot of great helpful tips. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's been a blast to interview people like him. CHUCK: Yeah. Anyway, you did something that was a little bit kind of outside the box that got me thinking, so I thought we'd bring that on and have you talk to us a little bit about some of the, I guess, less conventional things that you do. What you did was you sent 'Thank You' cards out to everybody in our Mastermind Group. I have to say, I don't usually get Pay-Per-Mail unless it's Pay-Per-Mail that says, "You owe us money." [David chuckles] CHUCK: So, I thought that was interesting! I was just wondering, what other ideas or techniques or ways of coming up with things like that, that we could do in our freelancing businesses to kind of make a  connection? DAVID: Sure, definitely! Well, the thing about it and approach that I'm trying to take you say unconventional, really,