Podcasts about depending

Welcome to Yoga Boss episode 90, "Should I hire a yoga mentor or a business coach? Many yoga teachers and studio owners looking to hire a yoga mentor to help them grow their careers. Depending on what your goal is there is a time to hire a  mentor and a time to hire a coach. Listen to this episode to know whether or not you should work with a business coach or yoga mentor. In this episode I break down: -The definition of a mentor-The definition of a coach -When to hire a mentor-When to hire a coach -Telling your students that you are the perfect fit for them. Enjoy this podcast? Share with your friends and other yoga teachers. Every single yoga teacher belongs here, and every single yoga teacher who wants a successful business is capable of creating one. Or leave a review on Apple iTunes.

On today's show we're answering another listener question. Emilio from El Paso Texas writes, I continue to enjoy your podcast every morning. I want to ask you if you had any references that you could share regarding how to adequately price an option to buy a piece of land. Any help would be appreciated. Emilio, this is a great question. Let's define first what we mean by an option. An option is quite simply a contract where you the buyer have the choice to buy a property, and the seller has the obligation to sell the property to you if you exercise your option. But if you don't exercise the option within the option period defined in the contract, the contract is cancelled. There are several ways you can structure an option in order to meet your specific needs as a buyer. Depending on the nature of the project, you may require more or less time to exercise that option. The terms that will be acceptable to both buyer and seller are a function of the amount of time you want the option to remain in effect. In a lot of cases, if that conditional period is short, in the range of a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months, you might pledge a fully refundable deposit. In that case, you are getting a completely free look. But if you're looking for a longer time period and the seller actually wants to sell the property, then they will likely demand a higher payment in exchange for the uncertainty in the sale of the property. I often see contracts written where there is a refundable conditional period of say, 90 days. That's a free option. You might then negotiate a few extensions into the conditional period where there could be a hard payment paid to the seller in exchange for the extension. Look at the contract from the seller's perspective. They have to endure the uncertainty of the property not selling at all, and in the meantime, they're barred from selling the property to anybody else who might come along with a firm offer. Most sellers are uncomfortable with that uncertainty. So if they are going to endure that uncertainty they will want to be compensated for it. As a minimum, you want to figure out what the holding cost would be for that period of time and consider offering an option consideration that would cover the holding cost. At least the seller's holding cost goes to zero and the impact of continuing to own the property would go to zero. It all comes down to understanding the seller's needs and negotiating a win-win deal between you. There is no one set formula. --------------- Host: Victor Menasce email: podcast@victorjm.com

Have you ever felt stuck at a following number before? Us too! In today's mini-sode we're going to be sharing a few tips on shifting your perspective around feeling stuck. Just because you aren't growing with a following number, doesn't mean you aren't growing. Tip 1: Reflect on your GOALS.  One way to shift and pivot your mindset is to take a step back and reflect on your goals.·      Did you lay out a goal at the beginning of the year to expand and diversify your brand by X amount? ·      Have you made it a goal to develop a new platform (like TikTok, Pinterest, or your own podcast)? ·      How are you doing compared to your goal(s) so far? It's important to reflect on your goals because you might find that you are experiencing growth in other platforms and that your total audience size is actually growing. Tip 2: Do a CONTENT AUDIT.  ·      Are you missing creating content for a specific niche or content pillar? ·      Is your audience resonating with who are and what content you're creating?·      Do you even know what type of content your audience is responding to?Depending on your content audit findings, I'd recommend:·      Either clarifying your target audience or clarifying your content and your brand.·      Identifying what content works best for your audience and doubling down on that type of content.Follow Emma on Instagram: @emmasedition | Pinterest: @emmaseditionFollow Maddy on Instagram: @madcrayy | Pinterest: @madcrayyFollow the Content Creatives Podcast: @contentcreativespodcastJoin the Content Creatives Podcast Facebook Group!

Depending on who you are, the feeling of being untethered can either be exhilarating or utterly terrifying. Listen in as Eleven discusses the energy of feeling untethered, within the framework of Numbers, specifically the number 5. And how the greatest gift to ourselves and our greatest power lies in allowing ourselves to BE IN the experience we are in, in this case, feeling Untethered.

In this episode, Managing Partner of XPAN Law Partners, Rebecca Rakoski, and Senior Account Manager at Contango IT, Schellie Percudani, talk about cybersecurity, especially for small businesses. Today, Rebecca and Schellie talk about business privacy and security practices, cost-effective steps that you can take to protect your business, and the importance of cybersecurity insurance. Why do small businesses have to worry about cybersecurity? Hear about ransomware attacks and how to react to them, data privacy laws and how they impact your business, and the value of hiring lawyers, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast.   Key Takeaways “What we all have in common between the small businesses and the large businesses is we're all human.” “You're only as good as your last backup.” “You can't have privacy without security.” “You definitely don't want to be fudging any kind of information. You definitely want transparency.” There are four basic things that you can do as a business owner: enable multi-factor authentication, provide security awareness training, monitor and patch your systems, and enable software and hardware encryption. “Encryption is your Get Out Of Jail Free card in most jurisdictions.” “60% of small businesses will go out of business within 6 months of a data breach without liability insurance.” “The first thing that businesses need to do is take a proactive posture.” “If you look at data breaches, if it's not caused by an employee in the company, it's caused by an employee at one of their vendors.” “Make sure you put yourself in a legally defensible position.”   More About Schellie Percudani Schellie is a Senior Account Manager at Contango IT located in Midtown, Manhattan. With 75 people, Contango IT services their clients through 4 key areas of technology. IT Service/Support - We offer unlimited onsite and remote support for all covered users and devices with up to 60-90 second response time. In that same fixed monthly price, we also include asset management, budgeting breakdowns, disaster recovery planning, compliance requirement review and planning, technology road mapping, and a lot more. IT Infrastructure / Cabling - Moving offices? Contango IT handles the technology side of the move through Cabling and IT setup. Cybersecurity - 45 people strictly in Cybersecurity keeps Contango IT on top of the biggest buzz In technology. Risk? Compliance? Reach out, looking to help in any way possible. Even if it is just second opinion or advice. Custom Programming - Front-end or Back-end development, Android, iOS, Web-based and much more. Winners of the Microsoft Best Use of Technology Award and the NYU Stern New Venture Competition Any technology questions, reach out! With hundreds of clients over 4 services, Contango IT has seen it before.   More About Rebecca Rakoski Rebecca L. Rakoski is the managing partner at XPAN Law Partners. Rebecca counsels and defends public and private corporations, and their boards, during data breaches and responds to state/federal regulatory compliance and enforcement actions. As an experienced litigator, Rebecca has handled hundreds of matters in state and federal courts. Rebecca skilfully manages the intersection of state, federal, and international regulations that affect the transfer, storage, and collection of data to aggressively mitigate her client's litigation risks. Rebecca is on the Board of Governors for Temple University Health Systems, and an adjunct professor at Drexel University's Thomas R. Kline School of Law and Rowan University.   Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Cybersecurity, Small Business, Privacy, Security, IT, Insurance, Legal, Hacking, Ransomware, Malware, Data, Technology, Data Breaches, Encryption   To learn more, follow Schellie and Rebecca at: Website:          https://www.contangoit.com                         https://xpanlawpartners.com Twitter:            @XPANLawPartners                         @RRakoskiesq Instagram:       @schellie00 LinkedIn:         Schellie Percudani                         Rebecca Rakoski, Esq.   Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website:                      https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts:          https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify:                        https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud:               https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher:                       https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio:               https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927   Read the Full Transcript Here:  00:02 Hello, Rebecca and Shelly, welcome to the podcast. I'm very excited to have you on to talk all about cybersecurity. So welcome, welcome.   00:13 Thank you for having us.   00:14 Yes, thank you. And   00:16 so this cybersecurity this for me as a small business owner, is brand new to me. Although it probably shouldn't be, but it is, but that's why we're talking about it today. But before we get into it, can you guys give a little bit more detail about yourself and what you do so if the listeners understand why I'm talking to you guys today?   00:41 So I, Rebecca McCroskey, I'm a co founder and managing partner of x Pam law partners, we're a boutique cybersecurity and domestic and international data privacy law firm, which is a really fancy way of saying we help organizations with their cybersecurity, and data privacy needs, right? I have been a practicing attorney for almost four years. I hate to admit that sometimes I'm like, I'm dating myself. But what's great is we really help businesses, small startups, all the way that big multinational corporations because right now businesses are it's, it's really a brave new world that we're facing today. And businesses are getting attacked literally from all different sides. And so we started x pant to really help businesses understand what their legal obligations are, and what their legal liabilities are. And I tell my clients, my job is to avoid those problems for you, or do my best or put you in the best position to address them if and when it becomes an issue. So that's   01:48 what I do in a nutshell. Great, thanks, Shelly. How about you?   01:53 Yes, my name is Shelly perky. Donnie, I am an account manager with contango it and we help businesses and our end organizations if I could speak, we help them manage their day to day it to help build a strong security posture. We also help them with cybersecurity, we have 45 people strictly in cybersecurity, we have 25 penetration testers, eight ethical hackers. So we have a strong, you know, posture to help businesses build a posture so that they at the end, I wouldn't say that they're not going to be attacked, but they are prepared for anything that could happen. And so we help them with that. Got it.   02:43 Well, thank you both for being here to talk about this, because we are seeing more and more things in the news lately about ransomware and cyber attacks. And so oftentimes, we think of that as only happening to the big businesses, right? So why should small businesses, which a lot of listeners that listen to this podcast, are entrepreneurs or small business owners? Why should we have to worry about this?   03:10 So, you know, from a legal perspective, obviously, anybody who's ever come into contact with the legal system knows, it's not just for large businesses. So from a legal perspective, you're going to be subjected to liability from your people who whose information you're collecting, call them data subjects, you can, you're going to have contractual obligations with your vendors and third parties that you use and share data with. So put that and then just put that aside for a moment, then you also have small businesses have a reputation. And in the small business community, I am myself a small business, I'm a small law firm, Chief law firm. And you know, your reputation is everything. And so part of your reputation nowadays is how you're handling security and privacy. What are you doing the data. And so it's really important for small businesses to realize it's not just the big guys, we hear about them in the news, the colonial pipelines and the JPS foods and the Equifax is of the world. What you don't know is that every single day law firms like mine are getting a call from small businesses going help. We just clicked on a bad link, we just got ransomware, what do we do? And that happens all the time. It really you hear about the big guys, but it's the little guys that are really, you know, bearing the brunt of it, I think.   04:32 Now, I would agree. And what we all have in common between the small businesses and the large businesses is we're all human. And like Rebecca said, it's human error. Somebody clicked on an email, and they didn't know you know, they weren't trained. Hey, this is a spoofing and phishing email. This is what they look like, this is what you need to look for. And so that's where we come in, and it's we're all human and we all make mistakes. It's just no Like, you know, you this is what to look out for.   05:04 Got it. And so what are some of the issues facing businesses today, when it comes to cybersecurity?   05:12 What ransomware is obviously one of the biggest issues, right. And for your listeners who don't know what ransomware is, it is, what happens is somebody clicks on a bad link, download the bad, you know, attachment to a file, and the ransomware is downloaded to the system. Depending on how sophisticated the hackers are, they can either deploy it immediately, which means your system starts to, they start to encrypt your files, or it can be that they sit in there and wait for Oh, I don't know, the most inopportune moment that your business has. And then they deploy the ransomware. I've had clients where they deploy ransomware, or they first delete backups before they deploy the ransomware to really add insult to injury there. So but so that's one of the big things and then the your entire system gets encrypted and you can't unencrypted it without the encryption key which you then have to pay for the ransom part of it. And, you know, we hear about the big ransoms, again, the 4.4 million from colonial the 11 million from JBS. But you know, I was speaking with a colleague the other day, and a law firm got ransomware for $50,000. Now, that's a lot to a small business, it's a lot to any business, but they try to make it it's almost like it's commercials with what they think that they can afford and pay and so that they'll pay because they want you to pay the ransom. So that's I think, I think that's probably the   06:35 number one I would say so too. And then you now you're on their list, because you've paid your   06:41 SIR now. Wow, they paid   06:44 from now you're on a list of this hacker of like, Well, you know, was easy to get in before. Yeah. So let's see how we can get in again.   06:55 Right? Oh, my goodness. Hang in and you know Rebecca's right.   06:59 And that's where you know, also patching and monitoring your systems having a good strong it. posture is important. Because they see that stuff, they see little inklings of, Oh, well, something's going on here. somebody's trying to get in, you know, so they can see that. And you know, you're only as good as your last backup, and where is your backup being stored? And you know, is that in a secure location? Because if not, guess what? It doesn't matter. Because your information is gone.   07:33 Oh, my gosh, yeah, that makes so much more sense. Now, even just explaining what ransomware is. I didn't realize so they hold the encryption key ransom. And that's what you're paying for.   07:46 Correct you in order to get your data back, you have to pay to get the encryption key. And people think Well, okay, so I'll pay the ransom. And I'll get the encryption. I'll get the encryption key. And it's like, like magic? Yeah. You do, to some extent, although there used to be honor amongst thieves. It's not always the case anymore. No. But the other thing is to keep in mind encryption is not perfect. So you're not going to get it back exactly the way it was before. And a lot of laws have been changed now. So the fact that you were ransomware, it is in and of itself, a reportable event for a data breach. So that's another aspect to it. I mean, we're talking more about the technical aspects with the ransomware. But this is the other part where you know, I always say like, ransomware is like three explosions. The first one, oh, my God, my computer has exploded, but yeah, my computer's, what do I do? And then the second one, which is how are we going to, you know, get back up and running. And then the third is really the legal liability that flows from it and holding it together.   08:55 Also to I mean, Rebecca, are you finding that now, too, they're not only holding it, they're selling the data? Yeah. So they're still older data copied it, they're giving you back access to it, but now they're gonna sell it?   09:12 Yes. So what it comes down to is yes,   09:15 there's a lot to do. At that point to now you've got to tell your clients, hey, I've been   09:23 hacked. And that's where that whole reputation part comes in, you know, where you're, you know, these are people who are interesting information to you data. You know, I mean, as a law firm, we obviously hold our clients data. But you know, if you're a business, you could be holding personal information of your clients and business partners. You could be holding sensitive data on your employees or social security, financial information, information about their beneficiaries, which could be kids and things like that. So it really is a problem that just expands exponentially. It's a rabbit Well, I guess you're falling down that rabbit hole for a while.   10:04 You're like Alice in Wonderland.   10:07 Right? Oh, my gosh. Well, now you mentioned Rebecca about laws? And does that? Could you talk a little bit more about like certain data privacy laws and how that works? And if you're a small business, what does that mean?   10:24 Sure, so different. So there are two sets of laws that you need to really be businesses need to be concerned about, right. So one of them are your your data breach notification laws, which won't really be triggered unless and until there is a data breach, there are 50 states, there are 50 different laws, it's super fun for businesses who have to deal with us, then you have data privacy laws, and because nobody can seem to get their act together to come up with a federal law, we are stuck with, again, a patchwork of laws. So different states have passed different laws. And that is in and around a data subjects rights, about the data that's being collected about from them. So for example, California has a law, Virginia passed the law, Colorado passed a law recently, I know there's a proposed one in New Jersey in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas. So you name the state, and it's probably considering Washington State has tried to have made several passes into data privacy law. And what's interesting about this privacy laws is it they're usually, there's usually a threshold, sometimes small businesses will meet that threshold, but you need to understand that and it's all about the data that you're collecting. So the data you're collecting is going to trigger or not trigger requirements under some of these laws. That same data is the attractive nuisance, if you will, to the hacker they want to, they want to so you know, I always say you can't have privacy without security. So they really do go hand in glove.   12:00 What would be like an app if you know this at the top of your head, but an example of data privacy law from one of those states that has them on the books like what would be an example.   12:13 So California has the California consumer Privacy Act, the ccpa, which was amended in November, when the good citizens of California had a ballot initiative to pass the California Privacy Rights Act or the cpra. And those types of so in and around that you have different rights, the right to deletion, the right to correction, or right to a ratio of three, you know, the right to be forgotten is what's commonly known as, or just some of the rights that you're entitled to. And so businesses that fall under the within the purview of the ccpa, which is in effect right now, the cpra, which will go into effect in 2023. And so if you are a data subject, and the business is is under those laws, you can, you know, say to the pay, I want to know what you're doing with my data, hey, I need you to correct or delete my data. And the business has a set statutory period of time to respond to that data subject Access Request. It's about transparency. So anybody who saw all those updated privacy policies online, that's all driven by privacy laws, there's one in Europe called the GDPR, the general data protection regulation. And it really is in and around transparency, and data collection, storage and sharing practices. So that's, I could go much deeper, but I don't want to put anyone to sleep as I talk about loss.   13:42 I think I think that's really helpful just so that people get an idea of like, well, I don't even know what that is, you know, and if you're a small business owner, you've got a million other things on your plate, because you probably don't have a dedicated IT department, you don't have a dedicated cybersecurity department, oftentimes, you're a solopreneur. Or maybe you have less than 10 employees, you know, so all of a sudden, all of this stuff has to come on to somebody. So I think just getting an awareness out there that it exists, is really important so that you can maybe look it up in your own individual state.   14:20 Yeah, and one thing I would say and I know that this is a problem amongst entrepreneurs and startup is within the startup community is that they think well, we can do this ourselves. We can like cut and paste the privacy policy online and somebody Shelley's laughing at me over here. But you know, the purpose of these laws is to provide information about what that business is doing with data. So if you're borrowing it from somebody else, you could be in trouble twice because you're now you're not accurately reflecting what your laws are, what you're doing with the data. And you've basically taken this information and maybe obligating yourself under other laws of regular So for people who are listening, I know nobody likes talking to lawyers. I swear we're not that bad. But hiring a dedicated privacy or security attorney who understands this is really important because you told what to, you know, have an Ono moment on top of it. Oh, no moment when you're you know,   15:19 exactly. You definitely were Rebecca Sade is absolutely correct. There are people that do that they try to manipulate it and do it themselves. What they don't realize is once you're hacked, it's not just, Oh, no, they've got my information. Now I have to pay this ransomware. But guess what, oh, if you weren't following those privacy acts, you're also gonna get fined on that data, too. So you definitely don't want to be fudging any kind of information. You definitely want transparency.   15:47 Yeah. So hire lawyer. I'm a big fan of lawyers. I hire lawyers for for everything, because I don't I'm not a lawyer. I don't know how to do any of it. And I want to make sure that I am protected. So I 100% get it. Now, what? So we're talking about the pitfalls of what could happen if you have a breach, or issues facing businesses. So what can businesses do to help with cyber security? What are some things we can have in place to give us some protection and peace of mind?   16:20 Well, I would like to answer that this is Shelley, I'm someone who's there for simple and very effective basics that you could do as a business owner. And they're very cost effective. In fact, you know, you already have some of them in hand, as far as like Microsoft Office 365, all you have to do is enable your multiple factor authentication, that's a huge one, it's like leaving your light on in your house, if you're going out to dinner, they're gonna move on to the next house, because you have that layer of protection. And then, you know, security awareness training, educating your employees, educating yourself a lot of spoofing and phishing email looks like, that's huge that you know, it, it makes them aware. And that also, you know, it shows your employees that you're protecting them, you're protecting your clients, you know, it shows stability. And then also, you know, monitoring and patching your systems, you know, making sure that someone has an eye on what's going on. I'm looking for those little ticks that someone may be trying to get into your system, because a lot of people that you can have websites, you can tell by is your website going slower, that's usually a sign that someone might be trying to hack into your system. You know, so it's little things like that. And then also, you know, software and hardware encryption, that's a huge one. A lot of people, I know we have all our devices, it's our fingerprint or face that opens it. But if your hardware is not encrypted, they could just steal your laptop, pull out the hard drive, plug it in somewhere else, and guess what the data is theirs. And it's just the simple things that can help a business.   18:10 Yeah, so So to recap, the multiple factor identification that I get, and I do security awareness training, what what are these emails look like? What not to click on? monitoring and patching systems? So when you say patching systems, what exactly does that mean?   18:27 Well, that's where someone is patching in and they're, you know, they're making sure that your system is secure. And it's going somewhere in that secure like firewall, everything like that. So that is exactly   18:39 the basic there. There are systems like so for example, the Equifax data breach was a vulnerability in an Apache struts operating system. And when they found this vulnerability, it was it was a problem. People write code, people make mistakes, you need to fix it. Once they discovered the problem. They went, they were like, Oh, you need to apply this patch. It basically fixes the code. Well, if you don't apply the patch, if you don't have somebody who can help you do that you're not you're leaving your back door   19:11 open or even Yeah, or even like software, like it needs to be updated. So they're patching and updating, they're constantly monitoring, updating any software so like have you ever had where your phone doesn't work and because you haven't upgraded your system? Well that's kind of like it is for monitoring and patching. They make sure that everything is up to date everything is to code   19:34 right because if you're not patching and updating like Shelly said, you can actually leave a hole Yeah, and you're not the it's a lot easier for them to get in because you would not that system isn't being supported anymore by the Microsoft's or the Googles because they've moved on. You got to move on with them. Otherwise, you're you're gonna have a problem.   19:52 Got it. Got it. Okay, that makes a lot more sense.   19:55 They could do that themselves. Like oh, I can do this. I can do this. But as they're growing Their business, they don't have time to focus on that. And that's how little cracks happen.   20:04 Got it? Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And number four was making sure that your software and your hardware was encrypted. Right? And does that. I mean, this might be a stupid question. But does it come that way?   20:19 No, that's not a stupid question. I mean, a lot of us think that because, you know, I mean, we're on a computer right now that if I shut it and locked it, I opened it again, I could put my finger on it, it would open it, I wouldn't have to type my password in. But if my hard drive wasn't encrypted, didn't have that same protection on it, where someone could steal it, and then just pull out the hard drive, because these people are very talented, plug in the hard drive. So you need to make sure that your hard drive has that same protection with your fingerprint of code that, you know that if they would have to, they wouldn't plug it in somewhere else, they're gonna have to know that code, because it's not going to work.   21:06 Keep in mind, too, that encryption, like we're always talking about is, in most jurisdictions, if you have an encrypted hard drive, if even if they get it, they can't access it. It's not a data breach. So I like to say encryption is your get out of jail free card in most jurisdictions, okay. There are 50 of them. There's a lot, but in most of them, that's your get out of jail free card. So it's one of the biggest, that multifactor I guess, are probably two of the biggest bang for your buck. There they are. And how do you   21:37 know if your software and hardware is in is encrypted? Again, perhaps another silly question, but I just don't know.   21:43 So first of all, I don't encrypt my own hard drive. I know a lot about technology. But I, you know, I don't go to my dentist for brain surgery. professionals, who are IT professionals, like Shelley's company, and I say, here, encrypt my hard drive, and they take care of it for you. So having it's really important   22:06 night. Yeah, I can. And does that literally mean you hand your computer over to someone and say, encrypt my hard drive? Not necessarily No, no, okay.   22:16 No, no, no, a lot of times what you know, like our text can do, they can come in, they can work in remotely in and you know, just like when they have when we monitor and patch, they do it remotely. You know, if you don't even know what's going on. It's just and it shouldn't, it shouldn't interrupt your day, it should then to wreck your workflow. It should be seamless. And usually, you know, it's something that, you know, our techs are very, you know, highly educated, I love text, I always think, Oh, my gosh, what they do is so cool, because they can just, they can fix everything, and they just go in and they're they're magicians.   22:56 Got it? Got it. Okay, how it should be you.   22:59 I mean, a lot of times, and this is true, too. I think Rebecca, a lot of rules now are making sure that you actually have a credible IT team. Because if you don't, you can now get fined. Or   23:14 Yeah, there are different laws where you can if you're not doing the things you're supposed to be doing, if you're not monitoring if you don't have your asset, you know, management, those kinds of things. I mean, one of the classic examples of that is is HIPAA. Now they don't say you have to have it on teaching but they do say you have to encrypt your heart you know, encryption, or they say you show it or they say you have to monitor monitor your devices and let's face facts, do you want to be I don't want to be monitoring my devices, I want my IT guys or gals to be monitoring my devices, I want to be practicing law. So that's the beauty of it is that it's it's Charlie says it's running seamlessly in the background, and you're doing what you should be doing much with running   23:55 your business. Got it? All right. Now let's move on to so let's say you have all of this in place. You've done your basics for cybersecurity. Do you have to have cyber security insurance? Or can you just say, Well, I did all this. So what do I need the insurance for? No,   24:15 that's like driving around without your seatbelt on. Like, you know, I, I frequently wanted to ram the car in front of me, but I don't I don't do that. So cyber insurance. When I will tell you this as when I started my own law firm. The first thing I bought was malpractice insurance. The second thing I bought was cyber liability, a separate standalone cyber liability policy. They are getting more expensive, but for a small business depending on the data you're collecting, they can be very reasonable. But I sleep at night because I know that if something goes horribly wrong, it's there. All of the things you're doing. me that all The good cyber practices that Shelly and I have been talking about that just means they're going to cover you when the when the stuff hits the fan. Because if you're not doing all of that, you've probably told they've sent you a questionnaire with your cyber liability policy and you filled it out and you're like, Oh, do I have multi factor authentication? Oh sure. I encrypt my hard drive. If you lie to them, they don't cover you. But if you're doing all these good cyber practices, and you have insurance, it's you know that every single one of my clients first thing I ask, Where is your data? What is it doing? Where is your cyber liability policy? Those are the   25:35 those are the big three Yeah. Okay. To help you too, because how are you going to get that money out? Right, how do you get that money back? How do you recoup your business? I mean $50,000 is a lot Oh yeah. And you know, you're a small business and yeah, you you could take a hit you can take a loan but wouldn't it be better if somebody covered it for you it's kind of like you You get a car accident you know, it was like that rental car where your car is getting fixed. You would like to get a new car that new car smell   26:11 Yeah, cyber liability insurance is absolutely critical for small business every this statistic might be a little bit old, but I will pull it out anyway for just as an example 60% of small businesses will go out of business within six months of a data breach without live liability insurance. So that's an I know that statistic has gone up it's a it's a little stale, but I think that's about a year old and every year they put out new stats I just haven't brushed up on my statistics today. But   26:41 well that is true because as many business owners as I talked to in everything, you would not believe how many of them I've had friends that had successful businesses and everything was going great. They got hacked, and they just couldn't recoup the money that they need it breaks my heart because they never thought it would happen to them because they weren't trading money they weren't doing anything like that. It was just common goods like e commerce that they were just like, yeah, and then something happened.   27:09 I mean, I get a call at least once a week from a crime business person literally tears I don't know what am I going to do? I have a little bit of a policy or something. It's like a rider on my my general liability policy, but now it's going out because it runs out like that and so quick, and they're like now what do I do? I don't I don't have an answer for them. They're gonna have to you know, they have to pay for it out of pocket. A lot of them can't It is really heartbreaking.   27:37 Yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, so you know, we talked about some issues facing businesses today. basics for cybersecurity, the need for cybersecurity liability, which I am in the process of getting after speaking with Celli a couple of weeks ago, so I'm there I'm doing it I'm in. You don't have to I You don't have to tell me twice when it comes to important insurances, I will get it. So is there anything else that you guys wanted to let the listeners know when it comes to cybersecurity for their businesses?   28:14 Um, I think the first thing that businesses need to do is take a proactive posture. So doing the technical things that Shelley's talking about, shoring up some of their legal obligations, like I'm talking about with, you know, appropriate privacy policies, contract language and things like that. The other thing is, they have to also be aware of their vendors, which I think is another big issue facing organizations if you look at data breaches, it's not caused by an employee in the company it's caused by an employee at one of their vendors. And so you know, it's a big issue and so I would say that for all small businesses, all of the technical aspects and then make sure your your legal, you put yourself in a legally defensible position because unfortunately, these things are going to happen. And you want to make sure that you not just survive but thrive after after an event like this.   29:09 Yeah, and I agree with Rebecca, those are the key things that you need to do as a business owner, but it's also helping yourself to educate been growing your business and I know at times it can be scary because like, Oh my goodness, I got to talk to a lawyer. That's more money. Oh, I gotta have someone you know, outsource it person. When I've had my cousin, he knows computers, he knows everything. You know, everything's going but if you're looking to move your business to that next level, and you're looking to flourish, you really just like anything else, you need to make sure you understand and you are doing what is required of you to do to help your business flourish.   29:53 Got it. Well, this was great. I mean, hopefully people listening to this, it will set a match under them. To get them to really take a look at this in their business because like you said when you're a small business owner you've got a million things going on. But this is super important and I think something that people really need to focus on so I thank you for bringing this topic to me Shelly and for bringing Rebecca on because I think this is really great and I do hope that all the listeners out there will now start to take a better look at their businesses and are they protected Do they have the right things in place so thank you thank you now where can people find you? if they have questions? If God forbid they have a breach and they need a lawyer or they need someone to help do an IT assessment of their business so where can people find you? So   30:47 I obviously have a website expand law partners com Also you can follow us on Twitter and on LinkedIn please connect you can connect connect with me personally and my business we put out for small businesses out there who have a lot of questions we are constantly pushing out different topics raising issues bringing attention to different ones so please act x Pam law partners connect with us and hopefully will will provide you with some of that information that Shelley was talking about   31:23 excellent Shelly Go ahead.   31:24 You can reach me at contango it calm is our website I can also link in with me you know I love to meet new people and I always like to offer any kind of advice or second opinions I can help with if I if there's anyone I can point you into the direction to you know help your business I would love to do that.   31:46 Excellent. Shelley is a great super connector for sure. So definitely reach out to them now ladies one last question and I asked everyone this is knowing where you are now in your life in your career. What advice would you give to your younger self?   32:01 see somebody asked me this I'm gonna have to steal from my prior answer was start my law firm earlier. I wish I had done it earlier. I cherish the time I spent at a large law firm but I love what I do now. I love helping businesses so this I would do it earlier. So amazing. I would become an ethical hacker. Love that. I want to change my answer. That's a great answer. I love it.   32:35 I love it. Well, ladies, thank you so much for coming on the podcast sharing all this vitally important information. I do appreciate it. Thank you so much for having us. Pleasure and everyone. Thank you for listening. Reach out to these ladies if you are a small business because you may need some cyber help. Thank you for listening, have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

A necessary step in the creation of a trade is that of forming a directional assumption. Depending on the current price action, we may decide to trade from a contrarian standpoint. This means executing trades that profit from a price reversal. Join Tom and Tony today as they explain this trading concept in detail!

A necessary step in the creation of a trade is that of forming a directional assumption. Depending on the current price action, we may decide to trade from a contrarian standpoint. This means executing trades that profit from a price reversal. Join Tom and Tony today as they explain this trading concept in detail!

We have options in our life on how we participate in the game. We can watch, wish or work. Depending on the position you choose, will determine the results and person you create yourself to be.  Which one are you? Show Notes: https://www.chantelallencoaching.com/2021/10/14/ep-154-are-you-a-watcher-wisher-or-worker/

As you may have heard, I do not believe that the “religious exemption” is going to hold water when it comes to refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccination*. Consequently, the question I have tried to find an answer to is simply what is a better argument against the vaccine mandate? As a libertarian leaning Conservative, I like the position of privacy. What is between myself and my medical professional is between myself and my medical professional. It is literally none of your business, and it is certainly not the business of government (at any level). To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, how does my vaccination status in any way effect you? If you want the shot, get it. Unless the government is lying about the efficacy and effectiveness of the vaccine, my status cannot possibly effect you. The problem with this argument is that it relies on several Supreme Court rulings which in turn, are grounded in some rather questionable Constitutional logic. Even more concerning is that the case that finally underpins the idea of medical privacy is facing multiple challenges in this years Supreme Court term. Depending on how the High Court rules on those cases, it is conceivable that medical privacy could go the way of the Plessy ruling… *In short, no major religious group expresses anything opposing vaccinations in general as a part of its doctrinal statements. In short, it's not intellectually honest to claim an exemption in the name of faith based on a belief that is not held by a given faith. See What The Frock – Absurd Arguments (In Pirate) and Crab Rangoon's for further discussion.

My guest today is Simon Severino, CEO of StrategySprints.com. We had a great conversation about pricing, strategy, sales acceleration and more.  Let me know what you think about the newsletter and podcast, it helps me give you even better content.  Check out Booking Protect. The consumer purchase data is clear, folks want the peace of mind that refund protection offers them. Depending on the month, between 30-70% of customers have taken up refund protection since tickets have gone on sale after lockdowns. That's up from around 10-15% before the pandemic. That's a dramatic shift in behavior.  In this episode, we talk about NPS score. A few months back, I chatted with Patrick Ryan from Eventellect about NPS and customer research. We came together to create an NPS worksheet that you can get by emailing me at Dave@DaveWakeman.com Hook up with my friends at Activity Stream. The Activate email marketing platform is a great tool to help you re-engage with your customers now. So hook up with Martin and the team to find out how you can use email to reconnect with your audience and get back to creating magical moments for your audience.  Simon Severino and I talk about a bunch of cool stuff today like: * the power of processes * Measuring the correct things * How you can grow your business in just 90 days with the right focus * Pricing power And, more.  You can check out Simon's business at www.strategysprints.com    

Wednesday, 13 October 2021   (Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out. Acts 1:18   Note: The explanation of this verse comes with a gross-out warning.   The words now continue to refer to Judas. The gospels record this concerning his death –   “Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4 saying, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.' And they said, ‘What is that to us? You see to it!' 5 Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself. 6 But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, ‘It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood.' 7 And they consulted together and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. 8 Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. 9 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of Him who was priced, whom they of the children of Israel priced, 10 and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me.'” Matthew 27:3-10   Understanding the context, Luke now parenthetically records, “Now this man purchased a field.” Obviously, Judas was unable to actually purchase anything while dangling from a rope. Instead, the idea is that the money he earned through betraying Jesus was used in his name by the chief priests. As Vincent's Word Studies says, “The expression means merely that the field was purchased with the money of Judas.”   From there, Luke continues, “with the wages of iniquity.” This expression means that the silver he was paid was reckoned to him as wages. He earned the money through his actions, but they were actions of iniquity. Therefore, despite throwing the money down in the temple, his name remained attached to them.   This same concept is found throughout the world. When it is known where a sum of money comes from, the acknowledgment for that money is assigned to the one from whom it issued. For example, “This hall was built with the money provided by Glen Giver.”   With that understood, Luke continues with the unhappy details of the final state of Judas' earthy body, saying, “and falling headlong.” The Greek reads, genomenos elakēsen, “and becoming headlong.” The inference is that he hung himself (Matthew 27:5), and at some point, his rotting corpse fell. Hence, translators rightly say “having fallen.”   As far as the word “headlong,” it is prénés, an adjective found only here in the Bible. It signifies headlong, or prone. Hence, one can see him hanging and when his body finally fell from that position, he landed face-first on the ground. When he did, “he burst open in the middle.”   Again, a word found only here in the Bible is used, laskó, to burst asunder with a loud noise. With all of the detail given, a clear mental picture is made. In Israel, even at the time of year of the Passover, the sun is direct and would have quickly caused Judas' body to swell up from rapid decomposition. The gasses caused pressure from the inside, and when he came down, he fell flat, face first, and forcefully. As such the pressure of the gasses was great enough to cause him to burst open, “and all his entrails gushed out.”   The inclusion of the details, culminating with this note here, is given to explain the ignoble end of Judas. It is a note of disgrace in death. Such a death, and the surrounding circumstances concerning the body, are being given to highlight the despicable deeds of the man. An example of the disgrace recorded here is found in the death of Joram, a contemptible king of Judah. Because of his vile life and actions, the prophet Elijah said to him –   “Because you have not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat your father, or in the ways of Asa king of Judah, 13 but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and have made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to play the harlot like the harlotry of the house of Ahab, and also have killed your brothers, those of your father's household, who were better than yourself, 14 behold, the Lord will strike your people with a serious affliction—your children, your wives, and all your possessions; 15 and you will become very sick with a disease of your intestines, until your intestines come out by reason of the sickness, day by day.” 2 Chronicles 21:14, 15   Exactly as the prophet stated, so it occurred (see 2 Chronicles 21:18, 19).   The fact that no record of Judas' burial is given is also telling. To not be buried is an added note of disgrace, as is evidenced by the words of the Lord through Jeremiah –   “They shall die gruesome deaths; they shall not be lamented nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like refuse on the face of the earth. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be meat for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth.” Jeremiah 16:4   Understanding these things, one might wonder how Luke would know the details. First, the reason for the gas buildup and resulting explosion is obvious. Judas hung himself at the Passover the next day was a Sabbath. Depending on where he hung himself, he might not have been discovered until that was over on Sunday morning. People would be home resting according to the commandment (see Luke 23:56).   This would allow plenty of time for him to swell up. Secondly, the recorded detail tells us that he was discovered, and someone saw the resulting explosion when he landed headlong. But a dead body in Israel was considered unclean. As such, whoever found him (or whoever was told about it), had no desire to even touch his rotting corpse. Instead, he probably would have taken a knife and cut the rope. Down Judas went, and apart he came. Hence, an eyewitness is not only possible, it is likely.   Finally, the death of Judas in this way has one more highly ignoble consequence laid upon him. As he was hanging there for some time, it means he was hanging overnight. But the law says this –   “If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.” Deuteronomy 21:22, 23   Anyone hanged is accursed of God. As such anyone who was hanged was to be taken down before evening (the start of the new day). Judas did not receive this treatment. The contrast is given –   Christ was nailed to a tree, but He was taken down and buried. Judas was hanged and his body remained up.   Christ rose on the third day, whole and complete, and having prevailed over death. Judas fell (probably on the third day, but that is speculation) and burst open; a most ignoble end for his corpse.   Christ was anointed with spices in His burial (see John 19:39). Judas bloated up while hanging in His exposed death.   Christ removed the curse of the law and the sting of death through His work. Judas was accursed of God in his hanging, and he never received the atoning work of the Lord for his iniquity.   Life application: The Bible doesn't hide gruesome facts or difficult to swallow details. But when they are given, it isn't just for a sensational story. Rather, they are provided for a specific reason, and they call out to us to consider them and contemplate why they are stated.   When we come across events such as these, let us consider them and try to learn from them. In the end, the glory of what Jesus did is usually not far away from the evaluation, being hinted at for us to see. Thank God for the Person of Jesus Christ who has done marvelous things for His people!   We thank You, O God, for the events recorded in Scripture that provide us with the detail we need to see the marvel of what You have done in Christ. Even some details that seem hard to swallow when we read them will often give us wonderful hints of the contrasting glory to be found in what Jesus did. Thank You for this precious word You have given us. Amen.        

@PhilTheFilipino & @MrEricAlmighty are here with our latest review to talk about all about Marvel's What If... series that just finished up on Disney+. For this ambitious MCU project, we set up an amazing team up with Affable Chat, and the results are out of this world! But what was the end result of What If? We go into full spoilers to answer that question!Synopsis: What If...? explores alternate timelines in the multiverse that show what would happen if major moments from the MCU films occurred differently. Jeffrey Wright stars as the Watcher, who narrates the series, alongside many MCU film actors reprising their roles. Benjamin and Joey host Affable Chat, a podcast of epic pop culture commentary. Consider taking the time to check them out wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and give them a follow on Twitch, Instagram, and/or Twitter!

Listen Now On the Sunday, October 10th edition of The Travel Guys…  In the Travel News, Southwest Airlines had another meltdown this weekend, with flight cancellations numbering well over 1,000. Depending on who you speak to, it was either due to bad weather in Florida, a shortage of staff and crew, or the alignment of the moon. Canada is telling travelers you must be fully vaccinated. This is for international AND domestic travelers, arriving by...

Depending on your financial situation, you may benefit from asking your employer to take more tax off your paycheque. But how can you know when that's a good idea? Enter Ian Martin. Ian is an LIT and CPA and spent 6 years working at Canada Revenue Agency, so he knows a fair bit about income taxes. On today's podcast, Ian explains when it's in your best interest to have your employer deduct higher taxes (like if you think you'll owe due to CERB/CRB, or if you'll owe because you work more than one job). He also gives tips for how to handle income taxes if you're self-employed or if you're bankrupt. Tune in for lots of practical advice!   Links:   CRA TD1 Form: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/td1-personal-tax-credits-returns/td1-forms-pay-received-on-january-1-later/td1.html

What's Good Dimah Fam! In this episode Nila and Adise wonder if life starts to change you over time. Sometimes life forces you to change for the better, but sometimes things go left and you realize you're changing in a bad way. What happens then? Think about it, when you've gone through something that's affected you negatively, (if you're not someone who reacts upon impulse) you usually reassess the situation and change things so that situation doesn't happen again. But what if the things you're changing about yourself are creating someone you're not? Depending on how you look at the situation, you either change for the better or change for the worse. It's entirely up to you. Change is sometimes great and necessary to grow, without it things will probably remain stagnant in life. Just make sure you're on the right side of it. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below TDP Family! We love you so much! Thanks for listening! 

Depending on where you're located, the seasonal changes are inevitable as the leaves shift color, and the temperatures slowly drop. If your business isn't prepared for the weather or upcoming project timelines change, you might get left out in the cold. It happens to the best of business owners as Landscape Disruptors host, Stan "The Dirt Monkey" Genadek, and guest, Brittany Auman, talk about their current struggles heading into the winter blues.In this episode of Landscape Disruptors, Stan and Brittany tackle planned contracts falling through, difficult customers, the labor shortage, keeping employees paid, and the steps they take in their businesses to keep sales flowing and stress levels down. 

Sign up for www.solciety.co! Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.Speaker 2 (00:42):What's up Solarpreneurs? Taylor Armstrong back with another episode here to make your life as a solar professional, more profitable, easier to do and more enjoyable. So if I can do even a fraction of that, you're welcome. Just kidding, but really that's what we're aiming to do. And hopefully we make it a lot easier for you to close more deals, get more referrals and have success in this awesome industry. But today I want to basically tell a little story, something that happened to me recently, that I think a lot of you, the listeners can learn some lessons from a big mistake I made. So I'm going to go through that story. But first, before I get to that, just wanted to give a shout out to, um, my boys over at, uh, knock star university. If you haven't checked out a knock star, it is a six week program I'm going through right now and they do.Speaker 2 (01:40):It's really cool. They have a competition for six weeks. They put you in a seating round, then they do weekly trainings. So if you're looking for some extra training for you or your team, um, great resources guys have over there, I'm going through it. And also just wanted to throw out a little teaser. We're also working on something super exciting that has to do is training. Uh, can't spill the details yet, but is going to be releasing very soon here. And I'm super stoked when it does to go over more details, but you can't say anything I want to, um, anyway, just a couple of quick shout outs for those that are looking for more trainings, go check out and rockstar. Um, so the story I have what's going on is, um, this is basically just to illustrate to you guys, what can go wrong with an account?Speaker 2 (02:36):The title is episode is called how I made negative $563 on a solar install. And I'm in San Diego. So especially people are familiar with the California market. You're probably thinking like, what, how do you make negative dollars on a account? Like people out here are making a thousand, 2000 at ridiculous amounts. I mean, guys are making 20, 30 grand on single accounts, even I've heard. Hey, so how can someone go to make making ridiculous money to making negative on an account? I couldn't believe it when happen to me. And I don't think I'm the first person that it's happened to. So I want to go through the mistakes I made with this particular account and hopefully help you guys avoid the same mistakes. So here's what happened in this. First of all, this was back about seven months ago, I get an online lead a which if you're not running on lane leads, why not?Speaker 2 (03:40):You should be running online leads. You should be knocking, should be getting leads from all sources. Okay. That's for another episode though, I was running an online leads that I get a lead. It's a solid lead. I go, um, set it up for next day appointment. I go, we're sitting outside. I find out it's actually a home that's hasn't been moved into yet. The dude had been renting it out and he was gonna move in with his family in the next few months is what he told me at the time. Okay. Um, unfortunately it didn't work out exactly how this guy was saying. Um, but I ended up closing the deal, um, closed it's a little bit higher. So I thought I was going to make an awesome commission on it, but here's the kicker with this account. This guy, before he moved in, he was doing a ton of remodeling on the house and he wanted to get a new roof along with this solar.Speaker 2 (04:37):And at the time I had just started working for, um, the dealer that I'm with now. I wasn't super familiar with their processes and S uh, their roofers. I didn't know exactly how you did a deal with a roof over there. This is the first deal I had. First, our roof solar combine had done with the new dealer. So I call, um, our office and I kind asked him how to do this. And I'm in the heat of the moment, which you guys should all try to close deals as quick, you know, quick as possible, not want to leave them hanging. Don't want to leave loose threads. So I'm like, all right, I'm just going to get this closed. Um, but tell me about what to price it out so we can be good to throw a roof in there because here we can, just, even if we don't have to necessarily add a roofing to the financing, you just price it high enough.Speaker 2 (05:27):We can pay for a roof with the commission is what we do a lot of times just price it high, make so much that you pay for a roof with it. So I price it pretty high. I think I'm okay. I'll be good. Pay for a roof with this. And I can figure out the details later. Right? And we were working with a roofer. His name was Juan, and he got us really good prices on roofs. So especially knowing about this guy, I'm like, okay, yeah, Juan's going to hook us up with an awesome deal. I'm going to have plenty in the commission to pay for all this. We'll be good to go. So fast forward, um, several months down the road, one does the roof and then the installer goes to install up there and they put up the system, they actually do the install.Speaker 2 (06:19):Okay. But the first problem that we encounter with as account is I get a call from the customer actually, after they had already installed the solar, they didn't do a full installation, which I'll get to in a second, they did a personal install and I get a call from the customer and the customer says, Hey, Taylor, um, I see that you didn't put gutters on with my roof. Um, you guys need to come finish up the gutters. And I'm like, okay. Yeah, I'll look into that. So I call Juan or roofer and he says, oh, I don't do gutters. The gutters that they had up there, they're rotting. They're just causing all sorts of problem when I was trying to do their new roof. So I had to take them off. So yeah, they're in the dumpster now we can't use those gutters and I don't do gutters.Speaker 2 (07:05):That's a separate thing. So I'm like, okay. So I actually don't know. Maybe some, maybe some of you listeners can tell me is that normally included with risks. I actually don't even know, but I took one's word with that. I'm like, okay. So I call the customer in, say, a Mr. His name was, uh, Z. His name was, uh, he was like middle Eastern. So he had a tricky name. So I just call him Z. I'm like, Casey, they actually didn't do your gutters because that's not included. That's going to be separate. Do you want to pay for it? And at that point, when the customer heard me even say that he was going to have to pay for something, this guy flipped the lid. He's like, are you kidding me? That is included with a roofing project. That is part of the project. I am not there on some expletives in there.Speaker 2 (07:57):So I am not paying for a roof. I'm not paying extra to put gutters in with my project, just super free. It's not listening to me, wouldn't have anything to do with it. And the good news is that he had solar on his roof. But, um, what ended up happening is we did a partial install on his home and with his other projects he was doing, he was adding like a wall around his property. And I don't know the full details on this, but the wall that he was building somehow interfered with us, being able to put, um, just the box for the inverter down by his electric panel. So we couldn't finish the installation because we are waiting for his other contractors to finish this wall. So the good news is he already had solar up there. So in my head, I'm thinking, okay, well, he can't cancel or anything.Speaker 2 (08:54):He has solar up there. So he can't cancel the project or say he doesn't want it anymore. Even though that's actually what he's threatening to do, saying I'm going to cancel. If you guys don't finish this. So it was calm from out that, but then the issue we ran into is we couldn't complete this installation. He needed to finish the other wall. Um, so what happened is he started using this as leverage. Basically he knew that he needed to finish the wall. So his, his side now was all, I'm not going to finish the wall until you guys come get my gutters from, come fix my gutters. So we were just locked in, essentially, it's still meat. I mean, we had leverage against him cause the solar is up there, but his leverage was, I'm not putting this wall in until you guys around. I'm not repairing this wall, whatever needed to be done until you guys come in, put the gutters up.Speaker 2 (09:49):So it turned into that, just a big nightmare. And the other issue is we had already actually paid one to do the roof. So Juan is paid. He's happy, he's taken care of. But in the meantime, our, you know, dealer is fronted all this money to pay one. And rather than just being locked into the stalemate, um, our office made the decision to just go ahead and pay for these gutters. So we hire another contractor. We pay the gutters, they come up and do it. That's that. And then I didn't really think anything of it until I see in my bank account. I see finally, after six, seven months find the I'm getting paid on this account about freaking time. It's been so long, been months and months and months, which we all hate waiting for. Installs. We all hate, we need to get paid on. Installs sucks. Have to wait, but find the AC it come in commission for Z. And then I look at it and this time it says 300, I think it says 300 something. I'm like, oh my gosh, 300 bucks. That's it.Speaker 2 (11:10):So you're probably asking, wait, didn't you say you got paid a negative amount on this account. So yeah, it gets worse. What happened was I got paid 301st, but then I, as time goes on, about two weeks after I got paid this 300 bucks, we get another message from the customer saying, Hey, you guys forgot to do you didn't do the back part of my gutters. You only did the front. You need to come back and do it. And our team schedules this. And by the way, I didn't really, at this point, I didn't really know what was going on behind the scenes. So, um, lock of communication and I'll get to the mistakes after this, but definitely like communication and our team just goes ahead and schedules the back gutters to be done. Not really thinking much of it. And we get this customer taken care of, but guess what?Speaker 2 (12:08):We get a bill from the contractor. We paid, I think 1500 for the gutters. Okay. Which again, I thought, you know, all this was included. Um, I thought all this was paid. I'm like, okay, 300 bucks. This is ridiculous. But then it gets worse. We end up, oh, extra money on the account. And yeah, that's why I say negative 500, whatever. It was 563 is because what happened was after we paid this contract and do the back cutters. Yeah. I am being now charge back money plus some, and this isn't even all that we owed on it. I mean, luckily our office is kind enough to front some of the money, but there's faults on both sides. Okay. So more or less moral of the story, there were a ton of mistakes made and I'm going to break down a few of them. And if you have a story like this, I'd love to hear it.Speaker 2 (13:11):Shoot me a message on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Shoot me a message. Let me know if you've had anything like this happen to you before, but first of all, number one, know how much your roof is going to cost you. All right. Like I mentioned, at the beginning, I had no idea that the roof was going to be, um, well, as much as it was, this one was more than I was thinking we were using Juan or roofer. Okay. And here's the second mistake made is make sure you're working with quality contractors. Hey, because one, he was a great guy, but what we find out later, we actually found out one wasn't even licensed. Okay. That's why we're getting such good prices on his roofs. This guy wasn't even licensed and maybe you're fine working without a licensed roofer. Okay. Probably not in most of most cases, but if you are, um, or whatever the case may be, make sure that customer is in some type of an agreement with the roofer.Speaker 2 (14:19):Kay. And you, whatever you do, whether it's you working independently or your company or your office, make sure you're setting these things in place. What's the agreement. What's the standard of quality that you need to work? What can they do? Can they, what can't they do? Cause in our case one, he just ripped off these gutters, threw them in the dumpster. But if we would have had that set in place, what can you work on? What can't you work on? If we would've had that agreement set in place between him and the customer, then it wouldn't cause an issue. Cause guess what? That would have been once issue. He would have been dealing with the angry customer saying, you didn't do my gutters, but what did we do? We just paid it directly out of our profits. And so we had to deal with all these issues.Speaker 2 (15:03):Cause the whole time, I mean, basically the customer hired us to do the work. We just outsourced it. Right. So set some type of agreement in place. What is your roof we're going to do? What are the expectations? You can't just rip off the gutters and then get blamed for it. Right. Have that in place having in place what's going to happen. Okay. And the fourth mistake that was made and make sure your communication is super clear. Again, I mentioned that, um, we had a lot of things being paid for all of the things being scheduled that weren't clear. And a lot of it's my fault because after six, seven months of the same account for me, it got to the point where I'm just like, whatever, just do whatever. I'm not going to look at it. If it gets installed. Great. Um, out here where I'm at, I mean, I'm used to a month, one to two month installs.Speaker 2 (15:57):So after that it starts getting pretty, uh, pretty what's the word? Redundant. Yeah. Pretty redundant stuff to sit and look at these accounts that aren't going through. So make sure you have communication and don't be like me be patient with it and always look at what's going on. Okay. Cause I didn't really look at the updates that were happening with this deal. Cause I just got so tired of it, but it's important to go back and see what happened with it. See what updates were left by your team. We use a sauna personally, just like a, yeah. You know, projects management. I mean you use it for a lot of things, but in the sauna our team members would basically go on leave comments. Hey, we talked to this contract or this happened, this went down and I didn't really look much at what was paid, what happened.Speaker 2 (16:50):So you need to be looking at your team, can communication, whatever you're using, make sure you're in the loop and make sure your team isn't scheduling stuff without your permission. And I, I think I did give him permission, but again, I was just sick and tired of it. So look at what's happening. And then you as the independent contractor, which most of you should be, I highly recommend you being an independent contractor. We're Solarpreneurs. Right. We're building our own businesses. So we're taking control of all this. Okay. But if it's not, you have your having an assistant or have someone that's keeping track of all this stuff because you can't just authorize everything and not know what's been paid, what hasn't been paid. Okay. And messaged me. Um, I know some people have made like spreadsheets to keep track of adders on deals and extra costs because the last thing you want to happen is, and go negative on a deal like this.Speaker 2 (17:47):Okay. And then the last thing is just figure out a resolution with everything. I talked about how we are in a stalemate with this customer. Um, things didn't really come to a resolution, but figure out a solution on both sides. Kay. I was sick of talking to the customer too. I didn't want to hear from them, but yeah, you need to be willing to have those tough conversations with your customers, admit when you've made mistakes and then come to a resolution. Okay. So those are just a couple of things I've learned and still working on being better with complicated accounts, you got to pull out all the guns, you got to be ready for the long fight. Okay. Cause there's some complicated accounts out here, whether they need main panel upgrades, whether they need roof work. I know lots of people, um, especially out here an hour adding in AC units, they're adding and maybe even paying jobs.Speaker 2 (18:49):Um, for, I talked to guys that companies doing all sorts of things at an installation. So point is keep track of all this stuff. Okay. Depending on how your office is set up, it's very likely that you gotta keep track of this. And even if your company is organized, even if you have project managers or managers that are on top of everything, I would suggest still just being in the loop. Okay. Cause that's another thing I know for me, I've been hit with adders and things that our back offices have, uh, has done that aren't weren't right. Either where if I would have been keeping track and things like that when it happened. Okay. So just wanted to share this story. Let me know if something like that's happened to you would love to hear it love to learn from other people's mistakes, but don't get hit with a negative commission. It is the worst feeling in the world in the world and it's definitely a momentum killer. So let me know what you thought of this. Let me know if you liked hearing from the mistake and with that, learn from it. Let's move forward and let's crush it this month. Peace Solarpreneurs.Speaker 3 (20:00):Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called the Solciety, this learning community with designed from the ground up to level the playing field to give solar pros access to proven members who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry. Brightest minds four, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently Solciety is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to Solciety.co To learn more and join the learning experience. Now this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to solciety.co And join. We'll see you on the inside. 

TW: Sexual abuseIn this week's solo cast we're chatting about everything that's going on in the NWSL and how we can best support our female athletes.Today's Scout:- Name: Sydney Umeri (the host)- College: University of Virginia & University of Kansas- Sport: BasketballResource:All things NWSL News- CBS Article - Washington Spirit NWSL Scandal- CBS Article - NWSL to resume season WednesdayPodcast Explainers- Attacking Third - NWSL Allegations and Turmoil- Two Wash-ups One Pro - Special Episode Mental Health Chat- Diaspora United Podcast - What the All NWSLNo More Side Hustles- support by clicking hereHousekeeping:- Website: www.retiredcollegeathletes.com- Instagram: @retiredcollegeathletes- Facebook: Retired College Athletes- YouTube: Retired College Athletes- Twitter: @RCAathletes- Email: retiredcollegeathletes@gmail.com- Patreon - If you love RCA and want to give financially to support the podcast you can do so through Patreon. Depending on what tier you give, you will receive exclusive content as a thank you for supporting us.

Matt and Scott discuss how to train older clients.  Barbell Logic's age demographics tend to skew older, so the company and its coaches have lots of experience coaching older clients.  Depending on the age, almost everyone can deadlift. Many can squat, bench press, and press. Some lifts may have to be modified, but an exercise similar to the lifts can be executed for most older clients.  Older people can and should train hard. For older people, this means intensity. Intensity is what older clients are missing from their life. Grabbing the groceries, for example, is a low-intensity exercise, so they need to lift heavy and add muscle mass as a type of insurance.  Volume, however, wrecks older people. Use less volume than you might program for younger clients. Frequency--number of workouts in a week--might also be less. 4-day splits for the very old are not recommended. You might do a 4-day split over 3 days or even have them only train twice a week with full-body sessions.  GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans.  No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial.  https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners:  https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts Matt on Instagram Niki on Instagram Connect with the show Barbell Logic on Instagram The Website Barbell Logic on Facebook podcast@barbell-logic.com  

On this episode of the My Little Eater Podcast, we're covering how to serve pumpkin to your baby, including the health benefits of pumpkin for your baby. There's no better time than now to jump into this topic, given that fall and thanksgiving are here! Typically though, most of us prefer to decorate with it, instead of including it in our meal plans - but I'm here to change that!  Pumpkin is such a versatile food, making it super easy to incorporate in a variety of dishes, adding a unique and rich flavour. It's easy to pair with sweet and savoury flavours, making the possibilities endless! There are also tons of health benefits of pumpkin for babies, including a TON of Vitamin A, fiber, iron and B vitamins, just to name a few! Luckily, pumpkin can be served safely to babies early on, and can easily be one of your baby's first foods when they start solids So, how do you serve pumpkin to your baby (or toddler)? Depending on their age you can offer it pureed, roasted as a side dish, make it into pasta sauce, baked goods and more! I'll  go through it all in this episode and I think you'll love it! If you find these episodes help answer your questions, and tackle all baby or toddler feeding questions, please leave a rating and review at Apple Podcasts! If you try pumpkin with your baby over the holidays, I'd love to see the cuteness! Share a pic of your baby trying it out and tag me, @mylittleeater, on Instagram!  Additional Resources: Starting solids with your baby? If you're unsure where to start, start with my Baby Led Feeding Online Course! This course will provide you with everything you need to know about feeding your 6-12 month old, from the right feeding gear, to what foods to serve and how to serve them, helping you build healthy eating habits early! The course teaches you how to confidently move through each phase of feeding (from puree to finger foods), preventing picky eating habits from the start. BABY LED FEEDING ONLINE COURSE: https://mylittleeater.com/baby-led-feeding/ If you're past the baby stage, and are now dealing with picky tendencies quickly arising, my Feeding Toddler Online Course can help teach you techniques to stop these tendencies before they become a bigger problem. These tried and tested solutions will ultimately eliminate mealtime battles and bring back happy mealtimes for your entire family.  FEEDING TODDLERS ONLINE COURSE: https://mylittleeater.com/feeding-toddlers/ Skip To… When you can introduce pumpkin (1:30) Health benefits of pumpkin (2:00) What type of pumpkin should you buy? (2:55) How to serve pumpkin to your baby and toddler (4:45) Recipes to include pumpkin in (10:09)   

New moons are the perfect time to set intentions and get clear on your goals—and we've got one coming this Wednesday, October 6. Depending on your zodiac sign, the moon's cycle will affect different areas of your life, and with Pluto going direct the very same day, there's a lot to unpack# Tapinn

Something interesting is happening in the grocery retail industry...there are actually new retailers emerging and it should galvanize every CPG brand. While new grocery retail concepts pop up all the time around the country, more times than not, those grocers stay local/regional and have a non-material impact over the entire CPG industry. The last "new" grocery retail chain created that made a material difference was Sprouts Farmers Market that was founded in 2002. Most market leading grocery banners have been around for 40, 80, even 100+ years. That being said, there's something different happening right now because these new grocery retailers have the kind of firepower that is extremely rare. Maybe its billions in investor funding or they are backed by trillion dollar market cap companies, but the grocery industry hasn't had this level of material new activity since Walmart focused on groceries in the late 1980s and Target in the early 2000s starting to focus on selling groceries. In this podcast episode, I'll explore this notion through examples like Foxtrot Market, Amazon Fresh, LIDL, GoPuff, and dark grocery stores through DoorDash and Instacart. Why should you care? Depending on the sales channel strategy of your CPG brand, this could mean a great deal in terms of new business opportunities or needing to adjust your models of existing grocery partnerships. FOLLOW ME ON MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaschallmba TWITTER https://www.twitter.com/joshua_schall INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/joshua_schall FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/jschallconsulting MEDIUM https://www.medium.com/@joshuaschall

Depending on what expiration and strike you're trading, option prices can fluctuate very differently when there is a big move in the market. The tastytrade crew explains how you can view net change for each strike price in any expiration to develop market awareness related to how options prices change differently in near-term vs long-term cycles. Live Q&A as well!

Depending on what expiration and strike you're trading, option prices can fluctuate very differently when there is a big move in the market. The tastytrade crew explains how you can view net change for each strike price in any expiration to develop market awareness related to how options prices change differently in near-term vs long-term cycles. Live Q&A as well!

Photo: Bushels of C-notes.  Each one devaluing silently under inflation. "Monetary inflation is a sustained increase in the money supply of a country (or currency area). Depending on many factors, especially public expectations, the fundamental state and development of the economy, and the transmission mechanism, it is likely to result in price inflation, which is usually just called "inflation", which is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services." #LondonCalling: Temporary inflation overstays.  @JosephSternberg @WSJOpinion https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/02/supply-chain-world-economy-energy-labour-transport-covid https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4d6c30f4-254a-11ec-80e0-b4b33b6f1716?shareToken=eb15df2f46c0d599343967ad54d2abf1 .. Permissions: Many dollar banknotes. Date | 19 February 2009 / Source | http://2bgr8stock.deviantart.com/art/Money-Cash-113445826  /  Author | Jericho       This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.  You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work; to remix – to adapt the workUnder the following conditions: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use .

You love snacks. ⠀ I love snacks. ⠀ We all love snacks. ⠀ Depending on your fitness goals, snacking could put you in a bit of a predicament. ⠀ Especially if you're trying to lose weight, mindless snacking could be the difference between being in a calorie deficit or a surplus. ⠀ But that doesn't mean snacking has to disappear completely. ⠀ Over the next 4 episodes, 8 contestants will compete in a bracket style head to head tournament to see who will reign supreme as the best snack of all time, and the champion of the snacks wars! ⠀ If you enjoy this episode, make sure to hit that subscribe butting and check out some of the other links down below. ⠀ Website: https://www.mtefit.com ⠀ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/made-to-excel-fitness-podcast/id1503696242 ⠀ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3rc4yyrjIAKB8936ysr5xP ⠀ TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMemHeLu2/ ⠀ YouTube: Full Podcast Episodes - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosRw2pPs754Y8xmZ1VHLBA ⠀ Podcast Clips - https://youtube.com/channel/UCneWsUZaW0vVEAFSQtrLGOg ⠀ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mtefit ⠀ https://www.instagram.com/fitnesshippiepod/ ⠀ Articles: https://www.mtefit.com/blog ⠀

Everyone seems to be in a rush to get to the "top." better yet, everyone seems to be fighting to get there. I wonder if we even fully comprehend what being at the top means. to some, it implies supremacy; to others, it means isolation. To some, it means success; to others, it means that there is a target on you. Depending on how you view being on the top will impact how you operate. Join Dr. J Duncan and Just_Z in on our conversation about what it means to "be on the top". Like what you hear? Be sure to share and subscribe to our podcast. Also, check out our Website: www.mindsunltd.com Contact our Hosts with questions, comments, and ideas at: email: jduncan@mindsunltd.com Instagram: @mindsunltd, @doctor_j.duncan, @_Just_z_ Check out our Merchandise at Mindsunltd.com/merch Support our Patreon at: Minds Unltd we are growing thanks to listeners like you!!! Thank you for over 3K listens!!!

We all have money questions. If you don't, you just haven't asked them yet.  Today, we're answering questions from you—our audience, tribe, fans, those in a quest to control their money and financial future! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiW3MeJiL7c There are some great ones here that might be on your mind too. So maybe you'll get the answer you've been needing. Then you can clear that hurdle and get one step closer to your goals. OR maybe it will prompt you to ask a question of your own. Find out and tune in now! Table of contentsDoes it Make Sense to Fund a Policy with a Loan?Should You Pay Off Your Mortgage ASAP?Can You Borrow Against Your Death Benefit?Why Can't You Simply Increase the Face Value of an Existing Policy?Is it Complicated to Prove Disability?What Insurance Companies Do You Suggest?What are the Interest Rates on a Policy Loan?Can I Do a 1035 Exchange Between Companies?What Are the Best Companies to Work with for Policy Loans?How Do Premiums Contribute to Cash Value?Isn't a Dividend Just a Refund of Premium? Book A Strategy Call Does it Make Sense to Fund a Policy with a Loan? A YouTube viewer of our show asked us the question, “Does it make sense to take out equity from an investment rental to start a policy and then borrow from that policy to reinvest in other investments?” We believe that it makes sense to have a life insurance policy as a foundation for your finances. This is because it protects your income, provides liquidity, and shields your money from creditors. On the other hand, properly funding a whole life insurance policy requires consistent payments. Depending on your funding source, it may not be wise to fund a policy with a loan if you don't have a strategy for paying premiums after that. This depends on your personal economy and your investing goals.  The other reason for caution is that it can take a few years for your cash value to “break even.” While you are able to take a life insurance loan right away, your cash value will not immediately equal your premiums paid. It will take time to build your policy to a point where you can make larger investments. However, when you do reach that point, it's an excellent strategy to leverage policy loans for cash-flowing investments. Should You Pay Off Your Mortgage ASAP? This question comes from Lon, another viewer on YouTube. He shared with us a HELOC strategy, and ended with this hypothetical: “The other question that you really need to ask is: Is it really better to pay off my mortgage ASAP vs. using my available income for investing?” We agree that this is a great question to ask. The answer, again, is not black and white. There are two answers to this question: a mathematical answer, and an emotional one. Mathematically, it often doesn't make sense to accelerate payments because you lose control. Contrary to popular belief, the less you owe on your home, the more control the banks have. This is true because, in the event that you cannot pay your mortgage, the bank is less likely to foreclose when you have a large loan balance. This is because there's a chance the banks will be unable to make up the difference. On the other hand, if you're only a few years away from owning your house, it's easier for banks to foreclose. They can sell your property and have a much greater chance of making up the difference on the house.  This doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't pay down your mortgage. However, it does illustrate the benefits of saving or investing your additional income, rather than putting it into the house. You can build equity in a life insurance policy, then use that to pay down your home. This is one way to maintain control of your home and your money. Then, there's the emotional component. Sometimes, you just sleep better at night knowing that you're reducing your loan balance.  To learn more: 15 vs. 30 Year Mortgage: Myths About Paying Off Your Mortgage

This week's guest is Maggie Headlee. She was a swimmer at the University of Minnesota.  In this episode, we chat about Maggie's amazing swim career, her battle with an eating disorder, and how she now runs Maggie Bakes Grace, a platform that shows us how all food is fuel.Today's Scout:- Name: Maggie Headlee- Sport: Swim- School: University of Minnesota- Instagram: @maggiebakesgraceHer Platform: Maggie Bakes Grace- Blog- Instagram- YouTubeResources Mentioned:- Katie Spada's episodeHousekeeping:- Website: www.retiredcollegeathletes.com- Instagram: @retiredcollegeathletes- Facebook: Retired College Athletes- YouTube: Retired College Athletes- Twitter: @RCAathletes- Email: retiredcollegeathletes@gmail.com- Patreon - If you love RCA and want to give financially to support the podcast you can do so through Patreon. Depending on what tier you give, you will receive exclusive content as a thank you for supporting us.

@MrEricAlmighty is going solo with a review of something he has been patiently waiting for over the past few years.....A STAR WARS ANIME!!! Star Wars: Visions was released at the end of last month on Disney+, and with all 9 episodes available to stream, is it worth your time to check it out if you aren't a fan of both Star Wars and Anime? Well....this review was made specifically with you in mind! Synopsis: Presenting all-new, creative takes on the galaxy far, far away, Star Wars: Visions is a series of animated short films celebrating Star Wars through the lens of the world's best anime creators. The anthology collection will bring fantastic visions from several of the leading Japanese anime studios, offering a fresh and diverse cultural perspective to Star Wars.

Could Using the Right Multi-Factor Authentication Save You? I had a good friend who, this week, had his life's work stolen from him. Yeah. And you know what caused it? It was his password. Now, you know what you're supposed to be doing? I'm going to tell you exactly what to do right now. Let's get right down to the whole problem with passwords. I'm going to tell you a little bit about my friend this week. He has been building a business for. Maybe going on 10 years now, and this business relies on advertising. Most companies do so in some way; we need to have new customers. There's always some attrition. Some customers go away. So how do we keep them? We do what we can. How do we get new customers? For him, it was. Advertising, primarily on Facebook. He did some Google ads as well, but Facebook is really where he was focused. So how did he do all of that? Here's the bottom line you have to, if you are going to be advertising on Facebook, you have to have an advertising account. The same thing's true. Google. And then, on that account, you tie in either your bank account or your credit card. I recommend a credit card so that those transactions can be backed up. And on top of all of that now, of course, you have to use a pixel. So the way the tracking works is there are pixels on websites, about those already. And the bottom line with the pixels. Those are also. Cookies are about the pixels are used to set a cookie so that Facebook knows what sites you've gone to. So he uses those. I use those. In fact, if you go to my website, I have a Facebook pixel that gets set. And the reason for all of that is so that we know with. I'd be interested in something on the site. So I know that there are many people interested in this page or that page. And so I could, I have not ever, but I could now do some advertising. I could send ads to you so that if you were looking at something particular, you'd see ads related to that, which I've always said. It is the right way to go. If I'm looking to buy a pickup truck, I love to see ads for different pickup trucks, but if I don't want a car or truck, I don't want to see the ads. It isn't like TV where it sometimes seems every other ad is about. Car or a pickup truck. It drives me crazy because it's a waste of their money in advertising to me. After all, I don't want those things. And it's also not only just annoying in money-wasting. There are better ways to do targeting. And that's what the whole online thing is. Anyways, I told you about that because he had set up this pixel years ago. Basically, the Facebook pixel gets to know you. All of the people who like you that might've bought from you. Cause you can have that pixel track people through your site, your purchase site, they know what you purchase on the shopping cart, et cetera. And you can identify these people over on Facebook and their ads because they abandoned the cart or whatever it is you want to do there. So there's just a whole ton of stuff that you can do for these people. And it's so bad. It is so valuable. It takes years to build up that account. Years to put that pixel in place. And our friend here, he had done precisely that. Then he found that his account had been compromised. And that is a terrible thing in this case because the bad guy used his account to place ads. So now there are really two or three problems here. We'll talk about one of them. Why was the bad guy going after him? He has been running ads on Facebook for a long time. So as far as Facebook is concerned, his account is credible. All of the ads he runs don't have to be reviewed by a human being. They can go up almost immediately. He doesn't have to wait days for some of these things to go up. So our bad guy can get an account like his that has years' worth of advertising credibility and now start advertising things that are not correct. So there again is part of the value of having one of these older accounts for advertising. And so the bad guy did that use his credibility. And then secondly, he used 25 grand worth of my friend's money to run ads. Also, of course, very bad, very bad. So I sat down with him. In fact, it was this last week, and I was out on a trip with just a vacation trip. It was absolutely fantastic. I never just do vacation. It's always business plus work whenever I do anything like this, but I was on a trip last week. And so my eldest son who works closely with me, and he's also part of the FBI InfraGard program. So I had him reach out to my friend, and he helped them out, and they talked back and forth. So here's the problem that he has. And I'm trying to figure out a perfect way to solve this. And I haven't figured that out yet. And if you guys have an idea because you are the best and brightest, you really are. So go ahead and drop me an email at me@craigpeterson.com if a good way around this particular problem, which is he has. This Facebook could count and many other accounts, including his website, hosting account, email account, et cetera. And. He has people who manage his ads for him. Who operates his website for him, who put up some promotions, advertising, and everything else. So these are third-party. This is what we generically call a supply chain, risk people who are not him have access to his stuff, his private property. And how does he do it, or how did he do it? Is he went ahead and gave them. Access by giving them accounts or passwords. How well were they guarding their passwords and their accounts? So the first thing I had my friend do was going to haveIbeenpwned.com. I had him put in his email address, the one he uses the most, and it showed up in five different. Hacks data dumps. So these are five various sites where he had used that same email address in this case. And he found out that in those five cases, the bad guy's got his passwords and personal information. All bad. And he went ahead and cleaned it up. So I said put in the password because have I been, pwned also let you check your password, just see if it has been used by someone else and then stolen. So there are billions of passwords in this database. It's incredible of all of these known passwords. So he put in his password, and no, it had not been stolen, but the problem is how about the people that were managing his ads on Facebook and managing his Facebook ad. We're the usernames, which are typically the email addresses and the passwords kept securely. That's a supply chain thing I'm talking about, and that's where I'd love to get him. But from you guys, me@craigpeterson.com. If you think you have a good answer, What we've been doing. And our advice to him was use one password. That's the only one to use. I don't trust last pass anymore. After their last big hack where they got hacked one password, the digit one password. And go ahead. And set it up. And in a business scenario, you can have multiple vaults. So have a vault. That's just for people that are dealing with your Facebook ad account, maybe have another vault for people who are posting for you on Facebook. Or better yet when it comes to Facebook, go ahead and have an intermediary that is trusted the, if this, then that, or there's a few of them out there that can see that you put the post up on the website and automatically posted on Facebook. So you don't have to get. All of these people, your passwords, but again, it's up to you. You got to figure out if that makes sense to you that those are the types of things that I think you can do. And that is what we do as well. Now, one of the beauties of using one password like that, where you're not sharing all of your passwords to everything you're sharing, the minimum amount of login information that you possibly can share is that if they leave your employees, All you have to do is remove their access to the appropriate vault or vaults, or maybe all of your vaults. And this is what I've done with people that worked for me in the US and people would work for me overseas, and there have been a lot of them and it has worked quite well for me. So with one pass, We can enforce password integrity. We can make sure the passwords on stolen. One password ties automatically into have I been postponed. If a password has been exposed, if it's been stolen online, it's a great way to go. Now I've got an offer for you guys who are listening. I have a special report that I've sold before on passwords, and it goes through talks about one password. He talks about the last pass, which I'm no longer really recommending, but give some comparisons and how you can use these things. Make sure you go and email me right now. Me, Me@craigpeterson.com. That's ME at Craig Peterson dot com and just ask me for the password special report, and I'll be glad to get that on-off to you. There is a lot of good detail in there and helps you, whether you're a home user or a business. So the next step in your security is multi-factor authentication. Interesting study out saying that about 75% of people say that they've used it for work or for business, but the hard numbers, I don't think they agree One of the things that you have to do is use good passwords. And the best way to do that is to use a password manager. I was talking about a friend of mine who had been hacked this last week and his account was hacked. His Facebook ad account was hacked. We asked him if we could reach out to. BI and he said, sure. So we checked with the FBI and they're looking to turn this into a case, a real case, because they've never seen this type of thing, the hijacking of an advertising account who hijacked it. And why did they hide jacket? Was this in preparation maybe for. Playing around with manipulating our next election cycle coming up. There could be a lot of things that they're planning on doing and taking over my friend's account would be a great way to have done it. So maybe they're going to do other things here. And our friends at the FBI are looking into it. How now do you also keep your data safe? Easily simply. When we're talking about these types of accounts, the thing to look at is known as two factor authentication or multifactor authentication. You see my friend, if he had been using multi-factor authentication. I would not have been vulnerable. Even if the bad guys had his username, email address and his password, they still would not be able to log in without having that little six-digit code. That's the best way to do multi-factor authentication. When we're talking about this code, whether it's four or 5, 6, 8 digits long, we should not be using our cell phones to receive those. At least not as text messages, those have a problem because our phone numbers can be stolen from us and they are stolen from us. So if we're a real target, in other words, they're going after you. Joe Smith and they know you have some, $2 million in your account. So they're going after you while they can, in most cases, take control of your phone. Now you might not know it and it doesn't have to be hacked. All they have to do is have the phone company move your phone number to a new phone. Once. So that means one of the things you need to do is contact your telephone vendor, whoever it is, who's providing new that service. That's a company like Verizon sprint T-Mobile a T and Tone of those companies that are giving you cell service, you have to contact them and set up a pass. So that if they have a phone call coming in and that phone call can be faked. So it looks like it's coming from your phone, even if there was a phone call coming in, whether it's coming from your phone or not, they have to get that password or passcode that you gave them. And once they have that passcode now, and that's great, but if you don't have that in there targeting you specifically, then you're in trouble. So for many of us really it may not make a huge difference. But I would do it anyways. I have done it with every one of my cell phone carriers now. A couple of decades set up a password. So the next step is this multifactor authentication. If I'm not supposed to get it via text message to my phone, how do I get it? There are a couple of apps out there. There's a free one called Google authentic. And Google authenticator runs on your phone. And once it's there on your phone and you are setting it up on a website, so Facebook, for instance, your bank, most websites out there, the bigger ones, all you have to do is say, I want to set up multi-factor authentication, and then it'll ask you a case. So how do you want to do it? And you can say, I want an app and they will display. A Q R code. That's one of those square codes with a bunch of little lines inside of it. You're seeing QR codes before they become very common. And you take your phone with the Google authenticator app. Take a picture. Of that little QR code on the screen, and now it will start sinking up so that every 30 seconds Google authenticator on your phone will change that number. So when you need to log back into that website, it's going to ask you for the code. You just pull up Google authenticator and there's the code. So that's the freeway to do it. And not necessarily the easiest way to. Again, going back to one password. I use this thing exclusively. It is phenomenal for keeping my passwords, keeping them all straight and then encrypted vault, actually in multiple encrypted vault it's so that I can share some of them. Some of them are just strictly private, but it also has that same authenticator functionality built right into it. Microsoft has its own authenticator, but you can tell Microsoft that you want to use the standard authenticator. Of course, Microsoft has to do everything differently. But you can tell it. And I do tell it, I want to use a regular authenticator app, not Microsoft authenticator. By the way. That's why I advise you to don't use the Microsoft authenticator, just use one authenticator for all of the sites, and then Microsoft will give you that same QR code. And then you can take that picture and you're off and running. Next time you log in, it asks you for the code and instead of texting it to you to your phone smarter, otherwise it will not. That require you to open up your authenticator. So for me, for instance, when I'm logging into a website, it comes up and asks for the username, asked for the password. Both of those are filled out automatically by one password for me. And then it asks for that code identification code and. One password automatically puts it into my pace to buffer copy-paste, buffer, and I just paste it in and they've got the code. So I don't have to remember the codes. I don't remember passwords. I don't have to remember usernames or email addresses. One password remembers them all for me. Plus it'll remember notes and other things. So you can tell, I really one password. We use it with all of our clients. That's what we have for them. And it does meet even a lot of these DOD requirement on top of. Depending again, how much security you need. We will use duo D U O and it also has this authenticator functionality and we will also use UBI keys. These are those hardware key. They do oh, can provide you with hardware tokens. Those are those little tokens that can go onto your key ring. That show a changing six-digit number every 30 seconds. And that's the same number that would be there in your smartphone app. Your one password or Google authenticator smartphone. Hopefully, I didn't confuse you too much. I think most of the reason we're not using the security we should is because we're not sure how to, and we don't know what we're going to be. And I can see that being a big problem. So if you have questions about any of this, if you would like a copy of my password security, special report, just send an email to me. M e@craigpeterson.com. That's me M e@craigpeterson.com. That's S O N.com. I'll be glad to send it to you. Also, if you sign up for my newsletter there on my website@craigpeterson.com, you are going to get. I was hold little series of the special reports to help you out, get you going. And then every week I send out a little bit of training and all of my articles for the week. It's usually six to 10 articles that I consider to be important so that, what's going on in the cybersecurity world. So you can. With it for yourself, for your family, for your business. Craig peterson.com. According to researchers. 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. And you know what Facebook knew and knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls. There's a great article that came out in the Wall Street Journal. And I'm going to read just a little bit here from some of the quotes first. When I went on Instagram, all I saw were images of chiseled bodies, perfect. Abs and women doing 100 burpees in 10 minutes, said, Ms.  Now 18, who lives in Western Virginia. Amazing. Isn't it. The one that I opened now with 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram, I made them feel worse. So that is studies again, that looks like yeah, these were researchers inside Instagram and they said this in a March, 2020 slide presentation that was posted to Facebook's internal message board that was reviewed by the wall street journal quote comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves. Apparently, for the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how Instagram is affecting its millions of young users. Now, for those of you who don't know what Instagram is, it allows these users to create little stories, to have. Pictures videos of things that they're doing, and it's a lifestyle type thing you might've heard, of course, of how this I don't know what it is. Kidnapping murder plot. These, this young couple and the body I think was found up in Wyoming. I'm trying to remember, but of her and it's yeah, there it is. It wasn't my OMI. And I'm looking up right now, Gabby potato. That's who it is. She was what they called a micro influence. And I know a lot of people who can loom, that's what they want to be. There's a young lady that stayed with us for a few months. She had no other place to live. And so we invited her in here and we got some interesting stories to tell about that experience. And it's, a little sad, but anyhow, she got back up on her feet and then she decided she was going to become an influence. And what an influencer is someone that has a lot of followers. And of course, a lot means different numbers. You get these massive influencers that have tens of millions of people that quote, follow unquote them. And of course, just think of the Kardashians they're famous for. Being famous, nothing else. They have subsequently done some pretty amazing things. At least a few of them have. We've got one of those daughters who now was the first earliest billionaire. I think it was ever youngest. So they have accomplished some amazing things after the fact, but they got started. By just becoming famous by posting on these social media sites. So you get a micro-influencer, like Gabby Petito, who is out there posting things and pictures. And you look at all of these pictures and, oh my gosh, they're up at this national park. Oh, isn't she so cute. I'll look at her boyfriend. They'll look so good together and people. Fall for that image, right? It's just like Photoshopping these pictures of models, changing them. There've been some real complaints about those over the years. So Instagram sets these kids up with these pictures of people that are just totally unrealistic. One of the slides from a 2019 presentation says, quote, we make body. Excuse me. We make body image issues worse for one in three teenage girls teams, blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety. And depression said another slide. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across. Groups among teens is this according to the wall street journal who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users, and 6% of American users trace the desire to kill themselves to Instagram. Again, according to one of these presentations, isn't this just absolutely amazing. And you might've heard it discussed a little bit. I saw some articles about it, obviously in the news wall street journal had it, but this is a $100 billion company, Instagram. That's what their annual revenues. More than 40% of Instagram users are 22 years old and younger. And about 22 million teens log into Instagram in the US each day, compared with 5 million that log into Facebook, the younger users have been declining. Facebook it's getting the population there is getting older and older on Facebook. In average teens in the us spend 50% more time on Instagram than they do on Facebook. And also tick-tock, by the way I took talk has now surpassed YouTube in some of these metrics. Quote, Instagram is well-positioned to resonate and win with young people said a researcher's slide posted internally. Inside Facebook. Another post said there is a path to growth. If Instagram can continue their trajectory. Amazing. So Facebook's public phase has really tried to downplay all of these negative effects that the Instagram app has on teens, particularly girls, and hasn't made its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who have asked for it. Quote, the research that we've seen is that using social apps to connect with other people. Positive mental health benefits said Mark Zuckerberg. He's the CEO of course of Facebook. Now this was 2020. In March one at a congressional hearing, he was asked about children and mental health. So you see how he really lawyered the words that they can have positive mental health benefits, but Facebook's own internal research seems to show that they know it has a profound negative effect on a large percentage of their users. Instagram had Adam Moseri told reporters in may of this year, that research he had seen suggest the app's effect on team's wellbeing is likely quote quite small. So what the wall street journal seems to be pointing out here is that Facebook is not giving us the truth on any of this stuff. It's really sad. We've got to be careful. No, apparently Mr. Moseri also said that he's been pushing very hard for Facebook to really take their responsibilities more broadly. He says they're proud of this research. I'm just summarizing this before we run out of time here, but it shows the document. Internal documents on Facebook show that they are having a major impact on teen, mental health, political discourse, and even human trafficking. These, this internal research offers an unparalleled picture. Courtney told the wall street journal of how Facebook is acutely aware that the products and systems central to its business success routine. Fail great article. I've got it in this week's newsletter. You can just open it up and click through on the link to the wall street journal. They have a paywall and I hate to use payroll articles, but this one's well worth it. And they do give you some free articles every month. So if you're not on that newsletter, you can sign up right now. Craig peterson.com. You'll get the next one. If you miss a link today, if you want some, the special report on passwords, et cetera, just email me directly. Give me a few days to respond. But me M e@craigpeterson.com. That's me M e@craigpeterson.com. We've all worked from home from time to time. At least if we're somehow in the information it industry, I want to talk right now about why you need a personal laptop. Even if the business is providing you with a laptop. Laptops are something that was designed to be personal, but many of us are using them as our main computer. I know I often am using my laptop, a couple of my kids and my wife. It's really their main computer, even though they all have other computers that they could potentially be using, laptops are just handy and you have them with, you can take them with you. We've got workstation set up that are kind of. Workstations, if you will, where there are three screens set up and they're all hooked up into one central screen controller that then has a USBC connection that goes right into the, your laptop. So you can be sitting there with four screens on your Mac laptop on your mac pro if you need four screens, it's really handy. No question. Many of us have a laptop for home and a laptop for business. And many of us also look at it and say, oh wow, this is a great laptop I got from work. It's much better than my home laptop. And you start to use the business laptop for work. At home. Okay. That's what it's for. Right. But then we start to use that business laptop for personal stuff. That's where the problems start. We've seen surveys out there that are shown. Then half of workers are using work issue devices for personal tasks that might be doing it at home. They might be doing it at the office. Things like personal messages, shopping, online, social media, reading the news. So the prospect of using your work laptop as your only laptop, not just for work, but also for maybe watching some movies, group chat and messaging, reading, fan fiction, paying bills, emailing to family or friend. It just seems not. It's so tempting. It's just natural. I'm on it. I'm on it all day long. Why wouldn't I just use it? And this is particularly true for people who are working from home, but we have to be careful with that. It's really something that you shouldn't be doing for a couple of reasons. One that. Top that's a business. Laptop is the property of the business. It's just like walking home with boxes, full of pencils and paperback in the old days, it is not yours to use for personal use. We also have to assume, assume since it is the company's laptop that hopefully it's been secure. Hopefully they haven't set up. So it's going through a special VPN at the office and it's going through special filters, maybe snort filters or something else. That's doing some deeper inspection on what's coming through your laptop. Well, there are also likely on that laptop. Tools that are monitoring your device. Things like key loggers, biometric tracking, Jill location, software that tracks your web browser and social media behavior, screenshot, snapshot software, maybe even your cam. Is being used to keep track of you. I know a number of the websites that I've used in the past to hire temporary workers. Those workers have to agree to have you monitor what they're doing. These hourly workers, subtle take screenshots of their screen, unbeknownst to them. Pictures from the cameras at random intervals. Again, unbeknownst to them, it'll track what they're doing. And so I can now go in and say, okay, well he billed me five hours for doing this. And I look at his screen and guess what? He wasn't doing that for all of those five hours that he just billed me. Well, the same thing could be true for your company, even if you're not paid by the hour. Right now, we're looking at stats that show over half of the businesses that are providing laptops for the employees to use more than half of them are using monitoring software. And through this whole lockdown, the usage of these different types of monitoring systems has grown. Now there's some of the programs you're using. You might be VPN in, you might be using slack or G suite enterprise, all good little pieces of software. They can monitor that obviously, but it goes all the way through to the business. And using your slack access as paid for, by the businesses also idiotic to do things like send messages to your buddies, set up drinks after work, complain to other people about someone else in the business, your boss, or otherwise your it, people at the business can see all of that. They can see what you're doing with slack. Even if you have a separate personal account. It's still more likely that you'll end up mixing them up if you're logged into both on the same computer. So the bottom line is if you are on a work computer, whether it's a laptop or something else, you can reasonably assume that I T can see everything. That's not. They own it. Okay. And they have to do some of this stuff to protect themselves. We put software on laptops for companies not to spy on employees. That's none of our business, but we put software on computers for employees. To make sure they stay safe. Think of what happens when your computer, your laptop, whatever it might be, connects to the company's network. Now that can be through a VPN. It can be because you take your laptop home or on the road when you're traveling and you bring it back into the office. If that computer is infected, somehow now you've brought that infection into the office. And that's how a lot of the malware works. It goes from computer to computer. So once they get in that front door where there's through a website and email that you clicked on or in a computer that you're bringing into the office, they can start to move around. Now it's not just your activity. And this is an interesting article from the verge by Monica chin. It's not just your activity that they can see on your laptop, but in many cases, they're also able to look at anything you're downloading any of your photographs or videos that you might've sinked up from your smart. Laura loading these types of things, your text messages on your work device for safekeeping, or just because it's your primary device might seem harmless, right? Cause you're just going to remove them before you hand it in. But some companies such as Apple won't allow you to wipe your device before handing it in regardless of how personal the contents are. And that makes sense too, because many times an employee leaves. And they don't give the company all of the information that they have, that they're obliged to give back to their employer. Things that they've been working on, customer information, et cetera. So Manalive, there are plenty of other devices out there. Hopefully if you leave your company with plenty of notice, moving a bunch of things off your work device in the last few days, uh, might raise some eyebrows at the. And I'm saying hopefully, because they should notice that sort of thing, because it could be malicious activity. It could be an insider risk that maybe they're not even aware of. There's so much you could go wrong here. So bottom line don't use the work laptop for home. So what should you use? You know, my personal recommendation. Almost always is get a Mac. They are safer to use the patches that they get are usually not destructive. You know, sometimes you can install a patch for windows and now your machine just won't work anymore. Right. You've had that happen. I know every last one of us out there that are tried to install Microsoft patches for a while have had that happen to them. All of a sudden the patch has completely messed up your computer and you are so out of luck, it's ridiculous. Right? So don't, you know, hopefully don't do that, but I like the max because they are basically safer than windows. And also because the patches just work on them, apple tends to get them out in plenty of time to try and protect us the next level. If he can't afford an apple and. Apple laptops really are not expensive when you consider how long they last and the quality that components, they are not expensive at all. But if you can't afford that, the next thing I would look at is getting a Chromebook. There are a lot of companies that make Chromebooks Chrome is an operating system from Google. It's similar to Android. Google keeps the Chromebooks up-to-date. They patch them quite regularly and make sure that there aren't nastiness is going on. You just have some of the same issues and Android has patches might take a while to get to you because it has to go through the vendor that made the Chromebook. You might have a Chromebook for Sam from Samsung, for instance, it's not Google's even though it's called a Google Chromebook. Now Chromebooks rely heavily on the cloud services that Google provides, but they can also run just locally. So with a Chromebook and you can get them for as little as 150 bucks, but remember you get what you pay for. Or as much as I've seen them in the $2,000 price range with fancy GPU's, local storage and other things, but at 150 bucks, it could be well worth it for you. It lets you do the regular word processing. Just think of what you can do with Google docs, spreadsheets against Google docs, spreadsheets, all of those types of things are built into it. You can. Cruz the web, obviously using Google Chrome on your Chromebook. And send and receive email, which is what most people do. That's really kind of all, most people do at home. So consider that as well. I also like iPad. They are quite safe again, but they tend to be more expensive and they can do pretty much everything. And now with Android support built right into Google Chromebooks, you can even run Android apps. So there you go. Keep safe and be safe out there. Right. Have a hack free life. Make sure you get my newsletter. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. The national cyber director, Chris Inglis said that we need cyber bullets, that cyber bullets are part of the war on hacks. And it makes sense on one level. But when you get into the reality, it's a much different story..  I had an interesting email this week from a listener. Actually he sent it about two weeks ago when I finally was able to get to it this week and responded, and he was pointing out how there are some things that I talk about on the show that I put into my newsletter that are really good. And. I'm paraphrasing here but theoretical to so many people, there's some things that you can figure out pretty easily yourself. Some things you can do yourselves and other things that are just different. To do still. And a lot of that has to do with the websites you go to in order to maintain your passwords. And he was complaining specifically about bank of America and how you can, according to what he has found here in the real world, you can come up with a. Password a 20 character long password that is going to keep everything nice and safe at trend to be generated. You're using one password and great. So you set your password up in bank of America's account, and then you try and log in later, and it doesn't work because it lets you put 20 character passwords and when you're creating it, yeah. But the login screen only takes the first 16. So of course they'd home match. You see it's things like that really are pushing us back, holding us back. But I'd say pushing us back from being secure as a country, there, there just aren't enough people paying enough attention to make sure this cyber security, even the basic stuff like passwords and two factor authentication are being done properly. So one of the things I wanted to make sure you guys were aware of is I need to know when you're having these problems, because what I want to do is put together some trainings to show you exactly how to do it. Because on some websites you were saying, it's pretty hard to use one password he's paying for it, but it's kinda difficult for him. And I think in some ways, a lack of understanding. Then, it can be difficult to spend a bunch of time trying to watch some training videos for some of the software. And so I want to hear when you're having problems so I can do what I did for him this week and spend a little time, write some stuff up, and I even am reaching out to some of this website. People like bank of America who are really messing up cyber security for people who are trying to do the right thing and writing them and saying, Hey, listen, I'm part of the FBI InfraGard program. I'm a member of it. I paid a lot of attention to cybersecurity. Heck I ran the training for the FBI InfraGard program for a couple of years, and there are some real things lacking. In the login anyways, and this one particular case of the cybersecurity, but I don't know all of this stuff. I'm not using all of these things and I have a disadvantage over you guys, and that is that I've been doing this for so long. I've forgotten what it's like to not know it. Does that make sense? So if you have something that I've talked about on the show, that's appeared in my newsletter and you're having some confusion over, let me know. Just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. What he did is he just hit reply to my newsletter. And of course, that goes to me and me@gregpeterson.com and it tracks it. So I know I need to reply, so I can sit down and go through and answer people's questions. I sent out a lot of the copies of my password, special report to people you guys had requested specifically some of the. People out there had requested a little bit of help. And I had sent out an email to most of the people that I could identify as being business people. I sent out a little thing saying, Hey, listen, if you could use half-hour my help, let me know myself or my team. And then, again, you can just send me an E Craig. So I answered a lot of those questions this week. And in fact, that's how I come up with much of what I cover here on the show. You guys ask the questions and that's how I know that it's a real problem. If I understand it, that's one thing. But for the people who don't do cybersecurity as their primary job or a strategy, I get it. I can get why you guys are confused. So make sure you get my weekly newsletter. So you can find out about all of the trainings, the free stuff, the paid courses, and. It's easy. Just go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. That's Craig Peterson, P E T E R S O N. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. And I'm more than glad. Add you to that list. And there are now thousands of people on that list to get my email pretty much every week. If you miss it one week, it's probably, cause I just got too busy, but I put out all my show notes. I put it all a little bit of training notes, all. The us government is supposedly getting ready to fire what they're calling cyber bullets in response to these significant hacking attacks. This is what they're calling a comprehensive strategy to dissuade. Adversaries. And this is all from the national cyber security director, Chris Inglis. This is from an article in American military news.com by Chris Strome. That was out this week. And of course I included that in my newsletter this week as well, coming out. Today or tomorrow, depends on how this all goes right with the weekend. I got to help a buddy out today, but president Joe Biden has been really talking about how do we use cyber weapons to retaliate. For instance, he gave a list of industries that Russia should not be. As though Putin himself is running all of these hacks or come out of Russia. Yeah, certainly there are some that are part of their military, but there many of them that are just bad guys that are trying to make some money, we should feel sorry for them. So Biden gives him this list and says, Hey, listen, if you attack any of these various industries or actually portions of our economy, We are going to retaliate. We have seen the us retaliate under President Trump and the retaliation. Of course he did all kinds of economic stuff to stop it. And much of which has been reversed by president Biden's administration, but also he attacked them directly in. Down some power systems there in the Moscow area, which I thought was really kinda cool. So kudos to President Trump for doing that and for president and Biden now to say, Hey, we are going to attack back. Of course. The biggest question is. What would we be attacking? How would we be attacking it? And for what reason, for instance, the red Chinese have gone after our office of personnel management, OPM records and got them all back in 2015. So they now know everything about everybody that had a secret security clearance or the took a paycheck from the federal government. All of those records, they would get their hands on them and get them on all of the records a lot. So Inglis was in front of the let's see here, the, yeah, he was a former director of the national security agency. He's the first to hold his Senate-confirmed position at the white house, this national cyber director position. And he says there is a sense that we can perhaps fire some cyber bullets and shoot our way out of this English set at the conference. It was hosted by the way, by the national security agency and a nonprofit group, he said that will be useful in certain circumstances. If you had a clear shot at a cyber aggressor and I can take them offline, I would advise that we do so as long as the collateral effects are acceptable. Yeah. What we have done here under president Biden administration is we have shut down some people who were operating illegally, we have shut down some cyber actors that were attacking us. So we've been doing that, but it isn't exactly. Wow. We just saw a muzzle flash over there. And so we are returning fire to the area of that muzzle flash, because as I've said many times before, we just don't know. Where in fact that bullet is coming from, it makes it a lot more difficult. English went on to say there's a larger set of initiatives that have to be undertaken. Not one of those elements is going to be sufficient to take this. Out let's see here, the us should make clear to Russia now their adversaries, what kinds of attacks would prompt a response, which is what president Biden did when he was talking with, of course, President Putin over there, red lines of both good and bad red lines are clear and crisp. Although I got to say many of our administrations have. Really done anything about it. It's the red line in the sand and Syria president Obama didn't do anything when they stepped over that red line. So yeah. And then with what we just finished doing in Afghanistan, where we drew a red line and said, we're going to protect all of you who helped us. And then we not only abandoned them, but we abandoned Americans behind there. I don't think a lot of people aren't going to believe us. So here's the last statement here. And again, this is an article in American military news from our cyber chief is the government actions. Aren't always going to be broadcast. In some cases, it's not helpful to broadcast those for all of mankind to see another one. We are doing some things behind the scenes. And I have certainly seen some of the results of those over the last few years. Stick around.  You're listening to Craig Peterson online@craigpeterson.com. You've got a smartphone and there are some new versions out, right? New hardware, new software, Android iOS. How long should you keep that device? How long can you stay safe with that older device? Apple has now done something. Different something they've never done before. One of the reasons that apple equipment tends to be safer than almost anything else out there is that they have, what's known as a closed ecosystem. There's arguments both directions here on whether that's safer or not. But the real advantage when it comes to cybersecurity is there are only. So many versions of the iPhone out there. What are we now in a couple of dozen versions of the hardware platform that makes it easier for apple to be able to support older versions of the software and multiple pieces of hardware, much easier than for, let's say Microsoft windows. It doesn't even have a single. Platform or Android, where there are hundreds of hardware platforms out there and tens of thousands of versions of the hardware, because one model phone can contain many. Changes different types of hardware to talk to the cell towers or the screen you name it. So it's very hard to keep up. Android has for quite a while now supported three versions of their operating system. Of course, we're talking about Google, but Android operating system. So they support the current release. Of Android and the Breviary release is two previous releases in fact of Android. Now that is frankly a pretty good thing to know, but there's over a billion Android devices out there that are no longer supported by security updates. We've got Android 10, nine, and eight that are fairly supported right now. We're actually up to Android 12. So here's how it works. If you've got Android version 10 out, if that's the main one, then you can continue to do. Eight and nine and get updates, security updates. But then here's the problem, everybody, those security updates are coming out of Google, but that does not mean that they are making it all the way to you. So there you go. It's one thing for Google to provide updates, but if you can't get them because your phone manufacturer is not supporting them, you've got trouble Samsung. Is probably the best company other than maybe Google and the Google Pixel phone. Samsung's the best company to go to. If you want some longer-term support. Many of these other companies just don't provide support past the current version. So keep that in mind as well. Android 12 was the 12th major version of Android announced by Google, February, 2021. And it is starting to roll out a Android. The 11th, 11 is the one that was out in February of last year. At least it was announced then. And we're, they're coming out, they're getting pushed out. So basically Google is saying the current version plus two prior versions. And that usually gives you about a four or maybe even a five year window. So if you're. An Android device from a major manufacturer, particularly Samsung on the Android side, your device is going to be good for at least four years, maybe five years now on the, and by the way, you don't necessarily have to upgrade the. You could be continuing to run an older release saw, as I mentioned earlier, if it version 11 is the current one that's out there being supported, which it is right. 12 is early still, but version 11, that means two prior versions still get security updates. You don't get featured. Dates, you don't get the new stuff, but you get security updates. So Android 11, the current one that means 10 and nine get security updates. So you don't, you're not being forced to do an upgrade. Most people don't upgrade their phones from an older major release to a newer major release. In other words, they don't try and go from Android eight to Android 11. Because in fact, most of the time, the hardware manufacturer doesn't support it. That's why there's over a billion Android devices out there right now that cannot get security updates. So have a look at your phone and your vendors. See what you're running. You probably want to do an update because most phones cannot get any support on the, in the apple side. Things are a lot different with Apple iOS, which is the operating system used on the iPhone and the I pad apple has always forced you to move to the next major version. No, they only force you to do that. If they support the hardware. And I've got to say kudos to them, they're still supporting the iPhone six S which came out quite a while. The iPhone success is something that my wife has been using and that I had as well. In fact, she got my old iPhone success, but that's a six-year-old. Phone came out in September of 2015. So it is still getting security updates, and we'll probably continue to get them. Not only is it getting security update this six-year-old iPhone success is getting the latest and our iOS operating system. It's getting iOS 15. Isn't that just amazing? Yeah, exactly. And so not just security updates, like you might get from some of the other vendors out there, Android vendors. So the apple keeps their arms around you for quite a while. Here's, what's changed now with Apple and iOS, the, for the first time ever in the iOS world, Apple is not forcing you to upgrade. So you're not being forced to upgrade to iOS 15. You can continue to run iOS 14. And that's how apples got around the security patches in the past, because what happens is you get the updates and installs them. Basically. There's no reason for you not to upgrade your phone. And so you do so apple never had to worry about releasing some of these fixes for really old versions of iOS. Although they have done that from time to time. In the Mac iOS side, Apple has done a couple of good things. The, where they always have supported basically three releases, what Google's doing with Android. So you now have a new feature. If you will, with iOS, here's a PSA for everyone. Public service announcement. You don't have to take the iOS 15 upgrade. Now I did. I put it on my iPhone and I seem to have some sort of a problem with messages where it's telling people that my phone has notifications turned off, which it does not. So I haven't figured that one out yet. I'll have to look into that a little bit more, but. This is nice because that means you're not going to have to upgrade your iPhone to iOS 15. You'll still get security updates for iOS 14, something Apple's never done before. We'll see if they continue this. We will see if they match Google going back. Three releases in Android. It just never been done before over on the iOS. So good news for them. Also course in the windows world and the Mac world, you really should upgrade the operating system as much as you can. Windows 11 though, man, windows 11. And I said this to my newsletter. I warned you guys is going to be a nightmare. For many people. You are not going to be able to do an automatic upgrade unless you have the newest of hardware, with the highest end of features, Craig peterson.com. One of the very big ransomware operations is back online. And now we have some inside information from one of the contractors working for this ransomware organization and oh yeah, there's an FBI tie, too.. This organization, ransomware gang, almost business, whatever you might want to describe them as is known as revolt. They have a few other names, but that's the really big one. And they are basically the 800 pound gorilla in the ransom. Business, you might be using cloud services right now. Maybe you use Microsoft's email service. Their Microsoft 360, I think, is what they call it now and use it for email and various other things pretty handy. It's mostly in the cloud. Computers you own or operate or have to maintain. I think that makes some sense too, but here's the bottom line it's software as a service right now, salesforce.com software as a service, Oracle has their accounting stuff. QuickBooks online, all software as a service. It isn't just those legitimate businesses that I just mentioned. That are using the cloud that are providing software as a service where you're paying monthly or however frequently. And you're getting this software as a service. That's what that means. Typically it means it's in the cloud and you don't have any real control over it. That's what this ransomware gang has been doing. This gang known as rebill. They all appear to be in. And there's some interesting stuff. That's come out. A transcript was released of an interview with one of their contractors. Now the original interview was in Russian. So I read through a translation of the Russian. I have no idea how good it is, but it is being quoted by a bank. Insider magazine that you might be familiar with bank info, security. That's one of the places that I follow. And there's a few interesting things that he talked about that I want to get into, but these are the people who have been behind things like the colonial pipeline attack and some of the other very large attacks, the way they work, their business model is. You can license their software, their ransomware software, and you go after a business or a government agency, whatever it might be, you get that ransomware software inside. And the reveal gang will take a percentage of the money that you have in rent. Now, how is that for a, an interesting business model, right? Taking something that the rest of the world has been using, and then take that model and put it into the legal side of the world. For three weeks, during this whole reveal ransomware attack, this summer turns out that the FBI secretly withheld the key that could have been used to decrypt. And computers that reveal had infected with ransomware and looks like kids up to maybe 1500 networks. Now those are networks, not just computers. That includes networks run by hospitals, schools, and businesses, including critical infrastructure businesses. The way the FBI got their hands on this decryption game. Is by penetrating reveal gangs servers. So they got into it. They were able to grab the keys and then the FBI waited before. Did anything with it. See, what they were trying to do is catch the people behind reveal. And so they didn't want to release information, get information out there to the press that might tip off those bad guys over there in Russia. And then shut down their operations. But as you might know, because I mentioned it here before the reveal gang went offline on July 13th, before the FBI could really track them down. And then the FBI didn't release the key until July 21st. And then I think it was Malwarebytes released a decryption tool. So if you had been hacked by the gang, you could. Now, remember it isn't reveal itself. That's doing most of them. Ransomware hacking if you will or a placement it's small guys. And that's why some people, including this contractor that apparently worked for the reveal gang itself says, people think that it's the Russian government, that it's Putin, that's doing this. He said, in fact, it's not it's small guys. And people like me are getting four or five hours a night. Because we're working so hard trying to make a whole of this work, come up with the new software approaches. We have to provide code tech support unquote to our affiliates, as well as tech support to the people who have had their computers and their data ransomed. So it a real interesting mix. Absolutely. Interesting mix. Now Christopher Ray here a couple of weeks ago, he's the FBI director told Congress that cool. We make these decisions as a group, not unilaterally. To the FBI and working with other government agencies, these are complex decisions designed to create maximum impact. And that takes time and going against adversaries, where we have to marshal resources, not just around the. But all over the world. So this Russian based gang first appeared in 2019, they've been around, they've been exporting large amounts of money from businesses for a very long time. One of the interest he'd things I think about all of this is that this reveal gang has their software as a service, and they provide it to quote affiliates, quote that, go ahead and then install the software, get you to install it on your computers in order to ransom you a double whammy ransom you, but there's now reports out there that there's a secret back door in the ransomwares code that allow. Rebill to go around their affiliates and steal the proceeds. How's that for hilarious, you've got a bad guy who goes in and gets the software from revolt, pays them a commission, and then reveal apparently has been jumping in on these customer support chats. In other words, you just got nailed and because you got nailed with ransomware, you have to go to. Chat room. And so you go in there and you're getting customer support on how to buy Bitcoin and how to transfer to their wallet. And apparently revival is getting right in the middle and is extorting money from these people directly instead of having the affiliates do it pretty amazing. So here's this part of this interview? It was aired on the Russian news outlet, London. And was trans translated by yeah. Flashpoint. Here are the guys that got the full transcript of the interview. He says in the normal world, I was called a contractor, doing some tasks for many ransomware collectives that journalists considered to be famous. Money is stolen or extorted with my hands, but I'm not ashamed of it. I do. And again, this goes into the thinking of many of these bad guys of Americans are all rich and they don't deserve what they have. He said, let's put it this way. This is a very time consuming job. And if you've earned enough, then you can quit the game. But chronic fatigue, burnout, deadline. All of these words from the life of ordinary office workers are also relevant for malware developers. So there you go. You should feel sorry for these malware developers who are developing software to steal millions from you and. Down our critical infrastructure. Hey, join me online. Craig peterson.com. And if you subscribe to my weekly newsletter right there on the site, I'll send you a few of my special reports. The most popular ones will come to you right there in your email box. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. We all pretty much have some form of insurance. And we're going to talk right now about the types of cyber insurance you may have. Now this might be through your homeowners policy or perhaps a rider on a business policy.  Many of our homeowners policies have started coming with cyber insurance. So we're going to talk about that. What is it? Businesses as well are also using cyber insurance and I'm sure you've heard of insurance basically called LifeLock and what that's all about. So let's kind of start. When we have a breach in a business, usually what happens is information about our customers is stolen. Look at some of the biggest breaches in history where we. Hundreds of millions of our personal records stolen Equifax breach is an example of a huge breach where we had all kinds of personal information that was stolen by the bad guys. Now, some of this information gets stale pretty quickly, but of course, other parts of it like our address, our social security number, they are probably not going to change for years. If for. No, of course our social security number will never change the social security administration. Just doesn't reissue them for very many reasons at all. And they do not reissue a social security number was stolen online because. Just about everybody's has, so what does a company like LifeLock do? They keep an eye on your credit report for you. And they're looking at what's going on new accounts that are open. They look at various other things, just related to that. And they, at that point say, wait a minute, something weird is happening. Now my credit cards, for instance, I have a credit card that if let's say I buy two of the same thing, one after the other and the, both the same price that credit card company pops a message right up on my phone saying, Hey, did you just buy two? Of these $15 things from and I can say yes or no, if I'm out on the road and I am purchasing gas, the credit card can pop up on my phone and it does and say, Hey, will you just trying to buy gas at this gas station? Because what'll happen as you use the credit card at the pump. And the pump says it was denied and then up at pops and yeah. Okay. No, that was me. And they said, okay, we'll try the transaction. Okay. And we'll approve it next time. And that's all automated. And that has nothing to do with LifeLock. LifeLock is there to more or less detect that something happened and if something happened and it was a bad guy and basically your identity was stolen. So they might be trying to buy a Ferrari in your name or maybe a 10 year old, four Ford focus, whatever it might be. And. They will help you try and clean it. That's what they do. So that's why it's cheap. And I don't know that it's terribly useful to you if you're really concerned. Go ahead and do that, but do keep an eye on your credit report. I do as well. My bank has free credit reporting for me, my credit card. Same thing. Free credit reporting that lets me know everything that's going on. So that's an easy way to tell WhatsApp. And there are different types of cyber insurance beyond this sort of thing, beyond the LifeLocks of the world. And many of us just get our cyber insurance through our homeowner's policy. It's a little rider. And businesses can buy cyber insurance as well. We have cyber insurance, that's underwritten by Lloyd's of London and we provide a $500,000 or million-dollar policy to our clients. As well, because that's what we do is cyber security, right? So the idea is if one of our clients gets hit, we have some insurance to back us up, but of course we go a lot further. It's almost like the LifeLock where if you do get hit by ransomware or something else, we will help you get back in business. We'll help restore your data. We'll help you with providing you. The information you need in order to do press releases, which agencies you need to contact, which of your customers you need to contact. And we've got scripts for all of that. So you can send it all out and just take care of it. So the idea is you don't want ransomware. So you hire us. We are extremely likely to keep ransomware out of your systems. And on top of that, if you are hit with ransomware, we restore everything. LifeLock does not do that. Obviously they all, I'll only do stuff after the fact and the cyber insurance you buy from an insurance agency is much the same, and there's a huge caveat with these policies that we're buying for our businesses and for our homes. And that is. They have a checklist at the insurance companies. Did you do this and this? And if you did, then they might payout if you did not, they may not payout. In fact, pay outs on cyber insurance policies are not known because. Bottom line. They really don't payout. Okay. I'm looking at some numbers right now and about paying ransoms and everything else. You may or may not. You got to have a look at it. Many of these policies are never paid out by the cyber insurance covers. They usually just regular insurance companies, but it's a special rider. And what they do is they say, Hey, listen, you did not follow the rules, so we're not going to payout. And there are many cases. If you go online and do a search, just use duck, go and say cyber insurance, payout. Lawsuits I'm doing that right now is. And it'll come up and show. Oh, okay. Does it cover lawsuits? Why are liability claims so costly? Yeah, exactly. A 2% payouts is talking about here. I'm invoicing, the most common cyber insurance claim denial. Yeah, it goes on and on. There are a lot is an act of war clause could nix cyber insurance payouts. That's another big one that they've tried to use. So the cyber insurance company will say, Hey, that was China attacking you. Therefore it was an act of. And you can bet if there is a big hack, they will use that. Think of what happens with the hurricanes coming onshore. How much do they push back on payouts? Especially with the real big one, it would bankrupt them. So we gotta be very careful. There are some different types of  cyber insurance. Policies do which have different types of coverages. You've got the first party lost loss, I should say. So that's you to covering you and your loss, your first-party expenses, third party liability. Each one of those has specific parameters. So sub-limit retention and others. First-party losses are usually including the loss of revenue due to business interruption. First party expenses would include all of the services and resources that you needed to use to recover from attack like forensic or system rebuilding services. These third-party liabilities. May cover expenses and legal fees related to potential damage caused by the incident to third parties like partners, customers, or employees whose sensitive information may have been compromised. So read them carefully. Be very careful. There are next-generation, cyber insurance policies are going even further and make these types of services. Prior to any incident to reduce exposures and prevent incidents in the first place. Now we don't provide insurance. We are not an insurance company, but that's basically what we're trying to do here. Not become an insurance company, but to make sure. The businesses have the right services so that the likelihood of anything happening or is extremely low. And then following up after the fact it's different obviously than insurers in and insurance, the guardians, Jessica Crispin had a great article about a couple of weeks ago that I've been hanging on. And it's talking about this tattle where that's been incorporated into the computers we're using at home. Now we're specifically talking about employers that are putting this. The software on computers, they belong to the companies. A lot of businesses are worried. If workers are at home or where we can't see them, how do we know that they're actually working, not watching Netflix or something else on. They have, of course, come up with software that can reassure your boss. It does things like take snapshots of what you're doing. Record your keystrokes grabs photos from. Picture from your camera. There's a new program called sneak, which makes your webcam take a photo of you about once a minute and makes available to the supervisor to prove you're not away from your desk. There's no warning in advance. It just takes that photograph catches your doom. Pretty much anything can be absolutely anything. Then, it's the type of thing you'd expect the national security agency to do. So there are some good reasons for this lack of trust because sometimes employees have not been doi

We often hear real estate investing referred to as passive income. But we feel that can be misleading sometimes. Depending on the cycle of your investment periods, the asset class you are in, and the condition of the properties you are acquiring, real estate investing can require different levels of involvement.  In this episode, we discuss what that level of involvement can look like in these different scenarios and how you can turn the dials to adjust your strategy to accommodate your desired level of activity.  --- 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 up everybody Michael Albaum here from The Remote Real Estate Investor. And today I'm joined by my co host,   Tom: Tom Schneider.   Michael: And today Tom and I are going to be talking about why is real estate investing referred to as a passive activity and the benefits some of the benefits that it yields referred to as passive income, we're gonna be talking about how passive investing in real estate actually is. So let's get into it.   Alright, Tom, share with me a quick update about what's going on in your world. A little portfolio update, if you would,   Tom: Oh, so I've mentioned before building a little, shed a little office shed, bottom of the lot, it is coming along. contractors are busy as all get up. But I have secured I'm in line, I'm in the queue, I'm the next person in the queue for my concrete guy. And then for the contractor actually going to putting it together. Next in queue there. So this is a symphony of development. This is my first development ground up development project. And it's just in the corner.   My wife's been asked to get it's a good way to frack totally, like totally, it's, um, you know, on my own whatever, project manager, whatever GM on the site, and it's timing from the materials getting ready from the company, that's prefabricating, the shell, the shed the site team that's doing the actual, like concrete stuff. And, you know, at first in doing this project, and like, yeah, this isn't really real estate investing. But the more that I do it, the more it's like, oh, these are totally muscles that you know, yeah, some some land up development stuff. So anyways, it's it's going along well, that is kind of the extent of my activities as it relates to investing. Right now is some value add stuff at my primary residence.   Michael: That's awesome. And I wish I had done something like that. Before I started my total redevelopment projects, I had a goose egg experience doing that kind of stuff. So that's, that's really cool.   Tom: Yeah, go getting it somewhere. Yeah. And yourself, Michael?   Michael: So I'm in the midst of a 1031 exchange, I'm selling a value add property that I added some value to out in the Midwest, and I'm buying a couple short term rentals via that 1031 exchange. And, man, the timing of it is just like so tight. So I'm scheduled to close on the down like property, the property that I'm selling by Friday or Saturday, and then purchase the new property on Tuesday. And I timed that. So I'm well within my 45 day window, but I didn't realize how tight it was actually going to be. So if one, if the sale of mine gets pushed out a little bit, I might have to scale or slide the purchase a day or two, which I'm hoping doesn't happen, but just really trying to line everything up to be as seamless as possible. But I'm excited to get into the short term rental space.   Tom: Exciting, juggle, juggle, juggle. That's it. That's it. timing. Yeah, very cool.   Michael: All right. So let's start picking this apart. So a lot of people have referred to real estate investing as passive investing or real estate investing generates passive income. And I'm curious to get your thoughts around how passive you think it truly is. And is it black and white, or are there shades of gray here?   Tom: So the way that I would describe it to a friend is, you can get to the point where it can be a pretty passive source of income. But realistically, like upfront, there's, there's some work to do. So in cycles of ownership of the property, there are going to be ones that are more busy. So when a property when you're doing your acquisitions, I'm going to I'm going to spend a good amount of time evaluating properties submitting offers, managing the transaction, stuff getting financed, lined up.   So in that upfront part of the process, definitely not an extremely passive process and even up to the point if you're buying it vacant, and perhaps there's some renovation work that needs to be done, I'm going to poke my nose into that process. Either managing contractors with my property manager or managing them directly. That's not a super passive process. And then going up into the editing process where you're working with your property manager to set rent, where they are marketing the property.   I mean, I'm at the point now with my property managers where I have an established relationship where I trust them to run with stuff but getting off the ground. I'm a little bit more hands on so the other kind of property lifecycle where it's time consuming is some construction thing comes up and I will usually with my property manager, that what's called a not to exceed limit and NTE, am I using that right i think so anyways, Start with the cost. Yeah, yeah,   Michael: Let's run with it.   Tom: If the cost is above a certain dollar, I'll say hey, I want to know about it like this could be a repair replace decision, where I did least like to provide some input, you know, I'll you know, talk to you the local property manager. The other high time commitment not passive is it repeats again, right, the tenant moves out goes back into construction. So a property can be occupied for a long period of time that is relatively passive and not really doing a lot except for opening the proverbial mailbox and seeing the rent check come in. However, though, there like is a good amount of time that it's not necessarily passive. So I think it's a little bit of a misnomer, the passive term that is often applied to it, just because especially in the upfront and some of these major milestones you can be a little bit more involved in, as you start building your profile, go from one to five, to 10, to 20, there really can be a lot more involved in it. I mean, I enjoy, I enjoy it, I think it's fun, you know, but it's definitely   Michael: It's because your sick in the head like me!   Tom; Because I'm sick in the head! The other time where it's not so passive. I'm sorry, Michael, I'm stealing just all the fodder, I'm just like,   Michael: I should never have given you my notes.   Tom: You shouldn't, you should have spoke first, all the points and then anything else. The other pretty time consuming event is tax time. And I think I've complained about this before, on where you're, you're collecting all these different documents and passing them on to your CPA, you're collecting your 1099 from your property manager, your 1098 from your mortgage, if you have a mortgage, and all these other documents. So that can be a little bit time consuming.   But you know where I'm at right now, I don't spend a whole lot of time and that I have a portfolio that's been humming along for a while. So I'm not necessarily doing acquisitions. I'm doing land development on my own personal primary. So Alright, Michael, I'll stop stealing all the points that we talked about before the episode. So go ahead, Michael.   Michael: That was great. You covered everything episode done. Thank you. Just real quick plug, something that you mentioned around tax time is if someone is using Stessa, they'll likely have a much easier time come tax time, because so many of those documents can be housed there and then sent directly over to their CPAs. But I think you nailed it. I think that's definitely a misnomer, calling it passive income. For all the reasons you mentioned that I'll just kind of share an anecdote from when I started investing, because I think it's it's a very common way that people get started investing.   So I started buying very turnkey single family homes in Southern California. And so the first one I bought was was relatively new build was a couple of years old, and was turnkey, ready for a tenant. So we got a tenant in place. And then I was freaking out until we actually got that tenant place, which took about a month, just because of the timing, that of what I bought the property. And so once you got a tenant in place, I was very hands on on the property manager trying to keep tabs on everything that was going on, because I didn't know any better. After a couple months of that it was very, that it was versus very passive. I mean, the property didn't need any work, that tenant was placed. And it was just one single property. So there wasn't a whole lot for me to actually do.   Now I would keep tabs on what the property manager would send over her reports every month and see, okay, what were the expenses and plug that into my spreadsheet and see how close was I in guesstimating, what my pro forma was going to be. So I spent 20 minutes a month, just checking up on things, reviewing the reports. And then I added a second property to the mix. And that was new construction brand new build.   So very similarly, there just wasn't a whole lot of stuff going on with that. And so there was the same property manager in the same market. So now I just had two properties on that monthly report as opposed to one. So okay, I spent 25 minutes reviewing that once a month, then added a third property. And that was my first add a state investment. And so that was a couple duplexes. And very similarly, it was fairly turnkey, fairly new builds about 10 years old. And so already tenants in place, there's just wasn't a whole lot for me to do in terms of being an active manager or managing the manager, so to speak. So I had property managers for all of these.   And that was kind of the case for a lot of my investing. And so the more turnkey I think you buy, oftentimes, the easier it is from the ownership and operational side of things. And there's really not a whole lot to do so to speak other than make sure things aren't going off the rails.   It wasn't until I started getting really heavily invested in value add projects that I was having to manage a lot of what you were mentioning with your with your shed is managing contractors keeping tabs of okay who's doing what and when and keeping tabs on your property managers because they're much more involved with that process on a day to day basis than I am but getting update reports, checking in seeing what happened, what works scheduled it and make sure things are actually getting done. And then following up and seeing what things are renting for how soon are they getting rented this kind of thing. So because that's been my life, up to my eyeballs for the last Three, four or five years, it's just been a lot, I've been much busier in that capacity. But now that things are starting to slow down from a project standpoint, it's definitely becoming more passive.   And I have a four-plex that I've talked about on previous episodes, and took that down to the studs total, I mean, brand new build, essentially. And that is very much humming along because there's not a whole lot that occurs on that property, knock on wood. So I talked to my manager about getting it pre leased and pre marketed and what the rent should be and how we're going to push rents and this kind of a thing, but that's only when the leases come due, so four times a year for that for those four units. So from that perspective, it can be very, very passive.   Tom: It's just a great kind of a point in that I think your there always is going to be some time constraints kind of based where you know where the property is, but there is a little bit of a menu of how much how not passive or, you know, by the type of property that the condition of the property so depending on you know, what type of investment that you're looking for, you know, for me looking for a property you know, maybe turnkey maybe some light work that needs to be done but ultimately, you know, a minimal time investment beyond those major events you know, acquisitions terms, what that versus you were, I have an appetite for a little bit more stuff and up to your eyeballs at points in times. But I mean, like life, there's, you know, there's ebbs and flows of…   Michael: I thought I had an appetite for, until I threw up, but that's neither here nor there. I think, Michaels, Uber says it really well, too. He talks about regularly. And in his book, he talks about taking on all these value add projects, and in hindsight, he wish teachers would have bought more turnkey. And so like you mentioned, you can really dial it up or down how much time and involvement you want to have. But you'll either pay for it or receive a discount. And so I think a lot of people end up buying properties on the cheaper end of the spectrum and given markets that probably do need work, but expect it to have the same time requirement as a turnkey property. And I just think that's a very big misalignment of expectations.   So you really need to understand what does this type of property What does this class of property look like in terms of my time requirement in terms of capital requirement? Because I think people often knock turnkey investments Oh, they're all the equities already been sucked out. Yeah. But if someone doesn't have the time to go manage it, or deal with the headaches or deal with the projects that are needed, like I think it's it can be a really great avenue for people. And so that's I think one of the beauties of real estate is you have this broad spectrum and depending on who you are and where you're looking to go there's likely something for you.   Tom: Yeah, and the other you know thing about these you know, massive project type properties kind of against people who say oh, you know, all the values already been sucked out for these properties that are already in good shape, the concept of beta where in taking on a project that has a property that has a big project, sometimes those costs can go over like and you can you know, end up buying this property that you're thinking you're gonna squeeze out some extra value but instead you're actually just squeezing a bunch of extra work and then your costs are going over I mean, it's really easy to look at these projects with some pink rosy glasses and thinking that you're getting some extra value but when in fact you're just doing more work and oh, materials costs are up Oh, your contractors timing so it's vacant for longer like me I don't think that's really the purpose of this episode so I'd like to expunge upon or talk about the value of slightly more turnkey properties   Michael: Vut that's where it ended up!   Tom: That's where it ended up.   Michael: I mean, I Case in point like Exhibit A myself that for that four Plex I was talking about as we got into the property started taking off the sheetrock. My contractor calls me goes look, Michael, the electrical and plumbing is all done very poorly. So this needs all new electrical and all new plumbing throughout, that wasn't in the scope of the project. So that's $40,000 that was not accounted for. Like that you pay for it now pay for it later kind of thing. So absolutely. I think big risk, big reward potential but also big risk for things to go sideways and get overhead get over your head and over your skis fairly quickly.   Michael: And less passive back to the original topic.   Top: Back to the original topic. So now kind of getting getting through some of the other asset classes I'm fortunate enough to own a couple double net and triple net leased properties. And if anyone doesn't know what that is, I highly encourage you to go check it out. You can Google it, it's abbreviated n n capital or N N N for double net and triple net lease respectively. That is about as passive as you can get in my opinion, with still being a direct owner. Now you can go invest in syndications or funds or crowdfunding any of that kind of stuff, which is truly passive, I mean, it's like stock market investing, you set it and forget it type of a thing, you're not a decision maker, you don't get to decide when things are done, ie being a decision maker, but double net and triple net leased properties often come with very, very little landlord obligations or responsibilities, if any. And so that in my opinion is is another definition of mailbox money. And if somebody is interested, again, highly recommend going and check check stuff out online about those   Tom: And those leases are almost always you know, commercial or retail shop right?   Michael: Exactly at the CVS is the Walgreens the McDonald's, the Carl's juniors. A lot of these companies will use utilize triple net leases and not actually own the property. And so it's it's definitely a different beast different asset class unto itself, but still within the real estate space.   Tom: Future episodes thrown in the queue.   Michael: Let's do it. Let's do it. Hopefully you can't hear the dog snoring next to me.   Tom: Calming, it's calming   Michael: Soothing. Awesome. Tom, anything else before we get out of here.   Tom: Nope, I think that's pretty good. We got it.   Michael: Awesome. So takeaways, do your homework on the front end? Do the legwork. Get the train moving so that way it's easier on the back end. Alright everybody, that was our episode. Thanks, Tom. Always a pleasure to riff on these with you. If you liked the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review whatever it is listening your podcast with the chorusing on the next one. Happy investing.   Tom: Happy investing.

It is Nick and Monty this episode as we have a potential chaotic weekend ahead of us with the Nats being heavily involved in playoff implications... just not for themselves. Depending on other teams' performances, the Nats going 1-2 in this series would result in a 4 way tie for 2 playoff spots in the AL Wild card, resulting in plenty of subsequent madness heading into the playoffs. We breakdown all of those potential scenarios as well as chime in on the Nats' perspective on all of this as we recap their season. Listen in! Check out HalfStHighHeat.com for more content! Check out the new Half Street High Heat store! http://tee.pub/lic/xPZiUO89Le4 #Ad We are proud to announce that MANSCAPED™ has sponsored us at Half Street High Heat! Support for this podcast is brought to you by MANSCAPED™, who is the best in men's below-the-waist grooming.  MANSCAPED™offers precision-engineered tools for your family jewels. Use our promo code HSHH20 at checkout for 20% off your entire order plus free shipping at www.manscaped.com for a limited time! Follow us on Twitter: HSHH - @HalfStHighHeat Ryan, Host - @WeAreAllShack Amanda, Host - @AWhite7877 Nick, Host - @NationalsAce Monty, Editor - @Monty2740 Writers: CK - @CKNaim58 Tyler - @nonrosterinvite Matt - @HolleranMDH Danny - @Nats_Baseball See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's solo cast we're chatting about athlete depression.Today's Scout:- Name: Sydney Umeri (the host)- College: University of Virginia & University of Kansas- Sport: BasketballResource:- Journal In PodcastHousekeeping:- Website: www.retiredcollegeathletes.com- Instagram: @retiredcollegeathletes- Facebook: Retired College Athletes- YouTube: Retired College Athletes- Twitter: @RCAathletes- Email: retiredcollegeathletes@gmail.com- Patreon - If you love RCA and want to give financially to support the podcast you can do so through Patreon. Depending on what tier you give, you will receive exclusive content as a thank you for supporting us.

Chad talks to Leadership Coach and Founder of Plucky, Jen Dary, about working with individuals and companies to create healthy dynamics at work. In fact, Plucky just released a new product that aids in doing just that! Manager Weeklies are notebooks designed to help leaders intentionally set up their weeks and track progress. It includes tips and tricks, including useful 1:1 tools. Each notebook is designed to last one quarter. Follow Jen Dary on Twitter (https://twitter.com/jenniferdary) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-dary-46b0367/) Plucky (https://www.beplucky.com/) Manager Weeklies info & order link (https://shop.beplucky.com/products/manager-weeklies-2-pack) Newsletter: beplucky.com/newsletter (https://beplucky.com/newsletter) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Jen Dary, founder of Plucky. Jen, welcome back to the podcast. JEN: Thank you. My third time. Three time's a charm. I feel very lucky. CHAD: There aren't many people who have been on the podcast as guests three or more times. So you're in an ever-increasing select group of returning guests. JEN: Thank you. I feel like it's maybe because the Tokyo Olympics have just started, but I feel competitive and ready to take on this third session. CHAD: [laughs] So the last time you were on was October 28th, 2019 is when the episode came out. JEN: Millennia ago. CHAD: Not quite two years ago, but yeah, also a millennia ago. And that was Episode 342 so if people want to go back and take a listen to that. And then before that, you were on Episode 270, which I actually don't even know the date of. It was even longer. So welcome back. You are celebrating the eighth anniversary of Plucky. JEN: I know. I don't really think of it in these ways because I don't have an MBA, or I didn't come from a business background or anything. But definitely when I hit five years, I feel like my husband said something about that. He was like, "Honey, you should be really proud. Not a lot of businesses make it five years." And that was not really on my mind. But now that Plucky is eight, I feel like oh man, I'm just so happy to talk about how businesses evolve and how what you thought it was going to be in year one was different than year three, was different than year five, and of course, it's different than year eight. So we're eight years in, but nothing's the same, and everything's the same. I'm sure you've experienced that too. CHAD: It was actually the eighth year going into the ninth year mark that we at thoughtbot started to make big changes. And it was that idea of coming up on a decade. It started to feel like, wow, there's real momentum here. And instead of thinking about what the next year looks like, what does the next decade look like? And are we the kind of company that is going to last 20 years? And that put us in a different mindset. And I started to think about the impact we were having and the legacy that we would have. And was it big enough for the size of the company that we had? JEN: How old is thoughtbot right now? CHAD: We just celebrated our 18th anniversary. JEN: Oh my gosh. All right. Well, maybe at the very end, you can give me your best wisdom for the ninth year. [laughter] CHAD: Oh jeez. Okay. [chuckles] JEN: No presh, but tuck that in the back of your brain. CHAD: Yeah, get some sleep. That's my best advice. JEN: [laughs] Great. CHAD: That would be great. We can come back to that. JEN: Cool. CHAD: So obviously, it's been a big two years since we last talked. I'm sure a lot has progressed in Plucky. How have things changed? JEN: Well, what's funny is that the two years spread that we're talking about or 18 months or whatever it is, for the most part, overlaps with COVID so far. So by the end of 2019, things were cooking, and everything is good. And even, personally speaking, my youngest son would be entering kindergarten in the fall of 2020. Again, as a business owner, a mom, all those things I was sort of at the end of 2019 hot, so good. And then I was anticipating 2020 to be continued pretty much the same as is. Like, we would keep training managers. I would keep traveling. All that would get easier because the kids are getting bigger, then my kid would go to kindergarten. And I was also finishing a book about...I can't remember if we talked about this before, but I was really sick in 2016. I had a brain tumor diagnosis, and I'm okay now. It was benign. I had this memoir that was eh, I don't know, maybe two-thirds done. All that was the plan for 2020, Chad. And I'm sure this is shocking news to you, but none of it happened, including freaking kindergarten, obviously in person. So on the business side of things, I kept everything stable as best as I could. So coaching kept going because coaching has always been remote. We have some products, and we kept shipping those out as best we could. At the very beginning of COVID, when everybody thought it was this three, four-week hiatus from real life, I recorded a story every day. Because I was like, what can I do for all the world that's working? So I recorded a storytime for Plucky with my kids. And I put it out on social media so that working parents could have another 15 minutes of distraction for their kids. That's how cute I was back then. [laughter] After one month of that, I was like, I need somebody to read stories to my kids. Yikes. CHAD: Yeah. [laughs] JEN: So the big thing that changed was that our manager trainings in person obviously I had to cancel those. So I transitioned from in-person to virtual events, and that has continued. And as of this recording, end of July, I was thinking that our November event this year…it's the 20th cohort of So Now You're a Manager. I was going to have it in person. And just last week, I pulled the plug on that. And I was like, no, we're going to stay virtual a little bit longer because I don't know how to predict what the hell is coming. So again, that sort of stabilizing, right? Like, okay, well, now I know how to do the virtual. That will be the stable choice this year, which is weird to say, but true. CHAD: Yeah. So you just gave a great organic listing of the things that Plucky does, and a big part of that was that in-person So Now You're a Manager training, which, if people remember from the previous episodes, new managers at thoughtbot have attended over the years. It's a really great training for people who become managers. So what was transitioning that to remote like? Because you'd only ever done it in person before, right? JEN: Yeah, totally. The first 11 cohorts were in person, and then we got to 12, and that was supposed to happen in March in Atlanta. We canceled that, and it wasn't until June that we had the 12th, and that was the first virtual one. And to say that I needed to go through stages of grief is probably pretty accurate. [chuckles] My energy in person is so a thing, like a tool of mine and just pulling people together, and making safe space for conversations and all that jazz. So I was like, what the hell is that going to be like on Zoom? And meanwhile, remember I'm watching my first grader go through the shenanigans of Zoom for the end of that year. And I'm like, oh my God, how am I possibly going to get grown-ups on this and paying attention and not being distracted? So a couple of things, I will say number one is I definitely interviewed four or five people in the industry who are good at virtual events, and I tried to get their deepest wisdom about it. The second thing is that I made the cohorts smaller. So in person, we have around 20 to 22 max, and in virtual, we do 10 to 12 max. And so that got a lot smaller. Also, instead of being two days back to back, I broke it into three half days which is just a different ask. And I wasn't sure if people would bite at that. I tried to mimic it after how some people do an MBA on the side. So then they go to work, and they practice the stuff they're learning at the MBA. And so that has been my thought like, okay, you'll be with me basically for a month. We'll have three half days together, usually on a Friday. And then you're practicing in the meantime. So between the times I see you, you're improving your listening skills. You're coming back with anecdotes about hires or tough conversations or whatever. So I won't say that's like a silver lining, but it's just a different beast. And the first day I did it, I mean, I'm telling you, I was on the bathroom floor on my knees like, don't let the internet go out. CHAD: [laughs] JEN: I was so scared. I don't know why looking back. I'm in tech, but I'm not technical. It's my husband who helps me set up a monitor and whatnot. Oh God, I was so nervous. And I just thought, shit, this is the thing I can't problem-solve. If the internet goes out, I don't know what to do, but if someone's upset, I can help them. So it just brought all of my skills in a different environment. And now I feel pretty good about it. I don't know if you found this with your distributed company overall, but I have worked very hard to make sure that it's a blend, of course, this digital experience, but also I use the mail. I use snail mail a lot. So attendees get a packet before we begin. They get a gift at the end, a graduation gift. And yeah, I feel like I've learned a lot about how to have a hand-in-hand experience of digital as well as a physical object that they can touch to make that experience more than just a screen. CHAD: Yeah, I think that's important. How did changing the format, reducing the class size, what business ramifications were there for that? JEN: Well, it's way less money. [chuckles] CHAD: Right. Okay, sorry. JEN: No. Oh my God. I want to be very real about these things, especially for people starting their businesses. It's way less money. And also if you think about it, everybody had already bought tickets to Atlanta, and then they had already started buying tickets to...I can't remember what the next one was going to be, New York, I think. So for a lot of the year, everything was, I'll say, comped, but that's not really what's going on. All of a sudden, the amount of seats that I thought I was selling for the year got reduced in about half, and much of that were already pre-bought tickets. So, as a line item, that was way lower. I also think I got...man, I haven't really said this transparently to anybody before, but I'll say it here. I got really scared about what to charge. Do you charge the same thing virtually than you do in person? And so I lowered it, I would say for a year. I lowered it by a couple of hundred dollars for each ticket because I didn't know what the market wanted. And also, I didn't know, oh God, were businesses closing? Were people getting prof dev budgets? Everybody was frozen for a good while. So I'm lucky that now today I'm back up to the same price that it had been before, but it's not as much income per event. And the other thing I'll say which affects money…but again, I want to be transparent for other folks who think about or currently run businesses. One great thing to come out of some of the social unrest of last year is that we now have an equity scholarship for So Now You're a Manager. So in every cohort, be that virtually or in person, I always reserve a seat for someone who's coming from an underrepresented group, so people apply. And that is something that I very happily said I will eat the cost of that ticket because it's important to me to have different voices in the room. And that has been a total awesome thing this year. That just started in January of 2021, but that's something really great that came out of last year. CHAD: Yeah. What did you find that customers wanted, and did it change over time? Was there an appetite for it to be remote, or was there resistance to it? JEN: I think at first people were overwhelmed and didn't want it. That's why I held it from March until June until I thought people were ready. I can tell you categorically that I've had the lowest percentage of parents attend of all time because, let's be real, who wants another kind of obligation? Or also, parents during this time, especially with young children, were not in that growth space necessarily for work because there was so much to keep afloat. So other than the three half days, I also have this optional hour that I throw in just if people can come; there's this extra exercise that didn't fit in from the original curriculum. And I don't think I've had one parent, maybe one, come across all those cohorts that have been virtual to that. So the optional stuff I see parents opting out of. That said, I saw more folks who maybe either live alone or maybe have a roommate but who are pre-family or some people won't have families but someone who was socially like, "It was so hard and tiring last year." And that sort of swung back around towards the summer and end of summer. I saw much more interest there because I think people were really lonely. CHAD: Yeah. And I also think, at least for me personally and for thoughtbot, that was when the thinking definitely shifted that this wasn't going to be going away anytime soon. And so we came to terms with that and started to then make much more long-term plans and permanent changes. JEN: I think it was also in the...I want to say like early fall when Twitter announced they'd be remote. Like, they have an office, but they wouldn't oblige anyone to ever come back again. And whenever that decision was made, there were a couple of other companies...At that point, I was still living in the Bay Area, and there were a couple of other companies that made similar suggestions. And so again, to your point, there was a revisioning of what the next phase was like or at least what to expect. And so, I think people weren't holding out to go back to normal. It was like, what's the new normal? CHAD: Yeah. So when we first shut down offices and went remote, we were giving updates every two weeks, and then it changed to every month. And then it would be like, "There's really no change. We're going to give another update in April." And then April was, "We'll give another update in May." And when it came to June, we just said, "We're planning on being in this mode for at least the end of the year. Let's start all acting and make this sustainable." So that is when our thinking changed too. JEN: Did you feel like with your CEOness and business responsibility over there...what kept you grounded for all that thing? Because obviously every time you make that announcement or regardless of whether that's in person or just...I don't even know– retention or whatever it is. It feels like you're just building strategy on freaking quicksand. CHAD: It wasn't easy. You feel responsible for everybody's well-being, both financially and everything else. And so the lack of stability…you want to provide it in an unstable world. You want to say, "Well, at least you shouldn't have to worry about this. Let's provide…" but it was impossible to do. And I'm much more comfortable with uncertainty. I think there's a spectrum of comfortableness with uncertainty, and I'm pretty far on one end of it, and even I was struggling. Same thing with like I'm very much on the spectrum of not having to worry about anxiety or anything like that, and even I was feeling it. And so I was just like...at one point I said to I think it was Diana or whatever "If I'm feeling this, if I'm getting chest palpitations, [laughs] something's really wrong, and we really need to pay attention to how everybody else is feeling." JEN: Oh, yeah. I even saw that anxiety obviously with coaching clients. There are some clients that when budgets dried up, there was like an initial drop-off, I would say March, April. But then I feel very lucky that the pipeline was still very strong, and I had clients stay with me or join or whatever. You remember as well as anybody not only did we have this health crisis going on, which again we still do but my last class...So third of three of the cohort in May last year was a couple of days after George Floyd's murder. And the responsibility I felt too...like, when all these things were going on last summer, it was like, who freaking cares about anything? It's like these huge things. And you start to say nothing matters. There are only three things that matter in life. And then you kept sort of recycling the drain on that. So here I am going into teaching the third of three classes. And during the third class, I always teach concepts on how to hire, concepts on how to lay someone off and fire someone, which everyone's always very barfy and nervous about. And I try to bring us together and graduate us in what feels like a victorious moment. But that's three days after George Floyd's murder, and everyone is reeling and needing to process. And I remember thinking that morning, I don't know how this is going to go because I was fully willing to rip up the plan and do something different. But at the same time, there's also sometimes they want some structure. Folks want to just show up and take this class and be distracted from what's going on in the world. So we sort of talked about this a few minutes before we started recording but really, what has been fascinating and challenging about continuing to train managers over the last two years is that these very large things are going on in the background: George Floyd's murder, a lot of social unrest in Minneapolis, the election, COVID, all these things. And you can't just put that away and show up to manager training. It is freaking relevant because it is relevant for them. Of course, it's very meta, but all of my students are then going to go back and be responsible for 3, 5, 7 other people in their day-to-day work. So it was really wild, but again, stretching and a challenge that I met with a lot of intention. I don't know if I was always super successful at it, but I thought a lot about it. CHAD: Yeah, I think that was the shift that we saw on our team. And what I've heard from people is that enough is enough in several different categories of things. And like, we just can't keep on doing what we were doing before. It's not working, and it is unacceptable. People are angry too. So it's not just processing. It's anger and wanting to see action, wanting to take action. And yet, doing it in a world where we can't actually be together, I think, made it particularly challenging for some people and for managers to know how to meet their team members where they were. And people process things in different ways too, and people need different things. And at that point, we had hired people who had only ever been remote. So I think the connections that you have with people that you might've worked with in person you can lean on a lot in the beginning. But then you're working with someone or managing someone who you've never met in person. JEN: Yeah. It's a whole new ball game. And I think that the notion of community has gone through the wringer, not only in the worst, it's a rebirth almost. I think the notion of locally what's going on for you and then who can you see? Who can you have a barbecue with? All of those questions of like, who can I be with? Of course, the internet's great, but the internet has some major, major boundaries to it. And people see that at work, and they see that in training. CHAD: One of the things we're struggling with in that category now is there are people who live next to each other because we were historically in offices. And as it becomes more possible to get together with each other, and this is something that, as managers, we're trying to navigate, it actually has a huge potential for exclusion now that we have hired a bunch of people who are anywhere. If the teams that were in-person together but are now working remotely start getting in person again, even if it's just an outing at a park, who's not able to attend that, and how will they feel? And what expectations have we set with them? And then you have just sort of equity and inclusion issues around people we've hired in Brazil since we've gone remote. There's no way for them to come. JEN: Sure. CHAD: It's not fair. And navigating that as a team, I think we've been able to do that, but it hasn't been easy. JEN: I think sometimes the only way to see it is none of it will work. So if none of it will work, then cool. The bar's low. [laughter] Yeah, it's not going to be perfect. And all in person had its issues too. So then, if you just sort of bottom it out and say, cool, cool, cool, there's no one silver bullet answer here. So what that means is yes, as human beings, folks who are possibly able to meet up for coffee will resonate and glow and be psyched to be around some other people. So, how do we say "No," less often to that? Because that's great. That's really something to celebrate. And I'm sure if everybody was in that situation, they would try to take advantage of that too. But then to say, if you're not in that situation, here's another option. And then, every once in a while, we'll mix those options together and have like a rolling menu with it so that nothing gets too static and paralyzed and presumed. And it's in that flow state, which of course, is more fatiguing because you have decision fatigue, and you got to keep making decisions about it. But if you can just say, "Oh, well, we're going to decide that on a week to week basis or on a quarter to quarter." I probably have said this to you before in one of these other podcast conversations, but I just really think that life is a giant science experiment. So if that's true, then you can just say, "Hey, y'all, for Q3, we're going to try this. And at the end of Q3, we'll ask you how that went, and we'll either keep doing it, or we'll totally change it, or we'll increment it." Software people are really good at this because they know that not everything has to go from 2.0 to 3.0. You could go 2.1, 2.2, 2.3. There are incremental builders. So if you can leverage that metaphor even culturally or socially with the makeup of the team and the way you run things, I don't know; I kind of think that's the best you got. CHAD: Yeah. And I think we generally have the idea that we trust people and that we can provide the information. And people will generally use that information to make good decisions that are oriented towards fulfillment. So a really good example when it comes to managers is in an environment where if you're meeting in person with someone, one team member and you're their manager, and you're not meeting in person with another, that could influence negatively the other person's path to promotion or the relationship they have with you and just subtly bias you towards the person that you might be able to meet in person with. And so as a manager, making sure people know that, that that is a thing that can happen is a good way to manage that bias because I think generally, people don't want to let that happen, but they might not even realize it, so they can actively manage it. JEN: Well, it sounds like even in that thought, you are gently nudging people back towards intention and back towards just not sleepwalking through their work, that this is important for us, not only in the distance conversation here but also obviously for race, and for gender and for all kinds of different ways that humans are. We will never get it 100% right and yet intention, and taking a beat, and taking a breath before you move into conversations about promotions or whatever will help remind you hang on a second, remember there's invisible stuff inevitably going on based on who I am and where I came from. How do I make sure things are fair today? Or whatever the reminder needs to be. It sounds like that's...I don't know. It's good that you have that front of mind. CHAD: So that's one example of remote management. How much of before the pandemic were people who were coming and attending the workshops? Were they managing people remotely? And how much of your curriculum was specific to that, if any? JEN: My gut says maybe about a third were remote managers. They are definitely with bigger companies that I was seeing that. The small agencies based in Pittsburgh, you know, Austin, those places were pretty localized. But so what you get with a bigger company is also a bit more infrastructure that supports some of these cultural conversations. And we had it as part of the curriculum, but it wasn't very big, and maybe I would sort of be intentional. There are breakout groups and stuff like that. And I might think I'm going to pair these two together for their practice one-on-one because I know they're both remote managers. I am very intentional about a lot of the pairings and all that stuff, and so I would be thoughtful in that way. But now, on some level, in all these virtual workshops, everybody has an equal footing now. So everybody's kind of screwed, and everybody's also making it work. So that has been a very interesting thing to see. And I always laugh at this example, a woman who came early on, maybe like the eighth or ninth cohort, and she's a remote manager. And she would say, "Well, I don't have a water cooler. I don't have, like, I'm walking down the hall sensing somebody's upset or anything." But she would say, "This is going to sound weird, but I keep an eye on how fast they emoji something." So if you have a person who...You know this person in Slack. They're always on Slack, always so supportive, funny, have something to say, a little thumbs-up emoji, or whatever. But if one day they're at work for sure and they haven't said anything about something, she would learn to read the tea leaves like that and check-in. And I just thought that was so clever and very creative. And what she's alluding to is this level three listening that I teach, which is gut or instinct or intuition. And what she was tracking was basically a change in behavior. And that's pretty much what we're tracking when we're in the office too. There could be many reasons why somebody doesn't emoji something right away. Maybe your daughter just ran into the room. Maybe there's a doorbell. There are a million things. But at the same time, not to be too precious about it but to casually track that at least instinctively. She was doing a good job of meeting the moment as best she could. CHAD: Are there other ways in which what you've been doing has changed over the last year? What are managers concerned about or challenged by? JEN: Yeah. First of all, I always had name tags that allowed for pronouns. But this is now certainly part of the curriculum. When we start, I give some social norms and then some tech norms. And so I make the suggestion that in Zoom, after your name, you put your pronouns. And it's not a huge chunk because I really don't feel like I am the best to teach this, but I've added in a DEI component, diversity, equity, inclusion component. And we have some folks in the alumni community who are DEI consultants, so that's great. I always give them shout-outs and refer over if people are looking for that. I've noticed that people are...I'll say careful, but what I mean by careful is that they are aware of all of the stuff we're talking about, like race and social stuff. Depending on where your office was in the country, the election was sometimes really hard. I think about companies in Ohio or Pennsylvania or swing states where it was not obvious that everybody in the office was on the same page about that. And the way that that stuff comes up and is like this piece of baggage in the room that prevents literally like a website being made. We want to think no, that shouldn't enter. That's not relevant here. And yet people are careful about both trying to say, "Listen, bring who you are. You're accepted here." And also like, well, sometimes what you're suggesting you believe about the world is harmful. The whole Basecamp thing is a good example of that. And so I found the managers who come to my training to just be open to not only sharing their experiences with that but looking very much for some guidance on that from their peers and then from me. CHAD: That's sort of what I was saying about people felt like you needed to be changing the way that you were approaching things. It wasn't okay anymore for most people to say, "We shouldn't be having this conversation. It's not a work-related conversation." It affects people's work and their ability to work. It is a work issue. And you can't simply put everything aside. That's one angle of it, but we're not all equipped. We're not all educated. We're not all ready to be able to do that as managers. JEN: Totally. But with the amount of shit that we have had to handle for the last two years, short of somebody who's a social worker/priest, I don't know who was ready. I feel like a lot of what we're talking about is so resonant for me because all of this is so hard. And if you are alone doing hard things, it's impossible. But the reason that I run the manager trainings the way I do and the reason that I hold onto them after and I put them in a Slack community, they're now alumni of the program. And it's active; it depends on the day. But people have hard questions that they're wrestling with. People have jobs that they're promoting, that they're trying to get people to apply to. It's this active community that goes on afterwards. Because, honestly, Chad, I feel like a big input into me creating So You're Now a Manager and the community around it was my experience becoming a parent. I was one of the first ones of all my friends. I was the first one of my siblings, and my son was the first grandchild on both sides. And I was like, this is so lonely. All my friends are going out in Brooklyn for dinner. And I was 31. It's not like I was very young or anything, but that's New York. And so I had a moms' group. And man, that moms' group got me through those early days because we could all laugh at how hard it was. We could cry together. And when I looked at the transition that people go through from IC, individual contributor, to manager or some level of leadership, you get responsibility. You have to play the messenger sometimes, something you're not totally down with. You have sometimes competition with peers. You have to manage up sometimes. And then you have these people who come to you with requests: I want a new career path. I want more money. I want a different title. And the slog of that is very reminiscent, on some level, of parenting to me. So I thought, well, this is not going to be like, here's your book. Good luck being a manager, although books could be helpful. For me, it seemed like there was at least a certain template of a person in the world who could use community too. So I always say you'll be with me for two days or a month if it's virtual. But I can't possibly teach you everything you'll encounter. That said, we can get some critical skills under your belt. And then you can just continue to riff with this peer network. And that has been a very, I would say, unique thing about the manager training I run and something that is so fulfilling to me. I have a very tiny business. Those are, in weird ways, kind of my colleagues, the funny jokes they tell or those personalities. That was another thing that we had to let go of. In 2020, I was going to have the first reunion. CHAD: Oh yeah. We actually talked about that in the previous episode as an idea. JEN: Heartbreaking. Yeah, it was called Encore. Basically, it was a follow-up and open to anybody that has already taken SNYAM, So Now You're a Manager. I had people who pitched talks, and we had selected them. And yeah, we had to pull the plug on that. So my hope is that next year we can do that. And now we've got almost...actually; I think we just hit 300 people, so maybe 50 will come, I don't know. We'll see. But I like the idea of providing a space for these folks who were new managers when I knew them and when they came through me but have gained some skills themselves and could become thought leaders in this management space. And whenever the world is ready for it, I'm excited to put that together. CHAD: Yeah, that's awesome. That sense of community is one thing I've struggled with, to be honest. Because having done this for 18 years, there aren't many people who worked at the company that work there now anymore. [chuckles] We've grown too. So I no longer have the close personal relationship that I had with most people at the company before or close work relationships. And combined with as we've grown, it's harder...you have to be more of a leader. You have to put yourself aside. It's harder to always be a servant to others. And then I found that especially difficult last year. And it's part of why I needed to not be CEO anymore and to transition to the COO role. Because I couldn't be in a position where everyone was always looking to me continually to make...and as distributed as we are, one of our values is self-management. But continually always looking to me to be the one who always has an answer, who is the stable one, I needed a break from that. So it's been nice, the transition. JEN: I was going to say is it better? CHAD: [chuckles] So it's a little bit different than I expected. So what happened was we made that change. We made other changes, and that was all going well. And then, in February, the largest vaccine scheduling provider in the United States came to us and needed help scaling the infrastructure and all that stuff. JEN: Oh my God. That's exciting. CHAD: And so I, along with a crack team of other experienced thoughtboters, went and spent all of our time focused on that. It has pros and cons, which is right as I was transitioning into a new role; I completely got pulled away and started working full-time with that client for a very important cause, which is the reason why we did it and decided it was worth it. The silver lining is it put everyone else in a position where we went very quickly from Chad's no longer the CEO to Chad's not here right now. [chuckles] And that was unexpected. But I think that it had downsides, but it had upsides too in terms of really being in a position where people could come into their own, into their new roles and sort of a forcing function for some of the changes that we needed to make. JEN: You know, I'll give you major props on that, Chad. Because 18 years and especially, I think this about a lot of things, but especially business here, people get stuck. They really do. They get stuck, especially founders, CEOs. They don't know how to get out of something if they're tired. And there are not a lot of models for what that could look like. The biggest disservice someone could make to leading a company would be to not really be feeling it because that shit trickles down. And if you're tired or if it's not your thing anymore, really, the biggest gift you can give is to go get aligned somewhere else and then hand over the reins to what I keep thinking of as the next generation. I coach a lot of people, or I work with a lot of people who are in the middle, let's say, so they're not C-suite, and they're not newest managers, but they're sort of senior there. They're totally ready to go. I can't overstate that. [chuckles] Will they mess stuff up? Sure. So did you. Will they have questions? Absolutely. But the next generation of every company it's the most strategic thing that a CEO could do is to think, what happens if I'm not here? That allows you to take a freaking vacation, like take a month off. Or that allows you to meet such a huge civic call, which you're describing here, and step away. Or again, God forbid something happened, and you get very sick; it allows the company to be bigger than yourself. So I just commend you on even having the courage to step towards COO and then obviously also kind of redirect as needed this year. But I hope that if there are other CEOs listening or folks in the C-suite who are wiped, this is my gentle nudge to them to hand over the reins at some point. Because you'll get a paycheck, I'm sure you can figure that. CHAD: [chuckles] Being wiped was one small part of it. And I had Diana on who's the new CEO, and we talked about this. We had grown to a certain point. Also, to toot my own horn, I had done a really good job of building a team of managing directors who were really good at what they were doing. And I was no longer the best manager for them. I was no longer what they needed in order to continue to grow. I could do it, but I wasn't the best person for it. So that was the overriding reason to make the change, and being tired and needing to not always be the one that everyone was looking to was certainly a part of it. But yeah, it's been good. JEN: Yeah. I figured we would get there at some point, but we talked a little bit earlier about how I have this new product coming out in September. So the product is called Manager Weeklies, and it's basically...I got to figure out the exact noun for this. I guess this is the marketing moment. [chuckles] But it's basically a small notebook. The way I think of it is it helps you take a deep breath before your week starts. And so I'm not messing with your to-do lists. Everybody has different versions of that, Trello or wherever the heck you keep it. But before you start the week, it is so important to wonder where's my energy at? What's my perspective? What are the couple of priorities? What am I blocking? Just a couple of invitation questions there. And then the idea is that you then can do this on whatever, a Sunday night or Monday morning. And then the rest of the week has, I feel like I've said intention 50 times in this conversation but has intention in it. You can decline those three meetings because they're not the highest priority. You can make some space to actually do the work that comes out of the meetings that you're in. And what I have watched over the last maybe three years are my coaching clients who get themselves together at the beginning of the week who have some sort of practice about setting things up in a good way are the most successful. They get the promotions because they look like they know what they're doing because they do. So anyway, it's called Manager Weeklies. So it's a small notebook. Each notebook is for a quarter. And then, because I'm a coach, I also filled it with other good stuff. Like at the end, there are all kinds of prompts for ways to give praise to people on your team, ways to give feedback, ways to handle conflict, ways to say, "Yes, no, maybe." And then there's a Work Wheel tool at the very end. And so my hope is that people who just feel like they show up on a Monday already behind that they would find some help with that intention. And I feel like what you're saying is that self-awareness component that came through for you, Chad, to say, I'm not the best at this, and also, I'm a little fatigued and so, therefore, deep breath. Here's the strategy going forward. It wasn't reactive, but there was some thought behind it. And so we'll see this fall people get a chance to try that out. CHAD: That's awesome. I feel like it's getting back to your roots but also building on it. So for people who don't know, the Plucky Cards were actually the first way that I was introduced to you was someone showing me a pack of those cards. So, where can people find out more about that? JEN: The best way for people to find any information is just to subscribe to the newsletter. I send it once a month. It's usually a reflection on work, life, something going on there. So if you go to beplucky.com/newsletter, then you'll be first in the know. What's very funny, Chad, is I have a former coaching client who holds the record now. He was the first one to buy the first pack of cards. He was the first one to buy the second pack of cards. [laughs] And he was also the first one to do this Small Group ticket that I recently did as a little offshoot of Plucky. So anyway, in my mind, I always laugh, and I wonder, I wonder if he's going to grab the first pack of Manager Weeklies this fall. But you're right. They certainly plug and play with the cards very well where there's even space in the weekly template to say, what's the one-on-one topic for the week? So it could be a card that you pull, and you use, or it could just be something else going on in the world that you want to bring to all the one-on-ones. But I feel like there are a lot of things I'm not great at in the world, but the things I am good at are people. And then I listen to people over and over again through all of these experiences. And I try to hear what else do they need? What weird little thing can I invent that could help them with some of these things that they struggle with? And I'm also just really mindful of the fact that not everybody has the budget for coaching or for manager training. And I would love for Plucky to be a brand that even if you work for a nonprofit or if you don't have the money to pay for some of those more expensive things that you would have 35 bucks for a pack of cards or 20 bucks or whatever the pricing will be for the notebooks and that you can engage with my brand, even if you're not very wealthy. And I feel like as a person who works and serves an industry like tech, that is always really a priority for me to not only coach or work with the people with the most money. CHAD: Yeah. If I remember right, you designed the cards, right? JEN: Oh my God, I wish. No. CHAD: Oh, okay. JEN: For the first pack of cards I worked with, I don't know if you know him, Greg Storey. CHAD: Yeah. JEN: He's great. Greg Storey did my first deck of cards, and then he moved on, and he's doing other interesting things with his career. So I have a designer who helped me with the second deck of cards called the Manager Pack. So that's questions for managers of managers to bring to one-on-ones, and then the Manager Weeklies are coming out. I've been collaborating with a woman who runs a design little shop called YupGup in Delaware. So her name is Joni. So it is so wild, Chad. I wish that I had any design sense. But it's like, I make these things which look like a terrible PowerPoint. I'm like, here, then there will be a bullet. And then I give it to a designer like Joni at YupGup, and all of a sudden, she has a logo. And then she has some emojis and colors. And I'm like, this is how I felt when I was pregnant, and someone showed me a sonogram, and I was like, (gasps) there's a baby in there. CHAD: [laughs] JEN: This is how I felt when she showed me them, and it was so exciting. And I will never be good enough to even be talented at all to make these things myself. But I hold the idea, and then I find someone who wants to help me make that in the world. It's just magical. That is so fun for me. And so I just ordered them. Actually, I ordered 1,000 of them about three hours ago. And so they'll come in August, and I just know it will be very surreal when I open the box and look at them and think about how many people in the world and pens in the world will be used to set intention, to set up people's weeks and hopefully, make a softer and more fair and thoughtful place to work. CHAD: And one of the things I love about your business and products is that you know you're having an impact beyond that 1,000 notebooks that you put out in the world because each of those people manages 3, 4, 6, 7 people. And if you can make work better for those people, then you have a 7,000-person impact. JEN: Yeah. And it's funny you say that because I think that recently...I keep saying I'm about to go away for a month or just be out of work for a month as a break after this whole COVID time. Since starting Plucky eight years ago, I didn't really have a model. I am not a traditional business. And even though many people kept saying, "When are you going to hire? When are you going to build the team? When are you going to do all of that?" That is not the shape of Plucky medium-term or long-term. I'm not going to be a coach factory. I certainly could, but then I'd end up super burned out and not liking my job. And then I'd have a sad company, and it would be bad. So I don't want to do that. CHAD: And that's literally the opposite of Plucky. JEN: Right. I mean, in the name, right? So, where I have landed as a model is to look at what artists do. And you would never take an artist...I really like Lisa Congdon in Portland. She's a cool, cool artist. And I've heard her speak, and I like her a lot. And what would Lisa Congdon's team look like? She sure isn't hiring other artists to do the work that she's over-signed up for. You get Lisa. And so she has a shop, and then she has partnerships where she teaches at different universities. And as I move into the ninth year here, I'm thinking a lot about what's standing between me and Plucky's shape and what an artist like Lisa Congdon has going on? And honestly, fully transparently, I think it's that I need to own that Plucky is me. And it's so messy in marketing. Do you use the royal 'we'? We at Plucky? Who is we? And I think that there's some good growth in front of me this fall and next year to say, yeah, I'm Jen, and I run a company called Plucky. And I'm putting this stuff out in the world, and I hope to have ripple effects. And it won't be by hiring 100 people. It'll be just like you described, selling things to X people, and then those people's reports, those ripples will follow down. And I'm really grateful to have found myself in this place because I love coming to work every day. CHAD: Awesome. Well, even though you love coming to work every day, also enjoy your vacation. JEN: Oh my God. Thank you. CHAD: And your time off and your time to reflect. JEN: Yes, thank you so much. CHAD: You already mentioned the website, but again, mention that, and then are there other places that people can follow along or get in touch with you? JEN: Yes, sure. So the newsletter, like I said, is beplucky.com/newsletter. On Twitter, you can look at @BePlucky. I'm on LinkedIn, too, obviously for Plucky. And then I have basically a behind-the-scenes account on Instagram because it was too annoying...Like, what do you take pictures of, Chad, when you're a coach? You can't take pictures of confidential conversations. CHAD: [laughs] JEN: So Instagram, I was like, I don't know what to do with this anymore. So anyway, I just have a behind-the-scenes one over there, which is called bepluckster because somebody else had it. So yeah, so all those ways. And also, I just generally say that if you're a person listening to this podcast and you just wanted to say something to me or ask a question, you should always just email me. It's just hello@beplucky.com. I love just hearing from people. And I might not be able to send you a three-page essay back, but I really love just interacting. And if something moved you or made you think about something, whether that was something I said or Chad, you can always just shoot me a note and tell me what you're thinking. I am not precious about that. CHAD: Awesome. Likewise. So you can subscribe to the show and find notes for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us, Jen. JEN: Thank you. Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Jen Dary.

Depending on when you listen to this, the UMD women's hockey team is about 36 hours away from the official start of their season. The Bulldogs open with a WCHA road trip to Minnesota State on Friday at 6:01 p.m. and Saturday at 3:01 p.m. in Mankato. In this week's episode of the Bulldog Insider podcast, News Tribune hockey reporter Matt Wellens and My9's Kelly Hinseth get a season preview from senior forwards Gabbie Hughes and Naomi Rogge, as well as make their own season predictions. The Bulldog Insider is co-hosted by Duluth News Tribune sports reporter Matt Wellens, My9 television voice of Bulldog hockey Zach Schneider and CBS3 Sports' Kelly Hinseth. Episodes are edited and produced by Duluth News Tribune digital producers Samantha Erkkila and Dan Williamson. You can find more Bulldog hockey coverage at duluthnewstribune.com.

Thomas Graham, distinguished fellow at CFR, leads a conversation on constraining Putin's Russia. FASKIANOS: Welcome to today's session of the CFR Fall 2021 Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's meeting is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website CFR.org/academic if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Thomas Graham with us to talk about Putin's Russia. Mr. Graham is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior advisor at Kissinger Associates, where he focuses on Russian and Eurasian affairs. He is cofounder of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies program at Yale University, and is also a research fellow at the MacMillan Center at Yale. He previously served as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff from 2004 to 2007, and director for Russian affairs from 2002 to 2004. His résumé is very distinguished. I will just also say that he is a U.S. diplomat who served two tours of duty in Moscow, where he worked on political affairs. So, Mr. Graham, thanks very much for being with us today. I thought you could get us started by talking about the primary interests at stake in U.S.-Russia relations. GRAHAM: Great. Thank you very much, Irina, for that introduction, and it's a real pleasure to be with all of you here today. I want to start with three broad points that will frame the rest of our discussion. The first is that the problem that the United States faces is not simply with Putin; it is with Russia more generally speaking. The last seven years of very difficult, challenging adversarial relationship is really not an aberration in the history of the relationship between our two countries. In fact, from the moment the United States emerged as a major power on the global stage at the very end of the nineteenth century, we have had a rivalry with Russia. And the issues that divide us today are the ones that divided us 125, 150 years ago: We have opposing worldviews. We have different geopolitical interests. And clearly, we have different systems of values that inform our domestic political systems. This rivalry has intensified, ebbed and flowed during the twentieth century. But the effort we made at partnership after the breakup of the Soviet Union up until 2014, marked by the eruption of the crisis in Ukraine, is really the aberration in the history of relations between our two countries and one that was founded very much on the fact that Russia endured a period of strategic weakness. So the issue we have to deal with Russia and how we're going to deal with Russia well into the future, even after Putin departs—which he will, obviously, at some point, if only for biological reasons. The second point that I would make is that Russia is not going to go away. We hear a lot in the public debate in the United States about Russian decline, about the population/demographic problems it has, about its stagnating economy, and so forth. None of this is necessarily untrue, but I think it tends to exaggerate the problems that Russia faces. It ignores the problems that all other major countries face—including China, the United States, and many major European countries—but it also overlooks the very great strengths that Russia has had for decades that are going to make it a player and an important player on the global stage, nuclear weapons to begin with. We should never forget that Russia remains the only country that can destroy the United States as a functioning society in thirty minutes. Russia has the largest natural endowment of any country in the world, a country that can pretend to self-sufficiency and, in fact, is better placed than most other countries to deal with a breakdown in globalization in the decades to come if that, indeed, happens. It has a veto on the U.N. Security Council, which makes it an important player on issues of importance to the United States, and it has a talented population that has fostered a scientific community that, for example, is capable of taking advances in technology and developing the military applications from them. Just look at the strength that Russia exhibits in cyberspace, for example—again, a major challenge for the United States. So Russia is going to continue to be a challenge. One other thing that I should have mentioned here is that the Russian state throughout history and Putin's Russia today has demonstrated a keen ability to mobilize the resources of their own society for state purposes. So even if in relative terms they may be weaker and weakening vis-à-vis China and the United States, in some ways that political will, that ability to mobilize, allows Russia to play a much larger role than mere indicators of its economic size and population size would suggest. Now, Russia clashes with the United States across a whole range of issues, and as I said that is going to continue for some time. And this brings me to my third point: How we should think about American foreign policy, what our guidelines should be in dealing with Russia. And here there are three, I think, key elements to this. First, the United States needs to preserve strategic stability. We need to have that nuclear balance between us (sic) and the United States. This is an existential question. And as I already mentioned, Russia does have a tremendous nuclear capability. Second, the United States should seek to manage its competition with Russia responsibly. We want to avoid or reduce the risk of a direct military conflict that could escalate to the nuclear level. This is—also, I think, recognizes that the United States is not going to be able to compel Russia to capitulate on issues that are of interest to us, nor are we going to be able to radically change the way they think about their own national interests. So it's a competitive relationship and we need to manage that responsibly. And finally, given the complex world that we live in today—the very real transnational challenges we face: climate change, pandemic diseases, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—the United States should seek, to the extent possible, ways to cooperate with Russia in dealing with these issues. We should recognize that Russia is not necessarily the only player nor necessarily the most important player in dealing with these challenges, but it does have a role to play along with other major powers in handling these transnational issues. So those, I think, are three sort of broad points that help set the stage for our discussion. Now let me turn sort of very briefly to the questions about U.S. policy. How do we deal with this Russia? What are sort of—the way we should think about American foreign policy? And here the point I would make is that we should think of the policy in terms of what I would call the three Ds: defense, deterrence, and dialogue. Now, defense and deterrence in many ways go together. If you have a very good defense, if you demonstrate an ability and willingness to defend your interests effectively and deliberately, then you tend to deter another power. They have less reason to want to attack you. But if deterrence fails, you very much need to be able to defend yourself—to disrupt Russian operations in cyberspace, for example, or disrupt military operations by the Russians that you find problematic in some way. So defense and deterrence go together, and we need to think about that. Now, you build these elements on a number of other things that we're all familiar with. A strong military—strong, capable military—is, obviously, an element of both defense and deterrence, and something that we have managed quite well in the past and I imagine will manage quite well going into the future. Cyber defenses are also an important element of constraining Russia on the global stage. Now, here the United States really has much room for improvement. We built our internet, our cyberspace largely for the accessibility, the ability to pass information from one entity to another, and we spent much less attention to the security of that system. As cyberspace has become more important to our socioeconomic and political lives, we really need to devote much more attention to cybersecurity, hardening our commuter—computer networks, for example, making sure we have strong passwords and so forth, something that I think we now recognize but we need to put a much greater effort into doing that. Third area of defense and deterrence is strong alliances. When we're thinking about Russia, this is clearly the transatlantic community, NATO, our relations with our other European partners. And here, we need to develop the types of military/defense cooperation that we need to demonstrate quite clearly that the United States, along with the rest of the NATO allies, is ready and prepared to meet its Article 5 guarantees to collective security should the Russians do something that is untoward in our neighborhood. And then, finally, and I think of increasing importance, is the question of national unity. National unity, national resilience, has really become a key element in defense and deterrence at this point. We need to demonstrate to the Russians that we have sufficient national unity to clearly identify what our interests are and pursue them on the international stage. One of Putin's close colleagues several years ago said that what Putin is doing is messing with the Americans' minds, and certainly we've seen that over the past several years. Putin hasn't sowed the discord in the United States, but he certainly has tried to exploit it for Russian purposes. And this is something that he's going to concentrate on in the future, in part because he recognizes the dangers of military confrontation with the United States. So great-power competition, from the Kremlin's standpoint, is going to move very, very quickly from the kinetic realm to the cyber realm, and we need to be able to deal with that. So building national unity at home, overcoming our polarization, is really perhaps one of the key steps in constraining Russia on the global stage. And then, finally, some very brief words about dialogue. We tend to downplay this in our national discussion. Many believe that diplomatic relations are—should not be branded as a reward for bad behavior. But I think if you look at this objectively, you'll see that diplomatic relations are very important as a way of defending and advancing our national concerns. It's a way that we can convey clearly to the Russians what our expectations are, what our goals are, what our redlines are, and the responses that we're capable of taking if Russia crosses them. At the same time, we can learn from the Russians what their goals are, what their motivations are, what their redlines are, and we can factor that into our own policy. This is a major element of managing the competition between our two countries responsibly. You'll see that we have begun to engage in negotiations and diplomacy with the Russians much more under President Biden than we did under President Trump. We've already launched strategic stability talks with the aim of coming up with a new concept of strategic stability that's adequate to the strategic environment of the present day and the near future. We've engaged in cybersecurity talks, which my understanding is have, in fact, had some success over the past several weeks. Where we, I think, have lagged is in the discussion of regional issues—Europe, Ukraine, the Middle East, for example. These are areas where there is still potential for conflict, and the United States and Russia ought to be sitting down and talking about these issues on a regular basis. So three Ds—defense, deterrence, and diplomacy or dialogue—are the ways that we should be thinking about our relationship with Russia. And obviously, we'll need to adjust each of these three elements to the specific issue at hand, whether it be in Europe, whether it be in the nuclear realm, cyberspace, and so forth. Now, with that as a way—by way of introduction, I am very pleased to entertain your questions. FASKIANOS: Tom, thanks very much for that terrific overview and analysis. We're going to go to all of you now for your questions. You can either raise your hand by clicking on the icon, and I will call on you, and you can tell us what institution you are with; or you can type your question in the Q&A box, although if you want to ask it you can raise your hand. We encourage that. And if you're typing your question, please let us know what college or university you're with. So I'm going to take the first raised-hand question from Babak Salimitari. And unmute yourself. Q: Can you guys hear me? GRAHAM: Yes. FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: Hello. I'm a third-year UCI student, economics. I have a question. I'm going to sound a bit like Sean Hannity here, so please forgive me, but I have a question about that Nord Stream 2 pipeline that you constantly hear on the news, and it just doesn't make that much sense for me of why this pipeline was allowed to be completed into the heart of Europe considering Russia's strength with natural gases and the leverage that they have over Europe with that pipeline. Why was that allowed to be completed? GRAHAM: Well, I think from the standpoint of the Biden administration this was a matter of what we call alliance management. Germany is clearly a key ally for the United States in Europe, and the Germans were very committed to the completion of that pipeline, starting with Chancellor Angela Merkel down through I think both the leading political parties and the German business community. So I think they made the decision for that. But let me step back because I'd like to challenge a lot of the assumptions about the Nord Stream 2 project here in the United States, which I think misconceive it, misframe the question, and tend to exaggerate the dangers that is poses. The first point that I would make is that Europe now and in the future will have and need Russian gas. It's taken a substantial amount in the past—in the past decades, and even as it moves forward towards a green revolution it will continue to take considerable amounts of Russian gas. It can't do without that gas. So the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, contrary to what you hear in the United States or at the U.S. Congress, I don't think poses an additional threat to Europe's energy security, no larger than the threat that was posed before that pipeline was completed. The Europeans, I think are aware of the problems that that poses, and they've taken steps over the past several years to integrate the gas—the gas distribution network in Europe, to build facilities to import liquified natural gas, all as a way of eroding the leverage that Gazprom might have had over energy markets in Europe. And that has been quite successful over the past—over the past several years. Now, I think, you know, the other issue that comes up in the discussion in the United States is Ukraine, because Nord Stream 2 clearly provides Russia with a way to import the gas into Europe and bypass Ukraine at the—at the same time. And Ukraine is going to suffer a significant loss in budgetary revenue because of the decline in transit fees that it gets from the transportation of Russian gas across its territory. You know, that is a problem, but there are ways of dealing with that: by helping Ukraine fill the budgetary gap, by helping Ukraine transition away from a reliance on gas to other forms of energy, of helping Ukraine develop the green-energy resources that will make it a much more important partner in the European energy equation than it is now. And then finally, you know, it strikes me as somewhat wrongheaded for Ukraine to put itself in a position where it is reliant on a country that is clearly a belligerent for a significant part of its federal revenue. So we need to think hard with the Ukrainians about how they deal with this issue, how they wean themselves off Russian transit fees, and then I think we have a situation where we can help Ukraine, we can manage the energy-security situation in Europe, we can reduce any leverage that Russia might have, and that Nord Stream 2 really doesn't pose a significant risk to the United States or our European allies over the long run. FASKIANOS: Thank you. We're going to take the next question from the written queue from Kenneth Mayers, who's at St Francis—sorry, that just popped away; oh, sorry—St. Francis College. Thinking beyond this triangular framework, what pathways and possibilities can be envisioned for a more positive dimension of working together in mutually, even globally, beneficial ways? GRAHAM: What triangular relationship are we talking about? FASKIANOS: His—thinking beyond this triangular framework and— GRAHAM: Oh, OK. So I think it's defense, deterrence, and diplomacy is the— FASKIANOS: Correct. GRAHAM: OK. Can you repeat the final part of the question, then? FASKIANOS: What pathways and possibilities can be envisioned for a more positive dimension of working together in mutually beneficial ways? GRAHAM: Well, there are a number of areas in which we can work together beneficially. If you think about proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, for example, the United States and Russia over the past two decades have played a major role in both securing weapons that were located in Russia, but also in securing highly-enriched uranium that was in Soviet-designed reactors throughout the former Soviet space. We have taken a lead together in setting down rules and procedures that reduce the risk of nuclear material—fissile material getting into the hands of terrorist organizations. And we have played a role together in trying to constrain the Iranian nuclear program. Russia played an instrumental role in the conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that we signed in 2015 that the Trump administration walked away with, but they will continue to play a role in constraining Iranians' nuclear ambitions going forward. And we've also worked in a cooperative fashion in dealing with the North Korean nuclear program. So there are areas in nonproliferation where the two countries can work together. On climate change, I mean, I think the big challenge for the United States is actually persuading Russia that climate change is a significant threat to their own security. They're slowly beginning to change that view, but as they come around to recognizing that they have to deal with climate change there are a number of areas where the two countries can cooperate. One of the things that climate is doing is melting the permafrost. That is destabilizing the foundation of much of Russia's energy infrastructure in areas where gas and oil are extracted for export abroad. The United States has dome technologies that the Russians might find of interest in stabilizing that infrastructure. They suffer from problems of Siberian fires—peat-bog fires, forest fires—an area that, obviously, is of concern to the United States as well. And there may be room for cooperation there, two. And then, finally, you know, the United States and Russia have two of the leading scientific communities in the entire world. We ought to be working together on ways that we can help mitigate the consequences of climate change going forward. So I see an array of areas where the two countries could cooperate, but that will depend on good diplomacy in Washington and a receptivity on the part of the Russians which we haven't seen quite yet. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Let's go next to Jeffrey Ko. You can unmute yourself. Thank you. Q: Hi. So I'm Jeffrey Ko. I'm an international relations master's student at Carnegie Mellon. And my question has to deal with these private military forces, and especially the Wagner Group. And so I would like to know, you know, how does this play into our security strategy regarding Russia in countries that have seen proxy warfare? And how does this—how difficult will it be to engage with Russia either diplomatically or militarily on the use of these gray-zone tactics, and specifically utilizing the Wagner Group as an informal branch of Russia's military? GRAHAM: Well, look, I mean, I do think that we need, one, to sit down and have a discussion with Russia about the use of these private military forces, particularly the Wagner firm, which has played a significant role in a number of conflicts across the globe in the Middle East, Africa, and in Latin America. But we also ought to help the countries that are of interest to us deal with the problems that the Wagner Group causes. You know, the United States had to deal with the Wagner Group in Syria during the Syrian civil war. You know, despite the fact that we had a deconfliction exercise with the Russians at that point, tried to prevent military conflicts between our two militaries operating in close proximity, when the Wagner forces violated those strictures and actually began to attack a U.S. facility, we had no hesitation about using the force that we had to basically obliterate that enemy. And the Wagner Group suffered casualties numbering in the hundreds, one to two hundred. I think the Russians got the message about that, that you don't—you don't mess with the United States military, certainly not while using a private military company like Wagner. You know, in places like Libya, where Wagner is quite active, I think the United States needs a major diplomatic effort to try to defuse the Libyan crisis. And part of the solution to that would be negotiating an agreement that calls for the withdrawal of all foreign military forces and certainly private military groups from Libyan territory, and lean on the Russians to carry that through. In any event, you know, this is not going to be an easy issue to resolve. I think we deal with this by—country by country, and we focus our attention on those countries where our national interests are greatest. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Jill Dougherty, who's at Georgetown University. The Putin administration appears to be hardening its control of Russia's society with the purpose of keeping Putin in power at least until 2036. Most recent example is the Duma elections that just took place. Will this crackdown domestically affect or damage U.S.-Russia relations? GRAHAM: Thank you, Jill. Always a good question and always a difficult question to answer. You know, I think the issue here is the extent to which the Biden administration wants to make the domestic political situation in Russia a key item on its agenda with Russia over the next—over the next few years. You know, my impression from the conversations I've had with people in the administration—in and around the administration is that President Biden is not going to focus on this. You know, his focus really is going to be China, and what he wants to do is maintain something of a status quo in the relationship with Russia. You will notice that the second round of sanctions that the United States levied with regard to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, something that was mandated by U.S. law, were actually quite mild—much less extreme, much less punitive than the legislation allowed—I think a signal that the Biden administration was not going to let domestic political issues in Russia overwhelm the agenda that the United States has, which is going to be focused on strategic stability, cyber issues, and so forth. So my immediate reaction is that the Duma election is really not going to have a dramatic impact on the state of the relationship between our two countries. We accept the fact that Russia is an authoritarian system. It is becoming more authoritarian. We will continue to try to find ways to support those elements of civil society we can, but always being careful not to do it in ways that causes the Russian government to crack down even harder on those individuals. This is a very sort of difficult needle to thread for the United States, but I think that's the way we'll go and you won't see this as a major impediment to the improvement of relations—which, as we all know, are at a very low level at this point in any event. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. Let's go next to Sujay Utkarsh. Q: Hi, yeah. Can you hear me? GRAHAM: Yes. FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: Awesome. So, regarding the issue about cyber warfare, I was wondering if you can go into more detail about what advantages the Russians have in cyberspace and what the United States can do to compete with those advantages. GRAHAM: A good question and a difficult question for people outside the government to answer, since we're not privy to all the information about Russian cyber capabilities nor are we privy to the information about American cyber capabilities. Both countries cloak those programs in a great deal of secrecy. You know, it seemed to me that one of the advantages that perhaps Russia has is that it's a much more closed society than the United States. Now, I'm thinking simply in terms of the way societies can be disrupted through cyberspace. We're a much more open society. It's easier to access our internet. We are—just as I mentioned before, we are a polarized society right now. That allows Russia many avenues into our domestic political system in order to exacerbate the tensions between various elements in our society. The United States can't reply in the same way in dealing with Russia. You know, second, Russia, in building its own internet, its own cyberspace, has paid much more attention to security than the United States has. So, you know, I would presume that its computer systems are somewhat harder to penetrate than American systems are at this point, although another factor to take into account here is that much of the initial effort in building up cyberspace—the Web, the computer networks—in Russia was built with American technology. You know, the Googles, the Intels, and others played an instrumental role in providing those types of—that type of equipment to the Russians. So I wouldn't exaggerate how much stronger they are there. And then, finally, I think what is probably one of the strengths, if you want to call it that, is that Russia is probably a little more risk-prone in using its cyber tools than the United States is at this point, in part because we think as a society we're more vulnerable. And that does give Russia a slight advantage. That said, this shouldn't be a problem that's beyond the capability of the United States to manage if we put our minds to it. We have done a lot more over the past several years. We are getting better at this. And I think we'll continue to improve in time and with the appropriate programs, the appropriate education of American society. FASKIANOS: Thank you. The next question is a written one from Kim-Leigh Tursi, a third-year undergraduate at Temple University. Where do you see Russia in relation to the rise of China, and how does that affect how the U.S. might approach foreign policy toward Russia? GRAHAM: Well, you know, that's an important question, obviously one that a lot of people have focused on recently. You know, Russia and China have developed a very close working strategic relationship over the—over the past several years, but I think we should note that the Russian effort to rebuild its relations with China go back to the late Soviet period to overcome the disadvantages that then the Soviet Union felt they had because of the poor relationship with China and the ability of the United States to exploit that relationship to Moscow's detriment. So relations have been improving for the past twenty-five, thirty years; obviously, a dramatic acceleration in that improvement after 2014 and the breakdown in relations between Russia and the West. Now, there are a number of reasons for this alignment at this point. One, the two countries do share at a very general level a basic view of for—a basic dislike of what they see as American ambitions to dominate the global—the global security and economic environment. They don't like what they consider to be American hegemonic goals. Second, the economies seem to be complementary at this point. Russia does have a wealth of natural resources that the Chinese need to fuel their robust economic growth. You have similar domestic political systems. And all of this, I think, is reinforced by what appears to be a very good personal relationship between President Putin and President Xi Jinping. These two leaders have met dozens of times over the past five to seven years and have maintained, I think, very robust contact even during the—during the pandemic. So there are very good strategic reasons why these two countries enjoy good relations. They are going to step those up in the near term. The Russians are continuing to provide the Chinese with significant sophisticated military equipment. They've also undertaken to help the Chinese build an early warning system for ballistic missiles, and when that's completed it will make China only the third country in the world to have such a system along with Russia and the United States. Now, I would argue that this strategic alignment does pose something of a challenge to the United States. If you look at American foreign policy or American foreign policy tradition, one of the principles that has guided the United States since the end of the nineteenth century, certainly throughout the twentieth century, was that we needed to prevent the—any hostile country or coalition of hostile countries from dominating areas of great strategic importance, principally Europe, East Asia, and more recently the Middle East. A Russian-Chinese strategic alignment certainly increases the chances of China dominating East Asia. Depending on how close that relationship grows, it also could have significant impact on Europe and the way Europe relates to this Russian-Chinese bloc, and therefore to the United States as a whole. So we should have an interest in trying to sort of attenuate the relationship between the two countries. At a minimum, we shouldn't be pursuing a set of policies that would push Russia closer to China. Second, I think we ought to try to normalize our diplomatic relationship with the Russians. Not that we're necessarily going to agree on a—on a range of issues at this point, but we need to give the Russians a sense that they have other strategic options than China going forward—something that would, I think, enhance their bargaining position with the Chinese going forward and would complicate China's own strategic calculus, which would be to our advantage. I think we also should play on Russia's concerns about strategic autonomy, this idea that Russia needs to be an independent great power on the global stage, that it doesn't want to be the junior partner or overly dependent on any one country as a way, again, of attenuating the tie with China. The one thing that I don't think we can do is drive a wedge between those two countries, in part because of the strategic reasons that I've mentioned already that bring these two countries together. And any very crude, I think, effort to do that will actually be counterproductive. Both Beijing and Moscow will see through that, quite clearly, and that will only lead to a closing of the ranks between those two countries, which as I said is a strategic challenge for the United States going forward. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Holli Semetko, who's at Emory University. Polarization is something we must overcome, as you said, but those of us working on social media have some evidence to suggest that social media has fostered political polarization in the U.S. Yuri Milner, a Russian Israeli entrepreneur, invested in an early round of Facebook funding with help from VTB, a Russian state-controlled bank, as well as his investment in Jared Kushner's real estate firm. What is the level of FDI from Russia in the U.S. and do you see it as a threat to national security? GRAHAM: Well, look, I mean, the actual level of Russian FDI in the United States is quite small. You know, you have some few, I think, good examples of it—the one that you've mentioned with Yuri Milner, for example. There was some investment in a steel factory some years ago. But by and large, there hasn't been a significant amount of Russian foreign direct investment in the United States. I think our growing concerns about Russia have made us even more leery of allowing Russian investment, particularly in sectors that we consider critical to American national security. So I'm not deeply concerned about that going forward. I think we probably face a much greater challenge from the Chinese in that regard. Of course, you've seen efforts by the United States to deal more harshly or look more closely at Chinese investment in the United States over the past several years. Let me just make one sort of final point on social media since it's come up. You know, Russia is a problem. We need to pay attention to Russia in that space. But again, I don't think that we should exaggerate Russia's influence, nor should we focus simply on Russia as the problem in this area. There is a major problem with disinformation in social media in the United States, much of that propagated by sources within the United States, but there are a host of other countries that also will try to affect U.S. public opinion through their intrusions into American social media. You know, given our concerns about First Amendment rights, freedom of speech and so forth, you know, I think we have problems in sort of really clamping down on this. But what we need to do, certainly, is better educate the American public about how to deal with the information that crosses their electronic devices day in and day out. Americans need to be aware of how they can be manipulated, and they need to understand and know where they can go to find reliable information. Again, given the political polarization in our country today, this is a very real challenge and difficult one. But I think if we think long term about this problem, the key really is educating the American public. An educated American public is going to be the best defense against foreign countries, other hostile forces trying to use social media to undermine our national unity and exacerbate the politics of our country. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Eoin Wilson-Manion, who's raised his hand. Q: Hello. Can you hear me now? GRAHAM: Yes. FASKIANOS: Yes. Q: Awesome. Well, thank you. I just wanted to ask if you could touch a little bit more on Russia's presence in Syria and what that means for U.S. interests in Syria and I guess the larger Middle East. I'm Eoin from Carnegie Mellon University. Thanks very much. GRAHAM: Well, you know, the Russians entered Syria in 2015 militarily largely to save Assad from what they thought was imminent overthrow by what they considered a radical Islamic force, a group of terrorists that they thought would challenge Russian interests not only in Syria but would fuel extremist forces inside Russia itself, particularly in the North Caucasus but farther afield than that—even into Moscow, into areas that were Muslim-dominated inside Russia itself. So they had very good national security reasons for going in. Those ran—I mean, the Russian presence in Syria clearly has run counter to what the United States was trying to do at that point since we clearly aligned against Assad in favor of what we considered moderate reformist forces that were seeking a more sort of democratic future for Syria as part of this broader Arab Spring at that time. So there was a clear conflict at that point. You know, subsequently and in parallel with its continued presence in Syria, the Russians have extended their diplomatic—their diplomatic effort to other countries in the region. Russia enjoys a fairly robust diplomatic relationship with Israel, for example, that has been grounded in counterterrorism cooperation, for example. They have a sort of strange relationship, largely positive, with Turkey that they have pursued over the past several years. We know of the ties that they've had in Tehran, in Iran for some time. They have reached out to the Saudis and the Saudis have bought some military equipment from them. We see them in Egypt and Libya, for example. So they're a growing presence, a growing diplomatic presence in the Middle East, and this does pose some problems for the United States. From the middle of the 1970s onward, one of the basic thrusts of American foreign policy was to limit the role the Russians played in the Middle East. We sidelined them in the negotiations between the Arabs and the Israelis in the 1970s and in the 1980s. We limited their diplomatic contacts to countries that we considered critical partners and allies in that part of the world. Now I think the geopolitical situation has changed. Our own interest in the Middle East has diminished over time, in part because of the fracking revolution here in the United States. Gas and oil, we've got close to being independent in that area. We're not as dependent on the Middle East as we once were for energy sources. And also, as, you know, the Biden administration has been clear, we do want to pivot away from the Middle East and Europe to focus more of our energies on what we see as the rising and continuing strategic challenge posed by China. So I think that means that going forward the United States is going to have to deal with Russia in a different fashion in the Middle East than in the past. We're going to have to recognize them as a continuing presence. We're not going to be able to push them out, in part because we're not prepared to devote the resources to it. We have countries that are still important to us—Saudi Arabia, Israel for example—that do want a Russian presence in the Middle East. And so what we ought to do, it seems to me, is to begin that discussion about how we're going to manage the rivalry in the Middle East. Now, it's not all simply competition. There are areas for cooperation. We can cooperate in dealing with Iran, for example, the Iran nuclear dossier, as we have had in the past. Neither country has an interest in Iran developing nuclear weapons. Second, I think the two countries also would like to see a Middle East that's not dominated by a single regional power. So despite the fact that the Russians have worked together quite closely with the Iranians in Syria, they don't share Iranian ambitions elsewhere in the Middle East. And if you look at the diplomatic ties that the Russians have nurtured over the past with Turkey, with Israel, Saudi Arabia for example, none of these are friends of Iran, to put it mildly. So we can talk, I think, to the Russians of how our—you know, we can conduct ourselves so as to foster the development of a regional equilibrium in the Middle East that tends to stabilize that region, makes it less of a threat to either country, less of a threat to America's European allies, and use this as a basis for, again, sort of not escalating the tension in the region but moderating it in some ways that works to the long-term advantage of the United States. FASKIANOS: Next question from Michael Strmiska, who's a professor at Orange County Community College in New York state. Do you see any hope of persuading Russia to abandon its occupation of Crimea in the near term? Or do you think this is like the occupation of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia after World War II, where a very long timespan was needed before any liberation was realistically possible? GRAHAM: Well, I guess my answer to those two questions would be yes and no, or no and yes. On Crimea, you know, I see no sort of near-term scenario that would lead to the Russians agreeing to the return of Crimea to Ukraine. Quite the contrary, Russia has taken steps since 2014 they continue at this point to further integrate Crimea into the Russian Federation politically, economically, socially, and so forth. The Russians have also built up their military presence in Crimea as a way of enhancing their domination or their influence in the greater Black Sea region. So I see no set of circumstances that would change that, certainly not in the—in the near term. And I think, you know, the Ukrainian effort to focus attention on Crimea is not going to, in fact, gain a great deal of traction with Europe nor with the United States going forward, though we will maintain the principled position of not recognizing Russia's incorporation or annexation of Crimea. You know, I don't think that the Crimean and Baltic situations are necessarily analogous. You know, in the Baltic states there was a significant indigenous element, governments in exile, that supported the independence of those countries. There was a fulcrum that the United States or a lever that the United States could use over time to continue pressure on the Soviets that eventually led to the independence of those countries as the Soviet Union broke down and ultimately collapsed at the end of the 1980s into 1991. I don't see any significant indigenous element in Crimea nor a movement of inhabitants of Crimea outside Crimea that wants Crimea to be returned to Ukraine. I think we need to remember that a significant part of the population in Ukraine is Russian military, retired Russian military, that feels quite comfortable in—within the Russian Federation at this point. So if I were being quite frank about this, although I think the United States should maintain its principled position and not recognize annexation of Crimea, I don't see anything over the long term, barring the collapse of Russia itself, that will change that situation and see Ukraine (sic; Crimea) reincorporated into the Ukrainian state. FASKIANOS: So there are a couple questions in the chat about Russia's economy: What is their economy like today? And what are the effects of the sanctions? And from Steve Shinkel at the Naval War College: How do you assess the tie between Russia's economy and being able to continue to modernize its military and ensure a stable economy? And will economic factors and Russia's demographic challenges be a future constraining factor? So if you could— GRAHAM: Yeah. No, no, just take the economy. Obviously, a big issue, and it will be a constraining factor. I mean, the Russian economy is stagnating and it has for some—for some time. They enjoyed—the Russian economy enjoyed a very rapid period of growth during President Putin's first presidential—two presidential terms in the 2000s, but since the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 Russia has run into very difficult economic times. In fact, it's never really recovered from that crisis. If you look at the past ten years, barely any growth in the Russian economy at all. If you look at the impact that that has had on Russians themselves, there's basically been no growth in real disposable income; rather, a decline over the past six or seven years. I think the Russians recognize that. The question is whether they can come up with a set of policies that actually will reverse that and that lead to a more robustly growing economy. Now, what the Kremlin has tried to do is not so much reform the economy—which I think is necessary if they're going to enjoy robust economic growth—as much as professionalize the economy; that is—that is, bring in a younger sort of cadre who are well educated, many of them educated in the West, who understand how modern economies function and can keep the economy stable at least at the macro level. And this is one of the reasons that Western sanctions have not had nearly the impact on Russian behavior that many had hoped for or anticipated back in 2014 when we began to turn repeatedly to this tool in response to Russian activities and operations against Ukraine. You know, it has had some impact. I think the IMF would say that it's probably taken a percentage point off—or, not a percentage point, but a tenth of a percentage point off of Russia's GDP growth over the past several years. That certainly hasn't been enough to change Russian behavior. But it hasn't been more, in fact, because the governors of the—of the central bank have dealt quite adeptly with that, and maintain said Russian macroeconomic stability and some sort of foundation for the economy to grow going forward. I imagine that's going to continue into the—into the future as well. So it is a constraining factor. Then I would end with what I—with a point that I made in my introduction. Russia does have a tremendous ability to mobilize its resources for state purposes, to extract what it needs from society at large to modernize the military, to maintain certainly Russia's defenses and also some capability to project power abroad. So I wouldn't write them off because of that. I think it's going—still going to be a serious power, but not nearly as great a challenge to the United States as if it, in fact, solved its demographic problems, its economic problems, and had a robustly growing economy, greater resources that it could devote to a whole range of things that would improve its standing on the global stage vis-à-vis the United States and vis-à-vis China. FASKIANOS: Well, with that we are at the end of our time. And I apologize to everybody. We had over twenty written questions still pending and raised hands. I'm sorry we couldn't get to all of you, but we do try to end on time. So, Thomas Graham, thank you very much for sharing your insights and analysis with us today. We appreciate it. And to all of you for your terrific questions and comments, we appreciate it. Our next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday, October 6, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. And we will focus on the Indo-Pacific with Dhruva Jaishankar, who is the executive director of the Observer Research Foundation America and nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute. And in the meantime, I encourage you to follow CFR at @CFR_Academic and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for new research and analysis on global issues. So, Tom, thank you very much. GRAHAM: Thank you. Good luck to all of you. (END)

No matter the topic, we generally try to keep the show lighthearted.  That's not always easy.  For example, today we talk to Cassie about her firsthand experience with domestic violence.  Not a fun topic.  Don't worry though.  We also critique of various types of clothing.  That's kind of fun.  Depending on who you are, anyway. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In AT Inventors part 2 Jay and Elysia discuss establishing a business and product testing. Some of the topics we discussed include: Establishing Business Defining your core values before establishing a business If you define the core values and base all your decisions on that then decisions are a lot easier. It is easy to chase every shiny object but as a startup, you need to be focused on doing one thing well. Articles of organization Business insurance, product liability and other protections J: I do not have a reseller license, for now, I am a direct-seller only. E: Reseller certificate allows you to get items tax-free that you are going to use for your business.  You need this to sell it anywhere, like a trade show...this is so you can pay more taxes. Depending on structures you may set up monthly sales tax or quarterly. E: Product liability insurance - Mine is high since I am looped in there with skateboards where people break bones often. I have been able to break that into 4 payments so it is not a huge hit My patent fee structure is confusing and I break it up to level out the costs. Design and utility patents are different - again a couple of thousand dollars for the attorney fee. And nobody gets approved on the first round so be ready for that.  Lots of small adjustments. Consider if you really need a patent or can you focus on other aspects of the business? Business structure types, LLC, sole or other corporations Toki Nakazawa - you can function as an S corp using Form 1120S even though you are an LLC Funding vs bootstrapping your business financial needs How do you manage a business partnership? Do you want a business partnership Is Shark Tank or other investors an option J: the style of my product is already out there, i am just making it more specific for our situation. E: KNOW YOUR PRODUCT LINE J: Is it sustainable? Method of selling product (direct, wholesale, etc) Where is all the money going? Proper accounting and continual costs When to consider employees, worker comp insurance, payroll and managing other people E: I answer all of my phone calls and emails.  Do you want to make money or provide something that enriches the lives of others? If money is your motivation then focus on that. If freedom of schedule is your goal, focus on that. J: My military price is important to me.  I want to support and help those that have protected us and given me so much. Why people always ask about how much money you make, how many units you sell and if you are a million dollar company The importance of good business mentors who understand your product line J: I am always cautious because it is a dog eat dog world E: One of my college professors keeps a log of all her incoming and outgoing calls Leave the end of the day with your desk clean Through the years I have been able to meet all of my product owners.  These inventors offered to help in establishing a business.  I reached out and they  helped out SBA and SCORE are great resources Some of the advice was helpful in that it showed me the wrong path. When to quit your day job and jump all in with your business J: Elysia, you are really an example.  The passion in me really says let's go all-in with Nexus because I feel I am mediocre at both right now.  I am not ready to leave the day job yet (I have a baby on the way). E: Lots of friends know they can not start a business because of the family's need for stability. It may take you longer, but you can do it. “I can not keep doing it with the work schedule and my health...it is time”  You can jump right back into AT if needed. TestingThe MVP-Mean Viable Product How do you choose a product line and different tiers of quality When to diversify and when to stay focused on your product line Do you have multi-purpose materials or interchangeable parts

• The word: ɡrēˌō,ˌɡrēō• Click here to watch the music video: https://bit.ly/3CSLl0q• AKA: Arielle Kayabaga, a passionate community leader and the first Black woman elected to London City Council. She chaired the City's Corporate Services Committee and served on the Standing Committee on Municipal Finance. • Ask a Stupid (dubious) Question Day • Annamie Paul steps down as federal Green Party leader-CANADA• Dismantling the anti-vaxx industry-WORLD• 2 Book of Samuel 20. "What's in the box?" -The Players: Sheba is a descendent of the old King Saul. King David himself. David's new army commander, Amasa, has arrived. One of David's military leaders was Abishai. Military leaders Abishai. "Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above." ― Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.Thank you for listening to S1 – Ep.62 ▶️ http://bit.ly/chonillanetwork | Leave a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/tsacpodcast | Pass the plate & donate here https://bit.ly/passtheplatedonate for us to create more episode and extra content☺ Tweet https://twitter.com/tsacpod and use the hashtag #TSACP while listening. – Join the Sherley & Clove podcast community on FB – Have a question or feedback; submit a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. You never know; we may read or play your msg on the show! – Email us: tsacpodcast@gmail.com

I need to thank the Commission of Vinho Verde for hosting this trip to the region and setting up such wonderful experiences that really gave a 360˚ view of this region. Photo: ©Wine For Normal People, Vineyards of Aveleda After talking about a wonderful tasting at Graham's Port Lodge in Vila Nova di Gaia (across the Douro from Porto) and Quinta do Noval, we discuss some important things about Vinho Verde that augment Episode 291 from my time there. This show is not about the base tier wines – fizzy, cheap and cheerful versions, but about the premium wines that are single grape varieties and made in interesting ways. It's a look into the diversity that Vinho Verde has to offer, beyond what you may know!   We discuss some key points on Vinho Verde: There are nine subregions (see below for more detail). Depending on whether they are in the north or the south, closer to the Atlantic or inland, styles and grapes vary enormously.   We talk about the thing that wowed me the most: how very different the aromas and flavors of wines of this region are based on the soil they grow on – granite v. schist   We discuss the main grapes and their general flavor profiles: Loureiro: A grape with herbal bitterness, that's floral, and creamy. It's the top grape of coastal areas. Arinto: The MVP that adds acidity and minerality to blends, this is the base of most Vinho Verde sparkling wine. Trajadura: Although very light in flavor with low acidity, it adds body to blends. I found it tastes like stems – woody but not oaky. It's great with Loureiro and Alvarinho. Alvarinho: The same grape as Albariño from Rias Baixas on the western coast of Spain. Here the grape seems more tropical, but more acidic because unlike the Spanish, the producers in Vinho Verde do not put the wine through malo-lactic fermentation so the acidity is a bit sharper. The grape is from this region and interesting versions show rosemary and other savory herbal notes with salinity. We discuss the various permutations of the grape – there is experimentation with oak, amphora, eggs (stainless steel and concrete), and extended skin contact and what those versions are like. Avesso: An unusual grape, it represents only 2-3% of production because it is so tricky to grow. When it is good it is like pears, red apple, flowers and the texture is creamy, even though it doesn't undergo malolactic fermentation. It's a grape/wine worth seeking out. Azal: A rare grape grown only in some of the subregions, it is like citrus and herbs. It is usually marked for blending but the varietal wines are high in minerality and acidity and not short on fruit flavor. Photo: ©Wine For Normal People, Arinto Grape in Sousa And the reds: Vinhão: In its best form smells good – like incense, violets and lilies, but I found it can also smell like goat poop, band-aid, and dirt. It is lower in alcohol and very acidic (some versions are tannic). An inky, light style red with lots of flavor, this is really a local wine, made in a very local style, not for broader consumption. It is used in rosé but often blended with Touriga Nacional, the famed grape of the Douro/Port. Espadeiro: Another hard to grow grape, it is late ripening and tastes of strawberry and cherry. It is used for rosé. As well. Touriga Nacional: A lighter version of Portugal's star grape from just over the mountains in the Douro.     Regions and their main grapes: Lima: Herbal, fresh and grassy Loureiro is their wine. The wines are lovely.     Ave: Both single variety wines and blends of Loureiro, Arinto, Trajadura, Alvarinho. The Alvarinho + Trajadura blend is common and produces green herb, tangerine notes. Producer: Sao Giao     Cavado: Similar to Lima, with fresh Loureiro and some Arinto for very acidic sparkling wine, Alvarinho that is peachy, floral and acidic.     Sousa specializes in floral, talc-like and acidic Loureiro , Arinto for sparkling and for blending to add body to Loureiro, Alvarinho as the more serious wine that has lime and flint notes, and Trajadura, which is light and rounds out blends. Producers: Quinta da Lixa, Quinta das Arcas (Arca Nova) Photo: ©Wine For Normal People, Quinta das Arcas in Sousa  Amarante is in the southeast. It makes a lot of different grapes but we focused on the Avesso grape, which is floral, like pears and red apples, bready (from lees contact) and creamy, as is the nature of the grape.  I love this grape, it belongs in the full whites category with Rhone whites, Priorat whites, Verdejo, and Fiano. Producers: A&B Valley Wines, Curvos     Basto is in the southeast as well, with Douro on the other side of the mountains. Avesso, Arinto, Azal, and Alvarinho are the main grapes. Azal is a rare grape that is acidic with green apple, citrus, herbal, lemon, grass, mineral notes and and acidic yet savory quality. (I mention that only about 10 -15 pure Azals made in the world, Quinta da Razas in one of them). Producer: Quinta da Razas   Photo: ©Wine For Normal People, Harvest team at Quinta da Raza in Basto Monçao e Melgaço  is the home of Alvarinho! There is traditional Alvarinho and then there is so much experimentation with the grape that flaovrs range enormously. The standard bearers show tropical fruit, lime, and floral notes with characteristic strong acidity because the wines don't go through malolactic fermentation. Granite v schist soils make a difference and any number of styles from sparkling to oak aged, to amphora aged to skin contact wines are being made. Producers: Soalheiro, Adega de Monçao, Quinta da Santiago.   I did not visit the subregions of Paiva and Baiao so we don't discuss them in the show, but they are in the south and specialize in Arinto, Avesso, Azal, with some Loureiro.   All in all it was a lovely trip! The producers are open to the public, so it's an easy and fun few days to plan if you love white wines and want to learn something new!   _____________________________ Thanks for our sponsors this week: Wine Access: Access to the best wines for the best prices! For 15% off your next order, go to www.wineaccess.com/normal   To become a member of Patreon go to www.patreon.com/winefornormalpeople     To register for an AWESOME, LIVE WFNP class with Elizabeth go to: www.winefornormalpeople.com/classes

This week's guest is Natalie Lawrence. She was a soccer player at Point Loma Nazarene University and is the founder of the Female Athlete Mission. In this episode, we chat about how we as Christians we can play for an audience of one, become better teammates, how God is always working even when things are not going our way and so much more.Today's Scout:- Name: Natalie Lawrence- Sport: Soccer- School: Point Loma Nazarene University- Instagram: @nat_lawrenceeHer Platform: The Female Athlete Mission- Blog- Instagram- Podcast- YouTubeHousekeeping:- Website: www.retiredcollegeathletes.com- Instagram: @retiredcollegeathletes- Facebook: Retired College Athletes- YouTube: Retired College Athletes- Twitter: @RCAathletes- Email: retiredcollegeathletes@gmail.com- Patreon - If you love RCA and want to give financially to support the podcast you can do so through Patreon. Depending on what tier you give, you will receive exclusive content as a thank you for supporting us.

As we approach the 4th quarter of the year, we must began game planning on how we plan to finish the year. Depending on how this year has been thus far, would play a role in if we choose to continue doubling down on our efforts or pivot and make adjustments. Book Free Discovery Call: www.JoeWintersJr.com Music by Bingx.

In this episode, Paul and Rachel talk all about picking shows and being strategic with doing so. Depending on where a competitor is at in their career, being specific with what shows you are doing and what judges you are getting behind is important. 

Your business success is directly related to how you track all the data available around you. In the absence of tracking, the business owner does not know what works and what does not work and will end up missing some golden opportunities without them knowing. Depending on your business industry, the methods of how you track your data may differ but will show the same incredible results.  One thing that most business owners often forget is that serving your customers and clients is not a one-way street. In order to increase your profitability, you also need to get some feedback, gather all the data around them, collect it, and devise an action plan that will yield an incredible result. How do I gather the data? What action plan and method should I do? Is it applicable to my business industry? What are the benefits of doing so? All of those questions will be answered in this episode.  Enjoy listening!     Here are a few insights you'll hear in today's show… The benefits of gathering all the data around your business. The process of tracking data based on your particular industry. Double win! The incredible result when tracking your customers and clients data. Connect with Annette Ferguson: Website: https://annetteandco.co.uk/ (https://annetteandco.co.uk/) Twitter and Instagram: @annetteandco_ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkohh_X-4R5mKfEW9rBQ1qA (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkohh_X-4R5mKfEW9rBQ1qA) Resources: Business Wealth Academy: https://www.businesswealth.co.uk/bwa-waitinglist (https://www.businesswealth.co.uk/bwa-waitinglist)

Hello everyone! The terms antibias and antiracist bring up a lot of opinions and feelings in people. Depending on who you are talking to, this work might be the most important work happening in schools, or the bane on public education as a whole. Never being shy of a large topic, I wanted to discuss this work with one of the leading (and humble) voices in the space and see what it was all about. Luckily, Liz Kleinrock agreed! In part one of our talk, we covered the WHY behind antiracist and antibias work. In this episode, we take a look at what this looks like in context, and how to sustain this work over time.  Liz Kleinrock is an anti-bias anti-racist educator and consultant based in Washington, DC. A transracial adoptee, Liz was born in South Korea and grew up in DC before attending Washington University in St. Louis, MO. After spending a year student teaching a 5th grade class in Watts, Liz joined the founding faculty of a startup school in East Hollywood where she spent seven years teaching 1st through 4th grades. In addition to classroom teaching, Liz also works as an anti-bias anti-racist facilitator for schools, organizations, and companies across the country. Her work has gained national recognition through a documentary short produced by Fluid Film, and media outlets such as CNN, The Washington Post, NPR, and BBC. In 2018, Liz received Teaching Tolerance's 2018 Award for Excellence in Teaching, and currently serves on the Teaching Tolerance Advisory Board. Liz is proud to share her 2019 TED Talk from “Education Everywhere” on building foundations of equity with young learners, and is working on her first book with Heinemann Publishing. Whether you are a supporter of antiracist and antibias work, or are wary of it, this talk is sure to add to your thinking on the matter.     This episode is sponsored by Heinemann—the leading publisher of professional books and resources for educators—and their professional book, Textured Teaching: A Framework for Culturally Sustaining Practices by Lorena Escoto Germán. With Culturally Sustaining Practice as its foundation, Textured Teaching helps secondary teachers stop wondering and guessing how to implement teaching and learning that leads to social justice.  Lorena Germán shares her framework for creating a classroom environment that is highly rigorous and engaging, and that reflects the core traits of Textured Teaching: student-driven and community-centered, interdisciplinary, experiential, and flexible.  The actionable strategies Lorena uses to bring Textured Teaching values to life illuminate what is possible when we welcome all types of texts, all types of voices, and all forms of expression into the classroom. Learn more about how to become a culturally sustaining educator. Visit Heinemann.com to download a sample from Textured Teaching.

Understanding the intent and purpose of the book of Acts, in relation to everything else that is going on in redemptive history, is necessary to form a full picture of what God is doing in the world. To separate the church into two separate entities, as hyperdispensationalism does; to reinsert the law (in part or in whole) into the New Covenant, as the Hebrew Roots movement does; or to say that the church has replaced Israel as replacement theology claims, blemishes the intent of what God is doing in the world. Depending on the teaching, it can doctrinally destroy the effective working of Jesus Christ on behalf of all people, it can incorrectly consider other covenant promises made by God to the people of Israel, it diminishes the efficacy of the shed blood of Christ – marring or destroying the marvel of what God has done through His perfect life, sacrificial death in fulfilment of the law, and His resurrection. Let us carefully pay attention to what Acts reveals. In doing so, we will avoid these false teachings and we will be able to hold fast to the wonder of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

This podcast is an interview style show where each episode will have a different person(s) with a different interesting story, job, thing to plug, etc. Depending on how things go I may get people in local bands, businesses, who knows!   !!! FIRESIDE CHAT #2 !!!   On this episode, Chippa is honored to be SHOOTING THE SHIT with Dan Hoeppner of the LEFTOVER ARMY MONSTERS PODCAST!!!   We discuss Dan's Podcast, Kaiju and other geeky topics.  We also discuss the Fireside Alliance!   Leftover Army Monsters is part of the Leftover Army Podcast.  Check out the latest episode here:  https://soundcloud.com/user-752223467/lom-ultraman-towards-the-future   ---------------------------------------------------------------------   This interview is part of a series of interviews with members of The FIRESIDE ALLIANCE!!!   The FIRESIDE ALLIANCE is "an independent media network and a progressive community of progressive communities. Brought to you by Alex Shaw and Chris Chipman."   That's right, Alex Shaw and yours truly have created a safe haven for like minded content creators and their fans to just exist together and be awesome!   For more information about the FIRESIDE ALLIANCE, as we as a link to our DISCORD, go here: https://www.firesidealliance.com/

Welcome to The Apple Seed! Some time filled with stories for you and your family. Since 2013 we've been bringing you tall tales, personal tales, fairy tales, historical tales and more. All kinds of tales, from all kinds of tellers. It doesn't matter where you're from or how you live your life, food has to be an integral part. As humans, we need energy, and we get it from all sorts of places. What's more, we tend to enjoy exciting foods. No one likes it to be bland or gross. Depending on the place, food tends to take on different personalities and characteristics. Food contains culture. It's only natural, then, that we have stories about food. We have just such stories today. You'll hear one about a rice ball, you'll hear another about magical ice cream. You'll even hear a story about dancing. Now, dancing certainly isn't food, but it definitely is another integral part of many cultures and what makes us human. On today's episode, enjoy the following: “Rice Balls” by Connie Regan-Blake from Dive Into Stories (2:49) Radio Family Journal: "Andes Mints" by Sam Payne (15:59) The Daily Mix: "Macs a la Mode" with Jenna Parker (20:13) “The Secret Garden” by the Acting Company (28:13) “The Dancing Lass of Anglesey” by Heather Forest from World Tales of Wisdom and Wonder (39:13) “The Magic Ice Cream Maker” by Priscilla Howe from The Ghost with the One Black Eye and Other Stories (45:45)

This is The Digital Story Podcast #809, Sept. 21, 2021. Today's theme is "Photography's Final Flurry of Summer." I'm Derrick Story. Opening Monologue Canon, Apple, and GoPro close out our sizzling rampage of announcements at the end of summer. What a wild couple of weeks it has been. Today we're going to take a look at the final fruit of the season, then turn our eyes to what autumn and the close of the year might bring. I hope you enjoy the show. thenimblephotographer.com, click the box next to Donating a Film Camera, and let me know what you have. In your note, be sure to include your shipping address. Affiliate Links - The links to some products in this podcast contain an affiliate code that credits The Digital Story for any purchases made from B&H Photo and Amazon via that click-through. Depending on the purchase, we may receive some financial compensation. Red River Paper - And finally, be sure to visit our friends at Red River Paper for all of your inkjet supply needs. See you next week! Product Links and Comments There are product links in this article that contain affiliate tags. In some cases, depending on the product, The Digital Story may receive compensation if you purchase a product via one of those links. There is no additional cost to you. You can share your thoughts at the TDS Facebook page, where I'll post this story for discussion.