Podcasts about explain

Psalms and Wisdom: Ecclesiastes 2:24–26 Ecclesiastes 2:24–26 (Listen) 24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment1 in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him2 who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. Footnotes [1] 2:24 Or and make his soul see good [2] 2:25 Some Hebrew manuscripts, Septuagint, Syriac; most Hebrew manuscripts apart from me (ESV) Pentateuch and History: Joshua 2 Joshua 2 (Listen) Rahab Hides the Spies 2 And Joshua the son of Nun sent1 two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there. 2 And it was told to the king of Jericho, “Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.” 3 Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, “Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.” 4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, “True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. 5 And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.” 6 But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid in order on the roof. 7 So the men pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords. And the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out. 8 Before the men2 lay down, she came up to them on the roof 9 and said to the men, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. 10 For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.3 11 And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. 12 Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign 13 that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” 14 And the men said to her, “Our life for yours even to death! If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the LORD gives us the land we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.” 15 Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall. 16 And she said4 to them, “Go into the hills, or the pursuers will encounter you, and hide there three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterward you may go your way.” 17 The men said to her, “We will be guiltless with respect to this oath of yours that you have made us swear. 18 Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your father's household. 19 Then if anyone goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be guiltless. But if a hand is laid on anyone who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head. 20 But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be guiltless with respect to your oath that you have made us swear.” 21 And she said, “According to your words, so be it.” Then she sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window. 22 They departed and went into the hills and remained there three days until the pursuers returned, and the pursuers searched all along the way and found nothing. 23 Then the two men returned. They came down from the hills and passed over and came to Joshua the son of Nun, and they told him all that had happened to them. 24 And they said to Joshua, “Truly the LORD has given all the land into our hands. And also, all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us.” Footnotes [1] 2:1 Or had sent [2] 2:8 Hebrew they [3] 2:10 That is, set apart (devoted) as an offering to the Lord (for destruction) [4] 2:16 Or had said (ESV) Chronicles and Prophets: Zephaniah 2:4–15 Zephaniah 2:4–15 (Listen) 4   For Gaza shall be deserted,    and Ashkelon shall become a desolation;  Ashdod's people shall be driven out at noon,    and Ekron shall be uprooted. 5   Woe to you inhabitants of the seacoast,    you nation of the Cherethites!  The word of the LORD is against you,    O Canaan, land of the Philistines;    and I will destroy you until no inhabitant is left.6   And you, O seacoast, shall be pastures,    with meadows1 for shepherds    and folds for flocks.7   The seacoast shall become the possession    of the remnant of the house of Judah,    on which they shall graze,  and in the houses of Ashkelon    they shall lie down at evening.  For the LORD their God will be mindful of them    and restore their fortunes. 8   “I have heard the taunts of Moab    and the revilings of the Ammonites,  how they have taunted my people    and made boasts against their territory.9   Therefore, as I live,” declares the LORD of hosts,    the God of Israel,  “Moab shall become like Sodom,    and the Ammonites like Gomorrah,  a land possessed by nettles and salt pits,    and a waste forever.  The remnant of my people shall plunder them,    and the survivors of my nation shall possess them.”10   This shall be their lot in return for their pride,    because they taunted and boasted    against the people of the LORD of hosts.11   The LORD will be awesome against them;    for he will famish all the gods of the earth,  and to him shall bow down,    each in its place,    all the lands of the nations. 12   You also, O Cushites,    shall be slain by my sword. 13   And he will stretch out his hand against the north    and destroy Assyria,  and he will make Nineveh a desolation,    a dry waste like the desert.14   Herds shall lie down in her midst,    all kinds of beasts;2  even the owl and the hedgehog3    shall lodge in her capitals;  a voice shall hoot in the window;    devastation will be on the threshold;    for her cedar work will be laid bare.15   This is the exultant city    that lived securely,  that said in her heart,    “I am, and there is no one else.”  What a desolation she has become,    a lair for wild beasts!  Everyone who passes by her    hisses and shakes his fist. Footnotes [1] 2:6 Or caves [2] 2:14 Hebrew beasts of every nation [3] 2:14 The identity of the animals rendered owl and hedgehog is uncertain (ESV) Gospels and Epistles: Matthew 13 Matthew 13 (Listen) The Parable of the Sower 13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2 And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6 but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 He who has ears,1 let him hear.” The Purpose of the Parables 10 Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” 11 And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12 For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:   “‘“You will indeed hear but never understand,    and you will indeed see but never perceive.”15   For this people's heart has grown dull,    and with their ears they can barely hear,    and their eyes they have closed,  lest they should see with their eyes    and hear with their ears  and understand with their heart    and turn, and I would heal them.' 16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17 For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. The Parable of the Sower Explained 18 “Hear then the parable of the sower: 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. 20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.2 22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 23 As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” The Parable of the Weeds 24 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds3 among the wheat and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27 And the servants4 of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?' 29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”'” The Mustard Seed and the Leaven 31 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” 33 He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” Prophecy and Parables 34 All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. 35 This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:5   “I will open my mouth in parables;    I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” The Parable of the Weeds Explained 36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear. The Parable of the Hidden Treasure 44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. The Parable of the Pearl of Great Value 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46 who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. The Parable of the Net 47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. 48 When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. New and Old Treasures 51 “Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” 52 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” Jesus Rejected at Nazareth 53 And when Jesus had finished these parables, he went away from there, 54 and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? 55 Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” 57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” 58 And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief. Footnotes [1] 13:9 Some manuscripts add here and in verse 43 to hear [2] 13:21 Or stumbles [3] 13:25 Probably darnel, a wheat-like weed [4] 13:27 Or bondservants; also verse 28 [5] 13:35 Some manuscripts Isaiah the prophet (ESV)

With family: Joshua 5–6:5; Psalms 132–134 Joshua 5–6:5 (Listen) The New Generation Circumcised 5 As soon as all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the people of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts melted and there was no longer any spirit in them because of the people of Israel. 2 At that time the LORD said to Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time.” 3 So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth.1 4 And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them: all the males of the people who came out of Egypt, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness on the way after they had come out of Egypt. 5 Though all the people who came out had been circumcised, yet all the people who were born on the way in the wilderness after they had come out of Egypt had not been circumcised. 6 For the people of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, the men of war who came out of Egypt, perished, because they did not obey the voice of the LORD; the LORD swore to them that he would not let them see the land that the LORD had sworn to their fathers to give to us, a land flowing with milk and honey. 7 So it was their children, whom he raised up in their place, that Joshua circumcised. For they were uncircumcised, because they had not been circumcised on the way. 8 When the circumcising of the whole nation was finished, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. 9 And the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” And so the name of that place is called Gilgal2 to this day. First Passover in Canaan 10 While the people of Israel were encamped at Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening on the plains of Jericho. 11 And the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. 12 And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. The Commander of the Lord's Army 13 When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” 14 And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped3 and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” 15 And the commander of the LORD's army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. The Fall of Jericho 6 Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out, and none came in. 2 And the LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor. 3 You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. 4 Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. 5 And when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat,4 and the people shall go up, everyone straight before him.” Footnotes [1] 5:3 Gibeath-haaraloth means the hill of the foreskins [2] 5:9 Gilgal sounds like the Hebrew for to roll [3] 5:14 Or and paid homage [4] 6:5 Hebrew under itself; also verse 20 (ESV) Psalms 132–134 (Listen) The Lord Has Chosen Zion A Song of Ascents. 132   Remember, O LORD, in David's favor,    all the hardships he endured,2   how he swore to the LORD    and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,3   “I will not enter my house    or get into my bed,4   I will not give sleep to my eyes    or slumber to my eyelids,5   until I find a place for the LORD,    a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.” 6   Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah;    we found it in the fields of Jaar.7   “Let us go to his dwelling place;    let us worship at his footstool!” 8   Arise, O LORD, and go to your resting place,    you and the ark of your might.9   Let your priests be clothed with righteousness,    and let your saints shout for joy.10   For the sake of your servant David,    do not turn away the face of your anointed one. 11   The LORD swore to David a sure oath    from which he will not turn back:  “One of the sons of your body1    I will set on your throne.12   If your sons keep my covenant    and my testimonies that I shall teach them,  their sons also forever    shall sit on your throne.” 13   For the LORD has chosen Zion;    he has desired it for his dwelling place:14   “This is my resting place forever;    here I will dwell, for I have desired it.15   I will abundantly bless her provisions;    I will satisfy her poor with bread.16   Her priests I will clothe with salvation,    and her saints will shout for joy.17   There I will make a horn to sprout for David;    I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.18   His enemies I will clothe with shame,    but on him his crown will shine.” When Brothers Dwell in Unity A Song of Ascents. Of David. 133   Behold, how good and pleasant it is    when brothers dwell in unity!22   It is like the precious oil on the head,    running down on the beard,  on the beard of Aaron,    running down on the collar of his robes!3   It is like the dew of Hermon,    which falls on the mountains of Zion!  For there the LORD has commanded the blessing,    life forevermore. Come, Bless the Lord A Song of Ascents. 134   Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD,    who stand by night in the house of the LORD!2   Lift up your hands to the holy place    and bless the LORD! 3   May the LORD bless you from Zion,    he who made heaven and earth! Footnotes [1] 132:11 Hebrew of your fruit of the womb [2] 133:1 Or dwell together (ESV) In private: Isaiah 65; Matthew 13 Isaiah 65 (Listen) Judgment and Salvation 65   I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me;    I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me.  I said, “Here I am, here I am,”    to a nation that was not called by1 my name.2   I spread out my hands all the day    to a rebellious people,  who walk in a way that is not good,    following their own devices;3   a people who provoke me    to my face continually,  sacrificing in gardens    and making offerings on bricks;4   who sit in tombs,    and spend the night in secret places;  who eat pig's flesh,    and broth of tainted meat is in their vessels;5   who say, “Keep to yourself,    do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.”  These are a smoke in my nostrils,    a fire that burns all the day.6   Behold, it is written before me:    “I will not keep silent, but I will repay;  I will indeed repay into their lap7     both your iniquities and your fathers' iniquities together,      says the LORD;  because they made offerings on the mountains    and insulted me on the hills,  I will measure into their lap    payment for their former deeds.”2 8   Thus says the LORD:  “As the new wine is found in the cluster,    and they say, ‘Do not destroy it,    for there is a blessing in it,'  so I will do for my servants' sake,    and not destroy them all.9   I will bring forth offspring from Jacob,    and from Judah possessors of my mountains;  my chosen shall possess it,    and my servants shall dwell there.10   Sharon shall become a pasture for flocks,    and the Valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down,    for my people who have sought me.11   But you who forsake the LORD,    who forget my holy mountain,  who set a table for Fortune    and fill cups of mixed wine for Destiny,12   I will destine you to the sword,    and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter,  because, when I called, you did not answer;    when I spoke, you did not listen,  but you did what was evil in my eyes    and chose what I did not delight in.” 13   Therefore thus says the Lord GOD:  “Behold, my servants shall eat,    but you shall be hungry;  behold, my servants shall drink,    but you shall be thirsty;  behold, my servants shall rejoice,    but you shall be put to shame;14   behold, my servants shall sing for gladness of heart,    but you shall cry out for pain of heart    and shall wail for breaking of spirit.15   You shall leave your name to my chosen for a curse,    and the Lord GOD will put you to death,    but his servants he will call by another name,16   so that he who blesses himself in the land    shall bless himself by the God of truth,  and he who takes an oath in the land    shall swear by the God of truth;  because the former troubles are forgotten    and are hidden from my eyes. New Heavens and a New Earth 17   “For behold, I create new heavens    and a new earth,  and the former things shall not be remembered    or come into mind.18   But be glad and rejoice forever    in that which I create;  for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy,    and her people to be a gladness.19   I will rejoice in Jerusalem    and be glad in my people;  no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping    and the cry of distress.20   No more shall there be in it    an infant who lives but a few days,    or an old man who does not fill out his days,  for the young man shall die a hundred years old,    and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.21   They shall build houses and inhabit them;    they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.22   They shall not build and another inhabit;    they shall not plant and another eat;  for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,    and my chosen shall long enjoy3 the work of their hands.23   They shall not labor in vain    or bear children for calamity,4  for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the LORD,    and their descendants with them.24   Before they call I will answer;    while they are yet speaking I will hear.25   The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;    the lion shall eat straw like the ox,    and dust shall be the serpent's food.  They shall not hurt or destroy    in all my holy mountain,”      says the LORD. Footnotes [1] 65:1 Or that did not call upon [2] 65:7 Or I will first measure their payment into their lap [3] 65:22 Hebrew shall wear out [4] 65:23 Or for sudden terror (ESV) Matthew 13 (Listen) The Parable of the Sower 13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2 And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6 but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 He who has ears,1 let him hear.” The Purpose of the Parables 10 Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” 11 And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12 For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:   “‘“You will indeed hear but never understand,    and you will indeed see but never perceive.”15   For this people's heart has grown dull,    and with their ears they can barely hear,    and their eyes they have closed,  lest they should see with their eyes    and hear with their ears  and understand with their heart    and turn, and I would heal them.' 16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17 For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. The Parable of the Sower Explained 18 “Hear then the parable of the sower: 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. 20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.2 22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 23 As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” The Parable of the Weeds 24 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds3 among the wheat and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27 And the servants4 of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?' 29 But

Thousands of years ago great minds managed to create incredible technologies that were way ahead of their time, like a fire that couldn't be extinguished by water, an unbreakable medieval sword, and even an ancient computer from 200 B.C.E.! You'd be surprised to find out what crazy inventions existed back then that science still can't explain today. If you're ready to learn more about these mind-blowing ancient inventions plus a whole lot more, then keep on watching. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is There a Biblical explanation for why America has gone crazy in recent years? That's the question that Rick Wiles is asking today. There has always been wickedness in the world, but never at the level that we are experiencing in our nation. Entire nations are falling away and being deceived. What explains the current torrent of raw evil being manifested today? Rick Wiles and Dr. Raymond Burkhart discuss this dilemma, and Rick shares his pre-salvation vision of locust-soldiers. Rick Wiles, Doc Burkhart. Airdate 7/1/22It's the Final Day! The day when Jesus Christ bursts into our dimension of time, space, and matter. You can order the second edition of Rick's book, Final Day!  https://tru.news/3LknyuL

Experts from the University of Cincinnati and Miami University explain why we're paying more for gas, groceries and just about everything else.

Experts from the University of Cincinnati and Miami University explain why we're paying more for gas, groceries and just about everything else.

I really love the wild theory we explore in this episode. About 1500 years ago some obscure Catholic pope declared we probably shouldn't marry our cousin. And from here the “West” was born. A psychologically peculiar subset of humanity then rose to dominate the planet, namely western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic folk. You know, WEIRD people. You and I. Joseph Henrich is a Harvard professor in evolutionary biology who took 10 years to research this truly Zeitgeist-shifting theory. Today he explains how the arrogant assumption that we are the “normal” ones has led to some very bizarre stuff – whether we pay parking tickets, how much testosterone we have and whether we feel shame or guilt when we do wrong.Connect with Dr Henrich's work here https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/Get hold of his fun book The Weirdest People In The World See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

You name it. We EXPLAIN it. In this podcast episode, Robin Riddle, NP-C explains the risks of frequent Tylenol use during pregnancy. What did you think of this episode of the podcast? Let us know by leaving a review! Connect with Performance Medicine! Sign up for our weekly newsletter: https://performancemedicine.net/doctors-note-sign-up/ Facebook: @PMedicine Instagram: @PerformancemedicineTN YouTube: Performance Medicine

Today's episode of Happy Hour covers four unsolved mysteries of science. First, Mary Reeser, a woman who seemed to spontaneously combust; then, a man from the nonexistent country of Taured; next, 5,000 birds that committed suicide on New Year's Eve; and finally a story of reincarnation. What do you believe? Trigger Warning: SuicideContact Us:Instagram: @horriblehistorypodTwitter: @thehorriblepodEmail: horriblehistorypodcast@gmail.comSupport the Show:Let us know you like Horrible History.Buy Us a Coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/horriblehistoryPatreon - www.patreon.com/horriblehistoryPatrons get early access and exclusive content!Support the show

By the end of this episode you will be able to: Describe the anatomy and physiology of the liver Outline the pathophysiology and common symptoms of liver failure Explain how to assess and treat a patient with cirrhosis

In this inspiring episode with Loulwa Bakr, we get all the scoop behind her successful career in corporate finance, investment banking and VC. Loulwa aims to be a role model for all the young women emerging out of the MENA region with big dreams to make a name for themselves in an industry that is heavily male dominated. She shares how she pivoted and trusted her gut to answer her true calling and lead a notable journey in finance and onwards to becoming a partner at Chrome Advisory.Loulwa Bakr led a notable career in corporate finance and investment banking spanning 15 years, culminating with heading the investment banking division of Credit Suisse Saudi Arabia. As an industry pioneer, she participated in various CMA committees that reviewed regulations at the inception of the CMA, and led some of the landmark transactions in Saudi capital markets. In addition to being recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, she is currently an independent member of the board of directors of Reyl Finance (MEA), an independent member of the board of directors and investment committee of Jahez (Saudi Arabia) and a member of the advisory board of Columbia University's Global Centers (Amman).No Need to Explain with the Mental Health MamasParenting is hard. When you have a child who doesn't fit neatly into a box, it can be...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Becoming You AgainBecoming You Again is for women going through divorce who need guidance and support. Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Socialette: Online Business PodcastA bite-sized podcast to help you build the online business of your dreams.Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

When Esther's eunuch Hathak met with Mordecai to find out what was wrong and why he was in sackcloth, Mordecai told him the entire situation. He gave him a copy of the edict, but even more importantly, Mordecai told him to tell Esther that Haman had offered to pay for the entire campaign out of his own pocket. This is no small detail. When was the last time you heard of a congressperson or a senator offering to pay for something themselves? It's hard enough to find a story where our government officials pay for their own lunch, let alone a massive nationwide campaign! This shows the resolve that's in Haman's heart. The situation was dire, and he needed Esther to fully understand this. Haman had been very calculating with his plans, all the way down to leaving several months to get the word out and prepare local militias to carry out the order.As cold and calculating as they were, not even the Nazis were this organized about their extinction of the Jews. No such order had ever been given against the Jews and no such order has ever been given like it since. Why do you think Esther didn't know about the edict?-------------------Esther is simultaneously a victory and a tragedy. In some ways, If you look at it through a modern lens, it should be called the Victory of Mordecai and the Tragedy of Esther. Esther loses her parents and then is taken into the harem of a despotic king to be used as he wishes. Mordecai ends up, like Daniel, a very high official and ruler in his expatriated land. This will be a great study of Esther as we look at the emotions, the world and the meanings of one of the most cherished, and often misunderstood books of the Bible.-----------LINKS----------Support 10WB on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/10weekbibleThe 10 Week Bible - http://www.10WeekBible.comTwitter: @DarrenHibbs - https://twitter.com/DarrenHibbsSign up for my newsletter - http://www.darrenhibbs.comGet a copy of the 10 Week Bible Study today - https://www.amazon.com/Darren-Hibbs/e/B00B4I47CE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl2&tag=darrenhcom0a-20&linkId=401f3d79974c70929517936977e32df9My other YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChUU0XHSHuhSyN8qk-7efYgTake the survey and win some great fun stuff at www.10WeekBible.com today.Support the show

Interview with Holly Bertone. Holly spent 25 years rising through the ranks of consulting and federal government service before her failing health shattered her corporate dreams. Since then, she has leaned into her path of true purpose and fulfillment as a Gratitude Coach by helping women view their cancer or autoimmune diagnosis as a gift so that they can unwrap their resilience to build fortitude with gratitude.  In this podcast episode you will learn:✨ The benefits of practicing gratitude✨ What might hold you back from starting a gratitude practice✨ The powerful effects gratitude had on me in my journey over the past 5 years✨ How you can start your own gratitude practiceEnjoy listening.With gratitude,Julia-----Shownotes:Connect with Holly: https://pinkfortitude.mykajabi.com/STRESSD-----

You can mourn many different kinds of losses in your life.That's one of the central themes in Ray's song, "Sunday Mourning Hymnal." In this episode, Ray takes the guest chair as Ben Evans and Alex Rust interrogate him on all the complexities of writing vulnerable lyrics. They discuss Ray's departure from his religion and how a person has to build new structures of meaning and purpose in the aftermath of deconstruction. Follow Ray on Instagram and TikTok -- @SundayMourningHymnals and follow the podcast on IG and TikTok too -- @DecodingtheCreative

Listen to a mom try to explain what a cassette tape is to her young daughter, who calls it "some ancient history storyteller." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Identify the pathways that connect greenhouse gas emissions to child health outcomes.Explain how climate actions can promote child health and health equity.Recognize the unique role that pediatric care providers have in addressing the climate crisis.

The radio airwaves that power wireless technologies—known as spectrum—are a finite but critical resource. Tailoring spectrum toward its best use often entails industry and government sharing airwaves with one another, a process that has proven complicated as historical use does not always equate to the best current use of spectrum assets. And, with the advent of 5G wireless, the stakes are higher than ever. https://www.aei.org/profile/shane-tews/ (Shane) sits down with https://rysavy.com/about/ (Peter Rysavy) on this episode of “Explain to Shane” to analyze potential spectrum sharing solutions and discuss how 5G policy has played out across different industries and government agencies. Peter is president of https://rysavy.com/ (Rysavy Research, LLC), a consulting firm that has specialized in computer networking and wireless technology since 1993. Peter recently published a https://rysavy.com/spectrumsharing/ (series of articles and slide decks) on the basics of spectrum sharing, along with advanced concepts that draw on past examples to demonstrate the complexity—and importance—of the spectrum sharing process.

Worried that a gap in employment will hold you back in your job search? No way! Here's how to turn that résumé gap into a compelling part of your story that makes you uniquely qualified.Modern Mentor is hosted by Rachel Cooke. A transcript is available at Simplecast.Find Modern Mentor on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or subscribe to the newsletter to get more tips to fuel your professional success.Modern Mentor is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.Links:https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/modern-mentor-newsletterhttps://www.facebook.com/QDTModernMentorhttps://twitter.com/QDTModernMentorhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/modern-mentor-podcast/https://www.leadabovenoise.com/

Tears welled in the eyes of Labour MPs Jamie Strange and Rino Tirikatene as they spoke of how their respective mothers were urged to have abortions while pregnant with them.The pair were defending their decisions in 2020 to vote against decriminalising abortion in Aotearoa, explaining how personal those decisions were for different people.They were two of nine Labour MPs who voted against the bill - 37 voted in favour - which passed by a narrow margin in Parliament of 68 to 51.The strength of laws securing the right to safe and equitable access to abortions in New Zealand has come under scrutiny after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and the constitutional right there, allowing states to ban abortions - over half have indicated they will do so.The ability for politicians to speak freely on the subject here, traditionally treated as a "conscience" vote allowing them to take individual stances as opposed to following a party line, has also come into question.National MP Simon O'Connor was forced by leader Christopher Luxon, himself opposed to the right to an abortion, to take down a social media post Luxon said "triumphalised" the ruling and did not represent the party's current position not to relitigate or revisit the topic of abortions.O'Connor was one of 35 National MPs who voted against abortion reform in 2020 - 13 of whom remain in Parliament - alongside 20 who voted in favour.Labour's Tirikatene, MP for Te Tai Tonga, said his vote on abortion in 2020 was "a personal decision"."I wouldn't be here today, because my mum was advised by her doctor to have an abortion when she was carrying me. It's a very personal issue, and I'm pleased that my mother made her health decision."Strange, standing aside Tirikatene, said he did not know that of his colleague, as he revealed his own mother had made a similar decision."My mother was also advised to have an abortion back in 1975. She didn't. I'm here today for that reason."So as Rino was saying, it is a very personal issue. It's also a very complex issue. It's certainly multifaceted. And I think we would both acknowledge that it is a very complex issue, and it's different for each person."Labour MP Jamie Strange says abortion is a personal issue, and has revealed his mother was told to have an abortion when pregnant with him. Photo / SuppliedThey both said they agreed with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's strong statements on the issue, saying the US decision was a "loss for women everywhere", and assurances that it would not be relitigated.Tirikatene said they felt they could still express their personal views on the matter, and if any legislation did come up again it would be treated as a conscience issue."We support the Government position and the statements that have been made by our Prime Minister."But again, when these issues do come before the House, they are treated as conscience issues. And so that's how we always approach it."Labour MP Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki said she had always been opposed to abortion but the choice was "part of New Zealand's fabric now"."That's not what the Government is going to do, it's not going to change the law."Ikaroa-Rāwhiti MP Meka Whaitiri said her vote against abortion reform in 2020 was due to cultural concerns within her electorate. Photo / Warren BucklandArdern said shortly after the US ruling it was a "loss for women everywhere". She said people were "entitled to have deeply held convictions on this issue"."But those personal beliefs should never rob another from making their own decisions."How New Zealand MPs voted on abortion reform in 2020The Abortion Legislation Bill, to decriminalise abortion, at its third reading in 2020:YES:LabourKiri AllanGinny AndersenJacinda ArdernDavid ClarkTamati CoffeyLiz CraigClare Curran (no longer an MP)Kelvin DavisRuth Dyson (no longer an MP)Paul EagleKris Faafoi (MP until July 23)Peeni HenareChris HipkinsRaymond Huo (no longer an MP)Willie Jac...

Hometown Radio 06/27/22 6p: "Jane" draws on personal experience to explain her concerns about the Supreme Court decision on abortion

Can you justify and explain what you believe about food with Rowie McEvoy by Max International College for Fitness Professionals

Author J. Freedom is a historian and social scientist who found her freedom, health, and peace outside of the United States.   J. is the author of "We Out. How to End Our Abusive Relationship with AmeriKKKa: Volume 1: The Blueprint".  Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she believes it's past time to say goodbye to our abusive homeland that has no intention of treating us as equals.  J. and her wife now reside in Cancun, Mexico where they can be free and live their authentic lives as a couple.Mentioned in the Episode:We Out. How to End Our Abusive Relationship with AmeriKKKa: Volume 1: The Blueprint by J. Freedom “The time has come for African-Americans to come to terms with their abusive relationship with America and decide if they will stay and accept their place in society as less-than, keep fighting a losing battle, or relocate to another country”.Subscribe to J. Freedom on YouTubeNo Need to Explain with the Mental Health MamasParenting is hard. When you have a child who doesn't fit neatly into a box, it can be...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Becoming You AgainBecoming You Again is for women going through divorce who need guidance and support. Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifyJoin aspiring Black expats, expats, and re-pats where you can build community, get resources and gain support along your journey abroad….You're invited to join Blaxit Global Passport. Join Blaxit Global Passport - https://blaxit-global-passport.mn.co/ Looking for VPNs, banking, travel, and health insurance for your move abroad? Well have no fear, we've got you. Get your Move Abroad Starter Kit today at www.blaxitglobal.com/resources.Support the show

The Bee Gees were monumentally successful across multiple eras, yet their reasons for success may surprise you!  Let's dig into the eight qualities that set the Bee Gees (and could set YOU) apart from everyone else. Join host Steve Wohlenhaus on the ANATOMY OF SUCCESS podcast and dig deep into what actions you can take to find success in health, work, and relationships. Expect transparent candor and challenges that require action, all to help you define success on your own terms.

In this episode Rob talks about lessons of the book “The First 100 Days ; Lessons in Leadership from the Football bosses” by Phil Denton and the links to the method of creating your own story of your career. KEY TAKEAWAYS There are three things that should be kept in mind as as a new leader. One is invite your people in to the story. Two is to explain to them why it matters and why it's important. Three is give every member in your team a role in the story. Explain to your team what your vision is, your overall concept. “We” are gong to create this'. Invite, include, explain. Understand the reasons why your team is motivated as individuals and key that in when you explain why the success of your efforts is important. What is it that they can contribute?  BEST MOMENTS ‘Here you are, I want to paint a picture. You are a new leader. It might be a school, it might be a business, it might be a family, it might be a club.' ‘You're in the dressing room, you've been introduced, its your first day. How are you gonna impact them?' ‘I've mentioned this in a previous podcast. One of Jack Charlton's kit men felt he was the most important member of the team because that's how Jack Charlton made him feel.'   VALUABLE RESOURCES Leader Manager Coach Podcast ABOUT THE HOST Rob Ryles is a UEFA A licensed coach with a League Managers Association qualification and a science and medicine background. He has worked in the football industry in Europe, USA and Africa; at International, Premiership, League, Non-League and grassroots levels with both World Cup and European Championship experience Rob Ryles prides himself on having a forward thinking and progressive approach to the game built through his own experience as well as lessons learned from a number of highly successful managers and coaches. The Leader Manager Coach Podcast is where we take a deep dive examining knowledge, philosophies, wisdom and insight to help you lead, manage and coach in football, sport and life. CONTACT METHOD https://www.robryles.co.uk/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMPYDVzZVnA https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertryles/?originalSubdomain=uk Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/robryles See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

✨Tech Impact ✨✨Space and Nature Aruba our special guests to explain what they do with their tech

Aliens. UFOs. Bigfoot. Paranormal mysteries --- All Things - Unexplained.Smitty spins the wheel of questions for astrophysicist Dr. Charles Liu. World-famous astrophysicist Dr. Charles Liu --- host of The LIUniverse and frequent Star Talk Radio guest with Neil deGrasse Tyson --- joins The Unexplained Ones to discuss his new book --- The Cosmos Explained (available on Amazon), and to...Explain the Unexplained.**************************

What you'll learn in this podcast episode Good training is not quick to create. It takes time, effort, and years of instructional design experience. And too often, best-in-class training gets derailed by inadequate communications. An effective, attention-grabbing communications strategy is just as important as the quality of the learning itself. How can companies ensure that they're designing training and communications that produce positive learning experiences and—ultimately—business outcomes? In this episode of LRN's Principled Podcast Damien DeBarra, leader of Curriculum Design and Communications Strategy at LRN, and Tomaso Manca, learning director at LRN, discuss the importance of intentional curriculum design when developing corporate onboarding. Listen as the two talk about what best practices organizations should consider in their approach.   Principled Podcast Show Notes [1:28] - What is meant by the idea of campaigns, not courses? [3:47] - Best practices for incentivizing learners. [6:11] - The benefits for learners. [7:31] - How does LRN approach this campaign-based strategy? [9:46] - Examples of ways to retain the attention of your audience. [11:54] - Tactics used by LRN to bring the idea of campaigns, not courses to life. [15:00] - Tips to ensure people don't feel overwhelmed by your campaign. [17:30] - The LRN difference in this approach. [20:40] - Advice for people looking to implement this approach for the first time. Featured Guest:  Tomaso Manca has created exciting learning events for more than 20 years. As a Learning Director at LRN, he works with clients to create engaging learner experiences that support behavioral changes.  Before joining LRN, Tomaso spent more than six years as a Learning Manager at Interactive Services. Prior to that, he worked as Best Practices Global Learning Manager at Thomson Reuters, supporting the learning of their Sales Organization.  Tomaso holds an M.A. in Economics from Yale University.       Featured Host:  Damien DeBarra brings more than 20 years' experience to the instructional design and strategic workforce planning spaces.  As a Senior Advisory Learning Solutions Manager at LRN, he focuses on creating training solutions that ensure business buy-in and connect hiring practices to day-one learning roll-outs. In the last few years, Damien has helped organizations such as United Airlines, Sun Life Financial, SITEL, Astellas, MFS Investments, and SAP create 90-day action plans for their solutions and develop supporting communication strategies. He has worked with over 200 clients in areas ranging from retail to pharmaceuticals, call centers to nuclear plant manufacturing. Prior to LRN, Damien spent more than nine years as the Learning Solutions Director and Head of Instructional Design at Interactive Services. He has also worked as an instructional designer at NCALT, Electric Paper, and Epic. Damien received his BA from Maynooth University.     Principled Podcast Transcription Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast. Brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership, and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers. Damien DeBarra: Good training is not quick to create. It takes time, effort, and years of instructional design experience. Best in class training is too often ruined by inadequate or authoritarian style communications. An effective attention grabbing communication strategy is just as important as the quality of the learning itself. So, how can you ensure that you're designing training and communications that produce positive learning experiences and ultimately positive business outcomes? Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast. I'm Damien DeBarra, the leader of curriculum design and communication strategies at LRN. Tomaso Manca: And I'm Tomaso Manca, learning director at LRN. As co-host for this episode, we are going to be talking about the importance of intentional curriculum design when developing corporate onboarding, and what best practices to consider in your approach. All right, Damien, let's dive in. Something I've been hearing a lot at LRN is the idea of campaigns and not courses. What do we mean by that? Damien DeBarra: So campaigns, not courses, it's taken from the name of a talk we did recently at the Learning Technologies Conference in the UK just a month or two ago. And it's reflective of a conversation, which we have a lot here at LRN, which you hear in production, in our delivery teams and in the advisory team where I work. And that is the... We often semi-jokingly refer to it as, "the tragedy." "The tragedy" is that, we see world class learning materials being delivered to the business with a sort of, "or else" style communication. So if you think about it like, the client comes to us and says, "look, it's really important for us to roll out this training initiative around..." For example, B E and I, we make them a world class e-learning course. We develop a brilliant interactive classroom version of that for those who can't do online. We animate fully bespoke, beautiful videos. There's a whole plethora of support materials ready for the learners to help apply to the job. And the people who've partnered with us are really super psyched and can't wait for the business to get at this. But then the email goes out saying, "Hey, do this course by Friday, or else." It's devastating to your efforts, because as we sometimes like to joke a little bit, people who take online training, particularly online training, they're a little bit like people who ring call centers. And that is that they're already slightly irritated before they get to you. And if you do anything to give them an opportunity to opt out, to give them an opportunity to let that email slide down the inbox and just be ignored, they'll likely grasp it. And it's not because people don't want to learn on the job, it's simply that it's one email and another hundred inside of the day. They've probably got a job to do. They've already got training. They might be behind on... So any kind of blunt order to do a course really doesn't help. So instead, what we try and do is catch people's attentions and then incentivize them, or if you like, seduce them or draw them towards actually exploring those learning assets. Tomaso Manca: Very interesting, Damien. Can you share the best practice for incentivizing learners? Damien DeBarra: Sure. Well, we tend to do it slightly differently for... with each client, with each partner and differently for each communication strategy, depending on what's being taught or what needs to be learned. But there does seem to be an emerging best practice and it is nascent, it's really emerging, but that is the move away from what you might call the one and done training deployment towards a more campaign based approach. Campaigns, they're spread out over slightly longer periods of time. The amount of minutes a learner spends in their chair doing the training should be the same, or if even possible, less than whatever they did the previous year. But the campaign is spread out rather. And it's made up... The idea is use microburst trainings and snappy communications. Really engaging videos, try and keep them under one minute, two minutes, maximum. Job aids with exploratory questions to help you focus, and then whatever the medium, whatever the channel, we try and focus on using simple repeated messaging across a period of time in multiple channels.  And if possible, we try and get that messaging going through the business, not just from an actor, as aware in a voiceover, but rather from real people within the organization. So real people within that business, diverse voices and if possible local leaders. So it brings a degree of authenticity to it, but again, back to that idea of, we need to catch people's attention. So whatever communication it is you're sending out around your training launch, it really needs to get people's attention. It has to stand out from the other 99 emails that you might have received that day. The response we want is, we want people to see a headline in an email and go, "oh, what's that?" And click to open it. And it's... It is about drawing people in and avoiding the language you normally associate around training. The very instructional designer language, the very people and culture departments. So human resources department's language, moving away from all that language around learning and trying to make it sound and feel not like training but more like a marketing campaign for something really cool. That's going to make you better at your job. Tomaso Manca: So we're talking about using language that draws the learner in, within a campaign based strategy. What are the benefits for our learners? Damien DeBarra: Well, there's a number of them, as we said, the first one is to try and take the sting out of being asked to do training when you've already got a multiple... a long series of tasks to do in your day. So as we said, we know people, a lot of people... if we give them an opportunity to leave that email alone, they will. Also... I alluded to this a couple of months ago, that language of instructional design we're all kind of used to hearing, "by the end of this course, you will be able to..." Whilst that has its place, if we can use a different kind of tone and approach, what you might call a more magazine style of writing, it's much more human. It's much more relatable. And it benefits the learner because, basically we want to try and increase and drive engagement.    So it's about trying to make the materials not sound like training, it's something that's going to be where you're being talked at. And the benefit of the learner is, as I say, primarily engagement. Keep them guessing, kind of engaged in thinking, "what's going to happen next? What's this about?" You've told them there's something in it for them, but using good copywriting and clever headlines, and also simple questions to draw people into wanting the answers to those questions. So the benefit, I'd say probably in summary, if you were to reduce it to one word, it would probably be engagement. Tomaso Manca: And how does LRN approach this campaign based strategy? Damien DeBarra: Well, like I said, it's different for every partner, but there are common tools. So, the idea is to have a carefully targeted communication strategy that is, we determine what the core messages are that we want in the comms campaign. We determine when we want to release them. Not everything should go out at the same time. And we want to repeat those as a series of simple focus messages through multiple channels. So yes, the email is the obvious one, because that's... things go to the inbox. It's the primary point to contact, but we also like to use internal communications channels. So for example, if you're within the Microsoft Office environment, as many of our clients are, let's start pushing stuff through Microsoft teams or through Yammer or through Slack, if that's where your environment is for internal discussion. And also, it doesn't have to be digital. So for example, we create off, sometimes physical assets. So posters that go on walls in common areas within manufacturing environments is a classic one. Tent cards that sit on tables with a QR code. Again, seductive headline. "What's that about?" You take your phone out, maybe scan a QR code and it launches you to a 62nd advertisement about the campaign. So we do it a multiplicity of different ways, but the idea is that we work with you, your partners and communication specialists within those partners, to create a calendar strategy that's tailored for your needs. It's about getting the right messages and the right headlines delivered in the right channels. It's important to spread the messaging across different channels to make sure that we hit everybody in as many places as we can, at the same time as trying not to oversaturate the business with too many communications. So it's a bit of a balancing act between those two things. Tomaso Manca: These are great points, Damien. I think it's important to make sure, as you were saying, to cut through the noise. Ensure that the learners hear what they need to hear in a form that resonates and connects with them. You want to engage and excite people, as you were saying. Damien DeBarra: Exactly. You do. You want to engage and excite people. And in fact, I'll just throw the microphone back to you for a second and ask you. You've written stuff like this as well, and had a lot of experience of this at the deployment level, at the individual communication level. Could you give us a couple of examples of what that looks like tactically? Some of the approaches and ideas you've used. Tomaso Manca: Well there are a few things to keep in mind, first of all, talk about real people and real issue that will resonate with your audience. And use messages that are simple and direct. For instance, with a client of ours, a large multinational food conglomerate, we have scheduled design workshops that focus on creating targeted messages. Representatives from the target audience are invited to each workshop and they help tailor the message and provide immediate feedback on whether the message will resonate with their peers or not. You also want to deliver those messages using multiple formats to ensure you capture the attention of your audience, something you already touched upon. A good example is a communication program you are creating for a large chemical company. Every month, we generate a message that fits within the client's larger communication initiatives. And so far we used a variety of medium. We use graphically announced email blasts. Actual poster to be placed in the client's office, and short videos. We plan on adding podcasts and user generated video content next. And speaking about medium, the choice of medium barriers depending on the message and the desire to impact. You want to ensure that the content and the format go hand in hand, that they're aligned and true to your brand, your voice and your audience. The feedback we keep receiving from our clients is that these tips really help engage in their audiences as the messages come across as relevant, flexible, and timely. I know I covered only a handful of examples, so I'm going to bounce it back over to you then and ask you, what additional tech do we use at LRN to really bring campaigns, not courses, to life? Damien DeBarra: So it's a little bit of the kitchen sink approach. Our strategies leverage the full LRN toolkit. So we've mentioned multichannel approaches like, using emails, using online training, but we also can design virtual classroom events. There's the email and comms campaigns I've mentioned. Internet, banner adverts, SharePoint, or WordPress built websites, to back up the training materials. But we also have our... We have a campaign manager tool, which allows you, the client, to log into the LRN platform, plan out the entire comm strategy, put all the copy... and schedule the entire thing, to send out the emails or the comms at exactly the time you want weeks and months in advance. And it enables you to do a load of work up front and then sit back and let the system take care of it. Ultimately, we can write the... work out the comm strategy for you, write the copy and the headlines and provide the visual assets, and then hand them over to the partner to deliver themselves. This is a 50-50 split on what partners want. Some want to control that release themselves internally, and others want us to do everything for them, or have a tool that does everything for them. But we use everything, job aids and videos, microsites. Also help lines, chat channels in teams and Slack and other tools like that. And then crucially there's one overlooked thing, which is leader accountability programs. In the past, we've grandly called this, the accountability principle. And that's a slightly fancy pants way of saying something quite simple but very important. And that is... That if you bring leaders into the process of the training, it has a dramatic effect. So if you consider the two... the following two ideas... following two communications, "Hey Tomaso, I want you to do this training course by the end of the month." That's of relative interest. If I say in the communication, "Hey, Tomaso, I need you to do this training by the end of the month." And one week afterwards, your leader slash manager is going to have a conversation with you about this for 10 minutes. I think your interest level, your amount of skin in the game dramatically increases. And an even better version of that is, "Hey Tomaso, do the course." Now then you're going to talk to your leader, "and by the way, this affects, or connects to your annual performance review." That's a really powerful incentive. So, a leader accountability and leader involvement, or just general accountability for your participation in training is very, very powerful. So it nudges the learner, we think, from being potentially passive, into a very active role within their own learning journey. Tomaso Manca: I could see that having clear incentives linked to the overall job performance is a very powerful motivator. I really like, also, the imagery you used of the kitchen sink approach. And I'm also thinking that some people might hear this expression and worry that it could lead to information overload. What are some tips to make sure that people don't feel overwhelmed by your campaign? Damien DeBarra: Yeah, it's a really important concern because it can go too far. I saw a campaign recently we were designing, when it was getting out of hand. We were sending out, potentially discussing sending out 8, 9, 10 communications around something which was actually only a 30 minute training course. And that's probably far too excessive. So you have to work with the partner to make sure that we're not overdoing it. And also, it's about being judicious and careful in what you say in the communications. So two obvious things to say, the first of which is, if you're sending somebody an email about a training initiative, make it short. Make sure that the email is written as snappily, and as eyecatchingly as the training should be written itself. And then the second thing is, if you're worried that people are getting too many communications and there's too much training and too much time spent on training is a common complaint we hear.      Actually make a virtue of the issue of time. So for example, you can say to the learner, "put the time into the title." So let's say something like, "the 20 minute code of conduct training." Okay, that's a very awful title, but put the time into the title and say something like, "invest 20 minutes in doing this now. And you'll be prepared for your annual review." "Spend 30 minutes on this training course, and you'll be able to do this, this, and this in your job." So again, it's back to what you and I often talk about the whiffing. The, "what's in it for me?" Explain to the learner how much time... how little time you want them to spend. In fact, "look, we've reduced it to 20 minutes, because we've heard you, there's too much training. It's taking too long. We heard you, it's now down to 10 minutes every month." So again, if it's a campaign and it's spread out across a quarter, rather than asking them to do a 40 minute course, tell them, "you're going to do 10 minutes every week for the next four weeks. And as a result, you're going to be safe in your job. The company's going to benefit and you'll be ready for your performance to do... and you'll be able to serve your customers and our communities and our shareholders." And so on. So I would say if you're worried about them... if the partners expressing their concern or you have a concern about there being too much time spent on this, or if it's just overload, make a virtue of talking about how it actually saves time in the long run. Tomaso Manca: Makes sense to me. And when it comes to this approach, what do you think is the LRN difference? Damien DeBarra: So I could probably talk to you all day about tech and campaign managers and our disclosure tools and how there's a lot of technology to talk about. But actually, sometimes I think that the power of good copywriting can't be underrated. So we deploy a lot of cutting edge technology to drive solutions, but sometimes the most powerful tool we've got is one simple eye-catching headline. So we know, as we've just been discussing, that learners are time poor. They're training wary, so we place a strong emphasis on getting their attention using snappy headlines to drive people to the training assets. Tomaso Manca: Interesting. Can you share some more examples of successful copywriting? Damien DeBarra: I can probably share a few headlines. I won't name the partners themselves, but one springs to mind is, Large North American Financial Firm. That's as far as I'll go in describing it. And their problem was, very much like we were just discussing, learners getting way too many communications around having to do training. The communications were a bit on the blunt side, borderline rude in one or two... in cases. And learners were telling us via data in surveys and in focus groups that they were just really quite fed up with this. So the approach we took was, we knew that we had to get their attention in five to 10 seconds. Getting their eyeballs or they were gone. So what we did was, we opened up a campaign, and the first email in the campaign, the headline said, and it was deliberately written in capital letters. It said, "I can't wait to do compliance training this year." And then when you clicked on the mail, the next line was, "said, no one ever." That's the headline to grab your attention. And then the next thing is, it said, "we hear you. We've got it. You've told us through focus groups that it's taking too long to do training. So what we've done is, we've reduced everything down to 20 minute buckets per quarter or per month." I think it was. Another example was, from the same campaign in fact, was that, for reasons which aren't entirely understood or there seems to be a different set of reasons for different clients, fishing scans spike in August and September. So what we did there was, we sent out an email. I think it was in August and the headline in that one was, "you are a danger to yourself and others." So deliberately provocative headlines. And there's about 12 different subjects in that communications campaign, but they all took that approach. I hesitate to call them click bait headlines, because that's an awful term, but it was something designed to make you go, "what? What's that?" And hopefully you click. Again, that principle of having got their attention with the headline within 30 seconds or even 30 words. You should tell them in the first paragraph this is why you've clicked and this is what you're going to get and how long it's going to take you to do it. And again, that thing, the whiff and "what's in it for me" explaining that, if you do this, it will make you better at your job, et cetera. So getting their attention and explaining what the value is for them. Tomaso Manca: And I can see that it all boils down to writing. Damien, you've touched... certainly you've touched on a lot of great points about the value of taking what we are calling a campaign, not courses, approach. And I think this will inspire a lot of our listeners to consider for their own training. So what advice would you give to people who are looking to implement this approach for the first time? Damien DeBarra: Well, at the risk... That's a great question. So at the risk of potentially starting with something negative, get ready for resistance. A lot of the times the heartbreaking thing we hear sometimes when we're talking to our partners is, I kind give them this pitch and then they say, "that's brilliant. That's never going to work here." See, it's that classic line. "That's fantastic, now let me tell you why I won't work for our company." And it's because a lot of people are wedded to the particular calendar of release at one time of the year. And we understand that's a necessity for certain partners and clients, particularly if it's a very big program. We understand why they might want to get it all done in one quarter so the learners don't feel it's dragging on over the year. But if you have one particular smaller training initiative, you might consider that campaign based approach, but get ready for resistance. People will be skeptical about it. Some folks just won't want to do it. You also, when you get into doing communications around this, you'll also need to bring in other partners from across the business. So traditionally, if you're the training manager at a company, small to medium enterprise, I don't know, a couple of hundred staff, the training department might be you... might be just one person. But now you're talking comm, so you've got to bring in your communications team. They have their own calendars. They have their own priorities for things that need to be communicated to the business. And a common one we hear is... from our learning and development partners is, "that's great, but the communications team are already telling me there's too many communications." So get ready for that conversation. Get ready to try and influence the other stakeholders in your business to understand the benefits of taking this different approach. And to do that, you might try and arm yourself. This is easier said than done. Too massive, right? But you might try and arm yourself with a case to make that change. And that's in the form of some data. So are you able to get a survey from your current learners on... let's say on your last year's training on, how your learners liked it? Get that survey data. Now that might be painful because that survey data might reveal that they really don't like the training and it can be hard not to take that personally. And you might think to yourself, "do I really want people in the business scene, the feedback we're getting?" And an even more powerful... Sometimes in addition to a cluster of data from a large number of learners, is anecdotal information taken from focus groups. So a classic trick... not trick, but a classic approach we've done a few times is to bring in a group of learners into a focus group. Keep the training and development people out of the room. That might sound cruel, but you want people to feel free to speak freely. And of that five or six people, you might have a bit of a spectrum of learners. That is saying a couple of learners who have been in the business a number of years, who'd probably be training wary, that might be a bit tired of all this. And maybe a couple of learners who are newbies who've just gone through the training, have not yet been at the company long enough to be completely drawn into the culture, and they can often give you very fresh observations. So I suppose what I'm saying is, get ready to have the conversations and get ready for that resistance, but also try to strike a balance. As I said, if there's a possibility you can overdo this, where you can go hog wild, go crazy and start communicating to the business on everything. And that can become even more irritating than the blunt once a year communication. So there's a balance to be struck all the time. I hope that answers your question. Not sure I have. Tomaso Manca: Oh, absolutely. It does. And it opens up a lot of other questions. You and I can probably be talking about strategy for the rest of the day, but it looks like we are out of time for today. Damien DeBarra: Yeah, we should probably wrap it up. And it's always great talking to you about this stuff Tomaso. Thanks for the time. Tomaso Manca: Likewise. And thanks to our listeners. My name is Tomaso Manca. Damien DeBarra: And I'm Damien DeBarra. And I'd like to thank you all for listening to the principal podcast by LRN. Outro: We hope you enjoyed this episode. The Principled Podcast is brought to you by LRN. At LRN, our mission is to inspire principled performance in global organizations, by helping them foster winning ethical cultures, rooted in sustainable values. Please visit us at LRN.com to learn more. And if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Google podcasts, or wherever you listen. And don't forget to leave us a review.  

Join our guides, Tony and Charmaine Chvala-Smith—along with host Karin Peter, the snarky one—for an adventure of discovery navigating the provocative, complex, ancient, humorous, judgmental, yet revelatory text of the early Christian Church. Explain, explore, and experience the New Testament. This month's text: John. Find a video of the podcast here: https://youtu.be/dzTpf2ngM0IHost: Karin PeterGuest: Tony and Charmaine Chvala-Smith

You name it. We EXPLAIN it. In this video, Robin Riddle, NP-C explains what Semaglutide is and how it is being used for weight loss. What did you think of this episode of the podcast? Let us know by leaving a review! Connect with Performance Medicine! Sign up for our weekly newsletter: https://performancemedicine.net/doctors-note-sign-up/ Facebook: @PMedicine Instagram: @PerformancemedicineTN YouTube: Performance Medicine

The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: Inherited IRAs Today, I'm talking about a few clever ways to potentially reduce taxes on inherited IRA withdrawals.  With the SECURE Act accelerating the withdrawals and the taxes paid on IRA withdrawals for non-spouse beneficiaries, some of you may want to make some changes to your estate plan and consider some alternatives in how you deal with IRA assets and who you name as beneficiaries.  As I mentioned yesterday, the rules on Inherited IRAs were overhauled in 2019, and even though they should be clarified later this year, there are steps you can start taking now to reduce the tax bite on IRA assets you're planning to pass along to your kids, or if you're planning to receive IRA assets from your own parents, it's wise to have a conversation about planning that can be done in light of these new rules.  In most cases, an estate attorney needs to get involved, so it's a good excuse to revisit your estate plan.  That's because mishandling an inherited IRA could bump you into a much higher tax bracket, and significantly reduce the net amount that you would receive from an inherited IRA, so it's important that the original account owner - whether that's you for your own IRA, or mom and dad for an IRA that you plan to inherit from them - it's important that you do some advanced planning here.  First of all, its important to understand the exceptions to the 10-year rule for mandatory withdrawals. A disabled or chronically ill person, a child who has not yet reached the age of majority, and lastly, a beneficiary who is not more than ten years younger than the deceased. If a beneficiary checks one of these boxes then the rules could be significantly different.  Secondly, it might make sense to unequally split different account types among different children, giving IRA assets to children with lower income and a bigger portion of taxable assets like trust accounts to children with higher incomes. [Explain]... Another consideration here is that Roth conversions become a lot more attractive when viewed in light of these changes, especially from an estate planning and tax minimization standpoint.  That's because the 10-year withdrawal rule still applies to Roth IRA assets, but none of those Roth IRA withdrawals will be taxable for Roth IRA beneficiaries. A beautiful thing!  Those are probably the 3 main considerations, but it's important to do some advanced planning while the original account owner is still alive to ensure that the tax drag on inherited assets is minimized.  That's it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast.   ---------- >>> Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2DI2LSP >>> Subscribe on Amazon Alexa: https://amzn.to/2xRKrCs >>> Visit the podcast page: https://truenorthra.com/podcast/  ---------- Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance

What do you think Janet's love language is? What is Helen most sensitive to? How could someone add 1% more happiness to Mel's Life? In this episode, we play an online version of the popular card game, “We're Not Really Strangers” - a game focused on empowering meaningful connections and there are 3 levels of questions and wildcards that help you deepen your existing relationships and create new ones. The online version we play in this episode is called “We're Just Friends”, and can be found here: werejustfriends.online. Listen in as we deepen our relationships and learn more about each other. We hope you enjoy this episode and are inspired to play this game yourself with your own friends and fam! Questions from the episode: 1. What do you think my love language is? 2. What do you think I'm most sensitive to? 3. How can I add 1% more happiness to your life? 4. What is the last thing you lied to your mom about? 5. What would your younger self not believe about your life today? 6. Strangers would describe me as _____. Only I know that I am _____. 7. If you were to write my dating profile bio, what would it say? 8. On a scale of 1-10, how emotionally available do I seem? Explain. 9. Wildcard: Permission to ask me anything. 10. What mannerisms of mine stood out the most to you? Hosts: Melody Cheng, Janet Wang, Helen Wu Editor: Michelle Hsieh __________________________________________ P A R T N E R S • Get Upside: Get $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more with code abg. • Hubspot: Get started at hubspot.com • Pair Eyewear: Get 15% off your first purchase at paireyewear.com/ABG • Shopify: Get a free 14 day trial and full access to entire suite of features at shopify.com/abg • StitchFix: Get $20 off your first purchase at stitchfix.com/ABG • Thrive Causemetics: Get 15% off your first order at thrivecausemetics.com/ABG __________________________________________ C O N N E C T W I T H U S • Subscribe and Follow us @asianbossgirl on Apple Podcasts/Spotify/YouTube/Instagram/Twitter/Facebook • Listener Survey: Let us know your thoughts on the podcast here • Shoutouts: Give a shoutout on the podcast here. • Email: hello@asianbossgirl.com __________________________________________ S U P P O R T U S • Merch: asianbossgirl.myshopify.com • Donate: anchor.fm/asianbossgirl/support • More about us at asianbossgirl.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We had some great conversations with our guest @chefcharmant in this one yall. We spoke about whats an ideal salary living in an expensive city, also who has a better legacy curry or lebron, and are you excited about this supposed gas tax holiday and much more. •Question of the week•Is it me or do you think the government is trying to get rid of the so called "middle class"? Explain?

“As long as we dare to dream and don't get in the way of ourselves, anything is possible—there's truly no end to where our dreams can take us.” Hilary Swank On the episode you will learn: The Neuroscience behind ✔ Why our dreams are so weird, highly emotional and often forgotten. ✔ With a BRAIN STRATEGY you can use to improve your waking life, with your brain and sleep in mind. For returning guests, welcome back, and for those who are new here, I'm Andrea Samadi, author, and educator, with a passion for learning, understanding difficult concepts, and breaking them down so that we can all use and apply the most current research to improve our productivity and results in our schools, sports environments, and modern workplaces. On today's EPISODE #226 and Brain Fact Friday, we are going to dive deeper into the research of Dr. Baland Jalal, who has studied the phenomenon of sleep paralysis and dreams for the past decade, and see what we can learn from our brain, while dreaming. To do this, we are going to review what's happening to the brain during sleep paralysis, and during our REM/dream state to see what we can learn from this understanding. I hope this will open up our level of awareness and help us to understand how our dream world can impact our everyday, waking world. What is Sleep Paralysis? Dr. Jalal and I discussed this terrifying experience in depth on our recent interview, episode #224[i] and most of us can relate to this experience, but wonder what it is, and why it happens, in addition to many other questions I had about dreams themselves. You can see Dr. Jalal's lectures on this topic, where he explains what happens to our brain when we sleep and that we even see things we might say were ghosts. Now that I have heard Dr. Jalal's explanation of what happens to our brains when we are dreaming, I definitely think of my brain now, when analyzing my dreams, with this new awareness. Which brings us to this week's Brain Fact Friday where I want to explore sleep paralysis, why dreams are so weird, and why are they highly emotional, and do this, with our brain in mind. SLEEP PARALYSIS DID YOU KNOW that during REM sleep (when we dream) there's a part of the brain in the brain stem that paralyzes the body to keep us (and our sleeping partner) safe[ii] and another part of our brain (the cortex) that's responsible for our perceptual awareness. Occasionally, we can wake up when we are still in REM sleep, and are perceptually aware, but unable to move as we are paralyzed. This is sleep paralysis, and can feel terrifying, if you have no idea what's going on. I learned from Dr. Jalal that in this state we can also see what we think is a ghost, or which he explains is “an illusion that your brain creates” in the Temporal Parietal Junction (that's close to our Occipital or Visual Lobe) that can project a sense of our self, outside of our body. Have you ever felt or seen something like this and thought it was a ghost? Seeing something like this, paired up with feeling paralyzed can be a terrifying experience as I told him in the interview, and he agreed, with his own sleep paralysis experience. Then, our brain doesn't like the feeling of incompleteness and it will make up a story of what you are seeing. Dr. Jalal explains that in all of the years he has done this work, he has found that our cultural background can influence what we think we are seeing. It took me some time to make the connection, but the ghost I saw, was not far off from an 18th Century Englishman, or even someone wearing the outfits of the guards at Buckingham Palace. I did grow up with a photo of the Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip in my house, and this made me think it could have been the reason why my ghost was of British decent when I was actually in a house in Vancouver, Canada. My brain created this image from a past, cultural memory. WHY ARE DREAMS SO WEIRD? DID YOU KNOW that there's a part of our brain called the Dorsolateral PFC[iii] (a region of the frontal lobes associated with executive functions like working memory and attention) (Curtis and D'Esposito, 2003) that put concepts together in a meaningful way in our life—and that during REM sleep, or when we are dreaming, this part of the brain “shuts off”[iv] so we aren't usually aware that we are dreaming? If you have ever thought “that dream felt so real” this is the reason why, and it also explains why everything in our dreams is messed up and backwards. One minute we are on a bus with friends we haven't seen in years, you grab one of your friends' hand, jump off the bus, and go to the movies, and the next minute, you are back in your childhood home, drinking tea. This is one of my bizarre dreams, and I'm sure you can relate with your dreams. Now that I understand Dr. Jalal's explanation of the part of my brain that puts concepts together in a meaningful way, shutting down during REM sleep, I can clearly see why everything in my dream is disjointed and doesn't make much linear sense. WHY ARE DREAMS FILLED WITH STRONG EMOTION, PAST MEMORIES AND PEOPLE? DID YOU KNOW that during the REM state, or while we are dreaming, that “four areas of the brain fire up: the visual spatial regions (that help people to find their way around the world), the motor cortex (creates movement in the body), the hippocampus (our memory center) and amygdala (that processes strong emotions like fear, pleasure or anger)” “Which is why dreams are often filled with movement, strong emotions, past memories, people, experiences and are irrational.” Mathew Walker[v] tells us on his podcast that's all about why we dream. If you can keep a dream log, over time you can see what's going on in your waking hours, and learn from your dreams. Usually our concerns, worries and fears will show up in our dreams in some way, and you can solve them once you are aware of what they are. To conclude this week's Brain Fact Friday, that came from our recent interview with the world's leading expert on sleep paralysis, Dr. Baland Jalal, we took a closer look at the neuroscience of our dream world, explaining why our dreams are so weird, often highly emotional and what we can learn from them. I have four brain tips to make what we have learned about our brain when we sleep, useful in our daily life. UNDERSTANDING SLEEP PARALYSIS: Once we know what sleep paralysis is, that our brain paralyzes our body to keep us safe, then we can understand what might happen if we become perceptually aware during our REM sleep, and stuck between our sleep and wake state. BRAIN TIP FOR THIS FACT: OUR BRAIN DOESN'T LIKE CONFLICT OR INCOMPLETENESS: So figure out what your story is, if you have had a sleep paralysis experience and it's left you feeling unsettled. I explained my British ghost that my brain created as an illusion to tell the story and fill in the blanks of the unknown. What was YOUR sleep paralysis experience, and how can YOU  make sense of it?   WHY ARE DREAMS SO WEIRD AND OFTEN FORGOTTEN: Since we now know the Dorsolateral PFC, the front part of our brain associated with memory, attention and putting things together in a meaningful way in our life, shuts down during REM sleep, we can now understand why dreams are so weird and events that happen are all over the place. If the part of our brain responsible for our memory is turned off, this explains why “95% of our dreams we don't remember” but we might remember the last few minutes, and last stage of our dreams if we are intentional about it. BRAIN TIP FOR THIS FACT: REPEAT TO REMEMBER: (which is John Medina's Brain Rule #5).[vi] If you want to improve this number see if you can remember your dreams when you wake up. Write them down before you do anything else, or they will be forgotten. Sometimes I'm not even awake yet, and I repeat the dream in my head while I'm brushing my teeth, to help me to remember and write it down when I can. Also, it will help if you are intentional about this practice and say “I will remember my dream” before you go to sleep at night. LEARN WHY DREAMS ARE HIGHLY EMOTIONAL: When we know what parts of the brain fire up during REM sleep, especially our amygdala that processes strong emotions, or past memories and experiences, we can now look for messages in our dreams, over time to see what common themes come up. If we can solve the problems that we find in our waking hours, it will help improve the other 1/3 of our life spent in sleep. BRAIN TIP FOR THIS FACT: SLEEP WELL, THINK WELL (John Medina's Brain Rule #7).[vii] Here's the im portance of sleep again. It keeps coming back on this podcast. John Medina writes in his Brain Rules book, that “people vary on how much sleep they need and when they prefer to get it, but the biological need for a nap is universal.” (Medina, Brain Rules)[viii] If there's something bothering you in your waking hours, it will show up in your dreams in some way, and will impact your sleep. To truly sleep well, leading to improved “attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning and even motor dexterity” (Medina) work out your problems, and add a nap to your day to keep your mind operating at its highest levels. While Dr. Jalal does put his neuroscientific mind first with every question I asked him, there were still some questions that he said science couldn't prove, that have a spiritual side. Instead of saying that some things are not possible, he leaves this up to us to keep an open mind, and perhaps in the future, new advancements in science could move us forward so that we could find answers to the spiritual questions of our dreams in a way to benefit our waking life. Until then, I plan to keep on dreaming, and learning as much as I can on this topic to share with you here. I hope you've enjoyed diving deep into sleep paralysis, why our dreams are so weird, and highly emotional with some tips we can all use to take our understanding and awareness to a new level. It really helped me to make sense of my sleep paralysis experience after interviewing Dr. Jalal, and thinking of ways that we can all use what we learned from his research. I do plan to keep an open mind moving forward to see what else I can learn from lucid dreaming, especially as it relates to improving our psychological well-being. See you next week and hope you have sweet dreams this weekend. REFERENCES: [i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #224 with Dr. Baland Jalal on “Expanding our Awareness into the Mysteries of the Brain During Sleep” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/harvard-neuroscientist-drbaland-jalalexplainssleepparalysislucid-dreaming-andpremonitionsexpandingour-awareness-into-the-mysteries-ofourbrainduring-sl/ [ii] Sleep Paralysis https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21974-sleep-paralysis#:~:text=Why%20does%20sleep%20paralysis%20happen,or%20coming%20out%20of%20REM. [iii] Dorsolateral PFC https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/dorsolateral-prefrontal-cortex#:~:text=The%20dorsolateral%20prefrontal%20cortex%20is,Pathways%20in%20Clinical%20Neuropsychiatry%2C%202016 [iv] Neuroscience of Dreams and Sleep Paralysis at Harvard University Published on YouTube Feb. 13, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBL-51kIkc&t=7s [v] Mathew Walker Podcast The Sleep Diplomat https://www.sleepdiplomat.com/podcast [vi] John Medina's Brain Rule #5 Repeat to Remember https://brainrules.net/short-term-memory/#:~:text=Rule%20%235%3A%20Repeat%20to%20remember.&text=Which%20means%2C%20your%20brain%20can,have%20to%20repeat%20to%20remember. [vii] John Medina's Brain Rule #7 Sleep well, think well.

What are the Jewish Dating Secrets? What Can the age-old Jewish tradition teach us in the 21st century?Join Rabbi Yisroel Bernath for a lively and open discussion on Healthy Relationships. This one is sure to be raw, real and a TAD bit controversial.Plus… Rabbi Bernath will tackle some of your most difficult and pressing questions. In this no-holds-barred conversation that is sure to leave you with a lot to think about.Hosted by Rohr Chabad NDG | Young Jewish Professionals | JMontreal.com Sponsored by Andrée & Selim Sasson, Beverley & Joseph Sasson, Nadia & Mark SassonAbout Rabbi Yisroel BernathCherished for his incredible warmth and non-judgmental personality, this hipster is not your typical rabbi. In 2012, Rabbi Bernath founded the smashing success JMatchmaking International, a network of Jewish dating sites. He has made several dozen matches to date! In addition to being a matchmaker and dating coach, Rabbi Bernath is also the author of three books, and continuously produces engaging content on his many social media & podcast platforms. As a professional voice-over artist, screen-writer, and actor, he has been a part of dozens of productions, including the hit CBC Documentary "Kosher Love". He has successfully helped hundreds of singles break through the "singles wall". His caring yet firm style has given singles the hope and clarity they need to navigate dating and long-term relationships. Find out more at http://www.theloverabbi.comRight now we are in the middle of our annual raffle and you can win $22,000, a Trip for 2 to Israel and many more prizes... You gotta be in it to win it. Tickets: www.NDGThe Orthopreneurs Podcast with Dr. Glenn KriegerWhether you're an orthodontist, dentist or entrepreneur, this is a GREAT starting point.Listen on: Apple Podcasts No Need to Explain with the Mental Health MamasParenting is hard. When you have a child who doesn't fit neatly into a box, it can be...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Collecting Keys - Real Estate Investing PodcastEx-W2 Employees turned Full Time Real Estate Investers Talking Wealth and Legacy BuildingListen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify The Action Academy | Millionaire Mentorship for Your Life & BusinessOn The Action Academy Podcast, your host Brian Luebben interviews top entrepreneurs...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Our Village Stories: Parenting through Passion and GritParenting can be tough and so is being a teen. But sharing stories, even the tough...Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show

Art, entertainment, sports; these forms of expression are among humanity's greatest prides, and yet none of it comes easily: Artists are blasted for their work, Journalists' integrity scrutinized, athletes under pressure to perform. Values are repeatedly tested. But the following spectacles — from a tanked Broadway show to racy portraiture to an epic baseball scandal — also remind thinkers, creators, and performers that, sometimes, disaster is just part of the process. Welcome to Shocking Events That Made History series. This is your host Danny and this is episode 3 from the series, in which we will talk about cultural breakdowns.Find the transcript on https://englishpluspodcast.com/shocking-events-that-made-history-episode-4/Support the show and me as a content creator on https://www.patreon.com/dannyballanThe Orthopreneurs Podcast with Dr. Glenn KriegerWhether you're an orthodontist, dentist or entrepreneur, this is a GREAT starting point.Listen on: Apple Podcasts No Need to Explain with the Mental Health MamasParenting is hard. When you have a child who doesn't fit neatly into a box, it can be...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify English Plus Brain Fitness Book SeriesPreview Brain Fitness Book SeriesBuy Brain Fitness Book Series on Amazon Support the show

Joe Soltis, CEO, ChoiceLocal (Cleveland, OH)   Joe Soltis is CEO at ChoiceLocal, which Joe describes as “the top performing franchise growth engine” with a “money back guarantee.” The agency offers a wide scope of services for franchisors and franchisees of over 50 brands, enabling them to provide “Fortune 500 level customer service, results, strategy, and ROI on the franchisee level” for a “small and medium size business price.”  Large clients might be parent companies of franchise systems, franchisors owning 20 or more franchise systems where each system may have from 20 to 200 franchisees – and up to as many as 6,000 internal franchise units. Small franchise systems may have 10 units. For these smaller clients, the agency facilitates franchise development, consumer, new customer, location, company, and digital talent recruitment marketing. Joe says hiring is a challenge, especially in the franchise space. The agency needs to understand its client's hiring needs, the kind of candidates it desires, and the historical hire rates to know the number of applicants to target . . . then reverse engineer the hire rate/cost per quality candidate by channel and implement the most effective marketing strategy to ensure future growth. Joe says they use the same channels as they do for consumer marketing (in a different order), plus some that are recruitment specific. Joe notes that franchise operations need to beware . . . a lot of agencies will lock clients into proprietary technology solutions . . . that don't fit. ChoiceLocal strives to find the right tools for each client to build a “win-win” ecosystem where franchisor, franchisee, and the agency all win. He says it's important that the tool providers are companies sensitive to client needs, adaptable to a changing market, and willing to invest in “making sure that you can use their tool to provide the best in the world customer service to your end customers.” Joe started his career working his way up for 10 years in a company that grew to serve Fortune 500 companies. At a time of great personal loss, he changed the direction of his life. In his words, I always said I wanted to be successful so that I could help people, and that day it changed to “I don't want to just build something; I want to help people and I want to do it now. I don't want to be successful so that I can help people later. I want to do it now.” Joe started ChoiceLocal with the mission “to help others” – the agency's franchisor and franchisee partners, agency teammates (to make their dreams and aspirations reality), and people in the community.  Joe structured the agency with the goal of having employees work their 40-hours, then “unplug and leave work at work.” With a teammate Net Promoter Score in the 70s (far exceeding the “good” score, which is in the 30s), the agency has been a Top Workplace in Northeast Ohio for the past five years. When Covid struck, the agency created a ChoiceLocal Economic Stimulus Package to help its customers “grow through the downturn,” an initiative that Joe estimates saved 30 franchisees from going out of business.  Giving back to the community is “baked into” the agency's DNA, with 10% of profits dedicated to helping “kids in need.” Joe says the agency's “big hairy audacious goal is to help 10,000 kids a year.” As of this interview, the agency had already helped 6,000 kids in 2022 through such things as meal programs, partnering with Habitat for Humanity to provide a home for an in-need family, and through team members' personal volunteer work in the community. Joe says the next thing after achieving this goal would be to “raise the goal.” Recently, the agency spun off a dental franchise, Broadview Dental Group, which Joe targets to be “the largest provider of dental care in the United States within 10 years.” Expectations are that dentists following this franchise system “can have 4.5 times the profit of a typical dental practice and only have to work three days a week to do it.” In this franchise system, a dentist maintains 100% of the business's equity and, on retirement, can sell the franchise. Joe can be reached on his agency's website at choicelocal.com, by following ChoiceLocal on social media channels @ChoiceLocal, by following Joe on Twitter @helpothersjoe, or by connecting with him on LinkedIn.  ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Joe Soltis, CEO at ChoiceLocal based in Cleveland, Ohio. Welcome to the podcast, Joe. JOE: Rob, great to be with you today. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Why don't you start off by telling us about ChoiceLocal? What is the firm's specialty? What is your superpower? What are you known for? Hit us with it. JOE: We're the top performing franchise growth engine. We work exclusively with franchisors and franchisees, and the reason we do that is we want to give Fortune 500 level customer service, results, strategy, and ROI, but we want to be able to do it when you look on the franchisee level at a small and medium size business price while delivering that. When we do that, we offer a money back guarantee. We're the first and only franchise marketing agency to offer that money back guarantee. We work with 50+ brands. We're one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., members of the IFA, the whole nine yards.  ROB: Wow, congratulations. There's a certain clarity to that that is certainly appreciated. Let's peel it back just a layer. When we think about franchise, I think some of us think about restaurants, but there are franchises of all stripes. There is plumbing. There are franchise marketing agencies, for that matter. So what does a typical customer look like? Is there a particular range of franchises, of locations? Because you could have two or two thousand. What's a typical engagement look like? JOE: We work with some franchise systems that are owned by what we would call a platform, like a parent company that owns franchise systems. There are some franchisors that we work with that actually own 20+ franchise systems, and within each of those franchise systems there can range anywhere between 20 franchisees on the small side and 200 on the large side. So, we're talking within these companies 2,000-unit franchise operations, and some franchise systems that we work with even have 6,000+ franchise units within them. Also, on the other end of the spectrum, there are franchise systems that we work with that are 10-unit franchise systems. We power them on franchise development, we power them on consumer marketing and new customer marketing for their franchisees as well as their company and locations, and we also power their talent recruitment through digital marketing to drive highly qualified applicants. Staffing is obviously a huge challenge in today's world, and particularly within the franchising space. ROB: That's a little bit of a wider scope of services than I think we often hear in local marketing, especially once you get into the recruitment side. So that's interesting. Is it the same channels for getting customers in and getting employees in? Is it different? What's the mix of touchpoints there? JOE: It is the same channels, used in a different order, plus there are additional channels that are recruiting specific. Obviously, there's different job boards that are highly important in the recruiting space, and then there's also a whole host of digital channels that can be activated, from geotargeted Google Ads to Facebook advertising. Each of them has their strengths and their weaknesses. Our job within these franchise systems is to understand what their hiring needs are, who they're looking to hire, what their historical hire rates are so we know how many applicants we need to drive, and then we can also reverse engineer the hire rate by channel, and then we can from there figure out their cost per quality applicant by channel and then develop a marketing mix that's going to allow them to continue to grow. ROB: There's a lot going on there. Over time we've seen different platforms that have tried to jump to the forefront to help, I think, organizations like ChoiceLocal, handle marketing for multilocation, for franchises. What's the state of the tool ecosystem for this? Has any tool that tries to help with this problem and actually create a library of content to push out to different locations worked? Or has it not worked and you end up building some of those solutions yourselves? How do you look at dozens of locations, different local needs, some shared content, that sort of thing? JOE: There are a lot of agencies that will come in and sell franchise systems, their own proprietary tech in order to bring that about. What we've generally found is when these marketing agencies bring in their proprietary tech, it's more in the agency's interest and less in the interest of the franchisor and the franchisee. Essentially, it's “Here, take this marketing solution. Take our proprietary tech, and then it's impossible for you to leave us.” That's how they set that up, and it can create some difficulty and a lot of angst within these different franchise systems. When working in the franchising space, what you need to do is build a win-win ecosystem where the franchisor wins, the franchisee wins, and as a byproduct of that, as the agency you win as well. There's a whole host of various tools in this, from Rallio to WebPunch to SOCi. There's a lot of others. Yext. These are all various powerful tools that can be used and deployed. There's other powerful tools in the call tracking space, too. You have companies like CallRail who do a really strong job with this, with call analytics and those types of things. The job of the agency is to find the right tools that are right for that franchise system while also using their agency buying power to leverage economies of scale and do what's in the best interest of their client partners. ROB: If I hear you correctly, there's not a one-size-fits-all best franchise management tool. It is a little bit of a best of breed, it's a what are the needs of your particular brand/set of stores, that kind of thing. Sometimes it is Yext, maybe sometimes you bring CallRail to the table. You're the experts, and you're prescribing the menu that you recommend. JOE: Yeah, that is right. One thing, too, as you follow these companies – depending on how much they're investing in R&D, how much they're willing to listen to their customer, how much they're willing to allow their agency partners to fuel their product roadmap and guide their product roadmap – that's really how you're going to pick your partners, in large part. There's a lot of these SaaS companies that are not very customer service minded. They're more like “Get in, sign up for a product, and then leave us alone” kind of deal, and as an agency, that's not the kind of partner you're looking for. You're looking for ones that will invest in making sure that you can use their tool to provide the best in the world customer service to your end customers. Why I say that is that's something to look out for in the beginning. And the other reason I say that is the companies that are willing to invest in their customer service also tend to invest in their product development, and you'll notice there's ebbs and flows of who's good and who's bad when they do this. And things change, so you've got to find a partner that's always looking to change and adapt with the market as it changes and evolves. ROB: It's interesting how the cast of characters has changed. When I google for this problem space, Hootsuite is out there, Content and Sprout are out there contending for just a small slice of that franchise deal. But you know they're chasing every other vertical in social as well. I can certainly appreciate – we're in Atlanta; CallRail is a neighbor company here. Do you know their roots a little bit? It's an interesting background on them. JOE: It's a really neat company. ROB: The founder started off with a site to help people with BMWs that were out of warranty to find a local repair shop. My understanding is if you have a BMW that's out of warranty, you need a local repair shop. That's what I've heard. So, he started off doing lead gen for these local shops and then built call tracking to help prove the value of his BMWershops.com website, and ended up building CallRail from it. JOE: What's neat about CallRail, too, is they really have come in – there's a lot of companies that historically have played in that place, and they really trounced them. Some of their advanced features and some of their call analytics, listening to calls, transcribing calls, turning them into qualified leads, or basically saying what's a qualified lead, what's a hot lead, what's not a lead, and how they built some of that technology – it's pretty cool stuff. ROB: Yeah, there's a tremendous customer focus there. I do want to shift gears for a moment; I want to get to the origin story of ChoiceLocal. What led you to create this firm? What led you to this point of focus, of all the areas you could have focused on helping and niches you could have served? JOE: I served at a company that served multibillion dollar companies. I was a Vice President of Operations of Product Development there. We served Fortune 500 companies – FedEx, CBS, other multibillion dollar publicly traded companies. That's where I spent my day and that's who I served. We built a team of 180 full-time digital marketers. Kind of a neat story. Started as employee #8, within a few years worked my way up to VP of Ops and Product Development and did that. It was cool. I learned a lot and I had some really great mentors while I was there. The owners there have done some really amazing things outside of agency, just building multimillion dollar companies and multibillion dollar companies and taking some of them public, like NCS Healthcare and others. So, I learned a ton while I was there over that 10-year period. Then in 2012, we had a pregnancy. Went into an ultrasound room with my wife and there was no heartbeat. So we lost our son, Ben, pretty late in the pregnancy. I always said I wanted to be successful so that I could help people, and that day it changed to “I don't want to just build something; I want to help people and I want to do it now. I don't want to be successful so that I can help people later. I want to do it now.” That's actually how ChoiceLocal got started. In its simple form, our mission always has been – our mission and our core values were written prior to even having a business plan – our mission is help others. We help our partners succeed, our franchisor and franchisee partners, help their dreams and aspirations become a reality. We help our teammates' dreams and aspirations become a reality. We've been a Top Workplace in Northeast Ohio five years running. We have a teammate Net Promoter Score in the 70s, which is unheard of high. You ask people, “What is a good employee Net Promoter Score?”, the answer is 30. We're hanging out in the 70s. So, we really work to live that mission and really care about others. Working in the agency space, a lot of agencies will bring in talent, they will work them like crazy for like five years until they burn out, and then they leave and they go in-house. Having experienced that and have friends who've experienced that in other companies, I wanted to do something fundamentally different. That's why we founded ChoiceLocal and built it the way that we have. But our mission of help others is also giving back. We take 10% of the profits out of the company and we use it to help kids in need. Our big hairy audacious goal is to help 10,000 kids a year. We created the Benjamin Isaac Foundation, named after our son, Ben. We just gave a home to a single mother with three kids. Her name is Brie; she's got three beautiful boys. We just had their house dedication two weekends ago, and that was through Habitat for Humanity. We were the sole sponsor for the home. Got to meet her beautiful boys. We helped them move in, had the housewarming and a dedication. It was so cool. It's just so cool. We do tons of other stuff like that. So far this year – it's now June, and we are at a little over 6,000 kids that we've helped through various charities that we partner with. ROB: Well, 4,000 more to go and then another goal. JOE: Yes, raise the goal. ROB: There's a depth in that origin story. I think something that is interesting to think through – when you have a team, when you're giving to causes, how do you connect the day-to-day of what the team is doing to the causes that the company is giving to and really ensure that there's an authentic connection there? I think it can be very disconnected sometimes. Here's the owner, here's the team, we're building this stuff, some money got shot out over here – to a good cause, but maybe it doesn't feel relevant to the day-to-day. So how do you think about connecting the team to the cause? JOE: That's a great question. It's a really great question. The first thing is we hire for people that have the core values that we have. Family, giving, integrity in all things. There's certain ways that you can interview people to make sure that they have those. And if you actually study some of the psychology behind it, if you study various hiring techniques that are used in books like Topgrading and WHO and those types of things, there's ways you can interview for those core values and competencies to screen people out that don't have that. So, you're hiring people that believe what you believe and then you're coming into a culture that celebrates those core values and celebrates those things. For example, we have a team meeting every single month where we update on everything that's happening in the agency, what's going on with business strategy. We're transparent on financials and performance and all of those things so everybody can see what's going on. We have a part where we talk about help others and core values. In core values, people nominate teammates and they celebrate how they live those core values out, and we tell those stories. A lot of those core values are how we help our partners and internally, but it's also how we give back. And then we tie in our financial performance. We then say, “Because we were able to do this, we were able to give Brie and her three boys this gift.” We make it very personal. Along those lines, we also have quarterly volunteering. We try to get every teammate to volunteer once a quarter so they can see, feel, and touch the work they're doing. My personal favorite is when we go to the Boys and Girls Club of America. Those kids need love, they need support, they need good mentors, and when you go there, you feel fantastic afterwards because you've been able to deliver some of that for them. So that's really powerful. And then we also do this BHAG walkthrough. BHAG stands for big hairy audacious goal. We have this roadmap, and then we say, “Here's three kids that were helped because of this. Here's 1,600 kids that were fed for a year in a place of education.” We did this charity giveaway through our annual thing at the International Franchise Association called the ChoiceLocal 10k Charity Giveaway. People enter a drawing giveaway. There's a really cool story – there's a woman who served as a board member of the International Franchise Association; today she owns about 20 Taco Johns franchises. Very successful businesswomen. She picked the Great Harvest Heartland as her charity, and she ended up winning. What I found out after she won is that as a kid, she was so poor that she needed to go to the foodbank to eat. So, it was a very personal gift for her. That's the type of stuff that really hits home, when you always tie it to that personal story. And then when you say, “Because you were able to do this specifically,” and you name the person, “it allowed us to be able to do this.” Sorry, I'm passionate about this – the last thing I'll add to it is helping the business owner. This particular franchisee is having a really hard time and they're on the verge of going out of business. We had a good amount of this through COVID. We announced the ChoiceLocal Economic Stimulus Package for our customers. We have this whole “grow through the downturn” quarterly priority and theme. We saved probably 30 franchisees from going out of business during COVID, and that was really cool. We celebrated each one of those as a company during the team meetings and made a really big deal out of it, because it's a huge deal. They put their life savings into the business. Together, we helped save their business. That's flipping awesome. It's really cool. ROB: What an opportunity. I hear a certain proximity that you're referring to within the team. Is all of your team right there, one office, one team? Is that your world, or are people in different places? JOE: It used to be that way, pre-COVID. We were in the office three days a week, and Monday/Friday work from home. COVID hit and we went 100% remote. Then we had highest teammate Net Promoter Score ever, highest client Net Promoter Score ever, highest revenue ever by far, highest profit dollars. We're like, this is working really well. So we surveyed our team and said, “What do you guys want to do?” and everybody said basically, work from home, come into the office once. So, we instituted that. What we then found is about 10-15% of our staff in a given week would come into the office, and they'd come in on different days, and when they came in there was like 3% of our staff there. It felt a little lonely, and some people like that connectedness. So I just met with our leadership team on this this past week; we're probably going to be instituting now – we do a lot of stuff on Slack. I know a lot of companies do. Basically, we're going to have ChoiceLocal In-Office Day. It's going to be completely optional, but everybody that's going to go is going to go into Slack, fill out this poll, and RSVP and say “Hey, I'm going to be in the office this day” and try to get other teammates to come in. And then they're going to have a group of probably 30-40% of the company in on that individual day, and they can hang out together. Plus we do all the fun stuff. We have team meets once a month. Those are in person. About half the company comes to those; the rest are virtual. We bring in catered food. We're in Cleveland, so we're going to watch a Cleveland Guardians, which used to be the Cleveland Indians, game. ROB: Yeah, that's an adjustment there as well. JOE: Stuff like that. We do Topgolf. We do a big Christmas party every year. Stuff like that. It's fun. It's so fun. ROB: It sounds like an adjustment, but it sounds like listening to the team, it sounds like adjusting well. When I think about folks I've known in the agency world in Cleveland, there's no shortage of opportunity to lose your team to the revolving door of brands. That seems like it's probably the way of life there – not to mention the regional opportunities with vendors. It really does take some work to keep them on the agency side, I think. JOE: Historically, at my prior agency that was definitely a continual challenge. We launched ChoiceLocal with the mission of help others, with the goal – we're not perfect at this; I don't want to sugarcoat it – but with the goal of being a fast-paced, high energy environment, but you work 40 hours, then you unplug and you leave work at work. We were able to build our systems so that's possible. We historically have had almost no turnover. Now, with that said, this year during COVID, our turnover rate has spiked a bit, but it's nothing like I was ever used to. In a year we would have maybe, out of 100 people, like 1 to 2 people leave that we didn't want to leave. Historically. This year that number is probably up to like 4 out of 100. ROB: Yeah, that's turnover, but it's not a high turnover rate. It is managing what it is. It sounds like you have learned a lot along the way. As you think about lessons you've learned building ChoiceLocal, are there particular things you think of that you would wish to go back and tell yourself to do differently if you were able to? JOE: There's a whole host of things. One of the things I have as an advantage is I was a political science major, and I learned absolutely nothing in college that is useful to me today. [laughs] ROB: A beginner's mindset is what you're saying. [laughs] JOE: Yeah, exactly. There's this book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, and there's so much truth to that. I was raised treat others the way you want to be treated, and that's how I've always operated. I've always brought that to what I do because I thought it's the right thing to do. But I've actually found it's an amazingly sound business strategy. What I'm going to say now may be a little bit controversial, but there's so much stuff that you learn in business school, like when you're getting your MBA and those types of things, and so much of that you need to throw out and ignore because it's trash. For example, you're a service-based business, so a person is not a commodity. A person is not a tool to be used. A person is not a KPI. They are a person with dignity, a person who has a family, a person who deserves to be cared about, loved, and appreciated. If you just do that and focus on that first, the business results tend to take care of themselves. But at the same point, KPIs are important. Accountability is important. Ensuring that you have that is critical. Knowing that you hire right for core values first and for performance second, but also critically important – all of that integrates really well, and those are really important things. The last thing, from a mistake that I made, that I'll say is there's a book called Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Else Smarter, and basically the premise of the book – and this happens for a lot of folks in agencies, particularly in leadership positions – how did you get successful? You got successful by busting your butt and being pretty smart about the way you do things. That's how you were successful. The weakness that comes with that is as you get a bigger team, you need to shut up, you need to ask questions, and you need to be humble. That's the next level. And that book, for me, as I was evolving and growing as a leader, taught me those skills. It played a really important role, and now it's something I believe in so strongly. I met with a future VP of our organization who's probably going to get promoted to a VP very, very shortly, and I said, “Read this book. Take it to heart and do it.” Then I said, “Here's all the stupid things that I did, and here's how this book helped me.” ROB: You start to pull apart some pieces, many questions come to mind. I start to think about – clearly, when you talk about future VP, there's some planning there. There's still some awareness of individuals in your organization, even though at 100 people, it starts to get hard to know everyone. Especially when some people aren't even coming in one day a week, possibly. It's an interesting mix. I think this probably had to be intentional for you as well – building up the leadership team. What are the pieces you've put in place at different stages in the business to build around you to be your best, but also to help the company be its best, maybe where you aren't? JOE: Hire generous people, people that love helping other people be successful. If you have people on your leadership team that don't believe that, don't have them on your leadership team. And if you don't believe that, work on it. [laughs] It's so critical. You need to hire generous people, surround yourself with generous people. It's funny; I was like, we're the world's best at marketing for franchise systems, world's best at franchise development, consumer marketing for franchising; we're the world's best at recruiting for franchise systems. Why don't we just own a franchise system? So, we launched a separate franchise system, hired a guy who led another franchise system to $750 million in network revenue to be the CEO of it. And he believes what we believe. What attracted him to us first and foremost – and he's got an amazing track record in franchising – was our values. He's a generous person. He believes in integrity. He believes in accountability and performance at the same time. So, you've got to find people that believe that and have those competencies. The other thing I'll say is it's important, if you're hiring somebody to lead a business, that they understand that business. You can do it and you can be successful if you don't understand it inside and out, but it's way harder. If you can find people with the right values but also who have worked at different levels in that industry over the course of their career, they can understand the strengths and weaknesses of various decisions, and when you make a decision, how it affects people in different parts of the organization or what you're actually asking and what it entails to make it happen. Which tends to result in better decisions being made, better business performance, less mistakes. Those are the types of things that you really look for. ROB: What franchise business have you got yourself into, then, now? JOE: The name of it is Broadview Dental Group. Our vision is to be the largest provider of dental care in the United States within 10 years. We have some aggressive plans, but I am very confident that we're going to be able to pull it off. ROB: And I've heard that some different models of roll-up franchise operating groups – I've heard they're taking the dental world kind of by storm. The independent dentist is starting to dry up a little bit. Are you seeing that? Is that part of the move? JOE: Yes, it is, and it's sad. What's ended up happening – there actually is one other franchise system in the dental space. I wouldn't call it a real franchise system. That sounds arrogant. I don't mean it that way. But if you look at how franchise systems typically operate, where they basically have some sort of buy-in and then some sort of royalty, it's set up very different with the buy-in being extremely, extremely, extremely high. It's different. But if you look at most of them, they're called DSOs or DPOs, and what they basically do is a dentist is like “Hey, I want to get my practice to the next level.” Then these DSOs or DPOs, which are typically funded by venture capital – this isn't always the case, but typically with venture capital, they care about one thing, which is maximizing shareholder wealth. They'll say, “Okay, you want to take your business to the next level? Sign here. We get 70% equity in your business up to 90% over time, and we can fire you if we want to, and we'll help get your business to the next level.” When you're a dentist and you're passionate about helping others and you're passionate about your practice and your trade, you basically just need a really good business mentor, and most dentists really haven't had it. So what we're doing is giving them 100% equity in their own business, a way to get to the point where they can have 4.5 times the profit of a typical dental practice and only have to work three days a week to do it, and all they need to do is follow our system. And they own 100% of their business. They can sell it when they want to, and when they sell it, they'll sell it for a higher multiple because guess what? In franchising, when you sell your business when you're ready to retire, it's worth more because it's a franchise system and it's proven. There's less risk involved. ROB: Right, it's not (Your Name) Dentistry. It is part of an umbrella. There's brand equity there, there's a system. They don't have to figure it all out. One of my college roommates, his dad was in the dental world, and when you mentioned the high fee to buy in – he always told me dentists like to buy expensive things, so I guess the franchise must be one of those things, just priced for the market, I suppose. When we look ahead to what's next for ChoiceLocal, what's next for marketing in the franchising world, Joe, what are you seeing? What are you excited about for the firm, for what is going to be necessary for your clients to continue as the marketing world evolves? What are you seeing? JOE: There's so much exciting growth ahead. One of the things that I love about being an agency that focuses on ROI and provable results is every time there's an economic downturn, it's good for the agency growth and it's good for your customers. What happens is when there's an economic recession, which I believe we're headed into – we have horrible inflation and there's certain policies that have to be implemented to bring it under control, and the result of that is going to be a recession. What happens in those cases is companies tend to pull back in marketing. But if you're driving marketing where for every dollar they spend, you're giving them $18 in new customer revenue, it's stupid not to spend that. You can grow through the downturn. You can take market share. Imagine putting a dollar in the stock market and getting $18 back within a year. It's a brilliant investment. It's a simple investment. So, what's going to end up happening is that's going to accelerate growth within agencies that are ROI-focused as this economic recession hits, and for however long it hits for. That's exciting. But what I'm also excited about in the newer leading-edge things within agencies is the ability for big data backed with artificial intelligence to transform marketing, to transform business, and frankly to transform medicine. I was talking with the COO of ChoiceLocal, who serves a role with Broadview as well, and we're like, who ever thought that two internet marketers would fundamentally change healthcare and dental care in the U.S.? You'd be like, “Explain that.” It's the same thing you do in marketing with big data. If you have a massive amount of data in a HIPAA compliant way, you can anonymize it, data mine it, and find correlations and causations and literally, with that type of patient data pool, you can change medicine. Similarly, you can do the same thing with marketing, where you can data mine, you can find ways to micro-target ideal customers based on who current ideal customers are – and you may not even know what some of those things are – and then you can target them and measure the performance and lift. That's crazy cool stuff. And that's the newer leading-edge stuff that's really exciting, particularly when you're dealing with franchise systems and the volume that's behind that. ROB: Right. You've got volume there, you've got a growing scale in the business. To think about leveraging it for more than just “Hey, we're bigger” – lots of interesting things there. Joe, when people want to find and connect with you and with ChoiceLocal, where should they go to find you? JOE: They can go to choicelocal.com. Everything is there. They can follow ChoiceLocal on pretty much every social media channel that exists @ChoiceLocal. So they can do that. They can follow me personally on Twitter @helpothersjoe or connect with me on LinkedIn. I try to post a lot of content there that's specific to purpose-driven business, which is a huge passion of mine, as well as franchising and marketing as well. So yeah, @helpothersjoe on Twitter is for me personally. ROB: That's excellent. Joe, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Congratulations on what you've built so far and why you're building it. I think everyone listening has enjoyed the depth in the origin of the business and the intentionality as you build it. JOE: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for all you've done and thanks for having me on today. It really is a great pleasure. Really appreciate you. ROB: All right, appreciate you. Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Q: My question is about the L in TULIP - limited Atonement. I have had trouble wrapping my mind around this and reconciling it with some of scripture. RC Sproul's term definite atonement has helped me and I think it is probably a more accurate term. But would like to hear what Dr. E has to say about this doctrine and scripture to support it. Head to our show notes for all of the resources mentioned in Dr. E's answer. Do you have a biblical or theological question for Dr. E?   Call or text us your question at 615-281-9694 or email at question@michaelincontext.com.

Aliens. UFOs. Bigfoot. Paranormal mysteries --- All Things - Unexplained.Smitty spins the Wheel of Questions for astrophysicist Dr. Charles Liu.Smitty vs. an Astrophysicist (The Cosmos Explained with special guest astrophysicist Dr. Charles Liu Part 4) premiers Friday, June 24th, 2022 at 7 PM EST.World-famous astrophysicist Dr. Charles Liu --- host of The LIUniverse and frequent Star Talk Radio guest with Neil deGrasse Tyson --- joins The Unexplained Ones to discuss his new book --- The Cosmos Explained (available on Amazon), and to...Explain the Unexplained.**************************