Podcasts about Fantastic

What a FANTASTIC episode from start to finish! Anne C. Belanger, is a natural fertility specialist with 30+ years of experience and former UN representative for WOOMB International. Tonight she is coming into the studio to discuss what she has learned, and how it can be applied to combat the existential population crisis we have in the West today. FertilityBusiness.org Unleash Your Brain w/ Keto Brainz Nootropic 15% OFF w/ code MARCH: https://tinyurl.com/2cess6y7 Every purchase enters you into a MASSIVE Product RAFFLE! E-Mail me for FREE SAMPLES of KB or SALTE Hydration Packets! Sponsor Monthly for VIP Perks: https://www.quitefrankly.tv/sponsor One-Time Tip: http://www.paypal.me/QuiteFranklyLive Quite Frankly Amazon Storefront: https://amazon.com/shop/quitefranklyofficial Official Coffee & Mugs: https://www.coffeerevolution.shop/category/quite-frankly Official QF MERCH: https://tinyurl.com/f3kbkr4s Gold & Silver: https://quitefrankly.gold Send Holiday cards, Letters, and other small gifts, to the Quite Frankly P.O. Box! Quite Frankly 222 Purchase Street, #105 Rye, NY, 10580 Tip in Crypto: BTC: bc1q97w5aazjf7pjjl50n42kdmj9pqyn5zndwh3lng XRP: rnES2vQV6d2jLpavzf7y97XD4AfK1MjePu Quite Frankly Socials: Twitter/X: @QuiteFranklyTV Instagram: @QuiteFranklyOfficial Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/xPu7YEXXRY Official Forum: https://tinyurl.com/k89p88s8 Telegram: https://t.me/quitefranklytv Streaming Live On: QuiteFrankly.tv (Powered by Foxhole) Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/yc2cn395 Rumble: https://tinyurl.com/yeytwwyz Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/quitefranklylive Audio On Demand: Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yk4yfdsa iTunes: http://apple.co/2dMURMq

Rick Stroud and Steve Versnick on the South Florida Bulls going to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 14 years and winning the Conference Tournament for the first time since 1990. Plus the World Baseball Classic has been fantastic theater as the USA is playing the Dominican Republic and why you should be excited with the Buccaneers free agent acquisitions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thinking of writing a book?Fantastic! The world needs more good ones!But completing your manuscript and turning it into a quality printed book is a journey.Listen in to discover 7 truths about writing a book that are often overlooked or misunderstood. Resources:Snag your copy of my FREE guide, Your Path to PublishingConnect with Dalene:Contact - > info@inkandimpact.comPodcast -＞Ink and ImpactSubstack -＞ Publish with PurposeFB/IG/LI -＞@dalenebickel Work with Dalene:Get personalized support through 1:1 book coaching at www.dalenebickel.com/bookworthy-coaching What additional topics would you like to learn about?Ready to write and self-publish your first nonfiction book and make a kingdom impact? Join the FREE Publish Like a Pro Facebook group!

On The Dad Whisperer Podcast today I'm excited to be talking with my friend Rick Altizer, the director of a FANTASTIC movie that will be in theaters nationwide next week for two days only on March 17 & 18 titled, “HE CALLS ME DAUGHTER.” This is a film about the power of a father in a daughter's life…with heart-wrenching stories coupled with hope, redemption and healing. This is a move you definitely want to see and Rick will give you the inside scoop as you listen in to our conversation! 

Andrew Billingsly, CEO at Plaswire, joins to discuss how the company recycles wind turbine blades into construction materials, timber replacements, and utility products. Plus carbon fiber recovery, zero-dust cutting technology, and plans to license blueprint factories worldwide. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Andrew Billingsly: Exactly.  Allen Hall: Are we good?  Andrew Billingsly: I’m truly impressed with this great operation you’ve got. You really moved this forward, isn’t it? That’s great. We try. Yeah.  Allen Hall: Yeah, we try. We’re not  Andrew Billingsly: trying. You do.  Allen Hall: So I, I will put an intro to this episode when we get back to the states. So I’m just gonna say, Andrew, welcome to the show. And then we will start talking.  Andrew Billingsly: Where do I look  Allen Hall: here?  Andrew Billingsly: Right? Just, just here.  Allen Hall: Yeah. Don’t worry about those. We’ll figure that out later. That’s,  Andrew Billingsly: yeah. A bit of AI in that. Yeah.  Allen Hall: Yeah.  Andrew Billingsly: And you’ll see as well. Andrew, welcome to the program. Thank you very much, Alan. Joe, really great pleasure to be here today.  Allen Hall: So we’re here to learn about PLA wire and all the great things you’re doing in Northern Ireland because you’re involved in a lot of recycling efforts in wind, outside of wind. You’re doing very novel things, which I think the world needs to hear about. Let’s just back up a minute, because not everybody. And particularly [00:01:00]in North America has heard of PLA wire, even though you, you’re all over LinkedIn. What does PLA wire do? What is this basic fundamental of PLA wire?  Andrew Billingsly: Basically, we’re a processor of polymers. Okay?  Andrew Billingsly: So that’s how we see ourselves, that’s how we frame ourselves. We’re a polymer processor with a waste management license. Uh,  Joel Saxum: I think the important thing here, and this is why I wanted to have this conversation, you and I have been talking in the background for a few years, is. The rhetoric around a lot of the world is we have this problem with recycling blades. We can’t figure it out. Nobody’s got any solutions. Um, and if they do, it’s very agricultural as we say, right? They’re just grinding them up, using ’em in this, that, and what I tell people is like, no, no, you’re incorrect here. There are people doing this. There is, there is solutions out there. It just needs to be, we need, we need to talk about it. We need to put it out there.  Andrew Billingsly: Absolutely. Uh, I fight very hard to tell the true story. Of course, there’s a [00:02:00] lot of greenwashing in every sector of every industry in the world, and those who do it right have to defend themselves. I mean, unfortunately, that’s what we have to do. Fortunately, mostly we’re able to do that if we work hard at it. For us, we do not have a problem in general, dealing with wind farm waste. Wind farm waste is for us blades. Because we’ve taken a pragmatic approach to it. We have to look at how we deal with any waste coming into our, uh, process to ensure it’s environmentally handled, that it’s handled correctly, environmentally, that it meets a price point so that whatever we do with it, we can sell that product, ensure that it’s sustainable in how we operate, and it’s fully circular. So that’s how we’ve addressed wind blades. We were invited into the industry and we worked out what was needed in the industry. But [00:03:00] before we went all full on with it, we had to make sure we could make products that was saleable, that was usable, and could be utilized within the industry wherever possible. But you thought outside of the box  Allen Hall: quite a bit because the way I think the wind turbine blade recycling efforts have gone is to say, well, we’ll, just like Joel was saying, we’ll just grind them up. You’re taking polymer outside of the wind blade world that you’ve been using in aerospace and other industries and saying the valuable part of the wind turbine blade is the fiber and the resin, whatever remains there. If I combine that with other polymers, I can create products with a lifetime that can replace other more expensive items, metal items, cement items. That is the, the, the wisdom that went into what you have done. How did you come up with that?  Andrew Billingsly: I think I was born outta the box. Frankly. I’ve been told that several times.[00:04:00] We’re a solution orientated company. Uh, I was talking recently to somebody about how we built our first factory in Northern Ireland that went up in 10 weeks. That’s 20,000 square feet. And because the pressure we were under, we had that factory erected and in operation in 10 weeks. And that’s just a fact. That’s a recorded fact. And I looked back only two years later and said, heck, what did we do there? Yeah, because we had to do it. So we did it. Yeah. We looked at the problem with the wind blade and we thought, we’ve gotta get a good solution for this. And we’d done that years before with aviation. We were presented with the challenge to deal with plastics arising from the manufacturer’s seating. Now the US produces all the plastics for that sector. It comes into Europe for manufacturing seats, a lot of it local to where our factory is, but nobody had a solution. I have to put my hands up now. I broke a few rules here. I filled two [00:05:00] barn up with this material chopped up and ready to sell, but I actually couldn’t sell it, but I knew there was a solution. So I worked on that for perhaps 18 months and then it worked. And today we are the main, uh, processor of this plastic that comes out of aircraft seating manufacturing, possibly. We still are the only one doing that.  Allen Hall: So you actually take the plastics from the manufacturer of seating and there’s a lot of scrap that’s involved in that. Andrew Billingsly: Yep.  Allen Hall: You take all that plastic waste, you bring it back into your facility, you recombine and pelletize it again so that it can be reused somewhere else.  Andrew Billingsly: Yes, that material goes into, uh, an extrusion process with another company now. Okay. Wow.  Joel Saxum: But, but that’s the same thing you’re doing in wind right now, right? The making it circular, but you’re adding or you’re, you’re adding other second use plastics to it.  Andrew Billingsly: Yeah. So our outta the box thinking was looking back in 2018, how do we grow our business [00:06:00] because recycling plastics within the extrusion world and the injection molding world. What’s getting more internal companies getting better at dealing with their own waste and putting it back into the circuit. So what’s the waste? Nobody wants. It’s the really mucky stuff. It’s this material that comes out of, for example, bio digesters that take the supermarket garbage, the yellow label food that people don’t buy because it’s really is in a bad state. And that goes for digestion and they pull outta those biodigester 10% plastic waste. Hmm. That is a really difficult product to deal with. And not only that, you also find a similar volume of waste coming maybe 24 tons a day, in some cases, sometimes more from the municipal waste processing centers as well. All this waste plastic goes for incineration. Nobody knows how to economically recycle that. So we took on that challenge and produced what we call [00:07:00] RX polymer, which is. Hm, going through pattern now. I got the number only yesterday incidentally for it. And, uh, this enables us then to combine plastics that would not normally combine. So think about polyethylene, polypropylene. Yeah, they mix, but then add in nylon, adding polyester. PET, add in styrene, adding up to 8%, uh, PVC materials. It’s an unknown for a polymer engineer, but we did that. And we cooperated with the university in Ireland to prove it. Uh, this is the technology Uni University in Shannon, and we still have an extremely good relationship with them. So we have this polymer. Along comes COVID, we worked with it. We did the deep dive. We went out to find out could we make product with it, could we make a product people wanted, and could we sell that product because what’s the point otherwise? And then after COVID. [00:08:00] We went out into the market, met with aviation, had a very substantial and transformative almost meeting with Paul Bella, director at Boeing. So by the end of the year we’d worked out along with some discussions with Air Airbus and with Tarmac Aero serve, how we could help them with their composite wastes as part of our RX polymer January, 2023. We got sucked into a, into the wind sector.  Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.  Andrew Billingsly: January, 2023. We got sucked into the wind sector with a significant phone call from Ted. We had a meeting and agreed to take their first blades. We went out bo more land and that was start of a journey.  Allen Hall: Okay. So it just calls you up and says, Andrew, I need you to start recycling our offshore, mostly offshore or all offshore blades.  Andrew Billingsly: These were initially on shore blades. On  Allen Hall: shore blades. Okay. Andrew Billingsly: And they said, did we know how to do it? Could [00:09:00]we do it?  Allen Hall: Okay?  Andrew Billingsly: And we said, yes.  Allen Hall: You said that? Yes. Without really knowing if the answer is yes.  Andrew Billingsly: Yes.  Allen Hall: Okay. I, I think that one of the things, I’m gonna back up just for a minute here. One of the things about Northern Ireland that people in the states don’t really realize is plastics and ejection molding are a focal point for Northern Ireland. Roy, which is the big plastic comb. Brush manufacturer is based in Northern Ireland, so there’s a tremendous amount of plastic knowledge, injection molding knowledge sitting right in the same area. So hearing your story just makes me think, yes, this all starts to make sense now that, that the whole region is a, uh, epicenter in it, so to speak, of how to think about plastics working with shorts and bombardier and all the now Airbus and Boeing. Those people are brilliant and you’re cut off the same limb of the tree. Right. [00:10:00] Where are these products now being used? So you now you’re getting blade from Wared and you, well, let’s talk first.  Andrew Billingsly: You have other customers besides Wared now you have some big names there. Oh, absolutely. So we do work with Airbus. We do work with Boeing on the aviation side, but we’re talking wind today. Uh, so we have Sted, we work with Eola, Scottish Power Renewables, work with GE Verona. RWE uh, a host of them actually just goes on and on, you know, and it’s very important to serve these companies as best we can. Uh, we’ve recently started working with EDF and taking first fleets from a lot of these first fleets of blades from these companies. We have a contract with BNM, which is in partnership with Ocean Wind for the future. BNM is B and Owner one of those great stories of a dirty company in the sense of producing. Fuel for, uh, households from Pete, which is extremely smoky and so forth, transforming to being the best [00:11:00] when it comes to, uh, renewables in Ireland. Wow. Wow. Yeah,  Joel Saxum: I didn’t even know you could do that. Make fuel out of Pete. I just knew you made whiskey out of it. My knowledge is not as good as your, your knowledge. Uh, but so questions for you. Then you have all these other customers coming in. You’re bringing in plastics from other areas and other sectors. How many right now as it sits, how many wind blades can you guys run through, you think? What does a yearly put throughput look like? So  Andrew Billingsly: when we get to capacity as we grow the business, we’ll be able to process up to 11,000 tons of blades on our site.  Joel Saxum: Okay.  Andrew Billingsly: Whoa. Which is a good size capacity. Yeah. Uh, far, far in excess of what we expected, but that was to do with development. We moved from putting 10% blade into our finished product to 30%. Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Andrew Billingsly: It was a big step. We achieved that in March this year, and it was just a. Happy days. And,  Joel Saxum: and when we talk product, right, we’re talking the RX polymer, but what is the end product? What can that be used for?  Andrew Billingsly: So the end product, uh, we can directly [00:12:00] replace virgin plastics in certain situations in the construction industry. Things like protection board, shuttering board and that type of thing. For, uh, precast concrete, there’s a lot of precast concrete products are manufactured because it’s easy to do with, uh, concrete and to use virgin plastics. It’s just not even thought of doing that. But with our RX polymer and the combination of a fiber base in it, we can produce precast concrete products, which outperform concrete versions. We’ve now got a polymer version, which won’t crack through temperature, variation through vibration, through wet and dry cycling, that type of thing. Wow. It’s kind of no brainer in a sense. And then on the timber replacement,  Joel Saxum: scour protection, offshore wind.  Allen Hall: There’s certain, well being in Northern Ireland, there’s a lot of wind and rain and sea and all the above. Oh yeah. It’s  Andrew Billingsly: plenty of all of those. There it is. Definitely. It’s just wet and a bit like Glasgow, plenty of rain, you [00:13:00] know, and or Seattle’s not so different actually. It’s sure. Very similar. It could be quite similar. Yeah. So, and timber replacement is a big thing because the supply of timber cannot meet demand. Yeah. To try and accelerate the supply of timber. They accelerate the growth of the trees using hydrocarbons in the form of fertilizers. And it’s not really gonna go anywhere in the right way. But to be able to put out product now, which outperforms timber for the utilities is a logical step for us. And that’s what we’ve done. Producing poles and posts, which are fiber reinforced, which outperformed timber for the utility companies. Just one design by one utility in the UK consumes 33,000 tons a year. It is madness. I know. But we can offer them a product which lasts a minimum of 30 years certified versus a timber version that because of the regulations regarding, uh, preservatives, it could only last between eight and 10 years. Allen Hall: Oh, [00:14:00] sure. Well that makes a lot of sense. So you’ve, you’ve broken through the barrier of blade recycling into now almost consumer products, industrial products, construction products. Uh. What’s next? Where are you going next? You gonna start making airplanes and cars out of this material or  Andrew Billingsly: no? That I fell outta the box actually bumping my head so I can’t go any further. Um, where do we go from this Look, we are always going to be looking to be better at what we do, so on the blade side, we have great cutting technology that everybody should look at and consider doing something at least similar. So no dust. Very important, and we are moving sometime next year. We haven’t got a date for this yet, where we’ll have a robotic cutting system with absolutely no ze, no dust at all. Zero dust. That’s amazing. Yeah.  Joel Saxum: That’s a, that is a, that’s a big problem in like the states for plane recycling. The, the [00:15:00] regulations around dust and um, and how close you can be to residential areas and siding and all those kind of things.  Andrew Billingsly: If you’re making dust and it’s landing on the ground, it’s gonna be there forever. So don’t make it.  Joel Saxum: There you go.  Andrew Billingsly: That’s the fact. Um, the idea of the robotics is also to be able to recover the carbon fiber, stay in the center of the blade.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. ‘ Andrew Billingsly: cause carbon fiber is heading towards being a shortage product. And we have the opportunity to preserve that and re reuse that product effectively. If you see the carbon fiber in a blade and the big blades, 70 meters and so forth, you go, wow, it’s pencil thickness. You don’t want to see that getting weight.  Allen Hall: Right.  Andrew Billingsly: So using expensive  Allen Hall: too. Yeah.  Andrew Billingsly: Using, yeah, it’s very expensive. Get more so, you know, we are using carbon fiber for novelty. Things like fass in cars and so forth, right. Or wrongs and other matter. But it’s utilizing a product that needs to be going into better applications. No doubt about it. So we’re going in that way to improve the cutting technology. And then [00:16:00] another area is a recyclable blade. So we are talking with the developers of the original recyclable Blade technology about should we be working with them to operate a facility to enable that future technology to become operable. It’s okay to sell the product, but are you recycling it afterwards?  Allen Hall: Right. Can you break it down and get the fiber out of it? Yeah.  Andrew Billingsly: So they’re early discussions and we’d like to progress those over time and achieve a success for everybody there.  Joel Saxum: So Audi, the, the, the facility in Ireland, you’re doing a lot of process improvement. You’re getting better and better and better, but you can, you can process a certain amount of tons there per year. Are you looking at mainland Europe, US South America? Are you, are you moving around yet or,  Andrew Billingsly: yeah. You are a mind reader, aren’t you? I think. Come on now. Look. So we are working with the crown estate. I don’t know, how do you know about the crown estate? Very, uh, influential party, uh, regarding offshore wind [00:17:00] and onshore wind. Okay. And we are working on a feasibility study with them to create a blueprint factory and put up a new facility in the United Kingdom in Scotland. Where we put, that is still under negotiation at the moment because it depends whether or not there’s gonna be a blade manufacturing facility there. Blade manufacturing waste has to be dealt with. Oh yes, it has to. And it’s been ignored and it has to be dealt with and we align to be doing that.  Allen Hall: So you would set up shop next door to the blade manufacturing facility.  Andrew Billingsly: That’s the optimal thing to do.  Allen Hall: Sure it  is.  Andrew Billingsly: Yep. And there’s various discussions taking place with more than one manufacturer about putting a facility into Scotland, but I’m not privy to discuss those things. And then in England, working with a consortium to put up a facility there which will support the offshore wind as it decommissions.  Allen Hall: Oh sure. Wow. See, we have a lot of plans. Yeah. For  Andrew Billingsly: the future. Yeah. And we real, we will realize them. Uh, the beauty of all of this [00:18:00] is the carbon saving because we are diverting products away from incineration. And if you take a blade and put into cement kilt, you’re still producing CO2.  Allen Hall: Sure. It  Andrew Billingsly: has to. And we know that’s not a long term solution because when you melt glass, glass sinks to the bottom of the furnace and one by one cement kiln say, we’ve had enough of this and it seems to affect the refractory bricks as well. Which causes deterioration and another cost for the cement companies. So we can prevent between 2.7 and 2.9 tons of CO2 production. For every ton of waste we divert from this generation.  Allen Hall: Wow. That’s tremendous.  Andrew Billingsly: That’s tremendous. Yeah. And then the products we replace in the market, the virgin plastics, the precast concrete replacements, the, the timber replacements all have high carbon numbers, but now that’s finished. Right. Yeah. So we can net up to 1.7 tons of CO2 offset saving, [00:19:00]whatever way you want to put it, for every time we process. That’s quite fantastic. Well, now we never knew these numbers. As I say, we were pulled into this industry and then we started to look at what are we doing here? And whoa, we didn’t realize. Joel Saxum: Fantastic.  Allen Hall: Well, for, for everybody who’s listening today that deals with blades and that, that’s a vast majority of our relationship has to do with blades somewhat during their life cycle. And I’m wondering what the next generation of recycling actually looks like. It’s PLA wire and they need to get a hold of you, Andrew. How would they do that? To learn more?  Andrew Billingsly: Yes. Well, we are talking with potential partners. Our way to grow is really through a licensing system.  Allen Hall: Okay.  Andrew Billingsly: A reasonable licensing system. So our intention is to put out this blueprint factory, which can be manipulated to suit the market. It can be smaller, it can be larger. The equipment for it is standard. It’s a lot of standard machines joined together in a particular way. The keys and the process and so forth. [00:20:00] So for example, we can offer a blueprint to a company and they equip it with US machinery or Mexican machinery or whatever, machinery. Sure. Yep. So they can control the cost of that. So we sell that design, sell them the engineering work to it. Work with ’em on their market surveys in advance to make sure they’re not going into a world that’s not gonna produce revenue for them. Everything has to be profitable. Assure them of the markets for the finished products, and then work on a license fee with them. Allen Hall: Okay. And they can do that by going to the website PLA wire. You can just Google PLAs Wire,  Andrew Billingsly: Google. Yeah. So you’ll find me at andrew@plaswire.com, which is easy enough for everybody, I believe. Yeah.  Allen Hall: P-L-A-S-W-I-R-E. Dot com.  Andrew Billingsly: That’s correct, Alan. Yeah. Thank you.  Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a really interesting website and Andrew, I’m really glad we had the time to sit down and to discuss your business because it is fascinating. It’s next generation on recycling, and it’s good to spread the word a little bit. So thank you for [00:21:00] joining us today,  Andrew Billingsly: Alan. Joel. It’s been really good for me too. It. I’m so pleased to be able to do this. Yes. And you know what you want the most fantastic podcast to listen to, I have to tell you that. Yeah. Allen Hall: Well we need to have Yon Moore. So  Andrew Billingsly: yeah, I’ll be very happy and love to be able to share our progress as we develop and just, we are always gonna be a changing organization, but always for the better. And you’re gonna understand, I guess we’re quite passionate about what we do.  Allen Hall: Yes.  Andrew Billingsly: Yeah.  Allen Hall: Yes. Congratulations and thank you for joining us.  Andrew Billingsly: Thank you very much. Yep. Perfect. Cool. Wonderful. Wow. So easy now.

The eighth installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists takes us to 1931 Germany, where a whole lot of people keep telling each other the rise of the Nazi party is not a big deal. Yes, old chums, we are going to the cabaret - Bob Fosse's CABARET, specifically. It will be distressing, and eerily familiar, but at least we'll have songs.Thank you for checking this new project out, whether you are a long-time Contrarians fan or someone who's just trying to listen to people talking positively about immigrants and negatively about fascism. If you have any recommendations for future entries in the series, let us know!- Many thanks to the amazing Jordan Cooper for composing our intro and outro. Fantastic collaborator to work with - and he has a They Might Be Giants podcast: DON'T LET'S START. You can also check out Jordan's band TROUBLE'S AFOOT on Bandcamp!- Interested in more Contrarians goodness? Join THE CONTRARIANS SUPPLEMENTS on our Patreon Page! Deleted clips, extended plugs, bonus episodes free from the Tomatometer shackles… It's everything a Contrarians devotee would want!- Our YouTube page is live! Get some visual Contrarians delight with our Contrarians Warm-Ups and other fun videos!- Our buddy Cory Ahre is being kind enough to lend a hand with the editing of some of our videos. If you like his style, wait until you see what he does over on his YouTube Channel.- THE LATE NIGHT GRIN isn't just a show about wrestling: it's a brand, a lifestyle. And they're very supportive of our Contrarian endeavors, so we'd like to return the favor. Check out their YouTube Channel! You might even spot Alex there from time to time.- Hans Rothgiesser, the man behind our logo, can be reached at @mildemoniospe on Instagram or you can email him at mildemonios@hotmail.com in case you ever need a logo (or comics) produced. And you can listen to him talk about economy on his new TV show, VALOR AGREGADO. Aaaaand you can also check out all the stuff he's written on his own website. He has a new book: a sort of Economics For Dummies called MARGINAL. Ask him about it!

I recently had a long conversation with a very successful professional. He's 58 years old. Highly educated. Respected in his field. Financially sophisticated — in fact, his job depends on understanding money. If you looked at his résumé, you would assume he was completely set for life. He wasn't. A couple of bad investments. Some concentration risk. A few decisions that looked reasonable at the time. And suddenly he's essentially back at ground zero — trying to start a new business at 58. This story is far more common than people realize. The Dangerous Assumption is that many successful professionals assume they'll be fine. Doctors. Lawyers. Executives. Entrepreneurs. They make high incomes. They understand finance. They know about markets and interest rates and diversification. They focus on their career. They focus on income. They even focus on investing. What they don't focus on is their own financial future with the same intensity they focus on their profession. There's a difference. Being financially literate is not the same thing as being financially intentional. Especially when you assume you always have more time. The Good News at 58 is that he still has time. A lot of time. For entrepreneurs especially, it doesn't take 25 years to rebuild. It can take five. There's a quote often attributed to Bill Gates: “Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in five.” That quote is brutally accurate. In one year, starting a business feels overwhelming. Progress feels slow. Revenue is inconsistent. Doubt creeps in. But five years? Five years of focused effort, smart strategy, capital discipline, and experience compounded? That can change your entire financial trajectory. I've Seen This Movie Before. I have a very good friend who was worth over $40 million in his early 30s during the real estate boom. Then 2008 happened. The real estate debacle didn't just dent him — it wiped him out. For years, he struggled. Pride gone. Lifestyle reset. Just trying to survive. Most people would have mentally retired at that point. They would have blamed the market, blamed the system, blamed bad luck. But about six or seven years ago, he found his rhythm again. New strategy. New focus. New discipline. Today, he's worth over $60 million. I get that's not normal. But it proves something important. It Doesn't Take a Lifetime. The examples I just gave are extreme. Most people don't lose $40 million. Most people aren't rebuilding at 58. But the principle is universal: It doesn't take a lifetime to secure your future. It takes a focused season. A defined period where you are intensely clear about your objective. A stretch where: • You work harder than you're comfortable with • You manage risk better than you used to • You stop assuming income equals security • You align your decisions with a specific financial target for the future There's another quote I love: “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Luck isn't random. It compounds around preparation, visibility, and persistence. When you are laser-focused on a financial goal, you start seeing opportunities others miss. You make better introductions. You ask sharper questions. You move faster when something makes sense. And over time, it looks like “luck.” The story of the 58-year-old professional isn't a warning about markets. It's a warning about complacency. Success in your profession does not automatically translate into security in your future. Income is not wealth. Financial literacy is not financial strategy. And intelligence does not eliminate risk. But here's the good news. If you're in your 40s or 50s and feel behind — you're not done. If you made a bad investment — you're not finished. If you took a hit — that's not your final chapter. You may just be at the beginning of your five-year season. The key is focus. Direct yourself to a destination you can visualize. That's the only way you will get there. Because in the end, securing your future rarely requires a lifetime of perfection. It requires a concentrated period of intensity. And the sooner you decide to enter that season — the sooner your next five years will start compounding in your favor. There is no one who knows this reality more than this week's guest on Wealth Formula, Rod Khleif . Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qogQNGbK9wk Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/549-youre-successful-until-youre-not-with-rod-khleif/id718416620?i=1000753860685 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mTzyRJxjnkeiVFGCXfOni Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you notice any errors or corrections, please email us at phil@wealthformula.com.  welcome everybody. This is Buck Joffrey with Dwell Formula Podcast. Coming to you from Montecito, California, I wanna remind you that there is a website associated with this podcast called wealthformula.com. That’s where you go if you wanna. Become, uh, more, uh, involved with this community, including our accredited investor club, AKA investor club, uh, very easy to join. It’s free. All you do is you get onboarded and you see lots of, uh, potential deal flow that you wouldn’t otherwise see again, that is wealthformula.com. Simply click on investor club and get onboarded. Now, as for today’s show, I had a, uh, a long conversation with a very successful professional, recently 58, highly educated, respected, financially sophisticated, in fact, in the money business. Uh, and if you look at his resume, you would assume he was completely set for life, but he wasn’t. A couple of bad investments, some concentration risk. A few decisions that looked reasonable at the time, and suddenly he’s back pretty much to ground zero trying to figure out what to do, and he’s thinking about starting a new business or maybe buying a business. Well, that got me thinking because the reality is this story is far more common than people realize, and I actually hear it fair amount. Right? Many successful professionals assume they’re gonna be fine. Doctors, lawyers, executives, entrepreneurs, making high incomes. Maybe they understand finance, they know about markets, interest rates and diversification in theory. But here’s the trap. You focus on your career. You focus on income. What they don’t focus on is their own financial future with the same intensity. They focus on the profession, and that’s. The difference, right? The issue is that being financially literate is not the same thing as being financially intentional. Now, I actually hate that word because it’s a very, uh, uh, neo agey word intentional. But in this case, I will use it because that it’s very, it’s very appropriate. But here’s the good news, even at 58, right, you still have time. You have a lot of time for, especially for entrepreneurs, it doesn’t take 25 years to rebuild. It can take five. And there’s this quote, um, it’s often attributed to Bill Gates, who, who’s been in the news lately for a lot of other stuff, but this is a good quote. He says, most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in five. And that quote is so true. I will, it’s incredibly powerful and it’s very, very useful to think about and. Put in the back of your mind because in a year, like you’re saying, you’re starting a business, it’s gonna feel overwhelming. You may lose money, you know, slow progress, revenue, inconsistent five years, you know, with focused effort and you know, good strategy and discipline. The financial trajectory of your life could completely change over that five years. In fact, I will say that with my first business that I ever started, that is absolutely what happened. I was just pretty much outta residency, didn’t have any money, and within five years I was rocking and rolling. You know, it was a, it was, you know, it wasn’t worth, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. But I, I, I was, I was doing way better. If you look over five years, it’s an incredible trajectory. And it’s not just me. I mean, there’s guys who’ve done it more extreme ways. I talk about this friend, a lot of times he was worth like 30 or $40 million in his early thirties, and then 2008 happened. It didn’t just kinda dent him, it wiped him out, and for years he struggled. Lifestyle kind of reset a little bit, just trying to survive. You know, there’s this saying in business that the key to su success in business is to stick around long enough until you get lucky again. Well, sometimes that’s true. And a lot of people might have, uh, kind of mentally retired at that point. But the reality is he stuck with it. He rebuilt about six or seven years. He was kind of sideways, then another six or seven years, new focus, new discipline, and today worth 60 million bucks. Now, that’s not normal, right? But it does provide, uh, it does, it does kind of provide an important point. It doesn’t take a lifetime always. Now most people don’t lose $40 million, and most people aren’t rebuilding necessarily from zero at 58, but the principle really is universal. It doesn’t take a lifetime to secure your future. It takes a focus season to find period where you’re intensely clear about your objective. It’s a stretch where you work harder than you’re comfortable with, and maybe it’s not fun to do that in your fifties or sixties. You manage risk better than you used to. You stop assuming income equals security. You align your decisions with a specific financial target. You know what, there’s a another line I love, another quote, and I don’t know where this one comes. I, I, I think it was some hockey coach of mine way back. It’s that the harder you work, the luckier you get. The thing is that luck isn’t random, right? It compounds. Around preparation and visibility and persistence. And when you’re laser focused on a financial goal, you’re gonna start seeing opportunities that are out there that others might miss. You’re gonna make, you know, better introductions, ask sharp questions. You move faster when something makes sense, and over time it starts to look like luck. I think the real lesson, um, about the situation that people get into, like this person I was talking about is. That it, it’s not a warning about markets per se, although markets have a lot to do with it. It’s a warning about complacency. You know, success in your profession does not automatically translate into security in your future. You know, income as you know, is not really wealth and financial literacy is not financial strategy. Although literacy is really, really important. You gotta have a strategy. And you can be really, really smart and not eliminate, you know, or mitigate risk enough. So if you’re in your forties or fifties and feel behind, you’re not done. Okay? You made a bad investment, you’re not finished. If you took a hit, I’ve taken plenty of heads, especially the last few years. It’s not your final chapter. You may just be looking at the beginning of your next five year season. And the key is focus clear goals, define targets, discipline, action. The sooner you decide to enter that season, the sooner your next five years will start compounding in your favor. Man, I gotta tell you, this is a, an ongoing story I hear a lot about, so again, think about that Bill Gates quote, you, you know, people tend to way overestimate what they can do in a year. Grossly underestimate what they could do in five. Anyway. There’s no one who knows this better than my guest on this week’s Wealth Formula podcast. Rod Cleef. Many of you already know him. We’ll have that conversation right after these messages. Wealth Formula banking is an ingenious concept powered by whole life insurance, but instead of acting just as a safety net, the strategy supercharges your investments. First, you create a personal financial reservoir that grows at a compounding interest rate much higher than any bank savings account as your money accumulates. You borrow from your own bank to invest in other cash flowing investments. Here’s the key. Even though you’ve borrowed money at a simple interest rate, your insurance company keeps paying you compound interest on that money even though you’ve borrowed it. At result, you make money in two places at the same time. That’s why your investment. Get supercharged. This isn’t a new technique. It’s a refined strategy used by some of the wealthiest families in history, and it uses century old rock solid insurance companies as its backbone. Turbocharge your investments. Visit wealthformulabanking.com. Again, that’s wealthformulabanking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Today my guest on Wealth Formula podcast is Rod Thief. He’s a real estate investor, author, and mentor with decades of experience in multifamily investing. Uh, he’s built and sold hundreds of millions, uh, in, in apartment assets and teaches thousands of investors through coaching masterclasses and his life. Uh, lifetime Cash Flow Academy. Uh, rod, how you doing? Good, brother. Good to see you, my friend. Let’s review, but you know a little bit about you, your background. Sure. You know, uh, sure. We have an interesting story. Okay, well I’m a Dutch immigrant, you know, think wooden shoes and windmills. I immigrated to this country, uh, when I was six years old with my brother Albert, my mother’s cia. Um, and we ended up in Denver, Colorado. Uh, struggled initially. Really struggled actually. And, and I remember, uh, wearing hand me down clothes all the way through junior high school until I finally lied about my age when I was 14 ’cause I was tall and said I was 15 so I could flip burgers at Burger King. You know, and I’m sure you’ve got listeners that had it harder than I did, but I knew I wanted more. And luckily my mom had an incredible work ethic and so she babysat kids so we’d have enough money to eat. And with her babysitting money, she was an entrepreneur and invested in real estate. Um, and her first real estate acquisition was the house right across the street from us. When I was 14, she paid about $30,000. And then when I was 17, she told me she’d made $20,000 in her sleep. It had gone up in value. And I’m like, what? Forget college. I’m getting into real estate. So I. Went and got my real estate broker’s license right when I turned 18, which you could do back then with education. Now they got, they got smart you, they need some, you need some experience. But, uh, I was a broker. I was smart enough to go work for a broker. But, um, you know, my first year in real estate I made about eight grand. My second year, maybe 10 grand, but my third year I made over a hundred thousand dollars, which back in 1980 was some pretty decent money. And so what happened between year two and year three? Uh, the 10 x my income was what? What happens? I met a, a guy, he was a broker. I was working for actually, it taught me about the importance of mindset and psychology and how really 80 to 90% of your success in anything is just that your mindset and psychology. So fast forward to today, I’ve, I’ve owned over 2000 houses that I’ve rented long term. I own thousands of apartments now, and I’m also buying senior housing now, which I’m excited about. And you know, in 2006, my net worth went up $17 million while I slept. And you might say, wow. I said, wow, I got a head so big I could barely fit it through a door. And I thought I was a real estate God. And you know, when that happens, God of the universe will give you a nice little SmackDown. Well, that was 2008. I conservatively lost $50 million in 2008 and nine. What I’m known for talking about on my podcast, which I’m blessed to say at this point’s, the largest, uh, commercial real estate podcast really in the world at this point is, and, and the reason being is I spend time talking about mindset. You know, people don’t remember what you said, but they remember how you make him feel. And I do little clips every week called Own Your Power, their motivational clips. And, and I think that’s the reason it’s been so well received. But, uh, you know, I’m known for talking about the. Mindset it took to have 50 million to lose in the first place. And you know, maybe more importantly, the mindset it took to recover from losing it. But, uh, you know, I’d love to, we can chat about that if you like, or I’d love to talk about the state. Yeah. Whatever you It’s a, it’s, I think it’s appropriate to talk about that right now, rod. I mean, I think Okay. You know, in this, in this market with what we had, you know, um, you know, there’s been a, there’s been a lot of pain in multifamily and Yeah. You know, it’s, you know, you and I have talked about this before where. Part of success is, is trying to recognize particular situations. Um, you know, you talk about Warren Buffet and how Warren Buffet says be greedy, when others are fearful and all that, that’s great, but it’s really hard to do. Right? And so help us understand like, sure. You know, uh, how, how do you, how do you do that? Sure. How did you go and how bad did it get? Well, I lost 50 million. I lost $50 million, so it got pretty freaking bad. Okay. I call ’em seminars. That was an expensive seminar. Yeah. Yeah. And very little, uh, so it was, it was ugly. It was ugly, but. It was, it’s, I, I’ll be, I’ll be candid. The strategies I’ll share very briefly here, the strategies, I’ll share the same strategies you would use to get started. Okay. You know, if, if you know you need to do something, and we talked about this, uh, uh, before we started recording, you know, the. With ai, a lot of jobs are going away. You know, if you heard of Elon Musk on, on Joe Rogan’s last epi episode, or the last interview he did with Joe Rogan, you know, he said any job in front of a computer is pretty much gonna be gone like lightning, like a year or two. I mean that fast. It’s crazy. And so, you know, and even, you know, surgeons are, are, are, are gonna be replaced by robotics and, and on and on and you know, and I think there’s gonna be it professionals, uh, you know, there’s gonna be a lot of. Pain for the people that don’t proactively, you know, reinvent themselves, start thinking about what they’re gonna do to reinvent themselves. Maybe it’s an ai, maybe you’ll learn ai, but, but you better think about it now or if you’re in one of these positions. So when the shoe drops, you’re ready because. Uh, there’s a lot of opportunity. I mean, there’s 10,000 people a day turning 65 in this country. You could buy businesses, um, you know, uh, I’m in, I’m, I’m excited about senior housing. They need beds, you know, and, and there’s a huge shortage of beds, but, so there’s a lot of opportunity, but you better pick something if you’re in one of these fields and get busy starting to study it and learn it, and do it on the side so that when the shoe drops, you’re ready. That’s, I don’t wanna scare you, but I just wanna open your eyes. To that fact. But so how, how I recovered from losing $50 million again, is the same strategy I would tell you to use to get started. And it’s first thing, it starts with goals. You gotta figure out what it is you want. ’cause how do you get anything if you don’t know what it is? Because with the goals you create a burning desire or a hunger and you’ve gotta have that to push through fear and limiting beliefs and so on and so forth. And, um. You know, I, I, that’s, if you come to one of my bootcamps, I do a virtual bootcamp every couple of months. It’s two days. I don’t sell anything there. And I’ll tell you later how you can come for 47 bucks. So it’s no excuse. But, but the first thing we do is goal setting on steroids, uh, because you’ve got, again, you’ve gotta create that hunger. Now, I’ll, I’ll say this to you, if you have no interest in, in, uh, learning what I teach. At my link tree, I did my goal setting workshop. It’s an hour. There’s a guide you can download if you go to rodslinks.com or text the word links if you’re driving, uh, to 7, 2, 3, 4, 5 at the bottom. My, is my goal setting workshop. And you know, here’s the thing, buck, people spend more time planning a freaking birthday party than they do designing their lives. Doing your goals is designing your life. So you know, if, if, uh, if you haven’t done ’em in a while, go to Rods, links, go at the bottom. There’s my workshop, there’s a guide. You can download ’em. Not gonna try to sell you anything. Spend an hour with me. Have your spouse do it. Have your kids do it if they’re over 10 years old, and design their lives. So again, it starts with goals. So that’s the first thing I did was reassociate with my goals. Then the second piece is you gotta make a decision. And I don’t mean dip your toe in the water. I don’t mean one foot in, one foot out. I mean, you decide it’s done. Okay. The Latin root for the word decision means to cut off. If you’re gonna attack the island, you burn your ships ’cause you’re taking their ships home. That’s a decision. And, and that’s what I did. I said, okay, enough, quit feeling sorry for yourself. Pick yourself up and go make something happen. And that’s, that’s what I did back then when I lost everything. But it’s the same thing again. If you’re, if you’re in a job and you’re. You’re just not where you want to be. So we make that decision and then you gotta take the first step, uh, you know, buck. And that’s, that’s pretty much it. You know, Dr. Martin Luther King said, you take that first step in faith, the next step will be revealed. And you know, LA Sue said the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But, you know, in our business and, and, and the investors that we deal with and, and the, you know. Uh, active investors and, and, and passive both, as many of ’em are very analytical and you know who you are. If that’s you and I love you, you’re some of the most successful students that I have and successful people in our businesses. However, I also know how you have to check off every single box before you make a move, and you can’t do that here. Okay? You’ve got to, you’ve got to recognize that you’ve gotta have enough faith. To get started, you know, you can go all the way across the United States at night with your headlight only seeing 50 feet in front of you. And, you know, you can make it, you know, other people have done it before you, you know, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a, a road. And, uh, it’s the same way. You may have some obstacles, but, uh, it’s the same way with this business or really any business. But you, you, you’ve got to take that first step. And, you know, a, a lot of people fear failure, and I’m gonna tell you, don’t fear failure. Fear being in the same place you are right now, a year or two from now, unless you absolutely freak. Love where you are right now. Fear, fear, regret. That’s what I would fear if I were you. I, I, there was this nurse in Australia, a hospice nurse, uh, and her name was Bronny Ware. She asked patients when, who were about to die, if they had any regrets, and she wrote a book about it as a national bestseller. Something like The Five Regrets of Dying. You know what the number on regret was? It was Living the, not Living the Life I could have lived living someone else’s life, not doing what I know. I’m capable of fear that don’t fear failure, you know? Well, the next piece is fear and limiting beliefs. So fear, you know, every successful person have has fear. Now we, we, we, entrepreneurs call it stress, but it’s fear. And, you know, action mitigates fear. You wanna mitigate fear, take action. Go do something. If I’m, if I’m laying in bed at night, it’s three in the clock in the freaking morning and something stresses me out again, stress is fear. That’s what we achievers call stress. Uh, it’s fear. Uh, and, and, um. If something wakes me up and I’m stressed about it, I literally will get outta bed and just go write down some notes. I used to have a pen with an electrical pen that drove my ex-wife crazy and I’d, I’d write notes sometimes fill up pages of notes in bed so that I’m taking some action so I can go back to sleep. So there’s a, there’s a very simple example of it, but anytime that I am fearful about something, I take massive action towards it. Just, just taking steps, doing things. That will mitigate it. And it’s just how it works. So, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s as simple as that buck. I mean, you just have to do some things. Towards that fear now. Now, the other thing is, if you don’t take action, the fear expands. So that’s the, uh, uh, that’s the antithesis there. So, so you, you need to take action because that’ll, that’ll mitigate it. The, the next piece really is limiting beliefs. You know, when I immigrated this country, I didn’t speak English. I got thrown into school, found out what bullies were for the first time. So I got my butt kicked occasionally, hadn’t learned how to fight back, and then my mom, this is the prop, sent me to school in these wooden shoes. And these are the actual wooden shoes. We found them. When we put her in senior house, senior living in, and these leather shorts, the Germans wear for October Fest, I had to wear that to school. And of course that was crack cocaine for the fricking bully. So I got my ass kicked again. And don’t wooden shoes, rod Or, or those, yeah. Yeah. Wooden shoes. Wooden shoes. Yeah. These are from Holland, man. That’s where I was born. Yeah. My mom. Proud Dutch woman. Yeah. This is, they’re wood. They’re real wood. The farmers still wear these things, uh, ’cause they’re good to go through mud, but they’re crack cocaine for bullies. Okay? And so, yeah, you know, uh, I, I, I got my butt kicked again and, and I came up with this belief system that I wasn’t good enough. I used to ask myself, how can I show them I’m good enough? And a lot of people have these limiting belief systems. I’m not good enough. I’m not courageous enough. I’m not strong enough. I’m not old enough. I’m not young enough. Here’s the thing to remember. There’s a reason the acronym for Belief Systems is BS because 99% of them are bs, but we believe they’re real. I mean, I used to be afraid to raise my hand in front of 10 kids in a classroom, and because of fear of rejection, now I speak in front of thousands of people a year, usually in flip-flops. Okay, so you know, you can mitigate this. So if you’re aware of one of these. Limiting beliefs, BS belief systems, drag it out into the daylight. Look at it with your adult rational mind. You’ll recognize that it’s BS and it will dissipate. But you gotta, you gotta think about it consciously and it’ll, it’ll go away. Um, the, the next piece is focus. Um, you know, focus really is power and whatever we focus on gets bigger, both positive or negative. Okay? So it’s very important that you focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. I’ll get, people call me and say, how do I get outta my student loan debt? I’m like, wrong question. How do you make so much money? The debt’s irrelevant, is the question you need to be asking. They asked Mother Theresa if she was anti-war. She said, no, I’m pro peace. I mean, you get it, right? And, and so, and in fact, I’ll give you another example. So I, I, my podcast is over, I believe, over 30 million downloads, which doesn’t sound like a lot in our social media world, but in, in the podcasting space, it’s not bad. But I listened to two podcasts, Joe Rogan and Tim Ferris. I try to get both sides of the aisle. I’m definitely on, on one side. Uh, but, but, um. They get, and the reason I bring that up is they get about 30 million a week, you know, but that big podcast. But, but, um, on, on Tim Ferriss’ show, he interviews the best of the best in the world. You know, the best athletes like Michael Phelps, NFL players and NFL players, NBA players, actors like Hugh Jackman, ed Norton, Jamie Fox, Arnold billionaires like Ray Dalio, heads of the biggest companies on the planet like Zuckerberg. And he deconstructs their success. It’s very intelligent conversation. I mean, I, I love listening to it. I started to hear a pattern, uh, they almost all meditate. What does meditation enhance? Focus, right? So focus is a really important piece of, of, of success. And just a couple more. One is playing, the next one is playing to your strengths. You know, when, when you, when you go to reinvent yourself or if you’re struggling, you know, or, or gonna start something. Play to your strengths and hire a align or partner for your weaknesses. Like in our world, you know, there’s lots of different hats you can wear. It’s a team sport. You could be the person that finds the deals and analyzes them. If you’re analytical, you could be the mouthpiece like me or you, and you’re, you know, raising money, talking to brokers and, and getting the word out. You could be the. You know, the um, asset manager, if you’ve got some project management experience, construction experience, there’s lots of different hats you can wear, but you wanna play to your strengths. Your strengths are your greatest assets. Don’t try to maximize your fears. You’re gonna get much further. Like I said, if you hire aligner partner for your weaknesses, you know, some of the most successful. Um, partnerships I see in the business are an analytical, introverted person with an extroverted, outgoing person. I mean, that’s a match made in heaven in our business. ’cause our business is primarily empirical. You ask the right questions, uh, and, and you get the numbers right. You know, it’s kind of hard to make a big mistake. Um, and so. You know, just make sure you’re playing to your strengths and when you’re playing to your strengths, you’re gonna have passion and passion’s required to influence people. Right? ’cause you love what you do, so you’re passionate about it. So again, real heavy duty argument to play to your strengths. Yeah, I think the last piece, the last piece is, is peer group. Um, you know, who you hang out with is who you become. You’ve heard it, you’ve heard it before. So if you’re gonna get into something, get around people that are doing it. Like my Warrior Coaching program, I’m, I’m gonna brag. I, I, like I said, they own 300,000 multifamily units that we know of. I’m, I, it’s, we’re counting, uh, we know it’s close to 300,000. We’re at like 275,000 or something. I know there’s a lot we’re missing. And, you know, tons of senior housing, tons of self storage, tons of industrial flex space, um, retail mixed use, you name it. Uh, mobile home parks, and. Almost all of those deals were done between warriors, between my students. So you know, ha, who you hang out with is who you become. You know, if you show me your three best friends, I’ll show you who you are in your relationships, your happiness, your health, and definitely your finances. But see, so many people default to a peer group they went to school with or they work with, and those people with their own fears or limiting beliefs might hold you back, you know, afraid of losing you, afraid of feeling less than if you succeed. And sometimes it’s family. I’m gonna tell you, love your family, but proactively choose your peers. Right? You know, and when I was losing everything in 2008 and oh nine, I was in Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership and there were people there that were killing it in that crash, uh, you know, thriving. And they’re like, get up, you puss. 50 million Schmill. Go make something happen. That’s who you wanna be around, not only while you’re building, but certainly when the proverbial stuff hits the fan, right? Uh, so anyway. I, that those are, those are some of the big pieces. Yeah. Well, that, I mean, that’s, let, let’s talk a little bit about the, the business that you’re in. Um, you know, you’re, you’re heavily involved with real estate. Obviously these, uh, mindset things are a great place to start. Now you go out there, let’s talk about where the market actually is and what you’re seeing in this market right now. Does your represent opportunity to you? There’s a ton of opportunity because there’s a ton of people in trouble, sadly. Right. Okay. A lot, a lot of people got adjustable bridge debt. You know, these rates have gone through the moon. I’ll give you a small example. We were looking at a small asset in San Antonio where I’ve got some assets and I. And there, the lender reserve payment that this guy had to pay to prepare for a refinance went from 8,000 a month to 80,000 a month. Do you think that’s painful? Right. And you know, and, and when you’ve got a multi tens of millions of dollar loan on a property and the interest rates adjust several points, you’re done. And, and so that’s just on the interest rate piece. Uh, mentioning my SEC attorney had six foreclosures in one day, apartment complexes, uh, clients, new clients that came to him, he told me like three weeks ago. So who knows how many since then. But you know, there’s a lot of deals and trouble and it’s sad. It’s very sad. But, uh, that’s just one piece is the loans. Uh, the expenses have gone through the thick and roof. I mean, I’ve got maintenance supervisor that’s making $40 an hour at this point, which is crazy. Uh, you know, I, I teach at my bootcamps. Uh, I used to teach a 50% expense ratio. That’s what you want to have. Now I teach 60% ’cause they’ve gone up that much. And so, you know, there’s a lot of pain in the market. But with crisis comes opportunity. There’s incredible deals. I’ve got a a, a 200 unit asset in San Antonio. Um. That is on a lake, and right next door is a 300 unit, 300 plus unit asset. Um, it’s sold the 300 units sold for 43 million in 21 or 22. It’s, it’s with the bank, it’s down to 28 million now. And I’m not even interested unless it gets to 24, unless the rates drop significantly. And so 43 to 24. So that’s what’s out there right now. And di I think you just bought a, a deal at like a 40% discount, didn’t you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And here’s the thing, which is what I wanted to get into as well, and I I just bring, bring people’s attention to it, is that these times in history don’t happen that frequently. Right? Right. And it, and it’s interesting what the, the last multiple, uh, opportunities we’ve, we’ve, we’ve capitalized on, they have been all these situations where it’s a debt problem, right? It’s, it’s an asset that’s performing fine. But someone’s got a month, uh, to go and they just need to get out. They’re gonna lose all their equity, their debts due. Um, yeah, their debts do, there’s like this, this wall of debt, like, I think it’s like a trillion dollars of debt due by the end of this year. So what we’re seeing is, you know, the last several opportunities, 30 to 40% discounts on basis, uh, compared to just two or three years ago. And I think the challenges for investors is that like. In the background, those of us who’ve been through the pain are still feeling the pain and you feel very gun shy about it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and you also start thinking, well, 30 to 40% discounts. Uh, you know, this, this is, this sounds very scary, but in, in reality, I, I’m trying to get people to understand that, that those discounts only last for so long, right? I mean, that if you look at like the, the debt. That’s out there. Most of that really bad debt washes away at the end of this year. At 2026. Yeah. After that, like those 30 to 40% discounts that like people are hearing so often, they’re not gonna be there anymore. No, that’s, and what I, and what I hate to see is people wait two or three years from now and all of a sudden there’s a frothy market and everybody’s jumping on the bwa. ’cause that’s what they always do. That’s not, you wanna be a net seller in that market. That’s right. And, and you know, it’s like you mentioned Warren Buffet’s famous quote, be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when they’re greedy. And, and so right now they’re fearful, which is making harder to raise money. And I’m, I’m having the same conversations. It’s like, Hey, if there was ever a time, it’s right now and now. Now the key, now the key. Differentiator or key factor is it’s all about cash flow. You know, like I said, that that deal at 43 is down to 28. 28 still doesn’t make sense for me. So it’s all about cash flow. And so, you know, I wrote a bestselling book. I’ll brag about, hang on, I’ll show it here. It’s called How to Create Lifetime Cash Flow through Multifamily Properties. The reason I bring this up is the subtitle is The New Rules of Real Estate Investing IE The new rules is it’s all about cash flow. I don’t, you know, I can brag about what you, you know, the discounts you can buy a property for, but it, it’s all about the numbers. It’s got a pencil, it, so cash flow is king. Um, so would you agree with that? Oh, a hundred percent. No. The interesting thing is though, that like, that’s a, that’s actually in real estate. That’s a principle I think a lot of people had, and I think what ends up happening is when the market gets frothy, you kind of skip that step, right? Because then what you’re, then what happens is that the market becomes so competitive that you’re trying to project, okay, I can get this from here to here and I can make it cash flow pretty quickly. And that’s when it gets dangerous, right? Yeah, yeah. Because listen, when Mark, when, when, when rates were, were as low as they were, you could do that. Now what? As soon as they started accelerating, well then you just got behind and, and you, you couldn’t catch up. And that’s kind of what happened. No, that’s it. And the expenses. Yeah. Yeah. They, the business about this market though, and maybe you can get some perspective on this, is what happens. You’ve experienced multiple real estate cycles and one of the opportunities that real estate investors have had throughout the decades is investing in a market where interest rates start to fall. What happens? Well, what happens is, is, is, is, is values As values go up, you know, and here’s the other thing, you know, uh, uh, with inflation, inflation’s not going away. And when you buy a property, the debt’s locked unless you do the adjustable rate thing. But if, if you get a normal, a normal mortgage. The, the rent, the debt is locked, but your, your interest, your rents are gonna continue to climb here. They’re going up, they’re gonna keep going up. And, you know, and, and of course the value of, of what we do is based on a multiple of the net income, the NOI, the net operating income. So any increase of the rents is gonna go to the bottom line. And, and so your values are gonna go up. So again, incredible opportunity to get into this real estate now. With the debasement of the US currency, with with, with all the money they’re printing and everything else, you’re, you’re seeing incredible rises in, in hard assets like gold, silver, of course, we saw a crash in Bitcoin ’cause it’s ethereal, it’s air, but, but real estate, uh, is, is you look at it over, over, you know, 50 years and, and it only goes one direction. It has some dips, but it continues to go one direction. And, and so, you know, I, I love real estate. I always have and. And, and always will. And so, you know, that’s why I teach it, you know, I do, I teach multi and I now teach multiple asset classes. I just taught multifamily for a long time, but now I teach pretty much every asset class and I’m, yeah. So what’s, uh, housing too? Yeah. Tell us a little bit about senior housing and um, yeah, what you’re doing there. I, I, I’ve only purchased one assisted living facility so far, but my students, my God, I can’t even count how many assisted living facilities and memory care units they have. But I, I’m, I’m gearing up. I have a whole team doing it. Uh, we’re cold calling and, and, and the, the, the out, the goal is. Is, uh, uh, 12 units in the next 18, I’m sorry, 12 separate facilities in the next 18 months. And we’re growing up to do that. Uh, we’ve got a ton of interest. And here’s the, here’s the reason why they call it the silver tsunami. There’s, there’s six, 10,000 people a day turning 65, and it goes forever. And it seems like forever. I mean like literally a over a decade and. And again, um, you know, those people. Uh, so there’s a lot of opportunity with that. There’s an opportunity to buy businesses as well. A lot of ’em wanna retire and own businesses, so there’s an opportunity there. But, but, um, in senior housing, there’s, there’s a huge shortage of beds. And, and I’m quite candidly, I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to match the need in the shortage of beds, but there’s a huge shortage of beds and, and so, um, you know, and to build new. The about the least you can build a place for is $200,000 a bed. Well, there are facilities that got crushed by COVID where you can buy. Facilities for sub a hundred dollars a bed. So there’s, there’s a, there’s an opportunity there that we’re capitalizing on. It’s very exciting. Uh, that won’t be around there a lot of, is there a lot of competition from, you know, big money institutions, that kind of thing in this space that are sort of pushing prices up? Because I would think if they would have to, yeah. Yeah. I would think they would have the same sort of thesis overall. So the larger facilities, yes. The, you know, I, I’m not doing the, the 200 bed facilities, you know, I’m in the 50 to a hundred range, you know, uh, kind of the mom and pop range as it were. Uh, and. So, at least to start, I mean, at some point I’ll compete with the larger ones, but we’re starting there and, and there’s just an incredible opportunity to, to get to, and the returns are fantastic. I mean, we’re seeing 15% cash on cash, 25% IRR, realistically not BS returns. And so, you know, it’s very exciting, honestly. And, and, and, and, and again, it’s got legs. It’s not going anywhere. It’s not like one of these things that’s cyclical. There’s, there’s the, these people are retiring. They’ve impacted everything from Pampers diapers to suburbia, and they’re gonna impact, you know, senior housing in a big way. So, um, you know, it’s, it’s that, that’s exciting. Yeah. I got crushed by that wave in 2008. I got crushed by that wave. I’m surfing this wave. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Good for you. So tell us, you know, a little bit more about how people can get involved. It sounds like you got a lot going on there. So tell us about Well, I, I, I teach, you know, I teach this stuff. I have, I’ve had, I dunno, upwards of 20,000 people attend my bootcamps by the way. Really never had a complaint except that the breaks are too short. ’cause I, I packed three days into two days, but I teach this business and soup to nuts, how to find deals, how to pick a market, how to pick a team, how to underwrite them, how to finance them, how to raise all the money for them, on and on. And so if you go to Rods. links.com. That’s my link tree. That’s where my goal setting workshop is. If you want to do your goals, do it there. But, uh, if you come to my bootcamp, that’s the first thing we do. Uh, ’cause I, I need to have you get very focused on what you want. But, um, you know, it’s two days of training. I don’t sell anything and you can come for $47. So tell me your excuse. Okay? And the bonus, the bonuses are thousands of dollars. You get my deal evaluator software, my document library. You get all this stuff. And you know, and candidly, if you come to the bootcamp and. On Monday, you decide it wasn’t worth it, you didn’t love it. I don’t mean like it, I mean, love it. I’ll give you your 47 bucks back. It’s never happened, but it’s first time for everything. So, yeah, no, I, I, I love what I do. It comes out and what I do, and I, I spend time on mindset too, because again, that’s 80 to 90% of it. That’s why my students are so freaking successful. They actually do it. Um, and so. I, I, I really love it, and that’s where I’ll continue to do it. So I’m, I’m doing one of these virtual events pretty much every month and a half. I’ve got one coming up, I don’t know when this’ll air. I’ve got one coming up in March, March 7th and eighth, and there’ll be one, you know, 60, 45, 60 days after that. So, yeah. Fantastic. Rod, thanks so much for being on the show today. Oh, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Uh, thank you. And, and again, it’s Rod’s links or text links to 7 2 3 4 5. Matt, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Buck, it’s great to see you again. You make a lot of money, but are still worried about retirement. Maybe you didn’t start earning until your thirties, now you’re trying to catch up. Meanwhile, you’ve got a mortgage private school to pay for and you feel like you’re getting further and further behind. Now, good news, if you need to catch up on retirement, check out a program put off by some of the oldest and most prestigious life insurance companies in the world. It’s. Called Wealth Accelerator and it can help you amplify your returns quickly, protect your money from creditors, and provide financial protection to your family if something happens to you. The concepts here are used by some of the wealthiest families in the world, and there’s no reason why they can’t be used by you. Check it out for yourself by going to wealthformulabanking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Hope you enjoyed it. We talked about a lot of things, but I think the mindset step is really important. So if you’re one of those people. Who is worried about, you know, a time in your life right now, or that that things aren’t going well? Things can turn around really quickly. You just gotta have some, you know, you gotta have the right mindset. You gotta have the right goals. That’s it for me this week on Wealth Formula Podcast. This is Buck Joffrey sign now. If you wanna learn more, you can now get free access to our in-depth personal finance course featuring industry leaders like Tom Wheel Wright and Ken McElroy. Visit wealthformularoadmap.com.

A magazine that first hit newsstands 100 years ago today was unlike anything readers had seen before. Its cover featured a brightly-colored painting of people ice-skating on a comet as it zoomed past Saturn. Its founding editor, Hugo Gernsback, called it “a new sort of magazine” – “a magazine of ‘scientifiction'” – a genre known today as science fiction. Amazing Stories was the first magazine dedicated solely to the genre. Its debut issue, which was dated April 1926, carried reprints of stories by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, and others. The story titles included “The Man from the Atom” and “The Thing from – Beyond.” The magazine was an instant hit. Within a year, monthly circulation was at 150,000. Other publishers quickly caught on, and began publishing many more sci-fi magazines. Over the decades, they included such titles as Fantastic, Astonishing, and Astounding. They featured many of the major figures of science fiction’s “golden age.” Their inventive stories and eye-catching covers caught the attention of lots of youngsters. The magazines inspired many of them to pursue careers in astronomy, physics, engineering, and related fields. They also inspired future filmmakers, who expanded “scientifiction” far beyond the printed page. Few science-fiction magazines have survived. But their influence is still felt today – on Earth – and beyond. Script by Damond Benningfield

On this podcast we speak about all the action at Indian Wells as Alex Eala defeats Coco Gauff due to an arm injury. Fonseca destroys Tommy Paul, Mboko was pure class against Kalinskaya. Djokovic now faces Draper in a 4th round clash. Tell us your thoughts in the comments! ❤️ SUBSCRIBE TO GTL: https://bit.ly/35JyOhz ▶️ JOIN YOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://bit.ly/3Fk9rSr

Concept Kit FANTASTiC | 11 July 2025 | 30.82 MB Fusing elements of Trap, House, Hip Hop and Techno and twisting them into something fresh, ‘Concept’ is great for those […]

Psychedelic Vocals Pack Vol.3 FANTASTiC | 04 May 2025 | 466.86 MB ‘Psytrance Psychedelic Vocals Pack Vol.3’ is a psychedelic vocal pack produced to lace your songs with lysergic chants. […]

What happens when biodegradable plastic bags meet the tiny, powerful creatures living in our oceans? In this episode about environmental ocean science, Mindy and Guy take you on a wild ride to explore a scientific breakthrough in biodegradable plastic bags! Listen and and discover how microscopic ocean microbes devour this new plastic, turning it into harmless byproducts. From supermarket chaos to microscopic environmental ocean science, this adventure is full of funny funny hijinx, big adventure, and a breakthrough in biodegradable plastic technology. By connecting laughter to learning, this environmental ocean science episode shows how science and fun can sometimes collide in the most unexpected ways.It all starts in a bustling eco-conscious supermarket, where Mindy's stash of plastic bags sparks total chaos, teaching listeners why choosing biodegradable plastic bags over single-use plastics can make a big difference for the environment. Then, back at Mindy's gingerbread mansion, the real fun begins. She drops the bags into a giant seawater tank and, with the help of the incredible Wow Machine, shrinks down to microscopic size to witness ocean microbes at work. These tiny, hungry organisms munch, digest, and transform the plastic, turning it into safe byproducts—all while Mindy and Guy provide hilarious commentary and clear explanations of the science.Along the way, you'll learn that these biodegradable plastic bags can lose 80% of their mass in just over a year, compared to normal plastics that take hundreds of years to disappear. You'll also explore the role of microbes in ocean ecosystems, see why the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a massive environmental challenge, and discover how smart, eco-friendly inventions like biodegradable plastic bags could help protect marine life. These ocean experiments for kids highlight the invisible teamwork happening in nature and make it easy to understand how science solves real-world problems—while keeping the fun high and the laughs constant.Get ready for a whirlwind adventure full of chaos, clever science, and lots of laughter. From flying tomatoes in a supermarket to shrinking down inside a giant seawater tank, Mindy and Guy show how biodegradable plastic bags work in action, why microbes are nature's unsung heroes, and how small changes in our daily lives can have a big impact on the environment. This is the Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and Wow in the World of biodegradable plastics and ocean microbes, brought to life with humor, curiosity, and a whole lot of WOW!

Meet the Fantastic—and Controversial—Dr. David Healy Psychiatric Drug Companies-- What Are They NOT Telling Us? Today, we are thrilled to interview the famed and courageous Dr. David Healy. I have admired his work for many years, but never imagined I'd have the chance to meet him and chat with him. First things first. You may know Dr. David Healy for some of his highly controversial books, like "The Antidepressant Era," "Let Them Eat Prozac," and "Pharmageddon." But who is he, really? According to AI, Dr. David Healy is a prominent Welsh psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, and critic of the pharmaceutical industry known for his research on antidepressants, their links to suicide, and exposing industry practices like ghostwriting and disease-mongering, operating through initiatives like RxISK.org to promote drug safety. He has a long history of challenging Big Pharma, facing academic backlash (like losing a University of Toronto post) for his views, and serving as an expert witness in legal cases involving psychotropic drugs, advocating for greater transparency and patient safety.  Healy initially worked with pharmaceutical companies, gaining firsthand knowledge of how SSRIs were marketed despite their trial weaknesses, focusing on the oversimplified serotonin hypothesis. He then became a vocal critic, highlighting issues like ghostwriting articles and manipulating academic opinion to sell drugs, leading to conflicts with industry-funded institutions. He founded RxISK.org, a platform for patients to report adverse drug reactions, aiming to make medicines safer. His strong stance (on research linking SSRI antidepressants to increased suicidal thoughts and urges) led to intense and corrosive controversy, including losing a professorship at the University of Toronto (though later settled as a visiting role) and harassment, noted here and here. In recent years, he has acted as an expert witness in cases involving drug-related suicides and homicides, bringing issues to regulators.  In essence, Dr. David Healy is a significant, often controversial, figure dedicated to drug safety, academic integrity, and patient awareness in psychiatry, challenging established narratives and industry power.  Taking a deeper dive, AI has added this critically important information: David Healy has discussed numerous examples of conflicts of interest that mainly involve the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medical research, publication, and practice.  Key examples he has highlighted include: Ghostwriting of Articles: Pharmaceutical companies hire medical communication firms to draft research articles or reviews, and then get prominent academics or clinicians to put their names on the papers as the sole or primary authors, a practice known as ghostwriting. The named authors often have little to no involvement in the actual research or writing. Hiding or Misrepresenting Data: Drug companies have concealed unfavorable data or miscoded raw data on drug risks, such as the link between antidepressants and suicidal acts. This manipulation can make a drug appear safer or more effective than it actually is. Biased Clinical Trial Design: Healy notes instances where clinical trials are designed with "tricks," such as using inadequate or excessive doses of comparison medications to make the company's own drug look superior. Marketing-Driven Education: A large portion of continuing medical education (CME) classes for doctors are sponsored by industry. Healy argues this leads to a bias in the information presented to doctors, with an emphasis on the benefits of brand-name drugs rather than an objective assessment of all treatment options. Gifts and Payments to Physicians: Drug companies spend billions annually on marketing directed at doctors, including free samples, sales visits, and small non-educational gifts or lunches. Healy points out that while many doctors believe these gifts don't affect their own prescribing, studies show they influence prescribing patterns and create subtle biases. Industry Influence on Academia: Healy's own experience with a job offer being rescinded at the University of Toronto, which had received a large donation from a drug company (Eli Lilly), is a prominent case he uses to illustrate how industry funding can infringe upon academic freedom and stifle critical research. "Disease Mongering": Healy argues that the pharmaceutical industry often engages in "disease mongering," marketing conditions to the public and physicians to create a market for their products rather than simply addressing genuine medical needs.  So that hopefully gives you some idea of the scope of his work, and his vision of transparency and integrity in the reporting one the effectiveness and risks of psychotropic medications. In our conversation today, he emphasized the importance of listening to patients who describe side effects of medications, such as SSRIs, in described the efforts of Big Pharma to suppress such complaints, giving psychiatrists "talking points" to reassure and quiet concerned patients. In general, a main focus of his career has been to challenge and confront the efforts of drug companies to suppress negative information about their products and troublesome and dangerous side effects. He said that one of the rationales the drug companies use is to say that disseminating that type of information will discourage many potential patients from using their products, and therefore miss out on the potential benefits of the medications. In fact, they have a name for this, "treatment hesitancy," and discourage open discussion of negative effects for this reason. I asked Dr. Healy if he's experienced direct negative pushback from drug companies, and he gave a surprising answer—he said no, that the major pushback he's gotten has actually been from colleagues—psychiatrists who have bought the party line disseminated by the drug manufactures. For example, when he gave his famous talk at the University of Toronto on the increase in suicidal urges associated with SSRI antidepressants, a famous psychopharmacologist, Dr. Charlie Nemeroff, got him fired. Here's the story on Dr. Nemeroff, According to AI: In the late 2000s, Nemeroff faced investigations and sanctions from Emory University for failing to disclose significant speaking and consulting fees from pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline, raising questions about research integrity and conflicts of interest, notes The BMJ and The New York Times.  Although the antidepressant effects of SSRIs are controversial and hotly debated, their effects on the nervous system are not. Dr. Healy's research indicates that they have a suppression effect on the nervous system, which dulls the senses, and this can happen within 1 to 2 days. One of the more troublesome of these effects is called "genital numbing," which affects 9 out of 10  people talking SSRIs. This can result in difficulties with sexual arousal and greatly delayed orgasm, and apparently these effects can persist long after drug discontinuation. He said that these sensory effects can develop quickly, within a day or two of starting the medications. Even more chilling, he said that the problem can actually get worse when you discontinue the medication, and can sometimes persist for life. In addition, quite a few individuals have "bad trips" on SSRIs, although a minority clearly have "good trips." He said the best thing to do for a bad trip is to take the patient off of the medication immediately—and NOT increase the dose. He confirmed my impression that a common error with all antidepressants is to increase the dose—which simply increases the side effects. In addition to the genital numbing described above, he said the SSRIs cause "emotional numbing," which means a decreased capacity for joy as well as sorrow. One of the main activities in David Healy's life has been listening to patients, rather than discounting their complaints when they describe negative effects of medications. When asked about what alternatives to drugs he might recommend to someone struggling with depression, he said that sometimes, just doing nothing will be helpful, since most mood problems clear up spontaneously in 12 to 14 weeks. He said that most are simply human problems, not "mental disorders," but real-life problems, like relationship conflicts or social issues. Although we did not discuss it extensively on the show, I would point out that skillful, drug-free therapy with TEAM CBT can sometimes help as well, and that recent research has confirmed rapid often dramatic mood improvements with individuals using the Feeling Great app, which has been entirely free to anyone since the summer of 2025.  Finally, we do not advise anyone to discontinue or modify the dosages of any medications you have been prescribed without consultation with your doctor. The information in the Feeling Good podcast is of a strictly educational nature, and is not intended as treatment or medical advice. We thank you for listening to today's shocking but incredibly important dialogue with one of the pioneers and champions of greater ethical integrity and transparency in the psychiatric profession. It is sad, indeed, that we don't have more visionary critical thinkers like Dr. David Healy! David (H), Rhonda, and David (B)

Exploring a country still all mystery. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we venture to Mythic Britain & Ireland, a Vaesen sourcebook by Graeme Davis. A labor of love, the book presents all you need to run a game of Vaesen in the British Isles, including scenarios, monsters and mystery seeds. But in addition to being an RPG book, it also works as an introduction to the landscape of folklore that's so unique to Britain and Ireland. Fantastic stuff, and gorgeous illustrations to boot. * * * Graeme Davis has a Patreon dedicated to monsters, their lore and resources for their use in RPG, appropriately called The Monster of the Month Club. You should join! * * * Instagram? Old news. Join the Vintage RPG Newsletter! That's where all the cool kids are now! Stu's book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon? Discord? Cool RPG things to buy? All the Vintage RPG links you need are right here in one place! Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast! Edited by the one and only R. Alex Murray. Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com. Available on iTunes, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients. The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter. Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

Welcome back to I Only Listen to 90s Music! In this episode,  D, Stacey, and Scott are joined by a very special guest: Stacy's lifelong best friend, Samantha. We dive deep into 90s nostalgia, from learning to drive in St. Louis to unforgettable concert memories. We also discuss the latest in the music world, including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominations, a tribute to the legendary Bob Power, and some "industry tea" involving Teddy Riley and Lil Yachty. 8:40 Rest in Peace, Bob Power: A Legend in Engineering 9:58 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominations Debate 26:07 Teddy Riley: What Is going On With Him? 32:17 Lil Yachty's Take on Hip-Hop History 45:27 15 Things You May Not Have Known About New Jack City 54:32 The Adventures of Stacey and Samantha BRAND New Voicemail 314-649-3113 Join the I Only Listen to 90s Music Facebook Group http://bit.ly/3k0UEDe      Follow I Only Listen to 90s Music on IG https://bit.ly/3sbCphv       Follow SOLC Network online Instagram: https://bit.ly/39VL542                          Twitter: https://bit.ly/39aL395                          Facebook: https://bit.ly/3sQn7je                To Listen to the podcast Podbean https://bit.ly/3t7SDJH                      YouTube http://bit.ly/3ouZqJU                      Spotify http://spoti.fi/3pwZZnJ                     Apple http://apple.co/39rwjD1  IHeartRadio http://ihr.fm/2L0A2y

https://youtu.be/_A__xfP6HBM Laurie Barkman, strategic growth advisor, former $100M CEO, M&A expert, and author of The Business Transition Handbook, helps construction, architecture, and engineering firms build scalable, sustainable businesses that create time, freedom, and long-term value. Having experienced a major acquisition firsthand and led companies through significant growth and change, Laurie now focuses on helping mature business owners navigate the complex journey of building enterprise value and preparing for future transitions. We explore Laurie's BUILT Method—Blueprint, Unlock, Integrate, Lead, Transition—a strategic framework designed to help founders of established businesses scale beyond owner dependency and prepare for successful leadership or ownership transitions. Laurie explains how aligning the owner's personal vision with the company's future strategy creates clarity, why measuring enterprise value can unlock new growth decisions, and how proactive transition planning helps entrepreneurs avoid the identity crisis that often follows a business exit. — Take 5 Steps to Transitioning Your Business with Laurie Barkman Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and today my guest is Laurie Barkman, a strategic growth advisor, former a hundred-million-dollar CEO and M&A expert who’s helping construction and engineering companies build scalable, sustainable businesses that creates time, freedom, and value. Laurie is also the author of the Business Transition Handbook. Laurie, welcome to the show. Steve, thank you so much. I’m so excited to be with you today. Yeah, it’s great to have you. And you have a really interesting niche with the business transition and helping construction or architecture engineering firms. So what brought you to this point? What is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in your practice? My personal why has been evolving over the years through my career. I think I was always an entrepreneur at heart. I had orbited entrepreneurial companies, like startups, in a big company. I was always the maverick. I was trying to be an intrapreneur and ultimately found myself in a position of finding a way to help business owners in the back part of their journey. While I love startups, I have found that my niche is in working with mature companies—so companies that are over five to seven years old—and helping entrepreneurs in the tough decisions.Share on X It’s the tough decisions that they really wrestle with, feel alone, and I’ve been in executive shoes, right? I’ve been lived that world. I’m living in the entrepreneurial world right now, but again, in this mature space where we think about life differently, we think about transitions differently, and I’ve just kind of embraced that idea, especially as a Gen Xer, of how to help other Gen Xers in that in-between. So is there like a personal reason why you are attracted to this whole idea of the transition?  I’ve lived a lot of transitions, especially in the corporate world, going through an acquisition about 10 years ago, I was an outside hire at a third-generation company, and they said, “We’re looking to hire you not for the next three years, but for the next 20,” which was really exciting, but it ended up being three. And the reason why is because a little Bluebird, who wasn’t so little, a global company who was very in acquisitive, I was interested in this business, third-generation company. It was over a billion in revenue. My business unit was about 10% of the total. So again, sizable business unit, and myself and the other executives had to work really, really hard to keep our foot on the gas pedal, making sure that the deal, if we were, was going to go through that we helped make it go through—which we did. It was out of the blue. The company was not on the market. But I saw firsthand the innovation, the growth, and the transition over the three generations of the stories of how it went from one to the next was just so fascinating to me. So when I ultimately was part of the integration team, I left the business. The short answer was that I was just there for three years. And so after that I really saw an opportunity to help other entrepreneurs on their journey. So this notion of that we’re going to grow, we’re going to innovate, and then eventually we’re going to transition—maybe it’s a family business, maybe it’s founder-led. Nonetheless, we want to create value, we want to have good handoffs, and I saw things were working well.Share on X As I mentioned, I joined at the point of the third generation. Then it was up to the corporate gods take it from there. And so I thought about ways to add value and work with inspired entrepreneurs who envision a future legacy for themselves, the people they love, the communities they serveShare on X but they’re just stuck. They feel stuck in some way. They’re kind of on their path. They’re not at the end of the path. They’re on it, and they need that support. That’s really what’s been motivating me and driving me for the last seven plus years. Yeah. That’s a wonderful journey, and it’s a very wordy thing because these entrepreneurs, they build a company, and then they don’t know how to allow it to grow up. And you basically are there and help them with the empty nesting and the pre-empty nesting, getting them into good courage. That’s also very important. So one of the ways you, I understand you do this is you call it the BUILT Method, which is kind of neat because you work with construction, engineering, architecture firms. So what is the BUILD Method is about, and how does it help people?  Yeah, the  BUILD Method is definitely an acknowledgement that we are in a physical world, and I appreciate you making that connection.Share on X And it’s not lost on our audience, hopefully. It’s such an important space. We really, in a time of AI and such dramatic change, the built environment of architecture, engineering, design companies that are envisioning their futures. There’s like any industry, there’s a lot of changes. And so this is a blueprint, if you will. That’s the “B,” right? It’s a blueprint for what is your vision and what is the firm model, what should it be in the future? It’s really that roadmap of future growth. The “U” is an unlocked. So many of us feel stuck. Maybe we’re stuck in the day-to-day because we have owner-dependent businesses. Maybe we feel stuck because our revenues are plateaued or declining. And we see ourselves as a bottleneck. Maybe we’re a bottleneck for a variety of reasons, which I’m sure we could talk about. The “I” is all about integration. And so, what do we need to do to document our systems and put things in place so that we don’t have risks in terms of not only owner dependency, but any other employees where there could be gaps should someone leave the organization or have some other untimely departure? The “L” is lead, and lead is not used lightly. Lead is really with clarity and not with chaos. And for owner-dependent businesses, people that have companies that can’t thrive without them, this tends to be a real challenge that they want to lead from the front, but they’re not. And they're so in the weeds in the business, they can't see the forest for the trees. They're not working on the business. So really helping my clients find that clarity is so important.Share on X And then the “T”, last but not least, stands for transition. It’s probably my favorite word at this point. And it’s not just transition or change for any sake. It’s good to have that confidence and to be in control, to be in the driver’s seat, and to be proactive about change. It’s why I wrote the book, The Business Transition Handbook. It’s really encouraging entrepreneurs to not think about an exit as a point in time and a finite point in time. It’s why I do talk about exit and I do talk about exit planning, but my recognition is that this is a finite action, and a transition is a journey. It's a path, and that's why my business is named Business Transition Sherpa, because I am with you on your journey. So the BUILT Method is really all about these different aspects and helping entrepreneurs on their journey.Share on X STEVE PREDA: Yeah. This is very cool. And there is a lifecycle to business, and there’s a lifecycle to an entrepreneur as well. And hopefully the business’s lifecycle is much longer than the entrepreneur’s. So someone is going to take it on, and you want to create a great legacy and a great business. So your way of the blueprint or your version of blueprint is different. Is it like what people call mission, vision, values kind of thing or there’s more to it? I think it does start with that. I mean, those are so fundamental, and my overall approach with strategic transition planning is the acknowledgement that there’s different aspects of the planning that we need to do as business owners, and one of those aspects is a blueprint for the business. And the business fundamentals of where do we want to be in five to seven years or ten years. Another part of that, which is a dovetail, is where does the owner want to be? What’s their personal future vision? And we start to intertwine those things, especially in this age and life stage. I work a lot with, as I mentioned, Gen Xers, and so we are in the mid-fifties of our lives, and statistically speaking, we’re about five to seven years away from a significant life transition. A lot of the Gen Xers, especially business owners I work with, are saying, “I’m looking ahead. I see what the baby boomers have done, and I don’t want to do it their way. I want to do it differently. I’m not going to die at my desk, and I want other things out of my life. My business has provided this and that for me, which has been valuable, but I’m ready for something different. I just don’t know what it is.” So we integrate in this blueprint. Their vision is not just for the business, but it's for themselves as well. And it's a big reason why I work directly one-on-one with the owners, founders.Share on X You and I have talked offline about the role of management team. It’s so important for me. It’s really, really important to give that private time and private space for the owner because these are such important questions that will influence the direction of many lives. And if we’re unwavering, it feels a little uncertain, and we don’t want to necessarily showcase that uncertainty to our teams. So the blueprint part of this is a bit of ideation as well. A big part of what we do is we work on what their future vision is, and it takes into account this age and life stage component of what we’ve been talking about. Yeah. That’s really interesting because maybe you find that as well, that sometimes the vision—the individual vision of the entrepreneur and the company’s vision gets confused. And the entrepreneur may not realizing that their vision may be to transition out of the company, but that’s not going to be the vision for the company because the company for them to be able to transition, has to have a much longer view and people have to believe in it, so that even with the founder, they’re going to be successful. So that is an interesting conundrum that I vision for with an entrepreneur like that. Do you find that to be the case? It is a conundrum. I think it’s just a lonely place in our heads and for owners and founders who have a lot on their shoulders. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” right? It’s a saying that means so much. I think that people want to explore options. They don’t want to lock in on something and put all their eggs in that one basket. I have found that owners who create options for eventual transition are better positioned than folks who have placed bets. I could tell you so many stories, Steve. So for example, especially in our engineering, architecture, and design-type of audience, owners sometimes are placing bets on their internal management to buy them out over time. I had one gentleman call me—I’d say he’s a baby boomer. He had a wonderful number two, had been grooming the number two for eventual. What he had envisioned in his mind was of to sell the business to him, and not only did the number two not want that; he resigned. And it felt like such a betrayal. He was so upset. I had talked to him months after this happened, and he was still upset about it. He felt like it was a starting over in a lot of ways for his own exit plan, which it was. And so we try to prevent against that. Yeah, there's a lot of things that we can do to try to figure out if we have the right people in the right seats. And that's important.Share on X I know you spent a lot of time on this as well, working with management to say, “Do we have the right people in the right seats?” And we do assessments, and those are great. Those are skills and strengths, and we should do that. But what I have found is that we don’t do that when it comes to ownership, especially if we think that the owner is inside the company. And we can talk about it—I’ve created an assessment for that because it’s a high-level way to just get your head around. Do people on my team have an ownership mentality or not? We’re not recruiting for that. We’re recruiting for the skills and strengths that we need for that time. And when we’re growing people over a long period of time, you can imagine how that becomes even more of a problem because if we assume they’re an owner, they have a owner mindset, and they don’t—and they’re more cash—oriented versus equity—oriented and other things—that puts us in a trap. Yeah. I think it’s a big trap. I read it somewhere, I know where I read it from. Dan Kennedy, who’s like a small business guru—he was big in the 2000s—and he once said that the worst number in business is one. It’s one salesperson; it’s one successor who will have to come through. I think this is a big mistake of business owners that they try to clone themselves because they think that if they just find one person who is going to be as good as me, and all my problems are solved. Whether you call it an integrator who is going to come in and run the show and I can just be up there and vision and dream about stuff, I think it’s a huge mistake. I much prefer the idea of creating mini-CEOs in your business who can really strategically own their functions. So anyhow, yeah, this is a big problem. But I’d like to move on to the next letter in the acronym, which is “U”. I really love this word: “unlock.” It’s very inspiring. Unlock—how do you unlock? How do you figure out how to open up the floodgates of opportunity or whatever you mean by unlock? I think part of it is a diagnostic around where is the business today and what are some of the things that we’ve set as goals for enterprise value. What is enterprise value? Are we measuring it? Most often we’re not, and the one big unlock is just this recognition that we have set KPIs for our business, which are great, and we’re using them with our teams, and we’re operationalizing those. Love it. Awesome. Keep that going. But what a business owner is not measuring most often is the enterprise value.  And if we are measuring that, we might make different choices in how we’re investing our resources if our objective is to increase that value. So we might say, “Well, what is enterprise value?” Okay. So we need to understand that. And then, what is it in measurement terms—either through a professional like myself who can help us understand and not just talking to your buddies at the golf club or what you think your business might be worth? And if we can really get some data around that. You know, I love my analytical entrepreneurs, which is one of the reasons I love this space. They're analytical people, and they like the numbers, and they want to have some structure around it. So that's what we do, is we start with the baselining.Share on X Where is the business today? And let’s set some targets. We look at, “Well, what’s best in class in that particular industry?” So again, the AEC industry, we have some benchmarks around that. And then we have to understand, “Well, what are some of the value drivers?” One big, big value driver, of course, is going to be financial performance. So what’s beyond that? And what are these hidden things that we don’t know that can be detracting value? And so if we dig into those things, it’s like an unlock. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. My best example of that in this conversation is enterprise value. Once you know where your enterprise value is today, you can’t unsee that. And you also can’t unsee the desire for many people, which is, “Oh wow, what if I could increase that?” Then we’re talking about millions of dollars of value at some point in the future. So aligning that with our exercise we talked about earlier, which is our age and life-stage exercise around exit timeline. It’s so powerful because now we can set some targets that are meaningful to our communities, our employees, our stakeholders, and ourselves, and aligning the personal, the business, and the financial towards this overall picture. It’s a major unlock. And do you find that—what is the level of transparency you see that these business owners allow for their team to see? So would they actually show them that this is our profitability, these are our margins, gross profit, this is our overhead, this is our net profit, this is how we calculate enterprise value, and here is how you can help me improve it. Is this how it goes or it’s more everyone is just focusing on a couple of KPIs that are within their program?  It’s an evolution. I think a lot of times in the beginning, we keep it a little close because we’re trying to understand it ourselves. And for firms that have developed a cost-of-goods-sold model, a gross profit, they’re already measuring that. Maybe they’re doing that by lines of business. That is really powerful. I have one client in the engineering space that just put that in. And they doubled revenue last year, by the way. So they’re a high-growth company in the engineering space, which is so exciting. They’re doing about $10 million in revenue, and they just put that in for the different lines of business. And how it’s helping them is it’s giving them a year-over-year perspective, which is good. They can see where they’re investing, and they can also see payback opportunities where there’s an intersection with the team. I think is on the business side for growth levers. When we talk about value drivers, and we'll just pick one that's quite common beyond financial numbers, it's our ability to drive recurring revenue, subscription models, and different flavors of…Share on X So for this particular client, we’ve been working on developing a recurring revenue program for them, and we’re at the starting line, but what’s going to be so exciting, I think, not only in terms of their core business growth that they’re seeing, but once we get that recurring revenue program up and running, it’s going to be material. Once the revenues are large enough, of course, it’s going to be material on their enterprise value. And so the dovetail is, well, yeah, he’s not going to launch the subscription revenue business by himself. He needs others to help him do that. But the idea for it and the vision for it and then the unlock right, comes from this type of exploration. Yeah. Wow. That’s great. And it is definitely a challenge that construction companies often struggle with. How do I do a project-based company primarily? How do I drive recurring revenue, subscription models? That would probably deserve its own podcast, this whole topic or maybe a podcast series. Maybe I’ll talk about it another time. I still like us to cover the last letter in the acronym: the transition. Because that’s where I see a lot of people who have sold their business. I was an investment banker in my past life, and I don’t know how many times we saw the business, and the owner was so excited that they basically neutralized the risk, and then they had this big pile of cash, and they bought the boat and they bought the car and the house. And six months later, the boat was collecting water in the marina. You know, they showed the car off to everyone, and it was no longer exciting, but it was very expensive, and they didn’t know where to store it, kind of thing. And then they were getting bored, and they were kind of disappointed because their identity got ahead. How do you deal with it? How do you help people with the identity issue and this whole thinking about transition the right way? You nailed it. That identity is a really big part of why many business owners feel lonely and a bit depressed one year after a sale. There’s many reasons why that could happen. I think the statistics are a little bit over the place, but I do believe that identity is a big part of it. And so if we are working on this together, an example with one of my clients is I gave them a book to read because I got an inkling of what he was interested in, which is themes around justice. And he’s seeking ways to have an impact in his community that are truly outside the business for lots of reasons. But he just innately wants this type of involvement, and we are going through an exploration of what that could look like. He’s in a good place with his business. We're continuing to grow it, and we're working on his growth and enterprise value growth and things like that.Share on X But this sort of sits on this in a parallel path, and it will intersect at some point because we all are human. We have an age and life stage to us, and how he’s envisioning spending his time over the next 10 years. He wants to continue to have a path forward. But we’ve created a space for when we meet, we’re meeting one-on-one, we create that space to really talk about how does he want to spend his time outside the business. And note the timeline here. He’s about 10 years away. And to his credit, he’s saying, “Yeah, I want to start doing something now.” And if that’s how we can think about it, Steve. I think it’s really important. It’s almost like this giant on-ramp. We’re not going to just sell our business and then, all of a sudden we’re going to go have this amazing thing that we’re going to create tomorrow, right? It just takes time. And another way to think about it is like a portfolio—a portfolio of how you look at your identity, how you feel about yourself, and how you spend your time—and has to align. Really, it can align with your core values, it can align with how you want to spend time with people you love. So I have one client, engineering company owner, who is very committed to the church that they support, and he spends a lot of time and a lot of resources. It’s very clear on the company’s website how the company has a policy of donating proceeds from profits to this entity. So it’s well known, and it’s just part of their culture. And in developing his 10-year view, this is part and parcel of it. It’s involving his family members; it’s involving the company. It’s helped fueling a decision around their transition path. They’ve considered lots of different options: Should they sell to a third party? Should they become an ESOP? And the dovetail, I think, for many, is to figure out what is that right fit based on what’s important to you. What’s going to give you that feeling of that completeness and balance that you’re seeking? Wow, that’s amazing. You have people who are thinking about that 10-years out. That is impressive. I’ve never seen that. If a business owner thinks 3-years out about that, it’s already much better than average. So you obviously are inculcating them with the right kind of ideas. So tell me about your business. So let’s switch gears here a little bit. I mean, you ran this a hundred million dollar business for three years, and it got sold; it got integrated. So I’m sure that you had some big challenges there. What is it that you would consider the hardest decision you ever had to make in your business? Yeah, I think in today’s world, I can try to put my coaching hat on for this answer. I’m trying to build a practice that is creating value for others. And so one big thing is to make sure that I’m doing that now with my client relationships and how we measure things. I’m confident that we are doing that, but inherently, if we have one voice, how do we reach many? And I think a lot of companies… it’s like, “Oh, that’s a marketing question.” Yes. And right, it is a marketing question. There’s a lot of things that are dynamically changing in our world. How do we reach the people that we want to reach? How do we share a message? So that is no matter what business you have, I think we can all sort of empathize with that. So I do feel like that is changing a lot. So the challenge is, how do I meet people where they are, right? I think podcasting has been a great vehicle. We’re doing more of that. We’re going to be doing more in-person things as well. I do think that we’re very much in a powerful digital age, and the more digital tools we’re putting in front of us and the more digital time we’re spending. My hypothesis, Steve, is that the value of the interaction—the one-on-one as well as group—is not lost on anybody. That it’s going to be even, probably even more important. And especially as things, and if you’re reading some of these AI articles about potential impact in our economy, there’s going to be a lot of need for us to come together, and lean on each other’s shoulders, and be good, solid resources for one another in times of dramatic change. I fully agree with you. I have that feeling as well that there’s so much alienation that is being caused by the digital stuff, and AI in particular, that people are replacing conversations with chatGPT conversations. I think people will just realize that this is all unreal, or we don’t know whether it’s real or not real. And there’s so much noise because everyone is creating all these posts with AI, and you know what is a real voice here? You won’t know unless you meet the person in person and then you hear their own voice and provided they’re not a robot because that can also happen that you have humanoid robots, but let’s not go that far. So I do agree, and I think that your personal recommendations are going to be even more powerful in the future because you don’t know what is real and what is fake. People also starve. We sit in front of our Zoom screens, and it’s not the same as meeting someone in person. There is a different quality to it, and we are going to starve for it. I was just thinking this morning that I looked at my calendar, and I’m just coming out of my season of spending days with my entrepreneur clients, and it’s over. And next couple months, it’s going to be pretty quiet. I’m going to be in my office, and I’m dreading having to sit here on my own. So I’m thinking about, “Okay, I have to get out there. I have to meet people.” So I’m recording video on this one. Last question. Well, penultimate question to you is, what do you think is the most important question that an entrepreneur should be asking themselves? I’m going to come back to kind of this AI conversation. I think every CEO needs to be using ai. And I think every CEO needs to be considering how their teams can use it and not put your head in sand. I think there’s a lot of impact, positive impact that can be had by just some basic productivity improvements, which is kind of how 95% of AI is being used today. There’s nothing wrong with that. And then from there can lead us to coming up with ways to enhance our business. I have one client that’s using it for proposal development. It’s been a dramatic improvement in quality and time, and that’s just one case study example, but there’s so many others. Following’s. Okay. You don’t have to be a leader. And just being recognizing that AI is going to touch so many aspects of our business and personal lives. And then the other thing is like, don’t stop hiring people because of AI either. There’s a lot of doomsday articles coming out now about the economy and impact of AI. There may be some scary truth to some of those things. And then I’m seeing articles from folks saying, “Look, AI shouldn’t take over your entire business. You’re still going to need smart people. You just want to give them the tools.” As an example, there’s a friend of mine who runs a digital marketing agency, and you might think, “Oh, that’s the kind of business that’s shrinking.” Well, they’re over 200 people, and they’re using AI in very efficient and effective ways. So it’s not a recipe to just dial back your human capital. It’s a recipe to do the unlock and do the think about how you can best use this information to create a scalable practice. Yeah, I think so. Also, this has been seen in history that since the Industrial Revolution, everyone was afraid of losing jobs. And the more technology there is, the more ideas there are for further services, the more demand there is because all the value is being created, and we want to spend that value on more stuff, right? And yeah, I agree that AI is just raising the bar. So every company has to now be AI-empowered and do a lot more. We can’t just deliver what we were delivering a year ago. We have to deliver more, which means that those people who are AI-enabled, they’ll just have to raise their standard. Yeah, I agree with you. So if people would like to learn more about let’s say they have an AEC-type of company—architectural, engineering, construction. Did I get it right?  Yes.  And they are thinking about the future and the transition and build the blueprint for a great company that has more enterprise value, et cetera, or they read your book and they realize that this is exactly what they need. How can they find you and how can they connect to you? Well, my website’s probably a great place to go, which is btsherpa.com. And if people are interested in that succession assessment that I mentioned earlier, just put slash succession—so btsherpa.com/succession—and you’ll get access to the assessment. You can take it multiple times for different people in mind as well. And so my book is on there, my podcast, and I really do hope that people follow up with me. If you have any questions at all about anything we talked about today. Fantastic. So do check out Laurie Barkman via btsherpa.com/succession if you want to read the materials and download stuff. Thank you, Laurie, for sharing all your great ideas and insights. If you enjoyed the conversation, then stay tuned because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur, thought leader to the show who will share with you about frameworks about growing your business and making it more valuable. So thanks, Laurie, for coming, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Laurie's LinkedIn Laurie's website

Why do some teams flourish while others stall — even under strong leadership? In this episode of Called to Flourish, Jay Bransford, President & CEO of Best Christian Workplaces, explores why thriving cultures are built on unified teams aligned around shared mission and trust. Drawing from Scripture and decades of research-backed insight, Jay explains how fantastic teams handle conflict, cultivate psychological safety, and move from "me" thinking to "we" collaboration. This conversation offers practical and biblical clarity for leaders who want to build teams that accomplish more together than any individual could alone. You'll gain insight on: • Why flourishing was never designed to be a solo endeavor • How healthy teams handle conflict without losing trust • The leader's role in shaping collaboration and culture • Why unity multiplies organizational impact

While we are partial to the initial SCP at Sonic Cinema Productions, we don't have the monopoly on those three-letters and Midnight Disease productions has some great audio using them. Secure. Contain. Protect. There are things that go bump in the night. Fantastic things. Horrible things. Redacted things. The SCP Foundation was built to keep humanity safe from a world of beings it doesn't want to know exists. Things of wonder. Things of destruction. And these things have files. A LOT of files. This week on the Society we feature SCP Archives "Stairwell" and "Plague Doctor"! It's AUDIO DRAMA TIME! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Coaster Radio Listener Meetup is OFFICIALLY in the books, and it did not disappoint. Mike and EB take you inside their Sunday at SeaWorld Orlando for the 2026 meetup — Fantastic fans, 11 miles of walking, rain-soaked roller coasters, and a penguin habitat that was a brisk 28 degrees. (They were already wet. It was not fun.)   Ride reviews include Manta, Penguin Trek, Kraken, Mako, Ice Breaker, Expedition Odyssey, and the one everyone was waiting for — Pipeline: The Surf Coaster, which may have just redefined what airtime even means.   Plus: the guys sit down with Banks Lee from SeaWorld's marketing team for an exclusive interview that ends with a riveting riddle, a capitivating clue, and a nugget of breaking news that no one else has. Coaster royalty Taylor Bybee crashes the happy hour. And Bob the Lobster calls in from the deep.   Also on this week's show: Nebraska gets its tallest roller coaster ever (it's 70 feet, and yes, that's a big deal there), Rock N Roller Coaster says goodbye to Aerosmith as the Muppets move in, Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift testing footage gets Mike to completely change his tune, and the guys review the animated POV of the new RMC Raptor coming to Myrtle Beach.

John and Kay have a spoilers filled discussion about the Fantastic 4: First Steps movie from 2025. Links: The Fantastic 4: First Steps @ IMDB.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt10676052 Email us at TheGuys@ComicBookPage.com Join the discussion on our forum at: http://forum.comicbookpage.com Join the Comic Book Page Slack channel: http://comicbookpage.com/cbp_slack_request.php This podcast episode originated on the Comic Book Page […]

Episode 3 of the week after a crazy Verzuz battle! Salute to the cubicle game! Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@WeLoveHipHopNetwork416 Intro Music: Missy Elliot - Get Your Freak On https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=QshTZrpRQ_g&si=raztWFWwHCj6ExQf Erick Sermon ft Redman React https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=M-23YgkgKjI&si=E92btJAne4vYZ1Zz Busta Rhymes ft Ron Browz - Arab Money https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=fuH7r4KBb7o&si=tVJRZL7eoj72EkXK Topics - Casper hits 68 on billboard Canada - R.I.P. Breakfast Club (Netflix killed it) - Warrant for Edmonton rapper - Iceman dropping this month? - Iran breakdown - Library Junkies Thanks to Thanks to Exotic Hotpots: https://www.instagram.com/exotichotpot/ Road Ready Detailing: https://www.instagram.com/torontoroadreadydetailing/ Graba Grabba: https://www.instagram.com/grabagrabba.ca/ We Love Hip Hop: www.instagram.com/welovehiphopnetwork/ Friday: www.instagram.com/fridayrickydred/ Dusty Wallace: www.instagram.com/trappherajohn/ DJ Zar: https://www.instagram.com/djzartv/ DJ Natural Wav: https://www.instagram.com/djnatural.wav/ One Take Jake: https://www.instagram.com/onetakejaketv/

Joshua heads north to beautiful and snowy Canada to spend 5 days with the wonderful people at PWS Imports (Single Cask Nation's distributors within Canada) and, at the very end of a long whisky-filled trip, has a sit down with Travis Watt and Dave Robert to discuss: Canadian whisky clubs, distribution within Canada, Whisky Wonderland Festival, Canadian whisky, Pantera, and so much more! Now, as usual, have a seat, have a pour, and listen in as Joshua, Jason, and Jess answer your wonderful questions. Unless you're driving. If you're driving, be smart and stay sober but be sure to listen into the conversation! Special thanks to: - Weigh Down for allowing us to use their song "Wooden Monsters" as our theme song - RØDE for making *really* great microphones - Focusrite for making awesome USB receivers - Joshua Hatton for producing and editing

NEWS:https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/revolver-bookkeeper-accused-of-fleecing-nightclub-out-of-almost-4-5m-20260218-p5o39t.htmlhttps://www.realcommercial.com.au/news/sizzler-is-back-australian-comeback-announced-for-iconhttps://futurism.com/health-medicine/scientists-gooninghttps://www.skynews.com.au/business/media/sky-news-australia-rebrand-details-released-on-upcoming-rebrand-as-news-corp-invests-in-the-future-of-journalism/news-story/13b41e3c0112dadc09241597d288e2eehttps://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2026/01/30/oecd-housing-taxhttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/national-anthem-mandate-nt-schools-analysis-culture-wars/106290008https://www.nme.com/news/music/martin-shkreli-is-suing-rza-over-multi-million-dollar-wu-tang-album-once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin-he-bought-and-forfeited-3927450https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/19/sydney-writers-festival-swf-kpmg-sponsor-randa-abdel-fattah-speakerhttps://www.news.com.au/national/politics/pauline-hanson-offers-to-form-a-coalition-government-with-the-liberals-and-nationals/news-story/3e47e50d05f7646e37320b43b7183690https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/05/not-delivering-any-aukus-nuclear-submarines-to-australia-explored-as-option-in-us-congressional-reporthttps://au.news.yahoo.com/pro-palestine-slogans-banned-nation-043816614.htmlhttps://www.afr.com/politics/federal/australian-world-news-live-updates-coalition-calls-to-criminalise-helping-isis-linked-australians-return-capital-gains-tax-senate-inquiry-20260223-p5o4i1https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-22/keppel-data-centre-latrobe-valley/106123748https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kgv837wvdohttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/20/pm-anthony-albanese-australia-republic-comments-former-prince-andrew-arrest-ntwnfbhttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/09/australia-in-danger-of-becoming-an-artless-country-as-enrolments-in-creative-courses-collapsehttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-07/isaac-herzog-visit-australia/106294858https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australian-federal-police-confirms-it-wont-arrest-israeli-president-isaac-herzog/0ir4q4vq3https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/special-police-powers-in-effect-on-monday-as-nsw-declares-israeli-presidents-visit-a-major-event/e3gcrw17hhttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2026/feb/10/pepper-spray-and-questionable-police-tactics-how-a-sydney-protest-ended-in-chaos-videohttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/08/albanese-says-isaac-herzogs-visit-will-bring-unity-but-to-many-palestinian-australians-its-a-slap-in-the-facehttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2026/feb/10/turn-the-temperature-down-albanese-defends-invitation-to-herzog-after-protests-videohttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-28/authorities-investigate-alleged-perth-bomb-as-terrorist-act/106280668https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-08/deal-done-to-bring-coalition-back-together/102760848

*EDIT* Due to circumstances this event has been postponed to a later date…Fantastic League of Wreslting is back at it with another great season of Family Friendly Pro Wreslting action with the Fantastic 8 Super Juniors Tounrament. A great tournament highlighting some of the best Junior Heavyweights in the Midwest along with some great tournament action.Card:1st round-Joee Blues vs Yoshi KaiElijah Eros vs Trash PandaDrake Pharaoh vs Dylan DerringerRiley Reinhart vs TainoNon Tournament-Cyberstorm vs Larue/DeathwishLa Estrella of Dragongate vs Xac Abstract vs Marco ModelloZero 1 USA Shining Light title-Mondo Real vs Logan CavazosGreat tickets still available to witness this great night of action at: https://sportsthread.com/user/buy-tickets/634/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP43ARleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeOq3W86n0unjPmKqDo1NJ0ywA1AK6tyU8dP03vPpbG8hiozQrqzAyRqbUNGY_aem_sdAabxaVqj-V_dBnvA0IsgGet all the FLOW news and where you can follow them as well as great sponsors at: http://www.flowrestling.net/index.html?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP43DRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeYO7c0q3G4Ym6FzidfSXak8QbefLHu4gwEZKco-NvoAsplDSsmtcZ7QayqUo_aem_EylCMCqPVKu3Y2l7YM_83wBe sure to follow Drinkin at MO's on our social media accounts to stay up to date on the show..X(Twitter): Big_Mo83Instagram: drinkinatmosFacebook: Drinkin at MO's Threads: drinkinatmos Be sure to subscribe to the channel here on YouTube and all audio platforms…YouTube: https://youtube.com/@drinkinatmos338Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PqYhq9pQF21c5Hu01b23j?si=X8XLCOFZS_-qGBBzdYoD7AApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/drinkin-at-mos/id1617536259IHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-drinkin-at-mos-112523315?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=trueAmazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/5af99e6b-2c35-4f31-b8e4-5d8183216231/drinkin-at-mo%E2%80%99s?ref=dm_sh_pMALI1SeXwefTlaUdVRC9VIohSpotify for Podcasters: https://anchor.fm/drinkinatmosThank you to Prince Nana Coffee for sponsoring the podcast. Use the referral link below to order yourself some amazing premium coffee.Referral: https://princenanacoffee.com/?ref=BigMoThank you to Reaper Apparel for having Drinkin At MO's as a Brand Ambassador… be sure to use the code below for 10% off your order..https://www.reaperapparelco.com/discount/Drinkin?ref=ApFLTTMUPromo code:Drinkinatmos #prowrestling #independentwrestling #wwe #aew #ringofhonor #TNAwrestling #gcw #czw #ecw #letsfngo #drinkinatmos #njpw #nwa #flophousewrestling #socalprowrestling #luchaunderground #luchaundergroundtemple #pwrevolver #warriorwrestling #fantasticleagueofwrestling

Check us out on Spotify on our first attempt at a video podcast! The Wolf and the Truth dive into a FANTASTIC best ball draft. The Wolf has promised the Truth a 50-50 split if it hits (which it will). The guys identify a great 4th round and 8th round pick (both of which they hit in the draft), and then delve into the finale of the Traitors and tease Best Picture nominees and a few other topics.Tune in for our upcoming 7:00 Monday Baked Best Ball Drafts! And check out the Wolf's newest rankings and other great Roto Street Journal content at rotostreetjournal.com

When I say your competition isn’t that good, that most of your competition is average, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to do things better. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I say, your competition isn’t that good. Right, Jay? Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Do you even know who your competition is? Do you know what they offer? Do you know what people think of them compared to you? Maybe you don’t even know if your competition is that good. David: Exactly. And I hear, so many times, when I’m talking to salespeople, the idea that, there’s a lot of competition. Competition is very difficult. There’s a lot of online competition. There’s a lot of local competition. There’s a lot of price-cutting competition. There are all these different variations on competition. And that’s all true. But a lot of them really, honestly, just aren’t that good. And if you recognize right up front that most businesses are average, right? There’s an average in every business, in every industry, there’s an average. And some people are better than average. Some people are worse than average. There are a lot of average. So if you’re competing with the average or the less than average, then you should be able to do pretty well. If you’re a conscientious individual, if you’re reasonably good at what you do, if you study and practice your profession and you get reasonably good at it, you’ll be able to outperform a lot of them because to the extent that there are really exceptional competitors in your market, there are a lot less of those than there are the ones on the other side. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always believed this, you know, you can get caught up in the muck. When I was in radio, I worked for a radio station that had a built in listenership because it was so ingrained in the community. And what that did is it made it so they didn’t have to work hard to get sales or to get numbers. Now you would think, oh man, that’s an amazing place to be. But what happened is, they started to get complacent, right? Everything was so easy, and then all of a sudden ratings started to shift and suddenly they realized, we don’t know how to sell. Because we’re so used to sitting at a desk and the phone is ringing. And we’re just taking orders. So you’re not a salesperson, you’re taking orders, right? And their competitors started to eat them alive because their competitors had to sell all the time, and they were very good at it. So sometimes you’re successful just in spite of yourself. And that may be what your competitors are in, what state they’re in. David: It really could be as simple as that and as difficult as that, in either situation. But, you know, the idea that the competition is excellent, or the competition is terrible, or the competition is average. In a sense, none of it really matters. Because this is life. This is the world that we’re in. These are the cards we’ve been dealt, right? So our competition is there. We’re there. The question is, how are we going to make sure that we are outperforming our competition in all the key areas of customer contact? I mean, if you were to boil it down and say, okay, let’s say my competition is very good. Let’s say you completely disagree with the premise of this podcast, that your competition isn’t that good, or that it’s average or whatever you say. “No, I’ve got a lot of competition.” Okay, then that’s your question. How do you outperform your competition in all key areas of customer contact? Some people may say, “well, I don’t know. What are the key areas of customer contact?” And if you’re asking yourself that kind of question, that indicates that there’s work to be done in your organization. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And do you even know how the competition functions to be able to compare yourself? I mean, that’s got to be at least half the battle, right? David: Yeah, that’s part of the battle. Maybe it’s a third of the battle. Jay: Okay. David: I was gonna say a quarter, maybe it’s a quarter to a third of the battle. And the only reason I say that is I don’t think we should spend a ton of time overanalyzing our average competitors. I mean, if there’s a really, really good one, yeah, you can take a look at what they’re doing. But ultimately, sure, we all want to outperform our competitors. But what do we really want? We want to get to the point where we’re so good at what we do that it’s no longer about outperforming our competitors. Now it’s a matter of outperforming our past best, right? What’s the best we were able to do? When you’re leading in a market, when you really are the market leader, you’re doing things right, you’re doing things well and efficiently, you’re already better than a lot of your average competitors, then the goal you want to reach for is how can I do what we do better in our own organization? Right? How can we initiate contact better? How can we leave messages better? How can we send emails that are more compelling? What are the very specific things, all these points of customer contact that could potentially change for the better to get me better results? Jay: Yeah, I love this idea that your true competition really is yourself, right? It’s kind of like golf or, you know, another single person sport where you’re, really competing against yourself. And, if you can identify constantly ways to get better and you’re not falling into that complacency, then you’re probably going to do better than most of your competitors. David: Yeah, exactly. Something else that I read recently, was talking about the idea that a lot of us want to try to beat our best month ever, our best year ever. We’re always looking to top that top line, which makes a lot of sense. But I read this in a book by Nic Peterson. He said that, ideally, our goal should be to beat our bottom. In other words, sales are going to go up and down, right? That’s going to happen over a period of time. Sales are going to go up and down. We’re going to have peaks and valleys, and hopefully it works on an upward trajectory, and as you’re doing that, if you can make sure that the floor is constantly rising ,then eventually you get to the point where your floor is higher than other people’s ceiling. And if you think about the idea of being better than your competitors, that’s really what you want. Cause if you have a great month this month, an exceptional month, then it’s like, okay, now the new month starts. Now you’re at zero again. You got to start from scratch. Right? But if you know that your first goal for that month is to make sure that you’re above your previous floor. Then it seems a lot more doable. It’s like, okay, we might not have another peak month this month, but if we can stay above our floor, then we will continue to grow and grow. Jay: Yeah, I really like that. I’m somebody who tends to look at records, right? Like we just finished a record month and I’m like on a high, right? Things are great, but you’re exactly right. I mean, next month beating that every single month, month after month. Is that realistic? I think you’re pointing out, no, it’s probably not, and it could be counterproductive. David: Yeah, it’s probably not realistic that each month is going to be higher than the last, and there are not going to be any that are lower. But I think it’s also realistic to say, okay, can I beat our worst month? Or a recent worst month? It’s like if you look at a stock chart and you see how there are these different… Jay: let’s call them peaks and valleys, ups and downs. David: Yeah, peaks and valleys. So if it’s bottoming out at a certain point, you want to say, okay, I want to get in higher than that. It’s a terrible explanation, but you kind of get the drift. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And again, we kind of always fall back to this, is what systems do you have to track these types of things? Do you understand the cause and effect? I mean, so often, yeah, you had a good sales month, or yeah, you increased the baseline, but do you know why you did that? Was it just the phone rang more? Or was it something tangible? Because if it’s not something tangible, how are you gonna repeat it? Was it more calls? Was it more advertising dollars? What was it that got you there? If you don’t know, then the business is driving you. You’re not driving the business. David: Exactly. And each of those things are some of these different areas of customer contact, right? Whether it’s the advertising, whether it’s the phone calls, whatever it is, when we’re looking at that, we’re saying, okay, where are these key points of contact and what can I do to make each of those better? Can I make the messaging better? Can I tweak the messaging? Can I reach a different or better group of people? All these different things. Can I reach them using different marketing vehicles? Can I reach them online? Can I reach them offline? Can I reach them on the phone, via text, via email? How can I reach them? And look at what you’re doing, look at what’s working well and what may be not working as well as it used to, and then say, okay, how could I tweak some of these things, the messaging, the combination of marketing vehicles we’re using, or the people we’re reaching, the MVPs, we’ve talked about that a lot in the past. Which of these can I adapt, can I fine tune, like tuning in an old fashioned radio where they used to have dials on them, right? That type of thing. So you’re able to dial it in clearly and make sure that you’re getting the right people, saying the right things, using the right combination of marketing vehicles. Jay: Yeah, we talked about this last time, avoiding assumptions, figuring out why you got that customer, right? Cause you may be thinking, “oh, I had a new ad campaign or new marketing and this is why they came in.” And maybe it was a contact you had made with them a year ago. Maybe it was a bad experience with one of the competitors. Maybe it was something that changed in their business cycle. I think that type of communication as to why they’re there, why you were able to close them, you need to have systems to track this and, be open and honest with your customers to find out. What was it that motivated them to come to you? David: Yeah, in our work with our clients, we talk a lot about intelligent repetition of contact, being in touch with people again and again and again, but without saying the same thing, without getting boring, without getting tedious, without driving them crazy, right? If we can do that, that’s intelligent repetition of contact, and it makes it far more likely that you will be in front of someone when they’re ready to make that buying decision. Jay: Yeah, I love that idea, but you’re still going to have competitors. So do you need to have some awareness of what they’re doing? Or do you kind of say, I’m going to focus on me and I’m just going to be the best I can and compete against myself? David: Well, I like that better. I like the idea of focusing on ourselves. What I’ve found though, is that in most markets, you don’t have to look too far to hear about what your competitors are doing. Because if you’re reaching out to a new prospect and you hear about one particular competitor again and again and again, that tells you who is actually pretty good in the market. If you hear those names again and again and again, if you hear different people, each time you talk to someone, then it’s like, okay, well that’s sort of the average, that’s the industry. But if you’re talking to a lot of people and they’re all saying the same thing and they’re all saying great things, that’s an indication that you have now found the leader in your market. So that’s what you need to target, then. Then you may look at, okay, well, what are they doing? How are they doing it? How is it better than what we’re doing? Or is it? Is it not better than what we’re doing? But they don’t know what we do, so they can’t compare. Jay: Yeah, and finding out, can I even compete with them in one particular area? Maybe that exposes a different lane for you where you can be competitive, right? So it’s not like you have to play chicken with everybody. That may not be the best solution. We’re in a very unique industry because our products and services are so defined that I only have probably three competitors nationwide. And so when I talk to people, oftentimes, our competitors will come up and sometimes it’s in a good light. Quite often, like you said, my competitors are average. They aren’t that good. It’s not hard at all for us to offer better customer service, better products, everything. I have found, that, a lot of people are like, oh, I hope they don’t go and research and talk to my competitors and get outbid. I’m like, go and talk to them. Go and have that experience because I know you’ll be back and I’m in a better position when you come back. So that’s made us more confident than less confident. David: Yeah. And when you have a small number like that, it is easier to know what each of them are doing. I remember in our promotional product business, back in the day, we had a situation where there was one competitor that wasn’t really known for answering their phones. You try to reach them and you couldn’t get through to them. And so, if a sales person of ours, or if I was in a conversation with somebody and they say, “Oh yeah, we use this company,” sometimes I’d say something like, “Oh, are you able to get them to answer their phone?” And very often they’d laugh. Because if you know this about a company, you can say something like that. Like, “Oh, well, they don’t usually answer, but I can usually get a call back.” “Oh, okay. Well, if you ever get tired of that, or if you ever get voicemail and you’d like to talk to a human, here’s my card, right? That’s just a small example, but you basically look for the things that you know to be true about a competitor. And I’m not saying you’re picking on them. I’m not saying you’re dissing them or anything, but you just point out a very obvious truth about them. And very often that will get their attention. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love it. How do people find out more? David: Go to TopSecrets.com/call and watch the video on that page. See if it makes sense to have a conversation with myself or my team. When I say your competition isn’t that good, what I mean is that a lot of them are not taking the time to learn the things that will allow them to do things better. And if you’re in that camp, if you’d like to be able to do things better and differently than your competition, if you’d like to be seen as the leader in your market, then by all means, TopSecrets.com/call. Jay: All right. Fantastic, David. Always a pleasure. David: Thank you, Jay. Your Competition Isn’t That Good. Ready to Outperform them in All Key Areas of Customer Contact? If so, check out the five primary ways we help promotional product distributors grow: Just Getting Started? If you (or someone on your team) is just getting started in promotional products sales, learn how we can help. Need Clients Now? If you're already grounded in the essentials of promotional product sales and just need to get clients now, click here. Want EQP/Preferential Pricing? Are you an established industry veteran doing a significant volume of sales? If so, click here to get End Quantity Pricing from many of the top supplier lines in the promo industry. Time to Hire Salespeople? If you want to hire others to grow your promo sales, click here. Ready to Dominate Your Market? If you're serious about creating top-of-mind-awareness with the very best prospects in your market, schedule a one-on-one Strategy Session here.

We had sublime music and live performance from Niall McCabe and his wonderful band today on the show!

After attending a sold-out show in St Louis nights ago, I wanted to create a fun way to introduce the group to a potentially new audience. 27 of my favorite songs condensed into a nonstop 60-minute blast. I've enjoyed what these guys have been doing for years. Fantastic energy at the shows and it's a fun time. 

Episode 279-Bang or Bong. Maybe both. Also Available OnSearchable Podcast Transcript Gun Lawyer — Episode Transcript Page – 1 – of 11 Gun Lawyer — Episode 279 Transcript SUMMARY KEYWORDS Supreme Court case, marijuana user ban, Second Amendment rights, ACLU, NRA, New Jersey, Hughes amendment, West Virginia, machine guns, loopholes, gun rights, felon restoration, Epstein files, Michael Bloomberg, gun violence prevention. SPEAKERS Speaker 2, Evan Nappen, Teddy Nappen Evan Nappen 00:16 I’m Evan Nappen. Teddy Nappen 00:18 And I’m Teddy Nappen. Evan Nappen 00:20 And welcome to Gun Lawyer. So, we have some exciting things coming in the future here. I want to make sure the listeners are well aware. In the Supreme Court, we have a case coming up that is going to look at the prohibitor for firearm possession concerning marijuana use, if you’re a user of marijuana. And the case is U.S. versus Hemani. This is very interesting, because it is widely believed that the Court is going to strike down the gun ban for marijuana users. Regardless of how you feel about marijuana use, I’m looking forward to seeing this opinion, because it may be useful in knocking down other gun disqualifiers. Because, folks, gun disqualifiers, such as the gun ban for marijuana use, is an area of exploitation by the gun rights oppressors. Evan Nappen 01:38 So, if they can’t just get a flat out gun ban through, which they try to do all the time, if they can piece meal gun bans to various classes of individuals, then they get the job done that way. That’s why you see the ever expanding list of persons who they try to get disqualified from being able to exercise their Second Amendment rights. And this case has, I believe, potentially very far reaching implications as to subverting that anti-gun rights, that gun rights oppression tactic. So, we want to look at it at as more than just the marijuana. It will be fascinating to see it be a victory, because we have parties in support of this ban going away as diverse as, on the same side now, the ACLU and the NRA. Both. The ACLU is in favor of getting rid of the marijuana user gun ban, because it is, of course, beneficial to in their view, I’m sure, legalization of marijuana, which is something that they would be in support. The NRA is in favor of it going away, because it is consistent with The NRA’s position of supporting Second Amendment rights. So, this has created the classic strange bedfellows situation. (https://www.marijuanamoment.net/aclu-attorney-confident-supreme-court-will-strike-down-gun-ban-for-marijuana-users-after-oral-arguments-next-week/ ) Page – 2 – of 11 Evan Nappen 03:28 But ultimately, what we see coming from it should be a victory for gun rights. And I believe and hope it will be even further reaching than simply addressing the marijuana question. It’s going to be, I believe, very helpful in fighting other disqualifications. Remember, New Jersey is one of the states that tries to always have an expansive list of what disqualifies a person from being able to exercise their Second Amendment rights. They love to create disenfranchisements of our rights because they are rights oppressors, and this tactic, hopefully, will be taking a hit here. So, we’ll keep you informed about the progress and what occurs under the Hemani decision. Teddy Nappen 04:30 I will say, just from the ACLU, just to be clear, they are heavily backed by the Democrat for their super PACs. I’m just saying. Like that is the, and I can’t wait to see all the individuals of the ACLU all out in mass as they’re about to help win a pro-gun victory as well. Yeah. Evan Nappen 04:55 I guess they’re looking at it more as a pro-marijuana victory and ending prejudice toward marijuana users. But whatever their motivation may be, we are going to be consistent in our support for Second Amendment rights. Getting rid of disqualifiers is getting rid of disqualifiers that are disenfranchisements to our Second Amendment rights. So, hey, at least they’re on the right side on this one, and maybe we can get them to continue to see the light on other disqualifiers. Such as restoration of rights for felons and such, right? I mean, this is something you would think they would be in favor of, as well, for restoration of rights. You paid your dues. You served your time. And if you’re not a violent felon, why are you disenfranchised of your rights? I mean, even violent felons, when you get right down to it. I mean, there’s, I missed that in the Second Amendment, where it says we have a right to keep and bear arms, unless you’re a felon, you know, or any of these exemptions. They aren’t there. So, to what degree we tolerate them, to what degree we may think they’re even valuable, I don’t know, but we need to. I’d rather be seeing us pull back on every type of ban and maximize freedom and maximize our Second Amendment rights. Evan Nappen 06:31 Also, in regards to maximizing our rights, there is a really interesting I just love this. I love this. There is an attempt, now, a very shrewd attempt on the pro-rights side to create the ability to get around, yes, a loophole, folks. Because you know what loopholes are. Loopholes are freedom finding a way. And this. Teddy Nappen 07:08 I thought it was a hole in a Castle. Evan Nappen 07:10 Yeah. Right, exactly. Loopholes were the hole in the castle that you would fire your arrows from, because you would still be protected. You could still fire through those, those square, rectangular hole. They’re the loopholes. So, that’s why they’re called that. But, anyway. The key loophole here is in the Hughes Amendment. What there’s an attempt to do, particularly in West Virginia, who has taken the lead here with a bill in West Virginia, which is SB 1071. This is right from AmmoLand, by the way. Page – 3 – of 11 (https://www.ammoland.com/2026/02/contact-chairman-willis-now-sb1071-could-restore-machine-gun-rights-in-west-virginia-if-it-gets-a-hearing/) It could restore access to modern machine guns. That’s right. Evan Nappen 08:00 What they’re doing, what they’re attempting to do is a bill that will create a state run Office of Public Defense within the West Virginia State Police. To procure and sell modern, select-fire machine guns directly to qualified, law-abiding citizens. That’s right. You know how some states have State liquor stores. This will become the state machine gun store. That’s right. It can operate via the Hughes Amendment. Now, the Hughes Amendment was the law back in ’86 that prohibited the, I mean, actually the Hughes Amendment prohibited the new, the sale of new manufacture of machine guns. Okay? So, that created this situation we have now where it’s legal for a citizen to obey the NFA and acquire a machine gun and pay the $200 tax. But the problem is no new machine guns could be put into registration, you see. And that created this essentially, artificially, ridiculously high, crazy prices to own full auto. So, this bill takes the Hughes Amendment and essentially flips the script on the Hughes Amendment by stating that, and this is under Title 18 922(o), that the Hughes Amendment. Here’s, the key loophole language. “. . . does not apply with respect to a transfer to or by, or possession by or under the authority of, a State or any department or political subdivision thereof.” Evan Nappen 10:20 So, in other words, the bill will create a State agency that purchases machine guns and transfers them by quote, right in the law, “by or under the authority of”, the State of West Virginia. The transfers are therefore fully compliant with federal law and critically exempt from the National Firearms Act $200 transfer tax because they’re government facilitated. It’s brilliant. It’s brilliant. It’ll make it so that qualified persons, any adult, who can legally possess firearms under federal and state law, they’d undergo a background check at state police, state police troop headquarters. The office would, where possible, prioritize West Virginia manufacturers, operate distribution points using existing facilities, and issue official state certificates of transfer. Subsequent transfers between qualified citizens would require a simple $275 re-transfer fee through the office, which is waived for heirs. A $250 surcharge per gun plus a modest administrative fee capped at 50 bucks, would flow to the new Public Defense Fund to cover costs, generating revenue for the state without raising taxes. Evan Nappen 11:48 And it was GOA (Gun Owners of America) that drafted this bill. This is really cool. And now I think Kansas is putting a bill forward, and I’m sure we’ll see other pro-gun states moving to create this. This way we can gut the Hughes Amendment and open up the market for new full auto. And by doing that, they’ll become even more commonly owned and become an even greater argument for the Second Amendment and their protection. Eventually, with enough exploitation of loopholes, laws themselves that created the original ban become useless and in fact, go away. We’ve seen this happen. We’ve seen this happen. For example, when it came to NFA Trusts, to purchase NFA, you had to get, at one point, what was called a chief law enforcement officer to sign off. And if your chief didn’t sign off on that, you could not appeal it. You were just dead in the water and could not acquire NFA. Then along comes the idea of setting up a trust where trusts do not require a chief law enforcement to sign off. So, everyone started doing NFA Trusts to acquire NFA, because it avoided the Chiefs sign off. And Page – 4 – of 11 because of that, there were about 10,000 trusts at ATF on NFA. So many just got around it that they finally just repealed the rule and said, guess what? You don’t need to have your chief law enforcement approve it. They just have to get notice of it. But they got rid of the sign off. Why? The loophole defeated it. Evan Nappen 13:50 We see that even going on with switchblades. We’ve seen how there’s been a huge expansion in knife rights based on the ability to work the loopholes for interstate sale and for state sales to be independent. And how the federal prohibition was simply affecting very specific transactions under federal law. To the point where the federal government, in trying to uphold the federal switchblade law, said, as one of their justifications, well, the law isn’t even enforced anymore. That’s right. Why? Loopholes! Loopholes. Freedom finding a way. And so this is exciting to see this taking place on machine guns. Finally going at the NFA. Not shying away from taking on the big stuff. Not letting them get away with claiming that any firearm is somehow intrinsically evil, wrong or bad. We’re finally fighting back with offense. Offense for once. Not just totally on the defense. Evan Nappen 15:07 Speaking of which, you may encounter a new group called “Bridging the Divide”. (https://bridgethedividenow.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Brief-Policy-Outline.pdf) Bridging the Divide on Firearm Policy. Oh yeah, they’re claiming that there’s some bipartisan, that they have taken pro-gun folks and anti-gun and uniting them on principles that everybody believes in. They’re claiming to do this. And here’s their wonderful policies. Lo and behold, when you look closely at this so-called, you know, “Bridging the Divide”, which is, you know, bridging the gap, which is more of laying a trap, my friends. Laying a trap. What you see are their policies that they’re claiming is, you know, they have this bipartisan, so to speak. This is pro-gun and anti-gun right oppressors. Gun rights oppressors and gun rights people. Evan Nappen 16:08 And of course, here’s their policies. They have eight of them, eight of them. This so-called “Bridging the Divide.” One, Prohibiting Factors for Firearm Purchase and Possession. This is right from their “Firearm Policy Outline.” They want to prohibit gun possession by those convicted of violent crime at the misdemeanor level while removing state restrictions on those non-violent felonies. So, they want to expand prohibitions to misdemeanors. Claiming, of course, non-violent felonies, right? Yeah. And then remove prohibition of gun purchases by persons who use marijuana. Well, yeah, guess what? The Court’s already going to kill that. So, they’re throwing this in. They want to, essentially, what they’re looking to do is expand prohibitions to misdemeanors. Who’s kidding who? Come on. Give me a break. Evan Nappen 17:04 Two, Background Checks. Create state level background checks for private sales. Oh, so, in other words, Universal Background Checks, and they want to impose it state by state. More of that. So, end private sales. But they want to have “logical exemptions”? Well, it’s the same, so-called logical exemptions. Let’s just instead of logical, we’ll call it “narrow”, narrow exemptions. No. Private sales should remain private sales. It is more of an intrusion, more of oppression, on our gun rights. How about three? What’s the third thing? Extreme Risk Protection. Oh, seriously? Red flag. We have seen, Page – 5 – of 11 experienced, and are currently experiencing the unbelievable denial of due process that takes place from that garbage. Evan Nappen 17:55 Four, Dealer Registration and Gun Trafficking. They want to focus on the small number of dealers from whom the majority of traced crime guns originate. Oh, really? Well, guess what? What creates those statistics? Anytime they’re run – when guns are seized. And if you’re seizing guns the way New Jersey does, at the drop of a hat and those guns are run, that raises dealer numbers as quoting “crime guns”, even though they’re not crime guns. It is absolutely a flawed basis, and they want to focus on that. Five, Child Firearm Access Prevention. Oh, lock up your safety. That’s what that’s called. Lock up your safety to protect the children. Here we go again. Six, Firearm Suicide Prevention. Ah. In states where murder rates are low, well, let’s go at suicide. Anything we can do to go at the guns, right? And what happens with suicide prevention? Oh, well, that’s the wellness check. You know what’s going on in New Jersey with wellness checks? Anybody calls on anybody, and the police come. They take you away. They take your guns. They hold you for about three days to see if you’re okay. And even though you’re fine, now we got to fight to get your rights back. Fight to get your guns back. There’s a million ways to kill yourself, folks. Focusing on the gun isn’t the answer. Focus on actual causes. But no, it’s just an excuse. Teddy Nappen 19:34 I think the biggest issue with this whole concept of “Bridging the Divide” is take a step back and let us, let us be on equal terms. Here’s the problem, they cannot define what an assault firearm is. They are. Evan Nappen 19:50 Wait, wait, Teddy. I haven’t even gotten to that yet. I haven’t gotten to that. Teddy Nappen 19:54 All right. Evan Nappen 19:54 Number seven, Firearm Injury Prevention Education. They want to tie public health to firearm injuries. Why? Because that goes to healthcare so they can regulate it. Get it regulated back through the health, federal health agencies. Get it back to the CDC. Get them back on it. Cranking out anti-gun nonsense. That’s the game. Eight, Community Violence Intervention. Oh, that gets funding to who? Anti-gun groups. That’s what it’s about. Evan Nappen 20:33 So, we’re looking at these policies and then who’s on it? Well, their board is chock full, chock full of all former and bunch of all anti-gun rights folks. Then they sprinkle in a few that are supposedly pro-gun. So, who’s one of them? Rob Pincus. Rob Pincus is on there, proudly on there. They have listed him as a gun rights advocate. Except here’s a little article from Lee Williams back in March 29, 2021, from thegunwriter.com. (https://thegunwriter.substack.com/p/huh-rob-pincus-supports-expanded?utm_source=publication-search) It says, “Huh? Rob Pincus calls for expanded background checks, gun control and then says he didn’t.” Oh, really? Interesting. You can read that article and see. Page – 6 – of 11 The people they’re getting on board. There’s no major player there that is truly an advocate of our gun rights that I could find, and plenty that aren’t. Evan Nappen 21:30 Nowhere in their policy does it say repeal assault firearm bans, repeal large capacity magazine bans, repeal sensitive place prohibitions, or enact national reciprocity. All the things that we’re fighting for, for our rights. No. All it is is more, more, more. Just a subterfuge of more bans, more back doors to taking away rights. I didn’t see a damn thing here that expands our rights. Nothing. It’s just take, take, take. And package it as some kind of compromise. Their compromise is always us giving up our rights. Forget it, folks. Just forget it. Evan Nappen 22:18 And finally, let me point out, right from The Trace, right from The Trace. Sent out in an email blast, and I just want to read you this from The Trace. (https://mailchi.mp/thetrace/inside-the-loosely-regulated-world-of-gun-manufacturing-4869976?e=a13774efb8) This is fascinating. “Since the Trump administration snatched. . . ” This is The Trace. Snatched. They think of the Mel Brooks. You know, sees snatched, right? But anyway. “Since the Trump administration snatched funding from gun violence prevention . . .” Oh, in other words, let’s decode that. Since Trump took away all the money going to gun rights oppression groups, “. . . the field’s practitioners have had to confront an uncertain future.” Oh, they’re no longer getting the money from the Government. Huh. “Without federal dollars, state and local governments will have to decide whether to pick up the tab. It’s far from a sure thing. Gun violence intervention programs have long had to fight to prove the value of their work. The problem, however, is that it’s difficult to measure. Studying gun violence is expensive, and the nature of violence makes it a uniquely challenging subject to pull apart.” In other words, to propagandize into an anti-gun policy, to take away our rights. “And while gun violence research has seen a resurgence in recent years, the Trump administration cut funding for that field, too.” Yeah, isn’t that cute? I love it. “. . . meaning the available evidence for these programs could grow slimmer.” Evan Nappen 23:46 So folks, The Trace is bitching and moaning about losing their money, and who took it from them? President Trump. And it’s about time. There’s no reason our tax dollars need to go to oppression of our gun rights, and it’s the Trump administration that ended this funding. Keep that in mind. Teddy Nappen 24:10 Just to kind of going back to the whole issue. Whenever the Left try to present themselves like no, no, we need to find these common sense issues. Okay. Let’s define our terms, because the Left does not see the Second Amendment as a right. We know this because the Left wing nut case of a judge, Jackson went and broke down her entire descent of Bruen, describing how it is not a right. It’s a privilege. Arguing that when we deal with gun cases, you have to consider the victims of gun violence rather than looking to the law and the Constitution. That is where they’re coming from. They’re coming from the stupidity and suicidal empathy when they say they’re bridging the gap. That is their argument. Page – 7 – of 11 Evan Nappen 25:01 Just don’t fall for it. Don’t fall for it. But here’s something that you would, that you would like to do, something that you should do, something that you would enjoy doing. And that is going to WeShoot. WeShoot is an indoor range in Lakewood, New Jersey. It’s the range where Teddy and I shoot and where we get our training. You will love WeShoot. And WeShoot is offering some great deals on guns. As a matter of fact, they have a Troy A4 Defender. It’s compact, balanced, and NJ compliant. This platform delivers serious capability in a maneuverable package. It shoulders naturally, runs smoothly, and feels purpose built. They also have a Sig Sauer P365 AXG Fuse. This is where innovation meets metal. The AXG alloy grip module gives you the premium weight and control, while the longer slide and enhance sight radius makes fast, accurate shooting effortless. Try out that SIG P365 at WeShoot. Evan Nappen 26:16 They’re also offering a Smith & Wesson CSX. Now, this is a micro-compact with an aluminum frame and a very crisp single-action trigger feel. It’s slim. It’s refined, and it’s built for discrete carry without sacrificing shoot ability. It has that classic metal construction in a defensive, ready size. Also, you can see Julianna and the MAC 5. This is a retro-inspired style with modern execution. The MAC 5 delivers iconic roller-delayed energy, and Juliana brings the confidence to match. So, check that out as well. Go to weshootusa.com, weshootusa.com. Check out the guns, check out Julianna, and check out the great things that are offered there. Fantastic training, top training. You can get your CCARE certificate so you can get your carry and have a great time in their pro shop. The service you’ll receive is second to none. Go to weshootusa.com. Evan Nappen 27:37 Also, please, please make sure you are a member of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs. They are the premier gun rights group in New Jersey. They are the umbrella organization of gun clubs in New Jersey. They are fighting for our rights. My good friend and colleague, Dan Schmutter, is there in federal court. He’s doing a great job. We’re waiting for some more results to report. Exciting times. We’re going to have some, I feel, excellent results over “sensitive places”, the magazine ban and the assault firearm ban, as we keep fighting and slogging through it. Getting our rights back. Plus the Association is on guard at the courts, at the legislature and the courthouse, both. We have a full-time paid lobbyist and, man, New Jersey is always a challenge. So, make sure you’re a member. Go to anjrpc.org and join today. You’ll get news sent right to your email. You’ll get a beautiful newsletter, and you’ll know that you’re part of the solution. You want to be part of the solution. The solution to the problem. The problem is gun rights oppressors, and the Association fights them in the belly of the beast, New Jersey, right there. ANJRPC.org. Evan Nappen 29:04 And don’t forget to get a copy of my book, New Jersey Gun Law. It’s the bible of New Jersey gun law. It is the book you need to navigate through the insanity that is New Jersey gun law. I try to make it as easy as possible. Question and answer format with 120 topics. It’s a book everybody uses, and you need one. Just go to EvanNappen.com and order yours. And when you get it, don’t lend it out, because you’ll never get it back. I hear that complaint all the time. So, make sure you keep your hands on it, or you’ll lose it. Go to EvanNappen.com and get a copy of New Jersey Gun Law today. Now, we have Press Checks with Teddy. Teddy, what do you have for us today in Press Checks? Page – 8 – of 11 Teddy Nappen 29:50 Well, as you know, Press Checks are always free, and I just want to preface this on this one. Where you see in the news media, they’ve been pushing the whole Epstein thing. All right? They’ve been trying to push that. And of course, the Left ended up destroying themselves, as they’ve lost multiple power players who have been implicated in the whole, in the whole surroundings that it comes with the Epstein files being released. And one of the individuals who, by the way, this individual had close ties to Jeffrey Epstein since, like, the early days, Michael Bloomberg. You know, maybe it was because he had a, you know, big gulp in his hand, and that’s why, you know, he’s like, Oh, how dare you. But, yeah. Teddy Nappen 30:41 So, we go to AmmoLand, where this was a wonderful article written up by Alan Gottlieb. (https://www.ammoland.com/2026/02/ccrkba-demands-bloomberg-come-clean-about-epstein-relationship/) Regarding the fact that now we are demanding that all the anti-gun groups, including Everytown, including all of his multi anti gun right the gun rights oppressors groups cut ties with Michael Bloomberg. You know, the money. And there was, I actually went. And funny enough, anyone can do this. You can go on to the Epstein files on the government website, and they have the entire files library. You can type in word searches. So, you type in “Michael Bloomberg”. I went and read through the different documents on it. Now, to preface this, there was no showing of wrongdoing in what was discovered by the fact he was. However, he was invited with Michael Bloomberg, George Stephanopoulos, Eric Schmidt, all these individuals, to a cocktail party with Jeffrey Epstein to watch The Imitation Game. You know, that movie about Alan Turing where he broke the German Enigma. Okay. Bear in mind, this is 2015. Jeffrey Epstein had already been convicted of the first initial charges back in 2000. Evan Nappen 32:05 He was a felon, you know. So, hey, they love to make a point that they shouldn’t have guns. Epstein kept trying and trying and trying to get his rights back so he could get guns. Yet, here he is with the king of anti-gun funding, Bloomturd. Teddy Nappen 32:25 Yeah. Evan Nappen 32:26 What’s that all about? Teddy Nappen 32:27 There was also a letter. Now, again, there was no direct correspondence with Michael Bloomberg. However, there was a letter from Maxwell, Jillian’s mother, basically inviting him to attend a premiere, apparently, this was a movie, Power of Good. I’ve never heard of this one. But this very clearly shows that there was direct information going back and forth. There was also, it seemed to be, there was a massive invitation, and Jeffrey Epstein was trying to create this almost investor group. I want to tell you. Like he wanted to make this online new media. He was naming these board of directors, one of which was Michael Bloomberg, the Rothschild, Lee Rothschild, Alan Goodman. So, various individuals. He Page – 9 – of 11 seemed to be almost like a financial advisor or a bank roller for Jeffrey Epstein. Again, there’s no showing of wrongdoing, but it’s just, clearly, he had a relationship with him. Even highlighted to the articles where, in 2011 the Palm Beach Daily News, Epstein’s address book included Michael Bloomberg. In 2013, there were multiple pictures taken with Bloomberg and Maxwell together having book parties at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York City, where I guess they were reading gender queer, but also the level. Evan Nappen 33:51 Well, the way they brought in the Clintons to the committee, they need to bring Bloomberg in. I mean, you know, this is. The Left kept pushing and pushing and pushing about the Epstein files. Hoping against hope, that they could somehow get President Trump on this, when, in reality, what we’re seeing is it blowing up in the Left’s face, aren’t we? Teddy Nappen 34:12 Yeah. Also, here’s a really big one. Epstein was invited to a Bloomberg hosted fundraiser for Plaskett. Congresswoman Plaskett. You know, the woman who took direct funding from Jeffrey Epstein, actually got donation money. So, not only was he hosting the dinner, cordially inviting Epstein to come on down. Even writing a letter. Please join our host. Michael Bloomberg. Dear Jeffrey Epstein, please join our host, Michael Bloomberg, to the dinner. So, very clearly he was running in these circles. There’s a very clear tie relationship. Again, no showing of wrongdoing. There wasn’t a direct correspondence with him in the emails. And if you actually go through a lot of the emails, he would email news articles. That’s why you know Bloomberg News. And he would email them to others. So, that did also come up. It just shows the very clear ties. This is the one that really sticks out to me. Documents release revealed he was interested in gun politics and Bloomberg’s work. They don’t show direct donations to EveryTown. However, in 2013 there’s an email soliciting Epstein for a donation to American for Responsible Solutions, which is run by Gabby, Gabby Giffords, who later became Giffords. Evan Nappen 35:34 That’s right. But all they care about with Epstein is Trump. And how does that all relate? Is Trump in the Epstein files, Teddy? Teddy Nappen 35:46 Oh, very much. Yes, yes, Trump is in the Epstein files. Okay, I’ve got to tell this to everyone here. The black pillars, all those out there, we do not have all the information. We know that for a fact. Okay? Has it been mishandled? Absolutely. Pam Bondi should resign. Fall on her sword. Because she has damaged the administration on Trump for the mishandling with the stupid binder gate, all the stupidity of, oh, I have the client list on my desk. That was a lie. And the whole situation there. However, if you actually look at the timeline, you can go see the articles. See the full breakdown of it for Donald Trump. Teddy Nappen 36:24 Here’s the timeline, 2004 to 2005, there was reported abuse by a 14-year-old girl by Epstein. Then Trump immediately ended the relation with Jeffrey Epstein. Banned him from Mar a Lago. In 2008, Epstein was convicted with the help of Donald Trump, who cooperated with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, who fully deposed himself to the lawyers. As opposed to all the other people that are Page – 10 – of 11 implicated, who just stayed away. He actually went in to help the victims. Imagine that. And going in next 2000, after Maxwell is convicted as well, where she trafficked to Epstein. Also in 2019, he’s later arrested again. Guess who’s President in 2019? Donald Trump. He was arrested for sex who invested arrested Epstein for sex trafficking, and then he’s later dead in 2019. So, not only does it exonerate, where, after he was convicted, Trump broke off all relationships with Epstein. He helped get Jeffrey Epstein. That is all that they have on Donald Trump when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein. Teddy Nappen 37:32 All the fake news, all the fake and you know why he said hoax? He wasn’t saying the Jeffrey Epstein whole pedo ring was a hoax? No, he is saying hoax, as in talking about the Dems whole plot to directly connect Trump to the pedophile ring. That is their plot. That was the hoax. Was it misspoken? Yes, Trump fires from the hip. Sue him. That’s how it goes. But actually looking at the facts of what came down, this is what he should have said. Under four years of Biden, not one committee was formed to go at the Epstein files, to go after the Epstein files. The Dems didn’t even want to touch it, which, by the way, all the people that were running in Epstein circles, Schumer, all the, all the heavy donators, Bill Gates, all these individuals are running in Michael Bloomberg, running heavily donations, including Jeffrey Epstein, who heavily donated to the Democrats. So, it’s the level of insanity that goes into it. Teddy Nappen 38:37 By the way, for everyone to remember. Did you know? Did you also know the fact that all of a sudden, the victims who never spoke out during the four years under Biden are now taking Super Bowl ads saying, release more files. Okay, what happened to we have our list. We’re making our list. Just say it. Are you worried about defamation? Musk said he’ll pay for defamation. And good luck as trying to go after women of victims of sexual abuse. I’m sure a go fund me will be immediately formed and covered. So, what are you waiting on? Oh, that’s right, these are just political cudgels for you to abuse. Okay? That is a fact, and that’s what I’m saying to the victims who, all of a sudden, will not name names. So, that it’s one of the big things, like, very clearly, it’s being used as a political tool. They don’t actually want to release the names. Evan Nappen 39:28 Well, I think it’s interesting that it’s come around to Mr. Bloomberg, and that has major effect in terms of funding of further gun rights oppression. He needs to explain the way they’re looking at it. Forced it to be opened up. Hey, guess what? You’re there. You need to explain it now. At least do that. Teddy Nappen 39:52 Also this. Evan Nappen 39:53 There you go. Teddy Nappen 39:54 Proof in concept. Peter Mandelson, who was directly connected to Jeffrey Epstein. He was Keir Starmer’s Cabinet Minister, who just recently resigned. He resigned in shame. So, the proof is in the Page – 11 – of 11 proof is, in fact, that this has the effect. If we could break up Bloomberg from EveryTown. I mean, there is their money. They have nothing aside from. Evan Nappen 40:17 Well, they’re not getting funding anymore from the Government. Yeah, from USAID killed all that. Yeah, so that’s good. Well, let me tell you, Teddy, about this week’s GOFU. That is a Gun Owner Fuck Up, where you learn about expensive mistakes that others have made so that you don’t make them. Now this week’s GOFU that I want to talk about, might even be considered a future GOFU. But it applies still today. If West Virginia, Kansas, or any of these places end up creating State machine gun stores, if you will, which I believe they will, and this ends up taking off, make sure that you do NOT, as a non-resident of those states, acquire a machine gun from those states and then, no less, bring it to New Jersey. In other words, the GOFU, in the big picture, is you have to be cognizant of your jurisdiction and what you’re doing in your jurisdiction, and when you’re in another jurisdiction, what you can and can’t do. Evan Nappen 41:34 We see the jurisdictional problem arise all the time. Whether it’s in carrying a gun where you’re allowed to carry in one state and not in another, whether it’s purchase or possession of a firearm in any given state versus another, people bringing guns or accessories or other things that were legal in one place and illegal in another. The burden is on you to know this. I am constantly seeing cases where people make that very critical error. So, the GOFU, in a general term, my friends, is make sure you know your jurisdictions laws and do not inadvertently violate them because you are in another jurisdiction, and you are coming into this other jurisdiction, this is where the trouble can begin. It can be quite serious. So, be very cognizant of this when dealing with guns. Evan Nappen 42:40 This is Evan Nappen and Teddy Nappen reminding you that gun laws don’t protect honest citizens from criminals. They protect criminals from honest citizens. Speaker 2 42:51 Gun Lawyer is a CounterThink Media production. The music used in this broadcast was managed by Cosmo Music, New York, New York. Reach us by emailing Evan@gun.lawyer. The information and opinions in this broadcast do not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your state. Downloadable PDF TranscriptGun Lawyer S5 E279_Transcript About The HostEvan Nappen, Esq.Known as “America's Gun Lawyer,” Evan Nappen is above all a tireless defender of justice. Author of eight bestselling books and countless articles on firearms, knives, and weapons history and the law, a certified Firearms Instructor, and avid weapons collector and historian with a vast collection that spans almost five decades — it's no wonder he's become the trusted, go-to expert for local, industry and national media outlets. Regularly called on by radio, television and online news media for his commentary and expertise on breaking news Evan has appeared countless shows including Fox News – Judge Jeanine, CNN – Lou Dobbs, Court TV, Real Talk on WOR, It's Your Call with Lyn Doyle, Tom Gresham's Gun Talk, and Cam & Company/NRA News. As a creative arts consultant, he also lends his weapons law and historical expertise to an elite, discerning cadre of movie and television producers and directors, and novelists. He also provides expert testimony and consultations for defense attorneys across America. Email Evan Your Comments and Questions  talkback@gun.lawyer Join Evan's InnerCircleHere's your chance to join an elite group of the Savviest gun and knife owners in America.  Membership is totally FREE and Strictly CONFIDENTIAL.  Just enter your email to start receiving insider news, tips, and other valuable membership benefits.   Email (required) *First Name *Select list(s) to subscribe toInnerCircle Membership Yes, I would like to receive emails from Gun Lawyer Podcast. (You can unsubscribe anytime)Constant Contact Use. Please leave this field blank.var ajaxurl = "https://gun.lawyer/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php";

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit weekendwater.substack.comHi friends, We did it, we watched two SOUTHERN CHARMS for our 2damp2trash edition of our recap! We also made HATS (thanks to Kin Ship Goods!) Damp Trash Detective HATS! They are HERE. They come in both green and pink, and they are FANTASTIC. In this recap pod, the gang goes to Mexico for some kind of wellnes…

Ken Wolf, Artistic Director of Manhattan Repertory Theatre in New York City, presents the 478th episode of THE PLAYWRITING PODCAST. Episode Story Topic: What to do with a Fantastic 10 Minute Play!   Check out my BIG Brand New Playwriting Event: HOW TO WRITE A FANTASTIC 10 MINUTE PLAY IN 90 MINUTES! https://www.manhattanrep.com/fantastic10   Check out our 3 Tiers of developing your play in NYC with Manhattan Rep: Manhattan Rep's Play Production Reading We will put together a Professional Reading of your play in NYC! https://www.manhattanrep.com/reading   Manhattan Rep's Play Production Workshop We will bring to life a workshop production of your play in NYC! https://www.manhattanrep.com/workshop   Manhattan Rep's Play Production Program Let us help you self-produce your best play in New York City or anywhere in the world. https://www.manhattanrep.com/play-production-progra AND... Also, Check out Manhattan Rep's INSTAGRAM  @manhattanrepertorytheatre And... My Playwriting Coaching  Book it here: herehttps://www.manhattanrep.com/playwriting-coaching MY PREMIERE PLAYWRITING COACHING - A year long program where I help you write a perfect play, and teach you everything you need to know about Playwriting and connecting your plays to theatres and producers. Book it here:   https://www.manhattanrep.com/premiere   Email: How2WritePlays@yahoo.com

A man once dismissed as harmless suddenly becomes the most dangerous intelligence asset on Earth. When every secret he speaks could ignite a war, he must choose whether to keep answering questions—or stop talking altogether. The Man Who Knew Everything by Randall Garrett. That's next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.Before we begin today's story, I want to take a moment to say thank you.Steve bought us five coffees and he had this to say, “Thank you for this service. Has become an integral part of my week.”Thank you, sir. Steve, that is exactly why The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast exists. Whether you've been with us since Episode One or you just discovered us, you are the reason we're here. Thank you for listening. There were only six stories in the October 1956 issue of Fantastic. You've already heard one of them, An Eye For The Ladies by Milton Lesser about a month ago. The story right before it almost 70 years ago was on page 46, The Man Who Knew Everything by Randall Garrett…Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, He escapes drowning only to discover that the island holding him is not as empty as it seems. When he finds a machine that might change more than his location, he must decide whether to risk everything on a button marked START. Castaway by A. Bertram Chandler ===========================☕ Buy Me a Coffee - https://lostscifi.com/coffee

This week we record a new song, go to a monastery in Kentucky, and mess around with a song called Gone.

Are you providing your patients with a 5-star treatment? It starts with your front office. Kiera breaks down what a full rollout of peak client care looks like, identifying five different points to utilize as soon as that patient walks through the door (or calls). Episode resources: 5 Star Treatment Planning Document Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment  Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I am so excited. Today is gonna be one of my absolute favorite topics, and it is getting more patients to say yes to treatment. You guys, I obsess about this, and I talk about it a lot, and I just feel that these are some really good things. And so I wanted to go through our five-star treatment planning process with you today, so that way you guys are able to help more patients say yes, be able to maximize your practice.   Because at the end of the day, a patient who comes into your practice, they want to do dentistry. There is a treatment coordinator that I worked with for years and she always says like, Kiera, my thoughts are when I go in and I treatment plan, like the reason is patients are gonna say yes to me because they're at the practice, they want to get this help. And I just think having that mindset helps so much. And so this is a five-star treatment planning and we've actually created it for the entire practice. And   one I'm gonna go through is,   specific and then we actually broke it down for our front office team, our clinical team and our doctors of this process of five star treatment planning. And what's really fun is when we implement this into a practice, we do a full rollout with the team. And then what we do is actually once they complete it, they actually get to check off their stars. And there's actually way you can become five star certified in Dental A Team. So if you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm Kiera. Dent really is my last name. I'm obsessed with all things dentistry and I'm obsessed with teams and doctors having their best life possible.   Our team is so committed to you, to your practice, to making sure that you are thriving and not just surviving. And so really giving you guys tips and tricks that you can go implement into your practice to help more patients say yes, to be able to help your team be so thorough and so productive and really making life easier. So we love to hear from you. I love pen pals. You can always reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And if you're ever curious of, I wonder what consulting could look like in my practice.   Be sure to book a call. It's complimentary. We go through your practice with you. We assess your practice. We give you a roadmap, whether you work with us or don't, to make sure that you are always being able to positively impact your team, your life, and your community. Because our goal is to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. So with that, five-star treatment planning. So these are the quick five stars that we go. And like I said, then it's broken down more in depth of what each department needs to do. ⁓   The first one is going to be more for front office team members. And it also can be for clinical team if we're actually having them present treatment in the back. And so the first star is when we go into it, we're going to smile and assume the yes. So before we even walk into the room, we have confidence. We know that we're going to go into it. We know that we're going to have patients say yes to us and we smile.   We are going to assume that the patient wants to do dentistry. Why are we going through and saying like, my gosh, this is a big case. my gosh. I don't know if they're going to accept. my gosh. my gosh. Stop that. Why are we doing that? There's absolutely no reason to do that. Patients are at the dental practice and just because they don't love the dentist doesn't mean that they don't want to have healthy mouths and healthy teeth and being able to have confidence. I say our mouths are the coolest thing ever. We get to smile with them. We get to talk with them. We get to eat with it.   Like there's so much value to it. Like it truly is, I think, the gateway to our confidence. It's the gateway to our health. And so being able to help patients have that. So I'm always going to assume, like my mantra is, everyone says yes to Kiera and there's always a solution and we will find it together. So we go in and we have that and we're going to assume the yes. We also gonna use what I call the three E's and that is edification, empathy and energy. So I'm gonna watch the patient and I'm going to edify the doctor, which is star number two.   I'm going to have empathy for what they're going through and not just assume it's run of the mill, just because it's a crown for us, doesn't mean that that might be life altering for our patients. But we're not going to put negativity out there. We're still going to be able to have empathy and positivity for them and help them see that this is the best place for them to get their treatment done and then making sure our energy matches. You guys, I come in really high. I have a lot of energy. So many people are like, Kiera, we want to consult with you because we love your energy and our team needs that. Well, guess what? Our whole team has to have that because this is who I am.   And sometimes you need to have energy and like, need to get too excited on the podcast and I need to rally you. But for some of you, I remember there was a doctor who's like, Kiera, you're like a little much for my team. And my team's more like, hey, how are you? Well, guess what? That team is actually a better fit with Britney Stone. Britney is a much better match energy wise than I am. And so just making sure that we mimic and mirror the patient across from us. So star number one is smile and assume the yes before we even walk into it.   Star number two is we want to rave about the doctor and repeat a perfect handoff. So we want our patients to feel like they're on the winning team. And I think about it, if I'm going in like, I'm going in for surgery. And if that treatment coordinator who's presenting to me, so I've met the doctor, they've diagnosed the treatment to me. Okay, so all that needs to happen before we get to this spot. But the doctor told me, Carrie, you need to come back for surgery. If that front office person that I'm talking to about my financials said to me, gosh Carrie, you're so lucky.   ⁓ Dr. Kressler is absolutely incredible and you're going to get such great care. I've seen him do this surgery multiple times. I know you're in the best hands and truly I'm here to make sure that you're taken care of. We're super excited for you and I know you're going to have great results. Like even me saying that I feel this whoosh of like confidence of OK, got it like I am making the absolute best decision I possibly can. And so this is what we do. So number start number one is smile and assume the S use our three E's. Number two is rave about the doctor. Help them see that we're on the winning team.   and use that perfect hand up. It'd be like, awesome, Kiera, you are so lucky. Dr. Jones is so incredible. He's done this treatment so many times and we're gonna get you taken care of. Dr. Jones wants to see you back for a crown. We need to get you scheduled in about two weeks. We need to do about 30 minutes and we're also gonna get your cleaning scheduled for that. This is gonna be amazing. Doctor is incredible. And then we move to the third star, is schedule the appointment first and give two options. We wanna get the commitment.   So a lot of times treatment coordinators will like come in like, how was your visit today? Meh, I'm at the dentist. Why don't we control this narrative? I'm going to smile like, Hey, it's so great to see. I'm so excited to get you helped out. Dr. Jones is so incredible. You've made a great choice. And I know he's going to take great care of you. We're to get you scheduled for that crown in two weeks. It's going to take us about 30. It's going to take us about an hour and a half. I hope a crown's not 30 minutes. It's going to take us about an hour and a half. And we're also going to get that cleaning scheduled. perfect. First things first, let's get you scheduled.   I've got Monday or Wednesday, which works best for you. That's when Dr. Jones does all of their crowns. I've got Monday or Wednesday, which works best for you. The reason I wanna move right into scheduling is because this is gonna help me get a commitment. And I believe that words are free and we should use them to our advantage. So when I'm going through this, let's just make it very easy for the patient. We smile and assume the yes, we rave about our doctor and talk about our perfect handoff, and then we move right into scheduling. Now the patient might be like, well, I wanna know what this is going to cost. I say, absolutely.   I want you to feel so solid and rock solid confident moving forward. Dr. Jones is extra busy. So we always just make sure we get you on the schedule, make sure we get that appointment set. I'm to go over all the financials. I want you to be super confident with that. But we'll just get you scheduled since the schedule is so busy. I've got Monday or Wednesday, which works best for you. Now, if they push back again, don't stress, talk to them. But this way they're able to see the flow, how we're going to do this. Because for me, what I'm also doing on that is I'm putting emphasis of we are doing treatment. And the question is how we want to pay for it, not the question of are we doing treatment or not.   I'm not forcing a patient, I'm not making them doing it, but sequence does matter when it comes to treatment planning. And you guys, I am a dang good treatment coordinator. 50, 60, $70,000 cases paid in full same day. It is not something that is hard, but it is something that's finesse. And I do believe that it's an art, not a like set in stone science. It's an art, it's a feathering. It's a reading the patient, it's understanding. And I'm giving you guys literally how I do this and how it's worked for so many practices.   practices we've been able to add multiple millions annually by doing this process. So we schedule first, get them scheduled. Then after that, we're going to present the total treatment. So star number four is point to the amount. I don't say it out loud saying 10 grand is very loud and obnoxious and obtrusive. Pointing to it doesn't feel as bad. And I'm going to use the art of silence. So that's star number four in our five-star treatment planning. So once the patient's scheduled, we're gonna present the treatment, all right? So we're gonna go through that crown and that cleaning.   It looks like it's going to be this amount. This is what your insurance is estimated. I'm pointing with my fingers. I go down and your out of pocket total will be blank this when we see you on Wednesday. What questions do you have for me? I want you to be super confident moving forward. And then I zip my lips and I'm silent. And the patient usually will say, perfect. Nope, no questions. I'll see you then. Or they'll say, ⁓ I'm curious about that. Like that was a little bit more than I was thinking. Do you have any options? I promise you they will say that.   But instead of me right here, which is where I think most treatment coordinators and failing goes wrong is when they say, ⁓ my gosh, so do you have questions about financing or do you have any questions about this? One, I don't ever want a patient to say no to me. So I don't ever use the questions of do you want to, or do we want to do this, or do you have questions? I say, what questions do you have for me? Let's get you scheduled, not do you want to schedule? And these are just small little nuances, but if you watch yourself and you listen to yourself and doctors, same thing in your exams.   and clinical team members, same thing when we're back there. We're so obsessed with this like quick, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, I wanna get you in and out versus I want to actually solve, I want to actually schedule patients and I want to actually be thorough with my patients. So what questions do you have? Words are free, use them to your advantage, use the art of silence and don't talk, zip your lips, but people get nervous and they don't want you to break up with them and they don't wanna be rejected so they start talking and they're like, my gosh, we can talk about finances, we can talk about, do you actually wanna just for free?   This is how discounts come about. This is how doctors are like, my gosh, I just gave that, it's a way for free. Stop talking. Let them process and let them ask, what questions do you have for me? I want you super confident moving forward. And I stop and I smile. And I truly do. And I might feel awkward, that's okay. But remember, I'm assuming the yes, they're going to say yes to me. Why wouldn't they say yes to me? And my second mantra is there's always a solution. And we together, me and this patient are going to find it because my job is to make them healthy, happy, and like total full care of health.   So then we go on to star number five, and that is over objections, okay? So objections do come, but objections to me are like, just remember that they need more information. We haven't educated them on something. That's all it is. They're not rejecting you. And so I say, go beyond the no with air quotes two times. And I do it as an S because I just want to find out and I want to dig to the root. I'm not forcing these patients, but 99 % of the time an objection just means I need to educate them more. I need to answer their questions. I haven't filled them in on something and that's all it is.   So we become a word ninja, we go past it, let's find a solution. And then if I've gone past it two times and I've really done my best, then I schedule them on a two, two, follow-up. So I call them in two days, two weeks, two months. So no matter what, they're still gonna talk to me and I'm going to make sure that they get the success. So that's our five star.   And when you start tracking it, we track it as well. We look to see our patterns and it helps our treatment coordinators get better and better. So now you're like, well,   But Kiera, that's great. Now let's talk about the objections. Cause I got my fifth star. My fifth star means I got to go past objections twice. Well, let's talk about some objections. Number one is a lot of people do think about just insurance. So they're like, okay, well, what about insurance? I like to explain that insurance is a coupon. So like just like Kohl's cash or coupons at the store. Well, you still want to buy the carrots, even though they're not on sale. And so what we do is we use our insurance and we maximize every single penny of it. but we also don't want to just wait on insurance and have insurance dictate because it's never going to be cheaper.   or more predictable than it is today. So we wanna make sure that we your treatment taken care of, you're worth it, you deserve it. And we're gonna squeeze every single dang penny out of that insurance company that we can. But we just have to recognize that dental insurance is different than medical insurance. And dental insurance is a coupon, medical insurance, we pay our deductible and they cover everything else. So that's why, and so our job is to help you out with this. We're gonna get you scheduled for this. I've got Monday or Wednesday, which works best. And we're gonna make sure that you're taken care of with that. Schedule.   If they're like, I need to check my work schedule. Fantastic, no problem. I, Kieran, you gotta be careful, use your words. I, Kieran, would hate to forget about you. The truth is, I literally will. I've got like 100 patients coming today. So I would hate to forget about you and let you slip through the cracks. Let's just pop you on the schedule and if that doesn't work when you get home, me a call and I'll happily change it for you. That's it. Then you're like, okay. If I say, oh John, I would hate for you to forget about this, he'll be like, I'm not gonna forget. But if I'm like, oh, I would hate to forget about you, patient's like, yeah.   Don't forget about me, Keir, put me on that schedule. It's all about psychology and making these patients feel like VIPs. I truly believe our patients are VIPs. I love them so much and I want them to get the best dental care possible. So that's what I'm gonna do for schedule or for work. Now if it's cost, I remind them and truth be told, it will never be cheaper or more predictable than it is today. So let's get you scheduled, let's figure this out, let's work through the solutions. I have so many solutions with you. Like let's work through it. What solutions do you have? Like this didn't happen overnight, we don't have to solve it overnight.   We do need to get going on it so it doesn't get worse. We present the other side of the problem. This is what happens if we choose to wait. And I just want you to know your options, you're worth it. Let's get this taken care of. There's always ways that we can work on cost. You guys, there's thousands of ways. We can do less treatment. We can split it up. We can do layaway, whatever your practices processes are. But usually it's not cost. Usually it's fear. And I'll say, let's talk about it. Do we have savings or do we wanna talk about third party financing?   I'm not gonna give them care credit to go home and apply for. Let's just apply right now. Let's find out what our options are. Let's see what we've got here that we were able to find out. And then like, I don't want you to have to go home and make this hard. Let's make this easy to where you feel confident and we're able to find the solution for you.   How many times do we actually spend the time to do that? To me, that's VIP care. I can't tell you how many times I've watched treatment coordinators like, here's the application, go home and do it. Well, guess what? They're not. That's hard. Let's make this easy for them. Let's find the easiest way for them to say, yes, that's VIP customer service. And I know you might be like, here, I'm so busy. Guess what? This is the fastest, easiest way to fill your schedule. How many of you want to make phone calls to fill that schedule? I don't. I'd much rather sit here and do five minutes of care credit with you rather than chasing you down, trying to do care credit, figuring it out. That's way harder.   Choose our heart here. And then spouse. Spouse like, need to talk to my spouse. Absolutely. I 100 % want you to chat with your spouse. What questions you think that they'll have? I want to make sure that you're fully prepared and confident to answer those. Well, I think they'll want to know about costs. I think they'll want to know about the... They'll tell you. They will tell you. Or if they're like, oh no, I'm like, hey, I really hate to try and like relay things to my spouse that I don't know about. I'm happy to get them on a phone call so that way we can talk about this openly. I'm here as a resource for you.   more than happy to do that with you. Now there's two ways you can do this. There's pressure or there's like confidence of I'm genuinely wanting to help you out. And truth be told, like I know this is so much easier. I think in all of treatment planning, I'm thinking how's the easiest way for this patient to say yes. How's the easiest way for me to help them. And this is where we're going to go. These are how I'm going to go past these objections. And I think for so many of us, we just want to like one and done. I did my job, check the box versus like it's outcomes over activity.   my outcome, I'm trying to get as many patients scheduled as possible, not the activity of I presented treatment plans. It's very different. So if I know my goal is not just to present treatment plans, my goal is to have like 80 % success. Well, then I'm going to look at this and I'm going to work through this and I'm going to check off all five stars and I'm going to become an expert. But realizing that I have to continually improve on treatment planning is going to be a great piece for you.   So this is the five-star treatment planning. And like I said, we have it for every single position. This was more of a front office. We have it for doctors. We have it for clinical team members, but this is a great way for you guys to increase your case acceptance, help more patients. And remember, 80 % of treatment planning is psychology, 20 % skill. So when we go through this, I think this is going to really be able to help you guys, guide you guys. And I know it will because I've done it for so many practices. So let's do it for yours. And if you need help, there are practices where we literally just do treatment planning consultations.   We consult them, we work with the front office team members, and what we do is we listen to the treatment plans, we help them out. And I've done this with many offices for multiple years. And it's crazy because in those practices, they're like, what happened? You guys also became like so successful and people were noticing that. And they're like, well, it all started when we hired this consultant and they've added multiple millions, but dollars are nice. Lives changed is better. And how many lives have we been able to help? How many people we've been able to help?   because we chose to be word ninjas, we chose to use our words to the best of our ability. We chose to listen and to see and to look at the results we're getting and change our processes and not be so set and like, well, this is what I do. I tell everyone that we coach, I don't actually care. There's no script. Like, yes, you guys can have this email us. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com   But more than that, what I care about is that you're able to help these patients and that we get the outcomes, the results. We're after results. We're not after the task. So if your results are crushing it,   You don't need to change anything, but if they're not and we're not getting the results we want, then change. And I would hope that you and your practice take on that none of us are perfect. All of us are here to expand, to grow, to evolve. And that's what we're here to do. We're here to help and serve more patients. So reach out if we can help you guys. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Go implement this, go change more people's lives, go become treatment planning masters. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.  

(00:00-17:23) Friend of the Show, Keith Tkachuk joins us. Needs to pick up the pep a little bit after his trip to Italy. The night after the win is a little foggy. The experience of watching Brady and Matthew in the gold medal game. Four St. Louis kids bringing home gold medals. The Tkachuk boys and their savviness with the media. Getting to go to the White House. Fantastic goalie play in the final. Gold Medal vs. Stanley Cup. The significance of beating Canada. 3 on 3 OT in the gold medal game. Hall of Fame sperm.(17:31-40:02) It's the Rudy theme and that means it's somebody's birthday. Reading the funnies in the restroom. The epicenter for angry sports radio. Audio of Bryce Harper talking about his gut feeling on if the 2027 MLB season will start on time and if there will be a season at all. Tim's due for an Ohtani type deal. The Admiral and the Becky Thatcher. Jordan Walker wanted no part of this program. Lern and Tim's calves. A hole in the Death Star. Did Betsy Bruce buy The Admiral? Just the fellas on the boat.(40:12-1:01:27) Friend of the Show, Blues Insider Jeremy Rutherford joins us in-studio. JR's reaction to Big Walt and what happened in Milan. Seeing Big Walt in a Ritz Carlton robe in a hotel elevator. JR taking his two-part questions. Trade deadline talk. Did Binnington's play in the Olympics change anything with potential suitors? Down on 3 on 3 OT to determine a gold medal game. Would the Tkachuks want to play in STL?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

THE FANTASTIC POUR Brett welcomes The Monitor Tapes' DC Dave to the Fantasti-Lounge for a new edition of the Fantastic Pour as we talk Superman in the Silver Age! We enjoy a Lemon Drop Martini and read Action Comics #335. Join us in the Fantasti-Lounge as we discuss: Did Superman break the bro code? Re-starting the universe. Practical types of Kryptonite. And much, much more! Secret Pour-igins: Lemon Drop Martini Cocktail: Lemony Luthor Ingredients (per drink): 2 oz vodka of choice 1/2 oz Cointreau or triple sec 1/2 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice 1/4 oz simple syrup 1 twist of lemon Sugar rim 1/2 cup granulated sugar Zest from 1 lemon Instructions Add sugar to a plate, then add zest of a lemon into the sugar and rub into the sugar with your fingers until tinted yellow and fragrant Moisten the rim of a chilled martini glass with the juiced lemon, rim the glass with lemon sugar and set aside Fill shaker with ice Add vodka, Cointreau, lemon juice, and simple syrup to the shaker Shake well and strain into martini glass Garnish with a lemon twist and enjoy Comic: Action Comics Vol.1 #335, DC Comics, 1966 Have a question or comment? E-MAIL: fwpodcasts@gmail.com You can find The Fantastic Pour on these platforms: Apple Podcasts Amazon Music Spotify The Fantastic Pour podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Fire & Water website: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Fire & Water Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Fire & Water on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireandwaterpodcast Fire & Water on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fwpodcasts.bsky.social Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts DC Dave is the co-host of the Monitor Tapes. Listen here: https://brickcrisis.com/

Business feeling stagnant in your smaller market? Contradictory to our previous claims, adding a new practice area might be just the thing. But first, new Direct Business Search data just dropped—what do you do now? ----- Fantastic news, everybody—Google has finally segmented out your Direct Business Search results. What does that mean for you? Gyi and Conrad hash out the details to help you understand how this new data could affect your tactics and budget, ultimately bringing better focus to your marketing efforts.  Later, we've often said that finding your niche area in legal practice can be a very effective way to capture more business in your market. Buuut… is that always true? Could there, perchance, be a situation where adding new practice areas is the best move for your business? Gyi and Conrad discuss the pros and cons of practice expansion and how to stay tactical and competitive in the process.  The News: Very clever PR stunt, folks. – Cheeky law firm offers to help Native American tribe evict Billie Eilish from their land after smug Grammys rant.  Just want to offer our appreciation to Rich Ruohonen for being an awesome athlete, lawyer, and citizen of our great country – A 54-year-old personal injury lawyer from Minnesota just became the oldest US Winter Olympian Google Direct Business Search data now showing in LSAs.  Fresh Near Media Research is on its way. Stay tuned!    Listen Next: LHLM Office Hours  Connect: The Bite - Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Newsletter! Leave Us an Apple Review  Lunch Hour Legal Marketing on YouTube  Lunch Hour Legal Marketing on TikTok r/LHLM 

Could we see some MASSIVE upsets at WWE Elimination Chamber? Could Trick Williams get the win or does Cody Rhodes main event another WrestleMania?! Should we also expect Rhea Ripley back into the title picture and how does this impact her team with Iyo Sky?We also dive into all the latest updates in TNA with Steve Maclin's heel turn and how his relationship with Mike Santana will play out and AEW continues to put tag team wrestling front and center with FTR and the Young Bucks and the latest developments! WELCOME BACK TO REBOOKED!00:00 - Intro06:41 - TNA - MACLIN ATTACKS21:22 - Ali vs Elijah was FANTASTIC 30:31 - AEW - Bad Guy Swerve Strickland is back40:08 - Hangman, why are you pulling a Cody?50:34 - Bucks vs FTR gets PERSONAL55:41 - WWE - cWho wins in the Chamber?01:09:05 - Liv chooses Stephanie/Women's Chamber01:19:13 - AJ Styles, Hall of Famer01:26:20 - 24/7 Champion of the Week⏰ Subscribe to the channel to be alerted! https://www.youtube.com/@REBOOKEDWrestling?sub_confirmation=1

My guest on this episode of The Back of the Range is Brad McMakin, head coach of the Arkansas Men's' Golf Team. Fantastic conversation with one of the most respected coaches in college golf. Brad McMakin - Arkansas Men's' GolfThe Back of the Range - All Access Subscribe to The Back of the Range Subscribe in Apple Podcasts and SPOTIFY!Also Subscribe in YouTube, Google Play , Overcast, Stitcher Follow on Social Media! Email us: ben@thebackoftherange.comWebsite: www.thebackoftherange.com Voice Work by Mitch Phillips

In this, the very first FANtastic Episode of Beyond the Torch, Leslie Nease and Todd Herzog interview four Survivor superfans (Atticus, Bryce, Corey, and Tricia) to talk all things SURVIVOR! The conversation covers their favorite Survivor moments, players, and memories, including discussions about iconic tribal councils, emotional family visits, and underrated moments from the show's history. They share personal stories about how Survivor changed their lives, debate the role of villains in the show, discuss their predictions for Season 50, and celebrate the community that has formed around the series. This episode is a celebration of the show that changed reality TV and showcases the deep connection fans have with Survivor and how the show has brought people together across the world.Special thanks to the best Whiskey on the Planet Watertown Whiskey! Check them out on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/watertownwhiskey/?hl=en Tell them Fairplay sent you! Please Drink Responsibly https://watertownwhiskey.com/ Our new Website is live! Check it out at: www.realityaftershow.com Join our Patreon at RealityPatron.com If you would like a cameo from Jonny Fairplay order one now! cameo.com/jonnyfairplay Check us out on Tiktok @fairplaytokBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reality-after-show--5448874/support.

Introduction“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” — Irina Dunn, 1970I heard about the movement of decentering men on TikTok. With zero expectations, I decided to try it out for a month. It was October 2025. I was sick of dating apps and about to publish my second book. I'd been single for three years, but this was something different. I'm here to tell you everything about it and share all the reasons why I'm never going back.I wrote this article to give us, women, a blueprint for how to be the main character in our own lives. Our mothers and grandmothers couldn't teach us this; they depended on men (financially) to survive, and had to center them accordingly. This article is not about hating men; it's about unlearning the ways that the patriarchy has trained us to prioritize making men happy. This pressure comes just as much from the women in our lives (aunties, influencers, our mother), as from men. After all, it was my mother who let my brother get away with never doing the dishes after dinner.Starting this process for the first time scared me. I was worried that if I stopped trying to date men, I was giving up on my dream of becoming a mother. Yet as I began to decenter men, I realized that my idea of motherhood was purely a fantasy. Facing the reality of motherhood, those statistics scared me much more. In this article, I will cover everything I've learned from the internet, economists, and my own experience, so that you can decide whether decentering men and trying it for a month to start is right for you. Let's begin!

They say when man makes a plan, God laughs. His particular laughter this week was getting the site we normally record our podcast on banned on my work computer. So we scrambled and we have before you the result of minutes of furious googling, but these are the things we do for you, our dear listeners, nay, our dear friends. If there is praise, we will gladly take it. If there is criticism, well that is the fault of the school system. Best BooksCyclops #1Action Comics #1095Absolute Batman #17Generation X-23 #1Book Blurbs (Hold on to your butts, we have a lot)Absolute Wonder Woman Annual #1, Moon Knight #1, The Rocketfellers #12, Children of the Round Table #6, DC KO #4, Spider-Man Noir #5, Ultimate Spider-Man #24, Batman/Superman Worlds Finest #48, Arcadia #3, Superman Unlimited #10, Fantastic 4 #8, The Darkness #3, Uncanny X-Men #24, Supergirl #10, Captain America #7, Doctor Strange #3, The Muppets Noir #1Uncle's One More ThingWarhammer MiniaturesMarvel Cosmic InvasionEverything is Tuberculosis by John GreenThe Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

On the 23.5 episode of Hands of Z, Shawn and Keith look at two of Keith's favorite tag teams, The Fantastics facing The Midnight Express, except one Express is not like the other! Side note both matches are from 1988 AND both matches take up a full episode of NWA syndicated TV AND both matches run close to 40 minutes! Up first from March 26, 1988 (The day before the very first Clash of Champions), The Fantastics debut in the NWA to face current US Tag Team Champions, The Midnight Express of Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane w/Jim Cornette in a non-title match! Then from December 31, 1988 (Taped on 12/15 before Starrcade 88) The Fantastics defend the US Tag Titles against The Original Midnight Express of Dennis Condrey and Randy Rose w/ Paul E. Dangerously in a 2/3 Falls match! Fun episode with two fun matches! Can Keith and Shawn survive 2 matches that went 80 minutes total? Tune in and find out!

Chris Jennings and Dr. Mike Brasher peruse a series of fun facts about waterfowl, including questions such as how many invertebrates a wood duck eats, which waterfowl species is the largest, which lives the longest, which is the fastest and why is it not green-winged teal. The duo also discuss observations from past research including multiple paternity, double brooding, long-distance migration, which acorns wood ducks consider the tastiest, and several others.Listen now: www.ducks.org/DUPodcastSend feedback: DUPodcast@ducks.orgSPONSORS:Purina Pro Plan: The official performance dog food of Ducks UnlimitedWhether you're a seasoned hunter or just getting started, this episode is packed with valuable insights into the world of waterfowl hunting and conservation.Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails:Whether you're winding down with your best friend, or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award-winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.

How did The Fourth Fighter Group contribute to D-Day in 1944? Why did The Fourth Fighter Group keeping flying till the last days of the war? What happened to all the aces of The Fourth Fighter group at the end of WW2? Join Al Murray and James Holland for Part 4 of this new series looking at the larger-than-life American aces that flew to every corner of the Nazi empire, starting with Spitfires in the dark days of The Battle Of Britain to P-51 Mustangs at the closing stages of WW2. Start your free trial at ⁠patreon.com/wehaveways⁠ and unlock exclusive content and more. Enjoy livestreams, early access, ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and a weekly newsletter packed with book deals and behind-the-scenes insights. Members also get priority access and discounts to live events. A Goalhanger Production Produced by James Regan Editor: Charlie Rodwell Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Social: @WeHaveWaysPod Social Producer: Harry Balden Email: wehaveways@goalhanger.com Membership Club: patreon.com/wehaveways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is all about the power of a phone call, and how you can maximize it. Kiera goes into the formula for phone call success, and how it will boost your patients' interactions with your practice. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and gosh, I decided to shake up the background and hang out in my house and have you come hang out with me. And so if you're watching this, welcome. This is the studio. This is where I live. This is where I hang out and just trying a couple different things. I really obsessed about making this podcast a space where you feel like you're hanging out with me in my living room. And we're just sitting here.   chatting shop, we're sitting here talking about all things dentistry. And today I wanted to just go through a quick episode with you guys of how we can improve our conversion rates. So there's a couple quick levers of how we can improve our calls, our being able to get our forms and documents and being able to do this without spending more time because that's something that we all wanna do. And so ⁓ I think it's a lot of times like how can we convert our calls better? How can we get things done a little bit more efficiently? Do we do AI? Do we not do AI? And so.   I really feel like just small improvements. You guys know on Dental A team, I'm obsessed about small little improvements done to create efficiencies. I remember I was in a practice and they said, ⁓ okay, Kiera, like come on in, we wanna see you. And I went in and we were able to add about 13,000 to their practice. And they were like, Kiera, what did you do? I'm like, what did I do? It was just very simple, easy things. was, ⁓ we had patients stop at the front desk and start making their payments so we were able to make our collections higher.   We had them doing a handoff to their team of what were the next steps. So that way the patient felt confident of what they were doing next. ⁓ and we just scheduled patients. We assumed the yes. And those are not hard things. Those are not sexy things. Those things are just things that are going to help you guys tremendously. And so today it's like, let's figure out how we can convert a few more things. So. Dental A Team is truly a company where I believe that growing and having sustainable growth comes from optimizing before we spend more. And I know that it feels so.   Alluring and something that I want to do is I want to spend more and I want to get the magic pill and the reality is that you can probably get the exact same results with minimal effort if we just optimize a little things and so figuring out how we can catch more missed calls or how we can convert more new patients or figuring out how we can get more patients to say yes to treatment is something that's really really fun   A Team's podcast is tactical, practical, implementable. That's how we operate. That's how we like to consult. And I love working with practices. I love being able to see you guys ⁓ in your offices, being able to do things, ⁓ being able to just live your best life. Life is our passion. Dentistry is our platform. So, all right, you guys ready to dig in? Because I'm ready to dig in. The number one thing is, let's talk about our phone calls and optimizing our phone calls.   because that is our number one zone. And I think it's crazy how much we spend on marketing to get these new patients and how much we work on having a great patient experience. And then we have our newest trained person that knows nothing about our practice answering our most important phone calls. And so things on this are like when we miss phone calls or we don't handle a phone call correctly, those are little lost opportunities. And this isn't to rag on our front office team. We're busy. You guys, I've sat in the front office. I prioritize the patient in front of me over the phone. And so what are some little things that we can do?   And there are softwares. There's like patient prism and they're like, I pretty sure with weave, they have them where we can actually track and monitor and see our, ⁓ our phone calls and see how we're doing. But we want to just help our front office team. Like it is crazy. Jason, husband told me, ⁓ he was like, yeah, I, Kiera, if you don't like what someone tells you at a practice, just wait, call back and you'll get someone else and you'll get a different answer. And I think about that in practices and how often are we possibly doing this? How often is our practice maybe.   doing it where we actually are having Susie follow protocol and Sarah isn't and therefore Susie is undercut, but Sarah was trying to do what's right. They're both trying to do what's right. So this is where we're at front office teams. Let's make sure we're all saying the same thing. So no matter if they get Sarah or Susie or Kiera or Jason or John, every single one of them is the exact same. And this is going to help. So number one, we need to have actually in the front office team, especially usually there's quite a few of them. We need to make sure that one person   is dedicated to like first on phone, second on phone, third on phones. So everybody knows like, hey, what is the ring, the ring place? Now, if you're a really large practices, sometimes they put it in a call center. All those are totally fine, but we need to make sure that every single person is actually optimizing our phone calls. And so it is a, you can even get a phone tree where we optimize new patients. We have a line for billing questions. So that way we can actually know which phone call should I prioritize and know exactly this is a new patient phone call. Now, when we,   When we answer the phone, I actually put mirrors in front of a lot of our team members. We want them to smile. We want the patient to feel the energy on the other side of it. We want them to feel like they chose the best place. And I actually feel this is one of the greatest ways to optimize is if you just give your patients a little bit different experience on the phone of like, we are so excited to have you call us versus we are annoyed that you bothered us in the middle of our day. That tone and intonation is going to help patients say yes or no a lot more to you.   I remember, and I shared this example a few years ago, I was trying to find a PT and I called around to a bunch of different locations and I literally chose the place based on how they answered the phone. And I think I truly believe in today's world of AI and automations that what is going to become the number one differentiator more than cost, more than anything else is kindness. Kindness and customer service is going to be what far outshines most everything else because it's becoming a trait. ⁓   People are grumpy, people have the COVID cranks still, people are annoyed. I walk into stores and like, we're closing in 30 minutes. I'm like, fantastic, I'll just shop on Amazon. They don't yell at me. This is where I think we need to recognize our society and people want to be loved. We are human beings, we are human connections. And so really being able to give that. it is about, let's answer the phone. Let's have our intonations and our tone and that big smile.   And then let's make sure that we're following protocols. So how we block schedule, how we schedule patients, how we handle a new patient phone call. New patient phone calls are great to optimize. It is a, like we take control of it instead of saying, you have insurance? It's amazing. How did you hear about us? Let's change that tone and that vibe. So that way they feel like, my gosh, like I heard about you on Google. We absolutely love our patients. Like our Google reviews are what we're so proud of. And we strive to make sure that you as a patient coming in.   are going to be able to leave us those same reviews because you have the best experience with the best dentist. I'm Kiera, it's so nice to meet you. Let's get you all ready and set up for your appointment. What are we looking for? we coming in like when was the last time we saw the dentist? I want to make sure I set you up for the right type of appointment. We just take a few minutes to be human. A new patient phone call can literally be done in five minutes and make them feel human. It's taking control of the conversation initially. It is saying.   Hi, how did you hear about us? I'm Kiera, welcome to our practice. I know you're absolutely going to love it here. Let's get a couple of information. Let me start with your name, your phone number in case we ever get disconnected. I'm gonna make sure I get you so taken care of and we truly cannot wait to welcome you into our practice. ⁓ And then we go through, if they have insurance, fantastic. If they don't, if they're on an insurance plan that we don't take, that's fine guys. These people can still come. want you to, I'm gonna drill this down so hard on optimization of our phone calls. ⁓   Just because a patient doesn't have insurance, we are not going to let $1,000 dictate if this person comes to see us or not. You guys, $1,000, I know that not all insurances are 1,000, but that's usually about the max, but they pay so much more than that. And this is about a long-term relationship rather than a short-term transaction. I'm going to say that again, our new patients, it is about a long-term relationship rather than a short-term transaction. And if we can remind them of this is the greatest place, you're so welcome to be here. You're so like, we are so happy to have you here.   People choose that all day long. People want to know they're on a winning team. So how can we make them feel like they made the absolute best choice by choosing our practice? And I want you to audit phone calls. So for the next couple of days, I would like, and we actually track, we have trackers where it's like, let's get our new patient trackers and how many of these new patient phone calls scheduled and didn't schedule. And if you have your front office team track this for about one week, they will actually be able to see how many new patients are actually getting, how many are we converting and why are we not converting it.   Then if we actually listen to these calls back, we can fine tune one or two statements and be able to optimize and get people to come in. You guys like, this is one of the things I'm like, I don't know how much more easy I can make this for you. But if we just prioritize two or three little things on our phone calls, making sure we all schedule correctly, that we welcome them and we're excited and we just role play this for the next month, you will absolutely increase your practice. I promise you, because we're going to convert more phone calls. We're going to have more happy patients.   We're going to have patients who are more excited to come to the dentist because they're already feeling welcomed. These are little things that don't make a big, like they don't seem grandiose, but they make a huge, huge, huge impact. so making sure that we're optimizing that you guys, the phone is one of your most powerful resources in your practice. And if we have like, you do not want your billing representative and billers, this is nothing against you. am not a great biller. I was like, I don't want to go to bat. I don't want to go figure out the one penny you do. And that's why we have different roles.   You want somebody who's so excited, who loves your practice. ⁓ I've had front office team members that are in this role that are from like tanning salons or from a high end customer service or from a waiter waitress situation or a hostess situation where they just love and they want to welcome and they want to greet and they're so excited and they just make that person feel like a million bucks. so making sure that our phone calls are optimized really truly is going to help us and help us really ensure that our practice is optimized. And so with that new patient phone call,   It is a, let's snag them at the beginning, let's ask them how they heard about us, let's capitalize on that, let's find out what type of cleaning that they want or what they're calling for or when the last time was that they went to the dentist and then let's schedule them appropriately with VIP customer service. And then what I typically do is if we are using insurance, I say, fantastic, I'm gonna send over our new patient welcome information right now while I've got you on the phone, make sure it gets to you. And then I do need to get that back 48 hours before your appointment to make sure it's confirmed. Did you get that email from me?   Fantastic. When can I expect to see this? I want to make sure I don't miss it for you. And that way I can get your patient, your appointment confirmed. I have them commit to me right here, right then, because if I do that, this patient's already more locked and loaded to come into me. They've committed that they're going to get this back to me in the next two days. I'm going to look for it. And if you really, really want to stand out and shine on customer service, following up in two days, hey, Kiera, I didn't see that paperwork come through. I wanted to make sure I didn't miss it. You can set little reminders for yourself. This is not hard.   and listening as front office, you be like, my gosh. But I wanna say what is actually hard? Choose your hard on this. Chasing a patient, not getting my insurance until the day of being, like having new patients, no show on appointments, that's hard. Me following up in two days on their paperwork and making sure that they give it to me so I can, 48 hours ahead of time to make sure their appointment's confirmed, that's not hard. That's just a shift of your process that optimizes your process and makes it to where you actually have a ton less work. It feels like hard work today.   Just like if I were to say, okay, go sign your name. You're like, okay, I can sign it. Got it. If I say, okay, now sign your name, but you have to sign it every other letter, that's going to feel hard because that's actually easier than you signing all the letters. And if you practice every other letter a few more times, you actually become faster at that than you were at your initial signature. So just because it's different doesn't mean that it's hard and it's not efficient. It just means you're doing it as a different way. And so really looking at that and seeing how can I actually make this to where we can optimize our phone calls. And that's what we're going into.   You guys, just a small optimization of our phone calls, of how we operate, of how we ask for information, that's going to cut down so much more time that allows you to be in front of your patients, because you're not chasing all these forms all the time. I promise you, get patients to commit to you before they even get into your practice, and you're going to have a completely different practice. And so I want you just to remember that this is a great way for you to optimize on a phone call. Now, there's several other ways that we can optimize. We can optimize on our handoffs. You guys have heard me talk about NDTR about a thousand times.   We optimize on that and I say it's like, we don't just get a drop a sheet with our front office or we drop a patient and say like, good luck. It's a, we hand them off so they know exactly what they're doing. We hand them off every single time. It is a well-oiled baton and we practice that consistently from front office to back office, back office. Like let's not like bicker towards each other. Let's figure out what does front office information need to give us so that way we are all set for our appointment. And then what does clinical team need to make sure is in the notes so our insurance claims go out correctly.   And then what does clinical team need to bring to the front office? So that way it's a smooth handoff. And what do doctors need to say to team members? So that way we get all the information necessary while making sure the patient's front and center. That small optimization, which I will do on another podcast for you with the handoffs and the different pieces are going to be able to make it to where your patients absolutely 100 % schedule their appointments. And people are like, but it's so hard to do. Choose your hard guys. This is not hard. You want to add an up level your practice?   Optimize your phone calls, optimize your handoffs, optimize your life. I promise you, patients can feel perfection. These are things that I would recommend you do on a monthly, weekly basis where we role play this out until we perfect it and this is how we operate it. Do you think at Disneyland that they just like hope and pray that those things are gonna work out and that's gonna be perfect? The answer is no. They practice, they role play, they practice, they do it. They make sure that the way people are talking to guests is the exact same way no matter who it is and they employ hundreds and thousands of people.   So in your practice, you think that this would be doable? I hope you say yes, because when we can optimize, when we can make sure that our phone calls are the most important thing and our handoffs are the second most important thing, your patients will feel that. And then we get raving fans and then we get the reviews. You guys, reviews aren't just happenstance. Reviews are intentional. It's because they can feel the process throughout. They feel loved, they feel cared about, and they feel like you are going to take care of them. So optimize, you guys. This is the time for you to just optimize.   to have it to where it's so much easier for you, to where you're able to really, really, really drive these patients forward. So as a quick recap, let's talk about it. Number one, we're going to shine and outshine our competition by kindness and customer service. And that might be a theme that I'd roll out to your practice this year of kindness and customer service. We want patients to feel wanted in our practice and we want them to feel excited to be here with us. So what we do from there is we make sure we find out when we take a new patient phone call, what exactly, how did they hear about us?   We tell them they're on the winning team. This is the best place for them. We scheduled the appropriate appointment. We have the correct information. And then we ask for their paperwork back to confirm their appointment. Just that small shift is gonna change a lot of things for you. And then we optimize our handoffs so we're not just dropping people off. We're optimizing front offices giving clinical team the correct amount of Clinical team, think of how happy you'd be if the paperwork is already in there before the patient arrived and you're able to take your patients back on time. That would be like a hallelujah. Everybody would pop confetti and we'd say thank you.   Also, clinical team members, shout out when you do get that. Go tell your front office thank you, because what we praise typically gets repeated. So make sure that we're saying thank you for that. We take them back on time, information's passed to our doctor, doctor's back to us, us up to the front office, and we have the correct information on our claims, and we're giving that feedback of, if claims are being denied, let's tell each other what's being missed. We get those things fixed. You guys, your practice will be.   next level. And this is something where, yes, we always look for optimization and dollars on the schedule. And I will tell you, we can add 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 very quickly, but it's through very, very, very simple things. And simple does not mean easy. And I think that that's where people shy away from this, but I'm going to encourage you to be the practice that's optimized, optimizing the little ways. Maybe we use AI, maybe we listen to phone calls, patient prism, other, other platforms that are going to be great for you. Let's, let's actually have somebody go through and video our handoffs of a patient.   Like, let's just see it. Let's watch it back. Think about pit stops. There's a great YouTube video where they do a pit stop that was optimized in ⁓ racing and they practice it over and over and over and they timed themselves and they got better and better and better to where it was so fast and everybody knew exactly what they were supposed to do. And I think about a practice that way. Are we optimizing? Are we practicing the most important things? Are we obsessing about crazy things that really aren't moving the needle forward? That's your challenge. That's your choice. And if we can help you with this,   These are things I'm happy to share our new patient phone call script. Reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Happy to share it and like, let's chat. Let's chat about your practice. Let's talk about what things we could optimize. What areas could we make more efficient for you? This is what I obsess about doing. This is what our team obsesses about doing. This is why we created Dental A Team. Things don't need to be hard for you to have success. And I encourage you to do that. Reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

(00:00-14:10) New Cardinal starter Dustin May sits down at the table. Learning from veterans who have done it for a while. Feels like a bridge between the veterans and the young guys. Coming up as a young guy with a lot of hype. Has done pretty much everything except be a closer. His health scare where his wife convincing him to to the hospital saved his life. Fantastic experience playing at Dodger Stadium in LA. Golfing with McGreevy at Grove XXIII.(14:18-21:03) You like this beat, Doug? People want to see Mizzou lose and see Jackson suffer.(21:13-27:20) The Design Aire Heating & Cooling EMOTDSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

New Cardinal starter Dustin May sits down at the table. Learning from veterans who have done it for a while. Feels like a bridge between the veterans and the young guys. Coming up as a young guy with a lot of hype. Has done pretty much everything except be a closer. His health scare where his wife convincing him to to the hospital saved his life. Fantastic experience playing at Dodger Stadium in LA. Golfing with McGreevy at Grove XXIII.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Who was responsible for The Fourth Fighter Group getting equipped with long-range P-51 Mustangs? What did the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine do for the Mustang airframe? Why were the Mustangs so important? Join Al Murray and James Holland for Part 3 of this new series looking at the larger-than-life American aces that flew to every corner of the Nazi empire, starting with Spitfires in the dark days of The Battle Of Britain to P-51 Mustangs at the closing stages of WW2. To watch the ad-free, video-supported, version of this episode, please head to our Patreon page directly. Start your free trial at ⁠patreon.com/wehaveways⁠ and unlock exclusive content and more. Enjoy livestreams, early access, ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and a weekly newsletter packed with book deals and behind-the-scenes insights. Members also get priority access and discounts to live events. https://www.patreon.com/wehaveways/membership?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta A Goalhanger Production Produced by James Regan Editor: Adam Thornton Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Social: @WeHaveWaysPod Social Producer: Harry Balden Email: wehaveways@goalhanger.com Membership Club: patreon.com/wehaveways Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices