Podcasts about For Sale

This week we're joined by Melissa LaMartina, the filmmaker behind For Sale by Exorcist. We chat about her mockumentary, occult research and more before diving into her childhood to learn about her horror history. Then it's time to visit Unico in the Island of Magic, a wild anime children's movie about bug wizards, towers made of people and the cutest yet saddest little unicorn ever. This movie is available in a number of places to watch, so give it a go before listening!You can follow Melissa on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also follow her horror host alter ego on Instagram as well as her band Beach Creeper. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary: In this conversation, Michael Easley and Dr. Calvin Beisner discuss the intersection of faith, environmental stewardship, and poverty. They explore Beisner's journey into stewardship, the founding of the Cornwall Alliance, and the importance of prioritizing human needs in environmental discussions. They also touch on the recent publication of Megan Basham's book, 'Shepherds for Sale,' which critiques the evangelical environmental movement and the influence of money in faith-based organizations. The dialogue emphasizes the need for accountability and critical engagement within the Christian community.  Dr. Beisner and Dr. Easley discuss the importance of critical thinking and reading in developing a Christian worldview. They emphasize the need for Christians to engage deeply with scripture and literature to sharpen their minds. The discussion also delves into the green agenda, exploring the implications of environmentalism from a biblical perspective, including the trade-offs involved in energy production and the impact on the poor. Takeaways: Human beings should be the top priority of all life. Poverty is a tragic reality that many have never seen. The principles of the Cornwall Declaration remain applicable today. Public figures should be held accountable for their statements. Critique should be expected in public discourse. Discipline in thought is essential for Christians. Logic is a vital tool in understanding faith. We need to pay attention to sharpening our thinking. Critical thinking skills are lost in most education. Social media contributes to a decline in reading. Reading a real Bible is essential for understanding scripture. Engaging with literature enhances critical thinking. The green agenda often overlooks human welfare. Trade-offs exist in environmental policies. Fossil fuels are crucial for modern life. Rising energy costs disproportionately affect the poor. LINKS MENTIONED: Shepherd's For Sale by Megan Basham  Climate and Energy: The Case For Realism by Cal Beisner and David Legates The Cornwall Alliance  Watch the highlights and full version of this interview on our Youtube channel. For more inContext interviews, click here.

The home Loans Radio Show 04.05.2025 with That Mortgage Guy Don- Rates are going DOWN Summer buying season is heating up!

1. Eric Edholm of NFL.com, one of the most respected minds in the business, said last week he would be all for the Panthers using six or seven of their nine draft picks on the defensive side of the ball. Would you be in favor of that strategy, or do you think the Panthers should spend considerably more draft picks upgrading the offensive weaponry for Bryce Young? 2. If you're Mickey Loomis and Kellen Moore, is your top priority putting a big "For Sale" sign on that 9th overall pick, even though you have five picks in the top-112? 3. Would it surprise you if the Falcons decide to further strengthen their secondary in Round 1 by taking say Will Johnson or Nick Emmanwori should one or both be available at 15? 4. Even with his recent medical setback, how surprised would you be if the Bucs passed on Jihaad Campbell if he was still available at 19 overall? 5. Panthers three-round mock6. Saints three-round mock 7. Falcons three-round mock8. Bucs three-round mock

Ever notice how the people and opportunities in your life reflect who you are? In this week's episode, Dale and Brian unpack a simple but powerful truth their dad believed—like draws like. It started with a hand-painted “For Sale” sign, but over the years, they've seen how this principle applies to business, relationships, and life.From attracting customers to hiring employees, we don't just choose the people around us—who we are determines who shows up. If we want strong, trustworthy connections, we have to embody those traits ourselves.Tune in as Dale and Brian share personal stories and insights that will challenge you to think about what (and who) you're attracting into your life.Episode Highlights: The story behind the axiom.The law of attraction.Opportunities & connections abound.Links Mentioned in Episode/Find More on ForeverLawn:www.foreverlawn.comImpact Without Limits Instagram: @impact_withoutlimitsForeverLawn's Instagram: @foreverlawnincGet Grass Without Limits HereVisit our show notes page HERESubscribe to Our Newsletter HEREDale's Instagram: @dalekarmieBrian's Instagram: @bkarmie

CrossFit is For Sale. What happens when you don't PR? Training for a specific sport or event. How much do I actually sleep? How to get your chest ready for the beach. Ideal height for box step-ups. How high should your pull-up bar be? How to sub Jump Rope for Running. History of the Linchpin Tests.

Text us for a shout out! David and Justine Goubert are the special guests on The Florida Business Forum Podcast as we simulstream an interview from the Gold Coast Builders Association , Builders Spotlight. Join host Sam Yates us as we welcome the Gold Coast Builders Association's newest Members - We Set The Stage Broward.We Set The Stage Broward specializes in all phases of staging properties For Sale, Open Houses, Show Homes, Commercial Properties and much more. And, they have extras that makes them especially unique.Thanks to David's 30 years as an executive for Luis Vuitton and Neiman Marcus, a "White Glove" approach means adding furniture sales and other products to the mix. Justine Goubert, David's daughter, who is Set The Stage Broward's General Manager, has extensive experience in not only staging but special events such as high-performance racing F1 Miami and many other ultra events.We Set The Stage Broward is a family venture!Check out this special episode of the Gold Coast Builders Association's Builders Spotlight Podcast shared here on The Florida Business Forum Podcast, Florida's Number One Rated Business Forum Podcast. Support the showThe Florida Business Forum Podcast is now Florida's Number One Business Forum Podcast based on an independent survey of more than 400 Florida businesses and not-for-profit organizations. Produced by Yates & Associates, Public Relations & Marketing, and hosted by Emmy Award winning reporter and television anchor Sam Yates, The Florida Business Forum Podcast is your source for detailed Florida business and not-for-profit news. If you or your business or not-for-profit organization would like to share your news with our Florida, national, and international audience please contact Sam Yates, Sam@YatesPRO.com. The Florida Business Forum Podcast is the only business forum of its kind dedicated to Florida news, business, and not-for-profit organizations. When Florida business minds need to know, they turn to The Florida Business Forum Podcast first!Program Sponsorships are available starting at $500/monthly with a minimum six-month sponsorship. The Florida Business Forum Podcast is affiliated with the Pod National News Network USA providing business news podcasts to every State in the U.S.A. The Florida Business Forum Podcast is heard throughout Florida, the United States, and 32 countries and territories. Direct Media Inquiries to Sam Yates, Sam@Yatespro.com. Or via text to 7725285185.

In this episode of Next Steps 4 Seniors, I converse with Christina Gennari, a top real estate expert from Keller Williams Domain, about navigating the current real estate market with a focus on seniors' needs. Christina shares strategies for home sellers, underscoring the importance of minor property updates and thoughtful staging to enhance appeal. We explore emotional challenges faced by seniors when moving from long-time homes and discuss practical tips for attracting multiple offers through strategic pricing and marketing. Christina emphasizes the significance of selecting the right realtor and provides insights into housing considerations for seniors, such as accessibility and lifestyle needs. This episode offers valuable resources to empower listeners in their real estate journeys. Connect with Christina and her team online at https://www.christinagennari.com/ or Contact Christina at 248-397-4747 ☎️ Got questions? Call (248) 651-5010 or email marketing@NextStepsForSeniors.com Subscribe and download the show on your favorite podcast platform. Plus find more great content on our Conversations on Aging Facebook and Instagram pages. Check us out at www.nextsteps4seniors.com or our foundation at www.nextsteps4seniorsfouondation.org Have questions or suggestions? Call 248-651-5010 or email hello@nextsteps4seniors.com. For podcast topics or sponsorship opportunities, contact marketing@nextsteps4seniors.com. Don’t forget to subscribe, follow, and share on your favorite podcast platform. Visit NextSteps4Seniors.com to learn more and explore additional resources. Let’s take the next steps together! This episode is proudly sponsored by Aeroflow Urology, a leader in incontinence care solutions. You may be eligible to receive your incontinence supplies at no cost through your insurance, delivered discreetly and directly to your door. *Some exclusions apply Visit aeroflowurology.com/ns4s to learn more and see if you're eligible.Learn more : https://nextsteps4seniors.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Show Notes:This week I got to chat with Melissa LaMartina, the director of a new horror comedy from Dread productions called For Sale by Exorcist (on VOD now!). She told me about the filming process, working with her husband who co-wrote it, and where they found their protagonist. She also told me about the one time she stayed in a haunted hotel, the spooky town they got engaged in, and what her next film is about.Melissa's Socials: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/auroragorealis.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissalamartina/ Watch “For Sale by Exorcist” on VOD: http://www.epic-pictures.com/film/for-sale-by-exorcist Who's There? Socials:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/whostherepc.bsky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whostherepcEmail: whostherepc@gmail.com Website: https://www.whostherepodcast.com Join the Email List: https://mailchi.mp/4a109b94d3bc/newsletter-signup

Have you ever looked at buying a house and thought there may be other forces living there? Well I know the perfect realtor for you! This chapter I talk about the new film For Sale by Exorcist and had the chance to talk to the films director Melissa LaMartina. Thanks for listening!Follow Melissa:https://www.instagram.com/melissalamartina/https://bsky.app/profile/auroragorealis.bsky.socialJoin me at the Esquire theater on the 3rd Friday of the month for Frightful Fridays! ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.esquiretheatre.com/Follow me ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://letterboxd.com/OldManBrad/https://linktr.ee/oldmanbradBecome a patron for even more content! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/OldManBradA huge thank your to the patrons of Old Man Brad: Two Peas on a Podcast, Flicks and Friends, Nerdrovert, Chris Yeany, Brett Parker, KaraMusic by Carl Kasey at White Bat Audio

What's on Craigslist? 3-10-2025 …Hot Dude seeks Ugly Wealthy Woman …You wiped your butt on a Dollar Bill, and I picked it up …I don't remember much, but I think we had great sex …For Sale the 99 Subaru Impreza Wagon

well, I polled our Twitter followers on which film they wanted us to cover next in our commentary series, and Polanski nation (Poland?) won out decisively, defeating other hot prospects such as Ridley Scott's The Counselor and the enticing "Extreme Prejudice ft. FFF" (the Fuckedman is in tow once again here, and will be joining us as an auxiliary member of the show for at least a majority of our commentaries). join us as we watch a very great film by a very bad man, and talk about important issues such as public ownership of utilities and the Chinese. as is now standard, I'll be posting (almost) the entire intro (plus, on this occasion, the outro) to our free feed [EDIT: this, the thing you are looking at now] as well as a video version of the commentary to this Patreon shortly. we'll be recording something else in the next few days, on which I'll give an update on the status of the podcast and why we've mostly just been doing movie commentaries and shit like that lately. but rest assured that we are deeply committed to building our "New RP Canon" of seminal motion pictures. LISTEN TO THE FULL COMMENTARY HERE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/123984352?pr=true&forSale=true - BY SUBSCRIBING AT PATREON.COM/REELPOLITIK [VIDEO VERSION COMING SOON]

On this episode of Legislative Review: We take a look at a bill that would expand income eligibility for covenant homeownership and a recycling bill concerning manufacturers of paper and plastic products.

Home Loans Radio 03.01.2025 With That Mortgage Guy Don- rates have gotten lower 6 weeks in a row!

Ooga booga, Kill Donkeys! It's time for FOOD COURT, your favorite podcast, where we brave the malls and the movie halls so you don't have to! Sean and Mampy watched The Monkey, the new horror comedy from writer/director Osgood Perkins. Will the boys laugh at the exploding heads? Or will they yawn at the imploding story line? Tune in to find out! So grab your popcorn, sneak in your snacks, and pop your pepto because it's time to get impaled on a For Sale sign! Bon Appétit!

Home Loans Radio 02.08.2025 With That Mortgage Guy Don- February inventory is up and rates moving lower 3 weeks in a row.

Home Loans Radio 02.15.2025 With That Mortgage Guy- Get your wife a beautiful Refinance and a lower house payment for Valentines Day!! yes!

I got my first job when I was 15 years old, working at a Pumpkin Patch on a local farm, and it's been all downhill from there. I'm partly joking, but the working world has never been a place of maximum success and happiness for me, and in this episode I try to come to terms with my own job history as a way of exploring the pressures that consume many of us: bosses, bills, weird co-workers, and the dark feeling that American life is often a big depressing rip-off. I've got stories to tell from a lifetime of shitty jobs, from manning the bakery case at Marie Callender's as a teenager to dealing with obnoxious D-list celebrities as a production assistant in Hollywood. As a wise man once said, “work sucks, I know.” Here's a few slices of how I found that out. Subscribe to hear the whole episode and access our whole library of bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/posts/122293336?pr=true&forSale=true

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games. Join our active and welcoming Discord community, Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon), or Leave us a review wherever you find this podcast! Episode 200 - Our Favorite Board Game Decisions The big 200! We take the opportunity to share our favorite decisions in board games with all 4 hosts! Timestamps 0:00 - Intro 5:59 - Our Favorite Decisions    Games Mentioned Briefly Race for the Galaxy, Avalon, The Resistance, Skull, Coup, Game of Thrones, Dune Imperium Uprising, Dune, Big Top, For Sale, Isle of Skye, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Key Harvest, Lunarchitects, Glen Moore 2, Heaven and Ale, First in Flight, Ticket to Ride, Dominion, Star Realms, Palaces of Carrara, Kodama, Herbaceous, Coloretto, Yummy World, Dice Heist, Foundations of Rome, Ra, Barenpark, Castles of Burgundy, Civolution, Voyages of Marco Polo, Troyes, Magic: the Gathering, Broom Service, Babylonia   Preplanners Age of Innovation likely to be the next game featured for a deep dive!   Music and Sound Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Thank you to Flash Floods for use of their song Palm of Your Hand as a sting from their album Halfway to Anywhere: https://open.spotify.com/album/2fE6LrqzNDKPYWyS5evh3K?si=CCjdAGmeSnOOEui6aV3_nA Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI Intermission Music: music elevator ext part 1/3 by Jay_You -- https://freesound.org/s/467243/ -- License: Attribution 4.0 Contact Follow and reach us on social media on Bluesky @decisionspace.bsky.social. If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Byeee!

 As much as many of us read to escape the evil in the world, sometimes we need to get a picture of what we're fighting against, what people are dealing with, what to pray for. Authors like Cher Gatto do the hard work for us. Listen in and see what we'll get for the sequel to Something I Am Not. note: links may be affiliate links that provide me with a small commission at no extra expense to you.   Cher is back with more about Billy, but wow.  We so often think about getting people out of these terrible situations, but how often do we realize the far-reaching consequences for others' sins in our lives? The things survivors must deal with daily? But not only that, Cher gave us a tiny picture into her book, Regent. I don't know about you, but I'm dying to find out what happens in that one, too!  Something Else by Cher Gatto WHEN THERE IS MORE THAN FREEDOM AT STAKE... Something Else is the anticipated sequel to the award-winning novel, Something I Am Not, and continues the story of small-town quarterback hopeful, Billy McQueen, stolen as a child, raised in a barroom, and sold by his illegitimate father. Now, he is reunited with his real family, married to his best friend, and works to set others free. But a note from his past sends him spiraling back into the world he fought so hard to escape, and Billy comes face-to-face with not only the evil that put him there but the ever-present darkness inside him. "I never understood why my nights brought me here. Why I would ever want to relive my years at TKO. The club. The apartments upstairs. Maybe I came here looking for answers. Maybe I wanted to understand something that might put right the broken pieces within me. If I could find a reason, an explanation, then I would know why God let it happen. How I could have been taken from my home as a little boy and stripped of everything good, until nothing was left. Maybe the rubble of the warehouse, charred from the fire of my fabricated death and plastered with half-hung For Sale signs, painted the most accurate picture of what I felt like on the inside. Maybe that's why I came." Learn more about Cher on her WEBSITE and follow her on GoodReads and BookBub. Don't miss the first episode about Something I Am Not HERE. Like to listen on the go? You can find Because Fiction Podcast at: Apple  Castbox  Google Play Libsyn  RSS Spotify Amazon and more!

You could have just done the thing and it would have been less work. Games we played this week include: Dynasty Warriors (21:45) Codenames (25:10) Donner Dinner Party (27:40) Battlestar Galactica (30:05) For Sale (35:55) Sengoku Basara 2 (42:15) Spartan: Total Warrior (44:50) Buccaneer (48:15) Babysitting Mama (50:05) --- News things talked about in this episode: Ubisoft lays off 185 UK workers (53:40) https://www.eurogamer.net/ubisoft-announces-studio-closure-as-it-lays-off-185-staff Activision employees harassed after leaked Slack conversations about DEI policy (55:05) https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/it-looks-like-someone-at-activision-is-leaking-slack-screenshots-to-right-wing-x-users Nintendo loses lawsuit against Super Mario Market in Puerto Rico (1:00:20) https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-loses-trademark-fight-against-super-mario-supermarket --- Buy official Jimquisition merchandise at https://thejimporium.com Find Laura at LauraKBuzz on Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon. All her content goes on https://LauraKBuzz.com, and you can catch Access-Ability on YouTube every Friday. Follow Conrad at ConradZimmerman on Instagram/BlueSky and check out his Patreon (https://patreon.com/fistshark). You can also peruse his anti-capitalist propaganda at https://mercenarycreative.com.

Nothing stings quite like driving past a “For Sale” sign in your own neighborhood… with someone else's name on it. Ouch. But what if you could be the go-to agent in your own backyard? In this episode, I'm chatting with Stephanie Osborn, who's breaking down exactly how she turned her neighborhood into her personal listing goldmine. Spoiler alert: It's not about fancy ads or overnight success—it's about small, consistent steps that build trust and relationships. If you're ready to claim your turf and start getting more listings where you live, this one's for you!Connect with Stephanie on InstagramJoin the Real Estate Bestie Facebook Community ➡️ https://rosemarylewis.com/facebook

The politics of rebuilding Los Angeles after the fires, tech maneuvering for Trump juice, social media outrage missing the mark, Elon's Nazi salute masking something darker, a new Gilded Age comes into view, what's at risk with global capital behaving like a caged animal. This is a short clip from a full episode, which you can hear by subscribing to our Patreon. Subscibers get access to all of our bonus content, including full episodes, videos, book recs, and News Trap updates: https://www.patreon.com/posts/120711896?pr=true&forSale=true

Fires in Los Angeles unleash a wave of online hate from the left and right. What chance do we have to mitigate the coming climate change disasters if the population's reactions are driven by algorithms that massage and indulge our worst impulses? This is a short clip from a full-length episode for Nostalgia Trap subscribers, sign up for a FREE 7-day trial to listen to the whole thing, plus gain access to our library of bonus episodes, videos, and more: https://www.patreon.com/posts/119735891?pr=true&forSale=true

M&A may look like a numbers game on the surface, but there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. According to this episode's guest, selling a business is as much about psychology and emotions as it is about the facts and figures.In this episode, we welcome Clint Bundy, Managing Director at Bundy Group, who shares his experience, advice, and stories on helping people sell their businesses. We kick things off with Clint's most memorable M&A experiences and why the reality of selling can be an emotional rollercoaster.Clint shares his expertise on how to understand the true value of your business, what buyers are looking for, and how to win the numbers game when coming to a final price agreement. He also talks about what businesses can do to prepare for a sale and why utilizing tech and great systems is the most important step to take. Whether you're planning your exit soon or far in the future, there are some great take-home points from Clint in this episode. After all, his advice is to plan way ahead of time, so give this episode a listen before you even think about getting that For Sale sign!In this episode, find out:Clint shares his wildest M&A stories from his career, including one poor guy who fainted from the stress of selling his businessHow his background as a financial analyst prepared him for a career in investment banking The one thing Clint wishes he'd done a better job of when starting his career in his 20s Why selling a business is “a war of numbers” with buyers and sellers both wanting the best price (which means different things to each)How companies are using automation and new tech to build better systems and the impact this has on a business' saleA breakdown of the top steps in selling a business and what goals sellers should strive forWhy a lack of preparation is the number one mistake sellers make Surprising facts about preparing a business for sale that will really appeal to investorsWhy selling a business is mostly about psychology, not just numbers The four signs of a good company that investors look for The current state of M&A in the automation space, including who's buying and selling What it's like helping a business sell when the market conditions aren't idealEnjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It's feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!Tweetable Quotes:“Motivation is the foundation of transactions – a motivated buyer + a motivated seller.”“We want to show the strongest possible financials and the strongest possible story, past, present, and future, to get the seller an above market price.”“We have to remember when a buyer is buying a company, they are buying the future.”Links & mentions:Bundy Group, a boutique advisory firm with an industry-focused senior team and over 200 successful transactionsThe Old Fields, formerly The Old Garage, this Southfields London pub is situated on Southfield High Street just a minutes walk from the Underground station, and close to the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis ClubMake sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

What's on Craigslist? 1-6-2025 …I Was The Guy In Your Tree Outside Your Window …You were nude and I was interested …The Honda Panty Dropper is For Sale

This week we watched the excellent Apple TV series Severance and put it in conversation with Naomi Klein's latest book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Both texts explore how the concept of “doubles” plays out in capitalist culture, and we have fun talking about the ways they did (and didn't) blow our minds. From Klein's refreshing take on the left's severe mistakes of the COVID era (and how Steve Bannon greedily lapped up the detritus) to Severance's terrifying vision of a corporation that aims to replace your entire identity, we take the opportunity to look into the mirror at the selves we make, and that are made for us. SUBSCRIBE to hear the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/117926165?pr=true&forSale=true

A United Healthcare CEO is assassinated and the world laughs, fitness and nutrition culture goes fascist, Europe in collapse while China salivates, Trump's tariffs portend new global shockwaves. To hear the whole episode, subscribe for a FREE 7 day trial: https://www.patreon.com/posts/117457956?pr=true&forSale=true

Life isn't fair. So when you fight back, fight dirty. In 2 parts, Based on the post from Tx Tall Tales. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Christmas has always been my favorite time of year. I married young, and had two perfect daughters, but my marriage was far from perfect. We had been young and in love. I was entering the community college and Denise was starting her senior year when we decided to tie the knot. Her family's ready acceptance of me was a huge factor - the family I'd never had, making me feel like a real member of theirs. I can admit it now; I probably loved being a part of the family as much as I loved Denise. Our split up was inevitable, two teenagers who knew nothing about life thinking their infatuation with each other would make everything else workout. I wasn't an all-star, super jock, Rhodes Scholar with a 12" swinging cock. I was just your average student, A and B grades, spending some bench time on the football team to get my letter, and losing my virginity at 18 to the girl I'd eventually marry. When times got rough, we didn't know how to handle it, and struck out at each other. Her family often stepped in and helped out when they could, but time after time, the great sex wasn't enough to make up for the difference in our wants, needs and ambitions. In the end, we gave up. Sometimes I think it's a miracle we made it through 5 years. Our devotion to our children allowed us to finally see past our own issues, and work out a remarkably amiable truce, with our girls at the center. Even though Denise and I couldn't live together, it turned out we got along a lot better divorced. We shared our daughters' time, lived only one neighborhood apart, and worked together as a team to make our personal differences have as little impact on our girls as possible. I had initially shared an apartment uptown, but eventually bought one of the smallest houses in the same school district, just to make things easier. It was a lot more than I needed most of the time, but when the girls stayed with me it felt like a home. And we only lived a couple of miles apart. The neighborhood was nice, predominantly younger families, in older, smallish homes. Most of the people were cordial, kept up their property, and after a few years I knew many by name and would exchange greetings at the grocery store, or when out shopping. I had become suburbanized. This was our fourth Christmas since the divorce. Denise was living with Eric, who I wish I could despise, but he was a decent guy with a great job and lousy taste in sports teams. He doted on my girls without trying to take my place. It had taken a while, but we'd developed a friendship, which wasn't a bad thing. My child support was pegged at just over $1500, with the kids on my health insurance. Even though we weren't married long enough for alimony to kick in, I was paying another $500 a month just to make the kids' lives better. And for me, that was all that really mattered. The expense had been rough at first, but with little to concentrate on other than work, my performance skyrocketed. Two promotions in three years had made the financial aspect much less problematic, but increased travel had made the ability to be available for the girls less guaranteed. Denise was good about it, and worked with me. In return I picked up some more of the girls' expenses, including music lessons and a piano. At Least we still had Christmas Christmas was special. We celebrated Christmas as an extended family. I'd come over early, and we'd have a big family breakfast and open all the presents together. I really went all out to make sure the girls got their favorite items. At six and eight years old, they were still young enough to have simple wants, and the magic of Christmas was as real as it gets. The in-laws would come over in the afternoon with more presents and we'd have a good old fashioned Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. It was nice to be part of something. I got a Christmas shut-down at work and Denise didn't, so we agreed that they'd stay with me from Christmas to New Year's, and any time she could get off, we'd usually work out something to get her time with the kids. It was understood that I wouldn't leave town, at least not for more than a day. Summer was great with the 2 weeks I got to spend with them, and we'd usually spend it on the beach. Christmas was still different. Christmas was magical. I always was given the girl's wish list, but I'd also start my shopping in late November for the must have items of the season. And I wasn't stingy; I'd buy them all up, just to make sure I didn't miss any. Stores, online auctions, Craigslist, I'd use any way possible to get my hands on the hottest presents. The first two years I'd caught hell from Denise for buying everything on the list, leaving nothing for them to get. Now I received a separate list of things I wasn't allowed to buy. So it was that I had just finished wrapping my forty-fourth present, all in glitter Barbie paper for Briana, and in Hannah Montana paper for Allora. December 5th, my earliest date so far to finish the bulk of my shopping. Sure, I'd pick up a few more things, including something for Denise and Eric, but my girls were taken care of. The presents were carefully spread around my living room, where they'd remain on display until just before Christmas, when I'd bring them over to Denise's in a big ceremony. The call came from Denise's mother, Sharon. It took me 11 minutes flat to get to the hospital. I was still too late. Denise and Briana had both died en-route. Eric had passed away only ten minutes before I'd arrived. But Allora, my perfect little Allora, was fighting for her life, in critical condition. She'd always been a fighter, would never back down from any challenge. She'd beat this too, I just knew it. It was a freak accident, with a car dodging out of the way to miss a coyote on the road. An 18 wheeler behind the car did his best to avoid the car in front of him, but ended up fishtailing, and taking out a suburban in the next lane over. That vehicle crossed the median and hit my ex-wife's family van head-on. Six dead already and one little girl still fighting hard for her dear life. Sharon and I kept a vigil over the little towhead, and when the doctors came out after 6 hours and declared the worst was over and she was in stable condition, we fell into each other's arms and cried like children. We stayed by her side, one of us always present, and Sharon called me when my baby woke up and spoke. For three long days we watched her slowly heal in the hospital, the worst of her bruises, cuts and contusions blossoming on the second day, and only just starting to fade again. I'm not a religious guy by nature, but I found myself on my knees beside her bed, praying to God to take care of her, and giving thanks for pulling her through this horrendous disaster. At 4:18 pm on December 7th, she passed away. No warning, no reason, she was there, and then she wasn't. The doctors suspected a clot. I suspected incompetence. I finally understood how a person could get so down on themselves that life might not even feel worth living. I went home and shut myself off from the world. After a while I took the phone off the hook. Hell, let's be honest, I ripped the fucking wires out of the wall so I didn't have to listen to one more bleeding heart tell me they were “sorry for my loss”. The cell phone was easier. I just turned it off. Several people from work came by and assured me that I could take as much time as I needed. They'd bring me food, and news, and would leave as soon as they felt they'd spent the minimum time required socially by the situation. Denise's family took care of the funeral arrangements. They attempted to call, and even stopped by for my input. I gave them a check for $10,000 to take care of the girls, nearly wiping out my savings. What was I going to spend it on now? I couldn't bring myself to go to the showing but I did take a shower and put on a suit for the funeral. It was a bleak day, gray skies, 20 mile an hour winds threatening to tear the top off of the outdoor tent. The ground was soggy from rain the previous night. Just perfect. "Thanks, God. Piss on a guy when he's down. Well, fuck You too." I shook the required hands, and kissed the offered cheeks until I just couldn't take it any longer. All these fake people. Fake emotions. Tell me how sorry they were then go home to their perfect little families and eat meatloaf. Fuck'em. Fuck'em all. Fourteen days. Two solid weeks in that dark house. I wouldn't turn on any lights. No TV. I didn't bathe, I didn't shave. I sat in my chair or I lay in my bed and wallowed. I had a few visitors after the first couple of days, but I'd rarely let them in, and before long they had the decency to stop showing up. Only Cathy from next door wouldn't let me sink into complete oblivion. Every day, at least 3 times a day, she'd check in on me. I wouldn't have let her in, but she had a key to the back door for emergencies and wasn't afraid to use it. She'd open the windows a crack, and goad me into getting out of bed and at least sit in the living room. She'd bring food, which she'd set in front of me, and refused to leave until I at least tried it. I insisted on getting my key back, and she handed it over willingly enough. And showed up again the next day. She'd made copies. Meddlesome bitch. Again, she badgered me into eating her breakfast. And she'd talk. God, how that woman could talk! I got tired just listening. All the neighborhood gossip, town gossip, political gossip, school gossip - she was plugged in everywhere and knew it all. Who was doing what, or whom. Griping about people who still had Thanksgiving decorations up, or had Christmas blowups in their front yard. Church fiascos and neighborhood vendettas, she would sit there, drink her tea (or bourbon and coke if the sun had set) and fill me in. I didn't care. It had been two weeks since the accident. I'd lost more than 10 pounds, and really just wanted to crawl in a hole and die. But Cathy wouldn't let me. She made it her personal mission to cheer me up, get me to respond, bring me back to life. Then one day she let me have it with both barrels. She walked up to me and slapped me across the face. Hard. "Damn it Alex! Snap out of it! Life is hard. And it isn't fair, but as bad as you have it, there's always someone who has it worse. Often in your own backyard if you have the eyes to see it." "What do you know about it?" I snapped viciously. "I notice your kids are alive." "I know my mother died when I was six, and my father left when I was thirteen, leaving Mike to raise my sister and me. He was seventeen years old. But he manned-up and did the job the best he could. That's what I know. Life is hard." "Life is hard. Life's a bitch and then you die. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When God closes a door he opens a window. If I hear one more God-damned cliché I swear I'll kill something," I growled. "Alex, you got a raw deal. You had two perfect little girls, and now they're gone. Your past is shattered. Your little bit of immortality is lost. And as bad as you've got it, I'd remind you others have it worse, and they just press on. You need to as well," Cathy told me, kneeling beside me and holding my hands. The woman barely knew me. A middle-aged mother of three with grown kids, and a workaholic husband. Her life was her home, keeping it immaculate and decorated for every holiday and season. Now it seemed I was her newest project. Why should I matter that much to her? Couldn't she see I didn't want her help? "Sure, starving Ethiopians, children in Nigeria dying of aids, Tibetan monks martyred, it's a tough world. Boo hoo." "You don't have to look as far as Ethiopia or Tibet. There are people right here, right on your own block that are really struggling. Open your eyes. If you don't like the unfairness do something about it. Even up the odds a bit. Make a difference somewhere. Get back to living." Something she said must have gnawed its way down to my subconscious. I spent my usual 14 hours or so in bed, but when I awoke I was thinking about her constant comments about someone in my own backyard that had it worse. I cataloged each person on my block, in my head, and nobody really had it that bad. Sure, Neil, three doors down had lost his job, but his wife was still working, and he was looking. The Harris's on the corner had a boy in Iraq, but as far as I could tell he was still Ok, and they had three more at home. The Martins, one down from the corner, fought all the time, and even had the cops called in on them once but they were still together. What did Cathy mean? I expanded the radius of consideration to include the blocks surrounding us. Then it hit me. Across the alley in back, two houses past Cathy's own. Six months ago. Barry Morrison had driven into an empty field behind the local middle school and eaten a bullet. I didn't know much about the family - I just knew there was one. When Cathy came over, I had showered off the top two layers of grime and sweat, and was drinking a Coke in the living room. "Good morning, Alex, beautiful day outside. Why don't we go out on the porch?" "The Morrisons. Tell me about them." She placed her mug of tea in the microwave, warming it up, then walked out my front door and sat in one of my rocking chairs out front. Irritated, I followed, and sat in the chair beside her. "The Morrisons?" "Sandy and her daughter Erica. You won't see much of her; she's working two jobs trying to keep the house over their heads. They're still fighting with the insurance company over payment. Suicide clause won't pay under two years. He had insurance for years, but just around two years ago he changed the terms. She's been trying to sell the house, but it's underwater, and nobody's buying." "How's the little one?" "Erica's not doing so well. She's seeing a counselor twice a week, and hardly speaks anymore. The school's talking about holding her back," Cathy explained. She sounded sad. "Do we know anything more about why he did it?" "No crimes, he wasn't fired, no embezzling, it's not clear what it was about. Apparently he'd been depressed for quite a while, but the underlying situation is still a blank as far as I know." "Harsh on the family, going out like that," I told her, finding the whole idea hard to grasp. "To say the least. The poor woman is worn to a frazzle." "And how does this all matter to me?" I asked. "It doesn't. It doesn't have to matter to anybody. They're on their own. Alone." "No family help?" "Not that I know of. If they're around, we don't see much of them, that's for sure." "Cathy, how the hell do you know all this stuff?" I had to ask. "People just like to talk to me. I'm a very good listener," she told me with a big smile. We sat quietly enjoying the crisp air, finishing our drinks. "You're a good neighbor too, Cathy. Thanks," I said softly. "That's what neighbors are for," she said, reaching out and patting me on my arm. That's what neighbors are for. Cathy brought me dinner again and I realized I was starving. She beamed at me when I finished the whole platter. "Let's go for a walk, Alex. You could use a stretch of the legs." It had gotten chilly, and we bundled up a bit. She took the lead and we walked down the block and turned up the neighborhood. We headed back up the next block and she regaled me with the entire history and habits of the inhabitants of each place we passed. She might have been a good listener, but I had to wonder when she ever was quiet long enough to hear anything. It was obvious when we got to Sandy Morrison's place. The "For Sale" sign was a dead giveaway. The unkempt yard and overgrown bushes indicated a lack of care for months. It couldn't help with the sales prospects. The door paint was faded, and there were no Christmas lights or decorations set up. I thought the Realtor wasn't earning their commission, letting the place show like this. Through the window I could see a desktop Christmas tree, maybe two feet tall, lit up all in white. Strangely, Cathy stopped speaking before we got to the house, and didn't speak again until the end of the block. "Sad," was all she said. We took a round-about path back to my house, and our conversation had returned to the safety of weather concerns, community issues, and such, carefully skirting any discussion of the Morrisons. I was feeling the chill after the walk, and invited Cathy in for a cup of coffee, Irish fortified if she so desired. We drank our coffee in front of my gas fireplace, warming our old bones. Damn that neighbor of mine, and her good intentions! She'd not only gotten me to think of something other than my own misery, and the unfairness of it all, but she had me thinking about those poor girls behind me, and what they must be going through. Damn it! It wasn't fair. I guess I still wasn't ready for pleasant company. Angry at the world, I threw my mug at the wall, shattering it, and leaned over with my head in my hands, doing my best to hold back the tears. Big boys don't cry. Cathy stood and ran her fingers through my hair for just a moment before leaving out the back door. Kind enough to leave me alone to wallow in my misery a little longer. December 22nd. Just three days until Christmas. When Cathy came over that morning, I was already up and dressed. I had my working duds on and coffee and bagels ready. "You're up early," she commented, helping herself to the java. "It's almost 10," I reminded her. "Not so awfully early." She laughed. "Seems to me anything before noon is quite early as of late. Got plans?" I nodded. "Thought I'd head over to the Morrison's and see what I can do about the outside of the house. Clean it up a bit. Make it a little more presentable if they're really planning on selling it." "That's mighty neighborly of you." "It'll give me something to do. I need to get out of this damned house." After our coffee, she walked with me across the alley, all my yard-work gear in a wheelbarrow. The grass was dormant, but long, and the bushes were out of control. I didn't notice when Cathy left, but she returned in a few hours with some sandwiches for lunch, insisting I take a break. I'd finished the bush trimming and had mowed the lawn, bagging the trimmings. I was just finishing the edging when she appeared. I took a break, and listened to her chatter about the neighborhood activities, and how sad it was that in the past few months nobody had offered to do as much as I had. "I guess we victims of fate need to stick together." "It already looks 100% better. If you want to work in the backyard, I have a key to the gate." "It figures you would." "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked. "It just doesn't surprise me. I bet you've been helping out when you could." She sighed. "Not too much. She's too damn proud. Doesn't want any help from anybody." I shook my head. "Now you tell me. She'll probably call the police on me." "So what if she does? You know you're doing the right thing. I'll bail you out if need be." I let her unlock the back gate, and saw I had my work cut out for me. The back yard was worse than the front. The fence needed work as well, some boards were broken and loose, and one whole section was sagging. Luckily, my tools were only a couple of hundred feet away, across the alley, and I was soon at work, determined to finish before the residents arrived home. The biggest problem was one of the fence posts which had rotted out at the bottom. A new post and some quick-setting cement, solved that problem. Within an hour I'd be able to reattach the fence crossbeams to the new 4x4. I turned to see a young girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, watching me from the porch. Crap. "Just thought I'd fix your fence, before it falls down. I hope you don't mind." She just shook her head. She stood there watching me, and I felt ill at ease. I was a stranger. She shouldn't be talking to me. I should probably leave. "I'm just going to clean up here and head back home. I can finish up later when your mother's home." I straightened up my clothing a bit, wiping my hands on my pants. "I'm Alex Reed. I live across the alley," I explained, pointing down a few houses. She nodded. She reminded me so much of my own daughter, right around that age. Her hair was the same length, blonde, but not quite as light as Allora's. Allora. My perfect little Allora. I closed my eyes, seeing her in that hospital bed, bruised and bandaged, fighting for her life. Her hair tucked under the bandages, the few strands that stuck out dark from sweat. Her body so small in that antiseptic white bed. My Allora. Gone. It felt like somebody had wrapped a band around my chest, and pulled it tight. I couldn't breath. I turned away from Erica, so she wouldn't have to see me lose it. She'd suffered enough already. I felt the tears rise, unbidden, and I started for the gate. I had to get out of there. I barely made it as far as the driveway. It was too much. I closed the gate behind me and crumbled to the ground, seated with my head between my knees, my hands covering my head. It was Christmas, damn it! Christmas! My girls were supposed to be with me, shaking their presents and trying to guess what was in them. Instead Allora and Briana were gone. Their lives snuffed out before they could see anything of the world, before they could find their place, before they could fall in love. No shaking presents. No stomach aches from eating too many holiday sweets. No late night parties to drive me crazy with worry. No learning to drive. No struggling to find the right college. No bringing a boy home for the first time. No cramming for tests. No Spring Breaks. No proms. Nothing. Ever again. I was sobbing, and the little girl who had lost her father was standing on the driveway beside me, her hand resting on my shoulder, while I made a fool of myself. "Erica! You know your mother doesn't want you out if she's not at home. You should go back inside. Mr. Reed will be all right, he's just tired. Go on now." Cathy had me by the arm, and was doing her best to get me back on my feet. "C'mon Alex, not here. Let's get you home." I knew she was right. I stood up, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. "I'll be alright. Just give me a minute." I pulled myself together, took a couple of deep breaths, and stood straight. "I'm Ok. Seeing her was just a little too much, too soon. But I'm fine now. I need to clean up here, and put the fence back together." "Alright. I'll help." It only took us a few minutes to clean up and cart the bags of yard trimmings out to the rear curb. I ran all the yard tools back to my house, and returned to finish the fence work. I braced the new post with a couple of 2x4's and reattached the two panels. Cathy's help made it a lot easier. When we were done we both stood back and looked over the yard. Much better. "I'm going to go inside and fix Erica her after-school snack. It's about all that Sandy will let me do. Why don't you come with me?" "I don't know if I should. Sandy doesn't know me. She may not want me in her house when she's not there." "Never mind that. She'll be fine. Just come in a moment. It'll only take a few minutes." I followed her inside, through the glass sliding door. Erica was sitting on the floor watching TV. I didn't even look that way. I was afraid that seeing the wrong TV show would dredge up more painful memories. "Where can I wash my hands?" I asked Cathy. She pointed to a door. "In there." I headed to the bathroom. "Don't use the toilet. That one doesn't flush anymore." I could hear the running water in the commode. I washed my hands and wiped them on my shirt. There was no towel in the bathroom. Then I took the top off the tank and examined inside. Nothing complicated. The chain that connected the stopper to the handle extension was missing. Lifting the rubber stopper, I saw it was under the lip, the cause of the running water. I reattached the chain, and tested the flushing. Worked fine. "Fixed. The chain was just off." Cathy nodded, and returned to making a grilled cheese sandwich. Briana loved grilled cheese. But you couldn't cut the sandwich, and you had to remove the crust. I wouldn't be cutting the crust off of sandwiches anymore. I took a deep breath, and went to examine the front door. "Cathy? I'm going to head home and get my sander and some paint. This door needs some help desperately." "Go ahead. Sandy won't be home until late, and if we're going to get in trouble for the yard and the fence, we might as well make it a trifecta." Fifteen minutes later, I was running the battery powered hand-sander over the door, removing the worst of the existing paint. I didn't have too much to do, it was already mostly bare. I had brought over three possible paints to use, all of which I knew were approved by the homeowner's association. "What color paint do you think I should use?" I asked Cathy. "Let's ask Erica." She returned in a few seconds with Erica at her side. "We're going to paint the front door, Erica. What color would you like?" We had a choice of off-white, light blue, and a dark brown. She pointed to the light blue, then seated herself nearby to watch. I had already removed the hardware. I taped the hinges and bottom kick-plate, laid out my drip cloth, and started applying a coat of paint, top-to-bottom. I looked over at the young girl watching me so intently. I saw the tree beside her, so small and bare, with one little package underneath it. Christmas trees shouldn't look like that. They should be big, full of decorations, all sorts, each one with its own story. Handcrafted special ornaments, with pictures of your family members. Popsicle stick ornaments with the Elmer's glue showing. Lights blinking in an assortment of colors, candy canes and tinsel, and an angel on top. There should be presents around the bottom, stacked and scattered, so many you can't even get near the tree. It was the first year I didn't have a tree. We'd normally go out as a family and visit one of the Boy Scout tree lots, picking the biggest, fullest tree we thought could fit in my living room. Then we'd decorate it together, Christmas songs playing in the background, and sipping eggnog. We'd spend an eternity untangling the lights, replacing the bulbs that wouldn't work, and replacing the metal hangars on the decorations that needed them. It was an all day affair. Not this year. Not ever again. I realized I'd stopped painting, and I was staring. A long drip of paint from my brush was running down the door. The little girl looked at me, almost as if she understood. "Would you like to help?" I asked. She looked around, as if to ask if I was talking to her. "Yes, you." She shyly nodded yes. I reached over to my bucket of painting supplies and pulled out a small brush. I pointed to the inlaid panels on the bottom half of the door. "You can paint here, around the edge of the panel. It needs to be done with a detail brush like the one you have. Get into the cracks." She nodded, dipped her brush, and started painting straight down the panel edge, doing a good job. "That's perfect. Just like that." I went back to work completing the top half, and had to work around her, sometimes leaning way over to paint above her. She saw what I was doing, and I saw the mischievous heart of a little girl for a moment when she started backing away from the door, making me lean further and further over. "Hey!" I said in mock outrage. "You're doing that on purpose!" When she giggled, apparently ignoring me, and continuing with her painting effort, I felt a small leap in my heart. It was nice to hear her giggle. "When you're done with the painting, and done torturing me, you can paint around the edges of the two hinges and the kick-plate. If I won't be in your way." Little Erica nodded, and continued her careful painting, working slowly and deliberately around the perimeter before moving onto the hinges. I found myself kneeling beside her, painting the bottom-half of the door, while she detailed the trim. We switched places so I could work on the side near the hinges while she completed the bottom trim. "Not bad," I commented, holding out a drip bucket for her to dump her brush in. I sealed up the paint can, peeled off the trim tape, and stood back to get a look at the results. A little girl stood beside me, her blonde hair a poignant reminder of all I'd lost. I took a deep breath to compose myself. "Not bad at all. Think your mother will like it?" I looked down at her while she thought it over. A smile slowly spread across her face. She nodded twice. I put my hand down for a fist bump, just like I would with my girls. She shrank away for a second, then glanced up at my face for a second before making a tiny fist and bumping her knuckles against mine. We were enjoying the last of the natural light as dusk was settling in. Cathy walked out and stood beside us, giving her approval. "The blue is perfect. Great choice Erica." Erica stopped admiring her work, looked at Cathy, and blinked like she was just seeing her for the first time. She looked up and down the block, then walked back into the house and planted herself in front of the TV. "Ready to call it a day?" Cathy asked. "Yeah. Best get while the getting is good." I packed up my paint supplies and in just a couple of trips hid any trace that I'd ever been there. Except of course for the door, yard and fence. Oh, and the toilet, although that really didn't count for much. Back home I cleaned up and sat down pondering what I'd just done. I had mixed feelings, a little guilt creeping in for taking liberties with someone else's house. But thinking about that little girl, and what she must be going through, made anything I could do to help worthwhile. Thinking was dangerous. I realized I hadn't been very nice to the people who had tried to help me. I decided to rectify that if possible, and found a new phone cable for my phone and plugged it in. Picking it up I heard a dial tone. Good. I made a list of phone calls, and went to work. Calling, one-by-one, my friends, neighbors and co-workers, I apologized for my behavior and thanked them for their concern. To a one, they blew off my boorish behavior, and promised they'd be there for me if I needed anything. I stopped, with just a few calls remaining, wondering where those people were for Sandy and Erica, who seemed to need it far more than I. I picked up the phone and dialed Denise's family. I knew it was going to be tough. I apologized for leaving the funeral arrangements to them, and thanked them for all they had done. Speaking to Dan was difficult, but my conversation with Sharon almost did me in. The time we'd spent in the hospital, watching over Allora came up, and I had to take a break for a bit to get my emotions under rein, while I listened to Sharon sob. Even after the divorce we'd remained friendly, and I was glad that we'd had each other on that fateful watch. I promised I'd stop by in the next couple of days, she insisted there was some paperwork that needed taking care of. My last call was to Steve, my roommate for three years in college, and best friend in the world. I had hung up on him twice that first day, and it was haunting me. He'd left more than a dozen messages on my cell-phone voicemail. Plus, I had ulterior motives. The phone rang several times and went to the answering machine. I felt like a weight had lifted, I wouldn't have to face him. "Steve, Alex here. I'm sorry I..." "Alex, I'm here, don't hang up, I'm here. Let me turn off this damned machine. Hold on." I heard some rustling and the echo of our voices disappear. "Jesus, Alex. You're killing me." "Sorry. It hit me so hard; I just couldn't listen to one more well-wisher." "I understand." He would understand. His father had passed away while we were in our last year of college, and he took it hard. Started drinking heavy, cutting classes, and chasing anything with boobs. I took care of him as much as I could, going so far as to collect his homework and projects, even talking to his professors. He'd been slow to pull it together, but eventually came around. Five years later, less than a year out of law school, it was his mother. I had flown out and spent a week with him. I knew it would be hard - he was an only child, and he had few relatives, and none he was close to. He came out of that funk bitter, and it cost him his girlfriend - no loss there. We'd been as close as brothers, hell, probably closer. We still were. Steven understood. I opened my soul to him, and stayed on the phone for ages. I heard him send his wife off to bed, while I vented. It was a much needed cathartic outpouring that left me exhausted. "What can I do? Anything, you know it. Should I fly down?" As much as I'd love to see him, it had been nearly a year, he was a family man now, and it was Christmas. "No. Stay with your family. I'm doing better, and if I need to I can call." "Of course." "I also wanted to say I was sorry." "Sorry?" "Sorry that I couldn't do more for you when you lost your parents. I never really experienced losing anyone like that, and couldn't comprehend what you were going through." "Shut the fuck up. You were there for me, buddy. Always. When nobody else was. I'll never forget that. Enough said. Don't need to be getting sappy over it." I couldn't help but chuckle. "Alright. By the way, there's one other thing you might be able to do for me." "Anything. That's what friend are for." That's what friends are for. The pounding on my front door was not unexpected. Ten o'clock at night might be a little of a surprise, but the knock wasn't. I went to the front door, and looked out through the glass beside it. A woman stood there. I had a fairly good idea of who it was. I opened the door. "Mrs. Morrison?" She glared at me and nodded. "Come in, please. Can I get you a cup of tea, or coffee?" I turned and walked into the house, leaving the door open. I walked to the kitchen, and poured myself a cup of coffee. I turned to see her standing in the archway to the living room. She looked ready to burst, but I watched her breath deep and run her hands through her short hair. She looked young. Too young to be going through the hell she was currently experiencing. "I don't want you around my house or my daughter," she finally snapped. "I understand, and I'm sorry I interfered." I walked past her and sat down in the living room. "I can't explain it. I had to do something to get out of this house, and when Cathy told me about your situation I guess I got carried away." She stared at me, and crossed her arms. "Don't mention her name. I could kill her." I smiled. "Believe me, I understand that. She's been in my house every day, 3 or 4 times a day, meddling in my life." "Meddling is right," she snapped. She walked over and sat on the loveseat across from me. "Listen. I appreciate the thought. And I'm sorry for your loss." She smirked. "Ha, listen to me. Sorry for your loss. Crap." She leaned back. "We're doing fine. I don't need your help, I don't know you from Adam, and I don't want you around my daughter when nobody's around. Jesus, you painted my frickin' front door blue! A little presumptuous, don't you think?" I smiled. "I would have picked the wood tone. Blue was Erica's choice, one of the four approved colors according to our Stalinist homeowner's association." She leaned back, rolling her eyes up. "Don't remind me. If the bastards send me one more notice about yard and fence maintenance, I'll rip their lungs out." She seemed to calm down for a second, maybe realizing that those notices would no longer be coming. "I know. I should be thankful but I don't need a stranger meddling in my life. Understood? No more doing things for me." "I didn't do it for you. I did it for that little girl. You don't know me. I don't know you. Agreed. I don't know what happened to you and your family or why. Not really. What I do know is that girl of yours doesn't deserve the hand she's been dealt. That's all I could think. I just wanted to help where I could." She looked angry. "I'm sorry you lost your daughters. I am. But Erica is MINE. My daughter. My responsibility. Not yours." "You are right. She's no responsibility of mine." "That's right. I don't know you. We live three doors down and in two years you've never spoken a word to us. Six months we've been on our own. I certainly don't need you poking your head in now. I don't know you, I don't want to know you, and I'm not sure I'd like you if I did." "Welcome to the club." "Club?" "I'm not sure I like me either. I'm sorry, alright? Now I'm tired. You can let yourself out." She got up and stomped her way to the front door, closing it sharply behind her. That had gone better than I'd expected. December 23rd. I got up early, cleaning up, even shaving. I had errands to run. Cathy showed up in my kitchen while I was preparing breakfast. "At least neither of us is in jail," were her first words. "Not yet." "You did a good thing. Don't forget it." "I know. Still she was right. We should have asked permission." "The hell we should! She'd never have given it." "Then maybe we should leave her be." "If a person was drowning, and they couldn't yell for help, wouldn't you still throw them a life preserver?" "A little overly-dramatic, don't you think?" "No. She's going down for the third time, and is in complete denial. By the time she accepts the fact she needs help it could be too late." She looked me over. "You clean up nicely. What are you up to?" "I need to run some errands, see a few people, stop by work, some other stuff." "Don't overdue it," she said, still in her 'caring' mode. "Need some company?" "Thanks, I appreciate the offer. I can handle this." "Ok, you have my number. Give me a call if you need anything." The office visit was painful. I stopped in, thanking my bosses for their understanding, visiting a few friends and letting them know I appreciated their concern. The way they looked at me just drove home how alone I was. I was glad to get out of there. I made a visit to the florist and picked up a trunk-load of Christmas cacti. I drove around to everyone I could think of, expressing my gratitude, and leaving the pretty plants behind. I used the same corny line with each one, comparing my 'prickliness' the last couple of weeks to the plant's spines. I left a few plants on doorsteps with a note. By mid-afternoon I felt I'd done my part. I stopped by Denise's parent's house, and Sharon greeted me at the door with a hug before she broke into tears. After she'd soaked my shirt she brought me in. "There's something you need to know, Alex." She sounded odd, and I wondered what was up. "Denise left a will. She left you the house and the lion's share of her insurance, to take care of the girls if anything happened to her." I was stunned. It was so unexpected. "I... I don't know what to say." Sharon reached out and patted my hand. "It's not what I'd expected, but if you think about it, it makes sense. What are you going to do?" "I guess I'll sell the house. I certainly don't need two houses." "She had mortgage insurance, it'll be paid off. You could rent it out, you know. Earn some steady income off of it." It was too much too fast. I couldn't think straight. "I'll have to think about it. I just wasn't expecting anything like this." "I understand." She held my hand. "How are you doing?" "Better. Not good, but at least I can get out of bed." "We're here if you need us. You know that, right?" "Yes. Thank you. After the girls, you were the best thing that came out of our marriage." "We love you too. Don't forget it." "I'm sorry I was so useful about the funeral arrangements, I don't think I could have handled it without you," I confessed. "Don't even think about it. That's what family is for." That's what family is for. My day wasn't quite complete. A few more calls and I was putting things in motion I wasn't sure I should, but I couldn't resist. Around dinner time, I ventured next door. Cathy's husband John answered the door. "The hermit has left the cave. Good to see you out and about." He shook my hand, letting me in. "Cath - Alex is here." Cathy came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. "How'd your day go?" "Not bad. A few surprises, but I survived." "We're about to eat. Care to sit down with us?" "Maybe. When do you think Sandy will be getting home?" "Probably nine-ish, would be my guess. Why?" "Just want to talk to her if I can." "You have time for dinner then?" "Sure." By 8:30 I was enjoying a cigar with John, sitting out in their driveway, trying to figure out what our football team's chances were of going anywhere in the playoffs. We were strategically positioned so I had a view of the Morrison's driveway. When Sandy drove up, I excused myself from John and jogged across the alley. "Sandy, can I talk to you a moment?" She looked ready to chase me off, but after a few awkward seconds she crossed her arms, leaned back against the car and raised her eyebrows. "Again, I'm sorry I entered your house without your permission. I know that was wrong. All I can say is I wasn't really thinking straight." She rolled her eyes. "Anything else?" "Yes. I know you told me you didn't need my help, but there's someone I'd like you speak to. I have a friend that's a lawyer, and he's willing to check into your insurance situation pro bono. Like you and me, he's suffered a few losses in life, and he'd like to help you if he can. If you'd just give him a call, he'll see what he can do." I could see she wanted to say no, but was torn. She gnawed on her bottom lip, which I saw were chapped. She looked exhausted. I pulled out his card and held it out to her. "It'll only take a couple of minutes. It can't hurt." She finally nodded and took the card from me. "Is that it?" "One last thing. I'm headed over to my ex-wife's house tomorrow to clean out the refrigerator, and to get rid of her tree. It's my responsibility now. I was going to ditch the tree; it's one of those pre-lit artificial ones which I never could stand. I thought, if you don't mind, and it's not interfering too much, I could bring it by here and you could take if off my hands. Otherwise it's going to the dump." I spit out the words quickly before she could find too much fault with me. She seemed resigned to allow me to interfere, at least this much. She sighed and finally spoke up. "Alright. That would be nice. Now if that's all, I'd like to go in now. My feet and back are aching and I have to get up early tomorrow." "That's all. You can call Steve tonight if you'd like, he's a night owl and is expecting your call. Good night." I took off quickly before she could change her mind about anything. I had recruited Cathy's help over dinner the night before, assuming things went Ok with Sandy, and by noon we were back at the Morrison house, knocking on the door. Erica let us in, and we hauled our goodies in after us. I had the tree folded up and left it on the front doorstep while we made room for it in the living room. After I'd put it in place, I hauled in a large plastic crate of Christmas decorations, and encouraged Cathy and Erica to get to work making the tree look 'festive'. Right on schedule my weekly cleaning crew showed up and I put them to work giving the entire house a thorough cleaning. I had felt guilty chasing them away the last few weeks, and had begged and cajoled them into doing me this one favor, on Christmas Eve of all days. The team of four went to work like whirling dervishes, storming through the rooms in pairs leaving sparking chrome and sweet smells in their wake. We only had a few hours if Cathy was right, and I had one more big task lined up. The Chem-Dry carpet cleaners were running a little late, but showed up not long after the cleaning crew had finished with the living and dining rooms, and I had moved most of the furniture into the hallways and kitchen. They went right to work, and had the downstairs completed in a little over an hour. While they worked at that, I spent the time decorating the front yard and the house with Christmas lights. I hoped that Sandy liked traditional multi-color displays. I wasn't all that fond of the 'all-white' look, and was using my own lights to decorate her house. By the time I had finished I was sweating up a storm, and was getting nervous about the time. The carpet guys left first, reminding me to let the carpet dry for another hour before returning the furniture to its place. The cleaning crew followed shortly after, and I'd rewarded them nicely, tipping them an extra $100 for coming out on Christmas Eve. I moved indoors, with the lights complete and lit up, to find a Christmas wonderland awaiting me. Cathy and Erica had done an amazing job, using what I had brought over and getting the Morrison's decorations out of the attic and putting those to use as well. You could hardly tell it was the same house. "You ladies have done an incredible job!" I announced, standing in the doorway. Cathy looked a little disheveled but very pleased with herself. "Let's finish up quick. I have to get home; John's going to kill me." I'd promised her we'd be done by 4:00 and it was already nearly 5:00. She was holding a Christmas Eve open-house and was expecting half of the neighborhood over that evening. She only had a couple of hours left to finish her own preparations. I gave her a hug for all of her effort and shooed her off, while I started hauling the furniture back into place, working at a frenzied pace to get done before the unsuspecting benefactor got home. Erica followed behind me, arranging all the lamps, baskets and knick-knacks, and adding additional holiday decorations as we went. With the last of the furniture in place, I turned and gave her a high-five. "This is all our secret, right? If your Mom asks, the Christmas elves stopped by to help clean up. You did a great job, Erica." She smiled and held her arms out to me. I leaned down and gave her a hug. "Thank you," she whispered, just before she let go and disappeared up the stairs. I felt a lump in my throat. Whether it was fear of being caught by her mother, or the joy of hearing her speak her first words to me, I couldn't be sure. By eight o'clock, Sandy still hadn't shown up on my front-doorstep with a shotgun. I guess she was going to wait until after Christmas to eviscerate me over meddling where I didn't belong. I didn't care. I felt good, the best I'd felt in two weeks, thinking about that little girl celebrating a real Christmas. Kids should have Christmas. I had cleaned up and decided to make an appearance next door, as I'd promised, when I got a call from Steve. "Hey-ho, Stevorino." "Only my Grandma gets to say that, asshole." "Merry fuckin' Christmas to you too." I teased. I heard him chuckle. "Merry Christmas is right. At least for your neighbor." "How's that?" I asked, suddenly interested. "The insurance creeps were just stalling. They don't have a leg to stand on. The only change to the policy was upon their advice after an annual policy review by their own agent. A little legal pressure was all it took. It's not a lot, less than $300K, but she'll be getting her check next week." "Steve, you're the man. I take back all those nasty things I said about you." "Shit, they're probably true. If anybody would know, it'd be you." "All kidding aside. You're a life saver." I knew he hated any hint of seriousness. I could almost hear him blushing over the phone. "Hey, that's what friends are for, right?" "That's right. And I couldn't ask for a better one." "Ditto. Asshole." "Shit. You had to go and spoil it. Listen, I gotta run. Give your family my love and have a great Christmas. I'll give you a call next week." "You got it. And Darla sends her love. She made me say that. Don't get any ideas." "Got it. Give her a kiss for me. Scratch that. I'll come out after the holidays and give it to her myself. When are you going to be out of town next?" "Funny guy. Start anything with her, and I'll make you keep her and the credit card bills." "Ouch. You win," I had to laugh. "Thanks again." "Merry Christmas. Hang in there buddy." "You too." To be continued in part 2, Based on the post from Tx Tall Tales for Literotica 

It's Black Friday, so between insane binges of online shopping, Justin and I sat down to record a conversation about the Netflix documentary The Antisocial Network: From Memes to Mayhem, as we consider the path from Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders to 1/6 and Donald Trump's triumph in the 2024 election. What role has internet culture played in shaping our current reality, and what can we expect in the future?  This is only a short bit from a much longer episode, so subsribe to enjoy the whole thing --- lots of juicy ideas here. Subscribe for a FREE 7-day trial to hear the full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/116970931?pr=true&forSale=true

Haunted houses abound in the new horror comedy film “For Sale By Exorcist.” The film centers around Susan Price, a licensed realtor and certified exorcist, who travels through twelve states, separating ghosts and demons from the buildings they're haunting … and gets buyers into specter-free homes. The film is the directorial debut of Baltimore filmmaker Melissa LaMartina -- we get a preview! Tickets to "For Sale by Exorcist" Baltimore premiere, here.Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story idea to pitch? Contact On the Record at: Senior Supervising Producer, Maureen Harvie she/her/hers mharvie@wypr.org 410-235-1903 Senior Producer, Melissa Gerr she/her/hers mgerr@wypr.org 410-235-1157 Producer Sam Bermas-Dawes he/him/his sbdawes@wypr.org 410-235-1472

Celebramos los cuarenta años de la celebración de la Muestra de Pop-Rock y Otros Rollos con Luis Linacero, Ignacio Cristóbal Bescós “Coco” y Justo Peña “Juju”. También recibimos a los integrantes del grupo For Sale para descubrir su nuevo disco “Un Día En El Parque”.También suenan DelaCueva (Amor A La Deriva), Pablo Estallo (Cactus Blandiblú FEAT DelaCueva), Copiloto (Dotes Innatas 2024), Bestia Bebé (El Rock And Roll Pasó De Moda), Faneka (Para Conquistarnos), Kruger Rap (Al Revés), Just Diego (Sentirse A Salvo), Roulette (Love's The Drug), Koko Jean And The Tonics (Frank's Zone) y Sidonie (Hyde Park FEAT Sopa de Cabra).

If you're getting ready to sell a home, this episode is for you! Today we're going all in on staging tips for sellers—from what to clean to what to add (and what to hide!). Join us as we break down the most effective ways to prepare your home for the market, help buyers imagine themselves living there, and ultimately, get the best possible sale. Whether it's clearing clutter, freshening up with neutral colors, or staging each room with intention, these strategies can mean the difference between “For Sale” and “Sold!”   Some of the tips we cover: The checklist of “must-dos” for any seller to make a great first impression Why your online listing photos matter and how to prep for them Levels of staging: occupied vs. vacant homes and what to consider for each Budgeting for staging and the impact of making simple updates How to manage smells, lighting, and even music during showings Specific tricks to make kitchens, bathrooms, and closets feel open and fresh Outdoor must-haves: making sure the landscaping enhances the home, not detracts When to invest in upgrades like carpet replacement or fresh paint   Don't let your home go on the market without this advice! It's all about setting the right mood and creating a space that invites buyers to see their future home. Leave us a review at ratethispodcast.com/hustlehumbly Get your FREE Database Template  Email Templates 101: emailtemplates101.com Build Your Own Business 101: hustlehumblypodcast.com/byob Agent Systems 101: agentsystems101.com All Resources: hustlehumblypodcast.com Submit your topic ideas and toasts to team@hustlehumblypodcast.com

TVC 666.3: Ed welcomes actress, comedienne, and “puppet fabricator” Corinne Britti (Condor's Nest, For Sale). Corinne plays real-life 1970s comedienne Valri Bromfield in Saturday Night, the Sony biographical comedy, written and directed by Jason Reitman, that portrays the chaos behind the scenes at NBC in the ninety minutes leading up to the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live on Oct. 11, 1975. Saturday Night is now playing theaters everywhere. A rabid sewer in real life, Corinne also hand-crafted the puppets featured in Ice-T's award-winning music video for “The Hate Is Real.”

TVC 666.3: Ed welcomes actress, comedienne, and “puppet fabricator” Corinne Britti (Condor's Nest, For Sale). Corinne plays real-life 1970s comedienne Valri Bromfield in Saturday Night, the Sony biographical comedy, written and directed by Jason Reitman, that portrays the chaos behind the scenes at NBC in the ninety minutes leading up to the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live on Oct. 11, 1975. Saturday Night is now playing theaters everywhere. A rabid sewer in real life, Corinne also hand-crafted the puppets featured in Ice-T's award-winning music video for “The Hate Is Real.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Take a walk with me down Fascination Street as I get to know Corinne Britti. Corinne is a comedian and an actress. Her recent projects include: For Sale, Condor's Nest, Take Care of Emily, and Saturday Night. In this episode, we chat about what made her want to be an actress, and why she felt NYU Tisch was the place to go. We discuss some of the things that you DON'T learn in acting school, and some of the things she learned at the Stone Street Conservatory. Corinne shares funny audition stories, and even a story about why there were bodies strewn all over her apartment during Covid! I ask her about the live comedy show / therapy session she co-created, and whether she plans to bring it back. She shares how she came to work on an ICE T music video, and we talk about some of her previous projects, and some of the weird ways that filmmakers find their talent. Naturally we touch on her new film SATURDAY NIGHT; which is in theaters NOW. In this film, Corinne plays real life comedian Valri Bromfield; and the film covers the back stage events in the hour or so leading up to the LIVE pilot of Saturday Night Live. Since this film is directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, naturally I ask what it was like to work with him, and I ask if she would ever work with him again. Her answer may surprise you..... but probably not! GO SEE SATURDAY NIGHT!!

Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Stamp Swap, Typeset, and Sausage Sizzle. Then, we talk about some "goody gifts" - small games that can fit in a stocking, goody bag, or trick or treat bag! 0:00-Intro 0:55-Recent Games - Stamp Swap - watch the playthrough 1:36-Typeset 6:40-Sausage Sizzle! 15:18-Goody Gifts 27:58-Outro 29:02-Bloopers Join our discord Support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/boardgameblitz Or get some of our merch on TeePublic or shop on our Amazon Storefront This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Use the code "BGBLITZ24" to get 20% off non-exclusive items. Consolidated Links For the full show notes visit our site at http://www.boardgameblitz.com/posts/396

Grab your ghost-hunting gear and pack a lunch—it's time to tour the spookiest spots for a devilish dining experience! This week, Trevin dives into a haunting recurring dream that's been creeping him out for years, while Amanda faces the nerve-racking decision to shake things up at her annual costume party, wondering if the thrill is worth the chills. In this Halloween special, Amanda treats us to a chilling exploration of haunted places, starting with Bird Bridge—a local legend from her hometown that's sure to give you goosebumps. Trevin then shares the eerie tale of a haunted Louisiana mansion with surprising ties to Nicolas Cage and Kathy Bates, and it might just leave you ready to buy your very own haunted house. For our final Halloween stories of the season, Amanda (as Witch Wanda) spins a tale of a young man from Oklahoma City who'll go to any lengths for the perfect “sexy” costume. Meanwhile, Trevin transports us to the Czech Republic, where Satan himself causes chaos for a local priest on a Halloween mission. Get ready for the ultimate Halloween feast of stories and spine-tingling destinations. Don't forget the deviled eggs and devil's food cake—this Satanic Feast is one you don't want to miss! Today's Stories: Halloween for the Sexy Soul Father Smejkal and the Satanic Feast (Discussions include: Nightmare, Reoccurring Dreams, Hanging Man, Hangman, Dream Interpretation, Creepy, Halloween Special, Halloween Party, Halloween Games, Olympics, Beer Olympics, Drinking Games, Costume Party, Haunted, Haunted House, Bird Bridge, Rocky Ford Bridge, Emporia, Kansas, Sandra Bird, Cottonwood River, Murder Ordained, Tom Bird, Lorna Anderson, LaLaurie Mansion, Madame Delphine LaLaurie, Morbid, Real Estate, For Sale, Bourbon Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, Matthew Blake Dixon, Kathy Bates, American Horror Story, Elk City, Oklahoma City, Sexy Referee, Shoplifting, Party Galaxy, Chappell Roan, Playlist of the Dead, Jaromir Smejkal, Kurdejov, Czech Republic, Priest, Smashing Pumpkins, Jack-o-lantern, Religion, Demons, Witch)Join our Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/livelaughlarcenydoomedcrew For ad-free episodes and lots of other bonus content, join our Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/LiveLaughLarceny  Check out our website: HereFollow us on Instagram: HereFollow us on Facebook: HereFollow us on TikTok: HereFollow us on Twitter: Here  If you have a crime you'd like to hear on our show OR have a personal petty story, email us at livelaughlarceny@gmail.com or send us a DM on any of our socials!

“Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!” is a famous introduction to one of the most iconic comedy shows ever. My guest on this episode of The PVDcast has a connection to that introduction. Corinne Britti is that guest and she stars in the movie, Saturday Night, which tells the tale of the first episode of SNL. Additionally, we will discuss Corinne's other roles in Condor's Nest and For Sale. You will even hear about a unique project that Corinne co-created that mixes comedy with mental health awareness. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show & new episodes of The PVDcast drop every Thursday!

Nothing stings quite like driving through your own neighborhood and spotting a “For Sale” sign… with someone else's name on it.

Send us a textActress, comedian and writer Corinne Britti currently co-stars as real-life 70s comedienne Valri Bromfield in Sony biographical comedy Saturday Night from writer, director Jason Reitman. She also stars as Leyna Rahn, an escaped German Jew who turns Nazi hunter in writer/director Phil Blattenberger's action-thriller Condor's Nest, and she's Claire, a dry-witted medium who is hired to exorcize a house in writer/director Christopher Schrack's horror comedy For Sale.  Corinne contributed to the original story, produced and starred in the award-winning drama, Take Care of Emily, from writer-director and frequent collaborator Nick Rapuano. Her first summer out of college, Corinne won the role of Marie DiNello in Rapuano's drama Route 80, which marked her feature film debut. Along with performing standup and sketch, Corinne also produced and co-hosted Almost Therapy, an acclaimed and long-running live comedy show in Brooklyn, New York, which featured both standup performances and a live Q & A with a mental health professional.  Born in Washington D.C., Corinne credits her first high school drama performances with giving her the bug to seek an acting career. She received her Bachelor's degree in drama from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, including studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for Shakespeare, and the Stonestreet Film Conservatory. Corinne is a rabid sewer who, during the pandemic, helped craft the puppets (and stars) of Ice-T's award-winning music video for “The Hate Is Real.” Corrinne on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9072763/?ref_=nm_mv_closehttps://www.instagram.com/corinnestagramster/"Saturday Night" will be in theaters nationwide starting October 11, 2024"Condor's Nest" and "For Sale" can be found on TubeThanks again for tuning in- you can find our main website at www.fowlplayersradio.com with all of our episodes. Our most recent three seasons and some best of episodes in video format can be found at youtube.com/@fowlplayersradio. Please hit the like and subscribe button and leave an honest reviewPlease support our guests in their endeavors. Buying books, cds, t-shirts, and tickets to shows make great experiences as well as great gifts and greatly help keep these folks going. It is also very much appreciated by the artists.#michaelspedden #fowlplayersradio #fowlplayersofperryville #madiganswaterfront #westernmarylandscenicrailroad #5thcompanybrewing #suskyriverbeveragecompany #marylandpartyboat #Saturdaynight #condorsnest #corrinebritti #forsalewww.fowlplayersradio.comwww.thefowlplayersofperryville.com#michaelspedden#fowlplayersradio#fowlplayersofperryville@fowl_radio@SpeddenMichaelwww.youtube.com/@fowlplayersradiowww.patreon.com/fowlplayersradiobuymeacoffee.com/fowlplayerw

Alice Springs is littered with “For Sale” signs as those who can afford it are packing up and leaving. Punitive government curfews made daily life more challenging, and families struggle to see a future for themselves if things continue the way they are. With the newly elected Country Liberal Party promising to be even tougher on crime – and lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years old – more government interventions are on the way. But there's also the story of those who stay to help set young people on a different path and reconnect with Country. In the final instalment of the three part series This is Alice Springs, Daniel James heads to a station in the MacDonnell Ranges that offers an oasis of calm amid the chaos. But even here the cycle of incarceration and violence is never far from children's lives.  Socials: Stay in touch with us on Twitter and Instagram

Ever wondered how a bartender and construction worker could pivot into a successful career in real estate finance? Join us as we chat with JT, a seasoned loan officer with 17 years under his belt, sharing his journey from mixing drinks in San Antonio to mastering the world of mortgages. JT opens up about the early days, when he was inspired by the affluent lifestyles of lenders and made the bold leap into a commission-only role before the Dodd-Frank era reshaped the industry. His story is filled with humor, grit, and the kind of determination that makes you believe anything is possible if you're willing to hustle.But JT's journey is more than just numbers and loans; it's about personal growth and transformation. We dig deep into his bold strategies in the competitive real estate market, like his innovative approach to For Sale by Owner properties. With insights into the power of a purpose-driven mindset and the role of spirituality in amplifying success, JT shares how supportive relationships and accountability are crucial for achieving big wins. Learn how marrying the right partner can be like having a personal coach, driving you to new heights, and why the thrill of the chase in business is only rivaled by the fulfillment found in collaboration.The conversation doesn't stop there. JT shares his vision for the future, navigating the challenges of rising interest rates and financial setbacks while aspiring to become a top recruiter globally. He opens up about the difficult choices in entrepreneurship, including the hard decisions that come with letting go of team members. Yet, through adversity, JT remains focused on serving underserved clients and seizing new opportunities, like those at LPT Holdings. Whether you're in real estate or simply enjoy a good story of resilience and reinvention, this episode offers a refreshing perspective on working smart and embracing change, with a sprinkle of humor along the way.Key Factors Podcast is Powered by ReviewMyMortgage.com Host: Mark Jones | Sr. Loan Officer | NMLS# 513437 If you would like to work with Mark on your next home purchase or as a partner visit iThink Mortgage.

In this episode of The Real Estate Investing Podcast, Ron Apke welcomes back Shelby, a fellow land investor and member of the Land Investing Online community, for an exciting update on her land flipping journey. Miss the first interview? Check it out here! Since her last appearance, Shelby has successfully subdivided a large property, netting an impressive $300,000 in profit! This major milestone led her to quit her 9-5 job and focus on land investing full-time while being a stay-at-home mom. Shelby dives deep into how she landed such a lucrative deal, sharing the unique "survey hack" strategy she used to buy a portion of land from a property with an existing home. She also highlights the importance of building genuine connections with landowners and how her passion for the business played a pivotal role in closing big deals. Shelby's goals for 2024 include streamlining her business, implementing texting as a follow-up strategy, and hiring help like a Virtual Assistant. Looking ahead to 2025, she's focused on narrowing her buy box and continuing to explore creative marketing strategies—like hiring Doordash drivers to place For Sale signs! Don't miss Shelby's inspiring story and valuable insights into building a successful land investing business

Hey lifers,Welcome back to ask uncut where we answer all of your deep, dark and burning questions!We're all a little scattered today driving past turn offs and forgetting entire road trips!  PLEASE VOTE FOR US IN THE AUS PODCAST AWARDS Vibes: Britt - Will & Harper on NetflixLaura - Zoe Foster Blake book "Things Will Calm Down Soon"Keeshia - How to find the listed For Sale range or price on any listing on Domain or Real Estate Davey Hamilton Then we jump into your questions! SHOULD 'FAMILY PLANNING' BE ASKED BY MY BOSS?I'm a medical doctor going through my final years of subspecialty training. I had a missed miscarriage in April this year and had to ask for time off work to go through the miscarriage and I developed complications afterwards resulting in a hospital admission. This time off “had to be approved” by my head of department I was told. A few months later I interviewed for a Fellow job (a promotion) and was told I'm “not ready”. Then in my supervisor meeting a month or two later, my supervisor (who is the HOD) flatly asked me how my “family planning” is going?!? I feel very uncomfortable about this situation and feel like I'm being held back because I'm a mother hoping to have another child. I guess my question is:- Am I wrong to feel I'm being discriminated against?- Is there anything I should/could do about this?- Should I just suck it up and put up with it?Keep in mind these people have total control over my career progression in training and in the hospital WORKPLACE GIFTSWhen I first joined my workplace, within a short time there was the 40th birthday of one of the 9 staff members in our office. Despite there being no party that colleagues were invited to, there was a collection of money for a gift for this person. At the time I was in my early 20's. Fast forward and I've recently had my 30th and had celebrations without my work colleagues invited (intimate small gatherings out of town). Now I didn't receive a gift from my colleagues. No biggie I thought, whatever. But now another colleague is having his 60th and we've been invited by the family to lunch and there's an office money collection for a present. TBH I'm like WTF! I don't know if this gift is meant to be in lieu of maybe some free food at the party, but I'm not impressed. I kinda want to make a point and not put money in, but being in a small office, I know I will be talked about and so I'll just cave to social pressure and put cash in… But have I missed some social cues here? Would love to know the girls thought HOW DO I GET THIS GUY OUT OF MY DMs AND INTO A REAL DATE?I've been messaging this Aussie ‘influencer' since January. He's mentioned multiple times that he ‘can't wait to see me,' but still hasn't asked me out despite living just 25 minutes away. I get that he has a busy, travel-heavy life, but it's frustrating that when he's back in town, he doesn't make the effort. I've even called him out, saying it feels like he's just keeping me around to stroke his ego. He insists that's not the case but always has some excuse. Our mutual friends have hinted that he can be sketchy, so now I'm wondering—do I keep him around for banter or just a ghost DO I INVITE MY EX BEST FRIEND TO MY WEDDING?My ex best friend and I were best friends for 10 years, she saw me through the best and worst of times and a few of those years were long-distance (international). We had a falling out two years ago - it was pretty rough and we tried to work through it, but it just wasn't working so we stopped speaking. We never spoke about it to resolve things but since then we've messaged each other for each other's birthdays, and any other big events (she texted me congrats on the engagement) and it's always been pleasant. Her family and I have remained super close which includes her parents and her sister (who is like a little sister to me). I definitely want to invite her family to my wedding, does that mean I have to invite her? If so, how do I approach the situation? The wedding will be only with my closest family and friends (100 people max). She was always my other half, and I never imagined having my wedding without her. But is it weird to invite someone who you're not that close with any more just because they used to mean a lot to you? I think about her every day and I wish that we could reconcile our friendship, but I fear that the distance is too hard as that was our falling out You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ready to fill up that listing pipeline, Bestie?

Listen to the full episode and check out all our News Trap/bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/111997005?pr=true&forSale=true

Dr. E Calvin Beisner joins Michael to discuss Biblical stewardship of creation and how climate change should impact Christian voters. Links Mentioned: River Oaks Sunday School Lessons Cornwall Alliance Climate and Energy: The Case For Realism by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and David Legates Shepherd's For Sale by Megan Basham  To read the show notes, click here.

The King of Commercial Real Estate joins us to discuss office, hotels, apartments, retail, industrial and warehouse real estate. Many office building values are down 80%+. Is it headed straight to purgatory? According to Moody's, the national office vacancy rate is 20%.  Offices have the double-whammy of higher interest rates and lower demand. Learn how feasible office to residential conversions are. For two years now, momentum has swung from Airbnbs to hotels. More apartment syndications will blow up from forthcoming interest rate resets. Commercial real estate often has higher prices than residential. Learn from our guest, Dolf de Roos, on creative ways to make low down payments.  Learn how to vet commercial tenants. We discuss adding carports to residential RE. Rich people are often vilified. They're called “filthy rich” or “stinking rich”. Resources mentioned: Attend Dolf's free live training: www.DolfLive.com For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation   Complete episode transcript:   Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze   Keith Weinhold 00:00:01  Welcome to GRE! I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. There are many commercial real estate sectors. Large apartments, office, hotel, hospitality, retail, warehouse, industrial. Well, what's thriving? What's been beaten up so bad and is never coming back? And what's in a dip that's ripe for opportunity? Also creative deal structuring if you don't have a lot of money. It's the debut of the King of Commercial real estate here today and get rich education. When you want the best real estate and finance info, the modern internet experience limits your free articles access, and it's replete with paywalls. And you've got pop ups and push notifications and cookies. Disclaimers are at no other time in history has it been more vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that actually adds no hype value to your life? See, this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor and it's to the point to get the letter. It couldn't be more simple.   Keith Weinhold 00:01:13  Text gray to 66866. And when you start the free newsletter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate course completely free. It's called the Don't Quit Your Daydream letter and it wires your mind for wealth. Make sure you read it. Text gray to 66866. Text gray 266866.   Corey Coates 00:01:41  You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold 00:01:58  What does your read? From Tuscarora, Pennsylvania, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Whitehill, and you're listening to get Rich education. Today's guest, the king of commercial real estate, is talented, dynamic, global, articulate, has both a wide range of knowledge and an expansive palette of creative strategies in both commercial and residential, where you can buy with little out of pocket. And he's going to share that with us today. That's coming up here shortly. Now, when we think about residential real estate, of course, that is a really wide world in itself.   Keith Weinhold 00:02:38  From condos to single family homes to tiny studio apartments. You could also divide it into short term and mid-term and long term rentals. And then you could also parse it by all of the geographic markets. Well, of course, the commercial real estate world has a ton of segments too, one of which is office, which I want to talk about because it's probably been the most downtrodden and beleaguered since 2020. But there are still some things that are misunderstood within office and even dividing things up that much. Let's take care not to broad brush stroke office real estate itself some smaller segments of office might be in decent shape today. Other office segments are in real trouble. Like we're talking about tall concrete and glass, office towers and a lot of business parks, too. Yeah, business park, sort of a campus like areas, like maybe what the comedy The Office had. He had Dunder Mifflin was in a business park.   Steve Carell 00:03:43  I'm just helping you invest in your future, my friend.   Oscar Nunez 00:03:46  It sounds like a get rich quick scheme.   Steve Carell 00:03:48  Yes. Thank you. You will get rich quick. We all will.   Keith Weinhold 00:03:52  yeah. I guess that's what Steve Carell's character. What Michael Scott from The Office says about prudent investing. Let's talk about office real estate and how that intersects with the housing market. And really a lot of this comes down to the office vacancy rate. Moody's tells us that 1 in 5 office spaces in this economy are empty. And that is the highest ever. And a lot of people think that it's going to go higher right now. Dayton, Ohio is the highest in the nation at 28%. These are office vacancy rates. Charleston, West Virginia's 27. Tulsa, Oklahoma 26. And Houston, Dallas and Austin are all in the top ten for the worst office vacancy rates. Now, a lot of city officials, they want to turn that into housing, and they want government funding in order to make that transition happen from office to residential. This is most attractive to cities if you can partially convert a building to have housing on upper floors, and then you just maintain some offices on lower floors and see that mix right there, that makes for a vibrant, lively downtown community, because that way you don't have downtowns that go quiet at 5:00.   Keith Weinhold 00:05:10  But a lot of these renovations, they just aren't that feasible. They call them ritzy conversions. That's kind of what this is known as. So office to residential. I mean that means you often got to deal with huge floor plates, overhaul mechanical systems, and you've even got to consider things like the fact that windows don't open in office buildings. And they've often got to for resin conversions. Well, with this prolonged high vacancy in offices. Well, where do these people that would have been in offices spend their time instead? Well, of course at home in their residential real estate. And oftentimes it is a one for one. You have one less person occupying an office for lots of that waking day, and that means one more person occupying their home. Well, that's one reason that people are increasingly willing to spend and pay more for homes because they're spending more time than ever there. And ever since the work from home movement and zoom from home movement, if you will, since that became commonplace for urban workers coming off the pandemic, you soon saw the hashtag auto.   Keith Weinhold 00:06:27  The return to office movement that began is where you've got to come into the office 2 to 3 days a week, and then a lot of companies try to ramp it up to 4 to 5 days per week. Some companies even said, yeah, come on in here. You've got to in order to be eligible for promotions. Well, a lot of people don't want to come into the office. We found that out now, especially younger workers. In fact. Did you ever hear of the term coffee bagging? Yes. Some workers are trying to game the system. Coffee bagging. That is the art of returning to the office to a quick hit. Just have a quick hit. You only badge in, get coffee, chat and peace out of there. Well, more people are doing this or they're staying at home than what you're often led to believe. So despite the RTL movement that you hear about the share of employed persons that work their average day from home, last year it rose to 35%, up from 34%, and that's per the BLS.   Keith Weinhold 00:07:31  Well, that's a little interesting to know, but it all comes down to that office vacancy rate, which is, like I said, a stubbornly high all time record 20% nationally, and it could go higher. If you're going to invest in office real estate today, I mean, you've really got to have some insider knowledge and invest smart.   Donald Trump 00:07:55  Did you use the word smart? so you said you went to Delaware State, but you forgot the name of your college. You didn't go to Delaware State. You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class. Don't ever use the word smart with me. Don't ever use that word. Oh, give me a break. Because you know what? There's nothing smart about you, Joe.   Keith Weinhold 00:08:16  oh, dear. Oh, one of those two men is our current president, and the other could be our next president. Oh, well, love him or hate him, I guess the Trump. Hey, he is the Art of the deal author. And when you think about the Trump name, you should think about seeing those letters on tall office buildings in hotels coming up on the show here in future weeks.   Keith Weinhold 00:08:39  We are stacked with great guests an NFL All-Pro, the president of the Mississippi Institute, the return of the tax free wealth author Tom Wheelwright, and also the incomparable financial firepower of Garrett Gunderson. That's all coming up here in future shows. Let's talk to the king of commercial real estate. This week's guest is a former high tech engineer turned real estate mogul and New York Times best selling author of the book Real Estate Riches. He is globally renowned for his ginormous real estate ventures and his mentorship. But his approach to real estate isn't just transactional, it's about strategic creativity and leveraging property investment for financial independence. Known as the King of commercial real estate. Hey, welcome here for your great debut. Joining us from Malta today. It stopped the roost.   Dolf de Roos 00:09:38  Thank you very much. It's my absolute pleasure to be here.   Keith Weinhold 00:09:41  Oh it's great to finally speak here on the show. And I know that a good segment of our international audience has been anticipating this episode. And often we think about commercial real estate today. Problems come to mind immediately, like the large apartment space with interest rates blowing things up over there, and then the office sector, which just seems to be dying and never coming back.   Keith Weinhold 00:10:03  So first of all, why don't you give us an overview on how various commercial sectors are doing today?   Dolf de Roos 00:10:09  There's always the things that you see on the surface, what you read in the newspapers and what you lead yourself to believe just on the sheer balance of probability. And then there's the reality of what is truly going on. And I'm always amused at the chasm between them. There's a big difference. And in fact, your ability to do well in real estate is largely dependent on the arbitrage between the markets perception of where things are at and the reality. Now, if we all follow the trends, you know, real estate doesn't go up linearly as mathematicians would say. It goes up in fits and starts with each peak a bit higher than the previous peak and each trough a bit higher than the previous trough. But in addition to that, real estate markets always overshoot so that when things are going well, when the public perception is that things are going well, Interest rates are low. There's good capital growth.   Dolf de Roos 00:10:59  People think it's going to go on forever. It will never end and they pay way too much for properties. We have the greater fool theory where no matter how big a fool you are to pay too much for a property, it doesn't matter, because next year they'll be an even bigger fool to pay even more for it. So everyone jumps into the market, overshoots, and then there's a strong correction. A bit like the 2008 GFC. It was on the cards. It was. The writing was on the wall, as they say, and then it corrects. But instead of correcting back to where it should be, it overshoots on the downside as well. And in Phoenix, where I'm based, at one stage we had 90,000 homes into foreclosure simultaneously, and they were selling them on the courthouse steps at the rate of one every 56 seconds for initially 20,020 5000, and people thought, why are these fools buying these properties? The market's crashed. It will never recover. And yet when you live long enough, which unfortunately I have to say, I've done now like I've been around a while, I've seen a few cycles.   Dolf de Roos 00:11:59  No, I'm serious though, Keith, because when you experience your first downturn, you think it's the end of the world. But when you've been through three and you've seen that despite all the bad press and saying it's doomsday to never recover, it not only recovers, but it actually far exceeds where it was before it crashed last time, then you know that the time to take action is when everyone else is panicking. You have to be countercyclical when everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon and paying too much for properties. That's when you should get on a plane and read some good books on a beach somewhere, preferably in a foreign location. Why a foreign location and being disloyal to the home country? Note just explore something. Expand your mind. And you know, I know I'm waving around a bit from topic to topic, but one of the great things about reading books on foreign beaches is that you get to see different ideas of real estate that you can bring back home. So when you bring back these ideas that can help correct the market, then you almost you don't wish for a crash, but you think when it happens, well, there's got to be some good aspect to this and you can actually find some stunning deals from people who are too scared to think it might recover well.   Keith Weinhold 00:13:05  So those places where you might find stunning deals are in some of those commercial real estate sectors that are suffering today. Tell us a bit more about some of those sectors in their health. We're talking about five plus in the department's office, hotel, hospitality, retail, warehouse, industrial. Let us know what's going on with some of those sectors.   Dolf de Roos 00:13:27  In a state of flux. And it's a very good question. Let's talk about hotels for a moment. When the pandemic set in, we were all told to do this thing called to be socially distant. We've almost blissfully forgotten that expression. But social distancing was the thing. So hotels fell out of favor because you're in a foyer with a concierge and a reception area and hundreds of other hotel guests checking in and checking out. So Airbnbs became very popular and the value of hotels plummeted. Many couldn't meet their mortgage obligations because their revenue from room sales did not cover their own loan commitments, so they were being sold off at ridiculously cheap prices. I know of one hotel in the Atlanta area, admittedly a very old hotel.   Dolf de Roos 00:14:09  It was converted into a storage facility. When you think about it, hotels are all compartmentalized and have good little cubicles for story. Yeah, and Airbnbs took off. And we all know people, and people wrote books about it and had courses on it. I know in Phoenix, one statistic in a 12 month period from July 22nd to July 23rd, the availability of Airbnb's went up by 23% and all would have been good and well if demand had kept on escalating. But as the pandemic sort of wound down and people realized they did need to be socially distant anymore. And what's more, when you went to an Airbnb, what you found is that there was a long laundry list of items you had to do, but the sheets through the washing machine no more than one bed at a time. Well, four beds worth of sheets is going to take you three hours and do this and do that. People thought hotels are much easier, so there was a massive swing by tenants of rooms back to hotels, and the value of hotels went back up.   Dolf de Roos 00:15:04  And in the meantime, the value of houses used as Airbnb's, it sort of peaked a bit and it's going down rapidly. How far it will go down? I'm not so sure. So my point is, with hotels in a very short period of time, like three years, the values plummeted and then they came back up again. Office space is suffering a bit of a longer cycle downturn. It's fair to say, I think, that offices are in a very dire straits. Something like $785 billion of mortgages secured against commercial office space that is coming up for renewal, and there's not enough revenue to cover them. There is a pair of hotels on Union Square in San Francisco, for instance, the park Renaissance and the Renaissance itself. They had $745 million of mortgage funding, and the operators of those hotels handed the keys back to the bank and said, we can't make this cash flow. There's a lot of commercial space that is being sold off a ridiculously cheap prices. So there are two ways of looking at this, Keith.   Dolf de Roos 00:16:02  One is if you happen to own office space right now, unless it's boutique space, I've got quite a bit of office space, but it's a very much a boutique classification, and they'll always be demand for boutique office space from unique operators like interior decorators and people like that. But for the general concrete and glass office towers, demand for that has plummeted. The values have gone down and I know of one building in Chicago. It's sold for 315 million. It's on the market at 60 and dropping, and there's not a buyer in sight. And you might say, well, it's got to be a bargain. But no. Here's the challenge. With commercial real estate. Unlike residential, residential is valued on the basis of comps. We all know that if you have a four bedroom, three bathroom home, certain age, certain size, certain condition in a certain suburb, then and if it's sold for, say, $480,000, then a similar sized and aged house up the road, down the street around the corner is going to sell for about the same amount.   Dolf de Roos 00:17:02  Whether it's tenanted or not, that doesn't even matter. But when it comes to commercial real estate, the value of a commercial property is literally a multiple of its rental income. Technically, is the rental income divided by the cap rate? Which cap rate is short for capitalization rate? It literally means the rate at which you capitalize the rental to arrive at the value. So if we can figure out a way of doubling the rental, then we've doubled the value. And by the same token, of course, if you lose the tenant and you have your rental, then you have the value. And that's why the value of so many of these commercial office buildings has plummeted, because there are no tenants for them.   Keith Weinhold 00:17:40  Yeah, well, there's a lot there. And back to the Airbnb thing. Yeah. About two years ago, there seemed to be this well well-documented Airbnb bust. And my gosh, I personally had awful Airbnb experiences recently, including checking into an Airbnb where it hadn't been turned over, it hadn't been cleaned yet, and that I can never unsee what I saw.   Keith Weinhold 00:18:00  Then I had to stay there. That was really rough. I think what you're getting at here is once you hit a bottom, that's where the opportunity is. So there are going to be some of those opportunities somewhere in the commercial real estate sector, commercial real estate syndicators, many of them imploded from high rates. So when we talk about finding the bottom link with these large apartment buildings, how many more apartment syndicator implosions do we expect from the higher mortgage rates?   Dolf de Roos 00:18:27  Many. I'm indifferent to it. I'm not saying I don't have sympathy for the people who own them, and I'm not gleeful for those who buy a bargain. But here's why I'm indifferent. I think it's fair to say that I've made most of my money in real estate by finding either vacant or semi vacant buildings, and that goes against the grain. Most people think they need to look for a building with a good tenant, because it's the tenant that pays the rent, and that's not incorrect. That's accurate. And then if you've got a building that you buy and say 8% return and your mortgage interest is 7%, hopefully that 1% margin covers your property taxes and your insurance and your maintenance.   Dolf de Roos 00:19:05  And then you just wait for time to do this thing where slowly, over time, the rents creep up and the property value creeps up. I don't have the luxury of waiting that long, and I never had the cash to buy properties like that, so I literally sought out semi vacant or even vacant buildings. Now, I didn't buy them because if I bought a vacant building, I still have to pay property tax and insurance. But what I would do before buying it is see if I can find a tenant, and I can give you a specific example. I came across a vacant building that was a funeral parlor, and most people don't like to think of what goes on in a funeral parlor. But they have these stainless steel trays where they put the product of their business on, and they insert these hollow stainless steel tubes and suck up the blood and replace it with formaldehyde and all kinds of things we don't want to think about.   Keith Weinhold 00:19:52  That's even worse than my Airbnb experience.   Dolf de Roos 00:19:55  No one knew what to do with it.   Dolf de Roos 00:19:57  So I found it. And it was being sold for a song because it was vacant. And what I did is I employed someone at the then going hourly rate of $8 an hour to phone every funeral director, going further and further from this place until she found someone who said, oh my gosh, I've always wanted to operate there. And I was just open and honest. And I said, well, there's a funeral parlour premise for sale. Go and check it out if you want to buy it, buy it. Why would I offer it to him, Keith, when I really wanted to buy it? Because the last thing I want is a tenant to be gracious. The fact that the only reason he's paying me rent is that I'd beat him to it. But I knew that in all probability, he didn't want to buy real estate. That's not his gig. And he said, no, I don't have the money or the inclination he had to look at. He said, listen, I love it.   Dolf de Roos 00:20:40  I want to operate there. What would it take? And I said, well, if you're willing to sign up a heads of agreement, an alloy, we're subject to me buying it. You will become the tenant, then I'll have a crack at buying it. And his response was, were not so fast, I need you. I'll only do it if you give me a long term lease. Well, that's exactly what I want. So I'd found a tenant by adding the tenant to this otherwise vacant building. The value of it doubled. And when I went to the bank to apply for a mortgage, they said, well, we're only going to give you 50%. Well, guess what? 50% of double the value was the purchase price. They lent me all but the last $10,000 to buy that property. So the magic sauce here is finding the tenant. Could anyone else have gone through at the time? This is before the internet, the Yellow pages and phoned every funeral director going for. Of course they could, but no one thought of doing it.   Dolf de Roos 00:21:33  And that comes to part of what you had in your title, that this is all about creative real estate. The thing I love about real estate is it's about the only investment vehicle where you can actually use your creativity. I mean, if you're a really creative person and you buy a portfolio of stock, IBM stock and Microsoft and biotech, what.   Keith Weinhold 00:21:53  Can you do to improve it?   Dolf de Roos 00:21:54  Can you deploy your creativity? How can you deploy what you've seen in your travels to make your stock portfolio worth more? Zero. Absolutely nothing. Not with stocks, not with bonds, not with futures. Options, certificates of deposit, Treasury bills, nothing. But with real estate, the sky's the limit, I love that.   Keith Weinhold 00:22:13  Well, you talked about getting into commercial real estate sectors with little or none of your own money. That's part of the creativity. A lot of our audience is interested in investing in residential property, a single family home. You might still be able to get one for 150 K now, 20 to 25% down payment on that 30 K plus.   Keith Weinhold 00:22:34  I mean, that's still pretty manageable for a lot of people, but many are somewhat intimidated by commercial real estate. I think one of the first things they think about is how do I come up with the money? So we talk about creativity in funding that down payment. Tell us more about some good strategies for doing that, and kind of overcoming that daunting feeling of higher commercial real estate prices.   Dolf de Roos 00:22:52  You're absolutely right. Most people think commercial real estate is more expensive, where you might be able to buy a home in a cheaper market, a cheaper price point at one 20,000, say the commercial property is going to be half a million, or if homes are $1 million and a fancy suburb and the commercial properties at 3 million. That's true, but not all properties are like that. My smallest commercial building was a little corner shop. It was a wet fish supply shop, so they sold fish but not cooked fish. And it was a horrible looking thing. But I paid all of $79,000 for it and it's been rented on a full commercial lease from the day I bought it, so it needn't be liked.   Dolf de Roos 00:23:31  In fact, we tend to only notice the big ones for the For Sale sign. You're in the downtown of some city and you see a big one of the big firms, CB Richard Ellis or Jones Lang LaSalle or something for lease or for sale sign, that's for sure. And you don't tend to notice the small ones. The trick in finding good value real estate. Be it commercial or residential, again, has to do with the fact that it's not an automated market like the stock market. You buy stocks through computers on a share market. Everyone pays the same price. But when it comes to real estate, the seller may choose to go through a real estate agency. It might be a national one, and then it's vetted by many agents. But we have a thing known as fizzbuzz or for sale by owner. And why would a seller choose to circumvent a real estate agent? Well, probably because he's hoping to save on the 6% commission. By the way, that's the highest in the world.   Dolf de Roos 00:24:21  And the rest of the orders? 2 or 1 and a half or 3%, it soon to be lowered in the States. But even so, they want to save on that commission and more sinisterly. Perhaps some of them think, why should I entrust my property, the sale of my property to some snooty, nosed 22 year old kid just out of school who doesn't even live in the suburb. I have lived here for 59 years or whatever, he says. And I know what it's worth. And in pricing it, he's either way too high or way too low. Now, if he's way too high, you and I aren't going to buy it because it's just way too high. We know that. But what if it's 100,000 below market value? It happens every day of the week, and if we stumble across one of those, then we might just make 100,000 that day. Not in terms of cash, not in terms of folding hard cash, but in terms of equity. And we could sell it the next day for a hundred thousand more.   Dolf de Roos 00:25:08  But we don't because we want to invest in it. And these things are real key. These happen. That's why I encourage people don't take the same route home from work every day. If you've finished work, get in your car, take a different route, keep your eyes peeled, look for visible signs of a sale by owner, or look for abandoned properties, ones where the grass is a bit high in this litter blown up against the fence and the windows are a bit grimy, and then do some research to find out who owns it.   Keith Weinhold 00:25:34  Sometimes the greater the crisis, the greater the opportunity. But often we talk about, say, if one has overcome the money in the down payment thing, you know, in effect, when we go ahead and get a loan, whatever sector we're investing in, the bank underwrites either us or the bank underwrites the property. But in a sense, us as the investor is we're sort of underwriting the tenant that's in there. Now, when we buy a residential building, you know, we can look at the tennis credit scores and their work history.   Keith Weinhold 00:26:00  You know, we know that the residential tenant is going to pay us to live there. We have a good sense of faith about that. But when it comes to commercial real estate investing, say, I want to buy a plaza with eight businesses in it. I think a lot of investors feel overwhelmed because they're like, oh my gosh, like, how do I study the validity of these eight businesses? And how do I know that they're going to be solvent and sustainable going forward? And do I need to understand all this, or can you speak to that and help break that down for us a bit? Basically the investor underwriting the tenant.   Dolf de Roos 00:26:31  That's all true. And yet there isn't that much to learn. Because if we take your imaginary shopping plaza with eight tenants. Yeah, I think we'd all agree that if one of those tenants was a Gloria Bean coffee and tea or whatever it's called, or Seattle's Best or Peet's Coffee, not to mention Starbucks, that's a global change, but one of those lesser brands.   Dolf de Roos 00:26:51  I think we would be pretty comfortable that they can pay the rent every month. And similarly, the bank underwriting that loan was like, well, a Peet's Coffee or Gloria, that they're a good tenant And, you know, just to name others at random rosters for less, that's a nationwide chain store. I think if we had them as a tenant, that would all go well. And you might get a couple of independents, but they would have a track record. They've leased those same premises for the previous eight years, and they moved there from other premises, which ended up being too small for them. That means they're expanding where they were for 12 years, things like that. Give a picture to any novice in this game to say, wow, they're probably going to be here for the long haul. And beyond that, what happens when you develop the skills to attract new tenants? You don't worry about that even because you know that when you lose a tenant, it's easy to get one lesson.   Dolf de Roos 00:27:42  I've got 101 ways of getting tenants for buildings, and I'm blown away that people don't deploy even one of them. And I'll give you an example from last week. I was with a client in the UK in Bournemouth, which is way in the south of the country, and we were looking at a commercial office building there and it had been vacant for 18 months. And I said to the agent what seems to be the trouble with getting a tenant? And he shrugged his shoulders and said, well, I don't know. It's been on the market for 18 months. And I said, has it ever occurred to you to put a sign outside the property? A big canvas sign hanging on the side of the building signs, and the grass verge saying, this building is for lease. Enquire within or go to this website. And he was stupefied by that thought. He said, what an amazingly good idea. You have to let people know. They think that they're going to go to their office because they're looking for office space.   Dolf de Roos 00:28:34  So now, would they be guaranteed to get a tenant within a week by putting a canvas sign on the building? Of course not. But I know we won't reduce the chances. And that's why if I can find a tenant before committing to buy the building, I'm pretty confident we'll get there. And I've got all these other techniques, Keith, of doing it like one that I really love is, let's say you've got a vacant warehouse and it's an ugly, horrible warehouse in a sea of similarly ugly and vacant warehouses. If you and I bought that, I would hesitate to suggest that we would have a tenant within a month. And here's how we'd do it. We would spend no more than $10,000, and we would go to the manager's office, because ultimately, the person who decides whether to lease our warehouse as opposed to another one, is not the CEO and the head office in New York or LA or wherever. It's not the cleaning lady or man who's going to sweep the floor. It's going to be the manager is going to manage it.   Dolf de Roos 00:29:28  So I get rid of the linoleum and I put in commercial grade carpet. I put in triple glazed or dual glazed windows. Keeps the noise out and the warmth in. I replace the fluorescent tubes with LED lights and replace the locks with electronic locks so he can never forget his keys. I put on an 80 inch LCD screen and tell him it's good for corporate training videos. We know he's never going to watch corporate training videos on it, but those TVs you can buy for $500 now, I put on a little coffee machine and make sure it's brewing when it looks, and have a fridge for end of week drinks, celebrations, and our unsuspecting manager, who's looked at seven ugly warehouses so far that day when he comes to our ugly warehouse and he opens that door to the manager's office subconsciously, or maybe consciously, he thinks, oh my gosh, if I lease this one, this is where I'm going to be packed for 40 hours a week for Lord knows how many years. He says I'll take it.   Dolf de Roos 00:30:17  And he hasn't even asked the rental. You might say that's bribery and corruption, but I think it's just offering a better product than the competition. No one else does this.   Keith Weinhold 00:30:27  Oh well. This is another brilliant example of using creativity in real estate investing. We're talking with the king of commercial real estate, Dolph Thomas More. We come back including some of his psychology and insights from the rich. This is general education. I'm your host, Keith Whitehall. Hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine at Ridge Lending Group Nmls 42056. They provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation. Because they specialize in income properties, they help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire. With leverage, you can start your prequalification and chat with President Ridge personally. Start now while it's on your mind at Ridge Lending group.com. That's Ridge Lending group.com. And your bank is getting rich off of you. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings.   Keith Weinhold 00:31:31  If your money isn't making 4%, you're losing your hard earned cash to inflation. Let the liquidity fund help you put your money to work with minimum risk. Your cash generates up to an 8% return with compound interest year in and year out. Instead of earning less than 1% sitting in your bank account, the minimum investment is just $25. You keep getting paid until you decide you want your money back there. Decade plus track record proves they've always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. And I would know, because I'm an investor, to earn 8%. Hundreds of others are. Text. Family 266866. Learn more about Freedom Family Investments Liquidity Fund. On your journey to financial freedom through passive income. Text family to 66866. What's up everyone? This is HGTV Star Kombucha. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Wine hold and don't quit your day dream. Welcome back to Get Syndication. You're listening to episode 513 of the show that's created more passive income for busy people just like you than nearly any show in the world.   Keith Weinhold 00:32:55  I'm your host, Keith Whitehall. We're at the king of commercial real estate, Dolph Durst. Just like he has a lot of creative, proven types of things that you can do to improve commercial real estate. He also has a lot of those ideas for residential because he's been around the game for so long. So tell us about some more of those creative ways to add value to residential real estate.   Dolf de Roos 00:33:17  Well, probably. Like most people who end up focusing on commercial real estate, I got started in residential and that's where I first deployed some of my creativity. And I noticed, for instance, that I'd have a rental property that had no garage and no carport. And when you think about it, a tenant's biggest asset because it's not their home, it tends to be their car. One could argue that because they waste money on expensive cars every two years, that's why they can't afford to buy a home. But we won't go there. So if it's their car, if there's no carport and no garage, that means their biggest asset is in the rain.   Dolf de Roos 00:33:49  The sleet, the sun, the shine, the hail, you name it. So by building a carport, we can protect their biggest asset and it's worth a lot more to them by any means. If you have a carport on a house, that house will rent for about $80 a month extra. An 80 a month times 12 is 960. Call it $1,000 extra, a rent in a year. And Keith, I can build a carport for $1,000 easily. It's simply for one in each corner and then a roof with a bit of a slope. Why the slope? Well, if it rains, the rain falls off. If you're really cheap, you can get away with three posts. It still stands, you know. But no. And I'm being silly, but we sometimes make them with two posts and cantilever them. They're a bit more expensive, but then there are no posts out front so I can build a carport for $1,000, and then I get $1,000 extra a year coming in. And when you think about it again, which other investment can you think of that once you've consummated the deal, once you own it, you can spend an extra thousand dollars and then get 100% return on that money.   Dolf de Roos 00:34:49  And as they say in the infomercials. But wait, it gets even better. Because think about it. Let's say we have that carport built, but we haven't paid for it yet. And so we've got our thousand dollars a year extra of rental coming in. We go back to the appraiser and say, we want a new appraisal With an extra $1,000 coming in, he's likely to appraise it at $10,000 more. With that increased appraisal of 10,000, we go back to the bank and say, Mr. Bank manager, remember I got a 70 or 80% more. I've got now got an appraisal for 10,000 more. Will you give me a modest 70% loan on that? Well, banks are in the game of lending money and making a profit. So they say yes. So you get 7000 from the bank. Let's use 1000 of that 7000 to pay for the carport. It's now paid for. That leaves us with $6,000 cash. And the question is, is it earned income? And the answer is no, it's not earned income.   Dolf de Roos 00:35:42  There's no income tax on it. Is that the sale of something? Nope. Didn't sell it. No sales tax, no capital gains. It's tax free money. And you might say but hang on, you've now borrowed $7,000 that you have to be interested. Even at a ridiculously high 10%, that would only cost 700 a year. But we're collecting an extra thousand a year. So when you build this carport, you have two choices. One is pay cash for it and get 100% return on your money. Or the second one is don't pay any money for it, but $6,000 of tax free money in your pocket and get $300 a year surplus cash flow index for inflation for the rest of your life. Like, why would you not do that?   Keith Weinhold 00:36:25  Well, and it's a terrific example of how to accidentally improve the property. And it's so interesting that you bring this up, Dolph, because just a few weeks ago here on the show, I talked about garage real estate. I mentioned how adding a carport can often be more cost effective for a landlord from an ROI standpoint, than constructing a garage.   Keith Weinhold 00:36:43  I also talked about the future with autonomous cars. If people are going to need garages as much as they will, but that's into the future, and that's another subject in itself. All for one really important thing. I know that probably even more important than the actual investing is getting people in the right mindset to do this in the first place. You've studied this in really unexpected psychology behind wealth creation. I think a lot of it is counterintuitive, but it kind of makes sense because if you come from a scarcity and conventional mindset and you just do mediocre stuff, you're only going to get a mediocre outcome. So why don't you talk to us more about breaking down that psychology that most Americans and most residents of everywhere in the world really struggle with?   Dolf de Roos 00:37:28  Well, my pleasure. I had been teaching real estate for about 15 years and I decided why? I don't know, but I decided to run a survey to find out how many of my students became a millionaire within 18 months. That was my expected time frame of reasonableness.   Keith Weinhold 00:37:43  Is that I was actually wealthy.   Dolf de Roos 00:37:45  Right? And I was pretty confident. But when the results came in, I was devastated because it was fewer than 4%. And in my mind, 4% wasn't even statistically significant. Meaning if you take a thousand people, a random 4% are going to become millionaires. One's going to marry into money, one's going to win the lottery, one's going to win at a casino, and the fourth one's going to fall over a paper bag and looks inside. And we just believe that there's a million bucks there. So I vowed to stop teaching until I'd cracked the nut, because my dilemma was, how is it that when you give people all the tools you think they need to become fabulously wealthy, they still don't do it right? And what I found is that it had nothing to do with my rate of speech or my accent. Not that I have one, of course, or the content of my information or the sequencing of it. It had everything to do with the subconscious mind of the student, the fear.   Dolf de Roos 00:38:38  And he has that stance. You're a young kid and you say, hey, mom or dad, I want a bicycle. And they say, well, what do you think, kiddo? That money grows on trees and I know where the parents coming from. Hey, money's not that easy to come by. Temper your expectations of what you'll get for your bet. But this kid is. Our money doesn't grow on trees. Meaning money's hard to come by. And how often have we been told money can't buy you happiness. And money is the root of all evil. And when I say that, someone always points out no, the full saying in the Bible is for the love of money is the root of all evil. There's a big difference. And I'll say, yes, there is a big difference. But to the subconscious mind, it's still here's money and evil in the same sentence, and it's unconsciously makes that association. And the religious even say that it is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven.   Dolf de Roos 00:39:24  In other words, if you're rich, you're condemned to hell. And that's a nice, strong belief system to take on board, even subconsciously. And by the way, most people don't know what the eye of the needle is. The eye of the needle was the entrance to East Jerusalem and even camels. And I've been there. I've said the camel said to get down on their knees as a sign of respect before they could enter. So there's a reason behind all these things, but the subconscious mind takes aboard. Money can buy you happiness. Money's hard to come by if you work hard for it. You don't deserve that money's root of lever. You won't get to heaven. You condemned to hell. And how do we describe the rich kids? We say they are so rich. That filthy rich. They're so rich. That stinking rich we associate being rich with filth and stench. So that is why in the United States and every Western nation, when someone wins the lottery and we no longer win 10 or $20,000, it's 300 million or 800 million or 1.2 billion when people win the lottery within five years of winning, 80% of the winners are back to where they were before they won.   Dolf de Roos 00:40:25  Right? And why is that? I discovered that it's because subconsciously, even though they're happy they won it and they going to tell their boss they're going to quit and they're going to buy their parents a nice home and they're going to get a new car. But subconsciously they feel they don't deserve it because they haven't worked hard for it. They're not going to be happy. They're now evil people. They're not going to go to heaven, and they're filthy and they stink. And the only way to overcome that is to get rid of the source of the problem, which is the money. And you'll see it happen again and again and again. So what we do is we dissolve what's in the subconscious mind, all these things that we've been saying without realizing it over and over and over again and replace them with more empowering beliefs. And the great thing about the subconscious mind is, initially, you don't even have to believe the thing that you're going to say over and over again to replace those old ones, but it could be something as simple as money is good or a bit more sophisticated.   Dolf de Roos 00:41:18  My poverty helps no one, but my wealth can help a lot of people.   Keith Weinhold 00:41:22  The more you have, the more you can give.   Dolf de Roos 00:41:24  Exactly as the reverend says, I'm a magnet for money. And so when we get into this mode of thinking differently, then all of a sudden people find that the money starts flowing and we give people specific exercises to do. And it's you think by how is that going to make difference? But it does. And so what I found when I introduced these concepts into my real estate teaching, the success went from under 4% to over 80%. And if that's not evidence enough that this works, I don't know what is.   Keith Weinhold 00:41:56  Yes, it really takes changing that mindset to break down these old stereotypes and have the confidence to say and act upon things like financially free beats debt free. But if you raise to think that money is a scarce resource, you think that retiring debt is a good thing, or don't focus on getting your money to work for you. Focus on getting other people's money to work for you.   Keith Weinhold 00:42:17  A lot of people don't even know what that means. But yeah, it takes breaking down some of these simple things that we all began to learn when we were age five or something like that. Golf is we're winding down here. You operate globally. You play globally. That intimidates a lot of people. They don't really know how to do that. But it's giving you this wherewithal to say that real estate is the only profession that can truly be played globally. Tell us about that.   Dolf de Roos 00:42:44  Well, when you think about it, if you study to become, say, an attorney, you can't just up and leave the US and go to Germany or Peru or Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to practice, you've got to study their local laws and set the bar exam. If you're a physician, you can't just go to another country and conduct frontal lobotomies on patients. You've got to study and hit the bar exam. I had a friend who was a dermatologist, a skin doctor from Austria. He moved to Australia after eight years of study to get his qualifications.   Dolf de Roos 00:43:13  They wouldn't accept them here to start all over again. And he said that's ridiculous. And he became a farmer and was very happy doing that. But when you think about it, not only our real estate investors welcomed all over the world, but they think that you're going to bring money with you. You don't have to, of course. In fact, if you're going to invest as a US citizen in another country, I would not recommend bringing U.S. dollars with you. I'd recommend borrowing locally, because if you bring U.S. dollars with you, then you're subject to exchange rate fluctuations. So just borrow locally and then you've got no risk from that at all. But despite the fact that the other countries, the host countries think that you're an investor, you're going to bring money. So they welcome you with open arms. I think it's the only profession where you are never discriminated against. Your welcomed. You're made to feel welcome. They want more of you. They encourage you to come with delegations of other investors.   Dolf de Roos 00:44:05  It's kind of good gig to be on.   Keith Weinhold 00:44:08  Make the World Yours. The UN recognizes 193 world nations. Get out and see them and invest outside your own home country if you have the ability to. Well, Duff, you've got this interesting combination of commercial real estate focus, a great grasp of the mindset and how to help people with the wealth mindset. And then thirdly, you also operate globally. So it's been really interesting to speak with you. You help people in so many ways with a lot of your teaching resources. So why don't you let our audience know how they can engage with that?   Dolf de Roos 00:44:41  We have a lot of programs that we run from time to time. I mentioned I saw a client in the UK. He was an example of someone we did a fly out for. I'd spend three days just with that one client to help him with his portfolio. But the thing I've got coming up is a live training and people can get a free seat to attend and learn more at my website called Dolf Live.   Dolf de Roos 00:45:03  So Dorfman and Dolf and then live Live.com golf Dolph Live.com. You can see what we've got coming up there. It's entirely free to attend. And then, you know, once that event's gone, I'm sure we'll post other things there, but that's the best way of staying informed with what I've got going. Part of my passion, Keith, is sharing it. You know, it's pretty boring doing it on your own. And one of the biggest thrills I get is when you get feedback by email or however, from someone who said, well, when I heard this or saw that or read this, I wasn't even sure if it would work and I certainly wasn't sure if it would work for me. But look at what I've done since then, and that gives you a feeling that you can't describe in words. That's pretty cool. You change someone's life and you don't even really know who they are, then that's kind of that's fun stuff.   Keith Weinhold 00:45:48  The ruse has been helpful to me in our audience today. The King of Commercial Real Estate, thanks so much for coming on to the show.   Dolf de Roos 00:45:55  Hey, thank you so much for the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.   Keith Weinhold 00:46:04  Check out Dolph Live.com. It looks like he's got a live event coming up this Thursday night, and if you missed that more afterward, like I was saying earlier, a ton of great episodes coming up here on the get Rich education podcast, just stacked. As always, you'll get lessons from me when I'm going to break down. Is any debt worth paying off? Which debts are which are not and why? That's going to help you know what to do with every debt for the rest of your life. And that's besides what I mentioned earlier, both new guests and very popular returning guests. I hope that you learned something today. I'll run it back next week when we meet again. Until then, I'm your host, Keith Weintraub. Don't quit your daydream.   Speaker 8 00:46:54  Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own.   Speaker 8 00:47:05  Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss the host is operating on behalf of get Rich education LLC exclusively.   Keith Weinhold 00:47:22  The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get Rich education.com.

Megan Basham is a culture reporter for the Daily Wire and author of "Beside Every Successful Man: A Woman's Guide To Having It All. She is a frequent contributor to the Morning Wire, one of the top ten newscasts in the United States. She has also written for the Wall Street Journal, TheTelegraph, First Things, National Review, and World Magazine, where she worked as a film and television editor. Megan's brand new book, Shepherd's For Sale, serves as a warning of what can happen when a church forgets that true power lies not in the world's wisdom, but in Scripture.