Podcasts about hey greg

Welcome back to the Rut Roundup! This week we talk to Jason Plank from Pennsylvania on how his season went last fall. Jason discovered the Hunt Fish Journal 2 years ago and here's what he wrote, "Hey Greg, Just wanted to update you since are last correspondence.  I had incorporated scrapes and linking branches at two of my sites.  They were not set up exactly as you guys teach and I didn't even have a stand or blind at one of my sites.  The property is up for sale and I wasn't sure what was going to happen, so I didn't hang a stand.  I did however stay out of there except for running the scrapes. This past weekend, I decided to hunt one of the stands in the afternoon  I was sitting on the ground with a ghillie suit.  I saw 1 doe about an hour before dark.  The wind was swirling and she smelled something but didn't take off.  She just walked down through the woods instead of staying on the trail.  Then about 20 min. before last shooting light, this buck walked in with his nose to the ground.  He hit the trail and headed to the second scrape I had set up.  When he hit my opening, he gave me a 20 yd shot.  Next year, I will have some stands set up with the method that you guys are teaching.  I have not used mach scrapes a lot in the past, but do believe in them.  I think thats what attracted me to your method."   We here at the HFJ like hearing from all you guys and bringing you on the shows to tell your success stories around the Rut Functional Hunt Method.   Thank you to all our listeners and special thank you to Jason Plank for taking the time to do this show!!       

On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Jamey Schrier on the show to discuss how to develop your dream private practice.  Jamey Schrier, P.T. is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Practice Freedom U, a business coaching and training company. He’s an executive business coach and leadership trainer. In this episode, we discuss: -Jamey’s entrepreneurial journey -The importance of vision and giving yourself permission to imagine your dream practice -How to generate revenue even during unprecedented times -Why building a team of experts is necessary for you to grow your practice -And so much more!   Resources: Jamey Schrier Twitter Jamey Schrier Instagram The Practice Freedom Method Facebook FREE GIFT Practice Freedom Method Website   A big thank you to Net Health for sponsoring this episode!  Learn more about the Redoc Patient Portal here.     For more information on Jamey: Jamey Schrier, P.T. is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Practice Freedom U, a business coaching and training company. He’s an executive business coach and leadership trainer. Founder of Lighthouse Leader®, Jamey helps physical therapy owners create self-managing practices that allows them the freedom they want and the income they deserve. He is the best-selling author of The Practice Freedom Method: The Practice Owner’s Guide to Work Less, Earn More, and Live Your Passion A graduate of The University of Maryland Physical Therapy School, Jamey specialized in orthopedics and manual therapy. He was the sole owner of a multi-clinic practice for more than 15 years. Jamey’s passions are basketball, tennis, golfing, and reading. He and his wife, Colleen, and there 2 kids live in Rockville, Maryland.   Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy (00:00): Hey, Jamey, welcome back to the podcast. I'm happy to have you on again. Jamey Schrier (00:05): Karen. It's lovely to be here. Karen Litzy (00:07): Yes, no stranger to the podcast. That is for sure. And that's because we love having you on because you always give such good information to us PT business owners. So thanks for coming back now, you were a PT business owner yourself. People can go back and kind of listen to the past podcast that you did with us to get even a dive in a little bit deeper to your history and how you kind of went from a business owner to now coaching and mentoring in a training business. But can you give the cliff notes version for us now? Jamey Schrier (00:45): The cliff notes. That's how I got through school. Yes. Be happy to give the cliff notes. So I always wanted to have my own business ever since I was younger and went with my dad to his store. I thought it was the greatest thing. So when I got the opportunity to open up and put up my shingle, I went all for it. And I had my fiancé Colleen at the time. Now my wife who you have met, she was, yeah, she was my fabulous front desk. So it was a perfect scenario. Right? I was the quote, the doctor doing the treatments. It was the happy go lucky front desk. And it was a perfect scenario. And that lasted for a couple of years until we started to hire people until I said, honey, do you want to get married? Jamey Schrier (01:35): And she said, sure, boom. She left. She got 35 books on weddings. And she was like, not really there that much. So we had to actually grow a real business. Well, I really didn't know how to hire. I just assume everyone worked like I did everyone thought like I did. Everyone just did quote the right thing. And that's when a whole lot of stress and a whole lot of struggle started to happen, which caused me to create this sense of anxiety that I really didn't experience before. Definitely not as an employee, but I didn't experience for the first couple of years in business. So my hours started to increase. So not only that I have to do the treating and some of the other duties that I had to, but I also had to oversee them and all their stuff. So I took half of their job as well. Jamey Schrier (02:23): And about four years into it, a crazy thing happened, which I've shared before, but I will quickly share. It is my place burned down. We had a fire and it burned down and I was caught with these weird feelings of feeling relieved. Great. I don't have to go to work on Monday and feeling scared to death and feeling, Oh my God, what do I do now? Not just similar to what has happened with, COVID like, Oh my God, I wasn't prepared for this. What do I do now? Jamey Schrier (03:00): So after some soul searching, I realized, I don't know anything about how to build a business. I was a very good clinician. I thought being a good clinician was enough. It was not. So I spent the next nine years learning, trying, failing, learning again, trying and failing of how to build a business that can literally operate with a little bit of maintenance, but not me. They're doing all of it. And fortunately I figured it out and in January of 2013, I removed myself scared to death, but I did it anyways. Remove myself from the schedule no longer I was treating my team was handling it and my business shot up. So I got more time and I made more money and my team was great and my patients were happy and I was like, Oh my God. So I went on a webinar. I believe it was the private practice section webinars that they do. And I just shared my story. People reached out. And next thing you know, I was in the coaching business because they were asking me how I did it. And I've been doing that and being on a mission to help other practice owners try to build, grow their business for the last seven years. Karen Litzy (04:11): Awesome. And the name of your courses? Jamey Schrier (04:19): So the name of the company is Practice Freedom U, the letter U kind of playing off the university thing. And it is a really a business training and coaching firm. So we help the practice owners and we help their teams and grow and build the kind of business they like. So they can have the kind of life that they want. Karen Litzy (04:40): Awesome. And now you had mentioned in your story about when your practice burned down, you kind of weren't prepared for it. It's like kick in the guts. So the country, the world continues, not has been, but continues to live through the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of clinics had to close. Some may still be closed as we tape this. I am in New York city. We are just reopening now. So as owners begin to reopen and restart, delivering their patient care, what are some of the not so obvious things that they should be aware of? Jamey Schrier (05:23): Yeah, that's a great question, Karen. What I learned in my experience when the place burned down and literally I had nothing to go back to, what was difficult about that was I was the only person going through that everyone else was just business as usual. And my initial instinct, because I am a high achiever because I am a doer was to do more like, okay, what do I got to do? What are we going to do? And it wasn't until maybe a couple days into it that I began to learn that, you know what me trying to do more me trying to be busy and filling up my day with just stuff. Even though I had no patience at all. And there was, by the way, there was no tele-health right. I mean, there wouldn't be telehealth right now if there wasn't a whole country, if it was just one person, the insurance companies wouldn't be changing all their rules. Jamey Schrier (06:26): So, but we didn't even have the technology for that. So what I did was I just started to sit and think and just sit with, well, okay, I'm going to rebuild this. If I'm going to rebuild this, what is it that I really want from this business? What wasn't working well. And I started to write out this, this idea, this outline of what I wanted the business to be. Now, mind you, I didn't know how I was going to get there. Right? I didn't know that, but the more I ask questions, the more I said, what would my business have to look like for me not to work 70 hours a week, which is what I was working, what would happen? What would my business have to be? If I didn't work the weekends, who would I need to hire ultimately to perhaps not have to treat or choose the people I want to treat. Jamey Schrier (07:26): So, as I started asking these questions and gave myself permission, love that word, I gave myself permission to imagine what it would look like. It started to create the outline. And this is exactly what I did and what I shared with other practice owners, what to do during this time. First of all, pause, acknowledge what the hell was going on right now, because it is unprecedented. I hate that word because everyone's saying it, but it is something that you are not prepared for. And it is something that everyone is going through. The people that are going to get through this and be better than they were before, or the people that are not trying to go back to where they were. It's the people that are pausing and saying what an opportunity to fix the things that were broken and to ultimately create what I want. Jamey Schrier (08:21): It doesn't mean it's going to happen today or even in a week, or even in a month, or even in six months. But it's something that can start to help you create the outcome you're looking for, which then causes you to focus on where do I work today, this week? Who should I keep? Who should possibly, I keep furloughed, right? If you're like me at the time I was treating for, you know, 12, 14 years, I was like, maybe you want to reduce your schedule. What would that have to look like to reduce your schedule? Because now's a great time to start searching for therapists. Cause they're out there. And then maybe you weren't as keen on some of the metrics you weren't as clear. Well, what a great time to start getting really organized. So I tell people the not so obvious things is for you to pause, reflect, and start to ask the question. Jamey Schrier (09:21): I love questions better than statements, but start to ask the questions. What would it look like in order to blank? What would it have to be? Who would I have to have in place? What technology we would have to be. You don't have to answer the questions. And that's the mistake that people make. They put all the pressure to have to answer them today because we are doers. We are problem solvers, give yourself a break, give yourself permission, just put them out there. And something interesting is going to happen. I know you and I have talked about this in the past. It's amazing how things start to happen. How people start to show up people that are like, wait a minute, fall into place. They start to fall in place. And it seems like this voodoo magic. It isn't, your mind will start to look for your subconscious mind will start to look for these and it could be right in front of you, but you never saw it before. It's kind of like, where's the salt honey, where's the darn salt. Then she comes in just right in front of you, your mind, wasn't seeing that. So that's kind of the things that I would initially suggest, and then that kind of guides you to. So what are the key elements that you have to do now, which I'm sure we can dive in. Karen Litzy (10:34): Yeah. So let's talk about that. So aside from the obvious safety of your staff and of your patients, that's clearly number one, right? And we want to make sure that when places reopened that that is number one priority. So putting that to the side, because that is hopefully a given for all physical therapy practice owners, right. If it's not, I think you need to go back and ask yourself some questions, but so that should be number one. I think the other thing that a lot of owners are struggling with is the lack of money, lack of revenue that you missed from your business, let's say over the past three months or so. So do you have any thoughts on how owners can build back that revenue? Jamey Schrier (11:22): Yeah. And that is from the people that I've spoken with the surveys we've done, I mean, that is the number one stressor. I mean, you would want to think it's safety it's to protection. Well, the thing that stresses us out is if we don't have any money, we don't have security and stability and we can't take care of our own family. And that stresses the living daylights out of us. Cause for many people, that's why we went into business to be able to have that control and freedom to create the lifestyle we want. So we know that the biggest stressor Jamey Schrier (11:54): Now, for many people, you have a PPP loan, you have maybe a EDIL loan. So it's important to get clear on what options you have find eventually. So some people are kind of coming out of that PPP loan, like the money's gone, they just reacted, they got the loan and they thought they were doing a good job by keeping their staff, even though their staff didn't do anything, except write some blogs and send out some YouTube videos, but it didn't generate anything. So you know, you have to look at what you have available. So that's number one, get your financials in check. So you know, for our business we brought in accountants, we brought in attorneys, I'm sure you know, Paul well so we brought in people and I know for me personally, when this happened, I reached out to experts in this area. I reached out to my accountant, to my financial advisor. Karen Litzy (12:55): Are you kidding me? I was on the phone with my accountant, like literally, almost every single day and emailing him several times a day and thank God for accountants, what gems. Jamey Schrier (13:08): Yeah. But you know, what's interesting, Karen, not everyone thinks like that. You see, we are rugged individualist at heart. What is this business? We struggled. We sacrificed, we studied, we got A's and that is not how you build your business. You need to be. Karen Litzy (13:25): Yeah. That's how I used to be. Now. I'm like could you help me with this, this, this, and this? I mean, because I don't, I'm not an account. I've never filled out. Like I got a PPP loan. I didn't know what I was doing. So I would take screenshots of everything, send it to him. And then he was like, put this number here, put this number here, put this number here. And I was like, did it digit to do? And guess what? It was approved. If I didn't have his help, I wouldn't have been able to do that. I have learned, I've seen the light. Jamey Schrier (13:54): Don't tell anyone. I did the same thing. I call my accountant very calmly. I said, Hey Greg, what should I do? He said, well, it makes no sense not to get the PPP loan. I mean, it's more or less going to be free money. Who knows what's going to end up happening with it. But go ahead and apply that. I said, great, can you have someone help me with that? Because if I don't feel like doing it and he's like, sure, yeah. So everyone's talking about PPP loan. Everyone's freaking out. I've had, I can't tell you how many dozens and dozens and dozens of conversations I've had with business owners. Because I asked him, I go, so who's on your team. Do you have an accountant, financial advisor, someone that understands this and they went, well, I have a friend or a neighbor that does my taxes. And I'm like, see there lies the problem because you don't look at your business as a team of people that are experts in different areas. Jamey Schrier (14:52): So if you're going to learn from this whole COVID thing, start building the experts in your business. So it doesn't fall on you to try to be the expert that you're not. And give yourself permission, Karen, like you did. And I did. I'm not the expert nor do I want to be. However, I do know enough to know that I need to talk to the accountant about this particular problem. Yeah. So talking to someone, even if it's your bookkeeper and start to design what you have available, because that is going to determine if you have literally no money available, then bringing back all your staff isn't feasible, right? It's just not going to happen. But if you have some money available, if you have some other loans, maybe you have equity in your house. Maybe you have some things, not that you're going to use it, but you have it there. Jamey Schrier (15:46): Then the next thing is, start to create the plan, have a plan. Now I typically teach what's called a 90 day sprint, right? 90 day sprint is what is the outcome? The number one outcome you want in the next 90 days, once you're clear on that outcome, let's say the outcome is I want to be a lot of outcomes for people. I know I want to be back up running the way we were before at the same level, it doesn't mean they're going to do it, but it's amazing how many people have believe it or not. It's amazing how many people have that. They are literally 80, 85% pre COVID and they just, you know, kind of reef officially grew up in a, you know, for six weeks ago. So it's amazing what happens when you put that scary goal out there. But the purpose of it is to just reverse engineer down to, so what has to happen this week? Jamey Schrier (16:46): What are the two or three things that have to happen this week for you to start moving towards that? So once you get clear on your financials, you got to start making decisions about your staff. The one thing I would be very weary of is diving back in. If you weren't that before, if you were not treating 40 hours a week, I would not knee jerk reaction to go back to that. The reason is this, I know it seems. Yeah, but if I do it, it's like free money because I'm not paying myself. Yes. That would seem to be the case, but it's not. It's actually going to cost you more money because your mind, your creative energy is all taken up by taking care of the patients in a very emotional setting, dealing with the notes and the insurances and all that. And you're not taking a step back and a 30,000 foot view and really seeing the different components of the business. Jamey Schrier (17:50): And if that happens, your natural response is going to be quick, impulsive decisions. Even you think you're a hundred percent sure of the decisions you can't trust yourself because of the emotional state that you're in. So if you've been a treater before, okay, if you want to go back to that fine, cause you still need to remove yourself at some point, even if it's cutting your schedule down, cause you need to look at things to run your business. So, but if you're not, take a survey of your staff, who's essential. Well, you need people that can generate money. I would choose the people that were the most productive before. COVID sounds obvious, but sometimes you kind of like so and so more, but even though they weren't a great therapist or not a producer and you make decisions like that, or you haven't really had numbers, you're not even sure what your metrics are. Jamey Schrier (18:45): We never really tracked productivity. I think this person was good. So look back at that. Or when, in doubt, who was sought after bring those people back. Now, if you're deciding on will Jamey, should it be full time or part time there's other models out there. I just got off a conversation with a guy that has a business around employment payment models. And he was talking about, you know, this model of shared risk is becoming more and more popular. So perhaps you do an hourly model. Perhaps you explore a shared risk model where the person gets maybe one third or 40% of their income and then they get targets and they make money based on that. You don't have to know what that is. You just have to know that someone is out there that knows what those options are. Your job is to go out there and find out about it and then share it with your staff. Jamey Schrier (19:48): So really getting clear on your team and who you need. I would absolutely bring a front desk back, obviously your billing and all that can be done from anywhere. And then the biggest thing is if you don't have patients in the door, none of this is going to matter. Your money will eventually run out. So I am a simple person, you know my stuff isn't rocket surgery. As one person once said it isn't rocket surgery. What was working before COVID hit? Like, what were you doing? I know most people will answer. I don't know. It was kind of word of mouth. I was kind of doing this. Like they weren't really clear on that. Well, first of all, moving forward, let's be really clear on that. What's working. What strategy was working. One of the most basic strategies you can use. Jamey Schrier (20:39): That's a human strategy is reach out to your people. If you haven't already, most people have reach out to your patients, reach out to the list of people, check in with them, see how they're doing. And they've been cooped up for months. I don't know about you, but I got problems all over the place. Cause I haven't been able to exercise the way I want I'm stress. Of course, stress goes to my back and my head shoulders, these people, it's not like COVID took their health. I mean, they still are human beings. They still have the same problems they did. If not worse, how can you help them? So approach it from, Hey, how are you feeling with all this? Well, my shoulder hurting, Hey, you know what? And then you just offered maybe a free consult. Then you do it either in person or through tele medicine. Jamey Schrier (21:30): Yeah. If you do that and you approach it genuinely like you want to help them, man, I've had people generate dozens and dozens of patients quickly. And I would put the people that are best on the phone that had the highest level of communication. Don't put someone that doesn't really like people that much, you know, like don't put that person on the phone. They're not going to like having that conversation. Same thing for your referral sources, same thing for your referral sources. And you know, can I share one strategy, marketing strategy, eight marketing strategy. And you and I were just talking about it right before this, you said, you know, I couldn't get half these people on my podcast and now what else are they doing? They're like, sure, I'll come and share all this stuff. Well, we have a simple strategy that is called an interview spotlight strategy. Jamey Schrier (22:27): And all you do, same thing. What we're doing here. You just reach out to a rep. We call them referral partners. But someone that oversees and has influence of your target audience, right? If you're going to do this, do it with someone that as you build a relationship can send you the kind of people you want and you offered to interview them and you choose the topic. That would be interesting to your audience, to your list of people. So do you specialize back pain? Are you a vestibular person? Are you pediatrics? Women's health doesn't really matter? And you say, Hey, I was you know, I was thinking we're starting in an interview. Spotlight interview love to interview you. It's all through zoom, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is, we'll promote it to all of our people. So I'm sure you'll get some recognition and business out of it. And if you'd like, you could promote it to your people as well. And then you end up with marketing term leads, prospects as well. But what really happens is you start building a connection, a deeper connection with the referral source, who obviously is, you're going to be top of mind with them because you reached out and helped them. You weren't the person sucking on the teat did, give me, give me, you were actually providing something first. Jamey Schrier (23:46): One of my clients did this and he generated 50 cases, 50 in a very short period of time in New Hampshire, like massive town. And he said, this is like, I think it was like 52 people. Exactly. But he said, Jamey, this was easy. And it was fun. It was really a lot of fun. And because we're all used to zoom now, the technology is so easy to use. You just record it. Doesn't have to be video. You can do audio and you just save it and slap it in an email. Karen Litzy (24:18): Yeah. Yeah. That's a great marketing tip. Thank you for that. And just so people know it doesn't, you don't have to have a podcast to do that. You could just, like you said, save it, send it out to your list. Even if your list is five people or if it's 500 people just, you're just creating good content that people want to hear. Jamey Schrier (24:40): And you're meeting people, who's a great marketing, same and it can be used for anything. Always meet people where they are not where you want them to be. So if I was going to do this in New York and let's say reach out to some docs or reach out to some other people that may I'm like if you do with personal trainers or CrossFit or whatever your audience is, my approach in New York would be different than my approach in the Midwest. Of course, right now, the template's the same, but how you're going to do it, how you're going to, I mean, what you're going to talk about the content has to meet your people where they are. If you start talking about, Oh my God, we're opening up. Things are great. And all that. That's not going to land on a lot of people in New York. Jamey Schrier (25:31): So meet people where they are meet the doctor, meet the people, meet the other referral partners where they are and see how you can help start cultivating these relationships. And as your town opens up more and more and things get back to quote normal, whatever that is that bonding is what separates you. That's what keeps giving again. And again and again. So how many of these can you do? I mean, I know some people are doing like twice a month and they said, this is just fun and it's easy. And by the way, it does lead to other opportunities. Karen Litzy (26:07): Sure. Tell me about it. Jamey Schrier (26:09): I mean, your whole business is built on, you started this. You're like, I'm trying to figure this out and all of a sudden you've done. I don't know thousands of episodes. You've met all kinds of people. I know you used to travel around the world. So  this is a formula. And it's a really powerful formula. I'll tell you the hardest part about the whole thing. Karen Litzy (26:31): Yes, absolutely. Jamey Schrier (26:35): Passion. Don't let the little critic on your shoulder go, but you can’t do it. I think you need to be, you need to learn more about zoom. Just do it, just do it. Karen Litzy (26:37): Yeah. So yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect. Jamey Schrier (26:49): It better not be, if it's perfect. It's too late. You're not doing something that's rusty, not rusty, but like just rough around the edges and stuff. You've waited too long. You need to get what is called the minimum viable product up running and out. Then you learn from it and your fourth interview will be a hundred times better than your first. And there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. So true. So how quickly can you get to the fourth interview? Karen Litzy (27:19): Yeah, that's great advice. And now as we kind of wrap things up here I know that as we were going through this conversation, one thing that struck out as like, you just can't do all of this stuff on your own. It's what I should say. You can, but it's really, really hard, right? Why would you, so having a mentor coach, is something that can be so helpful. So where can people get in contact with you if they feel like, okay, I've got this business, I'm ready for it to grow. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So where can people find you and learn a little bit more about what you're doing and if you've got any free resources and things like that for people that would be helpful. Jamey Schrier (28:12): Sure. So I want to just real quick, I know we're coming up on time here, but I want to address real quick with the idea of the coach or a mentor. You know, a coach isn't the end all be all it. Isn't the person that has all the answers and all the solutions to your problem. The way I got into coaching was I resisted it because I was a rugged individualist. Who's smarter than most people who could figure it out. And eventually I started looking at my bank account, looking at the amount of stress I was dealing with and looking at how many hours I put in. And I said, these aren't the results I want. So whatever I think I am doing, it's not getting the results. So can I just swallow my pride and my ego and go ask for help. Jamey Schrier (28:55): And that is so hard for high-achieving individuals like ourselves. So if you are at the place where you're like, you know what, I want some guidance because to me, a coach is guiding you. It's a co collaborative effort. It's strategic thinking partners. If you want that person go and find the person that connects to at practice freedom U I built our company based in part of providing people that kind of business coach, that kind of guide that helped them through some of these problems. Cause it's hard to think of it. I've had a coach for over 14 years. I'll never not have a coach because I don't trust my own thinking because I don't know what, I don't know. So if you're interested in that, you can certainly reach out. You can check out our site, practicefreedomu.com. Jamey Schrier (29:50): You you can get my email from Karen, but one of the things that I thought would be a great thing for your audience is to give them a little insight on some of the things we talked about today and a lot more other things that I think are very appropriate in how to restart, rebuild, and build your business the right way. I did write a book called the practice freedom method and it's 12 chapters of various things from marketing to hiring, to financials a lot with my story and all the struggles I went through. I share all the crap that I went through. So you can learn from it and I wanted to give it to your people for free. You can download it immediately. It's the entire book, but feel free to just go through the chapters it's in digital form. Jamey Schrier (30:42): You just go to practicefreedomu.com/healthywealthysmart-podcast, and you'll just get it immediately. So that would probably be the first place that I would go. And if some of my stuff resonates and you want to have a conversation happy to do so, if not, I would just seriously, you know, consider getting a mentor, finding someone or even maybe a small mastermind group, just people you resonate that can think differently than you to help you through things that alone will take you down a better path, regardless of the specific strategy or tactic that you use. Karen Litzy (31:21): Right. Excellent advice. And thanks for the free book. And that'll also be on the podcast at podcast.healthywealthysmart.com under this episode. So one click and we'll take everybody right to that site. And now last question, knowing where you are now in your life and in your career, what advice would you give to your younger self? Say a young pup, right out of PT school? Jamey Schrier (31:49): Young Jamey Schrier that's scary. Cause I was one cocky son of a bitch. God, I knew it all. Fear is a part of this fear is a part of growth and it is never the right time. You will never feel like you're enough. And if I had to talk to myself before I would've told myself, swallow your frickin pride and start hanging around people that you want to be like, that you're in that you're impressed by something of what they're doing. Just be there, just be with them. And just soak up some of that. I didn't do that a ton. I had a little bit of an attitude towards that. I don't know why. I don't know where it came from, probably because I wanted to feel improved to myself. I wanted to do it on my own. And the reality I look back and I was like, God, that was the stupidest thing I ever did. So whatever your passion is, whether it's business and you want to do your own thing, whether it's side hustle, I know that. Or whether you just want to be the greatest therapist or clinician or researcher, just connect with other people. People are so awesome in giving and providing, but they're not going to do it without you coming to them. Karen Litzy (33:10): Yeah. They're usually not knocking on your door while you're on your couch watching TV. Jamey Schrier (33:15): They're not going to come to you and what the successful people out in the world. I don't just mean financial success. I mean success and happiness success and just who you are as a person, just your own wellbeing. All of those people have these groups, these connections, these people, they reach out to, they all do. They might not talk about it, but they all do. They all have coaches. They all have mentors. They all have people they connect with. And when you do that, it just makes this so much easier and so much more fun. Karen Litzy (33:48): Yeah, absolutely great advice. So Jamey, thank you so much for coming on and everyone again you could go to a podcast.healthywealthysmart.com to get the book or go to freedom practice U the letter freedompracticeu.com/healthywealthysmart-podcast for the book. And you can also find out more about Jamey, what Jamey's doing to help so many physical therapy business owners around the country. So Jamey, thanks so much for coming on again. I appreciate it. Jamey Schrier (34:25): Oh, thank you, Karen. Enjoyed it. Karen Litzy (34:28): Great. And everyone, thanks so much for tuning in. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.     Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram  and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest!  Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts

Greg MeadeCo-Founder of CROSSNET Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: CROSSNETCROSSNET TwitterCROSSNET FacebookCROSSNET YouTubeCROSSNET Instagram Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the business e-commerce. I talk with Greg Meade about how to identify your target market. This is a business eCommerce episode one 24 Charles (00:15): Today's episode is sponsored by drip, drip. It's of world's first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you're ever in an eCommerce store, you need to have drip a try and here's why. Tripp offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There's robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing, one of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation rules visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation roles. It's powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools and offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe that's drip.com/b O E now onto the show. Welcome to the business of eCommerce, the show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles [inaudible] and I'm here today with Greg Meade. Greg is a cofounder of cross Nash, a full way volleyball game that merged official volleyball with Foursquare that he created with two of his childhood friends. I asked Greg on the show tonight to chat about his process and identifying a target market. So, Hey Greg, how are you doing today? Greg (01:31): Doing well, how are you? Thanks for having me. Charles (01:32): Yeah, awesome to have you on. First real quick about the product actually. So kind of explained in the intro but, and I've seen videos and for people that are kind of just listening in what, what is the product exactly? It's a game that's, and I've played Foursquare, I remember playing and I was a kid from new must be around the same age I guess. I guess in the eighties. Foursquare was like a big thing. So, so I remember that, but people who don't remember that, I haven't seen the site. What exactly is the product? Greg (02:02): Yeah. So crossing it is the world's first Foursquare volleyball game. Like you said, it is traditional Foursquare, but we incorporated volleyball. So you gotta hit in there this time instead of bouncing on the, on the ground. Charles (02:13): Okay. So it's something a lot of people play. Like I'm guessing, I looked at the site people hit the beach and stuff like that, right? So it's kinda, you know, Greg (02:21): The beets beach grass, we just got an indoor model. So what we're going to get in a lot more physical education curriculum in schools. So yeah. Charles (02:30): Yeah. So I think kind of the idea of identifying your target market, I feel like this is one of those things where if you come up with a product for us, then you're trying to figure out like, how do we get it in the head? Like, like you could see the product, right? You could see exactly how this happens. You get the product and you're like, Ooh, this is fun. We can play this. And you play yourself and you're like, who are those people that want to play? Like, who are the people like us that want to play this game? I'm guessing that's how that kind of started. Greg (02:54): Yeah, exactly. So we would bring it to the beach to start off and we'd get a lot of traction. A lot of people will come up to it. Get in line, ask questions, take photos, take videos, want to play. It gets crazy. So when you set it up it's the first time seeing it for the majority of people in the world. So they'll, they'll,

Covid-1929: Are You A Wartime Or A Peacetime Leader?   “Hey Greg, you misspelt the name of the virus, you dummy - it's Covid-19”.  Well, did I now?  Actually the 1929 reference is more accurate.  Wall Street crashed and the chain reaction pushed the whole world into a miserable recession, that destroyed lives and businesses.  In my view, that is what we are looking at here and the question is, as a leader, are you ready for the commercial carnage?    Launching a start-up, maintaining market share and seeking rapid growth escalation are all different requirements and not all leaders can do all three with equal flair. China's retreat from markets has thrown a lot of business plans straight out the window.  Now the virus contagion goes global. We are entering an economic war zone and are your leadership skills ready for the challenge?    As a leader, focusing solely on the health aspects is to join the media led sensationalist panic.  If you have an existing health condition or are over 70 years of age, then you have a very high mortality risk from the virus.  For everyone else, the biggest risk is that your company goes down and you are out of a job.  Are you the leader able to make sure that doesn't happen?   In 1929 the stock market tanked and everyone, including the Government, started scrambling to preserve cash and stop spending.  This just drove a stake through the heart of the capitalist system, as people's panic stopped the wheels of commerce.  This will begin to seem very familiar to everyone very shortly.   Japan is the first major capitalist country, apart from Hong Kong, to really suffer from the virus.  The pain starts for small medium sized (SME) businesses.  Here, these SMEs account for 99 percent of all enterprises, 70 percent of employment, 50 percent of the value added manufacturing sector and 60% of the nonmanufacturing sector.  According to Government statistics 70% of companies in Japan don't make a profit, so many will be SMEs and be in that situation.   The virus is curtailing commercial activities.  Abe closes the schools and people focus on what to do with the kids at home.  The other issue that doesn't get enough attention is what happens to all those businesses who have revenues tied up in supplying schools with lunches and other services?  Events get cancelled and that means everyone who had revenue potential in that event, gets zero income or maybe even loses money.  Tourists, both domestic and international, are stopping their activities in Japan, so the entire industry takes a huge hit.  This affects thousands of businesses directly and also those who were looking at supplying goods of services to that industry.  Hokkaido gets locked down to avoid the virus, but what about avoiding the corresponding loss of cash flow?   This is how we recreate a 1929 scenario.  I would guess that right now, almost all SME enterprise leaders in Japan, are focused on preserving cash.  This is the oxygen of business and without it you don't last long.  The way to do that is stop investing, stop spending and stop paying other people for the bills they have already sent you. This chain reaction leads to an economic meltdown and it won't be contained in Japan alone.  Like the virus, it will envelop the entire world, as it creates the same domino effect on all businesses.   You are the leader.   What are you going to do during this mass slaughter of fellow SMEs, to make sure you don't go down for the count?  The war time leader doesn't try and tart up the reality for the team. They tell them straight where the firm is positioned now, regarding cash reserves and are totally transparent about the stages the business will go through.  Stage One is stop all unnecessary spending. Stage Two is stop paying other people, including the Government.  Stage Three is cutting salaries, starting with the President, who leads from the front and goes down to zero, while the others take a progressive haircut of firstly 10%, then 20%, 30%, 40% etc.  Stage Four is to throw in the towel and declare bankruptcy.   During these four stages on the way to the Apocalypse, the leader must be constantly communicating where we are right now and that we can survive this.  The team will not be conveniently gathered in the office anymore, because they will be scattered to the winds at home.  Are they actually working at home?  That is a question, because with the downturn there may be less for them to do.    Suddenly they have time on their hands and can brood about how bad things are and how fragile this company they have trusted with their livelihood is.  Constant media bombardment with bad news wears people's spirit down. Watch for signs of depression and stress in the team and get them help if these appear.  The leader must be a beacon of raw hope and optimism and more importantly must keep communicating that to the team.   The leader needs to keep them all busy too.  Meetings that were face to face, can still be had by video conferencing, as the tech is very accessible and inexpensive today.  Scheduled meetings should continue to offer some normality, routine and opportunities for good internal communication.  Don't stop holding them because everyone is at home, hold them anyway, but now do it remotely.  Offer remotely delivered training for your clients or for your own team – it could be product knowledge, technical hard skills or soft skills training.   Create projects and get them involved.  It might be focusing the sales team to take the opportunity of decision makers being at home and contact them there, sans the usual bevy of brilliantly talented gate keepers, who frustrate our efforts to reach the boss.  It might be developing marketing campaigns that align with the current situation.  For example, drop the usual key search words for pay per click leads and go after different terms and phrases.  It might be to clean up systems and projects that have been kept in abeyance, because previously there wasn't the time available.  Plenty of time available now if there is no work going.   Be positive and radiate belief that we can come out of this long dark tunnel.  Brainstorm what can be done in the new environment, start executing on that plan, constantly communicate, be totally transparent and provide massive hope of a better day coming.  Be a war time general for your team.   Free Live On Line Stress Management Sessions On a separate note, we are running public Live On Line Stress Management classes, which will be free to all attendees on March 19 (English) and 24th (Japanese) and April 16th (Japanese) and 17th (English).  We are also offering the same thing as an in-house programme, delivered Live On Line for our existing clients and for prospective clients.  This allows us to help our clients and our community.   The registration process for these free stress management sessions is being offered on our website, so please go to this specific page: http://bit.ly/dale_stress_e                  

Tim Kremer from the Gravel Epic race series talks to us about events in Marrakesh, Slovenia, Girona and Mt. Etna. Each event capturing the local flavor and best routes designed by local gravel athletes. Gravel Epic Website. Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Good day everyone, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast we've got Tim Kramer from the gravel Epic series over in Europe. Big thanks to Jason over at the gravel cyclist for making this connection for me. I first read about the gravel Epic series on the gravelcyclist.com. Get your passports ready and start saving those dollars because when you hear about the gravel Epic series, I think you're going to be like me and want to jump on the next plane over to Europe. Tim and his team have created four events, one in Marrakesh, Morocco, the second in Slovenia, the third in Mount Etna in Italy, and the fourth in Gerona. They've worked with local athletes in all these areas to find the best terrain, most representative of the area, and they're combining that with rich cultural experiences so you can immerse yourself in the local culture. So with all that said, let's jump right in. Tim, welcome to the shelf. Hey Greg, thanks for having me. Ever since Jason at the gravel cycle of shared your events series with me, I've been super excited to get you on the phone and learn more about it. It sounds amazing. But before we get started as is customary on the podcast, I'd love to just learn a little bit more about your background and how you got into gravel cycling. The background graph cycling is very easily explained. I don't remember exactly how many years ago it was, but I read an article on the dirty Kanza and the New York times. That was when I was sitting in my living room in Hong Kong on a weekend and I read this and I thought, bloody hell, that sounds like an event I'd like to do or so I, Mike, my calendar when registration is opened, I think it was sometime in January and I was lucky enough to get in. That was a few years ago, so it was a little bit easier than now. It's still a lottery. And we got in. So my friend of mine and I, and shortly afterwards we bought our first gravel bike. A simple cyclocross from focus. It was, I think back then and you know, started training, which in Hong Kong was pretty hard cause we have no gravel roads. So we basically just cycled on the road. And the first time ever on gravel was when we were hit the roads in Kansas. That's amazing. I mean we often explore how gravel cycling differs in different parts of the country and how unique Kansas is. But I can't imagine getting on a plane from having only written around Hong Kong on your bike to the Flint Hills of Kansas and tackling that huge event. It was a yes, very different experience. For one, eh, I had the wrong shoes. I wrote with most shoes, which was almost constant, completely wrong thing to do. So the first river crossing when I walked through my puddles couldn't clip in anymore and I still have a, the road with a stick trying to clean the pedals, I can continue cycling. But beyond, beyond that, it was an amazing experience. And we've been seeking out travel events ever since. We wrote at a year later, we did a small event in Texas and 200 miners. So it was lucky that I'm self employed and we were able to combine the business trips with revel races or other bike races. That's great. And you know, as someone who, it sounds like shares residency between Hong Kong and Spain, were you particularly in Europe I guess were you simply just not seeing the type of events that you were falling in love with in the U S anywhere on the continent? Well the Spain thing for us is relatively recent, so my family only relocated here a year ago. I still kind of go back and forth. We, we saw the races in the U S and thought it was something really exciting because gravel is slowly taking off in Europe and continental Europe and the UK. It's a little bit better known in that. Tons of races. But they are mostly local. Except for two or three races that are now over two or three years have grown a little bit more. I wouldn't say international, but more national. And when we thought about this, we thought this would be something really, that we enjoy, that our friends enjoy going to interesting places and, and taking them off the road. Not the typical grand Fondo but on the, you know, was me, we call it the sort of the, the gravitates to where the roads end, so to beautiful places. And that's what we try to do and look for locations. And first four locations we found in Marrakesh and Slovenia bled in UNG Alona and which is, you know, it was only about an hour away from, we are now in Barcelona and Mount Edna are completely different in their environment and completely different in the kind of rioting on gravel that our participants will experience. That's amazing. So let's step back for a minute. I mentioned it in the opening, but you got a gravel. Epic is listed as the first gravel series in Europe, in North Africa. What an incredibly audacious goal to put on four amazing events. What was the vision behind what you were creating and why did you look to do the four events rather than starting with just one? I'm audacious. Yes. And we're finding out my, the workload that really it is a lot more than we expected. We're not from the event or, or a sports event business. We come from very different backgrounds, but we thought that the amount of marketing needed it's much better to have it amortized over four events and also to keep us across the year and you know, more involved in not to some one event decided to start with four. We're lucky that we of course don't organize everything by ourselves. We have local partners who are based there. We'll know the region. We could not find the same gravel roads and that the people that do so in that regards were happy that we don't have to do everything. But there's still a lot of work to be done. Yeah, I can only imagine and that makes a lot of sense. Economically speaking, I know I talked to a number of race organizers. It's one thing to create a small event in your local community and keep it manageable, but the moment it becomes successful, you realize that the infrastructure and skillset of the team members required is often difficult, difficult to cobble together when you're only talking about focusing that energy on a single event each year. Yeah, and I mean we intentionally, you know, really want to get a very international group to our races. And from what we've seen now in Marrakech where registrations haven't been open for that long, we already have people from 10 or 11 nationalities coming. You know, we have from as far as Los Angeles, I'm a cyclist and then from Hong Kong, from the other side of the world we get inquiries from India. We are always surprised to where people come and how they find us because it's not really an area where we advertise. Yeah. I'm sure that's only going to grow as the registration period opens longer and longer. Certainly, you know, seeing the types of events and locations, particularly for North American writers and writers, you know, in Asia, it's a heavy decision to make a decision to attend one of these events in Europe. And obviously it takes a lot of planning to get there. Yes, it does. You know, and it's, that's what we try to combine them with a lot of touristy activities and we also offer you know, for people from the U S and want to come over for more than a week, not just the race, but you can take a three, five or eight day gravel tour in the area and then finish with a race or start after the race. That's the super exciting plan. I love that. I also like to hear that you enlisted the help of local riders who know the community and trails better to kind of craft the race courses. How did you identify the four locations in the first place? If I could only remember exactly all the discussion that went in. I mean, we looked obviously at the map at something that was interesting for us where we would want it to go. Myra cash was right on top of our list because a, it's very easily reachable and it's completely different from by where we are in terms of cultural experience and the writing as well. So that was a fairly easy choice. We originally also had looked at places in Germany and Holland. But decided then that wasn't so exciting and pick Slovenia because of the mountain bike scene that was there. A friend of ours has been riding there and highly recommended it. So we went over there for a long weekend and came back very, very impressed by the area and the three glove national park by the Julian Alps. And we're lucky enough to find a good partner. And when we went back, they already had stitched a probably 60, 70% of what now is the race cost together for us to explore. Mon Aetna, the same thing. We were looking for something that is again different in terms of writing cause we wanted to give people who want to enjoy the forum experience something very different. Every single event and riding on an active volcano is again very different than the surface is different cause it's lava rock. And the amazing part in Aetna is you can ride the beautiful forest and suddenly the forest is cut open by where the lava poured and cut down the forest and you have 500 meters or a kilometer writing to laugh Robin rocks and suddenly the forest closes again and you're, you're again in a very confined space. It's a very unique experience. Amazing. So let's go through a little bit more specifically the events and the locations and maybe gives the listener a little bit of an understanding as to the type of gravel riding experience they'll have. You touched a little bit on it just now about Mount Etna and you also mentioned how in your opinion different each experience was going to be, let's take them in order and make sure that each one gets the lip service it deserves because they all are clearly amazing locations. Well starting in Marrakesh, which is the first race in our theories and March next year, which is we start in the desert, so it's fairly flat. The gravel is very hard packed. It doesn't rain much there. There's only a few eliminated rain in the winter months. And lucky from when we start the race, it should have just finished. So we can see still the snow capped mountains and the Atlas in the background and it, we still have tons of green around. But the desert itself, eh, not much green, but you will see a lot of green as you ride along the course. But the, the gravel is very, very hard packed. It's not quite as sharp as young people know. And we talk about dirty Kansas our size. So we have never, none of us had a flat ball riding there, but it's quite a hard pack road. The climbs are very long. Not short times. The main climb out of the Agatha desert into the Atlas mountains. I forgot how many kilometers or miles, but it's, I think it's somewhere around six to 10, six miles, 10 kilometers long. And then you ride along the Ridge and you descend into valleys where again, it gets green, you see plantations right to bourbon villages. It's a very, very unique different experience as you ride along because the scenery constantly change us. And then finally you ride back through the RFA desert too. They can probably start and for many it'll be a race against the sunset trying to make it before the sunsets. If we then go to the next races and Aetna, which a completely different environment. For one it's Italy, which the food, the ambiance, the noise in the street, everything is quite different experience when we get to the race course, which starts just outside of the national park. And a small town called Milo. The initial, no, I don't have the data and dragged in front of me, but I think the first 20 kilometers we climb close to 2000 meters or 30 kilometers. So it's a constant up, up, up until you reach sort of the plateau level. And when you start riding around the area, we're not riding fully around Aetna, that's much, much too long, but our course kind of goes up to it and then goes down again, goes back up again. And it's a nice combination of off-road and on-road. The riding is a bit more technical because the rocks, the lava can be quite sharp. Eh, or in later in the season or if there wasn't a lot rain, a lot of rain. The lava is very soft. So it's definitely a course that requires much more technical skills than any of the other three courses that we have. But the amazing thing there is really to ride and you can see Monadnock in the back, which is always covered with some clouds. It always looks like it's smoking. And sometimes, and sometimes you can even hear it rumble. So it's a very nice experience. And course we have, I find very interesting because it goes through forest, which the road is much smoother. And sun, you had that lava patch where again, you really have to go on your chores and make sure you don't crash. And then after that we go to Slovenia with the race starts in blood, which is very, very well known for the church in the middle of the Lake and the cost that overlooks the leg. Very, very small town, roughly only 8,000 people. And there, the course is longer and more climate and everything else, all the other courses that we have, but the roads are Forrest routes. So it's, it's really not technical. We expect people to be much, much faster which is why the causes longer. And we have over 4,000 meters of climates. That's over 12,000 meters of climbing, over 180 kilometers, I think it was. So bring your climbing legs for that course. But again, it's not technical. The descends are not too difficult. You know that the tire choices there are very definitely, what do you need an Edna after your ride? Possibly widest tie. You can fit on your bike. With knobby tires, with Slovenia, you probably put a 35 on, I wouldn't say slicks, but really you don't need much in terms of treads. And then we finished the race. He was in Geovanna, which people know is very well known for cycling. There's tons of pro cyclists, ex pros living there. There is a ton also already off slaw, smaller. I'm grabbing races in the area. I'm always, it's longer than that. The local races, we're going up to 180 kilometers. The course is at times technical. But most of the time, you know, the climbing is nice and long and gradual and it's a beautiful area. And part of the [inaudible] North Catalonia, My gosh, the hardest thing is just deciding which one sounds the best out of those. Yeah, it's a difficult choice. You know, for me, Marrakesh was always the first choice simply because it's more exotic and it's an area that I'm really not familiar with. But I'm equally blown away by bled and by that, because again, it's completely different to the writing that I have here in Barcelona. So it's very hard to say what people expect and where they come from, what their preference is. Yeah. And I noted each of the courses, the expected medium finish median finish time is 10 hours. So it sounds like that's the goal. Yeah. Common theme across the events. And basically what we've done is we write the course. If I, it takes me about 11 hours, I think that the normal cycle should take about 10 cause we, I mean we, you know, we stopped for P, we stopped a bit more and we look at it and says, yeah, roughly 10 hours. And we expect the fast people. I'm always depending on conditions to come in at seven and a half to eight hours. And the cutoff depending on the cause where we are and what we can do with low closures will be 14, 15 hours or everybody should be able to finish the course. Yeah. And as people group up, obviously in the event the pace gets a little bit hotter and the course can get covered a little faster. Correct. Correct. For a Marrakesh we already have a couple of very, very good cyclists signed up. So we'll definitely see some action up the front, I think. Interesting. And then also a common theme, a pretty healthy chunk of climbing looks like between, you know, minimum 3,300 meters of climbing to over 4,000 in one of the [inaudible]. Yes. Yes. I think that's just driven by the destinations that we picked. The all mountain is areas. We like to be in somewhere more remote areas, which often that also leads to be in more mountainous areas. And you know, I personally like climbing. I think it makes a writing interesting if it's just on the flats and it's not for me. Yeah. Well, some of the descriptions you were providing on the courses are only possible to get this type of views and changes in terrain and changes in the ambiance of where you're riding through by having those large elevation gains. Yes, that's correct. And again, Marrakesh, you know, it's the end of winter so that the lower regions that'll be quite nice and warm. But when you get up to close to 2000, it'll be fresh. People will have to pack extra clothes. Interesting. So it'd be a real adventure. Yes. It'd be different experience from the, from the desert up into the mountains in, in terms of temperature. In terms of views and writing, it'll be completely different. And it looks like for each event correct me if I'm wrong, you've got two distances. Correct? We have what we call the exploration course. Not that it's easy by any means. But for those who are new to long distance gravel riding we wanted to offer something more manageable. We make it very easy if people feel that the training went well, they can easily change to the larger course. But of course, a hundred miles on gravel is something very different than a hundred miles on the road. And how are you thinking about the race in terms of it being a race versus a ride? [Inaudible] I think just based on the distance for 80% of the people, it'll be a ride, which is the challenging itself. We made it a race so that people more have a record of how long it took them, but not in the sense that we expect people to go out and really race one another. It's more a race against yourself, I think. And against the clock or whatever goal you've set yourself. And maybe a rate is against a friend, but I don't expect this to be a race like you would find on their own and on a road race or so. No. But do you imagine that over time, you know, writers will start to think of thinking of the events as they do a dirty cancer and SBT gravel where the professional athletes have it on their calendar because it's, it's notable to, to win. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be nice. It'd be interesting. I mean, as I said before, we have a couple of writers that, you know, when I signed up with like, okay, so they're clearly the more modern than say professional, but very, very, very good amateurs and no one did the scene who don't does, right. They, they, they will go and race this thing. But for most of us it'll be a challenging ride. That allows you to set goals. We also have a time section on every race that we call our coms. It's one long climb, but people can, if they don't want to race the whole race, but put it in over the next you know, 10 K on one climb or so and see how they fare against the best riders. So there's a little bit for everyone. Yeah, that's neat. I always appreciate this time segments just because it's, it's novel. It gives you a little bit of something to focus on during a long event. Yeah. Yeah. And especially in the climbs are hard enough. But if you know that you can see yourself, see how you did ever against everybody, I think it makes a bit of take that at least I need when I'm attempting one of these long clients. Yeah, it's interesting with all these events something is inevitably going to go wrong during your day. That's just sort of the nature of gravel and adventure riding. They're having those times segments. It's just a reminder of like, Oh, I can come back and try to tackle that the overall time as well as the segment time again in the future. Yeah, correct. I mean, you know, gravel, rough roads. The bikes are good, but things do go wrong. Yeah, absolutely. I do. I had, I had one carbon when go bust on me and Aetna, I think I must have had a rock really badly. And you know, that was the end of my ride. So that has happened. Yeah. Yeah. I do imagine, you know, as the sport continues to grow from a, from a retail perspective over in Europe, that the bike brands are gonna want their brand ambassadors to be traveling to these locations and sort of putting a flag in the ground that their equipment was a, you know, on the ground in Sylvania or, or AmeriCash. Yeah, it would be very nice. We haven't really signed up any sponsors because we're so new. We don't really have any history. But hopefully in a year from now we can approach the bike brands and they'll be interesting in working with us. I know just because it's, it's a category that is very, very interesting now in Europe, as I said, it's growing. You can see everybody, we are releasing components about it. We have even seen special Graebel shoes. Not, I am not, I haven't been able to figure out what they are, but all kinds of special Graebel equipment is coming to the market now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's obviously something we explore pretty extensively here on the podcast. And there's, I think just little tweaks that are starting to arrive over time where people are saying, to your point, like, you know, what is a gravel shoe? It's not, it's maybe not as soft as a mountain bike shoe, but maybe it's not as stiff as a road racing shoe and there's just sort of a blend in the middle there that that meets the kind of day you're going to have out of the bike as a gravel cyclist. Correct. I mean, you know, we're, luckily we don't push as often as maybe some more difficult mountain bike races or so or, or some bike packing events where you have to carry all that luggage up the Hill. But you know, some sexual, I mean, I know that some people will have to walk on certain seconds on all of course because it's difficult in a technically or too steep. Yeah. So you mentioned the UK being a little bit of a hotbed. Are there other pockets in Europe that you've identified where you feel there are a lot of gravel cyclists emerging? And while we can see by the Facebook groups that there are very large groups in Italy and France for example, there's a Facebook group in France that has 9,000 writers now, are they all pure gravel cyclists? Probably not. A lot of them own a gravel bike and they use it for commuting. But you know, that's what grabs the writing is if not just grab a beer in Europe is often all road riding. It's a bike that allows you to go everywhere. Some people use it for their commute instead of the normal city bike maybe that they had before instead of a cyclocross bike. Yup, absolutely. But it's certainly that big. It's coming. And he, in Spain, in our circle of friends within the last 12 months, I think 30% of our cycling group bought a gravel bike. And even also of Barcelona, we still have tons and tons of good roads that allow us to go out there. And it's very nice to explore an area that we've written through many, many times and starting to be able to turn off the road and ride 20, 30 kilometers on gravel in an area that we've not seen before. Even though we've written that area for many times, I think that's exactly it and exactly why this massive light bulb goes off the moment you get one of these bikes, it's easy to sort of sit on the sideline when you live in a place where there's amazing road riding like you and I both do. But the ability to take that left turn and hit a section of gravel just opens up this world of possibility. And all of a sudden, I know speaking from my own experience, I find myself writing just the best sections of road that I'm familiar with and then getting off road or amazing sections that'll connect pieces of, of tarmac that are otherwise and connectable in a reasonable amount of time. I fully agree. I mean, we were on a ride here in an area, a park wash, which we've written in many times on the road bike. And for the first time somebody put a rotor that was 90% gravel and I think for six hours all of us were smiling because it was such a new and great experience that we didn't expect. Yeah. I think particularly for people in the area. Yeah, and I think particularly for athletes that are coming from the road side, which is my suspicion is we're drawing a lot of athletes from that side of the sport versus the mountain bike side. As a mountain biker, we've all written those sections where you just sort of, something happens, you skid out but you survive and you get to the bottom of it and you, you want to high five, your friends did that. You don't often get that on the road, but you, you, you often and frequently get that in gravel and particularly in events that are, that are long or Epic in the terrain, you know, you're going to have mishaps and that's part of the fun. And when we all get to the finish line, it's part of the reason why the gravel community can be so tight from the first place finisher to the last place finisher because we're all going to have those experiences throughout the day. I fully agree and you know, we try to have at the end of our events, always a big party and not the normal finish a party. We're trying to put something together where people really sit together and share the stories of what happened to them during the day and then how they enjoy the ride or what they didn't enjoy. And you know, we're, we'll hopefully get lot of tons of feedback how to make it better the following year. But we really would like to people to connect to these events. And that's why said it's, it's a race, but we really, for most of us, I think it's more of a timed event and I think it's fantastic if people sit together later on and make friends. Yeah. The other thing I think that's fantastic about what you've laid out here is, you know, obviously all of these destinations are, are tourist worthy. And you know, it's not like writers should plan on popping in and out just for race day or 48 hours around the event. I know you're thinking about that and thinking about how to make a trip out of it, particularly for athletes from North America. We're not going to come over, you know, for less than a week to do something like this. So are you laying out other events around the actual race day to help riders who are coming in early explore the terrain and make the most out of their trips? Yeah, absolutely. We have for example, in Marrakesh we have a six day gravel tour, which can be easily made into three or if people want even more because there's so many relatives, we can connect them all different ways so that people can come over and explore the area before the event, if that one for three, four days or not a part of Morocco, because we have a tour that starts close to Marrakesh and you can ride just at the tip of the Sahara desert. In I'd say, you know, we, we say six days, I think people who have a little bit more stronger legs can easily do it in five days, maybe even four, if you want to push yourself. So there's tons of stuff to do around in terms of probably writing, but obviously also for the family. A Morocco, Marrakesh is a tourist destination for the a trip, no matter whether you bring the bike or not, it's especially for North Americans, such a different world to walk through the souks in Marrakesh. It's fantastic. I really enjoyed it. For me. Two days is enough, but my wife was very happy to hang around longer and buy more stuff. But it's, it's more the a trip and you can get on the car or a motorcycle and take a trip into the Berber villages and explore the life of the villages they have, which again is very different from what you see in the city. And these additional add on gravel events. Are they events that you're, you're paying to participate in? Are you, are you arranging these? Yes. I mean that paid events. I mean for some we can just, if somebody does once a day trip, we can happy to give them a GPS data around the village. But the other things, because they need to be organized. You need to have a van, we need to book the hotels. The transfer when the right finishes, cause it's not a loop. Back to Marrakesh or Casa Blanca or wherever the people want to go at the end of the ride. So yes, they are, they're paid trips. Okay. So you'll actually arrange sort of a little journey for us around the country. Yes, we are very flexible. We want people to have a good time. We know it's a long way to go and to make it worthwhile. We happy, you know, we work with local partners who then help us to put these things from simple things like a one hour camel ride around the desert to a six day bike trip on gravel bike or for some, you know, if the partner comes along when they are e-bikes as well. Amazing. Well I have to say, you know, you cannot visit [inaudible] gravel, epic.com and not be inspired and excited by the imagery that you guys have put forth in the videos around the various locations. I definitely encourage all the listeners to go check the event out. It's very inspirational to kind of look at these locations and I'm excited to have had this conversation with you, Tim, and learn more about what your goals are for the event and I wish you the best of luck. Thank you very much for having me. Hopefully can work in many of the listeners at one of our events. You know, if you have any questions, always shoot us an email. We hope to give you all the answers you need. Awesome. Thanks Tim. All right. Thanks so much Greg. Wow, big thanks to Tim. I feel like I've already packed my bag and signed up for a couple of those events. I've always wanted to ride in Morocco and heard amazing things about the terrain over there, so that one's definitely on my bucket list in this week's can't let it go. I've been thinking about dropper posts. We've talked about it a bunch of times on the podcast, but I always have fun slamming my post. It's one of those subtle things and maybe not necessarily the most obvious thing to get on a gravel bike, but give one a try. I think you'll like it. And if you're orientating your spec around fun, I can't recommend dropper posts enough. Thanks for spending a little time with us this week. As always, a welcome your feedback via social media channels or craig@thegravelride.bike. If you have a moment, please share this episode with some of your friends. We'd love to get more listeners and ratings and reviews are always deeply appreciated. So until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheel.    

Welcome!   Today there is a ton of stuff going on in the world of Technology, and we are going to hit several topics today. From Technological Protection to tactics. Zero-Day Browser Vulnerabilities, Malware Infected Phones, Vulnerable Broadcom Chipsets in Cable Modems. Why connections always mean hacking. Social Engineering. The absolute need for Updates, Patches. The Coming Cyber War is already here, and more on Tech Talk with Craig Peterson on WGANand more on Tech Talk With Craig Peterson today on WGAN and even more.  It is a busy show -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Technology Can Only Protect You So Much --- Then Other Tactics are Needed Zero-Day Browser Vulnerabilities A Free but Malware Infected Phone -- Courtesy of the US Taxpayer A Lesson to Learn - If it is Connected It can Be Hacked Routers and Firewalls with Broadcom Chipsets Are Vulnerable Social Engineering Comes to the Forefront of Attacks Updates, Patches, and Hackers Oh My! Cyber War isn’t Coming It is already here! --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here a big week when it comes to security updates, and I mean a massive weekend. Welcome to show number 1043. That's weeks people. I've been doing this for a very long time, glad you have joined us, and if you are watching over on YouTube, I'd love to hear from you. Just email me at Craig Peterson calm you know if you're on YouTube or, or Facebook, I've noticed a few people who have subscribed, and I love that thank you very, very much. I hope you get a lot out of the show. If you're listening on the radio, of course, you can also email me at Craig Peterson calm with any questions that you might have. And I always try and answer them now sometimes it takes me a little longer than others. As you can imagine, I am a busy guy. It is kind of a labor of love, but we do want to answer your questions and help You out with everything. Keep an eye on your mailbox this week. Because I am finishing the course of courses. I am so excited about this, so proud of what we're doing. And what I'm trying to do here is help you get to the point where you have all the information you need. If you're the Operations Manager now responsible for it in a company, or you're a smaller company, you know, doctors office, etc. It is going to be great. So keep an eye on your email. Because what I want from you here as I'm finishing this course up is your questions. I want to make sure they all get answered. As I've been going through putting the course together, I've even noticed that there are things that would help take that kind of extra mile if you will, you know there are these concepts that people just don't understand. And I'm going through this thinking oh my gosh, you know, to me, it's so obvious, but to so many people, it's just not because this isn't what they do every day, and they've done every day for years and years. So we're adding a bunch of different things to this course, different bonuses that are going to help. Of course, as we always do, I will still do free training, that's always part of one of these courses when we lead up to it. And there's a lot of people out there that say, Hey, listen, I can get everything I need just from the free training. And you know, between you and me, that's not true. But you can learn a lot from those. So I hope you will attend. And if you're not on my email list right now, even if you're a home user and not a business person, you're not an office manager. Let's say you're a small business owner, and you're wondering if this is something that you should do or not. I think the answer is yes. Because really, I've never been so excited about something ever. It is something I think you're going to love. I know I have put mine all into this and solos my wife. I've had a couple of other people here in our team helping out as well had a great meeting this week. And it's just man, this is exciting. So anyway, if you're not on my email list, sign up right now so that you can get on you can get not just this, but every week I send out videos, I send out a newsletter. I do Facebook Live training and YouTube Live, and we have pop-up training when there's something that's hit the news that you know you're trying to stay ahead of we do all of this stuff, and that's all for free, but you got to be on that particular email list. So subscribe by going to Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe, make sure you're there. I think you're like it. You know, you can always unsubscribe, which some people do, right? It's not for everybody, but most people have been on there for years now. I have people on there. That man, I'm trying And remember, but it's been probably 25 years on that list. So join now Craig Peterson, calm slash subscribe. Now I started by saying that we have some real security problems this week. So I want I'm going to mention this a couple of times during the show, I want to make sure you guys know first of all, huge, huge, huge windows problem out there. And this problem was reported by the National Security Agency. Now, I made mention of this on the radio this week when I was a guest on the morning drive show, but I think it's worth mentioning again, and that is The National Security Agency when they have found these types of bugs. What do they do? They keep them for themselves. They don't want other people to know about the virus, because then they use that bug now to go and grab onto other people's computers, you know, foreign agencies, bad Guys, good guys, people that they're not sure of right all of this stuff. They've been using it for years. We saw this from Edward Snowden and his leaks, right? He went out, saying everything they are monitoring, and that they are capturing and, and they're putting up on to their computers and their data storage over there in Utah and just terrible things. So we know they're doing this stuff. Well, this was amazing to me, because I realized that here under the Trump administration, this is the first administration where the National Security Agency has recognized a more significant responsibility. It isn't just hacking into other people. It's providing security to us, to you to me, right, and helping us to understand what we need to do which yea yea yea right. I've always been trying to help everybody. Get more secure. So I'm glad the NSA is doing that. Now. They didn't do it under the Obama administration or the Bush administration or the Clinton administration, right? They just haven't done this, and I don't think ever. So kudos to them if they're listening. And of course, we know they are. And kudos to the government agency. So this is a big, big deal here with Windows. And we need to understand kind of what it is it's going on. But basically, it has to do with encryption. It has to do with that part of the windows that we use to try and keep ourselves safe. Now, it's not all encryption. I don't want to get too technical. Everybody, you know, my show here is really to help you guys understand things and not get all cliquey and clinical and buzzwordy, although sometimes I am accused of doing that frequently, I try not to. So it has to do with encryption. And it turns out that in the cases of this time, encryption. Microsoft isn't even validating keys, which, as you can gas, if you don't know anything about encryption, is a huge deal. So update windows pronto. Now, there are no known attacks in the wild, but you can be sure those are coming. Also, a big update this week from Firefox because of a massive security hole. You probably know, I love the Firefox browser. I use that Firefox browser. And I hope you do too. It is important if you use Facebook, because of Firefox browser has a special thing where it's fencing Facebook in so that it can't read all these other sites visited. It's great for that, but there is a security bug. So that's news, I guess. We want to make sure we fix that main, and you can do that by updating Firefox. Now Firefox is one of those browsers that updates itself. So hopefully you've recognized it Firefox came up and said, Hey, I want to restart to install patches, and then let it restart, you have to let it restart. And Chrome started doing that as well. Again, never, ever use Microsoft Internet Explorer, it is the definition of a problem for you. Okay, security and otherwise, so don't use Internet Explorer. And also, of course, the Edge browser. I wouldn't use either. And I'm not fond of Google browser, Google Chrome unless you have to use it, right, because some applications only work well in Chrome. So let's get to our first article of the day here. We're talking about half protected is half empty, and you can see behind me, technology can only protect you and me so much. Many of these threat actors, these cyber guys that are out there, they are coming after you and me. And one of the easiest ways to come after us is using phishing smishing some of these other tactics, and we're going to come up here in another segment Today, I'll be talking about smishing. And how bad that has gotten and how you can avoid it six tips. I'll give you here to avoid smishing. But in reality, right now, we're talking about the human element. And what the wetware You and I, right versus hardware and software you and I are doing, and we're getting confused, and they are taking us to task on this. But we've got to be careful here with our security controls. We got to make sure that people only have as much access to data as they need to know so so many businesses will see this all the time. And I understand if you're doing this because it gets kind of complicated to do it the right way. But so many businesses are sharing their file server with everybody. They've got an Active Directory server or some sort of a network-attached storage device, etc. And all of their files are on it, and everybody has access, you don't want to do that. Because all it takes is one person to get fooled into clicking on a link, downloading some of the malware software. And once that malware loads onto their computer, start to spread. Where is it going to spread? Well, heck, it says Look at this, a network-attached file system a file share. I'll just try start to spread that way, and it does. So keep your security controls in place. Make sure you have the minimum necessary access. Make sure when it comes to your password management, be sure that you are using password vault at a very minimum. You can go all the way up to things like Thychotic, which is just phenomenal; it changes passwords and everything as used. But be very, very careful because this can go a long way towards helping your business to stay safe. Train your personnel and make sure they know what they should be doing. You Google has some free tools you can use. I have some tools. In my weekly newsletter, a lot of businesses use that as their training. They have people go through that read it and then answer some questions. So that's all free at Craig Peterson, calm slash subscribe. So stick around. We're going to come back, and we're going to talk more about this whole Firefox warning. And we'll talk a little bit about browsers. You're listening to Craig Peterson. I'm of course on the air on WGN radio and other stations online at correct Peterson dot com Hey, hello, everybody, Craig Petersson here. Welcome back. We're going to talk a little bit right now about browsers. You know, this is the biggest problem I think many of us have when it comes to being online. which browser should I choose? And where am I going to see the problems? Well, as I just talked about in the last segment, and we're going to talk a little bit about now, we have a security vulnerability out there for Firefox. Now, Firefox is a browser made by the group known as Mozilla. And they've been making this browser for quite a few years. Now. I love this browser. I used to use it almost exclusively. Now, I've changed my tune a little bit. And I have a few different browsers that I use, frankly, for different reasons. So let's go through those reasons pretty quickly. One, if I need the most compatibility in a browser. And this usually means I'm using some sort of software as a service online. So I might be trying to do something extraordinary with a Canva, for instance, which is an amazing tool when it comes to graphics. And it doesn't always work so well with other browsers. It refuses to run under the Opera browser. So if I need the highest level of compatibility, it's Google, Google Chrome. And Google Chrome browser is the most supported, and it's number one out there, the most supportive browser, bar none. It didn't use to be, but it sure is now, the second browser level browser that I use for everything except for Facebook. Lately, I've been using Opera O-P-E-R-A. Now opera has browsers for your desktop, whether it's a Mac or Windows machine. Has it for tablets, it has it for your smartphones. P-opera is great. It is Every fast. That's kind of its claim to fame. It's the fastest browser, but it also has the highest level of security. Well, almost right? But of the common browsers that are going to work with most websites opera. So that's number two. Number three is the Firefox browser. Now, remember, I said, I don't run Facebook, inside of opera. And that's because Firefox has an incredible feature. When it comes to running Facebook. It fences it in quite literally see what far what Facebook's trying to do is get all the information they can get about you. Now, that's not necessarily a terrible thing. Because Facebook is frankly, selling advertising and they Want to know? What are you most likely to buy? And you know what this world runs on advertising. We see ads all the time on TV. We hear ads all the time on the radio like right now, if you're listening to me on the radio, you're going to hear ads, right? That's how the lights get kept on at all of these businesses. Now, would you rather see an ad for cars, new cars, when you're looking to buy a new car? Or do you want to see ads for cars all the time? Personally, if I'm looking for a new car, that's what I want to see. ads for a new car. If I'm looking for shoes, that's what I want to see ads for shoes, right? you get the point here. So if Facebook's able to kind of track what you're interested in what your friends are talking about, then it can give you the ads, and it thinks you're going to be interested in I love that concept. And as somebody who owns a business, I particularly love that concept. So I'm not wasting time or money, not wasting the time of people who aren't my customers and would never become a customer by showing them an ad, right? It's like the Super Bowl ads coming up in a couple of weeks here. But those Super Bowl ads that are almost useless and cost millions of dollars, you know, those are almost useless. So from an advertising standpoint, I love the fact that Facebook keeps that information. As a consumer, I love the fact that pays Facebook keeps that information. However, What I don't like is Facebook's habit of doing what's called cross-site tracking. What that means is Facebook knows Hey, I went to this site I went to that site, and it can help them with selling stuff it knows Hey Greg just went to the Ford website Ford trucks he was looking at, etc. etc. And so now it says Hey, Mr. Chevy dealer Are you interested in maybe buying some advertising is handed off to good old Craig there. And that's how they're making money as well. And so the Chevy guys happy because his ad went to somebody who was potentially going to buy the competition, which by the way, I buy an F 150. Any day over so many of the other products on the market, let me say that we can talk about that some other time, or a rather lengthy discussion. But that's what they're doing. So in the faith in the Firefox browser, when you're running Facebook, what it's doing is it is blocking that cross-site tracking. Because when you like something on Facebook, you might not be aware of it, but it can use some of that information for the cross-site tracking stuff. And there's a lot of information that I just don't want Facebook to have any of their business. Remember, it ends up in the hands of who knows who. Everyone to the Obama campaign. Did you want all of your information given to a political party? Then when Trump ran, they sold some of the information through a third party over in the UK to the Trump campaign. Alright, and so I certainly get it What? Why weren't people upset that the record of literally billions of people was handed right over to the Obama campaign, and yet, few only 10s of millions went to the Trump campaign, and everybody freaks out. Well, I guess that's part of the Trump derangement syndrome, right? So that's why I don't like Facebook to do cross-site tracking. none of their business was out. I'm going online, frankly. And that's where I use the Firefox browser. It's got some excellent cross-site tracking features built-in Plus it has some other features about advertising. And one of the ways that the web sites can figure out who you are, even if you turn off tracking, is to look at what plugins you have installed in your browser, right? A little bit about the history, the cache, the memory in your browser and your computer, right? The operating system version, the computer, the version of the browser, all of that stuff gets pulled out together, come up with a unique picture of who you are. So even if they can't say cookies, they can get all of this information, figure out who you are. Blocking Facebook from doing that when you are on Firefox, and in fact, Firefox blocks that kind of information gathering, no matter which website you're going to, it isn't just Facebook, so check it out. But the Department of Homeland Security now has come out issued a notification encouraging People to upgrade the Firefox browser. It is because there are serious critical actions where they use a security problem with the version of the Firefox browser. So they're warning us, they're advising us, they are encouraging us to make sure we update our Firefox browser up to at least version 72. Now the beautiful thing about the Firefox browser is it always tries to keep itself up to date. And so if your browser, whether it's Chrome or Firefox or anything if your browser comes up and says, Hey, I want to do an update, just let it do the update. Okay? Which usually means you have to quit the browser and restart it. So that's a huge deal because it's likely unless you configured it differently. You can tell it hey, I want you to reopen all the tabs I had open before all of the windows I had open and I do that all the time. I have, by the way, a little browser plugin that I use that you might like, it is called the Great suspender. I figured I should mention this to you guys, the great suspender. And what the great despite suspender does is if you go to a web page in a tab, it will automatically be suspended after an hour, 15 minutes whenever you set it for saving your computer memory and saving your computer execution time. Alright, so if you're like me, and you have a ton of tabs open, check that out the great suspender. So, in summary, if you have to have absolute compatibility, Google Chrome, normal browsing, you probably want to use opera and then Firefox for one year using Facebook, and then you know banks and things. Facebook or excuse me, and Firefox is pretty good. You're listening to Craig Peterson WGAN stick around because I'll be right back Welcome back everybody Greg Peter song here on WGAN and, of course, online as well. If you are watching on YouTube, and you want to see the articles, I post my videos on YouTube. This week we posted a few on Facebook as well. Hopefully, we'll be able to get them all up this week on Facebook as well as YouTube. So how do you find them? simplest way? Go to Craig Peterson comm slash YouTube if your YouTube user or Craig Peterson comm slash Facebook if you are a Facebook user, you know some of us like Facebook some of us don't like Facebook, I use it because of business. There are people on Facebook who are clients and who asked questions I often will put together these pop-up Facebook groups to address specific problems that people are having or the come up in in the news cycle as well. So all of that online at Craig Peterson calm, I'm also we're in the process of changing the website look and feel we got the new one laid out. But we don't have it up and active yet, but we should have it up hopefully within the next few weeks. So keep an eye on that too. I think you're going to like it a lot less confusing homepage than what used to be there. There's just too much stuff on there. So the new homepage has a couple of videos from the weekly summary of the articles. So you can click on them and read them and watch me as well. And then it has this is a new feature that we're adding to our newsletter right now. And that is, we have the top security tactics for the week. So the things you need to So like this week, as I mentioned at the top of the show, we've got a huge Microsoft huge security problem that the NSA told us about Homeland Security warned us about a problem with some of the older releases of Firefox. What software is being attacked right now in the wild? What needs attention now. So that's going to be a new feature of our newsletter as well. So keep an eye out for that. Lots of stuff going on as we get ready for our big training course that's coming up in just a few weeks from now. So keep an eye on your email box, because we're finishing up the course and I'm going to ask you guys what you think maybe I should add, make sure I have in the course. And I'm sure it's going to result in us having to produce a little bit more content than we thought, but the goal is to help you guys understand the security stuff. Now, this article is just mind-blowing to some people. It is from Forbes magazine. You'll find it at Forbes calm. And of course, I have a link to it on my website as well at Craig Peterson calm. But the United States has these programs. You remember all of the bragging people that, wow, I got my Obama phone now that President Obama took over and somehow they figured that it was from him, right. But we have had a program for a very long time for people who don't have much income. And I remember people with dial old rotary phones that got free phones, and the idea was that they could be used to call your doctor to call 911 or something that happened. A quick call to your family and friend. It was even back in the day when the phone call Company charged per minute to make a phone call on a landline. So these programs have been around for many, many years. And more recently, the government has been giving out to people, some of these smartphones. Now they're usually more limited functions and features, and they're trying to keep the costs of these phones down and keep them simple. But in this day and age, I look at it and say, Hey, listen, if we want people to be able to find jobs, they need an online web browser of some sort. So yeah, I love the idea of giving them a smartphone, you know, providing them a charity shouldn't be doing it. The government is doing it right now. But they should be able to go online and do some shopping. Some of the numbers I've seen out of Africa are amazing to me some of these charities I've worked with, who have gone and given phones even just the basic old phones you know, with the ten keypads on It that you can use to what was that called the T something rather. But you could use to spell out words and websites, and it would go there. And they've been giving them those phones, and now they've given them smartphones. But they have had some amazing results, particularly with women in Africa. They were able to build businesses now because they could communicate. Right? capitalism is a terrible, terrible name. Because the capitalists aren't the ones starting the companies. Then it's the entrepreneurs, and it's the people like you and me. Were the ones creating the companies? We're the ones taking the risk of the capitalists are the guys in the banks, who say, yeah, hey, if you don't need the money, we'll loan it to you. Right. Those are the capitalists, the people that are buying and selling stocks, and these big public companies. Yeah, those are capitalists. When we're talking about these African women, who have been some subsistence living for their whole lifetimes. Now being able to have a business where maybe they're making something selling it online, maybe they're selling their herds of animals buying herds, cheese, milk, whatever it might be. Those are entrepreneurs. And giving them the tools that they need, like the ability to be able to communicate is a huge, huge deal. Very, very big. So what are we doing here in the US? For years, the government has provided low-income households with cheap phone service, cheap cell service, and even free smartphones. Sometimes they are completely free, particularly if they are ill or injured, you know, on disability, etc. Well, one provider called assurance wireless, you probably heard of them before, offers a free Android device, along with free data, free trial. 16 and minutes now, this is all in this Forbes magazine article. So it sounds fantastic, right? smartphones can be expensive. Even if you buy the ones I say till I say don't buy, right like the Android phones, they can still be expensive, and they can still be $1,000. For some of these phones, it's not a cheap deal at all. But according to some researchers, the article goes on. There's a catch. The Android phones come with a pre-installed Chinese malware, which effectively opens up a backdoor onto the device and an endangers their private data. One of the malware types is impossible to remove, according to the researchers, and now the researchers here, our company called malware bytes. If you have bought one of my courses before you know Malwarebytes is one of the pieces of software, I recommend that you get it Not perfect right, but it helps much better than antivirus software, right? My gosh, did you realize antivirus software today? Today is effective against zero percent of the newest attacks is zero percent right, so having Malwarebytes is probably an excellent idea. So Malwarebytes said that they tried to warn assurance wireless, which is a Virgin Mobile company. And assurance wireless never got back to them. These devices that we're talking about have a backdoor and one that looks like it's impossible to remove. Those companies are still are those phones that are still out there. Man. So Forbes then after they found out from Malwarebytes about what was going on, Forbes reached out as well to assurance to wireless. Nothing happened. Okay. Then apparently, after the initial publication, this article a spokesperson for Sprint, which owns Virgin Mobile, and assurance wireless said, we are aware of this issue. We are in touch with the device manufacturer, unit max to understand the root cause. However, after our initial testing, we do not believe the applications described in the media are malware. So there you go. Chinese spying on Android smartphones. Well, that's nothing new. Having your phone coming pre-installed with malware. Hey, didn't we just talk about that a few weeks ago, how the latest releases from some of the major manufacturers of Android come pre-installed with over 100 vulnerabilities? So again, don't buy an Android period. Anyhow, let's see if the Craig Peters song. And here on WGAN online and Craig peterson.com. And we're going to talk about the ring controversy when we get back So stick around. Hey, welcome back, everybody Craig Peterson here on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks for joining me today. I appreciate it. We enjoy putting the show together, getting the information out helping everybody understand what's going on in the world of technology, you know, and I try and not use some of these industry terms that confuse people. And I've been told many times, that's one of the reasons people love to listen and to watch, and you can do both online at Craig Peterson dot com, and you can find me almost guaranteed in your favorite podcast app. No matter what it is. I'm pretty much there. I've been doing this whole podcasting business now for upwards of 20 years. So I am out there, and I appreciate every listener. Hey, if you enjoy the podcast, If you're listening to this podcast on TuneIn, make sure you spend a minute if you wouldn't mind and go to Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes. Now iTunes is the 800-pound gorilla still in the marketplace, and they do a lot of statistical tracking. Go to Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes. And if you would give me a five-star review, let me know what it is you like about the show, the best things. Hopefully, we can get even more people signed up. But I'm also on tune in, and I heart and all over the place. So you can go to Craig Peterson dot com slash, your favorite, whatever that might be tune in, and it'll take you right there, and then you can subscribe to the podcast. Well, we've talked many times about this general problem, and this is called the Internet of Things. What are you supposed to do? What is Well, we'll start there very briefly for those that aren't, you know up to date on this, because it is changing all the time. The Internet of Things now includes some of your clothing, yes, computers embedded in your clothes. Computers are built-in to the newest televisions, obviously, and into the refrigerator and your washer and dryer. At the Consumer Electronics Show, I saw some of the kitchen appliances like your stove, right? You no longer have to turn that knob on the stove. Now you go to an app, and you get your phone out, and it'll turn on or turn off whatever. That's the Internet of Things. The Smart light bulbs that we have the turn on and off the at the front door where you have maybe used to have a key, and now you can hold your phone up near that's the Internet of Things. Now, it brings about a whole lot of significant use cases and, and I love the Internet of Things. I have some of the devices at my home in my office that is all connected to the internet. And there's a good reason for it. And it works well for us. So that's the Internet of Things. Ring, which is a company that was acquired by Amazon a couple of years ago for $1 billion, is a security company. And their claim to fame was this video doorbell that they made, and they still do, and it's even still called Ring, and it's now being sold by Amazon who owns the company, as I mentioned. And the idea is you replace your doorbell on the front door, side door, whatever it might be with this little ring device. And the ring device has built into it a camera, and it's also hooked up to the internet. So if someone rings the doorbell, it will go ahead now, and it'll pop up and alert on your phone. And it'll say, hey, someone's at the door. Now you can not only look at the person at the door, and know that they are, who they are you can talk to them, you can hear what they're saying, you can go ahead and respond to them, have a conversation with them, whatever you might need to do. And then there are other ring devices now, and other devices in your home so you could unlock that front door. And Amazon has a service now that is used primarily in the bigger cities, where they'll walk into your home and leave the package inside by using a unique door lock that they can unlock. I don't know about you, Walmart is doing the same thing. With Walmart, that door lock is exclusive again, but Walmart will only use employees who have been with Walmart for more than a year and have a spot free record. Now that makes sense to me. You don't just want anybody walking in. But I don't want anybody walking into my house. So the idea behind Ring is you can be on that beach, you can be at work, you can be picking up the kids doesn't matter. And you know who has been at your home. So if you got a porch pirate, you can go back and look at the video. You can even turn it over to the police, which is where part of this problem starts. Because Ring has been doing some things that a lot of people say whoa, wait a minute now. Ring has stored all of these video recordings from the front doorbells and storing it in the cloud. Now just because it's in the cloud doesn't mean everyone has access to it, although we have certainly seen that with some cloud databases, which I believe is the problem that Ring had. So what happens then? Because now all of the videos that your ring devices have captured is online. Another problem that these companies had (Ring, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Siri) is that some contractors were looking at these video files listening to the audio. And people thought that was a terrible thing. Oh, you know, frankly, that's not a terrible thing. Because how are you going to make the voice recognition better? If nobody verifies the voice recognition, right? You have to have somebody listened to it. Well, in Rings's case, it turned out that some of their devices were getting hacked. Now we know this happens with the Internet of Things devices. Most of it's like 90 95%. I think all of the security cameras that we have in the United States get manufactured in China. Many of them are eminently hackable. I mean, in a very, very big way. So, if you have a device that's hacked, what does it matter to you? Well, it mattered to some of these people who claim someone hacked that their Ring device because they had a camera in their kid's room. And the bad guy took over the camera and started having a conversation with their kids. Now, if that's not a problem, I don't know what it is. Remember the LA Unified School District with their laptops. And the cameras on the laptops are being turned on remotely by their IT people at the school district. And young ladies had their laptops open in their bedrooms while they were getting changed. Think about the consequences here. They can be pretty steep, and there's no question about it. One of these days, we'll make a comparison of some of the smart devices that are out there. As far as things like smart-speakers go, Amazon has been excellent. They design their echo devices to have a hardware limit on them. So they can't just sit there and listen, unlike Google Home. There are some malicious apps on Google Home that could sit there and listen for hours on end and stream everything said. They heard streaming it all up to the internet. Okay, so Alexa is kind of the way to go there. There are these people whose kids' rooms now had hacked cameras and microphones and speakers going after the company. And in November senator Ed Markey, Democrat from Mass said that he wants to make some changes to something else that Ring has been doing. The other thing the Ring did was cooperating with police departments. What they've been doing with the police departments is sharing the video, live video as well as recorded video, from the doorbells, hopefully just the doorbells. The police are doing an investigation in the neighborhood. The idea is, hey, we can grab. They're up all this stuff from all of these different cameras. We can see this car that went through the neighborhood and spied on people. Right? Maybe, someone marking to come back to later and steal things. Now, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. The problem was that people didn't know it was going on and didn't sign up for it. They were not aware they could opt-out of it, which is a huge, huge problem. When you get right down to it, we don't have the kinds of standards I think that we should have. There are some significant technical flaws in some of these devices. There have been Hackers accused of breaking into ring products, using the cameras and speakers to yell obscenities at customers in their home and harass children. It is an enormous thing, leaving data online uttering racial slurs issue violent and all kinds of extortion threats to residents. So it's a very, very big deal. Now Amazon responded to these charges, and this was Brian Huisman, an Amazon vice president said they take customer privacy and protection of customer data very seriously. Amazon acknowledged that on for occasions in the last four years, they fired employees for improperly accessing customer videos, and that's what I was talking about before. Ring used to have it set up so that anyone could access anything. It's kind of like God Mode over on Uber, where any of the employees could track any movement of anyone using Uber editor. Employees were using God Mode to track celebrities. It was just incredible login credentials, and a breach of more than 3600 Ring account holders last month. That's personal information. We've got to get more careful. If you are a company that has custom software that you've designed or that is designed for you, I urge you have it code reviewed. Make sure you are using the highest standards available so that you're not going to end up in a lawsuit. Ring is going to end up in a lawsuit over this. It's not just going to be Ed Markey going after him. Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN online and Craig Peterson dot com. Stick around. We got some more news, this time about cable modems. Hey, good afternoon. Welcome back. I should say I like Good morning anyways, it's a better greeting, isn't it then Good afternoon or good evening or Good night. So good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN and of course online and Craig Peterson dot com. We are also putting all of the show up on YouTube and Facebook. And you'll find all of that if you dig a little bit over on Craig Peterson calm, so hopefully, you'll be able to check it out over there. Now we have Greally seen a lot of security problems this week. You might even call it kind of a week of security problems. So just started with just a quick reminder to get everything patched up significant issues with Microsoft this week, and Firefox as well. Now the Microsoft problem was so severe that they released a patch for Windows the same day they announced the bug. They kept everything under wraps, which is how they try and do it. Typically someone will report it. Usually, they'll give 30 to 90 days to the vendor to get it fixed before they all kind of open source it before they tell the world about it. They want the vendor to fix the problem if it's a white hat guy, right? Of course, this time, had the NSA involved. And they did wait until Microsoft had a patch. But sometimes these vendors they'll sit on it for six months or more. And so they the guys that discovered it, say Okay, forget about it, we're just going to go ahead, we're going to release it out into the wild. We know everybody knows, you can usually expect attacks within a month after that happens. So make sure you patch up and patch up soon. You should have automatic updates turned on. We're going to be discussing this during the training that's coming up here in this course. It is going to be phenomenal. Let me tell you, but some of the free training, we're going to talk a little bit about that. We can't do this on the radio because I want to show you screenshots and where to go and what to do and how to do it. But make sure you have that all turned on. Okay. So now let's talk about our next article of the week. And this also has to do with the security problem. Now, if you are a listener to any of the radio shows that I'm on if you listen to have Jeepers, all over New England, any of these stations, you know, this week I was mentioned, I was talking about this problem with cable modems. And there are some huge, huge issues with them. And, you know, we got to be careful when it comes to our networks because that's how the bad guys get in and once they're in whether they came in on your system. Or they came in on that little thumb drive these stuck in the computer. Or maybe they came in some other way no matter how they came in. What we found is they use the network to spread. So what kind of network stuff can you get? What should you do? And most of us want to rely on it. We rely on our cable company, maybe our telephone company, etc., etc. So I'm pulling up right now. I'm just checking some pricing active here on my computer. What should you get? So first of all, this chipset that's used by several different significant vendors out there, including Campolo, net gear, sage, calm, Technicolor, they have ten different models that the researchers have found are vulnerable, which is not a good thing. And right now we know of over 200 Hundred Million cable modems that are affected. It means if you're a small business and man, we see a lot of these guys that get a cable modem because it's cheaper, right? It's going to save a couple of hundred bucks a month as opposed to getting fiber coming in with real professional gear. Yeah, the professional equipment is going to cost you more, but what's ultimately going to cost you more if you get attacked, right? Because 20% of the businesses filed for bankruptcy in less than a week. You know what's going to save you money. There's also the problem of you not knowing what to do or how to do it, and that is the reason I have created courses that help explain it to you? But with 200 million cable modems that are open right now in this is a massive, huge deal. So I've got an article up on my website talking about this that I got from Forbes.com. They don't require any authorization these cable modems to analyze what they call their analyzer. And they have two more. Two more of these vendors used an undeniably awful combination of this software and usernames and passwords a new spectrum for the username and the password to be able to get into these. So a very, very big deal. So what do I recommend? I have a lot of this in my, in my course, right, the DIY course that did last year. It's almost been a year, and I think since I did that course. But what I'm recommending right now, for most people in their homes is something get out a pencil, piece of paper, to text it to yourself, whatever you might need to do. It's called a net gear, or B or B i. Now, you can find these things at the big box retailers. You can buy it from Amazon, and you can get them all over the place. Now you know, I don't like Google stuff because I don't trust Google. Netgear has not been the best when it comes to security stuff. So they came out that's the main reason they came up with this thing. The RV allows you to have your main unit that plugs into the cable modem. And now that from that main unit, you can have used a mesh network is what it's called, you can have other Orbi devices around the house and get excellent coverage. Now in this day and age where everybody's streaming, the kids have streaming televisions in their rooms. Hopefully, you do not use the built-in Smart TV functions, but you have an external little smart box. But our kids have them in the room, so you need more bandwidth. If you see jerkiness when you're watching videos and having troubles on the internet, that's probably why, and you may only be using the old fashioned networks, the 2.4 gigahertz stuff as opposed to the five gigahertz stuff. Orbi of takes care of all of this for you now, it is not cheap. It is also not a professional grade. If you're a business, you should not be using this, and you should be moving up to the better Cisco stuff. Now, thank goodness Cisco got rid of the low-end line. They Cisco had bought, I think it was next year actually and some of their low-end equipment. And they can confuse the industry because people's you know, I got Cisco Well, no, really actually when she got was a home-based router, firewall, whatever it was. Small businesses medium, particularly in large businesses, you should have a Cisco network. Juniper doesn't have anywhere near the security stuff. Palo Alto Networks, nowhere near the security stuff. Cisco is 100%. Okay, so we count me on this. Back to the home users, and the real small business like a small office, Home Office, this Netgear Orbi, a tri-band whole-home mesh Wi-Fi system, is what you want. Three gigabits a second speed. It's very, very good. It's this particular model I'm looking at right now, and Amazon is called an RBK 50. It's a router, and the extender covers up to 5000 square feet. It is two-pack, and it is right now selling for $286 for the pair. You get the main unit, and then you also get another unit that is part of the mesh system that kind of expands the coverage and gives you the coverage you need in this day and age right because we have so much that's going on via the internet. So this works with all internet providers saying replace your existing Wi-Fi router and extender compatible with any internet provider, including cable, satellite fiber, DSL, and more. It has wired Ethernet ports and parental controls and even pauses device internet access. You can view history usage filter websites for free set online time limit schedule, device internet access, and more for five bucks a month, and they have advanced cyber threat protection. Now, it's not a tip. It's not the real commercial Advanced Threat Protection, but this is better than you're getting from the cable company. Okay. Advanced cyber threat protection, what they call net gear armor. And this is something a bit defenders provided but defenders you probably know something I like. Its network-wide anti-virus anti-malware fraud, phishing ransomware security on an unlimited number of devices, and comes to the free 30-day trial. And this is $70 a year for that service. Now you're paying per year like if you're a business and you buy equipment from us, you are paying monthly, and every year we at least right we do major software upgrades we keep the hardware up to date and because we're using the professional's stuff from Cisco. They're taking up literally hundreds of millions of endpoints. They're watching what's going on, and we're providing updates hourly for the commercial gear. Okay, so this is quite good. It's using, you know, mu MIMO. I'm not a big MIMO fan. Smart Connect for one Wi-Fi name being formed beamforming technologies, which is Primo. What that means is it aims a signal at the device so that it's not the kind of stomping over itself and stomping all over other devices, which is just fantastic. It has to be Bay to wireless security protocol, which is the lowest you want to use. It's quite good. Includes guest Wi-Fi access DLS which is a denial of service firewall VPN, Mr. Now we here's why I say guess Wi-Fi is excellent. You know home always talking about how you've got to be careful when it comes to your Internet of Things devices, like your Amazon Echo or your light bulbs or whatever. What you do when you set them up is you configure them to go on to your guest Wi-Fi network, which can still have a password, and then they cannot easily get on to your main Wi-Fi network and go after your computers. So there goes some actionable stuff. We learned that cable modems just aren't what they used to be, especially the ones we get from the cable company. I've got some courses that go into a lot of detail on this, but if you're kind of a techie person, you can probably figure this out. I brought up that at least right now. I still like this Netgear Orbi. It is a great little device. I'm seeing it at this very minute. Over on Amazon. com on the Amazon business site, by the way, an Amazon business they're selling it for $286. So good deal all the way around. Stick around. You are listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. We will be right back. Hello everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here. Glad you can join us today we are, of course, on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Right now, I want to talk a little bit about a problem that you may not have heard about. You've probably heard of phishing, and you know, I talked about that all the time. That's the P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G. That's where someone sends you an email pretending to be someone that they're not trying to get you to do something. Often, it looks like it's from your bank, or maybe a bank you used to have dealings with, and they try and get you to click on something, and that might cause you to download and install something, and now all of a sudden, you are hacked. A lot of times that use this whole phishing thing to use it as a part of social engineering, right? They are trying to get you to do something, so you reveal your password and account numbers to them. Then they can get in, and they approach you and them, you know, make it look like it's all legitimate and hey, you know, we really want to help you out, and it just doesn't happen. That is the basics of phishing. If you're still if I'm not clear if you're still wondering what that is, just think of that good old standby right, the Nigerian prince scam from all those years ago. I wrote some software to help stop some filters. But that particular type of fishing doesn't go on like it used to. It's changed. And part of the reason it's changed is that our habits have changed. Now, how have our habits changed? Well, one of the ways that they have changed and changed hugely is that they have started using SMS. So you know, we're on our phones all of the time, these devices are formerly known as cell phones, these smartphones, these computers in our pockets. And if you look at the overall internet traffic, more than half of it now comes from these smartphone devices. So, by the way, if you have a business and you are not using a smartphone first strategy, you are probably missing out and maybe missing out massively. So make sure you handle that right handle that, okay, handle that for me. So, smartphones are a huge deal. Well, the bad guys aren't stupid. They're just greedy, and maybe even a little bit lazy. And that's where we get into this whole concept now of switching from email, where they're sending you phishing email trying to get you to do something to today, where they have switched over to SMS, where they are trying to get you to do something based on a text. They send you Now, and it used to be that if you send someone a text, the normal text was open within seconds after it was received nowadays. Now, with so much nastiness going on, we very frequently don't pay attention to the text messages. But they're doing the SMS phishing, and they're doing it more. So I wanted to cover five different attack examples so that you can see what they're doing and what it might mean to you. Alright, so let's go through them right now. So the first one up on the screen is a smishing. Example. Now. smishing is fishing over SMS. SMS is, of course, texting or a simple messaging system. Okay. That's what it is. That's what it was. So the first one is your bank account is locked. So you'll get a text message. It looks relatively legitimate. And it'll say from and the biggest example out there right now is the one that's up on my screen. You can see this by the way, by going to Craig Peterson comm slash YouTube, or Craig Peterson comm slash Facebook, if you're a Facebook user, you can see all of the videos from today's show. But it'll say from US Bank, separate US Bank unusual activity. It'll tell you your account is frozen.They want you to unlock it, and you want to go to a URL. Now they're not getting fancy with most of these URLs. And in this particular smishing case, it's taking them to their site. And then it has a question mark US Bank. So you look at it and say, Oh, well, this is from US Bank. I'm going to the US Bank website. I can click on that. so fast that this is not us banks URL at all. When you're looking at a URL, which of course, is what the browser uses to get you somewhere, the question mark just means pass this through to the program that's running on the original website. So there you can use it as a tracker saying, oh, wow, our US Bank submission attacks are working well, right now much better than the XYZ bank. So we're going to send out more than with the US Bank. Okay. So that's that after that question mark, in this case, is used for tracking but not always, right? There's a there are excellent legitimate uses. Not that tracking is not an illegitimate use. But in the case of bad guys, it's illegitimate. So that's number one. Number two is an urgent message about your credit card. And in this case, it's claiming to be from American Express. So if you look at this on the screen, you'll see it's from Amex. the message, which there is no such thing, right. And as you got a card alert and noticed the URL on this. It's WW, Http colon slash slash, www dot American Express dash message.com. So let's break down that URL for a little bit here. First of all, it's HTTP and not HTTPs. It doesn't matter a whole lot to you, if it's a scammer, because what they're trying to do most likely is avoid some of the tracking ability that's inherent in an HTTPS request. To be able to have an SSL certificate or a secure server certificate. They're going to have to at the very least go to a website and get a free certificate, and it's going to do a double verify, making sure they are who they say they are. That's going to record the Right. It's just a big hassle. So they're not going to bother doing that HTTPS thing. So that's why it's HTTP more than likely. And then it says www dot American Express dash message.coYou see that part? Well, again, that is not an American Express URL, not that you know, right. And not that you can verify when you go there. When you go there now, they kind of have Yeah, now in SMS, once you see, and you click on is where you're going. It's not like in an email where you can kind of hide what the real URL is people are going to, and it's going to show you the whole real URL. And when you get there, it's not going to know anything about you. But it's going to look like the American Express website. And it's going to have the login and password, and you're getting a card alert. So you're going to go there you can enter your username you can enter in your password. And tada, you're out of luck. Because now they have a username, password. And then they might redirect you to the real American Express website, and you have to log in again. You say, Well, that's weird. And you go on with life. No big deal. Well, in reality, what just happened is you gave it to them. And they're all set. So they're going to send you on over to the American Express website. And then you're done. Okay, next one up on the screen is you won a prize and click here to get it machine attack. You can see this one appears to come from our friends at Walmart. It says the example here on the screen is congrats, Kelly, we printed your code on your last receipt. You are among seven we randomly picked for $1,000 Walmart gift card promotion, and then it's got a link to a redirect Type site k three x VC dot-info, slash blah, blah, blah, blah. So if you click on that, you're going to their site. And again, they're going to squeeze you in this case for some Walmart information, maybe a bank account saying, Hey, we're going to wire the money to you what's your bank account number. And number four is, we're going to have to go through these last two real quick here and pretending to be from Amazon. You can see these up on the screen right now. And this last one is an unusual account activity from Apple support. So make sure you check these all out Craig Peterson dot com slash YouTube, or Craig Peterson dot com slash Facebook. I'll try and put this up on my homepage as well. You can see examples of these newest mission attacks. Stick around. We're going to talk about why some of these businesses are not patching and are leaving us vulnerable. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. Wow, can't believe it man is our last half hour together right now. You're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Thanks for joining me and online Craig Peterson dot com. Make sure you subscribe to my email list. You'll get all of the updates, and my most important videos of the week. You'll also find out about when the nasties are happening like they're happening this week as well. Sign up Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. I'd love to see you there. We're going to talk about the biggest problem we as consumers have, we as business people have. These lines cross because businesses are holding our data. With this new California law that's been in place for consumer privacy and keeping everything information safe, letting us know what businesses have about us and requesting its removal. There's a movement afoot to help get a handle on our personal information. You probably know that the Europeans passed a similar law, that when in fact that got teeth last year, went in a couple of years ago, just like the California law did last year. And these laws are rolling out all across the country. Massachusetts has it, and the federal government is looking at a law similar to California has to pass on a national basis. So what this ultimately means is, we could be in better shape as consumers and we could be in a lot worse shape as businesses, as we've been getting calls from businesses lately about how do I go ahead and protect myself as a business here? What do I have to comply with when it comes to this whole California Yeah, consumer privacy thing, right? Very, very, very big deal. So how do we do this? Well, as a business, the simplest thing we need to do is start at the very beginning, because the California law lots and lots, a customer client or prospect come to you and say, Show me the data you have. But there are crazy teeth in place in pretty much every state now that if you lose their data, you are in even deeper trouble. Look at what happened with Equifax. Look at what happened with TJ x right the TJ Maxx type companies who lost tons of our data Home Depot. Some of these companies had good security tools in place, but their people did not know how to use them. They couldn't read the reports. They had multiple vendors tools in place, and they didn't have just a single pane of glass. Lastly, they didn't have the type of automated systems that really can get rid of the false alerts. Man do we are there a lot of false alerts, every day hundreds of thousands, my company it for our clients we get 10s of thousands no think of it of these alerts every day. Oh my gosh, it's crazy. So you as an individual, whether you are just all just right, but if you are a consumer, or if you are a business, you have to patch now it's painful I get it. It is in nowhere near as painful as it used to be, you know, you used to install the windows patch and, and it was like putting your marble on red and Vegas, right? The odds are what 5050 not even quite that you're going to win it, it's crazy because you would install a patch and your machine Wouldn't boot. And so now you had to spend days sometimes trying to figure out, Why won't my machine reboot? What can I do? I think I'll get a new machine and move my data over. Make a good backup and write all of this stuff back and forth. The pros and cons. So how do you do all of that? How do you make that happen? Well, today, it's a lot less of a problem. Most of the time, when Microsoft releases patches, you're okay. It's not like the apple environment with a Mac where it's scarce that you ever have a problem with your Mac, okay, with an upgrade. It's sporadic. So keep that in mind as well. And now, let's go back to this. So if you are a big business like an Equifax and you find out that there is a major security problem with, let's say, some of the middleware that you're using. Now middleware is the stuff that sits between the front, which is typically the way site or your customer service people, and the backend, which is typically your set of databases. So that's your middleware. So let's say that there's a patch for the middleware, which there was. And you look at it and say, Oh, my gosh, this middleware changes. Because usually when they issue a patch, it isn't like, Hey, this is just a patch, install it, and you're fine. It's usually a hey, we've made a bunch of changes to improve things in our middleware, or our software and our web browser or web server software. We've made these changes. And as part of this, by the way, we fixed this other security problem. So when you as a business person now who have complex systems in the background, and you're trying to do an upgrade to make sure that middleware is up to date, or that database software or that front end software is up to date. It may not work properly anymore. It probably won't. Now you have to spend a bunch of engineering time to figure out what do I have to change? What other components do I need to modify? How can I make this whole thing work properly again, and that can cost you a lot of money. So what a lot of businesses have been doing is burying their heads in the sand. Hopefully, that's not you, but burying their heads in the sand. All of a sudden, before you know 200 million US citizens, data is out there. You have all of this inside information about people because your Equifax right now people lost jobs when it came to, to these hacks I just mentioned earlier, and that's probably a good thing. But I also empathize with them because I do outsource CISO, chief information security officer tasks for people. I can tell you most of the people who are in these positions have in their drawer, right there next to them, their resume. If they do get hacked, they'll pull out the resume and start shopping around again because they know it's over with. And yet they could not get the authority from the business to do the upgrades and the updates. So I have done this myself. You sit there, and you say, Oh, my gosh, what's the win here? It is not going to generate more revenue by doing these patches. And I'm just one of what millions of companies worldwide that using this software, open-source or otherwise, probably nothing that I need to worry about. So forget about it. I'm not going to mess with it. Have you fallen victim to that I know I have, and that can end up being a problem and a real problem depending on who you are? So pay businesses is upgrading. Sometimes it's because they don't know, which by the way, is another reason to be on my newsletter list. It's free. But every week now, we're telling you here are the top problems that are out there right now from a security standpoint that are being exercised right now by the bad guys in the wild. And if you don't have these patches done, you are in deep trouble. So that's easy to do just credit Peter song.com slash subscribe, and you'll get those types of things. But we're looking right now this particular article that came from secure World Expo, and they're talking about Paul's secure VPN, which we don't use for any of our clients. We have a much much better VPN software from Cisco. But anyways, patches came out for this a long time ago. months. In fact, and it turns out that most organizations have not done the patches yet. So be very careful here. If you're a member of a board of advisors, a board of directors if you're a business owner, if you have questions, reach out to me at Craig Peterson calm, I'll do what I can, but you have a responsibility. And now, it's fiscal responsibility. Coming June this year, depending on what kind of manufacturer you are, there are criminal liabilities tied into this including, ten years in prison. So hey, guys, pull up your socks and start taking this seriously. So you'll find me online. Greg Peterson dot com, and, of course, I'm right here on WGAN and make sure you subscribe to that newsletter. Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. We'll be right back. Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome back. Wow, the last segment of the show today. It's just going by fast, and I love it. I'm so excited about everything now. We have so many, so many things that are going to help you in the works right now. It's just been a phenomenal, phenomenal time for all of us here. So thanks for joining us. I want to do a quick review of what we've covered today. So let's go back here. I got my slides up. And we'll go right back here. So we started with some of our training and tactics. And we talked about technology and how it can only protect us so much. And in fact, part of the problem we have is the wetware. It's you, and it's me responding to things. Next up, we talked about some zero-day browser vulnerabilities. And in this case, we specifically were talking about Firefox and significant weaknesses this week in Firefox. And I told you what version of Firefox you should be running and what you need to do for the windows security vulnerabilities was exposed this week by the NSA. So you know, congrats to them. By the way. Here is your free phone, right? The Obama phones while it's not Obama's phone, it goes back for decades now, this program that we have in place to help underprivileged people who don't have much money, who maybe need some way of contacting their doctor, etc. Well, it turns out that some of these phones from one manufacturer, in particular, come with m

My guest is venture capitalist Greg Sands. Greg is the founder and managing partner for Costanoa Ventures, an early stage VC firm based in Palo Alto, California. I can tell you I've met Greg and he's got passion. Passion for life and passion for entrepreneurship. Listen To The Podcast: Resources: Twitter: @gsands, @costanoavc Website: costanoavc.com Interview: Mitch Matthews: He worked, even as he was growing up, worked in a community bank, so he started to get to know the ins and outs of entrepreneurship early and up close. In college, he even co-founded a micro enterprise incubator in East Palo Alto. Before founding Costanoa, Greg was a managing director at Sutter Hill where he had a number of huge successes. Plus he was the first product manager at Netscape Communications where he helped to write the business plans. He even coined the name Netscape and built SuiteSpot a business unit. That unit went from zero to $140 million annually. Amazing. No schlep either. He went to Harvard for his undergrad, Stanford for his MBA. But most importantly, he's the proud father of four, and apparently around Palo Alto, he simply known as Sara Sands' husband. I know what that's like. I love it. Hey Greg, welcome to Dream, Think, Do, buddy. Greg Sands: Thanks. It's great to be here with you. Mitch Matthews: I love it. So, okay. Many, many facets to venture capital. How do you describe specifically what you do? Greg Sands: Well, our job is fundamentally to find extraordinary entrepreneurs working on important problems and then make an investment and support them through the entrepreneurial life cycle and journey. It's extraordinary work. I honestly feel grateful to do it everyday. Mitch Matthews: I bet. And I'm sure peaks and valleys, adventures and horror stories all go along in that. Again, as we got to interact even in Jefferson, it was just obvious you are in a sweet spot where you're really truly getting to do something you love. Now we've got a lot of different people, as you and I have talked about, we got a lot of different listeners to Dream, Think, Do, but a lot of younger listeners also just anybody that's kind of also trying to find that sweet spot in life. So I love to ask some questions about that a little bit as well. When did it start to sink in that maybe this was your gig? This was your jam? Was that at an early age as well? Or was that something you uncovered over time? Greg Sands: No, uncovered over time. I mean it's interesting. I would say my career has not been one that's been planned very top down. I tend to be bottoms up and kind of sense of direction and push towards it. So I was working at a consulting firm out of college. I was working with pharmaceutical R&D and environmental technology and I basically decided to go to business school at Stanford because I wanted to put myself in the middle of Silicon Valley. And I didn't know that much about it, but it felt like the right direction for me to focus on smaller organizations and entrepreneurial organizations and technology driven organizations. Greg Sands: And so I just throw myself into the middle of it. And then within that ecosystem just started exploring. And so I happened to be introduced to Jim Clark as he and Mark Andreessen were founding Netscape. So some of that is right place, right time, as you mentioned. Got to write the first business plan and shipped the first products and build the suite of Internet server software. And in the end, by virtue of being in and around that ecosystem, playing a hands on role first as a product manager and software business and in and around the emergence of the Internet, actually got a call about the venture capital business. And I hadn't really been thinking about it. But as I spent six months talking to people, exploring, getting to know the team at Sutter Hill, I came to to think that it was a place that would use a lot of my skills that would move some of my passions and the...

Hey Greg, this week we are covering Netflix's Hilda, a whimsical show with a foundation for a mysterious unexplored world. Links! Reddit Theory: https://www.reddit.com/r/HildaTheSeries/comments/9k5mo2/theoryprediction_hilda_is_a_witch/

Featured Guests: Greg Trompeter - Director, Kenneth G. Dixon School of Accounting Melanie Fernandez - Partner, BDO Paul Gregg - Assistant Chair, Finance Executive in Residence, Dept. of Finance; CFO, Rini Technologies, Inc. Jim Adamczyk - Senior Executive VP / CLO, FAIRWINDS Credit Union Mike Johnson - Dean, UCF College of Sciences Episode Transcription:   Paul Jarley:                         This is a story of a man who was ahead of his time. Some say that he had the most important idea of the last 500 years. He may very well have helped to invent the future. He most certainly understood the role trust plays in our modern economy. And he was of all things, a mild mannered accounting professor. Paul Jarley:                         This show is all about separating hype from fundamental change. I'm Paul Jarley, Dean of the College of Business here at UCF. I've got lots of questions. To get answers, I'm talking to people with interesting insights into the future of business. Have you ever wondered, "Is this really a thing?". On to our show. [music]` Paul Jarley:                         A few months ago, I received an email from Mike Johnson. Mike is Dean of the College of Sciences and more importantly, my drinking buddy. The subject line read, Innovations in Accounting. Who knew? I opened the email and clicked on the link to an article entitled, "Why Everyone Missed the Most Important Invention of the Last 500 Years". I was skimming the article when Greg Trompeter walked into my office. Greg is the director of the Dixon School of Accounting, and so I turned to him and said, "Hey Greg, have you ever heard of triple entry bookkeeping?" Greg Trompeter:              (laughs). Triple entry bookkeeping. Paul Jarley:                         Indeed he had. Greg Trompeter:              It's an idea that came up, maybe in the mid to late 1970s. There was a professor at Carnegie Mellon. His name is Yuji Ijiri and he came up with a notion that for four or five hundred years people had been using double entry bookkeeping as if it were perfection itself. He said, "Well, maybe you could make it better". Paul Jarley:                         Okay, let's stop right there. I realize a podcast in accounting theory is a bold move. But Dr. Ijiri was quite the dude. His obituary notes he was interested in things like the relationship between accounting, quantum physics, and quantum computing. How many people do you think are trying to connect those dots? He didn't strike me as the kind of guy who would waste his time on frivolous pursuits. Yuji Ijiri:                               Bookkeeping evolved from single entry, which just recorded what happened, to a double entry, where what happened has to be explained by reasoning. Paul Jarley:                         Dr. Ijiri might be dead, but in the miracle of today's modern technology, he left behind a YouTube video explaining his ideas around triple entry bookkeeping. Yuji Ijiri:                               I get attracted by three. Everything three is very interesting and much more complex than two. And what the triple entry might look like. Paul Jarley:                         He challenged a group of Ph.D. students to figure this out. 10 years lapsed, when he realized... Yuji Ijiri:                               Nobody is doing anything about it. (laughs). Paul Jarley:                         So he decided to take matters into his own hands. Yuji wrote two books on the subject. The second of which... Yuji Ijiri:                               bases on the calculus of taking a type of derivative of existing accounting and come up with a new dimension and then create the double entry at that level. I think it has a lot of applications... Paul Jarley:                         I know that seems esoteric, but Dr. Ijiri's ideas might just rock your world. As Greg explains, changes in accounting facilitated changes in markets and signific...

Hey Greg, this week we talk about the trailers for Venom, Death Stranding, and The Last Of Us Part 2, and where we predict the stories will go. Want to avoid spoilers? Time stamps are: Venom 2:35, Death Stranding 30:38, TLOU P2 57:01. References Venom: https://whateveraspidercan.com/2018/08/01/analysis-venom-official-trailer-2/ Death Stranding: https://www.gamesradar.com/death-stranding-news/ http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/12/11/kojima-explains-death-stranding-gameplay-and-lore Last Of Us Part 2: Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VumV3YO9c8o Lara Croft Death Animations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWrSUmhn-Xs

I keeps my nudes for "look at how far I've come" purposes... What do yall do with nudes once the wang or punani holder expires its lease? Hey Greg talkin greezyyyyy x listeners talking about *#gummybearwang #morningheadstarts #buttplugs* *https://she-gets-it-shop.myteespring.co/* Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/she-gets-it/exclusive-content Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

I keeps my nudes for "look at how far I've come" purposes... What do yall do with nudes once the wang or punani holder expires its lease? Hey Greg talkin greezyyyyy x listeners talking about *#gummybearwang #morningheadstarts #buttplugs* *https://she-gets-it-shop.myteespring.co/* Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/she-gets-it/exclusive-content Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy