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3 episodes with hurricane wilma
2 episodes with hurricane wilma
2 episodes with hurricane wilma
The day after Hurricane Wilma. Crosstalk with Hank. Phones are out in the studio so Jorge and Josh are working in the sports studio. Check out NEIL's YouTube channel. 5,000+ hours of audio. https://www.youtube.com/c/NeilRogersRadio
In a world of sales and personal branding, one woman's journey took an unexpected turn. From the tranquil landscapes of southwest Virginia to the bustling markets of Italy and Brazil, Alison Mullins was on a path of growth and expertise. But it was a fateful encounter with Hurricane Wilma in Cancun, Mexico, that would change everything. Surviving the storm became more than just a test of strength for Alison - it ignited a fire within her, a passion that transformed her approach to sales. But what happened next? How did she turn adversity into triumph? Stay tuned to uncover the remarkable twist in Alison's story. This is Alison Mullins's story: Alison Mullins' journey towards becoming an expert in sales and personal branding can be traced back to her roots in southwest Virginia and her experiences in some of the most competitive markets around the world. As a small-town girl, she began her career in the construction industry specializing in natural stone surfaces. With time, Alison ventured into sales and marketing, exploring architectural, interior design, and luxury residential sectors. From working in Italy to quarries in Brazil, her experiences have shaped her unique expertise. However, the most pivotal of her experiences was surviving Hurricane Wilma in Cancun, Mexico. This event pushed her to a road of self-discovery, where she transformed her hardship into a resilient spirit, becoming a survivor with an undying passion for her work. To truly be an expert in your field, you have to be willing to talk to others, learn from others, and give to others. You've got to be a connector. - Alison Mullins My special guest is Alison Mullins. With a rich background in sales and marketing, Alison Mullins has spent two vibrant decades leaving imprints in various sectors, including construction and natural stone surfaces. Her passion and dedication are reflected in her global work travel, from the United States and Canada to Italy and Brazil. Now as the founder of Rep Methods, her deep-rooted sales wisdom continues to bloom, helping countless professionals transform their sales strategies. Alison's approachable personality also adds a warm touch to her expertise, making her insights more relatable yet powerful. In this episode, you will be able to: Uncover the secret to upscaling your business through sales proficiency and a resonant personal brand. Traverse the journey of book writing, encapsulating its challenges and rewarding experiences. Comprehend the need for humility and ongoing education for longevity in the sales field. Apprehend the increasing influence of video content in consumer engagement. Decode the method to foster leadership skills within your sales force. The key moments in this episode are: 00:00:08 - Introduction and Background 00:01:42 - Expertise and Becoming an Expert 00:08:07 - Writing a Book as a Platform 00:10:38 - Developing Expertise and Claiming Expert Status 00:14:21 - Rewards of Putting Yourself Out There 00:15:50 - Using Video to Engage with Buyers, 00:16:43 - The Power of Video in Sales, 00:19:19 - Key Elements of Successful Sales Leadership, 00:23:30 - Building Leadership in Sales, 00:28:01 - Sales Leadership Skills, 00:32:35 - Being a Disruptor, 00:33:31 - Disrupting in a Male-Dominated Industry, 00:35:05 - Quiet Disruption, 00:36:33 - Disrupting the Conversation, 00:38:15 - Connecting with Alison, Timestamped summary of this episode: 00:00:08 - Introduction and Background Mario Martinez introduces the podcast and welcomes Alison Mullins as his guest. They briefly discuss Alison's new book, "The Art of Selling," and her background in sales and marketing. Alison shares her experience in the construction industry and her passion for natural stone surfaces. 00:01:42 - Expertise and Becoming an Expert Alison emphasizes that expertise is self-declared and requires passion, knowledge, and humility. She believes that being willing to learn from others, connect with people, and contribute to the community are essential for becoming an expert. Validation from others can also help establish expertise. 00:08:07 - Writing a Book as a Platform Alison shares her motivation for writing the book, which was to establish herself as an expert and share her knowledge and experiences. She sees writing a book as a way to gain credibility and prove a point. It was also a therapeutic process for her. 00:10:38 - Developing Expertise and Claiming Expert Status Alison discusses the boldness required to claim expertise but also emphasizes the importance of allowing others to recognize your expertise. Putting yourself out there, being prepared for backlash, and receiving validation from others can help establish expert status. 00:14:21 - Rewards of Putting Yourself Out There Alison encourages individuals to put themselves out there and take credit for their expertise. While there may be fear and uncertainty, the rewards can be significant. The validation and positive feedback received can enhance credibility and establish expertise in the field 00:15:50 - Using Video to Engage with Buyers, The importance of using video content to engage with buyers is discussed. Video allows for face-to-face interaction and the use of multiple senses, making it a more effective tool for building expertise and connecting with an audience. 00:16:43 - The Power of Video in Sales, Video is highlighted as a valuable tool for salespeople to engage with customers. Platforms like Loom, OneMob, and Hippo Video are mentioned as options for sending video messages and maintaining customer connections. 00:19:19 - Key Elements of Successful Sales Leadership, The importance of mental health balance is emphasized as a key aspect of sales leadership. Other essential elements include organization, passion, and understanding one's strengths and weaknesses. 00:23:30 - Building Leadership in Sales, Empathy is identified as a crucial skill for salespeople to develop leadership in their craft. The concept of limbic resonance and the ability to intuitively understand and connect with others is discussed as an art form in sales. 00:28:01 - Sales Leadership Skills, The importance of empathy, intuition, and chameleoning (the ability to adapt and fit into different situations) in sales leadership is highlighted. These skills take time to develop and contribute to effective sales leadership and customer relationships. 00:32:35 - Being a Disruptor, Alison discusses the benefits and challenges of being a disruptor in the industry. She emphasizes the importance of speaking one's mind and standing up for what one believes in. She also shares her experience as a woman in a male-dominated industry and how it has shaped her as a disruptor. 00:33:31 - Disrupting in a Male-Dominated Industry, Alison highlights the unique challenges she faces as a woman in the construction industry. She shares the importance of having confidence and resilience as a disruptor. Being noticed and heard is key to making an impact in a male-dominated field. 00:35:05 - Quiet Disruption, Alison shares a story about an interaction with someone in the tech industry who initially praised her book but later expressed hesitation in sharing it with his audience. Instead of reacting negatively, Alison responded humbly and asked for his support, demonstrating a quiet form of disruption. 00:36:33 - Disrupting the Conversation, Alison discusses her response to the tech industry professional's feedback. She explains how she disrupted the conversation by assuming he either intended to insult her or didn't realize the impact of his words. Alison humbled herself by asking for support while still pursuing her goals. 00:38:15 - Connecting with Alison, Alison shares how listeners can connect with her through her website, where they can schedule a quick conversation with her. She prefers phone calls as a way to connect in the 21st century. Sales expertise and personal branding: Wielding a profound experience in sales, Alison paints a clear picture of the importance of personal branding as a lever to establishing oneself as an expert in an industry. Her belief is that passion, continuous learning, and humility should drive this endeavor. By taking a bold stance to showcase their skills, individuals can gain recognition and influence, which can boost their professional journey and build credibility. The resources mentioned in this episode are: Get your pen and paper or iPad and keyboard ready to take notes as you listen to the Modern Selling podcast. Check out FlyMSG.io, the free personal writing assistant, and text expander application created by Vengreso, the company founded by Mario Martinez Jr. Learn more about Alison Mullins and her new book, The Art of Selling: We Make Order Makers, Not Order Takers. Visit the Rep Methods website to explore Alison's brand and the services she offers for business development and sales. Consider writing your own book to establish yourself as an expert in your field and gain credibility. Reflect on the importance of humility and continuous learning in developing and maintaining expertise. Take Mario's advice and create a YouTube channel or video series to share your expertise and answer burning questions related to your industry. Check out Modern Selling on YouTube to watch the video version of this podcast episode. Visit the podcast's website to access additional resources and episodes to help you grow your sales numbers at scale. Follow Mario Martinez Jr. and Alison Mullins on social media to stay updated on their latest insights and content.
My guest today and I worked together in Club Med Cancun in 2004/2005 with Hendel. His first season was in Club Med Sandpiper in 2004 as a Waterski G.O. Originally from Chicago and now living in Austin, Texas, please help me welcome, Parker Burke! Before Club Med, Parker obtained a degree in Business Management with a Minor in French. He even did a semester abroad in Aix-en-Provence, France in 2002 (and we never talked about this during our season in Cancun!). After Club Med, he got a Master's degree in Hospitality & Tourism Management. You could say hospitality is in his blood because his maternal grandfather owned and operated the historic and opulent Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee. Parker had his first meeting with Club Med in New Jersey and when it came to the talent portion of the audition, he did something so weird and wild at that interview, that people requested he do it at each different village he worked at (if you don't know, then please listen!). Parker worked for Club Med from 2004 to 2007 and worked in the resorts of Sandpiper, Cancun and Ixtapa. It wouldn't be a My First Season interview if we didn't talk about hurricanes and Parker had quite his share of them. Ever the optimist, he acknowledges that if it were not for Hurricane Wilma, he never would have met his future wife in Sandpiper in 2005! Parker has always had an extreme personality so lately, he has gravitated towards trail and ultra running. I ask Parker why anyone would run a 50k for “fun” and he is kind enough to answer my many questions on that subject. We talk a lot about Parker being a Waterski G.O. and how rewarding it was for him to teach disabled water skiers, moments he will cherish and never forget. We end the interview with Parker telling us the three things he misses the most about Club Med. **My First Season podcast has always been ad-free and free to listen to and is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Samsung Podcasts, Podbean App, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible, TuneIn + Alexa, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM, Pandora and Listen Notes. And if you like what you hear, please leave a review at Apple podcasts. Please check out his Instagram: Parker Burke (@jparkerburke) | Instagram And NatureQuant which we talk about in the interview: NatureQuant
How often do we hear something and then say, “that simply can't be”. Why are we always so certain? Why do we tend to be so locked into a position that we close our minds to exploring alternatives? Meet our podcast guest David Zimbeck. David grew up with an incredible imagination, a thirst for knowledge and the drive to learn. He is mostly a self-taught person whose desire to learn, think and grow are unstoppable. Among other things, he has been a major force in software developments that help shape our emerging crypto currency world. However, David goes much further than software development. Listen to this episode to learn all about this fascinating man. What David has to say is well worth your time and may cause you to open your own curious mind and mindset. Thanks for listening and I hope you will let me know your thoughts about our episode and the Unstoppable Mindset podcast by emailing me at michaelhi@accessibe.com. About the Guest: David Zimbeck, our lead developer, is unlike most people you will ever meet. His resilient work ethic, diverse project experience, and deep knowledge of cryptography has led to the creation of BitHalo, the world's first unbreakable smart contracting system. These decentralized contracts are the fundamental backbone of BitBay. Born in Ohio and having lived all over the world, he has acquired the vast perspective needed to create truly disruptive software. David is completely self-taught, and intimately knows a hard-day's work. He developed BitHalo's first 50,000 lines of Python code single-handedly from scratch... all while working long, grueling shifts on the oil rigs of North Dakota. It was here that he executed his idea of double deposit escrow, bringing unbreakable peer-to-peer contracts into real-life agreements. As a former world chess master, he also possesses a truly analytical mind. David has a keen understanding of cause and effect, and sees the importance of early decisions in any situation. This mentality, in addition to his innate honesty, perseverance, and self-discipline has driven him to position BitBay well beyond most other blockchain projects in terms of both development and security. “Chess has helped me visualize code. It has helped me plan, memorize and problem solve. It has helped me anticipate problems well in advance.” David now resides in Mexico, and continues to work round-the-clock to help keep BitBay on the forefront of blockchain development. About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson 01:21 Well, Hi, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, How's that for an opening? I want to thank you for joining us today, wherever you are, hope you're having a good day and hope that we can add a little bit to your your life and give you some things to think about today. And we have a person as our guest today, Davidson Beck, who has given me a lot to think about, and I hope that he will contribute to your thought processes as well. David, welcome to unstoppable mindset. David Zimbeck 01:56 Thank you. Thank you, sir. pleasure, sir. Honor, honor Me and on here and nice meeting you and everything. Looking forward to it? Well, let's start like I tend to do a lot. Michael Hingson 02:08 You You obviously grew up tell me a little bit about you as a as a as a child, and kind of what what you had going on growing up and where that led to, because it's you, you have quite a an interesting life. And you've done some very remarkable things. And let's talk about it. So just kind of wondering, what was it like being a kid for you? And where did it go? David Zimbeck 02:32 Well, I'm actually I've had a, I guess, cuz I know, we talked earlier, and I've had a pretty diverse background. So people kind of get surprised when they see that I've done various various things with moderate moderate levels of success. And, and mostly, you know, I was always encouraged to be creative growing up. So you know, my parents never really, you know, inhibited me I'd gone to different schools, public, private schools, as well as homeschooling, I was a little disobedient. So I didn't really, I can't say I was like, the model student or anything. But it's possible that that worked in my advantage, because what it also taught me was to think outside the box, you know, and to try to understand exactly what it is that we're being taught and why. And, you know, I also had a drive ever since I was younger, to make the world a better place that was even, even since I was like, 10 years old. And my attitude was just, well, nobody's else do it, nobody else is doing it, somebody's gonna gotta clean all this shit up. So you know, I just decided, I just decided that I would try to do it. And so that that's also something kind of kept me somewhat diverse in my careers. But at the same time, whenever I do something, I like to benchmark myself and do a really good job at it. So So with that, with that in mind, you know, I when I was in, when I when I left high school, I went straight into working, because I didn't want to waste any time. And I worked in the real estate sector as well as acting. And that was like my early. My early work. Oh, yeah. And I was also a chess player. So that was one thing that probably really helped me a lot as a kid because I was considered. Well, I was I was one of the top chess players, or at least one of the top chess puzzle makers in the world. So what I did was I first learned how to play chess when I was like 11, or 12. And then after that, I knew I didn't want to play too competitively. Even though I had gotten my master title and master rank. And I could have played competitively, but I preferred the idea to express my, my work as an art form. So because an art form kind of is a lasting thing, if you paint a picture, you know, and you put it on the wall, it's a lasting thing, but if you're competing all the time, they always say you're only as good as your last when, you know, and I didn't want to be like a dog chasing my tail like chasing my own ego. Yeah. So essentially, I just wanted to benchmark my myself, which I did, and I did I did really good work. And that's what he did as a teenager. And then as I got older, that helped me, and a lot of my work because I was able to apply it to things. And I know, I know, you'll be able to appreciate this because it helps you visualize things. So I was able to visualize things in my head, you know, because when you're playing a game of chess, you're seeing it on the board, and you're essentially moving, you're moving the pieces with your mind, before you even place your hand on a piece, you have to figure out where they're gonna go, and what the possible things could happen in the future. So you calculate all that in your head. So it's, it's very similar to what you do. And it's almost kind of like, once you crack open your mind, you know, it's it never ends. So. So yeah, actually, I gotten Michael Hingson 05:39 sorry, go ahead. You tell me how to how do you get the ranking of chess master? How does that work? I mean, I understand it, but how do you get that. David Zimbeck 05:50 So what happens is you just play, you just play enough. I mean, when you play in tournaments, or whatever, you end up playing against other players. And if you win, you gain points on your rating. And if you lose, you know, you lose points on your rating. So once you get a rating of over a certain numbers, and while in America, we have like, unfortunately, we have a different rating system. So we're like one of the only countries that does that. There's two, there's basically the US C, F and D Day. So for the United States Chess Federation, I'm like, maybe 23 2400, somewhere around there. So that's, you know, that's my, my rating. And so that's well, that's well above Master, I could have gotten Grandmaster international master titles, but for that I would have had to travel because there's more because they play under the system of the day. So so to get that, you know, I would have had to actually go to Europe, which actually I did for a little while, but I wasn't as focused on chess when I went there. Michael Hingson 06:43 Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. So David Zimbeck 06:45 no, no, it's it's a good question. Because a lot of people think it's not like something you can just pull out of a hat and say, oh, yeah, I'm a master at this. No, you actually have to earn it. And Michael Hingson 06:57 I figured that was the case. But I was always just sort of curious as to how the ranking actually was achieved. And, and clearly, you did a lot of it. And then as you as you pointed out, you have to really use your mind because it's chess is really only as an end result on the board. David Zimbeck 07:14 Well, there's something else too, which is, unlike other game, like, if you look at games like poker, or other games, which granted do do have a good amount of skill involved. It's there's also a great deal of luck. Whereas chess, there's no luck at all whatsoever. You know, you play a game of cards, you know, you need to get good cards, you play game of Scrabble, you need to get good tiles, you play a game of chess, you just need to make good moves. And you don't even play the opponent, you play the board. Because the better you move is on the board. There's nothing your opponent can do. So it's really a game of pure skill. I mean, even even you could even argue, argue some sports that Well, I'd say sports are almost pure skill pretty much for the most part, but there's still a little luck involved with you know, you could miss a shot a breeze, a breeze in the wind could knock your golf ball off course, you know, you know, something can happen. But in chess, there's, there's, there's no forces of nature that would interfere with with your performance. So so that's that's what makes it a good game to learn, especially, you know, for kids. But, but yeah, that there was that. And then when I was in, I travelled a little bit. And I was in Los Angeles, actually, with my sister who was pursuing acting, which wasn't really my interest or at at the time, but since I had my family all had like a theater background, I was I was pretty much familiar with with it. And she helped me get like an agent and stuff like that. So actually, I was doing pretty good with that, too. And I was booking like commercials. And in some movies, I booked Pirates of the Caribbean too, which is what I'm the most known for. Where they flew me out to Bahamas and you know, I was on a boat with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. And so. So yeah, I mean, I guess it's, I mean, I happen to work in that as well. I was. Michael Hingson 08:58 Actually you're one of the pirates. Did you have a speaking part? David Zimbeck 09:02 Um, no, but it was probably because of my audition, because when when we did the audition, it was a little bit of improv. And so all the pirates who auditioned were older, that was one of the biggest auditions in LA. Or, I think that at the time, because there's maybe like, 10,000 people that went out for it. And they only picked like, 20 of us, you know, so when when we auditioned, there was all these older gentlemen who were, you know, look like pirates. And I'm probably 30 years younger than anybody auditioning. So I said, oh, there's no way I'm gonna get this. And so, I just, I just didn't take it seriously, you know, but I did. I did a little bit, you know, I mean, I walked but I was when I went for the audition. I was like, you know, yar, I'm a pirate already barred Do you have a pretty doctor and I just kind of was just having fun. And I guess that they responded to that exuberance and thought it was funny. And and that's what got me the role actually, interestingly enough for other catalysts. No, unfortunately, There is a possibility I might have ended up having a speaking role thrown at me. It happened to a couple of the core pirates. But what happened is there was a hurricane that hit we were in Freeport, Bahamas. So there was a hurricane that hit. I think it was Hurricane Wilma at the time. And we ended up getting called home and flown home charters. So we only got about like, I would say, like a month, then change maybe out in the Bahamas before you're flown home. But it was still it was still an amazing experience. Unfortunately, I got I got snow from the credits. I don't know if it was because of that. Or because we never properly manage our contract or whatever. But that's okay. That's that's part of life. It was still a great experience. And and and yeah, I mean, it was it was really fun. So yeah, I mean, I think that those things definitely helped give me some some experience out in the field of succeeding and various different professions. But like I said, because my focus was on making, making the world a better place. I never, I never quite could, I guess you could say put like my full passion or, or my heart and into some of those ordeals actually, was one of the reasons I left chess behind as well, which eventually will get to, you know, where I were actually ended up making a name for myself, which was in Bitcoin. But that didn't that didn't come till later. I mean, I'd still work some odd jobs, I'd worked on the oil rigs for a while. And I was doing about like, 100 hour week, you know, it was just crazy. We'd sleep like four hours a night and stuff like that. And and then after that is when I got involved in in Bitcoin, but I'll turn the floor over to you for a moment that you Michael Hingson 11:36 know, that's that's, that's fine, actually. Well, even blackjack Sparrow had ethics. So just Just saying. David Zimbeck 11:46 Oh, pirates do. Yeah, they go by a different code. It's yeah. Well, I've always seen it as the the most important code of ethics to go by as a moral compass, you know, as if you have if you have a true moral compass, and one that's objective, because nowadays, our modern society is a little bit there. They believe the morals are relativistic. Well, if I believe it's okay. It's okay. But that's just not how that's not how the world works. It's not how things truly are because nothing is truly subjective. When you really boil it down to like the truth. The truth is, in fact, objective, it doesn't really matter. If 100% of the society agrees that, you know, killing people is a good thing. If they agree on it doesn't make it a good thing. It's still it's still more moral, morally reprehensible. So I think that the key the key is having a good moral compass. And then from there, and I don't know, maybe, maybe I just always had it. Maybe my parents just just raised me. Well, I don't I don't I don't really know. I mean, I mean, I feel like a lot of it, I kind of carved out on my own, because I saw so many things that bothered me. And I just said, I don't you know, I don't want a world like that would make the world a better somehow. Well, Michael Hingson 13:01 well, here's a question out of curiosity, when you, when you live your life, do you like at night or at some time during the day you you've done things and so on? Do you go back and do self analysis? Did I do that the best I can? What could I have improved on that? Was that a mistake? Do you do you do much analysis of what you do and think about that? David Zimbeck 13:21 Yeah, constantly actually, one of the one I think one of the most important qualities a person can have is introspection. You know, very few people look inside and right. One of the most, one of the most critical things for me is I sit there and I say to myself, actually, to be honest, I don't know how some people can even manage their own lives when they if they've done awful things to others in their life. It's like, how can you wake up in the morning and look in front of the mirror and be really proud, you know, of that person? You know, it's like, it just doesn't make any sense. To me. It's like as if they have no sense of self, you know, and I don't know how that works. I don't know, maybe they're proud of what they do. I have no idea. But to me, it just seems like if you're introspective and you really look inside yourself, you're gonna start caring a lot about, you know, your soul and, and how, you know, how pure how pure and innocent how you can maintain your own innocence and stuff like that. I would think that those things would be very important. Michael Hingson 14:20 That gets back to the moral compass concept again, of course. David Zimbeck 14:24 Yeah, exactly. So I do I do believe that. And you know, introspection also has has to do with casting away pride. Like if, if you make a mistake, you have to be completely honest. With your with yourself about about your mistake. Actually, again, the thing about chess is like, if you're playing chess, you know, it's ironic, you would think that strong players would have an ego, but actually they don't. Some some do. Okay, yeah, some, some are pretty bad. But for the most part to get to a certain point, you have to kind of humiliate yourself quite a lot because you're going to lose a lot, you know, or you're going to sacrifice a lot. You're going to sacrifice a lot of time, you're going to change your ideas about what you think is strong and what you think is weak, there's going to be a great deal of humility that's going to be introduced to you. And if it hasn't been introduced to you, then clearly you're not working hard enough, you know, because once you get to the higher levels, you're going to start realizing all the fantastic and beautiful possible things that could happen. And then even then, and that's only applying to chess, which is like, an eight by eight little board. I mean, imagine life, which is like, you know, it's infinitely times, well, not infinite, it's almost, it's almost endlessly more complicated. And while you could argue a person's potential is literally limitless. I mean, there's nothing. There's nothing really that we can't, that we can't do. But it's it can tends to be like, pride, which would get in the way. So one of the obvious advantages of being introspective, is, is not being afraid of admitting a mistake, not being afraid of, you know, having, you know, being a little upset with yourself over something, but But of course, working towards making yourself better. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I Michael Hingson 16:09 do, one of the things about one of the things about chess is, of course, that, in one sense, it's very unforgiving, you play, and if you make a mistake, you very well could lose. But the other side of that is, and that's why in part, I asked the question about introspection, you can then go back and look at it and say, Why, why did I lose? Or what was the mistake? Or why did I make that mistake? And what can I learn from that for the next time, and I think that's a really good subset of life. And it's something that I advocate, we've talked about it on this podcast before. And something that I think is extremely relevant is that it's important for us to look at what we do, it works better if we do it from the standpoint of a moral compass. But it is important for us individually to go back and look at what we do and what do we know? And how can we best use our knowledge? And where do we go from here? David Zimbeck 17:09 It basically like it'll, it'll help you get better get along better with other people as well, you know what I mean? Because if you're if you're introspective, you know, and somebody points something out to you, you're not really going to be afraid of criticism. And sometimes I have, I have, you know, issues with with friends, if, you know, if they have a hard time accepting criticism, which usually happens when they carry a lot of guilt, by the way, yeah, you know, maybe they've come back for more, they're just traumatized. And, you know, maybe they can even take the slightest shred of critique. And you can almost see it unfolding. It's, it's not that it's personal. It's not like that they're upset with you. It's that they can't take more responsibility, because they've had a hard time accepting the responsibility they've already had to take, you know what I mean? Which is all the more reason why you shouldn't give yourself any, any any, right? Oh, absolutely. Dragging that baggage around. And Michael Hingson 17:58 I agree. And, you know, personally, I believe I'm my own worst critic. And I want to be because I should be able to analyze and look at things, but at the same time, I never mind input from other people. Because if I have such an ego, that I can't listen to what other people say that I don't ever really connect with them. Whereas if somebody is willing to be strong enough to say to me something about what I do a podcast or whatever, and for me to then look at it and decide whether I agree with that or not, then I have a real problem with me. David Zimbeck 18:45 Yeah, totally makes perfect sense. Michael Hingson 18:48 So how did you go into programming and so on? You You obviously did that. And of course, chess certainly gives you a mindset for that. But how did you then go into the whole world of programming and doing software stuff? David Zimbeck 19:04 So so the thing is, is that I learned when I was a little kid, I think my uncle taught me to make like mazes or something in queue basic, and I was like, maybe 1011 years old, but that's about as far as my programming experience had, you know, I was just, you know, just just playing around mostly. And I remember making some cool stuff. But for the most part, you know, I didn't really do much I know in high school I did. I learned C and I think C Plus Plus you know, nothing serious. It wasn't until later when I was working on the on the oil rigs and then I had some downtime actually switched jobs and was doing easements. And then I I've always I was always good with computers because I was around computers because I was doing things like editing and web design because I did some commercial production for a while and stuff like that. So I saw I was familiar with, you know, very familiar with computers. Plus I did a lot Got a research. So from that, you know, I worked with them. And so I automated my job when I was there doing the easements. And because we were having the type of hundreds of legal contracts, which all essentially look the same. So after I audit, after I automated my job, I was able to do like a job, which maybe it would have taken weeks, and I did it in a matter of a day or two, and actually got fired for it for working too efficiently. And and then it was at that exact time where I'd already known about Bitcoin since it started, essentially, around maybe 2011. Yeah, I think it was when I knew about it, maybe like a year after so. And so I always knew about it. And I known about some of the stuff on on on the on the deep web, because I knew that, you know, it was it was interesting, because it was on Deep Web that weren't on the main web. But for the most part, it took me a while to actually have it click, because then when I'd first known about it, I didn't think of it as an investment vehicle, I just thought of it as, like a very cool kind of decentralized banking system. But I always I never really saw how it would gain the traction or the so when it when I saw it later, when I was out in North Dakota, it like it had clicked, I was like, oh my god, I can't believe it, this thing that used to be worth worth, nothing is now actually quite quite valuable at the time, it was maybe 100 bucks or something like that. But you know, it's pretty good. And so I said, Well, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna miss out on any further. And I'd made an investment. And I remember making an investment in Litecoin, or something, and I turned like $1,000 into like, $50,000 within, I don't know, a week or two is crazy. So I was and then I held on to it a little too long. And then some of that, like went back down. But I started to learn, you know, and I started to get involved in in altcoins. And in them just, you know, for fun. And but it wasn't, it wasn't my primary motive to see it is more just like an investment vehicle, which maybe I should have, because I would probably would have made a lot more money. But I was also kind of interested in what you could do with that coin. See, because the thing was is you understand the concepts of it, you kind of understand that? Well, first of all, it's decentralized, because there's many, many different people who have a copy of the ledger, kind of like if everybody has a copy of the same movie, you know, you can't change a line in the movie without everybody disagreeing. Yeah, oh, hey, that's not what he really said. So if everybody has a copy of the Bank Ledger, it's basically immune to fraud, which is Mungus ly important. And furthermore, it makes it so that nobody can just take money out of thin air and produce it, which is way more than we can say, for the Federal Reserve, because they're just printing money like crazy at their own will. So having something that's kind of like ownerless, that's immune to fraud, and can theoretically replace modern banking is and is safe, and that nobody can freeze your account is awesome. That's, that's amazing. But at the same time, I knew that politically, the government's are always going to be able to kind of plant in the eye, people's minds, beliefs and ideas and quite possibly subvert such a thing. So I wasn't completely convinced that Bitcoin is going to, you know, save the world or make it that much, it'll make it better. But just like the internet, which has allowed us to communicate, it's allowed allowing us to have this call, the internet can also be used as a tool for, for bad, you know, because nowadays, the internet's use for censorship and it's used for, there's so much censorship of information if the information that you're getting from the internet is incorrect. And also, if it makes if they make it very hard to find the correct information, then you can kind of fall into this trap of dogma. And it becomes like a whole brand new religion all over again. So that the pitfalls of technology, including including Bitcoin, by the way, of course, Michael Hingson 23:48 we have a situation right now, for example, where we've got Ukraine going on, and Russia has denied people access to Facebook, and essentially most of the tools of the internet. And so they're subverting fair free flow and relevant information, which is, David Zimbeck 24:08 you know, always a problem. Well, but actually, I would say that Facebook is not a free flow of information. And I would say that neither Michael Hingson 24:17 No, and I just use that as an example. But I'm thinking more of just David Zimbeck 24:21 I know what you mean. I know what you mean, though, but essentially, essentially, what a lot of people don't actually know is that Google controls about something like 90 some percent of all of the internet searches through through like mobile, and then fact that there's only two search engines. I know we're segwaying a little bit but I will get back into what really got me into programming. But this is kind of an important segue to give some context. Essentially, that yeah, they control all the information so so there's only two search engines. A lot of people don't realize this. There's just Google and Bing which is just Microsoft, all your other search engines like DuckDuckGo or Whatever they actually pull from DuckDuckGo, I think pulls from Bing start page. I'm not sure I think Yahoo and Yahoo and start page probably pull from Bing. And so, so a lot of a lot of these search engines actually, they're they're not actually indexing anything, okay? They're just utilizing the results from the other search engines, and which is just all Google, Google and Microsoft, which means that, essentially, a couple companies have control over all the information, and they do censor a lot. And they censor very aggressively and they censor for political reasons all the time. And it's outrageous. It's so bad, like these companies, the world would be better off. They were just shut down, honestly. So in that in that case, yeah. I understand why Russia did that. But they're no better. Okay. Russia has their own search engine, which is Yandex. Okay. And I think China has Baidu. And there might be there's one other there's Gigablast, which is a tiny little company that's been indexing the internet for a long time. And they're one of the very few independent ones. There's a decentralized crawler as well called PAC, but not enough people use it to give it to give it the information that it needs. And then there's the dark web, but they have all their indexes are just private lists of sites. So there's no, there's no way of easily navigating that at all. So yeah, there's there's very little access to free information. Like it was back in the day when Google was uncensored, because when it was uncensored, you could just find everything, which I would argue is a bad thing, because you can find things that are bad. But no, it's more important to for it to be uncensored, because that's exactly why the freedom of speech was protected by the First Amendment. Right. And in fact, even Kennedy, right before he got killed, I think is less less speech that had something to do with that. And that's exactly what he said, he says, This is why the freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment because if you have censorship of the news, by organizations, then you you essentially lose all access to, to knowledge, you know, which is horrible. And so what we have is a modern day burning down of the Library of Alexandria, essentially, because we, you know, we have companies that are controlling the information and completely destroying it. So with that said, and, you know, I mean, when it comes to situations like Ukraine, and United States and Russia and all that stuff, I have to under you have to understand that these are just large, powerful people who target citizens, whether or not it's United States, the United States started wars for no reason. Okay. Like, and they never got sanctioned. You know, NATO joined in on the war. And in fact, I think, even certain countries like France actually had had sanctions against them for not going to war. What a joke is that in then, so you have, you have these countries that essentially have a carte blanche to like, bomb, whoever they feel like. And then when Russia starts doing it, they turn around and they have this international condemnation, which is fine. I mean, Russia shouldn't be going to war that much. I totally, totally agree, I think was disgusting. But, but at the same time, it just strikes me slightly hypocritical, because United States is engaged in so many wars, I think, I don't even think people have an accurate count of how many countries even bombed at this point. So so I don't know what why isn't everybody sanctioning and boycotting American products, and they should really based on their based on their track record. But it's true across all politicians, essentially, the victims of war are always citizens. They're not pilots. They're not, you know, they're not other politicians. They're not heads of the military. Those people stay happily in their multimillion dollar mansions, while other people go and fight their battles, which is essentially how it's always been. And it's sad, you know, but people should learn to lay down their guns, all of them that every single military member, every single cop, they should do, they should just cut the shit and stop taking orders from from tyrants. But since since we can't guarantee that that'll happen, that's why we've tried to strike at the root of things. So one of the things that I've always identified as the root of the problem is deception. And that's this is what got me excited about Bitcoin, specifically. Okay, so when I realized that because Bitcoin is electronic, an electronic account, which you can do pretty much anything with, unlike a bank, would they have their own rules? I was like, Oh, wow, with Bitcoin, you know, you could make a joint account. And with that, you can make a contract which can't be broken. So what I realized is, is that both parties essentially, make a promise. Like, I promise you, I'm going to do something because these pay you for goods or services, you promised you're going to deliver the goods or services. What happens if both of us put our money in a joint account, and we time that joint account to blow itself up? Nice. That might sound crazy, like why would you blow up money, but it's the equivalent of mean you putting our money in a safe locking the safe I have a key and you have a key and in order to get in? We have to unlock it at the same time. Okay. And then we strap you know, dynamite to it. We walk away and we say okay, we'll be back in a week. You do your part, I do mine and you do your part I pay you. And if either of us are dissatisfied with the deal, we both lose. But I said oh my god, this is the first time in history we've ever had a chance to make a deal an agreement They can be enforced without law. And that was astonishing to me. I was like, oh my, this is so important because now there's a non violent resolution to a contract, you see them saying, All modern contracts are essentially resolved violently. And what I mean by that is, behind every law, whether or not it be a parking ticket, or a walking doesn't matter, or whatever, it's actually enforced violently. Because if you don't pay that ticket, well, maybe they'll put a lien on something, or whatever. And then that lien leads to, if you don't get off your property, then they will actually attempt to take it by force. And if you don't accept the fact that they're going to take it by force, they will shoot you. It's the same thing. If you're, if you're caught, you know, not stopping at a stop sign cop pulls you over, you can't just drive away, okay, because he'll shoot you, you know, so, so actually, all laws are enforced through violence. And we need to be in a society that doesn't enforce law through violence. So essentially, this was a way to have it enforced by the money itself, which allows two people to barter and most importantly, that it's not enforced by an escrow agent. Because most deals in society are enforced by escrow agents, for example, judges lawyers, or just you know, real estate escrow agent doesn't matter, essentially, what they call a non a non biased third party, but there's no such there's literally no such thing. Non biased. Third party doesn't exist, unless it's the heavens or something. Okay, like humans don't have. Most humans do not have the moral capacity to properly judge a situation. And this is seen by our our legal system, which is completely corrupt and wicked, okay, like we see people getting thrown into jail without any evidence whatsoever for things that shouldn't even be crimes, victimless crimes. And it's, it's sad, it's, it's awful. It's the worst thing. So So essentially, the point is, and I guess I give another analogy for this, if you had, if you are accused of something you didn't do, okay, let's say you're accused of murder, but she didn't do it. Okay. Would you trust 100? Judges? Would you trust 1000? How big does the jury have to be? Would you trust a jury of 10? When you trust a jury of 20? If you presented your evidence? Probably the answer would be no. Because why would you trust somebody else? If they weren't there? You know, what, if you were framed? What if the evidence actually doesn't look good for you? But it's actually false? You know, so? Or what if the juries just a bunch of fools? I mean, why would you? Why would you put your fate in the hands of others, especially when the common person that they put on on a jury typically is supposed to be uneducated of the law, actually, and they'll handpick them to be so. So, you know, it's, it's outrageous. And I found the solution, essentially, to a big, big problem in society that had never been proposed before. So that's what caused me to develop bit Halo, which is what I am known for. And probably one of the main reasons people would recognize me on this podcast. Essentially, that was the first contracting platform ever made for Bitcoin. So to answer your question, I got involved into programming because of that. And from there I was. From there, I was all self taught. So from when I was in North Dakota, it took me about, I was very motivated, because I was already doing long hours. So I did about, I would say, the same thing was working almost 100 hour weeks, I was probably working 16 to 18 hours a day, I'd roll out of bed, I try to figure out how to code because I really didn't know how to code well enough yet. So I had to go learn Python. And instead of doing any practice programs, I just went straight and tried to make this program, you know, so at the same time as learning Python, I had to learn cryptography, I had to learn Bitcoin, I had to learn how to work with the transactions, and Bitcoins, very much like old school accounting, working with dollars, it's not like you just add 10 to your account, and then magically, you get 10. Bitcoins not like that, you got to work with each transaction as if it was, you know, digital cash, and work with digital signatures and stuff like that. So it was a lot, it was a lot of learning. And I had to figure out how to do that all on my own, and there wasn't much support material at the time, because the early days of Bitcoin. So that was about maybe 2013. So there wasn't that many resources online and just with enough effort, you know, after about three, four months actually banged up the whole prototype myself. Interestingly enough, the reason why I actually had to do the coding myself and I couldn't pay anybody but aside from the fact that would be expensive. Was I always found to have trouble with outsourcers, specifically programmers. I mean, they they pad their hours, they they lag on their schedules, you know, the you have to kind of trust them almost blindly. I mean, if you think it's hard to find a good mechanic, or a good or a good doctor, good luck finding a good programmer, it's even worse. Okay. So so so to find really good and skilled people for that that'll work, especially within your you know, budget was impossible and that's why My mom told me she said I was asking about I said, I don't know who I could find for this. She says, Well, why don't you just do it yourself? And I sat there and I thought about it. And I said, Okay. Interestingly enough, when I did the work, I was actually in North Dakota, negative 50. Below, you know, with the windchill, I was living in a trailer at the time to save money. And so imagine I'm living in a trailer in that in that weather. And I didn't just pick up and go, I had like, maybe nine space heaters, I had one space heater for my waterline because I didn't park right over it, which was a mistake. And then I had three under the skirting, I had three inside I had and I had one small space heater to keep the ammonia on my fridge from freezing, which I didn't even know that was a thing, which was hilarious, because that actually happened like my fridge froze. But that can happen because they put those on the outside of the trailer. So I actually needed a tiny little space heater for that. And and that's in addition to propane. Now granted, I was living quite comfortably with all that, but I just siphon the electricity off of the lot next to me, luckily, they were giving they were comping us on electricity, which they stopped doing later. But yeah, so I mean, it was brutal. And I had to do all that work was actually so hard, that end up losing some weight, and I had neglected my health. And I realized, oh, I have to I have to, I have to nurse myself back to health. And so I I called my parents and went out and visited them. And I said, Hey, you know, you got to cook for me for like a month and, and I just did whatever I had to put weight on at that point. I just grabbed some ensure whatever and had a bunch of Michael Hingson 36:33 them. So put on my way. So one of the things that comes one of the things that comes to mind is what motivated you to do so much self teaching of yourself. What? What was that that instilled that in you? Because clearly, you're a very curious person. I think you've alluded to some of it, but you're a very curious person. And you are not at all afraid to teach yourself and try things. How did you really get that way? Exactly? Was that from the chess? Or where is that from? David Zimbeck 37:01 Um, yes, it's a good question. I guess it was it. I mean, some of that has to obviously come directly from somebody's soul. They just have to be somebody who, who seeks, you know, who seeks who seeks knowledge who seeks who seeks truth, obviously, that's part of it, then the second part is going to be like, when you seek truth, you're going to question some of the things that you're taught, like, if the school is telling you something, you don't necessarily want to accept it blindly. You know, a student, a student would be in a class, I really can't stand how modern schools are run, for example, kids will just sit in a chair for eight hours a day listening to his teacher just literally lecture to them. And they essentially accept everything at face value, including including the sciences, which is a huge mistake. Because technically, science, the root of science is actually in replication. See, science isn't supposed to be a dictate or a mandate. Science isn't support. We're currently living under a scientific dictatorship, actually, it's totally autocratic and bad. It's no better than that, you know, people are always getting angry about old religious fanaticism when when we lived under religious fanatics, but actually, ironically, Science, Science, Science can become a fanatical cult as well, because especially because people don't actually check it. So we are under this illusion that people check all of our science properly. And in my research, because I wanted to make the world better, I ended up realizing that a lot of that's actually not the case. Most of our sciences is is horribly flawed, in fact, kind of crazy, to be honest. When people believe in you know, relativity, which is essentially time travel, they believe in you no matter bending space, how do you bend space? It's like nothing, there's nothing there. How do you bend it? So I mean, there's people don't even ask, like, fundamental questions. And so when I started to do that I started ended up really cherishing the ability to do research. And, and that's kind of how I got in, I got involved into self teaching, which is I realized, that was actually old adages to this even, even in, you know, for example, in the Bible, they'll say, you know, Prove all things, but it wasn't all it was on all the religions, people understood that in order to properly understand a concept, you have to be able to repeat it. And science is not really effective, unless I can sit down with tools, you know, and check the information, you know what I mean? So, so I think when you have that amount of rigor in your approach to anything, anything, let it be business, you know, of course, a scientific field, could even be programming. Essentially, you have to learn to do it yourself. And if you don't learn to do it yourself, you're gonna rely on somebody else to do it for you. And that's even more dangerous in programming where you're working with other people's money. Like, do I really want to be responsible for other people losing money because somebody that I hired didn't do the job properly? I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's a nightmare. If I don't have the ability to audit my own code, then it's good for nothing. I mean, how How am I gonna be able to put so much of other people's money on the line when you're dealing with financial systems? And that's a huge difference from when you're working in Bitcoin versus any other field. Because, yeah, granted, you're working in another field, like you're, you're flipping burgers, you screw up, okay, nobody's life's on the line, okay, you just, you know, you fix it and you move on. But that's not the case with financial systems with financial systems, if you screw up, you could be looking at people losing millions, if not hundreds of millions, in fact, billions, which has happened many times in the Bitcoin industry, because of absolute negligence, has to do with lack of auditing, lack of self teaching, lack of rigor, lack of discipline to a field, which is actually scientific, people don't see the cryptography industry as a scientific field, because they assume that programs just work, they just assume apps just work you get in the car, and it just goes, but that's not the case, the amount of work that goes into making the cargo that making the app work, in fact, is that requires quite a bit of ingenuity. And there's no end to which a person can self teach, which also would bring us back to humility. Because if you, if you want to be able to actually excel in anything, you have to you have to have that because a lot of the times you're gonna have to take all the notions that you have, tear them down, throw them out, and try to replace them with something better, regardless of what the modern dogma is, you could like I said, you could have the whole world believing things one way, but it but if they don't properly question it, that's their problem. And if one person comes in and starts to question it, true, they might not get the media attention, they might not get the traction, but they still might be right. And that's the thing. Truth is objective, thank God, because Because Because of that, we have the ability to check for ourselves. And so self teaching is absolutely critical. And I think that if anything was to be taught in schools, that should be the first thing, which is teaching children how to research, teaching them how to question teaching them how to be skeptics, and, and, you know, teaching, of course, I think some some some strong spiritual concepts about about how to how to truly care about truth and how to pursue it. Michael Hingson 41:59 So that gets back to something that we have a couple of things that you talked about in comments that you made that I want to want to go back to one, let's talk about science a little bit, you're right, about being able to replicate. So Einstein created the theory of relativity, general and, and specific relativity. But again, I think that with people like him with people who've created scientific theories, they're trying to create explanations for what they see. And they have created theories that explain observations that they've seen, you said, relativity is about time travel well, relativity is more about the speed of light, if it is a constant, which the theory currently says that it is. But it's also about what information you get as you are traveling less than the speed of light, and what happens to you when you travel faster than the speed of light. We also know physicists also will tell you that the expectation is at some time, there will be a theory that will come along that will explain more of what we understand today. It's like classical mechanics moved into quantum mechanics and relativity, which will go into something else. But I think that people are trying to find explanations for the observations that they make. Well, and unfortunately, some of it they can't replicate, you know, because they can only see what they can see. But anyway, go ahead. Well, so. David Zimbeck 43:33 So yeah, this is, if you don't know, I mean, this is a real can of worms. It is a subject and it may be outside of the scope of this podcast, but I'd be happy, I'd be happy to talk about it. Essentially, it's amazing how many assumptions are made in terms of of our scientific rigor in regards to these fields are purely theoretical. Relatively, relativity is not, relativity is not a proven concept at all. Neither is quantum mechanics. They're they're very theoretical. And in fact, I would argue that there are three even potentially lies even malicious ones. And I can explain a little bit as to why. So first of all, quantum mechanics was developed in response to things like the double slit experiment, which essentially debunked the idea of, for example, the electron molecule, because previous beliefs about physics, especially with chemistry, was to consider that like things like light was actually the behavior of a gas or a fluid, which they called the ether. So they felt that how do you have a wave without resistance, you know, you can't you can't have a wave without resistance waves happen because there's, there's there's pressure and pressures trying to equalize. Essentially, if you have a glass of water, you stir it, you get a wave, but how do you have a wave or an oscillating wave of light without it moving through any medium and they constantly abstract these things and they create these Really bizarre abstractions of the mind as if, as if light and gravity are just all in this other world that doesn't exist in our main physical world, but I hate to break it to them. stuff is stuff, you can't have energy without it being something, it's got to be something. So there, Michael Hingson 45:15 which is back to the comment, aspect, right, which gets back to the comment that. And I'm appreciate what you say. But which gets back to the whole point of they're, they're not explaining everything yet. And there is there's a lot more that we don't understand. David Zimbeck 45:36 I'm arguing that it actually is explainable. It's very explainable, and it's actually something can be properly physically modeled. And in fact, we had scientists before a current scientists that already had very good models for this. Not Not perfect, but good. For example, okay, so Tesla Heaviside, Maxwell, doesn't matter who you bring up any of these major scientists, pre you know, Einsteinian stuff, they actually all believed in the ether. So they believe that light was the movement of fluid, which would mean that they did not believe in atomic theory. Okay, so the major flaw in atomic theory is not so much with the proton, the model of a proton, which is fine, you know, you could argue protons, a shell that could fill and release fluid or something along these lines. But an electron, you see, the issue was having one electron for each protons. So they essentially say that the atom is essentially empty, it's completely empty space. And then there's just a single electron that that model should have gone, gone away. Tesla couldn't stand it. He thought it was crazy. He thought it was like, what you call it, you know, the emperor has no clothes. You ever heard that story? Yeah, so there. Yeah. So I mean, kind of like the emperor has no clothes. Essentially, there's all these people believing in these strange theories is actually completely complete nonsense. The idea is, is that how could it how can how can an atom be truly empty, you have the movement of matter, okay. And so you have to have the most subtle matter. So essentially, when you have the movement of electrons, you know, that should be cool. You know, atoms shouldn't be empty, they should be mostly full. And that would better describe like, for example, light behaves like a wave, it doesn't behave like a particle, okay? It never did. And in fact, when you had things like the double slit experiment, it proved that light was a wave, unequivocally completely proved that light is a wave, this debate should have been over. But what happened was, and this has to do with introspection, our modern scientists had so much arrogance, that they couldn't admit that perhaps the model of the electric of the electron and the Taunton, atomic theory was wrong. Because they couldn't admit it, they decided to create whatever math they could, it didn't matter if the electron had to travel through time, like Fineman proposed, it didn't matter if the electrons bumping into possible versions of itself and creating wave like patterns through different timelines. I mean, these people are crazy, they'll do anything to justify the theory of the electron to make it seem like a wave without it being a wave. But if you want it to be a wave, I have a better idea. Next, the idea of the electron and just say that the atom is full, it's filled, it's filled with fluid of subtle, subtle, subtle fluids moving in and out of it, it's just the changing of pressure and stuff like that. And you essentially you get, get a much a much better model for for our modern physics than then what we what we used to have, are what we have currently, sorry, I'm saying what we had prior to this was actually a better model. And in fact, if we had applied it, even today to modern computer models, I think we would find it to be much, much better. I think it explained our physics better, I think it explained our chemistry better. And, yeah, and so so essentially, it's just a misunderstanding of the behavior of solids, liquids and gases, and to the dismissal of the fact that they can be much, much more subtle. And, you know, then the hard then the hard matter, like, you know, the protons, new elements and stuff like that. And essentially, underestimating the fact that, you know, that we have we had it, we had a model, we had an answer for it, we believe that these things will wave because they remember the movement of mediums, they were the movement of fluids, you know, that when you see light, you're essentially looking at the movement of a gaseous kind of fluid almost, because when the when the flu is disturbed, just like, you know, the waves in the ocean, you know, a wave pattern is generated, because there's collision, and there's competing for pore space and pressure. And so then when you have collision, then you have, you know, a wave pattern. And when you have a wave pattern, you know, you can interpret it and all this other stuff. So it makes perfect sense. It fits within our physics, but the modern physics actually, they they literally say that, like light will come from nowhere, the electron produces the light, and then it just vanishes like, like, they just make things up the quantum theories, and I don't and I'll probably get some flack for saying all this. But essentially, the quantum theories rely on things like time travel, but you got to also have to look at it like this, like time travel or adding any type of you know, as you're, for example, as your speed increases, you, you approach the speed of light, you know, then all of a sudden time slows down which is which is just a real sad theory, in my opinion, because what it's basically essentially saying As mathematically, it's saying something mathematically, it's saying, If my experiments don't match the results, then I will travel backwards in time, and I will fix them. Essentially, it's, it's the equivalent of wanting to travel back in time and go ahead and fix errors in your in your results. But you see, science is not about taking theories and trying to force everything into your theory. Science is about measurement. And that's it. You look out, you measure, you report, you measure, you report, you don't start inventing ideas about time travel, just because you know, a certain a certain experiment doesn't quite fit quite fit your model, there's always a very logical explanation as to why these things are the way they are. One easy one would just be that light's not a constant. David Zimbeck 50:45 In light isn't really a constant anyway, because the medium in which in which you see light, if it was dependent upon the movement of a gas, or a fluid, in like the ether than in the in the medium in which you would see it, you know, that would make sense that it would change depending on what it passes through. For example, when you have light passing through water, okay, it slows down because there's increased refraction, when you have light passing through a gas, it may be different, actually, light light doesn't factor very in speed quite a bit based on the medium that is passing through, because it's a misunderstanding, when you look at light that they think light is the movement of photons, when actually lights just simply could be just the medium of a of a gaseous kind of, you know, body kind of like the ether, there was a belief that the ether was actually debunked, but actually, that was false, because there's like I think was a, there was a Mickelson Morley experiment. And there was also the segment, Segment experiment, I believe that the one one of them caused a lot more problems for them than the other, because one of them was just looking for ether drag. But the other one was looking for actually, just in general, this the idea that the ether was there, and I think they had more, don't quote me on this, you might have to double check, but I think it was the sag neck experiments caused them as so many problems. So you can see, even when you look it up all the patch work that they had to do. And then of course, they had to invoke relativity, again, I think in order to deal with these problems, because they couldn't they couldn't fit it into their model, because their model is that week. But ironically, the simpler model is, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go so far down this, but it's such an interesting topic. Because no, no about it. But But this model essentially is the movement is basically the behavior of fluid dynamics, which is something we already understand. It makes sense. We can apply it, we can model it, we can use it in computers, we don't have to go with all these fantastical quantum mechanics, you know, type theories. And this is just an example of kind of some of the stuff. You Michael Hingson 52:38 know, let me ask you another question that really, let me ask you another question that I'm really curious about, you made the comment earlier. And I think that there's probably some some merit to it that a lot of people don't grow up or are very moral, and we don't have the moralities, and so on that we really ought to have. If I understood your right, my question is, how do we teach that? How do we get people back into a moral or more ethical and a moral compass kind of a track? David Zimbeck 53:09 Well, you know, they always say a good teacher is a good student. Right. And I mean, I think that once one's parents, and schools and institutions, and people start to understand how far they fallen, I think that'll be a very important moment of redemption, because then they'll realize that things are getting out of hand, which they are already. I mean, we can see all over the world, things are really out of hand, and they've been so for a while, but seems that each generation, it seems to get worse. We've mentioned earlier, you know, about laws, you know, I told you were how we have, you know, millions of potentially millions of laws. But that can't possibly be right, because that can't follow a moral compass. How can you expect somebody to be to be beholden to a million laws? You know, how does even a person know what all the laws actually are? In fact, quite frequently, the judge doesn't even know what the law is. The lawyers have to go to school for 10 years or higher, five, 510 years to just figure out what the law is, heck, even my real estate, when I had to study for my real estate license, I had like 10 books, you know, which were super thick, like four or 500 pages each just to teach me the law. I mean, this is this is crazy, in my opinion, because the truth of the matter is, is actually morality is quite simple. And, you know, you know, you don't kill you don't cheat, right? You don't, you don't lie to people. You don't, you don't do so you don't force anybody to do anything. You know, you don't force them to do your do your bidding. I mean, how hard is it? I mean, there's not that I mean, there's not that many things. Interestingly enough, lying is one of the least criminalized laws. What concepts excuse me, it's criminalized when there's financial loss sometimes, but tends to be a slap on the wrist. When you have large scale fraud in the banking system and stuff that costs people billions of dollars, you don't see the heads of case or Goldman Sachs going to jail, they pay a fine and they move on. If you see pharmaceutical companies, knowingly giving people things that are going to kill them, like drugs that should have been recalled or whatever, you don't see them going to jail, they get a slap on the wrist and then move on. And in fact, they lobby for legal immunity. So this just goes to show you how nonsensical the law is and how immoral the law actually is. And actually, I find that each year, the law moves further and further away from morality becoming completely immoral to where morality ends up being. Breaking the law actually, there's there's a there's a thing that says, when freedom is outlawed, when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free. So it's it's interesting to look at it from that perspective. And of course, I'm what I'm arguing is not to do anything bad. Actually, ironically, I'm arguing to do things that are good. But that's the thing, like just because something is legal. In fact, it could mean that it's actually a bad thing. You know, like there's a lot of legalized forms of atrocities, for example, like I told you the immunities that some of the drug companies get for things that for things that they do to people, knowingly, by the way, so, you know, so yeah, so I mean, I think when you look at it from that perspective, personally, I'm a minimalist, I think that the amount of laws that a government society should have should fit on a few sheets of paper, you know, like, if I can read the law in a single evening, then I, it's probably acceptable. But if it takes me 10 years of schooling, to figure out what the law is, then I think there's a big problem with the law. And I think it has a big problem with the way in which children are taught and raised. And I think that they should be taught to understand basically, the root concepts of what morality actually is all about. Michael Hingson
Hurricane Wilma made landfall as a Category 3 system near Key West, and later near Everglades City, Florida On October 24, 2005. Wilma had earlier made landfall on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 4 system. Wilma, the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, reached a low pressure of 26.04 inches, surpassing the previous Atlantic record holder of Gilbert. Wilma, the first Atlantic storm to use the letter “W” formed as a Tropical Depression southwest of Jamaica on October 15th, becoming a hurricane on October 18th and later becoming the 5th Category 5 hurricane of the season. Wilma produced a storm surge of 4' to 8', flooded portions of the Keys dropped 10 tornadoes over Florida and yielded 3” to 7” of rain across Florida. Wilma directly was attributed to 5 deaths in Florida, knocked power out to 98 percent of South Florida and produced an estimated $12.2 billion in damage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
It would be 15 years until another season would have a W-named storm – Tropical Storm Wilfred in 2020. Hurricane Wilma was the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, and was part of the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, where 3 of the top ten most intense Atlantic hurricanes took place: including also #4 Rita and #7 Katrina. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AccuWeather Daily brings you the top trending weather story of the day - every day.
Hurricane Wilma made landfall as a Category 3 system near Key West, and later near Everglades City, Florida On October 24, 2005. Wilma had earlier made landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 4 system. Wilma, the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, reached a low pressure of 26.04 inches, surpassing the previous Atlantic record holder of Gilbert. Wilma, the first Atlantic storm to use the letter “W” formed as a Tropical Depression southwest of Jamaica on October 15th, becoming a hurricane on October 18th and later becoming the 5th Category 5 hurricane of the season. Wilma produced a storm surge of 4’ to 8’, flooded portions of the Key’s dropped 10 tornadoes over Florida and yielded 3” to 7” of rain across Florida. Wilma directly was attributed to 5 deaths in Florida, knocked power out to 98 percent of South Florida and produced an estimated $12.2 billion in damage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
15 years ago this week, South Florida was devastated by Hurricane Wilma.
Hurricane Wilma was the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, and was part of the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, where 3 of the top ten most intense Atlantic hurricanes took place: including also #4 Rita and #7 Katrina.
Hurricane Allen was a rare and extremely powerful Cape Verde hurricane that struck the Caribbean, eastern and northern Mexico, and southern Texas in August 1980. The first named storm and first tropical cyclone of the 1980 Atlantic hurricane season, it was the fifth most intense Atlantic Hurricane on record in terms of barometric pressure, behind Hurricane Rita, the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, Hurricane Gilbert, and Hurricane Wilma. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Craig Fugate, the former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President Barack Obama and former Florida Director for the Emergency Management Division under Governor Jeb Bush, joins the Carolina Weather Group to provide his insight into the ongoing response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic - and to share stories from his career responding to weather and natural disasters. Craig was the first to to use the "Waffle House Index" and provides insight into how the informal FEMA tracker came to be. In his career, Craig coordinated the emergency response to storms such as Hurricane Charley, Hurricane Frances, Hurricane Ivan, Hurricane Jeanne, Hurricane Dennis, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Wilma, Hurricane Matthew, and Hurricane Sandy. Craig provides his insight into how we can prepare for a 2020 hurricane season simultaneously occurring during the coronavirus pandemic. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/carolinaweather/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/carolinaweather/support
What does strong crisis leadership look like? What makes a strong crisis leader? How do you develop a strong crisis management team? What role does emotional intelligence play in crisis leadership? In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser, along with Sr. Consultant Jenn Otremba and Consultant Bray Wheeler talk about crisis leadership and their experiences coming up in this field. Topics discussed include emotional intelligence, crisis leadership skill sets, how to train & develop new crisis leaders, the Harvard National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI) program, educational and learning opportunities for crisis leaders, and more. Some relevant previous episodes and blog posts include: Top Business Continuity & Crisis Management Executive Programs Managing Uncertainty Episode #5: Leading during an Active Shooter Situation //static.leadpages.net/leadboxes/current/embed.js Episode Transcript Bryan Strawser: Hello and welcome to the Managing Uncertainty Podcast this is Bryan Strawser, Principal and CEO at Bryghtpath. Joining me today are - Jenn Otremba: Hi, this is Jenn Otremba, Consult at Bryghtpath. Bray Wheeler: Hi, I'm Bray Wheeler, Consultant at Bryghtpath. Bryan Strawser: So this is our long form episode for the week and we're going to be diving into a round-table discussion about Crisis Leadership. Since the three of us are here, a few weeks back I had done a solo episode on our podcast about characteristics of strong Crisis Leaders, and we'll link that in the show notes but I think we want to talk just more openly and with a couple of different opinions about what we see as strong and not strong Crisis Leaders, and some of the things we've learned along the way. I think between the three of us we've got a good thirty-plus years of experience in Crisis Management, and we may have learned a few things along the way. Jenn Otremba: One or two. Bryan Strawser: One or two things along the way. So what makes a good crisis leader? What are good examples of crisis leadership? We start there. Bray Wheeler: What makes a good crisis leader? What demonstrates crisis leadership? I think it's a lot of things. I think some of it comes a little more naturally to people. Some of it's learned for folks, but I think some of the key things are really having that ability to kind of see the incident for what it is, and not get too ... not overact to it, not get too flustered by it, kind of see it as an opportunity to kind of jump in and manage the situation for what it is, and make sure that you're trying to do the right things. And make sure that you're bringing the other people along with you, because it's not a solo sport by any means. Jenn Otremba: That's a good point, it's not a solo sport at all so I think it's developing that team around you to work through a situation. It's being careful to not get too emotionally involved with what is going on. I think it's like you said it's really keeping a level head as you're managing through the situation. And then I think also recognizing when you're beginning to escalate or when the people around you are beginning to escalate and get stressed and separate yourself or separate others as necessary. So it's really being able to read the room and understand kind of where everybody is at - that's crisis leadership to me. Bray Wheeler: That self-awareness is a huge piece of it. To your point I think it's being able to read the room, being able to read yourself, knowing when you're tired, knowing when you're stressed, knowing when you need a break, knowing when somebody else needs on too, to be able to take those intentional pauses because that's how you're going to be able to get through that stuff, is to be able to recognize- Jenn Otremba: Especially a long term, on-going situation, right? Bryan Strawser: I kind of start with just the thought about the person of the crisis leader, and I think you've both kind of hinted at this, and I'm just going to go back to the kind of elements of Mettle Leadership that the Harvard National Preparedness Leadership Institute folks have researched and talked about and that's that Crisis Leadership starts with the person of the leader. It starts with that understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, or opportunities, as we like to used to say. But what do you do well? And then how do you build a team around you to compensate for the things that you don't do well? Like I'm not the ... I'm well aware that I'm not the most empathetic person in the world, but I could build a team around me to do those things. To add that to the tool box in a crisis. Bryan Strawser: But I think it is understanding kind of what are the things that you do and don't understand. I think the second is just, the situational leadership aspect that comes with being the leader of a crisis that somebody's got to have their head above the clouds looking around and understanding kind of where you're at and what you know and what you don't know and "What you don't know you don't know", to quote Donald Rumsfeld, and understanding how you need to fill those gaps to really understand the impact of what's going on. It's that need to be able to see the big picture. Bray Wheeler: It's easy to go down a rabbit hole really fast. Jenn Otremba: Really fast. Bray Wheeler: In a crisis. Bryan Strawser: I mean look at ... we always use that example of Japan with the 2011 tsunami- Bray Wheeler: Yes. Oh my gosh, yes. Bryan Strawser: Earthquake, nuclear issue where Japan was really really good at all of those things taken as individual crisis situations. Give them all three at the same time, on a scale that the world had never seen, and they didn't see it. They didn't see the issue for what it was and it cost them. It was really a failure of crisis leadership. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: And it practically brought the government down. From there I think it's the crisis leadership aspect of the leader understanding that they've got a couple of constituencies that they have to communicate and work with. And that's ... they've got to lead and communicate up within their organization, or if they are the top person in the organization that now they're interfacing with executives or political leaders, elected leaders, who look to you to know the subject matter, but they're dealing with all of these other things and you've got to ... how do you communicate the right message? Bryan Strawser: There's leading the Silo, leading the team through the crisis and then the ability to lead across and I think that's the most important it's the connectivity of effort, leading across multiple Silos and some people just don't see that. Jenn Otremba: I think it even comes before that with the ... I think that you had mentioned earlier about developing the team and picking the right team around you, and I think training the team as well so that they're prepared to respond to incidents and it's not shooting at the hip for every situation. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative).. Jenn Otremba: I also find it interesting that you pointed out that you were not the empathy in the room - Bryan Strawser: Oh hell no. Jenn Otremba: Which, we're not either Bray, so who plays the empathy here? Bryan Strawser: Marie. Jenn Otremba: Marie, [laughs] Bryan Strawser: I think you're really empathetic. Bray Wheeler: Not really. Jenn Otremba: Can you? Bryan Strawser: Yeah, I can try. If you've ever taken ... but I knew this because our previous employer put me in a situation to take an assessment tool, the Herman Brain Dominance Instrument, and it told me that I didn't have any empathy. I mean I literally have no empathy on that scale. But it was interesting to me as a leader to see that, and this is long before I worked in Crisis Management, but to look at that and go, "Well I'm going to have to find some ways to compensate for that. I'm going to have to have some people around me that have this". Jenn Otremba: Yeah, I think it's huge to know yourself, and know how you may not know how you're going to react in a crisis situation, we see this all the time especially in the military, you don't know how you're going to react in those overly stressful situations that are unheard of to the normal population but you may know yourself to know at least those types of things. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jenn Otremba: That you're not the person to go to for that but you know the people on your team that are. Bray Wheeler: Well I think it's one of those things to where ... excuse me ... I don't think that ... Bryan to your point ... I don't think that that you're not an empathetic person, but it's probably not your natural inclination to go the - Bryan Strawser: No, you're right. I have to think about it. Bray Wheeler: And that's those traits in a Crisis Leader that they need to be aware of, I am that person and I could be that person outside of work or outside of this situation but my natural instinct is not to go there it's to go here. Which isn't wrong, but to know those things and to know those things about ... to your guys' point to build that team around you ... where they go there. And then that kind of- Bryan Strawser: That helps me go there. Bray Wheeler: - And that kind of support. Bryan Strawser: Yeah I mean, to your point, I had to train myself that when things happen, that my first questions were, what is the impact on the team? And how are we doing, how is the team doing? Bray Wheeler: Yeah. Bryan Strawser: And that team question is two-fold. How are the folks at the sight or the sights that are impacted, like how are they doing, but, and I think both of you have brought this up, it's also how the crisis team is doing, right? Bryan Strawser: My team and the other folks that came there to work on the crisis, how are they doing? Because you get into four or five days of 16-hour a day, 24-hour day response, and you're dealing with ... you've got employees that have been killed or injured and families impacted, homes lost - Jenn Otremba: Or you don't even know where everyone is at. Bryan Strawser: Right, yeah. Jenn Otremba: I think of like the Boston shooter situation. Trying to account for people and trying to get creative on how we could find out who was where. And that lasted for days. That was stressful for everyone. Bryan Strawser: That was a week. Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: Almost a week. Although really only about a 48 hour period that was crazy. Bray Wheeler: And I think, back to your point, that a Crisis Leader kind of sitting in the middle of all those different tiers, the across, the up, the down, it's their disposition that probably matters most. Especially in the probably first 24, 48 hours of ... they set the tone. Bryan Strawser: They do. Bray Wheeler: Their disposition of how they react, how they're kind of constructing, how they're seeing the scope of the incident matters to how people are reacting to it. Because if you're frazzled, you're overcharged, certainly the people underneath you are going to act that way, people next to you are going to maybe be asking questions, and the people above you are going to be asking questions too of, are you the right person or do I need to be doing more? Or, is this a bigger deal, or ah it's not that big of a deal, you're overreacting. So I think it's ... to your earlier point, Jenn, that level-headedness, that disposition, that calm in the storm. Bryan Strawser: Yeah, you can't be otherwise. You've got to find ... I mean, first of all, this isn't for everybody. Crisis leadership isn't for everybody. Bray Wheeler: No. Bryan Strawser: But it's ... you have got... there is some of the ability here to kind of train somebody to do some of this, but you've got to ... you have to portray a calm, in-control persona even if it's not ... even if you're not at the time. I mean you might have a thousand things going on in your head, you better be talking about one. Jenn Otremba: Yeah. Bray Wheeler: Right. Jenn Otremba: I think, and some of the things that we've done in the past and our different experiences, is we've had teams that were large enough to where we didn't have to be that direct leader each time. We could take turns as to who, okay you got this one, all right then I will step back and play the other role of taking care of everyone while you're managing through that. So I think for us, we were lucky enough in a lot of different situations that we've worked into where we had other leaders that we could lean on to, you know this time isn't my turn, this time is my turn to be the follower. So I think being a good leader, demonstrating crisis leadership, is a big part of that is also being a good follower when it's not your turn to be the leader. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: A friend of mine was the Police Incident Commander during the 35W bridge collapse here in Minneapolis back in 2007. Jenn Otremba: Yeah, I think so. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: I was not in Crisis Management at the time, I was on my little hiatus doing other things within Corporate Security at our previous employer. But he was the ... I mean the fire department and the Sheriff's department had Incident Command because this was on the river. But the Minneapolis Police were a significant part of the response. They had hundreds of people down there and they get their Command Post set up in the Red Cross parking lot there, overlooking the Mississippi. Bryan Strawser: And they had trained this particular Lieutenant for a couple of years to be like one of the top, he was going to be the next guy to run this kind of stuff when my friend retired. And they had a couple of incidents where he had kind of been frazzled and had kind of yelled and snapped at some people but apparently just went off on somebody a couple of hours into the response and my friend relieved him and sent him home. And that was the end of his time in, kind of large scale incident management in the public sector. Went on to a great law enforcement career, I don't want to impugn the guy's reputation, but this was not for him. He did not have the mindset to do this because you can't act like that. You've got to be calm and controlled and in control of the situation - you have to demonstrate crisis leadership. Bray Wheeler: Oh yeah. It doesn't make you a bad person or a bad professional it just ... it's almost a calling. You have to naturally kind of be inclined to put yourself in those situations, want to be put in those situations, know yourself well enough to know that that is what you're going to do ... you're going to kind of go into the fire so to speak. Jenn Otremba: I think sometimes it can be important to acknowledge to that, while you may portray good traits as a good Crisis Leader one day, another day you may have a lot of personal things goin on- Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jenn Otremba: - Or your mind isn't there and that's not your day. So even though today may not be the best day for you when the 35W Bridge collapsed, they may be a great leader in another situation. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jenn Otremba: When their mind was in a different place. Bryan Strawser: Or they're more comfortable with that kind of an incident. Jenn Otremba: Exactly. Bray Wheeler: That's true. Bryan Strawser: You know, put me in a cyber incident and I'm probably not as calm as, you know, a natural disaster or something else but I think it's that comfortability factor too is huge too. But it's also, to your point, having a bad day. Jenn Otremba: Yeah. Bryan Strawser: You've got to be able to recognize, I'm having a bad day. Jenn Otremba: You really do. And then I think- Bryan Strawser: It's not my day. Or, I have to know enough to set that aside if I'm the only one that's on the docket. So, I kind of stepped in. Jenn Otremba: I think you may also have to recognize as a, maybe a secondary leader, that your primary leader is having a bad day and they may have to be removed like you said Bryan. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Jenn Otremba: And as a good leader you have to recognize, somebody is telling you that it's probably true. So step down and move aside and let somebody else take over at least for a while. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And certainly, I mean lots of responses are a 24/7 thing. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Bryan Strawser: Your own fatigue is a big issue, the fatigue of your team I think, to your point about rotating and shifting people in and out. It's necessary. I mean I remember when I first got into Crisis Management full-time in 2005, come around Labor Day Hurricane Katrina hits, followed by Hurricane Wilma, and Hurricane Rita, or that's out of order. Hurricane Rita, and then Hurricane Wilma and I don't think I had a day off for 60 days, 58, 59 days. Because we didn't have, at the time we didn't have the resources and we didn't have the structure that we would have later on. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: When we built those capabilities out. That was not a healthy environment for the four or five of us that was carrying the load for this, but we didn't have anything else. That was it. Jenn Otremba: Well I think of... to your point there... working in consulting I've learned a lot about working with smaller organizations that don't have built out teams quite like we did and we've had a lot of different organizations reach out to us for specific needs, you know maybe it's just to understand or be better at Crisis Communications in that moment because you don't have that expertise. And I think there's no shame in asking for help outside of your organization as well. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jenn Otremba: Whether that be a consultant or even just people you know. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative).. Bray Wheeler: Well I think it gets back to one of the mantra's we use too when you need a friend- Bryan Strawser: It's too late to make one. Jenn Otremba: Yeah. Bray Wheeler: And that goes ... it's not just external partners and law enforcement or EMS, it's the internal partners. It's having those teams, it's having that buy in, it's having those relationships in place that ... if you are a one, two person Crisis Management shop you need those other players in the organization to know that, yeah my other hat is Crisis. When something happens, I am shifting it to that. I am helping. And the organization knows that too. It's not just ... you know that HR person wanting to. HR knows that that's ... yep something happened and I'm shifting into that because that's what the company needs, or that's what the organization needs. Bryan Strawser: Well, I think the partnership thing is ... if you think about partnerships with other organizations, I think it's important to look at .... there's a two-way street there that develops over time in that relationship or that partnership. It's not just about transactional nature of needing something in a crisis. I remember during ... there were tornadoes that came through Minneapolis ... gosh I don't remember when, 2009, 2010. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: They went into north Minneapolis- Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: Caused a lot of damage, right? Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: Remember this? Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: It was a big deal. So, I wasn't impacted, I was in charge of Crisis Management at the time for a Fortune 50 Company, we were not impacted, but on my own accord I picked up the phone and called Minneapolis' Deputy of Chief of Police, and said "Hey," ... and it was like eight o'clock at night I think when this thing happened. I'm like "Hey, Chief, just calling to see if you need anything. Do you need anything?" And he goes, "Hold on." He was in the Command Center. "Does anybody want anything?". But they were okay, they had a great response. Bryan Strawser: Fast forward to 2012, we had an active shooter situation that we were all three involved in, that was across the street from our offices, and for three or four hours we didn't really know what was really going on. And it turned out to be a construction noise that occurred. This guy, at this point, is retired from Minneapolis PD. Calls me, just to see, one do you need anything, two, do you want to talk? And this was that night. Do you want to talk about, kind of what went down that day? Knowing that like, we thought people were in harm's way and it turned out to be a false alarm. But we were all concerned about that. That's the kind of partnership I think you develop over time, it's not just about Big Company helping Big Police Department and vice-versa. Bray Wheeler: It's that community piece of it, too. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bray Wheeler: That communal, not only broad scale but just that Crisis Community of people who are in that .... kind of in the weeds all the time with it. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I do ... and then I want to shift and talk about how do you kind of train, or get educated on some this but, during the 2017 Hurricane Season, which was such a monumental event for you know, four months. Between Harvey and Irma and Maria, I was at Bryghtpath but we were supporting ... I was serving as Interim Chief Security Officer for a University that was impacted in all three of those. And it was a pretty stressful time because they didn't have the resources that we had had previously. We've since, you know, they built some things after this. But I went to the Harvard NPLI program, and it ... you know I got an email in the middle of the Hurricane Season from Dr. Lenny Marcus, the Co-Director of the Program, who said, "Hey, I'm down here with the Red Cross today in Virginia, but I've been all over talking to people, and I see a lot of you as alumni making huge impact, but here are some things to remember." And kind of took us back to the things we would talk about in the program. Bryan Strawser: And I thought that was such a meaningful email to send, knowing that, God he probably had 200-250 alumni on the ground, in leadership roles, doing different things, private sector, public sector. That connectivity I think really helps as you think about how you're dealing with and working through these situations. Bryan Strawser: So how do you learn this, beyond doing it? Bray Wheeler: Practice, unfortunately. Real-life experience. Jenn Otremba: Yeah, you don't really know how you're going to react, because I know I said this before but nobody knows how they're going to react in the situation unfortunately until you're put into the situation. Jenn Otremba: I think, if you want to get into this line of work, the best place you could be is in an organization that has multiple Crisis Leaders that you can learn from. Being thrown into it where you're the only one and you've never done it before I don't think is the best place for you, that's not what I would recommend. I think it would be best to be somewhere where you can learn from other people, see different styles so that you can develop your own style. And experience those things where you're not the only point person. Bray Wheeler: Yeah. Jenn Otremba: There are obviously school programs you can go to that Academia has all kinds of options out there but that's not going to be how you learn how to actually be in the nit and gritty. Bray Wheeler: Right. Jenn Otremba: You're going to learn some basics there but- Bray Wheeler: Yeah some of the structure and fundamentals and the background - Jenn Otremba: Exactly, which is important. Bray Wheeler: And the context of all of it, but to your point, it is one of those things where you ... you have to put yourself in situations where you experience it. Whether it's, you're just kind of one of the minions, you know to help execute it. Or you're a partner, or you have some sort of an assistant role or something like that. But you almost have to be in it, watch it, observe it. Bray Wheeler: I know from my early days I was brand-new into the concept and hired in but it wasn't until the wildfires in California, '08, that it was really like, "Okay, now my feet have been wet for a little bit, for nine months or something like that, but now I understand what's going on, now I see what's happening." Bray Wheeler: And that was really eye-opening for me to be able to step into that and get a taste for ... this is full-on. And watching it play out and being able to jump in and kind of my instincts kicking into kind of know what to do, what to expect. Jenn Otremba: Yeah. One benefit too, I think for me having a pretty long career military-wise is, we in the military like to train, over train, exercise, train, exercise, exercise, train, train. And there's something to be said ...I mean, when we do it, man it is awful. But there's something to be said about having so much training behind you, so that when you're in a situation you at least have an idea, a little bit of an idea about how you can react and have some of the automatics happen right away because you don't have to go back and read again a protocol because you have memorized, "what am I going to do in this situation?". Jenn Otremba: And you work together with other members of your military unit as well so that when you're in those situations together you've worked together. Jenn Otremba: In the Civilian Sector we do the same thing where we run exercise, after exercise, after exercise. We don't do it as often, I think in the Civilian Sector as we do in the Military, but doing those over and over help to develop those sort of skills and those checklists in your mind as well. Bray Wheeler: Especially if your organization is brand-new, or the people that kind of comprise your team, however big however small, if they're new to it as well, it's the more you do it, the better relationship you have with each other, which makes whatever response you end up doing, easier. Because otherwise, you're ... everybody's flying blind or everybody's inexperienced or nobody knows and then it becomes ... you're just complicating it for yourself, you're throwing up other obstacles in your way because of you ... nobody has that experience or nobody knows how to interact with each other. Bryan Strawser: I mean I think it's fair to say, everybody's got their own learning style. Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: And we should accommodate that as we think about this but I don't think there's any substitute for experiencing this in real life. In an organization where there are people senior to you that can teach you and mentor you and kind of bring you through this, that's how all three of us kind of learned - Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: - this. At least when we started. I think exercise are great if they're realistic, and we do exercises as a company for clients and we are getting ... we've gone to the very realistic stage I think at this point in our consulting careers. Where we want it to be under pressure, we want people to feel time constraint, we want them to have to make the tough decisions. And where there is limited time and information and you've got to decide what you're going to do. I also think there's a place for the academic aspect of this which is ... there are programs you can go to and learn this. I am biased, I think the Harvard NPLI Program, because it is focused on leadership versus like, how do you structure an exercise? None of that happens there. Bray Wheeler: The nuts and bolts? Bryan Strawser: There's none of the nuts and bolts. This program is about, how do you lead in a crisis? And when you're talking about ... there's a lot of discussion of cases where ... that I think is even beyond what I saw in business school, on my M.B.A., in my M.B.A. program you read a case and then you discuss the case, and you might take action on the case in terms of talking through or writing something. Bryan Strawser: But at NPLI, when you talk about a case you bring the Principal that was involved in the case to the class and they tell the story. And you talk to them about what happened. And I think that there is no substitute for that kind of experience in terms of learning about what happened, right? They would explain how they led - what crisis leadership looked like to them. Bryan Strawser: So when we talked about managing an organization through reputational challenge we had the Director of the Secret Service, the Incumbent Director of the Secret Service come in, off the record conversation, no press contact, no sharing, and he walked us through what happened in their scandal in Cartagena, where they had agents that were hiring prostitutes and other things that went on down there, and military personnel, and others. And they got caught. So he's the Secret Service Director, how does he manage through that? Okay, so that ... I thought that was a great example of Crisis Leadership. And I agreed with many of the things he talked about doing. Right or wrong. About how they dealt with this. Bryan Strawser: But I think programs like that are great, there are other good programs in Crisis Management and Business Continuity but they're not focused on leadership. And I think what I got out of Harvard was about, here's how you should think as a leader dealing with these situations and what are the things you should look for in yourself, good or bad, and how to compensate for that as you're building the team around you. Bray Wheeler: Yeah, I think it's ... I mean, to build onto that it's that self-assessment piece that's critical. To know yourself, we talked about this earlier but just, it is important. To know those things and to know where your limits are. I think the other piece too is, there's a lot of good companies that have gone through different situations whether it's reputational, whether it's right or wrong, or tragic or not, finding those stories, finding those breakdowns, finding those reports from Harvard, from other places where they've deep dived into it and they're talking to people and reading those articles or those papers or books. You know, to at least get a sense of, how did they respond, what were they thinking about? What did they learn? What, you know, at the very minimum, I mean it's, it's that preparation. It's that. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Jenn Otremba: That's a good point. I love that actually because we spend a lot of time talking about things ...at Bryghtpath especially we talk about a lot of things that go wrong and how they manage ... and we break it down to, well how did they manage through it, what did they do, what could they have done better? So I think, to your point, that sort of, even if it's your own incident, making sure that you're running through that after action with your team so that you can get better for the next time. I think that says a lot about a leader when you're able to not only assess yourself but have your team assess you. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And we've seen this, we've seen good and bad leaders in our experience from a crisis standpoint. Bray Wheeler: Yeah. Bryan Strawser: We've seen incredibly intelligent folks who are great leaders within their organization, could not lead through a basic crisis situation because of a number of different reasons. It could be they have low kind of emotional intelligence and so they panic and they get frustrated. We've seen the "Let's debate the decision for four hours" - Bray Wheeler: Yep. Bryan Strawser: - situation. Meanwhile, you've got people in harm's way, looking to you to make a call. There's a lot of different things that we've seen but what we've run through is a pretty good example of, here's what a good Crisis Leader looks like, here's what good Crisis Leadership looks like, here's some ways to grow it within the Org. Closing thoughts? Bray? Bray Wheeler: I would say, one thing that we kind of talked about off here too is, I think it's important to remember is this isn't an opportunity for promotion. It's not an opportunity that a Crisis Leader should look to take advantage of. It's an opportunity that needs to happen for the company. You need to step into that role with some clarity and that's not about you at that point. No matter what's going on, and if does involve you or it is part of you or it is you, you should probably step aside. You know, because there is that bias coming into play, but it really isn't about you at that point it's about the organization it's about the people impact - Bryan Strawser: It's about the team. Bray Wheeler: That's where your head's got to be at. Bryan Strawser: There's my lack of empathy speaking. Bray Wheeler: It's about the team. Jenn? Jenn Otremba: I don't think I could put it any better than that, honestly. I completely agree with what you're saying. Bryan Strawser: Yeah I mean I think we've hit everything that was on my mind. I'd just end with this, that if you're the Crisis Leader in the critical moment, your team and your organization is looking for you to lead them. Lead them. Take them through the situation. Show crisis leadership. Jenn Otremba: Be the leader. Bryan Strawser: Be the leader. And if you're not the right person, find somebody that can and bring them in and put them under you. And let them lead it. Bray Wheeler: I would say too, so my final FINAL thought. Jenn Otremba: As it turns out, Bray has a lot to say. Bray Wheeler: I have a lot to say on the subject of crisis leadership. No, I think it's, to your point, if you're the designated Crisis Leader that's your opportunity to kind of step into that and lead them. That's why you're in that role. But I think if you're not in that role if you're one of the key partners, you're on the Crisis ... you know, their cross-functional team, if you're underneath that person, you're still a Crisis Leader. You still have a job to do you still have to lead your respective area, you still have to be that player. So it's also about being a Crisis Follower too where you're in it. And you're self-aware enough to know, "I'm tired, I've got to take a step back", or "I know about this, let me see what I can do to help." I think there's that designated Crisis Leader but everybody else has got to have a little bit of that too to be able to get through it. Jenn Otremba: Right, there's some responsibility for everyone on the team. But yeah, be the leader or be the follower, you know, right? Bray Wheeler: Because the culture of the team is probably what makes or breaks that response. Jenn Otremba: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Bryan Strawser: That's it for this edition of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, join us next week for our update on Current Events and News from around the World. Hope to see you then.
The day after Hurricane Wilma. Crosstalk with Hank. Phones are out in the studio so Jorge and Josh are working in the sports studio
Our podcasters were on shaky ground in this episode, but it was all good, because the topic of the moment was natural disasters. Living in Hawaii exposes you to practically everything except tornadoes, so Fern and Jamie shared their personal experiences with hurricanes and the like. Then they chose their fave natural disaster movies and TV shows. In a windy session of Who Would Win, iconic weatherman Al Roker was pitted against Mr. Kite of Pee-wee’s Playhouse fame. (It was vicious, folks.) And the tasty snack this time was smoky sriracha jerky.The Cay – by Theodore TaylorPee-wee’s Playhouse intro, including Mr. KiteAl Roker blown over by Hurricane Wilma
Dr. Randy R. Rapp is an Associate Professor of Building Construction Management Technology at Purdue University and coordinates the Disaster Restoration and Reconstruction Management concentration. He has practical experience of the impact of both natural and man-made disasters and has worked in government and commercial contexts. While with Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), he served in project controls and operations for Hurricane Katrina and materiel and logistics management for Hurricane Wilma. He was also the project controls manager and deputy program general manager for the Restore Iraqi Oil program. With Edward R. Fisk, he co-authored the Introduction to Engineering Construction Inspection (2004), contributes to redevelopment of the Certified Restorer credential for the Restoration Industry Association, and chaired the Government Affairs Committee of the Institute for Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration Certification (IICRC).
Dr. Randy R. Rapp is an Associate Professor of Building Construction Management Technology at Purdue University and coordinates the Disaster Restoration and Reconstruction Management concentration. He has practical experience of the impact of both natural and man-made disasters and has worked in government and commercial contexts. While with Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), he served in project controls and operations for Hurricane Katrina and materiel and logistics management for Hurricane Wilma. He was also the project controls manager and deputy program general manager for the Restore Iraqi Oil program. With Edward R. Fisk, he co-authored the Introduction to Engineering Construction Inspection (2004), contributes to redevelopment of the Certified Restorer credential for the Restoration Industry Association, and chaired the Government Affairs Committee of the Institute for Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration Certification (IICRC).
Rick gets the latest info on what to look for while island-hopping in Hawaii from Lonely Planet's Sara Benson, and checks in with Gary Chandler who is in Mexico updating the Moon guidebook to Cancun and Cozumel. He'll report on how well the area is recovering from Hurricane Wilma, and what visitors can expect from Mexico's top resort region. We're getting the scoop on planning escapes to Hawaii and Cancun on the next Travel with Rick Steves. For more information on Travel with Rick Steves - including episode descriptions, program archives and related details - visit www.ricksteves.com.
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