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Every Saturday, we showcase a topic important to you by rounding up the greatest highlights and clips from Level 10 Contractor's ENTIRE podcast run. This week, we cover branding. What's that you say? You already are the master of branding? Or you're too small for branding? Nonsense, on both accounts! Branding is more than your name or your logo or the bright color you wrap your service trucks in. Your brand is your promise. In Level 10 parlance, it is your Identity. It's what sets you apart and makes your company superior to the competition… and you better be sharing it in every piece of your marketing.
In Level 4 playoff action, Winneconne took on Baldwin-Woodville. Winneconne defeated Baldwin-Woodville 28-8. Tony Giordana and Dick Knapinski had the call.
In Level 4 action, Little Chute took on Columbus. Little Chute defeated Columbus 35-25. Jonathan Krause had the call.
In Level 3 action, Winneconne took on Freedom. Winneconne defeated Freedom 31-15. Tony Giordana and Dick Knapinski had the call.
In Level 1 playoff action, Kimberly took on Fond du Lac. Kimberly defeated Fond du Lac 28-21. Jonathan Krause had the call.
In Level 1 playoff action, Kimberly took on Fond du Lac. Kimberly defeated Fond du Lac 28-21. Jonathan Krause had the call.
In Level 1 playoff action, De Pere took on Neenah. De Pere defeated Neenah 28-27 in overtime. Tony Giordana and Dick Knapinski had the call.
Every Saturday, we showcase a topic important to you by rounding up the greatest highlights and clips from Level 10 Contractor's ENTIRE podcast run. This week, we cover branding. What's that you say? You already are the master of branding? Or you're too small for branding? Nonsense, on both accounts! Branding is more than your name or your logo or the bright color you wrap your service trucks in. Your brand is your promise. In Level 10 parlance, it is your Identity. It's what sets you apart and makes your company superior to the competition… and you better be sharing it in every piece of your marketing.
In this special episode of the Oracle University Podcast, Bill Lawson and Nikita Abraham chat with Peter Fernandez, Senior Director of Cloud Certification at Oracle University, about the exciting new Raise Your Game challenge. They discuss how the initiative is designed to enhance participants' skills in Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and Oracle Cloud Success Navigator. They also cover key details about the challenge, such as how to get started, who can participate, the way it is structured, and the prizes up for grabs. Raise Your Game: https://education.oracle.com/raise-your-game-saas Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started! 00:25 Bill: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Bill Lawson, Senior Director of Cloud Applications Product Management with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services. Nikita: Hi everyone! Last week, we concluded our three-part series on multicloud, and today, we're shifting gears and exploring an exciting new challenge that's been thrown down by Oracle University. To tell us all about it, we have Peter Fernandez joining us. Peter is Senior Director of Cloud Certification at Oracle University. Hi Peter! We're thrilled to have you with us today! Peter: Hi Niki, hi Bill! I'm delighted to be here. 01:02 Bill: So, Peter, let's get straight into it. What's this new challenge all about? Peter: The challenge, which we're calling Raise Your Game, is an incredible opportunity for anyone looking to gain knowledge and gain professional skills about Oracle's Fusion Cloud Applications. We launched a skills challenge on Feb 14, and it will continue until May 15, 2025. This challenge encourages you to build expertise in two key areas: Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and Oracle Cloud Success Navigator. This training is geared towards anyone who could be a student in higher ed or someone pursuing a business degree, and Oracle customers and partners who are new to Oracle's Applications or experienced consultants implementing business applications. 01:55 Nikita: And how exactly does the challenge help in building this expertise? Peter: The challenge has two levels. In Level 1, you'll need to complete an Oracle Fusion Cloud Apps Foundations course and pass the corresponding exam. These courses are designed to deepen your understanding of the technology enablers in Oracle's Fusion Cloud Applications and learn about Oracle's Modern Best Practice, or OMBP. These are extremely helpful throughout all phases in the journey when implementing and using Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications. The Foundation training itself covers a wide range of topics, including core OMBP processes, key performance metrics, implementation considerations, and technology enablers like AI, ML, mobile, and analytics. 02:49 Bill: Before we move on, Peter, can you tell us more about Oracle Modern Best Practice? We discussed it a few weeks back, but for anyone who missed that episode, it'll be nice to get a quick refresher. Peter: Sure, Bill. Implementing Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications successfully is more than just technology—it's about following best practices that drive efficiency and success and tie back to business requirements. Oracle Modern Best Practice represent years of accumulated experience, industry insights, and proven methodologies. It serves as a guiding framework for implementing efficient business processes within Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications. These best practices map the features and innovations within Oracle applications to the processes that customers perform every day, and that is key. These curated, industry-leading practices detail how the features that we have built using the most modern technologies can be leveraged to optimize operations. Having a solid grasp of an OMBP and its associated technology enablers will empower you to ensure smoother business operations and higher customer satisfaction. It will show you how to automate activities, streamline tasks, improve results, and set your team up for continued success. The goal of these courses is to make it easy for implementers, global process owners, IT teams to identify every opportunity to improve an organization's business processes with Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications. 04:33 Bill: So, getting back to Level 1, what do I earn when I complete it? Peter: When you complete this level, you'll earn a Level 1 Oracle University Learning Community badge. This recognizes that you have foundational knowledge in your chosen Fusion application. 04:48 Bill: That sounds exciting. And then there's a Level 2? Peter: There is also a Level 2 and where things get even more exciting. You're going to take your knowledge to the next level by completing the Oracle Cloud Success Navigator Essentials course and passing the associated assessment. This level in the challenge focuses on particularly applying the knowledge you gained in Level 1 where you'll explore the Oracle Cloud Success Navigator's features and functionality, and get the skills you need to lead organizations through their Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications implementation journey. 05:25 Nikita: And when I complete Level 2, I earn another badge? Peter: That's right, Niki. When you successfully complete Level 2, you'll earn a special Level 2 Oracle University Learning Community badge. The goal of Raise Your Game is to reach the Summit by completing both Level 1 and Level 2 challenges with the fastest time and the highest pass scores. Both these combined determine your position on the leaderboard and your position in the Top 500, which will be awarded separate prizes at the end of the challenge. 05:59 Nikita: So, when you're done, you'll have both theoretical and practical knowledge. And I understand that there are some fantastic prizes up for grabs? Peter: Absolutely, Niki. This not only helps with both theoretical but also practical knowledge. Learners also have a chance to be featured on the leaderboard in the Oracle University Learning Community. The leaderboard showcases the people who have achieved Level 1 and Level 2 with the fastest times and the highest scores. Along with the badges I told you about, at the end of the promotion, the top 500 people who complete both Level 1 and Level 2 with the fastest time and highest pass scores will receive an Oracle-branded cap, an Oracle Success Navigator pin, and a special Oracle University Community Success Navigator digital badge. 06:52 Bill: So, Peter, who can participate in this challenge, and are there any prerequisites? Peter: The challenge is open to anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of Oracle Cloud Applications. And while there are no strict prerequisites, a basic understanding of business concepts and some familiarity with Oracle Cloud Applications is recommended. This will ensure that you're able to make the most of the learning materials and engage with the content effectively. You can always check the program overview on the website if you have more questions about this challenge. We've got an FAQ posted there that should answer most anything you are curious about. 07:31 Bill: That's good to know, Peter. And the fact that I get started no matter my level of experience is great news, too. Peter: Absolutely, Bill. Even if you are a beginner fresh out of college, or a seasoned pro like I mentioned earlier who has been implementing Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications (or other applications) for years, I would recommend the challenge and training to you. Basically, this training is for everyone. This program provides foundational knowledge to improve the implementation approach using Oracle Modern Best Practices. Even those individuals that are certified in Cloud Applications will benefit from learning how these modern best practices fit into their work. 08:12 Nikita: Ok, Peter, I'm ready to do it. How do I get started with the challenge? Peter: That's great. The first step, of course, is to register. And you can do this by visiting oracle.com/education. That's Oracle's main site. oracle.com/education. And select the first tile that you'll see on the webpage, which is the Raise Your Game challenge. If you don't already have an Oracle MyLearn account, you'll need to create one and you'll be prompted to create one. This account gives you access to the Oracle MyLearning platform. Once you're registered, you'll have access to a curated list of learning paths and corresponding certifications. It's important that you review the official rules and promotion details before proceeding with the challenge. 09:12 Unlock the power of AI Vector Search with our new course and certification. Get more accurate search results, handle complex datasets easily, and supercharge your data-driven decisions. From now to May 15, 2025, we are waiving the certification exam fee (valued at $245). Visit mylearn.oracle.com to enroll. 09:40 Nikita: Welcome back! Ok, Peter, I've registered. What's next? Peter: After you're done registering, you need to select the Cloud Application course that aligns with your interests and goals. We have courses on four different areas: Human Capital Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Supply Chain Management, and Customer Experience. Once you complete the training and certification, you're done with Level 1. For Level 2, we have the Oracle Cloud Success Navigator Essentials course and assessment that you will need to complete. You can check your status on the leaderboard in the Oracle University Learning Community and share your progress on social media. Like I was saying, the time taken to complete each of these levels and the higher scores earned determines the Top 500 winners. 10:36 Bill: And the best part of this challenge is that it's completely free, right? Peter: Absolutely. There is no cost associated with participating in the skills challenge. It is completely free for anyone, anywhere in the world to participate as long as they comply with the official rules of the promotion. You can take any or all of the Foundation Associate certification exams at no cost. With multiple free attempts, there is no time limit for completing the exams, but to be eligible for the prizes, you must complete the exams and assessments by May 15, 2025. That's midnight GMT. 11:16 Nikita: What if someone doesn't pass the certification exam on their first attempt? Peter: If someone does not pass the certification exam on their first attempt, we understand that not everyone does. We've made provisions for that. If you don't pass the foundations associate certification exam, you have the option to retake the exam many times over. 11:37 Nikita: Now, Peter, let's say someone has already registered for the Fusion Cloud Applications Foundations Associate certification exam before joining the skills challenge. Will their exam be considered for the prizes? Peter: Well, that's a great question, Niki. If someone has already registered for the exam before joining the challenge, their exam will be considered for the prizes as long as they first join the skills challenge. This ensures that everyone who engages with the challenge has a fair chance to win. 12:06 Bill: Does course content consumed before the start of the challenge count towards the awards and badges? Peter: Unfortunately no, Bill. Any content consumed or purchased before Feb 14, 2025, that's again 12 AM GMT, does not apply retroactively to awards or prizes in the Raise Your Game challenge. We want everyone to start on an equal footing here. 12:29 Nikita: What about certifications earned before the challenge began? Peter: Again, certifications earned before Feb 14, 2025, again 12 AM GMT, do not qualify for the promotion. That ensures again that the challenge is fair for all participants. 12:48 Nikita: Now, Peter, how many free exam attempts do participants get as part of the challenge? Peter: Since all the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Foundations Associate Certification exams are free, there is no limit to the number of attempts. Participants can take these exams as many times as they need to. 13:05 Bill: And, Peter, say I want to take more than one of the Foundations courses and exams. Can I do that? Peter: Absolutely. This is a great way for someone to learn about the different areas of business that they may be familiar with. As I mentioned earlier, the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Foundations training is a program to provide you with knowledge of OMBPs, Oracle Modern Best Practices, that is, and Fusion Cloud Applications. So, it's a great opportunity to cross-skill. You can earn all four certifications if you choose. 13:38 Bill: Peter, thank you so much for joining us today and telling us all about this challenge. It is a really fantastic opportunity for everyone, whether you're new to Fusion Cloud Applications or an experienced implementation professional, to boost your Oracle Cloud Apps expertise. We're really excited to try it out ourselves! Peter: A sincere thank you to you, Bill and Niki. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'd really encourage everyone to jump on this challenge. It's a great way to enhance your learning journey and have some fun along the way. Nikita: I couldn't agree more! Thanks Peter. That's a wrap on this episode. Join us next week for another episode of the Oracle University Podcast. Until then, this is Nikita Abraham… Bill: And Bill Lawson, signing off! 14:19 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
Folge # 140: Der Großeltern-Konflikt ist sehr gängig in unserer Generation, speziell wenn wir selbst eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft leben und uns bewusst ist, wie Glaubenssätze bei Kindern entstehen. Eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft ist eine recht neue Form der Elternschaft und häufig haven unsere eigenen Eltern bzw. Schwiegereltern da noch ganz andere Ansichten, wie man Kinder "erziehen" sollte. Nicht selten kommt es daher zu Konflikten in der Familie.Doch wie können wir mit diesen Situationen umgehen, ohne den Konflikt noch größer werden zu lassen? Dazu gebe ich euch in der heutigen Folge Denkanstöße und zeige neue Sichtweisen auf. Denn tatsächlich können alle Beteiligten der Familie aus dieser Dynamik sehr profitieren, daran wachsen, Wunden heilen und noch mehr Bewusstsein erlangen!Wenn du intensiver in dieses Thema und weitere Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft einsteigen möchtest, empfehle ich dir an meinem Online Kurs für eine achtsame und spirituelle Elternschaft teilzunehmen:In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 139: An einer Sache dran zu bleiben ist ein sehr dienliches Lernfeld für unsere Kinder. Doch wie können wir als Eltern unsere Kinder darin unterstützen an einer Sache kontinuierlich dran zu bleiben, ohne Druck aufzubauen?Das erfährst du in der heutigen Podcastfolge!In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 138: Wir sind sehr stark darauf konditioniert worden, dass Fehler etwas Negatives sind, indem wir für unsere Fehler bestraft wurden. Mal ganz offensichtlich, mal sehr subtil.Doch was macht diese Konditionierung mit uns? Wie steht sie uns (als Eltern) im Weg? Welche Bedeutung haben Fehler im Lern- und Entwicklungsprozess unserer Kinder und wie sollten wir als Eltern am besten reagieren, wenn unser Kind einen Fehler macht?All das erfährst du in dieser PodcastfolgeIn meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Glaubenssätze zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 137: In dieser Folge bekommst du einen exklusiven Einblick in einen meiner Live-Calls mit den Teilnehmerinnen meines Online-Kurses Bewusste Elternschaft. Wir sprechen über ein Thema, das viele Mütter betrifft: die Herausforderung, den Bedürfnissen aller gerecht zu werden – den Kindern, dem Partner und sich selbst.Eine Teilnehmerin teilt ihre persönliche Situation und die Überforderung, die sie empfindet. Gemeinsam analysieren wir ihre Herausforderungen und decken die Glaubenssätze auf, die dahinterstecken. Wir sprechen darüber, warum so viele von uns in diesen Mustern feststecken und wie wir sie durchbrechen können. Ich teile wertvolle Impulse, um mit diesen Belastungen bewusster umzugehen und sich selbst nicht aus den Augen zu verlieren. Da dieses Thema so viele von uns betrifft, wollte ich diesen Live-Call mit euch teilen – in der Hoffnung, dass ihr euch darin wiederfindet und hilfreiche Erkenntnisse für euren Alltag mitnehmt.In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Glaubenssätze zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge #136: Eine Eingewöhnung im Kindergarten, bei der Tagesmutter oder anderen Einrichtungen kann eine Herausforderung sein. In dieser Folge teile ich meine Erfahrungen mit dir als Mutter und Kindergartenleiterin, die schon viele Eingewöhnungen aus verschiedenen Perspektiven durchlaufen ist und betreut hat.Ich beantworte Fragen, wie:Wie lange sollte eine Eingewöhnung gehen?Wie sollte eine Eingewöhnung optimalerweise ablaufen?Was kann ich als Mutter / Vater tun, um die Eingewöhnung zu unterstützen?In welchem Fall sollte ich eine Eingewöhnung abbrechen?In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Glaubenssätze zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 135: In dieser Folge möchte ich mit euch über ein Thema sprechen, zu dem ich vor kurzem auf Instagram einen Beitrag gepostet habe. Es geht darum, was wir Eltern machen können, wenn unsere Kinder überhaupt nicht zur Schule gehen möchten. Wenn es so schlimm ist, dass sie fast täglich morgens weinen und wenn unsere Kinder sich sichtlich sehr unwohl fühlen in der Schule. Aber wir in einem Land leben, wo es die Schulpflicht gibt und wir da nicht wirklich einen Ausweg für diese Situation sehen. Wie wir dieses Thema reflektieren und evtl neues Bewusstsein dafür entwickeln können, möchte ich mit euch heute genauer beleuchten.In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Glaubenssätze zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
In this episode I give an overview of the second part of the Akashic Records Practitioner Level training, Level 3. In Level 3 you can become qualified in undertaking deep healing and clearing work with your clients. For the episode on what healing and clearing in the Akashic Records is all about, click here. To listen to the episode on Level 2 (Becoming an Akashic Records Reader) click here. To sign up for Level 3, please click here.
Folge#133: In dieser Folge teile ich meine persönlichen Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse darüber, wie wir eine tiefere Verbindung zu unserem Seelenteam und der geistigen Welt aufbauen können. Ich erkläre, wie diese Verbindung uns dabei unterstützt, mehr Vertrauen ins Leben zu gewinnen, Führung in Entscheidungsprozessen zu erhalten und Heilung zu erfahren.Außerdem zeige ich auf, wie du diese Praxis Schritt für Schritt üben kannst und wie du deinen Kindern beibringen kannst, ebenfalls Zugang zu dieser liebevollen Unterstützung zu finden. Wenn du das Gefühl hast, mehr Führung und Verbindung in deinem Leben zu brauchen, dann ist diese Episode genau das Richtige für dich!In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Glaubenssätze zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 132: In dieser Folge beleuchte ich, wie wir als Eltern oft unbewusst Macht auf unsere Kinder ausüben – sei es durch Anweisungen, Bestrafungen oder das Übergehen ihrer Bedürfnisse. Ich spreche darüber, welche Spuren diese Machtdynamiken in unseren Kindern hinterlassen und wie sie langfristig ihr Selbstvertrauen, ihre Autonomie und ihre Beziehungen prägen können.Doch es gibt einen anderen Weg: Statt Kontrolle durchzusetzen, können wir die Beziehung zu unseren Kindern stärken, indem wir Macht durch Mitgefühl und Kooperation ersetzen. Mit konkreten Beispielen aus dem Alltag zeige ich dir, wie du bewusster mit deinem Kind kommunizieren kannst, um ein Umfeld zu schaffen, in dem es sich sicher, geliebt und respektiert fühlt.Lass uns gemeinsam den Wandel von Macht zu Verbindung gestalten.In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Glaubenssätze zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 131: Hast du dich schon einmal gefragt, wie oft wir als Eltern unsere Kinder unbewusst kritisieren – oft in den kleinsten Bemerkungen des Alltags? In dieser Folge nehme ich dich mit auf eine Reise der Reflexion: Wir sprechen darüber, wie unterschwellige Kritik aussehen kann, warum sie sich so leicht in unsere Kommunikation einschleicht und welche Auswirkungen sie auf unsere Kinder hat.Gemeinsam entdecken wir, wie du deine Worte so wählen kannst, dass sie das Selbstvertrauen deines Kindes stärken, statt es ungewollt zu untergraben. Mit konkreten Beispielen und liebevollen Alternativen aus dem Alltag kannst du lernen, bewusster zu kommunizieren und die Beziehung zu deinem Kind zu vertiefen.Lass uns die Macht der Worte nutzen, um ein Umfeld zu schaffen, in dem dein Kind sich gesehen, gehört und wertgeschätzt fühlt.
In Level 3 playoff action, West De Pere took on Kaukauna. West De Pere defeated Kaukauna 20-14. Jonathan Krause and Jonathan Dinse were on the call.
Folge # 130: Kennst du das auch? Plötzlich scheint dein Kind ein für ihn / sie völlig untypisches Verhalten an den Tag zu legen. Irgendwas scheint sich verändert zu haben. Nur eine Phase? Oder steckt vielleicht mehr dahinter?Manchmal fragen wir uns als Eltern, was ein bestimmtes Verhalten bei unseren Kindern auslöst. Wir versuchen alles, wir sprechen, wir verändern den Alltag, das Umfeld, die Umgebung. Ein Gespräch nach dem anderen. Wir holen uns Tipps ein und doch ist es zum Verzweifeln.Wir wissen, hinter jedem „ungewünschten“ Verhalten steckt ein tieferes Bedürfnis bei unserem Kind und manchmal kommen wir einfach nicht dahinter, was es ist. Unser Kind schafft es vielleicht noch nicht, dieses Bedürfnis bei sich selbst zu erkennen oder es zu artikulieren. Vielleicht hat es auch einfach Angst es zu äußern oder es weiss selbst gar nicht so genau, was dieses Verhalten triggert.Um herauszufinden, was die „Wurzel des Problems“ ist, können wir die Seele unseres Kindes fragen.Genau für solche Situationen ist die sogenannte "Child in Mind" Methode genau richtig! Wir können uns mit der Seele unsere Kindes verbinden und mit ihr kommunizieren. So können wir herausfinden, was unser Kind unterbewusst gerade braucht. Wir können heraus finden, was die Ursache für das neue Verhalten ist und auch, wie wir unserem Kind helfen können, da wieder heraus zu kommen!
In Level 1 playoff action, Xavier took on Little Chute. Xavier defeated Little Chute 21-14. Jonathan Krause had the call.
Folge #127: In dieser Folge spreche ich mit euch über ein sehr weit verbreitetes und wichtige Thema. Diagnose: ADS bzw. ADHS.Diese Diagnose wird heute unglaublich schnell Gestellung und in Deutschland ist mittlerweile jedes 10te Kind mit ADS/ADHS diagnostiziert. In den USA ist es mittlerweile jedes 5te Kind. Welche Auswirkungen das hat, was ADS/ADHS überhaupt ist, wo es her kommt, wie es behandelt wird, wie es diagostiziert wird und welche enormen Risiken diese Diagnose und die gängige Behandlungsweise mit sich bringt das erläutere ich heute alles in dieser Folge.In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Glaubenssätze zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge #126: Früher oder später wird unser Kind in eine Situation kommen, in der es verbal angegriffen wird.In dieser Podcastfolge gebe ich dir 3 Tipps, wie du als Mutter oder Vater dein Kind in solchen Situationen stärken und unterstützen kannst.In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Glaubenssätze zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 125: Der Inhalt dieser Podcastfolge, beschäftigt bestimmt die meisten Eltern sehr: das Thema Grenzen setzen. Wir als Eltern, die eine neue Form der Elternschaft leben möchte, haben in unserer Kindheit vieles erlebt was wir in dieser Form nicht an unsere Kinder weitergeben. Anstatt Autorität und Fremdbestimmt möchten wir unseren Kindern Selbstbestimmung geben. Aber wo ist es dennoch wichtig eine Grenze zu setzen? Wann wird eine Grenze zu einer Regel? Was ist die Konsequenz bei einer Grenzüberschreitung? Und wo unterscheiden sich Grenzen und Strafen?Folgende Podcastfolge wurde in dieser Folge erwähnt:Regeln vs. Grenzen: Was brauchen Kinder wirklich? Und wo liegt der Unterschied? (Folge 5)In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft lernst du mitunter die eigenen Grenzen zu erkennen und weitere Tipps zum Umsetzen.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten? Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 124:In dieser Folge habe ich um aller ersten Mal meine siebenjährige Tochter interviewt und habe ihr einige Fragen gestellt, die ihr mir über Instagram geschrieben habt. Erfahre in diesem interview, wie meine Tochter das Leben auf Bali empfindet, welche Unterschiede sie zu Deutschland wahrnimmt, wie sie zu Yoga steht, wie sie zu Gott steht und noch vieles mehr.In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft begleite ich dich intensiv zu verschieden Themen rund um die bewusste Elternschaft.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, und unter anderem unsere eigene Glaubensmuster genau in den Blick zu nehmen. Welche Eigenschaften im Alltag stören und wie wir beginnen können daran zu arbeiten. Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 122: Häufig erzähle ich davon, dass wir nicht erziehen müssen und unsere Kinder dabei beobachten können wie sie sich frei entfalten. Manchmal fragen mich dann Eltern: Aber was ist in meiner Rolle als Mutter oder Vater denn dann meine Aufgabe...? In dieser Folge möchte ich euch aufzeigen, was die drei wichtigsten Aufgaben für uns als Eltern sind. Mein Online Kurs für eine achtsame und spirituelle Elternschaft geht bald in die nächste Kursrunde. In Level 1 geht es erstmal um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, die Analyse von uns selbst und der Dynamik des Familienalltags. Wo liegen Stressfaktoren und wie können wir beginnen daran zu arbeiten?Wenn du auch bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft auf www.KundaliniEltern.deIn Liebe,deine Ksenija
Goals are a fundamental part of life, and not coincidentally, video games. Whether you're looking to escape the dungeon, beat your last score or get to the next level, goals serve to challenge, focus and motivate us. These things are key to learning, success and tracking achievement—so can these concepts and technologies apply to education?In this episode of Connect, get ready to level up your thinking with “the father of the video game industry” and the preeminent expert in STEAM education. We're excited and privileged to welcome back Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, and Dr. Leah Hanes, CEO of The Two Bit Circus Foundation and ExoDexa, to expand our conversation on gamification and the future of education.In “Level 2” of our discussion with Nolan and Leah, we delve deeper into the idea of creating curriculums that “meet students where they are,” the concept of constructive play, and the value of tying learning to other senses. Plus, we'll examine how traditional education isn't meeting the needs of every student nor is it keeping pace with technology—and what can be done to solve these problems.Join us as envision the future of education, entrepreneurship, and technology – and of course, discover a few Atari easter eggs along the way! For more information about Axis Communications, visit us at www.axis.com Follow us on social media at Axis Communications - Home | Facebook Axis Communications: My Company | LinkedIn Axis North America (@Axis_NA) / TwitterAxis Communications USA - YouTube
Folge # 121: In dieser Folge möchte ich mit euch über eines der wichtigsten Themen (meiner Meinung nach) in jeder Elternschaft sprechen und zwar das Thema Selbstliebe. Ich denke, es gibt kaum etwas wichtigeres, worauf wir uns als Eltern fokussieren sollten als die Selbstliebe für uns und die Selbstliebe unserer Kinder und deshalb möchte ich heute dieses Thema mit euch aufgreifen.In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft begleite ich dich intensiv zu diesem Thema.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, und unter anderem sich selbst genau in den Blick zu nehmen? Welche Eigenschaften im Alltag stören und wie wir beginnen können daran zu arbeiten. Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 120:In dieser Folge sprechen wir über das Thema: neue Formen der Beziehungen. Dieses Thema habt ihr euch gewünscht. Moderne Beziehungsmodelle, neue Beziehungsmodelle und deren Einfluss auf unsere Kinder wird dabei spannend sein zu beleuchten.In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft begleite ich dich intensiv zu diesem Thema.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, und unter anderem unsere eigene Glaubensmuster genau in den Blick zu nehmen? Welche Eigenschaften im Alltag stören und wie wir beginnen können daran zu arbeiten. Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 119: In dieser Folge spreche ich mit euch über das Thema: Langeweile bei unseren Kindern. Ist es unsere Aufgabe, unser Kind den ganzen Tag zu bespaßen? Müssen wir uns ständig Gedanken machen, was wir unseren Kindern an Bildungsangeboten bieten müssen? Oder hat die Langeweile doch was Gutes? Hier findest du die erwähnten Podcastfolgen:TV und Medienkonsum bei Kindern (Folge 78)In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft begleite ich dich intensiv zu diesem Thema.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, und unter anderem unsere Kinder genau in den Blick zu nehmen? Welche Eigenschaften im Alltag beschäftigen uns und wie wir beginnen können daran zu arbeiten. Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge #116: In dieser Folge greife ich mal wieder ein Thema auf, dass ihr euch gewünscht habt. Ständiger Streit unter Geschwistern. Was können wir als Eltern tun?In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft begleite ich dich intensiv zu diesem Thema.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, und unter anderem unseren Familienalltag genau in den Blick zu nehmen. Welche Eigenschaften im Alltag stören und wie wir beginnen können daran zu arbeiten. Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge #115: In dieser Folge geht es um ein Thema, dass ihr euch gewünscht habt. Heute spreche ich mit euch über das Thema Kindergarten und Schule . Was ist besser fürs Kind? Kita oder Kita frei aufzuwachsen? Zur Schule gehen oder doch lieber schulfrei aufzuwachsen? Schulfrei? Geht das in Deutschland oder in Europa überhaupt und wenn ja, welche vor und Nachteile haben Einrichtung wie Kindergärten und Schulen? Welche Vorteile hat es, wenn unser Kind diese vielleicht nicht besucht? Welche Alternativen gibt es?Hier findest du die erwähnten Podcastfolgen:Entwicklung des Wurzelchakras bei Kindern (Folge 24)Wie Schulen das Konkurrenzverhalten bei Kindern fördern - Interview mit Nina vom Podcast "Bildung mal anders" (Folge 30)In meinem Online Kurs für eine bewusste und spirituelle Elternschaft begleite ich dich intensiv zu diesem Thema.In Level 1 geht es um die Einführung in die Spiritualität, und unter anderem unsere Verhaltensweisen wie haben wir das Lernen gelernt? Welche Eigenschaften im Alltag stören und wie wir beginnen können daran zu arbeiten. Mehr Info's zum Kurs findest du hier:kurse.kundalinieltern.deWenn du bereit bist endlich mehr Frieden, Achtsamkeit, Liebe und Entspannung in deinen Familienalltag zu bringen, findest du mehr Info's zum Kurs und zu weiteren Themen der bewussten und spirituellen Elternschaft aufwww.KundaliniEltern.de In Liebe,deine Ksenija
Folge # 114: Wir alle haben gewisse Erwartungen an unser Kind. Als Eltern gehen wir davon aus, dass unsere Erwartungen völlig legitim und altersgerecht sind. Dabei vergessen wir sehr häufig, dass wie fast alles im Leben auch unsere eigenen Erwartungen an unsere Kinder nur unsere individuelle Wahrnehmung des Lebens ist. Alle Eltern haben unterschiedliche Erwartungen an ihre Kinder.Manchmal sind diese Erwartungen an unsere Kinder sehr unbewusst und entstehen durch unsere Glaubenssätze. Dabei sind sie sehr häufig die Ursache von Streit, Stress und Frust in der Beziehung zwischen Eltern und Kind.
In Level 1 of Power Up Your Classroom we delve into the why of the game. By understanding the unique characteristics of gamification and game-based learning, we will be prepared to integrate both types into our classrooms. My goal for today's episode is to give you a greater understanding of the why behind Gamification and Game-Based Learning and the what they are. You might even begin to see how you are already doing some of these inside your classroom with your students and you don't even know it. Tools Available in Springfield: Office 365 23 Tools for 2023 (Springfield Teachers) Nearpod Newsela Reading Progress Newly Formed Amazon Affiliate Link: Power Up Your Classroom Book from Amazon Other Resources: Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action | TED Talk Google Graveyard - Killed by Google Course Launch Video by Jacob Aringo Cate Tolnai Website You can find me at: Website: https://www.beardedtechedguy.com Instagram: @beardedteched Facebook: @beardedteched Twitter: @beardedteched Show Credits: Summer Adventures – Serge Pavkin Music from Pixabay --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/spsdigitallearninghour/message
Welcome to the third installment of our transformative sermon series, “Navigating A Turnaround.” In this powerful message titled “Embracing Your Calling to Rescue Others,” we delve into a profound concept—being rescued to become a rescuer. Today, we journey into the captivating tale of Jonah, a biblical narrative that holds valuable lessons about finding purpose, adventure, and grace, even in the face of challenges. As we explore Jonah's story, we will discover the key to embracing Level 2 of our journey, where genuine transformation occurs. In Level 1, we take charge of our lives and decide for ourselves. We acknowledge the frustration of lacking purpose and adventure and find solace in God's Word, compassion, and grace. But Level 2 is where we reach our maximum potential, feeling fulfilled and energized by our calling to rescue others. As the saying goes, “Rescued people rescue people.” We witness firsthand how God's intervention in Jonah's life empowers him to positively impact others. He faces his own hurdles, yet with faith and determination, he learns to excel at Level 2 and embraces his divine calling to rescue those around him. This message is an invitation for each of us to embrace our higher purpose and wholeheartedly embrace the responsibility of being rescuers in the lives of others. Together, we'll discover the profound joy of sharing God's grace and compassion, even amidst life's challenges and setbacks. Let “Navigating A Turnaround: Embracing Your Calling to Rescue Others” ignite a passion within you to become an agent of positive change in the world. As we navigate our turnarounds together, we'll experience the transformative power of God in our lives and in the lives of those we touch. Join us as we embark on this transformative journey, and be prepared to witness the beauty of embracing our calling to rescue others. Remember to share this empowering message with others and stay connected for more life-changing content. Let's become beacons of light and love in a world that needs it most.
Some of the highest performing content right now is Edutainment. It's got all the buzz too. Why? Because it combines your two favorite types of content: Education and entertainment. You learn while you're entertained. Having done edutainment videos for years now, I get alot of questions about edutainment. Things like: -Can everyone do it? -Will I look unprofessional doing it? -What's the right balance of education and entertainment? Which is why I decided to answer all of these questions and more….and then SHOW you how rio create edutainment video content. Because literally NOONE on planet earth is teaching this stuff! Until now
NASA is working towards a sustained lunar habitation, which is presenting some interesting engineering challenges. One of the people working on the concepts and solutions for making that human presence a reality is Goncalo Esteves, Founder and CTO, Argo Space Technologies. Argo Space Technologies is focused on systems engineering, process implementation, product management, and engineering support for Lunar habitation. The company supported Planetoid Mines in its submission for the NASA Break the Ice Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to further the development of technologies that can excavate and transport large quantities of icy lunar regolith and can continuously operate for 15 days. The teams will move on to build and test full-size prototypes in Level 2. The 13 U.S. teams will receive equal shares of NASA's $500,000 prize purse for Level 1. In Level 3, qualifying teams will put their prototypes to the test in a head-to-head onsite competition for a shot at $1.5 million in prizes. But Lunar habitation is not the only aspect of space exploration in which Argo Space Technologies is involved. Goncalo and his team are also involved in the International Space Station (ISS) and World Design Organization – Business and Process Team The team is working to design the new business processes for manufacturing in space and new business model as NASA works towards commercialization of the station. The team worked with ISS personnel to propose cycle time reduction from three years down to six months on projects for cost savings of some $500 million. How does what happens in space affect your everyday life? The Ex Terra podcast is dedicated to introducing you to many of the interesting people involved in the commercial space industry, and taking you behind the scenes with many of the companies making significant contributions to the new space economy. The podcast is available on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Pocketcasts and Radio Public.
In this episode, The Word Magician and Bestselling Ghostwriter, Crystal Adair-Benning, talks about effective copywriting. Today, Crystal talks about ways to improve your copy, pleasure copy versus trigger copy, and when to hire a copywriter. What is copy? Hear about the eight levels of perspective and belief, using love letter language, and get Crystal's advice to her younger self, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways “The best copy meets our clients where they're at, so we can take them where they need to go.” “The world is triggering enough. We don't need to see it in our copy.” “Your clients will tell you exactly what to write.” “Follow your zone of genius.” More about Crystal Adair-Benning Crystal Adair-Benning is the Word Magician, Story Supercharger, Copywriter & Ghostwriter for rebels, misfits and world-changing humans. She is best known for being not known at all. A secret weapon amongst successful entrepreneurs who covet her Quantum Copy Method - combining the science of writing with the spirituality of creativity. A multiple NYTimes Bestselling ghostwriter and former highly sought-after luxury event planner, Crystal finds joy in being an Intuitive Creative, digital nomad - free to explore the globe with her husband, dog and laptop. If you really want to know Crystal, here are some fun facts: - She never leaves home without her passport. - She saves trees with tech (her Remarkable is everything)! - She was truly embarrassed to call herself an empath for years and hid her genius because of it. - She met and married her hubbend (husband/boyfriend) in a month... because she was a smitten kitten. - She believe in LOVE above all else and will happily destroy the bro-marketing patriarchy word by word. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Copywriting, Beliefs, Perspective, Communication, Conversion, Storytelling, Resources FREE Copy Workshop. To learn more, follow Crystal at: Website: wordmagiccopywriting.com Instagram: @wordmagiccopywriting Facebook: Word Magic Copywriting Twitter: @WordMagicCopy Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:05 Welcome to the healthy, wealthy and smart podcast where healthcare meets business with your host me, Dr. Karen Litzy. And just as a reminder, the information in this podcast is for entertainment purposes only, and is not to be used as personalized medical advice. Enjoy the show. 00:28 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the healthy, wealthy and smart Podcast. Today we've got a great podcast, which walks you through how to connect, convert and catalyze conversation through copy. And yes, this means how to get more conversions how to possibly make more money with your copy. So to bring us through today's episode, I'm really happy to have crystal Adair Bening, a word magician story supercharger, copywriter, ghostwriter for rebels, misfits and world changing humans. She is best known for being not known at all a secret weapon among successful entrepreneurs who covered her quantum copy method combining the science of writing with the spirituality of creativity, a multiple New York Times Best Selling ghost writer and formerly highly sought after luxury event planner, Crystal finds joy and being an intuitive creative digital nomad free to explore the globe with her husband, dog and laptop. So I met crystal a couple of months ago at Selena Sue's mastermind, and I am like in love with this woman, she is so good. She will walk you through what copy means how to make it your own and how to talk to your customers. Now, aside from all of this, wonderfulness, and you'll hear throughout the podcast on August, the last week of August, I think on the 31st She is having a free three hour master class word magician copywriting workshop. You guys, it's free. She's going to take you through everything. So you can head over to podcast dot healthy, wealthy smart.com. Go to the show notes for today's episode and click on for her free three hour workshop. You can also go to word magic copywriting.com. And you'll sign up it's like a waitlist, you'll sign up for the waitlist and you guys three free hours with a copywriting expert. I know I am no copywriting expert. So if you want to have better copy for your website, your sales page, your funnels, your social media, check out her free class, that is going to be the last week of August either the 30th or the 31st. Otherwise, enjoy today's episode. Hey, Crystal, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to have you on today to talk all about copy. So thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm excited. This is definitely an area where it is a weakness of mine. And dare I say weakness of a lot of people certainly in my profession of physical therapy, and I'm sure you hear that all the time. Not like that's anything new. But before we go on, I want you to define what copy is. 03:30 Oh, good question. So copy is literally the words that you use to market your business. So it can be your website, your emails, your social media, and ebook you use a book you write. It could be literally like an ad that you run on social media might be copy. So copy is all of those things. We think about the words that come out of our mouth when we're talking to our clients. But when we put it down on paper, it becomes coffee because it's something that somebody can refer to us. Perfect. And how important is that for business? Let's let's get into this. Essential, right. Super important, super important. And here's another question that might seem like a dumb question. But how can copy be used to make a connection with your audience maybe make that sale? What is the purpose? So when we write copy, the best copy that we write is naturally about us. It's for the humans that we're writing for. So I teach a lot of times about the idea of it being a love letter. So if you think about the average client that emails you and maybe they email you and say, Hey, I've got this problem and my back's sore and this and that and I need I'm struggling with this and how do I do it? You might immediately hit reply and you say yeah, but when appointment in my calendar, very good, right? Like that could be an option. What if we instead decided to treat it like coffee? 05:00 and use the love letter principle Love Letter language and say, Hey, I'm really sorry that your back hurts, that's awful. I know how challenging that can be. And we definitely want to take care of you, here's a link to my website, I would recommend we get you in within the next six to seven days, because that's probably when the pain is going to feel worse. And when we have the most opportunity to fix it. By simply adding words to the copy, you're still getting across the exact same message. But there's a level of I've got you that we feel in a love letter, if you think to honor the love letter you've ever received, what's the underlying tone, it's your magic, you're amazing, I love you, and I got you. And so if you can impart that into the language that you're reading, whether it's a website and email, your social media copy a book, your audience literally feels that vibration, and it starts to pull them in, because suddenly they not feel what they feel seen. They feel taken care of supported, they feel comfortable with you, they're willing to say, Hey, I may not know this human yet, but they're inviting me into their space, they're welcoming me. And that feels good. And so they will actually move toward you instead of against you. So that's one of the ways that I would highly recommend you use it. Yeah. And in the physical therapy, I'm a physical therapist. So in physical therapy, and in healthcare, I would say, a lot of people, when they're coming to see us, they're in a point where they're feeling vulnerable, where they may be in pain, they may not be at their best. And so I like how you describe it as a love letter, because we're trying to tell them like it's okay for you to be open with us. Do you have any other examples of how we might be able to convey that to someone who's feeling maybe at their worst? Yes, so absolutely. So what we need to do first and foremost, and this is where the psychology kind of takes over. So my work is a lot of science needs spiritual to kind of combine it all together and create what I call word magic. And this is the science piece of it. So each of your clients already comes in, they have a belief that they currently believe, right, they're living in a system, they have an understanding of the world around them, they have a perspective of their values of the beliefs that they believe in. So on a very basic level, because we've got a short window of time, I'm gonna give you the there's like eight levels. So I'm gonna give you the overview. So number one, we're basically survivors, these are babies. Oftentimes, if we're in a really traumatic situation, if you're a refugee, for example, if you're homeless, you might become this person, your whole goal is to get your basic needs met and actually survive, right? Your belief is just I need to survive period. In Level two, I call this cult cohesion, who ever desire to fit in, we're learning all about rules and how we fit into society, how we fit in with our families, how we fit in with our communities. These are the reasons we call it a cult cohesion is because often, if you've ever joined a call, not all of us have. But if you've been part of a cult, there's a very strong belief system around the rules of that cult and fitting into that cult people often don't leave because they're going to be excommunicated, right. And so that's kind of the second level, it's not real bonded Level. Level three, we go up and these are black sheets. Think teenagers, right? When we're teenagers think of that angst, right? But we're recognizing that we have special gifts, and we're different than those around us. For the black sheep of our family, you'll often hear that we're searching for our gifts and our talents and level three, so teenagers most often, but you'll also see it in a lot of musicians, artists, people that really don't fit the norm. Lady Gaga is a perfect example of a value level three or belief three, believe four, we move into family rules. So we return from I'm so special, I'm unique. I'm a I'm a black sheep and we move we come back to family. You'll often find mom's fit here really well. If you work with a lot of moms, you'll hear about family is the most important thing. And they're very selfless. They're very giving their marbles, right. They believe in process systems and steps if you're a strong family person, if you work in government, military, religion, schools, they all fit into this rule kind of category. Then we move into five, if you're an entrepreneur, like many of the PTS on here, maybe you are an achievement architect is what I call you. You're entrepreneurial, you're driven for money and achievement. You know, we associate words like hustle faster, stronger, easier, better. We're seeking a goal we're very goal oriented in this level. Grant Cardone, Gary Vee are examples that I can think of that are very achievement oriented. Then we go into level six, level six, we go from being very self motivated and as achievements to 10:00 Being very world motivated, we often have achieved a lot in our lives and fives were high achievers, who suddenly recognize that there has to be something else to this. We can't just achieve for the sake of achieving and doing it for ourselves, there has to be more to this. So we often come into spirit at this point. I kind of joke sometimes that this is often the people you'll find in Mexico doing Ayahuasca retreats, or going to Peru, and, you know, trying to find themselves trying to find God or their version of God. They often turn away from financial achievement at this point. So we achieved so much that we're like, I don't have to keep working for money anymore. And now we turn to like, what is spiritual like sound for us? John Lennon, Nelson Mandela are great examples of this. They're people who achieved a lot in their lives. And ultimately, we're like, it's not about the money. It's about how can I give back in my community? How can I impact then we go into sevens, sevens move again, from spiritual tools, it's about everybody. Sevens come back and go, well hold up. I haven't the money that I gave it away, and I found God. But now, why can't I find God and make money? 11:07 Why is that not a possibility. So they really want to make money, certainly with money, they really want to make money. And they want to have impact. They believe that they can do both. Tony Robbins, Oprah Russell Brand great examples of these humans. They're the ones that really have like, we have it all, and we're going to give it away in the celebration, it's affordable. So they're really trying to do better things with their money. And their opportunities and visions, number eights, these are harder to define. So the eights are the cosmic connections, these are Ascended Masters, these are the people that know and understand that we are living in quantum existence on multiple timelines, sometimes all at the same time, and that every single thing we do is affected by somebody else. So I'm in my hands. And this affects somebody else down the road, I write on an email, and like millions of people can be affected by the email I write. That's where the Cosmic Connection is. So what's important here, when we talk about making connection, and how does coffee really convert is, there's two things you need to understand what is the belief bubble that your client currently sits in? What is the belief bubble that you as the owner setting. And then just for bonuses, your business also sits in a belief bubble, your business has a belief system that it abides by, if you know those three things, you can write incredible copy, because we write to the client, and not to ourselves, which means that typically, so if I'm a five, if I'm a high powered entrepreneur, and I'm working predominantly with moms, and dads who are burnt out, they're family focused, but they are given at all for their kids, and there's nothing left for themselves. I need to write to them, I need to speak their language. I need to know how they speak about the problem, that they're experiencing, how they're experiencing it. And I need to reverberate those words back to them in the copy my language and their language may be different. We know this, right? A client may have a presenting problem they walk into your office with, and they use words like, you know, my back's sore, or my back's tender, or I can't lift my kids. And you might know that it's partially about those muscles in those numbers. But there might also be an emotional attachment that you have to deal with, there might be a traumatic injury that you have to deal with, or long term problem that you're trying to support, you know that the presenting problem is not the real problem. It's just what they're noticing. 13:47 We need to speak to the thing they're noticing, not to the thing they actually need help with what when we do that work is when they're actually our client, they trust us, they know that we understand them by speaking their language. And then the real work can be done. It's not lying to your client. It's called meeting them where they're at. So the best coffee meets our clients where they're at so we can take them where they need to go. Yeah, that was great. I took a lot of notes there. And so what I'm hearing the bottom line is know yourself, your business, your the values of your business, so that you're coming from a solid foundation, and then really understand your potential clients and really get deep into who they are, what they need. Maybe what they're fearful of what they like, dislike so that you can write to them from a solid from your own solid base. Exactly. You're using their language, your solid base is where they want to go. 14:53 We typically work with clients that are a belief below us or are just like during the same 15:00 We bubble but they're just, they're just underneath us in our beliefs, we have a belief and then we have a neurology. So what often happens is, for example, I tend to sit as I work with a lot of fives I work with a lot of entrepreneurs are really kind of trying to kill it in their business. But if I look at the five, their neurology is already in sixth, they're already starting to think more spiritual and about there has to be more to this, I'm thinking about impact. So they've got higher level neurology. But the problem is, their client is sitting in a poor potentially wanting to become a five, I have to meet them in the floor in the language where they first meet me. So the language where your client first meet to, in case you haven't figured it out yet, typically, it's your website and your social media, that's where your client first meets you. So it's super, super important that we speak their language, not necessarily our language, when we first meet them, once we get to know them, once they're involved in our processes a little bit more, once they've been part of things, I might offer a book that's more in my believable mind language for them. Because I know that they're going to work with me for a little bit, and we're going to get them there. But to start with, I have to meet them where they're at, they're not going to understand me, coaches are the worst for this, I'll use a great coaching example. Coaches will say things like I do quantum timeline therapy, or I'm somebody who does quantum releases or breakthroughs. Your client has no idea what that I was just gonna say. I don't know what that means at all. Exactly. And every coach who who does those things goes well die know what that means. But your client who has never worked as a coach has no clue what we're talking about. The same thing happens in PT, right? You have things that you know what this specific thing is, but if you said those words to client, a client, we go, excuse me, what? What is that? So we need to go okay, hold on to this, this complicated process that we do? How do we reframe it in a way that our clients can understand it? How, what is it in their life, and if it's as simple as a massage that releases your back pain, and allows you to functionally lift your children again, then that's the way you explain it, instead of a, you know, repetitive injury release tension system, whatever the whatever the phrase would be a BT, clearly, I'm not a PT, but you want to break it down to what are they saying? And how is this gonna relate to them. And the best tool you can do is if we go back to that love letter, languaging, rather than trigger them by being like, you're this problem. And this problem and this problem, if we then speak into the power of what they can create, by doing the work with us, that's better. So if I can say, I'm going to create the ability for you to keep up with your kids, lift them longer, have more energy and stamina to like, go three rounds in the bedroom at night, if you want. Whatever it is, if I use the language of what the outcome of working with you is, versus just the trigger of why they showed up in the first place, they're going to be much more likely to stay on board. The world is triggering enough. We don't need to see it in our coffee, we do need to show them that we understand them we feel their pain. But what we need to express more often than not, is what is the outcome of working with me, if you work with me, I will do X, you will feel x times better, you will have the ability to do X, Y and Zed that you couldn't do before. That is much more compelling than simply saying stop hoarding. 18:43 Right, right. 100%. Yeah, or just try and relax. 18:50 Right? That's another one that we hear a lot. It's like, never in the history of the world. Has someone relaxed by someone just saying we'll help you relax? Yeah, it's like, it's so like, What are you talking about? Is the ultimate oxymoron, right? Like, tell somebody the rocks and they're immediately gonna be like, 19:09 yeah, yeah. 19:13 I catch myself doing it too. Like, my like, word for kind of my mouth. And I'm like, Oh, that's not going to help the situation at all great. Just put in our coffee, we have a chance to be really clear and to really understand the belief system or climate, the understanding are going through. So if you're telling a busy mom to just relax, she's probably not going to be too receptive. However, if you tell her that she's going to be able to appreciate the moments with her family more by doing this work. That's a much more enticing and appealing approach to her. Yeah, no, that's a great example. Thank you for that. What advice do you have for folks who are trying to get there, whether it's their website 20:00 their social media or wherever copy may land. What advice do you have for them? If they're like, I just have no idea what to do here, like I? I am like, because, again, you'll hear again and again, I'm not a writer, I don't know what to say. So what advice do you have for people in that situation? 20:23 I mean, of course, the selfish thing to say here is, right, aside from hiring, right, right. Right from that, though, that the thing that I would say is this. Start with the understanding of the belief bubble that somebody's in, start by really listening to our clients, how do they talk about their presenting problem and mimic it back to them, the easiest thing you can do is your clients will tell you exactly what to write, because they're already telling you in clinical sessions with you, every single time, what is my problem? literally read it verbatim. And keep yourself a list. Oh, how many times did I hear mom say I can't look my kids. That's probably a problem that they're really interested in getting sorted out. How many times did I hear people say, I struggle to bend over and lift boxes? Okay, maybe I need to focus on the ability like functional movement and the ability to lift things. Functional Movement is jargon speak for us. But for client, the ability to lift boxes with ease? Are you kidding me, that's a great tool to start listening to your clients. If you want to write better. The second thing that you're going to do is honestly start following and paying attention to your numbers. How many of our emails get opened, how many things get clicks, how many people visit your website? How many people leave your website? How many people show up? Or how many people get your email and you get snarky responses back? Right? If you're finding yourself in a situation where a lot of your emails are short and snarky, you probably have a problem with writing love letters, you might want to check that out. But if we look at the numbers, the numbers don't lie. The numbers tell us important to the problem among our clients will literally tell us how to fix it. For me, there's two places I would always start, I would start updating your website, making your website in the belief bubble and language of your client. And I would have a look at your emails and see if there's a way that even with two or three sentences, you can make them more loving, kind and allow your client to be seen. And if you do those simple, two things are usually simple. But I obviously no, it's not recorded. But if you seriously take those things, and implement some minor changes to things, watch, your clients start to shift their ability to work with you their ability to show up to start being more vulnerable with you speaking more openly with you and really deeply connecting with you. And from there, they'll tell you exactly what to write. And if all else fails, then you come to somebody like me, and we start talking about the strategy behind it. But the simple solution to start emails and website, start there. I love it. And I love 23:19 that you said when you're listening to your clients, just jot stuff down, like make a list of things you're hearing over and over again, and then just put that on your website, or put that into an email. Yeah, I mean, it seems like a no brainer. But like, Why? Why did I not think of this? 23:41 And most of us don't, right? Like it goes in one way or the other. You might be doing an intake with a client and hearing them and they're talking about struggling to pick up their kids and you're busy reading, you know, they've got a lumbar problem or a back pain issue. You're putting it into your language, if you simply wrote down exactly what they said a few times over and you don't even have to do this for long like I'm talking like, take two or three days, like six or six or eight clients even and you'll start to hear repetitive patterns in your clients. You probably intuitively know then you've just turned them into PT speak. 24:18 So take them out of PT speak and put them back into client speak change site on your website. Make sure that your website itself is written like a love letter that it allows your client to feel seen and valued and heard. Give them the safe space it's not about you it's about them. So if your website has a lot of eyes in it, change it to WE ARE THEY ARE you it is not about you it is about them. So the number one tool after listening to your client is making a buy bomb. If your website currently is all about you and when you do, 24:50 flip the script, make it about them. 24:53 You are going to feel so much better when we work on your ability to 25:00 Let your kids know so much better than I help moms be able to lift their kids. Because that feels so impersonal. 25:09 Right? It was wanting to put that personality back into that love back into it. So if you do those couple of things, you're immediately going to start to see incremental conversion challenges where things are not challenging, but opportunities for you, where you're going to get more conversion. And then the next step is, of course, going in with a deeper strategy around how do we build all of your pieces together so that it's always about the client. It's always spoken from love. It's ethical, crappy, meaning that it's not triggering, it's really about pleasure for the person. So pleasure copy versus triggering copy is a great tool for people to be able to utilize. So pleasure copy is all about calling people in by giving them the real results and the inspiration that they're going to receive by doing the work with you. Because first and foremost, when we're purchasers, we want to know, what can you do for me? Not what's the like physical aspect, not the, like manipulation of my body, not the tools around mindset, we don't care about that stuff. It's not the how we're gonna get there. And so what am I gonna get? How am I going to do that? So that's what somebody actually wants. So I would say if you can go into pleasure, copy and writing pleasure, so don't trigger them, instead, inspire them, talk to them in Love Letter language, and speak in their belief system, not your own keys to converting and actually catalyzing conversation, which is truly the key to converting a man I mean, such great tips. I like I said before, I've been taking so many notes and thinking about Oh, does my website do this is it so now I'm gonna have to go do an an edit of my website. So thanks a lot for adding a little more work on to the plate. No, I'm just joking. It's good work. It's good work. It's good work. This was great. What? What would you like the audience to take away from this conversation concerning copy and how we can connect and how we can convert? And ultimately, because if we have a business, I mean, we do want to make money, right? We're not all in the world motivated, where, where we've made a whole bunch of money, and now we can give it away. But we do want to make money. And we do want to make an impact. So what what are the things that you want the audience to take away from? So I think the first thing is, know your beliefs. Know the beliefs of your client, know the beliefs of your business, right to your clients beliefs. First, knowing your beliefs is helpful, because it will, it will show you what the gap is between your beliefs and your clients beliefs. And that's important to understand because it's often about jargon or lingo, keep that out of your copy, speak to the pleasure, talk about the results you're going to create for their client and inspire them to live a life better than they currently have, by doing this work with you speak into that more than you speak into their pain, right? We're the life like literally triggering enough right now. Stop focusing on pain, instead, start focusing on the pleasure that they're gonna get working with you. And I finally move into love letter language. So love letter language is just taking a couple extra and this is rare for a copywriter to say, but add a couple sentences, show them that they're seen, show them that you hear them, allow them to be vulnerable with you by asking great questions that encourage that vulnerability from them. And you really utilize that and if all else fails after that, Kelly copywriter, that's what we're here for. But you can do this, it is completely possible to do your copy in a way that is fully aligned and a way that is loving to your client and immediately get to conversion. We only opt out by working with copywriters, but start doing it on your own. Everybody should do it on their own first and call us second. And speaking of hiring a copywriter where can people find you if they have questions or they want to hire you as their copywriter? Yes, sir. Absolutely. word magic. copywriting.com is my website. That's the best way to get a hold of me send me a smoke signal or a text message or whatever from Yeah, otherwise find me on Instagram at word magic, copywriting. Pretty simple. I'm always around. I've always got a free class coming up too. So there's usually a waitlist on my website to get into my next free class where I teach. And I talk about specifically how would you combine these things? And how do you how do you put it all together. So if you're interested in learning, you can always take one of my free classes. And then if you just want to hire me we can go that route as well. But I love it when people simply connect. And at the very least, I promise you if you sign up for my email newsletter, I send tips and tricks all the time. So if you 30:00 Want to do it on your own in small bits and pieces? That's a great way to perfect and we'll have links to everything crystal just said at podcast at healthy, wealthy smart.com under this episode, so one link, little quick click, and we'll take you to everything. So take her free class, follow her on Instagram and get the newsletter. Okay, Crystal last question. And so when I asked everyone, and that is knowing where you are now in your life and in your career, what advice would you give to your younger self? 30:37 Ooh, juicy questions, I would tell my younger self to follow your zone of genius first. And what I mean by that is I actually spent two decades as a live event professional. I was always a writer, I was a writer from the top, I could write, I won awards for it, I always wanted to write. And then I followed the money. And I wanted to advance and I kind of let my copywriting and my writing kind of slide a little bit. I mean, I was reading New York Times, bestsellers, and 16. Like it was brilliant. And I let it slide because the money was better in advance. And I slipped in and eventually became a zone of excellence. And I did it for two decades. But there was always a little piece of me that felt unfulfilled because I wasn't just a writer. And that's what I wanted. 31:29 And when I left the bounce, and just started writing, everything got easy. It was like I hit the easy button on my zone of genius and cerebral doing work, I was super passionate about stuff I loved. I got to you know, work in strategy and marketing, because copy is a lot about strategy and humans. So a lot of the work I did in advance actually magically comes into play and copy. But working in my zone of genius. I think from the get go, I would have changed everything for me, I would have felt so much more fulfilled, so much younger, and so much more let up by this work. 32:05 So yeah, I would have told my younger self to follow your love of writing. Follow your zone of genius first. What great advice crystal, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast and sharing all these tips and tricks to help us write better copy, whether that's on our website or our newsletters or our social media. So thank you so much. You're so welcome. Thank you and everyone. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart. 32:38 Thanks for listening. And don't forget to leave us your questions and comments at podcast dot healthy, wealthy smart.com
In Level 3 of the SDJ Video Game Saga, the gang tackles a boss level of discussion about sexism in gaming. We take stock of female and nonbinary characters in the games we play, misogyny and sexism with girl gamers, and the lack of diversity in the gaming community — and how all that is slowly changing. Square 50s Guy wonders how a woman can go joystick to joystick with men. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sexydadjokes/support
This episode we fix the podcast timestream in a late-night, more-than-slightly delirious rerecording of our discussion of episode 12! Join us for a messy trip through a not-so-great SHIELD Academy. The crew discusses the odd characterization of the Academy students, the episode's centerpiece character, and the Academy itself. Along the way however, Holly just has to make a bold and poorly worded hot take that everyone gets hung up on for far too long. In Level 7, Luka and Holly elaborate on their frustrations with this episode's characters.
We're back and boy howdy do we got a television episode. This week we welcome back our ol' friend Mike and as the series shifts its focus back to Centipede and leaves us with our first real cliffhanger. The trio gets supremely creeped out by Po and Raina while while trying to unravel the mystery of why the SHIELD writers wrote Po Like That. In Level 7, Luka and Holly discuss the upcoming plot reveals and discuss where some of these characters go from here.
We're back! And we're just as rowdy as ever as we take a trip to the Hub and get our first real look at Big SHIELD. Join Luka and Buck as they discuss their first impressions of Big SHIELD while Holly struggles to figure out if this season is pro-cop or not. And much to Luka's dismay, Buck and Holly reveal the name they have decided to call our listeners. In Level 7, Holly continues her struggle while also commiserating with Luka some more about their shared feelings about a certain character.
It's finally here! This week we get to talk about the infamous Episode 6, and wooo boy howdy is it a wild one. In our lengthy discussion, Luka and Holly gush about every little detail, Buck finally learns what all the fuss is about, and our first guest (!!!!) Beau has some truly next level takes. But more than anything, we all get to scream about FitzSimmons. In Level 7, Beau joins Holly and Luka and the three of them discuss Beau's history with the show, and get their takes on some of the more spicy characters. Thanks so much again to Beau for guesting! You can follow them at @BeeElderly on twitter!
The week we're back on the plot train with a trip to Hong Kong, where we see some familiar faces along with new ones. We discuss our love for Skye, questionable decision-making, and dunk on the writers for not being true gamers. Along the way, Luka disapproves of Skye's taste in men, Buck is skeptical of the show's depictions of hacking, and Holly expresses her desire to be topped by May. In Level 7, Luka and Holly once again discuss the reveals of this episode in the larger context of the show as well as their opinions of the newly introduced characters.
CONTENT WARNING: Mentions of surgery at 46:02 until 48:18 and briefly in passing at 55:16This week things take a dark-ish turn as we get some more Plot™. There are diamond heists, infiltration missions, mysterious signals, potential telepaths, and we talk about all of them! Luka and Buck also discuss the episode's brief tonal shift, while Holly gets existential dread. In Level 7, Luka and Holly discuss the plot implications, as well as the accuracy of Buck's called shots.
In this episode, Buck records from a toaster (sorry about that). As Skye learns to become a SHIELD agent, we talk about how her character is beginning to develop, in addition to the characters around her. We also talk about connections to the comics, get frustrated with billionaires and libertarians, and lament about the lack of May and Fitzsimmons. In Level 7, Luka and Holly discuss how this episode sets up future plot points later in the season and in the series.
Today's episode is going to be a little different than previous ones: We're not going to interview anyone. In lieu of a guest, Joe will be discussing three different levels of add-backs. The three levels of add-backs are various ways to add value to your business. Most of these suggestions are fairly easy to enact, but may not have been things you've previously thought of doing. Tune in to hear about calculating a seller's discretionary earnings, where you will make the majority of your money, and much more. Episode Highlights: Where you make 50% of all your money. Calculating Seller's Discretionary Earnings. Valuation multiples. Making sure the acquirer understands the value of your business. Breaking down expenses. Pros and cons of certain business credit cards. The pitfalls of hiring family and friends. How current tariffs may affect your bottom line. Illegitimate add-backs. Being careful not to erode trust. Transcription: Joe: Hey everyone thanks for joining the Quiet Light Podcast. This is going to be a little bit of a different podcast than some of the others we've done. I'm not interviewing anyone on the podcast with Mark. It's just me. It's just me talking about something that's critically important. As many of you know, I've been doing this for over eight years now, tracking towards personally 100 million in total closed transactions. I've talked to thousands of entrepreneurs over the last eight years. And what I hear more often than not is so the multiple is still around three times and [inaudible 00:01:54.5] is asking me from New England always wants to say it depends upon your definition of three times of what. Most people don't get the "what" correct so I want to focus on that right now; that "what", three times of what. It is a three times multiple or four times or five times or two times depending upon the financial key metrics that Mark and I talked about; the four pillars that have been created, and then these three levels of add-backs. It's a multiple of Seller's Discretionary Earnings and calculating it correctly and getting it right is one of the most important things you can do for your business. So I'm going to talk about it here. I'm also recording a video for those that want to go to the Quiet Light YouTube channel and look at the video as well. From the video there'll be a set of slides that you can download from the show notes from this podcast as well. So on to the three levels of add-backs. First, what we want to do is actually define the reality that if you've got a physical product e-commerce business, more than 50% of all the money you'll ever make from your business comes the day that you actually sell it. That's pretty substantial. And you think about it, we're all trying to drive revenue and make a living as entrepreneurs but in a physical products e-commerce business and many others as well, most of the money you'll ever make comes the day you sell it. So you want to prepare to sell all along the way. I know it makes your eyes bleed but if you do the right thing and focus on running the business like a professional and creating a great opportunity for your buyer; and there's many buyers in this audience that are listening, if you create a great business to hand over to somebody that wants to take it to the next level and do the things that you may not want to because the business has outgrown you, you're going to get more than 50% of all the money you've ever made from the business. Odds are as well that your business is your most valuable asset. And I'd venture to guess that, you know the value of your house within 5 or 10% and your investment portfolio, and your retirement fund, and your car, and your condo, and your townhome, or how much you have in your bank account but you are 30, 40, 50% off in terms of the value of your business. And some of you are running businesses that are completely unsellable even though you're doing great things with driving revenue. And they're unsellable because you're co-mingling too many things with one brand. You've got seven brands in an account, you want to sell off one and you don't use proper accounting software like QuickBooks or Xero. I've seen this too many times. Too many people say, oh, okay three times I've got this. I've got an 18 year old and 16 year old; I hear I got this all the time. Please don't say I've got this. Go through this. Listen to the full podcast. Get these three levels of add-backs right and you will get the real value for your business along with all the other things that you need to do for the four pillars. The real value of your business is important to understand here. We're not talking about maxing out the value of your business and jacking up your Seller's Discretionary Earnings; we're talking about you getting paid for what you've created. It's not boosting or jacking anything, its legitimate black and white add-backs that are owner benefits or one-time expenses. And I'll go through the whole list that you deserve for the value of your business. If you're a buyer out there listening and you're looking at businesses for sale, you can look at some of the add-backs that have been missed by the broker or the individual that's selling the business and calculate your own instant equity when you buy the business. Okay, so in terms of the valuation and the way that it works, it's hard to understand, but simple at the same time. The calculation for the list price of a business; it's the earnings base multiplier approach and you've all heard the term at this point Seller's Discretionary Earnings. Well, the math is simple. The formula is simple but it's hard to remember. Its Seller's Discretionary Earnings times the multiple equals the list price. Again, calculating the Seller's Discretionary Earnings accurately is important and it's hard and then determining the multiple and what range you're going to fall in depending upon the four pillars and financial key metrics is hard. But when you get the two of those right and you've got the right data, it equals the list price. Plus, in a physical products business, the landed cost of goods sellable inventory on hand at the time of closing. Almost everyone does it that way with the exception of one broker in the sub 20 million dollar range. Some of the larger investment banking firms may be doing something totally different in the 50 to 250 million dollar range. Okay, so to calculate Seller's Discretionary Earnings first you have to have a Profit & Loss statement. And that's why I always preach QuickBooks and Xero. I had an email from somebody yesterday and he wrote he doesn't use QuickBooks or Xero and he's using other stuff and he says I don't trust QuickBooks. Well, he doesn't trust himself then or a bookkeeper that he would hire because QuickBooks is just information that's entered or imported from the person doing the work. But you've got to calculate Seller's Discretionary Earnings properly. As I said to get the list price, Seller's Discretionary Earnings times the multiple equals your list price. How do you calculate Seller's Discretionary Earnings? It's your net income on your Profit & Loss statement, plus your add-backs. And again, we've coined the three levels of add-backs here at Quiet Light Brokerage. And under each level there are six different levels. So there's a total of 18 points that we focused on for add-backs. So, net income plus add-backs equals your Seller's Discretionary Earnings or SDE. Now valuation multiples; I'm going to cover them real quickly here because everybody wants to know what multiple ranges are. But that person says so you know the ballpark, multiple ranges three times. Is that right? First question is a multiple of what? Second thing to say is without accurate Seller's Discretionary Earnings your multiple means nothing; absolutely nothing. So you've got to get the discretionary earnings right in order to get the multiple right. Important thing to understand is that the size of the business does impact value. Also, multiple channel revenue versus a single channel of revenue impacts the value. So if you've got a business that is less than $100,000 in Seller's Discretionary Earnings and you are 100% direct consumer brand not selling on third party platforms, let's say you're 100% Shopify. If you've got a business that's got all the four pillars that we talked about and good financial key metrics, you're probably going to be in that three to four time multiple range. That's a pretty good number. But if you are a 100% Amazon brand and by 100%, I really mean 85 to 90%, you are going to be in a drastically different range. You're going to be in two to three times. And this is at sub $100,000 in discretionary earnings. And this is all subject to change. It floats and changes depending upon the economy, the type of business, the recurring revenue aspect of it, B2C versus B2B; all sorts of different variables. So this is just general information. So again sub 100,000 three to four times if you're selling direct to consumers, if you're a 100% third party platform, two to three times; a pretty dramatic difference in value. As low as 200,000 if you're 100% Amazon brand and as high as 400,000 if you're 100% your own you are all selling to the customers. In the $100,000 to $500,000 range, you're pure B2C brand jumps from three to five times multiple of Seller's Discretionary Earnings. The Amazon brand jumps as well, but it's only two to three and a half times. We started at the same floor of two, and then got bumped up to three and a half times. There are exceptions to every rule and it's a very broad range depending upon trends of the business, how much you're spending on advertising as a percent of total revenue, how clean your books are, growth opportunities in the business, the transferability of the business; all these different things. But the multiples will overlap as I go through this. Jumping up to discretionary earnings of 500 to a million, you're looking pure B2C at four to six times Seller's Discretionary Earnings and on 100% Amazon brand you're at three to five times. The five times here has to be really, really solid. It's going to be a great business. But the three times is as low as that sub hundred thousand dollar business because it's just a broad, broad range. If you've got a hero SKU that's doing 70% of your revenue, that's going to bring your multiple down; as simple as that. There's a lot of competition on single channel third party platforms like Amazon that could change your revenue trends overnight. I've seen it many, many times. Okay, so Seller's Discretionary Earnings last level north of a million dollars, you're looking at a pure B2C, you're looking at six times plus. Amazon brand you're at four times plus; a lot of overlap there. Again, because no two businesses are alike and you can't just make the assumption that you're going to be at X if you're doing Y in Seller's Discretionary Earnings. Again, though, size does impact risk. That's what we're talking about here in terms of the multiple ranges and where they go. Okay, so the three different levels of add-backs will be defined clearly; detailed clearly but let's just define what the heck an add-back is. If you think about it as simple as an owner benefit; something that you personally get from the business, they're also one-time accounting expenses, they're one time legal expenses and expenses that don't recur or carry forward to the new owner of the business. That's broad, but very specific. The goal of identifying add-backs again, it's to identify the true baseline earnings for potential acquirers of your business and also for you so you'll understand the value of your most valuable asset. It's not to jack up the price. That's not the point. The point is to make sure you get the true value for your business and so that the acquirer of the business understands the real value of it as well. There are three different levels that we've developed here at Quiet Light. The first one, Level 1, they should be pretty obvious. They're obvious benefits that I think almost anyone could identify. Level 2 are one time and accounting expenses. They get a little bit more complex there. But it's Level 3 that an inexperienced broker or if you are someone that is selling your business directly to a buyer yourself, you could be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the overall value of your business if you're not focused on Level 3; if you're not digging deep and I always say using math and logic, it's not magic. It's not gray. It's black and white math and logic in that third level. And we'll go through some of them right now. But there's six different points to each level. So let's talk about this Level 1. I had somebody approach me at a Mastermind event recently and asked me what I thought was a pretty obvious question; Level 1. He said, hey, I don't make a whole lot of net income in the business, but I do take a $250,000 salary, is that an add-back? Yes, that's an add-back, that's an owner benefit; crystal clear owner benefit. So if you're only making your businesses $10,000 net income a year, but you're taking a $250,000 salary, your total owner benefit there with those two things alone would be; or Seller's Discretionary Earnings would be $260,000. The exception here is unless there are two partners that are working well over 40 hours a week combined. We can only add-back one owner payroll in that situation and have to do an adjustment for the second. If you've got two owners that are generalist in terms of their skills working less than 40 hours a week combined, then we could add-back both of them. The second one in Level 1; and by the way, with owner salaries, again, there's little asterisks that I put all over these things. There are exceptions to every rule. You have to talk through each and every one. Estimated income taxes; if you've been in business a long time as an entrepreneur probably making quarterly estimated income taxes payments, that's an obvious owner benefit that goes into the add-backs schedule that your broker or adviser or you if you're selling your business on your own would create. Owner health benefits; pretty obvious, if I sell my business today, I'm not going to pay for the new owners health insurance. They would have their own. Charitable contribution is number three, pretty obvious. Interest expenses, we see a lot of businesses come through for sale that were purchased years ago with an SBA loan and there's expenses there that do not carry forward to the new owner. Or if you were a 100% Amazon business owner and you've taken advantage of the Amazon Lending Program, there are interest expenses in your P&L as well, those do not carry forward and those are an add-back. Retirement contributions are number five; pretty obvious there. And number six has got a lot of them, it's little things that are owner benefits, like your personal meals and entertainment that you run through the business, travel that you run through the business. And we'll get into Level 3, we'll talk about some travel with mastermind groups and events and things of that nature. Vehicles or miles that you write off on the vehicles. This one should be pretty obvious, but it's mobile phones. No one is going to buy your online business that doesn't already have a mobile phone. So if you write off your mobile phone through the business, it is an add-back because it's not an expense that carries forward because the new owner already has a mobile phone. If they don't, they shouldn't be buying an online business. And yes, I've had a conversation with people before, a lot less in recent years than seven or eight years ago. If you've got a home office and you choose to write off tax for tax reduction that expense does not carry forward, nor do the utilities. So those are the first six in Level 1. Those are the more obvious owner benefits. In Level 2 they're a little less obvious so let's go through them again. There are six different levels there. The first one is trademarks, copyrights, patents, logo designs; things of that nature, it's all centered around intellectual property. These are mostly onetime expenses that do not carry forward to the new owner of the business. And I've sold businesses, as many of us have here at Quiet Light where somebody had just gotten a utility patent in the 12 months prior to selling the business and there's 20,000 dollars' worth of legal fees there. That's an amazing thing to have in terms of selling your business; that's defense ability; part of the risk pillar but it's also an add-back. So you can put that $20,000 back into your Profit & Loss statement below the [inaudible 00:17:27.5]. Same with logo design, copyrights, things of that nature. The second point here is these other types of legal expenses like a lawsuit. It happens now and then, but it generally doesn't happen every year so you could do an add-back of that as well. Unless you've got a P&L and you've been sued every year because of the type of business that you have. We may not sell that. Sorry, no one might buy it. Sorry. But if you try to sell it on your own, it would be an add-back. Enforcement letters that someone would write for you, those are generally one time and don't carry forward same with incorporation documents. The third point here in Level 2 is the new bookkeeper setting up books and arrears. You guys have always heard me talk about our book keeper referral list. We don't get paid referral fees from bookkeepers. We keep a list of good qualified bookkeepers because we want you to run a better business and have cleaner books because it's going to help us help you get a better value for your business. It's going to help the buyer take something over that is clean and documented well. So sometimes people will come to me and they need to have their books cleaned up. They would hire an e-commerce bookkeeper that would go through the last 24, 36 months of data and pull it into QuickBooks or Xero. There's generally a one-time fee for that. That expense does not carry forward to the new owner because you've already done it. There is a monthly fee that you would pay a bookkeeper that might charge you $500 a month to do your bookkeeping for you but if they charge you two or three or $4,000 to do your book in arrears, that is absolutely an add-back and its money well spent; well invested. It's fuzzy math to calculate the return on investment on that but you would, in my opinion, get well over 100% ROI if you spent money on hiring a bookkeeper to do your books in arrears. Equipment purchases are generally one-time expenses and often buried in the P&L under office supplies and they're very often personal in nature. Most of these businesses that are run remotely from a solopreneur that has VAs or even if you've got people that work closely and you all go to an office, there's not a lot of physical equipment that is purchased. So personal computers, we often see the office supplies get bumped up a little bit in the fall or in the late summer when kids are going back to school or during the holidays when people are spending money on gifts or just before the New Year when they're getting new products for themselves to reduce their taxes in a sense. Those are buried in the P&L; these are definitely add-backs when they're personal in nature. The last two points here in Level 2, they're kind of obvious as well but sometimes people don't catch them. It's depreciation. It's an accounting expense, it's not an actual cash out expense. And the same goes for amortization. Okay, so Level 3, again, thanks for hanging in here, this is the dig deep most important use math and logic part of the three levels of add-backs. This is where you're going to get the most bang for your buck by taking your time and digging deep and keeping good records so that you can go through these different things. First one is a website redesign. Several years ago, I sold a business that had just spent $20,000 on a website redesign. That business was listed at a 3.5 multiple and the website redesign; the business was maybe seven years old at the time and it had not done a website redesign since the inception of the business. So it's not going to recur every year. In this case, it's not going to recur every five years. So we chose to do a 100% add-back of that. So at three and a half times, that added $70,000 to the Seller's Discretionary Earnings at a 3.5 multiple. It sold at full price and the person that bought that business has been running it since then and is now listing the business for sale in the next few months at a great return on investment. But it's absolutely an add-back. If in the P&L, it shows that you've done this every two and a half years then at the very least, it's a partial add-back. Point number two on Level 3 is something that most people in the e-commerce world are involved with in some way, shape, or form and that's Masterminds, events, and related travel expenses to Mastermind. Sometimes there's a pretty hefty joining fee as well. So if you are part of a Mastermind whether it's; should I name them all? I'm not going to name any today. You've heard me name some of them before. If you're a Mastermind member, you're the member, not your business. When you sell your business, that expense does not carry forward. It helps you personally grow your business and gain business knowledge and the new owner of the business may or may not join that Mastermind as well. They may actually be in their own Mastermind and have their own expense because they're bolting on new businesses to it. So this one is an add-back and it's missed by most people. The same goes for those events that you may go to. You choose to go to those events that are Mastermind related and odds are you checked out a lot of personal benefits there and travel and sightseeing and things of that nature. The exception to this rule is if your business is similar to Quiet Light Brokerage. We sponsor Masterminds, we sponsor events and we go to them to build our network of relationships therefore, it's not an add-back. It's an integral part of our marketing campaign. The other exception is if you brought your CMO; somebody that's on staff. If you the owner of the business goes it's an add-back but if you the owner of your business goes and you choose to bring your CMO, that's a business expense. That CMO is going to move forward and carry forward with the business and would go to that Mastermind every year, so to speak if the new owner of the business joins the Mastermind or has their own CMO because it's a great way to learn new marketing techniques. That part wouldn't be an add-back. So there are again exceptions to almost every single rule. Point number three here is pretty important. Most people listening to this podcast that own any kind of online business or doing some form of advertising. The biggest mistake I see people make is with, let's say, an Amazon FBA businesses, they're allowing Amazon to simply deduct the ad cost from their deposits every couple of weeks. That means that you are not getting the benefit on your spending. You're not getting that cash back and you're not getting the rewards. American Express Gold Card will give you four times the points on advertising spend up to $150,000 and then the levels change. There are cash back cards that you can get 1½, 2% cash back. The IRS hasn't figured out how to tax this. It's really; these are discounts, there's no method for tracking it. So I see a lot of people; it never shows up on their P&L, some people with bookkeeper's do; that's an exception rather than the rule. They do an adjustment in the Profit & Loss statement. They've got the total advertising expense and then they've got an adjustment for it there. But when it's not there at all; and let's talk cash back only for now, people just slide it into their personal income and bank account and they use the money for perks. It's an owner benefit so therefore, if it's an owner benefit, it is an add-back. The key here is to track it and find a way to convey it to your adviser if they don't ask; everybody at Quiet Light will but if they don't ask, convey to them that it is an owner benefit. You do have the data. It's math. It's logic. And your buyer will accept it. I've had situations where we've had $24,000 a year in cash back and tracked it and the business sold for a three time multiple, for instance. So it's almost $75,000 in value to the business when it's being sold; a huge benefit there. When it comes to rewards; this is the tricky part, a lot of people use the rewards instead of the cash back, which is really smart because you can get a lot more bang for your buck with the rewards. But you cannot convert that bang for your buck into actual dollars at that high level. So if you are going to travel internationally and use your points that you've accumulated to buy a $10,000 first class ticket somewhere around the world, you don't then get a $10,000 add-back. What you get instead is a percentage of your points. Most of the cards say you can convert them at 1%, so you would simply take the points that month times 1% and that is you add-back amount. That's a huge one that most people miss and it can add a tremendous value to your business. Now, as entrepreneurs, we first often seek employees that we know and we trust. Those employees are often friends and relatives. First point of advice I'd give you is don't hire somebody that you cannot comfortably fire and those are usually friends or relatives. Second point is, if you go ahead and do that, try not to overpay them. Because if you're overpaying them, you're getting some loyalty there, yes, but when you go to sell your business, you will lose 2, 3, 4, 5 times the value of how much you're overpaying them. But you don't have to fire them. My bad, advocated firing people before for this very situation. But you don't have to be the Grinch if it's around the holidays. Here's what I did in a particular situation. I had a business that was for sale, three and a half time multiple, really strong business, ended up getting multiple full price offers and sold at that level. But the owner of the business paid his brother who he loved dearly $20 an hour to do customer service work. Who wouldn't want to do remote customer services work at $20 an hour? It's a great deal. His brother loved it. It turned out the brother was really working about five hours a week because he was really good at creating canned responses, most of these; 99% of the communications from customers were via email so he just had a canned response. He was open about it, talked about it. There's a lot of logic to saying this brother is loved and overpaid excessively so we did a negative add-back, meaning we adjusted his income and dropped down to the add-back schedule and put an expense in for a virtual assistant to do the customer service work. We bumped the customer service work from what the brother said he worked from five hours to 10 hours. And instead of paying that VA the standard maybe $5 an hour if they're working remotely in the Philippines, for instance, we actually doubled it and made it 10. So we overpaid the VA. We paid them for more hours and this is all on paper, of course, and did an adjustment. We were conservative in our adjustment, but basically it was about a $10,000 add-back at a three and a half time multiple. It boosted the value of business by $35,000. So you've got to think through some of those things when you're making hiring decisions and firing decisions and plan in advance when you're selling your business. We don't want you to wake up some day and just be so tired and frustrated and fearful that you're too overleveraged in your business and decide to sell. We want you to plan it out so we can help you get maximum value for your business, but also have a better business for the buyer so that they can take it on with less risk that they're willing to pay more and they can grow it someday and eventually exit their business. Okay, point number five, most people miss this. If partway through the year, your cost of goods sold go up by $2 a unit and you're selling a thousand units a month, do you think your buyer is going to ask for an adjustment in due diligence? Yes is the only answer. They're smart. They're going to stroke a check for half a million, a million, to five million dollars. They're going to hire somebody to do their due diligence. They're going to pay attention and they're going to dig deep. You need to do the same thing. So last year, I sold Mike Jackness' business. Many of you have heard me talk about it with Mike on this podcast. We've done many presentations together. Halfway through the year Mike renegotiated his cost of goods sold on his one primary SKU. It was doing about; let's just call it a thousand units a month for simple math, he's doing many more than that. And it was more than $2 and a unit that was adjusted, but it happened in the last six months; the most recent six months of his P&L. That savings carries forward to the new owner of the business. So what we did is in the first six months of that year, we took the total number of units that were sold, multiplied it times let's say $2 a unit. That's two thousand dollars a month if a thousand units were sold a month or it's $12,000. And then you multiply that $12,000 times your multiple and you see what added value there is to your business. It's a legitimate black and white add-back. In Mike's situation off the top of my head; I'm guessing at this point, I'm going from memory but I think it was about $54,000 that was added to the list price of this business; true, legitimate black and white value. It's sold. Obviously we know that. The buyer has bought five businesses from Quiet Light Brokerage and multiple others. He's very, very well educated. He's very smart. It's a legitimate add-back. 99% of people that sell the business on their own missed that and I'm sure a lot more with other firms. At Quiet Light Brokerage; and here I am preaching Quiet Light, I'm telling you that you got to dig deep. All right, reduced cost of goods sold. That's what that is, that definitely carry forward. The other part here is that most people that are listening to this that are entrepreneurs bootstrapped their business and they listened to an influencer, an expert in the space, and they gave it a try. And it turns out all the stars were aligned. They worked hard, they got lucky. And they've got a business that is generating revenue for them. And you're just working like crazy on that treadmill, trying to keep up with growth, and inventory, and cash flow management; things of this nature. You didn't slow down yet or haven't had the opportunity to slow down and look at your packaging and maybe working with somebody like Inventus or Gembah to work on repackaging your products and your SKUs. When you do that, if the weight comes down, the pick pack and ship fees at your 3PL or at the FBA comes down and that will carry forward just like reduced cost of goods sold. So think about those aspects of it. They're all really important. When those savings carry forward to the new owner of the business, it's an adjustment or an add-back. We've all heard of the tariff wars in recent years, months, depending upon when you're listening to this. We've had tariffs that have been; first they were doubled; now they've been cut in half. If you're in the middle of this and your tariffs have been reduced by 50%, that savings will carry forward and you can do an adjustment on that as well. But you've got to have the data in order to do it. You can't ballpark these numbers. You've got to have the details and the data and the numbers. You've got to dig deep. You've got to use all of the math and logic that's at your fingertips if you're running your business really well and really focused with data to drive the value where it should be so the buyer can take it over again and do the right thing for the buyer. And that buyer takes it over and again does something great with the business. That's the third point; I'm sorry, sixth point of Level 3. Let's talk briefly about an add-back schedule and what it looks like and what it does for this business. For those that have planned in to jump over to video, they can see this in a P&L format, for those that are listening, I'm going to talk through it. The example I've got here is it's got a lot of add-backs in it. Let me make it crystal clear that this list I've got up in front of me, not every one of them is on every P&L add-back schedule. It's kind of excessive. But the point here is to show you how many there are and what the possibilities are. In this example though, the net income, we've got $297,000 in this add-back example. The Level 1 add-backs between payroll, payroll taxes, health insurance, charitable donation, meals and entertainment added almost $75,000 back to the net income. At a four time multiple that's $299,000 added to the list price. The Level 2 add-backs one time legal and professional fees, depreciation, and interest expenses added almost $21,000 back to the Seller's Discretionary Earnings. At a four time multiple that's $82,000. Level 3, we've got reduced cost of goods sold. You replaced an in-house bookkeeper, you've got a new e-com bookkeeper; a negative adjustment there, Mastermind joining fees, travel to events and Masterminds, and then adjustment on cost of the goods sold, cash back there; oh no this one is a cash back on your credit card. All of those total about $62,000. At a four time multiple it's adding $247,000 to the list price of the business. Between the three different levels of add-backs; $157,000 in add-backs, we started at almost $300,000 in net income and now we're at 157 in total add-backs, it's $455,000. All in at a four time multiple, these add-backs; these three different level of add-backs are adding $629,000 to the list price of the business. The bottom line is when you pay more attention to the details of the business your value is going to be much, much higher. Now, what is not a legitimate add-back? These are things that people have come to the table saying, hey, can I add this back? Hey, this is a one-time expense. It's not going to carry forward or things of this nature. And in most cases, they do carry forward or the math is really fuzzy and we can't do an add-back. The first one is inventory stock outs; lost revenue because of it. I've had people that have tried to talk me into this and in one case he did talk me into it. He was an investment banker, an attorney, an MBA; a really, really bright guy. He showed me the math and the logic behind being out of stock for a particular time in the trailing 12 months and wanted to do an add-back. The reality is that with a rapidly growing business, most people are going to be out of stock at one time or another until we get better at cash flow management. And then you're not going to be and you're going to be able to buy more inventory and you're not going be out of stock. But it occurs in most e-commerce businesses. So it's not an add-back, mostly because it does happen again and because the math is speculative at least. Okay, failed advertising campaign, point number two here, new advertising is something we all do in businesses. It's recurring and it's simply part of doing business and it's definitely not an add-back. The second owner salary that I talked about at level one in this case, it's not an add-back. If combined you're working more than 40 hours or that second owner if you're working less than 40 combined. If they've got some kind of non-transferable skill, let's say that they've developed the backend to your website and that's their primary role and they're only doing it 20 hours a week, but they're really skilled at it. Odds are the generalist buyer is not going to have that skill set. So it's not an add-back. And in fact, that payroll, you can do an adjustment on payroll if they're grossly overpaid, but you're going to have to do an adjustment in an add-back schedule showing the true cost of hiring somebody for that role after the business is sold. Recently fired essential staff is point number five. You want to let 9 to 12 months before adding back essential staff to prove that the business can be operated without them and that the trends and all the work has been separated out between new people that took over their roles. The last is I see this from some people and it's just not the right thing to do. Recent cost cutting is not a legitimate add-back. Cost cutting critical costs to increase your Seller's Discretionary Earnings, it's obvious and it erodes trust. So if you've traditionally spent $10,000 a month on advertising over the last 24 months but in the last three, you've cut it to $2,000 a month and the logic for you is because you got to boost Seller's Discretionary Earnings it's just going to hurt the new owner of the business and that's going to come back and bite them. And it's not the right thing to do but these types of things; other cost cutting is critical costs, just cut them to boost your Seller's Discretionary Earnings is definitely not an add-back. We always talk about black and white math and logic here with add-backs. There's no magic and there's no gray. Pushing too hard on add-backs is going to erode trust. We always talk about, again, the four pillars; the risk, growth, transferability, and documentation. Those are the Quiet Light four pillars. There's a fifth invisible one here and maybe it's the motor that keeps these pillars together, not a fifth pillar and that is you. That's the person behind the business that is running it. And if you push too hard on add-backs it's going to erode trust. And if you erode trust buyers are not going to give you the same value for the business or the deal structure is not going to be one that it could be if they trusted you. The more they trust you, the more they're going to pay for the business and the better deal structure you're going to get. So be a good person. Do the right thing. Run a great business. And you're going to get more value for it. Okay, so just to wrap this up for those that are stuck with me this long, I appreciate it, know your business' value. It's likely your most valuable asset. More than 50% of the money you'll ever make from your business is going to come the day that you sell it. So if you're a buyer of a business and you're on the hunt, these things are really, really important. You haven't bootstrapped, you haven't scrambled, you're coming into the business, it's already established, you could do some of these things and make these things a priority so that when you eventually exit your business; and everybody exits at one time or another, they don't think they will and they say no, I'm never going to sell. You're going to die someday; I'm sorry to tell you. So you're going to exit your business or it's going to exit you, outgrow you and not be sellable because of downward trend. So number one, know your business's value. Number two, know your numbers. Review your P&L monthly; Profit & Loss statement monthly. Get the details. The best thing you can do is outsource to an e-commerce bookkeeper or let them just give you that report every month. It takes two minutes to run the report yourself. Your cost of goods sold must be on an accrual basis. If you can get freight in on an accrual basis as well, please do because the businesses are sold on an accrual basis, not a cash basis. When you spend money on inventory and you do it on a cash basis your COGS will go up and down like a seesaw and the timing of the sale of your business will hurt you or hurt the buyer. And if you're going like crazy and you're putting all sorts of money into inventory, it's depressing your Seller's Discretionary Earnings and that's simply not the right way to do it. Review your key metrics, your churn rate, your average order value, ACOS or TACOS, your monthly recurring revenue, revenue by SKU, your inaudible [00:41:56.5]; all of these are important. Buyers are going to ask about them. The more detail you have about them, the more that knowledge is going to be conveyed, the more confidence you're going to instill in them, and the more value you're going to get for your business. Lastly, number three, track your perks. Personal expenses that are buried in the P&L owner benefits and we want to be able to pull those out of them. It's important because they are legitimate owner benefits and therefore they are add-backs. Track your cash back and travel points. Travel points can be converted. These owner benefits overall can add hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of value to your business. And you've earned it. Get paid for it. Don't take any shortcuts. There are no shortcuts to getting the true value for your business. Take the time and effort to review these and dig deep and by that, it's not an hour phone call with somebody that's trying to sell you on their ability to sell your business. I've got the perfect buyer for you. They just made an offer on another business. And I think they're going to buy your business. Please don't fall for that. You're smarter than that. We're here to help you understand the value of your business first and foremost. If you don't ever sell, that's okay. You're getting benefit from Quiet Light Brokerage, you're building a valuable business, you need to tell other people about it. Someday you will exit. Someday you will have somebody else that will exit and hopefully you'll think of us. But the key here is that you'll have a more valuable business that's better operated. And better for who? Somebody else; the buyer, and they're going to pay you more value for that. And someday oddly enough, I know it all comes back to selfishly Quiet Light Brokerage. Someday that buyer is going to sell their business as well. Maybe they'll think of us. That's our model. We want to help you first. Please take advantage of it and ask for a valuation. It's what we do. Don't say yeah, I'm not ready to sell. We do want to talk to you when you're ready to sell. We want to talk to you 12 to 24 months before you're ready to sell. Even if when you hit your target financial goal and you say you know what, I'm having fun. I want to hold on another year. Hold on to your business. You sell it when you're ready, but plan in advance. The best thing you can do is say, I want to exit; I want to change your mindset here and then I'm going to wrap this up. Change your mindset. Instead of going, how much can I get for my business? Say I want to get X for my business and then reverse engineer your pathway to that number. And the way to do that is a business valuation with a qualified expert at Quiet Light Brokerage. Now I'm pitching, right? I got to stop it. Everything we do is online. Everything we do is in the podcast. It's on YouTube. It's on our website. You could do a lot of this on your own. Go to the website, go to the show notes for this and download this PDF that matches this podcast presentation. And you're going to be able to do a lot of this on your own. If you can't do it and you don't want to do it, we're here to help. There's no cost to it. We're going to help you with it no matter what. So reach out. And don't forget, the most valuable asset is your business and you should pay very, very close attention to it. All right everybody thanks for listening. That wraps up this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast. Resources: Quiet Light Brokerage
Summary: Laura Waudby works part-time as a service dog trainer who prepares dogs for different types of service dog work and teaching puppy raiser classes -- plus, she's a new mom. You can find her online at TandemDogSports.com. In her “free time,” Laura trains and competes in obedience, rally, agility, and dabbles in disc dog and trick training. She was halfway to her OTCH with her UDX Corgi, Lance, before his early retirement. She has also competed at the Master's level in agility. Links Tandemdogsports.com Next Episode: To be released 4/20/2018, featuring Eileen Anderson, author of Remember Me? Loving and Caring for a Dog with Canine Cognitive Dysfunction. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we'll be talking to Laura Waudby. Laura works part-time as a service dog trainer who prepares dogs for different types of service dog work and teaching puppy raiser classes -- plus, she's a new mom. You can find her online at TandemDogSports.com. In her “free time,” Laura trains and competes in obedience, rally, agility, and dabbles in disc dog and trick training. She was halfway to her OTCH with her UDX Corgi, Lance, before his early retirement. She has also competed at the Master's level in agility. Due to the special behavior needs of one of her Duck Tolling Retrievers, Laura has developed a strong interest in learning how to create motivation and confidence in dogs that struggle, either through genetics or through less than ideal training, to make it into the competition ring. At FDSA, Laura offers classes for the Fenzi TEAM titles program and teaches Ring Confidence and several specialty classes including a class on articles and a class on stand for exam. Hi Laura, welcome to the podcast! Laura Waudby: Hey. I'm glad to be here. Melissa Breau: I'm excited to have you. So, do you mind starting us off by reminding listeners a little bit about who the dogs are that you have and what you're working on with them? Laura Waudby: My first dog is Lance, the Corgi. He is basically retired now due to an injury, but we do some obedience and trick training, and he likes to run around barking quite a bit. Then I have Vito, the Toler, and we mainly compete in agility, where we've worked on a lot of his ring stress issues. We still train in obedience, working on engagement, motivation, being brave. Then I have Zumi the Duck, who is my younger Toler. She's 3 years old right now. We are trialing now in agility, rally, and even obedience. These last few months she's started to awaken, so we're working on a lot of over-arousal issues now in both sports, but it's nice having a completely different set of issues than my other dog Vito. Then I usually have a foster dog or two around the house, service dogs in training. Melissa Breau: Congrats on getting in the ring with the youngster there. I've seen some of the videos. It looks like good stuff. Laura Waudby: Yeah, she's a lot of fun. Melissa Breau: I wanted to start out talking a bit about this idea of ring confidence. I think that most people who have a dog that loves training -- or even those who have worked super-hard to teach a dog to love training -- are often a bit surprised when they go into the ring for the first time and find they have a totally different dog than they're used to. Why is trialing so different from training? Laura Waudby: Everything about a trial is different than training. One of the biggest things is the atmosphere is really charged. There's nervous handlers and excited handlers both at the same time. It's clear that there's something specific about the ring area by the way that people are all crowding around it, everybody's watching. And then in obedience and rally, there's somebody there shouting orders at their mom or dad, so they can see that they're not really in charge. There's also the formality piece, really, even in sports like agility, when you're not really limited to how you praise and interact with your dog. There's still the stress excitement of the trial clams people up and you act really different than you would in a trial. So it doesn't take long for dogs to discover that the ring is very different. There's no food, there's no toys, and the absence of the reward can create a lot of stress too. Melissa Breau: Most people, I think, plan to work on it by taking their dog to lots of fun matches and training there until they think their dog is ready for competition, and while for some dogs, in some instances, maybe that's enough, I think often it's really not. What are some of the pieces that are maybe missing from that plan? Laura Waudby: I tend to find people use their run-throughs as getting that “trial experience.” They show up and their plan is to go through all the exercises or a full sequence of agility obstacles exactly like it was a trial, without rewards and extra praise, and without any support of their dog, who is probably struggling. The whole idea of doing all the exercises formally is really flawed to begin with. It's sometimes OK to test to see where you are and how the exercises hold up under pressure, but I think that should be pretty limited when you go to fun matches, because I don't think trial issues are due to the exercises themselves. It's more everything else I've talked about, with the formality and the pressure and the lack of rewards. So when I go to a fun match, I want to take advantage of that environment and work on showing my dog what the procedures are, things like, this is how we'll wait outside the ring, this is how someone will approach you and they'll take your leash, this is how we'll go to the start line together, or this is how we'll move in-between exercises. But practicing those little tiny things in a trial, I guess that's really where most of the stress issues tend to occur, and my main goal is just having a lot of fun, playing with the dog, helping them out, showing them there's nothing scary about being in the ring, having them feel good with all the pressure surrounding it. That's how I approach fun matches and run-throughs. Melissa Breau: Those are some of the pieces in the Ring Confidence class. Do you mind talking about how you work on that in that class? Laura Waudby: The Ring Confidence class has those two main goals of what we just talked about. The first goal is that ring equals fun. It should be a very happy and safe space for the dog, and that's pretty much through classical conditioning. It's entering the ring and having a party over and over and over again. It can take quite a while for dogs who have already been trialing, because you have to work on going to new places. It doesn't have to be a trial environment, but just going to a park or a shopping area and practicing entering a new spot and having fun. It's forgetting about training the exercises themselves and just playing with your dog, because if they're comfortable enough to play with you and focus on you, then they can work. The second part of Ring Confidence is working on that focus, and teaching the dog what to expect at a trial and what to do with all those little pieces, while turning those previous distractions and previous stressors into actual cues to focus on their partner. So it's mainly about providing that structure to the dog and to the human about what to do, such as how will they warm up the dog, how will they handle those delays in the ring, how will they handle talking to the judge, etc. Melissa Breau: Can you share a little bit more about what some of those aspects are that you look at that come with a trial environment and some of the ways that you train for those? Laura Waudby: When you're starting with a new dog, some of it is trial and error, and guessing how the dog responds to you, because you have to look at what does the dog need when arriving at a trial. Should you crate them inside, should you crate them in your car, how much time do they need to walk around the grounds, how much time works best before going back to the crate and giving them a little bit of a rest, how they need to warm up. So all of that is trial and error. Hopefully, you can get that from going different places with your dog, even if it's going to a park and seeing does your dog connect with really calm petting, do they need more energizing tricks and movement to feel comfortable, figuring out how far away from the ring do you need to be. All those little things are just trial and error as you go, but you can work on training different parts of it. And then looking at all the stuff once you're actually inside the ring, such as the people, pressure, practicing, the leash runner approaching your dog, practicing how you're going to keep that connection, and again, either building energy with a dog who stresses down, or with a dog who gets really over-excited, figuring out how you're going to keep that dog from boiling over as you move to your new setup spots or move between exercises. Melissa Breau: I know the class covers a couple of different sports. Are there differences there in what needs to be taught for the different sports? Laura Waudby: The basic concepts are pretty much the same, whether it's obedience, rally, agility, even we've had some freestyle students in the class. The main difference is that obedience you have a lot more stuff to train because you have a lot more pressure in the ring. You have to train for the judge approaching you, all the people approaching you at different times, and then, of course, the breaks in-between the exercises. In agility you have a lot more freedom of how you actually interact with the dog in the ring, while you work your way to the start line, how you handle delays. Encouraging a lot more active connections, such as jumping up and even barking, is perfectly fine in agility, so you have a lot more stuff you can do. And in obedience you just have a lot more things to train for. Melissa Breau: Fair enough. You mentioned handler nerves a little bit earlier, just the fact that there are excited people and there are nervous people and all the range along that spectrum. How significant of a role is that when it comes to a competition environment? Do you address handler nerves at all in class, or maybe you have recommendations from your own experience? Laura Waudby: Handler nerves are a huge part of trial issues. Dogs definitely sense our stress and this can shut them down or amp them up, depending upon the dog. Unfortunately, handler nerves are not my specialty at all. I still get very nervous before obedience trials. I'm just so focused on how I'm going to handle my dog for every part that I don't think other people can tell. We do a little bit of training in the Ring Confidence class to get the dog used to that picture of a stressed handler. We can work on things like holding our breath to mimic our really tense bodies, heeling to a metronome to mimic that extra concentration we have when listening to somebody else, but in terms of actually teaching the human part how to deal with their own stress and relax, I leave that up to Andrea. Andrea has all the wonderful Mental Management classes, so she is much better at dealing with that than I am. Melissa Breau: Denise taught the class, now you teach the class. As a competitor, are there any skills from this class that have really been game-changers for you and your dogs? I know that part of it's that you implemented the class, so maybe you could talk about that a little bit. Laura Waudby: This class I've already been doing for quite a while with my own dog Vito, because he's been a huge experiment for me in trying to get him happy in the ring. One of the things that Denise introduced me for this class was the idea that squish was having not just a safe place for the dog to be while waiting outside of the ring, but also that idea of teaching that release to be really … well, for Vito, who stresses down, for that release to be really energetic, drivey, focusing on me. I think that “on switch” has helped him quite a bit going into obedience. For agility, probably the biggest success for him in agility in implementing this class was actually teaching him to bark at me when entering the ring. It took a long time to get him to bark at me at the start line, and people don't believe me when I say that anymore, because he's a Toler and he loves Toler screaming, and he will scream a lot now on the start line. What that really did was it helped our connection. He used to stare at the ring crew, the leash runners, the judge, really worry about them, and now that we're entering the ring and he's barking at me, he's focusing a lot more on me and yelling at me, instead of looking around to find where all the scary people are. So that was our game changer for agility. Sadly, obedience does not allow the barking, so we're working on that squish and that release coming out of it, and all that personal play and jumping at me has been a work in progress to work on that motivation. Melissa Breau: For those who don't know what squish is, do you mind briefly describing what that looks like? Laura Waudby: A squish is a waiting position for the dog when you are outside of the ring. It could be when you're right up to the ring gates, if you have to wait close to the ring, or it could be further away from the ring. But it's a place for the dog to relax. They don't have to focus on you. Actually, you don't want them focusing on you. I want my dog to look around, to see the world, to look into the ring, see where the judges are, the stewards are, and just relax. And then we teach a release cue, which is pressure-based. I have a physical hand touch I do with my dogs on their chests, and when I release it, the dog should focus on me, with whatever drive and energy level you need that dog to do. So with my dog who stresses down, I really work … when I release Vito — he stands between my legs for his squish — when I release him, he should turn to me really quickly with a lot of energy. With Zumi, who stresses up a little bit, I work on a little bit of energy coming out, but a thinking type of energy and not just exploding randomly into the world. All my dogs wait between my legs for their squish position, but you could have them — whatever works for you. You could hold them in your arms, you could have them leaning against you. It's a place to feel safe. Melissa Breau: For people who are considering taking the class, could you talk a little about who is a good fit and how someone can decide if it's an appropriate class for them? Laura Waudby: The Ring Confidence class is probably my favorite class of all time. I love teaching it, and I really think it's for anybody who wants to trial or is trialing. The main audience are for dogs, though, who do perfectly fine at trials, they're fine hanging out in the crate area or walking around, but then they walk into the ring entrance, they walk into that ring, and bam, they're a completely different dog. They either stress down and start sniffing everywhere or just disconnect, or they stress up and have some over-arousal issues and really struggle to focus or have that thinking connection with their person. My ideal audience would be dogs who have not started trialing yet. It's kind of, I know, a novel idea to actually prepare your dog what to expect in a trial, but really getting them comfortable with the procedures before actually entering their first trial. Melissa Breau: In addition to the Ring Confidence in April, you're also teaching a TEAM 3 class. I know I've talked about TEAM, for those who are listening, a couple of times now in a few different episodes, but in case there's anyone out there listening for the first time, do you mind briefly sharing what TEAM stands for and what the concept is there? Laura Waudby: TEAM stands for Training Excellence Assessment Modules, and it's an online, video-based titling program. The first three levels were designed to set a very solid foundation for any dog sports. The emphasis is really on excellent training, breaking down exercises into their smallest pieces, and then seeing can the dog do just this little bit but do it very, very well. So it's more of that training title than “can the dog just do it,” because we want to see that they're … we're gradually adding the ideas of precision, reducing reinforcement, adding distractions, and then doing it in different environments. Melissa Breau: If somebody wants to compete in Obedience or Rally specifically, how can TEAM help them get there? Laura Waudby: I think of TEAM as providing a blueprint of how to break down all those advanced exercises into manageable pieces. So instead of spending all your time working just on heeling and recalls, which pretty much makes up most novice obedience organizations, it's like we introduce all the foundations for pretty much every single advanced exercise right from the start. In Level 1 we not only have pivoting, which is a foundation for really great heel work, but we also have backing up and scent articles and going out around a cone, teaching a vertical target for a go out, all these little things, and it builds from there until you … as the levels start to progress, we start to form little chains of those behaviors, so it starts to look more like the advanced exercises and not just those little pieces. Melissa Breau: I've heard a few times, in the Facebook group and talking to folks, that TEAM 3 is where things get fun. So I wanted to ask how TEAM 3 is different from those first two levels, and if you could talk us through a few examples of how it builds on those behaviors from TEAM 1 and 2. Laura Waudby: I agree, I do think of Level 3 as where it does start to get extra-fun. I think it's mainly because it starts to feel real. You're putting more behaviors together so that it actually looks like real obedience training to people who don't necessarily train this way. For example, in Level 1 and Level 2, you're doing all this pivot work with a prop and without a prop, and finally in Level 3, we actually allow you to heel forward, and that starts to look like really pretty heeling. We even test that by doing sidestepping in heel. Can the dog move laterally with their person by keeping their rear end nice and tight? And it looks really cool, but the dog already has the foundations for it from all that pivot training that he did in the earlier levels, so it's actually not that hard when you start to combine it together. With the combined behavior, the chains, it also means that there's also a lot more movement involved, and dogs just love that movement. There's still the technical pieces, but the extra movement they do, the running they get to, now starts to be more naturally rewarding for the dog and that makes it easier to start reducing their reinforcers. So at Level 3 you only get four cookies for the entire test, so it's like a reward every other exercise. It's really good trial preparation to gradually reduce the rewards, and the dog's having a lot of fun by doing all those movement-based exercises. Melissa Breau: In TEAM 3 submissions, are there any places that it's comment to see Not Yets — either because they're particularly tricky to train or because it's easy to misunderstand the rules and miss something when you're reading through? Can you talk us through what happens there? Laura Waudby: Overall, I think the students are doing a really great job with their Level 3 runs. They already have several successful Level 1 and 2 runs under their belts, so they're doing a much better job with remembering what the pieces are, how to handle their dog between exercises, and remembering where the exercises start. So I think there's a lot higher success rate at Level 3 than there are at the earlier levels. But there are two main places I see errors. The first is the heeling, just like Level 1 and Level 2. Level 3, at this point, we require two steps of forward heeling, a 180 pivot left, a 180 pivot right, and then the two feet of sidestepping right. The handlers can get a little bit over excited and forget that the pivots that they worked really hard on at earlier levels still have to be a true pivot in place at Level 3. We like doing really big, wide U-turns sometimes in heeling, but the dog doesn't have to move their rear end nearly as much in a U-turn, and they don't learn to stay parallel to us during the entire turn. The handler just needs to calm down a little bit and remember to do the really precise pivots to the left and to the right when they're doing the heeling work. Same thing with the side steps. Handlers tend to rush that. They get excited; they're a little stressed. I recommend doing several small shuffles sideways instead of trying to do two gigantic steps and leaving the dog in the dust. We want the dog to be parallel with you the entire time, so moving those smaller steps for the two feet tends to help with that. And the second exercise that I see, again, more handler errors than anything else is the directed cone send. This exercise is basically a baby version of a utility go out and directed jumping exercise you see in trials. We just use cones instead of jumps and have a shorter distance. The challenge here is that we also introduce the concept of cuing the dog to return directly to heel versus cuing the dog to come to fronts. They have to find that front from an angle, as the handler is not allowed to move their feet. What I find people are doing when they're practicing this is that they're waiting to cue the dog to find front or to find heel until the dog is all the way to them so they can use their hand signal as a guide. However, for the actual test, the cue to find heel or find front needs to be given when the dog is still at a distance just after they've rounded that correct cone. So this is more of a handler error than a training challenge, but if you look where you want the dog to go and give them the information they need soon enough, the dogs can do a great job of learning the difference when you're cueing them to find heel versus finding front. Melissa Breau: That's an interesting thing to include because — at least, I think — most of the time in the obedience ring they're coming to front, so it really forces some cue discrimination there. Laura Waudby: It's definitely not a skill that we need here in America, where the dog's pretty much always have to find front, except for the utility moving stand exercise. But this is really the first time they're doing it from such a big distance and with a lot of speed. Melissa Breau: This came up on the Facebook page, which is why I want to make sure I include it. Do students need to have their TEAM 2 title to take the TEAM 3 class? If not, how can they decide whether they're ready for it? Laura Waudby: They definitely don't need the TEAM 2 title. We actually encourage students to be looking ahead to the next level, or even further than that, and start training for it, even if they haven't done the lower level test. Dogs always have some behaviors they're really strong with that their handler needs to be raising the difficulty with challenging their dog and not just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. With the behaviors that are still in progress, it's OK to still work at your lower level, even though you're also working on TEAM 3 or even TEAM 4 stuff with the behaviors the dogs are really good at. And if you're not quite there when you're looking at some of the TEAM 3 lectures, you just may need to add some props in or reduce the difficulty in another way. For example, the Level 2 test looks at getting position changes from 6 feet away with a 5-second pause, and that duration distance takes time to build. You just can't rush it. So it's OK if you want to work on Level 3, which adds in handler distractions, but now you'll just go back to standing right in front of the dog and not working as much duration. So your splitting out the distance and the duration from the idea of the dog listening to their cue, even if the handler is doing something weird, like lying on the floor or turning their back to the dog. That may even help them for the Level 1 and Level 2 test. Melissa Breau: So, I think this question probably applies to both classes. Probably one of the most useful things competitors can do is to really know the rules of whatever venue it is that they're competing in inside and out, so that they know what to expect and so they can train things properly. What kinds of things should people look for as they read through rules for whatever their sport and venue, and do you have any tips on keeping it all straight? Laura Waudby: Probably the biggest help is going to a trial in the sport you're pursuing or a particular organization, or in the case of TEAM is watching all the videos, and not just watching videos from the level you're at, but watching videos of the upper levels so you can see what that final picture is, where all your training is going. You can get a better idea, too, like for agility, what course styles there tend to be out there. For in-person obedience trials, you can also look for the details of where the judges tend to stand, what do the common layouts of the ring look at, just so you're a lot more comfortable with everything and how things tend to be judged. For in-person trials for terms of ring confidence, sometimes the biggest factor you should know before going into a trial is knowing specifically how that trial site is laid out. If you have a special-needs dog, like many of us do, you may need to plan exactly where your dog is going to wait before entering the ring, how you're going to get to that ring entrance with focus. Some trial locations are not easy for the dogs who get over-aroused, reactive, or stress. That's where TEAM is really nice, because everything is online, but there's a lot more pressure on you to remember the order and the precision needed for each test. I recommend that people, besides watching all the videos to know how things should look, I recommend memorizing the exercises in at least in a group of three. If you print out those lists and divide them in three exercises, that will help a lot with your flow. I see a lot of people in the videos stopping to read what the next exercise is, read the rules, and their dog … they're just left hanging out there and not knowing what's going on. So read those rules, memorize a little bit of an order, and plan your flow will help a lot in getting through that exercise with much less stress for you and your dog. Melissa Breau: I think people probably underestimate the value of having watched the videos and attended things in person. I know one of the big conversations constantly on the TEAM Facebook page is being strategic with your locations and where you do your tests, and if you don't think that through, you may use a location that would have been better for a later level early on, and that can make things a little more difficult on yourself. Laura Waudby: Yes. As your level goes up, you definitely need more space, so you don't want to use your biggest space for a Level 1 when you really need that for a Level 3-plus video where you need to go offsite. So definitely start to plan ahead. Melissa Breau: Finally, as somebody who has competed a fair amount, would you be willing to share a little bit of information on how you prep for a competition and what your pre-trial routine looks like with one of your own dogs? Laura Waudby: I don't think I really do any specific prep work before a trial outside of all of the ring confidence work I've done. I don't train differently before a trial than I do on non-trial weekends. The only thing I make sure of is I don't put any extra pressure on specific exercises, meaning that dogs make weird mistakes sometimes. Let's pretend my dog suddenly can't remember at all how to do a scent article, or how to do their weave pole entry, and it's a few days before a trial. I kind of ignore it. I'm not going to do any training to try and fix it, because that's just going to add pressure to it. I really just ignore it and go to trial, don't worry about it. The last thing I want is my dog getting stressed the exercise because I'm suddenly freaking out about it. Chances are the behavior is taught fine, it was just a weird thing that day, and if you don't draw attention to it, then it's not going to stick around. And if it does happen to stick around, then you have to develop a training plan for it anyway, and you freaking out a few days before a trial is not a good time to come up with a new training plan. So I don't really do a whole lot. Melissa Breau: Fair enough. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Laura. This was great. Laura Waudby: Yeah, it was fun. Melissa Breau: And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in! We'll be back next week with Eileen Anderson, author of Remember Me? Loving and Caring for a Dog with Canine Cognitive Dysfunction. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Credits: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.
SUMMARY: The Fenzi TEAM program is a progression-oriented titling program that emphasizes excellence in training. Each TEAM level adds complexity for the dog-handler team in four areas: the difficulty of the skills being assessed, the potential challenges in the form of food and toy distractions, the challenge of the actual testing location, and finally the quantity of reinforcement allowed during the test. We invited Denise Fenzi, one of the founders of the program, onto the podcast to talk about creating it and how it all works. Links Recent Team Newsletter Self Study: Precision Heeling Fenziteamtitles.com Fenzi TEAM Players Facebook Group thedogathlete.com Next Episode: To be released 11/03/2017, featuring Shade Whitesel to talk about toys and common issues, including talking about introducing work to play. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we have Denise Fenzi with us again, this time to talk through the Fenzi TEAM titling program and then share a little bit about her upcoming book. For those who may not have heard the earlier episodes where I chatted with Denise, she is the founder of the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy and, more recently, the Fenzi Team Titles. Melissa Breau: Welcome back, Denise! Denise Fenzi:Thank you. How are you? Melissa Breau: I'm good. I'm excited to talk about TEAM today. Denise Fenzi: I'm excited about TEAM. Melissa Breau: So to start us out, do you want to tell us what TEAM stands for? Denise Fenzi: Training Excellence Assessment Modules. Melissa Breau: And why did you pick that name? Denise Fenzi: Well, actually, it was crowdsourced, so I just explained the program on a Facebook list and asked people to contribute their ideas. My experience with Facebook and crowdsourcing is I can come up with a really good answer in a lot less time than I could on my own. So, within an hour or two, somebody came up with that, and I thought it very much described what I was interested in, which is a team event between a dog and a handler. And I wanted to emphasize the training aspect of a competition in this case, and so it fit very well. Training, excellence, assessment, and modules works well because they do build on each other. Each level is a module to the next. Melissa Breau: So where did the idea for TEAM come from? What led you to create the program? Denise Fenzi: Well, most people probably know that my interest is competitive obedience, and traditionally I have competed in AKC. And the numbers have fallen off badly over a period of time. So I've been competing since I was a kid, so a long time, and back then we would have so many dogs that they would split Open B into two classes, so you would have 60-odd dogs in one class, so that gives you a sense of the numbers. And a lot of things have happened in the meantime. A lot of new dog sports have come in, and time has gone by, and people have different interests and such. But I hate to see something I love go away, and I think and think about, What was it about the sport that was … why were we suffering so much when other dog sports seem to be doing OK? And as I looked at novice obedience and thought about it, the AKC program was set up a long time ago, when training was done differently, and it was really very logical to start with heeling because of how it was taught. So back then you walked in a circle in a class, or in lines, kind of very military style, up, down, back, forth, run in a circle, and the dog was simply corrected if it went out of position. It was not refined, it was not pretty, it wasn't meant to be. The word obedience had meaning. It meant to be obedient. And the dog did what they were told. And so at the novice level, you really did showcase the dog's ability to walk on a leash, basically what we now call loose-leash walking, except slightly more stylized, right? In heel position. And then eventually you took the leash off, and we had all sorts of ways to do that. And then throw in a recall, because you need a good recall, right? That's obedience. A stand for exam would have imitated either a stranger touching the dog or a veterinary exam. It wasn't meant to be beautiful. It was meant to be practical, and the heeling was not beautiful. So the performances we have now look nothing like the performances of thirty years ago. And as I thought more about it, I think a big part of the problem is we don't train that way anymore, and really beautiful heeling, the kind of heeling that competitive people want to see in the ring today, takes a couple of years to master. It takes a long time to get a dog to work comfortably for a couple of minutes with extreme precision, head up, and we're talking 1 inch, in, out, up, down. It's very minor scoreable issues. Done well, it's beautiful, and in my opinion, I really enjoy teaching heeling. I like teaching all those tiny bits and pieces. But you don't just teach it all at once in one fell swoop. You teach it over time. And neither dogs nor handlers really want to spend 10 minutes at a time — and that would be short; some people train for a lot longer than that — working on this one skill. Yet entry-level people who come in from the outside, they're not thinking utility. They're thinking, Well, I'll try the first level, and if it goes well, I'll try the second level, and if it goes well, I'll try the third level. Competitive people don't train that way. They actually train all the skills usually from the start, and by the time they get into the novice ring, they do have two years of heeling, and they have a lot of other skills that they taught. So if you think about a barrier to entry, when your entry level emphasizes your most difficult skill, you're going to really struggle to bring in new people because there's no motivation. And if you do bring them in, what happens is they bring dogs in the ring that aren't properly prepared. So they may heel, they may get through it, but it's silent for 45 seconds at a stretch, very, very stressful for the dogs. If you compare that to the higher levels opening utility, the exercises generally don't go on that long. There's more going on, there are more cues being given, there's more movement, there's more freedom. I mean, on a recall, at least the dog is running and moving. Heeling is hard. And I thought, Well, if I were going to design a program that was designed to reflect the way we train today, what would that look like? And that was the goal of TEAM was to test the same way that we train, and we do train in small pieces, and it was also designed to teach dogs things like distraction training right from the start. So in our first level we have a stay where there's a cookie present, but it's only 2 seconds, so it's not horrible. But then it's 15 seconds, and then the dog is working and asked to retrieve within 2 feet of a cookie. But that's as you go up through the levels, so as one piece gets a little harder, another piece gets a little easier. The other thing we did is incorporated every skill we could think of in the first level. So you have scent discrimination in the first level. You have pivots in the first level. That's the basis of heeling. You have sit and down in the first level because they matter. And then, as you work your way up, skills are combined, so now you have a sit and a down, but maybe the distance is greater, or maybe there's a distraction, or maybe you're doing it away from home. And it's kind in the sense that expectations rise over time, so if you are training to the test, you can actually end up with a very well trained dog. That is not true in traditional competitive obedience. If you train for the test, you're going to become miserable because you can only do so much heeling and recalls and fronts. And so that's what we were trying to design was a program that reflected excellent training. So do you generalize your behaviors? Take them new places? Can you engage your dog without a cookie? That's important to me. Can you engage your dog without a toy? That's important. Can you end one exercise and go to another one without some kind of external reinforcer besides your voice? Because when I looked around the world at all of the obedience programs, and I looked at a lot of them, what I realized is there's really a fairly small number of core behaviors that they all use and they combine them in different ways. And if you worked your way through all those levels, including things like fluency, can your dog do it, oh, I don't know, can your dog sit on cue 20 feet away when you're laying down on the ground? Well, do you need that? No. But if you can do that, your dog has shown the ability to understand the cue under an unusual circumstance. Well, a dog show is simply one more unusual circumstance. So the goal of TEAM is that if a person trains the TEAM program and trains for the test, that's fine, and gets up through several levels, they should be able to go anywhere in the world, take those pieces, look at the organization they are interested in, put those little building blocks together in new ways, and compete successfully. Melissa Breau: So to dig in a little bit more in the skills specifically, what skills do dogs need in order to compete in the program? Denise Fenzi:Well, let's see. You need to retrieve, you need to be able to do scent work, you need excellent rear end awareness, because heeling is very much about moving your rear end and pivoting. We teach skills that include the mouth, the nose, the feet, the eyes. So can you look at the handler? Good. Can you look straight ahead? Good. You need both of those. Can you go out and come back? So we send the dog around a cone. Can the handler teach the dog using props? So you have to be able to show that your dog can effectively pivot on a disc, for example, or find front, which is a precision behavior using a platform. The first level's actually quite heavy on precision skills, but each one can be done in a matter of seconds, but I need to know that you can teach really high-level precision skills. But I let you keep your cookies, at least at the beginning levels. That gets thinner as you go, but that's appropriate as the challenge goes up, as you become more skilled. Let me think. Scent work, heeling, you need a stay, you'll need a sit or a down/stay. At the second level you need a sit/stay with a cookie behind the dog with your back to the dog at 15 or 20 feet. You need to be able to jump. The dog has to jump. The dog has to be able to retrieve, but at the first level the retrieve is just hold an object in the mouth for 1 second. It's not until you get to the top levels that you actually have movement. Eventually the dog needs to be able to work out of motion. So, for example, the stand out of motion is an AKC utility exercise. We do have that exercise. We do have signals at a distance. We do have go away, so go out to a spot and stay there. We have hold the position for 5 seconds without doing anything, which is shockingly hard for a lot of dogs. They can sit, but if they think you're going to say something else, they get very agitated when they have to just wait, and that is the expectation of the exercise. The dog has to be able to back up because … and that's a first level skill. In my experience, dogs that can back up between cues have many fewer problems with creeping forward on a lot of exercises, so I want to see that you've taught that. And the dog needs to show a front. Now I will say the first three levels were designed to be foundation for all sports, because as I talked to my agility friends and people in other fields, their dogs can do most of those things. We actually … many sports start with the same foundation skills. Many of us do touching an object, retrieving, many of us do pivoting on a disc, many of us do platform work, so those things don't actually change. The really obedient-specific things is probably scent discrimination, and I wanted that in Level 1 because people make it so much harder than it needs to be by waiting. So I think that roughly, I'm sure I left one or two out, but that kind of roughly covers the skills that you work on in TEAM, at progressively more difficult levels as you work your way up. Oh, and behavior chains don't actually come in until the third level. So up till then, everything is a discreet exercise, go out around a cone and come back. At the third level there would be exercises like go out 10 feet and get on a platform, and then the handler will direct you to go on. So it's a go back and field, go on over a jump that's 10 feet beyond, and then go on to a cone, which is 10 more feet. So now the dog demonstrates that it can work at 30 feet and then come back. That would be a behavior chain. So those don't start until the third level. Melissa Breau: At the very least that gives people a pretty good idea of kind of what they're looking at if they're interested in the program. Can you share a little bit more about kind of the logistics of how TEAM works? What is the process for somebody interested in titling their dog through TEAM? What do they do? Denise Fenzi: Well, it is a video submission, so it's pretty convenient. Now in the first three levels you can tape it anywhere you want. If you have room, you can tape it in your house. A lot of people do the very first level in the house. It's hard after that because of space. You do have to have a space large enough that the dog and the handler can be clearly seen and heard throughout the test. You videotape your test, you have to do it in order, you submit it through the TEAM website, and then you timestamp where each exercise is in order so that the judge … basically we do that because people forget exercises, so when they're submitting their video they realize they're missing one and then they don't submit, because we really tell people, “Don't submit a video that's not going to pass.” You have all the rules, you can use a very, very active Facebook discussion group to be sure you've done them correctly, but we don't want you to submit a not passing video, so we try to make sure you actually did do all of the exercises. You have to pass all of them except for one. It is “pass not yet.” It's not fail. It's not yet. You'll make it next time. We do not score it, but it's pretty tight expectations for passing an exercise, so when we say the dog needs to find front, we really do mean front. It needs to be within 30 degrees of front position. Now admittedly we let you have cookies, right, in those first levels, or we let you have a platform, but not always. So you submit your video and then a judge reviews it. The judge will give you comments on it, so it's actually a lot of fun to get your results back, because you'll get all kinds of helpful tips and suggestions. So the judge might say, “You know, you did a really nice job on this. Consider …” and give you a little advice to progress it forward. So people always say they really like getting the feedback from the judge, rather than a score sheet. I know there are more and more people getting together in groups. I know of a seminar in Ohio, for example, that filled very quickly when they offered it. I know there are training groups in the San Francisco Bay Area and also in Portland. Again, they offered a class and filled it that day. It's very popular with students because it's fun. People who are just engaged … people love the idea of coming in and Day 1 their dog is doing cool stuff, not just heeling in a circle. So they love watching their dog do scent discrimination the first week, or get on a disc, or on a platform, and move and do these things. People love that. Plus, playing with your dog is actually a requirement of TEAM, so people think that's very entertaining. I love … I love to see that, that people are doing it in groups. You can test alone. I did a test recently with Lyra. She did her TEAM 3. I just set up a video camera, I marked off my area so I wouldn't walk in and out. You want to think carefully about how you lay it out, because a judge has to be able to judge it, so if they can't see if your sit is correct in front, or whatever you've done, then you won't … you won't be able to pass that exercise. People appreciate it who for whatever reason cannot get to trials, will not get to trials, have test anxiety, whatever the deal might be. It is suitable for more reactive dogs. I will say that all of the levels are off leash, so that is a consideration. You need to be comfortable training your dog off leash, and at some point you have to be able to take your dog to new locations, so that means you either need to feel good enough about your training that your dog is safe off leash in new locations, or that you're able to find a fair number of new locations to perform. And I know for some people that is a challenge, but I would suggest that that is the nature of competition, that you will go to new places and you must prepare your dog for that. So we do expect that. Melissa Breau: I think the only thing that maybe you didn't mention that would be worth bringing up is the idea about questionable exercise. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Denise Fenzi: Yeah, we try to give super-clear criteria for what it takes to pass, but the reality is when you're looking at somebody's position and you just watched them do a 360-degree pivot, and it's supposed to be smooth and continuous, and the dog should be parallel every step of the way, and we allow a 30-degree out of position, you know, at some point. Well, for a judge to decide if it was 30 degrees or 45 when it took place at one moment, or if the handler did something funny with their shoulder but we can't decide, or, you know, little things like that, we do have the option of giving it a questionable, so that's kind of halfway in between. A questionable is a half point off, so if you think about ten exercises being 10 points, you're allowed one “not yet,” so you need a 9. A questionable is half off, so you can have two questionables and everything else perfect and you will pass. If you have one “not yet” and one questionable, you won't quite make it. But that, actually, it helps the judges. It makes us more comfortable, because it's very hard to not pass somebody who you really thought was, really had the essence of the exercise, but you also felt that you could not say they truly did it correctly. So it very much puts the handler on notice, because everything you do at the first level is going to come back. Nothing goes away. So it just builds on it. So if you got a questionable on your down at the first level, be aware that your down at the second level is at a greater distance and for a longer period of time, so you probably need to go back and look at it. So it helps the trainer do a better job. Melissa Breau: I think you're pretty well known as an advocate for positive training, and I wanted to ask a little bit about how that ties in or doesn't tie in to TEAM. So does someone have to be a positive trainer to compete in TEAM? And is there anything about TEAM that kind of inherently tests the trainer's training philosophy? Denise Fenzi: No and no. We certainly don't ask, and to be kind of brutally honest, I don't even care. You simply have to pass the test. In my opinion, it is easier to pass the test if you are a positive trainer, because it is designed to test clean training that is broken into small pieces, and since it's tested off leash from the first level, I think most people who are interested in TEAM are pretty comfortable training off leash anyway. But we do not, certainly don't ask about it. You do not need to be a student of mine, you don't need to share my philosophy at all. I personally believe that a good trainer of any method can teach most anything, one way or the other, you know, being a good trainer just matters because you communicate well. But no, we don't test it, no, we don't check for your philosophy, and to be honest, we're just pretty welcoming people, so if a person joins the Fenzi TEAM Players List on Facebook and is a balanced trainer, or mixed methods, or whatever, the topic is probably not going to come up. I mean, I don't think it ever has, and I really would be surprised if somebody asked outright about that. Melissa Breau: So if I wanted to put a Level 1 title on my dog, what would that video look like? What skills are at that first level? Denise Fenzi: Well, they do go in order, and now I have to tell you my poor little head is not remembering the exact order. I do know engagement for 15 seconds. That means playing with your dog. Now playing can be as nice as a belly rub. It just needs to show something where the dog is interacting with you and not trying to figure out how they can just get away. That's what I need to see — that your dog will stay with you and follow you, and if you interact or clap or smile, that the dog shows some kind of a connection to you. So we start there. Then the dog goes into using a pivot disc in heel position. So we want to see that the dog can find heel position, and it really needs to be correct heel position, and then show me a 180-degree pivot to the left. Then I want to see your dog show me a front. Most people use a platform in front from several angles, so you throw a cookie off to the left, you throw a cookie straightforward, you give one cue, get the cookie, and then we expect the dog to come back and use that platform to find front. We do the same thing in heel position. You can use a disc or a platform. The dog needs to show the ability to find its way to heel position, even when the cookies are thrown off center. We want to see your dog go over a jump, but you're welcome to go with the jump with the dog, and the jump is very low. We want to see your dog back up 2 feet continuously. We want to see your dog do scent articles. Now how does that look? Well, three scent articles, and you can put food in or on one of them. So talk about stacking the deck, right? We're going to make this work for you. It's going to get harder down the road, but I just need you to start thinking about scent discrimination. Your dog needs to clearly indicate the correct article, does not need to pick it up. As long as the judge can say, “Yes, the dog has clearly indicated,” it might nose touch and it might hold that, it might pick it up, it might lay down, I don't care what the dog does. Just I should be able to tell which one is yours. There is a retrieve — I'm trying to remember, maybe that's second level — where the dog holds an object. The dog has to stay in the presence of a cookie in a bowl for 2 seconds and has to release when said “OK.” So I want to know that your dog knows how to stay, and we want to know that your dog knows how to go. Your dog needs a sit and a down at 5 feet, so that's not so horrible. Your dog needs to go out around a cone and come back, because we want to start that process of showing us that you can get your dog to go away and come back. Am I leaving anything out? I'm sure I'm leaving something out. I believe there are ten exercises in the first level. And in some ways, in my opinion, the first level is the hardest because there are so many things for a new person to look at, and then, over time, it's really a matter of building up skills, so … oh, by the way, that scent discrimination — the handler is sitting next to the article. So they throw a cookie to get the dog moving away, they place their article, and then the dog comes back in. So the dog isn't working by itself at a distance. There's no retrieve, there's no front, there's no formal anything. Those things will come later, but it does get you started on the path. Melissa Breau: I don't think you left anything out. I was checking my little cheat sheet here as you went along, so ... Denise Fenzi: Oh, good for me! Melissa Breau: So now you've kind of walked through the list of skills, so how did you come up with those things, and how did you kind of decide which pieces to include? What was the process like to put all those pieces kind of together into a program? Denise Fenzi: Well, I worked with Deb Jones and Teri Martin to create this one, and I will say it is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I'm not kidding, actually, and I've done a lot of stuff. The reason it was so difficult, we really did look around the world at what are all of the obedience skills. They are jumping, they are heeling, they are position changes, they are retrieving, there's just a set of things and they come, doesn't matter where you go, they are done, those skills are done. So we had all of those, we broke them all down and said, “What do those all look like?” So that was one side of a spreadsheet. And then we said, “What are all of the elements of great training?” Well, fluency. Can your dog do those behaviors under adversity? OK, we want to test fluency. Formality. Can your dog do those behaviors when you're quiet and still and only one cue? We're kind of particular about that. We don't allow a lot of handler help. You really need to be formal. Can your dog do these behaviors in an unfamiliar environment? I call that generalization. Can your dog generalize the exercise? Can your dog do it under distraction? So if there are toys or food in the area, can your dog still perform correctly? So we had a spreadsheet, which kind of created a matrix, which said, “How can we test all of these things without pounding a person at each level?” Because we don't test everything at every level. We sort of, at one level you'll notice it's more skill based, so the first level is very heavy on skills, and then also can you create behavior chains? We don't even introduce the behavior chains until the third level. I mentioned that. Distraction training does start very, very light in the first level, but it gets harder and harder as you go on, second level, third level. Scent work, we decided first and second level, but you don't even have it at the third level. You have it harder at the fourth level. So we went through, and we had checkmarks here and there, and we tried to figure out by the time the person has done all six levels did I feel confident that they had the skills to go anywhere in the world and compete. Now I'm not saying they wouldn't have to rearrange the exercises, because they would, but that's kind of irrelevant. A person who finishes all six levels, who has also taken me seriously when I said, “Show me these exercises” in whatever, seven new environments or whatever it is, if they did that and they did it within the spirit of the program, i.e., they really did go to new places, they didn't just keep going to their friend's back yard, if they did that and they really did try to show their dog the types of environments that would be involved in competition, then they should be successful, and their dog should be comfortable because they are well trained. So that's how we got there. Where it got quite painful breaking it up into fair chunks, so you want challenge, but you don't want people to give up, because it's kind of hard. Finding the balance between accuracy, which is what we emphasize in the first three levels, and movement, flow, behavior chains, which is what we emphasize in the second three levels. Making decisions about things like a sit at heel. We actually don't require it. You just have to tell us. Your dog either sits at heel or stands at heel. Same as front. I don't care if your dog sits or stands, because again, around the world that varies. So you can pick what is most comfortable for you, or you can pick, like, if you have an older dog, maybe they don't want to sit anymore, so fine, don't have them sit, that's not a problem. But it can't be haphazard. You have to say, “My dog sits in heel,” or “They stand in heel.” So we judge that. That took a lot of thinking, trying to figure out around the world how could we design a program that didn't create active conflict. So I think we did all right, but it did take some thought. The next thing was setting criteria. What is a front? What is a finish? What is a down? It sounds simple until you look at a dog on a down who is one inch from the ground, the elbows aren't down. Now all of a sudden you say, “What is a down anyway? And you realize these things are not simple. So laying out criteria was very challenging. We do have video examples of all the exercises, so you can just look. If you're a reader, you can read through our very detailed descriptions of what we want to see, what it takes to pass, how it should be set up, and then you can look at the video and you'll see an example, “Oh, OK, that's what it should be.” We do say what will cause you not to quite make it, but we don't list everything. It's impossible. There's just too many possibilities. We do list the most common elements. There is a website called fenziteamtitles.com. It's well laid out, so you can just pick a level and look at it. Most of the levels have video runs where you can see a start to a finish. Not the higher levels, because I think we so far only have one or two dogs that have made it to Level 5, so there's just no videos to be had at the higher levels, but they're working on it. The program's only slightly over a year old, and we did change our rules about two months ago at Level 1. We just made it flow a little bit better, so it's possible we don't have up a full Level 1 run with the new rules. We should have one soon. So what a person will want to do is start with the website, start looking at the levels, they may find they already have several of the skills. Watch the videos so they see how it works. Join the Fenzi TEAM Players List, which has become quite active, and get to know your team players, the other people, who are very supportive. Register your dog. I think it's $20 to register your dog. That will put you in the database. The database is searchable. Some people choose to be searchable to the public and some people choose not to. If you are a trainer and if it matters to you, you might want to make sure you're public, because then people can see what titles you accomplish. Your TEAM titles will be listed there for each of your dogs. And a video run costs $29, so remember, you should only have to submit it once and you only have to pass once, so don't submit a video that's not passing, which makes it a very inexpensive titling program if you submit only passing videos. We do have a Plus level. Plus just means the 1 Level you showed in a new location, the 2 Level you showed in a new location. When you get to 3 Plus, then you can go on to the fourth level. The fourth, fifth, and sixth are all new locations. So that's probably how I would start if I was intrigued. I would join the Fenzi TEAM Players, and I would also from there get on the newsletter, you know, because I put out newsletters with tips and videos to kind of help you on your way. Melissa Breau: So you talked a little bit about this. I wanted to see if you'd talk about it a little bit more, kind of the … that the levels build on each other. I know you added a little bit at the end about the Plus titles, but is there anything you kind of want to add to that? Denise Fenzi: So when we designed it, so, like, for example at the first level, where you make your pivot on the pivot disc when the dog stays in heel position, you do have a disc. That would be first level. Second level you also have to show us pivots, but there's no disc this time, so instead of doing 180 degrees to the left, now you're going to do 360 degrees, and you're also going to do it to the right, so that's a little bit harder. When you get to the third level, now I need to see pivot left, pivot right, pull sideways 2 feet and go forward 2 feet. Now that's the first true heeling. But if you can do that, if you can pivot left from Level 1, pivot left and right without a disc from Level 2, and do what I just described at Level 3, then when you get to Level 4 and you're doing true heeling, your dog knows how to heel. There's just no question about it. Or in Level 1 you have to show that your dog can find heel position with a platform, and your dog needs to be able to find front. In Level 2 you need to show me a formal recall without a platform. So did you have the skill to get rid of that platform? And your dog needs to show me a correct finish. That means straight without a disc. So the skills in Level 1 directly influence Level 2. So Level 1 can use props. Level 2 can you get rid of props and maintain precision? So that's what I mean by the levels build on each other. And then once something we feel is mastered, then we let it slide. So Level 4 we no longer judge the quality of your straightness. We figure you've already shown us that you know how to teach straight fronts and finishes. It's totally up to you if you care to maintain them. We don't care anymore. Now we're going to do stuff where your dog runs out 40 feet, goes left around a cone, or maybe over a jump, or maybe gets scent articles, or whatever. Now we're going to look for other things. But the first three levels are precision. After that it's just kind of free fun, interesting ways of combining exercises that people wouldn't have thought of. Melissa Breau: So I wanted to ask a little bit about the tools that are out there if someone is struggling to teach their dog those skills. I know you mentioned the Facebook group, and I will include a link to that in the show notes, for anyone who's interested. Denise Fenzi: We also have at the Academy, Fenzi Dog Sports Academy does teach classes that teach TEAM skills. There's a couple ways you can get it. One is just take a class called TEAM. TEAM 1 is running right now. Now unfortunately, registration is closed, so you cannot join now. TEAM 2 is running in December. So if you look over the skills and you say, “You know what, I have most of TEAM 1,” then feel free to pop into TEAM 2 in December. It's not like you have to have the title to take the class. And since TEAM 2 is building on Level 1, you will be improving your Level 1 skills, so you have that option. You also have the option of when Hannah Branigan teaches her obedience skills series, she teaches obedience very much the way we structure the TEAM program. It's bits and pieces. So while it's not a perfect fit because it wasn't meant to be, many of the skills you would want in TEAM happen to be covered in her Obedience Skillbuilding series. So you can take classes at any given time. There will probably be webinars on the topic. I would guess we will teach webinars on it. There are support groups out there that you can find through the TEAM players list, if you want to hook up with people more locally and see if there's somebody you can work with. Melissa Breau: So far, which skills do people seem to struggle with the most? And then I'd love it if you'd share some tips for problem-solving those skills. Denise Fenzi: Well, the scent discrimination, this is really interesting, almost everybody passes it, but boy do they howl about having to teach it. So if I can get them to believe in themselves, they don't seem to struggle that much. They do teach it, but getting them to start teaching it is very hard because they can't get it out of their heads “This is a hard thing, this is an advanced skill.” No, it's not. It's no harder than anything else. It's just that you make it hard by thinking about it like that. So it's actually almost always, almost always, people pass the scent discrimination, but the getting them to teach it is just misery. I would say where people struggle the most is on the pivots. Staying in heel position accurately is very hard for people. Their dogs have developed all sorts of habits, you know, maybe they start to pivot and the dog jumps around into position, or the dog waits until they've moved 90 degrees before the dog catches up. We score that down, so you cannot pass if your dog does that. And while people gnash their teeth a bit and get very frustrated, the reality is if you ask them again in two weeks if they worked on it, they say, “Thank you for holding your criteria, because, you know what, after I worked on this for two weeks, not only did I do it, but I learned how to do it and my dog got better, but miraculously my dog's heeling has improved dramatically because he no longer bumps me on left turns.” And that's kind of the whole point of TEAM. Like what I tell people if they're struggling with their precision and obedience, I say, “Well, try this. I don't care if you're working on your OTCH. Stop all your obedience for one month and only do TEAM 1. Only TEAM 1 level for one month. Now go back to your obedience and tell me what happened.” And it just never fails. Because they went back and focused on the foundation precision skills, when they go back into their obedience, their dog is that much better. It's a bit of an eye-opener for people. So I would say pivoting on a disc gives people a fair amount of … they stress about it, they worry about it, the pass rate is not as high, I would say, on that exercise than most of the other exercises. Melissa Breau: Any tips for working on it? Denise Fenzi: I just did the last Fenzi TEAM newsletter. It shows a video, I'm working with Lyra on how to keep her in heel position when I do sit, down, stand in position when I'm moving my feet, and if you want to use that, it will also teach your dog how to — it's the same skill, actually — how to keep their rear end in position. So feel free to look at that, and that should help you out. And if you search my blog, I do so much on my blog of obedience. And it has a pretty good search function, so you can put in something like “heeling” or “pivots” or “a disc,” any of those. Or if you want you can buy my self-study program, called Precision Heeling, through FDSA. That is available at any time, not just during terms, so you can buy it today. Tons and tons and tons of video and discussion about pivoting and heel positions, very heavy on that, so you would, in theory, be quite good at it by the time you were done with that course. Melissa Breau: Excellent. And I think that I can share a link to the last TEAM newsletter in the show notes. So if I can do that, I will. Denise Fenzi: Oh, that's awesome. Melissa Breau: You mentioned a little bit earlier that there are places starting to offer some classes. Is there anything that people have to do if they want to offer classes? Is there anything special they have to do to get started? Or kind of how does that work? Denise Fenzi: No, I am not at all proprietary about it. You can use the name of the program in your advertising, you do not have to credit me in any way, shape, or form, you can do what you want, you can teach it how you want. So it's simply there, it's simply available. The Fenzi TEAM Titles is not associated with FDSA, it's not associated with the school. They are two separate things. I have no restrictions whatsoever on how you teach it or anything, really. You can use our logo if you're teaching. Not the FDSA one, but you can use the Fenzi TEAM Titles logo if you're offering classes on Fenzi TEAM Titles. Go to town, have a good time. I think this is good for dogs, I think it's good for dog training, and I think many trainers are finding it to be quite an eye-opener when they realize how effective training this way is. And since it happens to be one of my personal strong goals, anything I can do to make that work makes me happy, and I actually think if people take to this program that it will also improve the status and the wellbeing of obedience as a sport, regardless of what organization you decide you want to compete in or not. It's not really that important. What I do care about is that people do things with their dogs in a kind and friendly manner, and so we have set up a program that allows you to do that. So go to town if it serves you well. I mean, I would personally, if it was me, if I was training dogs for AKC obedience competition, I would from Day 1, after those dogs are done with their pet manners class, if they show any interest in competition, I would start them in TEAM, and then, after getting up through a few levels, they could say, “You know what? And you're ready for your CD,” because they would be, with just a bit of polishing, and the odds that you kept them, and you kept them intrigued and happy. When I talk to people who teach TEAM classes, they say retention is very high because people have a good time, they love coming back, they love seeing, “Look, my dog can find a scent article,” “Look, my dog can retrieve,” “Look, my dog can jump.” After six weeks your dog will, if it's well trained, should be able to go around a cone, get on a platform, pivot in heel position with a disc, hold an object in its mouth. That's cool, that's interesting. Pet people do have the attention span for that for six weeks. They do not have the attention span for heel position walking in a circle. I mean, I don't have the attention span for that. So whether you even want to teach TEAM, I would really suggest that some of these clubs, these AKC clubs that are struggling and that can't find new members, something like this, where people start to play and laugh and engage, because engagement is part of it, and be silly with it, and teach cool things that everybody, “Oh, it's a trick,” OK, well, call it what you want, it's getting to where we need to go, I think that would do wonders for the culture of our sports. So use it as it works for you. Melissa Breau: So I know that TEAM right now seems pretty focused on obedience, and I wanted to ask if you've considered doing TEAM programs for any of the other sports out there. Denise Fenzi: The first three levels of TEAM was never designed to be obedience. I'll just put that out there. It was actually really designed to be a foundation for any performance sport, because it teaches skills that the body awareness, the handler cues, the distraction training, the proofing, all of those things were really meant to cross all sports. So the first three levels is for that. I will say that we have at least considered, contemplated, adding stuff. What we're going to add, I don't know. Like I said, it was hard. It was a hard thing to do, and I don't like to do things that aren't well done, so if we're going to do another level, it has to be done well. But I would say that, like, nose work might be a possibility, so yeah, you know, you never know. You never know. So it's something to keep an eye on. Melissa Breau: Alright, and before we wrap up, I want to ask you about that book. So a new book? Want to share the details? Denise Fenzi: Can you believe that? I know, I just keep writing them. I wrote a book called Beyond The Back Yard: Train Your Dog Anytime, Anywhere, and I wrote it to the pet market. It's a distraction-training book, and it was quite popular. I sold more copies of that book than any other book I've done. And it did not sell to the pet market. It actually sold to the competition market just as heavily, which is great, but I'm sort of intrigued by that market, by the sort of in-between pet trainer, a little bit of competition dog trainer, engaged, I'm going to call it an engaged pet person, I'm very interested in that group because those are the future dog people. I like those people. So this book is called Beyond The Basics: Unlock Your Dog's Behavior, and it is not an obedience book. Actually it's a hard book to explain. It's very, very heavy on understanding the emotional reasons that dogs do things. So, for example, if you have a barking problem, you can have a barking problem because you have a stressed dog, a bored dog, an anxious dog, an under-exercised dog. I mean, there's so many possibilities, and it's actually important to understand that, because the solutions are often diametrically opposed to each other. So the way you handle a bored dog and an anxious dog, you cannot use the same solution. If you do, you will make your problem worse. So the book is very much about understanding the reasons, the underlying reasons, for dog behavior, analyzing your dog from that point of view, and once you understand why your dog is doing the things it's doing, then you can set in place a behavior plan to fix it. And then I give a bunch of case studies using recalls, I think there's seven dogs that all have recall problems, and they all have problems for different reasons. And it discusses the reasons, and then it discusses potential solutions for each of those dogs. So you can pretty quickly see why each dog solution needs to be for that dog and not the next dog. And then barking is also handled, dogs that bark excessively. So maybe seven dogs, and again, many different reasons. So we go through and we look at things like temperament of the dog. We do talk about breed, we talk about health, we talk about general emotional state, we talk about training. It's not a book on training, but in relatively few pages I sort of packed in everything you could ever possibly want to know about what makes good dog training, how to do it, it's all in there. It's just exceptionally condensed. If I was going to say who would get the most bang for the buck out of this book, I would say a dog trainer who specializes in behavior. If they could get their clients that have problem behavior dogs to read this book, they would save themselves an enormous amount of explaining, cajoling, coercing their clients, because the clients would get it. They would get it from the dog's point of view, and I think they would be endlessly more cooperative with the program when they were able to understand why their dogs, because all behavior serves a purpose, and when people take the time to figure out what is the purpose that this problem behavior is solving, now you can address it. So that's what this book is about, and then it also talks about if it doesn't work, what do you do now? If your solution didn't work, how do you go back and evaluate and analyze it? So that book will be available in Europe, because they get published in different places, probably in a day or two, so by the time the podcast comes out, it should certainly be out. In the United States I expect it out November 6, and that would be through my own website, thedogathlete.com. In Canada I would expect it maybe the middle of November. Australia/New Zealand probably closer to the end of November. So the Europeans are they're the lucky ones because it should be out in a day or two. Melissa Breau: Want to repeat the name one more time for folks so they can Google it? Denise Fenzi: Yeah. It's called Beyond The Basics: Unlock Your Dog's Behavior. Melissa Breau: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Denise, for coming back on the podcast. Denise Fenzi: Thank you for having me, Melissa. Melissa Breau: Absolutely, and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with Shade Whitesel to talk about toys and common issues, including talking about introducing work to play. Don't miss it! If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. CREDITS: Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called “Buddy.” Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.
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