Podcasts about ironically

Thank you for joining us for our 2nd Cabral HouseCall of the weekend! I'm looking forward to sharing with you some of our community's questions that have come in over the past few weeks…   Kim: Long time client of your IHPs. I have done a ton of work and made overall improvements in my health. However i work with a functional medical doctor to manage my hashimotos. Diagnosed age 14 currently 48. Been on your thyroid support protocol. What are your thoughts on adding t2? I'm currently on a combination of 137 Tirosent and 5mcg cytomel. I'm a non converter of t4 to t3 (high reverse t3 always). Did stress protocols etc work on sleeping which helps. Ironically my dr has never heard of supplementing with t2!!   Anonymous: Hi Dr Cabral, I have a question regarding Calcium Carbonate. I heard in podcast 1177 that you do not recommend this form of Calcium, yet I noticed that it's in the Alkalizing Vitamin C powder. Can you please elaborate on whether it is safe to take it in this supplement or not? Thanks   Kristin: Hi, Thank you for all of your education! I know there is a lot of information out there. I appreciate how your natural health recommendations are backed by evidence for their safety and effectiveness! I am hearing about ingesting Borax in small dosages mixed with water as a method of rebalancing toxicities including boron mineral deficiency, supporting with Candida bacterial overgrowth and heavy metal detoxing amongst others. My understanding is it also acts as a biofilm disruptor. Are you familiar with this practice and what are your thoughts about the safety and effectiveness of this practice? Is there a place for borax in a rebalancing protocol? Thank you!   Inga: Thank you Dr. Cabral for all your help and knowledge. I listen to your podcast all the time! So I have been having a more rapid heart rate when I drink alcohol. It started a year ago and would happen when I had a stronger drink or later in the night. Now it's happening every time I have a drink no matter the time or the percent of alcohol.. I have usually a drink or two on the weekends. I have currently stopped drinking. I'm fairly healthy, I work out 5 days a week. I eat lots of vegetables and good protein. I try to not eat a lot of sugar and have a cup of coffee a day .. both of my grand mothers had pacemaker so the rapid heart rate scares me .. any thoughts you have on this would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for your knowledge and kindness   Scott: Hello Dr. Cabral! I had a question about bladderwrack. I first heard about it on the 'Survivorman' show when he was in surviving in Alaska. It was said that it had many nutrients and protein in it. I was wondering if you had any knowledge of it and or experience in any of the internships you were in? I see that there are some supplements online. I tend to be a google-skeptic when reading about these supplements, the good, and their side effects. Could too much bladderwrack overload you with heavy metals since it comes from the sea? I trust your knowledge and experience above all. Thanks for all that you do…Ayubowan!   Thank you for tuning into this weekend's Cabral HouseCalls and be sure to check back tomorrow for our Mindset & Motivation Monday show to get your week started off right! - - - Show Notes and Resources: StephenCabral.com/2851 - - - Get a FREE Copy of Dr. Cabral's Book: The Rain Barrel Effect - - - Join the Community & Get Your Questions Answered: CabralSupportGroup.com - - - Dr. Cabral's Most Popular At-Home Lab Tests: > Complete Minerals & Metals Test (Test for mineral imbalances & heavy metal toxicity) - - - > Complete Candida, Metabolic & Vitamins Test (Test for 75 biomarkers including yeast & bacterial gut overgrowth, as well as vitamin levels) - - - > Complete Stress, Mood & Metabolism Test (Discover your complete thyroid, adrenal, hormone, vitamin D & insulin levels) - - - > Complete Food Sensitivity Test (Find out your hidden food sensitivities) - - - > Complete Omega-3 & Inflammation Test (Discover your levels of inflammation related to your omega-6 to omega-3 levels) - - - Get Your Question Answered On An Upcoming HouseCall: StephenCabral.com/askcabral - - - Would You Take 30 Seconds To Rate & Review The Cabral Concept? The best way to help me spread our mission of true natural health is to pass on the good word, and I read and appreciate every review!  

Transcript included below…Today, we're going to talk about how someone can still enjoy playing the guitar even if they have arthritis.Now, I myself don't have arthritis (yet), and fortunately, I've been blessed so far to have continuous use of my hands and arms throughout nearly 30 years of guitar playing, without incident.But we are not bound for this earth, and there may come a time when our hands may weaken, thereby limiting our ability to play some of the songs we can currently play.In my travels, I've had a few people ask me about what to do if a guitarist has arthritis.I don't want to claim to be able to dispense medical wisdom, because I don't have the background; nevertheless, I have a few things I could offer as suggestions.  Remember, everyone's body and hands are different, so what may be effective for one person may not be effective for another.Also, what may come easily to one person may cause another person to run the risk of injury, re-injury, or exasperating an existing injury.  So please be your own advocate and consider what I'm sharing here merely as an opinion, not a medical recommendation.  Cool?Here are a few thoughts that might encourage and empower a guitarist who has arthritic hands.1. Stretch your hands intentionally and gently before and even after you play. If you've been experiencing these episodes at Guitar Serious Fun for a while, you may have heard the story I shared about how I almost injured my hands due to overusing them with guitar and other instruments.For a refresher on this story, check out Guitar Serious Fun Episode 34: “Can Practicing the Guitar Be Harmful?”, as well as Guitar Serious Fun Episode 77: “Rhythms of Rest for Guitar.”In these episodes, I talked about how I read a couple books about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Repetitive Strain Injury and also worked closely with a physical therapist to strengthen my hands. The stretches I've learned through those experiences are ones I share in the early lessons of GuitarSuccess4U with our members.  So, if you want access to those (and so much more), please consider joining our membership.  It could change the game for you.Now I'm under no illusion that Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Repetitive Strain Injury and Arthritis are all the same.  They are most certainly not.  But they all have something to do with the hands having weakness or fragility, so I think it's worth doing a bit of research and learning more about how to attend well to our hands.One of our guest experts in GuitarSuccess4U is Dr. Gordon Myco, a Chiropractor and health coach.  Dr. Myco said in one of our lessons, “Take better care of your body than you do your guitar…because you can always get a new guitar.”  Right?2. Take breaks and always be conservative with hand use, not just while playing guitar, but while doing anything repetitive.This includes yardwork, crafts, or anything mechanical, especially something that requires some strength.  We do need to keep our hands moving, but we don't want to strain the muscles and joints.Breaks are super helpful, as we also talked about in “Rhythms of Rest for Guitar.”Speaking of rest, the Lord does some wonderful things to repair muscles, joints and even vocal fatigue as we sleep.  But if your hands are in any way compromised in their mobility and agility, it might be worth evaluating your sleep posture. I don't yet require them, but I am familiar with wrist guards that keep a person's wrist in neutral position as they sleep, so that they don't hyperextend them unwittingly. But again, I'm not even confident to speak intelligently on the physiological definition of “hyperextension,” so I'll step back from over-speaking here.  Just think, “Wrist guards may eventually be worth considering.”Now let's get into the practical aspects of playing the guitar if you have arthritis.3. Pray before you play.This may sound familiar, because it is actually a past episode.  It's Guitar Serious Fun Episode 47, by the same title: “Pray Before You Play”.  I encourage you to spin through that.  Is praying practical?  Absolutely.  Even offer a simple prayer like, “Lord, you've made my hands.  I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, and I sense a calling from you to use my hands and the guitar for your glory, in this season.  So please provide a way for me to do this, even if it's a way I can't yet see.”4. If you're an acoustic guitarist, make sure your action is low enough.I've been an acoustic guitarist my whole career.  And I've crossed paths with thousands of acoustic guitarists.  Unfortunately, a significant number of them have guitars that have unnecessarily high action.This could be because their instruments are in a lower pricing tier.  They could have also just come from the store and haven't been set up yet.Mike Lull's Guitar Works, the only shop I trust for repair and all the care of my guitars, was gracious enough to host me at their shop for one of our GuitarSuccess4U Expert Interviews.  They took me on a special tour of their workbenches, showed me their Plek Pro machine, and talked about how “Guitar Repair and Care” can be essential to our success.  I was even granted permission to provide to my members a special additional short video interview with the late founder, Mike Lull, about his story, process and philosophy of guitar repair.During the interview I conducted with the guys at the shop, Spencer Lull, Mike's son and the President of Mike Lull's Guitar Works, said that even a high-end guitar may still need to be set up by their shop.  He said that the vast majority of the work they do is to set up guitars.What does this entail?  It could mean re-setting or replacing the nut or the saddle.  Incidentally, this is the critical location where the strings are attached to the instrument.  If either the nut, the saddle or both are too high, the action will be too high.The truss rod may also need to be adjusted.Ironically, there are guitarists out there trying to play music on guitars that have not yet been set up, or that have been improperly set up, and without exaggerating, this is severely hindering their progress. It would be analogous to driving a car with tires that have very low air pressure.You can still drive a car with really low pressure in the tires, but it's not sustainable, and it's much more difficult.A well set up guitar increases morale. I taught several workshops recently at the Christian Musician Summit in Tacoma, Washington, and as I spoke about the importance of having a guitar properly set up, I allowed my guitar to make its way around the room.Each student present tried playing my guitar and handed it off to the next person.  And the overwhelming response I heard back from many of them about my guitar was “This is much easier to play on.  I think I really need to get my guitar set up properly.”So in GuitarSuccess4U, one of the 5 instant bonuses my members get access to is a short video I put together called “10 Tips for Proper Guitar Setup.”  Getting your guitar set up properly, especially by Mike Lull's Guitar Works, could be a game-changer, especially if you have arthritis. It could literally change the action to the point where you can play your acoustic with much greater ease.  Notes you couldn't access before could become more accessible.Mike Lull's Guitar Works repairs and sets up the guitars of Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. I mean, if their shop is good enough for those two well-known guitarists, it's good enough for me.  Look them up at MikeLull.com.  Follow the menu to “repairs” where you'll discover that they currently offer a free instrument assessment. And please tell them David Harsh at GuitarSuccess4U sent you.  I don't currently get any sort of referral fee, but I do get the satisfaction of knowing that they are taking care of my people!5. Try lighter gauge strings.I use Elixir Nanoweb Medium Gauge Strings – from gauges 13 to 56.  These have a bit of low end for a fuller sound, and they also allow me to tune to the many alternate tunings I like to play in.I've played guitars that require light gauge strings because of how they are manufactured.  Medium strings on those guitars would literally strain the neck.But light gauge strings on a properly balanced and set up guitar neck could be another solution that would allow for more playability with less exertion by arthritic fingers.6. If you haven't already, try playing a classical nylon-string guitar. These guitars provide several benefits, including the fact that the strings take less effort to fret because the strings are made of nylon, not steel.  Also, because classical guitar necks are wider, the strings are further apart, so some chords are easier to form.Now, I'm not a classical guitarist, so I don't approach that guitar with the posture and hand angles that a classical guitarist would use.  Nevertheless, I do find that classical guitars are much more responsive and require less hand strength, which might be a good next step with someone who has arthritic hands.It all depends on what your fingers are capable of.I've met guitarists who have arthritis who are able to navigate a 12-string acoustic guitar.  That, to me, is surprising, because there are literally twice as many strings; each finger has to fret two strings simultaneously for every note. But hey, if the instrument is responsive, and the guitarist has the strength and is enjoying playing the instrument, I say, make some great music!7. Try an electric guitar.Although I'm not an electric guitarist, I will readily admit that electric guitars typically have much more responsive string action, sometimes requiring even less pressure than a classical guitar would.  Of the few times I've played a friend's electric, I've observed this feature right away.Depending on which type of electric (Stratocaster, Telecaster, etc.) you may discover variations in the guitar neck shape, and how the manufacturer has fashioned the instrument. With this in mind, you may want to try playing a few different electric guitars, whether at a friend's house or even in a guitar store showroom.  Your hands will tell you what's working…but remember, as I've mentioned, some of the guitars in that showroom – even the electric guitars – may not have been properly set up yet.8. Experiment with some open / alternate tunings.There are more possibilities for alternate tunings than you can imagine.  But the ones that tend to require less fingers are ones that contain drones and low notes for an actual chord to be played open.  Drones like low D A D on the three lowest strings, for example, can be foundational for an open D-based tuning. DAD (on strings 6, 5 and 4)  could be the basis for DADGAD (perhaps one of the most famous and well-loved tunings), but also DADF#AD (which is open D Major), or even DADFAD (open D minor, which actually allows for more versatility, as songs I've composed in that tuning have revealed.)But if someone re-tunes a few of their strings (down, typically), entire worlds can open up where they can let a lot of the strings ring open, unfretted, to the relief of their fretting hand. Side note: tuning strings down allows for lower tension and easier “fretability.”  Is that a word?  Nope, but you get it.  Some tunings I've experimented with involve tuning some strings up.  So try down-tuning first.In some tunings, a single note can be fretted and slid up and down the neck, and it can still sound interesting.  Some chords in alternate tunings require fewer fingers, which can be a relief.Another side note: if you're going to collaborate with someone else, it's a nice gesture if you can know what some of the basic chords are in the alternate tuning in which you find yourself, because when they observe your hands on the frets, if they've got guitar or bass background, they'll be confused to see you in unconventional locations playing “new” notes or shapes.9. Experiment with some partial capos.There are multiple partial capos on the market, some of which fret all but a single string, or just half of the strings.  Note that a partial capo does not place a guitar in an alternate tuning; this is confirmed by playing a bar chord or a closed voicing scale in position above the capo, where the notes remain from where they were before the capo was applied to the guitar.But a partial capo can allow for some fingerings with the use of fewer fingers.  These can also allow for drone notes. There was a capo manufactured years ago called the Third Hand, and fingerstyle guitarist Harvey Reid was super helpful about spreading the word about what this capo was capable of. It has since been surpassed by the SpiderCapo, which basically fulfills the same function: six spinning tumblers that allow for 63 combinations of fretted notes per fret.  It is the “Cadillac” of partial capos, because it allows for all possible options.  The current model of the SpiderCapo that I have is not super rugged.  It doesn't feel like it's been very well manufactured, so I kind of have to baby it on my guitar neck.Through Harvey Reid, I was made aware of Liberty Guitar, a new method of playing guitar using a slightly altered tuning and a tool called a “flip capo.”  Some of this method only uses the two middle fingers of the fretting hand, which may provide considerable relief for someone with arthritic hands and allows guitarist to get faster traction if their hands are not as strong.As demonstrated by this concept, you can combine an alternate tuning with a capo, whether complete or partial.  But do some experimenting and discover what's possible.10. Experiment with a bottleneck slide.There are a few tunings, specifically DADF#AD (open D Major) and DGDGBD (open G Major) that have been fairly easy for me to tune to.  Once there, I've tried using a slide up and down the neck, so as to facilitate the basic open I, then 5th fret IV and 7th fret V chords, for slide guitar.This is an entire genre, and it definitely places the guitarist in a certain style of playing.  But the “win” here is that he or she can play slide guitar with very little strain or stress of the fretting hand, because the reality is, they aren't fretting.  They're placing the bottleneck or slide just against the strings, not even pressing down much, and they're still making music.11. Take a break from the guitar.I don't encourage someone to quit playing their guitar simply because they have arthritis.  Hopefully, today's discussion has shown my hope, to the contrary, that they stick with it.But if someone's hands are weak or tired, it might be nice for them to enjoy a short season of music on another instrument that's less demanding.  Instruments that come to mind are: harmonica, autoharp, hammered dulcimer, or even singing.  Each of these are instruments where we can enjoy music without a lot of exertion of the hands.  Lastly…12. Place yourself in the path of a guitar teacher or guitar community.The road to musical proficiency can sometimes be lonely.  And even after we've made significant progress, we can still experience moments of discouragement for one reason or another.For this reason, I highly recommend GuitarSuccess4U.  It's a tribe of like-minded guitarists who are all accessing the same premium, curated collection of tools.It's not a support group per se, but it does provide tremendous support.  For some of our members, these are their people.  Guitar is not something everyone in the world speaks or understands, so when we gather for our weekly Zoom calls, there's a level of empathy and understanding that isn't found in other places.Members experience accountability, encouragement, and an incredibly in-depth, yet accessible approach to the instrument.Proverbs 15:22 says, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors, they succeed.” I can think of two of our members currently who are on the journey of an arthritic guitarist.What if you, as a guitarist who is struggling with arthritis, were to join us, become known in our community, and then discovered some collective wisdom from the group?  It could be a game-changer for you. All it takes is a tiny change in our trajectory to send us in a whole new direction.I invite you to check out our website if you haven't already – at GuitarSuccess4U.com. We have a list of Frequently Asked Questions, and some sample lessons as well.  Re-capIn closing, you might appreciate knowing that today's episode came to life as a result of an e-mail exchange I had with someone asking for wisdom for a guitarist with arthritis.  They asked the question, and here, in this episode, was my answer.  Can you see what a single question has produced in today's episode?  If this discussion directly relates to you, I hope these strategies are in some way helpful to you as you persevere through the season of arthritis and still desire to make music on some level with your guitar.So, if you have a question or a topic you think we might be able to tackle here at Guitar Serious Fun, let your thoughts be known in the comments for today's episode.  As you may recall from Guitar Serious Fun Episode 22: “I Don't Know…But Let's Find Out,” I will intentionally avoid speaking about something I'm not familiar with, or pretend to know something I don't.  That's just not how I roll.But if the topic is in my wheelhouse, I'd be glad to share my thoughts here.  So please continue to experience my offerings here and to share Guitar Serious Fun with others in your circles.  We've got more great stuff coming up.Thanks for experiencing my thoughts. I'll see you next time.Thanks for reading Guitar Serious Fun! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guitarseriousfun.substack.com

Way too many of you ask me how do I get so many things done...It's by converting a lot of my 30-60 minute meetings into 15 minute meetings. Yes, this leads to much more productivity to squeeze as much juice out of a day but also gives you much more time to get back your work-life balance. Everybody reading this has 1 hour meetings that are actually 15 minute meetings or even 7 minute meetings! Ironically this podcast episode is 7.5 minutes long because I want to give you back that time. So enjoy this episode and use your time wisely! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/garyvee/message

If you've been a faithful listener of the podcast for some time, you'll know that I do a special episode each year during Thanksgiving week. It started out as five unusual things to be thankful for that weren't specific to me. Somewhere along the way, they became MY five things. The hope has always been that you will look at the circumstances of your life through a different lens after listening to my list. For many of us – myself included – 2023 has been difficult, so I want to take a different approach to this year's list. As a former coach of mine likes to say, half of life is A*S*S, and it feels like more than half of my year has been like that. If you're in the same boat, here's hoping this years list will help you see the good side of what you may have gone through in 2023. Here are five unusual situations at work you can be thankful for because of the growth they bring about. 1.    Getting terminated. Whether for cause, because of a large-scale layoff, or some other reason, what I see over and over again is that clients who get terminated are in a far better place six to nine months after they are terminated. What they repeatedly tell me is that they knew it was time to leave, but they didn't have the [fill in the blank with the emotion] to make the move themselves. So the Universe stepped in and took care of it for them. In the best situations, these people take the time to evaluate what they want moving forward, do the necessary mindset work on themselves, learn from any mistakes they may have made, and march courageously into the next phase of their life. You have the choice when something like this happens to you. You can play the victim, you can argue with reality, or you can ask yourself “now what?” I highly encourage the third approach.  2.    Recognizing that your attitude sucks. I've talked about one of my clients before – she came to me earlier this year because she had lost her work mojo. She knew she was phoning it in yet was resentful for others getting promoted instead of her. She is in SUCH a different place today. Ironically, she DID get riffed recently, but because of the mindset work we did together, she was able to handle that termination in a completely different way than if she was still stuck in sucky attitude mode. This client had a choice: she could keep blaming her boss, her coworkers, her employer…or she could look in the mirror and deal with what she saw. She chose to do the latter, and that has made all the difference. Remember…always, in any situation…the only person you have any control over is YOURSELF. That's the work.  3.    Being dissatisfied with your career path. Perhaps the path you've been on has run its course, or perhaps it's been the wrong career path for you from jump. Either way, there's such beauty in recognizing that you want to make a career pivot or reinvention. When I do this work with clients, they learn so much about themselves. They often bring up a long-ignored career path because it [fill in the blank with the career path's shortcomings] and realize their passion for that thing hasn't diminished over the years. When I work with clients to connect the dots between what they have been doing and what they now want to do, they experience a tremendous surge of confidence and assurance that they can succeed in this new field. Other clients have absolutely no idea what direction they want to go in now, so we do the excavation work to uncover the artifacts of their life that will give us clues. Still other clients want to engage their altruism more…their life experiences have soured them on their current corporate treadmill and left them longing for more meaning in their professional lives. Whatever situation you find yourself in, if you are experiencing seeds of discontent, be willing to work with a career coach like myself to figure out what's going on…and to work through what you want to do about it.  4.    Failing.We all know this intellectually: We learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. (BTW – don't like the word “failure.” I like to think of it as winning or learning.) But, let's face it: failing sucks at the time. What's great about failing, however, is the opportunity it presents us. Not just to figure out how to do the thing differently next time, but what it teaches us about ourselves. We might have to fall on our sword and admit our culpability. We might have to apologize to many people. We might have to go to great lengths to fix the problem we've created. We might have to deal with our inner demons, telling us WE'RE failures. WE aren't worthy. WE'RE bad people. Each of these potential outcomes presents us with an opportunity to grow, both professionally and personally. Not to mention, we now have a great story to tell when our next interviewer asks us about a time we failed.  5.    Working with a terrible boss. The research is clear: more people leave due to a bad boss than for any other single reason. If you haven't had a terrible boss, you're blessed – and most definitely in the minority. Most of us can rattle off a handful of horror-story bosses. Here's what I learned from mine: How I DON'T want to be as a boss…which helped shape how I DID want to be as a boss. I learned how to individualize the support I provided for each employee. Some needed and wanted more than others, all needed different types of support. I learned how to determine their motivators and how to reward them (hint: I asked). I learned how important it was to me to have my birthday and other life milestones recognized…so I did that for my employees. I learned how and when to give praise and constructive feedback. I learned to NEVER ambush an employee at their performance evaluation. I learned that my job as a boss was to advocate for MY team…vigorously. It wasn't my job to care about the other departments that answered to my boss. I needed to have MY team's back at all times and in all situations. Whether you have a bad boss, a PITA co-worker, or a direct report who you spend 80% of your time trying to make competent…LEARN from these situations and apply them to becoming a better boss.  I hope you're able to take at least one of the things on my list to heart as you navigate the fallout from 2023 or whatever is ahead for you in 2024. Remember: Winning or Learning. I wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings to those of you here in the United States, and a retroactive Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian listeners (who, BTW, have it right for putting more space between Thanksgiving and Christmas). 

My links: My patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/user?u=103280827 My Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/rhetoricrevolution Spotify Support: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/liam-connerly TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@mrconnerly?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc⁠ Email: ⁠rhetoricrevolution@gmail.com⁠ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connerlyliam/ Podcast | Latin in Layman's - A Rhetoric Revolution https://open.spotify.com/show/0EjiYFx1K4lwfykjf5jApM?si=b871da6367d74d92 Lesson 20: Fourth Declension  There is one important rule to remember here:  (1) Fourth declension contains u-stem nouns which are almost all masculine in gender.   Fourth declension is Latin's u-stem declension in which almost all the nouns are masculine in gender. Ironically, the one major exception is probably the most commonly used fourth-declension noun, manus, manūs, f., meaning “hand.”  This declension is unique to Latin. Among Indo-European languages, there really isn't anything exactly like it. Seen from the long view linguistically, it was a short-lived attempt by the Romans to create a distinctive u-stem declension, and the experiment didn't turn out well. By historical standards, fourth declension didn't last long. As early as the fourth century CE, fourth-declension forms were beginning to be subsumed into second declension, and by the end of the classical age the declension had begun to disappear altogether.  Unfortunately, even though it wasn't used all that much within the classical age, it was still a fully active form, so you have to know it (I know…)Here are the endings for fourth declension:  -us -ūs, -ūs -uum -ui -ibus -um -ūs  -u -ibus  Notice how you can't escape the strong presence of -u-. It dominates eight of the ten forms, producing what has to be the most distinctive genitive plural ending in Latin: -uum.  But if you think of memorizing the fourth declension endings with the formula: the base ending in -u-, plus the third declension endings added on. Looking at it that way can save you some time memorizing endings.  Fourth declension also includes a few neuter nouns. Here are the endings: -u -ua -us -uum -u -ibus -u -ua -u -ibus.  And here's a fourth declension neuter noun fully declined:  cornu cornua cornūs cornuum cornu cornibus cornu cornua cornu cornibus  Note: there are no mandatory long marks here.  The Ablative of Separation The term “ablative” denotes “separation” in Latin: ab- means “from”; -lat- means “carry, go.” Thus, the original use of the ablative was to indicate where something came from. Other uses like means and objects of prepositions developed later. In other words, the ablative of separation shows the oldest, the original, use of the ablative. The ablative of separation naturally occurs with verbs that have a built-in sense of separation, like the verb careo which means “lack,” for example, pecuniā careo, “I lack money,” literally “I am separate from money.” Notice the lack of any preposition in this construction. So when a word in the ablative has no preposition and its meaning denotes that two things are apart from each other ─ for instance, “me” and “money” ─ then that use of the ablative is called “the ablative of separation.” 

Today's show covers two men who used guns in defense of either themselves or others, only to find themselves promptly and firmly punished by the legal system that routinely allows criminals to walk free. Ironically, both men are from New York City, though the events took place on opposite sides of the nation.The first of these is Vince Ricci, a retired New Yorker who now lives in Los Angeles. At around 7:30 PM on Saturday, Nov. 4, Ricci was about to enter his home carrying a cup of coffee, when he suddenly found himself the victim of an armed robbery by two men.  Ricci managed to get his own pistol into action and drove the two men off with gunfire.  This event was caught on video, which we'll share with you today.This week we learned that Los Angeles County, the issuing authority for gun permits in LA, has revoked Ricci's concealed carry permit. The second man we're discussing today is New Yorker John Rote. Rote was on a subway platform when he happened to see a woman being mugged by an apparently deranged homeless man.  Rote retrieved a revolver from his backpack and used it to drive the mugger away—including by imprudently firing two warning shots.Rote was immediately arrested, charged with multiple crimes, and is currently out on bail awaiting prosecution.  Not helpful to Rote's circumstances is that the woman victim has announced that she became most frightened when she realized Rote had brought a gun to her defense.So, with that introduction, let's dive into today's show. Learn the Self-Defense Law you NEED to BE HARD TO CONVICT, for FREE!Grab your own copy of our best-selling guide to self-defense law for FREE!"The Law of Self Defense: Principles" is our best-selling, plain-English explanation of your legal privilege to use even deadly force in defense of yourself, your family, and others--AND MAKE YOURSELF HARD TO CONVICT!DON'T WAIT until you're actually ATTACKED--by then it will be TOO LATE!---> Get your copy for FREE (except for S&H) by clicking HERE RIGHT NOW!Disclaimer - Content is for educational & entertainment purposes only, and does not constitute legal advice.Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Christy by Catherine Marshall is a historical fiction book that follows the fictional character of Christy who decides to serve as a teacher in the Appalachian Mountains. It was based partially on reality and the experiences of Catherine Marshall's mother. She goes thinking she has so much to give and ends up finding there is so much more for her to learn.   “I love how she goes in with the intent of, ‘I'm going to help these people,' and ultimately, it's them helping her.” - Dana Robb   “It's one of the reasons I love this book because it's a really good look, and a really honest look at what richness and abundance people have within themselves and within their communities that people from the outside maybe don't recognize because it doesn't look like the richness and abundance that they have in their lives, and so because it's different and it's dissimilar, they assume that somehow these people are lacking, and that's not always the case, and it's not always true.” - Shelli Spotts   “Our journey is not always going to look like everyone else's.” - Shelli Spotts   “I love that it kind of tells you a little bit of the kind of feelings you might have with that internal compass, and that once she decides to go with it, she never wavers in that decision.” - Monica Anderson   “I really see this book as a journey that she goes on to connect with her inner compass, to connect with God.” - Dana Robb   “We have to allow love to guide our reactions to people, and then we don't see them as problems, and we don't see them as projects, and we don't see them as obstacles to be overcome, but we see them as they are: human!” - Shelli Spotts   “I love thinking about the multiplying power of love.” - Dana Robb   “And that's going to happen when you're inviting God into your life more, you're listening to your inner compass more, your love is growing, when you've got Him on your side, that power is immense.” - Monica Anderson   “I just love this idea that something very simple can make a huge difference.” - Shelli Spotts   “Frequently, what a community needs is not someone coming in from without to change them, but help to change themselves.” - Shelli Spotts   “This assumption that you're the one that has something to teach and that you don't have anything to learn, I think devalues great stores of wisdom and knowledge that other people have. We do have to go into situations where we're open to reciprocation, and we're open to learning just as much as we're hoping to teach others.” - Shelli Spotts   “Every interaction we have can be a type of ministry, and especially this theme of love. We can minister with love, we can minister love.” - Shelli Spotts   “By the end of the book, it just changed me. I felt like I walked there … seeing those delightful moments … I couldn't help but be affected by it.” - Monica Anderson   “I realized, by reading this book, that my imperfect effort is enough. What I have to offer, it's going to be enough, and that it's better to fumble on my way through, then to not offer anything at all.” - Dana Robb   Christy by Catherine Marshall   Multipliers by Liz Wiseman   Monica Anderson married her high school sweetheart. They have 3 children together, girl, boy, girl. She loves to spend time with her family and friends. She also loves working with animals, especially dogs and cats. She is continuing her education to gain more wisdom and knowledge so she can share that with others through teaching, mentoring, or discussions. This last passion is actually a new found love when she decided to invest in herself and took a Mission Driven Mom class. Monica is naturally happy, positive, courteous, and helpful. That being said, she also suffered greatly from victim mentality. She learned about many great tools to help her to be a better person for herself and those around her. Ironically enough one of the books required for the course was Christy. She fell in love with this book!   Whenever Dana Robb is presented with the opportunity for adventure, she is all in. Currently, this includes riding the local mountain biking trails with her husband, canyoneering, and climbing the hills of southern Utah. She loves to learn and explore with her six kids. She is drawn to the opportunities being involved with Big Ocean Women provides. Dana loves connecting to a global sisterhood where women's issues are being addressed through reframing and an abundance mindset. Shelli Spotts is an advocacy writer and creative writing teacher. She loves to spend time with her husband (usually in the garden) and their four almost adult children. She also loves to sew, to read, to write, and to drag her family outside to look at the sky. Shelli is passionate about poetry, Broadway show tunes, and telling stories—of ourselves, our families, and our communities.

 J Darrin Gross I'd like to ask you, Joseph Woodbury, what is the BIGGEST RISK?   Joseph Woodbury   Yeah, isn't an easy answer. For me. Ironically, I think most people's largest risk is is is in their industry or in their business itself. And, and I certainly think of risks there. But we've kind of talked about the storage industry, it's it's very robust, it's not going anywhere. It doesn't respond to recessions. You know, during the oh eight recession, when most real estate asset classes contracted by 60%, storage grew by 5%. So it's very, like, counter cyclical and recession proof. And so actually, I identify our biggest risk as a company is, is we're influenced not just by the storage industry, but because we're a software technology company, we're influenced by the venture capital industry. And if you look at other large marketplaces that have gone before us, they've raised a lot of capital to get to where they are. Airbnb is a $80 billion company, they just joined the s&p 500. So they are, you know, one of the most important companies in the United States of America. But they raised about $10 billion in capital to get there. You know, Uber raised north of $15 billion, and capital Instacart and DoorDash have both raised I want to say six or seven or $8 billion in capital. So most major marketplaces raised large amounts of capital today, you know, we operate in every city in all 50 states, we've raised a measly, you know, $65 million in capital. So I often ask myself the question, you know, will we be able to raise, you know, those those billions of dollars in capital, like marketplaces that have gone before us to reach the potential that they have, they have reached as mainstay brands in the United States. I think that's, that's the biggest risk. You know, when I, as the CEO, sit down and think it's not the storage piece. Renters love us hosts love us host earning money. renters are saving money, they keep growing, they keep transacting, they keep coming to the platform. It's, it's, you know, we're dependent on this venture capital industry. And it goes through different cycles. It's in a pretty bear cycle right now. And that'll continue to happen and it'll keep going through bear and bull cycles. But will that affect us, you know, years down the road? You know, what we go through some bear cycle that forces us to use other means of funding and that sort of thing?  

Hello Health Heroes! I had been introduced to Laban a few months back and he had told me bits and pieces of his and his wife Anna's incredible story of overcoming adversities and finding love in each other. Ironically they were both in Medellin Colombia so I invited them to come on a tour at our Healing Resort, Mountains Of Hope. After lunch i was able to grab our podcast producer and get a great show in for ya. This episode not only highlights two people finding love but it is also crystal clear, real life proof in the power of fasting and the innate ability for the body to heal. Many great lessons in our conversation… enjoy! Please like & subscribe to my show for more great inspiration and education so that you can become your own doctor and learn to self heal. And if you know someone that this show could help please share it with them and pay it forward! Love & Light Coach Tim. To contact Laban & Anna Go to: https://purposepartnersforlife.com/ Tim's Favorite, HIGHEST QUALITY Health Product Recommendations: Best Detox & Nutrition Supplements: https://www.chemicalfreebody.com/  Best Hydrogen Machine: Tim's personal unit - CLICK HERE Best Infrared Saunas & Healing Lamps: Tim's personal unit - Save $100 CLICK HERE Water Purification/Restructuring System: Book FREE Consult CLICK HERE Best Home Air Purification Unit : Tim's personal unit CLICK HERE Best Non Toxic Home Building Materials: CLICK HERE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In hour 3, Chris talks about the liberal media saying that Trump is the most dangerous thing on the planet, who must be stopped, or as Democrat rep Dan Goldman said on MSNBC, Trump must be 'Eliminated'. Ironically, Goldman was complaining about Trump's 'Dangerous Rhetoric' when he called for the former President's 'Elimination'. Also, Cardi B is back with more insight into New York and Biden, and one Canadian college student loves Hamas and hopes for a re-run! For more coverage on the issues that matter to you, download the WMAL app, visit WMAL.com or tune in love on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 9:00am-12:00pm Monday-Friday  To join the conversation, check us out on X @WMAL and @ChrisPlanteShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

     Last week I presented an overview of the GOP plot to subvert the last remaining shreds of democracy and pervert government into a Trumpian dictatorial hell. Sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, "Project 2025", a 1,000 page cookbook, gives detailed instructions on how to dismantle any semblance of rational government while nullifying the Bill of Rights. Make no mistake, this is a plot to destroy democracy itself. Ironically, this isn't merely Trump's doing, we need to investigated the Heritage Foundation as a possible hate group or a co-sponsor of existing hate groups.  Project 2025 is a series which will conduct a deep dive into this coup engineered by conservative lawyers seeking to overthrow democratic rule by granting would be autocrats like Donald Trump a "get out of jail free" card. This week I will focus on the plot to use the US military to attack fellow Americans. This discussion is ongoing and will be part of an extended series on Project 2025. Special focus will be not only on Trump, but on the attorneys plotting this illegal overthrow of democracy. This is our big story.This is all in light of Trump's latest threats against us 'vermin,' whereby he intends to incarcerate and murder his poltiical opponents.  Story #2 will focus on the sad joke that is the Supreme Court's alleged code of ethical conduct. We could all use a good laugh right now. I will also discuss the latest ravings of our favorite blonde neanderthal in Congress--Marjorie Taylor Greene--in our latest episode of "My Little Margie."  We will also have the Jackass of the Week Award.  

Nasal Care, Hygiene, Sleep/Dementia. What other choice do we have? We may say, “yes, I want to be healthy” but, sometimes it might be “I just don't want to be SICK!" Nathan Jones, CEO of Xlear, Inc. joins the show to discuss personal self-care strategies, the importance of hygiene and Xlear Sinus Care Products. Read the article, "Hygiene: Apparently and Ironically, in Medical and Public Health Circles, It's a Dirty Word" by Nathan Jones, frequent guest on our show. Visit Xlear.com for more information about Xlear Sinus Care and Spry Dental Defense Products and to find a retailer near you.

Hello our little winter snowflakes and welcome to a very special show. The Blind Guys have just returned from London where 2 major events happened... well, 3 if you count the King opening parliament! Yes, all 3 Blind Guys were in the same room for the first time since the dinosaurs walked the earth. Ironically, Jan, Stuart and Óran lined up their wormholes to coincide with the opening day (only day really) of Sight Village South East. It was a momentous occasion with streamers, fireworks, a 29-gun salute, and cake, although it seems only Jan knew about the cake

On this brand new edition of Cubs On Tap, the full panel of co-hosts are back talking Cubbies! Juice, Tyler, Nick, Joey, and Ron all get back together to start priming the offseason and the possible action that is on the horizon. To start the show, Nick and Joey give their first thoughts on a mic about the hiring of Craig Counsell, from there, the boys start to dive into the meat and potatoes of the episode. First, each panelist shares something they are currently thankful for with the Cubs. From there, each panelist gives their thought on something they WANT TO be thankful for. This time the discussion is more future looking and hints at hopes for this winter. Finally, the crew gives their top 3 players they want the Cubs to target this winter, in any form. Ironically, the crew only had one overlap in the entire episode! It was a heck of a discussion around each player. The boys go down a few rabbit holes to close out the show, foreshadow what's to come at Cubs On Tap, and so much more! Cubs On Tap is presented by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OnTapSportsNet.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, your go-to source for Cubs news⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, analysis, and updates. Follow us on social media: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@CubbiesOnTap⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@OnTapSportsNet⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@JoeyKnowsNothin | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TeddyFreddy270 | @JuiceOnTap | @LuceOnTap | @Nick_OnTap

Have you ever been frustrated with traffic, or even have momentary road rage? Did you know your car can be a great classroom of life? Ironically, one can learn to find joy at the same time of feeling frustrated, because switching perspectives can change a situation and environment completely. With life lessons in traffic, we can remember that we can't control others, and practice not taking things personally, and develop the skill of evaluating what our reactions are and how they might affect outcome. We can learn to let things go and choose our own path by our priorities -- that faster isn't always better, and that different sometimes is just different; not right, wrong, better or worse. Even with detours, rumble strips and unfortunate accidents, you can follow the still small voice of your inner GPS, to have peace transcend rage, and be in the driver's seat of your life to enjoy the journey.

With Xi Jinping coming to visit California, Gavin Newsom was able to miraculously clear out all the homeless in San Francisco. We've been told this is a problem with no answer other than to keep throwing money at ineffective solutions. California is choosing to let the homelessness issue fester. One has to wonder why, but the simple answer is that Californian officials suffer no consequences for it at the ballot box. Clearly, Xi's visit to San Francisco indicates Newsom is next up to be the Democratic nominee for president. Megan Rapinoe sustained an injury during her last soccer match and said it proves God doesn't exist. Ironically, some would argue her injury actually proves God does exist. Trump had another iconic moment over the weekend: walking into a UFC event with Tucker Carlson and Kid Rock. Seems like America would do pretty well if we put the country into their hands. Secret Service agents opened fire on potential carjackers while protecting Joe Biden's granddaughter. It's interesting to see who's allowed to have firearms for protection in this country. Princeton professor Peter Singer faced backlash for describing an article promoting zoophilia — sexual attraction to animals — as “thought-provoking.” Singer said the journal that supports zoophilia is fighting back against “cancel culture.” A high-ranking Ukrainian military officer was the “coordinator” of the sabotage attack on the Nord Stream pipeline, according to a new report. Anyone with a lick of sense was able to deduce this at the time it happened, but it's interesting to see it finally be admitted in an official report. Bill Maher ripped Barack Obama for “moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel. Maher is completely right, and a lot of people who support Palestine should heed his warning. The mayor of Los Angeles is leasing entire motels for the local homeless community because officials are unable to actually identify the root of the problem. Until we recognize that these people are largely drug addicts, nothing will change. Today's Sponsors: iTarget Pro Practice alone, compete with friends, or use it to safely train friends and family who are new to firearms. Go to https://www.iTargetPro.com and get 10% off at checkout when you use the offer code CHAD. This is the smartest, safest way to train, which is why competitive shooters trust dry fire training as part of their regimen.  Upside Upside users are earning hundreds of dollars a year. That's probably why they have a 4.8 star rating on the App Store. Download the FREE Upside App and use promo code chad to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. Bespoke Post It's free to sign up, and you can skip a month or cancel anytime. Get 20% off your first monthly box when you sign up at https://www.BoxofAwesome.com and enter the code watchchad at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOUR YEARS LATER, WILL THEY SPEAK ABOUT COVID?  4/8: Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century by Josh Rogin  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Under-Heaven-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0358393248 By the time the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Wuhan, Trump's love-hate relationship with Xi had sparked a trade war, while Xi's aggression had pushed the world to the brink of a new Cold War. But their quarrel had also forced a long-overdue reckoning within the United States over China's audacious foreign-influence operations, horrific human rights abuses, and creeping digital despotism. Ironically, this awakening was one of the biggest foreign-policy victories of Trump's fractious term in office. ​Filled with shocking revelations drawn from Josh Rogin's unparalleled access to top U.S. officials from the White House and deep within the country's foreign policy machine, Chaos Under Heaven reveals an administration at war with itself during perhaps our most urgent hour. 1890 China Qin Dynasty

FOUR YEARS LATER, WILL THEY SPEAK ABOUT COVID?  2/8: Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century by Josh Rogin  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Under-Heaven-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0358393248 By the time the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Wuhan, Trump's love-hate relationship with Xi had sparked a trade war, while Xi's aggression had pushed the world to the brink of a new Cold War. But their quarrel had also forced a long-overdue reckoning within the United States over China's audacious foreign-influence operations, horrific human rights abuses, and creeping digital despotism. Ironically, this awakening was one of the biggest foreign-policy victories of Trump's fractious term in office. ​Filled with shocking revelations drawn from Josh Rogin's unparalleled access to top U.S. officials from the White House and deep within the country's foreign policy machine, Chaos Under Heaven reveals an administration at war with itself during perhaps our most urgent hour. 1950 Mao

FOUR YEARS LATER, WILL THEY SPEAK ABOUT COVID?  3/8: Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century by Josh Rogin  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Under-Heaven-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0358393248 By the time the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Wuhan, Trump's love-hate relationship with Xi had sparked a trade war, while Xi's aggression had pushed the world to the brink of a new Cold War. But their quarrel had also forced a long-overdue reckoning within the United States over China's audacious foreign-influence operations, horrific human rights abuses, and creeping digital despotism. Ironically, this awakening was one of the biggest foreign-policy victories of Trump's fractious term in office. ​Filled with shocking revelations drawn from Josh Rogin's unparalleled access to top U.S. officials from the White House and deep within the country's foreign policy machine, Chaos Under Heaven reveals an administration at war with itself during perhaps our most urgent hour. 1966 Red Guards

FOUR YEARS LATER, WILL THEY SPEAK ABOUT COVID?  1/8: Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century by Josh Rogin  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Under-Heaven-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0358393248 By the time the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Wuhan, Trump's love-hate relationship with Xi had sparked a trade war, while Xi's aggression had pushed the world to the brink of a new Cold War. But their quarrel had also forced a long-overdue reckoning within the United States over China's audacious foreign-influence operations, horrific human rights abuses, and creeping digital despotism. Ironically, this awakening was one of the biggest foreign-policy victories of Trump's fractious term in office. ​Filled with shocking revelations drawn from Josh Rogin's unparalleled access to top U.S. officials from the White House and deep within the country's foreign policy machine, Chaos Under Heaven reveals an administration at war with itself during perhaps our most urgent hour. 1940 Boxers

     Las week I presented an overview of the GOP plot to subvert the last remaining shreds of democracy and pervert government into a Trumpian dictatorial hell. Sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, "Project 2025", a 1,000 page cookbook, gives detailed instructions on how to dismantle any semblance of rational government while nullifying the Bill of Rights. Make no mistake, this is a plot to destroy democracy itself. Ironically, this isn't merely Trump's doing, we need to investigated the Heritage Foundation as a possible hate group or a co-sponsor of existing hate groups.  I will also discuss the latest ravings of our favorite blonde neanderthal in Congress--Marjorie Taylor Greene--in our latest episode of "My Little Margie."  We will also have the Jackass of the Week Award.    Come join me.  Jeanine

So, this is literally our favorite round! At the end of the day, it's amazing!! Ironically, it's, like, so random! It's trash!! Irregardless, it's awesome!!! Am I right! Exclamation mark? lololHere's what our friend Artie had to say about this round: In this round of Beer Thursday, the hosts explore the world of overused phrases, or 'crutch words,' and how certain words or phrases can quickly become mundane or even annoying due to their frequency and misuse. They discuss the use of phrases like 'literally,' 'random,' and 'irregardless' and their growing annoyance with them. Additionally, they contemplate how certain terms and symbols (like 'LOL' and exclamation points) influence the overall tone and meaning of conversations. The hosts invite the audience to be more mindful in their communication, both in listening and speaking, and promote a better understanding of language.Support the showFor complete show notes, go to Shayne.Fun/bt. Follow Beer Thursday on Instagram so you can enjoy Jay's brilliant beer photography and join the convo next time we go live! Please support us on the Beer Thursday Patreon page! The next 18 Great Human Beings will get access to the Beer Thursday Facebook group at the $5 level. Never miss an episode and help us take you to the top with us by subscribing and leaving a 5-Star review on your favorite podcasting app: Apple Podcasts Listen on Amazon Music Spotify Stitcher Google Podcasts iHeartRadio

Where there is genuine excitement over the news that the actors strike is over. The strike, the longest in the Screen Actors Guild's history, was resolved late yesterday and today performers are getting ready to get back to work. And graphic footage depicting Hamas attacking Israel was shown at a screening last night organized by Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot. But things got ugly as a fight broke out spilling onto the street. Ironically, the screening was held at the Museum of Tolerance. Plus, at times it was downright ugly during last night's republican debate. Nikki Haley got really mad when one of the candidates brought up her daughter. She immediately hit back calling him scum. And today she's doubling down. And, social media lit up with concerns for Wynnona Judd after she seemed off during her performance. Even leaning on another singer for support. Well, as Megan Alexander reports, Wynnona saw the comments and is explaining what happened. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Join Dr. Kiltz and special guest Dane Johnson as he shares his incredible story and journey of self-healing from a life-threatening case of irritable bowel disease (IBD).     At 23 years old, and at the height of his modeling career, Dane Johnson was diagnosed with both severe Ulcerative Colitis & Crohn's Disease. His life was torn apart. Ironically, Dane was being paid to be healthy, and fit, but behind closed doors he was suffering from severe IBD.    Over the next 4 years, he lost 60lbs of weight, had 20 bloody bowel movements a day, extreme pain, anemia, no energy, sleepless nights, and eventually was struggling to save his own life. After years of these unbearable symptoms, ineffective steroids, antibiotics, and biologics, he was completely unrecognizable stuck in a mental prison.  In 2014, Dane's life came to a breaking point when his entire family flew to the hospital for his near death experience from IBD complications. Dane realized the only way he would regain his life and his freedom would be to do it himself, to become the CEO of his health.  Fast forward 10 years,  Dane not only was able to fully recover from this experience naturally, but has helped thousands of people around the world do the same. He has become one of the most successful IBD healers in the world but more importantly a visionary for true healing.  He is now the CEO and Founder of Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle, the largest and most successful IBD consulting firm globally. His team accompanied with licensed physicians now has over 1000+ testimonies worldwide of all ages, cultures and extreme experiences.   Dane is classically trained as a Board Certified Functional Nutritionist, but his larger vision is to continue to create real solutions and systems that will revolutionize IBD.   In this episode you will discover:   Tips for taking control of your life  The root cause of most disease  Mind v.s. matter – who is in control  The importance of food/meal prep  Thoughts on western medicine     Connect with Dane:   Instagram   YouTube   CCL Website    Connect more with Dr. Kiltz:  Website  Kiltz Mighty Tribe - Free membership and 30-Day Course   Doctor Kiltz Nutritional Solutions  Instagram  Tiktok  Facebook  Amazon 

The Key Master: When Seasons Collide by Jonathan R. BacherThe blending of fairy-tale fiction and history is not unique in any way as time travel stories have been told many times and in a variety of ways. It is the fascination of living within another realm that draws both the reader and writer into the mystical possibilities of fantasy. That seductive potential of transformation into another time, pulling one to follow a path that will lead into uncharted territories and a collision between their past and that of others before them. In this sense, each story carries with it its own relevance just as one's remembrance of the past, and fear of the future, is viewed in specific individual terms that are different for all of us.Based upon the hatred that existed between the English and both the Dutch and Swedish settlers of the new Americas, this story takes place in New Castle, Delaware, which played a pivotal but rather unknown role in our nation's history as the original center of colonial government prior to William Penn establishing Philadelphia as such. Ironically, it was in New Castle where William Penn first touched the shores of the nation that would become the United States of America. As a thriving port enterprise, New Castle served as the residence and meeting place for many who were involved with both the striving for independence and, for some, the ultimate signing of the Declaration of Independence. Among them were Benjamin Franklin, John Dickenson, George Read, and Thomas McKean.When a man is given a special gift that will allow for him to travel through time, he awakens in the year 1773 in his hometown of New Castle, Delaware. Through the course of routine circumstance, he finds himself accepted by some yet deceived by others. Remembering his past, which is really his future, he longs for a return to those associated with his life in the year 1986. The story becomes complicated when he learns that his close friend's family is descendant of a plot and murder that took place in 1777. This would be a plot that would question the very existence of the family name and all that they had acquired.In the end, he must now make a choice. Perhaps the most difficult choice of his many life cycles. Does he return to be with his wife and maintain a tarnished relationship? Or does he remain in a period where potential for true love awaits him?https://www.amazon.com/Key-Master-When-Seasons-Collide-ebook/dp/B0BRNTP2GB/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Key+Master%3A+When+Seasons+Collide&qid=1698282079&s=books&sr=1-1http://www.KingPagesPress.com   http://www.bluefunkbroadcasting.com/root/twia/11923kpp1a.mp3   

Get to catch up with old buddy Trent! Ironically enough, we chat about deer hunting for a bit before going into talk about The Razz. Trent was a big help in getting the event coordinated and continues to be a big supporter of DTW. Once again we go back into the scene days of bands we liked and some of the great shows we attended at the H2O Venue in Macomb early on. Follow along as we continue to pump up this next event!Find Concrete Sleep on:Facebook / Instagram / SpotifyCheck out Dial The Wild on Facebook and Instagram#dialthewild

He shielded him and cared for him . . . like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them aloft. — Deuteronomy 32:10-11 Not long ago, I realized that I hadn't been invited to something that I would have liked to have participated in. It was surprising to feel excluded and forgotten. I wondered why I had been left out, but I was too embarrassed to ask, so I assumed there must have been a reason for it. In that weak moment, it was hard not to draw the conclusion that I had been excluded on purpose. At times when we might feel insecure or unwanted, it is natural to feel hurt and alone. Feelings of isolation can create an ache in our hearts and a tiredness in our bones. We yearn for friendship and understanding. Ironically, when we feel that way, it can be hard to connect with others even if they do reach out to us—because we've begun to feel out of touch and unwanted. Humanly speaking, there might not be anyone who can truly care for us in the way that we need to be cared for. Our hurts can sometimes be too deep for words to express. What we need is to be held and carried up over our troubled situations. Our Lord and Savior is the only one who can truly do that. God sees us, knows what we need, and comes to save us. He scoops us up and carries us when we are not capable of flying ourselves. Lord Jesus, we can't thank you enough for your care for us. When we feel hurt and alone, it is the greatest comfort to know that you guard us as the apple of your eye. We love you and pray in your name. Amen.

Do you feel confused? Clarity brings peace and helps us heal. Transracial adoptee Sydney shares some of the key insights that have brought her healing clarity. Listen in for your own insights.Here's a bit about Sydney from her website:At the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020, I received a Instagram DM from a girl claiming to be my half sister. As a transracial adoptee (biracial/half black, adopted by a white family) who has always been curious about her birth family, I knew that this text would change my life. And it did.I was raised in a predominately – white community and experienced things such as separation anxiety, microagressions and identity crises for the majority of my life. Taking a DNA test and finding my half sister was just the beginning of my journey to finding my identity.At the University of Tampa, I took a writing class and chose adoption as my subject for a research paper. I assumed all I would have to do is tell my story, do a little research and I'd get an automatic A right? Well, that's not exactly what happened. As I was researching, I came across the words “transracial adoption”. Ironically, I had absolutely no idea what that meant, but when I found out, my whole world was flipped upside down.Suddenly, all of my anxiety, confusion, and feelings about being out of place were justified. I wasn't alone.For me, it has been a journey of realization and self-love that got me to where I am now. My goal is to educate parents who plan to or have already transracially adopted about what it takes to raise a child of a different race. I also am very passionate about speaking to other adoptees, hearing/sharing their stories and showing them that they are not alone.Transracial adoption is not a topic that is talked about very often and not many people even know what it is. I plan to spread awareness to the subject through social media platforms.My life as an adoptee has not been easy, but I have also been blessed with opportunities that may have not happened if I wasn't adopted. I hope that I can inspire others with the knowledge of transracial adoption and my passion for change.https://sydneyparkhurst.com/https://www.facebook.com/sydneyparkhurst6/https://www.instagram.com/adopteesydney/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtgR6jSgFOGWSxWQAjgTZXAhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/sydney-parkhurst-243783184/

Billionaire George Soros has sent $15 million to groups behind the pro-Hamas protests in the US. Ironically, criticism of Soros is characterized as “antisemitic” because Soros is Jewish. 5) Soros finances groups demonstrating on behalf of Hamas; 4) Iran's long game; 3) Debunked “Khazarian Jews” conspiracy theory makes a comeback; 2) Highly pathogenic avian flu hits poultry farms in Oklahoma, Alabama; 1) Indianapolis woman botches her own hate crime. FOLLOW US! Twitter X: @SkyWatch_TV YouTube: @SkyWatchTVnow @SimplyHIS @FiveInTen Rumble: @SkyWatchTV Facebook: @SkyWatchTV @SimplyHIS @EdensEssentials Instagram: @SkyWatchTV @SimplyHisShow @EdensEssentialsUSA TikTok: @SkyWatchTV @SimplyHisShow @EdensEssentials SkyWatchTV.com | SkyWatchTVStore.com | EdensEssentials.com | WhisperingPoniesRanch.com

The title of the 1st ep of ADHDAF is 'We are ADHDAF but who TF are we?' This new chapter of me (Laura) flying solo is a homage & probably even worse sound quality/editing!Ironically,in raising RSD Awareness,I've suffered the worst RSD of my life & nearly didn't release this!This is a transitional episode;I'm not quite there yet...next week's will have a guest/structure/a mic/editor (hopefully!)But this is imperfect action-ADHD Awareness & authenticity.I've never edited a podcast & am hearing impaired,so strap yourselves in!:)This impromptu chaos is 'The Most ADHD Thing' I've done this week-I'm finding my way forward in real time & I get by with a little help from my friends! ;)Thank you so much for your support as I find my way XTW:Trauma,Bereavement,Cancer,Grief,RSD,Emotional Dysregulation,If you are struggling with any of the topics covered, you are not alone.REACH OUT!Pharmacy Stock Checker HEREHope to see you at the Xmas shows!TICKETS HERE!Enter the FESTIVE AF Giveaway HERE for a chance to win tickets & NEW MERCH!Listen to me ranting and raving on Jamie Gittins' Musical Memoirs PodcastIf you've found this podcast helpful & are able,please help us continue to help others by joining our Community for Peer Support OR leave us a tipMASSIVE THANKS TO ALL PATRONS!Gold Tier Patrons Shoutout:RachSlatts,Cat Marshall,Ally Mac,Kim Pierpoint,Rachael Riley,Derec Thompson,Leanne S,Laura Fleming,Clare Wilson,Michie,Amy Davies,Ceci,Kelsey F,Katherine Wilkinson,Alarna Pigmatiello,Elle, Mary N,Suzanne Tanso,Katy Smith,Jacqueline McGeachie,Linda Collins,Jennifer Wilson,Jo,Rachel Stewart,Christie,Claire Turner,Katie Enstone,Ani Kemsley,Lizzee Oliver,Nicola Mackenzie-Cracknell,Michelle Bellyou,Olivia Dyer,Gurjit Thandi,Ailish,Jody Ellen,Charlotte Holtom,Heesoo Lee,Nyki McKenzie,Ruth Lester,Kimi Wright,Rachel Williams,Sahra Zekiri,Lorna Lou,Chelsie Louise,Kirsty Cassell,Jacki Allen,Helen McEwan,Nic Hewett,Carly Taylor,Jen M,Claire Protherough,Reece English,Cara Aurora,Laura,Louise MacDonald,Claire Dowling,Ally Rathbone,Jenny Jimenez,Trudy,Daina Stinnett,Rosie Gee,Dr Explodo,Kayak Lady,Lindsay Knox,Gill Blackall,Siobhan Campbell,Kara,Lynsey Hoskins,Anna Byron,Ali Velo,Nikki Wilson,Kirsty Witkowska,Catherine Hickey,Michelle A,Abbie Whitelaw,Rhianne,Sofia Buccheri,Natalie,Caitlin Lewis,GIlly Pompom,Andie MacInnes,Niki,Donnie,Kim Michelle,Jackie Whittingham,Victoria Closs,Vanessa Fisher,Marianne Kelly,Jade Badge,Emma Pearce,Lyndsey Lowdon,Nelly Griggs,Claire Robinson,Tallis Morris,Charlotte Lynskey,Magdalena Kuna,JosieJoJo,Georgie Chisholm,Rachel Jones,Matilda Wanless,Alicia,Abi Wood,Tabitha Buck,Sarah Coldrey,Fanny Willy,Kirsten Richardson,Louise Kilgannon-Patel,Kirsti,Collette Morrison, Carol Falkner, Sally,Gemma Beauchamp,Disa SIF,Jenni Bell, Paula C Gleason,Nella Scurfield,Nicola Wright,Jaime Kerns,Suzie Lawes,Sarah Spurgeon,Sara,Jill,Toni Morgan,Ian Hepworth,Louise Townend,Amy Holliday,Natalie P,Jessica Williams,Aimee,Alexa & Sharissa Smith who helped make this episode possible; raising ADHD awareness and providing validation & information to those who desperately need it.Support the show

The rise of Christian nationalism, first in England and then in the United States, has always been linked to Christian Zionism, which is now killing Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians. Ironically this is linked to Romans 11, where Paul sets forth the purposes of Israel to Christ, and refutes any eternalizing importance of the law or of ethnic Israel. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

How did your holiday season kick off?  Do you begin with Halloween like we do?As the days become shorter, I believe our souls begin to yearn for the light, and those of us committed to doing the inner work use this time to take stock of what we truly desire, what it working, and what we want (or need) to change in keeping with the seasons.Ironically, a lot of people miss the moment of inflection, or shorter days that invite us to preserve energy and do less, instead doing MORE for everyone and everything around them. This leads to burnout, illness, and anxiety. Gratefully, there is another way!This is one of the great paradoxes of adventure that I teach about in my course and learned when we pushed, pushed, pushed across the country to make it to our friends for the fourth of July.  (Great story - pick up my book if you may need this lesson, too!). As you consider my digital course, I invite you to look at where you may be PUSHING IT this holiday season, and consider where you might be able to invite in more grace, instead of being forced in to it by default.  Can you wait for it?What is truly special about this season is within - within you, your home and your personal decisions to take the adventure. I hope you'll decide to journey with me virtually with my first signature course in 2024 which starts in February but has a presale running now... please see the link below:(link coming - email us for now: )admin@theadventureparadox.comSupport the showUpcoming events:The 2024 Adventure Paradox Digital Course HOLIDAY PRESALEConnect with me here:www.catcaldwellmyers.com@catcaldwellmyersThe Adventure Paradox Podcast Page (Fb)

Running a small business can feel like a race all year long, but during November and December, the pace can multiply. Ironically, it is also the time of year that most entrepreneurs want to take more time off to spend with their loved ones or doing holiday activities. How do you do both, and stay […] The post 85: Get Your Small Business Ready for the Holiday Season appeared first on Women's Business Workshop Robin Walker.

Wendy Kathryn is an environmental toxins lawyer turned clean living coach, who educates women about how toxins are impacting our health and our kids' health, how to spot them, and how to avoid them.Wendy's  career has spanned making coffee as a Starbucks barista to reviewing and analyzing environmental toxins regulations in Europe. Her toxins experience dates back to over a decade ago, when she tossed everything in her home that had a fragrance in to the dumpster because my 9 month old daughter had terrible eczema. Ironically, Wendy worked in environmental toxins regulation (and still does) but she hadn't put it together until that moment that while she was so concerned with toxins in drinking water, soil and air, these same toxins were in her lotions and skincare and even her baby girl's diaper cream! Wendy dug deep in to the law and once she fully understood that there were ZERO regulations limiting toxins in our cleaners and personal care products, she found her life's purpose.  Resources:Toxin-free shopping guide: www.toxinfreeshoppingguide.comToxin-free roadmap: www.tossingthetoxins.com Connect with Wendy:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wendykathryn_/ Website: https://www.wendykathryn.com/ Toxin free in 3 course: https://www.wendykathryn.com/toxin-free-in-3  Connect with Jane Z. on Instagram at @farm.to.future

“The only discipline that lasts is self-discipline.” ~Bum PhillipsThis Habits 2 Goals episode is FREE for ALL subscribers. It's baaaaaack… The 36-hour, (once a week), fast ***WARNING** Please do your own research and consult your doctor before altering your diet.***What is it? Why do it? And, the backstory.In 2019, (at 51), I came to the sudden awareness that I'd never gone a day without eating. I wondered if I could fast for an entire day.The only way to find out… challenge myself. My plan was to cease eating around 8 p.m. on Sunday. Then, see if I could make it through Monday without food. If I could then make it to Tuesday at 8 a.m., I'd have gone 36 hours. The first fast was brutal!Afterward, I recall saying, “Maybe I'll try that again next year.”Then a day went by and I said, “Maybe I'll do that again next month.”Then another few days went by and I said, “I'm going to do that again next Monday!”The next thing I knew, it was 30 weeks later…30 consecutive weeks of fasting – 36 hours, once per week.I share the experience on a couple of previous podcast episodes.—» LINK & LINKWhy fast in the first place?Reason #1: Self controlI wanted to find out WHO was in control.Was it my impulses and eating habits or was it my mindfulness and willpower?I love Pythagoras' observation: “No man is free who cannot command himself.”Could I command myself for those 36 hours?Freedom and family are top values. Am I really free if I cannot command myself? Am I in control?Let's find out…Reason #2: Experiment!As important as habits, rituals and routines are that support our goals and ideals, it's equally important to experiment.See Dynamism (episode).“All life is an experiment, the more experiments you make the better.” ~R.W. EmersonBy experimenting, I learned firsthand an entirely different level of self-discipline and interestingly, gained a new level of freedom.“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."~R.W. EmersonIn Siddharta by Hermann Hess, Siddhartha's mantra is…I can think. I can wait. I can fast.These were things within Siddhartha's control.Few things in life are in within our control.What we eat and when we eat ought to be. Yet, for most, they are not. Ironically, most people think they are in control of what and when they eat yet, they have never tested that belief.Fasting is a great way to test that assumption.It stands to reason that if one cannot control what they eat, when they it, they really do not control very much.Reason #3: Health and wellness.Here are just a few of the reported health and wellness benefits of fasting:* Fights inflammation* Aids blood sugar control; reduces insulin resistance* Aids weight loss and reduced fat* increases growth hormone* Aids heart health* Suspected of aiding cancer prevention* Aids longevity* Improves clarity* Enhances mindfulness* Enhances spirituality. They don't call it a “Monk Fast” for nothing. For the record, I'd never heard that term until 2023!How I perform the fast…First, the disclaimer once again: I AM NOT A DOCTOR. PLEASE VISIT YOUR DOCTOR AND DISCUSS ANY CHANGES TO YOUR DIET FIRST.For better or worse, I dove head-first into this experiment with almost no research.I had no idea there are terms like “dirty” fasting.To get through the day, I will probably have about 5-6 cups of hot tea and drink a lot of water, sometimes carbonated. I also have coffee in the morning. That coffee has a touch of coconut oil and sometimes I'll add a touch of butter.Apparently, this is known as “Fat-Fasting”. I didn't know that.Purists are likely to say that those are calories and it's a “dirty fast.”For me, this experiment is about health and I'm confident that those fats are healthy. Further, the reduction in calories from a typical day of 2,000+ to approximately 50 is fasting.Less than 100 calories (far less), during a thirty-six hours period is substantial.I will also take my usual dose of psyllium husk (approx a tablespoon) with some salmon oils, around noon.So there you have it, the quick and “dirty” What? Why? and How?The challenge was to complete every Monday (all five) in October; that happens today.At 55, I expect that I will continue to test, experiment and explore. The good news; it's week five and it appears that I'm in control.I can think. I can wait. I can fast.Enjoy the show!~mg***Get the inspiring, free and world's first, HABITS to GOALS tracking template here: → https://thehabitfactor.com/templatesIf you'd like to understand human behavior at an even deeper level, learn more about the “Three Circles of Behavior Echo-System” which is featured in the book, “EVERYTHING!” I teach and coach organizations and individuals worldwide how to best utilize and leverage “The Three Circles of Behavior Echo-System” and the P.A.R.R. [Plan, Act, Record & Reassess] methodology to craft game-changing habits on-demand. Check out our latest cohort offering, the waitlist is now open: The 28-Day Breakthrough!MORE: “The Three Circles of Behavior Echo-System” / The Grunburg Behavior Model is a holistic, fluid, and dynamic behavior-change model. It's the first behavior-change model to demonstrate how our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and even our environment vibrate (echo and reverberate) to influence each other. Hence, the “Echo-System.” Optimize your behaviors – cultivate habits and skills – at will and on demand. Background info here.*Recently Awarded: “Finalist: Self-help, Motivation”International Book Awards: EVERYTHING is a F*cking STORY.Visit https://thehabitfactor.com/templatesTo learn more about P.A.R.R., just Google “P.A.R.R. and The Habit Factor.”Get The Habit Factor® FREE with your audible trial! https://audibletrial.com/habits2goalsFeedspot's “Top 10 Habit Podcasts You Must Follow in 2021”New listeners, grab your free habits 2 goals tracking template here: https://thehabitfactor.com/templatesFREE copy of As a Man Thinketh (PDF) right here: As a Man ThinkethSubscribe iTunes here! Subscribe: Android This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit habits2goals.substack.com/subscribe

Sign-up for my free 20-day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Wisdom for Work from JosephDevotional: 3 of 5Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” “I cannot do it,” Joseph replied to Pharaoh, “but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.” (Genesis 41:15-16)Joseph was in prison unjustly. So when the guards told him that the Pharaoh needed his skills, Joseph must have sensed some hope that maybe, just maybe, his talents as a dream interpreter could earn him a literal get out of jail free card.With that context, we almost expect Joseph to trumpet his own abilities to Pharaoh. But when Pharaoh gives him that opportunity, Joseph deflects the glory that could have so easily been his.What remarkable humility! Even though he was in the fight of his life where the temptation to glorify himself through his work must have been strong, Joseph recognized that it is God, not us, who produces results through our work. And thus, he alone deserves the glory.Ironically, it was that humility that led Joseph to be so bold. The biblical text implies that Pharaoh had already asked countless other wise men to interpret his dream before concluding that “no one” could do it. But Joseph walks up and essentially says of Pharaoh's request, “No problem.” Because Joseph recognized that it was God working through him, he knew that God could use him to do work others deemed impossible.Whether you're an entrepreneur, a writer, a teacher, a stay-at-home-mom, or a designer, you have an unfair advantage. You have the God who is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” living inside of you (see Ephesians 3:20). Let that truth inspire you, like Joseph, to boldly take on the problems nobody else will touch. Because when you succeed, God alone will get the glory!

Coal in China is seeing a multi-year resurgence after years in which the government seemed ready to dial back and ultimately halt coal power construction. Indeed, just months after the 2020 announcement by Xi Jinping on carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, in early 2021 a Central Environmental Inspection Team report criticized the National Energy Administration for approving too much coal and ignoring environmental policy goals (albeit on air quality, not carbon). The report stated that NEA had ‘built what shouldn't be built (coal, coal power lines), and not built what should be built.' China also committed internationally to ‘strictly control' new coal capacity through 2025, after which coal power should decline. Ironically, that CEIT report was just months before a major new coal boom in China began, which kicked off even before power shortages in late 2021 that were caused by high coal prices and then further power cuts in 2022 caused by hydro shortfalls in some regions.  Our guest for this episode is Sam Clissold, analyst with Carbon Tracker. Sam has deep expertise and experience looking at the pipeline of coal power projects in China and analyzing the potential economic risks of stranded assets they pose. Topics we discuss: China's coal plant pipeline and what's driving the increase. What happened to the plan to 'strictly control' new capacity? The geography of new coal - where is new coal being built? What are the economics of making coal more flexible to balance renewables, and does this cost potentially lead to asset stranding? Why is coal booming in Guangdong? To replace gas?  Plans to introduce a capacity payment scheme to subsidize coal power. The overall scale of the coal power stranded asset risk and its size relative to China's economy. For further reading: Sam Clissold, ‘Balancing Act: Stranded Assets and Flexibility in China's Power Sector,' Carbon Tracker, 30 March 2023, at https://carbontracker.org/reports/balancing-act-stranded-assets-and-flexibility-in-chinas-power-sector/. Episode producers: Joyce Yuan (production) and Anders Hove (host) Join us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/EnvironmentChina   

Failed deals. Capital calls. Lost investor money. A dreadful and sobering conversation ensues for many some commercial real estate sectors. Residential (1-4 unit) and commercial (5+ unit) real estate fortunes are decoupling.  Multifamily commercial loans are at the mercy of interest rate resets. Residential is stable due to low supply and sustained demand. Neal Bawa from MultifamilyU and I outline the multifamily problem. Values have plummeted 25%.  The magnitude of the multifamily problem is about 1/80th of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. There are two reasons for the office apocalypse—both declining income and increasing expenses. Only 3% of office buildings in downtown cores have a floor plan that can be converted to residential. Dreadful.  There will be possible discounts in the hotel industry due to a lack of funding and loans. Retail has surprising bright spots. We discuss the future of rents through 2026. Will multifamily problems create contagion into 1-4 unit residential? We discuss.  Timestamps: Multifamily industry changes and challenges [00:00:46] Discussion on the new difficulties faced in multifamily, such as failed deals, capital calls, and banking industry challenges. Opportunity arising in the multifamily market [00:01:12] Exploration of the current opportunity in the multifamily market due to a 25% reduction in prices from the peak, caused by distressed transactions and high interest costs. Anatomy of the problem with floating rate debt [00:05:57] Explanation of the issues faced by apartment building owners or syndicators when they have floating rate debt without rate caps, leading to potential deal blow-ups. The rate cap issue [00:08:29] Discussion on operators neglecting to buy a rate cap or buying a rate cap set too high, leading to negative cash flow. Magnitude of the multifamily reset problem [00:09:47] Comparison of the current multifamily reset problem to the global financial crisis, highlighting the challenges faced by operators. Challenges in refinancing properties [00:12:10] Explanation of the challenges faced by properties in refinancing due to decreased net operating income and increased mortgage costs, leading to potential loss of investor money. The availability of multifamily loans [00:16:50] Neil discusses the availability of commercial real estate loans, particularly in the multifamily space, and how it differs from other asset classes. Lending challenges in the commercial real estate space [00:18:03] Neil talks about the severe lending challenges faced by asset classes like office, retail, and self-storage, while expressing confidence in the stability of multifamily lending. Contagion and the impact on the 1 to 4 unit space [00:20:56] Neil discusses the limited level of contagion that could affect the 1 to 4 unit space due to problems in the multifamily market, highlighting the healthiness of the single-family market and institutional interest in it. The Troubled Office Sector [00:25:35] The speaker discusses how the office sector is facing a long-term demand crisis due to the decrease in office occupancy and the challenges of converting office buildings into residential units. The Ten-Year Problem in the Office Sector [00:27:06] The speaker explains that the office sector is about to face a ten-year problem, with defaults and declining values affecting the downtown core and other assets. Bright Spots in Retail and Hotels [00:29:21] The speaker highlights that retail occupancy is higher than multifamily occupancy, and despite the Amazon effect, retail is doing well. They also mention that hotels have seen strong recovery post-pandemic. Hotels and Multifamily Discounts [00:32:55] Discussion on the current cash flow opportunities in hotels and multifamily properties, potential discounts in the next 12 months. Retail Reinvention and Rents in a Recession [00:33:57] Exploration of how retail can sustain itself through experiential offerings, the resilience of rents in past recessions. Artificial Recession and Rent Growth [00:35:33] Analysis of the possibility of a recession and its impact on rents, the strength of the US economy, and the expected short duration of the recession. The recession and its frequency [00:40:56] Discussion on the frequency of recessions and how they are a normal part of the business cycle. Learning opportunities at MultifamilyU.com [00:41:31] Information on the webinars offered by multifamily ewcom, covering various topics including single-family and multifamily projects. Appreciation for Neil Bawa's insights [00:42:22] The host expresses gratitude for Neil Bawa's informative contributions and welcomes him back on the show. Resources mentioned: Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/473 Neal Bawa: MultiFamilyU.com and Grocapitus.com For access to properties or free help with a GRE's Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. You get paid first: Text ‘FAMILY' to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  Top Properties & Providers: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Keith's personal Instagram: @keithweinhold   Complete episode transcript:   Speaker 1: Today's guest is well known as the mad Scientist of multifamily. He's a data guru, self-described self-described process freak, and an outsourcing expert. He's a ten figure man with his billion dollar plus multifamily portfolio and his 900 plus investors. He's also the CEO at a multifamily education company because he's a really good teacher. It's been about a year and a half since you were first here. Welcome back to Neal Bawa.   Speaker 1 (00:00:40) - Well, thanks for having me back on. It's it's a delight to be back. Had a fantastic conversation with you last time. So I'm looking forward to this one. We did.   Speaker 2 (00:00:46) - The last one was so fun and spirited. But my gosh, since then, Neal, about a year and a half ago, so much has changed in the multifamily industry. We know that a lot of new difficulties have come into multifamily, like failed deals and capital calls and the need to raise bridge debt and banking industry challenges.   Speaker 2 (00:01:06) - So where would you like to start to help give us some perspective on all that?   Speaker 1 (00:01:12) - Well, think opportunity is finally here. You know, when when we talked a year and a half ago, I was I said things like, well, prices are too high. I said things like, I don't know where the margins are. I don't know how people make deals work. I don't know how they make them pencil out. Right. Um, in some ways, I'm still saying some of those things, but it's certainly not because of pricing anymore. So, you know, the single family market is a perfect sort of benchmark for the world that live in multifamily. As far as I know, in the last 12 months, single family prices have either been flat or up 1% or down 1%, depending upon which analyst you pick. But it's certainly been an extremely, extraordinarily stable market in terms of prices, where it's it's you know, the volume, of course, has cratered. It's down a ridiculous percentage.   Speaker 1 (00:02:00) - Whereas multifamily was an industry that has hurt more because of the portion of multifamily that was purchased or traded in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 time frame. Almost all of those trades happened using bridge loans which were floating, whereas almost all single family transactions were 30 year fixed loans. Right. So so two completely different things have happened. Normally the single family and multifamily market tend to be in lockstep. And that's certainly been the case for ten years. But over the last 18 months, single family and multifamily have separated from each other. And the big reason for that is almost all of the distressed transactions that you're talking about, that you're alluding to all of those cash calls. They are related to bridge loans, which had floating debt. And that floating debt has gone from, you know, 6% to ten, eight, you know, 11%, even for for some of these, these operators making it extremely difficult to make numbers work, making it very difficult to pencil. But on the good side, we've now seen compared to the peak, which was probably about 20, 21 months ago, we've seen a 25% reduction in prices, which is huge because we mean multifamily usually as an asset class, doesn't go down 25% simply because it its value is based on rents, you know, and rents rarely go down.   Speaker 1 (00:03:22) - They hardly went down for 6 or 7 months in 2008, so we didn't see much of a decline there in 2008, simply because, you know, the, the, the income was strong, but this time, the much, much higher cost of interest means that our overall post mortgage income is down. And that's why prices are down 25%. So both opportunity and distress in the multifamily space.   Speaker 2 (00:03:46) - That's such a staggering number. So let's frame that. Multifamily prices down 25% since their peak or year over year. And then just to be clear, we're talking about five plus unit residential apartment buildings with that figure.   Speaker 1 (00:04:01) - Yes, I'm glad you asked the question that way because I do need to qualify a few things. So so first thing is down from peak and depending upon different markets, the peak was either the last quarter of 2021 or the first quarter of 2022. And in a couple of markets, even the second quarter of 2022. So it's I'm not saying year over year, it's basically they're down 25% in the last 18 or 20 months.   Speaker 1 (00:04:25) - Um, so the second piece is that the down 25% is predominantly, let's call it hotter markets in the United States. So if we're talking about a steady Midwest market like Kansas City or Indianapolis, then you're probably seeing a decline of half that amount. So maybe 12.5, 13, 14%, where if you're talking about a very fast growing market, you know, all the Texan markets, the Floridian markets, then you might be seeing declines of that 25% level, since a lot of the transactions that did happen in the last two years were in the faster growing markets, that 25% number is still reasonable. And some people listening to this show might say, no, I don't think 25% is right. It's more like 20, it's more like 18. So I'll. Be at that by saying it's a pretty wide range. We're seeing as little as 18% in some of these fast growing markets, you know, hot markets. And we're also seeing markets like Phoenix, where we're seeing 27, 28% declines in price.   Speaker 1 (00:05:23) - Also, the the range is dependent on the number of units. We are seeing smaller declines if you've got less than 100 units. Right. So smaller properties, we're seeing a smaller decline maybe 15%. And then when we are seeing properties that are 300 units or more, just the whoppers, we're seeing 30% declines in those assets. So so a lot of it is really dependent upon, you know, because the bigger the size, the harder it is to finance it these days, the less the banks want to take a risk on it. So the bigger the property, the harder, harder it's hit at this point of time.   Speaker 2 (00:05:57) - The bigger the property, the less liquidity. So maybe, Neil, to help the listener get a full understanding, maybe you can take us through the anatomy of where a common problem is with what happens to an apartment building owner or syndicator when they got this floating rate debt and they didn't get a rate cap and rates spiked? What exactly happens that makes these deals blow up?   Speaker 1 (00:06:24) - Right? First, want to, you know, set the size of the of the problem.   Speaker 1 (00:06:28) - Right. So when you compare it to 2008, it's not comparable in 2008, the total size of distress or you know, potential distress was 8000 billion or $8 trillion. So it was it was a it was an absolutely staggering event. Luckily, not a lot of that distress actually happened. So that was good. But the the total size of distress was in that $8 trillion or $8000 billion range, the total size of distress in the multifamily market appears to be in the $100 billion range, so about 1/80 of the size of the distress in 2008. So keep that in mind. Also, as a percentage of the overall multifamily industry, there's about 100,000 multifamily properties in the United States that are on the bigger size. Let's call them more than 50 units. There's 20 million apartment units total. 100,000 are the bigger properties. Of those 100,000, the distressed portion of the portfolios is about, from what I can tell, about 3000 properties. Maybe it could be as much as 4000, but 3000 is a very common number.   Speaker 1 (00:07:30) - So about 3% of the properties are distressed. And why are they distressed? Multifamily has been doing incredibly well. Rent growth has been phenomenal, especially in 2021 where it was 15%. Just so you know, they the 50 year average is about 2% rent growth. So 15% is you know, champagne time. So so we've certainly had positive trends. And we continue to see positive trends. You know there's there's less and less people can afford a mortgage. So there's basically a you know brand new renters being created every day because of mortgage rates being this high. But the, the the downside was that a portion of those 100,000 properties were purchased in late 2020, 2021 and then, you know, 2022, and they were purchased using floating debt. And the the so we're talking about those 3000 properties. Those 3000 properties either didn't have a rate cap. So when when you you're purchasing using, you know, bridge debt or floating debt, you want to buy a rate cap. So if rates do go up they hit that cap.   Speaker 1 (00:08:29) - And then anything above that cap is something that the rate, you know, cap selling company reimburses to you. So that way you're not affected by but by going above that, well, some of these operators neglected to buy a rate cap, which was a really bad thing to do. But then there were others that other operators that bought a rate cap, but their rate cap was set too high. So, you know, they basically didn't think that rates would go up. So they did put a rate cap in. But instead of buying a rate cap at 6% or 7%, they may be bought a rate cap at 8 or 9. They were basically looking for the worst case scenario, and so they bought the cheapest rate cap that they could find. And now, you know, rates have gone up and they've already hit that rate cap. Maybe it's eight and a half or 9% and it had eight and a half or 9%. That mortgage is still too high for that property to cash flow. So now the property has negative cash flow.   Speaker 1 (00:09:18) - So there's I personally know of a few dozen properties where the negative cash flow is between 20,000 and $200,000 a month. And that negative cash flow means that the syndicators, the the general partners are basically putting that money in themselves, or they're taking short term loans and they are now looking for a solution there and their solutions are limited. I can give you a list of those, but their solutions are limited because the property is is negative cash flow and nobody wants to touch a property that's negative cash flow.   Speaker 2 (00:09:47) - Did we say that he's a data driven guy or what? That was some great perspective that the magnitude here of the multifamily reset problem has been about 1/80 of what the problem was in real estate during the global financial crisis. That was a great way to put things in perspective. Yeah, Neal, you know, it's such an interesting mindset that an operator would have the awareness to buy a rate cap with their floating rate debt, but yet not have the cap be low enough in order to keep them out of trouble.   Speaker 2 (00:10:20) - That's really unusual to me. Do you have any idea what percent of operators have bought a rate cap with their floating rate debt?   Speaker 1 (00:10:30) - I think a majority of them have. So I'd say more than 50% of the properties that were purchased during this time did have caps, but a lot of the caps were set high. So that that was a very common thing, where the caps were set to 8% or higher, as opposed to them being set at, you know, 6 or 6.5%. So it's more of a high cap issue rather than a no cap issue. And I think the bigger the secondary challenges, let's say let's say they had a good rate cap, right? So I bought it. Let's say you bought a property in the, um, let's call it the final quarter of 2020. And you bought a two year rate cap. And the rate cap was good. It was 6.5%. Yeah. Good for you. Right. But that rate cap was a two year rate cap. So now it expired basically last year.   Speaker 1 (00:11:14) - And so since last year you're now up at 10 or 11%. And, you know, a year's gone by. Your property is bleeding. Maybe it was doing well, but now that it's been bleeding for a year and you've been paying all of that bleed out of your operating expenses, now you're in trouble. And maybe you bought it. Three rate cap. Well, if you bought the property in the final quarter of 2020, then in about a month or two months from now, we're in the final quarter of 2023. Well, that rate cap is going to be gone. And then maybe in the next three, 4 or 5, six, seven months, all of your operating budget, all of your operating, you know, fund is going to be, you know, gone because you have this much higher mortgage. So what's happening is that this is one of those situations where there isn't a trigger on any one particular day, and a huge number of properties come to market. There were a lot of properties purchased in the final quarter of 2020, all four quarters of 2021 and the first three quarters of 2022.   Speaker 1 (00:12:10) - Right. So you're looking at a total of eight quarters. So each quarter, a certain percentage of those properties get to the point where either their rate cap is gone. Right. So it's finished because you bought a one year or two year rate cap, or they're they're at the point where even without the rate cap, their loan is expiring. So a lot of these bridge loans were two year loans and three year loans. And so the vast majority of the challenges that the multifamily industry is going to face are going to be in 2024, because that's when a vast majority of either rate caps or mortgages expire. And because because the net operating income of these properties has gone down and the and the mortgage cost has gone up, most of these properties cannot be refinanced. So I'd say out of the 3000 properties, you could probably refinance using some mechanism, a thousand of them, maybe a third of them. And that could be, you know, do a cash call, get, you know, money from your investors.   Speaker 1 (00:13:07) - Or you could do what is known as a pref lending, where you basically take money from an outside party and that outside that extra money helps you refinance into into perm debt. So those are your options. And the third option, which is likely to be most common, is that you go out and sell your property. But from what I'm seeing, the vast majority of these properties that don't get refinanced. So out of 3000, the 2000 that don't get refinanced are likely to come to market, and the vast majority of them will end up losing all of their investor money or a majority of their investor money. And so you, you know, if it's a $100 billion problem, that's, you know, we're talking about 30 to $40 billion of investor money, and a majority of that 30 to $40 billion could be lost.   Speaker 2 (00:13:48) - Yeah, that is troubling and really concerning as far as those LPs, those limited partners, those investors in someone else's syndication, hopefully that syndicator, that operator is communicating with their investors.   Speaker 2 (00:14:03) - But for investors, is there anything they can do to identify cracks in the arm or where they might be losing their deal, where they might be losing their money, where they might be throwing good money after bad if a capital call is requested?   Speaker 1 (00:14:18) - I think it's a very difficult thing to do for a limited partner because you have, you know, you have more, you have much more exposure to the deal than you would when you invest in the stock market, where you know, there's almost no exposure unless it's a public company. Um, but and these are all private syndications. But I think that a lot of investors simply don't know how to read the, the budgets versus actuals. They don't necessarily know how to read the Performa. So it's it's challenging. So if you're somebody that is. Comfortable doing that. I suggest you dive in and basically ask a lot of the questions of the syndicators. I have one such property, so, you know, I was lucky in that during that time a lot of my colleagues had I have people who I know colleagues that bought 10 to 12 properties during that time frame.   Speaker 1 (00:15:02) - It was very normal. I bought one and a half. So one of those properties was my own property, exited one of my partners. So I call it a half a property because it was already mine. Um, and then I bought purchased one other property in a military metro. So I was able to get it for a lower price because it was a military metro. And usually the prices are lower for, for for military towns and, and that property, you know, I'm having the same challenges that I've described. So, you know, the the rate cap issues and the fact that basically prices have gone down by 25%. And I'm dealing with it by constantly communicating with my investors, giving them, you know, options. You know, here's, you know, how when, when we were when we were all selling these these shares to investors, we gave them a, um, a sensitivity analysis showing them, you know, worst case scenario, best case scenario, you know, in a middle case scenario.   Speaker 1 (00:15:55) - And so now we're basically doing a sensitivity analysis based on what we are seeing in the marketplace today. And and giving them feedback on what our options are and think a lot of it comes down from the the general partners communicating with the limited partners. And if the your general partner is not very communicative, is not giving you information, ask for one on one meetings, ask for you know, more information in their webinar or in their updates. I think this is a time for limited partners to be vocal.   Speaker 2 (00:16:25) - You've learned about the problem in the larger apartment space. You've learned about how operators and apartment syndicators are dealing with the problem. And then, Neil, where do you think that we're going next and think maybe we should ask and look at it through the lens of where do you think we're going next with the availability of multifamily loans, could this help the source of capital dry up?   Speaker 1 (00:16:50) - And so I think the answer is we are going to a very dark place with availability of commercial real, you know, loans.   Speaker 1 (00:16:57) - Multifamily is in a privileged asset class. So, you know, the the term commercial real estate is sometimes meant to include multifamily, sometimes not. So I'll assume that multifamily is part of commercial real estate, but there are many other asset classes. So there's office which is the next biggest asset class. There's retail hotels, there's self-storage, you know, and and a few others like mixed use. And of those commercial real estate asset class, there's only one that's privileged and that's multifamily because there are not one, not two, but three lenders who are government or quasi government organizations whose only job it is to keep lending in the multifamily space liquid, and also the single family space liquid. And they are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and hard. Right. So Housing and Development Authority. So these three lenders right now are extremely, extremely active. And what has happened is that in in good times, call it 20 early 2022. You had life companies. You had all these private, you know, bridge capital, you had all kinds of capital that was lending to the multifamily space.   Speaker 1 (00:18:03) - Now some of that capital has backed off. There's still a huge percentage, I'd say probably 40, 50% of all loans that are being done today are these kinds of private, you know, groups. But think the government or quasi government groups are much more active today and their lending. So I don't think multifamily lending dries up at all. I don't think that that's the case. I think it dries up for the non privileged asset classes, hotel, retail, self-storage, office. These are the classes that are likely to see, you know, near lending dry up especially because on a fundamentals basis there's absolutely nothing wrong with multifamily. In fact as I mentioned I think we're a lot better off than 2019 to 2023 given that home prices have gone up 40%, incomes are only gone up 15%. So there's a very large number of Americans that simply cannot qualify for a single family home anymore. And so those people have to go to apartments. So the the fundamentals are really good for apartments. That is not true of office.   Speaker 1 (00:19:02) - So office is an asset class that is experiencing the worst fundamentals it has seen in its entire history. And so I do think that there's going to be very severe lending challenges in the commercial real estate space. But I haven't really seen that multifamily, and I don't anticipate seeing it in the future as well.   Speaker 2 (00:19:20) - Well, I don't know if any of that could have as much fun as last time. There were rather gloomy subjects to discuss here with Neal and come back. Can this problem in the multifamily space create contagion for the 1 to 4 unit space? And like with what Neil touched on, what about other commercial sectors like office and retail? How troubled are they when we come back? This is get recession. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold.    Speaker 2 (00:20:14) - Welcome back to Get Rich Education. We're talking with the mad scientist of multifamily, a big brained visionary. He's also an excellent teacher. I'm sure you can tell as you're listening to him here. And if you're listening in the audio only Bawa is spelled b a w a new. Here on this show, we talk an awful lot about investing in the 1 to 4 unit space and the advantage of the 30 year fixed that long term fixed interest rate debt. Do you see any areas for contagion with problems in the multifamily five plus unit space bleeding over into the 1 to 4 unit space?   Speaker 1 (00:20:56) - Yes, but to a limited level, I think that the the 1 to 4 unit space is the healthiest that I've seen in a very long time.   Speaker 1 (00:21:05) - And there's reasons for that. One of the biggest reasons is multifamily, which is the most well sought after asset class for institutional investors who don't typically don't usually like the 1 to 4 unit space. There's a few companies in that space, let's call them half a dozen, but there's several thousand companies that invest in the multifamily space. Some of them are right now looking at single family as a, you know, as a, you know, safe haven to park some of their money. Right? So there's, you know, more institutional level interest in the single family space because of its access to those, you know, those those 30 year fixed loans. So there's and the fact that single family prices basically haven't declined. So I think that there's there's a lot of interest in the single family space. Um, keep in mind that millennials are reaching their peak years of household formation. So they started in 2019. So until 2025. So from 19 to 2025, those are the peak years of household formation for millennials.   Speaker 1 (00:22:01) - And that's also putting a cushion under the single family space there. Contagion is some form of contagion is inevitable. I think that the office market is going to see spectacular levels of contagion, similar to 2008. I think that the other associated markets, like hotel and retail, are going to see some level of contagion, though I certainly don't expect it to be as bad as office. And then multifamily is going to see some contagion, as we mentioned, because of these 2 or 3000 properties that have to be basically sold into the marketplace and prices are down, which always creates contagion. Why? Because think about it. You're a mid-level bank. So a mid-level bank in the US is $250 billion or less in assets. Well, a lot of these assets are these banks are the ones that loaned out money to multifamily and retail and hotel and in office, and now are being forced by the Federal Reserve through a process known as mark to market. They're being forced to write down the value of these assets because these assets, you know, there's still you know, there's still active loans, but maybe they they loan $20 million.   Speaker 1 (00:23:00) - And now basically they're $20 million is only worth 18 or 16 or 15. And so now the fed is saying, hey, you know, you got to mark these assets down in value. And as they mark them down to value, that can lead to the banks becoming or mid-sized banks becoming less stable. I don't think this affects any of the large banks in the US, but the midsize ones are affected. And some of those mid-sized banks do lend to the single family space, but not a lot. I find that the single family space, when I look at their source of lending, not a lot of those mid-sized banks are involved. There's a little bit they do some brokerage work, but then they're selling those loans back to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a bunch of other, you know, governmental type organizations. So I don't see a sense of contagion in the single family space. I do see potentials of some price declines because until about two months ago, mortgages were predominantly in the sixes. They, you know, they spiked up once to the sevens and then they pulled back into the sixes.   Speaker 1 (00:23:56) - Now they've gone into the sevens and they may stay in the sevens for a substantial amount of time. When that happens, that can affect the single family market as well, simply because, you know, you can get to the point where supply is higher than, than demand. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's a pullback in single family prices. Let's call it 5%. But I'm not predicting the kind of challenges where the office market think we could see 40% declines in prices from peak, whereas single family you might see 5%. I think that's still an incredible outcome for the single family market compared, you know, just looking at the outrageous increases in prices since Covid don't I don't think that's a even a pullback. I would just say that's a balancing out.   Speaker 2 (00:24:44) - Who know the residential housing market. Really, it's something that's non-discretionary on a human need basis. Everyone needs to live somewhere and they will either own rent or be homeless. And you talked about some of those affordability challenges before. The lower the homeownership rate gets, the more renters you have.   Speaker 2 (00:25:05) - So long term, we will have some demand baseline for both multifamily and properties in the 1 to 4 unit space, of course, but the same thing cannot be said about some of these other commercial sectors, especially the troubled office sector space, where you have more and more abandoned buildings downtown. And a lot of these office buildings cannot be easily converted from offices to residential units. So why don't you talk to us about some of those other troubled commercial sectors, starting with office.   Speaker 1 (00:25:35) - Office is in a apocalypse. I think that this is far, far worse than 2008 and far, far worse than than 2001, because 2008 and 2001, they were liquidity crisis. They were short term, you know, demand crisis. This is a long term demand crisis because, you know, I read very important documents from companies that are in the key swiping business. You know, when you enter an office in a downtown core, you're swiping your card. And so those companies actually have phenomenal day by day data of how many people are actually going into offices today.   Speaker 1 (00:26:11) - It's been more than a year since companies started calling back, you know, people to the office and think that by now every company, whether you know, they're they're forcing five days back to the office or four days or three days or two days, everyone's sort of, you know, put their line in the sand. And we're at the point where, you know, this, this is what offices look like going forward. And if I'm right and this is what it looks like going forward, it is simply catastrophic for the office market in the United States, because we're still seeing key swipes at 50 to 60% of the people that used to swipe in before Covid. And that number is staggeringly, staggeringly low. And if this is what it settles at, you know, some companies are two days, some three, some four. I think we're in for a world of pain for the office market. You also, you know, there's a lot of people that in these podcasts basically will often say something like, no, the office stuff will get converted into residential.   Speaker 1 (00:27:06) - And I have news for you, only 3% of office buildings in office in downtown course have the floor plate, the floor plate necessary for residential conversion. Why? Because residential conversion by law requires that every every single room have a window. So what is happening is most of the time you basically can only convert the buildings on the edge, the, the square footage on the edge of a building, but that's central core but then becomes worthless. And if you don't have a use for it, then you still have to buy that office building to convert and you have to buy it at a reasonable price. The math doesn't work. I mean, you'd you'd need to see office values down 80% for, for, you know, a somebody who's converting to multifamily to say, fine, I'll just leave the 60% in the middle empty and I'll just convert the size. So 80% declines in value are needed for that kind of conversion to happen. So we are about to see a ten year problem in the office sector.   Speaker 1 (00:28:03) - And it's also dragging down all of the other assets in the downtown core. So we are seeing we just saw a $727 million default on two hotels in San Francisco. We saw a $558 million mall default. Also in San Francisco, we're seeing defaults across the board in New York, Boston, Seattle, San Diego, Miami, sort of heavy markets where this these challenges are happening. We're seeing a lot of these and it's happening in a very, very slow way. Keith. And the reason for that is the office market, their average lease is, you know, five years long. Some leases are ten years long, and a lot of these companies haven't gone out of business. So if the company is in the lease, they're continuing to pay even though the office is empty. But the moment that lease comes up for renewal, either the company doesn't renew it or they renew maybe half the space. Right. And so we we already know that this is an incredible debacle, but it doesn't seem like it at any given point of time because it's happening in a very slow motion way.   Speaker 2 (00:29:02) - Well, that's such a good point about how there will be this slow drain, this slow leak when these office leases expire over time. What about other areas of the commercial space, any other particularly troubled areas or bright spots that you see going forward?   Speaker 1 (00:29:21) - Ironically bright spots. And this is where I've been proven wrong in the past. You know, I've often maybe 4 or 5 years ago talked about the retail apocalypse, right, where Amazon would basically, you know, lead the retail market to become illiquid. Well, none of those things have happened because of two reasons. One is the retail apocalypse with people like me, you know, being on on 200 podcasts, talking about it, a lot of development of retail that was scheduled to happen simply didn't happen. So the very.   Speaker 2 (00:29:48) - Late podcast, people lost confidence. No. They were invested in retail.   Speaker 1 (00:29:52) - Exactly right. So so, you know, I fulfilled that prophecy. Think. But bottom line is that there's there's been very responsible levels of new construction in retail.   Speaker 1 (00:30:02) - So, you know, they haven't built a lot. Very few models have been built in the United States in the last few years. And even some of the malls that have been repurposed, some of their square footage is being used up for, for multifamily. And so that was one. The second reason is that retail is being very careful with pricing. So, you know, over, over the last 5 or 6 years, the retail market has adjusted to new forms of pricing, where, you know, you go into a mall and you see a gym where before the pricing of that mall never really allowed for a gym to be in a mall. It just gyms, you know, they want, you know, a lower price per square foot. And so malls have adjusted, strip malls have adjusted. And so today we have a surprising event where retail occupancy in the United States is higher than multifamily. This is the first time ever that multifamily is about a little under 95%. Now it's 94% occupied.   Speaker 1 (00:30:52) - Retail is 96 or 97% occupied, which never happens, right? Normal. Normally retail is right around 90%, 88%, something like that. But the high level of occupancy shows that that retail is doing well. Now, having said that. So so on the occupancy side, they're doing really well. There's there's really no pullback in terms of demand. But on the other side, because of the fact that interest rates are so high, retail cap rates are very high, which means prices are low. So prices are very reasonable there for retail. And so I think that real opportunity that I'm seeing I wouldn't invest in office at this point, Keith, because you don't know the end of this process. You don't know how long it takes. I think it takes a decade. So I might get 50% off in office and I don't want it. I just don't want to touch that asset class. It's tainted. Now, if I get 40% off in retail, I think I'm interested because fundamentally I don't see a demand issue if this is the highest occupancy that retail has seen ever.   Speaker 1 (00:31:53) - And at the same time, I'm getting a 40 or 50% discount simply because of lack of lending. Well, that is to me a classic opportunity to look at because once again, fundamentally, nothing is wrong with demand. And I realize that the Amazon effect is extremely real. But what I'm seeing is that that people want that experience of shopping. And so even amongst the young people, sure, each year Amazon, you know, goes up a little bit. But now Amazon's growth is no longer a hockey puck. Amazon's growth is sort of like this. You know they're growing by 10%, 15% a year, which is still great for Amazon. But I think when you when you project that across a 300 million person market that the US is retail no longer has to fear for an apocalypse. So this is actually a pretty good time to take advantage of the 40% discounts that I think will happen in 2024 for retail. Same thing. Everything I just said also applies to hotels. Hotels came out of the pandemic very strong, with huge increases in ADR or average daily rates and huge, huge increases in occupancy.   Speaker 1 (00:32:55) - So hotels right now are a very robust cash flowing business. If you've got good hotels and good locations, you're making a lot of money. They're cash flowing like crazy because their orders have gone up and their occupancy has gone up. So they've taken two positive hits. But once again, I expect there to be discounts simply because of a lack of funding, a lack of loans. And you can you might we might easily see 30%, maybe not 40, but 30% discounts in hotels in the next 12 months. So think both of those are really good opportunities, along with multifamily discounts at 25%. So this is an opportunity. This is a case of distress creating unusual levels of opportunity. I don't think we're quite there yet, Keith. We're beginning to see some distress in multifamily. We're certainly seeing distress in office. We haven't heard anything about the distress in retail or hotels yet. That's because a lot of their their loans don't don't trigger until 2024. Right. So that's we'll see what happens next year when these loans start to trigger and you can't really refinance them.   Speaker 2 (00:33:57) - I completely believe that inflation has thoroughly soaked in to hotels. You talk about their ADR, their average daily rate. I've recently stayed at hotels in Denver, Omaha, Chicago, Toledo and Boston, so I've gotten a pretty good sample size and sure feel the hit there. And interestingly, the last time I shopped at a mall, it was the biggest mall in this city, and I noticed a bowling alley that I had not noticed there before. And I went bowling and noticed an ice skating rink was there. So I just wonder how much retail can reinvent itself if it tilts enough into the experiential part, rather than just buying items off a shelf at a store, maybe that can help sustain that retail sector, to your point. Well, Neil, maybe we should wrap up really on what supports an awful lot of values in multifamily, and that is rents and the direction of rents, especially if we have almost hate to say this. R-word, a different R-word, a recession, because it seems like this thing has been around the corner forever.   Speaker 2 (00:35:03) - I know historically that rents are quite resilient in a recession, something that you touched on earlier back even during the 2008 global financial crisis, when I was a landlord, I owned fourplex buildings. Then I noticed that I had a pretty good steady stream of renters. My rents didn't really go up much, but they were really resilient. They didn't go down, and that's because people couldn't get a loan. So that was an affordability problem. Then we have another affordability problem now. But if we do tilt into recession, what do you think that is going to do to rents?   Speaker 1 (00:35:33) - I think we are going to see a decline in rents if a recession happens. Now, that's a question. By the way, six months ago, if you told me, you know, a recession wasn't going to happen, I'd say, no, that's not possible. We are going to go into a recession. However, I must admit that the US economy has truly, truly, truly outperformed beyond anyone else, beyond anyone's imagination.   Speaker 1 (00:35:54) - So today, the chances of a recession are certainly not 100%. Might be 50%. But let's assume that it happens and a recession happens. I think what is very, very likely is that this recession will be very short. So once again, if you're not paying attention to to to what's happening in the marketplace, this is a time that, you know, I was born in India and this is my adopted country. I feel very proud of the US economy today. If I compare the US economy to the Canadian, the eurozone, the Germans, the Japanese, we are outperforming every one of those economies. We're at the point where we're outperforming China, which almost never happens, by the way. And so we have an extraordinarily resilient and strong economy at this point. So if it falls into a recession just because the fed keeps hitting it over the head with this interest rate hammer, I think that recession will be fairly short, because as soon as the economy does go into a recession, the fed usually figures that out within a few months.   Speaker 1 (00:36:47) - Then they can stop hitting us with a hammer. I'm not saying that they'll just cut interest rates back to zero, but they certainly will provide some cushion. Maybe they cut rates by one one time, two times, just to make the market breathe a little bit easier. Because this is an artificial recession, there is no shortage of demand in the US economy. There's an incredible number of open jobs. There were as many as 11 million jobs now. Now there's about 9 million open. So there's there's a and wage growth has been so strong. Right. Because we have so many people retiring that at this point, for the first time since the early 60s, I believe, or late 60s, we actually have pricing power. So anyone who wants to be employed can ask for more money and get it. And so wage growth has been about four, 4.5%, which is really good for rents, by the way. It's phenomenal news because we needed wage growth for future rent growth. So we have a artificial recession if it does happen.   Speaker 1 (00:37:38) - And that artificial recession is being caused by the fed because they want that wage growth to come closer to 2% from the 4% that it's at, because everything else has come down. Right. So commodities have come down with the exception of oil, and so has, you know, so have the supply chain issues are gone, rents are down. So in the US the last 12 months, rents were flat and in some markets they might be down 1% or 2%. Austin I think was the only market that was down a lot. But most other markets were down very, very small amounts. So rents have been flat, which is, I think, really credible because if you look at rents over the last two years, they're up 16%. So in 2022 they were up 16%. In 2023 they were up basically zero. So if you average that out now you're looking at 8% rent growth, which is phenomenal compared to the long term average of 2.5%. So we've been outperforming on rent and we needed to take a breather in the last 12 months have been that breather.   Speaker 1 (00:38:32) - Now, if the recession happens, I do expect rents to go down, but not normally they don't. So in a in a in a six month, three month or six month average recession, you know, the average US recession is two quarters. So six months normally you don't get rent drops. You might get, you know, the rents plateau out. Or maybe their rent growth drops from 3% to 1%. That's that's much more common this time. We might see rent growth in a short recession drop by maybe 1% or 2%. And the biggest reason for that is supply. The largest supply of apartments in the history of the country is delivering, starting basically the beginning of 2023 until the end of 2024. So these two years, 2023 and 2024 are massive apartment supply years. And obviously, as you supply 500,000 apartments into an economy that overall is not outperforming, is is doing okay, but and it starts to go into a recession, then you're going to see some concessions. And that concession drives down the price of multifamily, which then drives down the price of single family rentals.   Speaker 1 (00:39:36) - So we could see a decline in rents. I'd say probably 1% to 2% is is possible, but that decline is likely to be short. So I think let's assume that the recession starts in the final quarter of 2023, which might not happen. I think it's more of a Q1 and Q2 of next year. If the recession does happen, those are the two most likely quarters. As soon as the economy rebounds and becomes positive, we should see very strong and stable rent growth. Well, I would say stable rent growth for the rest of 2024 by 2025, a lot of that incoming supply is done. So now supply supply and demand are in balance. So in 2025 I expect strong rent growth as much as 4 or 5%. And in 2026 I expect very, very strong rent growth. We might we might see 6% rent growth in 2026. So 2024 is that year where rent growth is a little bit shaky because of this. Word, the recession word. And, you know, whether it happens or not is we don't know.   Speaker 1 (00:40:37) - And when it happens, we don't know how long it lasts. But I think because it's an artificially induced recession, it's likely to be the vanilla US six month recession, which basically drives wages closer to that 2% target for the fed, and gives the fed the room to start easing up on interest rates.   Speaker 2 (00:40:56) - Recessions are not good. Perhaps the one positive about a recession is that then we can all stop talking about and speculating upon when does eventually happen, because on average, it does happen every five years. It's just a normal part of the business cycle. Well, Neal, this has been very informative around the multifamily world and beyond, including projections for the future. You've always got such great insight in stats on the pulse of the market. If someone wants to learn more about you and your resources, what's the best way for them to do that?   Speaker 1 (00:41:31) - Come join us at multifamily. That's multifamily, followed by the letter EW.com we get about 20,000 registrations in our webinars. We do about a dozen webinars each year.   Speaker 1 (00:41:41) - We do them on single family multifamily. We do them on other asset classes like office. We just did one on on on the office apocalypse and people like that because there's no education fee, there's no subscription, there's no upsell. People come join us. They learn a lot. And occasionally during one of these webinars, if you have a multifamily project that we are doing, we mention it for about 30s. And if that sounds like it's interesting, you can, you know, jump in and you know and participate. But otherwise, you know, there's a lot of tens of thousands of people that have never participated with us in any of our projects that come and join us at this ecosystem of learning called multifamily EW.com.   Speaker 2 (00:42:22) - Neal Bawa, Gro Capital and multifamily EW.com. It's been informative, just like it was the last time you were here. It's been great having you back on the show.   Speaker 1 (00:42:32) - Thanks for having me on, Keith.    

In this week's episode, we take a look at whether or not writers should stop writing because of the threat of generative AI programs. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of CLOAK OF ASHES as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of CLOAK OF ASHES for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: OCTASHES The coupon code is valid through November 18th, 2023, so if you find yourself wanting to get caught up before CLOAK OF EMBERS comes out soon, why not start with an audiobook? TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 173 of the Pulp Writer show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October the 27th, 2023 and today we're going to talk about whether or not you should stop writing fiction because of the threat of generative AI. Before we get into that, we will have a Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audio book of Cloak of Ashes for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: OCTASHES and again, that is OCTASHES and you can also see that in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through November 18th, 2023. So if you find yourself wanting to get caught up before Cloak of Embers comes out soon, why not start with an audiobook? That does seem thematically appropriate to go from Cloak of Ashes to Cloak of Embers, even though Cloak of Ashes will be book three of the series and Cloak of Embers will be book ten. As you might guess, my current writing project is still Cloak of Embers and as of this recording I'm about 68,000 words into it, though I really want to get to 70,000 by the time I am done working on it for the day. I've had two different 10,000 word days working on this book, which is a very good thing because it's going to be a long one. As I mentioned before, I'm 68,000 words into it and I'm not even at the halfway point of my outline yet and some of the previous chapters are so long, I'm going to have to split them up into smaller chapters. So I am confident in saying that while I don't know exactly how long Cloak of Embers is going to be, I am entirely certain that it's going to be the longest book I will write in 2023. For audiobooks, right now Brad Wills is recording Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock, and we are hoping to have that out by December or so. As for what I want to write once Cloak of Embers is done, I have not decided. I knew Cloak of Embers was going to be a long book. I didn't realize how long, so whatever I write next, it depends on how long it takes me to finish Cloak of Embers and how things look at that point in time, but I'm still hoping to have Cloak of Embers out in November, though it does look like there is a good possibility that the book might slip to December. 00:02:26 Main Topic: Should You Stop Creative Work Because of Generative AI? So on to our main topic this week. Should you stop writing or pursuing creative efforts because of generative AI? Without major spoilers, the chief villain of the new Mission Impossible movie from back in May was an evil artificial intelligence. That makes it timely to do another podcast episode about generative AI. I recently saw a long, somewhat maundering social media post arguing that since soon AI would advance to the point that it could spit out a fully completed novel at the press of a button, there was no point in attempting to write any longer. The post's author claimed it was a black pilled post, though my experience the term black pilled is usually Internet shorthand for “I will use my fears as an excuse to avoid action.” I also saw a New York Times article about a father worried about encouraging his son's creative interest because he feared that AI would soon replace all of that. So that leads to the question, should you stop writing fiction because of AI or engaging in any creative pursuit at all? Short answer, no. Get a hold of yourself. Maybe splash some cold water on your face. The longer, more elaborate answer: One, using fear of AI as a reason not to do something is excuse making. In fact, this is a formal logical fallacy known as the nirvana fallacy, which states that if conditions are not perfect or the outcome of an action is not perfect, then it is not worth doing. The usually cited example of this is that people wearing seatbelts can die in traffic accidents, therefore, seatbelts are not worth wearing. The counterpoint to this is that has been well proven that seat belts reduce fatality traffic fatalities and injuries and an improved but imperfect outcome is better than no improvement at all. Writers in general seem to be strongly prone to the nirvana fallacy. You will see many, many, many excuses for why writers do not want to write. Some of those excuses are, of course, perfectly valid, such as an illness, a life crisis like a death in the family, or a car accident, or something of that nature. But quite a few of those excuses boil down to the nirvana fallacy. Conditions are not perfect or the outcome will not be perfect, so therefore it is better not to start at all. Fear of AI is really the latest excuse to slot into the nirvana fallacy. Two: AI is worse than you think it is. It is regrettable that the various image generations and generators and large language models get saddled with the term AI because there's nothing terribly intelligent about them. They're basically fancy autocomplete, whether for pictures or for words. Granted, further refinements in the technology have made it into very super-duper fancy autocomplete, but there's still nothing particularly intelligent about it. AI is also a lot harder to use effectively than many people think. If you want to get a decent result out of an AI, you need to spend a lot of work refining the prompts. People can make some beautiful images in Midjourney, but for every beautiful image that comes out of Midjourney, there's like 40 billion terrible ones. Every really good image you see that was generated with an AI probably took like a 400 word prompt after several hundred iterations. Getting acceptable fiction out of a chatbot is so much work that it's easier simply to write it yourself. Ironically, if you want to fix it out of a chatbot, ask it about something factual. Also, whenever people try to rely on AI to do something important, bad things seem to happen. A nonprofit website devoted to treating eating disorders got rid of its volunteer counselors and replaced them with a chatbot, only for the chatbot to start dispensing bad diet advice. A couple of months ago, some lawyers in New York got in big trouble when they used ChatGPT for legal research, only for it to invent cases that had never happened. To be fair, the lawyer in question apparently failed to double check anything and ChatGPT repeatedly said in its answer it is a large language model and not a lawyer. As an amusing aside, the morning I wrote this paragraph, I got a text from a teacher I know complaining how much he hates ChatGPT. It's incredibly obvious when his students use ChatGPT to do their homework because the answers are so similar. As it turns out, ChatGPT isn't even good at cheating. The point is that whenever there are situations that involve personal or criminal liability, using AI is a very bad idea. Obviously, writing a is a much lower stakes endeavor, but that leads directly to our next point. Number three: you can't see in the future. Just because everyone says AI is the next big thing doesn't mean that it is. The problem with a lot of tech CEOs is that they all want to be Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was unquestionably a major figure in tech history, but he has been mythologized. His keynote presentations were masterpieces of showmanship, which means that people remember his career that way, like Steve Jobs strode onto the stage, dramatically unveiled the transformative next big thing: The iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, changed the world, and made billions of dollars in front of an applauding crowd. To be fair, I typed this paragraph when I wrote it on a MacBook Air. But that overlooks the actual history, which is that Jobs failed at a whole lot of stuff. He got booted from Apple in the 1980s. His subsequent company, Next computer, didn't do all that great. And when Jobs returned to Apple in the late ‘90s, the company was in such dire straits that it needed a deal from Microsoft to stay afloat until the eMac and the iMac came along. The triumphant keynote phase of his career was in many ways his second act as an older, wiser man after a lot of setbacks and a lot of obsessive work went into all the Apple products mentioned above. The iPad and the iPhone in particular went through prototype after prototype and were the work of large and skilled teams of engineers. The trouble with remembering the mythology instead of the actual history behind Steve Jobs is that people tried to copy the mythology without doing the mountains of work that inspired the myth. These tech CEOs all want their products to be the next big thing, but the problem is that the product one, often isn't very good and is less of a product and more of an excuse to extract money from the customer and two, isn't actually all that useful. Like regardless of what one might think about an iPhone or an iPad, it cannot be denied that they are useful devices. I refused to use Apple devices at all in the 2000s because they are so expensive (a criticism that, in my opinion, remains valid), but in the mid 2010s, a combination of job changes (since I'd suddenly become responsible for a lot of Mac computers after a layoff) and just the sheer usefulness of many Apple devices meant that I started using them. I still have an iPod Touch I use when I go running or when I do outdoor work, and since Apple doesn't manufacture iPod Touches anymore, I will be sad when it finally dies. By contrast, a lot of new products aren't that good or that useful. The CEO has forgot that to extract money from the customer, you actually have to provide value in exchange. An iPad is expensive, but it does provide value. NFTs are a good example of this phenomenon of failing to add value for the customer. For a while, all the big brains in social media were convinced that NFTs are going to be the next big thing. The idea was that NFTs would create digital collectibles and artificial scarcity. People talked endlessly about minting their NFTs and how this was going to revolutionize online commerce. But I think it is safe to say that outside of a few niches, NFTs have been soundly rejected by the general public. They don't add value. If you buy, for example, a collectible Boba Fett figure, it is a physical object that you own, and if anyone takes it without your permission, you can charge them with theft. By contrast, if you buy an NFT for a JPEG of Boba Fett artwork, you have an entry on a blockchain and there's nothing to stop people from copying the JPEG of Boba Fett. What's the point of the NFT, then? Even if you don't keep the Boba Fett figure in its packaging and give it to a child as a toy, it still provides value in the form of entertaining the kid. Cryptocurrency was another next big thing for a while. Some people were sure that crypto was going to end central banks and government issued fiat currency. Of course, while there are many legitimate criticisms to be made of central banks and fiat currency, it turns out they do a good job of slowing down a lot of the scams that infested the crypto space. The late, great science fiction author Jerry Pournelle used to say that unregulated capitalism inevitably led to the sale of human flesh in the market, and crypto seems to have proven that unregulated securities trading leads inevitably to FTX and crypto marketplace collapses. The Metaverse is a much more expensive version of this. Mark Zuckerberg, worried about the future of Facebook, decided to pivot to his virtual reality Metaverse. Likely, Mr. Zuckerberg thought that the rise in remote work during the peak of the pandemic would permanently change social dynamics and Facebook, if it acted right now, could be to virtual reality what Microsoft was to the personal computer and Google was to search engines. Facebook changed its names to Meta and burned a lot of money trying to develop the Metaverse. However, this plan had two major flaws. One, while some people preferred the new social arrangements during COVID, a vastly larger majority hated it and wanted things is to go back to normal as soon as possible and two, Meta spent like $15 billion to build the Metaverse, but ended up with the worst version of Second Life that required very expensive virtual reality goggles. Meta ended up wiping out like 2/3 of its company value. So while right now generative AI might be the next big thing, but as the examples above show, this might not last. Number four, public derision. Generative AI could also be following a similar track as NFTs and cryptocurrencies: an initial surge of enthusiasm followed by widespread disdain and mockery and retreat to smaller niche. For a while, several big gaming companies were very excited about NFTs and a smaller number were interested in cryptocurrency. They would roll neatly into the growth of microtransactions which the gaming industry really loves, like you could buy a new skin or avatar for your character, and you'll also get an NFT is saying that you had #359 out of 5000, that kind of thing. Digital collectibles, as mentioned above, except the backlash was immense and people widely mocked every effort by game companies to insert NFTs into their product. It's an act too much of previous extract money efforts like microtransactions and lootboxes. Cryptocurrency likewise experienced an increasing level of public disdain. See how crypto bros have been mocked after the collapse of FTX and other large crypto companies. Generative AI is very popular in some quarters but is beginning to experience a growing level of public disdain as well. One recent example was fantasy author Mark Lawrence's self-publishing contest. An AI designed cover won the competition and the outrage was high enough that Mister Lawrence cancelled the cover competition in future years. To be fair, part of the problem was that the artist lied about using the AI on his application form. The Marvel show Secret Invasion used a bunch of AI generated images for its title sequences, and there was a backlash against that. Various professional organizations have come out against generative AI, and apparently one of the key points in the Hollywood writer's strike and the ongoing actor's strike is restrictions on AI, though one of the sticking points here is less about AI and more about using AI to enable irrational greed. It seems like these studios want to be able to use an individual actor's likeness in AI generation forever without payment. It's too soon to say how it will turn out, but it appears that a significant portion of public opinion is on the side of the actors on this. It probably helps that the CEOs of major media companies invariably managed to come across as cartoon villains. David Zaslav of Warner Discovery seems like he's there just to loot the company as efficiently as possible. And Bob Iger of Disney is currently dealing with all the very expensive mistakes he made during his previous tenure as CEO. So if these guys are excited about AI, why should anyone else think it's a good idea? So it's possible that the public derision against AI might push into niche uses, which would be bad news for the companies that spent billions on it. I've found that people in general are not that upset about using AI to get out of unpleasant tasks like writing cover letters or answering emails, but if they are consuming media for entertainment, then they get very annoyed if AI was used and it's gotten to the point where “it seems like an AI created it” has become an insult in negative reviews of various programs. Number five: synthesis. Despite all that I just said about cryptocurrency and NFTs, generative AI is objectively more useful than NFTs and less likely to use all of the money than crypto, though it might handle on the same low level risk of being sued if you use Midjourney for commercial purposes. I mean, most kids who are cheating on their homework, if they had thought about it a little more, rewritten, ChatGPT's response just a little bit, maybe throw in a couple of typos, they probably would have gotten away with it. To use a less unethical example, imagine you're applying for jobs and you crank out thirty different customized cover letters. You can spend all day sweating over a handcrafted letter that some HR drone will go in set for a second before throwing away, or you can use ChatGPT to generate them. There are lots of tedious documents which no one enjoys writing, but are necessary parts of daily life and something like ChatGPT is ideal for them or for that matter, specialized chat bots, ones are specifically designed to rate marketing copy and nothing else. AI Audio will probably end up at a point where it's simply another feature integrated into e-readers. Hit play and an AI voice will read in an accent of your choice while the human narrated version will be a premium product. I think that generative AI will probably settle into a halfway point between AI will transform everything hype and AI will destroy civilization doomer-ism. That's how these things usually go. A new idea comes along: thesis. A backlash to it arrives: antithesis. After some struggle, they settle into a halfway point: synthesis. Then it becomes just another tool. Photoshop and Adobe offers some evidence for this position. Adobe has been integrating its Firefly generative AI stuff into Photoshop with the generative fill tool. If you know anything about Adobe, you know that they are as corporate and litigious as it gets. The company isn't exactly into taking big, bold swings with its products. They've been incrementally updating Photoshop and the other Creative Suite products forever. So if Adobe feels safe integrating generative AI into its products, it's probably not going anywhere for a while. But here's the important point. On social media, you see a lot of impressive images generated with generative fill in Adobe and Photoshop, but if you try it yourself, 99% of what it generates is not very good. Refinement, iterations, and testing are vital. If AI doesn't go away, I think that's where it's going, providing the raw materials for further refinement and improvement. Six: conclusion. As you might guess from the tone of my podcast episodes on the subject, I don't like generative AI very much, and I don't think it adds very much of value, though this might be just my overall grumpiness. If overreacting legislation came along that crippled AI research, I don't personally think much of value would be lost. No one can see the future, as many examples above demonstrate. But overall, I think generative AI is going to be just another tool and one that will require practice to effectively use, actually will probably require more practice to effectively use than people think. Stopping writing or preventing a child from engaging in creative pursuits is a bit like stopping carpentry because someone invented the electric saw and think about how many people you see every day, who obviously don't think things through at all. Encouraging the child in creative pursuits will definitely serve him or her well later in life, regardless of the actual career. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Get a Free Marketing Assessment with Gargle here!‍‍In this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode, we're joined by Shawn Rowbotham from DentalMarketing.net to explore how to effectively use direct mailers and postcards to attract new patients to your practice. Get ready for some eye-opening insights as we delve into surprising research that reveals how even younger generations are increasingly drawn to the power of direct mail. Discover why a pristine 5-star rating might not be the perfect fit for your practice, and learn how to strategically bolster your online presence to up the impact of your direct mail marketing efforts. Plus, we'll dissect the crucial "how" behind prospective patients' search for dental practices and reveal actionable strategies to capitalize on this evolving landscape. ‍Tune into this episode with Shawn for the best up-to-date practices on direct mail marketing!‍You can reach out to Shawn Rowbotham here:Website: https://www.dentalmarketing.net/Phone: 435-503-1725Feature Comparison for Direct Mail Companies: https://www.dentalmarketing.net/all-inclusive-pricing/‍Other Mentions and Links:Google My Business‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, Sean. So talk to us about direct mailers and postcards. How can we utilize this or what advice suggestions or methods can you give us that will help actually attract new patients through direct mailers and postcards? Shawn: Well, I think one of the things that, you'd want to start with is that people often have a tendency to think that.they can just mail postcards and, uh, get something in the mail, and then the patients are just gonna come in droves, and the phone's gonna ring off the hook. it doesn't work quite like that. It's, uh, probably, in many ways, similar to... Dentistry and when a patient actually, provides like a really simple, explanation of what they, you know, think that you're going to do for them.And you, on the other hand, know that there's a million little steps that have to go exactly right, or things don't work out well. For instance, if may say that they need a root canal. And so they're saying, okay, so you're just going to, you know, put a new, new tooth on top of that, you know, a crown on top of that, and it'll be all set in.And though that's accurate, you know, as a dentist, that there's a million other steps that actually occur and they have to be done very precisely and very accurately, or that's not going to work out very well at all. And unfortunately, direct mail is the same way. And a lot of people think that all I need to do is go ahead and, you know, make up a pretty card and send it in the mail and things are gonna go great.There's a lot more to it than that, especially nowadays. the other thing that I think is, uh, which I'll share with you a little bit more about that, but I think the other thing that's really valuable for people to appreciate and understand is that, a lot of people look at direct mail and they think of it as kind of a really old methodology.They think, you know, some people are even think like, uh. who even does direct mail still? Who, who still mails postcards for goodness sake? In a world of digital and, you know, email and, uh, you know, text marketing and every other kind of digital marketing and such, the challenge is, is digital marketing has become so popular that it has overwhelmed everyone.Every one of us get All kinds of, you know, solicited unsolicited texts. We get all kinds of emails. We, you know, pay no attention to, and ironically enough, the people who are most efficient at getting through that and spend the least amount of time focused on them is the younger generations, so they're really adept at.completely ignoring, you know, digital advertising by and large, but at least getting through it very, very quickly. So it gets very, very little attention. And so, ironically enough, they also tend to be the strongest market. And the studies show that they respond stronger to direct mail than the people who you would typically expect that grew up with direct mail, the older generation.So, ironically, it works even better for them. and the other thing that is happened in direct mail is the fact that because. Digital marketing, social media, and all that have become so prolific that now, the, old, older, you know, direct mail type thing is looked upon as kind of more of a novelty.There's not nearly as much competition in the mailboxes there used to be back in the day. If you remember, you know, especially for those of you who are older, you used to get tons of direct mail. I used to get catalogs. You used to get all kinds of stuff, uh, flyers, postcards galore. Now. We don't get that we get a little bit of mail.You know, we don't get nearly what we used to because of that. Frankly, there's a lot more attention given to the mail that we get, which enhances the results that you tend to get on direct mail. Unfortunately, at the same time that there are benefits in that there's less competition. There are a lot of things that make it tougher to get direct mail to work properly.So right now, you really have to make sure that you're leveraging a lot of the best practices that in our day and age right now have a big impact on the results that you're going to get. And a lot of those techniques and best practices dovetail with digital. There's been studies done as well that show that when you do digital in conjunction with direct mail, it increases both by about 65%.On average, in terms of their response. So it's a huge, huge impact. So it's really crucial that you take advantage of that. The other thing that is really, really important to appreciate. Is that before you ever even consider something like direct mail, you need to make sure that your digital presence your online presence is strong.Nowadays, admit it and think about it, the fact of the matter is, most patients are going to pick a dentist not to dissimilarly than the way they're going to pick the restaurant. They're going to go to tonight. They're going to go online and they're going to put in. Best Mexican restaurant, if they're looking for a restaurant, it's going to pop up and Google my business, the top three, you know, results, as well as a couple of potential ads that people have paid for.It's going to show them on a map. It's going to show more, you know, if they want to. And a lot of the times they're never even going to click that button. They're going to pick one of those. And most of the time, you have to ask yourself too, when was the last time that you chose a sponsored ad restaurant over an organic ad?It almost never happens. Me, I'm not sure it's ever happened. So you want to keep that in mind. And that's not to say that using Google ads and PPC isn't effective. It certainly can be. But you just want to keep the realities of the medium at the top of your mind when you're considering what you're trying to accomplish.so if they go ahead and they don't see you in the top three and you're lucky enough to have them click on show more, you have to ask yourself, where are you listed? How far are they going to go down the list before they find you? And when they do find you, what star rating does your practice have?And how does that compare to all the people above you? And then Even more importantly, they're both really important as you can imagine, but even more importantly is how many reviews do you have? ironically enough too, most people would assume that five star rating is the best rating. It isn't. When you have a five star rating, people assume you're lying.They assume that somehow you're working the system, and there's been a whole lot of studies done on this. So actually, believe it or not, the very, very best rating is 4. 9. That's actually what you want. Five star. I wouldn't try to get it down to 4. 9, but just keep in mind that if you're not at five star, it's not bad.Now, if you start falling into 4. 7 and below, then it is bad and you're going to have challenges there because chances are your competition is. Ahead of you, if that's the case, there's a darn good chance. They're going to select them instead of you. So I tell people even when they call us and want to do postcards.The first thing that we do is an analysis on their online presence. And there's 6 primary points that we review. And if they aren't in a good situation with those on with the online presence, then frankly, we tell them we need to work on that first and get that in place, or at least if they're close, we can be on track to get that in place before card set homes because otherwise they're frankly going to be paying the advertising bill for their competition.Because what ends up happening is now I send out a postcard, it gets into the homes, the people are interested, they're like, yeah, my last experience with my dentist wasn't so great, you know, my tooth hurts, whatever it is that motivates them to call. They then go ahead, go online, and they check out your practice, and now all of a sudden you're competing with everybody else around you.And if you don't look like a good, solid choice. You don't have to be number one, but you have to look like a good choice. And if you don't, there's a very high probability that they're going to call someone else. Just like you would do the same thing if you were picking a good Mexican restaurant. It's no different.You might look at an ad from somebody, it's great, but you see that these others are rated twice the reviews and they're rated higher, where are you going to go? You know, that's what happens. Michael: No, that's true. That's true. So then all this kind of falls into the best practices for having direct mailers and postcards to be effective.Shawn: It does. And the challenge is, is this, is unfortunately, and I'm not trying to, you know, cast stones at anyone, but unfortunately, there's a million people out there that are happy to mail a postcard for you. So, you have to really pay attention to who you choose as a partner to help you with that. If they're not paying attention to these things, they're not asking about them, they're not talking to you about them beforehand.You likely should be choosing someone else, because just getting a postcard in the mail is not the recipe for success. There's a lot of variables that are going to have a big impact, and if they're not paying attention to these most basic type things at the beginning, they're not going to be paying attention to a lot of the other things that are really important as well.So one of the things that I would share, with your audience, and I don't do this to, you know, even sell them on our, you know, on our service, but we've put together an intensely valuable resource, which we keep, uh, you know, current and active, uh, and updated all the time. Um, as a matter of fact, we even put the date it was last updated on this comparative analysis of all the top companies out there that people choose.Or, uh, direct mail for dentists because you can spend a tremendous amount of time trying to figure out who's the best and most of the time what most dentists do is throw up their hands after talking to a few people and just say, you know, Hey man, I just got to get this done. And, you know, so then they just find themselves going with whoever gave them the best sales pitch.And unfortunately, the sales pitch rarely connects with the best provided, you know, provided service that's going to get you the best results. And so it's really worth your time But we understand that doctors don't have the time to do it or even their uh, you know practice administrator or office manager So consequently we put this together and we maintain it so that they can take a look at it So if you go to like dentalmarketing.net and you go to the pricing page Frankly, most people that do what we do don't even have a pricing page because they won't tell you pricing until they've talked to you we actually it's the first thing we talk about and we put it right there in front of everyone And by the way, this isn't, you know, a stacking the debt.We did the same thing that you would have done. We went online and we put best dental postcard companies. It's not high tech from that standpoint, we get the list of who the people are that they're most prominent and that's, who's on the list. And you can look on there and you can see all the, uh, you know, people that people are using and how they compare with each other, which saves you a tremendous amount of time.We found over doing this for 15 years. That, uh, there are a long list of a number of things that are crucially important to get you the best results. And so consequently, those are the things that we rate all those companies on. So you can see how they compare with all those variables that we found, how that, you know, impact on your ROI.We also feel like it's super, super important that you pay attention to ROI, return on investment. Frankly, I don't care whether you do digital, social postcards, The receipt on the back of the grocery, you know, receipt you get, whatever you do, it doesn't matter. You shouldn't be doing anything if you're not tracking the ROI.If you're not, you just can't tell where your money is best spent. And inevitably it's likely going to be spent poorly. not going to get you the results you're looking for. Michael: I know at the beginning, you kind of mentioned something about the younger generation. Can you give us like a real quick, what's the age on that?Like, is it 19 to like... 30 that are now looking at postcards or that you've witnessed the data shows. Shawn: Yeah, anybody who's on their own, frankly, so, you know, the Millennials, Generation X, the different, you know, whatever the, you know, the different, these different generations, all those younger generations that most people think of intuitively, they think, oh, well, these people don't pay any attention to direct mail.You know, it's the older crowd that does, and. What the studies have borne out is that's actually just not accurate. Ironically enough, because they didn't grow up with it. It's a novelty to them. And so they love actually getting direct mail. They spend more time with it. They pay more attention to it.They respond stronger to it. They, choose, uh, you know, More often they're choose someone they've gotten direct mail from over somebody that has, they've gotten, you know, digital from, and they tend to believe it more, it's more believable to them as well in terms of the credibility factor for whomever they received it from.So all those things come into play. And at the end of the day, you end up with a really strong response. Now, in our particular business, a lot of people are eager to get regular new patients. However, there is a tremendous amount of emphasis on practices that want to get, more higher dollar cases, you know, specialty cases, things like all on X or full arch or implants, you know, cosmetic, uh, veneers, you know, ortho, a lot of these kinds of cases, even sleep, stuff like that.And so those types of cases are often, you know, more focused on the older generation and of course, direct mail is, you know, tried and true there as well. and, you know, I can go into, and I don't know if you have specific questions that you'd like me to cover in relation to direct mail or in terms of actionable things I can share to those online presence metrics that we pay attention to if that's helpful.But what do you think would be most helpful to your audience? Michael: Yeah, no, right now this has been super helpful what you, uh, let us know everything that we have to have into place first, right, before we decide to do direct mailers. Um, and then from that point on, we can kind of continue with it, right? targeting the right thing, but making sure we, we determine it.Shawn: And the thing is, is those, the, those kinds of things that are crucial for direct mail, they're not unique to direct mail. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. Whatever you're doing, you need to make sure that you have a strong online presence because anything that you do is going to be hand in glove with your online presence.So it's just a crucial foundational step that needs to occur first. Michael: Yeah, awesome, Sean. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly? Shawn: Um, well, they can go right to our website, like we're mentioning, the dentalmarketing.net. That provides a lot of insight and answers a lot of questions. And of course, they can contact us. They can, you know, frankly, contact me directly. we're extremely transparent, extremely open and eager to help whomever. Frankly, whether you work with us or not, and I'm, give people my, you know, direct line.They can reach me, you know, my number actually 435 503 1725. You can call me pretty much anytime. Unfortunately, I eat, drink, and sleep this stuff. Michael: All right, Sean, I appreciate your time, man. And thank you for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. Shawn: Thank you so much.‍