Podcasts about isn

Aaron Scott Young is a lifelong entrepreneur, trusted advisor, and business owner. He discovered his passion and talent for entrepreneurship early in life, and at age 18, he formed a recycling company in Portland, Oregon. He grew the company to 5,000 customers before selling it to become one of the first cellular phone dealers in Portland.For over 34 years, his garnered experiences from founding, acquiring, and directing multi-million dollar businesses as well as working as an officer for a publicly traded, multi-national company, have set him apart from the crowd as a trusted advisor of knowledge and authority. Today, Aaron is the CEO of Laughlin Associates, a pioneer in the incorporation industry that has helped over 100,000 entrepreneurs start, grow and profit from their business. He has made it his life's work to arm other business owners with success formulas that immediately provide exponential growth and protection for their business.Listen in as they discuss:Aaron's journey to developing wealth.Elements of a strong and successful business.What you need to grow your business.Qualities of a successful entrepreneur.Formulas to incorporate into your business.And, more!TIP OF THE WEEKMark: My tip of the week is going to be about reinforcing real wealth; not to solve your money problems, solve your time problems, and become an unshackled business owner. Learn more, go to aaronscottyoung.com.Scott: My tip is a book called Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts by Rene Brown.Aaron: At the beginning of the year, I go back either re-read or re-listen to The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. The principles taught in the Richest Man in Babylon are easy ways to think about how to manage money, debt, relationship, how to look at a long game, and if you look at a long game how to follow a recipe. Here's a thing, if you follow a recipe don't get greedy and stupid, just do things that are reasonable. Don't try to get rich quick, if you're making 10% 15% or 20% on an investment that's great! Celebrate! Don't think you have to double and triple every year. If you follow a proven recipe and you aren't greedy, you will be surprised at how fast your wealth grows and you will be amazed at how many people are watching you. When people see you that you're being responsible and you're being a little aggressive, you're not afraid and you're leading out, but you're doing things in a smart way and having some success, all of a sudden everybody wants to hitch their wagons to your star because most people have no clue what's going on, no clue what to do next and they're desperately seeking guidance. The Richest Man in Babylon gives you all of the foundations to know what to look for, how to act, what to do so you can grow your wealth.Want To Listen More?Did you like this episode? If so, tune into another one of our exciting episodes with special guest Rock Thomas as we discuss the importance of personal development.Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

-Isn't that what we expect on Saturday? Why wouldn't Bielema approach this game the same way he always did in playing against Nebraska with Wisconsin? Illinois DID roll the Huskers on the ground last year.. Show sponsored by GANA TRUCKING

Howdy, Shenanites! This week, we talk about structural supports, allocation of resources, and making meaning. Since we didn't get to questions last week, this is purely a question episode! Well, except for a slight skeleton detour. Isn't it weird how without bones or exoskeletons we'd be bags of goo? Just slurbing from one place to the next. Talk about road rash. Questions answered (abbreviated): - Eppajump Boilvarka: What life hacks have you guys used to power through the have-tos of game development, life, or business? - TimConceivable: Did you guys watch Wandavision? Are you watching Loki? - thewritingfriend: What's the best praise you've ever gotten from a boss/mentor/other authority figure? To stay up to date with all of our buttery goodness subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcasts (apple.co/1LxNEnk) or wherever you get your audio goodness. If you want to get more involved in the Butterscotch community, hop into our DISCORD server at discord.gg/bscotch and say hello! Submit questions at https://www.bscotch.net/podcast, disclose all of your secrets to podcast@bscotch.net, and send letters, gifts, and tasty treats to http://bit.ly/bscotchmailbox. Finally, if you'd like to support the show and buy some coffee FOR Butterscotch, head over to http://moneygrab.bscotch.net.

This is for the girl who…  Lost motivation Isn't seeing results  Hit a plateau  Is tired of eating God-made Whole Foods Needs to get back on track Okay, I know you're wondering, How does this help me when I stand on my scale and I'm miserable about my weight or when I'm eating right and working out and I don't see any results? How do I keep going in those moments? My answer is that we do it one day at a time in faith. I know this can seem impossible. I know every mistake feels like the end of the road. I've been there, and I know how painfully frustrating and hopeless it may feel. Transforming your health is difficult, but you're not alone. There is a process to getting healthy, and it takes time. You can't rush it. This is why faith makes all the difference. In this episode, I am covering all of the big “What if's” when it comes to turning your setback into a comeback!  Faith Fuel:  I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. —Psalm 16:8 niv Open your Bible and join in with or without your copy of my best-selling Christian fitness book, 10 Steps to Your Faith Inspired Transformation, F.I.T. You can get your copy where books are sold or HERE. Start today! God can do a new thing in you and your fitness, friend! ️ Now you know I'm never going to leave you without asking you to get into action because nothing happened without it! Join My Power Up Challenge! All you have to do is tell me how this episode spoke to you on Facebook or Instagram. When you do, you're automatically entered into my Power Up Challenge!  I pick one winner every week, and you'll either get a coaching call from me, a copy of my brand new Strong Confident His Faith and Fitness Devotional, my best-selling Christian fitness book Faith Inspired Transformation, F.I.T., or the F.I.T. Workout Series. Rate, Review, & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, here. Click play to join us! If you love this episode, it would mean the world to me if you left a review for The Strong. Confident. His Podcast on iTunes. It helps the podcast get discovered by other women and shows me what type of content to create for you and serve you with excellence!  Thank you in advance, friend!   Remember, You are Strong. Confident. His. From my heart to yours, God bless, Kim Dolan Leto Sign Up for Free Faith and Fitness Tips Start the Faith Inspired Transformation Workout Series For Free on Pure Flix Links Mentioned in This Episode Get Your Strong. Confident. His. Faith & Fitness Devotional Watch the Strong. Confident. His. Devotional Videos Series Faith Inspired Transformation Book and Workout Series Free Faith Filled Fitness Resources

1- Why do we have meals at funerals- -2- How long should a fast last--3- Isn't gratitude a better motive than reward--4- Why did Jesus say some demons only come out by prayer and fasting-

Hello to you listening in Brisbane, Australia!Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is 60 Seconds, your daily dose of hope, imagination, wisdom, stories, practical tips, and general riffing on this and that.Recently my friend and Akimbo colleague Leanne Gordon celebrated a Happy Birthday. I sent her an animated card with a yellow dandelion that becomes a puffball before disappearing. Leanne replied with a quote I'd not heard before, “Some see a weed, I see wishes.” Isn't that lovely?Did you know that the pretty yellow dandelion flower, once pollinated, transforms into a delicate puffball of seeds looking nothing like the original? It's this puffball that we might enjoy picking and blowing on while making a wish.Click here to enjoy a 90 second time lapse video that takes you from yellow flower to puffball.Question: What do you see differently than others do; and what would you wish if you could puff on a dandelion?This is the place to thrive together. Come for the stories - stay for the magic. Speaking of magic, I hope you'll subscribe, follow, share a nice shout out on your social media or podcast channel of choice, including Android, and join us next time! You're invited to stop by the website and subscribe to stay current with Diane, her journeys, her guests, as well as creativity, imagination, walking, stories, camaraderie, and so much more: Quarter Moon Story ArtsProduction Team: Quarter Moon Story ArtsMusic: Mer's Waltz from Crossing the Waters by Steve Schuch & Night Heron MusicAll content and image © 2019 - Present: for credit & attribution Quarter Moon Story Arts

Carl Richards of Behavior Gap joins me to talk about why it makes sense for him to sell his new book for $10,000.Talking Points The paradox of working in public every day The terror of going from 0 to 1 Using permission-less projects to get going The importance of noticing “tailwind” Turning flaws into features Using impostor syndrome as a compass Reacting to negative feedback about pricing How to decide whether to start a podcast Carl's BioCarl Richards is a Certified Financial Planner™ and creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in The New York Times since 2010.Carl has also been featured on Marketplace Money, Oprah.com, and Forbes.com. In addition, Carl has become a frequent keynote speaker at financial planning conferences and visual learning events around the world.Through his simple sketches, Carl makes complex financial concepts easy to understand. His sketches also serve as the foundation for his two books, The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money and The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money (Portfolio/Penguin).His sketches have appeared in a solo show at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah as well as other showings at Parsons School of Design in New York City, The Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, and an exhibit at the Mansion House in London. His commissioned work is on display in businesses and educational institutions across the globe.Find Carl online here: https://behaviorgap.com https://behaviorgap.com/radio/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/thinkingcarl https://twitter.com/behaviorgap Transcript Of The Show[00:00:00] Jonathan: Hello, and welcome to ditching hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. And today I'm joined by Carl Richards of behavior gap. Carl, welcome to the show.  [00:00:08] Carl: Thanks, Jonathan, super excited to talk to you.  [00:00:10] Jonathan: Same here. So before we get started for anyone who hasn't yet heard of you, could you give folks just quick background? [00:00:17] Carl: Yeah. So I it's crazy to let me think about how to do it quickly. So I. Was a financial advisor and that's not normally thought of as a creative job. But one day I found myself in immediate and I had a familiar experience that I finally realized. Going on. I was meeting with clients and I thought I was really good at communicating. [00:00:44] And these were really smart clown. My clients were really smart, successful people, and I was trying to explain a concept to them and I was just getting blank stares. Despite thinking that I was really good at this and knowing that these are smart people. So since they were smart people, it was clearly impact. [00:01:01] I remember who it was either a doctor and a technology sales rep, really technical sales rep. And I remember thinking that. This is bad, right? Like I'm doing the best I can. There's this concept they really need to understand, and I'm not getting it across. So out of a act of really desperation and I had never really done this before. [00:01:21] I didn't think of myself as a doodler. I didn't draw, I didn't do visual journal. Like I had done none of this. I'd never taken an art class in my life, but I don't have an act of desperation. I was like, there was a whiteboard in the office that I had never used and I jumped up and was like, no, like this. [00:01:35] And I drew. Like a couple of boxes and some arrows and some circles or something. And I remember the feeling in the room when the clients were like, oh, now I.  [00:01:46] Jonathan: Yeah.  [00:01:47] Carl: And I became a diff is my word. I like to use to that experience of taking something that was seemingly complex, whether it was or not, it doesn't matter, but seemingly complex and reducing it to something simple. [00:02:00] And so I started doing that publicly. I just, I started a little blog. This was years and years ago. My mom and my sister were the only ones that would read it. Like I found out later, my sister was lying. So it was really just the mom, but I kept doing it. And every time a question came up, every time I read something or somebody asked me a question or a client asked me a question, and at this point it was all about money investing and spending and budgeting. would answer the question and then I would try to, I would try to draw some simple sketch. And at this point, it was Sharpie and cardstock and if the Jitsu snap scanner.  [00:02:36] I did that for a while. I just kept putting them up on this little blog. And I did that for awhile. It was probably a year which is, seems like it happened pretty quick to be honest, I'm a year. [00:02:45] And then I got an email and there's a little bit of story that I'm leaning out, but not much. I got an email from the editor at the New York times saying, Hey, we love these women. Do it for us. And I knew enough to say yes and figure it out later. So  [00:03:01] Jonathan: Yeah.  [00:03:01] Carl: that started this column for the New York times that we did. [00:03:04] And again, I had no clue this would happen when I said yes, but we did that column ended up running weekly for 10 years, that led to the book. And then, maybe three or four years into that column, I kinda got bored. Just straight money. And expanded the definition of money and started doing things around creativity. [00:03:24] And we started thinking of it as a business life column. And so that expanded it to imposter syndrome and fear and doing public work and then. The two books and some speaking engagements. And I started getting asked to do speak at creative conferences, and I did an art show, a solo eight week art show and another one in London. [00:03:43] And all of it was a hundred percent by accident. And I couldn't ever believe that it happened so that's a little bit of the bio.  [00:03:51] Jonathan: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. I love the juxtaposition of certified financial planner and creator of the sketch guy column.  [00:03:57] It feels like  [00:03:59] Carl: super fun to  [00:03:59] Jonathan: interesting Venn diagram there. Okay, cool. So I'm glad you brought up the New York times thing. Cause I was going to ask you about that backstory and yeah. [00:04:09] Is there a piece that, so I would love to connect the dots if there are any dots to connect. Was it, because the listener is probably either blogging or something like that, YouTube channel, or they are thinking about starting one, maybe it's a mailing list. Maybe it's a podcast, but people who listen generally do some sort of. [00:04:29] You content creation and I have a I'll just quickly say short stories, not dissimilar. Where I was just, years ago, 2000, I don't even know five ish. I was blogging about a really niche topic for, I feel like I, I posted six posts in six weeks maybe. And a book publisher contacted me completely out of the way. [00:04:52] And I'm just curious if the New York times thing was completely out of the blue, or if you did anything to was there any, anything you did that actually led to that? Or was it pretty much out of the blue? [00:05:03] Carl: I wish I had something more, like I've been asked this question so many times, including my editor at the time, it was like, Hey, what would you tell? Wants to, and I was like, Ron, I've got nothing for you. The only thing I have. And this, unfortunately like this doesn't fit into the tips, tricks and tactics and hacks that everybody wants because we all want deeply. [00:05:24] We just want a tactic that we can follow it up. I think this, endless focus that I have on tactics and we all have on tactics is actually just a place to hide. [00:05:33] Jonathan: I agree. [00:05:34] Carl: but so I'm not gonna it would be cute to make up a story. But it really was the only thing I have is playing in traffic. Right, Like that, that, that was it. I didn't even know what SEO was like. I didn't I just kept doing the thing and I don't know why for some people doing the thing that you just can't not do. Like for some people that lead, that ends up being a quiet life of disappointment and desperation, and for other people. [00:06:05] Something hits and I wish I knew the answer to that. That's the question I've been thinking about for over a decade? Cause they're doing work in public doesn't guarantee that a book publisher is going to reach out to you. In fact, it's highly unlikely that they will, but I promise you, the only thing I have is I promise you, they won't, if you don't do it  [00:06:24] Jonathan: Yup. I'm actually glad. That you have a non-answer there because it is an answer it's stop worrying about that stuff. Keep playing in traffic, you know it, [00:06:32] Carl: yeah.  [00:06:33] That's all. I often want to be like we, I play a lot of, I think a lot about emphasis hugs versus punches in the nose and this feels like both it's like deeply empathetic look, brother, I get you. I understand. That this can be a lonely pursuit. You got a thing that's bothering you, and by bothering, like stirring within you and you can't stop doing it and you're going to do it publicly, you can do it. And I and stop worrying about all that other stuff. I didn't even know. I just did the work and sometimes it's going to work and sometimes it's not. And that's the big mystery for me.  [00:07:08] Jonathan: I'm a big fan of Seth Godin's approach of suggesting for people who just need a little bit more than what we're seeing right now. Just find the minimum viable audience for the present that you made. And it's so doable. It just feels so doable. Okay. We can move on. I just curious if I'm glad you, it was out of the blue basically, because I think that frees people actually to just focus on creating stuff, they want to create. [00:07:33] Carl: Gentlemen, before you move on, let me say it like that's that has not stopped. Like I don't have the same thing for the first book. Same thing for the second. Same thing for the book I'm working on now say it like it's, there is no master plan. And so I, yeah, I think to me, that's actually freeing, like you said, so I, Yeah. [00:07:53] it hasn't stopped. [00:07:54] I haven't come up with a formula since.  [00:07:57] Jonathan: okay. So let me, so let's go into that a little bit, because I do know for some things we're going to get into here you have at least one probably multiple daily practices. So it feels like you must have systems in place that Allow you to continue or not allow you to but support you in showing up every day. [00:08:16] Yeah, I can traffic. And this isn't really a show about systems, but I would just say to the person listening that, I don't, I wouldn't say I have a master plan. I don't know every step I'm going to take over the next three, even let's just say. Definitely three years, but I've got a rough goal for the kind of impact I want to have and who I want to help. [00:08:36] And I have a strategy to do that. And there's some systems in place that helped me show up every day and do it and, meet with great people like this, have them on the podcast. And there, there are, it's not that there are no tactics. It's just not worth worrying about the tactics. You just, have a goal, set up a system to support it and look it heads down and do the system. [00:08:55] Carl: Yeah. I The word that keeps coming to mind as you're talking is habits. Like I, I have a habit of noticing things in the world. I even have it. There's like a, I even joked, there's a face I make it's I call it the, her face huh. Like I have a habit of looking for that to happen a couple of times a day. [00:09:13] And then when it happens, I pull out my iPhone and see, this is the interesting piece. If you don't have a knife, if you don't have an iPhone, you can't do this. That's the places to hide. But I'm trying, I'm only going to tell you this, tell your listeners this, because I think it demonstrates like how simple it needs to be. [00:09:30] I mentioned that earlier cardstock Sharpie and Fujitsu, snap, scanner. I didn't have a flatbed scanner. There was no music playing there. So. [00:09:37] now it's like I noticed something in the world. I pull out my phone under notes. I have a folder called ideas. I take a note and if I'm moving, I'll just record on voice memo. [00:09:49] The note, then that folder, when it's time to put something into the world, I go to that folder. And I pull up the idea, like there's one in there from last there's one in there. Let me just do a real quick notes. There's Yeah. [00:10:03] there was one real, oh yeah. Re the idea of re-investing. Like I have a habit of, as soon as I feel better, like healthy, I'm energetic, I'll go make a big athletic goal. [00:10:14] And somebody [00:10:15] somebody was like what if you just reinvested that energy? So that's an idea that will go up on the podcast tomorrow. I go into the notes folder. There's an ideas folder. I pull it up. Oh, reinvest is there. When I do something with the idea of reinvest, I move it to another folder. [00:10:29] The folder is called used ideas. And that's the end of the, that's the end of the system.  [00:10:35] Jonathan: Yeah   [00:10:36] Carl: Yeah.  [00:10:36] there are habits and I think James Claire's work around process and systems are super smart. And I think that's the thing that sometimes I think there's a big difference between being creative and the process of making stuff.  [00:10:52] Jonathan: oh, that's a good point. [00:10:53] Carl: And I don't think of myself as creative, although I do now because I'm like, oh, actually it turns out being creative. Isn't some magic for some people. It is. And that's awesome. Like cool. But there's also a process of, and I call it making stuff on purpose. It's like stuff. It's not art. It's not, I it is, but there's no fancy feelings about it. [00:11:12] There's a big difference between being creative and sometimes they're the same thing, but just for people who don't feel like they're creative, you can create a system for making stuff. It's just like another widget. It's not a big deal. So anyway, yeah, I agree that there are systems, process and habits.  [00:11:27] Jonathan: Yep. Yep. And James has been on the show. So folks if you're interested, if you don't know who James Claire is, check out the podcast in his book, Atomico atomic habits. It's fabulous. So yeah, my, I do a daily mailing list and I just, when I have one of those ideas, same thing, probably talk face. I like that. [00:11:43] And I whip out the phone and I start a new Gmail message and I typed the idea or I say the idea and I just close it and it automatically saves on all my devices. It's instantly available everywhere.  [00:11:53] Carl: So good.  [00:11:54] Jonathan: Yeah, and it's just, it's the teeniest tiniest little spark will happen during the day. And I just know if I don't instantly grab it, I'm going to forget it. [00:12:01] 30 seconds later, kids come and say something, make gone all gone. But if you get into the habit of capturing those things, even if you don't have an answer, it's just an inspiration sometimes and or weird observation or paradox, if you don't capture that it is going to be gone. But when you do capture it, you get into the habit. [00:12:19] I sh I have like over 600 of these unreal. Ideas in this folder. And same thing if I don't have an idea for today, I just open up the folder and oh yeah, let's write about that  [00:12:29] Carl: can I just mention two things, one I've heard that like it's gone thing and I think that's true for, I don't know where the boundary conditions are on any of this stuff. I only want to mention this because maybe there's some listeners. Think a little differently about it. And I have finally I've noticed that the good stuff sticks. [00:12:49] I don't know where, again, I don't know the boundary condition of it. I don't know. So I've started to be a little less precious about the idea I got to capture it. I got to grab it. Because I find that the good stuff comes back and I don't, again, I don't know if that's just me or, Elizabeth Gilbert's thing at some point, if you don't let the idea out into the world that we'll find a new host. [00:13:09] I don't know. Is it three times? Is it one time? Is it, I don't know, but, so I've started to be just recently, I've developed a little less preciousness around oh, and I'll even find myself saying it to the idea. Hey right now, I'm driving brother. But if you're really good and you want me to be involved, could you come back? [00:13:26] Cause I think you're not nice. And I'd like to see you again, right? Like that kind of thing. And then the second thing I would mention is sorry, got what the second thing was, it was preciousness and then  [00:13:35] Jonathan: If it'll come back,  [00:13:36] Carl: it will come back. Exactly. Oh, this the not knowing the answer. I like it took me five years to finally get my editor convinced that point of the column was often the question. Cause there was always this, like this common refrain in journalists of so what what's the point here? And I would have to say the point is the question. And so I only mentioned that because I like, I wouldn't be scared. To share observations and create stuff that you don't know the answer to. [00:14:07] And you can be upfront about this. And I say this like almost every day on the podcast, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know, but I think it's interesting. And I probably, you, this is, I think we get hung up in this oh, where am I going to find ideas? And this is all the same thread. It's if you think something's interesting. [00:14:24] And again, it's just for me, if that her face, like I could be reading something. If I notice I have to pause and go back and read a sentence that's assigned to me where I'm like, oh, that's, there's something interesting. If you find something interesting, we live in such an inter it's such a connected world now that I promise, how, no matter how silly you think it is, there's something it's out there. [00:14:47] That's going to find it. Interesting. It's just a function of doing it long enough in a space where the signal gets clear. So I just wanted to mention that idea. You don't have to have the answers. In fact, I think it's far more. Gosh, far more honest and far more interesting to follow somebody on the exploration. [00:15:06] I think of the work I do really as like Shackleford journal. I don't know, it's not advice, but if you come this way, if you happen to find yourself on this trail, I found a spring here and it was interesting. It was nice to know that there's water and there's a tree around the corner that provides good shade. [00:15:23] I don't know if you, if it's good for you, but it was good for me. So that's the one thing I wanted to do.  [00:15:28] Jonathan: Yeah, I do like that. And I did notice that on the podcast where you're like this isn't advice, it's observation things I've observed and there's something, the thing I like about that is it removes the word should from any sentence you would ever write, because the word should always scares me. If that comes out of my mouth, I'm like, that's a little, yeah. Yeah. It's a Derek Sivers has a really. He is a very similar approach. I don't know if you're familiar with his stuff, but  [00:15:52] Carl: for sure.  [00:15:53] Jonathan: yeah, his, especially his new book or it's like how to live. And it's chapter after chapter of almost contradictory ways that you could run your life. [00:16:03] Some of them are completely contradictory, like one right after the other. And it's here's a bunch of ways you could do it.  [00:16:10] Carl: right.  [00:16:11] Jonathan: It's a fascinating approach. It's and maybe most fascinating. Yeah. How rare it is most books that you'd buy, self-help book would be like, here's what you do first get up at 4:00 AM, make your bet, like the classic stuff. [00:16:24] And it's yeah, I already read that. And that's not gonna work for me for whatever reason. Cool. All right. I have a feeling that we could talk for four hours.  [00:16:31] Carl: Right.  [00:16:32] Jonathan: This is great. Obviously if people want more of this kind of like talking about Karl's content, like the actual content go to behavior, gap.com and just start reading. [00:16:42] There's like loads and loads of great stuff there. But what I really the primary reason I reached out is, pricing podcast and you've got a new book coming out that has a pun intended novel pricing structure. Could you talk about that a little bit? Where'd that idea come well first, what is it? [00:16:59] And then where did that idea come from? Those sorts of things. [00:17:02] Carl: Yeah.  [00:17:03] Again, no grand scheme here. I I wanted to okay. So keep in mind. Let me just describe what it is first. So I do the sketches. I noticed years and years ago. I. Other people who gave financial advice for living. So this would range from CPAs attorneys, financial advisors, financial planners, private equity, venture capital, anybody who kind of deals with money and takes risk for a living started to ask for these images. [00:17:33] And they would I specifically remember the first time was like aye. You remember the guy's name? He said, Hey, could I, would you, could I have a print of one of these and would you sign it? And I was like, that is so silly. No. And he said I'll give you two twenty-five dollars for an unsigned one. [00:17:50] I'll give you a hundred dollars for a sign when I was like, give me the pen, so that was the first time. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Again. I'm not very good at seeing the future, but I'm really good at noticing T well, I'm getting better at noticing tailwind. And so it was like, oh, that's interesting. [00:18:05] So we started selling like prints and that's that? That's where like the art show I did an eight week solo 50 piece show that sold out and I was like, Ooh. [00:18:14] Jonathan: Wow.  [00:18:15] Carl: it was tailwind. So there's this group of people who use. So this is like purpose art, and I've got lots of friends who are off. [00:18:23] They don't have that kind of an audience and this idea would not work unless you had that kind of an audience. So people give my first book, the behavior gap sold to those same people and they would give it away to their clients. So it's, so it's been years of me thinking like, oh, isn't that interesting? [00:18:43] These are tools. The sketches themselves. And then the writing that goes with the sketches are actual tools. We think of them as conversation grenades. I think I stole that from class. You throw them in a room and conversations break out and it's the exact kind of con it's supportive conversations for people to give financial advice for a living. [00:19:00] They, they're the exact kind of conversations these people want to be having. So with all of that, and in mind, I was like, wow, I should create a, I want to create Yeah. [00:19:08] I've got to tell you another part of this story. I got contacted by somebody who said. I get these kinds of phone calls every once in a while. [00:19:15] It's actually quite annoying, but they're like, look, do you own all the rights to your material? And I do. And it's been very intentional. And do you own the name bay area? Like I do. Would you sell the whole thing to us? [00:19:28] And I was like, for how much? And they threw out a number and I was like tomorrow. And it didn't work out, but it got me thinking, and again at NFTE has played into this too. All of these little things mashing together got me thinking, like, how could I ever release? And Bob Dylan selling his catalog for 600 million, like all of those things were in the past. And I was like could I sell a fractional piece of my library? [00:19:53] And so I was thinking through that and I was like who would I sell it to? And I could sell it to people who use it, not just enjoy it, but people would use it. And wouldn't it be interesting if those people thought of themselves as owners, not just customers. So all of that came together and I was like, all Right. [00:20:05] I want to create, and then Austin Cleveland's book the size of it, six by six, the map. [00:20:10] Soft cover matte finish, like all of that, all of it came together. It was like, okay, I'm going to do a coffee table book. That's eight by eight square soft cover, matte finish. And I'm going to make, I love playing with the juxtaposition of kind of Swiss grid and hand-drawn elements. I love that. It's it feels like a business suit with flip flops. [00:20:31] Like I just love playing around with that. And we, I love juxtaposition and I, we also have a fundamental concept here called permissionless project. So it was like, okay, how can I do this project that would involve no one else's permission, no gatekeeper and a publisher? No, nothing. [00:20:43] So that's what, that's how the present came about. And it's eight, eight by eight soft cover. It's 52. I took 52 sketches. We wrote up 52 essays. We got a really fine I feel like the subtitle of the book should be better than the New York times, because these are all things that have appeared. [00:21:00] Then they went through more editorial processes based on feeds. So it's 52 sketches, 52 essays. Each fold of the book is a sketch and an essay when we mixed them up a little bit on which side and how they're done. But each bolt of the book is self-contained sketch essay. And then I was like, all right, great. [00:21:15] What should I do with this? And I thought, okay, the people, the fractional ownership, the sell of the library and all that MFT, like all of that came together. And I was like, what if I only made this available to a hundred people?  [00:21:25] And each person will get a hundred. Signed and numbered. So I'm gonna, I'm literally calling the printer and saying I'm printing, I'm actually printing 11,000 because I want to keep a thousand as artist proofs for myself to give to friends. [00:21:37] But so 10 I'm ordering 10. That's the only print run. It will never be printed. And I, all of this is I get so excited about it. Cause it's all part of my ethos. Like a project that has a start, a finish. It's not gonna be around forever. Like I love calling the printer saying 10,000, like the first print run. [00:21:53] I'm like, no final. Only, never again. And then I'm gonna get this 10,000. I'm going to go sit in the printers place and sign one of 10,002 of them. That's going to take me a week. And then you get the book. A hundred copies of the book to give to your clients. Again, that's the part that you know, is relatively unique here. [00:22:13] A hundred copies of the book to give to your clients. You get the digital rights, the forever digital use rights for the 52 sketches in the 52 S. These people will use the people who will buy this will use it. These in social media, they'll use them in their client newsletter and they'll use them occasionally. [00:22:32] We've had people in Texas print them on a billboard. Yes, of course  [00:22:37] Jonathan: I thought I saw that. I thought it was, I thought it was like digital magic.  [00:22:41] Carl: Yeah no. That one, the one you saw probably was digital magic, but there is a real one and I just haven't been able to get a picture of it. So you can print them on a t-shirt. You can print them on a mug as long as you're not selling. To give to clients. So like you, we call it, do the, do whatever you want license. [00:22:55] So you get to do whatever you want. Licensed 52 sketches forever. Cool. Geez. How do you price that? What do you do? And so I knew enough for my art show because when I did the art show, I went, I literally read everything. I get my hands on and how to price art. And I don't know if you know this, but there's no manual.  [00:23:13] Jonathan: Yeah. I do know that. [00:23:15] Carl: Yeah. There's no, like I looked everywhere. There's no, like in my world you can price a comp a comparable ass. Of similar risk and similar reward. And you've known with the price in the art world. There's nothing. So the same thing with the book, I was like wait a second. This isn't really a book. It's 52 weeks of marketing. [00:23:34] It's all these other things. I was like I just picked a number and partially I was like, Okay. [00:23:38] you know what? I want to do something that scares me. And I've always wanted to do a million dollar book launch.  [00:23:43] And so we priced it at $10,000 a piece, a hundred people can buy. It's a million dollars. [00:23:48] We've actually made 20 slots available. That would include me coming to speak at your book, like at a book. [00:23:54] party. So those are 20,000. So it's actually, what is that? It's a hundred and it's a hundred. And if those all sell, it's a $1.2 million. [00:24:03] Jonathan: Amazing [00:24:03] Carl: And it's crazy, right? And I feel all those feelings of wait, who told you, you could do this. [00:24:08] I have a buddy is called imposter syndrome. And he shows up every time I do something cool. He comes every time I talk about like right now, I totally I'm like what? That's nuts. I can hear listeners being like what I'm scared to death. And that's part of the project.  [00:24:22] Jonathan: Yeah, imposter syndrome is a good sign. If imposter syndrome shows up, it means you're doing something interesting and new. Okay. So that's incredible. Very cool. Totally. I saw it and I was just like, oh, we have to talk about this. Has someone besides imposter syndrome shown up to throw rocks? [00:24:39] Carl: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I We've only recently started announcing, you saw one of the early announcements you probably saw. And talk  [00:24:45] Jonathan: Yeah, I think so.  [00:24:47] Carl: And Blair is a friend of mine and he's had something to do with this. I'll call him and be like, really? Am I doing it? And he's do you know the answer to this? [00:24:52] Yeah.  [00:24:52] I th I, I think I saw, I'm trying to spend less and less time on Twitter. I do use Twitter for a lot for broadcasting, but I'm trying not to do a lot of interacting with. I did see like people in my industry saying things like it's obviously a top that's a joke that will always say like the market's certainly frothy at this point, if Carl's doing this and then somebody else, the one that, and those are like, whatever, like it's certainly, it's not for you. [00:25:18] You clearly don't understand somebody else said oh, here's Carl playing a joke on all his loyal fans. And w I then explained to him what it was. It was like, no joke here. This is what, and he's oh, I didn't get that. It had the digital rights. So those things I'm like, it's not for you. [00:25:33] The one that I heard the most recently was somebody saying, I thought you were all about helping people. Why are you suddenly leaving everybody? Yeah. So that, and I can feel that and then say, and it's Okay. [00:25:48] for me to do a project like this. Yeah, [00:25:50] for sure. And I don't know if it'll work. We've already, pre-sold a bunch of them. [00:25:53] We opened up 21 early seats. Cause there were people who sent notes saying literally like I'm bringing a bag of cash to your door. And I was like, oh, okay. But I don't know if we'll get to, I don't even know if we'll get to 15. But I'm okay with that because next year we could sell 10 more and 10 more until all hundred go.  [00:26:12] Jonathan: right. [00:26:13] Carl: I don't know if it'll work is what I'm saying. I have no idea if that will work, but there's enough tailwind for me to try.  [00:26:19] Jonathan: Yeah, I love that. I actually wrote that down tailwind. That's your so you'd note you're noticing engine is very good. Where you'll notice this sort of puppy, dog face stuff, but then also like when something happens, it's not just like you move on to the next thing. It's whoa, there's the sort of after effect of motion happening here just really good detector. [00:26:40] Carl: We generally, we tried to systemize that a bit. Like I think of it as a system. Like we use early detection stuff, like Twitter's a great place to toss something out. And again, if you get no feedback, I actually, I don't use that as a, I don't use that as a sign. It's only if I get feedback that I'm like, oh, interesting. [00:26:59] Because no feedback, actually the sample size is so small that no matter what the feedback is, it's inconclusive. So the only thing I can ever say from it is oh, interesting. Like maybe I should try a little more of that. [00:27:13] Jonathan: Right. [00:27:13] Carl: And just it's just a slight tailwind at that point. [00:27:15] And then, but we try to we have systems now for like, where does the idea get tested first? Behavioral up radio is where it gets heard first. And then if it makes it out of behavior, I pray a little go here. And if it makes it go there, I'll go here. And eventually it'll end up in volume for right. [00:27:29] Cause that's part of it. That's the other thing I should tell you the book's name. We were like, what did we name the book? I was like Let's just call it volume one. So somebody on the team actually suggested volume one. I'm like we can't do that. Like my publisher would never like we don't have a, what was her, the design of the book jar then? [00:27:44] How cool is this? Like when we'd realized we didn't have to design for Amazon or the bookstore, all we had to design was for the moment. I just envisioning it. I'm doing it right now. Like a financial person, but it's advice giver has it in their hand and they hand it to a customer, a client that moment we could design the entire book cover for that moment. [00:28:07] Really cool. So that's some fun stuff.  [00:28:10] Jonathan: Huge. That's amazing. Yep. You're just so focused on what it's for. This is what it's for.  [00:28:17] Carl: Yep. And that circles back to your idea of throwing stones. I have tried to get really good, and I'm not very good at it, but I try so hard that it's not for them. So that's phrase like it's not for you. And so if there's anybody throwing stones, I understand and empathize and get it. [00:28:37] And there's a reasonable, if they're thoughtful, I treat them as gold because I can make the project better. But largely I would say. It must not either. I didn't communicate well enough or it's not for you.  [00:28:48] And both of those are within my power, which is really freeing to me because if I didn't communicate clearly that's on me. [00:28:55] And if it's not for you, there's nothing I can do. It's okay. We'll just move on. [00:28:59] Jonathan: right. Yeah. Not everyone gets the joke as they say so. Okay. So you just mentioned the behavior gap radio.  [00:29:06] Carl: Yeah.  [00:29:06] Jonathan: Let's talk about that a little bit because I am signed up to that. It's well, you can describe it. What's the  [00:29:12] Carl: Yeah.  [00:29:13] I think for your listeners, this may be the most important idea because obviously I, there was a whole bunch of caveats around that book, project. Make it unique. I had somebody tell me a good friend of mine said, Carl, you're an N of one for this project. I don't know anybody else who could do it cause you've got a market that needs it. [00:29:29] So I understand that. But there's a bunch of N of one projects for everybody listening has an N of one project, right? Like you're the only one that could do it. So don't let that be a place to hide. But behavior radio to me is a, so let me just describe how it happened. I was noticing things in the world. [00:29:47] And it was actually a challenge from Seth Goden. He, we were having breakfast and he said, Carl, why aren't you writing a daily blog? And I said, cause it's, he's unabashed about how powerful it's been for him. And I'm like I don't like to write. He's you like to talk. And so why don't you just record? [00:30:03] I'm like, oh my gosh, really? And this was before like the most recent like podcast craze.  [00:30:10] Jonathan: Yeah.  [00:30:11] Carl: So I just started recording. Initially the notes folder I described early on wasn't notes. It was audio files, just what do they call it? Voice memos. So I started recording voice memos and I was saving them on a Dropbox file folder and somebody on the team. [00:30:26] And when I say team there's three.  [00:30:28] Jonathan: Yeah.  [00:30:28] Carl: Somebody on the team pound. And then they're like, what are you? Do you mind if I, why don't we start a podcast? And I was like no, I don't want to, no, I can't all sorts of imposter syndrome. They're like Okay. [00:30:37] What if I just put them on SoundCloud? And we embed the player someplace. [00:30:42] And it was like, oh Yeah. [00:30:43] fine. And then the times ran across them and they were like, can we run them every once in a while? So they ran it around as well, but then they stopped. And so it was just us posting these things up and I'd get notes, emails from people saying, I love your podcast. And I'd be like, I don't have a podcast. [00:30:57] And they would say, I don't know what you call it, but would it, could you put it on iTunes so I can listen to it in the car? I'm like, all right. it. And but remember it was just part of my process. That's why I think everybody could do this. It's awesome. Cleanse work, show your work. So I just started recording these every day and sometimes I do six a day and sometimes I take days off. [00:31:22] Still have the six, like I've, I haven't missed a day for a very long time, except Sundays I take Sundays off in terms of publishing. And then the people that I was having a conversation with the folks at super cast and super cast is a paid subscriber based podcast system, which is amazing. You can go check it out. [00:31:38] And they were like, wait, you're doing this anyway. And so I decided I didn't care if anybody listens. And Seth says that this is the story I tell myself, at least I'm not sure it's true, but I try to tell myself I don't care if anybody would listened to it,  [00:31:49] I'm doing it anyway. It's the idea generation. [00:31:52] Seth says, it's the metacognition, right? It's thinking about your thinking and it's the exercise of that muscle, because like you said, you have hundreds of them sitting in there. Like I did too. Like I, people are like, when are you gonna run out ideas? And never as long as I keep exercising the muscle,  [00:32:06] Jonathan: right.  [00:32:06] Carl: so I'm doing It anyway. [00:32:08] So yeah, somebody was like what if you just made it a paid podcast? So I had this little items I want to do a little experiment. What if I told no one about it for awhile? I just put it up and all we did, so we didn't lean on my list. We didn't lean on the TA. Anybody else? Like we just, all we did was we posted about it on Twitter. We take little snippets, audio grams, post them on Twitter and Instagram. What if we did that? And I thought if I did that for a year and I made it $10 a month, would it, would I be happy or sad at the end of this? It was like, dude, there's no doubt. If I had no audience and I started doing that every day and I put it on Instagram and Twitter, that's all I did every day. [00:32:49] I took a snippet or I took the highlight. I wrote the highlight on Instagram and Twitter. I said, if you like this, you'd love my daily podcast. It's 10 bucks. Go here, sign up. If you did that everyday for a year, I would be willing to bet money that you would be happy. You did.  [00:33:06] Jonathan: Such a good way to put it  [00:33:07] Carl: Like it's I don't know how happy. I don't know why, but I guarantee you'd be happy.  [00:33:12] Jonathan: Here's the flip side of that because I agree with you, but let's just let the devil come in and advocate. So that's a lot of time to invest in something and I want to pay off Carl. I want it to pay off. I want my tea. I could use that. I could bill $200 for that hour or two every day. So I'm losing, whatever, 365 minus Sunday's times, at least a hundred. [00:33:37] Carl: Yeah, I don't buy it. So here's what I don't buy it. I see the point totally. And I think  [00:33:41] Jonathan: It's opportunity cost at least. [00:33:42] Carl: Yeah, I think it's a very good conversation. So number one, it doesn't take me an hour. It takes me about 15 minutes. So we got that. So I should describe it. Yeah. It's a daily podcast. [00:33:50] I was like, oh, I don't want to start a podcast. I don't wanna have guests. That's so much work. So we have I have another concept that I love called turn the flaw into the feature.  [00:33:58] So it started with the Sharpie, Right. [00:34:00] Like I downloaded that, believe me, I did, I downloaded the illustrator and tried to figure out how to use it and couldn't figure out how to use it. [00:34:05] So I was like, I'll just, okay, crap. I'll just have to use a Sharpie and cardstock and a Fujitsu, snap scanner. I did that. And a couple of years later, I hired a designer and I said, Hey, take this and turn it into a beautifully designed product. I put it out and everybody was like, why I love the Sharpie. So the flaw became the feature. [00:34:23] So in this case, behavioral operators, I was like, oh no podcasts have guests and they're long and they're thoughtful. I didn't have time for any of that. And I didn't want to do it. And I wasn't very good. So I was like, okay but I want to do one okay. What's the fly is, it's just me talking. So it's me talking between three and 12 minutes and I have no problem with it being three minutes. [00:34:43] In fact, I work really hard to make it three minutes. So it's me talking between three and 12. And now I've asked anybody want me to have guests do no, in fact, I just had somebody yesterday, send me a message saying your podcast fits perfectly into my time while I'm getting, like making my coffee. And I love it because I don't have to set aside a bunch of times. So the flaw has become a feature. So reasonable one, it doesn't take that much time. So if I was saying that to myself, I really want to do this, but it takes too much time. I would say. How could I do it in a way that didn't take much time? [00:35:18] Number two? I don't know what the value would be. So remember the value extraction. I'm always thinking value creation and value extraction. Value extraction doesn't have to be money value extraction could be thinking about my thinking. Seth claims you'd write his daily blog if nobody read it.  [00:35:34] Jonathan: I would do. I would, I'm terrified of stuffing my daily blog. I would never stop it because my brain would dry up. Like it's where all my ideas. So I've been thinking about this a lot lately and ideas. I don't make my ideas, pop into my head and have created the conditions. That cause a certain kind of idea to pop into my head. [00:35:59] So it's like these events are happening to me, but if I took away the conditions, the events would stop happening to me, even though they're happening in my head. They're like outside events. It's if I moved to, I don't know Afghanistan, or if I live in Providence, Rhode Island, different events are gonna happen to me and it's going to come. [00:36:18] Different actions. I'm going to have to make different decisions because outside events are, you can, are predictably different in those two places. And if I stopped doing my daily list, that'd be like moving my brain to a place where it would stop having these things happen to it. It's hard. I haven't figured out how to describe this very well but taking, yeah, go ahead. [00:36:40] Carl: are those things? Are those things creating value in other areas of your life?  [00:36:44] Jonathan: oh, a hundred percent. [00:36:46] Carl: Yeah, so that's that to me is the most interesting part, right? Wait, I don't want to do this thing cause it's gonna take an hour and I could have built a hundred dollars. Or 200 or 500, whatever the number is. [00:36:55] And that would be like saying, the New York times didn't pay me very well. If at all, how could I possibly calculate what it was worth to me?  [00:37:06] Jonathan: Yes. So there's the leap of faith and I've made that leap and it and there's a solid ground on the other side of the chasm. So the thing for the listener who doubts this yeah. I have to, yes, there is. I can give maybe a lead, even more specific question. It's really a question is why are you doing it in the first place? [00:37:27] So if you want to do it to make a million dollars, then don't do it. But if you want to do it because you want to do it, it seems like a fun way to spend your day instead of doing actual work or not. Even your whole day is spent 15 minutes. Then go ahead. It's like the, when I'm coaching someone and they're like, but how is this going to pay off? [00:37:47] And I'm like, I don't know, but I'm sure it's, like you said at the beginning, I'm sure if you don't do it, you're going to be stuck right. Where you are right now in two years, in five years in 10 years. [00:37:55] Carl: Yeah.  [00:37:56] That inability to draw a linear line between creation and capture. Is I think a real hangup for most of us. And I have gotten so comfortable with the idea because we live, we go deep down this hole, but if we live in a complex adaptive system and in complex adaptive systems, you can't draw linear straight lines between creation and capture. [00:38:17] You have to be comfortable. The idea that it's going to be a messy, everybody will tell you that. That's why you see so many of those little hand drawn things that look like balls of yard, right? You have a hockey stick and that's like the myth hockey stick up into the right. [00:38:30] It's the myth. And then you have the ball of yarn is the reality. Like I had no clue that this was going to happen. My entire career is a giant ball of yarn. I have no clue what's going to happen now. And I've now gotten to the point where that if I'm not in that condition, I think I just think of it as an irreducible uncertainty, right? [00:38:53] If I'm not living in uncertainty with extended breaks, Right. [00:38:56] Like time to rest and recover because uncertainty is, can be a little taxing, but if I'm not living in uncertainty, then I'm doing something wrong. So I love sess. Like it may not work. So I agree. Just go and see everybody. [00:39:11] I think everybody, who's honest about a creative career says this same thing,  [00:39:17] Jonathan: The argument you mean. [00:39:18] Carl: Yeah. Everybody who has a creative career, that's worked  [00:39:21] Jonathan: Oh, yeah, [00:39:22] Carl: and there, and if they're artists that, I just mean that by like self-aware of it, like it's not necessarily dishonest. I'm just.  [00:39:28] Jonathan: sure.  [00:39:29] Carl: They'll say I don't, I didn't know. [00:39:31] Like I, I had a plan, but mostly it's mostly it's this thing that you could not do. And we've all felt it. And most of us bury it, but if you're feeling it, like all I'm suggesting is damn, I call it dancing with dragons, like dance with a little bit.  [00:39:45] Jonathan: Yeah. Let it out. [00:39:46] Carl: Yeah. And find a forum. And now it's, I don't care if it's just to your neighborhood coffee shop or if it's on Twitter, like whatever, find a forum, let it out, play in public because I promise you if you do it consistently for a year, you won't be sad. [00:39:59] You did it. I don't know why you'll be happy, but I know you will be sad.  [00:40:03] Jonathan: Yeah. I hundred percent agree with that. I've just, I've got a lot of engineering mindset folks who. Who feels like they can predict the future in many ways. And when there's decreased amount of certain, about like building stuff software and so forth. So it's I know if I do this, then it's going to do that. [00:40:17] So it's tough to say to them, it's okay, but you gotta trust. You gotta let go and not know exactly how it's gonna play out. But you're right. If you show up for you. And you're doing something that's meaningful you in some way that you want to do, not just because you think there's a big payout at the end, because you want to do it. [00:40:35] You're not going to be sad that you did it. You're not, so it's so good. Okay. Is there more to talk about with the podcast, the daily podcast? Or could we jump over? If so then let's definitely do that. I'm also curious about the mailing list and we we, I guess we already did talk about selling the sketches. [00:40:53] I have a number of illustrators on the list and it's and they're struggling. It's like, how do I, how could I possibly, how can I sure it was in the bowl doing illustration without going on Upwork and just being told what to do by horrible client. [00:41:09] Carl: Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know, but let me wrap up the real Brady. I would just say the reason I like that as a topic for this audience is because everybody could do it. If you just took your process, And decided to do your work publicly. How did you pick that pen? Which app do you use? I know that's a little tactical, but it's I tried, like just so many of us are convinced we don't have anything to say and I just would beg you to believe me, like that's classic imposter syndrome thinking. [00:41:36] Yeah. Because it's become easier. Second nature for you. Both of those in air quotes, it's become easier. Second nature for you. You think it's easier. Second nature for everyone else. And if it's easy and second nature for everyone else, it must not be valuable because it's common. It turns out it's not, none of those things are true. [00:41:54] You've just forgotten. Like I always in my audience, I always tell him, like you forgotten that most people in the world don't know what standard deviation means. Megan, you throw it around, like it's like a normal term. So that's w B area, the podcast, everybody could just start doing that and you look, it doesn't have to be a paid podcast just anyway. [00:42:13] So that was allied wrap that up the illustration thing. I don't know. I have I have a unique tailwind because these are it's purpose art. But there's a lot of it going on, I see really good friend of mine that does he does. He does marketing cartoons, the Marketoonist Tom fish, board marketing. [00:42:29] Marketoonist like he does marketing opportunities.  [00:42:32] Jonathan: Huh?  [00:42:33] Carl: Illustrations around. So I think that maybe it's just look, somebody came up, asked me if they could have one on the wall. I said, sure. And they paid me for it. And then we started now we sell digital downloads for a hundred dollars a piece. [00:42:48] You get the high res file and the forever do whatever you want. Licensed is what we call it. And now who's going to pay a hundred dollars. Like the people who pay the a hundred dollars for these are people who typically it's not, I have a few sketches that people hang on their walls in their house. [00:43:04] Like one, maybe I'm the only one. My wife would allow it, our house. But the rest are like in the office. They're they serve a purpose.  [00:43:12] Jonathan: Right. [00:43:13] Carl: I don't know outside of that, except that I've watched some people do. And it's always the same. The formula is always the same. It's like play in traffic, do a lot of it. [00:43:22] And then find interesting ways. There's so many interesting illustrators Right. [00:43:26] now on Instagram getting paid for all the standard ways, like a notebook, a print, a t-shirt and then. Digital rights to it. I've followed. I have a collection of those people. Cause I just love because they're permissionless, right? [00:43:41] Like nobody there's no gallery owner. There's no, like they're direct to the people in Kevin Kelly's standard thousand true fans approach. So that's all I really got on that. I don't really know how to be helpful there. [00:43:54] Jonathan: I think that was pretty helpful. And again, it's it's like a bunch of things that we've said, I think all would contribute into observations that might work for the illustrators in the audience. It's, there's not a million.  [00:44:08] Carl: Yeah.  [00:44:08] Jonathan: it's, there's just not, you don't have to worry as much about all of that stuff that you might be worrying about. [00:44:12] And I just, I do love the working in public or playing in traffic and paying attention to what's meaningful to people, but there's, there is also the thing of like I started doing a Sunday comic and I love it. It's super fun. Is anything going to happen from it? Not, no, I don't think so. [00:44:31] It's just another way to communicate the ideas that I read about it. And it breaks up the, cause I do even Sundays. Seven days a week, I'm putting stuff out. So it breaks it up for me. And it's a different way to communicate hard ideas in a funny way. So I dunno maybe something will happen, but it's just fun. [00:44:52] Carl: as I'm listening to Jonathan, I'm thinking like I've actually had this conversation probably a hundred times with people. So I do like here's, what I would do is I would find one person that would buy something. Going from zero to one is, I don't know, 60, 70, 80% of the way.  [00:45:08] Jonathan: Yeah.  [00:45:08] Carl: And it, because it's all the fears, they're all the tactical places to hide, but what is it? [00:45:13] So I don't care what it is. Like I just worked with somebody here locally that loves to draw zombie sort of drawings, which I'm just not into it. I have no interest in, but I love this person because they're way into it. Like I'm thinking agnostic. I just am super stoked when you have a thing. And his thing is he draws these zombie things. I'm like, what are, these would be super cool is a skateboard deck.  [00:45:34] Go would do, would you do me a favor? Just go by one blank screen, draw one and put it up for sale for 50 bucks and just see Hey, made this thing. I hope you like it. Classic stuff. [00:45:48] Like I do that in public and S and if you don't have it, anybody in public listening, do you send an email to 10 people?  [00:45:57] Jonathan: Yeah.  [00:45:57] Carl: I made this thing. Okay. How about stickers? I made a pack of five stickers. People seem to find my my sketches, a little humorous and light-hearted and it makes me feel good. [00:46:05] So I made a packet of five stickers. They're $12. Like we could okay. Make a mug, do a t-shirt do it. Like we could riff all day. Hang on what the thing is, but the what matters is the zero to one. Can you get somebody to buy it? Can you get one person?  [00:46:20] Jonathan: Yeah, I'm chuckling because of the terror of doing that first skateboard. I just it's just so classic. [00:46:27] Carl: Sure. And he hasn't done it yet. And I'm literally I actually went out and bought this kid he's well, he's 20 he's 24. He's an amazing, like one of the best artists I've ever seen, but no one knows it.  [00:46:38] And I actually went out and bought his domain, his name as a domain was available. So I bought it and I told him, you either start putting stuff up on this. [00:46:47] We're 60 days from now, I'm going to start putting stuff up drawn with my left hand in your name. He's and only because I'm trying to force the issue cause I care about him. But Yeah. it's super scary and I think that's why we all go try to find a million places to hide no cell one thing. [00:47:06] Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:47:07] Carl: one thing there's nothing left to hide.  [00:47:09] Jonathan: Yep, totally. And there's so many people in my audience who just sold their time. They've never really sold anything. They're just renting themselves out or they have a job without a boss or benefits and they've never priced anything. They've never put a price for something. On a thing and said, this is 50 bucks period, and yeah. [00:47:30] Carl: Can I riff on that for just a  [00:47:31] Jonathan: yeah.  [00:47:32] Carl: I think there's a reason that's so scary and it's it please. I'm like trying to be massive. I'll actually probably get emotional about it because you, excuse me. When you create something like that, you are literally putting yourself up for judgment, Right. You're taking it's. I think It's the most intimate. I have spent my life studying risk and risk-taking I back country ski and I'm involved with lots of venture capitalists and private. like, I know a lot about risk. I cannot think of a more intimate form of risks. Then, what we're talking about here is because you're literally saying, and I always think of this. [00:48:08] When I hear Seth say this, say here, I made this, I hope you like it. I think of holding something in my hands and extending my arms to somebody else and saying here, Jonathan, I made this. And then the words I hope. You like it. And because, there are going to be plenty of people who don't and they are going to have no problem in an anonymous way being vocal about it, and you're going to hear it. [00:48:33] And you're like, so I think, I don't think there's any more intimate form of risk. So that is art. That's what you're scared of.  [00:48:42] Jonathan: Yup.  [00:48:42] Carl: And on the other side of that fear is like the most intense, wonderful satisfaction of putting something into the world. And so balancing that I just think is so beautiful. [00:48:56] Like I just it's like that, that, that rift just now, like that's at the heart of the work I want to do more of is like, how do we get more people to say. I made this I hope you like it to the world because we need that. We, I, as a quote, unquote, consumer need that book. I need that print. I need that. [00:49:20] T-shirt because it shows to me there's still people making things they care about. And if that's the only world I want to live in.  [00:49:27] Jonathan: Yeah, wow. I don't think we can top that. [00:49:29] Carl: Yeah. Super fun.  [00:49:31] Jonathan: Carl. Thanks so much for coming on is sharing your observations and experience and expertise. Where should folks go to find out more about what you're up to? [00:49:40] Carl: Probably the easiest is behavior app.com. And and then, if you're interested in seeing the sort of broadcast stuff on Twitter, it's at behavior and Instagram app behavior,  [00:49:49] Jonathan: Amazing. Wow. Thanks again.  [00:49:51] Carl: Jonathan, my pleasure. That was really good.  [00:49:53] Jonathan: All right folks, that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark and I hope you join me again next time for ditching hourly. Bye.

Joining Mark this week are:Erik PetersonTeria HarrisTate LitchfieldMike ZainoListen in as they go around the table and share their biggest takeaways from the recent Land Geek Bootcamp. From networking and enjoying the VIP room to interactive sessions in the regular room, it's safe to say that this year's live Bootcamp was one for the books. Tune in to hear more!TIP OF THE WEEKMark: My tip is the book I love, Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game! He talks about business, business values, culture, and why it is important. It's really a phenomenal book, especially if you're building your virtual assistant team.Want To Listen More?Did you enjoy this episode? If you did, check out one of our exciting roundtable episodes where we discuss why you need to go to the Land Geek Bootcamp.Are you ready to learn more about land investing? Just click HERE to schedule a call.Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want, and with whomever you want?

Today we talk more about Holler Dollars, the Flood,  and where to move in Tennessee if you are immigrating from another state. These are all questions and comments from listeners. Mozzarella Webinar THIS THURSDAY Oct 15-17 - Back to the Land Festival: https://www.backtothelandfestival.com/ Tales from the Prepper Pantry Tomato Sauce Round of animal feed Venison Shoulder Roast to soup Working on ordering in Green Chilies for Green Chili Day (There will be Green Chili Ice cream!) (Sign up link) Operation Independence Hip Camp Car Fund Main topic of the Show: Listener Feedback Show Holler Dollars From Sue: I had two questions from an academic point of view. 1) in your example about Jenni and the garlic. That is technical not a barter situation. What you described is essentially creating another currency based in garlic. Because you've set a value for garlic that you'll honor no mater what, even if you have elastic demand for garlic. For instance, say she plants an entire lawn of garlic and brings it to the pantry for 10,000 credits. Under the system you described, her garlic is as good as currency even if you can't use her garlic. My second question is more of a philosophical one. If the framework of the holler is not paying the labor the equivalent of at least minimum wage in the Tennessee economy, then is it really independence? Why do you need to come up with a food value for the labor that is nor based on the real market value of the labor absent the neighbors? I guess what I am asking is, how much would it cost to run the holler if your neighbors did not exist. Isn't that the value exactly? My worry is that there are legal cases where work contracts made in sub economies where labor is valued at less than minimum wage can be considered servitude under the law and litigious. I'm not saying either of the above will happen of course. Just playing out your scenarios from a purely argumentative point of view absent the fact that these are your friends and neighbors Leos: Incorporated Approach Where to Move in Tennessee? I found you via Jack Spirko. My family and I are soon to be refugees from California. We are in pursuit of a new location to settle and build community. Tennessee is on our list to explore suitability for us. Can you recommend any areas in Tennessee worth looking into? Thanks so much, Dan What Coffee Maker Should I Buy? From Gary Hey, Nicole! I hear you on multiple shows: Unloose, LFTN, TSP. I can't recall which show it was on (probably not Unloose), but you offered advice on coffee makers I'm having trouble finding that episode, and I'm in hopes you can point me in the right direction (or just send me the makes and models :-). Love listening to you in all those places. Keep up the great work! Link to TSP Episode on coffee makers Make it a great week! Song: The Flood by Sauce GUYS! Don't forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce.  Community Mewe Group: https://mewe.com/join/lftn Telegram Group: https://t.me/LFTNGroup Odysee: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@livingfree:b Advisory Board The Booze Whisperer The Tactical Redneck Chef Brett Samantha the Savings Ninja Resources Membership Sign Up Holler Roast Coffee  

"Isn't going on a podcast already the most self-absorbed thing you can do?"- My fiancé Comedian Megan Gailey (HBO, The Tonight Show) joins me to discuss her favorite topic: herself! While navigating the labyrinth of this topic we also talk about spending your first year of marriage shoved together thanks to the pandemic, aggro-feminimity (a term she teaches me), and how volunteering in a hospice will completely change your perspective about how we treat our elders. Megan is skyrocketing toward being an elite comedian. With a ton of her credits already under her belt, make sure you jump on board this plane before it takes off for good and never looks back. Follow Megan: @bettermegangailey) www.megangailey.com

Episode 777 | Adriel Sanchez and Bill Maier answer caller questions. Show Notes CoreChristianity.com Questions in this Episode 1. I have been reading in Romans 12 about spiritual gifts. Paul seems to say that our spiritual gifts are given in accordance with the amount of faith we have. What does that look like in our lives? 2. Does God favor men over women? Seems to me that God created Eve as an afterthought in the creation process and that he created a woman to give to Adam like she was just some kind of object to help alleviate Adam's boredom. 3. What does it mean to pick up our cross and follow after God? 4. I am wondering what your thoughts are about Christian heavy hardcore and metal music. Psalm 150 says, “everything that has breath, praise the Lord.” Some bands call this aggressive-worship, but some people think it's the devil's music because of all the screaming, etc. What do you think? 5. In Mark 4:11-12, Jesus says His speaking in parables is so those “outside” may not understand, otherwise they would turn and be forgiven? Why does He say this? Isn't God's will that none should perish? 6. Did Jesus go to hell after the crucifixion? And were the people in Abraham's bosom, were they people who were getting a second chance at salvation? 7. Was Jesus Michael the archangel and was he made after Satan? I have a friend who is suggesting this but I can't find it anywhere in the Bible. Today's Offer 6 WAYS TO HELP YOUR KIDS AS THEY GO BACK TO SCHOOL Request our latest special offers here or call 1-833-THE-CORE (833-843-2673) to request them by phone. Want to partner with us in our work here at Core Christianity? Consider becoming a member of the Inner Core. Resources 8 THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CHURCH

FORNICRATE 4 MIMI:               What's up, Hot Wing Nation. Mimi here! Hey, you know what I want to talk about—besides the greatest birds in America? ForniCrate.                     I know, I know, I can hear what you're saying, “Isn't that just another one of those dumb subscription boxes like HomeCannibal or […]

In this episode, I share some of the most helpful themes that came up in the 4-week overdrinking workshop I recently led. Questions like: Isn't alcohol different from other habits because it is a drug that involves physical addiction? (If we were trying to manage experience, this would probably make a big difference. But we're […] The post EP162: Ending the Drinking Habit appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

Tony and Kevin (and Scott!) begin listing all eleven things that are wrong but halt on Carson Daly, about whom more than eleven things are wrong, so the whole question became overwhelming. They then went on to list what was wrong with the two segments on this episode: “A Man Called Bamby, part 3—the extended version”—in which Mr. Bamby and Michael the bartender/novelist peer through the window into the bar as Mafia Goons Aiden and Largo consult their boss's mother, Mrs. Giuliani, about how to protect themselves from her son's wrath, and Bamby's voice-over persona tries to flirt with Michael's voice-over persona while lying flat in a near coma, talking to himself. Next, in “Mr. Skids Saves the School Bus Children,” the unreliable, drunken old lout, Mr. Skids, takes a couple of surly teenagers on a bus trip to the Art Museum, but he doesn't even wake up enough to fall asleep at the wheel. Is this a job once again for 9-year-old Billy? Isn't it always?

Excerpt of the 24 Aug 1935 Shell Chateau starring Al Jolson. Enjoy these segments of the program, featuring Al Jolson introducing the show, and singing two of the songs included in the show, "I Feel A Song Coming On," and "Isn't It A Lovely Day." More of Jolson's singing is in the full presentation of this radio show on the Jolson website, as always. The complete broadcast, along with other Jolson radio shows, is available at the Official Al Jolson Website at www.jolson.org.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7 NLT If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. What does loving others on God's terms have to do with setting and attaining our personal goals? … Everything. … People, quote-unquote, win and succeed every day and reach amazing goals, but they harm and hurt people along the way. Is a win actually a win if we have made someone else lose? What good can come of a goal met if someone has been pushed aside in the race? The one who loves like Christ, as Paul defines in this passage, will win. That person will attain their goals because others have been placed first, people have seen Christ, and God has been loved more than self. Listen to verses 4-7 again from the Message Bible: Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always “me first,” Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. Let love set your goals. Let love drive your goals. Let love be your goal. After all, that is the true goal Christ came, died, and rose again to allow us to gain and attain. Let's agree in prayer: “Lord Jesus, help me to be patient and kind, to not be jealous or boastful or proud or rude, to not demand my own way, to not be irritable, and to keep no record of wrongs, to not rejoice about injustice, but rejoice whenever the truth wins out. May my love for You, in You, and from You, never give up, never lose faith, always stay hopeful, and endure through every circumstance. As above, so below.”

Today we are talking about building your own sell yourself to yourself commercial! Listening to or reading this every day can be extremely powerful with solidfying your identity of how you would like to see yourself, improve your focus, etc. They have truly been SO helpful for me.Here's the three things to keep in mind when you're writing yours:1. Purpose: – Ask yourself: Who am I and what do I want to focus on during this time I listen to this commercial – This will help you change how you see yourself. Right now I have been reminding myself in mine that I am a strong, kind person and that I am NOT a puppet. This is a good reminder for me that I need to go after my dreams and not expect things to just fall into place without some effort on my part.2. Wording: Remember - This is written specifically for you and that is SO powerful. What do you want to keep in mind? This can be a powerful training mechanism. I would recommend including warnings, ideas, and reminders that you think would be helpful for you. Also, using words that resonate with you is key. There are plenty of motivational messages that do not resonate with you. Why is that? Well, part of that is because it was not written JUST FOR YOU like this was. Isn't that powerful? I think it's amazing. :DAs far as the length goes, I would keep it to around a few paragraphs at the most. This would put it at around 1:30 if you were to record it and around that time to read it. That is plenty of time to take a little time-out to give yourself a time-out to refresh your perspective, refocus, etc.3. Delivery: How often will you listen to or "check in" with this? The energy that you have behind your voice and writing is important when it comes to what you feel when you revisit it. Think of it like having a nice, hot cup of hot chocolate that is ready at a moment's notice. You need to make sure that you "bring that heat" for that initial recording. :) The way I see this is that you record this in a bright moment to help you when you are in dark moments. When you are in the depths of the sea you will have a light to keep you afloat (like Ether 2:25 in the Book of Mormon talks about).By no means do you need to listen to yours every morning like I try to do, but get into some consistent routine. This will help your brain get used to it and help you become one with the commercial so it is more of a personal, rewarding/finding kind of experience to repeat and learn from.Feel free to let me know how it goes. I am always happy to talk about this kind of stuff. :)Personal Instagram: @dreamchaserdallinPodcast Instagram: @yieldtodaywithdallinpodcastRelated Episodes:#128: "Sell Yourself to Yourself Commercials Part 1 - Why, Examples, and Benefits" https://www.buzzsprout.com/543310/episodes/8992507 Resources: The Magic of Thinking BIG Book - https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Thinking-Big-David-Schwartz/dp/0671646788https://www.actionablebooks.com/en-ca/summaries/the-magic-of-thinking-big/My 2021 S.Y.T.Y.C.'s: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cqLtSEDW4OVCRyzwudFyLfCv9OfV86xCl1B-V6A7e5g/edit?usp=sharingTime Stamps: 0:51 – Purpose  2:52 – Wording  6:25 – Delivery

Sometimes we think we're going one way, and then all of a sudden you have to pivot and go a new way. Isn't that what life is all about?

Apple is Adding Tech to Look At Your Photos For Child Abuse This is a tough one. Apple has decided that it will build into the next release of the iPhone and iPad operating systems, which monitors for child porn. [Automated transcript] Apple has now explained that they will be looking for child abuse images in specific ones. And I just am so uncomfortable talking about this, but the whole idea behind it is something we need to discuss. Apple said they're going to start scanning for these images and confirmed the plan. In fact, when people said, are you sure you're going to be doing that? [00:00:44] Here's what. IOS 15, which is the next major release of Apple's operating system for I-phones. And for I pad is going to use a tie to something called the national center for missing and exploited children. And the idea behind this is to help stop some of this child abuse. And some people traffic in children; it's just unimaginable. [00:01:14] What happens out there really is some people. It's just such evil. I, I just don't get it. Here's what they're going to be doing. There are ways of taking checksums of pictures and videos so that if there is a minor change in something that might occur because it was copied, it does not mess it up. [00:01:40] It still can give the valid checksum and. Iman, that technology is detailed, but basically, just think of it as a checksum. So if you have a credit card number, there is a checksum digit on that bank accounts have checked some digits. If you mess it up a little bit, okay, it's an invalid checksum, so that number's obviously wrong in this case. [00:02:04] What we're talking about is a checksum of a pitcher or oven. And these various child safety organizations have pictures of children who are abused or who are being abused, who are being exploited. And they have these checksums, which are also called hashes. So that is now going to be stored on your iOS device. [00:02:34] And yes, it's going to take some space on the device. I don't think it's going to take an enormous amount of space, considering how much space is on most of our iPhones and iPads that are out there. Apple gave this detection system is called CSam, an absolute thorough technical summary. It is available online, and I've got a to this article in this week's newsletter, but they released this just this month, August of 2021. [00:03:07] And they're saying that they're using a threshold, that is. Quote set to provide an extremely high level of accuracy and ensures the less than one in 1 trillion chance per year of incorrectly flagging a given account. So now I can say with some certainty in having had a basic look through some of the CSM detection documentation that they're probably right about that, that the odds are excellent. [00:03:40] Small that someone that might have a picture of their kids in a bathtub, the odds are almost so close to zero. It is zero that it will be flagged as some sort of child abuse because it's not looking at the content of the picture. It's not saying that this picture maybe a picture of child exploitation or a video of her child being exploited. [00:04:02] If it has not been seen before by the national center for missing exploited. It will not be flagged. So I don't want you guys to get worried that a picture at the beach of your little boy running around and just boxer trunks, but a lot of skin showing is going to get flagged. It's not going to happen. [00:04:25] However, a pitcher that is known to this national center for missing and exploited children is, in fact, going to be flagged, and your account will be flagged. Now it's hard to say precisely what they're going to do. I haven't seen anything about it, of the apples. Only say. That that they're going to deploy software. [00:04:51] That will analyze images in the messages application for a new system that will warn children and their parents from receiving or sending sexually explicit photos. So that's different. And that is where again, a child, you put parental settings on their iPhone. If they're taking these. Pictures, selfies, et cetera. [00:05:14] Girls sending it to a boyfriend, sending it to his girlfriend, whatever it might be. The parents will be warned, as are the children looking for things that might be of sexual content. Okay. It really is. It's really concerning. Now let's move on to the part that I'm concerned about. I think everyone can agree that both of those features are something good that will ultimately be very good, but here's a quote. [00:05:41] Apple is replacing its industry-standard end-to-end encrypted messaging system with an infrastructure for surveillance and censorship. Now, I should say this guy who's co-director for the center for democracy and technology security and surveillance product project. He's Greg, no, him, no Chaim, is saying this. He said Apple should abandon these changes and restore its users, faith in the security and integrity of apple devices and services. [00:06:15] And this is from an article over a tech. So this is now where we're getting. Because what are they doing? How far are they going? Are they going to break the end encryption in something like I messages? I don't think they are going to break it there. So they're not setting up, necessarily, an infrastructure for surveillance and censorship. But, still, Apple has been called on, as has every other manufacturer of the software. [00:06:45] I remember during the Clinton administration, this whole thing with eclipse. The federal government was going to require anyone who had any sort of security to use this chip developed by the federal government. And it turns out, of course, the NSA had a huge backdoor in it, and it was a real problem. [00:07:04] Look at Jupiter. That was another encryption chip, and it was being used by Saddam Hussein and his family to communicate. And it turns out, yeah, there's a back door there too. This was a British project and chip that was being used. So with apple, having resisted pressure. To break into phones by the US government. [00:07:28] But some of these other governments worldwide that have been very nasty have been spying on their citizens who torture people who don't do what apple are not happy, what the government wants them to do been trying to pressure Apple into revealing this. So now I have to say, I have been very disappointed in all of these major companies, including Apple. When it comes to China, they're just drooling at the opportunity to be there. [00:07:57] Apple does sell stuff there. All of these companies do. Yeah, Google moves their artificial intelligence lab to China, which just, I cannot believe they would do something like that. AI machine learning, those or technologies that will give the United States a real leg up technology-wise to our competitors worldwide. [00:08:18] They move to China, but they have complied with this great firewall of China thing where the Chinese people are being censored. They're being monitored. What's going to happen now because they've had pressure from these governments worldwide to install back doors in the encryption systems. [00:08:39] And apple said, no, we can't do that because that's going to undermine the security for all users, which is absolutely true. For example, if there is a door with a lock, eventually, that lock will get picked. And in this case, if there's a key, if there's a backdoor of some sort, the bad guys are going to fight. So now Apple has been praised by security experts for saying, Hey, listen, we don't want to undermine security for everybody, but this plan to do ploy, some software that uses the capabilities of your iPhone to scan. [00:09:16] Your pictures, your photos, videos that you're sharing with other people and sharing selected results with the authorities. Apple is really close to coming across that line to going across it. Apple is dangerously close to acting as a tool for government surveillance. And that's what John Hopkins university cryptography professor Matthew Greene said. [00:09:47] This is really a key ingredient to adding surveillance to encrypted messages. This is again, according to our professor over John Hopkins, green professor green, he's saying that would be a key in Greece and then adding surveillance, encrypted messaging, the ability to add scanning systems like this to end encrypted messaging systems has been a major ask by law enforcement, the world. [00:10:15] So they have it for detecting stuff about missing and exploited children. That's totally wonderful. And I'm okay with that. No problem. But that now means that Apple's platform can add other types of scanning. All right. We'll see what ends up happening next, which is warning children and their parents about sexually explicit photos is also a bit of a problem here. [00:10:47] Apples. Yeah, on this is messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo is sexually explicit. The feature is designed so that Apple does not get access to the messages it's saying. If it detects it, they're going to blur the photo. The child will be warned, presented with helpful resources, and reassured it is okay if they do not want to view them. [00:11:17] And the system will let parents get a message. If children view a flagged photo, similar protections are available for child attempts to send sexually explicit images. Interesting. Isn't it. Interesting world. So I think what they're doing now is, okay, they're really close to that line, going over. [00:11:39] It could mean the loss of lives in many countries that totally abuse their citizens or subjects, depending on how they look at them. Hey, make sure you check me out online. Craig Peterson.com.

The "Great Resignation" in Big Tech - Better Jobs, More Money There seems to be a worker shortage. And many businesses are finding that, frankly, people involved in technology are resigning; they're calling it a great resignation of workers. We have a lot of problems as business people, filling jobs nowadays. [Automated transcript] [00:00:20] And one of the things I've thought about doing is maybe even starting a course for people who want to figure out if this whole cybersecurity thing is right for them. I think that might make a lot of sense for some people. And there are some of you listeners. I know, because I've talked to you who have gone out and. [00:00:40] Gotten into, is that a word who have changed careers into the cybersecurity realm? So does it make sense for you? I don't know. Do you think it would make sense for me to offer something? A cybersecurity course to give you guys the basics and help you understand it and see if it might be good for you. [00:01:00] Only, you know that, and if you're interested, make sure you drop me a note just to me, M E Craig peterson.com, and let me know what you think. Still, the big tech is suffering from this great resignation of workers and workers in the technology field right now. So it's a good time to leave. Now, this isn't the same as many workers who, for instance, were in the restaurant business for many years, were in food service. [00:01:31] You make money. Maybe you don't make money. Who knows those. And, of course, those jobs pretty much disappeared during the lockup. Big tech, it's different from big tech. Most of these people, most of us, frankly, retained our jobs. We were still able to work, still able to do the stuff we'd always been doing. Still, we were doing it from home, and many employees looked at the situation and said, I am not going to leave. [00:02:05] Because I don't know if I'll be able to get a new job. Does that make sense to you? So we have a bit of pent-up demand in the tech field of people who maybe didn't like the boss, didn't really like what they were doing but kept the job because at least it was a job. It paid some bills. And from the bottom-line standpoint, it didn't make sense to. [00:02:29] Now we see something else going on; people are leaving like crazy Facebook here. There's a quote in an article in MarketWatch. Lost this guy named Raymond Andres. Who's now the chief technology officer at the air table. Now I've used air table before I was a client of theirs for a while. It's really something. [00:02:52] If you need to do some essential project management or have a process for doing something. That needs to be tracked, and maybe something handed over to another person when it meets a particular stage. Check it out, air table.com online. Still, he left Facebook, and he said there's been a burst of activity of people leaving. [00:03:15] If anything. The lockdown delayed decisions. And that's exactly what I was saying. I've been saying that for a very long time, but there's another factor involved when it comes to technology. And that is the funding, which is just amazing. You might remember a couple of years ago we had this. Brakes on IPO's on initial public offerings. [00:03:40] These tech companies just were not going to go public at all. And because of that, many angel investors and venture capitalists said, forget about it. I'm not going to go ahead and make any sort of investment. So that is when many of these small companies just failed, and of course, incomes the lockdown, and even more of them died. [00:04:03] But now. But the investors are a spinner spending a lot of money so far this year. There have been 84 initial public offerings in the US alone. Isn't that amazing? 50 plus billion dollars in IPO's. Now that's up from about 38 billion. Last year. So there's obviously money in the IPO world. So that gets the venture capitalists interested. [00:04:36] So VC money is also at record highs. This year's track is to be the best year yet. According to PitchBook through June. This year 2021, $150 billion has been raised among about 7,000 deals. Now that's ahead of last year's record, a total of $164 billion for the year. So we're looking at some significant money going in. [00:05:10] And we have many people leaving from Google and Facebook and Amazon and Apple, maybe your company as well, who are saying, wow there's some real opportunity now I could get in on the ground floor. The VC money is a record high, so I can take at least some salary enough to make it heck I haven't had to pay rent for a year. [00:05:33] So I can afford to do that, to try and. Something with some of my friends, and that's precisely what they're doing. Robert half, a company I've had on my show before Robert half international, did a survey. They found that about one-third of the almost 3000 information technology professionals. [00:05:57] They surveyed said they planned to look for a new job in the next few months. They're also saying Robert half is that while employers posted more than 365,000 job openings in June alone, they're not getting filled; that's, by the way, the highest monthly. In about since September 2019, according to CompTIA, which is an industry trade group. [00:06:25] I'm a member of that. My company is a member of comp Tia as well. So there are a lot of things happening that are really driving people to startups. And there's a lot of advantages to that. So here's another guy. This is an engineering manager who left Facebook last year. And he quickly returned. [00:06:46] He said working at a startup, you have much more connection with employees, and things moved faster. So tiger graph, by the way, also hired ex-Googlers. And they're increasing the workforce this year too, about 300 from 90. So think about what they're doing. So that's not, yeah, technically, it's probably still a startup, but it's 300 employees. [00:07:10] That's not us. That is a lot of employees, and they've got a lot of money behind them. Here's another guy. And she's saying, I thought I would be a lifer at Amazon. But this was a tremendous opportunity. I can have a far more significant impact and more influence on the company's trajectory, which quite frankly was harder at Amazon. [00:07:33] And we're seeing more and more of particularly the younger employees looking at that. Her name's Anna fag fabric. Sorry about the names butchering here, but she's now at freshly. Officer. So many people are saying in this survey from Robert half international that having a chance to impact a smaller company was a significant reason for leaving. [00:08:01] And that's after years of massive growth at big tech companies. So again, IBM in the 1970s. They were the ruler; they were the king. It was impossible. If you work for IBM, man, they're going to be around forever. And, of course, they still are. And they have excellent products, especially the Z series mainframe, but they're not the company they were. [00:08:24] And I think we now are seeing. The next step in these big high-tech, but is no longer being the companies that they were innovation is going to leave with these employees, and they're going to really be hurt and hurt quite a bit. All right. So coming up, we're going to talk, of course, more about some of the more critical tech stuff you've got to. If you haven't already get on my email list, I'll send you a couple of special reports that we. [00:08:54] As well as, of course, every week, one or two newsletters, not sales documents, newsletters, Craig peterson.com.

EP272 - Q2 Ecom Data, Earnings, and Amazon News US Dept of Commerce Data In July retail sales were up 13.3% from previous July (down 1.1% from June). Year to Date sales were up 21.1% vs. 2020. Apparel is in the biggest recovery, up 63%. At peak of pandemic, restaurants lost nearly $51B/mo of sales to grocery stores. In July the gap has closed to $4B in sales. Restaurants sales for the past two months are higher than two years ago. Retail sales for all of Q2 2021 grew 28.2% from Q2 2020, e-commerce in Q2 grew 9% during the same period (due to the very high covid driven e-com last year). E-Com was 13.3% of retail sales for Q2. Q2 Retail Earnings Reports Walmart – US Comp Store sales up 5.2%, E-Commerce up 6% Target – US Comp Store sales up 8.9%, E-Commerce up 10% Home Depot– US Comp Store sales up 3.4%, E-Commerce flat Lowes– US Comp Store sales down 2.2%, E-Commerce up 7% Stores selling essential goods are comping against a very large 2020 basis in Q2. Most stores saw increased foot traffic driving store growth. Concerns about Covid resurgence and supply chain disruptions loom for Q3 and Q4. Amazon News NYT wrote that people now spend more at Amazon than Walmart – Jason says the number are debatable and that's besides the point. WSJ wrote Amazon Plans to Open Large Retail Locations Akin to Department Stores. We discuss Episode 272 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday August 20, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show, this is episode 272 being recorded on Thursday august 19 20 21 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott sure listeners Jason we had a little bit of a break in there you had vacation and I got to focus on car washing and it's good to be back together. Jason: [0:53] It is I had a great time but I did miss you. Scot: [0:57] Oh I did see that while you are on vacation your company won a big Walmart deal so I think they would like for you to go on vacation more often. Jason: [1:09] Yes that is the general consensus the like I have great empathy for anyone in these spaces where you have these like huge drawn-out pitches but this was like. More than five month pitch and. Not shockingly it took the the client a little longer to pick a winner then they they promise so I you were kind of. On pins and needles for a long time and then I went on vacation and we got a good result so I think all my my co-workers my the hundred of my co-workers that were involved in this pitch with me like are all eager for me to work even less than I already do. Scot: [1:48] Well I heard it was because Doug mcmillon listens to the podcast. Jason: [1:54] Yeah amongst others so Chef to all of our listeners from Walmart thank you so much for putting your trust in me and all the mean things that get said about you on the podcast all come from Scott please remember that. Scot: [2:08] Absolutely not I love Homer I probably spend more time in a Walmart than you. Jason: [2:13] That is debatable but I do know that you are a legitimate Walmart Shopper and and you have an awesome use case for Walmart. Scot: [2:25] Which one are you referring to. Jason: [2:26] I feel like Walmart is your go-to for hard to find Star Wars collectible toys. Scot: [2:34] That is true I have spent many a midnight at a Walmart waiting for the pegs the toys to be hanging from the pegs and it's just the best time to be at Walmart is the best people people watching that 12:00 to 3:00 a.m. period. Jason: [2:47] Yeah they're there are some interesting shifts that go on at a Walmart store especially the 24-hour ones. Scot: [2:57] And then I'm super jealous because on your vacation you've got to go two galaxies Edge before me and that is for the non Star Wars fan folks in the audience that is the new Star Wars attraction at both the California and Florida Disney parks. Jason: [3:16] Exactly and it was awesome we went to California Disneyland as many listeners will know I'm a dad in the body of a grandad so I have a, almost six year old son so we took him to Disneyland for the first time and generally, my my Advanced age is a disadvantage but in this one case it was an advantage because I had a much better excuse than you do to take time off from work and go to Galaxy's Edge. Scot: [3:43] Awesome well I'm bummed was it fun how would you rate it. Jason: [3:48] I highly recommend it I mean yes the whole trip was fun Galaxy's Edge lived up to my expectations and there's. Kind of too wet in the old days we would have called e-ticket rides in Galaxy's Edge. Smugglers Run on the Millennium Falcon and this much more extravagant ride called rise of the resistance and they were both awesome I would say rise of the resistance is the best ride I've ever been at an amusement park so so, totally cool totally worth it and you for sure have to go and I'll go with you when you're ready. Scot: [4:22] All right strong words were gone we'll take we'll take all the listeners will take your mom and you know some of the other folks with us. Jason: [4:31] I'm sure a lot of listeners would love to go the one that wouldn't would be my mom because my six-year-old dragged her on every roller coaster at Disneyland and he had a blast but she was like white-knuckled the entire time. Scot: [4:43] Okay so she's already checked the Box. Jason: [4:46] Exactly exactly you're not a big enough draw only the grandson is a big enough traffic to your bed. Scot: [4:53] Well I'm glad you had an awesome vacation and the last time we recorded a podcast was one of my favorite days which is Amazon earnings and today is one of your favorite days of the year this is when the US Department of Commerce who sidebar has been on the podcast they drop a big load of data what did you discover in the data. Jason: [5:15] Yeah so just side note I just to be jealous of my my month Disneyland. Got got invited to keep working with my my favorite client for for the foreseeable future and I got quarterly e-commerce data from the US Department of Commerce so that's what I call winning. But yeah let's jump into it so. We're recording this on a Thursday on Tuesday the US Department of Commerce released their monthly retail sales data so super brief. Primer recap they published data every month. For the previous month and that's called the advanced retail monthly data it's kind of a quick look at the the month it was 15 days prior. And then they publish more comprehensive set of data for two months back which would be like 45 days prior. So so that's the data that we got on Tuesday and of course we're all pretty interested in what July looked like because there was this whole kind of. [6:19] Covid recovery and people rushing back to stores in the pivot from online back to stores and then there you know had been a lot of like negative news and rebounds because of Delta and so you know it's kind of interesting to see. See how the the data swung and so in general, if you were someone that looked at month-over-month retail sales it was a Debbie Downer month so Joel I was about one percent lower than June, but as I have counseled many times on this show that's not a very important number to look at what we really want to look at is July 20 21 against July. 20/20 so so year prior data and retail sales for for this July were 13.3% higher, then last July so ordinarily that would. Um cause for a party that's a huge growth like ordinarily we see like kind of for to unit three to four percent growth year over year in total retail sales so 13% is huge. But of course. Last July was still pretty impacted by by covid so we have this weird basis and as we'll talk about later that's why most retailers are talking about year over two years at this point but so first data point. [7:44] July was a good month it was up 13 percent from the previous July. [7:51] We I also like to look at year-to-date sales so I add up all the months and January through July of this year is up 21% versus January through July of last year, which is also very healthy and again half of that period would have been pre covid versus last year so that's that's encouraging and then, there isn't a. [8:14] In awesome measurement of e-commerce in the monthly data especially the advanced monthly data but there is this thing called non store sales which is kind of the closest proxy we have to e-commerce and that's where things got interesting it was about 5.9 percent up from last year so way slower growth. Then you would normally expect for e-commerce so you normally expect retail the girl about four percent in e-commerce to grow 12 to 15% so so retail growing 13% is unusually fast and and Ecommerce growing 6% is unusually slow. But again if you think about the fact that last July a lot less people are going to stores and instead spending online. It kind of It kind of fits so I would from my perspective, there was nothing there was nothing like super anomalous in this data it's kind of where we would have expected it to be and then I like to dive into the categories and see if there's anything important in the categories and again the categories are kind of where you would expect, by far the category that's most up this year versus last year on a monthly basis and a year-to-date basis is a Peril so the apparel industry is like. [9:32] Sixty-three percent better this year than it was last year because they were just absolutely creamed by by covid last year restaurants and bars or up thirty percent over last year but then there's some some categories that actually did well in covid but are still pretty significantly up so things like furniture and home, Sporting Goods those and consumer electronics are all up significantly. Even though they generally got a covid boost so. That that is pretty interesting and then the thing that I most look at specifically related to covid is. In covid everyone bought all their food from grocery stores instead of restaurant so restaurants got creamed grocery stores did really well and so we've been watching to see if that. [10:26] Goes back to pre covid levels and it's getting awfully close so you know in. March of last year seventy percent of the calories got sold by grocery stores 30% by restaurants and that's a that's a that meant 60 billion dollars a month in sales that used to go to restaurants were going to grocery store so that's huge. And in July that Gap it became kind of, 52 versus forty eight percent so only a 4% Delta and pre covid-19 t-50 so that's that's about four and a half or five billion dollars a month, that grocery store still winning that they didn't win before covid but not surprisingly. Like people were eager to go back to restaurants and they are going back to restaurants and that's one of several indications we've seen that while. Digital grocery grew a lot during covid and it's going to keep some of those gains it does not appear to keeping all of those games and we are seeing some backslide and we're seeing that in things like like instacart sales as well. Scot: [11:40] Yeah there's been wasn't there a rumor that instacart was looking to be acquired. Jason: [11:46] Yeah yeah there's a few things out there there is a rumor that instacart was talking to doordash. And then Super interesting this week and I'll put a link to it in the show notes former guest and friend of the show Dan McCarthy who remembers the, the professor at Emory that specializes in in customer lifetime value and cohort analysis he got a big. Set of credit card panel data from Ernst research and he was able to use it to kind of. [12:20] Back into the gmv which in the restaurant business or the grocery business they actually would call govt Gross order value um and he was able to kind of figure out the size and stickiness of doordash and instacart and what he found was, instacart got a bigger covid bump than door – but that door – is much stickier and and has a much higher rate of repeat customers than instacart in fact. About 30% of he found that about 30% of door – Shoppers repeat and only about 20% of instacart Shoppers repeat and that that difference, is is very meaningful in the financial outcomes for those two companies and he kind of estimated that insta cards govt is probably around twenty three billion dollars on an annualized run rate so he kind of looked at it and said hey instacart does appear to have significant weakness versus door – and and so it kind of lien when the some Credence and some tangible Nest to the. The rumor that you know instacart might be on a covid peak in trying to sell at it's at its high we've also heard just some rumors that they're you know struggling to retain some of their there, customer Sellers and some things like that so so it's going to be an interesting space to follow. Scot: [13:48] Any other surprises from the dinner. Jason: [13:50] Nothing wildly surprising in later in this podcast we're going to talk about earnings and we're going to talk about Home Depot and Lowe's reported and so sort of a preview I would say like. Um the do-it-yourself category was a category that did really well in in covid-19, um and so you you know it's interesting to see like if that sticky if have you know as people are starting to go out more are they are they stopping the investment in their home and or are they reinvesting in their home this year is that a new habit so I've been watching the do-it-yourself space and it had modest growth. From last year so I want to from memory I want to say it was about eighteen percent up from last year and last year was a very. Hi year so that that's interesting and I won't spoil it but it's going to be that number will be even more interesting when we talk about how Lowe's and Home Depot. Scot: [14:53] Let's jump into it. Jason: [14:54] Okay so the next thing I wanted to talk about is so I mentioned that this monthly data doesn't have awesome e-commerce data in it. The US Department of Commerce publishes much better e-commerce data but they only publish a quarterly and that's why this week is so fun is because this is one of those quarter months when they publish both the monthly data and the quarterly data so we just today got the cue to e-commerce data from the US Department of Commerce and the top line here is Q to 2021 Drew about 28% from Q2 2020 and e-commerce. [15:38] I'm sorry tale so that's all of retail which like that's way higher growth than you normally see and eCommerce growth was 9% for that period so lower. Then you would normally expect to see right and again that kind of follows the trend here. E-commerce was artificially High last year and so you know even though it's growing it's growing against a bigger base and so the growth this year does not look as big. So a lot of people are you know trying to talk about. Growth on a two-year stack but that 9% growth becomes super interesting when you think back to Amazon you know Amazon got beat up because their rate of growth slowed a lot they were down to 22 percent but 22% still means you're more than growing more than twice as fast as the industry average. And as we're going to see you later like much faster than most of their competitors so so that that is pretty interesting and then a ton of news then writes like e-commerce is down. Because nine percent is lower than we would usually expect but I just want to remind people. That down doesn't mean what you think it means like like we sold more stuff online in Q2 of this year than we did Q2 of last year and Q2 of last year was amazing. It's just the rate of growth is slowing down. Scot: [17:02] This is where I always get confused because the headlines that came across my CNBC trackers were retail sales were down 1.1 percent and worse than expected. Jason: [17:14] Yeah so that was. Scot: [17:15] How do I reconcile that with 28%. Jason: [17:18] Yeah well so the 1% is monthly and it was that mean that was down month over month so that's June to July so, July 2 July monthly going back the retail sales were actually up by 13 percent which is much more healthy and Q2. Versus last Q2 retail sales are up what did I just say 20 that's the. Scot: [17:48] But okay but then the month-on-month is interesting because why do you you know if we're still coming out of covid you would expect it to be kind of climbing up even if we were heading into the fall or. Jason: [18:00] What you have to remember about consumer spending patterns and Retail is there it's all heavily driven by these purchased occasions and there's a bunch of purchase occasions that are tied to date and so the spending patterns you'd expect to see in July are different than the spending patterns you'd expect to see in June so there's there's more people spending on summer activities in June than July and there's more people starting to spend on back to school in July then in June and so there are all these factors that make it really hard to. Compare month-over-month in West you you do some like heavy seasonal adjustment gymnastics and even that tends to not work because, some of these these purchase occasion shift from month to month from year to year so sorry it's complicated. Scot: [18:51] Got it dads and grads will scrap it up two dads and grads being in June. Jason: [18:57] Yeah but so I mean my biggest takeaway is like as a retail I guarantee you every retail team I work with care a lot more about there. Their sales bases from last year than they do their sales bases from last month. Now the Miss versus analysts expectations that's a separate story and some you know obviously is you know like investors tend to get squeamish when, when the recharge missed the analyst expectations but it's super hard to predict analyst it's a tough job for the analyst right now given all the uncertainty around health and covid and we simultaneously have states where they're throwing parades because covid over and people are opening up and then we have states where their reinstituting Mass mandates so it's. It's like high degree of uncertainty at the. [19:51] Um so in that climate some poor companies had to report their earnings and face investors and so this was to me a fun week for earnings calls, Walmart reported their their Q2 earnings Target reported their Q2 earnings Lowe's and Home Depot reported their Q2 earnings and then TJ Maxx reported their cue turning so it's a pretty fun week in retail earnings um and. Again I tend to focus more on the operational metrics and less on the investor metrics so you know there were some beets and some misses in there that impacted stock performance and I don't pay that much attention to those. [20:33] As a reminder because Amazon reported a couple months ago and we did a whole show a couple weeks ago we did a whole show about it, Amazon is predominantly e-commerce and Amazon's Q2 was up 22 percent from Q2 of last year so so, put that data point in your head and then you go okay home Walmart and Target how did you guys do Target was up eight point nine percent. Which was a beet and Walmart was up 5.2% which I want to say was a meat if I'm if I'm remembering right so so both those retailers did pretty well they sold a ton of stuff last year during covid and they sold significantly more this year. Um with less of a covid impact and less of an economic stimulus impact and so that that. Was pretty encouraging both retailers throughout cautions about. Their performance the rest of this year and so both retailers I think had some negative movement in their stock based on there, um on there like forward-looking expectations but not based on their performance so so again. [21:53] Amazon twenty two percent Target at eight nine percent will call it and Walmart at 5%. Um that's their total sales e-commerce was a much more interesting story targets e-commerce grew ten percent. [22:09] And Walmart's e-commerce grew three percent and those numbers are tiny by historical standards right so Amazon is all e-commerce so their 20% growth means their e-commerce grew 22% so the so Amazon's e-commerce grew more than twice as fast as Target and more than four times as fast or about four times as fast as Walmart so that that makes Amazon's performance look even more impressive if you think about Target like last year. [22:41] They grew a hundred and ninety-five percent so, so again like really sucky to comp against that that huge huge Peak and last year Walmart grew a hundred percent so they're comping against a huge Peak so the, the story of Q 2 for all these retailers is going to be, you know how do they hold on in their total retail sales can they kind of beat the industry average and then. You know where do they fall on e-commerce and candidly like. Target Walmart and Amazon kind of don't surprise me what surprised me was Lowe's and Home Depot so remember I told you earlier that, the do-it-yourself category is crony US Department of Commerce is performing reasonably well it's like up like eighteen percent so. Home Depot with retail sales for the quarter were only up 3.4 percent and lows sales were down 2.2%. [23:52] So Kind of hard to reconcile that in my head like there are many other do-it-yourself retailers besides Lowe's and Home Depot. I almost think this is like highlighting a problem in the US Department of Commerce categorization because it just, I can't put together a model where Home Depot only grew by 3 / 3.4% where lows went backwards 2.2% and yet the whole do-it-yourself category went forward, yeah but that being said Home Depot's e-commerce and super cheesy how they report this like they Home Depot totally tried to bury this but Home Depot's e-commerce growth was flat, they did not grow from last quarter from this quarter last year again off a big basis they grew a hundred percent last year and then was grew seven percent. Which you know again that that's actually better growth than Walmart and Lowe's also had a big basis they had a hundred and thirty five percent so on an e-commerce standpoint you'd say like glows actually kind of out performed in e-commerce but then the bad news for Lowe's is they way underperformed and in terms of a brick-and-mortar thing which is of course much more meaningful to them. [25:11] Um so those were kind of the monthly earnings so. That I you know I think that is a trend the other thing that came out in these earnings calls is both Walmart and Target talked about how last year retail traffic was way down but ticket size was way up people came to the store to last and they bought more in each, trip almost all the retail growth we saw this quarter was from increased trip frequency, so it was almost all tied to more people walking into Targets in Walmart like there's probably pent-up demand go shopping from people that were we're doing more of their spending online so this is kind of, all of these data points are converging to say that people are are had kind of online fatigue and we're happy to go back to stores and we're seeing that in the industry data we're seeing that in the earnings data and you know it's going to be really interesting to look at Q 3 because. It's not clear that that trend is going to continue based on some of the the health news and. State restrictions that are getting imposed and certainly based on some of the international news. Scot: [26:22] Yet it was this time last year when we kind of coined the ship again, I wonder if we're teeing up for you even kind of a tougher holiday this this may be kind of teased out of the date a little bit like maybe maybe Lowe's was down because of supply chain issues of you know they just couldn't stop the stores I don't know that that's one way to explain kind of why one retailer would be doing bad but the category did it better, and yeah so you know the supply chains are all jammed up there's just all the way from Manufacturing to hear stories of you can't get room on boats and certainly planes and then when it gets here you can't get it off the dock because there's not enough trucks and then you know I'm living the nightmare scenario where you can't buy vehicles and I have a business built on being buying Vehicles so you know there's you know. The whole system's and need to add capacity for delivering more and there's literally no vehicles to be had due to this tube shortage so it's gonna be really interesting next four months to see how this plays out. Jason: [27:35] Yeah no a hundred percent agree I'm super concerned about holiday the inventory levels like wouldn't really show up in the, the kind of reported earnings like where it would come up in is the transcript of the investor calls and I'll confess I didn't listen live to I did listen to Walmart and Target I didn't listen live to Home Depot or Lowe's I kind of skimmed the transcript so I can't I don't I did not see, then calling out supply chain as a reason for this quarter's performance it definitely was called out as a risk factor for there. Their future performance and what was a little interesting is Walmart and Target vote both went to Great Lengths to express that they felt like they were going to be in a good inventory position for holiday and I say that because none of us are expecting them to be in a great inventory position for holiday so they're they're trying to. Push back that narrative and it like obviously those are two of the biggest retailers that have a lot of Leverage over the supply chain so it's like, you know if anyone can buy inventory it's going to be them and they're saying they've invested early and they think they've got the inventory they need for Holiday locked up. Your points are all, super valid like every step in the supply chain is more expensive and more fragile right now and the one that you didn't mention is. [29:05] It's also just harder globally to get stuff made and you know if you look at the global, like flow of covid there's really only one economy economy that completely recovered and got a hundred percent of their retail foot traffic back for example and that was China and guess what China is, like in the throes of a Delta pandemic and foot traffic to retail as way down like they've had a back slide and that has impacted factory production and productivity and you know you mentioned one tangible, way that's playing out as these chip shortages but like there's a bunch of them and then we also have this Global labor shortage, and a place where it's been particularly hard to hire people is in warehouses and factories and so I here in the United States we've got like a bunch of Labor shortages we've got a bunch of labor dispute so I want to say Mondelez has like three big factories under strike so Santa may not be able to get Oreos this Christmas like there's a lot of those things playing out right now so I would say, that Walmart and Target may have locked up enough inventory but there's. [30:21] Severe uncertainty about the holiday and I think everything we talked about for ship again in last year's going to be worse this year. FedEx and UPS have both announced their surcharges for holiday and they've already informed most of their customers of what there, how they quotas will be so that's going to for sure come into play the US Post Office which historically has not had surcharges is adding surcharges this year so lots of stuff going down and again, I'll be shocked of Amazon has as much capacity as they want but you know Amazon unique amongst all these retailers owns a lot of their own capacity and in fact. They're huge Amazon air Hub in Cincinnati just went online so. Yeah yeah and even when you can get stuff it's just more expensive like I want to say that like average price of a container with six thousand dollars last year and it's 22 thousand dollars right now so. Scot: [31:19] Effort Amazon Seller say 40,000 I don't know. Jason: [31:23] I think yeah it depends on what you know but yeah and so I again I've seen like. Retailers by part of a porch in Canada I want to say, um Canadian Tire like literally bought a shipping Port you know we've seen lots of retailers including Home Depot by their own container Freighters like, we're seeing all kinds of crazy reaches up into the supply chain to try to protect capacity so it's it's definitely going to be interesting. Scot: [31:54] We will keep listeners posted well this is the place to go to where we're called it last year early and we're going to keep tracking it and calling it early this year. Yeah and then since we're doing a news episode it wouldn't be a Jason and Scot show without a little. Jason: [32:15] News new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [32:23] That's right Amazon news Jason I saw this one got your dander up a little bit on on the the Twitter there was a New York Times article where they talked about how Amazon is now officially a hundred percent without any argument bigger than Walmart and an article what they do is they use a third-party source for GM v data which I actually appreciate this because for a very long time I was trying to help educate people that that you can't just look at Amazon Revenue numbers that their impact is bigger because there's this kind of Iceberg neath the surface of gmv that matters because if someone buys something from a 3rd party seller for $100 other retailers lost $100 they didn't lose the around $10 commission that Amazon shows us Revenue so I thought this was pretty interesting and when you you gross up now the number they used was pretty aggressive I don't know who this this Source was I don't have a subscription but it seemed a little aggressive and the lines are definitely going to cross I thought maybe they had pulled it into your to what we're I know this kind of got you a little agitated what what do you think about this. Jason: [33:39] Yeah yeah so it's super interesting it's a great article it's it prompted a lot of conversation I am mildly annoyed so first of all the I have seen as a result of this this article got written in the New York Times and it's a very accurate article. But it then got echoed by hundreds of other Publications and it got. Progressively worse so a I thought that would warm your heart is a ton of these articles go to Great Lengths to explain why revenue is in a valid way to compare these retailers and what gmv is and it's like. They all have discovered this year what you've been been teaching all of us for four. Probably 10 years now at this point we're old but so that was kind of fun so the New York Times article the headline first of all was people now spend more at Amazon than at. [34:33] And then the subtitle is the biggest e-commerce company outside of China has unseated the biggest brick-and-mortar seller. And so what this article is saying is, they're using a gmv estimate from a data company that sells data to investors and so it's a Wall Street analyst firm called factset and facts that said, Walmart's trailing 12-month gmv, was 500 Global GMB was five hundred sixty six billion dollars and Amazons 12-month gmv was six hundred and ten billion dollars so for the first time Amazon's Global gmv is higher than Walmart's and so Amazon has finally passed. Past Walmart and you know we've hit this big milestone that everyone should be talking about right like so that was their article and nothing in its wrong I would argue that the fact that data tends to be on the aggressive side but, maybe aggressive for both and, facts that is not estimating gmv for Walmart just you know like they're using revenue for Walmart and they're using GM V for Amazon and as you know, Walmart now has a meaningful Marketplace why got you know I don't think they've disclosed what the. [35:59] The ratio of 1 Peter 3 p is but Walmart has said they're going to sell 75 billion dollars online this year so. That you know their gmv is likely significantly larger than their revenue but the biggest reason this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison is these two companies don't sell in the same countries right so Amazon's and many more countries than Walmart so you know their incontinence that that Walmart isn't in and, the there India is a quite large Market both of these companies are significant players in India, the Amazon includes India sales in their gym in the fact that Jim V there are the facts that GMB includes am India for Amazon Walmart revenue does not include any India sales because Walmart owns a minority majority interest in Flipkart. [36:53] Um but that's that's really the way Amazon does business in India as well like if you're doing Apples to Apples I would argue that it's probably true that Walmart is still slightly bigger than Amazon of you if you put India back into these numbers and and do a gmv estimate for Walmart instead but I don't, even really care about that what's annoying is everyone that read the New York Times article then wrote a new article saying Amazon's the biggest retailer in the world and that's, wildly untrue because. Ali Baba's gmv is bigger is like 1.3 trillion right so its bigger than Walmart plus Amazon's estimate in these articles and that's why the New York Times had to write the most awkward headline ever that's like, outside of China even and you go well why are they saying outside of China when both Walmart and Amazon are competing in China well it's because they don't want to talk about the fact that they're both way smaller than Ali Baba. [37:51] And so so again like I just I kind of don't think this is a very big milestone I think Amazon spins more time and effort trying to sell more stuff in the US than anywhere else and Walmart spends more time and effort trying to sell in the US than anywhere else it's the whole market for both countries for companies it's highly likely that Amazon is going to pass Walmart for sales in the US in the near future I don't think they have yet and when they do that will be a big milestone that will be like when Walmart passed Sears Versailles in like 1990 but to me that's the big milestone that this, this kind of facts that data thing that New York Times is trying to spin and then you know everyone else misreported like to me it's. Not that interesting and so I'm kind of annoyed how much Buzz it's gotten but I just blew it and gave it a bunch more buzz on the podcast. Scot: [38:44] Okay another one Amazon this was kind of the big big topic today there was a leak or someone figured out that Amazon is going to open a department store. How do you feel about Amazon departments course I feel like they're going to have put Target out of business in six months. Jason: [39:09] I just sold all my Target stock it so it's over. I'm kidding yeah so I mean this is interesting news the. I would say it's very vague news at this point like I don't think it surprises anyone that Amazon is interested in and is probably moving forward with trying a bunch of different retail floor mats I do think Amazon realizes that. That brick-and-mortar is important I don't think they think of themselves as purely an online, retail and they've been investing a bunch of brick and mortar and a category they want to do better and is a parallel and they have been making a lot of progress in a parallel so it's not shocking that they would be trying to experiment with some apparel formats so so this news is kind of exciting I'd be eager to see what they what stores they do open and I'm aisle you know quickly go visit them when they do to see what see what they're trying but. From this article it's hard to know exactly what they're talking about so the the leases that the. The reporter found in this is an exclusive article from Wall Street Journal. The wheezes they found were for thirty thousand-square-foot stores so the first thing is again everyone saying like Amazon's getting into the department store business. There are almost no 30,000 square foot department stores most department stores are much bigger than 30,000 square feet. [40:33] Whatever it's worth the the article says that apparel is one of the categories that's likely in this new store from Anonymous sources that talk to them. So does that mean it's primarily an apparel store so that would make it like a Kohl's or T.J.Maxx eyes store and that could be interesting and meaningful or does it mean it's a general merchandise store that has some apparel and also has a full grocery store because there's a lot of 20,000 25,000 square foot grocery stores so 30,000 square feet. Isn't that much different than the the bigger store formats we've already seen Amazon starting to experiment with so I guess I'm just saying. Any brick-and-mortar news from Amazon is interesting I'll be super eager to follow it but there was nothing, to me and this announcement that goes man my mind's blown this is a major Game Changer or some some new industry that wasn't worried about Amazon last week should be super worried about them this week like I think all those Industries should have already been worried. Scot: [41:35] Yeah and a lot of people I saw coming and we're saying they're abandoning the bookstore this means the 4-star store doesn't work they're getting rid of just je wat technology the Amazon goes towards and I think people just kind of, Amazon. At the heart of their DNA is to experiment with stuff doesn't just because they're experimenting with something doesn't mean the other things failed they can run they have the resources to run 300 experiments retail store experiment simultaneously if they want to and that you can't really read that kind of stuff into them I think that's really jumping the gun. Jason: [42:12] No I would a hundred percent agree with that and again it's built right into their leadership principles like small autonomous teams right so it's not like it's one big entity and they can only do one thing at a time. They've got you know a ton of entities that are doing a ton of things at a time so I I certainly. Scot: [42:28] Purposely don't talk to each other because it was a slow not yeah. Jason: [42:31] Yeah absolutely. So excited to see them doing new things I do think when they open new store formats they tend to be more Innovative than than traditional retailers that are opening new format so I hope they open them and I will be there when they do. Scot: [42:48] And then while we were on the podcast Tesla announced they have a new robot swiped will have to you have to order one of those and then give us a gadget unboxing kind of walkthrough of how that goes. Jason: [43:02] I feel like you are higher on the Tesla waiting list than I am so we may have to leverage your status but I'm all for doing a robot Deep dive at our earliest convenience. Scot: [43:12] Yeah humanoid robots kind of freaked me out so I think I'll lose my status to send it to your hostel we'll see if it a skynet's you or not. Jason: [43:20] Yeah isn't is there another Terminator movie coming out I think there is. Scot: [43:23] There's always another Terminator movie coming out sometime. Jason: [43:26] Fair enough awesome we'll listen we set a goal for ourselves to do a shorter concise show and I said I think we can knock this out in 30 minutes so I totally blew that this feels like about 45 minutes but hopefully it was valuable to listeners if it was we sure would appreciate, five star review on iTunes if you have any questions or we got anything wrong in the show you want to talk about we would encourage you to hit us up on Twitter or Facebook. Scot: [43:57] Yeah I like to think we gave everyone 50% more for their money today so you're welcome. Jason: [44:03] Yeah and you and I earned fifty percent less what's 50% of zero awesome well until next time happy commercing!

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co! Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.Speaker 2 (00:42):What's going on. Solarpreneurs we're here and this very special episode because we're alive at, I guess it's not door to door Fest, but, um, Danny Pessy Taylor McCarthy's knock star event here live in key west Florida, and we have got someone super awesome on the show with us today. We got my man, Alex. Thanks for coming on AlexSpeaker 3 (01:03):Daily. Thanks for having me. I'm super, super grateful to jump on. The first podcast I've ever done is exciting. Something new.Speaker 2 (01:08):I know. And it's well deserved too. You're crushing it. We've had conversations and I'm just super impressed with what Alex has been able to do and Alex Smith, right? Yeah. Okay.Speaker 3 (01:19):Got to make sure that the quarterback yeah. Most injuriesSpeaker 2 (01:22):Though. Okay. Okay. He played for Utah. It's my favorite football team. So it's a good name. He's also from SanSpeaker 3 (01:28):Diego. Yeah. Alex would like the quarterback to every one of my clients, literally every time. Cause they was like, like that's not a real name. I'm like, trust me. I told my parents that made it a little too generic. That's what I got. There you go.Speaker 2 (01:40):Well, this guy, he's the quarterback of solar. You can call him that because he is every time you throw in a solar deal, it's getting installed up there. So he's doing some pretty awesome stuff. So Alex, do you want to start off telling us kind of your background in a door-to-door, how you first got in the industry into solar and all that.Speaker 3 (01:57):So I went to FSU fun school, good times. Good memories met a lot of good people, developed a lot of bad habits. A lot of friends that kind of bring me in the wrong direction. Um, but it was a good time. It was part of growing and, you know, experience. I'm happy I had. So when I graduated from FSU or was about to graduate, I didn't know what I was going to do at all. All my friends already accepted the roles like 50, 60, $70,000 a year jobs. And I thought they were crushing it because I didn't go to any career fairs. I didn't show up to anything. And I was like, man, and then the interviews I did get, I didn't show up because the people that were recruiting me, I was like, I don't want to be like those people. Like I don't, I wasn't trying to say like an arrogant way or think about it go away.Speaker 3 (02:30):But they were trying to bring me in. And I was just like, I don't think they are very happy with where they're at. So I never went to any of the interviews. And so luckily someone I became friends with because he worked at a bar, he just hit me up and told me about the opportunity. And he's was in California, said he made $10,000 his first month. And I was like, that's a heck of a lot better than 50, 60, 70 K a year. And then he dropped the ball. It's going to be door to door. And he just done. And I was like, man, I was a triple major. I did finance professional sales and marketing. So definitely didn't expect to go door to door. Um, but at the end of the day, I was willing to take a bet on myself for that one. And I didn't have anything else lined up.Speaker 3 (03:07):So I was pretty excited to get away from everyone I knew and just get a chance to kind of recreate myself rather than just being this frat star or whatever else you want to call me at FSU. I wanted to like, all right, let me peek in a different bubble. Like I did really well in this bubble. It's a small vicinity, you know, 2.3 miles or whatever. And Tallahassee wanted to bring that to a bigger area. Right. And like my career path. And so I moved out to California and started, started solar door to door. Wow. And when I, the funny thing getting out there too, I don't come from money. Um, so I had a bar of four grand for my grandma to get out there that was enough to ship the car. And then I had to pay the security deposit, which in Walnut Creek, for those who know it's very expensive.Speaker 3 (03:46):So my security deposit and the car, I basically had no money when I got there. So it was freezing out. I didn't have money to buy a jacket or anything. And so when I got out there, it was do or die a hundred percent. Commission-based getting paid a lot less than what we're getting paid now. So I'm always grateful thinking back to what it was before and just put my head down, deleted all my social media. Didn't talk to any girls. Didn't have anyone dragging me in the wrong direction. So it was, I was just hyper-focused and I was sleeping on a pool float, so I didn't have any furniture. So it was an expensive apartment with nothing in it, standing up eating. And then, uh, yeah, so they've got a pool full, you wake up really early. Cause those things deflate, you exceed a certain body weight, you ended up on the ground. So it just wake up. And there's the only thing I eat, slept and breathed every single day. And so that was, that was the kickoff to my career.Speaker 2 (04:31):That's crazy dude. And um, yeah, if you haven't seen, uh, Alex on social media, go give him a fall. We'll drop his info after, but this guy you can't tell if he has a Bulletproof vest on or if it's real life. Cause I mean, he's jacked out of his mind. So if you can imagine this guy, all pure muscle sleeping on a pool float, I think I'm sure it's the plate in pretty quick. SoSpeaker 3 (04:51):2, 3, 2, 3:00 AM start feeling the ground four or five. I got to get up every single day.Speaker 2 (04:58):So were you staying at like someone's house thereSpeaker 3 (05:00):Or whatever? Yeah, I was in an inexpensive apartment, so splitting it with another new guy. And so the total rent was about 3000 a month. I don't know why they put us in this place to start. That's where they told us we should live. I guess the other guys were living there. So it made sense. And then, uh, yeah, so my half is 1500 a month. Uh, but we hadn't, we had literallySpeaker 2 (05:18):Nothing, no furniture in there. There's like we were literallySpeaker 3 (05:21):Standing eating. We had plastic forks. You'd stand either sit on the ground for four. That was a full month. Geez man. Guess what? My first investment wasSpeaker 2 (05:30):A couch cushions, the bed,Speaker 3 (05:34):First thing I spent good money on and I appreciate bed so much because of it.Speaker 2 (05:39):That's crazy, man. I mean, I thought I was bad. I was a similar thing. Um, but I at least had a bed. We had company housing, so I didn't have to pay any rent. I had 50 bucks in my bank account, but I didn't pay any rent out there, but in California. Yeah. So I went out toSpeaker 3 (05:54):Good. They're covering the rent that'sSpeaker 2 (05:57):But I can imagine, I mean, if you're, if you have no other options, just burn the boats. Right. I mean it's like do or die out there. Yeah. You don't get to sell. You're not, um, you're not eaten basically. So do you feel like that was one of the main things that's first helped you out success? Just like, no,Speaker 3 (06:12):That was one of the biggest things for me. That was when I first realized how true it is that like, you have to get outside your comfort zone. Like you have to, I don't know for everyone, you have to go to a different place. But I think for a lot of people, they want to stick around in their hometowns. They want to stay where they're at because it's comfortable. They know people and the idea of getting to where they don't know anyone. And they're just going to be with a bunch of new guys, new, new people. They're not friends with. Yeah. Essentially on their own is usually too much. Most people pull the trigger. But the fact that I did that, I wasn't even scared about it. Cause I was excited more than anything else. And like, just knowing that, Hey, I'm stuck with a 12 month lease because a lot of people will try to say like, all right, we'll get an Airbnb for a month.Speaker 3 (06:49):Like, dude, you're not going to make it. I already know you want to get a HomeAway place where you stay in a hotel. Like, dude, you're going to be out of here within a week. As soon as it gets hard, you like, you can just go. And so coming out there with nothing else, but solar was the best thing, best thing I ever did. So like now it's like, all right, how do I, when I see someone as a really comfortable or a new location or something that, uh, you know, as new it's like, I gotta, I gotta attack it.Speaker 2 (07:11):Yeah. I love that. And um, I think you've probably seen it too, Alex, but like local guys that come in, it's like so hard to get them bought in they're reading. Cause like you're saying they can just go back to mom and pops, Allison just hanging out. They got the financial support. If it doesn't work out, but it's like so hard to get these guys getting results. If they're just still have that like lifeline, they can go back to it anytime. So I think that's a huge secret for anyone that's listening to this. If you are struggling, if you're just working in a local market, I mean, I think gets the point where you just got to switch things up. Maybe go someplace else, go to a new market, burn the boats. But I don't know if you been able to have success with like local guys. Have you S do you have any, I dunno, tips for people who maybe are like staying home, like maybe out of thatSpeaker 3 (07:55):In California, I didn't really have that much success with local guys and my power base people. I would bring people out there was from Florida. So, and that was a hard sell. Yeah. Cause even though it, I could show them my pay stubs. I changed my life. A lot of people weren't willing to move across the country, but those that did, they usually ended up being successful because they had no plan B. Um, so, but now in Orlando we actually have, uh, a couple of decent amount of local guys. And so I'm super impressed by them because I know even for myself, if I was in my hometown, I would have a very difficult time, not falling back into my old habits, not hanging out with the friends that were anchors, right. That were holding me down that wanted me to keep doing their thing.Speaker 3 (08:36):So I, I, I give kudos to guys on our team that are doing, and I think a lot of it is because we, our culture is really strong. So we're meeting every day. Like one of our guys Lewis, for example, he, um, you know, he left his fraternity, like, you know, he, he quit his fraternity and he was just super happy because it felt like he was in a fraternity again, just the same brotherhood, except it's more focused on getting better and making money and, you know, leveling up. So he just turned what he was doing before into something else. But similar premise just now it's focused on growth. And so he's, he's just super happy with it. So the local guys have kind of figured it out, which is awesome. And I think a lot of that comes from, uh, the daily meetings for meeting every single day. So these guys are like, you know, they have to do something different.Speaker 2 (09:13):Yeah, for sure. No. So we'll get to all that for sure. Um, yeah. I want to dive deep into that, but before that, I was curious to know like three in California. How long were you out there then? In total three and a half years. Three and half years. Okay. What, uh, what company was that? Where you go there?Speaker 3 (09:30):I started with sun grid solar. Okay. And then I went over to Coda energy group. Okay. And so that's where I spent all my time between those two companies. Okay.Speaker 2 (09:40):So yeah. Tell me about like when you first started out, was it like instant success? Did you have to like build up into it or what was your experience out? Just getting out there at first.Speaker 3 (09:49):So it would be when I started, like I said, I didn't know. I thought California is always sunny and always 70 degrees. It's not the case in the wintertime. It was pretty darn cold. And so I didn't have a jacket the first night they took us out to our first day in the morning. Um, I want to leave, just took me out to a breakfast Andrews and Betty took me out to breakfast. I ate the food there. I got food poisoning. And so I was going out to the doors, like having to throw up. And I was in fetal position every night when I got back. But I just kept thinking. I was like, no, I can't have this failure. Start this early in my career. Like, that's literally, I was thinking, I was like, no, like this cannot be me my will to survive my will to do something was way higher than like those problems pouring rain, freezing and food poisoning. Yeah. So still knocking through that and then pushing through that and made everything else easy. Like a lot of people complain when it rains is like, dude, I was in a monsoon. I was in the worst monsoon of California for like five, six years. Everyone was saying go. And so pushing through that, I got, yeah. Had some, had some quick success, but it was just cause I was, I was putting a lot out.Speaker 2 (10:45):Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. You're telling me this story the other day when we were talking, um, at least I think that was you about, um, how you're like running. I know this translates like all areas of your life. So Alex, he's not just like this in solar, but you're telling me like, when you would work out, you're drawn. Like what was it when you were doing 75 hard, you're done like 10 miles at night. It's doing 75 and stuff like that. Right.Speaker 3 (11:11):I had David Goggins via because I can't say it was all me. I had a complete, absolute beast in my ear all the time. Yeah. So 75 hard. I think a lot of people already know what it is, but my second workout at nighttime, I just turned it into 10 miles a day and it was fun to see how far you can push up. Cause I'm working out heavy every single morning and then like heavy weights going hard in the gym. And then at nighttime after work, it could be 10:00 PM. I'm running 10 miles. And so I was like, all right, what am I capable of? And half the time I would come back crippled like shin splints beyond belief, Achilles heel feels like it was ripping knee, complete knee issues. I don't even know what those issues are. I would just go into my pool and float and be like, I'm done.Speaker 3 (11:50):And then, so I wouldn't be able to move. I even bought those. Um, he does things like LeBron uses his compression legs. Uh, I don't know exactly what those are, but I got those because I need something. And the craziest thing was like, I kept pushing through all the pain and I like, every time I felt like I was going to break, like I was, I don't even know if I could work tomorrow kind of thing. I was like, this might be a bad idea. And then all of a sudden, there's just one day I think around like day like 25 30 something in that range where you might, my, all my pains went away. My shin splints went away. My Achilles problem went because I felt it. Kelly was like in a snap break. It had this like clicking, feeling like a rubber band. And then my knee was given out, like I had all these like compression things on.Speaker 3 (12:25):I looked like a robot running around and all of a sudden my body just completely adapted to it. And all the pain went away and 10 miles became a breeze. I wasn't winded tired or sore after it, there was like a flip a switch. And that just made me realize what David Goggins found out. Like he found out that if you push yourself really hard, like your body and your mind can figure it out. And so that's like something I've carried that little nugget, that reference point with me through a lot of other things. So even though that was a physical thing, like it, it definitely is a yeah,Speaker 2 (12:52):No, it's so true. And that's something we've talked about with a few guys here at this event is just like, I don't know at first, not going in sore. I mean, a lot of them guys in our team would only go out and knock for hours, but it's like, it came from pest control. We're knocking like 10 hours a day in pest control. Yeah. So I first came out, was guys and solar, we're only doing four I'm like, why are these guys complaining about knocking a lot to do 10Speaker 3 (13:15):Totally different mindset. Yeah.Speaker 2 (13:17):Like I've been in solar five years now. And so yeah. There's times where now I complain about, I'm like one of those guys sometimes where I'm kind of complaining about knocking for hours, but then we get guys coming to our team that got back from alarms. It's like, same thing that like, you guys only knock four or five hours here. And it's like, it's just adapting because we can do so much harder things. Um, if we condition our minds, like we knew we harder things, but guys get complacent. It's so easy to let yourself be like, oh, this is hard. This is, I can't, I can't do more than this. That's like a max effort. But just like the same thing. Once the first guy hit the four minute mile, it's likeSpeaker 3 (13:54):Those a little bit. And do you recall it after that a lot of people from alarms or pest then into your business, have you felt that yeah,Speaker 2 (14:01):Yeah, we do. And like, I'm work, I'm out here with Jason newbie's team now and he's obviously alarm backgrounds. He brought tons of people from alarms.Speaker 3 (14:09):It brings a ton of like lifeblood to the team. Yeah. Just they're exposed to the people that have done it at a high clip. They're like, oh crap. I'm really not working that hard. That is valuable. Having those people like come in, cause they're like, I was doing this for 10 hours a day, unless they revert to the, what you guys are doing. But hopefully they bring in, you know, that leadership there. Yeah.Speaker 2 (14:27):Yeah. So I think it's super important. Just bringing in guys that are from maybe different industries, guys doing different trainees, keeping it fresh. None of that's something you've invested a ton into and we'll talk about, but just bringing in like Taylor McCarthy, trains, your teams dropping a ton of money on just keeping your team motivated, working with other guys and you know, going to events. We see all your guys here. Um, but yeah, huge. Yeah. That's huge. And then I guess last thing I wanted to ask you about California, Alex, what was your biggest struggle starting out as you like, you know, first started hitting doors. What was the biggest thing you struggle with and how did you overcome it? And honestly,Speaker 3 (15:03):The, I, I did a really good job when I started out. So like by deleting all my social media. Okay. Not talking to any girls, like just head down. I didn't think about anything else. There's literally nothing else I thought about. Yeah. So I think I gave myself the best start possible. So there was nothing. I, I felt like I really struggle with the beginning cause I enjoyed it, doing it every single day. Yeah. Like it was, it was a good time and I was working from morning. I literally saw the other guys, they were getting out at our meetings were at 8:00 AM every day. Wow. So you're knocking. So I, other guys, I was waiting, I didn't have my car cause it was getting shipped out. So I was waiting until 10 30, 11 they're dragging their feet. I didn't understand. I'm like, I need to get to the doors.Speaker 3 (15:39):So when my car got shipped out, dude, I was out to the doors. As soon as the meeting was over. I didn't go back to my apartment because the office was right across the street. Just go to the car, go straight out turf. And I was there until it was pitch pitch black. And so, yeah, I think at the beginning, if anyone's new getting into this, but you don't need social media, you haven't gotten to the point where you need to share anything. Probably it's probably not that much stuff for success to share. Yeah. And so, um,Speaker 2 (16:03):Well, so no, that's a super awesome though. I think three's and for your success is just like burning the bridges, just getting rid of everything. Um, I mean, honestly, probably most of the problems that people have can be solved by just like working insane amounts of hours. Would you agree?Speaker 3 (16:18):Yeah. I think that's really, it. One person told me like any problem I had, whether it was customers, cancels, installation, cause all that stuff happens. The solution is at the next door. Like it will literally solve whatever probably have the next door will solve it and thinking anything else is going to do. It won't happen. Like it just won't work.Speaker 2 (16:35):Yeah. Yeah. For sure. How many hours would you say you were hitting then? In the beginning, likeSpeaker 3 (16:40):In the beginning, in the beginning I was there nine 30 till whatever dark was like really dark, like rain, shine, anything. It was the entire time. And that was my big advantage because all the other guys are veterans there. Yeah. I jumped well like way past them for anyone that's new in the industry. Like I don't think any company operates based on a hierarchy or in a structure where it's political, it's all based on production, effort results. And for anyone that's new into the business. I think the biggest thing you can do is separate yourself early because you can either take three months to get incredibly good or you can take three years. A lot of people take the three year out, then they're gone within a year because they don't realize without that early success without really grinding the beginning, it's going to, you're going to be four or five months and you're not producing you're out. You're going to leave because you never went down head first at the beginning.Speaker 2 (17:27):I agree for sure. What about, were there guys where you like the hardest worker at your company starting out or was that kind of like the culture was everyone like doing those amounts of hours and you're just followingSpeaker 3 (17:38):Along. There's only one other, guy's got a manual that was a new guy with me that was working just as hard as me. Um, so that helped having someone else working really hard too. But everyone else is funny. Like within a month all the veterans were asking to go knocking with me and I literally told them, no, I was like, I can't go out knocking with you because I can't my goals. I won't hit my goal if I'm splitting commission with someone. So everything flipped and like, this is weird. Like you guys have been doing this for awhile and you know, they're still cooking lunch and staying out of the apartment and whatever they did, I was just basically doing the opposite. And then they started wherever I would go and turf, they would draw a circle with sales rabbit right next to mine. Cause they thought wherever I was was just like this magical bubble. So everything, everything changed pretty, pretty drastically. They had just started trying to do whatever I was doing and then, uh, try to hop on the train and it seemedSpeaker 2 (18:21):Like, yeah, geez. So you've changed. The culture sounds like and gotten, kinda got their button to gear probably because they were like, dang, gotta keep upSpeaker 3 (18:27):With this guy. Yeah. It exposed a lot of people. A lot of people that are veterans are sliding by to expose them. And so, you know, based on their time and effort they put in, you know, it seemed like they should have been the next person to be a manager in office. But other than the first month I was asking, what's going to take for me to be a manager because I knew I wanted more out of it. And uh, so yeah, I just passed all of them.Speaker 2 (18:49):That's awesome. So what would you say for guys, like maybe the inner company where yeah. It's like people aren't working much and culture. Isn't great. Um, maybe you had times where you've had to, I dunno, like maybe on your team guys, aren't working as hard. Do you have any experiences or ways that you think are good to change that and kind of turn it around and then I'll inspire guys to work more.Speaker 3 (19:09):Yeah. I think the number one is, and this is the cliche lead from the front. That's the easiest one. Yeah. But the thing you can always do. And I think even me, I didn't really want to do it for a while. A lot of companies we'll meet, do correlation once, twice a week, maybe do something zoom. And so for any new guy or anyone that's feeling burnt out those days where you don't have a meeting, you don't get dressed. You don't put on your superhero outfit. Right? Like you don't play the part and you don't act it like you don't do it. So meeting every day has been crucial. So we meet every single day, either at 9:00 AM or 12:00 PM. We do team buildings when we're doing like a sport. So football, basketball, Frisbee, golf, bowling, you name it. We do a sport from 10 to 12 and then Saturdays we're meeting at nine.Speaker 3 (19:47):So we're with each other six days a week, sometimes seven, if we're doing other activities on Sunday. Yeah. And so at the end of the day, anyone that wasn't working when you're seeing the numbers every single day and you have to put up a bagel, you have to put up a zero. Cause you're, you're going the numbers every day. Not just what you did the last three days recapping that, that right there alone. I think can, if any company adopts that, I think that's the easiest, quickest solution to boosting production because then your guys get dressed and ready to go. They're not gonna want to go home the dress. They got to the office, they just ready to roll. Man. Put them in a car group, put them in a car group. That's number two, put them in a car group, have a leader in the car group, call him the commander, general, whatever you wanna name and make them feel important because yes, have him running the show, let him be a leader for his group of guys. It could be three guys. See what he's capable of. You might empower him. And then all of a sudden, you know, like he's the guy for the job. He's gonna run the next office. And so that also is critical because now these guys are forced to go out. Um, I was against hardships for awhile, but once I started doing them, I'll never go back to anything else. Just let the leaders have a chance to shine. Yeah.Speaker 2 (20:43):Well I know it works because we were just talking yesterday about how like they pretty much the same schedule you're doing. It's what Jason newbie in our squad here is doing, doing. I mean, he's I think how long have you been? How long have you started your like dealer out here? Uh, March. March. Okay. Jason started about the same time. Um, and yeah, he's got a team like 40, 50 guys. I know your team's crush an hour. So it's like success is leaving clues. These are the top guys areSpeaker 3 (21:09):Doing they're meeting everyday too.Speaker 2 (21:13):Um, we meet at 1130 right now. So 30 minutes,Speaker 3 (21:20):30 minutes on these guys. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. It's funny to hear that because you guys are crushing it rain a ton of momentum. Everyone I think sees what you know, Jason and you guys are doing over there, so yeah. Yeah. You're right. Success doesn't. Yeah. And I mean,Speaker 2 (21:32):I mean, I, I didn't implement this so I should have done it earlier. Cause I had my own squad out there and we weren't doing daily meetings and our production was for sure suffering because of it. We were just meeting like once or twice a week. It's like you said, those two days we were seeing guys produce, you know, pretty good. But then the rest of the days it's like guarantee you guys were getting out at least two hours later than they would have just because yeah, they didn't have, in my opinion, like 90% of the purpose of the meeting is just like to get the guys to get it together and go out there. And there, cause like, you know, you can only do so many trainings. I mean, trainings are good, but it gets to a point where you're just getting out, you're building the team, building the momentum and getting out there. SoSpeaker 3 (22:11):Yeah, no, it brings some energy to the meetings. Give him, give him some boost. Yeah. Give him a little boost. Give him some shout outs, give him some recognition. Let them jump some ranks of other people on the leaderboard. Yeah. That's it. Get out there. They have a fun time getting together and it's fun to see that you're doing that too. Yeah.Speaker 2 (22:24):And it's fun. And I see, I see your means. You guys are like screaming and shouting and getting guys fired up and stuff do. Right.Speaker 3 (22:29):That'd be a little ridiculous. Try to make it a little different. Every single time we like to do energy exercises. A lot of stuff. I picked up from other people in the industry. It's nothing I created on my own. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that stuff works as a cheesier. Weird. As it sounds running around an office and yelling random stuff just creates energy.Speaker 2 (22:45):Well, yeah. I don't know if you've been to like Tony Robbins events, but it's like the same stuff Tony Robbins is doing. You're like standing up screaming and shouting and allSpeaker 3 (22:52):That. You've been to a Tony Robbins event.Speaker 2 (22:55):I've seen him speak like two or three times, but it's pretty exact same thing. He's like his big thing is you're changing your state. And if you change your states, it's going to like, you need to change something about your state in order to change your like, you know, momentum and change what you're doing, change your state. So I mean, it's something I forgot about because yeah. I'll be honest. Like I was a lot of, sometimes I would run some pretty boring meetings, just like, all right guys, what's your goals. Cool. All right, let's get out there. Clap. And then that was it.Speaker 3 (23:24):I've done that to men too. ButSpeaker 2 (23:26):Yeah, the stuff works. The fact that the same thing that Danny, Danny and Taylor are doing here, then it's like, they're having to stand up scream, shell, whisper, yell, and really, uh, get afterSpeaker 3 (23:36):It. Yeah. I'm guessing the ma it's funny with, with like Danny and Taylor, one of the main things I was taking notes on was exactly how they're handling us. Yeah. Like how they getting our energy, bringing us the present, you know, the snaps snap three times. If you can hear me. Okay. Snap four times and then eventually the homes aren't now be quiet. Yeah. I was taking notes, all that stuff because that stuff is like super effective. Yeah.Speaker 2 (23:57):That works. It works. So yeah. Any boring sells managers or company owners out there, if you are not getting your guys fired up, I think you're doing them a disservice because even if they don't like it, but it works and you need to get your guys on a different level because then they can take that out on the doors too. If they're feeling like at a low state on the doors. I mean it's the same stuff. Yeah. Do some jumping jacks, get your guys fired up and teach them how to change their state when they're out there on the doors too. Yeah.Speaker 3 (24:24):How do you, how do you cheat him on that? What do you do to rehearse, to change their state on the doors?Speaker 2 (24:29):Um, I mean, just like the affirmation stuff. I'm sure you've taught your guys. Just like, you know, the brain Tracy stuff. I liked myself. I like myself and I love my job. It's like repeating that between the doors works for me. And I know for me, if I've gotten like a hard rejection, it's just like affirmation affirmation before the next door that in popping on my, a little sidewaySpeaker 3 (24:48):Thing lately. Yeah. It's funny how cheesy it sounds though. Like I think a lot of people listening in like, man, if you haven't ever done it before you think self-talk affirmations, like that's just for, gazy for Godsey because I thought the same thing. And then you hear people like Taylor doing it every second, we can be playing tennis. Taylor McCarthy's out there just talking to himself, always talking positively, come on, Taylor, you got this really good at this stuff. And so it's yeah. It's one of those things until you actually try, if you haven't tried it and you're listening to this, absolutely. Try to love my job. My job is easy. Yeah. All they do is write a line down a piece of paper. So your current situation, what your new situation would be, just keep saying that kind of stuff out loud. It surprisingly works. And then just smiling. Just smiling to just remembering, just to smile. That'll change your state too, for sure.Speaker 2 (25:32):I know. Yeah. It works a hundred percent. So yeah, definitely go out and do it if you haven't tried that for all our listeners. Um, so I'll see. I want to jump into now. Like, I mean, like I was saying, you have what? Seven or eight guys here though, man. Yeah. Include me. Okay. And you have what? Like around 20 guys or something in your officeSpeaker 3 (25:50):Right now? Yeah, I think we just went up to like 23. Okay.Speaker 2 (25:54):So grown a ton. Um, but yeah, that's pretty, pretty impressive to have that many guys here. And I know it's just, uh, you know, shown what you guys have built. I can see that your guys are like hungry to learn, want to grow a ton and like just eat this stuff up. So, um, any company I've been with even, you know, how to like 50 guys with my company, we only got three of us here, not to say they don't like learn in, but pretty impressive that you can bring like a whole crowd here and get them all excited about these things. So yeah. What do you, um, how have you kind of built that or how do you get your guys to buy into this whole, like culture of learning ins and get them to show up for these things?Speaker 3 (26:30):So these kinds of trips are basically incentive driven, right? Like there's always good to do incentives for prizes. Cool watches, a segway, whatever it is. But the most beneficial, and these they're fired up to just have the opportunity to come here and be able to expose them to higher level people. Even if we're losing three, four or five days of production is going to pay off tenfold. Yeah. So just having guys that understand the value, personal development, and if you're not working on yourself every day, like they don't see you becoming better. Like I'm always posting when I'm reading books, I'm always writing quotes. I'm always like showing things. I'm learning on social media so everyone can see it. And part of the reason I do, it's not because I just, you know, have an ego for it. It's because they're going to see what I'm doing on a regular basis and realize that personal velvet getting better is really part of the process to be happier.Speaker 3 (27:20):If you're becoming better every day, you're going to be happy. Yeah. That's like, I think that the easiest way to boil it down, if you just feel like you're becoming better, it could be in fitness, health, business relationships. If you just feel like you're getting better, learning more stuff, you'll be happy. So just having the whole culture based around that. And then in the past, I used to think like whatever, whatever leaders I had in my circle or in my company, I could get everything I wanted from them. Yeah. That was like, what I thought of you like felt that too, like, Hey, this is like, I'm good. I don't need to pay for anything else. Yeah. And once I realized that paying to play is the most important way. Quickest way to hack time. Yeah. It's, it's like been a game changer for me. I'll pay for all my guys, good ticket. Anyone that's working, putting the time I'm gonna invest as much time and money as possible into them. Because if they can understand the same value of like what what's like the CAC time and pay to play and just get a few shortcuts, a few nuggets from these things will do it for the rest of your life. That'd be happier. Guys are going to come back more motivated, hungry, and then bring that to other guys and bleeds over. It just keeps bleeding over. Right.Speaker 2 (28:20):I love that. And I think it's important that you're saying like do it as an incentive too, because it's like, I've been, I remember my previous company I was with, they like, you know, bought a bunch of bunch of people, like take us to go see grant Cardone. Yeah. Um, but then I, I don't, I can't remember if it was an incentive or if it was, maybe it was like a really easy one. So we went there and then half the guys like showed up for half the events and you know, half the time they're like on their phones. And I dunno if like, like not like appreciating it. It's like people when people pay, they're going to pay attention. Right. So it's like at least get them to like earn it. So they're going to come in and show up.Speaker 3 (28:59):That's that's so funny. It's it's true. But people don't pay for it. It's like you give someone a book, they won't read it. You just give it to them for free. Like one of the guys, Mike, Mikey that came to talk to us, he was like, Hey, we're putting this code and you'll get a book for free. I'm like, dude, I want to pay for this book. No, don't, don't give me this sort of for free. If I, if I don't pay for, it's going to sit on the shelf a lot longer. And then they, you know what they did with telling everyone to silence their phones or put their phones in the room. I'm doing that. Any of these kinds of ads, I grabbed everyone's phone on my team and put it all in the room. Everyone's everyone's phone was gone. And so, uh, yeah. Cause every, when everyone takes a ping or check something else, there's so many of the things going on. So like when there was at the grand Cardone event, that's just like, makes you not want to do it again. Like why would an owner want to bring people out to another event where no one's paying attention.Speaker 2 (29:41):I know. So super important run, figure out a way to get these guys they're bought in. And yeah, I was telling you about, I mean, we have this sole society app, we launched the training platform, which will be all of our listeners are on, but it's like, I can't remember. I told you, but all the people I gave free access, we did kind of like a trial period gave like, I don't know, 15 people free access. And it's like, guess how many of them logged on like three or four of them at something like that? And then probably two of them have actually like, you know, done something with it.Speaker 3 (30:10):So yeah. And then what about the people that paid? Yeah. What about those people that were paying?Speaker 2 (30:16):Um, yeah, I mean, they're going through it. They're the ones that are actually getting results. So that's awesome. It's like, yeah. And it's what Danny do. We're talking to these events. They're super expensive, but if people don't pay their lights, like they're doing us a disservice. If they don't charge us because we're not going to take it seriously, we're not going to appreciate the content. So, um, yeah, no, I think it's just getting your guys to buy in with that. And if you are, I don't know, using some sort of training platform, figure out a way to get them like skin in the game. Cause if not, yeah,Speaker 3 (30:46):Yeah, yeah. That's right. You show me your app. I'm pretty excited about it. I felt like that was the one thing. Um, I really want a smooth transition from when someone gets onboarded, the content they consume that I can actually track and measure all the way to when they start and then for the next month. Right? Like I've always thought I need to get a good source of content for that interactive engaging. Yeah. And um, I mean, I'm not here even plugged down and this is like legit. What I think about what you showed me, super interactive, super engaging, and be able to bring in my own content to it on an app on their phone where people are glued to already, I'm excited to white label it, bringing those content, have your content on it. And so I could have that part of the standard operating procedures dialed in from the second a person gets onboarded. They have to complete all this all the way until they start for the next month. I think that's going to hack time too. So that's really quick. Great that it looks clean. It looks,Speaker 2 (31:34):I appreciate it, brother. I didn't tell him to do that. SoSpeaker 3 (31:36):Look looks, it looks clean, man. And it's good. It's good,Speaker 2 (31:39):Bridget. That, yeah. We'll get your team on it for sure. Um, but yeah, man, so no, it's just super impressive. What you've been able to do with your team and get them bought in and really get them, uh, coming to these events. And it's like, it's not really a secret. I mean, I'm another guest. I know, you know, Mo in his crew, but yeah, they're doing pretty similar things. You guys are both doing, he showed up at door to door con with like his, basically his whole team there and they're all getting up on stage. So doing all these things that as a team getting guys bought in, um, it's just helped you grow a ton. So yeah. How have you, uh, so you started in March. How many guys did you start with back in March then?Speaker 3 (32:15):So March was just me and one other person. Um, and then I think it was mid March. I got two other people and uh, then we S it was, I was just meeting my house and that was a pretty slow growth in the beginning. Brought in a couple other people. Um, obviously didn't have any systems or anything dialed in. Yeah. And then what was it in, uh, April? I think we were at nine people did a, we experiment with different stuff. Like hearing it from other people was working. I got some, some tips from Mo, so shout out to Mo flaw. Like he was, you know, providing some help on that side of things. I really appreciated that. Cool. Um, so blitz was effective as fun, getting everyone around each other. Um, and then we brought in, we got up to like 20 guys in June and brought a guy has got an office space.Speaker 3 (32:59):Office space was huge. Uh, you know, that was big. And then, uh, we actually went on a hiring freeze for like a month and a half, two months. We just started hiring again because I didn't want to plug people into a model that wasn't fully developed. Nice. And so I've done that before where I just bring people in and it's not where it needs to be in, you know, in your heart, if things are good to go, when can you bring it someone in? Are they going to be successful quickly or is it only gonna be a few people that are going to survive because it's only, you know, designed for the people that are ready to go on their own. And so waiting for that, hiring freeze, get everything dialed in our systems, our processes, how we do business. And now it's like, all right, let's open the flood gates. That's why I hired like, started creating these guys to do everything else. Nice.Speaker 2 (33:36):Yeah. Shout out to Serge. He's here. He's Sarah, I'm recording this right now. So you're going to see some video with this episode. ISpeaker 3 (33:43):Appreciate it. I'm laughing.Speaker 2 (33:46):You're laughing. It's these Russians laughing at us. Um, but uh, no. So another thing that's been cool is you've invested a ton just in your growth and your team's growth. I mean, yeah, you're missing in surge. He's doing content for your team. You missed in Danny and Taylor. They're blowing things up. So I know a lot of, a lot of companies listening to this, maybe a lot of like team leaders, they're nervous to like invest in themselves dropping money. I mean, some pretty serious money that your job to work as closely as you are with TaylorSpeaker 3 (34:15):And Dan, it was the cheapest thing I ever bought. No, I was kidding the cheapSpeaker 2 (34:20):Stuff. No, but, um, so it's gotten you crazy as old, but I know you're telling me you're pretty like nervous to like invest in that. So what's been, I dunno, what's helped you, I guess, have confidence and like Joplin that kind of money and, um, just seeing your game grow.Speaker 3 (34:33):Yeah. I just saw other people doing it. And then I was like, they're dropping all this money. And like, not everyone, very few people are doing it, but I saw the people that were doing it, showing up all these events, bring the teams, doing this stuff. We're seeing a lot more success. Yeah. And I just realized like, yeah, I got to start paying. I got to start paying to get around the right people to expose myself, expose the team. And man, when I dropped that money for DocStar star select, it is, it is it's, it's, it's a decent amount of money. And in the beginning I was super nervous. I was like, man, did I just blow this much money right now? Um, because in the first month or two, I didn't really know exactly how to get what I wanted out of it. And the main reason I did it was because I to tell them McCarthy, like all the money was made, mostly just like even the master of it.Speaker 3 (35:14):I was even thinking about that. I just want to tell the McCarthy to be in my office for three days. Yeah. And so he came and blitzed with our team for three days and it completely changed everything. Yeah. Like it's one thing to show people how great this lakes are and like to use little tactics, um, myself. And then it's another thing to have someone that knows how to use it to the highest level, like highest technical level. Yeah. They see that stuff and you just realize what is possible with what you can do. And so just those three days pay for the entire thing without a doubt. And then having this mastermind events and everything else on top of it, one of the best decisions I've ever made. That's awesome. I'm going to keep doing it. That kind of just sparked it. I actually, the first thing I invested in was Knox our bootcamp, which Allison was hesitant to pay $5,000 for it.Speaker 3 (35:58):I was in it with you, we're in the same bootcamp. I was like, man, five grand for one zoom a week. Is this going to be worth it? Yeah. That was that paid for itself within three, four days, just got the motivation, got the competition going. And then it's like you, I think the biggest thing is just taking the first year, invest in like books. Then you might invest in some little training platforms and then you level up, you invest in, you know, something like $5,000 ticket item. Yeah. And then you just start to realize that at each level you're unlocking the next level. You're like, okay. I spent 5,000, so now I can spend 50,000. Yeah. Okay. So now I can spend a hundred thousand dollars on getting better working with the right people. And you know, even, even, uh, uh, Jerry that was talking today spending $400,000 on his coaches and he said he he'd pay more. If you could find more coaches that could help him out and level them up, we thought they could. And so it's like, yeah, like all the, all the real G's out there doing that. So it's just keep, keep, start small and keep growing that for sure. And it's cool. I think that's been,Speaker 2 (36:55):Yeah. And I don't know if you heard Jerry, but he was saying like, some of the programs seems in the mastermind groups, he didn't even like invest in it to, for the training. He just did it to be around like the other high level people. I was like, all right. If I'm paying 150 grand, there's going to be some people pretty committed in here that I'm going to be able to like, like make connections with. So he said that alone is made, I'm like millions of dollars just being able to network with those.Speaker 3 (37:17):Yeah. He said 150,000 made him 2.2 million. Yeah. Just being around the right people. That was a pretty aha moment. It's like, you don't even need to pay to get the training. It could just be purely the circle. Yeah. It was just the circle of people could change your life. So that was another aha moment with just like how far you can go with this thing. Yeah.Speaker 2 (37:33):Yeah. No, that's awesome. And if you, have you ever made any like bad, I dunno, investments on the business that you regret making or has it all been a pretty, pretty good?Speaker 3 (37:43):Don't think I've made any bad investments on the business. Um, I think the only thing I didn't do is invest enough. Like in the past I think that was the biggest thing. I just didn't invest enough. And I think the worst investment I made was just not spending the money. Yeah. That was, that was the worst thing I did with the cash is put it toward dumb things. Yeah. You know, rather than back into the people, back into myself. Yeah.Speaker 2 (38:02):Yeah. Well, yeah. No, and it's pretty easy. I mean, you just look at the results. Like he's a mess then surge surge is getting massive results with his video clients and then Danny and Taylor, they get massive results for everyone they work with. So it's pretty simple. I mean, just look at this. I was asking Mikey this same question. Cause he's in all of these mastermind groups, I'm like, Mike, you, when you invest in so many, like you're in like four different mastermind groups, like that's not how you can track that. It's like, how do you figure out that they're all going to be worth it? So yeah, he just saying, I dunno, it's like Jesus said right by, by their fruits, you will know, um, what's going on with it. So for anyone that's doubting on investing in things like that and training, just, you know, go look at the results, see what other people are having success with. And I mean, it's just gonna come down to the work. You put into it too and apply it, which is what you guys are doing.Speaker 3 (38:50):One thing, one thing I heard that always stuck with me, there's three steps and basically laws to constant human improvement. The first one is you have to add knowledge. Second one is you have to act on it or apply it. And the third one is you have to evaluate how that went. Is it something you're gonna keep doing? A lot of people just add the knowledge. Like they'll come to these kinds of events. They get hyped up about it. And then they don't reflect on it. Right. They don't spend the time polishing or learning and studying what they just learned and then acting on. And then one thing I always left out of the equation, I was pretty good at acting on it. I left out of the equation, the evaluation part, like evaluating how that stuff get. Did it, did it make the, there was a result of worse? Like did not help me out or is it like something? Okay, this is really good. I need to fine tune this. So evaluating and reflecting on that, falling those three steps with reading a book with anything else, any mentorship, if you just follow those simple three steps, I think that's the key. That's the key toSpeaker 2 (39:42):Improving. Yeah. That's fire ad knowledge. What was the ad knowledge evaluate and then reflect,Speaker 3 (39:47):Add knowledge, act on knowledge. Evaluate.Speaker 2 (39:51):Okay, bye. Right. That's awesome. That's super good stuff. Fire. Um, well, yeah. And so, um, I know you're you guys are what, uh, uh, I was talking to some of your guys and they're telling me you're closing like 70, 80% of your deals, which is like super good. Is that just been working with Taylor? You guys just implementing all this stuff and that's, what's taking you to the next level on the closing.Speaker 3 (40:16):Yeah. I, I can't take credit for that man or working with Taylor, just getting little tips and tricks, something as simple as his hypothetical, he throws in, you know, hypothetically, sir, if you already had the panels on your roof, you just have this, it's been three years, you just have this fixed payment of $150. So you've already added, you know, $4,500 of equity, $6,000 of equity to your home. And it's never going up. And then you have duke energy or whatever, utility knock on the door. And they try to convince you to rip all those panels off. They want to extract those three years of equity. So that four or $5,000 back to the CEO's pocket, and then go back to a variable rate. That's, you know, pretty high, much higher than what you're paying today. What would you tell duke energy? And so like just little things like that, just even the most simple one on the doors.Speaker 3 (41:01):This is a nugget everyone should take and apply to me to like, because it's so easy getting the appointment or even getting the clothes. My job is super simple. I just draw a line down a piece of paper. I show you what your current situation is and then what your new situation would be. Now, if this doesn't make sense, I wouldn't expect to do it. In fact, I won't even come back, but if it does make sense as logical, you're going to do it, right? Like it's not going to be a thing that you have to think about it. Just going to be a side-by-side comparison of your current and your new situation. And at the end of the day, if it ends up costing you less to own something, is there any reason you'd want to continue to rent it duke and pay your energy landlord? So just little, little nuggets like that.Speaker 2 (41:38):Boom. That's that's the thing I'm coming to these events. You just pick like I started making like a notes, just folder of all like the one-liners. So it's like all that stuff. It's just a game changer. And I know people have gone and listened to Taylor's podcast episode just on repeat and yeah, I think several year guys were telling me they've doneSpeaker 3 (41:56):It, but they posted, posted every day. Like you guys got to listen to this thing again. Let's do it again. Listen to the car. Yeah. CauseSpeaker 2 (42:03):It's like that kind of stuff. It's yeah. It's just changing everybody. Those things. It's the little buy in the customers it's taking. What was your closing ratio? Would you say before you started working with those guys?Speaker 3 (42:13):I would say my closing ratio was about 40% or so I would say it's about 40%. Um, so it significantly went up. Yeah. There were just a lot of little tactics I used at the end. There's like a lot of people, like they'll a lot of new reps or they just started closing. They'll say all these objections that happen in. And like, they want to think about all these concerns. It's like, that doesn't happen to me anymore because all the little jabs I throw in that I've learned from Taylor and other people in the industry all along the way, by the time I get there, it's purely just, is this the correct spelling of her name? Okay, great. Is this the right last name? Okay. What's the last four of your social? Like there's no, there's no questioning what they're doing. There's no like pauses or breaks. And if you are having people throwing stuff at you at the end, when you get into numbers, it's because you haven't dialed in your technique before that point. So dialing the word tracks, getting the technique, thrown in enough jobs to where it makes complete sense for them. And it's just a no brainer. Yeah. Is something that a lot of people don't do and you have to get training from the best people to do it. Otherwise you're just going to try to figure it out on your own. It's going to take forever. Yeah.Speaker 2 (43:16):Fire. So yeah, guys, I know, uh, I know it sounds like knock star paid us to do this, but we're doing this for free Danny. And we promise that Danny and Taylor don't have a gun to our heads telling them to sail. Just kidding. But no, it's true. So yeah. Learn from the best and just yeah. Implement it, memorize those lines. Cause I think that's been a game changer for all of us. So last thing I wanted to ask you, Alex, before we kind of wrap up here is you have obviously huge social media following. I know it's probably 99% chicks to just want to, you know, feel your abs and all that stuff, which is yeah. But, uh, so you're big on social media and all that. And I know you've recruited a lot. How, um, how, how many followers you have on Instagram? Like a hundred, a hundred gay,Speaker 3 (44:00):Like 100, 105. K yeah. Hopefully that's going to go upsurge. Yeah. Right, man. We're going to need 200,000 or something or blows up. Yeah,Speaker 2 (44:07):Let me go up. But yeah. So how has that, uh, as far as like recruiting goes, is that been a big thing for you? The social media, or do you have anything else that's helped you kind of like recruit these guys and bring on more people.Speaker 3 (44:18):I'm glad you brought that up. Cause that, that is like the key I've used. Uh, I've restarted multiple times for anyone else. That's like grown a business or grown, uh, you know, like just talk about solar and you've grown a sales team and you leave that or something happens and you know, you have to move out and you're starting from square one. I've done that multiple times and that's gave me confidence that I could do it again. Like I know at the end of the day, I've always been able to do it again. So like, I keep that as a reference point that no matter what's going on, I can do it again. And the way I always did it was through social media. So I would simply find a better opportunity. I can offer other people. And then in the day that's what I'm always was always chasing.Speaker 3 (44:52):Like what's the best opportunity. Not for me. Like, that's a cool part, but like, I really want to find the best opportunity to bring guys in because the end of the day, if I have a better offer for them, I have a better culture. They're going to join me in the only way they're going to see that is if I'm posting stuff about it. Yeah. So that's all I've ever done ever since. And I've been consistently posting my lifestyle. I used to share my own success. And I think in the beginning you share your own success, right? Like how much you made. And it's not about ego. It's not about being arrogant. A lot of people think it's like that, but I can't tell you how many guys I brought in to this business because they said they saw their, or someone shared my story with them.Speaker 3 (45:26):And they exposed like, Hey, I just made $20,000 in a week. Like they got exposed to that. And they wanted to reach out because if I didn't do that stuff, which a lot of people steer, cause it is weird in the beginning, like sharing financial stuff. A lot of people steer away from that. But if you post that out there consistently over time, some people will hit you up immediately. Like there's going to be people that are ready for change right now. Just like Taylor says, the hardest part of my job is timing. And that involves social media too. Then I've had people three years later, like, Hey dude, I followed your journey for three years. Like, what you're doing is awesome. Yeah. Actually I just saw that you moved to Orlando. Like this might be perfect for me. I'm over in Tampa. Right? So those things start happening three, four years later and you don't realize it at the time that it's going to be that way.Speaker 3 (46:08):But it's just like the, just like investing. Like if you think about like, okay, I'm only going to make 8% this year. That's not that much more money, but it's like compounded over time. You keep doing it consistently and sharing success versus my success. Then I really now only focused on other success. So I share what Liam's make and I show what Will's make. And I started Sawyer, Jake, all these guys, they're closing all these deals. I shared their success because they ended Dave. You just keep talking to yourself. That's not going to be much family because they just think you're a one-off. Yeah. So showing new guys success in the industry on social media has been pivotal to growing all my businesses because that's where my teachers always used to tell me, LinkedIn, man, the LinkedIn is going to be a thing. You gotta be able to network and you need to, and have people write out your, you know, your level 10 or you're excellent at communicating Excel.Speaker 3 (46:52):And like, dude, that is from gazing from Gaza. If I've ever heard it. When I heard that stuff, I literally thought I was like, this is BS. And the fake platform in the world, people are just putting on a face and a front. I was like, they're not real. They're reaching out like, Hey Alexander, I really liked the things you're doing. I think it'd be great to connect. And you could be great for this opportunity. Like this is, that is dead. That is not the way it may work for some businesses. But I already knew that wasn't gonna work for mine. I didn't know Instagram was going to be the thing, but that's just where I shared my life on. And so, uh, yeah, it was, it was funny just reflecting on like the teachers were completely off for this business for sales and everything is social media. Man. Look at grant Cardone, look at anyone. That's good at high scale. That's where it's at.Speaker 2 (47:29):Yeah. I know one year taking advantage of it. I mean, I just started doing, doing this stuff. Like semi-recently, I mean, I got like 700 followers growing long, long ways, but you know, consistent stuff. But even with my 700 followers just by posting these videos, testimonial, videos, stuff like that, like I'm getting referrals, I'm getting people like reaching out. I'll be like, oh, Hey, I didn't know you do solar just from like doing that with like 700 people soSpeaker 3 (47:53):I can get referrals for solar, for solar. Yeah. So, so I think that's an interesting, I think that's an interesting point. I don't have that at all because I think you could approach it two ways, either a it's going to be customer facing or B it's going to be sales rep facing, right. Like new guy facing recruiting facing. Yeah. It's pretty hard to do both. I think you can. Yeah, but I know for a fact, if my clients follow me on Instagram, there's going to be some cancels. There's going to be some problems that they can follow me on Facebook. Facebook is separate. Facebook is like, okay. Old people hang out here. This is a good platform to be friends with them on. Even though I don't really want to because they'll see my old college days. So yeah, I think it's like, you can go one or two ways about it. And for me, I picked like, okay, my lifeblood is bringing in new people. That's what makes me the most happy. I love selling deals. I love selling deals. But at the end of the day, like my lifeblood is bringing new people in bringing new people in sharing their success, helping them be successful. That's really what, what I want toSpeaker 2 (48:49):Focus on. Yeah. No. And I think you gotta have a focus. I mean, this was kind of like a lucky thing because it wasn't, it was like a friend from Utah that just recently bought a home. So it, that go Hey on the out.Speaker 3 (48:59):But yeah, that's awesome. I know some of my friends are good at that part too. They get like friends and stuff through social media, so everyone, everyone could do differently. Yeah.Speaker 2 (49:08):Yeah. But now it's a huge tool, so yeah. And we'll have to have a Mr. Serge creator on, in another episode, he can share more about the social media part, but uh, yeah, man. So no, I appreciate you coming on Alex and dropping some fire for us and for our listeners. So yeah. Speaking of social media, where can people connect with you and hang out with you on social media and find out more about what you're doing?Speaker 3 (49:28):Alex H. Smith. Okay. Alex H. Smith on Instagram. I don't think I have anything else. Just Instagram man. Uh, but surge is going to add some platforms to that. Right. I'm going to tick Docker. And I would say, I would say one last thing I just wanted to bring up just because it was so pivotal in kind of creating a hockey stick trajectory for me. Yeah. And I don't know who this is going to lay to or who it's going to help out. But for the longest time you're in the sales cycle, you roll, you can ride the roller coaster. I had a lot of ups and downs. Yeah. And I even got to a point, you know, where I cleared my first a hundred thousand dollars in a month. And I, I literally was not happy. Like I wasn't feeling it. Like I was like, what is going on?Speaker 3 (50:07):I have all this stuff's going. Right. But I just didn't feel good. And there were just a couple bad vices I had, I always knew for me, and this is different for everyone, but I was new for me. Like drinking was one thing that always like caused me to go into a downward spiral. So like I would drink and then I would be depressed for three or four days. So if I drank on the side, I wasn't drinking everyday, venturing on a Saturday. I wasn't into myself by Thursday. And by then I was feeling good. It's like, okay, now I can do it on a Saturday. Yeah. So every time I would show up for my team, if I did that, I would go to every weekend. But if I did that I'd would be, you know, 40% of who I am. Yeah. And I always knew that was a problem.Speaker 3 (50:40):And it took, it took a long time. I tried to, you know, stop drinking because I used to say like, I can't drink. That was like kind of thing. Cause I started out just FSU, gave me some habits. So I would say, a

Will the future of humanity be wild, or boring? It's natural to think that if we're trying to be sober and measured, and predict what will really happen rather than spin an exciting story, it's more likely than not to be sort of... dull. But there's also good reason to think that that is simply impossible. The idea that there's a boring future that's internally coherent is an illusion that comes from not inspecting those scenarios too closely. At least that is what Holden Karnofsky ? founder of charity evaluator GiveWell and foundation Open Philanthropy - argues in his new article series titled 'The Most Important Century'''. He hopes to lay out part of the worldview that's driving the strategy and grantmaking of Open Philanthropy's longtermist team, and encourage more people to join his efforts to positively shape humanity's future. Links to learn more, summary and full transcript. The bind is this. For the first 99% of human history the global economy (initially mostly food production) grew very slowly: under 0.1% a year. But since the industrial revolution around 1800, growth has exploded to over 2% a year. To us in 2020 that sounds perfectly sensible and the natural order of things. But Holden points out that in fact it's not only unprecedented, it also can't continue for long. The power of compounding increases means that to sustain 2% growth for just 10,000 years, 5% as long as humanity has already existed, would require us to turn every individual atom in the galaxy into an economy as large as the Earth's today. Not super likely. So what are the options? First, maybe growth will slow and then stop. In that case we today live in the single miniscule slice in the history of life during which the world rapidly changed due to constant technological advances, before intelligent civilization permanently stagnated or even collapsed. What a wild time to be alive! Alternatively, maybe growth will continue for thousands of years. In that case we are at the very beginning of what would necessarily have to become a stable galaxy-spanning civilization, harnessing the energy of entire stars among other feats of engineering. We would then stand among the first tiny sliver of all the quadrillions of intelligent beings who ever exist. What a wild time to be alive! Isn't there another option where the future feels less remarkable and our current moment not so special? While the full version of the argument above has a number of caveats, the short answer is 'not really'. We might be in a computer simulation and our galactic potential all an illusion, though that's hardly any less weird. And maybe the most exciting events won't happen for generations yet. But on a cosmic scale we'd still be living around the universe's most remarkable time. Holden himself was very reluctant to buy into the idea that today?s civilization is in a strange and privileged position, but has ultimately concluded "all possible views about humanity's future are wild". In the conversation Holden and Rob cover each part of the 'Most Important Century' series, including: * The case that we live in an incredibly important time * How achievable-seeming technology - in particular, mind uploading - could lead to unprecedented productivity, control of the environment, and more * How economic growth is faster than it can be for all that much longer * Forecasting transformative AI * And the implications of living in the most important century Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world?s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app. Producer: Keiran Harris Audio mastering: Ben Cordell Transcriptions: Sofia Davis-Fogel

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 198. Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I'm your host, Kimberley Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal, to inspire you. Anxiety doesn't get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big, fat virtual hug, because experiencing anxiety ain't easy. If that sounds good to you, let's go. Okay, friends, how are you doing really? How are you doing? It's summertime, you guys. Oh my goodness. We're here. How did this happen? Just to let you know, I will be taking a break as I have done for the last several years over the summer. So I will probably take a few weeks off in July so I can have some time with my kids to really rest and repair and play and be human. It's such a weird year. And so as I'm recording this, it's not summer yet, but it's crazy to think that we've landed in summer already of 2021. Am I right? Holy smokes. Okay, before we get started, as I always say, please do go and leave a review. I will be giving away Beats headphones to one lucky winner when we get a thousand reviews. We're on our way, guys. So please do go and leave a review. I would so be grateful. It just really helps me strengthen the podcast, and it's one of my big goals for 2021, is just to really help people with this amazing platform. All right. So here we go. Today, I am talking about how I am protecting my daughter from an eating disorder. But what I'm really going to be talking about is how we, me and my husband, are protecting my daughter and my son from an eating disorder. The reason I preface that is because, number one, yes, while women are more likely to develop an eating disorder, there is an increase of prevalence of young men and young boys getting and experiencing an eating disorder. There are many different types of eating disorder. It doesn't have to be anorexia. They can be binge eating. There's also types of eating disorders, such as bigorexia, which is around developing muscle. There's orthorexia. There's so many kinds of, again, bulimia anorexia, of course, we've discussed. There's so many types and it's so important that we recognize that this is not just a problem for women and girls. So let's talk about it. How myself and my husband are protecting my daughter and my son from an eating disorder. So there are two main things I want to discuss today. Number one is how we talk and number two, how we model. And so I'm going to give you much more detail into how we are doing that and how we're choosing to do that and the struggles that we're having. I, myself, had an eating disorder. So I'm really, really protective of this topic with my children. It's something I really want to try and protect them from while I know that I can't entirely protect them. I can do a lot of education to give them everything they need to hopefully not have to go through what I have gone through and what so many people have gone through with eating disorders. So, first of all, let's talk about what we talk about. Let's talk about what we talk about, shall we? All right. So the first thing, and you guys have heard me say this probably before, the first thing we talk about is diet culture. This is where we identify how our society is teaching us to believe that we should be a certain way. Our bodies should be a certain way. Our skin should be a certain way. Our hair should be a certain way. We should look a certain way. And we want to be able to identify this so we can call the BS on it. So the reason that I call BS on it is, just because society tells us our body should be a certain way doesn't mean it's true. In fact, it's entirely BS. Your body, my body, my daughter's body, my son's body, and my husband's body – doesn't have to be any particular way. Society and diet culture is going to tell us that it should be thin. It's going to give us all of these messages. “We should be thin. We should be strong. We should be tall. We should be short. We should be eating this certain thing. This product will help us with our metabolism. This product is bad. These foods are good. These foods are bad.” And there's so many messages that are faulty and proven to be wrong. So, so important. So we talk a lot about this with my children. When my daughter and I go shopping, which we haven't done in a long time, but when we see advertisements, when we watch TV shows, when we look in magazines or pitches of books in books, when we look at Barbie dolls, we talk about diet culture. I might say, “What about her body? Let's talk about Bobby.” And we look at Bobby and I'll say, “What do you think about her body?” And she'll be like, “It's kind of weird. It looks kind of strange.” And I'll say, “Yeah, why do you think that is?” And she says, “Well her waist is really small.” And I'll have a conversation with her. We talked to her about, “Do you feel like you need that to be beautiful? No, no, you don't.” How might we change this? And I might say to her, “You don't have to look anything like that. You know that your body is genetically set up to be exactly the way your body is and there's nothing you need to do any differently about that.” So important. Same with my son. Look at the action figures. We might say, “Your body doesn't have to look like that.” That's diet culture. You don't have to have a six-pack of abs. He's only six, but we're still already having these conversations. Now, what's interesting is my husband right now is reading the book to our children, and it was a book that he read when he was a young kid with his parents. It's interesting because there's all these references to fat, like fat this and fat boy and fat girl, and she was fat and so forth. We talk about the word “fat.” We talk about, is that a good word or a bad word? No, it's just a word. It's a descriptive word. But would we use it to describe somebody else? No. We would use many other things to describe somebody than using that kind of word. Not that there's anything wrong with the word. It's just that we don't want to encourage them to define a person by their body. We try our hardest not to compliment our children's body. You might think that's crazy. Some people go, “Oh, no, no. My child won't have an eating disorder. I tell them how beautiful they are every day.” I often will educate them and say, “That doesn't actually prevent anything. In fact, it just adds to that kid and that child thinking that the way they look is important. Because what if their body changes? Then they're going to be like, ‘Oh no, mom's always complimenting me on my body, and now my body changed. So does that mean I'm bad?'” So we do our best not to compliment their body or anybody's body. I have worked really hard since my own recovery to never congratulate someone for losing weight, which is really hard. In fact, I've had one really difficult conversation with our friend where she was saying, “I really just want you to compliment me because I have lost a lot of weight.” And I've said to her, “That doesn't line up with my values. I love you, but I never want to engage in something where you believe your worth is caught up in your body. I just can't do that. I'm sorry. But I love you and I love everything about you, every part of you, whether your body is in a large body, a small body, a tall body, a short body, whatever color skin. I love you.” And we say the same to the kids. Now, of course, we also don't ridicule their bodies. We don't comment on their bodies, their ever-changing bodies, as they, my daughter moves into preadolescence. We're still in the talk section. We talk about what we do value. That person is very kind. He has kind eyes. She has a beautiful smile. She radiates love. She is a fun person. She's very intelligent. My five-year-old son says intelligent a lot. “He is very intelligent. I am very intelligent.” Not that we want to overvalue that either. Because we want to really remind them that unconditionally, we will love them and that their worth is consistent. It doesn't matter what. It doesn't matter what. That they're worth and our love for them is consistent. And to be honest, I will say there is nothing more powerful than hearing that from a father, particularly if you're a young woman, a young child like my daughter. For my husband to say, “I love you, no matter what. Don't ever let a man judge you or comment on your body and you believe what they say, because you're more than a body.” To teach our son that other girls and other boys are more than a body. To teach him that he's more than a body. So important. Now another thing we do is we praise all foods. We celebrate all foods. We are grateful for all foods. We do not have good and bad foods in our family. We don't talk about things being healthy and unhealthy. While we do very much value health, we really try to help the kids understand that they can listen to their body and our body. This is the kind of funny story, I'll tell you. My daughter is going to be 10 and she can outeat anybody. It's really quite phenomenal. She's always hungry. And my instinct is to go, “You've already eaten. Stop eating. You certainly cannot be hungry.” I'm feeling full and she's eating double what I have. But I really catch how we talk to her about her food and we celebrate, “Good for you, honey. You're listening to your body.” She'll often come to me and say, “Mom, I'm starving. What can I eat?” And we laugh. And she smiles. And I say, “Hun, what do you think I'm going to say?” And she rolls her eyes and she says, “You're going to say, ‘You can eat whatever you want.'” Now, of course, we have some rules around this. We don't encourage and we don't allow the kids to eat a lot of snacks before a meal. We try to really have them understand the importance of waiting for their meal. But that's probably 45 minutes at the most. Often my daughter will have a full peanut butter and jelly sandwich 45 minutes before a meal and still eat her whole meal, and we praise her for that. My son is really, really picky around food. There's certain things he really, really likes. And interestingly, he has no interest in sweets. If he could choose between salty and a birthday cake, he would choose salty all the time. We encourage him to just listen to his body. I talk to them about me listening to my body. They'll be like, “Mom let's go have ice cream.” And I'll usually sometimes not eat ice cream. That's not because I'm restricting. I might say, “No, I'm listening to my body. I don't really need ice cream right now.” And then there's other days where I'm ordering three scoops of ice cream because I'm really hunkering down for some ice cream. So I try to also teach them that it's okay to listen to your body as does my husband. So these are all really, really important things we talk a lot about. And this is the last thing we talk about, which is health. What is health? Is health only eating sugar-free foods? Is health being thin? Is health being tall? No, none of those things. Is healthy eating only organic food? No, absolutely not. Health is having balance and taking away judgment. We have to remember here too, health is not just physical, it's mental. I know people who eat the most “clean diet” and they exercise, but they're not healthy because emotionally they've got a really unhealthy relationship with food and their body. They're hard on themselves. They beat themselves up. Maybe they binge. So this is the thing to remember. Your definition of health might not be what is the real definition of health. Now this is really true and I'm going to make sure I have some people on coming here once we get back after the summer on talking about health at every size. This is a crucial conversation we need to have. If you haven't read yet a book called Health at Every Size, I urge you to. It's so important to really understand the science behind that and understand the issues we have around how we have stigmatized people in bigger bodies as being unhealthy when we've actually got lots of science to prove that you can be really healthy in any size body, that health is not indicated by just your size. Okay. So now we move on to what we model. This is similar, but very important. So my husband and I have two completely different body sizes. Not that that's super important, but I feel it's important for our children to have those two examples and to have family members with different body sizes, where we celebrate every single body, and we do a lot of modeling around that. We do a lot of modeling, celebrating bodies – all the body sizes, shapes, skin colors, nationalities, sexualities. We try to model to our children and normalize differences instead of things being like, “This is good and this is bad.” We also model, like I've mentioned to you, how we eat. We try not to judge each other for what we eat in front of each other. We try to really encourage by modeling like there's no time you should eat food. A lot of my patients will say like, “Oh, I had a bagel for breakfast so I can't have a bagel for snack.” And we go, “No, you can eat a bagel for breakfast and for lunch if you want.” My son loves more than anything to put cream cheese and sprinkles on his bagels in the morning. He loves really sprinkled-up bagels and we allow it. We figured it's no different than him putting jelly or jam on his bagel. And so we allow it, we allow him to enjoy his food. Given that he's a kid who doesn't like a lot of sweets, we're all for it. We also model by not saying negative things about our own body. My son is a personal story, but my son once came in and I was getting out of the shower and he said, “Mom, your belly's all jiggly,” which is most moms' nightmare. You know what I said? I said, “Yeah, it is. Isn't it beautiful though, that I had two babies in that belly? Isn't that cool?” He might say, “Daddy's belly is big,” or whatever he may say. And we'll go, “Yeah, isn't that wonderful? We have so much fun eating food and what a wonderful body. Isn't it so great that we have our bodies, that our bodies do all these things for us, like pump blood and breathe and digest food and run and hold our hearts and hold our brains and filter nutrients and things like that? Isn't that incredible?” We model body acceptance and body love. This has been really helpful for us, particularly because I know a lot of women and men who've developed eating disorders because their parents were on a diet all the time, that their parents model these strict diet culture rules, and good and bad rules, and all of this stuff that's so dangerous for young ears to hear. Now, we also model this or share one more personal story is, so much of eating disorders is around restriction. Over the last two years, my daughter has had some medical issues where she had to restrict several different food groups and this was really uncomfortable for me. I was very strong against it. I had said to her pediatrician, “I'm very uncomfortable with this. I do not like the idea of her restricting.” And he really coached me through. “You have everything you need to help her protect against this becoming something eating disordered. And just because she needs to do this medically doesn't mean we have to make it about her body,” which was really helpful for me to hear. And so, yes, she has had to restrict several really important food groups because of some stomach issues that she was having. And so it's been a really interesting thing for us to have these conversations around what is a diet and what does that mean and why would we go on a diet and what are some reasons that we probably would not encourage her to go on a diet around and so forth. And so, that has been really, really fascinating to watch her navigate that. There's been a couple of times where she said like, “Mommy, I know I'm supposed to check on the ingredient list for certain things.” But she said, “That has made me really uncomfortable having to do that.” And I so appreciated her talking to me about that. And so we came up with basically a strategy that she could know basically what is in certain different foods. And from there, she wouldn't have to look at the nutrient lists anymore, the ingredient lists. I was so happy that she felt comfortable saying, “This feels not right for me. This feels like it could become a problem.” And so, that has been really, really huge. I think the only thing I would add from there is, for me as a therapist, but mostly a mom, I've had to really allow a lot of space for anxiety around this stuff because I never want my child to have to go through that. I have caught myself being hard on myself and feeling a sense of hyper responsibility, like it's your job, it's your job to protect her. I've had to really pull back on that as per my conversations with the pediatrician in terms of saying, “Kimberley, you can do what you can do, but you don't have control. It will be what it will be. You can model and you can talk and you can be the best you can be, but we also have to let go of control and just be uncertain.” Like I'm always telling you guys, it's an uncertain thing. There's no promises that we can do the best that we can. If we make a mistake and we mess up, we apologize and we share and we talk about where that mistake in that era came from, where did we learn it, what triggered us in that moment. And so, that has been really, really important for me as well. So I hope that that's being helpful. Those are the main pieces that have helped us as a family to protect our daughter and our son from an eating disorder and body image issues. I do hope that even one point has helped you in navigating this. If you haven't, if you're not the parent of somebody, these are also messages and things that you'll have to do for yourself, to model to yourself, talk to yourself about. And if not, go and find an eating disorder specialist who can help challenge this and work through the beliefs you have around food and diet culture in your body, and that can be really, really, really helpful. Okay. I love you all. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. It is a beautiful day to do the really, really hard thing and you're doing it. I know you are. So, I will talk to you very, very soon. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com.

Our self awareness reaches an all time peak this week. We review a listicle of all the ways to make an entertaining podcast! The gang quickly realizes how many things we fail at when it comes to entertaining, but hey, it's all fun and games isn't it? ...Isn't it?   Check out our band, Good Trouble, and our new album, Across State Lines, out now!   5 things is a comedy podcast brought to you by Good Trouble. Each week, we (sometimes) talk about 5 things pulled from our messed up brains.   If you lightly blew air out your noise at all during this podcast please share this episode, and leave a review on iTunes, share us on Facebook, or tweet about 5 things. We really appreciate it, that is how our podcast grows, so please help us plant the seed. (trust us we can't, most of us shoot blanks)    ****Nothing in this podcast is meant to offend, hurt, or harm any person or company. Take our words for what they are worth. They are not meant to be taken seriously by any means this is a comedy podcast.***** Find the podcast on Itunes, Podbean. Watch the video version on Youtube.    Follow our socials: Twitter: RealGoodTrouble https://twitter.com/realgoodtrouble?lang=en Facebook: Good Trouble https://www.facebook.com/GoodTroubleOfficial/  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbC1caUEKZ6HCavOCZ6tDjg Instagram: @GoodTroubleOfficial https://www.instagram.com/goodtroubleofficial/?hl=en   We are: Ben Rauzi Tyler McCollough Ben Seigworth Jake Heiller

Last night as we were recording, we came across this gem of a film entitled "Evolution" and with crazy quotes which we've fortunately committed to memory: "Whoa, Doc! Don't take the leg! Ira, don't let them take my leg.", "Isn't there anything else you can do? He thinks he's an athlete.", "Nursing school? Don't you think you'd be happier in a different profession, one where people's lives were not dependent on you?", "Give me back my friend you big sphincter!", and many many more. Let us know your thoughts on this episode and what your favorite shampoo is on Instagram or Twitter. Don't forget to recommend movies like this for us at any time, just visit our website! And if you're looking to take a journey to depths of the sea, make sure you're prepared with some Db luggage. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

[Automated transcript] Weekly - Microsoft is planning on making you buy a new computer [00:00:00] Microsoft has had some incredibly successful operating systems and some significant failures. Think of windows millennial edition. While now they're coming up with windows 11, and frankly, things just aren't looking that good. [00:00:16] If you know me, you know how I have had some issues with Microsoft here over the years. They are a company that has been, in my opinion, very dishonest have been doing all kinds of immoral things for a very long time by destroying. [00:00:36] Parts of the market that they considered being competitors of theirs, so they have used their position at the top of the market with billions of dollars in cash to really nail anybody that tries to challenge them. And it's incredible to me what has happened over the years. But, of course, you might know Microsoft did. [00:00:57] Putting investment into Apple. And many people say that investment that bill gates authorized really saved apple from total collapse. And I can see how is this a reasonable audience or argument? But the bottom line is that Microsoft Windows has never been a great operating system when we get down to it. [00:01:21] It's always had issues. It's always had glitches, and we could go into a lot of reasons for that. But I think one of the main ones is that it has really tried to stay compatible with everything, all of the. When you were a kid, you certainly rode a bicycle. But, still, the bike that you might be riding when you're in your thirties or forties is probably not going to have three wheels. [00:01:46] And it's probably not going to have a pedal connected to the front wheel. It is going to be a whole lot different, and Microsoft, over the years, has tried to make their more modern operating systems as time has gone on. Compatible with older operating systems of theirs. And that inevitably leads to problems. [00:02:06] If you're trying to fix a problem, Einstein said this, right? If you're trying to fix a problem, you cannot use the thinking that created the problem in that first place, in order to fix a problem, you have to think at a different level. And when it comes to software and operating systems, you actually. To program at a different level. [00:02:29] And the entire structure of the programs has to be different than it is when you're starting. Microsoft has been doing that a little bit. And with Windows 11, they are really trying, they've gotten such black eyes over the years for security problems, and I think they deserve them for the most part. [00:02:50] Now they're forcing you to use, what's called a TPM. Now these TPMS have been around for quite a while. You see them built into your Macs, and they've been built into your apple Macs now for years built-in frankly to your iOS devices for your iPhone also for years. But this is a trusted platform module TPM. [00:03:17] And the idea behind a TPM is that your computer hardware is locking. All of this information and the senior TPM. Now there are a lot of difficult implementations of TPMS. The implementation that apple uses stores, all kinds of stuff that makes sure you're booting properly security, keys, et cetera. What Microsoft is doing now is for windows 11. [00:03:47] If you're going to. Your machine has to have a TPM and not just a older TPM 2.0, now there are alpha images available right now for developers of Windows 11. And I have to absolutely encourage you if you are a software developer to get an alpha version of windows so that you can double-check, is my software still going to be able to run in this. [00:04:13] And I also want to encourage you if you are relying on certain applications and maybe they're a little bit older, maybe they're not, but if your business requires you to use a piece of software, you really should get windows 11. Right now, get the alpha code, follow it through beta and test your software. [00:04:36] Make sure it works. If it isn't working, then talk to your software vendors, warn them that it's. Because Windows 11 requiring TPM support, although it doesn't require right now in this alpha version that they're releasing, but it does require it. Supposedly when they finally release windows 11, your computers that you have today probably don't have this chip. [00:05:07] We have a client that decided they were going to go out and buy their own server against our judgment. And what we told them they should be doing. So they went out and they bought we're going to get an HP server from HP enterprise and they did. And it did not have most of the security staff that they needed, including it did not have a TPM. [00:05:27] It did not have one of these trusted platform modules on it. Now, in their case with this HP server, they could buy one after the fact and install it. Although the entire machine had to be completely destroyed and reloaded, that's a minor price to pay versus buying a whole new server. [00:05:48] The TBM is not necessarily going to be compatible with the new version of windows. In fact, Microsoft surface tablets. I look this up their highest end surface tablets, Microsoft branding all over it. Microsoft certified $6,000 almost to buy this, or, top end surface tablet with all of the bells and whistles you can get on it. [00:06:15] It will not work with windows 11. How's that? So the reason Microsoft is doing this, I think is a good reason. They really want to lock down this system so that we're no longer having as many security problems. And we're not going to get into all of the different types of security problems that TPM is not going to solve a lot of them, but it's going to solve. [00:06:40] Some of them, but the program manager over Microsoft, her name is Al area. I guess it is Carly. She said that the hardware floor of TPM 2.0 support is going to be in place for the final version. We'll see. I think a lot of people are going to push back. However, Microsoft really does and legitimately does want to make sure that everything is safe. [00:07:07] So keep that in mind. There are a lot of people complaining about it, the alpha version. And that is why you have an alpha version, they're complaining about it because of the TPM, but also because of some of the other things that are going on with windows 11, at least right now, some of the things Microsoft has announced they've got, for instance group policy will not let you get around hardware enforcement for windows 11. [00:07:34] Microsoft is still going to block you from upgrading your device. To make sure your devices stay supported and secure. So that's good news and it's good news because many times in the past, how many of us we've upgraded our machines and to a new version of the operating system. And I use upgrade with air quotes around it, but we've upgraded our machines and they won't work with the new version of it. [00:08:00] The audience here for her little statement, which was part of this, a Microsoft tech community user questions was very upset. They did not like the answers that she was giving. And this is according to windows central, the videos, top comment, read, quote, a lot of these answers come off as super tone. [00:08:22] Deaf is looking like Windows 11 will be another windows. So for those of us that know yeah. Windows eight was really quite the flop member. They very quickly came out with windows eight one and the Microsoft is, and the only tone-deaf company out there, I've got to say, I think Apple has been very tone-deaf in a lot of different ways. [00:08:44] Now they seem to be waking up doing some things a little bit better, so kudos to them for that. But a lot of companies really. Tone, deaf to what users want. And there's a lot of blog posts here. We'll have to see if what they're saying ultimately ends up in windows 11. If it does, things will be a bit of a problem. [00:09:08] But part of the reason we don't know. Is because Microsoft disabled, any more comments on the video, they were getting so many of them. And of course there's trolls people who hate Microsoft. I'm certainly not one of them. They also, by the way, deleted all existing comments on the video here about windows 11 with their program manager in response to the negativity, the voting is still upon this video and. [00:09:37] 2,700 dislikes and only 146 likes as of this last week. It's interesting. Microsofts are really rushing to these new hardware requirements. They're being very aggressive, and I think they're handling it. Sound familiar. We've heard these sorts of things before, but now we'll see here into the legitimacy of this, how much is it going to benefit is limited as well because where are we having our biggest problems? [00:10:09] People cooking, links, things get installed et cetera, that nothing to TPM is going to be able to handle. The TPM is going to make sure that you have a secure boot that's it's missing. Goal in life. So how was it we're going to help with a lot of this other stuff we will see, and I'll definitely keep you up to date on this. [00:10:28] It's a real. Hey, I want to remind you guys, go to Craig peterson.com. Hopefully you got my newsletter last week. I gave you a private link to a webinar that I did about VPN, because there's a lot of people selling VPNs. Most of them are misrepresenting what they can. And in fact, most of them make you less safe. [00:10:53] So don't miss another thing. Go to Craig peterson.com right now. And subscribe [00:10:59] There seems to be a worker shortage. And a lot of businesses are finding that frankly, people who are involved in technology are resigning, they're calling it a great resignation of workers. We have a lot of problems as business people, filling jobs nowadays. [00:11:20] And one of the things I've thought about doing is maybe even starting a course for people who want to figure out if this whole cybersecurity thing is right for them. I think that might make a lot of sense for some people. And there are some of you listeners. I know, because I've talked to you who have gone out and. [00:11:40] Gotten into, is that a word who have changed careers into the cybersecurity realm? So does it make sense for you? I don't know. Do you think it would make sense for me to offer something? A cybersecurity course to give you guys the basics and help you to understand it, to see if it might be good for you. [00:12:00] Only, you know that, and if you're interested, make sure you drop me a note just to me, M E Craig peterson.com and let me know what you think, but the big tech is suffering from this great resignation of workers and workers in the technology field right now. It's a good time to leave. Now, this isn't the same as many workers who, for instance, were in the restaurant business for many years, were in food service. [00:12:31] You make money. Maybe you don't make money. Who knows those. And of course, those jobs pretty much disappeared during the lockup. Big tech, it's different in big tech. Most of these people, most of us, frankly, we retained our jobs. We were still able to work, still able to do the stuff we'd always been doing, but we were doing it from home, and many employees looked at the situation and said, I am not going to leave. [00:13:04] Because I don't know if I'll be able to get a new job. Does that make sense to you? So we have a bit of a pent up demand in the tech field of people who maybe didn't like the boss didn't really like what they were doing, but kept the job because at least it was a job. It paid some bills. And from the bottom-line standpoint, it didn't make sense to. [00:13:28] Now we see something else going on, people are leaving like crazy Facebook here. There's a quote in an article in MarketWatch. Lost this guy named Raymond Andres. Who's now the chief technology officer at air table. Now I've used air table before I was a client of theirs for a while. It's really something. [00:13:51] If you need to do some basic project management, or if you have a process for doing something. That needs to be tracked and maybe something handed over to another person when it meets a certain stage, check it out, air table.com online, but he left Facebook and he said, there's been a burst of activity of people leaving. [00:14:15] If anything. The lockdown delayed decisions. And that's exactly what I was saying. I've been saying that for a very long time, but there's another factor involved when it comes to technology. And that is the funding, which is just amazing. You might remember a couple of years ago we had this. Brakes on IPO's on initial public offerings. [00:14:40] These tech companies just were not going to go public at all. And because of that, many angel investors and venture capitalists said, forget about it. I'm not going to go ahead and make any sort of investment. That is the time when a lot of these small companies just failed and of course, incomes the lockdown and even more of them failed. [00:15:03] But now. But the investors are a spinner spending a lot of money so far this year, there have been 84 initial public offerings in the U S alone. Isn't that amazing? 50 plus billion dollars in IPO's. Now that's up from about 38 billion. Last year. So there's obviously money in the IPO world. So that gets the venture capitalists interested. [00:15:36] So VC money is also a record hives. This year's track to be the best year yet. According to PitchBook through June. This year 2021, $150 billion has been raised among about 7,000 deals. Now that's ahead of last year's record, a total of $164 billion for the year. So we're looking at some major money going in. [00:16:09] And we're have a lot of people that are leaving from Google and Facebook and Amazon and Apple, maybe your company as well, who are saying, wow there's some real opportunity now I could get in on the ground floor. The VC money is a record high, so I can take at least some salary enough to make it heck I haven't had to pay rent for a year. [00:16:32] So I can afford to do that, to try and. Something with some of my friends and that's exactly what they're doing. Robert half, which is a company I've had on my show before Robert half international, they did a survey and they found that about one third of the almost 3000 information technology professionals. [00:16:56] They surveyed said they planned to look for a new job in the next few months. They're also saying Robert half is that while employers posted more than 365,000 job openings in June alone, they're not getting filled that's by the way, the highest monthly. In about since September, 2019, and that's according to comp Tia, which is a, an industry trade group. [00:17:24] I'm a member of that. My company is a member of comp Tia as well. So there are a lot of things happening that are really driving people to startups. And there's a lot of advantages to that. So here's another guy. This is an engineering manager who left Facebook last year. And he quickly returned. [00:17:45] He said working at a startup, you have much more connection with employees and things moved faster. So tiger graph, by the way, also hired ex-Googlers. And they're increasing the workforce this year too, about 300 from 90. So think about what they're doing. That's not, yeah, technically it's probably still a startup, but it's 300 employees. [00:18:10] That's not us. That is a lot of employees, and they've got a lot of money behind them. Here's another guy. And she's saying, I thought I would be a lifer at Amazon. But this was a tremendous opportunity. I can have a far greater impact and more influence on the company's trajectory, which quite frankly was harder at Amazon. [00:18:32] And we're seeing more and more of particularly the younger employees looking at that. Her name's Anna fag fabric, sorry about the names butchering here, but she's now at freshly she's their chief criminals commercialization. Officer. So a lot of people are saying in this survey from Robert half international that having a chance to have an impact at a smaller company was a major reason for leaving. [00:19:00] And that's after years of massive growth at big tech companies. So again, IBM in the 1970s. They were the ruler, they were the king. They was impossible. If you work for IBM, man, they're going to be around forever. And of course, they still are. And they have amazing products, especially the Z series mainframe, but they're not the company they were. [00:19:24] And I think we now are seeing. The next step in these big high-tech, but is no longer being the companies that they were innovation is going to leave with these employees, and they're going to really be hurt and hurt quite a bit. All right. So coming up, we're going to talk, of course, more about some of the more important tech stuff, you've got to, if you haven't already get on my email list, I'll send you a couple of special reports that we. [00:19:54] As well as of course, every week, one or two newsletters, not sales documents, newsletters, Craig peterson.com. [00:20:04] Bitcoin is all of the rage. In fact, these cryptocurrencies or something, a lot of people have considered investing in of course, many have invested in it. I played around with them about a decade ago, and the IRS seized 1.2 billion worth of it. [00:20:19] You might remember, we talked years ago about the IRS trying to tax things in the virtual world. So if you were in one of these real life type things and you owned property, as it were inside this virtual world, they wanted to tax it. Of course, if you sold something with real hard money and. You sold it inside that real world with real hard money, you would end up having to pay taxes. [00:20:47] Just if you sold a hammer to someone, that's the way it works. A lot of people have decided that, for some reason, cryptocurrency is completely untracked. Now we know about cases. I've talked about them here where some of these coins in this particular case, we're talking about Bitcoin or has been used online. [00:21:15] And in fact, the government has found out who was using it and really stepped in, in a big way. Silk road is the biggest example. This was an online black market for everything you can think of, from illegal drugs to firearms, to all kinds of illegal commodities that were for sale online. [00:21:40] This was back in 2013, they were using Bitcoin to buy and sell things on this free trade zone. I think they called themselves and silk growed was just thriving. On comes the federal government and federal agents in the United States really cut their teeth in crypto search and seizure. With taking down the silk road, you might remember this was very unprecedented. [00:22:10] People had no idea. What they could do. How could the federal government monitor this? Can I buy and sell these Bitcoins? All of that sort of thing. And 20 years as the chief of money laundering and asset forfeiture in. Yeah, us attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Sharon Levin said that this whole takedown or silk road was completely unprecedented and it was new technology. [00:22:41] What do you do well because people. Here cryptocurrency and crypto, of course, being short for cryptography, they figure that okay. While obviously it is absolutely untraceable untrackable. Tell that to the people that this year have tried to ransom money out of enough. US corporation, some of the major consider for instance, colonial pipeline and what happened with them and how at least half of their cryptocurrency was returned to them. [00:23:15] So don't think that this stuff is a way that you can get away with breaking in the law or not paying taxes. It is not the whole. Business, if you will, of crypto seizure and sale is growing incredibly fast. In fact, the federal government just enlisted the help of the private sector to manage and store these crypto tokens that have been seized from. [00:23:47] Now I mentioned that the IRS has seized about $1.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency this fiscal year. That is a whole lot of cryptocurrency. And what are they doing with it while it's the same thing? Remember the drug dealers back in the day. Miami, what was happening? I used to love Miami vice TV show. What happened there while they seize boats, they seized cars. [00:24:13] They seized cash. Obviously, they can just put back into circulation, but everything else, what do they do? Cores, they go ahead and they sell it at auction. And that's what they've been doing. Then in June, they started auctioning off light coin and Bitcoin cash. They had 11 different lots on offer. [00:24:38] It was a four day auction and it included 150.2, 2 5 6 7 1 5 3 light coin. You like that. Remember cryptocurrency is not necessarily a whole coin. It's like having a gold coin. That's worth 500 bucks. How are you going to use that to buy a loaf? But what happens with these cryptocurrencies is you can buy and sell fractions of a coin. [00:25:04] So that's why you get into the millions of a piece of a coin. So they sold 150 ish like coin and. Above 0.00022 a Bitcoin cash worth more than 21 grand. So that's one of the 11 lots that was out there. And this crypto property is what they're calling. It had been confiscated as part of a tax noncompliance case. [00:25:34] I'm looking right now at the public auction sale notice. And where it was, where you could go online. It was a GS, a auctions.gov. If you want to check these things out, as in the general services administration, auctions.gov, GSA, auctions.gov, and they were selling it, and it was a taxpayer, it tells you all kinds of information about them. [00:25:56] It's a. Crazy here, but you have to pay by cash to certified cashiers or treasures check drawn on different whatever banks. And it's really cool to look at some of these things, but you can find them online. If you're interested in buying them might be a good way to buy them, to buy these various cryptocurrencies if you want to get into there. [00:26:20] But a lot can refer to almost anything could be, as I said, boats or cars like it was on Miami vice. It could be some number of crypto coins that are being auctioned. So they're going to be doing more and more of that. Then, apparently, the feds are saying that they have no plans to step back from being basically a crypto broker. [00:26:46] Here is the bottom line here because they're seizing and selling all of these assets. So keep an eye out for that. Remember what is going on? The silk road site that I mentioned had been shut down or operating on the dark web. It used Bitcoin exclusively nowadays are using various either types of coins. [00:27:09] Most of them are ultimately traceable, and we're not going to get into all of the details behind it, but the bottom line is so what do they do now? Think about this. Silk road had 30,000 Bitcoin that they were able to identify in CS. And it was probably the biggest Bitcoin seizure ever. And it sold for about $19 million. [00:27:37] So that was quite a few years ago. Somebody just pull up a calculator here, say 30,000 times, and what's Bitcoin nowadays. I'm not quite sure. Let's say it's $15,000. So in today's money, it had a half, a billion dollars. Today's value, a half, a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin in there isn't that something, and that was all seized and it was all auctioned off. [00:28:03] So keep an eye on that. They're following the money is the technique they're using. You can find out a lot more at us, marshals.gov, and that is how they found it. If you've got pictures. You're going to have to sell it. You're going to have to transfer. You have to do something with it. And that's where they're getting. [00:28:24] Bottom line, particularly if you take the Bitcoin and turn it into something else, but this would take a while to explain. And I was very happy to be able to sit in on a presentation that was done by the treasury department on how they handle all of this. It's frankly very fascinating. Hey, make sure you spend a couple of minutes and join me online. [00:28:49] Craig peterson.com. You can sign up for my newsletter. You can listen to my podcasts, and you can get some free, special reports just for signing up. [00:28:59] This is a tough one. Apple has decided that they are going to build in to the next release of the iPhone and iPad operating system. Something that monitors for child porn. [00:29:12] Apple has now explained that they are going to be looking for child abuse images in specific ones. And I just am so uncomfortable talking about this, but the whole idea behind it is something we need to discuss. Apple said, they're going to start scanning for these images and confirmed the plan. In fact, when people said, are you sure you're going to be doing that? [00:29:43] Here's what. IOS 15, which is the next major release of Apple's operating system for I-phones. And for I pad is going to use a tie to something called the national center for missing and exploited children. And the idea behind this is to help stop some of this child abuse and there's people who traffic in children, and it's just unimaginable. [00:30:13] What happens out there really is some people it's just such evil. I, it I just don't get it. Here's what they're going to be doing. There are ways of taking checksums of pictures and videos, so that if there is a minor change in something that might occur, because it was copied that it does not mess it up. [00:30:39] It still can give the valid checksum and. Iman, that technology is detailed, but basically just think of it as a checksum. So if you have a credit card number, there is a checksum digit on that bank accounts have checked some digits so that if you mess it up a little bit, okay, it's an invalid checksum, so that number's obviously wrong in this case. [00:31:03] What we're talking about is a checksum of a pitcher or oven. And these various child safety organizations have pictures of children who are abused or who are being abused, who are being exploited. And they have these checksums, which are also called hashes. That is now going to be stored on your iOS device. [00:31:33] And yes, it's going to take some space on the device. I don't think it's going to take an enormous amount of space considering how much space is on most of our iPhones and iPads that are out there. Apple gave this detection system is called C Sam, a real thorough technical summary. It is available online, and I've got a, to this article in this week's newsletter, but they released this in just this month, August of 2021. [00:32:06] And they're saying that they're using a threshold that is. Quote set to provide an extremely high level of accuracy and ensures the less than one in 1 trillion chance per year of incorrectly flagging a given account. Now I can say with some certainty in having had a basic look through some of the CSM detection documentation, that they're probably right about that, that the odds are very good. [00:32:39] Small that someone that might have a picture of their kids in a bathtub, the odds are like almost so close to zero. It is zero that it will be flagged as some sort of child abuse, because it's not looking at the content of the picture. It's not saying that this picture, maybe it is a picture of child exploitation or a video of her child being exploited. [00:33:01] If it is not one that has been seen before by the national center for missing exploited. It will not be flagged. So I don't want you guys to get worried that a picture at the beach of your little boy running around and just boxer trunks, but a lot of skin showing is going to get flagged. It's not going to happen. [00:33:24] However, a pitcher that is known to this national center for missing and exploited children is in fact going to be flagged and your account will be flagged. Now it's hard to say exactly what they're going to do. I haven't seen anything about it, of the apples. Only say. That that they're going to deploy software. [00:33:50] That's going to analyze images in the messages application for new system that will warn children and their parents from receiving or sending sexually explicit photos. So that's different. And that is where again, a child, you put parental settings on their iPhone. If they're taking these. Pictures, selfies, et cetera. [00:34:13] Girls sending it to a boyfriend, sending it to his girlfriend, whatever it might be. The parents are going to be warned, as are the children that is looking for things that might be of a sexual content. Okay. It really is. It's really concerning. Now let's move on to the part that I'm concerned about, because I think everyone can agree that both of those features are something good that are ultimately going to be very good, but here's a quote. [00:34:40] Apple is replacing it's industry standard end to end encrypted messaging system with an infrastructure for surveillance and censorship. Now, this is a guy who's co-director for the center for democracy and technology security and surveillance product project, I should say. He's Greg, no, him, no Chaim, is saying this, and he said apple should abandon these changes and restore its users, faith in the security and integrity of their data on apple devices and services. [00:35:14] And this is from an article over an tech. So this is now where we're getting. Because what are they doing? How far are they going? Are they going to break the end encryption in something like I messages? I don't think they are going to break it there. They're not setting up necessarily an infrastructure for surveillance and censorship, but apple has been called on as has every other manufacturer of software. [00:35:44] I remember during the Clinton administration, this whole thing with eclipse. Where the federal government was going to require anyone that had any sort of security to use this chip that was developed by the federal government. And it turns out, of course, the NSA had an very big backdoor in it, and it was a real problem. [00:36:04] Look at the Jupiter. That was another encryption chip and it was being used by Saddam Hussein and his family in order to communicate. And it turns out yeah, there's a back door there too. This was a British project and chip that was being used. So with apple, having resisted pressure. To break into phones by the US government. [00:36:27] But some of these other governments worldwide that have been very nasty, who've been spying on their citizens who torture people who don't do what apple are not happy, what the government wants them to do have been trying to pressure Apple into revealing this. Now I have to say, I have been very disappointed in all of these major companies, including apple, when it comes to China, they're just drooling at the opportunity to be there. [00:36:56] Apple does sell stuff there. All of these companies do. Yeah, Google move their artificial intelligence lab to China, which just, I cannot believe they would do something like that. AI machine learning, those or technologies that are going to give the United States a real leg up technology wise to our competitors worldwide. [00:37:17] And they move to China, but they have complied with this great firewall of China thing where the Chinese people are being censored. They're being monitored. What's going to happen now because they've had pressure from these governments worldwide to install back doors in the encryption systems. [00:37:38] And apple said, no, we can't do that because that's going to undermine the security for all users, which is absolutely true. If there is a door with a lock, eventually that lock will get picked. And in this case, if there's a key, if there's a backdoor of some sort, the bad guys are going to fight. Now Apple has been praised by security experts for saying, Hey, listen, we don't want to undermine security for everybody, but this plan to do ploy, some software that uses the capabilities of your iPhone to scan. [00:38:15] Your pictures, your photos, things that videos that you're sharing with other people and sharing selected results with the authorities. Apple is really close to coming across that line to going across it. Apple is dangerously close to acting as a tool for government surveillance. And that's what John Hopkins university cryptography professor Matthew Greene said on. [00:38:46] This is really a key ingredient to adding surveillance, to encrypted messages. This is again, according to our professor over John Hopkins, green professor green, he's saying that would be a key in Greece and then adding surveillance, encrypted messaging, the ability to add scanning systems like this to end encrypted messaging systems has been a major ask by law enforcement, the world. [00:39:14] So they have it for detecting stuff about missing and exploited children. That's totally wonderful. And I'm fine with that. No problem. But that now means that Apple's platform has the ability to add other types of scanning. All right. We'll see what ends up happening these the next thing, which is warning children and their parents about sexually explicit photos is also a bit of a problem here. [00:39:46] Apples. Yeah on this is messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments, and determine if a photo is sexually explicit. The feature is designed so that Apple does not get access to the messages it's saying, if it detects it, they're going to blur the photo. The child will be warned, presented with helpful resources and reassured it is okay if they do not want to view them. [00:40:16] And the system will let parents get a message. If children do view a flagged photo and similar protections are available for child attempts to send sexually explicit photos. Interesting. Isn't it. Interesting world. So I think what they're doing now is, okay, they're really close to that line, going over. [00:40:38] It could mean the loss of lives in many countries that really totally abuse their citizens or subjects, depending on how they look at them. Hey, make sure you check me out online. Craig peterson.com. Hey, sorry about having to talk about this, but man, this isn't. [00:40:57] It's time for a little bit of good news. We now have satellite internet performance. That's pretty much on par with fixed broadband, and it isn't just in the us. We're going to talk about that right now. What are the options? [00:41:13] You might remember the whole Sputnik thing and what happened there really drove the space race forward very rapidly, but we're using much fancier satellites than Sputnik, which of course, all it was doing was sending out a beep. [00:41:30] It was alive. And I remember I went over to a friend's house. I have an advanced class amateur radio license, and I went over to a friend's house, and he had some satellite equipment. He was also a ham, and we were able to tune his satellite in his satellite dish into a couple of the satellites up there. [00:41:52] Now the amateur radio community has one or more satellites. I'm not sure. We were really impressed with all of the stuff that's up there in the sky. There are satellites, of course, that we don't even know what they're doing because they're top-secret government satellites. And they're probably a decade ahead of the rest of the industry. [00:42:15] But he was pulling down images from some of these satellites that were open-source of what's happening on the earth and just all kinds of things back before heavy encryption. It was very cool to think that these satellites were miles up in space. No, I'm looking@somestatisticsherefromspeedtest.net. [00:42:37] I don't know if you've ever tried it. You should try and go to speed. Test one word.net on your web browser. And it'll open up a little window. It's a company called Uber. And that window will allow you to start a test. And the first thing it does is it tries to find, okay, where are you located? And who has the closest reflector that we can use for speed testing? [00:43:02] Usually there's something not too far away from you. If you are out in the Netherlands and of course, many of you listening, kind of our Netherlands, when it comes to internet access, you have pretty slow internet and speed test dot nettle. I'll put there's three numbers, you, or maybe four, you really have to pay attention to. [00:43:25] You've got the download number and that's telling you how fast the data comes down to your browser from that particular spot, which is typically, as I said, close to you, although nowadays something that's far away on the internet, isn't going to be that much. So download matters and then probably what matters the most for most people. [00:43:48] The next thing to look at is upload most of the time. If you have a regular consumer internet link, your upload speed is about 10, maybe as much as 20% of your download speed. So if you're getting megabit down, It's going to be 10% of that megabit down, maybe as much as 20%. So you're going to get about a hundred K up versus the megabit down it again, it varies. [00:44:21] A lot of places will have 50 megabits down and 10 megabits up so it can vary. Now the up speed, the uplink speed is what's going to affect you when you are trying to upload a file. So maybe you're trying to upload something to work, or you are trying to stream a video cause you're trying to run a webinar. [00:44:45] That's what that is. The next number that you have to pay attention to is the round trip time. So that's the time it takes from a packet to get from your computer to the server that you're connected to. And then back again. Usually that's measured in milliseconds. And I remember the very first time I was using the ethernet, it was thick wire, ethernet, and 10 megabits. [00:45:16] And wow. I was just so fast and very expensive to use. And the delay pinging another machine. In other words, sending a packet from my machine to another machine on the network. And then having that packet returned to me was anywhere from if it was like lightning fast, 10 milliseconds, and more likely it was 30, 40, 50, even a hundred milliseconds on the same day. [00:45:44] Nowadays, if you're looking@yournumbersonspeedtest.net, you are probably seen speeds that just blow away what I was using back then because things have just gotten so much faster. You've probably seen a few milliseconds in speed round trip, speed time again, depending on how good your link is. And then the fourth one you have to pay attention to is. [00:46:11] And jitter is where you are seeing inconsistent speeds in those round trip times. And that's going to affect live stuff, particularly live audio, which we'll notice a lot to that. Hey, the audio is just terrible. It's dropping out at me. Maybe sounds digitized. Usually. Parts dropout gamers care a lot about the jitter because that's going to affect their game and how they play their game. [00:46:42] So I just ran it here on my studio computer. Now we have fiber optics. We have a business line that goes directly to Comcast backbone and I'm seeing. From where I am to a server that's about 90 miles away, I would say my ping time round trip is three milliseconds. It's just, I'm still blown away by that. [00:47:08] Cause I remember using dial up modems that were 110 bits per second, 110. And that was just absolutely amazing. And then 300, can you believers? 300 bod and it's changed a lot, right? So three milliseconds round trip time for me. And I'm trying to brag or make you feel bad. I'm just telling you what it can be. [00:47:30] My download speed is 720. Megabits per second. And that's because right now we're downloading a few different things and my upload speed is a gigabit per second. So you can see in a commercial link, typically your download and your upload speeds are the same. It is not, it is in 10% obviously is exactly the same. [00:47:54] So those are the numbers you should look at. I don't see on my results. The jitter, maybe there's not reporting that anymore, or maybe they only reported on bad lines. I'm not sure, but again, speed test.net. So they have released this guys@speedtest.net, some stats on the satellite companies, because our friends over at startling, that's Elon Musk's company think Tesla and SpaceX, they are showing. [00:48:28] Amazing download speeds. They're showing 97 megabits a second download. Now that doesn't of course, I really approach the gigabit that I'm seeing, but this is from a satellite. It's just amazing. And they're going to see if more now all fixed all speeds of everyone. One in the United States that has gone to speed test.net and ran speed tests. [00:48:56] All speeds averaged out in the United States come to 115 megabits. So Starlink is almost as fast as the average broadband connection in the United States. Now here's a little, here's where they really shine to upload speed of about 14 megabits a second. So that's not bad that still fits within our model that we talked about latency. [00:49:24] 45 milliseconds. Now compare that with what I had, which was what three milliseconds it's slow, but it's again, remember it's a satellite. So it's going from the earth station while it's actually going from your computer to their satellite dish at your location is going up to the satellite is coming back down to an earth station is picking up the signals from the satellite, and then it's going to the server. [00:49:53] So 45 milliseconds is pretty good. I want to put that in perspective, though. The two biggest competitors right now, satellite internet are Hughes net and ViaSat Hughes net. This is again, according to speed, test.net. Download speed is averaging a little less than 20 megabits a second. So it's 20% of the speed of startling. [00:50:20] Yeah, pretty bad. A and star links latency. Remember, and this matters a lot. If you're trying to do live video or you're trying to run your phone over it, latency is 724 milliseconds. So that's three quarters of a second. From the time a packet goes out until it comes back. So that will affect any sort of phone calls that you're making on HughesNet and then ViaSat none, much better download speed of 18 megabits a second, which is worse, but the upload is slightly better than HughesNet and their latency is slightly. [00:50:56] What I'm saying is Starlink is really starting to shine. And Elon Musk is saying they are going to be even better. They're going to be much better. Give them a little bit of time. The reason that Charlene has the faster latency. Much, much faster latency than our friends at HughesNet or ViaSat is that they have low earth orbit satellite. [00:51:23] So they are sitting up there. They do have some drag from our atmosphere, so they will come down. There's things in place to take care of all of that sort of stuff. But Starlink it's going to be available pretty much everywhere. The country. India is very excited about this because they've had real problems with the internet in some of the rural areas. [00:51:48] But Hey, if you are out in the middle of nowhere in the United States, there is hope check out, Starlink online, lots of great stuff. Hey, stick around. We will be right back. You're listening to Craig Peterson. [00:52:05] The hackers are still going after with ransomware, they're still doing just blanket attacks. They're still doing massive fishing, but they have glommed on to something that is being much more effective. That's what we're going to be talking about. [00:52:21] This is a huge problem. We have seen some very high profile ransomware lately. Think of what happened with colonial pipeline, the whole solar winds attack, and much more the bad guys are trying to figure out a way to more inexpensive. Ransom money from us to more inexpensively, get all of our confidential information. [00:52:48] I have a client that before he was my client, all of his data was stolen and they run right to the Chinese. I have another client who's operating account was completely emptied. And the problem in both of these cases, Was really the client not doing what they should be doing, but supply chain problems, supply chains, the software, you have the hardware you have that you're relying on it. [00:53:19] One of the major types of businesses that are being attacked right now are our managed security services, company, security researchers who are trying to do, with all the effort they can maybe keep ourselves safe. But they're not doing what they should be doing. You've heard me complain for many years about programmers. [00:53:43] I'm saying that in air quotes, people who have learned how to do Microsoft C sharp or visual basic, whatever it might be. At a very high level in share. Yeah, they can put stuff together. It reminds me of when the spreadsheets first started hitting the boardrooms, all of a sudden, business people, managers all the way on up through the board were saying I don't need the it department anymore. [00:54:09] In order to get these numbers, I can just gather them in myself and put together a spreadsheet. I'll be safe. Everything will be great. I'm going to get that information now instead of having to wait for it, to get some programmers involved and get it done. The problem in all of these cases is exactly this. [00:54:29] These are non-professionals that are trying to do the job. Those spreadsheets, many of them had bad data on them. They compiled into even worse data because there were in many cases. Problems with the spreadsheet. I remember when I was a professor at Pepperdine University and I was teaching management information systems out there in the west coast and beautiful campus, by the way, if you've never been there out at Pepperdine, right on the coast. [00:54:59] But when I was working with those students, who were, it was his MIS 4 22 last year undergraduate. I ended up emphasizing spreadsheet. Because I realized most of them didn't really know how to do it. Yeah. Okay. They could go ahead and put a little thing in there that says, add up all of these columns and this row and multiply by that and cut out. [00:55:25] I've got a number coming out, but is that number correct? It's like a county. And that's why accountants use double entries in the accounting systems to make sure everything zeroes out. Make sure everything is correct. And by having someone who's a manager using this spreadsheet, you might get some great information and might get it quickly. [00:55:46] It might be absolutely correct, but it's very possible that it won't be. And from my experience and programmers are the worst of the worst, because many of them started when they were kids, very bright kids who were working on stuff and hacking it things. That's where the term hacker comes from. [00:56:05] Hacker wasn't necessarily a bad thing. They certainly. Bad guys. They were just hacking it. The computer's trying to figure out how to program, and if something went wrong, they would hack at the code a little bit more to try and fix it and figure it out. Non-professional they were just hacking that stuff. [00:56:23] And that's what we called them hackers. And so it was a derogatory term for someone that didn't really know what they were doing, but they were hacking their programming or hacking it. Some other part of it. Versus having people who are actually trained and experienced Microsoft got sued because of how bad windows millennial edition was and windows Vista. [00:56:49] And they found that the majority of the code had been written by interns, by kids, right out of school without the experience. What does that mean? Why am I really bashing the younger generations? It has to do with the ability to foresee problems and the best way to be able to foresee a problem is to have seen it before, for instance, that you've gotta be careful when you're allocating right. [00:57:15] And that it's not necessarily going to be cleared properly, or if at all, and that the return points can be changed in programs. That's one of the things that hackers do most nowadays. So if you have software that's written by people that don't realize all of the implications of what they're doing, you could be in trouble. [00:57:38] I like to use the analogy of a car. Back in the day, many of us are turned a wrench and we tinkered with the older cars. We had a whole lot of fun with them trying to figure out how can I improve this? And we'll do this to the carb and we'll change this and look at this airflow problem, pretty basic stuff. [00:57:56] But today, what we're dealing with is a car that is a whole bunch of major components. We went to replace an air intake because of a bad sensor in a Ford Crown Vic. And it was one of the last model years. And back in the day, you could pretty easily fix that. You just buy the little sensor and put it in there. [00:58:20] And you're all set. We had to buy the whole component, which included the air intake, manifold all the way on back to the sensor and everything that was behind it. It was absolutely crazy and cost a lot of money. So think of someone who is trying to build a car today, we might equate this to you by a transmitter. [00:58:43] You buy an engine, hopefully they fit together. If all right, have you ever tried to match a transmission to an engine and it's not right. Do you have to get a converter or make a converter that goes in the middle, or do you have to drill it out in order to make it Mount properly? All of those sorts of problems. [00:59:00] And then you've got all of the other components in the vehicle as well that are mix and match. That's what programmers are doing nowadays. Nowadays, a programmer grabs this library that does something. So, for instance, Apple has a library you can use that identifies faces, but you don't know how it works. [00:59:22] You don't know that transmission, how it works. Is it really going to work for you? It wasn't smart to combine that 600 horsepower engine with a Vega Chevy Vega transmission. For those of you old enough to remember what that is. But it didn't stop you from doing that either. And that's what we're seeing. [00:59:42] That's what these supply chain attacks are all based on that. So much software is written by people that have not had the experience to think through the potential problems. And Microsoft is to blame for making it really easy for anyone to write a program, just like you could blame VisiCalc back in the day for making it really easy for anyone to make a spread. [01:00:07] But those spreadsheets weren't accurate. The software that we're getting from our suppliers, which include Microsoft. This latest, huge hack came right through Microsoft exchange. It was a zero day bug. The same types of problems that we've had with some of the other software that's out there. Think about how we got the solar winds attack. [01:00:31] Think about some of these other ones that we've had that are just absolutely massive. It can kill us and kill us in a very big, when we're talking of course, about all of our systems and software. Hey, I want to remind you guys, just spend a couple of minutes. If you would go online, Craig peterson.com. [01:00:51] You're going to get the sort of thing. Last weekend. I sent out a video that I chaired with some friends, and I shared it with anybody on my list. Last weekend, it was just part of the newsletter on VPNs, who you can tell. Who you can't trust and the best ways and times to use a VPN. All right. Stick around. [01:01:12] We'll be right back. You're listening to Craig Peterson online@craigpeterson.com. [01:01:20] So now, a little bit about what supply chain attacks are. We're going to get into that a little bit more now, what can you do about it? And this European union-funded study that came in the wake of these two major cyber attacks. [01:01:36] The European Union has now forecasted that there's going to be four times more software supply chain attacks in 2021 than there were in 2010. That, my friend, is a very big deal. These cybercriminals are now shifting to larger cross border targets. [01:01:59] This is just an amazing report. You can look at it. It's called threat landscape for supply chain attacks. And they looked at 24 supply chain incidents that have occurred between January 20, 20 and July, 2021. The basics here are a supply chain attack is where a software provider or some sort of a trusted provider is hacked. [01:02:25] Usually they're are hacked in a way that they don't realize they've been hacked and then they pass off. The hacked software to you. I can remember a Microsoft product back when they used to ship them on DVDs or CDs. And we got that thing. One of the first steps was always to scan it for viruses, and we did. [01:02:48] And sure enough, Microsoft was shipping out software with a virus on it all. The same sorts of things have been happening with thumb drives some of these ones, particularly cheap ones that you buy online often have built right into them. Malware. Now with some of the reason for the malware is legitimately purposeful. [01:03:12] Okay. What they're trying to do is get you to have their little ransomware work for them so they can make some money off of you. In other cases, you have a thumb drive that a friend gave to you, and you're now using a little thumb drive and guests. Yeah, you are a little thumb drive has some nastiness on it. [01:03:32] Same, thing's true with Microsoft word documents that might have macro viruses, if you will, that are built into them. These little Trojans do the same thing with the Excel spreadsheets and on. But what they're finding right now is that these hackers are trying to get to the companies that provide services for the bigger companies. [01:03:55] And that's where it can hurt you and hurt you in a big way. I was just talking about how many programmers just aren't terribly professional. And some of that has to do with their lack of experience and those programmers might be using a library. So, for instance, get hub, which I use, and it's very common to be used out there online. [01:04:18] It has all kinds of source code called open-source code. So you can use it. You can model. That some of that software has been infected. And then there are people who are using languages that are nice and simple, like Python and others. And you write in this scripting language and pull in libraries that come from public sources that do things for you. [01:04:41] So they might do something like display something on this screen. They might go out and grab something from a URL online or connect to a database. And what the bad guys have found out is we're not, double-checking all of the sources of all of this software, and that is causing some huge security holes. [01:05:04] And what ends up happening is companies like solar wind are using some of this soft. And they then might be including it in the software they're providing you now, in the case of solar winds, it's a little bit different, but it's the same concept. Solar wind software was being used by a large number of companies in the U S. [01:05:29] Agencies were using solar wind software. And so we're regular old, small businesses because what happens is you hire a managed services provider and they don't have time to look at all of your computers all of the time. So they have software that they're using called a Ryan in this particular case. And I'll Ryan is installed on all of your computers. [01:05:55] So probably unbeknownst to you there's software on your computers. That is not being written by that managed services provider. But in this case was being written and provided by solar winds. Solar winds got hacked and the hackers put into solar wind software. Code that would eventually end up on your computer and your computer getting hacked. [01:06:18] So you just see how complicated this gets, right? You guys are the best and brightest, but you've probably got your eyes spinning a little bit here because we're talking about multiple layers of like again, direction, right? So these attacks, which mode, it looks like it began maybe in March 20, 20. [01:06:38] We're only detected in December last year, and they have been linked to this Russian organization called cozy bear, but we'll see what happens. We've got the more recent ones, which is the reveal. Ransomware got gang, this R E V I L reveal. And they exploited vulnerability. In Casias VSA, which again is another management platform that's used by many of these companies out there that are providing managed services. [01:07:09] Now I've got to say by means of full exposure here. We had to use both of these pieces of software before. And when we looked into them, we found that they. Insecure. In fact, it sounds like some of these companies had been warned by their own employees, that the entire architecture of their software was insecure. [01:07:33] Okay. So we ditched them all. We're using Cisco's software, they're advanced malware protection. The real high-end firewalls with special software, the backend that's running. So we're not getting into all of these crazy acronyms and names right now. So just so you know, that's what we use. That's what we use for our customers. [01:07:56] I even have that at my house. Okay. So a little bit more expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than having to hire a whole bunch of it. People to keep track of everything else now, because say. I had gotten, I had this ransomware that was distributed to Casa, his client. And potentially to kiss his clients, and this reveal gang demanded a $70 million ransomware payment say is denied that it paid it. [01:08:28] They may or may not have paid it. You might remember in the Trump years, they said, absolutely. Don't pay ransoms, or we may come after you because that is illegal to pay a ransom by. Because you are supporting a terrorist organization. So you gotta be careful with stuff like that. Don't pay ransoms, right? [01:08:48] Because it also tells them that you are a company that pays ransoms. So guess who they're going to come after again, you, because they know you'll pay. So a lot of incidents, I'm looking at a timeline of the attacks that were studied in this report coming out of the European. Yeah. And it is amazing here. [01:09:06] The unit max beans. That's one of those libraries. I was talking about the able desktop as Sydney. Was Vera excelling on VC or excuse me, VG, solar winds, big knocks, Mon pass Ukraine, SEI, click studios cast private stock investment manager goes on Fujitsu ledger. So this is a huge problem. And this is the sad part. [01:09:34] European union's predicting. It'll go up four fold this year. So what do you do? You have to audit your vendors. And that usually means you have to have an agreement plays. They accept the responsibility if you are hacked. So keep it up. Yeah. Let me know if you'd like more help with that. You can always email me M e@craigpeterson.com. [01:09:59] I think I got a couple of those contracts kicking around these vendor contracts. If you'd, I'll send one to, but you have to reach out to me. M E. At Craig peterson.com. All right, stick around. We've got one more segment today, and I want to make sure you spend a couple of minutes online. Craig peterson.com. [01:10:20] And go ahead and sign up. Sign up for my weekly newsletter. [01:10:28] We're going to do a little bit of wrap up right now, including talking about I message some of the changes that have come in Apple's messenger application, that many people are saying it shocking, and you should stop using it right now. [01:10:44] This is an article in Forbes by Zach Dorfman, where he's talking about why you should stop using iMessage after what he's calling the shock iPhone app. [01:10:58] Has had a number of major problems here recently that have been in the news. Of course they have about half of the smartphones in the country, right there. But things have become a little worse for apple here recently. And what we're worried about is, for instance, this whole Pegasus that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, where it is, what's called a zero-click piece of metal. [01:11:25] Where they can send you a text message, even if they're not a friend of yours and take over your phone. And we've seen things like that before. In fact, I think it was in Saudi Arabia, where was it? The crown prince received a video from somebody. He played it, and it exploited some vulnerabilities in the video player and allowed them to have full access to his phone. [01:11:49] And don't remember all of the details, but that part, I do remember. So the big question is, have all of these major security issues being fixed by apple is I messaged say for not, apple is saying it is encrypted end to end. They don't keep messages. There's some question about that because of a major incident back in 2018, where Apple was going to make sure it encrypted all of your backups and then. [01:12:18] FBI apparently spoke to apple and got them to change their opinion on the whole thing, which is another interesting problem. Isn't it. So what do you do, what do you do with that? And what do you do? Very good question. Earlier this year we had WhatsApp make a major change. They had course also said we've got end to end encryption with WhatsApp or wonderful. [01:12:41] And then people really questioned it because it was now owned by our friends over at Facebook. Is there privacy thereon WhatsApp? Is it legitimate? Is it just a bad PR move? What's going on WhatsApp, by the way, with 2 billion users worldwide and WhatsApp Facebook said, Hey, listen, we're gonna start giving you ads. [01:13:05] And basically people were worried about them examining the content of their messages in order to give them targeted ads, et cetera. So now apples just confirmed what Forbes is calling the most shocking and controversial update in the platforms. History. And here's what's going on. Pegasus, of course, as I mentioned, this click attack, Apple's got his new update now, right? [01:13:32] That is using machine learning. In order to see if a minor child might be sending a picture pornographic or otherwise they should not be sending or receiving. And we also have built into it. Now, this child sexual abuse. Check some set of people. That looks on your devices to see, do you have any photos that match, just check some part of the problem with this isn't that I'm not worried about these children that are being exploited. [01:14:06] Cause I am, I'm absolutely against that. But the bigger question here is, okay, so what's next is apple going to capitulate to the government and let them know if you have a certain picture of something rather the government doesn't like, where is this going to end? So in other words, Apple's phones being a lockbox. [01:14:30] The Apple iPad is being a lockbox is really. No longer going to be true. It is no longer going to be that encrypted lockbox that has been promised to us the electronic frontier foundation. As a little comment here, they say Apple's compromise on end to end encryption may appease government agencies in the U S and abroad, but it is a shocking about phase four users who have relied on the company's leadership in privacy. [01:15:00] And security, which is absolutely true. Now there's not much controversy, frankly, about limiting the spread of child sexual abuse material, but where we go on from there, that's where it starts getting a little more questioning here. Here's a, this is a Jake Moore over at east set. You said the initial. [01:15:21] Potential concern is that this new technology could drive CSM further underground. See Sam being this child abuse material, but at least it is likely to catch those at the early stages of their offending. The secondary concern, however, is that it highlights the power in which apple holds with the ability to read what is on devices and match any images to those known on a database. [01:15:47] This intrusion is grown with intensity and often packaged in a way that is for the greater good, right? Isn't that always the case. So we're doing it for the children. I talked about this extensively earlier. You can find it in my podcast, go to Craig peterson.com/podcast. Right now you can listen to it there. [01:16:08] Take a look in your emails from the newsletter. Pretty good about trying to send those out the last few weeks. I haven't been that great because of issues here, family issues and others. So it's been a little tough. So I apologize for that, but we all want to see technology develop. That's going to help tackle abuse. [01:16:27] It's going to stop the real bad guys that are out there. But what happens when China says we want access to this? We want to know when there's any pictures of a weaker symbol, for instance, or something else. What's Apple going to do they get, they can no longer say, oh, that's not taught. We don't have that technology. [01:16:45] There's nothing we can do. Just like Apple has done with the iPhones in the past, saying we don't have a back door. There is no backdoor key. We can't crack into that. That doesn't stand up when they say, okay, China comes to them or Iran or Saudi Arabia, or you name the country and says, Hey, we don't want people to see these particular messages. [01:17:08] Absolutely amazing. So timing on this dreadful. Okay. Part of iOS 15, apparently Pegasus raised two serious concerns that Apple's ecosystem, including I message has sti

Welcome back everybody to the Self Storage Income Podcast! I'm your host AJ Osborne!    Debt - there are very few subjects that have gotten as bad a wrap as debt has. Don't get me wrong, debt when you don't understand it… can be downright deadly. But debt used as a rocket fuel for generating wealth and income… that's when debt becomes a massive force of leverage.    But how? How can taking on debt ever be a good thing? Isn't buying all cash a better way to go? Isn't paying off a loan as quickly as possible the best course of action? Yes and no, just like the above gives hint to - it depends on what kind of debt we're talking about.    Let's clear this up once and for all - not all debt is BAD and not all debt is created equal. We have two kinds of debt - consumer debt (which is generally bad and that you should try to avoid). And then we have revenue producing debt (which is the sweet nectar of the gods for investors).    This is just the tip of the iceberg and I couldn't be more excited to help shed some light on this subject because I see it and hear it every single day. I hope this helps you more fully understand the different types of debt, when you should and SHOULDN'T be afraid of debt, and when you can use it effectively to help grow your wealth.    Outside of that, I give a bit of economic back story in regard to capital,  the different types of markets, economic cycles, and more to really take a deep dive on the subject.    Enjoy everybody and we'll catch you next time!  AJ   Become a part of the CRE Circle: https://ajosborne.com/cre-circle/     The Self Storage Income Exclusive Fall Event in Coeur d'Alene Idaho (GET YOUR SEATS RESERVED ASAP!) - https://selfstorageincome.com/events/   Be sure to go to Selfstorageincome.com to get your  copy of my Self Storage Playbook. This step by step playbook walks you through from start to finish - how to identify a self storage market, how to perform due diligence, how to contact a current owner, and ultimately how to land a deal and purchase a storage facility.     You can also find the Self Storage Income Podcast on: iTunes Spotify Stitcher   The Self Storage Income Podcast is Sponsored by:   Janus International - https://www.janusintl.com/ Store Local - https://www.selfstorage.coop/aws/SL/pt/sp/home_page Live Oak Bank - liveoakbank.com/incomepodcast  

Welcome back everybody to the AJ Osborne Podcast! I'm your host AJ Osborne!    Debt - there are very few subjects that have gotten as bad a wrap as debt has. Don't get me wrong, debt when you don't understand it… can be downright deadly. But debt used as a rocket fuel for generating wealth and income… that's when debt becomes a massive force of leverage.    But how? How can taking on debt ever be a good thing? Isn't buying all cash a better way to go? Isn't paying off a loan as quickly as possible the best course of action? Yes and no, just like the above gives hint to - it depends on what kind of debt we're talking about.    Let's clear this up once and for all - not all debt is BAD and not all debt is created equal. We have two kinds of debt - consumer debt (which is generally bad and that you should try to avoid). And then we have revenue producing debt (which is the sweet nectar of the gods for investors).    This is just the tip of the iceberg and I couldn't be more excited to help shed some light on this subject because I see it and hear it every single day. I hope this helps you more fully understand the different types of debt, when you should and SHOULDN'T be afraid of debt, and when you can use it effectively to help grow your wealth.    Outside of that, I give a bit of economic back story in regard to capital,  the different types of markets, economic cycles, and more to really take a deep dive on the subject.    Enjoy everybody and we'll catch you next time!  AJ Become a part of the CRE Circle: https://ajosborne.com/cre-circle/

Isn't it a shame when a major celebrity doesn't know when it's time to hang it up?  Anna read that one comedian is planning a comeback that absolutely nobody wants! (:30) Anna has got three crazy news stories, and Raven's gonna pick one to talk about!  His options include a vigilante UFC fighter, a heartbreaking stolen library story, and a skeleton with hair!  (4:19) Is it ok to try other people's food when you're out to dinner?  It's one thing to have a couple fries off a friends plate, but Anna thinks that what her husband does is going way too far!  (7:39) If you could be buried next to any celebrity, who would it be?  Definitely a weird question, but Anna got curious after seeing that a burial plot next to her favorite celebrity was open!  (14:38) A new study says that the trick to a happy relationship is to name 5 things you love about your partner for every one thing that annoys you.  Anna and Raven put their respective spouses to the test, and while Anna's husband Paul eventually got 5, Raven's wife Alicia had more trouble!  (18:10) Everyone looks for ways to save money but if you resort to lying about your children to save a buck, that's all I need to know about you!  (24:59) What makes you irrationally mad?  People on Twitter are upset because of a recent font change, but that's got nothing on how Raven feels about his refrigerator!   (27:40) Thomas doesn't believe in using Credit or Debit cards, and instead uses cash for literally every transaction.  His wife Joan hates it and thinks it time for him to join the 21st century!  Whose side are you on?  (34:14) Deirdre has got a shot at $300!  Can she beat Raven in pop culture trivia and claim the prize? (41:53)

Batman and Robin (1997) is notorious as one of the worst Batman films, panned by both audiences and critics. But wait a minute. All four of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman films have their problems. Doesn't B&R's story hold together relatively well? Isn't it kind of .... entertaining? Could it actually be the best of the four? Of course it's far from perfect, and we discuss some of its problems, including a pretty un-Batman-like Batman and a misguided "homage" to Batman '66. We discuss the bad and relatively good of the final '90s Batman film. ALSO, Burt Ward reminisces about Bruce Lee, and we read your reaction to our episode on The Phantom Pharaoh! Message Board thread on episode 163 on The Phantom Pharaoh Arnold Schwarzenegger Complete Japanese Commercial Filmography

The Kenny Omega show rolled on, seamlessly traveling from Pittsburgh to Mexico without missing a beat. Meanwhile, in Japan, the great Masato Tanaka (Yes THAT Masato Tanaka) delivered a great match for NOAH! Isn't wrestling in 2021 wild? All this plus your questions talking MMA, fantasy booking, favorite matches and even a bit about our time in the Army! It's Illegal Double Team, delivered right to your ear holes!

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams.

Hello to you listening in Portobuffole, Italy!Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is 60 Seconds, your daily dose of hope, imagination, wisdom, stories, practical tips, and general riffing on this and that.Isn't it thrilling to climb a mountain, make your way up to the very top, to the summit that beckoned you from below?The French poet and ardent mountain climber René Daumal noted that “You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”Practical Tip: Climb your mountains, see where you've come from, where you are headed - and then you'll know what you didn't know before.This is the place to thrive together. Come for the stories - stay for the magic. Speaking of magic, I hope you'll subscribe, follow, share a nice shout out on your social media or podcast channel of choice, including Android, and join us next time! You're invited to stop by the website and subscribe to stay current with Diane, her journeys, her guests, as well as creativity, imagination, walking, stories, camaraderie, and so much more: Quarter Moon Story ArtsProduction Team: Quarter Moon Story ArtsMusic: Mer's Waltz from Crossing the Waters by Steve Schuch & Night Heron MusicAll content and image © 2019 - Present: for credit & attribution Quarter Moon Story Arts

Kirk Chisholm is a Wealth Manager, Economist, and Principal at Innovative Advisory Group.  His background and areas of focus are portfolio management and investment analysis in both the traditional and alternative investment markets. Since 1999, Kirk has been providing wealth management services to individuals, executives, entrepreneurs, and their families, as well as businesses and organizations. Over the years, he has been highly dedicated to developing lasting relationships with all of his clients. One of the benefits of working with Kirk is his patience and ability to provide a clear and easy to understand explanation of complex financial concepts.Prior to integrating with Innovative Advisory Group in 2008, Kirk founded Stirling Global Advisors, LLC in 2005, a full-service private wealth management firm. Kirk has also held wealth management roles at both UBS PaineWebber and Smith Barney.Listen in as they discuss:How Kirk got into wealth management.The reasons why his business is innovative in wealth management.Lack of advertisement as the reason behind the limited knowledge of RIA.Some of the things that put people at risk when investing in real estate through an RIA.Questions that should be asked about alternative investments.Some of the challenges that are observed from RIA clients.How to do smart investing.And, more!TIP OF THE WEEKMark: My tip of the week is learn more, go to innovativewealth.com and also, do check out the Money Tree Podcast.Scott: Sometimes you have to move files from one computer to another, or you have to move files from your phone or iPad to a computer. Macs sometimes have Airdrop but it's not always convenient so check out SnapDrop.net. All you do is open it up on your browser and you'll see this in the middle of your computer that says Coral Pipe (maybe your says something else), and what will happen is, if I go to another device around me like my phone for example, and go to SnapDrop.net it will now see through the internet connection the other computer. If I drop a picture or file through there, it will move it to the other device seamlessly.Kirk: The one thing I think that has been the most productive for me this year is the book called The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran. It is so good, it helped me basically take a full year's worth of productivity and jamming into one quarter. I got all my year goals accomplished this year in the first quarter, it was amazing and I'm still shocked that I was able to do that. That is one of the books that I love and I'm spending the next two weeks re-reading it again to make sure I can do it again this year.WANT TO LISTEN MORE?Did you like this episode? If so, tune into another one of our exciting episodes with special guest Omar Khan as we discuss how to get a passive return on your investment.Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

When you turn on a garden hose, do you wait impatiently for the water to come out of the spout? Of course not.   You know it's coming eventually, so you trust that water's going to pour out of there any second.   When you plug in the hairdryer, do you wonder if it will work? Probably not.   When you drive on a two-lane road, are you afraid that the oncoming traffic will hop into your lane? I hope not.   When you go to bed at night, are you concerned that the sun might not rise in the morning? No way!   We TRUST that these things will happen.   What would happen if we, in a similar way, trust that the universe had our backs? What if we trust the universe with our big desires knowing full well they would show up?   In today's episode, I'm inviting you to adopt a sense of trust and surrender regarding the outcomes that you want, to trust in the power of your unconscious mind and your source (God, the universe, creative energy, etc.) just like you would the force behind the garden hose.    When you turn on the spigot, you know there's a lag time before the water reaches the end of the hose. But the lag doesn't make you doubt that the flow will come. You know you just need to give it a few seconds before you see evidence of the flow.   It's much the same when tapping into the power and abundance of the universe. There's some lag time, but there's no need to fret about the lag. The key is to stay positive in your anticipation and expectation as you focus on your desired outcome. If you start to feel impatient, temporarily shift your focus to something else that will help you get in a feel-good state. The key is to manage your moment-to-moment state as you focus on the essence of what you want. The key is to live as if it's already yours, and that its arrival is certain.   Trust that the universe has your back. The energy flow is always there. And you have the opportunity to co-create with your source.    Let that sink in.    If you're skeptical, that's okay. But what do you think could happen if your unconscious mind believed that the universe could be trusted? Isn't it worth a seven-day experiment to find out?    Thanks for listening!   To share your thoughts:   Leave a note in the comment section below Use the “I have a question” button Share this show on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn  Find Brenda on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube Links from today's episode:   MR116 One Simple Change for Big Results -- on disconnecting the cause and effect   To help out the show:   Leave a positive review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews help, and I read each and every one. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Libsyn

Welcome back everybody to the AJ Osborne Podcast! I'm your host AJ Osborne!    Debt - there are very few subjects that have gotten as bad a wrap as debt has. Don't get me wrong, debt when you don't understand it… can be downright deadly. But debt used as a rocket fuel for generating wealth and income… that's when debt becomes a massive force of leverage.    But how? How can taking on debt ever be a good thing? Isn't buying all cash a better way to go? Isn't paying off a loan as quickly as possible the best course of action? Yes and no, just like the above gives hint to - it depends on what kind of debt we're talking about.    Let's clear this up once and for all - not all debt is BAD and not all debt is created equal. We have two kinds of debt - consumer debt (which is generally bad and that you should try to avoid). And then we have revenue producing debt (which is the sweet nectar of the gods for investors).    This is just the tip of the iceberg and I couldn't be more excited to help shed some light on this subject because I see it and hear it every single day. I hope this helps you more fully understand the different types of debt, when you should and SHOULDN'T be afraid of debt, and when you can use it effectively to help grow your wealth.    Outside of that, I give a bit of economic back story in regard to capital,  the different types of markets, economic cycles, and more to really take a deep dive on the subject.    Enjoy everybody and we'll catch you next time!  AJ

-Isn't it amazing how much people still care about Tim Tebow? It seemed like a given he wouldn't make the Jaguars roster, as he hadn't played football in a few years and didn't really have a position Show sponsored by GANA TRUCKING

Isn't Robert Redford the coolest?  Obviously he's one of the coolest movie stars out there but he also started SUNDANCE!And he did a WHOLE bunch of other cool stuff.So, naturally- we wanted to know more!And while you are at it- leave us a review or a rating on whatever platform you are listening on!How much does a hot air balloon cost?  What happens when you get abducted by an alien?  Who died on the set of The Wizard of Oz?  Frasier VS Seinfeld, Old School VS Stepbrothers, Chris Farley VS John Candy?  What happens in a city after the Olympics are over?  Misty Roberts and Isaac Heckert are gonna talk about cool sh*t for 15 minutes everyday and have fun doing it.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/MistyandIke)

DOCUMENTATION AND ADDITIONAL READING PART 1 (0:0 - 9:36): ────────────────── ‘Becoming Parents' — The Moral Revolution's Contradictions Are in Full View in Just Two Simple Words WASHINGTON POST (IAN DUNCAN) Pete and Chasten Buttigieg Say They Have Become Parents WASHINGTON POST (SEAN SULLIVAN, TYLER PAGER, AND SEUNG MIN KIM) ‘Outsider' Buttigieg Plays A Skillful Inside Game, Positioning Himself for the Future PART 2 (9:37 - 19:30): ────────────────── One 'Pride Flag' Isn't Enough? The LGBTQ Community Has an Inclusivity Crisis Over a Flag — And It's Worth Your Attention CNN (KEELY AOUGA AND TAYLOR ROMINE) LGBTQ Groups Across the US Consider A New Flag Meant to Be More Inclusive of the Transgender Community and People of Color PART 3 (19:31 - 22:43): ────────────────── The Self-Defeating Nature of Intersexuality: There Is No End to the Revolution

Isn't it just like the Lord to teach or remind us of a timeless lesson when we least expect it? That is exactly what He did several weeks ago, and in all honesty, it was just what I needed to hear. If you know me at all, you know I am not given the hustle message so often heard in our world. I don't think it's biblical. Yet, just like anyone else, I need to step back and reevaluate how I'm spending my time and make adjustments.  I hope this week's episode encourages you to exchange hustle for choosing a heart posture that feeds your soul.  You can learn more about Susan and her ministry, She Rises, at www.sherisesmn.org and find her on Facebook and Instagram at Susan Vandeheuvel.

Isn't it crazy how often we actually choose darkness rather than Joy? Our belief in darkness makes darkness seem SO real. A Course in Miracles teaches us precisely how to live a joyful life. In this week's episode, Jennifer Hadley shares simple steps to de-invest in energizing darkness. Together we're living A Course in Miracles and choosing a life of Joy. To learn more about A Course in Miracles, please visit JenniferHadley.comOriginally aired 11/10/2015

"How do I draw near to God? How do I experience His presence? Often people feel they have to earn the right to be close to God. But the grace of God has a different story. The sin barrier that stood between you and God was removed at the cross of Christ. This 'drawing near' is a response of faith to the grace of God. We are one, in union, with God through His Spirit. We are as close to God as we will ever be. * Do you believe self improvement programs serve a purpose if they align with Christianity or does the Bible provide everything we need? * Is a lie a learned sin? Are most kids liars? * Isn't the only way a Christian can walk is in the Spirit if He lives in us and will never leave us?

The human brain is remarkably malleable. It can be shaped very much like a ball of Play-Doh, just with a bit more time and effort.Within the last 20 years, thanks to rapid development in the spheres of brain imaging and neuroscience, we can now say for sure that the brain is capable of re-engineering. In fact, you could say that we can facilitate these changes.In many ways, neuroplasticity – an umbrella term describing the lasting change to the brain throughout a person's life – is a beautiful thing.We can change our brain for the positive, so we don't have to feel “stuck”. We can increase our intelligence (our “I.Q.”). And, we can learn new, life-changing skills. In some instances, a person can recover from brain damage. Finally, we can choose to become more emotionally intelligent by “unlearning” harmful behaviors, beliefs, and habits.But, there's another side of the coin, we can redesign our brain for the worse! Fortunately, thanks to our ability to unlearn harmful behaviors, beliefs, and habits, we can right the ship again!Negative habits change your brain for the worse. Positive practices change your brain for the better. Negative people are almost always complainers without fail. Worse, complainers are not satisfied in keeping their thoughts and feelings to themselves; instead, they'll seek out some unwilling participant and vent.Of course, we all complain from time-to-time. In fact, researchers from Clemson University empirically demonstrated that everyone grumbles on occasion. Some just do so much more often than others.So Is The Brain To Blame?The answer is (mostly) “Yes.” You see, most negative people don't want to feel this way. Who truly would? Truth be told, it may not consciously be their fault.Harmful behaviors such as complaining, if allowed to loop within the brain continually, will inevitably alter thought processes. Altered thoughts lead to altered beliefs, which leads to a change in behavior.Additionally, our brain possesses something called the negativity bias. In simple terms, negativity bias is the brain's tendency to focus more on adverse circumstances than positive.Repetition is the mother of all learning. When we repeatedly focus on the negative by complaining, we're firing and re-firing the neurons responsible for the negativity bias.We're creating our negative behavior through repetition.It's not possible to be “happy-go-lucky” all of the time – and we shouldn't try. It's crucial to process feelings naturally as they come in. We should, however, take concrete steps to counteract negative thinking.Research has repeatedly shown that positive affirmations, prayer, and mindfulness are perhaps the most powerful tools for combating negativity.Isn't it also funny when science catches up with the Bible? Paul in Philippians 4:8 tells us to:"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."We're definitely not suggesting that life won't have negative moments and we certainly not telling you that every situation has a silver lining because they don't. Sometimes we're called to mourn and weep and that's totally fine. What this is suggesting is that our default setting should always be on positive side of things as we live in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Think about what's true about God and what He promises us and watch your brain revert to positive thought patterns and healthy thinking over time. 

Get the FREE guide + all 10 episodes bundled into a mini e-course for you at www.kelseykemp.com/module1 The 10 BIG questions we'll be addressing in this season are... Isn't sharing the gospel the only thing that really matters? Does physical, material, or “secular” work really matter to God? Are true "callings" only for the special few while the rest of us have normal, mundane work? Does God have a specific vocational path he wants for me, or are there a variety that would be pleasing to Him? Is work really meant to fulfill us? Or should we just find our satisfaction in Christ? Is it selfish to want purpose and fulfillment? Is it just for my own fame, prosperity, or self worth? Is work a curse? What does the bible say about how we should go about “finding our calling”? How do I really know that I'm called to do something? Can we miss our callings? Get all 10 of these episodes + the accompanying study guide at www.kelseykemp.com/module1 ------------------------------------------------------ ✅ Take a sneak peak of The Calling Academy™ and get on the waitlist at: www.kelseykemp.com/tca ------------------------------------------------------ ⚡️Ready to land the job you're called to? I can help you make the pivot, landing incredible job offers with speed. Learn how to nail your resume, networking, cover letters, interviews, and salary negotiations at: www.kelseykemp.com/jobofferaccelerator ------------------------------------------------------

Joining Mark this week are: Erik PetersonScott BossmanTate LitchfieldScott ToddWhen people are more likely to hold onto their assets, what do you do? Should you lower the offer price? Should you mail more aggressively? Do you sell it faster? How much do you sell it for? Tune in to this week's episode to learn from the experts. Plus, Scott Todd reminds us why land is the best way to hedge against inflation. TIP OF THE WEEKScott Todd: My tip of the week is to download this app 10BII Financial Calculator, learn how to use it, learn how to calculate yield.Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God upon the earth. And the first went, and poured out his bowl upon the earth; and there fell foul and evil sores upon the men who had the mark of the beast, and upon them who worshiped his image. And the second angel poured out his bowl upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man; and every living thing died in the sea.Revelation 16:1–3 KJ2000Well, the Bible tells us that God is slow to anger; it does not tell us he will never get angry, it would seem there are limits. This is the sixteenth chapter of Revelation. It comes after a long history of human abuse, of man’s cruelty to man, of man’s destruction of the earth, of his own environment, of the foulest evils of man, and finally, finally, at long last God moves.What could justify God’s anger? What could be done that would warrant this terrible punishment? Isn’t God a kind God? Isn’t he patient? Isn’t he loving? How is this consistent with a merciful and loving God, that he would have his wrath and that he would pour out this wrath upon people, and upon mankind? People want to know. This is one of the most common questions I get asked. How could a kind and loving God allow this to take place?

Feeling like life isn't fair or the Universe dealt you a shitty hand? Welcome to life on life's terms. Isn't it funny how sometimes we'll try to bargain our way out of a certain situation when, as cliché as it sounds, the only way out is through.

This week we learn all about the Word of Wisdom. Isn't the Lord's advice for taking care of our bodies so great?!

Do you have the crystal clear vision needed to take your agency to the next level? John Quinton-Barber describes himself as a visionary and accidental entrepreneur. He had 30 years of experience in the media and communications industry when he decided he wanted to set up his own business. After eight years, Social is now a top 20 UK agency. He joins Jason to talk about how he remained focused on the future and the crystal clear vision needed to continue growing your agency, some of the hurdles he has found along the way, and the importance of investing in leadership to focus on the key aspects of your agency's past, present, and future. 3 Golden Nuggets Invest in the right people. The first years of a digital agency are about survival. John focused on keeping the agency running but, after hitting one million pounds, he realized it was no longer necessary or efficient that he took care of every aspect of the business. He started to invest in people to take care of yesterday (the processes, HR, IT, legal), someone to take care of today (making sure the agency creating great quality campaigns, working with clients, giving them the best service), and then focused on taking care of the future, which is about strategy, vision, and where you want to go. Crystal clear vision. After deciding that he was not running a lifestyle business and getting serious about making something really special, John said he never looked back and never experienced doubts. A crystal clear vision will help your business thrive in hard times. If you don't have that vision, you won't get to the next stage. John admits he made many mistakes and that, by year four of his agency, he was barely making any profit and plowing every penny back into the business. But now, in year eight, he is reaping the rewards of investing in his dream. Build up leadership. Finding the right people was key to keep the business running, but empowering them was crucial to keep the business growing. John's mantra is “if you weren't in the business for three months, would it run? And would it grow?” Recruiting can become difficult when you're searching for leaders that can make this mantra happen, so John focused on building leaders within his organization. He makes sure that every director completes a year-long leadership course and has the tools to succeed as a leader. He no longer is the only one focusing on the future, on the vision, and that is the key to continue growing. Sponsors and Resources Ninja Cat: Today's episode is sponsored by Ninja Cat, a digital marketing performance management platform where you can unify your data, create beautiful, insightful reports and presentations that will help you grow your business. Head over to ninjacat.io/masterclass to enjoy an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Trust Your Crystal Clear Vision Begin Investing in Leadership Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? I'm excited to bring you another episode of the Smart agency Masterclass. I have an amazing guest all the way across the pond in the UK. And he's going to talk about how he's been scaling his agency over the past eight years and some of the trials and tribulations. Now, before we jump into the episode, I want you guys to take a screenshot, tag us on Instagram. And we'll give you a shout out, um, when the episode, uh, when, when you actually do that. So we can, uh, recognize you. So let's go ahead and get into the show. Hey,  John. Welcome to the show. John: [00:00:42] Jason, pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Jason: [00:00:44] Yeah, man. I'm excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? John: [00:00:49] My name is John Quinton-Barber. It's quite a posh name. It's a UK name, John Quinton-Barber. And I'm the founder and chief executive of a marketing digital agency called Social, here in the UK. Jason: [00:01:00] Awesome. And so how did you get started? John: [00:01:04] Well, I've always… I'm 50 years of age. So about 30 years in media and communications and PR. And when I hit about 43 years of age I had this urge that I wanted to set my own business up. And probably quite a few of the listeners will be relating to this quite now. I had this urge but in the back of my mind I felt, I can't do it. I can't do it. And I just took the leap and did it. So eight years ago I set up Social. Um, and what I wanted to do was just bring a different type of agency to the UK market. Because the agency world had gotten a little bit stale. It was offering PR, but it wasn't offering much else. Social was just about social media was just about emerging as the next big thing, next best thing. So I took the plunge and set up the agency, um, with not, not, not a lot of money in my pocket, to be honest. Um, but a whole scope of confidence. And yeah, eight years on, we've gone from what I said about, talking about the dollars, about $10,000. To now about $5.5 million dollars after eight years. So it's been one journey from two people to 48 people right now. And there's a whole host of learnings. Jason: [00:02:11] Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, it's… I remember kind of doing that jump, uh, you know, and there's many stages that you go through. Uh, if you think about it. And I always look at it as kind of like the stages of like climbing a mountain. Like at first you're kind of like surveying of like, do I really want to climb that mountain? Or, you know, which mountain do I want to climb? Um, what were, what were the stages that you went through over the past eight years that, um… were a point where you were like. I mean, were you ever at a point where you just was like, nah, this is not for me? Like, I want out. Or what… like describe some of the hard parts and how'd you get through them? John: [00:02:51] I've never had that. Never, never had that moment, Jason, where this is not for me. It's always, I've always felt it's for me. It's quite, almost like a mission, really a zeal within me to make this work. Um, the pain points. So as we know, when you set an agency up, it's about survival. You know, I've got family, I've got two young children. They were two young children at the time. It's about survival. I need to bring the income in. And you find yourself doing everything, you know, planning the business, servicing the clients, uh, wiring the, uh, the IT of the desk, sorting out the HR and the finance. So, um, in the first two years, that's what life was like. And we hit a million, a million pounds, so about $1.5 million, in about a year three. And that's when, for me, um, not the fun… Well, it was no longer, it wasn't fun anymore. But it was just like, oh my God. When it was about 10 people in the agency and we're bumping along about 1 million, life was good. You know, we could, we could, we all knew each other. We all knew each others' strengths. We could work together. But as soon as we hit that million-pound mark, that was it. We then had to refocus on actually, this is a business. And I had to make some decisions. Because I decided then it wasn't a lifestyle business. I was plowing back every bit of penny, every penny, back into the business. And taking a very modest salary. Because I had this vision that we can make this business into something really big and really special. And that's something I carry within me all the, all the while. And I'll keep all the while until the end until the big events at the end. Jason: [00:04:19] Well, I think… Yeah, no, I, I think you're, you really hit something I want to point out. You had a crystal clear vision. A lot of us, when we get started in the agency, it's kind of accidental and we really don't know where we're going. We're just reacting to all the work coming to us. And, but when you… and then I remember going through a pivotal point too, like you did of going all right, wow. It's like, you make this certain threshold and you're like, man, it's kind of not fun right now. Because the whole business has changed. But if I, if you don't have that vision of where you're going, you can't make it to the next part. It's kind of like, if I want to reach the summit and you kind of get up to like what I call, like, you know, the, the crux, right? That's kind of like in the middle, right? You're in the climb and you're like, well, I kinda liked it back at base camp. Like that's where the party was. But, uh, you know, talk about, you know, when you're at kind of that crux and you're going to like, Brett the million and a half, or, um, dollar mark. What did you have to do? Was it about building the team or…? John: [00:05:31] It was, I mean, my, my kind of like epiphany came when who is my chairman now, and he's in his sixties, late sixties. And he's not a PR man. He's a, he's a financer. And he said to me, he said, John, you created something special here. And you could, you could actually float this in years to come. And I was like float with it? I mean, I had to Google float it. What's that? Float it? You know, man, I'm trying to survive here. And that probably sowed the seed for actually the ambition I got. The belief I got in myself. So what I decided to do was okay, we, we, we're hitting the million mark. I'm now going to have to invest in a team around me to do the HR, to do the finance, to do the day-to-day. And I describe it like this, Jason, it's a… It's my, I always, when people say to me, I want to set up a business I say, okay, you need somebody to look after yesterday. You need someone to look after today. And you look after tomorrow. And what I was doing, I was doing yesterday, today, and tomorrow. What do I mean by that? Yesterday is basically someone that can sweep up after you. So basically all the kind of processes and the HR, the IT, and all the legals that on a business side becomes all consuming. Find somebody to look after yesterday. The today is about ensuring you're creating great quality campaigns, working with clients, giving them the best service, and ensuring that clients are happy. Clients are alright. And the tomorrow is about strategy. It's about a vision. It's about where you want to go. And I just, again, as I said by year three, when this hit me and my God between a million and probably 2 million, the pain hit me. It hit me where it doesn't hurt. I mean, made loads of mistakes, loads of mistakes. We're in the UK, I'm in Manchester, which is in the north of England. And you know, the, the eye on the prize was let's open a London office. You know, why? But, you know, we, we, we need to open a London office. And we opened a London office in year four and we shut it down in year five because we got it all wrong. We got the wrong people. We didn't have the right business strategy… We just approached it completely wrong. Delighted to say today in 2021, we now have another London office and it's doing really well. So we live in those lessons. Jason: [00:07:40] Yeah. I, I look at it as if you look at kind of three lines that an agency can be on, right? The first line… especially, you know, it happened what lasts last March, right? A lot of people panicked and they kind of went into, you know, a fear-based mentality. And I look at those businesses. They're barely surviving. Like they've just gone straight down. And then I look at other agencies, and I've been in this spot in the agency world for a couple of years of running the agency. You're kind of on this unfocused line and it's kind of the rollercoaster line…  Let's call it the rollercoaster line, right? And these are the preppers, uh, you know, these are the preppers of like saving up all the money and all that kind of stuff. And then you have, and I'm glad you mentioned focused on the strategy to the tomorrow. Let's call that the strategy line. These are the people that are in kind of positioning mode of going, like, how do we, um, how do we take over, uh, you know, more market share? How do we, um, acquire more talent? How do we acquire, which we've talked about in the pre-show acquire more agencies, right? And you're really kind of taking up another level. So I want everyone listening or watching to go, what line or have you been on and what line do you want to be on? And hopefully you guys want to be on the strategy line, but you may be like, you have to be honest with yourself of going, are we on the rollercoaster line? Because the only difference you said was leadership. John: [00:09:17] Yeah, no, we all, Jason, we're all on that. We all, we're all, you know, we all default back to those positions. You know, it's not, it's not all rosy and that's a model world, but I have to, you know, you have to dig deep. You have to dig deep in, in three things, in confidence, in your reserves, so your own health and wellbeing, because it's a big journey. But then you have to dig deep into your pockets and you'll have to invest in people, the right people. And I, you know, my, if you looked at my business about four years ago, you'd go, John, you know, you're barely making a profit. You're growing quickly. You're making it. You're spending quite a lot of money on the setting, so, business development team, finance, team, HR at a really quality number two guy. But you know, is costing me, uh, you know, it's a decent salary. Um, but that was that investment is now starting to pay off. We have got in our business now, eight PNLs. So we've had to really bolt on PNL's and you know, we're now starting to see the world. But the, the mindset for that is, you know, is sacrifice. You have to make the sacrifice. It's almost like when I hit year four, it felt like year one again, because I was having to kind of on this cycle of sacrifice. And now I'm on year eight and I am reaping the rewards. And so my, my message to anyone listening is if you've got a growth journey and growth plan, just go for it. Get the right talent. No, not the talent, not necessarily gonna deliver, you know, the, the, for the clients. The talent that is going to deliver for you sitting by your side to help you grow and scale your business. Jason: [00:10:50] Yeah. I love that. You said kind of invest in your company. And, and a lot of times people will misunderstand me a lot of times when I say, hey, the only thing that matters in your agency is your profit margin. And are you making money? That matters when you get closer to having an exit or, you know, liquidity event later on. But in the middle or in the beginning, I'm like, invest as much as you possibly can because you totally control everything. Like you can put money in the stock market, and I encourage you guys to do that as well, but that's you don't control any of it. It's like literally bet on red bet on black, you know, it's, I mean, it's a little more calculated. But with your agency, you can totally control the situation way better than anything else. So if you're listening, make sure you're investing heavily. You don't have to have 32% profit margins year over year. I know a lot of people reach out and they're like, I'm worried I'm at 15. Like, well, you're not even close to selling, so don't worry about it. John: [00:11:56] Awesome. No, it's true. It's true. And it's, um, you know, I, I do a lot of reading, obviously around some of the most successful companies. And you know, the successful companies didn't make a profit until, I said, you know, two years for listing or, or selling. And profit isn't really important if you… and I keep telling colleagues if you want to makes it grow. But you know, my, my mindset when I, it's interesting, my, my pits, some peer agencies in the UK that I… I would have a drink with and we chat too. And, um, sometimes I look at them through real kind of like, uh, envious glasses because you know, they're out having holidays four or five times a year, pre-COVID and… And that's great, you know, I'm all for that. I'm all for the lifestyle business. I think that's fantastic. You made a decision. But for me, it's just, as I said before, Jason, is quite a mission with me. I've got a mission and I'm going to make it, it's going to happen. I will scale this business and I'll take it to the UK A market. Uh, because I believe with that we've got a great proposition for investors. The one thing that, um, Jason, again, you'll be, you'll be so familiar with this is that culture of people. So while this is all happening with today, tomorrow and yesterday and invest in the center, um… we ha, I had to make sure that that Social probably has to be one of the best agencies to work for. Um, to say we invested a lot in the culture is wrong. It sounds like it's forced. We nurtured the culture that we were creating and we've got fantastic culture now. And I know every business owner says that and that, you know, generally have. And we continue to invest in that now with our people. Um, so the pandemic, uh, for, for us, didn't really hit us. You know, we, we grew through the pandemic, both financially… and we added nine new people during the pandemic year. So, but kind of how I think the… all that, all that groundwork in the first five years helped us through this tricky year. Jason: [00:13:56] Do you feel like you have to comb through mountains of data, jumping between multiple platforms to spreadsheets, to slide decks and backing again in order to create performance reports for your clients? It's a constant drain on your agency's time and resources. And that's where our friends at Ninja Cat can help. Ninja Cat is a digital marketing performance management platform that really unifies your marketing data and empowers your agency to automate insightful, beautiful client reports at scale. Now, Ninja Cat keeps your marketing performance and presentation tools in one place freeing you from manual data wrangling. And it really gives your team more time to focus on strategy and growing your business. And for a limited time, my smart agency podcast listeners will receive a $500 Ninja Credit. When you go to ninjacat.io/masterclass to claim your offer and schedule a demo that's ninjacat.io/masterclass. Why I know some people, like, you know, they're on the strategy line and usually you can accelerate your growth in a time like this. And they're literally, like, we don't want this to end because we're like, we're just reaping the benefits, uh, you know, for it. So let's talk about kind of like the transition from building the right team, right? So I look at that as kind of when you're building the right team, you're, you're in the crux. But then, kind of the next level up, I look at the crest and you're starting to build the leadership team. So let's talk about that because not many people do. Um, what are you, what… what does your leadership team look like? And, and how did you go about building it? Like what was, and would you go in the right order? The same order? So a lot of times people go marketing sales or do sales and marketing, you know, operations, that kind of stuff. John: [00:16:03] Well, for me, the first, the first kind of… the first again Eureka moment or epiphany moment for me was, uh, the operations side of it. Um, and so I brought in who is my number two now, Rob, managing all of the operations side of operations side of the business. And that was the, the first kind of key hire in this space. We are now a leadership team of nine across the business, um, head solve and directors. Um, and you know, that that team has taken time to build. And that team is, you know, we're a trusting team. Um, we work well together. We also get friction, which is, which is healthy I see. Uh, and I believe in, but yeah, the, for me, it was very much about operations, operations, you know, the business had to operate, um, and had to operate effectively. So bring that person in. I had a mantra about, and this is a really good test for anyone who's listening, the mantra is if you weren't in the business for three months, would it run? And would it grow? B. And obviously your priority is it has to run, so get it right. Make sure. And it's a good exercise to do is visualize. But just don't be happy with it running, it's got to grow. So what do you need to make it grow? So to make it run, I brought the right people in and then to make it grow, I've empowered the people in the business. They need to make it grow. Not just me. Um, and again, I'm off after next week for a whole month now. I'm taking a sabbatical. My phone is off. My everything's off. They can't get ahold of me unless it's burning down and that's the first time in eight years. But again, um, and again, I really want to reach out to anyone who's listening who's in that, in that probably two, three, four year phase. Just stick at it, because you get the right people and the right counsel and advice as any business, you can make it. Jason: [00:17:55] Yeah, I look at it as… And, um, and I'm actually showing a lot of our mastermind around this now of going, what are the things, if you audit your calendar for the past couple of weeks… What are the things that totally drain you? Which are the things that give you energy? And then when you look at the ones that drain you, because that's the things that like, you have too many of those that's when you're like, screw it. I'm outta here. Like, I don't want to do it anymore. All right. Or let me sell for this low valuation. I'm just, I'm done. Um, which you benefit from when buying. You know, you're like, oh, you've got low energy? I'll buy you, right? So if you guys are in the UK, obviously, go check them out. Um, but what I tell people is look at the low energy and then outsource or delegate or hire for that stuff. Like, I, I don't know why we always hire for things we don't have any clue on… like on. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, I've been guilty of this. I'll be like, I know nothing about pay-per-click. Let me go hire someone to do pay-per-click. Rather than like, I know everything about UX so let me hire UX, because I can manage that. And then figure out a process like it's just, it's just goofy. Um, what are some things… switching focus a little bit, what do you do in order to build your leaders within the organization? Because you know, at our top level masterminds, we're always talking about that. And also recruiting, recruiting is a really big thing. Like we cannot find enough people, it seems like. So how are you building leaders and then is recruiting your biggest issue too? John: [00:19:34] Uh, on building the leaders. It's, uh, it's important that we've got the program. So if you there's a few ways, we went with an external provider who does a year-long leadership course and I send… I, I want to say congratulation to my leaders that I'm dead proud of them. Uh, got the card here… the cards are there.  Um, so I went through it, I went through it, uh, three years. And now quite a lot of my, well, all my leads will be going through it. Um, and that's a day, month commitment for them. And they have, you know, they, they, they, all the topics are from culture to finance, to leadership, to behaviors. Um, I make people go through that process and I see them during the year just grow and blossom which is fantastic. And then I encourage them individually to find a mentor that's not me, someone that I can confide in probably about me, you know. If you want to moan and groan about me and they need someone external so they can have that. Again, we have identified a person for them in their life. Um, and you know, the, the company pays for that, it, it's a paid thing. So that you can never get enough, all the external kind of like counsel. Myself, I have a mentor, I've had one for five, six years. I belong to a board, the top of the alternative board, which when I was in America, I sit on the alternative board every month. And I just sit there and cry about people and money, cause that's always come up. But, um, but yeah, so leadership for me is I want to just, you know, embrace that. I said to my, one of my colleagues today, my strategy here is to get you working less and your reward going up every year. And that's what we've got to get through as a leader. And if you're working less in the business, then you know, you're, you're winning for me. Jason: [00:21:24] Yep. And then what about recruiting? Is that a, a big challenge for you guys like finding enough talent? John: [00:21:30] Absolutely. It really is. It's a, you know, to the point where it depends on the, it depends on the, on the area you're recruiting. So imagine digital social that's really, really sought after for obvious reasons. And that's challenging to recruit in them areas. So we want to, we want to do a blend of three things. We want to grow our own, um, so grow our people that we've already got into business. Because, you know the're very valuable to us, not just in monetary terms, but, just in, in their futures. We want to, I think mentioned before we were looking to acquire an agency. So we're looking, you know, where we can't, where we can't build a team because the talent pool, looking for jobs or employment isn't there. We're looking now just to, to hire, to, to acquire a boutique agency, particularly in the digital space. Um, and the third, the third area is looking at apprenticeships. So we're looking at bringing kids out of school and instead of kids going to, we call it school, university straight to us and we'll run a program with them. So that's something we're looking at for the next, for the next eighteen months. I I'm glad to hear, or we shouldn't be really glad to hear, that it's the same in America. But the talent is just strange. We're going through a strange time. Jason: [00:22:45] Well, uh, what we found, you know, in our agency and, and all the other agencies in the mastermind is when you get to a certain level… And it's around about 3 million you're you're cause you've, you've built an amazing team, you're building the leadership team. But it's hard to continue to find really, really good people. And it takes them a while in order to adapt to all the processes that you have. And so a lot of times what we'll do is we'll say like, kind of like, we'll bring someone in on the junior program and show them a couple of tracks. You can go kind of the skilled track, or you can go the manager track and then show them the different layers or levels that they can go up, you know. And it makes a huge difference because you know, like I'm thinking of, of Zach's agency now, like to train their account strategist, it usually takes about two years. Right? Like, so you got to start thinking two years prior, like how do we get all these people up? And it makes a really big difference. So, yeah. It's, I always love when I chat with people all around the world. And they're like, yeah, it's very different over here. I'm like we get all the same issues. John: [00:24:02] Good to know. Yeah, it is, I imagine. And it's about to how much, I mean, one of the things is obviously pay reward is very important. Isn't it? Of course, but actually culture again, progression L&D. If I'm honest, you know, our lead in development is just catching up, you know, we've, we've got, we've made huge strides in the area. We've got so much more. So we working on that, so we're just, we are catching up the, this the, you know, the, the high growth of the last eight years, um, to make sure we've got all that in place. Jason: [00:24:30] Awesome. Well, great. Well, um, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience? John: [00:24:37] Um, I think, I think for me it's about looking after yourself, you know, and I think again, just, just it's really part resilience is really, really key. And nothing more has been mentioned, so I, what's been mentioned a lot more of the last 12 months is wellbeing. Um, second is acknowledging that, you know, you are human. Acknowledging that you are… You know, you haven't got all the answers. Acknowledging that it's lonely then, and obviously you've got a mastermind course, which is fantastic, Jason. And, and again, if, if you can find something like that, or find something where you can find a buddy or a mentor for yourself, absolutely take it on. Because it, you know, you've got to have that in your, I think, in your life, if you want to grow, grow big, because it is a challenge. Jason: [00:25:24] Yep. Well, John, where can people, uh, what's the website address people can go? Especially if you're in the UK and you're going, hey, I want to, I want to be a big, bigger part of a team and you can buy me, John. So where can they go? John: [00:25:36] Oh, knock yourselves out, if you will. Um, well it's very simple. It's social.co.uk. Jason: [00:25:41] That's great. That's awesome. I mean, that's a very easy URL. I've had some guests on that literally they spell it out like five times and you still wouldn't even get it. So congrats on getting that. And thanks so much for coming on the show. And if you guys enjoyed this episode and you're in the UK and you want to possibly sell, go check them out. And know this is sponsored, uh, but he did drop a lot of amazing bombs. So go check that out. And if you guys want to be surrounded by amazing people on a consistent basis, I would love to invite all of you to go to digitalagencyelite.com. This is for agencies all over the world. Where we share the strategies that are currently working and little shrink moments, right? Like we can like cry on each other's shoulders to get us through. But go there and until next time, have a Swenk day.