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  In this episode Helene talks to Jane Clift about her role as the Chair of IAF England and Wales. They talk about: How Jane got involved with the IAF and the facilitation community “the game changer for me was coming to my first IAF conference,I had never met so many people interested in facilitation” How Jane became the Chair of IAF England and Wales Highlights and challenges since becoming the Chair  The importance of the IAF and community events “I think there's been a recognition in our chapter, in our community, we can all learn from each other.”  And future plans for both the IAF England and Wales chapter and Jane A full transcript is below. Links Today's guest: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-clift/ Email: chair@iaf-englandwales.org  To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter: Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/ And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team: Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/  Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/ Transcript H.J Hello and welcome to facilitation stories brought to you by the England and Wales Chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Helen Jewell, and today I'm going to be talking to Jane Clift, consultant, coach and facilitator and Chair of IAF England and Wales. Welcome Jane.   J.C Thank you very much, Helen. I'm very happy to be here.   H.J So I've got lots of questions for you, mostly about your role as chair, but before we do that, it'd be really nice to hear a little bit more about you as a facilitator and the type of work that you do.   J.C Very good opening question there. So I have facilitated in quite a wide range of contexts, and I think I was doing it before I knew it was called facilitation. So I'm currently have my own business, but I've also worked a great deal for organisations, originally in sort of technology and consulting roles. So I think I was setting up and running workshops well before I knew that there was a term called facilitator, or that facilitation was a thing. So I would say that my practice started very, very organically, very organically. It's   H.J It's funny, if I listen back to all the different podcasts we've done, we've done, I would say that that kind of thing is a real thread through all of them that people have kind of come into facilitation accidentally, organically, or discovered that it is called facilitation after they began doing it in the first place.    J.C Exactly, yeah, something that I've also, I've always really loved stationery and stationery shops, like I really, really enjoy going into rymans and places like that. So obviously, when you're working as a facilitator, you have got the best reason in the world to be stocking up on colourful stationery craft materials. So there's something about that aspect of it that I don't know,  just I've always really, really liked that idea of bringing, like, colourful stationery or objects into the workplace and having a reason to use them. And that reason is facilitation.    H.J I love it. That's a great reason. I am also a self confessed stationery nerd, so I totally, I'm totally on board with that. Is there a particular type of facilitation that you enjoy doing, or that you feel is your kind of forte? J.C So I've done a lot of facilitation around agreeing, like a strategy or a road map, or like, identifying things that are getting in the way. So one of the areas that I've actually facilitated on quite a lot is risk management, which is really an important topic if you're doing large scale programs or projects, which I've done quite a lot of in my career. So I actually really like that as a topic, whether you do that in person or online. I have done quite a lot of those workshops where you end up with a room covered in pieces of paper, covered in sticky, you know, in post its and so forth. But during lockdown, like many people, I became very adept at online facilitation, and that's probably the space that I've worked in the most over the last few years, and I, I really, really like that, and I'm amazed that it works, because you're connecting up people that can be all over the world, and you're just in this virtual space, and yet you can, you can make magic happen if you can facilitate it well, and I find that an incredible and unexpected gift that came out of lockdown. Having said that, there is nothing like the energy of being in a room with people. I also absolutely love that I had the great pleasure of being facilitated myself recently, large scale workshop, 30 of us in a room, all talking about something, and it was just so much fun. So I'm not sure I've really got a niche. I'm quite a versatile person, but I tend to be better with topics that are a little bit more creative or future oriented, or that are kind of attached to something that's happening right now. Hence the interesting risk.    H.J Ah, interesting, okay, and it's, yeah, also good hearing about that adaptability, which I think also flows through a lot of facilitators, practice or facilitation, and yeah, that whole movement online. I think it is amazing sometimes, as you say, to think how people can be connected online, but somehow, well, it's not somehow the magic happens. It's because we're brilliant facilitators.   J.C It is because we're brilliant facilitators and we can create a safe and a fun space. It's, it is incredible, and it's also something that you almost don't realise that you have a gift for until you get that feedback. Oh, that was great workshop. Oh, we made, you know, we made progress, or I felt I could speak up. During the lockdown, I volunteered as a facilitator for action for happiness, and I ran a monthly session, and each month we get to, oh, I've got to do that session again. Oh, like an hour and a half, and I go into it, and I had a co facilitator, and we'd be part way through the session, and the magic would start to happen. And you could feel, because lockdown was a very tough time for many people, and you could feel the magic of facilitation happen. You could feel people relax, open up, and at the end of the session, we'd always do this check in, and everybody without exception, every single one of those sessions we ran, people said, Oh, I feel better. All my energy levels have lifted, or I feel relaxed. And I just thought, wow.   H.J Yeah. And you get that real kind of lovely feeling in your body where you think, oh, yeah, this, this is, this is good. This is why I do this. Okay. And so you talk about, you know, your work, and then sort of almost discovering, I guess, that you are a facilitator, or that that's the thing that you can call what you do. When did you get more involved in the kind of the facilitation community and the IAF in particular. J.C So like many people who facilitate, I had been doing quite a lot of facilitation, without much formal training or orientation and without any awareness there was a facilitation community. So what kind of got me into the IAF was I, I'd been doing some team, like away day workshop, and I had, this is classic me, by the way, I kind of reinvented the wheel, not realising that there were lots of methods out there and and like ways of doing things. And after I did this workshop and probably kind of gave it far too much effort, I thought I actually need to get learn some technique here. I've got the interest, I've got the motivation, I've got the aptitude. I haven't got enough technique. So I went and did some training with ICA UK. I did, I think that their group facilitation skills course. And I think the trainer was Martin Gilbraith, who, at the time, I think, was very much a leading light in the IAF. And I joined the IAF, and then I kind of washed in and out of it a little bit. And when I started to get more involved was at one of the London meetups. That's, I think, when I started to become more actively involved. Realised it was a community. Realised that you could come gather, meet other people who facilitate and talk about facilitation. Wow, amazing, it's a thing.   H.J A big network of geeks where we get to talk about all of these tools and techniques and stuff and stationery, probably. And so you discovered, I guess then this community, what kind of drew you in more, what kept you going to, you know, maybe the London meetups or ?    J.C I really like, I like being part of communities. So even though I have my own business, I do like to collaborate with other people. I do like to be connected to other people. It's quite important for me. So there's quite a lot of community attached to coaching, which is another area I'm involved with. And I think once I identified there was community attached to facilitation, I was just interested in finding out more. And the meetups were definitely really good for that. And then the game changer for me was coming to my first IAF conference. I don't think I'd ever met, I had never met so many people interested in facilitation, all in one space. And also the diversity of practice was really, really, it was really inspirational for me. I had been toying with some more creative practices, not necessarily having the confidence to implement them. And at that conference, I saw people that were just going, you know, all in on their more creative facilitation practices. And I was like, wow. So I think it was that very first conference which really said, thought, these are my people, these are my tribes. We're all different from each other, and yet we've got this thing in common. And so it was the creative thing, a kind of curiosity about people, and I think another common thread was this desire to, desire to make an impact in the world, but in quite a practical way.   H.J It does, I recognize that feeling of finding your people and just feeling really comfortable in a space, whether that's a meetup or something bigger, like the conference, and just thinking, oh yeah, people get what I'm talking about. And, yeah, that, yeah, making a difference I think is, is part of that, isn't it? How can we spread the word a bit? How can we share our, share our inner geekery, our love with other people? Okay, so pulling you further in, then you've been chair for the last couple of years, since January 2022, I think. And so how did that happen?    J.C Well, I have to say I wanted to get more involved in the IAF, and I think I stood for the board, and I guess I didn't intend to be chair, but I'm one of those people who I think it's called situational leadership. I don't choose to be a leader unless I feel in a context I am the best person to be that leader. So so I don't have, I don't have a burning desire every day to lead, but when I'm in a situation where I think in this context, I'm the best person to lead in order for us to get a good result, that's when I get involved. So that's I think, in with that group, when I became, when I joined the board and joined the leadership team, I was, I felt I was the best person, or the one who had had the capacity and the willingness. There was plenty of other people who had the expertise to do it, but I had the capacity and the expertise and the motivation to be the chair. So that's why I became the Chair. And it's been incredible, incredibly interesting thing to have done.    H.J So that's interesting, that kind of sweet spot of having all those things come together at once, as you say, the capacity and the sort of, you know, the space and the skills to actually do that. And so thinking the responsibilities is quite a it's a big deal being the chair, especially of, you know, a group of people that are all volunteers all coming together, you know, all sort of, all having their own day jobs as well. What have been your main kind of responsibilities, I suppose, as a chair, knowing a little bit about having done the role already?   J.C So the responsibilities are quite varied. The way I've worked as the chair is, there's a lot of structuring of the leadership group so that we can work effectively. So I guess there's an administrative element to it, and there's also an aspect to it where you're trying to move things forward in what you feel is the general direction that the group is interested in, whilst being mindful of the fact that everybody is indeed volunteering their time, and that, you know, it's a volunteer organisation, with fairly sort of Slim, slim but stable financial capacity. So it's it's been, for me, about like moving us forward, taking us further away from that sort of post COVID environment, where I think many organisations, you know, they had to get back on their feet, and I think you had steered the leadership team beautifully through the incredible challenges of lockdown. And I think I've been able to pick up from where you left off, continue the great work. And I think move us into an even, you know, into a stronger position. And definitely, I feel we've fully recovered from lockdown now, and I think evolved somewhat as well in some really, like, great, sort of great directions.   And I think we've also, and I've done this quite frequently when I've been in leadership roles, is I've tried to sort of streamline. And so sometimes with all organisations, particularly ones where a lot of people are very ideasy, you can spread yourselves too thinly, you can chase hairs, you can have an inconsistent practice because you're trying to do too much because you've got so many ideas. So I think one of the responsibilities of the chair is to sort of say, yes, these are all brilliant ideas, but where, where do we feel we can really make the most difference? Where should we? Where should we focus our energies to have the greatest impact? So that's definitely one of the, one of the responsibilities of the Chair is to sort of provide that, that leadership to, but to, you know, to acknowledge all the great ideas, but just to say, right what are we actually capable of doing as a leadership team, as an organisation, given it's entirely volunteer led.   H.J And especially maybe with a group of facilitators, you know, we do tend to like ideas, don't we? We've got all sorts of, you know, things that we think should happen and could happen, and so I guess containing them then and making sure that, yeah, some are driven forward, some aren't lost, and people are still on board with with all of what's going on is definitely quite a challenge. And thinking, also back to my time as chair, it felt like that was a period of, as you say, in COVID, treading water, just making sure that things sort of carried on really but definitely your era has been much more of a moving forwards, progressing, improving things, I think. Thinking then about highlights, I suppose, things that have really stood out for you, things that have gone really well. What are those?    J.C The highlights for me, from my time as chair the sort of the red carpet event every year is our conference. It's so much fun. It is two days of learning, connecting, getting totally out of your comfort zone, talking about facilitation, meeting your community, making friends, being grateful, thanking everybody for all that they're doing. So the two conferences in the time that I've been chair, they've both been really, really wonderful events for me, and I am so grateful for being part of them, even though, as Chair, I'm actually quite second hand to the conference because it's organised by a different group. But when I'm there at the conference, I have felt this is such a celebration of facilitation, it really is. And I've also been really pleased I've brought new people to the conference and introduced people to the leadership team and so forth. So that's the red carpet events.    I've absolutely, also really loved our leadership away days. And in fact, can you just describe them different? Yes, we're calling them retreats now. I also love, yes, our leadership retreat. So they've been absolutely wonderful events as well. And I remember thinking, Oh, I'm going to be facilitating facilitators, uh oh. So I remember that was thinking that was quite the challenge. And yet, you know, I think we've, I think I've been involved now in three of the retreats, and I think they've all, they've all gone well, and I've learned a lot about facilitation from, from running those, from designing those sessions, and from also witnessing people in our leadership team facilitating sessions within the session. So they've been really wonderful as well. And I guess I do love the in person activities, like I do love being in a room or a space with other people, so any opportunity to do that has been great, and I think inspired by meetups that I went to in London, I'm now based in Sheffield, and I've also kicked off like a facilitate Sheffield group. I'm not sure I would have done that had I not had the experience of being a chair. I've just realised sometimes it's just like, shall we do this? Shall we try and get something moving? And that's been really interesting as well, that sometimes you've just got to have a go.    H.J Oh, that's interesting. That the Sheffield meetup sort of grew out of your position as Chair, if you like. It's interesting thinking about that facilitating, facilitators bits? I totally Yeah, that really makes sense to me. That whole, you know, you, it's really good to see other people and experience other people's facilitation, but at the same time, I think possibly we are the worst participants, but it is nice to kind of get together and have that, have that all sharing of how we do things as well. I think it's quite inspirational.   J.C It's really, really inspirational for me. I find the diversity of people's practice, of their life experiences, the fact that people come from different parts of the UK, and we've all converged, actually, I think it's been in Manchester or Birmingham. So we've kind of all come together. I find that very, very interesting. And everyone's paths into facilitation have been quite different. So so for me, I kind of find those sessions are very opening up, and afterwards I go away and I've learned something that's often quite significant for me and I've then carried forward with me. So I'm not going to those sessions and think I'm going to boss everyone around. It's been, they're very collaborative.   H.J Definitely. No, that's been my experience as well, that feeling of collaboration. So what's changed, you know, quite a lot, probably in your time as chair, from this period of, you know, COVID, where things weren't moving forwards very much perhaps. What are the main changes you think you've seen in the last couple of years with the IAF England and Wales leadership team and board, but maybe beyond that as well?    J.C So there's been quite a lot of changes. I think facilitation itself as a sort of professional and area of expertise is more understood, known, celebrated and in demand than it's ever been. That's quite interesting. I think in the time I've been chair, I'm, I have a tendency to want to structure things, so I probably have brought in some structure more, perhaps some more structure than there was previously. And I've, as I said, maybe done some of that streamlining activity. And I think everybody that I know in IAF England and Wales is really keen to, you know, expand our community, welcome more people in ,work on the diversity. I think that we are slowly becoming more diverse. We acknowledge that there's a lot more to do in that space, but there's a sort of appetite and a sort of momentum around that now, we're not just talking about it, we're doing something about it. So, for example, most of the leadership team have now taken part in anti racism training, which is, you know, really, really important. So I think perhaps we were a little bit more focused than we were.    The other thing that I think changed is, and I think you 100% laid the foundations for this. I think we are more tightly or better aligned with the EME region for IAF. So I've participated in our, the regional like leadership team meetings, and they've been very interesting. And I think there's been a recognition in our chapter, in our community, we can all learn from each other. And when we've had people come to the conference from other other chapters that survive other geographies that's been really, really interesting and inspirational. So we can, we can learn so much from each other. And we've also, I think also we as a chapter have been able to do a little bit of support for other chapters as well. So that's been really great, too. So I guess I'm just trying to summarise what's changed. So I think a little bit more structure and focus, and also, yes, totally recovered from COVID and the lockdown era, and I'm feeling we probably contracted a little bit during that time period, as many organisations did, I feel we're now expanding.   H.J It's really interesting that Europe and Middle East Regional link as well, because I personally really value that diversity and looking outside, you know, our chapter, and seeing what other chapters are do, are doing, and, yeah, forging those links is a really, really nice thing to be doing I think.   J.C It's a wonderful opportunity. One of the things when we hear, it's easy to look at the news and think, Oh, so many bad, bad, dark things happening in the world. What I find is when you connect with people from other geographies, other cultures, when you form those links, when you extend your community, it just makes all those bad news stories, they seem a little less important, because on a very practical, like, I don't know, day to day basis, or you kind of you're ignoring all that. You're reaching out and saying, no, there is, there are, It is worth doing this stuff. It is worth connecting. It is worth still believing that we can change things through our facilitation practice. You know, I just, I like the aspect of it. I find, actually find this, I find this idea of being part of a global community, I find it very optimistic and positive.    H.J It's almost quite, quite a skill, I think, to be able to find that optimism. Because, as you say, you know, there's a lot of doom and gloom around but I really like that way of thinking about things. Find the kind of the good stuff in, you know, all that's going on around us. Okay, and then flipping that on its head, however, with any role, with any you know group such as we are, there will have been challenges. What have been the main challenges? In a few minutes?   J.C So one of the challenges has been my own time. So I have my own business. Sometimes I'm working full time, and then I'm supporting this activity in my free time. So that's been a personal challenge for me. The other personal challenge for me is with my desire for structure and focus, I've had to really temper that, because I have had to learn, and it's been really, really good for me, that we've got to let the ideas flow. We, people need that space to let the ideas flow, to connect. We can't, I've got a tendency to go straight into right what are we all going to do? Action, action, action. And that doesn't work with this community, because that, they that's not how this community operates. So it's been, for me that's been a tremendous learning curve, and I am now much, much more respectful and aware of that need to sort of have a lot more flow before you sort of, so that's been, that's been, as I said, it's been that's been quite challenging for me. And. And then, equally, it's also challenging that with the best one in the world, we are all volunteers, and everybody's time, you know, time constrained, or they have things going on in their personal lives which may inhibit their ability to do things, even if they're highly motivated to do that. And we are trying to be smart about this now, work at how we can outsource some of the more rote activities to to, like virtual assistance, so that we can, almost, like, use our time in a more clever and a smart way. And what I'm thinking, what are the other challenges have been? Well, it's always, you know, I think this is something we all suffer from, is, and I'm the, I'm also guilty of it is, is trying to do too much.   H.J And it's, I think, that bit about us all being, you know, we're all all volunteers. We're all doing this in our own time. We're all doing it because we are invested in our community, and we want it to be better, and we want more things from it, and we want it to still be the fantastic thing it is. But actually, you know, there's only so many hours in a day, and and then finding that time to do that, and the energy, and then collaborating and coordinating, coordinating that with with a whole heap of other people all around the country is, you know, it's definitely not an easy task.   J.C It's not easy at all. And I think at one point I was trying to, sort of almost like fly solo too much, and doing too much on my own. And then this year I've been really busy. And I, it was actually, this is a kind of a sort of, you know, people make New Year's decisions. So one of my decisions for 2024 was whatever I'm trying to do in life, I want to do that in collaboration with others. So I've been a much more collaborative leader in 2024 for our chapter, and I think that's been really beneficial for the chapter. So rather than thinking, I can, I'll do all this stuff on my lonesome, I've actually asked people to come in with me, and I think that's been much more successful for the chapter and for me, and again, it's another sort of smart way of working and sort of not being that kind of lonely leader marching up the mountain on their own. It's much better if you are, if you're doing stuff in small groups or with a partner. So that's just been a personal learning for me and a decision and a change of a change, like a change of sort of operation.   H.J So it sounds like there's been quite a lot of learning, you know, over the last couple of years for you as chair and probably for all of us as the leadership team as well. Thinking then about, you know, all that hard work that goes into making this stuff happen, and the IAF leadership team and the, you know, England, Wales, and the wider community, what do you think that that we kind of bring to people, you know, what? What's, what do people get from it?   J.C I think the most important thing that we offer is community. I think, I think many people who work in the facilitation space, I don't know if it's solo entrepreneurs, you know, or small businesses, and I think creating a community that's actually really easy to connect to, you can be in our community, don't have to be a member. You know, many people aren't members. It doesn't matter. The important thing is that there's a community that you can be part of, and we offer different ways of connecting. We have our online meetups, we have in person meetups, we have our conference and then I think what I've I've seen happen which is a very beautiful thing to witness. I have seen people who I know have only met through the conference or through the community start to do collaborations together, which shows you that these relationships are really, really building and developing and supporting people professionally. So I think that community thing is, we never did anything else, that's that's, for me, is the most important thing.    But the second thing, I think, is really important, is sharing practice and acknowledging when we see good work and supporting practice. And it can be really something quite practical like, has anyone done this type of thing? Can you recommend an exercise to do this? How do you price something so, so it can be, like the very practical things, but it can also be, I mean, at the conference, quite a lot of people will showcase something that perhaps they're still working on, in terms of offering it out to clients. It's a place where you can do some experimentation. I think that's just, I feel we are very much a community of practice, and I just think that's another huge benefit to all of not just the paid up members, but everybody in our community that we can support each other to develop practice, and we can learn from each other's practices.    H.J And it feels like that community, or our community, is growing all the time, and the more it grows, the more you discover new things. And you think, Oh, I didn't realise that was a thing that's interesting. I want to know more about that. And like, it doesn't seem that there are any edges to facilitation most. It's like just a constantly changing picture, which for me is someone who's got a fairly short attention span, I think is great. Always like, Oh, I've found something new to do, to learn about. So what do you think, then, is next for IAF, England, Wales and the broader community, whether members or, you know, not members.    J.C We've done quite a lot of work on, like, quite futuristic visioning, and I think we slightly rode back from that, because it almost became something that was inhibiting our more immediate development and growth. So I quite like the fact that we've been a little bit more realistic about our capacity. And we've kind of, we're focusing on a few things we want to do really well. So one of them is this wonderful podcast that I'm on today.   H.J Of course.   J.C  We want to support all of our meetups, online and in person. We want the conference to be a great success, I think, we, we obviously want to continuing offering this. It's very hard to sometimes crystallise it, but this informal kind of community support. I think, where I think there's potential is I think we could actually promote ourselves or promote the practice of facilitation more on social media, and perhaps be more structured about that. I would really like to use the, we have the IAF Global website, which is currently being updated. I would like to see that also used as a vehicle to promote, share, practice and support the community. I feel there's quite a lot of things we can do around diversity and also connecting up with our global community. So these are some of the things I find interesting and exciting, and I feel we could do more in these spaces, we could perhaps do more to support other chapters in our region as well. So there's some of the topics, I think, Oh, that's interesting. I feel my energy rising when I think about that. So there's quite a lot of opportunities. And it's just there's, again, there's so many opportunities and ideas, and there's only so much time and so much money at the bank. So so I think lots of opportunities, but we have to take a realistic perspective on it as well.   H.J Opportunities tempered with a bit of fear, bit of can we actually do this stuff? And your time as chair is coming to an end at the end of this year, I think. So what's next for you? What are you going to do with all those spare hours?   J.C So I have really, even though it's been very challenging and time consuming and sometimes frustrating, I've absolutely loved the opportunity to be a situational or servant leader for this chapter. It's been a wonderful opportunity for me. It's reconnected me with a lot of leadership practice that I hadn't really done for a little while. So so I'm really keen to stay involved with our chapter and stay on the leadership team and support a new chair, whoever that will be in 2025. I also want to continue developing my own facilitation practice. And I think the thing that's come out of it for me, there's two things, one more opportunity to do leadership in life, and I'm pretty confident I want to replace, replace, I'm definitely going to be pursuing, probably a trusteeship with another organisation as I think that's a really nice segue from from what I've done here, but a slightly different way of doing that. So I like to be busy, and I, I like to serve. I don't want to say be too idealistic and optimistic, but there is something wonderful about feeling that you are doing some good public service, or some good service for others without it being a huge strain on yourself. It's really good to know that you are committing some personal time to some activities, which we hope are going to do good in the world.   H.J Thank you so much for talking to me today. I've just got one last question, and that is, how can we get in touch with you? So if people want to talk more to you, what, how should we get in touch with you?   J.C The easiest way to get hold of me is via LinkedIn. I've got a LinkedIn profile and I'm on LinkedIn very frequently. That's guaranteed. And you can also reach me by the email address for the chair.   H.J We'll put any contact emails and your LinkedIn link in the show notes afterwards.    J.C Brilliant.    H.J Thank you so much, Jane, and I will see you soon.    J.C Thank you very much. What a wonderful opportunity to be interviewed by you. Thank you so much Helen.    H.J So listeners, we've reached the end of another episode of facilitation stories, the community podcast of IAF, England and Wales.   N.W If you'd like to find out more about the IAF and how to get involved, all of the links are on our website. Facilitationstories.com   H.J And to make sure you never miss an episode, why not subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use?   N.W We're always on the lookout for new episode ideas. So is there a fabulous facilitator you think we should talk to?   H.J Or something interesting emerging in the world of facilitation you think listeners need to hear about?   N.W Send us an email at podcast@IAF-Englandwales.org .   H.J We hope you'll join us again soon for more facilitation stories.   N.W Until then, thank you for listening.  

  Episode Transcript SUMMARY KEYWORDS facilitators, facilitation, people, work, netherlands, conference, organized, chapter, facilitate, book, session, iaf, network, years, dutch, problem, situation, meeting, certification, assumptions   H.J Hello and welcome to facilitation stories, the community podcast brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. I'm Helene Jewell.   N.W And I'm Nikki Wilson.   H.J And this episode is one of our quarterly chapter chats, where we talk to people leading other chapters in the IAF global community. We ask them about how they see the status of facilitation where they are, and the history, priorities, current projects and aspirations for their chapter. Today, we will be talking to Jan Lelie, facilitator and founder of IAF Netherlands.    N.W So welcome Jan. So to start off with, could you tell us a little more about yourself and the work that you do Jan?   J.L Yes, of course. Well, I facilitate, and I said, I've always facilitated. I worked for six weeks as a consultant in 1984 and then decided that it was not for me, and that any situation requires all the participants to be in the same room, in the same place, and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. And find out actually what the problem is about. So I studied physics, experimental physics, and there I learned that the definition of the problem is part of the problem. So in most of the situations, people have a, how shall I say, the rudimentary idea of their problem, and then they start to implement a solution. And when the solution doesn't work, the solution actually becomes a problem. So you're asked to get a solution implemented which is not the solution to a problem, so it will never work. And I started out in IT, information technology and communications, and there, often IT is not a problem, it's a solution that doesn't work.   H.J  And so you have been part of the IAF for nearly 30 years, I think. How have you seen the practice of facilitation and the role of facilitators change in that time?    J.L Well, first of all, I think that everybody facilitates. It's like everybody communicates. So facilitation, in my experience, is about making connections. It's how you connect with people, how your relationship works, and from there, and everybody connects with each other, only like with communication, nobody has been trained into effective communication and in effective facilitation. So most people work from an expert position, like a consultant or a trainer or even a moderator, and facilitation, in my opinion, is a different paradigm, a different way of dealing with relationships, and the only way to progress is to to learn from each other in working as a facilitator and facilitating. So that was one of the reasons I went to an IAF conference in London in the end of the 1990s which was organized by the IAF, and because we had a computerized brainstorming solution, we wanted to show and also I already had organized a group of what we call moderators, a network of moderators. And then I learned that what I was doing was called facilitation.    H.J It's interesting. I think a lot of people have said that, that they, they didn't necessarily call it facilitation, or call themselves facilitators. They sort of discovered by accident that there was a name for it.    J.L I studied biophysics, and I used to call it catalysation. And the catalysation is what most of all biological systems rely on, catalysation. And catalysation, strangely enough, means breaking the connection. So facilitation means making, to make. And Li is a very ancient word which we can recognize in the word line. And line of Li is connection. So catalysation is breaking the connection. And in my way of facilitation, I'm always being aware of how to end the relationship, how to stop the relationship. I always facilitate with the end in mind, and that's what the catalyst does. The catalyst takes one molecule and another molecule, and tries to connect them, and then steps out of it and unchanged.    N.W And how learned over that time, and if you, if you kind of recognize that that original conference, that what you were doing was, was facilitation, what kind of other things have you picked up through being engaged with other facilitators over that time?   J.L What I do is practice makes perfect. So you have to practice what you preach. When I go to an IAF conference, I will do a workshop of myself and I also work with other facilitators to see and to learn from each other. Nowadays, at the conference we took about a quarter of an hour after a session, during IAF conference, to reflect on the session itself. What went well? What did you do? What can you do differently? And I think that is basically how I work. So it's still, I'm still doing training and courses, and then also what we learn together. I always say I cannot teach you anything. I can only facilitate your learning. And that's how I approach facilitation. Also, I try to be a facilitator's facilitator. This might sound strange, but I will say the universe is my teacher. So the universe is very kind, and they offer you lessons. And the problem is that you, as I said, you cannot see the lesson until it appears, and then it's always in the resistance. So when you feel resistance against something, it's probably something you need to learn. And that is also what makes facilitation for most people very, I shall say, difficult or awkward, is that you have to deal with the resistance of a group or the situation, and let it be, not try to solve anything, but just like to see how it works out. If you see what I mean. Like I said, the universe doesn't have an agenda. So sometimes the lesson comes too early. Then you learn something, and you think, okay, thank you. And then sometimes the lesson comes too late. So then after two or three years, you realize, okay, this session, I happen to speak to a colleague facilitator yesterday, and she has problem in managing her team. And she said, it's difficult. And then I asked, What kind of difficulty? Is it difficulty? And then we remember suddenly a session we did, like 4, 5 years ago, what was a very simple technique by a Korean facilitator who I've invited of making bracelets of your, of what you find difficulty, and then put them on your arms and on your legs, or wherever you feel the difficulties, and then sit with them for some times, and then have a conversation with others who are also sitting with their difficulties and dealing with that. And that's where I work. You know, you get this, this method or this tool, and then you think, okay, just the opportunity will arise.    N.W Oh, excellent. I love that idea of sort of collecting things that you might use in the future, but not necessarily knowing where they will, where the need for them will emerge. I think that's probably something that a lot of us do, but not always consciously. So that, I love that example. It's great.   H.J I just want to think a bit or ask a bit more about that, the whole sort of community element, I suppose. And thinking about IAF and the IAF Netherlands and ask a little bit more about that. So you're current and past chair of IAF Netherlands, but prior to that, you were IAF Benelux. Can you tell us a little bit about how the chapter was established?    J.L Yes, in the, well in 1990s I met John and Maureen Jenkins. And Maureen had been, or was, was becoming Chair of IAF world, and they happened to work in the Netherlands, and they organized a conference in Amersfoort here in the Netherlands, and I joined the conference together with some colleagues. And during the conference, we decided that we should have a Dutch network of facilitators, and we started to create a foundation called IAF Benelux. And it was in a time when IAF didn't have any chapters, it was just IAF world, and you became part of what, in my opinion, was an American organization, and then we, well, we founded this, this, this network, and we organized events. I think the most important thing is what we did is local events,and a yearly conference and also I went to the to European conferences. But the main thing for most Dutch people is they like to work in Dutch. And that is the other thing we organized from the IAF Benelux, we wanted to have a certification process, and at that time, it was only in English, but as that's been established by Dutchman, and there were some Dutch speaking assessors. We use the English process to have people certified in in Dutch and here in the Netherlands, we were the first organization which offered certification in their mother tongue.   H.J Um, and that's for the Certified Professional facilitator accreditation   J.L Yes, and I think we had about 100 or so certified facilitators here in the Netherlands at some time, because we did it together with the yearly conference, we had a certification event, and also we had separate certification event. At a certain time I think we had two every year. And beside that, we organized events, like I said, I like to meet other facilitators and to work together and to explore our way of working. And John and Maureen at that time, were very, as I said, supportive of the, of it. I think Maureen is one of the best facilitators in the world. He's one of a kind. So, and that's what worked for a couple of years, six or seven, eight years. And then IAF organized itself into chapter structures, and we had to become an association. So we, we terminated the foundation and became IAF Netherlands and for again, about, I think, 7,8,9 years. But the problem I always said with associations is that you have all these things about membership, and I think that association is not the best fit for a network of facilitators, because it creates expectations about what IAF does. So people usually ask me, okay, what is IAF going to do for me? And I said, Well, nothing. I'm not your mother. You have to facilitate yourself. We're here to facilitate you. But people kind of expect us to do things for them, and I was resisted that so, but I must say, I'm an exception. So most of my fellow board members, they were very kind, and they organized things, and they made memberships at everything. And I'm not that good in organizing things, you know.   H.J I guess that's true of lots of people, though, isn't it? So some people are natural organizers, and some people just want to go and do whatever the facilitation or the, you know, take part in things. And sounds like a, it's a good job that you have that mix in the chapter.    J.L Yeah, and I also said I'm the worst chair in the world, you know, because I facilitate, I don't share anything. So, but in the end, because the problem with a board is, in my opinion, that you shouldn't have people in the board for eternity. So we made the decision that you could only be two times three years in the board, and then you have to leave the board. So gradually the board of the IAF changed, and then many of the board members became frustrated, because when you organize a conference, not many people show up. I think that is only natural with facilitation, because it's the diversity of facilitators is too wide to have a common ground. That may sound strange, but in my opinion, we don't have a common ground. We don't have anything in common except that we call ourselves facilitators, and that is not enough to have a professional association. I personally always say a facilitation is not a profession, it's a calling.   N.W And so I mean, I suppose, bearing that in mind, despite some of the challenges of finding some common ground, you have hosted 12 conferences, I think, over the past sort of 30 years, while you've been involved. So what have been some of the topics or themes that the conferences have been about and that you've brought together people around?   J.L Well, usually, I collect a small group of people, and we have a conversation about, or a facilitated meeting about what, what could be the theme of the conference. So we did a conference of, do, do the nothing, or in, in the Dao, it's called the way Wu wei. So it's, it's like do nothing, and it's very difficult for facilitators not to intervene, but sometimes it's very important not to intervene, so be there and be aware of what happens, and notice that you should let things go as they were, and only wait until you are invited to intervene. So we did a conference about that. We did a conference of sedators carries on. So I think it's in England it's a set of movies, carry on movies.   N.W Yeah, quite a different facilitation, I think in my memory, but yes.   J.L No, but it's also what we do. You know, you just carry on.   N.W yeah, too true.   J.L and also like things that like, Oh, what do you do when you don't know what to do? This is also an interesting theme. And we also did a thing on facilitating with the brain in mind. So at that time, about 10, 15 years ago, a brain facilitation was coming up. So I just invited facili, we just invited facilitators to have a meeting together, so and bring the knowledge or the experience together. And then we also did something about like serious facilitation, which is also very funny, facilitation, seriously.   H.J It sounds like there's definitely a bit of a theme just listening to you talk around facilitators needing to sort of step back a bit and not get too stuck in. And I do recognize that that kind of feeling, that sometimes you feel as a facilitator, that you need to do something.    J.L The other issue with facilitation is that you always have to work from a perspective and a meet up perspective. You have to be aware of your awareness. So you have to be aware of the metaphor which is being used. So people talk in metaphors, but you have to take the metaphor literally and not figuratively, and that is, and that is very hard to do, to see yourself in a situation and be aware of your situation and at the same time, how should I say, control your behavior or or inhibit that's also a thing which is important, that you are inhibited. In my opinion, I will say that your timing is more important than your method. So we are also always focused on to methods and techniques which are important. You know, you I know about every method and technique in the world, but at the same time, the timing is more important so you can use the wrong method and still have the right timing and get the results. Where, if you have a good methods, but your timing is wrong, then it won't work. And then people start to think, Okay, I should know this method better, but now it's not in the method its in your timing. And in my interventions, I always try ,and then when we do is also about when we're training, to be late in your intervention, a bit laid back so you can see your intervention coming, at least I can do it, and then I say, Okay, let's wait for some time and see if I'm right. You have to be aware of your assumptions. Yeah, that's it. And that's also in physics, you know, that's what I'm mean, to be, to be aware of your assumptions about what is needed and first test your assumptions before you act on it. That's, I think, how you should define your meta perspective. So whatever happens in a group, you make an assumption, okay, I think they are stuck. And then you say, okay, What sign do I have that they are stuck? Okay, well, they're quarreling, yeah, but quarreling doesn't mean they are stuck. It can also be very constructive. You know, one of the times as an example, I was a co facilitator with a facilitator, and people only in a group were disagreeing with each other, and they asked me, What should we do? I said, Well, just let the disagreement continue. Disagreement is good, and only when you're called in to, to facilitate, then you come as a facilitator. And and this is very hard to do, because you want to keep, to care for the group. Do you want to people to be constructive and to have people sometimes they have to disagree with each other. And only when you're asked to intervene, you intervene.    N.W Yes, I think there's something really interesting there about, as you said, the timing, and kind of maybe leaving it a little bit longer than you'd be tempted to, just because sometimes then something more emerges that you might not have assumed would happen. And, yeah, really interesting.    H.J Okay, thinking of time and moving on, just so we make use of the time we have. I just, I wanted to ask a little bit about the book that you co wrote, co authored. And this was, I think, one of the initiatives of your chapter, the IAF Netherlands chapter, and it was called diverging conversations through facilitation. And I think it's got 24 different case studies from different facilitators. And I just really wanted to find out a little bit more about that.   J.L It was actually a suggestion of one of our facilitators that we should have a kind of year book. So every year a book about facilitation. And so I invited a group of facilitators to brainstorm about it, and I asked them to bring one of their favorite books, one book that inspired them. And then everybody introduces themselves using their book they brought. And then we looked at the qualities of the book, and then we make a list of the qualities about the book on facilitation, and then it was, they came off. So okay, we should have concrete cases about what you do as a facilitator, where you make the difference. It should have a strict format of four pages with two pictures, but not use the actual pictures, which make them into a line drawing, because you can read line drawings easier than pictures. And also they don't age. So pictures age, and then it should have a, shall I say, the preface, and a reflection on the on the book, and, and then we made this the chapters like, Okay, what did the client say? What was your situation? what was the core question?  What did you do as a facilitator? And then away, actually, where did you make the difference as a facilitator? And then what was your result? And then a reflection on your session. And then we edited all the and then we asked people first of time in the Netherlands, we did the thing in the Netherlands, first called the book, was ‘Facilitation Made Easy'. And we just invited people who came to the conference or in our networks to submit cases and asked their clients if they were okay with that their case was used. And also we checked the actual cases, and then we edited them for for, how should I say it, that they all look the same. And also, when you ask a facilitator what they do, you get a long story about the I did this and this and then I did, but that was not interesting. We wanted to know, where did you make the difference? What was the turning point, or the the Blue Note way, what was, what was, what you did, the counterpoint in your session? And then we sent them back to them, and what do you think about it? And then when they agreed, we put them in the book. And then, and it was very clever. I think we made, we decided to print like 2000 copies, but you could have your own cover sheet. So you could buy 50 or 100 with your own organization on the front and on the back, with and, and these were the sponsors of the book. So they paid, actually, they paid the fixed cost for making a book, publishing the book, even before we had to sell it, because they have already and they got a very low price for the 50 or 100. So our company might at work, ordered 100 and there were several other organizations, most of them organization for facilitators who bought 50 or 100 copies in the pre-sales. And I had my book published by Helling here in the Netherlands about facilitation, which is actually a meta praxis. And then it was in the Netherlands it was a huge success, and I introduced it at an IAF Europe conference. And then we decided to create the international version, and we translated the 12 international cases from the Netherlands, because a lot of us work in other countries and than in the Netherlands, and we invited facilitators from England, from Germany, from Japan, from North Africa, to add their cases. And we use the same format, and we added a glossary of terms, because then suddenly you notice that when we use the same word, we are saying different things. And we published that book, and our basic idea at that time was to make it one yearly or two yearly event and use the cases from the IAF award, let's say, as a format. We proposed it to the board, but we never heard anything about our proposal, again. One of the other things a facilitator could only buy two copies. So you bought one for yourself, and want to give away.   H.J Nice. I think I have a copy actually. So yeah.   N.W And from all of those different global case studies, are there any sort of key themes or lessons that came out of those, or any particular case studies that stood out for you?    J.L Yes, several. I think the case from Maureen Jenkins is very interesting because he worked with a congregation of nuns in Roman and international organization, which is actually very huge, but they have to change their way of working, and since it is very natural. And also, I like the case by Marlin Moran from Sweden, because in that case it is actually, it's a very short case, which actually, which is very often the case in many problem situations that people have different, how should I said, meanings of the same word. So in this case, it's about teamwork, but and the teamwork didn't work because they, the CEO, didn't think they were a team. They were working as a team, and it just happened that they had different definitions of the way of teamwork, some thinks, okay, it's a month or the weekly meeting. And also now we should pull together as a team we should share those. And Marlin noticed that and then made that as an intervention. And so this is also the cases that you start out with a certain assumption about what is the case, and then suddenly notice that there's a completely different problem or situation which is not being discussed and which should be on the forefront of the meeting. And I think this is one of the red threads, the one of ,what they have in common, that you are able to change your assumptions on what is happening while in the meeting. So of course, it's very difficult because you have prepared your script and or if you have your agenda and you want to stick to the agenda, but actually your own, I will say, you only got your agenda to know where you differ from your agenda. Plans are nothing. Planning is everything. So you've got a plan. I'm very, almost very well prepared for my sessions, but most of the times, in the first quarter an hour or first half an hour, the plan goes out of the window.   H.J I really like that plan. Plans are nothing. Planning is everything. I think I might, I might take that as a quote.   J.L  yeah, and you have to be able to replan your session during session, and that is why you have to. So only when you are well prepared you can improvise, because that gives you the certainty that you have thought this and and the ability to let go of your preparation when the need arises, when the situation asks you to. By the way, I learned it from a very good facilitator. She once came to my training. You did the brown    N.W and so thinking about, obviously, you've talked about the book and the conferences. What other ways do you sort of bring people together in IAF Netherlands? what other kinds of activities have you run? Or do you currently run?   J.L Well, strangely enough,we had to dissolve the association, so we are now kind of a kind of open network, which I run through meetup, and I only organize one meeting a year, and still the meetup starts to grow and grow and grow. So we go from 300 or under 300 to over 500 now. And I sometimes ask people, okay, what you want me to organize, to facilitate, and then I get no response. So I don't know, you know, let's see. I'm hoping to do something in September about facilitation.    H.J And do you have any particular you know, What do you think will happen in the future? So at the moment, it sounds like it's sort of loosely organized network of meetups. Or, as you say, you know, you put one meetup on a year. What are you hoping for the future?    J.L Well, what I've seen, what this happened, has happened in the Netherlands, is that there are several networks now, or facilitators, most of them are organized in a company and around a certain method or a certain tool, like Open space or Agile or Facilitation Academy. And in most of those, future center. And in most of those networks, people participate, who used to be in the IAF network. And I sometimes talk to them and say, why don't you come to the IAF meetings? And then say, well, we don't need an international association. So they are like local organizations for local meetings. And I think it's that's I think I see myself, like as a catalyst. And also in the IAF Meetup group, most of the participants are non Dutch speakers, but they work with consultancy agency or, yeah, or they are self employed in networks as a trainer or a consultant. They don't call themselves facilitators, and I expect that after some time, we will start doing more meetings or sessions on facilitation. But then, you know, this is just my way of organizing. So I don't organize much. I like just things. Things happen all by themselves. They don't need me to to happen and only when you when I'm asked to do something, I do something, that may seem strange, but I think that most of, actually all change processes happen by themselves through everything, even before open space, I thought everything that happens is the only thing that can happen and the people who come are always the right people. You know, I did sessions at an international IAF conference, and only one person showed up at my workshop. And, okay, let's have a one person workshop. And she's still very fond of it. Since I met her again, she's from Turkey. She still remembers that workshop that sometimes you know you your workshops are crowded to 40, 50 people. Okay, your framing creates your situation. So when you frame yourself as an association, you've got Association problems, and I can say blindly, which they are. You have to tend to take care of your members. The members expect you. You have to have a board, and your board will indefinitely expand. You have a certification events, and the certification will also proliferate. You get like a master certificate and a beginner certificate, I already predicted that this is a normal way of working. And as I said, facilitation is not a normal way of working. We are exceptional people ,work in an exceptional situation.    N.W Okay, well, I mean, I think there's a really lovely sort of emergent theme, kind of running through the conversation today, which I think it's more about, as you, you said earlier on, about the kind of ,the universe, I think, and how that shifts, and maybe that's how the future of the chapter might emerge and sort of respond. So I think we've had a really great conversation today, Jan thank you so much for your time. If listeners are in the Netherlands, where should they look? You mentioned the meetup, where can they find out more?    J.L Yeah, the IAF Netherlands meet up.    N.W Okay, so is there a website they need to look for?    J.L It's a Facilitator Meetup Netherlands facilitated by IAF Netherlands it's called.   N.W Okay   J.L  And there are now 5579 members.    N.W Brilliant. And what about if people would like to get in touch with you directly. Where's the best place to find you?    J.L Well, you can use it through the facilitator meetup by IAF Netherlands, or send me an email. IAF-netherlands@kpnmail.nl   N.W Great. Thank you so much.    H.J Thank you so much. Jan, it's been really interesting talking to you, and I'd love to chat more, but for today's podcast, thank you very much.    J.L Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, lovely to talk with you.  

This episode is one of our quarterly “Chapter Chats” where the team talks to leaders of other IAF Chapters.  In this episode Helene and Nikki chat to Sara Tremmi Proietti and Andrea Panzavolta from IAF Italy.  They talk about How the chapter began in 2013 and the successive leaders since then; Initiatives to extend the reach of the chapter in Southern Italy: The co-leadership model used for the past two leadership terms;   “Our jobs are a little bit different. So it's very interesting because we see things from very different perspectives. And this is also always very, very rich, and something that I really, really recommend” (Sara on co-leading with Giacamo)   The Chapter's Annual Conference- its volunteer-led model and support provided to people who'd like to run a session; Working collaboratively with other Associations in Italy; Twinning with other IAF chapters including Romania and Syria; Plans and aspirations for the future of the Chapter;  “we would like the chapter to be a point of reference at the national level for organisations who are seeking facilitator facilitation services or just want to learn something more about it” A full transcript is below.  Links  Today's guests:  Sara Tremmi Proietti: saratremmiproetti@gmail.com  IAF Italy website: https://iaf-italy.org/  IAF Italy email: italy@iaf-world.org   Today's subject  LinkedIn Article about Co Leadership by Andrea and Deborah: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stepping-leadership-iaf-story-deborah-rim-moiso-fmdwf/   To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter  Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/  And to email us: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org  IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales The Facilitation Stories Team  Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/  Nikki Wilson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/   Transcript   H.J Hello and welcome to Facilitation Stories, the community podcast brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. I'm Helene Jewell (HJ) and   N.W I'm Nikki Wilson (NW)   H.J And this episode is one of our quarterly Chapter Chats, where we talk to people leading other chapters in the IAF global community. We ask them about how they see the status of facilitation, where they are, and the history, priorities, current projects and aspirations of the chapter. Today, we're joined by Andrea Panzavolta (AP) and Sara Tremmi Proietti (SP), co chairs of IAF Italy, welcome.   S.P Thank you, Helene.   A.P Thank you so much for the invitation and also for your perfect pronunciation.   H.J Thank you so welcome to you both. And to start off with, we would like to know a little bit more about both of you and about the kind of work you do. So if you could tell us a bit about yourselves, that would be great.   S.P Thank you Helene. Okay, so my name is Sara, and I live in Rome, which is in centre of Italy. I have been working in public administration for over 10 years now, and for the past three years, I've been drawn to the world of facilitation, first attending a course and then starting to work also in in this field, public administration, I focused initially on economic programming, but then I turned more on teams like innovation and process optimization. So that's how I met facilitation, because during an office reorganisation attempt, we met a lot of conflicts and resistances and difficulties with our team. And so I understood that I needed to, you know, to discover and to learn something more about people, about relation, about group working. So that's how I met it and how I am.   A.P So may I introduce myself, and first of all, thank you for the invitation and for this amazing initiative, because I also listened to the past podcast and were very, very, very well done. I'm not the actual chapter leader. I was the past chapter leader with Deborah Rim Moiso. So thank you also, Sarah, who invited me to join you. And I'm an urban planner and the facilitator, of course, our 20 years that I practise as a facilitator. I'm a founder of the formative collective, that is a project that focuses on the team of non violent communication. And of course, we use the participatory techniques, methods. And I was awarded with the Platinum Award 2020 by the International Association of Facilitator. So I'm very proud about this, in a project that I follow it by region Emilia-Romagna, that is my region in the north of Italy, and the team was about the Community of Practice on participatory policy making. So that's all for me.   H.J Thank you. Really interesting to hear how you both got into facilitation and congratulations on your award too, Andrea.   A.P Thanks so much. It's a past award.   N.W Great. So today we're going to be talking about IAF Italy, which we know had its 10 year anniversary last year. So what can you tell us about how it started and how the chapters developed over that 10 year period?   A.P Yeah, thank you for the question Nikki .The Italian chapter born in 2013 on the initiative by Giancarlo Manzone and Gerardo de Luzengerger that I imagine you know very well. And from 2019 to 2021 was coordinated by Paola Martinez. That is another IAF member, very active. And since May 2021, has been coordinated by me and Deborah Rim Moiso. And now the coordinators are Sara Tremmi Proietti and Giacomo Petitti. And the chapter started to create collaboration between facilitators, and mainly to explain what the facilitator do. At that time nobody in Italy know the term, the word facilitator. And I was scared to present me as a facilitator, because nobody, nobody could understand what I did. So this is our first mission in that time.   H.J Thank you. Really interesting. Sorry, Sara, did you have something to add?     S.P Yeah, I would like to, just to add that the professional facilitator now it's spreading a little bit more in Italy, but still, we have a lot of resistance among organisations. And there is a great concentration of facilitators in the north of the country. So we are our initiative now is also to bring facilitation to the southern regions of the country. And we are quite pleased about an initiative that came from our members, which is a small initiative, because they just decided to have a WhatsApp chat called like facilitators from the South. And the nice thing is that this initiative came from a Canadian girl, who is a member who lives now in the south of Italy, and but, and she's a member of IAF Italy, and she formed this WhatsApp chat, and we are quite proud of this, even if this is a small step, but it does mean something for us.   H.J Wow, that's so interesting. And also that kind of organic movement of yeah, people starting up their own, yeah? Well, WhatsApp chat   S.P Exactly, exactly, yeah.   H.J  And I think what's interesting actually for us is, the more we do these Chapter Chats, we hear a bit of a consistent theme, actually, in this people don't really know what facilitation is. That certainly, when we spoke to Bogdan from IAF Romania, that was one of the things he was talking about as well. So it's definitely and in the UK. So it's definitely not, uh, not something, uh, specific to where we are, which is interesting. Okay, so, um, thinking then, uh, well building a bit on what you were saying, Sara about, you know, you've got some new initiatives. Can you tell us a bit more about the chapter as it is today?   S.P Yeah, sure. So the chapter today has about 30 to 35 members, as I was saying before, with the predominance in the north of Italy. So it's like 20 to 22, members in the north, and four of them are certified facilitators. So now we still have two co-leader, a co-leadership. It's me and Giacomo Petitti. We have been holding this role for a year now, so it's midterm kind of. And what we do is we basically carried on the work, the job that was began by Andrea and Deborah, because we hold monthly meetings. So it's pretty regularly. It's like the third Monday of each month we meet. And we also provided IAF Italy with a Zoom account so that we can, we could, uh, ensure you know this regularity. And this is a place, this is a moment of the month where people can meet and discuss and also participate in building and nourishing the community and to identify together goals and activities. So we wanted to be a participated chapter, no. So since we are kind of scattered among, you know, along the country, across the country, we cannot hold, like in person events so frequently. So we have our national event, which is held in Milan every year. So we keep it, you know, online, mainly. And then we we have, like, some activities, like, you know, things that we participate in, in events with other association for the promotion of the participation, or for the promotion of facilitation as well. Like, we went to an event last September in Bologna. So we travel a little bit, me and Giacomo sometimes. And then to, you know, to keep up with members, we have this WhatsApp chat, and then we have a sort of newsletter. We can call it like monthly, where we give, we keep them updated to with the international events and initiatives that are going on into the IAF Ward and yeah and that, that's pretty much it. And then we have, you know, like a specific also, activities that we were following, but maybe Andrea will tell you more later about it.   N.W And you touched on the kind of Co-leadership model that you follow. What do you, have you found works well in making that work when you're co leading?   A.P Yes, before the 2021 the chapter had always been led by an individual, but when Gerardo asked me to became the chapter leader, I was very scared. And in that period I had less time to dedicate to the association. So I asked to Deborah Rim Moiso to help me, and she joined, and she was very happy to join this experience. And we together were inspired by experiments in Co-leadership adopted by the global ecovillage network and and we not, we're not sure, but they may have too been inspired by the Kurdish democratic and federalism practices. So this was our approach, and it's very simple. Our co-leadership started, I don't know if now work at the same, but I think it's very similar. And any leadership position is taken at the same time by two people of different genders. So we suggest different genders, both are leader together. And you know, as IAF you need to have only one reference, one the chapter leader, but I was the person who did the senior tour. But for me and Deborah, we have the same power. And for me, was very important to share the season and to share also that after the meeting with the IAF International. And was very, very useful also to define the future strategy, also to when we decided to engage more members from the south of Italy, we decided together this and we decided to to have regular meetings with us, with me and Deborah. We call the coffee time meeting, or the beer meeting, the beer time meeting. So every week, we had a short meeting of half an hour to share ideas and also to share information that we took from from different meetings that we participate. So we shared also the duties you know about, to be a chapter leader. And so was a very good experience, and we suggested this managed model to all the chapters.   H.J Nice, and for you Sara, does that, is it a model that feels nice working alongside somebody else?   S.P Yeah, very much. I really appreciated this initiative. And when Andrea proposed me to take the role and told me that Giacomo was in as well, I was really relieved. I was like, Okay, now, now I know that I can do it like this. You know, in pairs. Yeah, I think it's very interesting to be together. And also you can, you know, divide activities, such as the previous one I was talking about, when you have to travel around. And also you can, you know, share meetings where you have to, that you have to attend, but mostly you can discuss and share fears and projects for the future. And also Giacomo and I have very different backgrounds. How are you know, we live in different places, in different type of communities, our jobs are a little bit different. So it's very interesting because we see things from very different perspectives and this is also always very, very rich, and something that I really, really recommend. So I'm really, really enjoying this. And also the nice thing was that at the last general conference, we kind of hosted the conference, which is organised by Gerardo every year. But also we decided to have a session together for a session. So we brought a workshop so we could test, you know, our Co-leadership in person and during work. So that's nice.   H.J So it sounds great from sort of lots of different perspectives. And yeah, interesting thinking about that diversity perspective that you both bring two sort of different mindsets or different ways of facilitating to your leadership. And I can absolutely, having been passed England and Wales chapter chair, I can absolutely relate to that being a bit scared of doing it by yourself. So if you've got somebody to work alongside with that must feel really good. So the other thing you you've just mentioned again, leading us nicely onto, my next question is about your annual conference. It would be really nice to hear a bit more about about the how that works, about your plans and past conferences as well. You tell us a bit more.   A.P Yeah, maybe I could introduce some themes related to the past conferences. And what I could say a lot of subjects. We started with ‘the collaboration era' was the title of the first Italian conference. Was the first conference to make know better the professional facilitator, and to start also the collaboration with different professional you know. At the time, each facilitator was very jealous about his work ,his profession, because it was, was something very precious, so we decided to start collaboration to share experience methods and what what we know. In our conference, everyone bring his or her experience and the share methods could offer a free workshop so you have to share something of your professional experience also. And another theme that I loved, it was “where the donkey falls”. So when you are a facilitator, you do everything very well, but when you start to converge to the, to take the decision, here come the problems. So how we could take good decision, how we could go in the conversing way and respect our participants or the group's members. And after that was very good for me, the covid free editions conference, because we shared all we learned in these months of pandemic situation also about the online. But were moment to share those feelings as professional, as individual, as a member of a family, and what does. Also the last conference we organised were about the facilitate in a few words, so no verbal facilitation. How to use the body, arms? You know, we are Italian. We could was very, very well para verbal. But you never stop to study. You have to improve your skills. So we decide to face this team. And the last in the in 2024 the team was neutrality in facilitation. I mean, it's possible to be really neutral as a facilitator in a group, how you can do to be natural, what methods, what you have to do before the groups works before the workshop or after, to be more neutral. And at the end, one of the most nice for me experience of the conference was the agile and facilitation conference that was there during the European Middle East, original conference of the IAF, so was a very, was an international conference. We mainly, not mainly, all the conference has been organised in Italian language. This was the only conference can I organise in English. Always in Milan was dedicated to Agile. So to work with an agile methods, and also to go in deep in the Agile methods that it's not only for person that work with computer and engineers but it's also good for design thinking, the facilitator. And I don't know if Sara wants to add something more about this experience?   S.P Yes, thank you  Andrea, it was very exhaustive. Yeah, what I would like to add is more like a personal, maybe, point of view for in a way, because I, as I said before, I met facilitation three years ago. So I just attended a couple of conferences the last two. So the first one was, yeah, the one like facilitating in a few words, and that, for me, was really amazing, because I just met facilitation and I had no idea, like not no idea, but I was very young in facilitation. So experiencing facilitation through the body and through paraverbal was very enriching for me, because I could learn a lot and experiment on myself a lot. And the second one, and the very nice thing for me was that I was asked by Andrea, I think by Andrea, or by Delfino, I don't remember, to to facilitate the open space technology that we always have during the conference. And it was the first time for me, and that was absolutely amazing experience. And in general, the great thing about the conference is that it brings together very different people, and you get to know that, other words, you know, exist in facilitation. And this is something that being new. It's always you know, something to discover. So it's very interesting. And another thing that I would like to add is that in the this year, last conference, which was held in March, the one about neutrality, was organised in a slightly different way, because there was like a preparation path conference. And people were, are kind of supported and not tutored, but supported in their planning and designing of the workshops that they wanted to to offer. And these, and they were like, they were like feedback, attentions, so that people could improve and take care of, you know, details supported by by a team of, you know, facilitators, and these ensured great quality of of workshops during the conference. It was really, really, really high quality. And I believe that it helped also young facilitators to, you know, to offer workshops with less anxiety. I don't know how to say that, you know, so, yeah, that was really, really nice. I think   A.P If I put up just a very practical thing that is not obvious, the conference is all organised by volunteers, and this is a choice, because the fee is very low, so it's about 180 or 150 euros. It depends about the year. So we want to be very open also to person that are not facilitator, are curious about facilitators or facilitation methods and stories, and that's all.   H.J Sounds kind of similar to the conference that we put on in England and Wales, actually there's, yeah, definite similarities. Nice. Thank you.   N.W Brilliant. And so I suppose building again on that kind of peer led nature of the work the chapter often builds collaborations and partnerships, both within Italy and beyond. So if we just start off with Italy, could you share some examples of some recent and current collaborations that you're involved with?   A.P Yeah, thank you, Nikki for the question. Yes. When I became chapter leader, together with Deborah, we decide to enforce relation with National Association, because we understood that we have to grow, and to grow we have to enforce the relation to know more association that are interested in the same subjects. So mainly we did intervention to explain what I effectively do and what are the core competencies, support, facilitator, and, you know, just to present ourselves and to explain what a facilitator is. We invite all the members of different association to share information and objectives, to find common ground. So we work, in particular with IP two, that is an association in Italy that work on public participation. And if the members are more academic, are more are not professional facilitator, but like to work in the field of facilitator and the public democratic choices. So they are very engaged about what IAF is. And also, we decide to start collaboration with Association like Facilit Ambiente, that is an association, a private association that is offered by the Chamber of Commerce of Milan Monza Brianza Lodi. And it's a sort of service offered for preventing environmental conflicts through facilitation. So they trust in facilitation. They want to support and promote the facilitations approaches and also IAF approaches and the core competencies. So also we work with the open gulf consultation, that is the national consultation, that aim to engage citizens, normal citizens, in the decision related to the government. And there is a national platform, online platform, and you can vote, you know, like this deal, but it's a national platform. So very, very hard to participate because you need, you need to use a lot of personal data to vote before, but for us, was a must. As an international association, as a national association of facilitation, we have to speak also with the Italian government about these, these subjects.   H.J Thank you. Sara, was there anything to add from you?   S.P Yeah, just that this, we are with the associate association that Andrea mentioned, the Association for Public Participation. We are now reviewing the Participation Charter, which was elaborated, created 10 years ago. So after 10 years, this charter has been reviewed. And the Charter is a document promoted by IAF Italy, and this AIP through association with other associations that establishes principles and objectives and guidelines for promoting public participation in decision making processes and the process of reviewing this charter just ended. So we will present this work at the Festival of the Participation, which would be held soon in Italy. So we are quite, quite proud of this. And yes, in general, we try to connect with the associate Association in order to spread facilitation, and also to promote the recognition of the facilitator, facilitator profession in Italy, because this profession is not yet recognised here.   H.J Amazing, Wow. Sounds like you've got lots and lots of Yeah, lots of work that you're doing, and perhaps lots more to do, just thinking about collaborations, but more specifically about the twinning that you've been doing with other chapters. I wanted to ask you a bit more about that. So we spoke to Bogdan, as I said before, from IAF Romania in a previous Chapter Chat and we know that you've twinned with IAF Romania, and you have started, I think, to twin with IAF Syria. And I just wondered if you could tell us a bit more about that.   S.P Yeah, yeah. We, Giacomo and I, decided to carry on this, this initiative that was started by Andrea and Deborah with the Romania when but we did with this training with Syria. And it was a very, very enriching experience for us, because it could help us expand our horizon, you know, also beyond, beyond the Western culture. And so we had a series of virtual workshop, online workshop with with Syrian, in order to share knowledge, resources and best practices between our chapters. We had four meetings about the first one was like, like, the role of facilitation in post disaster recovery. And this was really interesting, because we exchange different stories, and we could see how different it was to, for example, recover after natural disaster. Like it was like in Italy, because we have, we had a few earthquakes in the last few years that and then we had to rebuild, you know, buildings and communities. Whereas in Syria, they had to rebuild after war, and then also after earthquakes. So we could share this experience, and we would see the differences and the great job that they did, and that we also tried to do here in Italy. And also it was very nice because each, each each meeting, the other meetings, were about the conflict management and cultural diversity. So it was, it was very nice to because there are, there might be great differences, you know, in culture, especially when you, when you compare Italy to Syria. So it really makes you think and reflect even out of the session. You know, you have to think about cultural diversity at the basis of the relation. I don't know how to explain it better. And it was nice because we had the chance to co facilitate. So it was an Italian and a Syrian facilitator. And so it was really enriching and but what I saw and what I really liked is that, because I did facilitate one of these meetings, and it was the openness and the human connection that we could find and share when doing something that we really liked. So it was something that went beyond cultural diversity and went beyond the barrier, also the language barrier that you can meet when you go facilitate. You know, maybe Andrea wants to tell us a few more about the Romanian experience.   A.P But, yeah, sure. Just something to add about the idea, the idea, when we decide, with Deborah to propose this twinning during a meeting of the European chapter, we decide to propose a twinning that was composed about three, four meetings, thematic meetings. And of course, that will not take more than two years twinning, because, from our idea, also the Chapter must be in charge for two years. And every two years we want to change chapter leaders and as well, co chapter leaders. And so the twinning at this time about the Romania was amazing because was the first twinning so we decided together, also with bogdan and his and their colleagues, we decided also to share how it's different the professional facilitator in Romania and Italy. So starting from, what are your clients? What are your fees? And something very, very practical, but also if you work more in the private or public sector and what you did, what are your institution? So the line was to enrich each other with methods, but also take inspiration how to work in a different way with different clients that together are not you don't know. And so was very fun also to understand that we are in the same boat, so everything is the same in your nation. So a very good experience that I suggest to each chapter to start.   H.J Thank you. So then thinking about, actually, I just wanted to pick up on one thing you were talking about there, the language, which obviously we as native English speakers have as the kind of luxury, if you like that, when things are in a shared language, they are often in English, which is quite easy for us. How does that, How hard or easy is that to for example, work with Romania, work with Syria and have to use for both of you to be using a language that isn't your own.   S.P Well, actually, I mean, I do really like languages so and I think it's fun to when you meet someone who is not a native English speaker, to find your own vocabulary, like you build up your own vocabulary, which maybe it's not even English, it's not Italian, it's not Syrian, it's not Romanian, but somehow you understand each other, and that's fun. But I have to say that sometimes it can be a barrier, because, like maybe not all the, not all our members felt confident to facilitate in English. So, yeah, so you really need to encourage them that you will find a way to build up your vocab, vocabulary. And also, I think that during the sessions, there is this, at least for me, like, kind of worried that I may not understand well what people are saying, and maybe I my facilitation could be, you know, so and so. And so, you really need to trust yourself, I think, a little bit more, but also, and that's why I really like facilitation, you can always rely on your co facilitator, so if you or make a joke about it, so if you are two, if it's two, you know facilitators not speaking English as a native language, I think it's a lot easier to to manage that.   A.P If I could share, I remember my first online meeting with the monthly meeting with the European Middle East, and I was so scared about the language, because I never studied English, so I learned by myself. So I was so scared or what, what I could say with these facilitators, so professional facilitator. And there was, I met Andrew Spiteri, you know, in a breakout room, and he was so polite, so friendly, that I was very relaxed. And after that meeting, I said myself, everything will be okay. Don't, don't, don't be scared. Don't worry about the English. And you can also use para verbal and don't speak.   H.J Yeah,that's always a fall back, isn't it? Wow, yes, I've delivered training in a different language. Anyway, moving on. So yeah, looking ahead, what's happening in the near future in IAF Italy and yeah, how would you like to see things develop over the next few years?   S.P Okay, so looking ahead, so our focus, I think, remain on strengthening the culture of participation and participation in general. For sure, public participation is, you know, something that is important for us. And also, yeah, having this thing that I mentioned before that having the professional facilitator formally recognised. So something, yeah, it's like to we would like, yeah, this profession to be seen and understood and recognised at a, you know, an institutional level. This is the general, you know, the frame. So in the near future, of course, there is the next general conference. I know it's we are a year ahead, but it takes a lot of work. And of course, the conference is organised by Gerardo, but it's in collaboration with the Chapter. So we are working on improving the model, the new method that we experimented last year. And so we want to see where it goes if we keep working on that. So with this preparation path, and try to trying to scout a little bit new facilitators and see if they want to put themselves to the test, you know. So that it can be the annual conference, can be a place where people, even less experienced facilitators, can can try it, can grow, can know facilitation better and know themselves better as facilitators. This is Yeah, in the near future. In the long term, I think we would like to, the Chapter to transform into a proper, real, like community, where facilitators can share, can support each other, can network and also create work opportunities together. We what we would like is that people feel free to ask each other for help, for support, if they are short of ideas or about a session or a method or something like that. Then we want people to rely on each other, and we want to facilitate this trust building process, I don't know. And also, we would like the chapter to be a point of reference at the national level for organisations who are seeking facilitator facilitation services or just want to learn something more about it. So we would like to be Yeah, like a subject, someone people facilitators and organisation can rely on and can go and ask for help or information.     H.J Great. Anything else from you Andrea? Any other thoughts on the future?   A.P Of course, you know, I'm not now the chapter leader, but I absolutely have some ideas. And Sara had said something very important for me, so support the facilitator and to give them visibility. Organise moment to present facilitator to clients, to to factories, to person that don't know facilitator, and have to know and have to use facilitator because it's better. And when you try facilitator, you ask to yourself, why I didn't do it before. So I want to that IAF Italy support also the professional part of the individual facilitator and for me, it's very important, because in Italy, we need to grow with numbers. And I mean, also in Europe, but in our case, we have to make grow the knowledge of facilitators.   S.P I would just like to add that, I mean, my personal dream is also, of course, since I work in public administration, to bring facilitation in public administration, you know. So this is something that I try to do, you know, very, very small things in my everyday life, at work, but this is, it's more a personal dream this, but I would like to mention that as well, because I think we really need that. We do have, I think that facilitation is kind of entering institutions at a small, at the municipal level, so, you know, town hall level. But in the bigger institution which I belong to, I don't see that much, and I think we really, really, really need that. And also I think that for the for the chapter, something that we should try to, should invest on is young facilitators, of course, and this is also a campaign that IAF global is carrying on. We know that some of our members did join initiatives that have been carried on at the global level. And we are very happy about that. And I also, I would like to maybe this is also a personal, a personal dream. But I really like the share and learn idea, you know, the series that we have at the global level. And I would like that to have that maybe at a chapter level, maybe Italian, maybe even in a more structured way, maybe easier. So something that not felt like kind of overwhelming by people, but that can be, you know, a way to to exchange between peers,   N.W Great, well, lots of big plans and you've got a big work agenda ahead of you, but it sounds like some, some great ambitions there, and really interesting different things that you're getting involved in. So just before we wrap up then, where should we go if we want to find out more about you and the IAF Italy Chapter?   S.P We have a website, and then we also you can reach us, reach us at our email. So the website is, of course, www.Iaf-italy.org , and the email Italy@IAF-word.org so you can always write to us, we always answer and see, check our emails. And you can also write to me. My email is s.tremmiproietti@gmail.com and yeah, this is, this is our contact.   H.J Thank you so much. So I think it just leaves us to say thank you for joining us today, Sara and Andrea. It has been really fascinating talking to you and hearing all about IAF Italy, past, present and future. And hopefully we'll get a chance to speak to you again soon.   S.P Thank you. Thank you Helene and Nikki for the invitation. It was my first experience, and I'm really happy about it.   A.P Thank you so much for the invitation.   H.J  So listeners, we've reached the end of another episode of Facilitation Stories, the community podcast for IAF, England and Wales.   N.W If you'd like to find out more about the IAF and how to get involved, all of the links are on our website, facilitationstories.com   H.J And to make sure you never miss an episode, why not subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you use   N.W We're always on the lookout for new episode ideas. So is there a fabulous facilitator you think we should talk to?   H.J Or something interesting emerging in the world of facilitation you think listeners need to hear about.   N.W Send us an email at podcast@IAF-EnglandWales.org   H.J We hope you'll join us again soon for more Facilitation Stories.   N.W Until then, thank you for listening.  

Here's a look into what's going on in my inner world right now and what I feel called to share and talk about. It feels a lot better for me to navigate the world with optimism. But in order to continue showing up, I have to start being honest about what I am thinking about and what I want to use this platform for. Because I don't feel very optimistic.I don't know all the answers. I don't know how to find all the answers. I don't even know how to fact-check what I *think* might be the answers and determine if it's a troll or a bot or written by AI. But I do know we have to start talking to each other. Like really talking to each other. And start to have more compassion for one another. And be honest with each other. And start doing the scary stuff. And for me, that scary thing is feeling called to lead folks through these conversations and tapping into this compassion.And I don't know what that looks like just yet, but I know it keeps me up at night. I don't feel called to go back to a corporate job. I don't feel called to pitch and sell group programs. But I feel called to share my perspective with as many people as possible, keep an open mind, and know that I will be humbled and have to constantly check my ego in the process. Influencers look different today than they have in the past. But we have always had influencers and will always have influencers. I want to influence in a way that unites us. Thank you for every single follow, like, listen, download, view, DM, comment, text, and email. The individual conversations I have been having are what help me know that I am not alone in feeling lonely. That there are a lot of folks out there craving community, change, and nuance. Sending all my love, J Thank you for listening and subscribing! Follow JJ on Instagram and TikTok.

"Just like you use your dollars with an online payment service, you can still be defrauded USDC. It wasn't the dollars that defrauded you. It was the other side of it." Jeremy Allaire"I actually believe the web of value exchange. Whatever you want to call it, the internet of value is going to be extraordinarily more valuable and extraordinarily more impactful than the web of information." Jeremy AllaireEpisode Summary:In this episode of The Raz Report, Jason Raznick speaks with Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle.Hosts:Jason RaznickTwitter: https://twitter.com/jasonraznickSign Up to Benzinga Pro today to receive most exclusive interviews, news and stock picks fast!https://pro.benzinga.com/Click here for more episodes of The RazReport.Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.Transcript:BZ: We're very excited to have on this edition of the RazReport, Jeremy Allaire founder and CEO of CircleYou're going to hear about building companies, building enterprises and Circle USDC, which is taking the world by storm in a good way. Jeremy, welcome to the show.J: Thank you, Jason. Psyched to be here.BZ: Circle your latest company, I think you've raised over 700 million over $700 million for it. Is that correct?J: that's exactly right.BZ:When you founded this company in 2013 is it where you thought it would be?J: when we founded the company back in 2013, there were a whole set of ideas that we had about digital currency.We were very excited about this idea that you could build what we like to think of back then as an HTTP of money, meaning like a protocol for money on the internet. And by money we meant traditional money.The liabilities of a central bank, what we think of as everyday money. But convey onto that money, the power of cryptocurrency.So Bitcoin obviously itself brought into the world, this idea of a protocol that could work on a decentralized infrastructure to enable people to directly exchange value in digital cash like way.We wanted to build on that same fundamental technology foundation, but enable people to exchange, stable value assets, like dollars or Euros. And we believe that a kind of protocol layer for money would eventually become possible on top of these blockchain infrastructures. And that was a core mission and goal from the outset.We experimented with realizing that idea through building on a lot of, kind of digital currency banking infrastructure, we built a consumer facing application that kind of brought that to life. We actually built it on top of Bitcoin, which was the first-generation blockchain that was available back in 2013 and 2014 and 2015. And in during that time period, and then eventually in 2016, when ethereum, which is the second generation blockchain technology really emerged, it introduced more of the building blocks that we had been looking for back in 2013, when we founded the company.ETH allowed us in 2017 to begin work on and then also release what's now known as USDC, which is in fact the protocol for dollars on the internet and eventually other Fiat currencies too. But founding vision was there, the path to it obviously takes many, shifts.The metaphor I like to use is you can see the mountaintop. You can literally, standing far back, you can see that mountain top and how beautiful that looks, but you actually don't know how you're going to get to the top of the mountain. And you may actually go up one path and realize, oh, I'm staring over a cliff. I need to go back down and go up another.BZ: Ethereum is what allowed you to go create USDC?J: So back in 2012 and 2013 there, there were a lot of technologists or not a lot, actually back then, there was a lot now, but there were technologists getting involved in this space. And a lot of us got really excited about ideas issuing other assets on top of the blockchain or smart contracts and programmable money and what it would mean if you could have if you could say issue a dollar token and have a smart contract that could enable the programmability of that was like a mind-blowing concept.Early in my career, I worked on programming languages, app development, infrastructure, developer platforms, content infrastructure, lots of things like that. And so had a background in thinking about, developer platforms and the idea of a developer, an open infrastructure that was like a developer platform for money on the internet was super exciting. And so there were a lot of ideas on how to do it in 2013. It just technically wasn't possible.The history of Ethereum is really relevant here because Vitalik, who also was really excited about a lot of these ideas of how you can extend this kind of blockchain infrastructure to do other things. A lot of people thought that might happen that Bitcoin itself as an open source project would evolve to do those things. But there was an ideological battle between those in the core development community who really wanted to keep Bitcoin simple and focused on being a kind of digital gold store of value.Then there's a whole other group of technologists that wanted to advance this into being something that's more like an operating system that you could build a lot of things on top of including things like protocols for stable coins,DEFI, NFTs, DAOs all these things that have emerged. So it was really that kind of forking off and development of a new infrastructure layer that then made it possible to pursue and execute something like USDC.BZ: Jeremy, where did you grow up?J:I grew up in a small town in Southeastern Minnesota, a town called Wynnona Minnesota. I went to college in the St. Paul McAllister college and studied political science philosophy and a concentration in economics.I got introduced to the internet in my dorm room, literally in, in 1990 had a high-speed internet connection, which in 1990, there was not a lot you could do on the internet, but I was down the rabbit hole became completely obsessed, made all of my educational work about it and started using it in my studies around what was happening in the former Soviet Union and what was happening in the sort of changing revolutions around the world and got me excited about the idea of an open network, open permissionless networks, decentralization, disintermediation, a lot of these themes that still show up today in the internet space got me into it. And then graduated college there and started working on my first company.BZ: Did you ever go to Mall of America when you were growing up?J:So mall of America merged when I was a little bit older, I think when I was in college.BZ: But as a kid, did you have side hustles where you like selling the newspaper? Like Mark Cuban was doing the garbage bags? Were you doing that?J: I was a paper boy, that was my first job if you want to call it. But I actually had, I got really lucky in a sense when I was a teenager. I convinced my parents to take, like some, a small amount of money. I had been passed down to me from my grandparents and was in like mutual funds, which was a big deal in the eighties. You had mutual funds. I convinced them to let me invest it into baseball cards.So in the kind of mid to late eighties, I ran Southern Cordillera sports cards. So I ran a trading operation and I would deal and I would go and basically do baseball cards. So that was my side hustle that helped me pay for my spending money in college.BZ:Did you have tables ? So you'd buy cards, flip them and did you make some decent money doing it?J:Absolutely. Yeah, so I took long positions. Okay. On on term sort of players. Mark McGuire, Jose Conseco, that's just some of the big onesBZ:What was one of your best trades?J: Brett saberHagan was, 19, he had just an incredible record and I like accumulated a huge bunch of those. And then that was a short-term trade. I keep thinking in a bunch and then flip them at a huge increase in value as everyone wanted the Brett Saberhagen for a piece that I think that was one of the best one of the best trades I did.I would do arbitrage.That's where I go to these shows. find someone who really, wanted X and I would just run around and find it, buy it for Y and then turn it around. So there's that. And then, I had I still have a fairly sizable collection.BZ: How did you get involved in internet in college?J: I had a T1 which was basically like a hard wire, it was effectively ethernet, but hardwired into a campus that were, and, campuses where some of the only places that had access to the internet for research purposes. And a T1 was, even now was whatever, I, that was back then 1.5 megabits per second, which was really good.BZ: You're in college and you're exploring this whole open network of sorts were your parents supportive of that?J: No, not at all. They were like, I don't know what this is. I don't understand this.I graduated college in 1993 the tail end of the first Gulf war recession.. I studied, what I would thought would be interesting to help understand the world and whatnot. And so I was like temping and but, and, on the side I was just going deeper and deeper into the internet space.And and I remember coming home, I quit my temp job and said, fuck this, I'm going to be an internet consultant. I called myself, which was basically like helping educate people about how businesses, how to use the internet and actually, working on the very, very first websites, this was before, even like Mosaic was out, was hacking around.Basically how helping organizations figure out how to build stuff from the web. And I went home and my father was just so distraught and just so afraid that, he didn't understand any of it. And he was like, this isn't a job, so concerned. I was following my bliss and it was good timing in 1993 to be really going down that rabbit hole and learning all the technology and figuring out what it was to. Build stuff back then. That led to the Genesis of some of the first products that I helped build and create.BZ: You called yourself an internet consultant?J: So there all these people learning HTML, and then in 1995, more people.I really wanted to be able to do interactive apps where you could connect a database, you could have interactivity. And my idea was that anyone should be able to build a global online service because back then, like the idea of an online service was you had to have AOL, or you have to have, CompuServe or whatnot.But I was convinced that an open network that anyone could publish to or any device could connect to, it would be a lot better. And so working with my brother, who's a much more of a computer scientist than I am, became the product manager designer for cold fusion and hidden the kind of chief architect. And we ended up working through a lot of ideas and building essentially the first easy to use web programming language and what is now known as an app server, an application server, one of the very first commercial app server, which basically was a piece of software you can put on a machine connected database, do transactions, dynamically generate webpages. And, that paradigm now, is everything from SAS and content management and everything else on, on the internet. So built that and, got super passionate about enabling developers to dream what they wanted to build on the internet, everything from content to community, to e-commerce, to all kinds of things and built, developer platform business.I find it, you can find it out there.There's still millions of sites with that are still run by that it's now owned by Adobe. That product line is owned by Adobe, which bought Macromedia, which is I merged my first company or we merged layer into Macromedia as public company.BZ: And when you started Cold Fusion, you and your brother, what'd you call the coming like the layer corporation?J:.We had a whole family of products. We had the most popular HTML web development tool in the world Homesite.Literally millions of developers use Homesite. So most websites in the 1990s were built using that. And it was one of the reasons why Macromedia wanted to acquire us because they had Dreamweaver and Dreamweaver was really popular with professional designers.But like the average Joe or Jane would get Homesite it was free. And it was like super powerful HTML editor. And so we had millions of people using that.So no, like no one used front page, because it was so awful because it forced you into like these templates you couldn't get control. So Homesite was like gave you access to the HTML and made it really easy to edit the HTML. And we gave it away for free. It was like a feed, it was a freemium product. We wanted to get it out there. And then we got other people into our more advanced products.BZ: So you were doing freemium before, that was even a word. Okay. Did you raise money for Cold Fusion?J:I think it was three rounds of venture capital and then like a mezzanine financing. And then we IPOed in January of 1999.We were a public company on NASDAQ for 2 years. And in January of 2001, we merged with Macromedia, which was about three times larger than us. And merged the two public companies. And I became the chief technology officer of Macromedia.BZ: IPO process versus the M&A process? Which did you like better?J:I like building. And operating. I I like that a lot. it's interesting, there are times and places where M&A makes sense both as a buyer and as a seller, obviously the vast majority of outcomes and business are some form of merger transaction typically or in bankruptcy. So the number of companies that remain independent is smaller.But I think both had a lot of advantages back at that period of time merging at the time was a really good thing for our company and actually gave us a much stronger platform that was, as you recall, when 9/11 happened and the entirety of the certainty of the market, and really the demand for internet software and stuff collapsed alongside the collapse of the.com.BZ: So Brightcove, how did you get to start that?J: So in 2002, when I was chief technology officer Macromedia, we put the ability to render video and PR and have video as like a programmable object in something called flash player and flash player at the time was the most ubiquitous piece of software in the history of the internet.98% of computers in the world had it. We could actually upgrade the internet to a completely new virtual machine that essentially like a new client in like less than 12 months. So we put video in and it was right before broadband came out and like for consumers.And it was really clear to me looking at broadband wifi devices that can be connected to those.And then having a ubiquitous playback mechanism for video. I got really excited, started incubating ideas inside of Macromedia for basically self publishing, self video publishing type of applications actually built something internally that the company did not want to bring to market. I was really frustrated.My vision was video's going to become as ubiquitous as text on the web. Everyone's going to become a video publisher. Every business is going to be able to distribute television quality video to devices everywhere. And so this was in like 2002, 2003. And so I got frustrated and left, went to a VC as a technologist and resident general catalyst and incubated brightCove.And then founded it in 2004, really with this idea that again, video was going to become as ubiquitous as texts on the web and that you needed a new generation of publishing platforms for it. That could integrate everything that was needed for either a brand like a corporation. Or an organization or a media company itself to basically do direct distribution of television instead of relying on cable and satellite and all the old ways and transform other media companies who work in television and video into being into television and video. So it was a video platform company, a SAS company, as we now call these and founded it in 2004.it had a really nice growth run. And I took it public in early 2012. And then stepped into a chairman role after about a year. Cause I had gone down the crypto rabbit hole in 2013 just became obsessed with.What was going on in crypto and made a decision to basically, start Circle.BZ: Mark Cuban emailed me a question, Mark Cuban's known you from his tech days. His question is "what did you learn from your layer or your database days that you are applying today?"J: it's actually really relevant. As I talk about the inspiration for circle and what, I've been inspired by, , in this space. in, in many ways, right?What got me super excited about the internet in the first place was this kind of obsession with the idea of the internet itself, being an open network that was permissionless that anyone could bring a computer to and connect, and that anyone who did that could take open protocols like the SMTP protocol or the HTTP protocol or the VOIP protocol, or these sort of protocols, which are really just public IP, intellectual property, that's open source it's in the public domain.People can write software to it and that you could connect anyone anywhere through these protocols and do really amazing things in terms of information, exchange, knowledge, exchange communications so powerful. That's what drew me into the internet in the first place and kind of an obsession with open networks, decentralized and distributed model.What that could unleash and really a belief that architecture could maximize access and could maximize the ability for people to to reach the most people in the world and entrepreneurship and ideas. So that's what kind of, that was what informed. The work around cold fusion back then. And so if I fast forward to crypto, that was fundamentally the insight for me in 2012 and early 2013 was this is just like a replay.This is just another open protocol on the public permissionless internet that solved a set of problems that hadn't been solved before, which was a way to ensure that data could not be counterfeited. And that transactions could happen in with certainty in an irreversible way without requiring centralization. And these are big ideas and it was like a fundamental new infrastructure layer. The internet was being born. And so when I looked at it and said, okay, This is going to do for the exchange of value. And I don't just mean moving value from point a to point b, I'm talking about the richness of what we do in exchanging value.As people, as entities, as corporations it's going to do for the exchange of value, what the web and those earlier protocols did for information and communications.And to me in 2013, like that was so profound because I actually believe the web of value exchange.If you want to, whatever you want to call it, the internet of value is going to be extraordinarily more valuable and extraordinarily more impactful than the web of information. And so it very much informed how I think about this and the work that we're doing here.BZ: When you started Circle, did you start with anyone else?J: I co-founded, the company was Sean Neville. Sean is absolutely brilliant. He he co-led the company with me almost like co-CEOs for a long time. And then several years ago, he just stepped into a director role. He's on the board of directors and he runs a crypto incubator, a crypto kind of studio incubator.But he and I had worked together back Allaire, my first company we worked together a bunch at Macromedia. We worked together and bright Cove. He's just one of the most brilliant minds technological minds, strategic minds, creative minds.BZ: Was Circle easier to raise money for than your previous ventures because of your huge track record of success?J: When we started the company, I went to people who invested with me and who had made money with me in the past and said, this is what I'm working on. And they're like, Bitcoin I don't get this. You're crazy. This seems crazy. But. We believe in you, so go for it. I mean that kinda kind of thing. So it definitely helped.2013 and then 2014, 2015, during that time, there were not a lot of quote unquote adults in the room, in the space. If people think it's a wild west, now it was an extraordinary wild west back then. And we had, seasoned entrepreneurs, technologists.We had a really strong proactive approach with regulators with kind of major fiduciaries and really worked really hard to try and build something that was compliant and that, differentiated us as well and allowed us to raise quite a bit of capital. I think, a couple hundred million dollars within our first few years of getting started.BZ: And were you personally buying Bitcoin back in those early days?J: Yeah, absolutely. And buying ethereum and when it was less than a dollar. Like Solana and it was less than a dollar.BZ: Do you still own some of that?J: I am a owner of crypto assets. I don't talk about my particular trading and liquidity strategies, I'm quite structurally long on crypto.BZ: How would you define a stable coin to a fifth grader ?J: On the internet today, I can download a piece of software like WhatsApp or or log into a service like Gmail. We're open up Google Chrome, and I can connect to anyone else. Directly, I can have a direct communication with them. It doesn't cost me anything. It doesn't matter where they are in the world.As long as they have a smartphone, they can get that piece of software. We can do that. Or if there's someone who has an idea and wants to connect their computer, the internet and put some content on it, as long as I have a web browser, I can connect to that. And that's generally the case other than, some authoritarian regimes that have great firewalls.But even there, like it's generally the case, you can connect to anyone. I can freely communicate with anyone in China right now. And that model is so straightforward. It's the air we breathe. We don't even think about it. the fact that this kind of open connect and open permissionless, global decentralized network of communications and information exists. So why can't we do that with money?Why can't we have a way. Someone can just download a piece of software from an app store. And and then someone else could download a different piece of software made by a different creator or a different piece of hardware, or log into a service and exchange value with each other instantly globally frictionlessly at no cost. it's really that simple is how do we make it possible for storing, moving dollars or digital dollars to work in exactly the same way we have with information and data. And that's what we set out to solve is that problem and doing it on the DNA of the internet, doing it around this idea of an open protocol that anyone could connect to. So that's really the fundamentals of what USDC allows for. And, but I think. Yeah the idea goes far broader because you now have essentially an open API for dollars on the internet and it's programmable dollars on the internet. And so you can do a lot with that. And the use cases are really exploding,BZ:How big is USDC these days?J:So USDC has grown really fast at the start of the pandemic, there were about 400 million USDC in circulation that was just like, let's call it six months. Or, there's a year after or so after we had launched.Then it grew to 4 billion in circulation by the start of 2021. And it grew from 4 billion to 42 billion in circulation. At the end of 2021 and it's already grown to to over 52 billion in circulation, just in the past couple months here.And so USDC is about that big and I supported, trillions of dollars of transactions. Just on the public internet using blockchains. And it's still early days. It's super early days. Our view is that eventually there could be more than a trillion USDC in circulation and could be used for every imaginable use case for money and use cases that we haven't even thought of because programmable money is not existed until now.BZ: How can USDC offer such nice interest rates when banks are giving 0.5%?J: Look so if you think about. And you have a kind of base layer, which is the sort of digital cash equivalent of USDC. And it's a regulated, digital cash instrument that exists. And it's very easy to exchange, right? With point to point as your friends or others, that you've talked to really straightforward to send it, receive it, use it.And it's become very popular as a digital currency to use in trading, investing, international payments, other things. And so as its utility has grown and as more and more people and firms want to use. +As a form of working capital as a new kind of electronic stored value working capital mechanism, there's higher and higher demand for people who want to borrow it. And so one of the really powerful things about blockchains is not only do they allow these fast transactions to happen, but you can actually build essentially, borrowing and lending models on top of it.And so there's grown over the past in particular, the past several years, the last two to three years, large, both centralized, what are often called CEFI lending markets and what are called DEFI lending markets, where the market of borrowers and lenders is convened by a piece of software on the internet. So you're not dealing with a company you're just dealing with a protocol, but nonetheless you have essentially interest rate markets of borrowers and lenders.The demand to borrow USDC is high. And the interest rate that borrowers are willing to pay is high. And that is the source of those yields. Basically you have borrowers and to put it fairly simply the other side of that borrowing and I'll use circle yield as an example, because it's the one I understand probably the most you lend us USDC and we lend it wholesale to institutional borrowers. So these are in fact, hedge funds, family offices, systemic trading firms, electronic markets, firms, or other major firms in the ecosystem that want to operate using USDC. And these are firms that are borrowing at a high interest rate, but who are generating returns in north of that.An 8% interest rate to borrow at an 8% interest rate or borrowed 10% interest rate. That's not unheard of in a lot of things. Our credit cards are 20% interest rates or 17% interest rates. venture debt, which is what startups borrow typically have interest rates of, 10, 12, 13, 14% on them. interest rates in securities lending markets, which is the interest rates that say an institutional fund would pay to borrow against their stock can be fairly high now, corporate debt that's underwritten where a corporation's borrowing against their balance sheet and their P&L and it's underwritten by an investment bank and has a coupon and rating. So that tends to be a lower interest rate debt product.But generally when you look at interest rates that people borrow, right? They vary from, most single digits to high double digits or higher. And so what you have in USDC is you have a borrowing lending markets that exist at the retail and institutional level, and those are floating right now. So in DEFI right now, you can borrow you can borrow you USDC I think for 3%. the interest rate markets adapt to kind of market conditions and demand.BZ: How secure is my money in USDC ?J:The thing to remember is USDC itself is is regulated examine it's the USDC itself is A full reserve dollar digital currency.Now, if you're lending your USDC to someone else you're determining what is the credit risk that I'm taking with, who I'm lending to. It has nothing to do with USDC. It has to do with what are they doing with it? So there are some major differences, right? Are you a secured creditor or are you an unsecured creditor? is this unsecured credit that's then being used to do highly speculative trading or is, this secured credit with known institutional counterparties? So you're dealing with a huge variance.I like to use the example of a bank, right? If you walk into a branch of Chase and you say here's $10,000, you're depositing, and you're not depositing $10,000, you're lending chase $10,000.And you have a balance that says $10,000. But actually what you have is you have a claim against their loan book. They're taking that $10,000 and they're lending it out eight times over. And you're basically saying, Hey, I think that they're going to be good for that, that the small business loans, the credit card loans, the home mortgages, the corporate debt, all the stuff that they're doing to take my money and lend it out on a fractional reserve basis eight times. But fundamentally, you've got an IOU and now, you might look at a dollar that you've deposited and chase really different than s let's say you went to a bank in Zimbabwe and they said, you can deposit your dollars. And you say I don't know, what are you going to do with my dollars? And so it all comes down to, w what in fact are you w what, in fact are you seeing on the other side of that?So we've tried to design something with circle yield, which is very institutionally friendly. It's regulated, it's supervised it's over collateralized and it only, faces the best quality institutional wholesale borrowers on the other side. And so we've just tried to build some. I think the kinds of features that make it attractive, it doesn't produce the highest yields. It doesn't produce the same yields you might see through some of these retail platforms, but there's a reason for that.BZ: Is there a chance of defaulting?J: this has become a major issue from an investor protection regime, right? So very clearly, like I think the SEC, his view is that these are lending products. They're not banks. And in fact, for the average person they're basically making an investment and a lot of these are offered as an, they're unregistered investment contracts in a sense. What is an S1? And that's one is a public disclosure document that a retail investor can read and understand. And you can decide, you can read through the S one and say what are the risks? What is this? What am I actually getting into here? And so that's fair disclosure. So that's people and, the review of a major regulator the SEC.And so that's one, one standard to look at, there are others that, don't have any of that. And so you don't actually know what the underlying risk is other than the reps that are made through marketing, or maybe some high level stuff. And so I think you have to, you have to look at this through, through that lens. now DEFI is a different story. if you get USDC. DEFI protocols have some advantages to them. But they also have a whole lot of risks to them as well.There've been DEFI protocols that were hacked. And this is like software and all of a sudden the money is managed by software and the software gets hacked and they, that's gone, but you have some, defined protocols that are more pressure tested. There's probably going to be more and more disclosure audit type requirements on defy protocols over time, as well as the market participants want to have better hygiene around them. I think, buyer beware on all this stuff.BZ: USDC has a brand. So do you talk to these exchanges to make sure that they're trying to make sure that borrowers are good ?J: Because USDC is a free floating digital currency it can be utilized in so many different applications in so many different businesses and so on. And you've got, electronic markets firms that might be.Doing a trade with someone with USDC for $300 million in one transaction, you've got other, NFT markets that are utilizing USDC for payments on pieces of digital content and the, and those are, multiple layers removed. it is important though, that we need to always ensure that people understand USDC as a dollar digital currency itself is safe, stable, transparent regulated, compliant, all these things.Just like you use your dollars with an online payment service, you can still be defrauded. It wasn't the dollars that defrauded you. It was the other side of it.BZ: Do you have a minute to talk CND ?J:We initially negotiated a merger with Concord acquisition and business combination agreement in July of last year.And getting through the SEC qualifications taken a bit longer than we had expected. We had thought it would be, consistent with other spots4-5 months it's just taken longer and which is fine, and we're getting through it. We're making progress through every round of comments. But as we walked into the new year the business outlook has changed pretty significantly. The company grew USDC really rapidly. We're in a rising interest rate environment.Our transaction and treasury services businesses are taking hold nicely. And so we looked at the actual deal was set to expire in April. And so we we re-negotiated the deal.We extended the timeline so that it had enough time to get through the dispatch and the, in the sec process.We also eliminated the pipe from the first year. we also issued revised financial outlook for 2022 and 2023, which are considerably stronger from from a both a top line and a bottom line perspective from where we were, nine months earlier or whatever that exact timeline is.And so the increase in the value of the company is really reflective of the tremendous position that we've put ourselves in with the business and obviously the new outlook.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-raz-report/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In 1994 Sounds of Blackness got their global breakthrough when they sang with Daryl Hall, the World Cup Theme song, Gloryland, in Giants Stadium in New Jersey.  The Irish football team was playing that night and won. This gave me my cue to do for The Irish Times an interview with Gary Hines, leader of Sounds of Blackness. I loved their latest album, Africa to America: The Journey of the Drum, and the uplifting nature of their music, so the chance to talk with Gary, even over the phone was, well, heaven, to me! But the real blessing came at the end of the interview on a personal level when we had the following exchange. Hines said it could be "on-the-record or off-the-record" but I choose never to use it, until now. What Gary Hyne said to me was one of the finest compliments I had ever received as an interviewer.    Joe Jackson:  I really enjoy talking with you. Gary Hines: The feeling is mutual. I have done literally thousands of interviews over the past three years with the three albums and this is the most astute  – You get it, I guess, is the point.  That can be off-the-record on-the-record. I'm just telling you that, man-to-man. I can't tell you how impressed I am with your insight, into – Well, your insight, period. J: Thank you very much. I owe it to a black family in New York who saved me about eighteen years ago when I was down and out. G: I hear you, man. J: They became my buddies and I'll play (pay) it back forever, OK? G: It's all about just people, isn't it J: Isn't it just?     Amen to that.       

Company culture is the topic on this week's From Idea to Done podcast. Erick has devised an extra special event for the company, the Nerdlympics! Erick and Josh discuss the plan for this video game competition that will be taking place at Replay Games in Fargo.Hey Everyone, I’m Josh & I’m ErickE: Today’s idea is company culture. As the unofficial/super official culture person in our office. I have devised a little event. We will get to that a little later. Josh as a business owner can you give me your thoughts on how to improve our company culture?J: I think the main element to company culture is knowing your team and what is important to them, what’s happening in their personal life and wanting to be around each other. E: We have chatted a little about culture before on the show before. I think just trying to care about everyone and being inclusive is the first step that basically no one really does. I have kind of taken the lead in starting some cultural events. I actually looked at our projects and tied a mild culture reward to us finishing a big project on time and on budget. J: And I can really appreciate that you’ve been able to run with those items and celebrate the small wins we have had. It is far too easy to just say… Yup onto the next.E: So with some brief chats with the nerds. I decided to create a little event based on our conversations. I went to our friends at Replay Games. I have rented out their facility, and we are having the Inaugural Nerdlympics. J: For those listening who don’t know what replay games is can you explain their business?E; Basically my friend who worked with me at Toys R Us. Started his own company. He owned basically every console gaming system ever created and a lot of games for each system. They have tons of TVs and comfy chairs. You go there, rent by the hour and can play basically any game ever. J: Awesome, shamefully I’ve never been, but CJ’s a good guy so looking to change that fact about me. So Erick let’s talk about the Nerdlympics. E: One of the options for Replay Games is a party package. You get a 3 hour block of time to yourself. I want to give all the nerds 15 minutes to get their best overall score on various games on various systems. Scoring would be the same point system as in Mario Kart. We will have a big spreadsheet tracking everyone’s single game and overall scores. J: This sounds like I’m doomed to lose unless I can bring the 6th grade version of me and Super Mario 2. I setup a neighborhood competition when i was 12 and the winner took home a years worth of Nintendo Power magazines, what I didn’t tell anyone that it was the prior years used NP magazines. Good thing I won, anyway… Which Mario Kart are we looking at.E: Obviously Mario Kart 8. J: Growl….. So you are building a competition, picking the games, and probably play video games most out of anyone on our staff right now. E: Seems like an amazing idea to me. Can we have the prize be all of the 1989 Nintendo Power magazines? J: How old do you think I am… It was obviously 1993.E: Fair enough. We will have a follow up episode with the results of the Nerdlympics. J: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

On this week's episode of From Idea to Done, Erick and Josh talk about the book "Fanatical Prospecting" by Jeb Blount. Josh shares his biggest takeaways from reading it, like the idea of the 90 Day Rule. J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm ErickE: This week’s idea is prospecting. Well a little more aggressive prospecting. In fact Fanatical Prospecting. This is a book you asked me to read by Jeb Blount. Josh why did you want me to read this book?J: I thought that there were some really strong take aways from the book and he’s got a very good sales background. I thought it could help us learn from someone at the top of their game.E: I’d like to do a 2 part episode on this. We’ll get your thoughts and mine after I finish it. I am a solid third of the way done with it now. What were some of your bigger takeaways from this book?J: My two big ones were protecting the golden hours and the 90 day rule.E: Again, I don’t overly read books unless you tell me to. The main reason is I feel like as a business owner, if you tell me to read something, there is something you want me to take back to our business. I don’t like reading without taking action. From this book what is something you feel like we need to implement?J: I think that we need to make sure we’re paying attention to is the 90 day rule. We’re in a part marketing and part direct sales organization so to always be prospecting. The 90 day rule states that if you have a sales slowdown it is because you let your foot off the pedal 90 days ago. Remember Glen Gary Glenn Ross - Coffee’s for closers!E: Alright. I am about a third of the way into this. What is your overall review of the book?J: It has been one of the better sales books that i’ve read. One of those that feels like common sense, after you’ve read it.E: Sounds good. Again, I don’t read a ton of books unless someone I like, or someone who pays me recommends them. I am about ⅓ in so far, and I enjoy it. Now that I know why you wanted me to read it. I’ll try to find a way to take action on this information. Then I’ll review the book myself when I finish.J: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

In this week's episode of From Idea to Done Erick and Josh try their first remote podcast recording to discuss meditation, or what Erick likes to call "Jedi training." They both share resources they utilize to get into that relaxed zone.J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm ErickJ: And today’s episode is our first remote recorded episode. I’m not in the studio today in an attempt to bring on a series of marketing experts from across the US in future episodes.E: This week’s idea is Jedi Training. That is my nerd phrase I made up for Meditation. We’ll do an app review of a meditation app that I got as well to help with meditation called Insight Timer. In the last year or so, I have started meditating. Josh can you give us a little background on meditation with you?J: I started meditating about a year ago as part of a morning routine, i’m a little bit out of it now and need to get back into the swing of it. Call it my February resolution. E: Again, I’ve gotten into meditating the last couple of years. I downloaded it after being recommended to from our friend Peter Schott. J: Peter is a delightfully quirky human being. [other thoughts here]E: Professionally anything I can do that copies Peter, probably is going to be a good long term thing for me to do. So I downloaded the app he suggested.J: What are your thoughts on the AppE: I think it’s good so far. It has a lot of introductory meditations that I didn’t overly need. It does have a giant library of meditations to search through. I am looking forward to digging around, using all the filters, and having more great specific meditations for what is going on in my life. My free trial ended after a week, and I was pinged for $60 on my bank account. We’re all in now. Payment means I am committed. By this time next year, I will know for sure if this is worth $60. Josh what do you use for your meditations?J: I’ve used Headspace in the past and currently using Calm. I like them, but sometimes it's tough to know what session/class to go through. I feel like I need a meditation coach to make those decisions for me. Erick What are your overall review of Insight Timer?E: It’s pretty much like anything. Exercise, eating right, time management, all are important, and should be done regularly. How you get there doesn’t overly matter, apps can make everything accessible and easier. If you are looking to get into meditation, I would suggest digging around on youtube for free first, or talking to some people you know before jumping in headfirst and paying. There are plenty of free guided meditations on Youtube that I watched before this.J: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

Josh and Erick discuss the new streaming platform on the block on this week's From Idea to Done. Erick shares his love-hate relationship dynamic with Disney+ and more on this episode. The two compare it to other available streaming services and dig into what it offers.J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm ErickE: This week’s idea is the evolution of streaming television. I did it. I finally stopped being a butt hurt collector, and downloaded Disney Plus.J: Butt hurt collector? Well thats…. Ummmm… yeah...E: Yes, well before Disney Plus came out. I was probably one of a very small segment of people that owned all the Simpsons seasons, basically everything Star Wars including the old hand drawn Clone Wars that used to play in 5 minute shorts on Cartoon Network Fridays at 7, as well as all the Marvel movies, a lot of vaulted Disney movies, and weird random Disney cartoons like Rescue Rangers and Gummi Bears. Disney devalued years of collecting and basically my entire Blu Ray collection in October.J: Rescue Rangers? Oh yeah…. Duck Tales, right? [CLOSE] Anywho, what made you change your mind?E: The Mandalorian! I knew I was going to crack because I love Star Wars, or at least I love everything that has ever been made in the Star Wars Universe. Minus the movies. We don’t have time for me to get into that though. J: We did an episode when I switched my family over to the streaming service of Youtube TV what are your thoughts on Disney Plus?E: It was AWESOME! Basically it is a Niche streaming service for Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel fans. Which as a young at heart nerd. I enjoyed it. I am their Niche market. J: What made it different from Netflix for you?E: Nothing. This was the disappointing part for me. It has Phineus and Ferb, and the Mandalorian. It also had Recess and other pretty awesome shows I forgot about, but there is nothing different or better about it. The thing that Netflix should worry about is that Disney owns so much creative rights to basically generations worth of entertainment.J: Yeah I’m feeling like every channel is now having their own app and its an entire world of HBO’s, good on Netflix for producing their own content. Anywho, we’re here to talk about Disney, I think they did a good job with it, the kids like it, i get my hulk smash movies.E: I give it a B. I loved the Mandalorian. Disney just stole the revolutionary app idea of streaming entertainment from Netflix, and are making their fans pay them instead of Netflix. The part I liked is they are taking the creative copyrights they do own and expanding them. I am excited for the next season of the Clone Wars, the stand alone Obi Wan series, and more Mandalorian. I want them to create more original content in the Marvel, and all the other kids programming they have before they will get an A from me. J: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

This week on From Idea to Done Josh and Erick talk about Fundraise Awesomer, a book written by the local ball of energy, Patrick Kirby. While the book is written with non-profits in mind, those in sales can utilize many of the great tips in it.J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm ErickE: Today's Idea is workweek organization. We’re going to base this off of our crazy friend Patrick Kirby. He has written a book called Fundraise Awesomer. I know the book is kind of directed to people in the nonprofit sphere. I wanted to review it from the perspective of a sales and marketing person. J: Patrick is a delightful human being. Even on my most positive and excited moments I run about 20% of his baseline of energy.E: One thing I have learned over my years in sales is people who are great at nonprofits are really good to associate with. You will learn really applicable things to do for your business. Realistically sales is fundraising. Give or take a really little bit, we are all asking for money. I would buy basically anything from Patrick. That made this book worth a read. J: Tell me some of the takeaways from the bookE: One of the biggest takeaways is planning. Disgusting planning and routine. As a pretty high energy person myself, I have been saying for the past couple of years now, focus the laser. The book says Mondays are for planning, Tuesdays are for doing, Wednesdays are for documenting, Thursdays are for celebrating, Fridays are for appreciatingThis isn’t 100% of what I have implemented into my week, but I have taken some nuggets and applied them to my week. J: I think it is good to silo your activity around energy levels. I try not to have sales meetings on Friday’s as i’m pretty low energy. Another book I read called Fanatical Prospecting talks about protecting the golden hours. Basically don’t do email or social media during the time that you should be talking to leads.E: For my rule I kept Monday’s are for planning. I don’t schedule anything Monday morning anymore. That gives me a chance to come in look at my week, and prep. My Tuesdays and Wednesdays are for doing. Coffee, lunch, networking events, etc. Thursdays and Fridays are for marketing. I implement gratitude, celebrations, into that. I write actual thank you cards and online reviews of area businesses I like. Friday before I leave. I review and document my week then give myself a grade. J: What was your grade this week? E: I have gotten C’s both weeks this year, mostly due to not going to the gym, and not getting these episodes recorded.Organized action, planning, gratitude, celebrations, and tracking are at the stem of the best nonprofits I know, and at the same time the stem of all the best sales people I know. J: It’s really easy to get busy being busy and not doing something that is most important. By being intentional with your week you have a better shot of getting through all the must do’s for the week. E: One last little tip from the book I wanted to share was the quote, “You can’t ask anyone for a donation before you know the name of their dog.” This is true for asking for business too. J:I think in our world we need to know what is important to the partners we are talking to. Some favor price, some just need to make sure they are heard, and others just want a final product and to tell them when you are done. Not a one sized solution thats for sure. So what was your big overall takeaway on the book from you?E: Salespeople should implement practices used by great nonprofits. If someone is great in that world, they are doing it will less time and money than regular business. Learn from them. J: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

In this episode of From Idea to Done, we take a peek under the hood of Mario Kart Tour, Nintendo's Mario Kart app. We compare it to previous iterations and discuss using nostalgia.J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm ErickE: Today's Idea, is the new Mario Kart app better than Mario Kart on the consoles for Nintendo? We have reviewed new fun game apps I have been excited about before, but today we’re going to take a little different approach and look at this from a business perspective.J: Are you going to make me download an app that I will never use again this week?E: No, I mostly want to talk about the idea of Nintendo getting into the mobile gaming, but first things first. I will review the app. I wasn’t a giant fan of mobile Mario Kart. I have a drawer in my desk that says in case of emergency. It has a Wii U in it with a copy of Mario Kart 8. We randomly host happy hours some Fridays. I rent out the conference room in our building, then we drink, and play Mario Kart on the projector. The game is just better, and it is a solid 4 years older than what Nintendo came out with last week. That isn’t the big takeaway with this though.J: What was your big take away?E: Nintendo should have been doing this YEARS ago. I watched a video of your boy Gary V. Nintendo has been missing out on tons of revenue over the past 10 years by not embracing mobile phone gaming.J: I agree you have such an iconic brand in Nintendo. Every guy that is in their 30’s has to have some fond memories of one of their games. To not lean on nostalgia to some level feels like a crime and missed opportunity. I don’t buy anything gaming, but if you get me a mobile version of crystalis, paperboy, or battle toads I'd absolutely pay $5 for that.E: I did a little research, I did the overall sales of the 3DS consoles last year + if you bought $200 in new games once you bought it. The overall number I got from that was $2.4billion. I then did a little digging. The mobile app Pokemon Go has now grossed over $3 billion according to wikipedia. I know the source is wikipedia, but those numbers are the interesting part to me.J: Plus what’s the risk for Nintendo to put out another console, there is a lot invested in R&D as well as the marketing of it? Granted you get a larger wedge of the revenue, but there is more risk. On a platform can you roll out a test of river city ransom at a lower risk than producing it yourself.E: This honestly makes me a little nervous for console gaming.I get what Nintendo is doing with these apps. To their credit compared to basically every other mobile game I have ever played, their controls are really good, the games look amazing, and they aren’t blatant cash grab games. I wish someone would just create a great mobile game that has an end, and doesn’t keep bugging me to buy things. J: Yeah I’ve downloaded some games that are fun for the first few dozen or so times, then they get into pay to play versions. I even got hooked onto that silly Dr. Mario World game and now i’m pretty much over it.E: I hope Nintendo finds a good balance of mobile games while still making quality consoles and better games. I would be sad if I could only play Zelda from my phone.J: I wouldn’t disagree with that. I went out and bought the NES reboot last december so i can play with the original format on my bigger tv.E: We have talked about the business strategy of Nintendo bringing some of their classic titles into the mix. My technical nerd question for you is could our nerd make the mobile version of Battle Toads I have been dreaming about?J: Yes, we need to make Battle Toads. I don’t think that it will sit well for q4 profits for us, but hey… why not.E: Finally! Also, that game was so freaking hard, that if we charged people a penny for 10 extra lives we would be billionaires soon.J: Thank you for listening to this episod

In this episode of From Idea to Done, we discuss Lyft and their plans to eliminate the need for private vehicles by 2025. We chat about their current attempts at integrating with public transport systems.J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm ErickE: Today’s idea is replacing private cars. This week Lyft came up with an update to their app. With this update their president said, “There is only one mobility mode that Lyft truly wishes to defeat. The private automobile. That seem a little ambitious to me.J: The battle between Lyft and Uber seems like a zero sum game. I don’t know if I fully agree with his statement that by 2025 owning a car will go the way of the DVD. They actually showed that short term usage of vehicles went up with the growth of Uber and Lyft.E: The article talks about incorporating dockless scooter, bike and car shares, and public transportation with time and cost comparisons on top of their normal taxi services. J: I think a big opportunity is the ability to have, in real time, multiple transportation options available to you. It makes me not have to plan as much, but just adapt to current conditions. Unless that adapting is for me to use a scooter. That I will not do. I’m a 38 year old adult for god sakes.E: I got in trouble when I worked at Toys R Us for bringing carts in by lassoing them with twine while riding electric scooters. We’ll just agree to disagree on scooters. J: Thats fair.E: One of the problems I see with it, is it isn’t all automatically deducted from your account in app. Their main competitor Uber has taken a similar route just incorporating public transportation. The big difference with Uber, is you get the ticket in App. Part of today’s super ambitious world is we just don’t have time to do anything. I don’t care what a bus pass costs. I just don’t want to think, push a button, and have a bus pass. Lyft how dare you have me interact with any aspect of public transportation, and buy a ticket myself!J: Well that's stupid, it is a big cost of integration with those mass transit platforms, but they are leaving a ton of data and money on the table. I think that in NYC or LA they should look at pulling the transit systems into the app and pay through the app. The MAT systems would get increased ridership and Lyft would be better positioned.E: And according to the article Uber is doing that in test markets already. You have to keep up with your main competitor. They have some pretty big ambitions to get rid of private cars within six years. I don’t think they are going to do it. I am buying a car this month Josh do you think it will be the last car I will buy?J: No, cars are going to be around for a while, especially here in Fargo, ND. I mean I am going to leave here today, pick up my 3 kids that are all in booster and car seats, how am I going to do that in a ride share. I dunno, maybe I’m just embodying a cranky old man that doesn’t get things.E: ...basically us. Prove us wrong Lyft. J: Thank you for listening to this episode, if you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

In this episode of From Idea to Done, we talk about the Dr. Mario World app, compare it to its predecessor, and admit to losing rounds to a spouse.J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm ErickE: Today's Idea, is Dr. Mario still amazing?J: I’m not sure, my wife always beats me at the nintendo version and she doesn’t even think about how the placements work. So I’m not sure if it is still amazing… You tell me.E: YES! As app developer nerds it is our job to review new apps. Our boys at nintendo released the Dr. Mario World app that I downloaded this week I am actually really excited about it!J: Really?E: YES! To get into the history of Dr. Mario we have to hop into a delorean go back to good old 1990. I was 7, I recently moved to a new town. I was a new kid on the block listening to New Kids On The Block. On weekends if I was good, my parents would take us to a video rental store because that was a thing. That would be the first time I played Dr. Mario.J: Oh I remember playing it back then, somehow i was better as a 9 year old than I am as a fully functioning adult. What were your thoughts on Dr. Mario then?E: I absolutely hated it. Nintendo fooled me into spending my $3 on a game that had Mario on the cover, but was definitely Tetris. Don’t put Mario’s face on something, if I am not going to be able to fight bowser in. ESPECIALLY when the last thing you put Mario’s face on was possibly my favorite game ever Super Mario 3. Marketers are the worst.J: Yes they are mr marketer. What are your thoughts now?E: A few years later with the introduction of gameboy color to the marketplace, and a version of tetris on that particular system. I have learned to enjoy puzzle games after many hours of roadtrips in our sweet Ford Aerostar van. I now give Dr. Mario World an enthusiastic Thumbs up. Josh do you have this app?J: Well I made you read a book and you had me download this app. Honestly two things jumped out at me, the pills are going the wrong direction and you only need 3 in a row to clear the virus. So obviously no regard for historical accuracy here.E: Back in my day we hads to make 4 colors match before the group would disappear, and gravity worked like it was supposed to. J: Yeah none of this disregard for physics…. Seriously.E: Your overall review?J: For the one level I played, it’s better than getting beat by my wife at the original Nintendo version.E: Well there you have it. If you like wasting time on your phone before bed, or if losing to your spouse in puzzle games is infuriating, I would recommend downloading Dr. Mario World. Thank you Nintendo.J: Thank you for listening to this episode, if you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

In this episode of From Idea to Done, we talk about a book we started recently titled "The Twelve Week Year" by Brian Moran. We discuss thinking about making goals in terms of 12 weeks rather than annually.J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm ErickE: Today's Idea is work efficiency. This comes from a book you last week while traveling. What book are we talking about?J: The 12 Week Year and the tagline is get more done in 12 weeks than others do in 12 months.E: So what are some of the bigger ideas of this book?J: discard annual thinking, In January, December looks a long way off. We begin the year with big goals, at the end of January we are slightly behind, at the end of march, we’re still behind, but not worried. We aren’t worried because we have plenty of time to catch up. The second big takeaway was periodization. It’s principals are focus, concentration, and overload on a specific skill or discipline. It began, as an athletic training technique to help increase performance. The athlete focused on one grouping of skill and then moved on to the next every 4-6 weeks.E: You liked this so much, that you actually bought us all copies of the book. I don’t read a ton. I am more of a forget thinking and reading about ideas. Let’s take action! I did start to read it though because you are my boss and told me to read it. I have related to it. It had a quote that I really liked. It said an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. Again, I am about taking action. What are we going to take away from this book to our team of co-nerds to help us go forward?J: You start with a 12 week plan, E: Spoiler alertJ: It is in the title it isn’t a spoiler Erick. E: Fine, back to the takeaway.J: Start with the end in mind. At the end of the 12 weeks, what do you want to have achieved? For example you may want to have a personal goal of losing 10 pounds, and a business goal of closing $100,000 in new business.E: We have all made new years resolutions. What is the difference?J: The difference is it is 12 weeks and not a year. You need to check off 85% of the checklist items on your list, and you will be wildly successful. The way you do it by make them specific and measurable, state the want in a positive over negative statement, ensure they are realistic, assign accountability, and be time-bound.E: I’d like to have a follow up episode. Aired soon, explaining how we used this book to help us actually move the needle. By my calculations it’s Friday afternoon, and I have worked 12 weeks already this year. Is it time to go home after this?J: well i hope you’ve worked more than 12 weeks already this year….E: Fair enough on to editing... until 5.J: Thank you for listening to this episode, the first in our mega series. If you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.

To celebrate the 100th episode of the DoorGrowShow, I’m doing something a bit different. Instead of me interviewing someone, I’m the one being asked the questions.  Today, I am featuring my appearance as a guest on the Cashflow Diary (CFD) podcast hosted by J. Massey. We discuss my journey into property management and how to optimize a business through organic growth to achieve success. You’ll Learn... [05:00] Today’s entrepreneurs are like yesterday’s superheroes. They save lives. [06:01] Who is Jason Hull? Someone who has never managed a property, but helps others grow and scale their property management business. [06:48] Being an entrepreneur is in his DNA: Grew up with an entrepreneurial mother, who taught him to make more money and beat the competition. [08:16] Failed Marriage and “Disney” Dad: Jason needed a job that offered freedom and autonomy to spend time with his kids and create clients. [10:13] Website Design, Marketing,and Branding: How to win when competing with Goliaths and make it to the top of Google. [11:53] Financial Decisions: Entrepreneurs like to make money, not lose it. [15:25] Conventional to Comfortable Confidence: Do what works for you, not others, to lower pressure noise.  [20:15] Curiosity: See what others don’t and causes businesses to lose leads and deals. [21:55] Still struggling with imposter syndrome? Hire a business coach who believes in you to rebuild confidence and effective communication to make a difference. [28:55] Why choose property management and deal with tenants, toilets, and termites? [32:53] Why choose Jason and DoorGrow? He helps create positive awareness and address negative perception surrounding property management. [40:00] Cold vs. Warm Leads: Prospecting pipeline plugs leaks to grow business and get people to know, like, and trust you. [44:56] How do good property owners find good property managers? Avoid sandtraps of solopreneurs with few doors; add doors to build a property portfolio. [49:10] Short-term Rental Success: Get a property manager to solve revenue issues. [52:32] Precipice of Decision: Believe in yourself, make it happen, and decide to be different by listening to your truest voice.  Tweetables Today’s entrepreneurs and yesterday’s superheroes save lives and make the world a better place. Entrepreneurism: Insatiable desire to learn and explore opportunities. Entrepreneurs: Allow yourself to do what you need to do to lower the pressure noise. Entrepreneurs create positive, uncomfortable change wherever they go. Resources CFD 542 – Jason Hull On How Property Management Can Change The World Jason Hull on Facebook Steve Jobs 6 Non-QWERTY Keyboard Layouts Alex Charfen (Business Coach) Momentum Podcast DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: This is a special episode because this is our 100th episode. What I wanted to do was share something different. I've been on a lot of other people's podcasts recently and this was one that I really enjoyed, this was with J. Massey of the Cash Flow Diary podcast. He was a really great interviewer, I really enjoyed being on the show. He asked a lot of questions and it really dug into me. I'm not used to somebody really digging into hearing about me as much. I'm usually the one digging in and hearing about other people. I thought my listeners would enjoy this podcast so I asked J. Massey if we could have permission to put this on our podcast and he was glad to let us do so. You get to hear this interview of me being on this episode of the Cash Flow Diary with J. Massey. Enjoy the show. Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. J: All right, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of the Cash Flow Diary podcast. I'm your host, J. Massey. I'm glad that you are here today because we are going to talk about something that I know, and my guest knows, is one of the most, if not the most, critical piece for your success, not only in business but specifically, the real estate world. I know that many of us were out there. We're trying to grow our cash flow. We're trying to make things happen. Build a bigger, better business, and you're doing it and you're succeeding, and that's great. Also at the same time, many of you are like, “Man, if I could just figure out how to take what I'm doing in business and do it in real estate too, that would be great.” Some of you are like, “Man, I just want to grow that real estate portfolio and make it a little bit bigger and better, but I'm still having some challenges in these specific areas because I can't find any good help. I can't make anybody do what I think is common sense. There's just not enough common best practices out there. How on earth, J, can I find that particular property manager?” Or maybe you are that property manager and you're going, “You know what? How on earth can I find that owner that actually knows what's up and won't drive me nuts?” I believe we have solutions for you today. I have with me today none other than CEO, Jason Hull of DoorGrow, doorgrow.com. Some of you may actually know him from his podcast, the DoorGrow Show. What's going to be interesting today is that Jason wasn't always a property manager. We're going to get to find out the story, the journey, and most importantly, learn the lessons around entrepreneurship along the way that have allowed us the world to be able to know and love Jason the way that he is. Here's what we're going to do, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to pay attention, we're going to make sure that, yes, I know you're walking the dog and doing the dishes, but you're going to hit that mark, you're going to bookmark those spots so that you can come back and listen to the gems that he's going to drop. Most importantly right now though, let's just welcome Jason Hull. Jason, how are you doing? Jason: Wow, that's a great intro. I really appreciate that. J: Thank you. I'm glad that you were here. I'm also excited because we're going to be talking about something that I'm passionate about. Real estate's really important, but more importantly, it's the people and the teams that you hire that tend to make things go well, and sometimes, not go so well. I'm looking forward to that, but before I get down there, I have to ask you the same question I didn't ask everybody else the first time that they're here, are you ready? Jason: Do it. J: All right. I tend to look at today's entrepreneurs a lot like yesterday's superheroes—Batman, Robin, Hulk, Wonder Woman, you get the idea—because I think entrepreneurs and superheroes have a ton of things in common. For example, as an entrepreneur, occasionally, I can envision myself using our products and services, flying around town, and saving customers one sale at a time. Also, like a superhero, an entrepreneur has a beginning. If you think about Spider-Man, for example, there was a time where he's just a kid going to school, doing his own thing, taking some photos, and then one day gets bit by a spider, discovers he's got a superhuman ability, and now he has to choose, “Will I use my newfound talents for good or for evil?” My question to you is as follows. Before DoorGrow, before your podcast, before your degree in marketing, your website design, before being a property manager, before everything we know you for today, what we want to know is who is Jason Hull? Jason: That's a deep question. Let's sum up a whole person really quickly here. J: No pressure. Jason: Yeah, no pressure. First thing, let me just correct something real quick, I had never managed property in my life, yet I somehow am attracting property management entrepreneurs from all over the US and beyond, asking for help in growing and scaling their businesses. I'm more of a nerd that used to be secretly in the background, helping them and had to push myself out into the limelight to make a difference in an industry that I could see there was an obvious change needed to be made. But my background growing up, I grew up with an entrepreneur mother. She is this amazing, loving, charismatic woman that is a real estate agent. She's just had hustle in her since she was a little kid. She's told me stories of she saw the other boys mowing lawns and she was doing babysitting when she was young, she was like, “They're making way more money than me.” She went around and she figured, “I could undercut them by a dollar, go door-to-door, and steal their business, and start offering to mow lawn.” She started mowing lawns to make more money. She just had that bite in her to accomplish and do things. I didn't see myself as an entrepreneur, I didn't really know what an entrepreneur was, yet, I think it was just in my DNA. I was the guy in college that decided, “Hey, I want a band so I'm going to start one. I'm going to write all the music.” I was a guy going door-to-door, pre-selling CDs at girls’ dorms with a guitar in hand and a clipboard for an album that didn't exist so that I could pay for the recording time so I could fund an album, but I wasn't an entrepreneur. J: Yeah. No, that’s not entrepreneurial at all. Jason: I was thinking I needed to go get a job. I was like, “I'm going to finish college and I got to then find a job.” What thrust me into entrepreneurism is I had gotten married really young and the marriage fell apart. I had two kids and I needed to be able to have time that I could spend with them. I didn't want to just be Disney-dad. I had to create a situation in which I had freedom and autonomy. The other factor that played into it is my employer at the time got hit by the whole financial mess back in 2006–2007, I guess, and could no longer pay me. I was just doing nerdy stuff for them at the time. Then I realized, they were now a client. I started reaching out and creating clients. One of the earliest people I had helped was my brother who was just getting started in the property management business. He had just bought a property management franchise, he was fresh out of college with his business partner, they had no doors under management, and they had this terrible website they got from corporate. He was like, “Can you just help me figure this out because you're smart? What do I need to do?” I'm like, “Add some phases to it. That'll increase conversion rates. Let's do this and that.” He's like, “Can you just do it for me? Can you please just build me a site?” I'm like, “Sure, but you're going to pay for it.” He's like, “Okay, no problem.” I built him a website and then suddenly, all of his fellow franchisees—this franchise had maybe 200–300 franchisees in it—and I started attracting these people that had thousands of doors. They wanted what he had. They're like, “Hey, what he has is better. I want that.” Really quickly, here's me, a freelancer, web designer, starting to do websites for people with thousands of doors. Some of these are probably million-dollar-plus businesses. They had really great backlinks, so I was at the top of Google pretty quickly and started getting clients around the US within a short time. I was competing against Goliaths, just me. There we go, now then I'm an entrepreneur. I think I just have an insatiable desire to learn, I just always have, and entrepreneurship allows me to really explore and it's really exciting. J: Got it. Now I see how I got confused about the difference between understanding what it is you do versus being a property manager. It's more you help property managers, is what it sounds like, become better versions of themselves with their marketing and advertising. Am I close? Jason: Yeah. Over the years, I've shifted more into coaching and consulting, but we still do websites, we clean up branding. What I tell property management entrepreneurs in short when they come and ask me what I do, I’d say, “I'm not going to teach you how to do property management. I'm hoping you already know that and you're good at it. I’m going to teach you how to win, that's it.” Basically, what we do in short is we rehab property management companies so that they cash flow effectively, so that they have revenue, they have growth. We optimize their business more for organic. We're cleaning up their branding. Probably 60% or 70% of my clients that come to me, I change their business name, which is ridiculous if you consider how painful, challenging, or scary it is for somebody to do that, but I'm really good at helping them see the principles that impact their decisions about what's going to make money or cost them money. Then it becomes just a financial decision. One thing I know about entrepreneurs is that they usually like to make money. J: Yes, definitely, but what I like about what you've shared with us here is to some degree, you're in what I would call the reluctant entrepreneur category because you weren't even considering like, “I'm not one of those. That's not what I do,” and then over time, you start displaying these traits. Now I'm curious, did your mom ever suggest that, “Hey, son, you might be…” and you have this conversation with her like, “No, no, no, I just need to go get a job?” was that ever a thing? Jason: I don't know if I was reluctant. It just wasn't something that anyone had ever explained to me. I don't even know if I really was clear on what technically an entrepreneur was. I think I'd always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I had a paper out as a kid, my mom would have us fold flyers to canvass neighborhoods for real estate as little kids. She would pay us a penny per fold, if we folded a piece of paper twice, we get two cents. I would fold hundreds and then she would have us go around either on roller skates, scooters, or whatever, go around neighborhoods and just canvas and put those out. She'd keep an eye on us, walk around a bit with us, and we would just canvas neighborhoods. I think I was just raised with it and no one had ever put a label on it. J: Oh, man, this is great. I'm sure some people right now are listening like, “A penny a fold? That's nothing.” I'm sure that happens in somebody's head, but the principle was clearly laid down for you in such a way that you're like, “I'll do it. Okay, let's go,” and you didn't care, and spending time with mom is always awesome. But at the same time, this desire gets left behind and you just keep finding ways to create opportunity. That's what I hear when you talk is you just find ways to create opportunity relative to something that you're currently enjoying. I am curious though did you ever actually get the concert CD album sold? How'd that work out? Jason: I did. We did create the album, we created the CD, I wrote all the music for it, I sang every song on it, and yeah, we got it recorded. It's a pretty decent little album for being self-produced. I was very into the Beatles at the time. J: Okay, yes. There's something else that you're also mentioning, the thing that thrust you, I would say is the correct word, into considering something in entrepreneurship in a more realistic fashion was the combination of kids and your employer not being able to employ you, but most importantly, I hear of a deep-seated value. You’re just like, “You know what? Working for someone else can be fine, but I have two kids now and I value spending more time with them, so I'm going to become or do whatever it takes to make sure that I can do that.” I'm curious to know where that comes from. Jason: I think at the core of people that are really entrepreneurial, they know deep down that they're unemployable. Let's be honest. I worked at HP, I worked at Verizon, I was in call centers, I did a lot of nerdy jobs, I was a nerd, and tech support, stuff like that. In every situation I was in, I think something about me is I create positive uncomfortable change everywhere I go. It's just how I'm wired. I cannot be somewhere and leave things as the status quo. I don't do anything normally. If you could see the keyboard sitting on my desk right now, it's not even in QWERTY order, I pop all the keys off and rearrange them when I get a new computer and keyboard. J: I want a picture now that you said that, but okay. Jason: Yes, somebody can just Google if they want to see a different keyboard layout. J: Dvorak? Jason: Dvorak, yeah. J: Yeah, that's the only other thing. I was like, “What else could it be?” The only other thing I was thinking was Dvorak. But okay, that makes sense. Jason: Yeah, because I'm the guy that my brain just says, “Why is everybody doing it this way? Is this the best way? If it's not, I don't care.” Conventional standards mean very little to me. There's a lot of quirky things about me, and I think entrepreneurs are quirky. You look at Steve Jobs or you look at different entrepreneurs, they have weird habits. Like Steve Jobs, I wear the same clothes every day. I have black t-shirts, I have black pants, I have a whole closet full of black pants and black t-shirts. I just want it simple. I don't want to have to make decisions about that. I wear black hoodies, and I put on a conference, I've been around lots of people in business suits, that's what I wear because I don't care. I just want to be comfortable and that's what I wear. I think ultimately, as entrepreneurs, we need to allow ourselves to do what we need to do to lower the pressure noise instead of trying to play everybody else's game. For example, with the keyboard, I realized my wrists were hurting. I was typing a lot. I was getting my degree online at the time, I was also working, and I was typing a lot. I was like, “This seems stupid, this is really dumb. Why are my wrists hurting?” I did what I like to do, which is nerd out, and do some research in Google and I realized, “Oh, Dvorak has 50% less movement, it would cut my movement in half.” The home row on the left hand is all the most commonly-used vowels and the home row on the right hand is all the most commonly used consonants, so there's more back and forth between the two hands. QWERTY’s history was that it was designed and developed to slow down typist. The keys used to be in alphabetical order and they wanted to screw them up because they were typing too fast and the typewriters couldn't handle the speed. I'm like, “Okay, why am I doing this?” It took me, maybe about a month to get used to typing in a different format. My wrist issues went away and I was a lot more comfortable. J: I like you a lot, I like this. It’s like, “Hey, this doesn't work for me. We're going to figure out what does.” I now have this question. What was that transition moment? There's usually a moment at which, like I said earlier, the superhero recognizes. “I have something special here, and now I get to choose what I'm going to do with it.” You clearly had that moment, but that moment is often, we'll call it rocky, not as smooth, or there's usually some strong emotions around it in some way, shape, or form, or some pivotal conversation. What was it like when you realize, “My employer can't pay me. I guess they'll become a client,” and then you go, “Huh, maybe what I need to do is develop a surface around this whole thing and do my own thing?” What was that like? Jason: I think really for me, it's been a longer journey than just right in the beginning. A lot of people see me is a really confident guy, but I really have a strong introverted side. I wasn't that confident guy. In school, I did a lot of performing, I did music, stuff like that, but I still had a strong introverted side. I think that confidence level, part of it happened early on working with entrepreneurs and just recognizing that they couldn't see things I could see. I was like, “You can't see that this is a problem, that you’re branded as a real estate company and it's causing you to lose probably 50% of the deals and leads you should be because you're a property management business, but on the tenants as real estate. There were just things they didn't see that seems so obvious to me. The other thing is I'm really curious. With each client I would work with, just to do a website, I would probably spend on average about six hours doing a planning and discovery process over, maybe a period of a week or two with them. Multiple sessions, getting clear on their target audience, their avatar, what needs to be included in the website, what their avatar’s pain is, what they want. It became really clear to me that most of the websites were focused on tenants, yet they're not hunting for tenants, they don't have problems getting tenants, they want more owners to manage properties for. It just seemed obvious to me that everything was off on the websites that existed at the time. I think I just grew in confidence that I could help people, but I still stayed heavily in the background. I was also in a rough marriage, my second marriage. I was in a marriage in which I didn't really have belief. I didn't have somebody that believed in me and that didn't help the confidence thing going. Eventually, I signed up with a business coach. I went through several different coaches. Some I was a bad fit for, honestly, I just wasn't ready for them. Some, they were a bad fit. Some maybe were really great marketers and terrible coaches. I eventually got a really great business coach that I've been working with for a couple of years now. I remember going down to meet with him in Austin. He has a fantastic podcast, by the way, called The Momentum Podcast. His name is Alex Charfen; a really brilliant guy. I went down and met with him and some other entrepreneurs down in Austin. My business was struggling, we're maybe about $300,000 in revenue annually at the time. I felt like an ant in the room. I was around entrepreneurs that had multi-million dollar companies, I felt completely unworthy, my confidence just wasn't really strong, and yet when he would open up for dialogue, I would end up captivating everyone else in the room, and that was weird for me that I was able to communicate in a way that all of them wanted to know more and they were really fascinated about what I was talking about. I had learned a lot, I just didn't have the confidence yet to put it out there. I hadn't said, “Hey, I'm going to change this entire industry. I'm the one to do it.” I was like, “Somebody else should do it. Somebody that's been a property manager. Maybe somebody that runs a big, huge property management franchise should be the one.” My business coach was like, “Who else could do it? You're the one that you care about it, you're the one who can see what needs to change, and they’re everybody else’s competition. Why would they help everybody?” I'm like, ‘That's a good point,” but I had wicked impostor syndrome. I think that's a challenge for entrepreneurs that we have to kill is that impostor syndrome in which we don't feel like we're enough, or we're good enough, or that we qualify, or we’re worthy. We sometimes think we need to find that external validation to say that we're okay. I think that came just in working with clients. I grew in confidence in situations in which I was able to finally place myself around other entrepreneurs because one of the most damaging things we do as entrepreneurs is that we spend too much time around non-preneurs. J: Yeah, I believe you. Jason: It's painful and it's difficult because we see opportunity everywhere. We see how we can change and impact the world. We want to make a difference, we want to contribute, and the rest of the world looks at us like we're crazy, we're making them uncomfortable. “Why can't you leave good enough alone?” They hear the struggles we go through as an entrepreneur and they say, “Why don't you just get a job?” They look at us like we're crazy and then we look at them like, “Why don't I just slit my wrists now? How can you just sit there and tolerate, complaining about your boss and your job, and living for the weekend? Don't you want something bigger?” We don't understand them, but I think if we’re around non-preneurs too much, it wears us down. It breaks us a little bit. It's really hard and I hadn't really yet been around entrepreneurs. I think as entrepreneurs are starting out in our early development when we're in the early stages of being an entrepreneur, one of the biggest things that hold us back is being lonely. That's it. We're just not around other people like us to say, “You're normal. You, as an entrepreneur, are awesome, amazing, and you can change the world. You don't have to live by everybody else's rules.” J: Agreed. There's something that you said that I often have thought about myself. I know that there are people who are listening have had that same thought at least once. You mentioned that yes, we desire to make a difference, we want to see change, and we're not happy with the, ‘That's just not the way you do it, it should be this way.” That's just how we roll, and yet we're the ones who can see the problem. Like your business coach is saying, why aren't we the ones who can resolve it? But more importantly or said a different way, does that come across to you when you can see an issue? Does it come across to you—I know it does for me—as a responsibility like, “Okay, it’s me, obviously. I'm the one who sees it, this is my thing. So, let me go solve this problem”? That's how it feels to me when I notice opportunity or something that's just not right that could be better. Jason: Yeah. I think there are two sides to this. I think one, opportunity. On the negative side, I think opportunity also can kill us as entrepreneurs because we do see it everywhere. It can be incredibly distracting. There's that opportunist in all of us, and if we focus on too many opportunities, we don't really get to make any headway in anyone. That's a temptation and a challenge entrepreneurs deal with early on is struggle to focus and to niche down. On the positive side, we see that the world can be better. We can see it. We are the change-makers. We are the people throughout history, throughout time eternal probably, that were the ones that would move society forward. We would make everyone uncomfortable, we would change something, and we would move people towards a higher and better ideal. J: Now, let me ask you this question. You could have chosen any industry to serve. Why property managers? I've spent so much time as the one owning the property. This may sound funny to you, but I never considered that property managers had a problem finding owners. That never occurred to me because it just never occurred to me that they had that as a business problem. Obviously, it's there because you're saying it, but as an entrepreneur, you could choose to serve anybody. You could have taken this skill to any industry, so to speak, because believe me, they're not the only one with a problem. Why property management? Jason: That's a really good point. I don't think there was a time in my life as a child that I woke up and said, “I want to help property management business owners when I grow up. I want to get into this industry that's focused on toilets, tenants, and termites, that sounds exciting to me.” J: It's right after firemen, I understand. Jason: Yeah, I'll either be a superhero or I will be a property management coach. J: Yeah, absolutely, totally right. Jason: No, that's a great question. I think I resisted it, to be honest, in the beginning. It came to me like I just started attracting them, I tried to just help every type of business though, still, I didn't niche out. It took me a while. I started my corporation, my company back in 2008, but DoorGrow as a brand was maybe only four or five years ago. It took me a little while to, I guess, choose into that niche fully. I think it was imposter syndrome like, “I've never done this so I feel like I'm not the person to do it.” For a lot of people, it's not the sexiest industry. Here's how you fall in love with property management.If you're an entrepreneur that's a little bit nerdy, property management is like the systemizable, more tech-savvy version of the real estate industry. It's residual income instead of the hunt and the chase for the next deal as a realtor. It's a business that can be optimized over time. It's a business that can follow the theory of constraints and you can make processes around. All of that appealed to me. What I really fell in love with was not property management. It's the people that are property managers. Do you want to talk about resilient, innovative entrepreneurs? Property management entrepreneurs. You cannot imagine the level of challenges, difficulty, and negotiating. I don't think there's any industry like it because in terms of customer interaction, it's rated third behind retail and hospitality; it's heavily a people business. In retail and hospitality, you're not negotiating really difficult situations not unlike a lawyer between two opposed parties as the middle person, but in property management that's what you end up doing. These are really some of the sharpest people. They're just amazing entrepreneurs to be around and honestly, I just chose into doing it because I wanted to be around people that are like me. Entrepreneurs. I love my clients. I love being able to spend time with them. I do not feel weird and I really enjoy that. I have a nerdy background and a lot of the clients that are attracted to me, they like figuring out processes, systems, technology, and that sort of thing. There's just a strong resonance in the type of entrepreneur that is in that industry. J: For the person that's listening right now that happens to be a property manager or maybe it's an owner who's currently doing his own property management in some way, shape, or form, what would you say are the top three things you tend to assist a new client with from day one? How do they know, how can they recognize, “Oh, I need Jason”? What is it that you end up doing over there at DoorGrow for them typically in that first appointment or the first solutions you guys come to the table with? Jason: Let's go back to the question you asked me earlier about the surprising problem that exists in property management. J: Yeah, that is still a thing in my head like, “Wow, I didn't know they had problems finding me? I didn't know that.” Jason: Yeah, every business exists to solve a problem. If a business is not solving a problem, they're stealing money. The problem that exists in the property management industry that I could see, property management has two major challenges. The biggest challenge first is awareness, there are a lot of people that have property. In the US, in single-family residential rental properties, only about 30% are professionally managed, 70% are self managing. The first biggest hurdle is awareness, there's just a lot of people that are not aware of what a property management company would do for them. The average Joe on the street if you said, “Hey, I'm a property manager,” they would say, “Great, I guess you manage a property.” They don't really know what that means. There's a strong lack of awareness to the point where property management really is relatively, in the US, in its infancy. Let's contrast that with Australia. In Australia, 80% of single-family residential rentals are professionally managed. There are reasons for that. There's steeper legislation there, it's more consumer-focused and a lot of that, but the word on the street is that it grew 25% in a decade, it grew massively. But in the US, property management still is this ugly cousin of real estate, it has this negative perception, especially among real estate. The other challenge is property management is the number one source of property management-related issues like fair housing challenges, mismanagement of trust funds, or leases, all this stuff, property management is the number one source of complaints at most any board of real estate. Not real estate, property management is. So, everything property management. This is why it's perpetuated heavily among the real estate industry. Realtors say, “Oh, property management. That's gross. Don't touch that. How could you do that?” The second hurdle that takes the next big portion of potential market share away is perception. Property management has a very negative perception among investors, among people that are aware of it. There's a negative perception that takes away the next big chunk of potential market share. After perception takes a hit, those that are aware and they think they have a decent enough perception to think, “At least, I have to have one or I need one,” or maybe they are okay—there are some good ones—then word-of-mouth captures what's leftover. Word-of-mouth captures the best clients that property management might get. After word-of-mouth, the scraps that fall off my client’s table, that fall off the word-of-mouth table, the coldest, crappiest, worst leads that are the most price-sensitive, that view all property managers as the same and is a commodity, that are the worst owners and properties to build a portfolio on, in which you're going to have probably an operational cost in your property management company of 10 times higher than that of having healthy good doors and owners, those are the people searching on Google. That's what's leftover. Most property management business owners are trying to build their business on the back of Google. I'm wearing a t-shirt right now, you can't see, but it says, “SEO won't save you.” It has a hand reaching up out of the water, trying to grab a life preserver, a black t-shirt with white lettering. This is a message I put out to the industry that they don't need to be playing the SEO lottery because, really, search volume in the property management industry has actually been on a steady decline. According to Google Trends in the US, it's been a steady decline since July of 2011. It's been going down, yet every marketer targeting the industry, every service provider, every web design company, they're shoving and pushing the concept that SEO is going to save them. They just need the top spot on Google. They're playing into this myth, so all these property managers are spending marketing dollars, their hard-earned money, they’re trying to run Google Ads, everything to be at the top of Google, and they're not getting an ROI. They're not getting a return on that investment. It's an incredibly expensive game that has many potential points of failure. You have to be a property management business, usually, at about 200 to 400 doors, with a business development manager. You have to be making sure that all of your phone calls are answered and you're following up on every lead within the first 10 minutes to really play that marketing game. I found most property management business owners were not at that level. I wanted to create them, get them to that level. Originally, I was the guy doing that stuff, I was a marketing company, I was a guy helping with those type of things, and I realized really quickly that it wasn't working. They weren't even answering their phones. Why would I send them a lead that's only good for maybe about 10 minutes—that's how long an internet lead’s probably good for, maybe 15—and then 80% drop off in conversion rates if they're not going to answer their phones? I just pivoted this company and I was thinking, “What would I do if I were going to start a property management business? What are all the most common problems that I can see even in the largest companies? Where are the biggest leaks in their sales pipeline?” Just like the theory of constraints, I just went from the beginning of the sales pipeline, which is that awareness. It's branding. Branding was costing some of them half the amount of deals and leads they could or should be getting. Some companies do real estate and property management. By eliminating real estate from the branding, I helped double their real estate commissions, ironically, because property management is a great front-end product. Real estate is a better back-end product. People don't wake up in the morning and say, “I want to find a realtor today. That sounds exciting to me.” No. They want property, they want to find buyers, they try to for sale by owner, but eventually, they list with an agent. The property management, if you have a constant influx of owners, investors that may get into additional properties, constant influx of renters and tenants, you have buyers and sellers. You have bodies constantly flowing into the business and this is the dream of a real estate company. We just started addressing these big leaks from branding, reputation, which is word-of-mouth, their website wasn't built around conversions and targeting the audience, their sales process, pricing strategy played into this heavily, they were not priced effectively, they were taking too many deals at too low of a price point. Psychologically, for example, there are three types of buyers. Most of them just had one fee, serving one type of buyer, and there was no price anchoring. I just started to see all these different leaks that we could shore up through the pipeline so that we could optimize their business for organic growth. Then the big secret is at the front end of this. Once we get all of these leaks dialed in, their sales process, they have follow-up, all these things are in place, what spigot should we turn on through this pipeline? They could go back and do cold-lead marketing, but cold leads are terrible. Conversion rates are low even if they're a bad A. I don't know what the rating is on your podcast so I'll be careful. If they're a bad A in sales, they’ll only get maybe about 30% conversion rate or close rate, but most people, say 1 out of 10 cold leads, they'll convert. The hidden killer with cold leads in any industry or business—the secret the marketers don't want to tell you—is they can't give you contracts. Marketers cannot give you contracts. You can't hand dollars to a marketer and they will hand you written signed contracts or clients. What they can hand you at best, usually, the furthest they can push it along is usually a really cold lead. That's it. That's typically what they can give you is they give you a cold lead and this cold lead then has to be nurtured. You have to warm it up. You have to get them to know you, trust you, and like you.  Cold leads convert really poorly, usually, you'll get maybe 1 out of 10. The hidden killer though with cold leads is time. This is the hidden killer with cold leads that small business owners don't realize. Time on a cold lead is at least twice as much time as a warm lead or maybe three times as much. I found clients when I would ask them, “How much time do you spend warming these people up, calling them, meeting them at the property?” They say in total, in my sale-cycle time, three to six hours to close the deal. “How long does it take you a warm lead?” I was getting answers like 15 minutes, maybe an hour, it was like half, at least, half the amount of time. These small business owners, if you give them 10 leads in a week and it's going to take them 2 to 3 hours to do all the follow-up necessary and they're going to get maybe 1 or 2 deals out of it, that's a full-time job. They don't have the time, as small business owners, to do that if they're also the main person doing the selling. They just didn't have the bandwidth to do it. It wasn't even possible for me to give cold leads to clients and have them win that game. They didn't have the time. They really work part-time crappy salespeople that had maybe about 10 hours a week to focus on that piece. I had to create a system that will allow them more warm leads. Instead of the front-end of this pipeline, what I teach clients to do is to go to prospecting. There's 70% self-managing. There's so much blue ocean in property management and yet everyone's fighting over the coldest, crappiest, worst leads that fall off the word-of-mouth table, that are searching on Google in the bloody red water. It's created this false sense of scarcity that's so strong in the industry that everybody feels like the industry is scarce, yet there’s 70% self-managing and none of them are really happy doing it. J: I have been doing real estate for over a decade and I have never even considered this concept from the property manager’s perspective in this way. I've always considered them partners. I've never wanted the lowest guy, they’re such a critical piece. Some of the things that you said, I was like, “Why would somebody bargain-basement shop for a property manager? That's just silly, you don't understand, you can't do that. That's not going to work long term,” but I've never thought about the fact that they would have trouble finding the quality owners. Just hearing you describe their world, it's like, “Oh, wow, yeah. I can see why that would be a challenge.” I'm curious, though, when a property manager is out there and trying to make it work—I'm just going to throw it out there—how can the good owners let the good property managers know that, “Hey, yeah, I would love to have you”? Jason: I think the biggest challenge I usually hear is that there aren't any good property managers. How do you find one that's good? Those owners feel completely unsafe. The industry has a really bad reputation as a whole. One of the concepts I teach—all these principles apply to really any industry, in any industry—branding has an impact, reputation has impact, pricing strategy has an impact. There's nothing I'm doing for this industry that is only related to this industry. I think the challenge the industry has, though, is it just has a lot less awareness, but I think that also means there's a lot more opportunity. There's a huge opportunity in property management. If we were to grow even remotely close to how Australia's grown in a decade, that would mean the industry in the US would double. I think property management could be as big as the real estate industry here in the US. There's much potential. I don't think it's been tapped. I think property management in the US has artificially been kept small and it is really a business category that's in its infancy. If you look at business categories that are relatively new in the US, you've got marijuana, vaping, and stuff like this, maybe Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, there's these fledgling industries. Property management's been around a long time, but it's still in its infancy. There's a huge potential there to grow. There are a lot of bad owners. That's true, too. The accidental investors didn't really want to have a rental property, but they needed it, and they just want to get rid of it after a year. If a property manager builds their portfolio on those type of doors, which some do, they have to replace every single client every single year. J: Yeah, that's an untenable situation that would go with that. Jason: Yeah. You'll find property managers fall into this first sand trap of 50 units or so. One question you can ask them is, “How many doors do you have under management?” If they're in the 50 or 60 door category, then I call that the first sand trap. That's one of my key avatars that I want to help is to get them out of that first sand trap. I call that the solopreneur sand trap where they're doing everything in the business, they've taken on too many clients at too low of a price point. And this applies to any industry. As a small business owner, you take on too many clients at too low of a price point, you back yourself into a financial corner, and you take on the worst clients because you're needy, and your operational costs with bad clients are 10 times higher than that of having good clients, easily. One bad property or a bad owner that tries to micromanage you is easily 10 times the operational cost, time and attention, and stress as one good door or one good owner, easily. If you build a portfolio of that, you're stuck. You're backed into a financial corner, you can't afford to hire anybody, and you're losing as many doors as you’re getting on in a year. You're stuck. Sometimes, I have to tell them to do really painful stuff like fire customers in order to create space. J: Yeah, that makes 100% sense. For those that have listened to this far and want to find out more about what you've got going on, what's going to be the best way for them to track you down? Jason: I love connecting with other entrepreneurs and a really easy way for them to connect with me, I'm on every social channel—probably—that exists, because I'm nerdy, as @KingJasonHull. They can connect with me as @KingJasonHull on any social channel, especially Facebook. Then if they're in real estate and they're really considering getting into property management, they've managed rental properties, they feel like they know how to do it, but they want to grow that side of the business and maybe feed their real estate side, or they’re a property management entrepreneur that's been struggling at doors and they want to make a difference and grow, then they can just reach out to us at doorgrow.com. J: Okay, I've got a question I just got to ask now. I wasn't going to do this, but I got to ask. My entire world when it comes to real estate, is all around the whole world of short-term rentals. It's what we do, it's what we teach, it's how our students have achieved success. One of the interesting things is that when we're interfacing with individuals, we often get the question, “Why don't I just get a property manager?” I'm like, “You don't understand. What we are talking about is completely different than what a property manager would typically do.” I'm just curious if the whole idea of short-term rentals or things of that nature, because being able to add that, if property managers took that on, they'd be able to solve some of their revenue issues for sure. Is that something you're seeing happening and in any way with your clients? Jason: Yeah, I think there is a trend of short-term rentals coming into the space. If long-term rental property management is in its infancy, I think that's even younger. There are property managers, especially in more resort-like areas where vacation rentals are more popular, I think all of them have some, they get into that, especially the larger management companies, just by nature of having a larger business and lots of different investors, they're going to have some short-term rentals. Short-term rentals make a lot of sense for them. It's a lot of turnovers, it's a lot more work, but it also can be a lot more payout for them. There is a trend shifting towards that. J: Yeah. I just asked because, in order to do it effectively, there's just specialization that's required. That's why we just stepped up and started doing it because we can’t find the property manager that could do a good a job as we have learned to do and now teach others to do. It’s just like, “You know what? We'll just do it ourselves.” That's what's happening, but at the same time, in the back of my head, I'm like, “Man, they're missing an opportunity. If they would just understand some of these things that we're doing, I think it would work well.” I was just curious, it's been in the back of my head, I'm like, “I wonder, considering you're helping them put their services together.” Jason: Yeah, J, be careful because that is the story that almost all of my clients tell me. You may end up in this industry. That's what they all tell me. They all come to me and they’re like, “I started this business X number of years ago and it was because we were investors and we couldn't find a property manager that was good enough to do things the way that we needed it done, so we started one. They're all bad and we're good,” I hear that almost every day. J: Oh, man, I love it. Okay, as we wind down, I've got a final question for you because I'm really curious to hear your answer. Here's what I know. I know that individuals started the call on one spot, and now, as we’re ending, they're in a different spot. They're at what I like to call the precipice of decision. It's where they go, “You know what? That's it. I can do this. I can make this happen.” Maybe they are a property manager and, “Yeah, I should call Jason. That's exactly what I need to do. I need to track him down, figure this out.” They're drawing that proverbial line in the sand, they're saying that's it, and now they're going to be different. Now, Jason, you know like I know that when we make those types of decisions, we often have a companion, and it's a companion that comes in the form of a voice that says things like, “You? Now, you know good and well last time you tried anything, it didn't really work out. What on earth are you thinking about? Oh, my gosh, no one's going to buy anything from you. You're not going to be able to get any clients, whatsoever, so why don't you just go back to your job?” For some people, they're related to that voice. My question to you is as follows. Let's pretend that this time it's going to be different. This time they're going to do exactly what you suggest and they're going to do so in the next 24 to 48 hours. What would you suggest that they do? Jason: If somebody has a voice, especially if it's an external voice, saying, “You don't have what it takes. You can't do this. You need to play it safe,” they need to find another voice. The truest voice that we all have is the voice deep down. That's never the voice that we have deep down. When somebody says, “Oh, deep down I knew it would be like this,” or, “Deep down I knew I should have done this,” or, “Deep down, I just knew it was the right move.” The voice deep down—you can call that the voice of God, you can call that your intuition, you can call it your gut—is the truest voice and that's the only voice we really should be listening to. Let me close an open loop I left open earlier. I mentioned how I was down in Austin, I'd met with my business coach for the first time down there, I was around all the other entrepreneurs, I felt like an ant in the room, but I was sharing ideas, they were resonating with it. My business coach asked me to describe what I did and he said, “Oh, that'll never work.” Then, I explained to how much money I was making and what I was doing, so he understood it, he looked at me and he said, “Jason, you have a $20 million company and you don't even know it.” Do you want to know what I started doing? I started crying. I had had little validation, I had much resistance from spouse, I just had no support around me in terms of being connected to entrepreneurs, I started crying in front of a room of other entrepreneurs. I needed that in that moment, badly. Fast forward. In a year, I had 300% growth. We were a million-dollar company in about a year. I was crying and it was like a cathartic thing that somebody could see what I felt deep down and they believed in me. I don't know if there's anything more powerful than that to be seen for who you really are and I think that is the love or energy that we all need as entrepreneurs in order to grow. We need that belief. J: 100%. I definitely appreciate the journey that you have been on. I thank you for taking the time to distill your knowledge down in such a way that you could then share it, become the person that's capable of sharing it, and influencing an industry that's very close to my own heart. At the end of the day, it's where it's been at for us for quite some time, it's where we're going to stay, but the more that you enable property managers to do what they do and find the customers that they need, the better I think it all gets for everyone. Just let me be the first to say thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge, wisdom, and insight here with us today at the Cash Flow Diary. Jason: J, it's been an absolute pleasure. In line with what you just said, I really do believe deep down that good property management can change the world. The impact that they can have in that industry is massive. They're affecting homes, families, on the tenant and the owner’s side. They're affecting people's cash flow. They're affecting their finances. They're affecting real estate investors that got into the real estate investing with the myth that it could be turnkey. The impact is massive and I think that's what gets me excited about the industry. We're contribution-focused banks as entrepreneurs, we want to have an impact. I appreciate you allowing me to share that message and to be here on your show. J: All right, ladies and gentlemen, you know what time it is? It's time for you to move at the speed of instruction. What does that mean? That means get over to doorgrow.com. That means go listen to his podcast. That also means connect with him. He said he wants to talk to you, it's very simple, ladies and gentlemen. One of the things that I hope you learn from today's episode is when you see a need, it's probably your responsibility to go fill it and just figure it out along the way. You don't need to understand everything at the beginning, but over time, you can get there. But most importantly as you heard and I heard, you want to follow that path, follow that voice that is telling you there's greatness inside. Ladies and gentlemen, it's been fun talking to you today. I look forward to talking to you soon. Until next time. Jason: You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Semester Sneak Peek is a new series that provides a preview of courses available at Tulsa Community College (TCC) this coming fall semester.  As a series about upcoming classes, these episodes will feature interviews with many of the instructors tasked with teaching them.  Today's episode features Jeff Smith, Recording Studio Instructor at TCC.   Edited by Sam Levrault Music by The Odyssey, "75 to Ramona" Transcript by Bethany Solomon   TCC CONNECTION PODCAST | SEMESTER SNEEK PEAK | FT. JEFF SMITH Bethany: Welcome to semester sneak peak, our special summer series that provides a preview of courses available this coming fall semester. I am your host Bethany Solomon, associate editor of the north east campus here at the TCC connection. Today we have a very special guest, Jeff Smith, he is a TCC adjunct professor, TCC signature symphony violist, and president of song smith records. Jeff Smith: Hi! Good afternoon, how are ya? B: Good, how are you? J: I’m doing great. B: Can you start off by telling us a little about yourself? J: Sure. I was born and raised in Tulsa, OK. I started playing violin at 10 years old because my brother and sister played the violin. The summer of my 6th grade year my teacher came to me and said “you know you’re kinda beefy, husky boy, you need to play the viola. I said, viola? It rhymes with granola, I don’t want to play the viola, I said what am I getting myself into here? She said ‘Oh, no you’re not going to quit the violin, you’re going to learn how to double. Double. It rhymes with trouble, she said ‘oh no, you’ll be fine.’ So, I got to take two instruments to school, the violin and the viola. Uh, learned how to play the both of them, not long after that the beetles were popular, and I got a guitar. I started going on in. B: Very cool, very cool, so how did you find your way into the education as far as like, your music. Did you study in undergrad, music specifically, or did you have a broad range of interests beyond music? J: Oh, gosh. You look back on pivotal points in your life. One pivotal point in my life was, I guess I was in Jr high, early high school, and I had an electric guitar. Dad had come home with a Wollensak, as a German tape recorded. And it had an auxiliary input on it and I learned at a young age I could take the guitar output and plug it into the auxiliary input, crank it all the way up, play the guitar, turn its sound all the way up and it would sound something like: [makes loud buzzing noises mimicking guitar sound] Coolest sound I had every heard…. for about 13 seconds. I blew out the 8’ inch paper cone speakers and a couple of power tubes. Its kind of left a mark on me, like this is a cool sound, I gotta get into this. I was going to be an aeronautical engineer, all through high school, my dad was a fighter pilot in world war II, he had 96 missions over France. My grandfather had his PHD in mechanical engineering and actually wrote the maintenance Manuel for the B25 Mitchel bomber. So, I was going to be an aeronautical engineer, until, calculus first hour happened. Kay, I had a morning paper out, and an evening paper out. Okay! Take your XY X’s, translate it, rotate it, draw a hyperbola, spin the hyperbola, cut a hole in the hyperbola, and now find the volume and generate it. At that point I figured, you know, I’d rather play the wrong note, I couldn’t see myself designing something that will have someone else get killed because I misplaced a decimal point. But, all throughout high school I played in the youth symphony. My senior year, I audition Id and got first chair of the viola of the youth symphony. And I auditioned for the Tulsa Philharmonic. I guess they were desperate, and I turned pro when I was 17. Uh, went to the University of Kansas, was a Viola Major. A double major in Viola performance and music education. And at KU they had a computer music lab, and they had, we’re talking early-mid 1970’s. And they had an ARP 26 hardener. This is a synthesizer, analog synthesizer. You have never seen so many buttons, knobs, dials, flashing lights, flash chords, slider, path chords I was like ‘gollee’ what does this thing do, what does this thing do? I actually had a blast in that course, it got me down here. From there I came down to TU, finished up a bachelor’s in music ed, finished up a master’s in music ed, taught in Wichita, Kansas for three years, went back to school, picked up a master in viola performance. I have always believed that if are going to be a teacher, you must be able to do it. There is the old joke that can do, those that can’t teach, those that can’t teach become administrators. Um, nah, I kind of believe that if you’re going to teach, you ought to be able to produce. You ought to be able to do it. Does that make sense? B: It certainly does! So, moving into, as far like, the technical aspect of music, recording studio techniques, you have a lot of orchestra experience. How does that translate into the studio? J: Sure. Well I was a band and orchestra director for 27 years and the times that I wasn’t playing classical music with the orchestra, I was playing fiddle, guitar, keyboards, (unintelligible), for rock and roll bands. And that was an awful lot of fun, setting that stuff up, it gets really tiring after 15 years of lugging all that’s stuff around the back of a pick-up truck. It dawned on me, you know, that I can make music instead of lugging around all this PA gear and power amplifiers and all this other junk. Why don’t I just build a house, have recording studio, and have them come to me to make music, and I don’t have to lug all this stuff around. So I started SongSmith records in the mid-eighties back when we had, they were called ADAT machines. They recorded on a VHS cassette, and they would theoretically, and I say theoretically, synchronize together by two ADAT machines – and you could have, wow, 16 channels of digital audio. You could have a grand total of 34 minutes of digital audio. B: Wow. J: Of course, you could format the tape first before you had to record on to it, and that is about as much fun as having paint dry. But it was there, and we had 16 channels of digital audio. I’ve still got those ADAT machines and once in a while we’ll get an artist in the back of the studio that recorded with me 20 year ago say ‘Jeff! Do you still have to ADAT tapes?’ I say yeah. ‘Could we dump them into pro tools and clean them up a bit and rerelease? And I say sure. B: Fun stuff. Definitely. That’s really cool. So, what do you think, as far your students, and what you teach here, what has been the most challenging for your students? In terms of getting comfortable with technology or for musicians in general. J: Wow. That is kind of a tough questions. Each student is different, each student has their own strengths and weaknesses. On day one, I had to fill out a little, I call it a student data sheet. Tell me a little about yourself so I know who I am dealing with. A lot of times I will get students in the class who have already had pro tools experience they might run sound at their church. And I’ve got kids, ‘well I have sang in choir, but I want to learn how to record myself.’ And they don’t know anything about the technology. So, the challenge, for me as an instructor, is to teach on two or three different levels. So, I try to teach to the very, very raw beginner, to the kid who has had some experience, to those kids who could probably teach me a thing or two. I guess that’s the fun part about the teaching. In the class, I have to make sure that each kid knows we will only be playing with three things in audio. Frequency, amplitude, and time.   And all the buttons, and knobs, and dials, [mimics with higher pitch] Buttons, and knobs, and dials, oh my! All have to do with either frequency, amplitude, or time. If you understand that basic concept than you go through ‘okay well what does this button do, how does it change the sound? B: So, a lot of it is experimenting, as you’re in the course. J: Yeah. And that’s how they learn. We tell them, for example, once we define frequency, amplitude or time are, we go into signal flow. We go, okay, what happens, how does the ear work. How does the microphone work? We trace the audio from vibrations of your voice, or your guitar or whatever, through your microphone, line, inputs…..into. What happens next? [jeff starts laughing….] It all goes in from the patch bay, and the patch bay goes into the microphones, and the micros to the IO’S, IO into the computer and we explain all that stuff in signal flow, signal flow, signal flow. All an audio engineer does, all day long is. I don’t hear the guitar in my left ear, why not? Or, I plugged this in, and I don’t hear anything. B: Right. J: Or I turn this knob, and nothing happened. Back up and figure out why. B: And that is what you give your student leeway to do. Figure out why they made a mistake, to figure out why and backtrack. J: If you tell them what they did wrong, they’ll never figure it out themselves. If they go throughout, and your cohort here, can attest to this. I will rarely just tell a kid an answer, I say, do you have an iPhone on ya? There’s this thing called google, look it up! I’ll wait. And then for example, when they learn the measurements, and what decibels are to measure frequency. I’ll ask them questions like ‘what’s the unit of measurement for frequency?’ and they’ll say, uhm, decibels? No that is the measure for amplitude. Man, it hertz if you don’t know this. Hertz being cycles per second. B: Right. J: Hertz being, you know, cycles per second. Hertz is the measurement. So, it hertz if you don’t know this! [both laugh…] B: That’s a good one actually! J: The stupider or funnier something is, they’ll remember it. B: It sticks better! Definitly it helps it stick. So as far as walking away from the class, how important is it for students after, in the aftermath, are these techniques that can easily be forgotten if they are not applied immediately. J: Oh gosh, I hope not. B: If you have students that come for, let’s say, do you teach a second course as well? J: Yes. There’s a Recording Studios Technique II (RST II) class, theoretically there are two sections of RST I, which will have 16 kids total, 32. Out of those 32 kids, if RST II is offered, we only take 8. So it’s like ¼ of those two classes, if they wanted, we are limited to 8. We did a really cool thing this last semester. The students had to produce a video and they had to literally, we shot it on a gopro camera, and it was actually pretty terrible, but they learned the process. They had to get a video program onto their computer, there are several free ones, and just experiment there, here’s the scene we shot. And the whole theme of the video was, and this is terrible, once again, I love my wife, but she has a problem with collecting small electrical appliances. If there is small electrical appliance made, she has it. She’s got four or five crockpots, I don’t know how many mixers she’s got, toasters, curling irons, you name it, those little vacuum thingies, if it is a small electrical appliance she has it. So the format of the class was, we’re going to make a video and you all have seen these videos of the poor animals you know, for the charities, and there’s this poor dog with one eye and its snowing outside and he’s missing a paw or something and there is a choke collar behind this poor animal. And well the idea was, we’re going to have small appliances, and they need a home. And they produce something absolutely hilarious. “Do you know a small appliance that needs a home that’s been abused? We’re sorry. SARI, the small appliance rights institute, so we made a video, and we got t-shirts with irons. One of the appliances was an iron that burned a hole in the t-shirt, so the kids were like no, no bad iron! Flatten it with the newspaper, and later on we use that same shirt with sorry with this big old iron burn on it, we’ll give you this shirt if we give us $19 a month. That is only 63 cents a day.”   So I hope the kids learned a lot from that. Uh, they learned how to put it together, how to edit, how to synchronize the audio. One student actually wrote this really cool darkish sounding sad piano music that everyone wanted to use because it was so cool. B: So you have different types of projects and assignments in the class, of various ways. J: Oh yeah. B: So for exams, what should students expect for an exam, in a studio techniques class? How will their knowledge be tested? [Jeff laughs…] J: Exams! I figured kids are not in JR high school or elementary school anymore, I do not use true or false, multiple choice. Most of the tests and quizzes are done with fill in the blank and short answer. You know, hopefully using correct English and spelling things correctly. It’s not like ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” we’ll give you four choices, and you pick through the answers up here. I want you to go a little bit beyond that. B: Right. J: We also give the kids all kinds of interesting ways to help memorize things like that. For example, can you name the planets in order from the sun out? B: Probably not in order. J: Okay. I can. B: You can? J: My wife took an astronomy class once, kay, and if you take the first letter of each planets. If take the first letter of each planet, ‘M’ for Mercury, ‘V’ for Venus, ‘E’ for Earth, ‘M’ Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, back then Pluto. So, she came up with a very simple sentence. My very enormous man Jeff Smith understands nothing. B: She came up with that? J: She came up with that! Totally originally, and OH! Okay. So, you take all that information, you condense all that down. It is like taking all 5 great lakes. Heroin, Ontario, Michigan, siria, and superior. Spell the word HOMES, take that data and condense it. It is like putting it in a ZIP files for your brain where they can memorize some of these techniques, and hopefully it will not only help them in audio engineering but in life. B: Right. J: You know, if you’re on stage running sound for a band somewhere or in a church situation and all of a sudden thing die. You don’t want to turn to the guy next to you. Good gosh what do we do? As an audio engineer, you got to figure it out, quickly. B: Right. It is about application, not just knowing the what, or how, it is about knowing the why, the why you are doing what you’re doing. That is what differentiates it from a lot of other subjects. J: That’s the thing, if you know anything about Bloom’s Taxonomy of Education. Harking back to many, many years ago. If you have just a knowledge level question: ‘Who invented the telephone?’ You know? That’s knowledge level. If you have a question like, we’re gonna form a band, you’re gonna come up with a song, you’re gonna cover a song or something and you are are gonna form a single here in the class. We’re gonna pick members for the band, and you’re gonna go from there. That takes a lot more brains to be able to do that. B: It takes creativity! J: Absolutely. You gotta coordinate your schedule together, you gotta pick a song, come up with an original cover song, do the rehearsals, figure out how you’re gonna mic the drums. I’ll show you how to mic them, but you do it! And why you might do it this way. B: Right. It takes a lot of brain power to figure out what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and why you’re going to do it. J: The more you use it the stronger it gets. B: Yeah. That’s really good. That’s actually a really good way of doing it. So, for current line up of courses, beyond Studio Techniques I and then II. J: Two happens in the spring. I teach private lessons on violin and viola through TCC. That’s only a handful of students, like two or three. B: Oh okay! J: I also teach private guitar out of my house, but that’s a different story. B: Do you have anything like a semester split? What do you teach during what semester? J: Oh okay. In the first semester, the fall semester, we only offer Studio Techniques I, and hopefully there will be two sections. Then from that, we’ll offer in the spring, studio techniques I and II. B: Oh cool! So, advice for students as well, for anyone who does not have experience. What should they expect going to class and what should they expect coming out of the class? J: Bring a pencil and a notepad! You’d be amazed on day one that sometimes there is not a whole lot of different between first graders and college kids. You write something on the board, and some kid in the back will say, is this going to be on the test? [Bethany laughs…] J: Ummm, YEAH! The idea is if it is on the board, I feel it is important enough that you need to know it. Because if you are successful in music, you know, you could make a lot of money. Pay all that taxes and social security and support me when I’m old…..er. B: Very good point! So, if you want to be successful, for musicians specifically, how important is it to learn studio techniques for your own music? J: Oh gosh! In the music business especially, what has been relatively successful for me, I call it a multiple income source. My main income for many, many years was teaching in public schools. On the side, I was playing classical music in two different Orchestras. The (unintelligible} Symphony and the Signature Symphony and occasionally the Tulsa Harmonic. The Tulsa Opera and the Tulsa Ballet. On the weekends, we were not doing classical, we were rocking and rolling in establishments. We call them gun and knife clubs. [Both laugh…] Bring your own, within a hundred miles of Tulsa. You know, within 200 miles. So you had money coming in from the rock n’ roll side, money coming in from teaching lessons on the weekends, money coming in from your teaching job, money coming in from your symphony gigs, then if you write music, you can create it that way, and get royalties from that. That way if any one leg of that collapses you have something else to depend on. It the music business, to really make it big, you have to be extremely good at ONE thing. And then you can afford everyone else to pay them to record your CD for you, to book you here and there, but the more you know about every aspect of music. How do you finger a saxophone, where’s the best way to mic a saxophone, or a flue, or a guitar, or a cello, or a base? Where does their sound come out from? Where does it sound the best? What kind of mic do you use? All of that stuff, the more you know, the more you’re worth. You apply everything in music. There was a time when my teaching career, where the school I was teaching, I had been there for five years, and they were going to close the school due to a reorganization plan. My last year teaching there they’d lost all the electives. The only elective you could take at this school was band, orchestra, or gym. No home ED, no foreign languages, nothing. That was it. They closed the school next year to reorganize. Orchestras fold, right or left sometimes. Schools change. And in the music business especially, you’ve got to have a backup plan. You get smart, by a house, accelerate the principle on that, so you pay it off early. We paid our first house off in 8 and a half years by accelerating the principle. If you anything about financing, that is a different topic. But that’s how you get successful. B: Very cool. So I hear it is important to be multifaceted but to also master one area. J: Well. If you wanna be really successful in music, you got to be able to sing like Garth Brooks, or Whitney Houston. Or, you have to be able to play that violin like Itzhak Perlman. That’s all he does. For me, I can’t do that. I am too much Attention Deficit Disorder. I get attracted by all the flashing lights. Wow, cool, we are recording this in garage band right? Neat stuff! And I’m watching all these little lights flashing over here and she turns around smiling listening to us on her headphones running through the, and I am wandering GEE! What is that knob do, OH, that is the interface there she’s running through. So for me, you know, I’ve done the six hours of practice everyday when I was at the Cleveland institute of music getting my viola masters. Six hours a day of the viola? Gee I hate the viola sometimes! You know? It’s like too much. Put it down, play the guitar sometimes, go play the fiddle in a country band somewhere and make it fun. B: But you put a lot of time into it. J: Oh yeah! B: That’s awesome! Just to go over an overview on your courses one more time. Studio Techniques I, Studio Techniques II, Viola… J: And violin.. B: Oh, you teach violin as well. J: Yeah. B: So those are private lessons. J: For both majors and non-majors. B: Do you have a special email address that your students can reach you at? And potential students as well. J: I have the TCC email, but I have had more luck with my own personal email. Would it be okay to do that one? B: YEAH J: My personal email is songsmithrecords@cox.net. Now  if you go on the web and go to songsmithrecords.com, understand that I have been busy and haven’t updated the website for 15 or 17 years. It’s on my list of things to do I’m working on it but I’ve been busy. B: Alright, great, so where are your classes based at? What campus? J: We are based at the southeast campus. B: Sounds great, this has been Bethany Solomon and Jeff Smith at the TCC Connection. Thank you for listening and we hope to continue this series for the summer. J: Thank you Bethany, I appreciate your time. B: We appreciate you as well!      

The first podcast we recorded in Miami was above anything we ever expected, with a very special guest: Sir Lord Richard Layard. Just a number of facts in a row: - He helped advise Ton Blair’s government from 1997 to 2001; - He is the author of several books: Happiness: A New Science, Thrive, The Origins of Happiness, A Good Childhood, Handbook of Labor Economics, and many more; - He is a labour peer and professor at the London School of Economics; - He is co-author of the World Happiness Report, which ranks the level of happiness in different countries. Things we talked about in this podcast, Richard said: In contrast to 50 years ago we have larger houses, we are better educated, go on holiday twice a year and even live healthier, while one thing has not improved; we are more unhappy than before. Sir Lord Richard Layard explains why. Some context about how we met Sir Lord Richard Layard: It was a last minute decision to go the world happiness summit in Miami last March. A very beautiful chain of events made that we somehow had to be there. Besides that normally our podcasts are recorded in our mother tongue Dutch, so you can imagine how exiting and nervous we were. We apologize beforehand for the flaws you might notice. ;-) One of our close contacts, Asha Lalai, arranged that we could interview him late at night in the lobby of his hotel. This 84-year-old man indicated that he wanted to do the interview with us but just for a few minutes. In the end it has become a very informative and interesting podcast that has lasted a little longer than that. J Thank you so much Richard Layard!

I made a major life decision and transition a few weeks ago and I can’t wait to share it with you today, as it very much impacts our future together in the Shameless Mom Academy! Today I talk you through how I made the big, terrifying, overwhelming, and very responsible decision to sell my gym, Sync Fitness. I share why you should not wait until your fully ready for change before you make big moves. I walk you through how you can prove your strength, power, and resiliency to yourself so you can feel inspired to take on new challenges. I teach you the value of leaning into all things exciting and scary – and why these are very specifically the thing you must lean into! Warning: this episode may just inspire you to go take a flying leap!  J Thank you to our sponsors: Weebly: Build a beautiful website and a successful online business with Weebly. Go to Weebly to get 15% off your first purchase. Bluum: Join a monthly subscription box for pregnancy through preschool. Bluum boxes are curated for your child’s age and stage and continue to grow with your child as they get older.  Go to Bluum and use the code SHAMLELESS at checkout to get a free box with any 6 or 12-month subscription.

节目组: The World Says 世界说 节目名称: 星座S: Hey guys welcome to the world says from the VOE foreign languages radio station, I'm SherlockJ: And I'm JottaI: Good evening everyone I'm Iris and this is Francis.F: 大家好，我是Francis 插曲1 one S: So today we are going to talk about the astrology, or horoscope, or zodiac signs.J: Wow, I love magic most! Well there are lots of words in English to describe it. So, what's the Chinese mean of them?F: 嗯，这些词在中文里就是星座的意思。I: So in today's program we will bring you some knowledge about Astrology, and hope you like it.S: Okay, so the astrology is more like western thing, and I guess a lot of people think is like a superstition.F: 哦，像是一种迷信。S: Yeah Yea, but the other way, you know, in China is also popular among our students, especially girls.I: Yeah, I see this stuff in the Wechat all the time, talking about astrology. Speaking about this, do you know how to ask people their astrology in English?F: Isn't it….. What's your astrology?S: No… no is not, the astrology here is a little bit like.. a subject, like… the process how a planet move or something..J: 所以 astrology 这个词还是代表星象学多一点，而不是星座。 I: Right, so here you cannot just say What's your astrology, the one is What's your sign.S: Right, horoscope, what about horoscope, can we just use what's your horoscope?I: Neither, cause horoscope is like. You are reading a newspaper, I mean, like today, my luck is low..J: Oh I get it, wow, looks like somebody has done lots of work in it.I: You bet~S: I'm so glad we do this program with you Iris, cause, ya'know boys like Francis and I really don't know this a lot. And, for our today's show, I also check out some information.F: Just say it.S: Speaking of constellations, in fact, there are two levels of meaning, one is astronomy, the other is astrological.I: Come on, it's hard to understand.J: Constellation, which means a group of stars that forms a particular pattern and has a name.F: 并且zodiac的意思是黄道带，也就是太阳、月亮和行星构成的假想带。S：The conclusion is that, astrology and horoscope is more inclined to superstition. I've always been against superstition about the constellation. I do not think there is a supernatural power to control the will and behavior of mankind.I: Yes, fate is in our own hands. But sometimes we use it to have some fun is also good.S: I agree. So, could you say something about your constellation?I: Pisces pets are the most empathetic. You could have shared a past life experience with these lovely critters, they have excels in the art of listening.J: just iris is like that, lovely!F: 没错，双鱼座擅长倾听，他们还喜欢和人分享过去的经历。S：And Pisces can handle many different tasks at once and be successful in all of them. Come on, could I say：It's impossible?I: You can't. Pisces is often a very sensitive, very mystical, and very misunderstood sign. They're highly sympathetic. Ok. It's your turn.S：They just like me, Lance, Adam, Terry, Kenny, Abel, Thomas and Austin.J: Can't imagine that, but it was just an if.I:So you're a Aries. Sounds like my name. Ha-ha. I know that Aries people have the qualities of being impulsive, of being leaders, of being very...impatient.J:They also are natural-born entrepreneurs. They wanna do things. They don't wanna just sit here. They wanna just go and do things. Ok, it's time to talk about my star sign.I: What's your sign, Jotta?J: Capricorn, that's the Goat.S: The mountain goat—highly, highly ambitious. They wanna climb the mountain.J: You get the idea here. It's an earth sign. They're very practical, really organized.F:而且他们通常在生意上以及任何种类的建构上都表现得很好，因为他们是由土星管辖。I: Wow, it seems you know a lot about Capricorn.F: Yeah. Because I'm a Scorpio. They are similar.J: But there's two different types of Scorpios, they say: the ones that are very high with moral standing, and the other ones that go down.S: So, when you're thinking about a Scorpio, though, you're thinking about someone who's very intense, who is very driven, and who can very much wanna be a part of your life and merge.F: This is somebody who doesn't take anything light-heartedly.J:Oh,Iris,do you know what characteristic of a Gemini？S: Oh? Whose sign is Gemini?J: Emm...someone...I...you know...I: Oh, I know. Ha-ha.F:I know that they are always changing their mind.I: Yes, and qualities of Geminis—they are endlessly curious, very social, friendly people, intellectual, too. And they like a lot of stimulation.J: Thank you Iris. Ah, it's time to say goodbye.F: Hope you enjoy our program .See you next time.S:感谢制作苏鑫。I:如果你喜欢我们的节目，请关注我们的微信公众号 VOE-radio 和VOE外语广播电台的新浪微博，那里有我们往期的作品。 节目监制：周宸聿编辑：朱子业 夏茂航 张燚铭 余若天 播音：朱子业 夏茂航 张燚铭 余若天制作：苏鑫