Podcast appearances and mentions of jeff one

It's good to remember that whatever the emotional, mental, or life pain or trauma we face — whatever the shadow or ghost — we can at any time assemble the most powerful team of advisors, healers, teachers, and friends available to help us. It can be anyone, close by or at distance; a quality, such as courage or kindness. Whatever we think we need.They all come together in what we call The Inner Conclave, a multi-dimensional interior gathering of the many lives and resources accessible within us. If we face the trauma caused by abuse or loss, for example, we can imagine in our Conclave a person or quality that represents love, or trust, or wisdom.It's not merely a mental picture, but the energetic value and consciousness that work together to illuminate and in time transform the shadow or ghost, the pain and anguish. Where do our ghosts come from? Imagine an inner intelligence we call a soul that seeks always to keep us safe, and reconnect us to the natural love and wonder in us at birth.We discover much more about the ghost and shadow, and the healing possibility of The Inner Conclave practice, in this conversation with Aviv Shahar and longtime Portalsfriend Jeff Vander Clute. Jeff is a consultant and author of three recent books, including Beyond Every Teaching, a collection of transformative spiritual transmissions.Among their insights:It's a step-by-step process, potentially a navigable journey, to engage one's soul and come into the right relationship, a wholeness, with oneself. Miraculously, the world then begins to reflect our wholeness.The Inner Conclave contemplation enables a larger space and capacity, not to bypass or suppress the pain, but to illuminate and metabolize the ache and anguish.Suddenly, what used to be very big is no longer so large, as all the capacities and qualities we imagine and summon come online and take part in the inner conflict.We can bring mental healing to a whole lineage — a tribe, a nation — as part of humanity tapping into a universally-inclined shared experience accessed together in The Inner Conclave.Releasing ourself from the arresting limitation of polarities is to allow the natural multiplicity of voices, qualities, and essences that we are to impart their intelligence and revelation.Whatever the inner script, we each have a shadow or ghost pattern enacted with us because of our formative painful experience. Can it reveal a high truth or voice? How can we disarm it safely?This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel. TWEETABLE QUOTES “These are two novel objectives. What I simply meant by the transparency offered was that, in this case, we are journeying with a global community of some 150 people where the emphasis is that it's not a teaching or learning situation as a first principle, although the profound revelatory dimension, learning dimension, developmental dimension, and healing dimension all accompany nature and features, the primary impulse is this evolutionary frame of mind.” (Aviv)“I'm appreciating the genius of life in always bringing situations that challenge our core programming so that we can become conscious of our essential qualities and nature.On the one hand, well, this is just what I'm kind of thinking in this moment; we can contest it perhaps later. But I'm seeing that as long as collective human consciousness and there is a collective mind, if you will, that we participate in and are fixated on and have a deep belief in separation from the Divine, let's say, then separation will continue to show up in every domain - in some ways to get our attention. I'm seeing that as we shift collectively into homo universalis, that operating system or way of learning and evolving need not continue.” (Jeff)“One way the ghost compensatory act will express itself in this situation is the person will develop a whole set of behaviors to try to protect from any dimension that will take away from harmony. So, in fact, they're not living in harmony, they're actually defending against anything that will take away from them the sense of harmony, but they are more in the ghostly experience of having been distanced and separated from harmony.” (Aviv)“The stories that we tell ourselves, which so often are unconscious, or maybe at best semi-conscious, the scripts that are cycling round and round, which have their purpose to protect us from pain or to continue to remind us, perhaps, of a state that we feel has been lost. So you're providing a step by step path to go down a layer, down another layer, down another layer, access the agency, access the power of our own soul, frankly, to maybe burn away what is no longer serving, burn away the shadow.” (Jeff) RESOURCES MENTIONED Portals of Perception WebsiteAviv's LinkedIn Aviv's TwitterAviv's WebsiteThe Ghost and the Inner Conclave

Listen Up Home Buyers—Jeff Jackson With FIMAVictoria: Hi, I'm Victoria Ray Henderson, the host of the NABA podcast, Listen Up Homebuyers. So happy to have back for a second round of conversations, Jeff Jackson, the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Federal Insurance Directorate. He leads flood insurance operations for the National Flood Insurance Program at FEMA. And Jeff, I want to thank you so much for being a guest again on Listen Up Homebuyers.Jeff: Thanks. It's great to be back.Victoria: So glad to have you. I'd like to start with a very general question. What should every homebuyer know about flood insurance?Jeff: The most important thing to know is then that in all but the rarest of cases, flood risk is not insured through your homeowner's insurance policy. If you want to have coverage for water that comes from the outside and comes inside your house, so not stink backups, not toilet backups. Those kinds of things, but water coming in from the outside, it requires a separate flood insurance policy. You can either buy that from the National Flood Insurance Program, which is through FIMA, or there often are a number of private flood insurance policies that you can buy as well.Victoria: So if somebody lives in an area that isn't by the coast, isn't necessarily by a creek or a river, what do they need to know about flood insurance?Jeff: Well, it floods everywhere. There have been in the last little bit under 25 years, 99% of the counties in America have flooded. So, it's happening somewhere in your county. And what I would say is it's not always readily apparent just by looking around and seeing the distance to the nearest water source, although that's an extremely important factor. Changes in our built environment, the more we see paving, the more we see development of what was traditionally green space can raise our flood risk as well. And so there can be an illusion that you don't have flood risk when in actuality, you're at least perhaps moderately risky. And that certainly is an area when you get there, you would at least want to strongly only consider buying a flood insurance policy.Victoria: Okay. So as you know, I only work for people buying homes as an exclusive buyer broker. So the first thing that we typically do when they're going to be buying a home is see how well they're qualified to obtain a mortgage. At what point should a home buyer be looking at the risk that could be potentially there in a house of interest?Jeff: I would say it's when you get that listing from your broker and you see a list of houses, it's good to go look them up on the FIMA maps to see if it's a place where you would have to buy flood insurance. And we certainly went over this the last time I was here. But for the folks who are checking in for the first time, if you are in a high-risk area, what's called a special flood hazard area, and you have a federally backed mortgage, which is most mortgages, then you're required to buy. For everyone else, it's an option to buy, and for those where it's required, certainly as you go through the lending process, that will be made clear to you.But really, getting back to the heart of your question, it's when you walk through the door of the house for the first time. It's everything from knowing if it's in a high-risk area as you go and choose to look at the listing, as well as when you walk through the property, look around and look for what are there any signs of water in this house? Are there stomp pumps? Has clearly work been done because there's a drainage issue in a basement? Many places have that. So you don't have to be scared away that it's a matter of going in and learning as much as you can about the property so that you make a decision about whether or not to purchase it, and then if you do purchase it; First, do you have to buy, have flood insurance? And then second, should you choose to buy flood insurance?Victoria: Right, I always tell people that I'm working with that when we go into a house, the first thing I'm going to tell you is everything that's wrong with it. And I go straight to the basement because we both live in the greater Washington, D.C. area, and we have a lot of wet basements, a lot of issues, along the Potomac River. Just last week, I'm working with clients in Old Town, Alexandria, and they were interested in a condominium, and I checked the flood maps, and it's in an A.E. flood map. Walk me through what your advice would be for a homebuyer in that situation if they really wanted to put an offer in on a place like that.Jeff: The first thing I would do is reach out to your insurance agent and get a quote, not just for homeowners insurance, but also for flood insurance. If you're in that A.E. zone, that's one of the zones that is required to purchase if you have a federally backed mortgage. So I would go get a flood quote and factor that in, the cost of that in, when you're determining the affordability of the house, and as you're comparing it to other properties, perhaps where you might not have to buy a flood insurance policy and make that part of your buying decision, the more you can learn about a property, including from the cost perspective. But your number one trigger should be, have your insurance agent on speed dial. So, when you see that house, you know that Saturday is coming, you're getting excited about going and looking at all these properties, you know for that one, you would have to factor in cost.Victoria: When people are looking at properties and it's zoned X, but they aren't that far from a zone A.E., you had mentioned that typical flood insurance isn't covered in most homeowners insurance. Is that correct?Jeff: That's right.Victoria: Yeah. So, if you are anywhere near an A.E., would your advice be to go ahead and look into flood insurance?Jeff: I would go ahead and do it for a couple of reasons. The FIMA flood maps are really a regulatory product designed to decide when we as a country and particularly looking out for the mortgage holders' interest, when we're going to say, hey, we need you to go ahead and purchase this insurance because your high risk. If you're just outside of the high-risk area, you're not no risk, and that's the biggest myth that we have to bust here as we teach folks about flood risk in America. You're probably at medium risk. Medium to medium high is a good way of characterizing it.What we know over time is it only takes about an inch of water that can quickly get you up to around a $25,000 cost repairing your home. So, in that circumstance, I certainly would buy a policy. It really gives you peace of mind. It is an expense and I know with housing being so expensive and insurance costs are rising, it's not exciting to add an additional expense into the household budget to be sure. But we talk to people every year who do have the coverage and who do experience a loss. And they look at, let's say, a $50,000 or $60,000 flood loss, which is pretty common.Victoria: Okay.Jeff: Not average, but common, and so if you don't have the coverage, you're looking at covering that, putting things on a credit card, taking it out of your home equity. If you just bought the property, depending upon the size of your down payment, you may not have a lot of equity, and it really can set you back. People get set back decades and don't financially or don't financially recover at all. So particularly for the people in that situation that you described, it would be a great investment. Your home is your biggest investment for most of us, and this certainly will help you protect that investment.Victoria: Is it possible to give kind of an average, and we're not going to hold you to this, but an average cost for flood insurance? So people have some idea of what they'd be looking at.Jeff: Our average cost is a little bit over $800 right now.Victoria: Okay.Jeff: But it can range and particularly for those who are just outside of a high-risk area, it's going to be a little bit more than that probably. But the average cost right now is just a little bit over $800. The National Flood Insurance Program was created because we have an insurability problem in America, as well as an affordability problem. We haven't unfortunately solved the affordability problem in all these years, but the NFIP is here and we'll sell a policy to anyone in any of the 22,600 participating communities. So that availability problem that we see with, you know, we see insurers pulling out of places like California. We see people dropping people in Florida, insurers dropping people in Florida.With the NFIP that we're going to be there and we're going to continue to sell you the insurance. It is going to be at a risk-based price. That's the affordability piece of things, and it's one of the reasons why certainly for those who can afford to do so, we encourage you to buy, and for those that can't afford it, we continue to advocate to Congress to provide some type of assistance, and we're hopeful that one day that'll be in place as well.Victoria: On this podcast, we're going to include some links so that people can learn more, from the FIMA maps and regarding the flood insurance that you're talking about. Is there anything else that you would like consumers to know and specifically, again, people who are buying homes, anything that you could share with your expertise?Jeff: One is that the FIMA flood map is a snapshot in time. It may be some vintage and certainly has to be reevaluated to make sure it continues to represent the flood picture every five years, but a lot can happen in five years. Maps get updated on a priority order. And so, it's not uncommon to see a 10-year-old map that probably is pretty close to what the risk is. But if you're expecting fine line gradations and risk, that's not really what it's designed to do. It's designed to say it's tremendously helpful for the folks in your community who manage the floodplain, particularly at the county level. It's an important technical product for them. It's important for realtors and it certainly important to help you learn if you have to buy.What it's not great at is a nuanced view of risk, and so I caution against over-reliance on the flood maps, and I think the way you look at it is the right way to think about it, which is not just, am I in or am I out of the high risk zone? But how close am I to water sources? And then give some thought and have some conversation around what have been the changes to the built environment? Say, every map will have a date on it. What's the environment? What's happened since that map was put into place? That certainly is one thing.The second thing I would say is for many years, there's been a school of thought, which is that if you don't have to buy the insurance, you don't need it, you don't need to talk about it. I caution against anybody, gives you a very dismissive, oh, you don't need that, and so we don't need to bother to talk about it. I think that's a thinking that's a little bit behind the times and is certainly not where I would want to be as a consumer in terms of getting service from whoever would be giving me that advice. So I would counsel against you don't need it. I think there are a number of great agents. There are a number of great insurance agents who will help talk you through a nuanced conversation. I think somebody who's willing to get in a conversation with you is where I would want to be as a buyer.Victoria: Yeah, I think exclusive buyer brokers like myself, and we're all over the country, one of the first things we want to do is educate and inform, which is why I have you on this podcast, because people need to know what the risks are, and then they can make a decision based on that. I live in the Washington area, and every summer, I end up flocking to the beach, just like everybody does. Sometimes I drive along that strip, that little narrow strip of Ocean City and Lewis, Delaware, and then Dewey and Rehoboth and just think, this is a pretty risky area.Jeff: Yeah, it certainly is, there's been so much evolution in the science of catastrophe modeling and learning all the flooding events that potentially could happen. The more I talk to those experts, the more that I learn is that the amount of time we're in a home is infinitesimally small. It's just minute, and you'll hear owners of homes say, I've been here for 10 years, I've been here for 15 years, and it's never flooded. So, it's probably not likely to flood. And while previous flooding experience is important, it's just such a small amount of time. I mean, the way the water patterns work, 100 years is just beginning to get to the point where you really get a keen sense of how water is moving around and what the risk is in a particular area.And then that's on top of the fact that we change things so much. I mean, we're fortunate to live in these areas where things are getting torn down and things are getting rebuilt and we need additional parking. And so, there's got to be an extra lot. And so, there's all these things that sort of hopefully will move us away from maybe the people selling us the property had it for 15 years and it never flooded there. I wouldn't let that be the end of my inquiry.Victoria: No, definitely not. I mean, it's the biggest financial commitment you're going to make in your life until you, I guess, do it again. But you don't want to make a mistake like this.Jeff: We have a great website called FloodSmart.gov. It has all kinds of information about flood insurance policies, and that's important, but also just about flood risk in America. So, it's a great resource to go out and learn a little bit. Encourage your listeners to go check that out and we've got some videos on that as well. So, go check that out.Victoria: Great. Jeff Jackson is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Federal Insurance Directorate. He leads flood insurance operations for the National Flood Insurance Program at FIMA. Jeff, it is such a pleasure to talk to you again about flood insurance here on Listen Up Homebuyers.Jeff: It was great to be with you. Thanks.FEMA flood insurance Listen Up, Home Buyers! The podcast offering advice and tips from true buyer agents. Host and Producer, Victoria Ray Henderson is the owner and broker of HomeBuyer Brokerage in the Washington D.C. area. Victoria is and a member of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents.

What you'll learn in this episode: How to know when to walk away from a purchase, and how to trust your intuition when buying Why you should always ask for a detailed receipt, even if it feels awkward Commonly misunderstood phrases dealers may use to confuse buyers How Jeff does due diligence before making a purchase How to navigate the many platforms where you can purchase jewelry today About Jeff Russak Jeff Russak is principal of Lawrence Jeffrey Estate Jewelers. Jeff's expertise in antique and 20th century jewelry combined with an uncompromising attitude toward quality, condition, and style directs the acquisition process. His proficiency in signed pieces and hallmarks is especially useful in identifying and dating each piece. In demand as a speaker on antique jewelry at museums and shows, he also volunteers as a guest appraiser for charity. Additional Resources: Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com   Transcript: When it comes to buying jewelry, nothing is more important than trust. That's why Jeff Russak, principal at Lawrence Jeffrey Estate Jewelers, won't hesitate to leave a purchase behind if his inner voice tells him something is wrong. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how he vets his purchases and the dealers he works with; what red flags buyers should watch out for; and why a receipt is more powerful than you might think. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Jeff Russak, one of the principals of Lawrence Jeffrey. They are estate dealers located in Litchfield, Connecticut. Jeff has had decades of experience buying and selling. He's also extremely knowledgeable about estate jewelry. Welcome back. What are the mistakes you see people make, whether in the receipt, in the returns or not asking the right questions? What are the mistakes you see? Jeff: The mistakes I see boil down to trusting the wrong person. There you are, and they're showing you a five-carat ruby. It's fire-engine red and pretty clear. It's in a nice ring, and it's $12,000 to $14,000. I can think of a half dozen booths I've seen at shows that had jewelry like this. Well, it's a good deal, and they're going to tell you it's a good deal. They're going to tell you how beautiful it is, but somewhere your brain must be going, “I'm a little worried.” If you're a little worried, stop. I can tell you that those rubies were glass-filled. Of course, they looked good. Were they rubies? The GIA would call them a red, man-made product rather than a ruby. I've gotten a report on such a stone, and that's what they said. I think you have to listen to your voice. The less you know, the more wary you need to be, and the more questions you need to ask. The more questions you ask, eventually you're going to hear things that are going to lead you to either trust and buy or not trust and not buy. If I were a neophyte, I would be like, “Wow, that's a really good price. That's so much less than I've seen for similar pieces. Is the stone natural?” If they say, “Oh yes, this is an all-natural ruby,” I would say, “Will you write that on my receipt?” Then you have recourse. Now we're getting into federal law. Again, we're talking about someone who doesn't know. You have to ask questions to try and get a sense. It's like questioning your six-year-old who's definitely got cupcake crumbs on his fingers. You know something has happened. You're not quite sure what, but you're pretty sure. You want to give him a chance. “So, what have you been up to?” “Oh, nothing.” “What's on your fingers?” They're going to look at their fingers. “Nothing but these crumbs.” “Crumbs, really?” So, you begin to get an idea. The truth is there's no silver bullet for solving these issues. I tell my clients to decide what fun money is to you. For some people, that's $100. For other people, that's $10,000. If you don't want to become more expert in something you want to buy a lot of, if you're going to spend more than fun money, ask an expert. Bring someone in who's knowledgeable, who's an expert, and take it from there. I do that too. I'm pretty expert in a lot of stuff. When I buy a very high-end sapphire, I have someone out on the West Coast who is strictly an expert on sapphire. I will often send it to that person to have it evaluated in much greater detail than a lab report. I will speak with them, and they will walk me through tracing all those factors in the marketplace and how they relate to establish what a wholesale price for it would be, and even sometimes what a retail price would be. A small difference in color in a five-carat stone could be a $10,000 to $20,000 difference at retail. Sharon: That's certainly true. Can you look at a piece of gold and tell who the designer is or where it's from? Jeff: The first thing I do is look for the hallmarks. I'm deft with reading hallmarks, and if I don't know—just this morning, I was taking a picture of a hallmark I couldn't find anywhere. Our shop has a library off the main floor, and the walls are covered with books on all the various designers, on gemology, on the history of jewelry. Then there are cases, which are closed, and they're filled with catalogues, every Tiffany catalogue from 1951. We have probably 60 or 70 Cartier catalogues. We have primary reference material we look at and use, but the short answer is about a third of the time, I can look at something and tell you who made it. But until I look at those hallmarks, it's just a really well-informed guess. Sharon: Can you tell the age of something? If you don't know who made it, can you tell the age just by looking? Jeff: Yes, by examining the piece and taking cues from both the aesthetic choices the goldsmith made, but also from the resources the goldsmith had when they were doing the fabrication. That usually is what tells me when something was made. The resources often dictate the mechanical style. For instance, the French often prefer not to physically join pieces in necklaces. They have a particular way of hinging them. It's sort of a pin with a mushroom cap. When you see that, you almost always know that's a French piece or it was made by someone who studied in France. If it's a Genevan piece, well, the Genevans often studied across the border. There are a lot of clues. It just takes time to learn them. Sharon: The people who work for you or with you, what do you suggest they learn? Do they follow you around, or do you show them each piece? Jeff: I have a really knowledgeable staff. They know a lot. Truthfully, I tell them all the time that they know a lot more than they think. They get to a certain point and I stop telling them; I just ask. In the beginning, though, they'll hesitate. They'll say something and it's almost always right. They have good instincts. When they've handled enough pieces, when we've pulled the books off the shelf—like when I look at Georgian pieces, I don't just go, “Oh, this George III,” or “Oh, this is George IV,” or “This is early Victorian.” They look different aesthetically in many cases, but the way the mountings are made, for instance, changes in subtle ways over a period of time. So, I'll go back to a reference book, and I'll pull out a dozen pictures from each period, say from 1740 to 1780 and then 1780 to 1800, and try and make sure to narrow it down. Some people have that in their heads. That one still hasn't stuck for me, so I always look it up to make sure. And I have a photo repository. There are many museums that allow you to take photographs. I have extensive photographs of pieces from the Treasury in Vienna because they allow photographs. I believe the British Museum has a vast collection—I don't believe; I know they have a vast collection of Victorian. They allow photographs, whereas the V&A, I don't think they do; I'm trying to remember. So, we have those resources as well. We're always trying to learn, and we take staff trips to museums. I'm hoping to take the staff on a museum tour, maybe in London at some point because there's so much to learn there. Every time I go, it reinforces what I've seen before. Sharon: Are there tours? I'm asking for a personal reason. Are there tours like you're talking about? Jeff: I think there are some jewelry tours. I want to say maybe get involved with Jewelry Week, the folks who run that. I don't know of any. We would just go on our own. I know where to go and what to look at and which dealers to visit, the rock stars of our world. Recently the Vegas Show went on, which is a dealer-only show. I was standing in a taxi line with my creative director, and we just struck up a conversation with one of the Heyman brothers from Oscar Heyman. I had no idea who he was, and we're just talking about stuff. I didn't even know he was in the jewelry world. Then he said something, and I was like, “Oh, you're at one of the shows. What do you do? Who are you with?” He said, “I'm with Oscar Heyman. I'm such-and-such Heyman,” and I said, “Oh, wow! We love your work so much. We follow you. We look at your work. You have such an amazing reputation.” They're the nicest people. He was so lovely. He looks around like he's looking for somebody and says, “Did my mother send you?” There's a group of people who are fantastically honest. I would recommend anyone to buy their jewelry, to deal with them, to use them as a resource if you have a Heyman piece. You can get in touch with them, and they will help you. They're really an example of the absolute pinnacle of an exemplary firm, and arguably maybe the most important American firm today. Sharon: I'm surprised to hear you say that you go from high to low or low to high in terms of looking at jewelry. Jeff: One of the things I wanted to talk about was all the different ways we can buy. We have so many choices today as a buyer. I think it's confusing somewhat, and some of the choices open up the opportunity to confuse people on purpose. You have dealers. You have dealers who have shops. You have dealers at shows. You have dealers who have online shops and in-person shops. You have dealers who only have online shops. You have online gateways. That's like a 1stDibs or an eBay, where dealers have their own space on these. You have flea markets, estate sales, tax sales. You have auctions in person. You have online auctions. Now, you have guaranteed preowned. You can go to Cartier and buy an estate piece guaranteed preowned like you buy a guaranteed preowned Mercedes. A number of those stores are doing that. Then you have buying from a friend, a private person, The RealReal, or Poshmark. There are places where regular people have somebody else sell their things or maybe they sell their own things. You have Facebook moms' groups. You have Facebook Marketplace. That's a lot of places to buy things, but here's the thing: the rules for how you buy are exactly the same no matter who you're buying from, and the laws that control these sales are exactly the same no matter who you buy from. That's a hard thing to remember. If you're shopping for an engagement ring, a mom who's selling her engagement ring may not want to give you a proper receipt. She might not even know she's supposed to, but she may only sort of remember what the diamond weight was. Maybe she didn't buy a diamond at all, or maybe she was given a diamond ring and it wasn't a diamond; maybe it was a Moissanite; maybe it was a synthetic diamond. All the more reason why you need a receipt. I'm not even saying that anyone is trying to do something dishonest in this situation. I'm saying that you're spending a decent little chunk of change or a big chunk of change, and you have to protect yourself. The more risk, the more careful you have to be. I'm just as careful as an ordinary buyer. I have a lot more knowledge that helps, but I'm just as careful. We buy from other dealers, obviously, all the time. There's a psychology of dealers selling to one another. Even though we're dyed-in-the-wool retailers, we still sell very specialized diamonds. We have several dealers in Europe who buy very specialized, historic pieces from us that are worth a lot more to their customers than they certainly would be to mine. It's not my specialty; it's not my niche. So, I have all the same issues buying from another dealer that a regular person might have buying through a moms' group. It's the same problems and issues, and it's the same task in terms of making sure you're getting what you think you're buying. Sharon: Do you sell a lot online? Do you notice a difference in the questions people ask? Jeff: I'm going to say off the cuff that I think there are more questions from my online buyers than from my in-person buyers. I think there are more questions, and more detailed questions. I think they're smart. The online buyer does not have the opportunity to look me in the eye, doesn't get to see where I'm standing or a sense of whether there's an exchange of information. Maybe they ask, “How long have you been in business?” “Well, we've been here in Litchfield for 26 years. We own the space we're in, so I'm hoping not to go anywhere else. This is my ideal. You'll find me here next year and hopefully in 10 years, in 20 years.” Beyond that, I'm not sure I can say any more, but I think the online buyer has to be just as wary, but perhaps in different ways. Sharon: What kinds of ways? As to the right questions? Jeff: The questions I get asked a lot: I get asked if I could send a video of the piece in natural light because they're concerned about the color. You know what? They should be. We have great photographic resources. Frequently I will decline to let my team sell a piece online because we can't get a picture that properly shows the color of a colored stone. Even though it looks right on our screens, which are calibrated, it's going to look really different on a phone. Phone screens are the best. It's going to look better on a phone than it might even look in person. It's going to look different on different screens. So, I think it's not a bad thing to ask some questions. Personally, I would call and say, “What does this look like in person? Can you describe it?” That's a frequent question, and I think it's a good one. People ask about the guarantee. You and I have discussed many times that the 10-second lecture on buying online is all about the guarantee. You have to be guaranteed that you can return something you don't like for any reason, no questions asked. Sharon: If I knew I could return something without any questions asked, I'd probably feel more comfortable, at least on some of these purchases. Jeff: I agree completely. There are many situations where you can't return pieces that are online and where you can't inspect them in person. As dealers, we can deal with having a certain amount of loss. Maybe in this particular situation, you buy from them several times a year, and maybe two or three pieces aren't right and you have to fix them. You hope to sell them for something close to what you paid and you move on. People say, “Well, it's just the cost of doing business.” As long as you feel like you're doing well overall, then O.K., that's great. But I think if you have a bad experience as a buyer, as a consumer, I would probably not go back to that situation. I would try to find some place you trust more. Sharon: That's probably good advice. Jeff, thank you so much for giving us your tips. I'm sure there are a lot more we didn't cover, but thank you very much. Jeff: You're so welcome. Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

This week, Ali & Roark have WAY too much fun with Jeff Guenther (aka Therapy Jeff). So much fun that a fair amount was deemed NSFP (not safe for pod), but Jeff *may* be coming to a Patreon near you sometime soon. You may recognize Jeff from your TikTok FYP. He is incredible at doling out bite-sized relationship advice you absolutely need to hear, and Ali & Roark think you'll love this episode. They debate what questions to ask new partners and what might be a little too hard-hitting. Before Jeff joins them, Roark talks about shooting her shot with a guy from the past, and Ali discusses her next move with The Rower. Timestamps: Jeff joins the show for Weird or Nah and Topic Talk at around 28:45. Where to find Jeff: On TikTok @therapyjeff and on his website www.therapyden.com. If you'd like to hear our personal updates before everyone else as well as other exclusive content, join The Search Party on Patreon: www.patreon.com/findingmrheight. And, if you want to send in a "weird or nah" suggestion, share your own phone throwing moment, ask a question, or have general feedback, you can do it all at www.findingmrheight.com/podcast

We are excited to focus today’s episode on the final phase of our unique 16-week sales process. Today we are focused on phase four: exclusivity/documentation. We invite you to listen to episode 001 for more information about phase one (pre-marketing), episode 002 for more information about phase two (go to market), and episode 0016 for more information about management meetings: https://www.coladv.com/podcasts/002/ Other episodes dive deep into technical aspects and tactics used in middle market and mergers and acquisitions. We also invite you to download our 16-week sales process timeline for more information on how Colonnade Advisors typically approaches the process of selling a company: https://coladv.com/wp-content/uploads/Four-Phases-with-graphic.pdf In our deep-dive discussion on exclusivity/documentation, the word “scary” comes up quite a few times. Rather than being scary from a horror film or haunted house, this scary is more like cold feet before a wedding. That’s because exclusivity/documentation is when you pick your partner and take a leap of faith with a single buyer. You’ll learn that in this phase of the sales process, we are not yet on the homestretch. In fact, our discussion unveils the many challenges of this phase of the sales process that must be simultaneously and actively managed. You’ll hear that this phase of the sales process almost feels like a crescendo. Our job at Colonnade is to manage this increasing set of workstreams and pull off a successfully closed deal. Then, as you’ll hear in the podcast episode, it’s time to celebrate. Key topics covered in this episode: • Preparing for the shift of power from seller to buyer • The importance of the letter of intent ("LOI") negotiations • How to select the winner (while keeping others warm in the background) • Who’s involved during the exclusivity/documentation phase • How long the process takes, and how much it costs • Pitfalls that we have encountered during this phase and how Colonnade mitigates these risks with our clients What is the exclusivity and documentation phase, and how do you get up to this point? (01:07) Gina: "This phase occurs when a seller is exclusive with a single buyer—we have received several bids and determined the winner. Both parties sign an LOI at this phase, and the seller agrees not to provide information or engage with any other potential buyers. The seller is essentially going off the market, which can be a bit scary because if the deal does not move forward with the exclusive buyer for some reason, then we will have to go back to the other bidders." What tasks need to be completed during the exclusivity and documentation phase? (02:11) Gina: "During exclusivity and documentation phase, we work through the confirmatory due diligence, which often involves a buy-side quality of earnings report. Also, during this period, we negotiate, finalize and execute the definitive purchase agreements and work through any related regulatory tasks to close." Is it possible for sellers to go through the exclusivity and documentation phase with multiple potential buyers? (03:18) Jeff: "In large transactions, it is possible to run multiple parties through this phase, but it typically does not happen in middle market deals.” What is the importance of the letter of intent (LOI) negotiations? (04:13) Jeff: "LOI negotiation is critical because we want to nail down all the topics that we think are going to be critical in negotiation and final documentation before we commit to one party. Hammering out these key topics ahead of time also expedites the process." Is the highest price generally selected as the winner? (05:05) Jeff: "Business owners do not always pick the highest price. It is also about picking the best terms." Listen to Colonnade’s podcast episode 007: Striking a Deal: Price & Terms: https://www.coladv.com/podcasts/007/ Once a seller is exclusive with a buyer, is there a backup plan if the deal falls apart? (05:15) Jeff: "We keep the non-winning bidders warm and engaged in a limited fashion to make sure that we have backups if the deal falls apart.” How do you assess the certainty to close a deal? (06:30) Jeff: "Assessing the certainty to close comes from years of experience working with buyers and thinking through key items such as where is the capital coming from, what their acquisition history is and how likely they are to close on the terms that we have outlined." Are there particular buyer types that are more problematic in terms of the certainty to close? (06:35) Gina: "One group that has caused us problems with the certainty of close in the past is search funds or unfunded sponsors, which are private equity investors that do not have a dedicated fund. These funds tend to bid the highest prices, which is appealing, but they will still need to raise the capital once in exclusivity from institutional investors. Those institutional investors will want to do their diligence, almost restarting the deal process, which creates more risk of the deal not getting done." Jeff: "About ten years ago, family offices were also in this category to some degree. Family offices had smaller dedicated investment teams, so the certainty of closing was considerably lower than traditional private equity firms or a strategic buyer. But that has changed over the last decade where family offices have shifted to become credible buyers." How long does it take to get from signing the LOI to closing? (08:45) Gina: "We generally put 30 to 45 days in the LOI with a provision that both parties can extend the period of exclusivity by mutual written consent based on putting forth best efforts. The time to close depends on the industry. For example, some industries may need regulatory approval or use complex accounting methodologies, which would require more time." What are the components of confirmatory diligence, and how are these workstreams sequenced? (10:06) Jeff: "There is HR, accounting tax compliance, regulatory, legal, IT, and others. Running these workstreams in parallel is key because it is the easiest way to minimize time to close, but you cannot get to the legal documentation until all these other workstreams are completed." At what point do you expect the first turn of the purchase agreement from the buyer? (12:30) Gina: "Pushing to get that first turn of the purchase agreement is very important. We frequently put the purchase agreement in the data room before the LOI, and we expect a markup of it along with the LOI or an issues list, which will help expedite the process.” Who pays for the costs associated with confirmatory diligence and documentation? (13:38) Gina: "The seller pays for the seller's costs, and the buyers pay for the buyer's cost." Jeff: "In the context of a rollover deal, where the company is getting bought by a sponsor, the surviving entity ends up absorbing costs from both sides." What are the typical costs incurred during this phase for sellers and buyers? (14:31) Gina: "The seller can expect to pay for tax counsel or tax accountants if there is tax work to be done, an attorney to assist with negotiating terms, a tax lawyer, and other types of counsels. Buyers can expect to encounter legal fees, accounting fees, consulting fees, IT, technology consulting, and HR consulting." How much does this phase cost for both the sellers and buyers? (14:31) Gina: "Ballpark is anywhere from $75,000 to a couple hundred thousand for a seller. On the buyer's side, a couple hundred thousand easily on diligence for a middle market transaction that's valued $75 to $125 million.” From the seller's side, who is typically involved during the confirmatory diligence phase? (15:55) Gina: "Confirmatory diligence is a big undertaking, and sometimes the knowledge level about the company needs to go beyond the deal team that has been involved to date. At this stage, other people in the company may need to be made aware of the transaction (e.g. sales management, IT, HR, etc.), which can be tricky." What types of issues generally come up in employment contract discussions? (18:57) Gina: "One issue that comes up is pay, which we manage by building out expected compensation levels in the financial model. The second issue is the bonus structure, and the third is vacation. The most important issue that comes up is non-compete, who gets one and what the terms are." Which employees will generally be subject to non-competes? (19:25) Jeff: "There is usually a non-compete for selling shareholders that will be getting proceeds from the deal and non-equity participants that are key to the ongoing entity.” What are the risks associated with employment agreements and non-competes, and how do you mitigate these risks? (20:52) Jeff: "The risk with non-equity participants that are key to the business is that they could choose not to go with the new buyer for whatever reason. This can result in a domino effect from a price change to the deal not happening at all. One tactic that we use is to encourage our seller clients to put in place some type of transaction and retention bonus." Gina: "When Colonnade is working on a transaction, we ask a lot of questions upfront. We will often ask who has employment agreements and what are the terms of those agreements. For business owners that are thinking about selling in a few years, they should be thinking about who their key employees are and how to get them under employment agreements now." What are the different types of employee bonus plans associated with a sale? (23:17) Jeff: "One is transaction bonuses which are for employees who are essentially doing two jobs during the deal process. The second is the retention bonuses that ensure employees are not going to leave when the deal closes." What is Hart Scott Rodino ("HSR"), and how does it impact the transaction? (23:59) Gina: "HSR is one type of regulatory approval that might be needed to close a deal. HSR applies to companies of a certain size, which will need to be approved by the government for anti-trust reasons.” Jeff: "The amount increases every year, but HSR impacts transactions roughly around $80 million in transaction value. There is a filing fee, and it is about a 30-day process.” How long does it typically take from signing the legal documents to closing? Who owns the company during this period? (26:13) Jeff: "It can be 30 days or longer, depending on the different types of approvals. For financial services deals where there is generally regulatory approval, it is often 30 or 60 days. During this period, the seller and buyer essentially both own the company." Can sellers request a break fee if the deal does not close? (27:00) Gina: "In highly competitive, larger transactions, there will be break fees, but in middle market M&A, it's highly unusual to have a break fee. That is because there is not enough diligence that has been done before the signing of the LOI. Without all the information, it is unlikely that buyers will agree to a break fee because they may find out many things during confirmatory diligence." What are typical pitfalls encountered during the exclusivity/documentation phase? How does Colonnade mitigate these risks with seller clients? (28:58) Gina: "One is indemnification, which reps and warranties insurance can mitigate.” Listen to Colonnade’s podcast episode 010: Escaping escrow: Reps & Warranty Insurance: https://www.coladv.com/podcasts/010/ Jeff: "Another pitfall that we have seen involves who owns the intellectual property. To mitigate this risk, we address this issue early in diligence.” Gina: “Another is when the buyers want to speak with the seller company’s top clients. We try to delay that conversation until as late as possible in the process. We want to get to the point where we feel comfortable that we have covered all the major issues, and we're likely to close." Jeff: “The last pitfall that comes to mind is tax, where two parties can have a different view on tax regulations in a given jurisdiction. Our job is to push things forward and cut through all the issues as quickly and efficiently as we can.” What dynamics are typically in play right before a deal closes? (39:02) Jeff: “What I find is when people are the angriest and they're about to throw up their hands, that's when we know we've got a deal, it's sort of where everyone's been pushed to their limits. Everyone's had to give and take, and they're just about ready to walk away, and then the deal signs.” Gina: “And then we celebrate.” Host Information Gina Cocking Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners, and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79, and 99 securities licenses. Jeff Guylay Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million.

In this episode, Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay discuss the different types of auction processes we use in a sale transaction, including a negotiated deal, a small process, a targeted auction, and a broad auction. Gina and Jeff talk about each approach's pros and cons and why Colonnade advises clients on selecting one versus the other, recognizing that each situation is unique and calls for a customized approach to the market. This episode concludes with a case study of a negotiated process, a broad auction, and a hybrid between a small and targeted auction. In this episode, Colonnade Advisors addresses the following questions as related to the different types of auction processes: What are the four primary types of auction processes that Colonnade ues when helping clients sell their business? (01:52) Gina: "There are four general categories, ranging from the smallest audience to the largest. A negotiated deal involves one bidder. A small auction process generally involves two to five bidders. A targeted auction involves the most likely universe of buyers, ranging from six to 20. Lastly, a broad auction involves contacting a large universe of potential buyers, over 20 parties. There are pros and cons to each of these types of auctions." What are the advantages of a broad auction? (03:42) Jeff: "Broad auction is all about market discovery. All four types of auctions involve competition and market discovery, but a broad auction involves unturning every stone, looking under every nook and cranny, and finding that needle in a haystack that you wouldn't have thought about otherwise." How do we get to the highest value and best outcome with a negotiated auction? (05:14) Gina: "With a negotiated auction, there is one buyer, so there is the risk of no competition. The buyer could decide to change the price or walk away at any time. One tactic that we use is creating a credible threat. As the seller's advisor, we work in the background on creating materials to go to broader auction, if necessary. That is the credible threat: if the deal has a misstep at any point, the buyer knows that we can immediately go to market and get full market discovery." Jeff: "Some sellers do not want to go through a broad auction, so they are willing to get a slightly lower price for the benefit of only dealing with one buyer. In addition to pricing, deal momentum and getting a deal done are also critical. " What are the benefits of running a small process? (08:01) Gina: "A small process has a lot of the same dynamics as a negotiated auction. One additional advantage with a small process is actual competition, so you can compare bids and push bids up to the highest possible bid of that group. A second advantage is that the seller will have a fallback buyer if the first choice drops out for some reason. Another advantage to a small process is confidentiality. Selling a company is a very revealing exercise because the seller has to tell buyers everything about the company. A negotiated deal and small process limit the risk of who is getting the seller's confidential information." What types of buyers are generally in a small process and targeted auction? (10:46) Gina: "In a small process, it tends to be strategics. When there is a smaller universe of potential buyers, it tends to be the ones who really understand the business and are already interested, which are likely to be strategics. Jeff: "A small process is almost always largely comprised of strategics. There is probably a mix of strategics in a targeted auction, maybe have half a dozen strategics and ten private equity firms. That sort of universe can generate meaningful competition." What are the trade-offs between a small process and a targeted auction? (11:27) Jeff: "The workload for a small process and a targeted auction is probably the same, but the seller does lose a little bit of a grip on confidentiality because they are talking to 20 parties instead of two." What is one of the drawbacks of starting with a small group of buyers? (12:17) Jeff: "One of the drawbacks of starting with a small group of buyers in a negotiated deal, small process, or the targeted auction is that it is sometimes challenging, depending on how far along you are in the process, to switch to a broader auction. Sellers have to carefully select the appropriate process upfront." What are the considerations for doing a broad auction? (14:04) Gina: "The most important reason to do a broad auction is full market price discovery.” What is Colonnade's approach to assessing the buyer universe? (14:30) Gina: "Colonnade focuses on specific industries in business services and financial services and the intersection between those two, so we know the private equity universe and strategic buyers in these industries." Does a broad auction require more work for the seller? (15:30) Jeff: "A broad auction does not mean that our clients have to do more work than in a targeted auction. All the materials that we put together are the same. We still have to go through rigorous due diligence, putting the book together, building the financial model, and making sure that the story ties out." What is Colonnade's typical broad auction process? (16:00) Jeff: "We create a curated list of buyers, which is approved by our seller clients, and we approach this broad group with a no-name teaser. We contact this broad group and find out the conversations they are having internally and determine whether there is a fit. Sometimes the most obvious top five names are not interested, so it is good that we went to a broader universe. Our team goes through the list on a no-name basis, then under a non-disclosure agreement with specifics. We work the funnel down through indications of interest, management meetings, final bids, and down to the winner." Is there confidentiality risk in a broad auction when reaching out to 100 or more potential buyers? (17:25) Gina: "The 100 or more potential buyers do not all get the information. In the funnel, the 100 or more get the teaser and NDA on a no-names basis. Then at the next stage in the funnel, after the execution of an NDA, some subset will get the confidential information memorandum, which has a lot of information, but it still is limited. The next subset gives us an indication of interest letter, and we will invite them into the next stage, in which they then have access to a limited data room and perhaps a management meeting. Only that final buyer in exclusivity has access to what can be considered the company's trade secrets and have access to the contracts, etc." Jeff: "The buyer list is highly curated. " Can you give an example of a negotiated process? (19:02) Jeff: "TD Bank was selling a national commercial finance business to Wells Fargo. TD Bank hired Colonnade after they started talking about price. Colonnade's role was negotiating the deal and giving TD confidence that they were getting a fair price and what valuation should be in a broader process—creating a credible threat. We worked diligently to negotiate the deal with Wells Fargo and put a book together so that we were ready to go to market if needed. We had the 40 logical names ready to be contacted at any minute if the deal with Wells Fargo failed, and Wells Fargo knew it too. To Well Fargo's credit, they came through and offered a fair price and came through on the timing and offered a great platform for the team." Can you give an example of a broad auction? (20:54) Gina: "Last year, Colonnade advised Smart AutoCare on its sale to Fortegra, a Tiptree subsidiary. We started with over 100 potential buyers in a broad auction. We received eleven indications of interest, so it was a very robust auction, and we had great price discovery. At the time, we did not go to Tiptree because Fortegra was a supplier to the company. We had three or four LOIs, and we went forward with the winning bidder, and it was a great price. We ended up pivoting away from that buyer because the business owner felt that the private equity firm did not understand his business, so we went to Tiptree. We were able to negotiate a transaction with Tiptree and successfully close. It was a fantastic result." Can you give an example of a hybrid between a small process and a targeted auction? (22:37) Jeff: "A few years ago, we advised ADG on its sale to APCO. APCO had approached ADG and its private equity owner and made an offer. ADG hired Colonnade to run a small process or a targeted auction to the obvious buyers. There were many potential buyers, but we narrowed it to a list of 15 and worked that list to generate competition and drive up the price and terms. APCO, who had essentially triggered the auction, was ultimately the winner, and they paid market price and terms. It was a great outcome for the team." How do sellers determine which auction process is the best option for selling their businesses? (24:16) Jeff: "Each situation is unique, and it depends on lots of different circumstances. It is all part of the pre-planning process that we work with our clients to think about what's going to get the best outcome based on their objectives." Host Information Gina Cocking Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. She returned to Colonnade as a Managing Director in 2014. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners, and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was a Vice President at Colonnade Advisors from 1999 to 2003. She left Colonnade to gain operating experience as the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc., a bank holding company based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, that operates banking offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Additionally, Gina holds the Series 24, 28, 79, and 99 securities licenses. Jeff Guylay Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. Jeff holds the Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 securities licenses. Jeff serves as a director of the non-profit Nurture, an organization dedicated to enhancing the nutrition and wellness of children and families. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million.

 Discover which online course platform or LMS is right for your online course business and learning objectives Learn about the importance of knowing your focus areas that is critical for unlocking the full potential of your online course business Find out how the right platform can make it easy to share your knowledge, grow your audience, and scale the online course business Resources/Links: Check out Jeff's Website: learningrevolution.net/freeguide Summary Do you keep on creating online courses? But are confused by all the online course platform choices? Are you sure you're using the right platform to 'house' your content, optimizes user experience to your students at the same time making it easier to share your knowledge, grow your audience, and scale business? You're not alone! That's why Jeff Cobb drawn on his 20 years of e-learning and online course platform experience to help you cut through the confusion and choose the right platform. In this episode, Jeff shares his insights on how to find the right platform for your online courses and how finding the right one can greatly affect your sales and can even create a community around your online course. Check out these episode highlights: 01:33 - Jeff's ideal client: “So it's going to be a solo expert, speaker, consultant, author, or maybe a small business, but what they have in common is they've got deep expertise, and they want a way to monetize that through educational products.” 02:07 - Problem Jeff helps solve: “I solved a number of problems but for the purposes of this conversation, it's really, how do you select the right platform for creating and selling those online courses that you want to put out there?” 03:11 - Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Jeff: “One is frustration. So, it might be somebody who's like, already tried out a platform, tried to get out there, thought they were going to, you know, get tons of learners, make lots of money, whatever, and they're just pulling their hair out because they can't really get the thing that they wanted it to do.” 04:16 - Common mistakes that people make before they find Jeff's solution: “They'll get distracted by the bells and whistles. I mean, there's a lot of pretty cool stuff out there right now, and you're thinking, you know, "I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to do-" whatever, and you're just following those lights all over the place, and you get distracted from what your real goals are.” 05:04 - Jeff's Valuable Free Action (VFA): “You really have to get clear about your objectives, meaning both your business objectives and your learning objectives. So, what are the types of things you're trying to achieve as a business? And from a learning standpoint, what kind of outcomes are you trying to create?” 06:07 - Jeff's Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Jeff's Website: learningrevolution.net/freeguide 06:40 - Q: Can you actually still do online courses and make money at it? A: You know, it's getting a lot harder, particularly with just sort of self-paced, on-demand courses. People have this dream of, you know, "I'm going to set it up. I'm going to automate it. Set it and forget it. Just run people through this, you know, this online course". Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “You really have to get clear about your objectives, meaning both your business objectives and your learning objectives.” -Jeff CobbClick To Tweet

 Discover which online course platform or LMS is right for your online course business and learning objectives Learn about the importance of knowing your focus areas that is critical for unlocking the full potential of your online course business Find out how the right platform can make it easy to share your knowledge, grow your audience, and scale the online course business Resources/Links: Check out Jeff’s Website: learningrevolution.net/freeguide Summary Do you keep on creating online courses? But are confused by all the online course platform choices? Are you sure you’re using the right platform to 'house' your content, optimizes user experience to your students at the same time making it easier to share your knowledge, grow your audience, and scale business? You're not alone! That's why Jeff Cobb drawn on his 20 years of e-learning and online course platform experience to help you cut through the confusion and choose the right platform. In this episode, Jeff shares his insights on how to find the right platform for your online courses and how finding the right one can greatly affect your sales and can even create a community around your online course. Check out these episode highlights: 01:33 - Jeff’s ideal client: “So it's going to be a solo expert, speaker, consultant, author, or maybe a small business, but what they have in common is they've got deep expertise, and they want a way to monetize that through educational products.” 02:07 - Problem Jeff helps solve: “I solved a number of problems but for the purposes of this conversation, it's really, how do you select the right platform for creating and selling those online courses that you want to put out there?” 03:11 - Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Jeff: “One is frustration. So, it might be somebody who's like, already tried out a platform, tried to get out there, thought they were going to, you know, get tons of learners, make lots of money, whatever, and they're just pulling their hair out because they can't really get the thing that they wanted it to do.” 04:16 - Common mistakes that people make before they find Jeff’s solution: “They'll get distracted by the bells and whistles. I mean, there's a lot of pretty cool stuff out there right now, and you're thinking, you know, "I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to do-" whatever, and you're just following those lights all over the place, and you get distracted from what your real goals are.” 05:04 - Jeff’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “You really have to get clear about your objectives, meaning both your business objectives and your learning objectives. So, what are the types of things you're trying to achieve as a business? And from a learning standpoint, what kind of outcomes are you trying to create?” 06:07 - Jeff’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Jeff’s Website: learningrevolution.net/freeguide 06:40 - Q: Can you actually still do online courses and make money at it? A: You know, it's getting a lot harder, particularly with just sort of self-paced, on-demand courses. People have this dream of, you know, "I'm going to set it up. I'm going to automate it. Set it and forget it. Just run people through this, you know, this online course". Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “You really have to get clear about your objectives, meaning both your business objectives and your learning objectives.” -Jeff CobbClick To Tweet Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland 00:10 Greetings, everyone, and another very warm welcome to this edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland joined today by Jeff Cobb. Jeff, good day, sir. A very warm welcome. Where are you hanging out?

Without question, the last several months have accelerated ecommerce adoption and drastically changed consumer behavior. The entire sales lifecycle from finding a prospect to closing the deal has been turned upside down. Now two key obstacles lie in the path of ecommerce leaders… The first is the more obvious, more discussed problem: How do you operationally and technically need to change to meet your customers' evolving needs?  The second key obstacle is not as often addressed, but is equally as important: How do you then communicate to your customers that even in these changing times, you are equipped and ready to meet their new needs?  The binding and laminating business doesn’t sound like it would be ripe with insights into answers to both of these questions, but Jeff McRitchie, the VP of eCommerce at Spiral, is here to prove that assumption wrong.  Jeff has nearly two decades of experience in the ecommerce and digital space. Just last year, his own company, MyBinding.com, was acquired by Spiral, where he now helps lead ecommerce operations. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jeff explains what it has been like merging his ecommerce business with a more traditional binding company. He shares some of the challenges he faced along the way, and what methods and strategies he’s leaned into to find success. Jeff also discusses tips for building out a winning SEO and content strategy, and how ecommerce is playing a larger role across the entire business, including in customer acquisition and content marketing.  Main Takeaways:   The Merge: When a primarily ecommerce company merges with a larger more traditional business, there are a lot of balls in the air to create a cohesive and efficient system. Most of the adjustments have to be made on the side of the acquiring company, which needs to learn how to compete in a digital marketplace. That means that education has to be a priority both internally and externally.    Use Their Words: Every industry has jargon and industry-speak. It’s easy to fall into the trap of using that language throughout your platforms and channels. Instead, you have to meet customers where they are with their own language, and use the words and phrases they use. This will ensure that your customers feel like you are speaking directly to them and it also helps create more longtail SEO opportunities. Content For Now that Pays Off Later: Some of the most-viewed content you create might be consumed after a customer makes a purchase. On the surface, that might make it seem like content-creation is not a good customer acquisition strategy. On the contrary, it’s actually a critical long-term strategy in the sense that good, useful content is critical for brand awareness and building trust, which customers will remember when they need to buy in the future. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome to another episode of Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles. Today on the show, we have Jeff McRitchie, the VP of Ecommerce at Spiral Binding, My Binding and Binding 101. Jeff welcome. Jeff: Thank you. Stephanie: Thanks for coming on the show. I was excited when I was looking through Spiral's background. It looked like you guys started in 1932. Is that right? Jeff: Yeah. I mean, we've been around for a long time. Stephanie: Yeah. I think that'll make for a really fun conversation because I'm sure that the company and you have seen a lot of transformation over the years, so that'll be fun to dive into later. Jeff: For sure. Stephanie: Tell me a bit about Spiral. What is it? How do I think about what you guys do? Jeff: So Spiral is really a company and we've built ourselves around helping people to bind presentations and proposals. We do a little bit of laminating. We do a little bit of other things, but really we focus a lot on binding. We sell the equipment and the supplies for people to be able to bind presentations, proposals, books and training materials. Those are probably the primary things that come out of it. Jeff: We're a niche player in the office products market is one way to think about it. We're an interesting a hybrid of a company because we sell a little bit in B2B, a lot in B2B, a lot in B2C or B2B to C sort of space. Then we also have some really interesting national account sort of business as well. Kind of a little bit of an evolving company, we're a manufacturer and a distributor at the same time. We have lots of different faces which presents some really cool challenges from the standpoint of being in a digital transformation or Ecommerce role. Stephanie: Okay cool. So how long have you been at the company for? Jeff: My story is interesting, actually I'm co founder of a company called My Binding about 17 years ago. Last year we sold to Spiral. I've been with Spiral for just over a year now in this sort of digital transformation role but with My Binding, which was more of a pure play Ecommerce space. We grew and we were the largest sort of binding Ecommerce player in the market. Then all of a sudden we joined forces essentially with Spiral, which was the largest sort of B2B player in the market. Now we're one force together going after the binding and laminating market. Stephanie: Oh, interesting. What was that process like where you had your own company, you guys were selling online and then joining a company that maybe wasn't doing as much of that. What was that process like when it came to incorporating your company into an existing older company? Jeff: There's definitely some upsides. Suddenly you have increased purchasing power, you have more access to talent and capital. Those were amazing things, but the integration side of things is tough. Jeff: I mean, you're trying to merge systems and figure out how everything works together and learn the language of a new company. Some of that stuff is not as easy as it should be, as well as trying to figure out where exactly are they on the landscape of digital transformation and how do you navigate that when... We were pretty much an Ecommerce or digital first organization. That wasn't really their background. Now we're figuring out how do we be both? That's a pretty big challenge actually. Stephanie: Yeah. That sounds really difficult. What does the customer journey look like for Spiral or what did it look like compared to My Binding? Jeff: I guess the best way to think about it would be that in a B2B, B2C sort of Ecommerce experience, we were really building our business around a large number of transactions with a large number of customers, essentially small transactions to a large number of customers. On the more traditional B2B model, the traditional side of the Spiral business would have been around a small number of transactions to really big customers. Which is pretty typical when you look at this idea of traditional B2B and more like an Ecommerce B2B sort of experience. At least a B2B, to C sort of experience. Jeff: That was the really interesting thing is that we were dealing with customers from all over the country that in almost every industry that you can imagine, but most of them were rather small and we are filling specific needs for those customers. That was fine. On the spiral side you were looking and saying, hey, they had deep relationships. Relationships that went back decades, in many cases, with organizations where they were the supplier of choice. They had complex contracts and all those kinds of things. That was never really part of the Ecommerce world. Trying to figure out how do you merge those two together to get the best of both. It's not easy, but it's really fun actually. Stephanie: Yeah. I can imagine it takes a lot of training for their existing customers who are used to those contracts and used to things being done a certain way. How are you maybe going about training the customers who are used to doing things the old way to be like, Hey, we actually can do this online usually. Jeff: Slowly. Stephanie: Any lessons there that someone can take away if they're going through the same thing right now within their org? Jeff: You don't have to do it all at once. Our approach is really to allow customers to interact with us the way they want to interact with us by giving them better options. Really the priorities for this past year have been to try to integrate systems and then upgrade our footprint so that we can allow the company to put its best foot forward. Really starting with the E-comm side and getting everybody on the same platform and then tied into the same systems. Jeff: Now we're actually probably just a couple of months away from launching our brand new B2B E-com experience for the traditional spiral customers. Essentially we have been allowing them to continue to exist and deal with the company in the way that they used to while improving the experience and then bringing the platform up for the entire organization. One of the things about especially B2B commerce is that it gets really complicated as you tie in lots and lots of systems and a lot of interesting rules. Jeff: Customers want to deal with you in the way that they want to deal with you. What we've found is that we have to build specific experiences for our different customer types. That's the approach that we've been taking. I think that's a good approach from the standpoint of, you're not trying to force everybody into the same sort of experience because not everybody wants to deal with it in the same way. As a large organization that sort of deals with these sort of different challenges, we have to answer questions, like, do you display pricing on the front end of your website or is it a login only experience? Jeff: What pricing do you show people or what price pricing do people get and how do you control that and how do you manage that and how do you make sure that that experience is personalized for individuals? Then there's the age old question, which is really challenging in an organization that has multi channels and that is, how do you deal with the channel conflict? Whose customer is that? I guess it depends on who you would ask because everybody thinks that the customer is theirs. Yet ultimately the customer needs to deal with the organization in a way that the customer feels the most comfortable, not in the way that the organization feels most comfortable. Stephanie: Yeah. That makes sense. What kind of legacy or what things did the legacy customers get hung up on the most when you guys are making this transition and trying to show them that a new platform's coming? Is there similar themes of things that they're like, oh, I don't feel comfortable with that, or, I don't want to move because of this? Jeff: I think when it comes to customers, most customers want technology. I mean, they become comfortable. I think that they don't want to lose functionality. That's been probably one of the hardest things is that even if that functionality wasn't the best, they become comfortable with it and they don't really want to lose that. Yes they do want a best in class experience. One of the hard things that we all have to deal with in Ecommerce right now is that the bar has been raised. Jeff: There are people who want more and more features in terms of their online shopping experience. What you find is that you need to be able to roll these things out, but you need to make sure that it doesn't make things harder on those customers, especially long time corporate customers. They are really dependent on these things working smoothly and easily. That's actually one of the hardest challenges in this process has been, okay, well, we've done a lot of cool things for customers over the years. One off, you build a feature on the website just for that one customer. Jeff: Well, trying to then redo that and not lose a substantial amount of functionality for specific customers, especially large customers that you have these really deep relationships with, that's pretty tough. Stephanie: I was actually going to ask that next, when you mentioned that you were personalizing the experience for certain customers to make them feel more comfortable or hearing what they want and trying to incorporate that into the platform, how do you go about picking out what things you should maybe personalize or give to the customer without going down a worm hole of having a personal experience for every customer? Jeff: Ultimately, we're taking an approach of first saying, what's the best in class experience that we could build. What are the things that are going to be the best for all of the customers and then looking and saying, "Hey, can we in our roadmap put in the flexibility to accommodate for these many things that customers have asked for?" Jeff: How could we build this in such a way that we can add that on or this on? I'm not sure that we always nail it just from the standpoint of... It's pretty tough to keep everybody happy. But we're taking the approach of, hey, we can make it substantially better for everybody. It may not be perfect, but it should be a dramatic enough improvement that they'll recognize that we have their best interest in mind. Stephanie: It seems like some of those requests might also fit other customers as well or it might be something where they're like, oh, I actually wanted that and never thought to ask. It could be helpful when it comes to product development on your side, like technology development. Jeff: Yeah, totally. We had a really good team that we used to build out stuff and we're able to iterate fairly quickly. That's the good news because sometimes we miss something and so... But as long as you can respond fairly quickly to a customer's need, it gives you an opportunity to serve them better and to communicate. But the other really important part of this is really getting the account managers and your sales people involved in this process so you get some really good feedback because one of the challenges that we face at least is that sometimes as the E-com department and on the technology side, you don't always get raw feedback. Jeff: Maybe the stuff you're hearing is from the people who are yelling the loudest, not necessarily from the people who are trying to help you. You're not necessarily hearing about the features that are going to make the biggest difference for most number of users. Stephanie: That makes sense. With this whole re-platforming and new tech stack that you're going to be launching what pieces of tech are you most excited about showing to the customer or bringing online that maybe wasn't there before? Jeff: For us it's really about an enhanced user experience. We kind of been a little bit on the old school side on the traditional B2B piece of it. This gives us the ability to provide a really much better experience end to end in terms of transacting with us. Some of the things that we're aiming for, that are harder than I was thinking they would be, would be real time freight quoting. When you're a B2B company and you've got a distribution network across the country, and you're trying to figure out how much that pallet is going to cost to go to this customer. You think, hey that should be super easy. That's like in the Ecommerce world, until you start to realize, well, it's really important that you get that right. You have to first know where all that's going to ship from. Jeff: One of the biggest things is a really deep integration with our ERP so we can understand where the inventory resides and then how much it weighs and the sizes and all those kinds of things so that we can do that on the fly. Because right now we do an add back type thing. We'll tell you what the freight is later. Customers don't like that. Especially not in the Ecommerce world. Getting that upfront, same with sales tax calculation. Right now, a lot of that's done on the backend and people want to know upfront. That means building a system that has management for resale certificates and all of those pieces. Jeff: I need to understand where are you exempted, where you not exempted and what are you exempt from and all of those kinds of things so that I can quote you and tell you what the sales tax is going to be upfront before you place your order. That's another piece of it that we're excited about. Requisition list is another one where people will have their own custom price list in the system where they can quickly order. We're building a system where they can upload an Excel file with all of their items that they want so they can do quick ordering and quick reordering. Jeff: I guess those would be a few of the systems. Like a quote management system to allow people to request pricing on items and then for us to respond to them live and track that inside of our system is another one that we're building. Those are all areas where we're saying, hey, this could really enhance the user's journey and make it a lot easier for them to do business with us. Stephanie: That's great. Yeah that sounds like some great changes. Have you had any customers trying out the platform as beta testers and have you seen any difference when it comes to average order value or anything? Jeff: We're not quite there yet. We finished design and we're in the midst of development at the moment. I would say that that's going to be one of those steps prior to launch. Will be first to have sort of sales associates and account managers jump into the platform and test it for themselves and then to really get especially key customers in the system testing, and then also giving us feedback. What do they love? What did they not like and how can we make it better for them? That's on the roadmap before launch to be able to say, "Hey is this better for you?" It's funny because on a traditional B2C Ecommerce launch, you'd be focusing so much on the front end. Jeff: Like, the My Account pages are taking just as much time for this site because that's where our customers are living. They want to use the search, but they really want to use the my account pages. They know what they want, and they need to be able to quickly reorder it. They need to be able to see their orders. They need to be able to have the ability to upload those requisition lists. It's a little bit of a twist but getting them, especially into those my account pages so that they can spend some serious time understanding their accounts and telling us what they like or what they don't like is going to be really important for the launch process. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really interesting about focusing on my account page and how much time they're spending there. I'm sure that things like product suggestions or also bots might be very important on that page to help showcase items that maybe they wouldn't otherwise buy when they're just quickly uploading something or just reordering. Are you guys experimenting with some of the suggestion features? Jeff: Most definitely. Yeah. That's part of the vision is to try to figure out and say, okay, we have these deep relationships with customers and they buy specific sets of products. How can we expand to purchasing a product set? How do we get them and introduce them to complimentary products and show them the right pricing and the right place so that they can say, "Hey, I should totally add that on." That's something that I should consider. It's an interesting challenge for us because we have different personas or groups of people that we're dealing with. Jeff: On one hand we're dealing with dealers and they're really reselling product. You're trying to show them maybe categories of product, where do they need to expand because they're buying for specific purposes. Then you have end users and those end users you might want to show them a different size or a different color. We're experimenting with what the best algorithm is that we can use to show them the right products and then also in the right places too. Stephanie: That's great. What tests are you most excited about that you're pitching to everyone right now and some people maybe aren't sure about? Jeff: I'm actually most excited right now about the lead gen side of our business. Stephanie: Tell me more about that. Jeff: When you start to think about what the power of Ecommerce is for a B2B organization. Ecommerce can really become the engine that powers the acquisition efforts of a company. Especially because we can get in front of hundreds of thousands of customers a month, whereas the traditional B2B sales force might only touch hundreds of customers per month. Maybe thousands, but definitely not hundreds of thousands. Jeff: The idea of... What does it take for us to build a really cool robust system to not only bring these leads in but then to try to figure out how do I score these leads and then not only take them and turn them into an immediate sale, but to determine which ones of these really can be turned into those more traditional B2B accounts that we have these deep relationships with that are going to buy from us for years to come, many tens of thousands of dollars, right? Jeff: The really exciting part to me is looking at it and saying, okay we are on the Ecommerce side, on the B2B2C Ecommerce piece of it. We almost have too many leads. We get so much traffic that comes in. So then how do you figure out, take all those leads and build a really robust system where you can make sure that they're getting exactly what they need, and you're closing as many sales as you can, but then how do you figure out a way to pass those accounts up, the right accounts to the right people so that you can build them into a much larger long term sustainable program. Jeff: For us, that means building a really cool inbound sales team that makes sure that we take care of those leads and that we foster them and do all the things that we need to do, but then building an outbound sales team as well that's going to go in and then say, "Hey, let's take these leads and take them to the next level." Then also figuring out a system for passing accounts up and down inside of the organization. You really want to be able to pass a lead up or a customer up that has substantial potential to be either a national account or what we'll call an enterprise level account. Jeff: But you also want the reciprocity of getting those accounts back or the smaller accounts back from the team. I will say that no one wants to give up that account. That's a big challenge inside of an organization when you're trying to say, "Hey, I'll give you some, you give me some." The way usually ends up being is someone... Everyone wants to receive, no one wants to give. But the system only really works if you can give the best to the... But then also that you can receive quality back. For instance, handing back to the E-com team, only the accounts that don't do any business, isn't really a win. Jeff: You really want your enterprise salespeople focused on enterprise level accounts. We're having to sort of wrestle through what does that look like in terms of structure. I don't know that we really have it all figured out yet, but it's a cool idea. Stephanie: I'm guessing there's a way to automate that and create rules. So it, like you said, can go up or down depending on certain criteria from when they're coming in. How are you all thinking about automating that process? So it's maybe less of a salespeople having to give and take and whatnot, and more like, Oh, this is automatically routed to you based on these metrics. Jeff: That's exactly what we're doing. We're exploring machine learning and big data to try to figure out a really good way of scoring customers because using that scoring, you can figure out how to pass customers up. Then a set of rules as well that says if these customers aren't of a certain size or if they have this kind of profile, they really belong in this group. But it's an interesting challenge from trying to figure out where do you get all this data from, and then how do you process it? We're exploring different options right now in terms of what that might look like and how we can best approach that without spending a ton of money before we bet that it actually works. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really cool. So outside of the prospect giving that information, what kind of things are you looking into right now to find the information to help with that scoring process? Jeff: It's actually challenging. You have certain pieces of information that are given to you which you have usually a name and an address. Their email address usually has a domain associated with it, especially in B2B. So you can pull a lot of information from that and you can start to sort your domain, your customers by domain. But really we're looking and saying, okay, well we do know the purchase history. The idea then is, okay, if you were to sort all your customers out, you can sort them on a scale of, let's say a one, two, three. You can say my best customers spend the most money with me. My worst customers spend the least amount of money with me, but that really misses part of the point. Jeff: You almost need to add a second access to this, which is really about customer potential. When it comes to customer potential, we're looking at the idea of what would it take for us to add some big data to this? To understand the size of their company and the profile of the company that they come from, or the industry that they come from as well, because the industry can be really important to us. But then the other side of it is also looking at what they purchased. Like for instance, people who purchase specific equipment or supplies, they're going to have a much higher lifetime value with us because those are proprietary or have maybe a really good pull through rate. Jeff: For instance, it may not be that it's a proprietary supply, but when you buy that machine, you have to go through a lot of supplies to make it worthwhile. You look at the data and you say, okay, that customer has a huge amount of potential. Not because of the amount that they bought from us, but because of what they bought or who they are, the company that they work for or their position. We're looking at the possibility of maybe even extending that into some of the databases out there that help you understand whether people are in market and what their roles are as well. Jeff: Because when you're dealing with B2B, you're not really selling all the time to the company, you're selling to a person inside of the company and that person has a role. You have to figure out, okay, well what role do they play in this picture? That helps us to sort them into personas. If you're dealing with a really small number of accounts, you can figure this out, but we have to automate it because it's not really feasible to do that in a one off basis. Stephanie: Yeah, definitely seems like you're going to need a whole entire data or business operations team who can build those rules out for you and have dashboards. That seems like a big project, but well worth it. Earlier, you mentioned that you guys have more traffic than you know what to do with and lots of leads coming in. Of course my first question is how are you getting this traffic? How are you acquiring potential customers? Jeff: Sure. I mean... We're in a niche industry, right? So that's part of it. We've been around for a really long time. Because of that, at least... Spiral has been around 80 years, My Binding for almost 20 on the web. As you start to look at that, we created a massive amount of content. Thousands of videos and pages. We really have in a lot of ways, the best websites in our sort of space and industry. Because of that, people are finding us to solve problems. What you find is that we built out these websites and either through SEO or through paid search we're driving a ton of traffic to the websites because they convert and that makes a ton of sense. Jeff: We're essentially... We have all of this content and it's really designed around this idea of how do we solve these problems for customers? We can drive more and more of that content. The website deals with a certain number of those sort of leads and converts on its own. The challenge for us tends to be, what do you do with the people that are maybe a little higher in the funnel? You're now talking about making sure they have a really awesome call center that is going to be able to answer those questions. Live chat is really big. We've extended our live chat hours all the way to midnight which is unheard of in the B2B space. Jeff: I want somebody there to talk to somebody if they have questions about products. Especially really big products. We're experimenting with the idea of doing triggers for live chat. We did that and that was really successful for us. We turned on the trigger and said, with the idea of if I walk into a store, somebody says, "Hey, how can I help you?" We did that on the Ecommerce site and we had massive numbers of people that were engaging with us. But the surprise to us was that many of those people were actually much higher in the funnel than we were used to dealing with. Jeff: In other words, they were now engaging with us and they weren't ready to buy. They were in the research space and they had lots of questions. Which is really cool but it just changes the model a little bit and you all of a sudden have to figure out how do I step up for that? How do I make sure that I have the right person to answer those questions? That's part of it. Driving the leads really comes to how do you acquire traffic on scale? Really good high quality traffic for the site. Then the question is, well, what can you do with it? Driving the traffic is really exciting from a standpoint of it doesn't have to be done in one way but you have to be maybe a little bit creative to do it because you really are trying to get in front of people that have problems rather than... Jeff: At least in our space, you don't come to a binding website unless you have a problem that the binding website can solve. It's not exactly an impulse purchase. You're going to show up and you're not going to just browse around. I wonder what kind of binding machines they carry. You probably are on a mission to solve some sort of problem. Right. Whether that's like your bosses told you that you need to buy a binding machine or you need to upgrade the way that your reports or presentations are going to look, or you have a deadline of Friday and you need to get these reports out for the annual meeting. Jeff: These are all sort of really common sort of scenarios and so then the question is, will this product work for my specific needs? That's a question that our customers are constantly asking. Building to that has been a really great sort of acquisition model for us to build around the idea that every customer that comes to us comes to us with a problem that we can solve for them, and then figuring out how do you work backwards to that? What problems could we solve? Then as you start to get creative with that and build massive amounts of content, that content lives out there forever. That's been really a big part of our success, is really the longevity but also the content generation sort of machine that we've built over the years. Stephanie: How has your content... What is the style now today? Is it only educational? Is it humorous and how has it evolved over time? Jeff: We've tried a lot of things over the years. We've tried to be funny. I think we think we're funny sometimes. We've tried a bunch of different things. We've tried to be really educational. It was really hard to figure out the ROI of that. What we've really... If you were to look at our content, we do a lot of content that is really close to the bottom of the funnel, but that would be really helpful. We go with that sort of helpful thing as well as deep. So the idea of building out a really robust and large set of content over the years about products. Jeff: We spend a lot of time making sure that we have all of the details about the product, even to the point where our competitors come to our sites to look up products because they don't have as good of information as we do. That's one piece of the content side of things for us. We have a lot of how to videos. We did a bunch of experimenting around the videos. We found that the videos that people really cared about would basically answer a couple of quick questions. But mostly it was, will this product work for me? How does this thing work? Jeff: We made a whole series of those videos, almost five thousand of them that are really around the idea of how does this product work and a quick demonstration essentially. Usually around a minute long that takes the product out of the box, show someone how to use it. Those really work well for us because they show a customer generally what are they looking for. A lot of customers they want to see what it looks like or they have a machine already and they want to say, "Is that's the thing that works with my machine.? They don't understand our language. Those videos have worked really well for us as well. Stephanie: That's great. Are there any surprising pieces of content that you didn't think would work that did, or surprising sources of customer acquisition that you wouldn't have looked into before? Jeff: We've had a few blog articles that have found traction in the world and the web that I wasn't really anticipating. We've written a lot of content over the years. Most of the blog articles get a little bit of traffic. They're like evergreen content, little bit of traffic over a long period of time. But occasionally we'll end up with one like... Something about how to laminate without a laminator. Stephanie: That's a good one. Jeff: Amazingly, there's a lot of people that look up that and I was shocked. It consistently drives more traffic than almost any other blog article for us. Which is odd. I'm not sure it drives a ton of business because they don't want to buy a laminator, but if you think about it, there's a whole segment of people that have maybe problems that we don't traditionally associate with our business. That would be one thing and then the other piece would be the language piece. Jeff: It's always surprising when I discover that the language that we use internally for our business doesn't match the language of the customer. An example would be we talk about binding covers all the time because we're in the world of binding. A lot of people they just talk about card stock. In the paper world, the card stock doesn't even exist. It's not a thing. People will talk about it. It's cover weight paper. Index weight paper. Card stock is like this sort of crafting term. Yet it's sort of taken on a vocabulary of its own in the world. Jeff: When people search for binding covers, often they'll use that word. That's always surprising to me as well. There's a whole list of those things where people basically they choose to use their own words to describe things. Now you're trying to figure out how do I technically be accurate about this product but really use their language? Because if you don't use their language, then you're not going to show up in search for this stuff and they're not going to feel comfortable with it. Stephanie: That's a really good reminder, especially with generational shifts that the new consumer might be using completely different language than what you're used to. How are you exploring what that language might be? I mean, especially a company that has been around since the thirties, how are they figuring out, oh, this is what they call it now, this is what the kids are saying these days? Jeff: Probably the easiest thing for us is to look through our search results and especially the no results found once because often it's those things. When people are typing in stuff in the search bar and nothing's popping up. You look at that and you're like oh... A smart merchandiser, someone who understands your products really well, they start to make those connections and they're like, oh, wait a second. That's what they mean. Obviously a lot of that like spelling mistakes and things like that. You can fix those in your search engine but when you start to look at it, you start to see sometimes patterns. That's one of the easiest ones. Jeff: The other two that are really helpful for us would be Google autosuggest. Just start typing things in Google and then figure out what Google thinks that you should add to the end of it. All of a sudden you realize, okay, maybe people are searching for maybe a slightly different side of things than we thought they were. Then the other one would be Amazon. Amazon, their product terms are awful. Yet they sell so much. Why? Because they tie into language. They have usually products that have all these different words in the titles that you would never imagine. Jeff: As you start to look at products that are really successful on the marketplaces, you can start to realize, okay, well maybe they're onto something there. They've managed to call out even the most important attributes of that product in a very search centric sort of model or they have really been able to hone in on maybe key words that we weren't thinking of when we've been building this out. Especially because often you start with whatever... A point of reference would be the manufacturer's title. It becomes quite difficult sometimes to sort of detach from that, but Amazon detaches automatically because they let people come up with their own titles for stuff. Jeff: Usually it's the sort of ecosystem that will change the title to try to optimize. Sometimes when you find really successful products that you're realizing, Oh, maybe people do care about that. Stephanie: I love that. That's really good tips to remember about, finding those keywords and how to discover them because yeah, I think even longterm key words would probably be really good for your industry. I'm thinking, how would I Google something like that? I would probably be like how to create a hard cover book for my presentation or something really long winded like that. It's a really good reminder about the keywords importance. Jeff: Then obviously you have your paid search stuff too. You can look and see in your paid search accounts, you can say, okay, what keywords are actually driving? If it was a broad or a modified broad match keyword, you're going to start to dig in and you can say, oh, it actually matched on this keyword and it drove a sale. Again, driving back and saying, okay, what am I driving sales on? It tends to be a really good place to start discovery as well. The only thing, the problem with that is that you might be so far off that you're missing the boat completely. That's where it takes a really good merchandisers to sort of nail that stuff down. Stephanie: I also think it was interesting earlier when you were talking about how to laminate without a laminator and thinking about selling something through saying, oh yeah, you don't need to buy through us. Here's how you do it because I'm sure a lot of people, like you said, are searching for stuff like that or how to fax without a fax machine. I know I've searched that quite a bit, but making fun of it and you might actually be able to convert someone who's like, Oh, I actually just do need a laminator to do this, but having a humorous video around that. Jeff: Yeah. As well as maybe they decide that they want to buy some cold laminating pouches. The idea is, if you can be really helpful in the long term, going back to that idea of video. We've done a lot of videos over the years. We understand that many, many, many times people use our videos post-purchase not pre-purchase. People are going to the video to figure out how does this thing that I already bought work. Well, that doesn't really help us but it does help us in the long term. Jeff: As you look at it and say, it's not going to win us the sale today, but it will win us brand awareness. It does potentially when you do supply sales. Because we're a very supply driven sort of space. If you think about it, if you buy a binding machine, you got to buy some supplies for it. Longterm, we want to have an awareness and be in front of customers so they understand who we are when it comes time to buy the supplies that they need. Stephanie: Just like you said, it's really important to continue to stay in front of that customer so they come to you to buy supplies and remember you guys. How do you go about doing that and keeping a customer retained? Because it seems like it would be easier with these legacy customers who are maybe in these year or three year long contracts. Now when you're moving towards Ecommerce and they can hop around really quickly, it seems like you wouldn't be able to retain customers as easily. So how do you go about staying in front of them? Jeff: I mean, there's a lot to that, the question. To give you maybe a general overview of our thoughts is a big part of our business and something that's really important to us. Especially on the E-com side of things, it really starts with delivering a really awesome experience upfront. So you need to be able to help them find what they need and then deliver it to them in a really reasonable timeframe or meet their deadline. All that kind of stuff. To have the product in stock and all of those kinds of pieces. That's actually harder said than done when you deal with a really large niche category. Jeff: That's the beginning piece of it. Once you've given them that positive experience, or if they've had a negative experience, you use your customer service to basically earn a customer for life. That's actually the motto of our customer service group. Earn a customer for life. As you look at this idea, you say, okay, well, we now have a shot at their business longterm. Now the challenge for us is, okay, what's the best way to reach them? The easiest way is email. We have a ton of automation in our emails. We send emails based upon what you've purchased with replenishment. We send life cycle campaigns based upon... Welcome to the store anniversaries campaigns, and then also best customer campaigns, win back campaigns and reactivation campaigns. Jeff: We have all these automations that go out. They're really helpful. We also have sales that go out on a weekly basis that keep people engaged and keep things front of mind for them. You combine all of that on the email side, but then you recognize that that maybe only gets you half the customers. The question becomes... Because there's a bunch that are opted out in the B2B space, it's really hard on deliverability to get into the inbox. More and more people are using advanced filtering programs to prevent spam from getting through to their employees. Jeff: As you look at that, you say, okay, well, email only takes you so far. So then what do you do? The real question is, back to that conversation we had earlier about lead scoring, how do you determine your best customers or your best potential customers and make sure that you get somebody to call them? To send them a personal email which are easier to get into their inbox or to find another way of touching them. For us right now, the two other ways of touching them that we're sort of exploring, one would be SMS and then another would be direct mail. We're kind of in the process of exploring a test on SMS. Jeff: I'm not too sure how we feel about it, honestly. We have to figure out how our customers feel about it, just from the standpoint of as you look at customers giving their personal cell phones for business purchases and getting text messages. But you think about it, that's a great way to get in front of people and stay in front of them as long as you're going to be super, highly relevant. Then the other piece of it that we do a little bit of would be on that retargeting side of things. If you don't know who that customer is exactly, or don't have their ability to email them, you can at least sort of [inaudible] do it, make sure you're sending or placing ads more frequently into their feeds on different platforms through retargeting. Stephanie: That makes sense. It seems from, especially in SMS perspective, it seems like the only angle you can go about is being helpful. Like oh, you probably are running out of supplies, order now. I don't know, you can get a discount or something. It seems like there's not too many ways for B2B companies to use texting without the customer being like, "Oh, I don't want to be thinking about work right now." Unless it's a trigger for them to be like, "Oh, I need to reorder this or else we're not going to have it on the day." Is that true or are you seeing other avenues? Jeff: Well, the first step would be to be helpful with order cycle. For instance, think about what Amazon has done with allowing you to get a text when the item is delivered. Which is a big problem for a bunch of our customers, especially in pandemic, but even outside of that. It might be delivered to a central desk or to the shipping and receiving area of their company like an alert. Alerts are a pretty good option for us to sort of get our toe in the water a little bit and to stay active. Then yes, something that's personalized. Jeff: Then also, what we're struggling with is what is the best time of day to do this? Probably don't want to send it to them in the middle of their evening. They're disconnected from work, but you also need to make sure that... It's got to be time adjusted for the time that they're in and they also really needs to be followed in their workday probably. Those are some of the things that we're sort of figuring out and testing right now and saying how is this going? Then what's also the most appropriate way to collect where people don't sort of get freaked out. Because it's one of those things, do you want to get text messages from your binding company? I don't know. You got to ask it in an appropriate way. Stephanie: Yeah. That's a really good reminder. All right. We have a couple minutes left and I want to jump into a quick lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Jeff, are you ready? Jeff: Okay. I'm ready. Stephanie: I'm going to start with the hard one first for you because I feel like you're in a game right now. I got to keep it going. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Jeff: Well, I think obviously it's COVID. It's pushing people online in completely new ways. It's shifting customer expectations around a whole bunch of different things. It's ruined the Amazon two day expectation, which I don't mind, but it's also shifted the way that people shop, where they're shopping, how they're shopping, and even their mentality. I don't know that we even really totally understand how it's affected everybody yet because everybody's still sort of in this scrambling mode. But ultimately I think as this shakes out, it's going to change the landscape of how we market, but it's also going to change the landscape of how our customers interact with us. Stephanie: I like that. What one piece of advice would you give a new Ecommerce entrepreneur? Jeff: I would probably say stick with solving the customer's problems. I know that tends to be a B2B thing, but it's not really a B2B thing. If you think about it, I need the right sweater for me. Really be customer centric. That becomes really cliche and that's why I go to the idea of solving a problem. You got to think about what sort of value proposition are you offering to this customer that's unique, that is going to allow them to accomplish something that they wanted to accomplish when they came to your site. Jeff: I think by focusing and being really focused on the customer problem, I think you can build out really awesome experiences, and then that deep understanding of your customer will take you really far. Stephanie: That's a good one. What is your favorite day in the office? I'm trying to imagine what a binding company feels like. What's your favorite day in the office feel like? Jeff: I mean, most of my days are pretty full of meetings. A day without meetings would be an awesome day in the office. Stephanie: That's a lot of people. Jeff: I think so. In the world of the binding company, a day in the office doesn't look all that much different than a day in a normal office. It might be a little bit like an episode of the office. Stephanie: That's what I had in my mind honestly. Jeff: Yeah. It's like paper company. There is a little bit of aspects of that, but I mean, we're just like any other company. We're a retailer, we're a distributor. We deal with customers all day long. I would say the other thing, the best day in the office is the day that you have customers that love you and that are just heaping praises, especially on the customer service people and your salespeople. When you have customers who are just singing your praises, those are great days. Stephanie: Yep. That's awesome. I'm glad you mentioned the office and I didn't have to. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be? Jeff: That's a tough one. If I were to have a podcast. I am super passionate about entrepreneurship. I'd probably do an entrepreneurship sort of a podcast about starting a business, growing a business, and the creativity that goes around that. If I could get anybody on the show, I would probably pick an entrepreneur. Maybe I pick the person from lemonade stand or one of those organizations that's really making a big impact on starting up entrepreneurs with kids. That's something that I really love. Stephanie: Yep. I like that. Brings back the memories of my parents make me [inaudible] my neighbor's yard for 25 cents which is well below market. Jeff: I think you could make at least 50 cents for that now. Stephanie: I think so too. All right Jeff, this was very interesting, such a good conversation. So many good tid bits that people can actually use from this interview. Where can people find out more about you and Spiral? Jeff: Sure. You can definitely visit one of our websites. We've got SpiralBinding.com. We have MyBinding.com and Binding101.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. Shoot me a message and ask me to connect and I'd love to meet you. Stephanie: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining Jeff. Jeff: You're welcome. Thank you.

SUMMARY: Jeff Walters joins Steve for EP83 of the DYB Podcast and discusses his life's story of drug addiction to being a successful painting contractor. Jeff became the man of the house at a young age, which put pressure on him, though he had a very encouraging mom. He began playing in a band at the young age of 11 and worked hard --whether working hard for drugs or as he now does, to help give others a second chance. Not only does he have a wonderful, thriving business, but Jeff strives to give felons a second chance as he hires them and helps them to work hard to overcome their previous life choices to be successful, clean, and sober. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: How Jeff started out in a band at a young age and painted on the side to make money What the catalyst was that helped Jeff out of drugs and into being a successful businessman The hope Jeff offers to other convicted felons--helping them see beyond their past and work hard for their futures. The interesting start the 12 step program gave Jeff for his painting company and the encouragement he has for hiring today QUOTES: 1:34 Steve: "How did you get started in this crazy business?" Jeff: "Well, the funny part about it was, whenever I couldn't find anything else to do, I could always find something you paint. And this goes clear back from, in my teens, at that point I'm supposed to be an entertainer. So, I mean, I never thought of the painting business as a career. It was just a way to always make some quick, easy money." 3:04 Steve: "So you started playing music very young and then you figured, 'All right, well, I've got to actually generate some income.' How old were you?" Jeff: "17, 18. It was just kind of a side thing, when I was playing five nights a week and I did the holiday circuit and we had a band that traveled about five States. We did college one nighters for a few years, so I started pretty young. One of the neat things that there is, as I see some of the new young guys come in, now they're all 'gung ho' about starting the business and stuff. That wasn't how it was for me. I wasn't looking at it as a business at all, it was just a way to make decent money relatively quickly, but I didn't really look at it when I started, as that being a business or career." 3:52 "It was basically me and my mom growing up. So I didn't meet my dad until I was in my thirties. So it was me and my mom growing up and I was kind of the man of the house, but with that came a lot of, a lot of pressure. Mom was always supportive of everything that I did, but I turned to drugs, really, at a pretty young age and battled with some addiction issues for a huge chunk of my life. I'm thankful that I don't have to live that way today. I've been clean since, October the 6th of 2001. And it's something that I work on, really, every day." 5:29 Steve: "So you started off in new construction." Jeff: "I did. Yeah. Like most of us, right? Easy leads. Just usually no profit, unfortunately. But at that point, I wasn't looking at any of that. We're just trying to get some money to continue the lifestyle." 7:32 Jeff: "One of those things, Steve, where birds of a feather flock together, you know?" Steve: "Oh yeah. It's so true. That's one of my favorite quotes. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with-- Jim Rohn." 9:43 "When I got clean, that was almost a full time job for me -- just to try to find a whole new way to live and not associate with the people that you...that's why I took the halfway house for awhile. Cause that way, at least, I had someplace safe to go. I didn't have any money, I didn't have anything. So, finding a job sounded like the logical answer, except nobody would hire me. I'm a convicted felon at that point, I'm at a halfway house. I wasn't having very good luck finding a job. So I start up the business." 10:26 "Of course, at first...I didn't have any kind of advertising or anything else. As I would go to these 12 step meetings, I would tell them, say, "Hey, here's the thing. I just got out of treatment. Anybody has anything to paint, I'd like to do it." And at that point, I was just trying to keep the phone on." 11:29 Jeff: "An old timer once told me, "Look, all you need to do is stay clean till your next meeting." So that's how come I was attending three or four a day because I wasn't sure if I could make it til tomorrow, but I could make it to my next meeting. Then the days started turning into weeks and the weeks into months and then years. And here we are today." Steve: "These referrals from the meeting, they had a vested interest. They wanted 1) to support you, because it's like a brotherhood. And then 2) they were kind of there as accountability, too, after they pay you. They're like, "So Jeff, you're going to use this to pay bills and buy equipment, right?" Jeff: "Exactly...a whole new set of birds to flock together." 16:50 "I would way rather have some really good people that don't know how to paint. I can teach them how to paint. (Verses) somebody that comes in and says, "Oh, I got 27 years worth of experience." I'm like, "Yeah, I got 27 years worth of bad habits to break."  Steve: "Isn't that the truth!" 18:23 Steve: "Now, for our listeners who are not DYB Members, yet, you mentioned Monday. I just want to pack that a little bit. So, Monday is the new production management & admin management program that we have rolled out. And what Jeff's referring to is, we (in our 1-1 Coaching Meetings) built out an All Star Team CRM now, so that it's created its own application form. And so, then when he posts that link with his hiring ad, everybody drops into that form and it makes the process streamlined. Plus he's building his list, right, Jeff?" Jeff: "Right. Correct. And , the nice thing about doing that is now, they can fill out the app off of a cell phone. Before, I used to have him come in, fill out an application... I wanted to see if they could read and write and follow instructions, you know, and a lot of them couldn't do at least parts of those. But now, we've tried really hard to streamline a bunch of those processes and we see the benefits of doing that." 24:01 "I just wanted to, let some of the people know that there's some really good people there (felons) that really want to work hard and just want to do, want to change their lives and given the opportunity, some of them do that. We've had some really wonderful success stories over the years. And that's part of why, why I still do this. You know, God is good. He's given me some tools here where I can make a difference in some people's lives. So for me, I'm at an age where the money is important and I live comfortably, but that's not really the big motivator for me. So if anybody has any questions on that ever, they can sure contact me."   HIGHLIGHTS 0:18 Jeff meets his wife, who mistakes his employee, Johnny, for the owner as Jasmine thinks, "If Walters Painting will hire, Jeff, then maybe they will hire me." Little did they know, they'd get married a few years later! 01:45 Jeff starts playing in a band at a very young age and gets into the drug and alcohol scene. He then paints on the side to make quick cash for his lifestyle. 05:29 Jeff starts off painting in new construction for the easy leads. In 1988, Jeff is busted on drug charges and taken to prison. In 1991, is when he really started a painting business. 08:10 Jeff goes back to prison from 1995-1998, but he does work for the Department of Corrections eventually, painting about every correctional facility there was in Nebraska. 09:43 At a half-way house, Jeff tried to find employment, but as a convicted felon, no one would hire him. Jeff decides to start up his painting business. 10:26 Jeff begins asking for painting work at his 12 step meetings and landing work. 16:29 Jeff shares how he took his company culture to the next level, working with convicted felons and then having them all read business books together and discuss. 18:23 Jeff talks about how he has streamlined his business. 24:01 Jeff talks about his key motivator for business in giving hope to those who need a second chance.   LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Receipt Bank QuickBooks Online Monday: Project, Hiring, and Admin Management QBQ (The Question Behind the Question) Dave's Killer Bread ADDITIONAL FREE RESOURCES: Jim Rohn   Jeff Walters Facebook   Schedule Your Free Strategy Call With Steve Burnett   Thank you very much for joining us today! If you received value, would you take a quick few seconds and leave us a review on iTunes, please?   Press and hold to visit the page: Show Notes Page

Jeff Jordan is President and Executive Creative Director of Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Rescue offers a broad range of marketing services for government agencies (public health departments, state and federal agencies) and non-profits seeking to promote positive changes in public health related behaviors.  Jeff started his agency when, as a high school student, he volunteered for his local health department's youth-targeted anti-tobacco program. He transitioned from volunteer to contractor, tweaked the anti-tobacco program to approach teens in an innovative way, and grew the agency through “a lot of referrals.” He opened his first office while he was in college and continued his focus on behavioral change for social good.  In this interview, Jeff tells us that marketing tactics that are used to sell products don't necessarily work in changing “fundamental behavior.” His team has to be expert, not just in marketing, but also in behavior change theory, psychology, and sociology . . . and know how to appeal to different subsets within targeted cohort groups. Jeff says that it can take years for a consistent message to bring measurable change, and although there is nothing equivalent to “sales data” to gauge message impact in “real time,” he has found there are some measurable interim “markers” on the path to behavior change. Tracking and measuring specific behavior-related attitudes or beliefs or pieces of knowledge over time can predict subsequent behavior changes. About 7 years ago, Rescue won a $150 million FDA youth tobacco prevention contract. These funds allowed the agency to increase in size from 50 to 150 employees in 3 years. Today, Rescue's 175 employees work out of 6 offices around the country. They serve government agencies and nonprofits in 30 states. Rescue creates programs for these organizations, but also has a library of campaigns that can be licensed. Over the years, Jeff has learned to say “no” to opportunities that are not right for his agency. Budgets that are too small can limit a campaign's success . . . . and blame for poor results will invariably fall on the agency . . . not on the tight budget. The smaller a client is, the more they tend to demand. Jeff has observed that agencies end up over-servicing smaller accounts to keep them, tie up senior personnel in servicing these smaller clients, and underservice their larger accounts. Jeff warns that really small accounts can hold an agency down. Jeff applauds the move away from condemning people who choose unhealthy behaviors and the increasingly broad awareness of underlying lifestyle situations that contribute to these behaviors. Jeff's agency attracts employees who want to do something good in their careers. He describes the agency as “responsibly rebellious,” and explains that is manifested in the way the agency encourages clients to take risks in a responsible way. Jeff can be reached on his company's website at: Rescueagency.com. The agency runs what Jeff describes as a “pretty robust YouTube Channel” at: youtube.com/rescueagency. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Jeff Jordan. He's the President and Executive Creative Director at Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff. JEFF: Thanks so much, Rob. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you kick us off by telling us – it's right there in the title, a little bit – Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. But tell us a little bit about Rescue and where you excel. JEFF: We are a public health behavior change-focused agency. What that means is that we exclusively work for campaigns that strive to change health behaviors for social good. Almost all of our clients are public health departments, state and federal agencies. When we say behavior change, we refer to actually changing a fundamental behavior that a person is performing. So rather than changing what we would describe as a brand preference of someone who drives one car, changing them to drive a different brand of car, we're looking to change that fundamental behavior of actually driving the car and converting them to ride a bicycle instead. Or in other health arenas, things like quitting smoking or eating healthier, etc. ROB: Perfect. Is that something you've actually engaged in? Encouraging people to ride a bike instead of driving a car? JEFF: Not that one. [laughs] But it's an example people tend to understand. ROB: What are some examples, digging a little deeper, of campaigns? You mentioned smoking cessation. There's probably some other interesting things you've worked on. What are some examples? JEFF: We work from simple behaviors like quitting smoking or not using drugs or not vaping and things like that to more complex behaviors like healthy eating, where we're actually promoting specific types of foods, specific changes to what they eat, as well as mental health behaviors that are even more complicated – trying to get people to reduce stigma and recognize when to seek help, when to do something about the feelings they're having, and whatnot. ROB: Very interesting. You mentioned brand preference; in some cases, I think people think of brand preference as being kind of pliable. Maybe it is just as difficult to change as some health behaviors. How do you think about, or how do your clients even think about, measuring these behaviors over the long term? I imagine the feedback loop on one of your campaigns might be rather long in some cases, given the research required to gather those results. Or maybe there's something unexpected I'm not thinking of. JEFF: You're absolutely right. Behavior change, we usually say you need a couple years at least of consistent campaigning to really see a measurable change. Unfortunately, we don't have sales data to look at to see what's happening in real time, so we rely on self-reported surveys and things like that that either our clients perform or that we help them perform to see what people are saying about the behavior. You do have some interim steps that you can measure on the path to behavior change. Whatever your underlying theory is of what you think is changing in order to change the behavior, such as specific attitudes or beliefs or pieces of knowledge about a behavior, you can measure those, and then those can be pretty predictive of a behavior change later down the line. ROB: One benefit it seems like you might have in your industry – is the behavior change industry perhaps a little bit more open about what works and what doesn't than maybe some particular vertical market, like marketing soda or something? JEFF: I think it's a double-edged sword there. It's more open in the sense that you can survive on theory for a longer period of time. In the commercial world, you can have a great theory, but if it doesn't turn around sales in a quarter, you're kind of out of luck there. In public health, you can survive on theory for a few years. So that does allow you to explore more options. But that also allows bad work to remain for a long time. We see that there's a lot of mistakes and common pitfalls that clients fall into, usually when they work with traditional agencies, that just happen over and over again because it works to sell a product, but it doesn't work to change a fundamental behavior. ROB: What about openness in terms of tactics? In some cases you have organizations like the UK's famous – I may be misattributing it, but their Nudge Unit there. You have probably published research in some cases around behavioral change. How much of your work is synthesizing and adapting those things to a community and to availability of resources versus cooking up something completely out-of-the-box and new? JEFF: There's a lot of theory and approaches already within public health behavior change. I think the UK is interesting in that they tend to have movements that occur there within behavior change. 10-15 years ago, they were really social marketing, and then it switched to Nudge, and they seem to all move a little bit more cohesively, maybe because it's a smaller country. Here in the U.S., we don't see as much cohesiveness in the approaches. The latest and greatest CDC strategy or FDA strategy, those do have a big influence on the work, but a lot of states are making decisions for themselves and applying the theories and approaches that they're comfortable with – everything from states that might still be using hardcore scare tactics like the '90s in their drug prevention work, all the way to other states that are more open-minded in realizing things like adverse childhood experiences influence how people make decisions about risk behaviors later in life. That's something that the state of California is really looking at. You have a really wide range of approaches and comfort level with those approaches. One of the things that we have to do that is kind of unique to our industry is we often have to share some of that education and some of those case studies from other states with potential clients so that they can understand, these are your options. You don't have to just do the scare tactics. That's not the only thing out there, and actually it often doesn't really work. So, we have to be the experts not just in marketing itself, but in behavior change theory, psychology, sociology, all these things that go into it. ROB: It sounds like there's a difference of tactics, a difference of outcomes. Are you seeking cessation? Are you seeking some sort of treatment? Are you just seeking a reduction of use in something that is now legal in certain places? It sounds like you are able to pool that expertise and help – in the ways that many agencies are, but you don't think about it so much in public health – bring those best practices and learnings from other clients. That makes me want to pull back and dig in. You're in a very unique area of focus. I think we've done probably 120 or so episodes right now, and we have not been in a conversation with an agency owner who is in public health and behavioral change. You mentioned you've been in the agency, at least, for 20 years. Did you start off with that area of focus? How did Rescue come to be? JEFF: We are definitely a unique agency. I actually started the agency when I was in high school. I was a volunteer for my local health department's anti-tobacco program. That was a youth program. They worked with a local agency, and after volunteering for about a year, I noticed that the kids we were reaching, the teenagers we were appealing to, were not current smokers, and they were never going to be smokers, whether we existed or not. These were good kids. They were leaders. They wanted to put this on their college application. There was really no change I could see that we were causing, even though we were successful from the sense that there was a lot of youth involvement and we were doing a lot of things. Fortunately, we had an advisor at the health department that was also pretty savvy in terms of youth culture. I like to joke that she was a break dancer when she was in high school, and she was maybe 7 years older than me. So, she was still pretty connected with what high risk youth culture might look like versus low risk youth culture. I said, “Why are we spending all our money on these youth?” She was open to allowing me to move from being a volunteer to being a contractor to start to provide some of these services that would change who the program appealed to. That continued for the next year or so in high school, and very quickly we started to innovate in a way that just wasn't happening in public health, particularly with teens. That turned into a lot of referrals. While I was in college, we grew a lot through referrals and got our first office when I was in college and things like that. So, we really grew organically, and from Day 1 have been exclusively focused on public health. ROB: What does the team look like today? What are some of the scale points and key hires to where the team of the agency is now? JEFF: Today we have about 175 employees, six offices around the country. We are the largest marketing agency in San Diego, but most San Diego businesses can't hire us. [laughs] Our work, though, is spread around the country. We don't have a specific geographic footprint. There's not one place where our clients are clustered. We work with about 30 different states and with the federal government, with the FDA, as well as Veterans Affairs and others. Some of the big scale points that have occurred – there's been a few. The biggest one was about 7 years ago, when we were about 40 or 50 people at the time and we won a contract with the FDA to do youth tobacco prevention. That contract was a $150 million contract for an agency of 50 people. We very quickly grew thanks to that contract. We brought on our CEO, Kristin Carroll (who's still with us today), at that time, who helped us grow quickly. Within a matter of 3 years, we went from about 50 people to 150 people. But in that time, we've continued to grow with other clients as well. Some other notable wins are the California Department of Health's nutrition campaign as well as some other states that have brought on larger contracts. ROB: You mentioned that many San Diego businesses probably can't work with you. Does that reflect a change in the overall deal size that you've pursued? JEFF: No, no, that's just mainly because we don't do commercial marketing. You have to be a public health oriented campaign. We work with the local county health department, we work with the local school district, and we also work with the district attorney's office. So, we work with a lot of local government agencies, but we don't have any commercial customers here or anywhere else. ROB: I see. Once many agencies scale, and especially north of 100 people, I think a lot of times they become very focused on just the FDA size deals. How do you manage that different granularity of client size within one organization and not become really fixated on hitting those homeruns? JEFF: That has definitely been a problem of scaling up. There aren't that many FDA size deals in our space, so we're forced to continue our more modest deal size – which we're very happy with. But I think the biggest challenge that has occurred is being careful not to try and apply universal lessons to the entire agency. Some things that we do for our largest client don't necessarily apply to our smallest clients. We've gotten in trouble sometimes in starting to do things for our smaller clients the way we do it for our larger clients and then going over budget and overcomplicating things when they don't need to be. And vice versa, also making sure we don't get too simple with our biggest accounts. We have to operate in this limited budget standpoint for some of our accounts and then a more open budget to explore different things with our largest accounts. That's probably the biggest thing we have to remind ourselves of and be cautious with. Really, we're operating like two different agencies within one. ROB: We are chatting here right in the middle of the spring 2020 COVID-19 epidemic. How has that changed your mix of business? Do you have clients that are working within – do you have some stay home campaigns running and that sort of thing as well? I imagine any work you've done, you've had to learn very quickly. JEFF: Surprisingly, we haven't gotten into any stay at home work, mainly because we tend to focus on long-term campaigns so that we can measure these long-term changes. It does affect COVID because a lot of the reasons that people are passing away because of COVID is because of preexisting conditions that we're trying to prevent with some of our other behaviors. So in a way, they're all connected. But when there's an emergency like this, communications get out pretty quickly and go viral pretty quickly. You don't really need the traditional long-term campaign to figure it out. The one thing that has changed the most for us is the production of new creative and new messages. Right now we're focused almost exclusively on creating animated work and infographics and things like that. Our clients still want to produce the work, still want to put new messages out there. Right now, people are consuming media more than ever before, so we're still cranking away new stuff. ROB: That's excellent. Jeff, you've been at this for a little bit; you've built the largest agency in San Diego, which is quite a thing. What are some things that you've learned along this journey that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting Rescue all over again? JEFF: There's so many lessons you learn, but you almost need to learn them in order to grow from them. I think that one of the things that we learned was not to be afraid to say no to an opportunity if that's not the right opportunity. I have to teach this lesson to every new business development person we bring on or client service person we bring on. It might feel weird to say no to a small client, but keep in mind that if they don't have enough funds for us to do a good job, they won't blame the budget; they will blame us for not doing a good job. And without fail, the smaller the client, the more they ask for. Oftentimes I've seen a lot of agencies get stuck in this world where they are over-servicing smaller accounts to keep them and underservicing their larger accounts, and it's usually top-heavy. It's usually more senior people that are servicing these smaller accounts, who are now not able to go out there and pursue bigger work. So, you really have to be careful of the really small accounts holding you down. ROB: How do you think about positioning and communicating the scope with the small accounts so that their expectations are aligned? Or have you found it's hard to manage them and you just have to pick the right ones and let someone else have the ones that are going to ask for the full buffet for 5 bucks? JEFF: We definitely let someone else have those. [laughs] It's about being transparent upfront and saying, “Look, this is what it takes to do good work, and this is why. These are all the components that need to go into something.” We have found ways of being able to accept smaller accounts with different strategies. For example, something that's completely unique to our space is we actually license campaigns. We have about four different preexisting campaigns that governments can license from us and that are reused over and over again across the country. That has allowed us to open the door to some smaller – not the smallest, but some of the smaller accounts that don't have the funds to create new campaigns, but do have enough funds to implement a licensed campaigns. That's something that could never happen in the commercial world; no one would ever want to share anything. But in our space, the government loves to share, and they actually love the reduced risk that comes with knowing this has already run somewhere else. ROB: Right. I can see you coming with some results, and they can see what the campaign looks like out in the world. They can probably even go and visit and see in some other place how this campaign looks in the wild, which you can't do, to your point, for most businesses. Maybe you could get away with it in – I don't know, if you were just serving one lawyer per market, or one plumber, or something crazy like that. But even then, they probably wouldn't want to share. JEFF: Right, exactly. There's so many things that we do here because we are focused on this space that would just not be possible if we were a generalist agency. And that's part of our argument for potential new clients: look, you can hire your local ad agency that everyone has heard of that has done all the car dealerships and local banks and things like that, or you can hire a specialist in public health. What's going to happen if you hire a specialist in public health is you're going to get all this institutional knowledge about how public health marketing is different from commercial marketing and be able to be more effective, more efficient, and have all this research and tools at your disposal. ROB: Jeff, at 175 people, you're up above that 150-person Dunbar number that many people talk about as that maximum number of people you can be in relationship with, or people might phrase it differently. How have you thought about structuring, organizing, and persisting culture as you break through dozens and then triple digits and then over 150? JEFF: We had a pretty strong culture before I knew that company culture was a thing. It comes from the culture being embedded in the work. A lot of times, folks try to put this layer of culture on their organization that doesn't really have anything to do with anything. That's where culture tends to fail or feel shallow. Where culture is really strong and real is where it manifests through the work. For example, one piece of our culture is that we describe ourselves as “responsibly rebellious.” What that means is that we want to push our clients to take risks within a responsible way. That is manifest through a lot of decisions that we make for our clients, things that we present to our clients, ways that we approach how we work with our clients. Then, when we say that's a part of our culture, it's true. It is a part of our work. It's part of what we do. When we talk about being science-based, we have a giant in-house research team that does presentations for us that is then infused in the creative and in the strategy. So, I think the best way to maintain culture is to just have an identity that is real and that you truly apply every single time you do the work. ROB: It almost seems like some of the culture would be self-selecting. Not to say that people might not view Rescue as a very attractive place to work, but it seems like an odd company to sign up for unless you have a real interest in messages of public health and in helping people and helping communities. Do you find that in the interview process? JEFF: Yeah. This millennial generation that's now dominating our workforce, we are the ideal kind of company to work for. They want to cause social change. They want to have an impact, and we can allow them to have that impact. So, definitely the people that come in are people who have an interest in doing something good with their career. And that helps. Everybody in the agency wants to have a good outcome from that campaign on a deeper level than just simply delivering for a client. ROB: That makes sense. Jeff, what's coming up for Rescue that you are excited about? Or maybe it's even something in terms of either broad messages that you're seeing trends in, or even tactically? JEFF: One thing that's pretty exciting is that we're seeing a broad awakening of the underlying lifestyle situations that lead people to choose unhealthy behaviors. The best example of this is what's happening in California with the new – California has a Surgeon General for the first time, and she is focused on infusing adverse childhood experience understanding, which is this area of health research that talks about if you had these really, really big things happen to you when you were a kid – things like divorce or a parent dying or domestic violence or mental health in the family, these heavy things – those things set you on a trajectory to take on much higher risks later in life. And if you can embed an understanding of who people are and where they come from in your work, you can be more effective with these populations. So, an understanding of that, an understanding of mental health, an understanding that people don't do risky things in isolation. They do them from a complicated equation of everything that's happened in their life. That was just not existent for the past 20 years, particularly in things like drug and alcohol prevention, where it's like “people who use drugs are just making a bad choice, they're just stupid, they're just bad and they need to be told to stop doing bad things.” [laughs] That's just not how it works. It's really nice that a lot of public health is moving away from that perspective and instead moving towards a deeper understanding of the complexity of human identity. ROB: Absolutely. It brings to mind for me – you have a responsibility; the messages you're putting out there are not messages for any particular – you probably work with governments of every political party possible. JEFF: That's right. ROB: But we live in a world where – what you're saying even hearkens back to partisan politics. How do you think about putting messages out into the world that have to transcend politics and party? JEFF: I think we all suffer, across industries, across topics, from talking to ourselves and not understanding someone who's different. One of the things I like to say that I feel makes this so different is applied empathy. It's not just that we have more empathy than someone else, but that we actually apply that empathy to how we create our messages and can articulate, when we're going to create a campaign for rural men, why that campaign has to be so different from a campaign, for example, for African American women. What is different about their life experience, their attitudes, their worldview, their values that will change the way we communicate to them – but also change what we're saying. A great example of this is that we do a ton of tobacco prevention work, still, with teenagers, and you can talk to an alternative teen in an urban area who listens to rock and things like that – you can talk to them about the evilness of the tobacco industry and all the horrible things they've done, and they will get fired up. They'll say, “I don't want to support an industry that's destroying the world and manipulating people.” So, you can motivate them not to smoke just by talking about the tobacco industry to them. But then you take a rural teen, a country teen who maybe is a younger version of the right side of our political spectrum, and you talk to them about the tobacco industry and it just doesn't even faze them. They're like, “Well, that's their right as a company and you have the right to choose what you're going to do, whether you do that behavior or not. It's all about personal responsibility.” If you don't know that difference and if you don't know that they are processing information differently and caring about different things, then you're just speaking to yourself. You're just speaking about what you care about. And that can apply to so, so many different things. Within politics, its' so interesting to see people just yell within their bubbles about things that they care about and are baffled by why no one else cares about them or why the other side doesn't care. All you have to do is just spend a little bit of time on the other side and you'll understand why they don't care about what you're talking about. ROB: It's a great thought for all of us on meeting people where they are instead of where we think they are. Jeff, when the audience wants to get in touch with you and with Rescue, where should they look for you? Where should they find you? JEFF: Yeah, definitely. Rescueagency.com is our website. There's contact information there for different folks. But also, if you're just interested in what I was talking about and learning more about public health marketing and behavior change and things like that, we have a pretty robust YouTube channel, youtube.com/rescueagency. Lots of actual workshops and videos that we've done explaining our approach and research and some examples of the work. ROB: Perfect. Jeff, thank you for joining us. Thank you for the thoughtful work that you do. We're grateful for it, and look forward to a lot more of it in the future. Congrats on all the success. JEFF: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mike: So Jeff, we were talking previously about your film production and your travel experiences, and have you ever had any bad experiences or any really bad experiences that stand out in your television kind of documentary production?Jeff: Yes, there's been several --- there's been many small, uncomfortable or scary moments, but I think the pinnacle of that experience came on my birthday maybe three years ago in the Philippines Sea.Mike: Wow!Jeff: And we were shooting a television documentary in the Southern Philippines and its a developing country, so the standards for safety are a little bit lower than a developed country like America or Japan, so we were on a boat. We had charted a boat to go across the Philippines Sea from one island to another, and just after dusk at night.Mike: You were doing like a film shoot?Jeff: Yeah, we were filming down there for two weeks in the Southern Philippines, and we charted this boat so we had all out gear. We had our camera crew. We had everything on the boat going from one island to another, and just after dusk. after it had got dark, the boat sank.Mike: Wow! You lost everything?Jeff: We lost everything, but at that moment nothing really mattered. No physical possession, or none of the film that we had shot over the last week. Nothing. It was just --- you were just worried about living, so everything else went out the window, so I was just thinking about I have to stay alive. I have to live through this.Mike: And I"m assuming, you did stay alive.Jeff: I'm still alive.Mike: That's a bonus.Jeff: One of my nine lives is gone, or maybe two of them or three of them, but yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mike: So Jeff, we were talking previously about your film production and your travel experiences, and have you ever had any bad experiences or any really bad experiences that stand out in your television kind of documentary production?Jeff: Yes, there's been several --- there's been many small, uncomfortable or scary moments, but I think the pinnacle of that experience came on my birthday maybe three years ago in the Philippines Sea.Mike: Wow!Jeff: And we were shooting a television documentary in the Southern Philippines and its a developing country, so the standards for safety are a little bit lower than a developed country like America or Japan, so we were on a boat. We had charted a boat to go across the Philippines Sea from one island to another, and just after dusk at night.Mike: You were doing like a film shoot?Jeff: Yeah, we were filming down there for two weeks in the Southern Philippines, and we charted this boat so we had all out gear. We had our camera crew. We had everything on the boat going from one island to another, and just after dusk. after it had got dark, the boat sank.Mike: Wow! You lost everything?Jeff: We lost everything, but at that moment nothing really mattered. No physical possession, or none of the film that we had shot over the last week. Nothing. It was just --- you were just worried about living, so everything else went out the window, so I was just thinking about I have to stay alive. I have to live through this.Mike: And I"m assuming, you did stay alive.Jeff: I'm still alive.Mike: That's a bonus.Jeff: One of my nine lives is gone, or maybe two of them or three of them, but yeah.

Jeff has been running full time video production for several years alongside his wife. They both mostly shoot weddings, and have noticed a recent struggle with converting leads into clients. With his current pricing structure packaged by hours, maybe a simple tweak in his wording and offer is the key to booking more wedding clients. In this episode, we discuss: Same-day edits for weddings with a team  Consistency and simplicity in pricing

Jeff & Will talk about their past week of business decisions and the coming week they’ll spend at the Podcast Movement conference. They also remind the authors in the audience to check out the new Big Gay Author Podcast. The guys talk about the production of The Wiz they just saw as well as the current season of Pose. Together they review Lucy Lennox’s Wilde Love and Jeff reviews Dreadnought by April Daniels. Amber Smith joins Jeff to talk about her young adult novel Something Like Gravity. Amber reveals how the characters of Chris and Maia had been the main characters in different books before she decided they’d be great together in a single book. Amber also discusses how she got started writing, the trademarks of her books and the research she does to create her characters. Complete shownotes for episode 201 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript – Amber Smith This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Welcome Amber to the podcast. It is great to have you here. Amber: Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been really looking forward to this. Jeff: So I reviewed ‘Something Like Gravity’ back in episode 195 and it was the summer book that I didn’t know I was looking for. I’d like you to start us off by telling everybody, in your own words, what this book is about. Amber Well, this book is about a lot of things, but really, at its center, it’s a story about falling in love for the first time and finding yourself in the process. It’s told between our two main characters, Chris and Maia, and both of them are going through a really difficult time in each of their lives. Chris has recently come out as transgender and he’s really trying to figure out how to navigate his life now that everything’s suddenly changing, and he’s also trying to process this really terrifying assault that he survived the year earlier. Maia is dealing with the recent death of her older sister. And so both of their lives look very different, but the one thing that they have in common that brings them together is that they’re both trying to figure out who they are going to become in the face of these life changing events that they’ve been through. Jeff: What was your inspiration behind the book? Amber: There are various threads of inspiration, but it’s funny, I actually started writing this book as two separate books. Chris was the protagonist of one and Maia was the protagonist of the other. And I do generally work on two things at the same time because, if I get stuck on one I can sort of hop over to the other thing I’m working on. I always thought of these as separate books in the beginning and Chris’s story was primarily about coming out, and being queer, and being trans, and trying to figure all of that out. And Maia’s was a story about grief. At a certain point, I think it became too hard for me to continue working on these stories because both of them were super personal. I was drawing from a lot of my own experiences with coming out as a lesbian and also, you know, dealing with the loss of loved ones myself. At a certain point, I thought, you know what can I do to kind of make this easier on myself? And I thought about giving Chris a love interest. And when I started to think about what would be the kind of person that would be really good for Chris, and would kind of balance him out, and all of those wonderful things that happen in a relationship. I immediately thought of Maia – this other character that I was writing, and that’s when I realized, oh my gosh, I think these stories were always meant to be one story. And it just took me a while to realize it. Jeff That’s amazing to me on a couple of levels. I can’t do two projects at once because it makes my head want to explode. But also there’s – just coming back to the title, ‘Something Like Gravity’ is like gravity just pulled between these two stories and brought these two together from the disparate places that you had them. Did the characters fundamentally change when you brought them together or did everything just click into place once that happened? Amber: Well, not necessarily so. I think the biggest part was that I had been working on these stories for so long. I don’t think much of my original writing made it into the final book. I think doing that writing on both of the stories prior to lining them as one, really helped me to get to know each character in that sense because, I knew each of them so well, I knew their voices, I knew their histories. It was sort of easy to bring them together, but I had to rewrite everything better. I think it was almost like telling the stories of two people I knew really well already. Jeff: Any chance that those original stories get to become prequels or something? Amber: Oh my gosh I love that idea. Something to think about. Jeff: As you noted, I see both Chris and Maia have these weighty things that they’re dealing with on both sides. What was your process to present that authentically to the readers? Amber: I always, whenever I’m starting a story, I begin with my own experience and I always sort of view writing as therapy in a way. So like Chris and Maia’s experiences start out as something very real that’s happened in my life. But then as I write them they become something else. So, I don’t know. I think I just always have in the back of my mind the roots – like emotion, or the emotional world that I lived in as kind of the parameters for this story. And so hopefully that helps to keep things feeling real and authentic. Jeff: And then you put the love story in with this. The way that you counterbalance what they’re going through with this super sweet love story. It was unique to me how that worked because for some of the story at least, they’re almost not dealing with their issues because they’re finding this in each other. How did that kind of all mix together for you? Amber: I think one of the things I’ve realized as I was writing the book, separately in the beginning, was that I was focused so much on the pain that each of these characters felt. I’ve written about trauma, and assault, and grief, in the past and it felt like I was sort of rehashing – or reopening old wounds of my own. I just thought I really need to do something different here. And it took me a while to figure out that I wanted this to be a love story because, as you know, it took me a while to kind of wrap my head around why was I writing it that way in the first place? I had this switch flipped in my mind when I started to think about the love story aspect of, you know, what I’d love to do with this book is make love be more powerful than the pain that each of them were experiencing. And so that kind of helped me to steer this story in a different direction. And then when I really started thinking about it, that love, and connection, and relationships, those are the things that really helped me heal during the hardest times in my life. And so I think it can be so easy to focus on the darkness sometimes but, when I really thought about even my own life, I realized the things that really got me out of those dark places were my connections with other people, and learning how to love myself, and falling in love for the first time. And so that became something I want to do – explore more than that other side of things. Jeff: And it’s interesting too that essentially the secondary story for both characters is their relationship with their parents. For Chris it’s his parents coming to understand that Chris has come out as trans, and for Maia they’re going through the same grief that she is, having lost their daughter. How did you approach layering that in? Because, again, you’ve balanced this out so beautifully, how it just all kind of ebbs and flows together – but there’s a lot in play here. Amber: Oh thank you. You know, I think the family dynamics with each of the characters – I will say that’s the one thing that kind of carried over when I was working on these as separate books. In my original ideas for both Chris and Maia, one of the big things that they were dealing with were these really complicated family issues that were going on. Yeah. So I think I just I always knew from the beginning I wanted part of their journeys to be trying to work out all of this messy, complicated, emotional stuff with their families and with themselves. I don’t really know how I layered it in because I think it was just always in the back of my mind that that stuff needed to be there. And I had thought of Chris and Maia’s relationship, the way that they grow and discover more about themselves, as kind of the framework of getting to the place where they were able to deal with their family stuff because they evolved too. Jeff: Did you have to do a lot of research? In your acknowledgments in the book you list out a whole bunch of people and things that you looked at to help craft all this, and so it seems like there was quite a bit that went on to create the characters, and create the situations, and then, as we kind of talked about it a little bit, getting it authentically on the page. Amber: For this book in particular I really reached out to a lot of different readers and friends, people who have gone through similar things to Chris and Maia. So I had friends, who identify as trans or non binary, read different sections of the book looking at Chris’s perspective. I even had a professor at one of the universities here in North Carolina really go through the entire manuscript with a fine tooth comb because, while in particularly looking at Chris’s side of the story because even though I kind of started with a kernel of my own experience, for Chris as a queer person. I’m not transgender, so I wanted to be very careful that I wasn’t doing anything in my narrative, and my representation, that would be in any way harmful or misrepresenting Chris as a transman. And so that was super super helpful. I found that the areas that I was really worried about in Chris’s story, were not the areas that were pinpointed by my readers as being problematic. I think that goes to show, it really was important for me to seek out those other perspectives, because the things that I thought might be issues were not what they thought were issues. So yeah, that was a really big process… getting that feedback from those other readers. Jeff: One of the things I’d mentioned in my review, what struck me about the book, is a sweet love story, two characters with trauma, and yet the book itself kind of felt like this lazy summer vacation. I think some of it is because of where it set. So it’s a small town, and you’ve got Chris and Maia essentially living on farms and separated by this field, and I could just envision hanging out on the porch, and just kind of letting the summer go by. Bike rides, and these adventures they went on – where they went to the to the adjacent town to check things out. And it really kind of held the story together – and kind of kept it in this very innocent place. Was that deliberate, or did it just happen that way, because of how it all pieced together as you were going? Amber: You know, that part of this story really was deliberate. Once I started trying to figure out how to weave Chris and Maia’s stories together, I really sat down and I did a lot of pragmatic planning and plotting, which is not something I usually do at all. I think I knew trying to combine two stories, I really had to know where I was going because it could get really confused. So one of the first things I decided was the setting and the timeframe. I decided I wanted it to take place in a rural North Carolina town, which Carson is fictional, but it’s based on a lot of the small towns on the outskirts of Charlotte where I live. I knew I wanted it to take place across the course of one summer and I did that partially because of that feel that you’re talking about. I really wanted to give Chris and Maia a space where it felt like their lives and their realities are somewhat suspended for a little bit of time, so that they could have the freedom to figure out what they’re going to do, figure out how to process what’s happened in their lives. And I always felt, growing up, summer is sort of this weird Time Warp kind of area, where things just don’t happen in the same way as the rest of the year. And so I definitely wanted to bring in that kind of like lazy feel because it feels like we have all the time in the world, but of course, we know summer only last so long. That’s also a little bit of a ticking clock I could put in there. Jeff: What do you hope readers take away from the book? Amber: I really wanted readers to be able to look at Chris and Maia’s story and find pieces of themselves in each of these characters. Even if a reader isn’t trans, or queer, or grieving, I hope that they might be able to find some commonality with Chris and Maia. And maybe that’s just the simple fact of being able to relate to falling in love for the first time, but that for people who do identify with the things that Chris and Maia are going through, maybe if the reader is trans, or non-binary, or going through a major loss, or some kind of upheaval in their lives, I would hope that they could look at Chris and Maia as a way of knowing that there are people in the world who understand what they’re going through and they’re not alone. Jeff: Let’s talk a little bit about Amber Smith’s origin story. What got you into writing and coming specifically into writing these powerful young adult books? Because this is not your first one that deals with weighty material. Amber: I sort of came to writing in a very roundabout way – as a lot of people do. So, when I was growing up, I always wrote. I always kept journals. And when I was a little bit older, like a teenager, I wrote poetry, but all of my writing was very personal and not something I would ever show anyone. It was more like therapy. Like, even when I was a little kid, I remember the little diaries. And it was like I would just write about what happened that day, just sort of like dumping everything out of my head. So I was actually much more involved in the visual arts all throughout my life. That’s what I really focused on when I was in high school. I ended up going to college for painting. I had my BFA in painting and then I went on to get my master’s in art history because I had worked in some art gallery settings as an undergrad and I was like, “You know, I think I want to be a part of this whole art world in this way, maybe not as an artist, but as someone who kind of brings art to people.” And so I did that for a long time. I was working in my role as a curator, and during that time I was doing a lot of writing for my work, but it was more writing about art history and biography-type writing. Even though I loved what I was doing in the art museum world, I really missed working on my own creative stuff and so it was then that I really looked at writing as, not just a therapeutic outlet, but it became more of my creative outlet, and that’s when I started working on my first book. That first book actually started out as very much therapeutic writing and then the longer I spent with this story, it kind of morphed into something more fictional, and I’ve I guess I was sort of hooked at that point. I realized, “Wow, you know, I can really do a lot with fiction.” And it was really healing, just like when you read a fictional book, it can be a lot easier to sometimes relate to a fictional character and have empathy for their situation, and kind of see the big picture more so than we can sometimes do for ourselves. And that’s sort of what writing became for me very early on. That’s how I got here. Jeff: That’s a good story. I like how you went from essentially one creative expression to another – from creating works of art to now creating a different work of art, if you will. Amber: ‘Something Like Gravity’ is the first book where I’ve been able to kind of bring in some of my art background. So that was really fun. Jeff: Yeah, with Maia’s photography, I could see how that could bridge that gap a little bit. Amber: Yeah. Jeff: What would you say is the trademark of an Amber Smith book? Amber: I would say the trademark is the story is going to be emotional. It’s going to deliver some difficult stuff and it’s going to be very real. So I definitely don’t like to kind of sugar coat things all that much, so it can be a little gritty. Jeff: Gritty is a good word for it actually, having now read this one. Who are some of your author influences? Amber: Oh, you know, some of the authors who really influenced me the most are the authors that I read when I was in high school. I remember YA wasn’t necessarily a thing yet when I was a younger teenager, but in my senior year of high school I remember there were several books that came out right at that time and I was a big nerd, so I volunteered at my school library, and my librarian was like my best friend, so she would give me all of the books that were coming in – for me to take home and read her first, before anybody else. I remember reading ‘Speak’ by Laurie Halse Anderson. And that book really stands out for me. It just changed my life because I think it was one of the first times I remember feeling like a book truly brought me this deep sense of comfort. I was seen and understood. I was not alone. And that really stayed with me. And then there were other books that came out right around that time, ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’. That was a huge book for me that I read when I was in high school. Let’s see. Sonya Sones, her debut, ‘Stop Pretending’ came out and it was written in verse. And that was also the first time I had read something like that and it really made an impact. I think back to those books I read when I was a teenager, and the ones that really affected me were those ones that were about really serious issues, and they are the ones that made me feel like I was not alone. There was hope things could get better. I guess that’s sort of where I’m coming from now as a writer. What were the stories I needed when I was a teenager? Jeff: And what’s coming up next for you? Amber: Well, I’m not entirely sure. I have a couple of things in the works. I’m pretty sure what is going to be next is going to be a middle grade book. So, going a little bit younger. So that’s really exciting. I’ve been wanting to kind of explore different genres. I think back, middle school was actually a lot more traumatic for me than high school. So it’s funny I haven’t gone there yet. Jeff: I look forward to seeing what that could be because, over time, I’ve read some really compelling middle grade books. Amber: Yeah. Things that have been coming out recently too are just amazing. Jeff: What’s the best way for everyone to keep up with you online so they can follow along with what you’re doing and when new stuff comes out? Amber: I always keep updates going on my website ambersmithauthor.com, but I’m most active on Instagram. On Instagram I’m @ambersmithauthor. I’m also on Twitter as asmithauthor and Facebook as well. So definitely keep up with me there. I love hearing from readers, and I just I get so excited when I see messages come in from you guys. Jeff: Fantastic. We’ll link up to all those places, the books we talked about, and of course, ‘Something Like Gravity’. Wish you the best of luck with that as this summer continues this year. Amber: Thank you so much.

Jeff opens the show talking about the work he's doing on the manuscript for the Hat Trick re-release. New patron Lucy is welcomed. The guys talk about Tales of the City on Netflix and the new season of Pose on FX. Will reviews Anticipating Disaster by Silvia Violet while Jeff reviews Prince of Killers (Fog City #1) by Layla Reyne. Jeff interviews Layla Reyne about the new Fog City series as well as how it felt wrapping up the Trouble Brewing series earlier this year. They also talk about Layla's RITA nominated book, Relay, and the upcoming fall release, Dine with Me. Complete shownotes for episode 193 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript – Layla Reyne This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Welcome Layla back to the podcast. It’s great to have you here. Layla: Thank you for having me back. Jeff: I had to have you back to talk about this new series, “Prince Of Killers,” as listeners will have heard right before this interview, blew my mind to pieces and back. Layla: That’s what I wanna hear. Jeff: Tell everybody what this new series is and in particular what they have to look forward to in “Prince Of Killers.” Layla: Sure. So the series is “Fog City.” It’s set here in San Francisco. It’s a new romance suspense series. You don’t need to have read any of my series before that. I won’t say that there aren’t some Easter eggs for those that have, because we are all existing in the same place and time. But, this is a little different because this is following a family of assassins. So in books one to three of the “Fog City” trilogy, starting with “Prince of killers,” you’ve got Hawes Madigan, who runs a cold storage business by day, a very successful family kind of business in the city. And then by night, the families, they’re assassins. And he and his two siblings, Helena and Holt, are kind of the triumvirate that is currently the heir apparent. He’s the heir apparent and they kind of all run it together. His grandfather is ailing and so that’s kind of the setup and fairly successfully he is making some changes in the organization. And so in comes…in the first scene, which is actually set at one of my favorite restaurants in the city, Gary Danko, walks Dante Perry who kind of has this strut about him, you know, long hair, looks like a rock God. But he’s carrying a gun, which he immediately notices, Hawes does, and Perry tells him, “There is someone trying to kill you.” And Hawes kind of laughs it off to start with because, dude, he runs an organization of assassins. That’s what they’re paid for. But then as Hawes and the family come to learn, it does look like someone is trying to stage a palace coup, so to speak. And so “Prince Of Killers” involves sort of the first stages of that and them trying to figure out who it is. And Dante has his own motivations as well. You know, he is trying to find the killer of someone who was close to him and Hawes doesn’t want him to find out who that is either. So I will leave it at that without spoiling too much. Jeff: Let’s talk about the elephant in the room a little bit, and that is the fact that while you have left, for example, the books of the Whiskeyverse on some subtle cliff hangers, this one’s bigger than normal for you. Layla: Yeah, I’m not hiding anything, guys. This one’s got a cliffhanger. I wouldn’t say anyone’s life is in jeopardy, but it’s definitely a cliffhanger. I have made no bones about that “The Usual Suspect” is one of my favorite movies. So hello. And, you know, I grew up in TV land and so I love cliffhangers and I kind of embrace it with this. And, you know, the good thing is the plan is for all the books to be out this year. All the covers are done. By the time this airs, book two will be in the hands of editors and I should be working on book three by then. So, they will all come this year and it’s in the blurb. So you know, everybody, fair warning. I’m not trying to hide it here. So… Jeff: Yeah. And I love how you make the analogy to TV because I would put the cliffhanger that you did on the level of like the mid-season break. Not quite the end of season break, but that mid-season, it’s Christmastime, we’re gonna go away for a while and we’ll have a big thing when we come back. Layla: That’s right. It’s the end of November sweeps. Jeff: Exactly. Layla: That’s where we’re at, not gonna lie. And then book two picks up right where it ended and goes on in there. Jeff: Yeah. Which I’m super looking forward to. Layla: I’m writing. It’s been a…It’s fun and, you know, I can’t…yeah, I can’t spoil anything. Jeff: Yeah. Don’t say anything else. I don’t wanna know. I don’t want the listeners to know. Layla: Okay. Okay. Jeff: What was the inspiration for “Fog City” overall? Because since you’ve gone with this family of assassins, it’s certainly different from what we’re used to in the Whiskeyverse where you’ve got all the, you know, FBI agents and other kinds of, you know, law enforcement as your main characters. Layla: So ironically, I was wandering through Wander Aguiar’s photography website looking for covers for a different project and I saw this picture of what will be the book three cover. And I had to know what the hell is their story. I mean it just jumped at me and I was like, I have to know the story. And then one of my good writer friends, Allison Temple said, “You can’t buy the pictures until you have a story.” She’s like, “Do not spend the money.” So by the end of the weekend, I had the story. I had all three of them and then I was like, “Okay, so let me piece together the three covers.” And so that’s kind of how it, in its original, came about, you know, thinking about doing it. So art really did inspire art in this case because the photos were just amazing. I wanted to branch out and do a little bit of something different. There have been hints of the people in the gray area, you know, Jamie, good guy, but some of that hacking is not exactly on the up and up. Mel, I think we saw go more and more, you know, in her bounty hunter business and be a little bit more flexible once she left the FBI. And so kind of going from there and wanting to play more in that gray area and having read books too, L.J. Hayward’s “Death And The Devil” series, in particular, you know, it’s fun and it’s to some extent pretty liberating. I don’t think it was…it wasn’t harder. There are less rules. Right? I don’t have to check the FBI’s hierarchy chart every day to make sure I’m naming someone the right position. So in that regard, it’s actually been a bit easier. Jeff: Your shades of gray is 100% right because it’s not a spoiler to say that Hawes, not only did he have the legit business on the side, but he’s even trying to modify the ways that the family does the assassin business to make it, I guess, less bad maybe. Layla: Yeah. So, there’s an event that happened three years ago that kind of drives a lot of the series and when you read you’ll find out what that is and to the extent it drives Hawes’ three rules, which are in the blurb, which is no indiscriminate killing, no collateral damage, and no unvetted targets. So, if they’re not…He is turning the organization away from kind of the killing machine that his grandfather, Papa Cal, was. And his parents were very methodical, very efficient, not a whole lot of emotion in it. And so, he’s trying to find the balance between those two of it being, you know, I don’t wanna say the killer with a heart of gold, but he is a killer with a conscience. And so he doesn’t even like the moniker Prince of Killers and what that stands and how it came about, which you’ll read about in the book as well. So, he’s definitely a great character. And then when you look at the broader picture of everyone in the series, Holt is, you know, this…he has a kid and he is, first and foremost, a father, right? And he is a hacker and he, because of where he’s at in his life, has pulled back to being kind of the digital assassin of the bunch. And then Helena, who is the sister, who is my typical female complete badass, love her, she works for…she does a criminal defense work in her day job where she is actually working for people who are wrongfully accused. And so there’s some shades of gray in her as well. And then even one of the other side characters is the chief of police who has an interesting relationship with the Madigans and he knows that there is some benefit to what they do and you’re gonna find out there’s some backstory with him as well as to where he is. So, there’s a reference to him in…If you’ve read “Trouble Brewing,” there’s a reference to him in “Noble Hops.” It’s the same chief, for those who are watching, that read that. So… Jeff: That was one of the Easter eggs that I missed. Because you and I have talked about the Easter eggs and there was some that I caught it and some was like, “Dang it.” Layla: So that’s one of…he’s the new chief, you know, that’s a little bit more flexible in the way things are done. And so everybody…and then Dante is also, you know, playing in his shades of gray as a PI and how far he’s willing to go and what he’s doing personally and professionally. Like where’s that line for him? Jeff: Helena is the one that I found the most interesting in her shades of gray because here’s an officer of the court who occasionally does some, you know, very illegal things, which isn’t to say that, you know, all lawyers are, you know, on the right side of the law. But for her, it seemed like really… Layla: Right. And she makes a line about balancing out her karma, right? That’s kind of how she approaches it to some extent of, you know, part of what they’re doing and why he…particularly Helena and Hawes are so well aligned like that, you know, Hawes wants the contracts of the people the law can’t reach or that escape the law, you know, who get around it, let’s just say, because of who they know or who they pay. And that’s kind of who their targets…that’s the targets he wants. People that have, you know, skirted justice for nefarious reasons. And her day job is the people who justice has wrongfully done. And so they kind of work hand in hand and her feeling on it plays to both of her careers. Jeff: You mentioned in this book you had less rules, so like, you’re not looking upon the FBI flow chart and things. Were there challenges to coming at these characters who had these shades of gray or was it…”free for all” is a little bit much, but certainly more freeing I guess. Layla: Yeah, certainly challenges. Though, I mean, you still have to balance the fact that, “Hey, they’re killing people.” Right? And how you balance that with their conscience, with the people around them, particularly Kane, who was the police chief, has a lot to deal with and going on kind of. So yeah, I mean it is definitely there. There were different challenges for me, I kind of liked it because I got to go a little bit more, even though it’s a shorter book than usual, I think going into their heads more than I typically would because there’s a lot more internal conflict – while still having tons of external conflict. I felt like there was more internal conflict about what they’re actually doing than, you know, being an FBI agent and knowing you’re on the right side of the law. So this was more…they had to kind of walk that line, particularly Hawes. Jeff: One of the things I like most about the book that is…in a lot of ways, it’s separate from the romance and it’s separate from the suspense element a lot is the family unit. And it’s a recurring theme, at least in the books that I’ve read of yours from, you know, Irish And Whiskey and their families. And then what we see of the families in “Trouble Brewing” of the main characters. And here I really feel like maybe it’s because we’re so much closer to the family that we really, even in the shorter book, get a lot about Hawes and Holt and Helena and their interaction with each other. What was your plan as you like populated this family and the characters that you wanted to put on the page? Layla: So, it kind of, I would say, came about organically to an extent. The first scene I wrote like that weekend when I saw the pictures, I wrote it and then I posted it in my little reader group’s like, “I hate you.” And in that first scene, actually there’s a reference to the siblings, but you actually don’t see them, but then they pop up. And part of it too was I had already found their pictures as well. I kind of knew who they all were, but, I also knew who we needed to do X, Y, and Z from a plot standpoint. I also didn’t want Hawes to be an island to himself. Right? And to some extent, giving the life that he lives. And, you know, the two aspects of his life, that family is gonna be the only…like they can’t really let anyone else get close. Right? And so, they’re so tight with the family. That’s the only people they trust. And so, that’s, I think, particularly why, you know, that’s who he debriefs with. That’s who they’re planning with and everything because that’s kind of it. And then, sort of, you have in that expanded family, you also have Holt’s wife, Amilia, and you have the grandmother, Papa Cal’s wife, and like that’s the tight-knit crew. And it has been that way for that family for three generations. And that’s kind of what you find out is that, this is what they do. And because of that, they have to keep it close to the vest and the families who they trust. Jeff: But even through that, you’ve got Helena pushing on Hawes to make the connection to find somebody. Which I love because even as all hell’s breaking loose, it’s like think about doing that because you could have what Holt has. Layla: Yeah. They both…you know, Holt’s happily married with a kid. And I think for both, for Hawes and Helena, you know, that’s the ideal. Their parents were happily married, right? Papa Cal and Rose were. So you can have happiness, right, in this. You just have to find the person who accepts it and where’s that line? And Dante is someone who could be that person, right? He comes in and he seems to know what they do. He seems to be okay with it. And it’s got a hint of insta-lust for sure. Like they’re immediately attracted to each other, but it’s not until later where Hawes kind of starts to think, “Huh, here’s this person who maybe gets it and is okay with it,” the way that Holt and Amelia ended up working out. And Amelia is part of the group, she actually has her own specialty with pressure points and being kind of a perfect Trojan horse for the group because she’s not as out there as the rest of the Madigans are with the business. So yeah. So, he starts to see that. And Helena is kind of also walking a thin line of, “I wanna be happy, but do we know who this dude is?” Right. “Hey, Buddy. Okay, go have fun. But be careful.” So, he’s trying to be the rational one in that scenario. Jeff: So, we know that this is a trilogy. How far does “Fog City” go overall? Do you have a grand plan? Layla: I do, I do. Hawes and Dante will have a trilogy. So they’re the main characters through books one to three. And then Helena will have a book and then there’s another fifth book, but I’m not gonna say who that is because that’ll spoil things. But everybody will get their HEAs by the end of it. I’m looking at five and then I’ve got some ideas for spin-offs and I may already have some cover photos bought for them. I would say I like building big verses, right? I mean, I grew up…I mean my intro to really reading a lot of romances, Kristen Ashley, and I love that big verse concept. And so I like building them too. Jeff: And if you, you know, put it back on TV, I mean, you look at things like the Arrowverse and all of its characters or all of the Chicago shows on NBC, you can have all of your one big, huge comboverse. Layla: Yeah. No, and that’s kind of like that. I grew up in all that too. I was a TV person first. I come from that world where it is all intertwined like that. I like doing that. I like cameos and seeing characters and it’s fun. And you know, Mel runs everything, just remember that. That’s all you need to know. Jeff: Even if the characters don’t know that, she’s really in charge. Layla: Everything. Yeah. Jeff: Now, we gotta give you a congrats too because in the midst of you getting this ready, it was announced you’re a finalist for the Romance Writers of America RITA Award, for the book, “Relay.” Layla: Yes. Yes. Jeff: Which is awesome. For those who don’t know, tell us what “Relay” is about. Layla: “Relay” is book one and the “Changing Lanes” duology, which is “Relay” and “Medley.” So, two books. The duology follows the four men who are on the U.S. men’s medley relay team, swim team. And so, the first book, “Relay,” which was nominated, is about Alex Cantu and Dane Ellis, who had a little summer love affair at a training camp 10 years ago and didn’t go well because Dane is the son of an evangelical minister and very closeted. And so he ends up on the same Olympic team with Alex, who is the team captain, who’s worked his tail off basically to get where he’s at and he is…you know, it’s enemies to lovers to start. Obviously, there’s a lot of friction there from what happened in the past. And then they end up on the relay team together, have to work together. And so then you’ve got a bit of a second chance love story. That’s what it rolls into. And so you see up through the first two legs of training camp and Olympic training in the first book. So you see the two domestic sites. And then in the second book, “Medley,” which follows the other two characters, Boss and Jacob, that’s a mentor-mentee. A little bit of an age gap, like 26 to 19, I think. And Jacob’s this lovely like pirate-quoting cinnamon roll. I love him. He’s so much fun. And two bi characters. Jeff: Pirate-quoting cinnamon roll? Layla: Yeah, he’s a cinnamon roll character, like, he’s a total dork. Jeff: I love that description of him. Layla: And so, then you see international training in the Olympics in that book. So they go hand in hand. And I’m really…you know, there are definite problems with the RITA awards has been brought up with getting better representation. I am happy this book got through. Alex is a character of color. And, you know, when I wrote this, I wanted to say, you know, “This is the U.S. Olympic team, a representation that I would like to see,” right, that’s diverse in sexuality and race and, you know, I’m glad that it did get to the finalists because that’s at least out there. Jeff: And again, congrats for that. That’s cool. I’ll have to go pick that up now because I have not picked up your sports books and I’m certainly like a sports romance lover anyway, so… Layla: One of my good friends was a competitive swimmer up through college and so I talked to him a lot and then one of my other friends swam up through high school and then a little bit in college too. So, it was something different, you know, and I think it was right about the Olympics time where we started talking about that idea and then it just rolled. Jeff: As I mentioned, there was some research involved there too, just to know what the training program was like and where it happened. Layla: And then some of it was my own, like, but too, they go to Vienna for training and I studied abroad there. And I’ve kinda always wanted to put it in a book. And so that was a lot of fun – everywhere there is somewhere that I went and even the fight that happens up in the wine country kind of happened to a friend. And so it was interesting like to see kind of, it was a different source of the fight, but you know, I was traipsing through this little village in the middle of the night going, “Where’d you go?” Jeff: That’s awesome. Drawing from real life events. You’ve got a bit of a con schedule going on this year. You’re headed to BLC so you’ll be at the first incarnation of Book Lovers Con in New Orleans, but you’re also making your very first trip to GayRomLit this year. Layla: I know, I can’t wait. It’s finally back out here, relatively close to us on the West Coast. I’m so looking forward to that. You know, I loved…I’ve been to an RW International and then I went to RT last year and I love the reader interaction like that. I like that part of it so much. And so that’s why I’m going back to Book Lovers Con to get more of that, but then I really want to go to GRL because those are particularly our readers, right, and my favorite authors, so I can’t, you know, wait to meet some folks. See folks that I met last year, meet others, and then like… two of my closest writing friends I’ve never met in person, they’re both going to be there. So I can’t wait for that. Jeff: So name drop a little bit. Who are these people you’re meeting in person for the first time? Layla: Well, what’s cool at Book Lovers Con is that I’ll get to meet Annabeth Albert, who’s been a sprint partner, publishes with the same…with Carina Press too. So that’ll be awesome. But then, yeah, at GRL, it’ll be Erin McLellan, who you actually reviewed “Clean Break,” and Allison Temple. So we’re looking forward to that. Jeff: Very cool. Now, of course, “Fog City” continues through this year. I know you’ve got at least one other book sneaking it’s way out there. What else is coming up this year? Layla: So there’ll be the three “Fog City” books and then “Dine With Me” comes out in September and it’s very different from everything else. So, well, I guess not, you know, if you read my books, and even in “Fog City,” there’s food, there’re restaurants because I am a complete and total foodie. And so “Dine With Me” is kind of my love letter to restaurants that I’ve loved, to food experiences that I’ve loved. And it follows Miller Sykes who is an award-winning chef who gets a diagnosis, a medical diagnosis, and basically if he gets treatment, he will lose his sense of taste. It’s a high likelihood that the treatment and surgery will compromise the sense of taste. And as a chef, dude, how? Like even as a foodie, you know, God, I can’t imagine and I can’t even…as a chef, wow. And so rather than get treatment, he decides to go on the last tour of his favorite meals. And it’s not just high end, you know, it’s dive bars and, you know, there are high-end restaurants also all across the spectrum for everything a different place offers. And that’s partially my experiences too, everywhere there is based on somewhere I’ve been. And then Clancy Rhodes who is the financial backer for this effort is kind of along for the ride. He’s a total foodie, experiencing it, and how he starts to piece together what’s going on and also starts to realize they have a lot in common. Despite, you know, a bit of an age gap and coming from different places in different worlds, they are both kinda facing these great expectations and how to handle that. And he has to convince him that, you know, life is more than just your taste buds, right, and that love’s worth it. And so it’s the book of my heart. It’s been in my head for years. I’ve sat on the first chapter since 2015, 2016 it was on the initial list of blurbs I gave my agent, and we finally found a place to make it happen. So I’m super excited about it. Jeff: That’s awesome because it’s always good to get the book of your heart out there. Layla: Yes. Yeah. Like I said, it’s different. You know, there is a ticking clock aspect to it given the diagnosis and what’s going on but, there’s not a car chase, which is unusual. But it’s a much more internal book and a lot of food gushing. So, you know, I generally say have snacks and tissues, just FYI. Jeff: That’s not really a bad thing for any book to have the snacks and the tissues nearby. Layla: You’ll really need it. So, I’m excited. That comes out September 16 and that’ll be from Carina, that one will. Jeff: Cool. And I have to ask before we wrap up, how was it to wrap up the Whiskeyverse for now – as “Trouble Brewing” wrapped up earlier this year? Layla: Yeah. I mean, good. Right. I like where everybody got to. I loved writing that last scene in “Trouble Brewing” and “Noble Hops.” You know, it was just kind of a nice – everybody’s where they should be. Right. I was glad to give everybody their happily ever after there. I did see some things, which are in the pipeline. And so, things may happen in the future depending on time and whatnot. But I’m excited for it and I’m glad Nick and Cam and Mel and Danny and Aiden and Jamie all got their happy. They definitely deserved it. Jeff: Yeah. Yes, they did. They worked for it. Layla: They worked for it. Jeff: Yeah. It was such a satisfying read. If anybody hasn’t picked those books up, they need to for sure. Layla: Thank you. Jeff: So what is the best way for folks to keep up with you online so they can keep track of all the “Fog City” releases and the upcoming “Dine With Me” and everything else? Layla: Yeah, so probably my Facebook group, Layla’s Lushes is where I’m at the most. And you can find a link to that on my Facebook page too, which is just Layla Reyne. So, that’s me on pretty much all the platforms on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I’m on Instagram a fair bit. There’s a lot of food and my pugs there, so just FYI. I would say the reader group and the newsletter too, which is on my website, there’s a banner, so it’s laylareyne.com and you can follow and find it there. Jeff: Yup. We will link to all that in the show notes along with all the books. The reader group is the place to be because it’s where you find out about like, oh, the first chapter of “Fog City” well before anybody else does. Layla: Yeah. I kind of like…I have a hard time sitting on stuff. I ran one of the big “X-Files” spoiler sites back in the day, so if that tells you anything, I’m a bit of a spoiler junkie and have a tendency to spoil things though, just FYI. Jeff: Yeah. Everybody should go join up with that if you’re into Layla’s books in any shape, form, or fashion. Layla: Yes. Jeff: All right. Well, Layla, it’s been so good talking to you. Thank you so much for the great read that is “Prince of Killers” and I look forward to keeping track of “Fog City” as the year progresses. Layla: Excellent. Thank you so much for having me again. It’s been fun. Book Reviews Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: Anticipating Disaster by Silvia Violet. Reviewed by Will Nice-guy Oliver enjoys his quiet bookish life – so he’s less than thrilled to be attending a family reunion at a ski resort. He braves the frigid temperatures and disapproving attitudes of his extended family to please his grandmother, who he adores. Irresistibly sexy bisexual outdoorsman David is in town to help his friend mend a broken heart. While his bestie distracts himself with a pair of slope bunnies, David sets his sights on klutzy Oliver, offering to give him private ski lessons. Flirtation leads to friendship and to David accompanying Oliver to some of the planned reunion activities. When certain family members mock Oliver’s nerdish tendencies, David fiercely defends him. Can’t they see how smart and sweet and kind he is? To give Oliver a vacation from his relatives, David takes Oliver to Anticipation, the picture-perfect mountain town that he calls home. The more time that our heroes spend together, the more they think this might just be the real deal. The problem is that neither one of them does casual relationships. David has his life in Anticipation and Oliver has his life back in Florida with his grandmother. A long-distance arrangement doesn’t seem particularly practical and they sadly part ways. Oliver returns to his real life and, after some time apart from David, he realizes (with some help from grandma) that his quiet existence might be more about hiding from life than truly living it. He decides that David is well-worth the risk and heads back to Anticipation to start a new adventurous chapter in his life story. I really enjoyed Anticipating Disaster. The author takes some familiar character types and story tropes and crafts a really compelling story, while at the same time giving the romance her own twist. The set-up might be pure category romance, but let’s be real, this is a Silvia Violet book, so you know that the heat level is going to be cranked up to 11. Oliver has a penchant for lacy undergarments and, over the course of the story, David discovers he likes cute guys with a penchant for lacy undergarments – like, A LOT. Also, in the bedroom, David has a talent for turning some particularly filthy turns-of phrase. So the time our that heroes spend together do not disappoint – these aren’t the kinds of sex scenes you’ll skim over. This book is the first in a series with the quaint town of Anticipation serving as the backdrop for future installments. A few side characters are introduced in Anticipating Disaster and I look forward to the new romances that will unfold in upcoming books. Prince of Killers (Fog City #1) by Layla Reyne. Reviewed by Jeff. Anyone who’s been listening to the show over the past year knows that I’ve fallen hard for romantic suspense, and in particular the stories that Layla Reyne writes. As soon as I offered the chance to read an advanced copy of Prince of Killers I jumped on it and devoured it in just a few days. Not only is the suspense tight but the budding romance had great sizzle. I’ve never read romantic suspense where someone in law enforcement wasn’t at least one, if not both, of the central characters in the love story. In this book, our main character is on the flipside of the law as the leader of a family of assassins. This provided an interesting twist and I loved the ride. The titular prince of killers is Hawes Madigan who has recently come into leading his family’s business because his grandfather is on his deathbed. One evening, just before a job, Hawes gets information that someone inside the organization is looking to take him out and possibly targeting others inside his family. The bombshell is dropped by the mysterious Dante Perry. The news of betrayal from the inside throws Hawes for a loop. He figured some associates might take issue with the new rules he’s put into place, which include no indiscriminate killing, no collateral damage and no unvetted targets. He introduces these rules because of past incidents that haunt him. The introduction of the Madigan family and how they approach their line of work fascinated me as much as the suspense of the internal sabotage and the romance that blooms between Hawes and Dante. Hawes has a twin sister, Helena, and younger brother, Holt who has a wife and baby daughter. Holt’s the tech wizard for the organization and Helena has another career as an attorney helping those who are wrongfully accused. Hawes’s life revolves solely around the family businesses–both the legit refrigeration business and the not-so-legit assassin game. The interplay of the family members as they try to sort out the traitor in their midst while dealing with their dying grandfather is so sharply written. There’s barely time for them to process any one thing that happens and yet the do make time to support and care for one another. Helena even pushes Hawes toward Dante as a potential partner because she wants her brother to have someone. Hawes taking the leap to trust and fall for Dante is one of things I love most about the book as he finds the strength to overcome the fear of putting his family at risk. Even though Holt has made a family for himself and his parents and grandparents had a successful family life, Hawes feels that he needs to be cautious since he’s the family leader now. Dante also goes out of his way to get Hawes and the family to trust him with not only their brother’s heart but aspects of the business as well. Hawes using Dante as his rock as the plot against the family unfolds, exposed his vulnerabilities perfectly. Meanwhile, the bombs that dropped in the final quarter of this book were ones I hadn’t seen coming and got my heart thumping. This is book one of a trilogy and as was the case with Layla’s other books I can’t wait to see where she takes this story. Similar to the Irish and Whiskey and Trouble Brewing trilogies, the Hawes and Dante’s story doesn’t fully wrap up at the end of the book. Of particular note, Prince of Killers ends with a significant cliffhanger. I don’t mind cliffhangers but if you are averse to that kind of ending you might want to wait until book two’s out so you won’t be waiting long to see what happens next. For me Layla’s redefined what a family of assassins looks like with this book. Fog City kicks off with some mind-blowing twists and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

April was our most downloaded month ever. Thank you to our listeners! Jeff and Will discuss their upcoming travel schedule. They will be at the Romance Writers of America national conference, Podcast Movement, Dreamspinner’s Author Conference and GayRomLit. Jeff reviews Top Secret by Sarina Bowen & Elle Kennedy and Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Jeff interviews Casey about her debut novel. They talk about the inspiration for Red, White & Royal Blue and the impact the 2016 election had on the story.  In addition, they discuss the recently announced movie adaptation, what got Casey into writing romance and what she’s working on next. Complete shownotes for episode 187 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: Top Secret by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy. Reviewed by Jeff. I’ve been a huge fan of Sarina Bowen’s for some years now. Her Understatement of the Year is among my favorite books of all time and I also love Him and Us which were co-written with Elle Kennedy. Sarina and Elle are back with their first m/m romance in three years with Top Secret. They’ve written an extremely satisfying enemies to lovers romance that sizzles but also has some extremely sweet parts as well. Keaton’s a college junior from a privileged family whose been with his girlfriend since high school. For her birthday, she announces that she wants a threesome. After brief thought Keaton agrees. He lives in a frat house where one of his frat brothers is Luke. Luke basically keeps to himself barely gets along with anyone in the house. Luke’s a townie, going to school on an academic scholarship and as a despicable mom and older brother who only want to take advantage of him. He lives in the frat because it’s cheaper than a dorm and he’s running for president because that means free room. Keaton looks to an app to help find the right guy for this birthday present. He signs in as LobsterShorts and soon ends up talking to SinnerThree. Once SinnerThree finds out it’s Keaton’s first three way, he wants to make sure Keaton would be cool with him in the mix and to start considering what the rules would be. SinnerThree even gives sexy homework. This gets Keaton thinking because he’s buried his feelings about guys for a long time. Of course, SinnerThree is Luke, who lives right across the hall. What makes this book work so extraordinarily well is the two sides of Luke and Keaton we see between their public personas and their chats on the app. Luke wants to escape the town and the life he’s known growing up. He strives to excel in school so he can get the high-paying job and never be reliant on anybody again. Meanwhile, Keaton knows he’s got all the privilege but he also chafes at the expectations that his family and friends put on him and he keeps all that to himself because it’s what he’s supposed to do. When they’re chatting as SinnerThree and LobsterShorts the conversation occasionally drifts from figuring out what Keaton’s boundaries actually are to discussing their realities and what they want out of life. Their emotional shields fall away. The way Sarina and Elle transition from sexy to sweet and back again is perfect. Of course, the night finally comes and Keaton and Luke find out they’ve been talking for weeks. The night doesn’t go as planned, but they don’t stop exploring their sexual feelings or sharing closely guarded secrets. Both guys have great growth as Keaton comes into his own, embracing his true sexuality and the career he wants after college. I’m particularly happy this wasn’t a gay-for-you story but rather about a young man figuring out who he is. The battle for Luke is about his sexuality at all–he’s proudly bisexual. He can’t fathom that anyone could love him because of his terrible family. He’s been so battered by them, that he’s hesitant to accept help from anyone because it would surely come with strings. Thankfully, even though Keaton bungles quite a few things with Luke, he also works to make it right. It’s a credit to Sarina and Elle that they have created such fully fleshed out characters who evolve so much through the story. I was invested in so much more than the romance because I wanted these guys to find their way too. The motley crew of frat brothers also brought some great depth to the story as they were a mix of those who were genuinely kind and others were douchey. The parents were also an interesting contrast between Luke’s trailer trash and Keaton’s very well-to-do. Keaton’s father and mother are far more than meets the eye too. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory, but I have to call out them out too. It’s an example of Sarina and Elle creating multi-dimensional characters. Another extraordinary part of the story for me was how the black moment played out. A lot of stuff goes down and there were plenty of opportunities to cheapen the story. The way the last twenty percent of the book played was perfect even while it provided me with quite a few moments of stress. We’re headed into summer and this book is perfect for vacation reading. I highly recommend Top Secret by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy. Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Reviewed by Jeff I knew this book would be exactly right for me. I have a thing for the royal trope and the idea of an American first son and a British prince getting together made this a must read. What I didn’t expect was how Casey McQuiston elevated the material putting this enemies to lovers romance on the list of my all time favorites. Alex Claremont-Diaz is the first son. Henry is the prince. They have secretly crushed on each other for years. They developed an enemies vibe at the Rio Olympics when they had a less than good encounter, especially from Alex’s point of view. Move forward to today and a near international incident set off by the two at a royal wedding. As part of PR disaster control, a story is created that Henry and Alex are actually the best of friends. After some forced outings to appease the press they start talking to each other more and get past their public personas. One of the things that makes this story works so well is Casey has created an alternate history that many of us would like to see. Claremont took office from Obama so the Trump nightmare never happened. And it’s wonderful that her son is Mexican-American given the current hate filled climate around immigrants. There’s even a couple of lines in the book about how it’s not lost on Alex that there are some people who hate that a Mexican-American took the job of first son. Alex and Henry talk a lot about the lives they want. They’re both expected to meet family obligations and be leaders for their countries–it’s not really what they want though. The texts, emails and phone calls as Alex and Henry reveal more and more of themselves are absolutely priceless. At times funny and others heartbreakingly honest, they talk about how they feel trapped. As the first sparks of romance blossom between them their enemy side is quite fiery as they have rage filled kisses before succumbing to the fact that this is something that they both desperately want. The back-and-forth between sweet romance and the slightly angry romance enhanced the story as they fight against their feelings. The reality stays firmly rooted throughout the story and I loved that. Sometimes the royal trope, as much as I enjoy it, is far more fantasy than reality. It’s part of what makes the trope so good–that chancea prince might be your neighbor. This world could exist–a prince and a member of the first family. Casey gives them all the trappings, including secret rendezvous’s that are partially orchestrated by their security teams. Of course, as must happen the romance is horribly revealed and damages them both. The guys had to really work for the happy in this book, which makes the ending so sweetly satisfying. There were a lot of ways the end could’ve played out, but I can’t imagine one that would’ve been more perfect than what Casey gives us. I haven’t felt as overall thrilled by a book as I have by Red White & Royal Blue in quite some time. It reminded me of reading Becky Albertalli’s Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and the wonder of such rich, vivid characters in a charming story that deserves to be real. Casey captured not only an America that I desperately want to live in but a romance that was everything that I ever wanted. I could gush on and on about this book, and will more in the upcoming interview. For now I’ll leave this by saying that I beyond highly recommend Casey McQuiston’s Red White & Royal Blue. This interview transcript is sponsored by Dreamspinner PressDreamspinner Press is proud to publish Hank Edwards and Deanna Wadsworth’s new book Murder Most Lovely. Check it out, and all the new mystery and suspense titles from your favorite authors like Amy Lane, KC Wells, Tara Lain, and Rhys Ford, just to name a few, and find a new favorite author while you’re at it. Go to dreamspinnerpress.com for everything you want in gay romance. Jeff: Casey, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Casey: Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited. Jeff: So, before we got to this segment, I spent a ton of time just going over “Red, White & Royal Blue” as being one of the best things I’ve read this year and one of my top books maybe in the “ever” category because it’s everything I needed in a romance with the prince trope and essentially royalty in the U.S. with the first son. And, I mean, Alex and Henry are so awesome. Tell us what your inspiration was behind this book? Casey: Yeah. So I first started…actually, it’s weird. A couple of days ago, I was going through my Timehop which shows you, you know, what you tweeted two, three, four years ago, and I realized that, a few days ago, which is April 13th, was the day that I tweeted, “Hey, I just had this idea for a book.” And it took me back to that moment of the exact lightning strike moment when I knew what I wanted to write. And this is a question we’ll get into later, but it was one of many attempts at a book I had started and none of them had really taken hold of me like this one did. So it was early 2016, I was obsessively following the presidential election, which, you know, we all were at the time with a lot of optimism. And, at the same time, I was reading two books. I was reading “The Royal We,” which is by Heather Morgan and Jessica Cocks, and it’s basically almost a novelization of Will and Kate with a bunch of different things changed about it. So I was reading that. And I was also reading a super dry Carl Bernstein Hillary Clinton biography, which was a fun little juxtaposition. And I had this idea in my head of I want to do… I’ve seen so many sub-versions of prince charming trope, but I feel, as a queer person, I’ve never seen one that seems the most obvious to me, which is, you know, what if, he wasn’t the perfect, going to produce a million heirs, prince, you know. And then on the other side, I was I loved “Chasing Liberty” when I was growing up and “My Date with the President’s Daughter” and I was really into the idea of a rom-com starring this rebellious first kid, and I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to do first, and I was like, “Wait a minute. If I put them both in the same story, I don’t have to pick.” So, honestly, it was me being indecisive that led to that decision. And on a wider scale, a bigger scope, I just really was looking for the perfect, fun escapist tropey rom-com that was so undeniably fun that the fact that it was also queer wouldn’t keep it out of the mainstream, you know, because a big thing that I want to do as an author and as a queer person is push those stories into the mainstream and be like, hey, you know, it’s kind of what they say in “Love, Simon,” everybody deserves to have a great love story, you know. And so everybody deserves to have a big shiny tropey, fun rom-com, you know. So, yeah, that was kind of where it came from for me. Jeff: And there is so much rom-com-y goodness floating in this book. I think you pulled a little bit from everything. Without giving spoilers, because there could be some depending on what you pick for this, what are the rom-com moments that just sticks out for you as one of your favorites among all of them? Casey: Wow, that’s a good question. I have pulled so many tropes from so many of my different favorite rom-coms. But there is this one thing that I love in every rom-com which is the gratuitous karaoke moment, which is actually if you ever watch “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” it’s a song on “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” like “Shake Me Up.” Okay, yeah, that. So it’s like “27 Dresses” does it, and “10 Things I Hate About You” does it where it’s like somebody gets up and sings a song in front of a bunch people for no reason. And it’s like, “No, this doesn’t happen in real life, but it’s super fun.” And so writing the whole karaoke scene, which I don’t think is a spoiler, that was so much fun for me because I was, you know, as musical theater kid in high school, we all were, and so I got to be so indulgent with that, and it was such a blast. I loved it. Jeff: I think you picked a great one right there because you’re right, there is that moment. There’s even that movie, which of course I’m blanking out on right now, that was like…it was a Rebel Wilson movie earlier, I think this year, that she’s, like, there’s always the karaoke moment that she ends up trapped in the karaoke moment in her own little thing. Casey: I love the karaoke moment. Jeff: That says a lot about people, the songs they pick. Casey: It does. It’s character shorthand for sure. Yeah. Like when Bea gets up and sings “Call Me” by Blondie in the book I’m like, “This is what she’s about, you know.” Jeff: Yeah. There have been so many accolades on this book before it even got published. I mean, we were reading about it, I think in “Blush” almost two months ago now. What’s resonating so much with all these pre-readers? Casey: God, you know, I mean, just to start off, I’ve been, completely blown away by the response to it. When I wrote this book I was like, “This is so niche.” It’s a queer political rom-com with royal elements. And also we talk about gerrymandering in it, and I was like, “This is so niche,” no one’s gonna care, no one’s going to publish it. I was like, “I’m going to try and query this for a month, and then I’m just going to self-pub,” you know. And the fact that people have engaged with it so much and that it has gotten, I think three-star reviews now which is just blowing my mind completely, so beyond grateful for those. It’s just been so staggering and incredible. But, I don’t know, I think that right now the world is really depressing. We live in a world right now that is at times literally on fire, you know. And it is so important to have these little oases or moments of respite and little escapist things because when I first started writing this book, I’m so neck deep in the news cycle and I really couldn’t finish it until I pulled out of it because I realized that wasn’t what it needed to be. It didn’t need to be mired in all of the negativity and all of the darkness that was going on in the world. It needed to be this spark of hope, you know, that would kind of feel… I think about when Obama won re-election in 2012, and I was with my friends. I was in college at the time and we went out on the balcony, and popped a bottle of $60 French champagne, and I think about how I felt in that moment and I was like, “I want this book to feel like that moment,” you know. And I think that a lot of people have been missing that feeling. I think that we have so few things, especially when we look at the political sphere right now, to be excited about and to be hopeful about. And I think that we’re all just nostalgic almost for when we had hope. And I think that what this book does is it lives in the space of being here and now and still having hope, you know, and I think that’s really resonating with people. And then I also think that people are just excited to see…we’re seeing it with Helen Hoang and Jasmine Guillory who are writing romances that are integrating, you know, neurodiverse characters and just racially diverse characters. I think a lot of people are tired of seeing, you know, the same two straight white cisgender, neurotypical people falling in love, you know. And so I think that people are hungry for something that’s different in rom-com that can show that different types of people can have that same big, huge, escapist magical love story. So that’s kind of where I think it comes from. Jeff: You noted that you started writing this in 2016, essentially before the election happened. Do you think you would have written the same book had Hillary won? Casey: That’s a great question. And the book I had planned to write before the election went the way that it did was a different book. There were so many threads that I ended up dropping. I, at one point, had…and this was before anything about Russia had come up. I, at one, point had… a Russian double agent involved in the campaign and I was like, “This is too unrealistic. No one’s going to buy this. I’m cutting this,” you know. And now I’m like, “God…” But, yeah. I mean, it definitely…I think it would have been more lampooning the Democratic Party…not that I have anything against the Democratic Party as someone who is registered as Democrat, but it would have been more of “Veep” style, you know, that we’re all on the same side here, so we’re going to send each other up kind of thing. And instead it’s still very tongue in cheek, and it still has that “Veep” side to it, but it needed to have more of…. it needed to be less cynical, basically, you know, because I don’t think that we can really afford a lot of cynicism right now beyond what, you know, roasting the President on Twitter is cynical, I guess. But, yeah, I think that there are certain things that happen in the plot that never probably would have been explored if the results of the election had gone differently because I don’t think I would have felt as much of an urgency to put those into the story. So, yeah, it definitely would have been different. It definitely would have been a lot different. But the President was always the same. President Claremont was the same character from the moment I came up with the idea for the book. She’s like Tami Taylor, from “Friday Night Lights” meets Wendy Davis, the politician from Texas, meets a tiny bit of Selina Meyer from “Veep” and probably every strong female in my life, you know. So, yeah, long story short, yes, it would have been different.  Jeff: One of the things I like about it so much, and you touched on this a little bit, is that it’s not two white guys getting together because Alex is Mexican-American. And certainly given how things have played out under the current administration, having that element in the White House as first son, it says a lot. And Alex comments on this, you know, periodically as he’s kind of going through things and how that aspect of his heritage plays into things. Did you have that set early on or did that kind of manifest as we saw how immigrants were being treated post-election and even during the election cycle for that matter? Casey: Sure. Well, the minute…it kind of was, like, the plot itself that informed what Alex would be because, like I said, the first character I came up with was the president and everything kind of formed around her. And I’m from Louisiana, and I have this huge chip on my shoulder about democrats, and liberal people, and progressive people in red states because I was one for so long. I live in a purple-y state now. But, you know, I feel they’re so often written off and discredited, and I can probably count on one hand the number of actual presidential candidates who came and campaigned in my hometown, which is the capital of Louisiana. And people just don’t see anything worth investing in. So I wanted to do a southern Democrat. I didn’t think that a Louisiana Democrat was that realistic, so I did a Texas Democrat. And from the minute I knew she was from Texas, I was like, “Well, it would make sense for her to have married a Mexican man, or a, you know, a first or second generation Mexican man.” And it just kind of went from there where I was, like, “You know, I really do like that idea of that.” I spent so much time in Texas, I know so many people from Texas, I know so many Tejanos and people… it just made sense to me. And then, you know, the more that the rhetoric kind of got really vitriolic about Mexican immigrants around the election, I was like, “Yeah, fuck you. Actually, I am gonna put some Mexican people in the White House.” Yeah, that’s what’s gonna happen. I did as much as I could with it. Obviously, I’m white, and I did a ton of research, I talked to a ton of Mexican friends of mine, and especially Tejano first or second generation people. And then what I’m really excited about with the movie is that we have the opportunity to bring in more people on the creative side who are Latino who can offer more of that voice, that can go farther than I could go with it and that can explore more things with it. So, yeah. It just felt really natural to me, he’s from Texas, of course, he could be half Mexican. That’s just so typical there. So, yeah, it was a very natural progression of the character for me. Jeff: And in a weird twist, I’m actually interviewing you from Dallas. Casey: Yes, I know. I was just thinking about it. That’s so funny. Yeah. I feel like that’s appropriate. I feel the stars aligned to have you interview me from Texas. Jeff: And finish the book while I’m in Texas. It was kind of crazy. Casey: Yeah. That’d be so appropriate. I’m really excited because my second tour stop is in Austin, and I’m so excited. I haven’t been to Austin, like, a year or two, and it’s just feels so right to go back with this book. So I’m so excited. Jeff: There is a ton of history in this book. Henry goes into a lot of history of the monarchy. And one of the things I loved is in the emails that Alex and Henry are trading, they end up and quote a lot of literature or other letters of historical people. How much of that was in your head, and how much was “I need to go off and do a ton of research?” Casey: So, for me, a lot of…when I was talking about… there’s parts where after Alex starts figuring stuff out, he starts, like, develops independent research of, like, let me remediate myself on queer American history, and reconnect with it, which I think is something that a lot of queer people in their 20s do. Especially for me when I was 20, 25, and then I started to figure myself out, I was like, “Wow, I need to know the first thing about my own community.” And so I went back and really read a lot and educated myself. And so a lot of the American history, American queer history was stuff I was already familiar with because that’s something that I felt was my responsibility to learn in the past. But, yeah, I definitely didn’t know a lot about queer British history at all. And so that was a lot of reading for me, a lot of, you know, finding history threads on Twitter, and then okay, I’m gonna go look up all these stories individually, and find out what’s the real truth, because things get twisted online. But, yeah. The letters kind of started with…and this is gonna date when I started writing this, but I was really coming off the “Hamilton” high, you know, which I think we all were in early 2016. It was like, “Oh, man, I’ve been mainlining Alexander Hamilton history for six months, you know.” And, you know, I was really interested… I love all of Hamilton’s love letters with Eliza, but there was also his letters with Florence that were really fascinating to me, and I had started looking into that and that was how I found this book called “My Dear Boy” by Rictor Norton. And I found that because I was researching the Hamilton Lawrence letters, and that was where I found a lot of the letters that are featured in the emails. And then I also was looking into Virginia Woolf, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and all those figures from history who also have a lot of archive letters that are very interesting. And, yeah, honestly, it was almost…I had a blast with it because it was just a queer history, like Easter egg hunt. And, you know, I intentionally did that in the book because I pictured this book…I pictured it being something that a lot of people at different points in their journey with queerness would read, and I would want…let’s say some 19-year old who’s just figuring things out, and they don’t really know anything about queer history, I’m like, “Well, here’s the name of something that you should go look up.” “Here is ‘Paris Is Burning,’ go watch it,” you know, kind of thing. And so it was, it’s really, a bunch of sneaky history lessons. I’m a nerd, and I was like, “You should know this, too.” But, yeah, I had a blast doing that. And then just research, in general, was just so much fun. I spent so much time poring through the royal collection archives online, just for throwaway jokes and stuff. I was a journalist for six years before I quit to do this full time. And so, yeah, I’m a huge nerd and I love historical context for everything because that’s just what I’ve been wired to do for so long. So, yeah, that’s kind of where it all comes from for me. Jeff: And my musical theater geek self loves that “Hamilton” had a play in that because I kind of felt that I was reading some of it’s like, “This seems very ‘Hamilton’ in some ways that they’re using this.” Casey: I battled with myself over whether “Hamilton” was a thing that existed in this universe, and if I should mention it in the book, and I was like, “I’m not gonna,” because it’s still so fresh and I feel it’s gonna date the book a lot. But it’s definitely, like, there’s this undercurrent of we’re doing colonial rap battles under the text, you know. Jeff: That’s one of the things I like about this so much is that it is current revisionist history, you know, because, I mean, most of it, and this doesn’t get to a spoiler, most of it is leading into the 2020 election, with Claremont being President in the here and now and having succeeded from Obama. Yeah, its current revisionist history. It’s very interesting how that plays itself out. Now, I think we mentioned that this is your first book that’s out there in the world. What got you into writing romance and specifically m/m romance? Casey: I mean, I have always consumed all types of media and this is my one sacrilegious answer that I give in interviews which is I’m really more into movies and TV than I am into books, and that is the most media that I consume. It’s not what I write, I’m not a screenwriter, I’m not good at that type of writing, but it is where I pull most of my influences from, and what I consumed the most as a kid, I mean, unless you count “Harry Potter,” which everybody read… Jeff: Which does very much exist in the “Red, White & Royal Blue” universe, which I also love. Casey: Oh, yeah, very much so. But what I engaged with about all of those things was the relationships in them. I’ve watched “Lost” and I was like, “I don’t care about Dharma, or the clues or what this island actually means to the polar bear,” I was like, “I care about that everybody’s gonna end up together that I want to end up together in the end, you know,” and it was always like that with everything I watched. I’ve watched “Buffy,” and it was always about that for me. It was like, “This is cool, mythology is cool, whatever, but, like, Spike,” you know. And it really that was just what grabbed me, and so I knew that was what I was always gonna wanna write. And I tried to write other genres. Every other book I tried to start writing was young adult, magical realism, or young adult fantasy, which is clearly not my genre. And I tried a bunch of different false starts in those genres, and it didn’t pan out for me. And this was, like I said, the first time, I had an idea that completely grabbed me. And I think, like I said earlier, I gravitate to writing queer fiction for the same reason that straight people gravitate to writing straight fiction which is that I’m a queer person, and it’s my experience, it’s what I know. I didn’t really come into this book with an idea of what the gender should be more than what the story would be and it formed around that because I didn’t think that the story would take on all of the same qualities. If it was two women, you know, I thought that it would be a little different tone. I felt if it was two women there’d be a porn parody within 15 minutes of it coming out, you know. And so it’s just, there’s just different ways that lesbian couples and gay men couples are perceived by the world I felt, and for this story it made more sense with two men, and I also wanted to do that prince charming trope sub-version. And so it just kind of told me what it wanted to be. But my next book is…it’s about two women, and it’s a completely different story. And so, yeah, I really…honestly, it’s just me trying to make queer rom-coms a mainstream thing more than anything else. Jeff: More power to you. And, so far, it looks like you’re doing a great job with that. Casey: Thank you. Thank you so much. Jeff: This question may not have a good answer based on what you just told us about your kind of TV and movie thing, but are there authors who influence you? Casey: Well, yeah, I mean there are definitely authors that influence me. I loved Oscar Wilde growing up which is, you know, I was 15, my sisters, I remember being at my sister’s college graduation with highlighter and sticky tabs going through “The Importance of Being Earnest.” So, yeah, I did my term paper in high school on “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and I was like, “This is straight behavior.” But, yeah, Oscar Wilde was a huge influence on me. The “Harry Potter” books, yes, of course, they influenced me. I read a lot of non-fiction and a lot of memoirs actually because I love the voice of them, and I think that’s what helps me to have a good narrative voice. So I love Carrie Fisher’s writings, I love…Nora Ephron’s memoirs are all incredible, Mary Karr. Let’s see, what else. I’m looking at my bookshelf right now. What else do I read? Jane Austen, obviously, the classics of romance, you know. And then more recently, my favorite author right now is Taylor Jenkins Reid. “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” is my favorite book I’ve read in the past couple years and definitely has earned a spot on my all-time faves shelf. And so that’s definitely… And I loved how she does a lot of…she does a lot of what we call in journalism alternate story formats, so epistolary style things that are threaded into the book, which is something that obviously I really love too. And then yeah, that’s…I mean, I read a lot…at least I read a lot of non-fictions like Rebecca Traister and Roxane Gay, those are those are all my faves. But then I pull from a lot of a lot of TV and movies. The biggest influences on this were “Veep,” “Parks and Rec.” There is this web series called “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo” that I love, and it’s so millennial absurdity that it really kind of like… there’s a shout out to it in the book because they play the song, “Loco In Acapulco” by The Four Tops in that show, and I put that in the book. Yeah. So I’m kind of all over the place. I have a lot of influences and a lot of things that kind of all feed into what comes out of my brain. Jeff: So let’s talk movie. You hinted that a little bit ago. Amazon and Greg Berlanti picked this up before, you know, again before it’s even published out to the world. What was your reaction when you first heard that that was a done deal? Casey: Well, I mean, it was so many stages of reaction because what people don’t see behind the scenes is that the process is crazy. It starts with I have a Hollywood agent, and she sends it out to people and then one producer expresses interest and then more producers can if they want to, and then it turns into you’re on the phone with, you know, such and such from whatever huge production company, and it’s like, “I’m not qualified to do this.” And you talk to those and you pick your producer, and that’s how I picked Berlanti. And I was just really excited to even have a chance to work with them because I’ve loved so much of their work, not even just looking at “Love, Simon,” and going back to “Political Animals” which was a six episode series that’s on Netflix. It’s got…honestly, I have to say one of my touchstones too because it’s got Sigourney Weaver is the president in that which is just amazing, and they’ve got Sebastian Stan as one of the president’s kids, and he’s very tortured, and recovering from addiction, and he’s gay, and he’s Sebastian Stan so he’s crying, you know, and very beautiful. But, yeah. So I just knew that he had the range for it and I also knew that based on “Love, Simon” that production company had the chops to get an unapologetically queer rom-com into the mainstream. But also it was on a personal level, I just remember going to see “Love, Simon” in the theater and that was probably a week after I signed my book deal. And I showed up with an entire eight-inch Jimmy John’s sub in my purse because I knew I was going to cry and I like to eat my feelings. So it was literally me alone. I had to drive 15 minutes out of my city because I was living in Louisiana at the time to find a theater that was playing it, and it just me alone in the theater with my sandwich and was just weeping to Jennifer Garner, you know. And I just remember getting in my car and thinking if my book could make people feel half as seen as I just felt by watching that movie, then I will be so, so happy. And so I’d have the chance to do, to kind of pay forward what that feeling was for me to the next round of people, especially queer people, meant so much to me. And then yeah, Amazon, they just care so much about the project. They’re so passionate about it. They want it to, you know, really…they’re actually really invested in diversifying what is in the market, and taking some risks, and doing projects like this. And it’s just so incredibly mind-blowing, and it really doesn’t feel real yet to have people want to invest those kinds of resources in a story that I wrote. More than anything, I’m just so excited about what it could represent and what it could mean to people. I think about like…and not to at all compare the histories of these communities, but I think about “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians” and what those movies meant to have as big cinematic events geared around a demographic that wasn’t usually catered to by the mainstream, you know, and what it meant for those people and what it represented for the future of storytelling for different groups. And I like the idea of being able to make any kind of similar impact with movie is incredible. And I really hope that we can do that, and I really hope that it can be the beginning of a lot more queer rom-coms, you know. So, yeah, it’s amazing. I’m so, so humbled, and amazed, and really excited to see what comes next with it. Jeff: As you were writing, I think all authors tend to cast their books to some degree. Do you have in mind, and knowing this is totally separate from anything that Amazon and Berlanti might do… Casey: Sure. Sure. Jeff: …do you have in mind who Alex and Henry are, at least in your head, as you were writing if you had to assign them an actor? Casey: Well, it’s so hard because…and this is kind of an indictment of the state of Hollywood and that is slowly beginning to change, but there really aren’t a lot of young Latino actors out there choose from, you know. And so it was… there really wasn’t a definitive Alex in my head because I have looked and looked and it was so hard to find someone that fit. And that’s what’s exciting to me about the movie is I think that we will get a chance to kind of give a star making role to some young unknown Latino actor, which would be amazing, and I would love to do that. And Henry is just very elusive. There’s five million charming white British men, but in my head, he’s just so specific-looking, and I have not yet found anyone that matched him. But the parts that were, I think, easiest for me to assign an actor to were like… I always pictured Daniel Day-Lewis as Richards with like the silver foxy and then, Ellen Claremont in my head from day one has been Connie Briton. And then, I mean, Rafael Luna in my head is Oscar Isaac for sure, you know. Jeff: Oh, yeah. I like that. Casey: There’s some characters that I came up with the character first and then tried to figure out what they looked like, and there are other characters where… with Rafael Luna I was like, “I want a character who looks like Oscar Isaac. What’s he going to be?” you know, and that was kind of how that came to be. But, yeah, I’m really excited casting is going to be so much fun, and I’m very excited about it. And I’m really, really excited about just getting to see, you know, what we can do for some…I think there’s gonna be a lot of unknowns in the lead roles, and that’s going to be amazing because they’re going to be able to really step into and embody those characters without it being distracting, like, “Oh, that’s like so and so. I look at them and all I see is the character they played in ‘Game of Thrones’ or whatever.” Yeah. so I think that’ll be, you know, a fun thing. But, yeah, that’s kind of it for that. Jeff: Do we get to see more of Alex and Henry in the future do you think? Casey: I think that I would not rule that out, and that’s all I can really say about that. Jeff: Sure. Casey: Yeah. I think that that would be amazing. I would love to do that. Jeff: And you mentioned your next book is going to be a female pairing. Casey: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s completely different from this. It’s a much smaller scope of a world. It’s just a girl who moves to New York, and she’s from the south. I don’t think I will…I don’t know if I will ever write a protagonist that’s not from the south because that’s just so deeply ingrained in me and in my voice. But she’s from south, she moves to New York, and she kind of stumbles into this roommate situation where it’s just sort of ragtag band of misfits kind of thing. And she develops this huge crush on this hot chick who’s on her subway commute every day. And it’s kind of based on the idea of that way that you fall in love with something on public transit for like 20 minutes, and then you step off, and it’s like they never existed anywhere other than the train. They’re just there for 20 minutes, and you never see them again. But the thing is that she sees this girl every single time she’s on the train. And there’s kind of a twist as to… I will say there’s some light rom-com-y style time travel shenanigans that happened, and the girl on the train is not exactly everything that she seems. And so the whole book is about their relationship and at the same time trying to figure out what’s going on with this girl. But it is rom-com, and it’s super fun, and, of course, it has a gratuitous karaoke moment. Jeff: Excellent. Casey: Well, it’s more of like there’s a gratuitous karaoke moment, and there’s a gratuitous drag show moment. Yeah, so, range. But I’m really excited it. I’m hoping…I mean, obviously, we haven’t set a date for it yet, but it is super, super personal, book of my heart for me, and I’m really excited for people to read it. Jeff: Fantastic, definitely looking forward to that. Casey: Yeah. Yeah. It’ll be awesome. I’m excited. Jeff: What’s the best way for folks to keep up with you online so they could track your progress with what’s up with Alex and Henry and also the new book and everything else? Casey: Yeah, Twitter for sure. I’m kind of been taking a step back lately because since we announced the movie my notifications have been busted, you know. But, yeah, I’ll definitely be back on more especially during tour. I tweet out playlists and a lot of little trivial information like their birth charts and things like that on there, and then also Instagram. That one is more for like I’m here for this tour date kind of thing. So yeah, those are my big two ones. It’s casey_mcquiston on Twitter, and then casey.mcquiston on Instagram. Jeff: Very cool. Well, we will put the links to all of that in the show notes. Casey: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Jeff: “Red, White & Royal Blue” comes out on May 14th, and we wish you just continued success because it’s been so much already and look forward to seeing the movie and everything else that comes from it. Casey: Yeah, thank you so much. I’m so, so grateful, and it’s been so much fun. So thank you so much for having me on.

Shownotes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify, the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum, and I’m back with my co-host, Nachi Gupta. This month, we’re tackling an incredibly important topic - evaluation and management of life threatening headaches in the Emergency Department. Nachi: Fear not, this will not simply be “who needs a head CT episode”; we’ll cover much more than that. Listen closely as this is an important topic, with huge consequences for mismanagement. Jeff: Absolutely. As some quick background - headaches account for 3% of all ED visits in the US, with 90% being benign primary headaches and less than 10% being secondary to other causes like vascular, infectious, or traumatic etiologies. It’s within these later 10% that we are looking for the red flag signs to identify the potentially life-threatening headaches. Nachi: And to do so, Dr. David Zodda and Dr. Amit Gupta, PD and APD at Hackensack University Medical and Trauma Center, and their colleague Dr. Gabrielle Procopio, a PharmD, have done a fantastic job parsing through the literature, which included over 500 abstracts, 89 full text articles, guidelines from ACEP and the American Academy of Neurology, as well as canadian and european neurology guidelines, to summarize the best evidence based recommendations for you all. Jeff: We would be remiss to not also mention Dr. Mert Erogul of Maimonides Medical Center and Dr. Steven Godwin, Chair of Emergency Medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine. Nachi: Alright, so let’s get started with some definitions and pathophysiology. The international classification of headache disorders 3, or ICHD-3, classifies headaches into primary, secondary, and cranial neuropathies. Jeff: Primary headache disorders include migraine, tension, and cluster headaches. Secondary headaches include those secondary to vascular disorders, traumatic disorders, and disorders in hemostasis. These are the potentially life threatening headaches that can have a mortality has high as 50%. Nachi: And the final category includes cranial neuropathies, such as trigeminal neuralgia. Jeff: And I think we can safely say that that wraps up our discussion in this episode on cranial neuropathies, moving on…. Nachi: Headaches result from traction to or irritation of the meninges and blood vessels, which are the only innervated central nervous system structures. Activation of specific nerve ganglion complexes by neuropeptides like -- substance P and calcitonin gene-related peptide -- are thought to contribute to head pain. Jeff: It is important to note that all headache pain shares common pain pathways, thus response to pain medications does not exclude potential life threatening secondary causes of headache. This led to the ACEP guideline which states just that.. Nachi: I feel like that deserves ding sound as it's a critically important point. To repeat, just because a pain medication relieves a headache, that does not exclude dangerous secondary causes! Jeff: And what are the life threatening headaches? Life-threatening headaches include subarachnoid hemorrhage, cervical Artery Dissection, which includes both vertebral Artery Dissection and carotid artery dissection, cerebral Venous Thrombosis, idiopathic intracranial hypertension, giant cell arteritis, and posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, or PRES. Nachi: Slow down for a second and let’s not skip over your favorite section.. Let’s talk pre hospital care for headache patients. Jeff: Good call! Pre-hospital care is fairly straightforward and includes a primary survey, conducting a focused neurologic exam, and assessing for red flag signs, which include focal neurologic deficits, sudden onset headache, new headache in those over 50, neck pain or stiffness, changes in visual Acuity, fever or immunocompromised State, history of malignancy, pregnancy or postpartum status, syncope, and seizure. That’s quite a list. For a visual reference, see Table 3 in the print issue. Nachi: And patients with neurologic deficits or severe sudden-onset headaches, should be transported immediately to the nearest available stroke center. Tylenol should be offered for pain management. Avoid opioids and nsaids. Jeff: Upon arrival to the emergency department, history and physical should include your standard vitals, testing neurologic function, cranial nerve testing, head and neck exam, as well as a fundoscopic exam. As was the case for your pre-hospital colleagues, you should also assess for red flag signs for life-threatening headaches. Check out tables 2, 3, and 4 for more details here. Nachi: With respect to Vital Signs, in the setting of an acute headache, severe hypertension should prompt a search for signs of end-organ damage such as hypertensive encephalopathy, intracranial Hemorrhage, PRES, and preeclampsia in pregnant women. Additionally, fever, and especially fever and neck stiffness, should raise concern for CNS infection. Jeff: For your neurologic examination, make sure to include assessments of motor strength, coordination, reflexes, sensory function, and gait. Don't forget that lesions involving the anterior circulation, such as dysarthria, cognitive impairment, and Horner syndrome may be indicative of a carotid artery dissection, whereas dizziness, vision changes, and limb weakness may be due to a vertebral Artery Dissection. Nachi: And for cranial nerve testing - pay particular attention to cranial nerves 2, 3 and 6. For cranial nerve 2 - look out for an afferent pupillary defect, or a marcus-gunn pupil, which is seen in optic neuritis, giant cell artertitis, and central retinal artery occlusion. For CN3, oculomotor nerve palsies raise concern for a posterior communicating aneurysm and SAH. And lastly, CN6 palsies, which often presents with diplopia on lateral gaze , are often seen with intracranial idiopathic hypertension and cerebral venous thrombosis, in addition to impaired visual acuity, visual field defects, and tunnel vision. Jeff: For the head and neck exam, remember that a partial horner syndrome, with miosis and ptosis without anhidrosis, may be indicative of a cervical artery dissection. Unfortunately, if the patient presents acutely, their only complaint may be pain, as the neurologic sequelae may take days to develop. Nachi: Additionally, with respect to the head and neck exam, evaluate the patient for tenderness and beading along the temporal artery. Jeff: One review noted that temporal artery beading actually had the highest likelihood ratio for GCA, 4.6, whereas temporal artery tenderness only had a LR of 2.6 Nachi: And the last physical exam maneuver you should ideally perform is a fundoscopic exam for papilledema, which is often seen in IIH, malignant hypertension, and CVT. Jeff: Perfect so that rounds out the physical, next we have diagnostic studies. Most importantly, routine lab testing is typically of low utility in aiding in the diagnosis of headache. Nachi: Even ESR and CRP in the setting of possible giant cell arteritis have poor sensitivity and specificity to diagnose it. So even if the ESR and CRP are negative, if the suspicion for GCA is high enough, it should be treated and you should get a biopsy. Jeff: Do consider adding on a venous or arterial carboxyhemoglobin in the right clinical scenario, as CO poisoning represents an important cause of headache you wouldn’t want to miss. This is especially important at this time of year when heating systems are working overtime here in the states. Nachi: And hopefully you have a co-oximeter, so you can even check this non-invasively. Jeff: Interestingly, there may be a unique role for a d-dimer here as well. Several small studies have used the d-dimer to risk stratify patients with possible CVT. In one study a d-dimer level < 500 mcg/L had a 97% sensitivity and a negative predictive value of 99% - not bad! Nachi: Pretty impressive performance characteristics. I think that about wraps up lab work. Let’s talk radiology. Jeff: Though low yield, CT utilization is estimated at 2.5-10% of non-traumatic headaches. A non-con CT should be reserved for those with suspicion for an intracranial hemorrhage, while a contrast CT would be required in those in whom there is concern for an infectious process or space occupying lesion. Nachi: CT angio or MRI should be used in cases of possible cervical artery dissection. MRI also is the neuroimaging of choice for PRES, which is more sensitive for cerebral edema than CT. Jeff: Similarly, MRV is recommended in those with a concerning story for CVT. Nachi: To help guide your emergent neuroimaging utilization, ACEP suggests imaging in those with headache and an abnormal finding on neuro exam, those with new and sudden-onset severe headache, HIV positive patients with new headache, and those over 50 with a new headache. Jeff: With that in mind, let’s dive a bit deeper into the use of CT for SAH, a topic which doesn’t get a ding sound, but is certainly critically important. Recent literature have found that a CT within 6 hours of symptom onset has a sensitivity and specificity and negative predictive value of 100%. In addition, one 2016 study demonstrated a LR of 0.01 in those with a negative HCT within 6 hours. These are really important results because that means SAH is essentially ruled out with a negative study. Nachi: Unfortunately, the 2008 ACEP guideline and 2012 AHA guidelines still recommend a lumbar puncture in those being worked up for SAH. Luckily the ACEP guideline is currently being revised so your decision to forego the LP with a negative HCT in the first 6 hours will likely also be backed by ACEP in the near future. Jeff: That’s a nice transition into our next test - the LP. Since LP carries a risk of herniation, in those with signs of increased ICP, make sure to get appropriate neuroimaging before attempting the puncture. In those without signs of increased ICP, no imaging is necessary. Nachi: While the position in which the LP is performed doesn’t matter as much when ruling out infection or SAH, in those with suspected IIH, make sure to obtain an opening pressure with the patient lying in the lateral decubitus position. An opening pressure of greater than 25 is often seen in IIH. Jeff: And the LP in the setting of IIH is not only diagnostic but also potentially therapeutic, as the removal of 1 ml of CSF can lower the pressure by 1 cm of H20 and potentially relieve the patient’s symptoms. Nachi: Always rewarding to diagnose and treat simultaneously... Jeff: Absolutely. But back to the LP for SAH for a second or two. When evaluating for a subarachnoid hemorrhage, you’ll often note an opening pressure of greater than 20 with persistent RBC in all tubes. Nachi: While there are no RBC cutoffs, one study found no patients with a SAH with less than 100 RBC in the final tube. In contrast, greater than 10,000 RBC increased the odds by a factor of 6. In addition, one 2015 study found that patients without xanthrochromia and less than 2000 RBC were effectively ruled out of having a SAH with a combined sensitivity of 100% Jeff: Lots of 100% sensitivities and specificities being thrown around today, which is definitely not the norm. No complaints here, I’ll take it. Anyway, the last test to discuss is our good friend the ultrasound, specifically the ocular ultrasound. Nachi: Examining the optic nerve sheath 3 mm posterior to the globe, an optic nerve sheath diameter of 5 mm or greater is predictive of an ICP greater than 20. Jeff: Keep in mind that this may expedite the work up, though a normal diameter does not rule out increased ICP, so a head CT may still be indicated. Nachi: Alright, so we’ve talked a lot about testing, both lab and imaging, and we’ve mentioned a bunch of pathologies, but let’s spend a few minutes going over the specifics of each. Jeff: Let’s start with SAH. SAH account for 1% of all headache visits to the ED. Most nontraumatic SAH are caused by aneurysm rupture. A missed diagnosis of SAH can have a case-fatality rate as high as 50% Nachi: Although 75% of SAH patients report an abrupt onset, objective neck stiffness has the highest likelihood ratio of 6.6. Other important features include LOC, neurologic deficit, subjective neck stiffness, photophobia, and onset during exertion or intercourse. Jeff: Additionally, approximately 20% of patients with a SAH have warning signs of a sentinel bleed including headaches, cranial nerve palsies, neck pain, or nausea and vomiting. Nachi: In order to aid you in diagnosing a SAH, you should consider the ottawa SAH Rule which has a 100% sensitivity and a 15% specificity. To use this rule you must be between 15 and 40 with a GCS of 15 and present with a headache with maximal intensity within 1 hour of onset. If you meet those inclusion criteria, and you have no neurologic deficits, no neck pain or stiffness, no witnessed LOC, no onset during exertion, no limitation of neck flexion, and no thunderclap onset, you can essentially rule out a SAH. Jeff: While the ottawa SAH rule has been prospectively validated, know that this study has been challenged for its interobserver variability, but in any case it still provides helpful red flags to consider. If your patient is found to have a SAH, a CT angiogram and neurosurgical consultation should be considered immediately. Nachi: In addition to monitoring ABCs, early care involves the administration of analgesics and anti-emetics. Also consider elevating the head of the bed to 30 deg, which may also improve venous drainage and decrease ICP. Jeff: In terms of BP management, guidelines from the american stroke association recommend targeting a SBP of 160 with a titratable agent like nicardipine or clevidipine. Nachi: In addition, nimodipine, 60 mg q4h, should be given to those with aneurysmal SAH to improve outcomes. Jeff: and any role for anti-epileptics? Nachi: That’s controversial and the authors state it may be considered in the immediate post-hemorrhagic period and should be limited to a 3-7 day course with longer courses required in special populations. Jeff: The next pathology to discuss is cervical artery dissections, which account for 2% of all strokes and nearly 20% of strokes in those 50 and under. cervical artery dissections are most commonly due to trauma, but can occur spontaneously. Nachi: Risk factors include Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, osteogenesis imperfecta, and Marfan syndrome. Jeff: Regardless of the etiology, the management of cervical artery dissections is primarily medical with IV heparin followed by warfarin or a direct oral anticoagulant in those with extracranial dissections, and antiplatelet therapy like aspirin or clopidogrel in those with intracranial dissections. Nachi: Thanks to the CADISP study, we know there is no difference in mortality or neurologic outcome when choosing between antiplatelet therapy and anticoagulation. Jeff: Next we have cerebral venous thrombosis. This typically presents with a gradual onset headache. Though it can happen to anybody, cerebral venous thrombosis typically results from thrombotic disease. Nachi: Important risk factors include oral contraceptive use, pregnancy and postpartum states, Factor V Leiden deficiency, and lupus. Jeff: Treatment for CVT is controversial due to a high risk of hemorrhage and hemorrhagic transformation. According to the best available evidence, anticoagulation is the standard therapy with full dose anticoagulation of low-molecular weight heparin or heparin as a bridge to warfarin. Nachi: Yeah, it’s really a tough spot to be in as one third end up having some form of hemorrhage too…. Jeff: Perhaps yet another good place for shared decision making? Nachi: Honestly, it’s a good thought, but anticoagulation is the guideline recommendation, so I think that is likely the best route in this case. Jeff: Great point. Next we have idiopathic intracranial hypertension. This is typically associated with obese women of childbearing age. It may also be due to hypervitaminosis A from excessive dietary intake and even drugs like the retinoids used in treating dermatologic conditions and cancers. Nachi: idiopathic intracranial hypertension can be diagnosed by the modified dandy criteria which are found in table 8 on page 11. Let’s just run through the criteria. Jeff: The modified Dandy criteria for idiopathic intracranial hypertension include: signs and symptoms of increased ICP, no other neurologic abnormalities or altered level of consciousness, ICP > 20 on LP with normal CSF composition, neuroimaging without another etiology for intracranial hypertension, and lastly no other identified cause of intracranial hypertension. Nachi: And as we mentioned a few minutes ago, an LP can be both diagnostic and therapeutic, though the relief is likely temporary Jeff: For more permanent treatment, weight loss is the key. Acetazolamide, 250 mg to 500 BID is the first line pharmacotherapy. Combined with weight loss, acetazolamide and a low sodium diet has been shown to improve visual field function. Nachi: And if this fails, topiramate, furosemide, and in the worst case surgical options like CSF shunting, venous sinus stenting, and optic sheath fenestration are all options. Jeff: I imagine taking a diuretic for a headache could be a real hindrance on quality of life, though I suppose it’s better than risking vision loss or having a significant neurosurgery. Nachi: Agreed. Next we have giant cell arteritis. GCA is rare, with a prevalence of

Jeff Neumeister, Founder and CEO of Neumeister & Associates, joins us today to talk about cryptocurrency taxes, a confounding area of tax law (what isn’t?) and one that you should master if you are an investor in digital currency. Because what you don’t know could have an adverse impact on your pocketbook. That’s what happened to one U.S. college student in 2017 who invested $5,000 in Ethereum and somehow would up owing the IRS $400,000 in taxes. Yes, you stand to benefit greatly from understanding how the IRS views crypto (Hint: It’s in the same category as your house). And you’ll learn the cardinal rule of crypto taxation: The buck stops with you.   This is specially important this year after the 2018 market crash since many investors are selling their cryptocurrency and fleeing the market, without full knowledge of the tsunami of capital gains liabilities that these transactions may be triggering.   A forensic accountant by trade, Jeff brings great credibility to the task of walking us through the minefields of crypto taxes. He offers practical tips on everything from what constitutes a taxable event to what makes crypto taxes so challenging and how mined coins are taxed. That’s just a few of the questions Jeff answers in this episode. You’ll come away feeling a lot more confident about understanding your tax burden as you stagger into your tax prep marathon.     Topics Covered in this Conversation with Jeff Neumeister   What makes crypto taxes so challenging. What constitutes a taxable event? What is the difference between short-term and long-term gains? How are mined coins taxed? What happens if I give some coins as a gift, or someone gives me crypto? Do I have to pay tax on coins that were hacked? What happens if I lose some coins? What are the acceptable ways to report coin gains? What are the biggest obstacles to easily filing crypto taxes? Increasingly, there are charities that accept crypto. Is that something that would be helpful at tax time?  How are exchanges doing in terms of making it easy for investors to file taxes? Can crypto losses be balanced against traditional fiat capital losses. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen or heard with it comes to filing or not filing crypto taxes. Let’s step back a bit and look at the process involved - let’s look at two scenarios: Scenario A: Let’s say you are Sally Fey, a beginner investor in 2017 and you got all caught up in the buying and selling during the Bull Market and you didn’t track all the coins you traded across multiple exchanges nor did you jot down the buy/sell price  for each transaction. Now your taxes are looming and you have your head in your hands. How do you regroup? Scenario B: Unlike Sally Fey, you are Matt Jones -- a beginner investor in 2019 and it’s a Bear Market and you’ve been told now is the time to buy. You’re starting with a clean slate. You’ve set up your exchange accounts, you are ready to trade. What’s good tax hygiene you should follow from Day One and on to Day 365 to simplify your tax headache for the year? Can you get away with NOT paying crypto taxes? What are the penalties for non-compliance? Any closing thoughts on how to make our crypto tax lives easier?   Questions and Comments? chasingunicorns@gem.co   Guest Contact Information Jeff Neumeister Website | LinkedIn | Twitter Resource Links: 3 Ways the IRS Is Taxing Cryptocurrencies Taxes and crypto Turning your 2018 Bitcoin and Crypto Losses into Tax Savings What You Don’t Know About Crypto Taxes Can Hurt You Tax Nightmare: Student Invested $5k in Ethereum & Now Owes $400k in Taxes 4 things to know about your cryptocurrency at tax time Year-End Tax Tips And Strategies For Cryptocurrency Investors IRS Guidelines Transcript: Interview with Jeff Neumeister Interview Recorded On: November 12 Topic: Crypto Taxes Chitra: Hello, and welcome to Running with Unicorns, your portal to the world of cryptocurrency. I'm Chitra Ragavan, Chief Strategy Officer at Gem. It's that time of year again, and your crypto taxes are looming. Here's what you can do about it. Our guest today is going to walk us through the ins and outs of crypto tax filing. Jeff Neumeister is CEO and Founder of Neumeister & Associates, an LA-based tax advisory firm with a growing practice in crypto taxes.   Jeff, welcome to the program.   Jeff: Thank you.   Chitra: What makes filing crypto taxes so challenging?   Jeff: It'd be probably because there are so many different things that are happening in the crypto world. It's not just mining coins or just trading coins, but there are forks, airdrops. There's just a lot happening. Because it's a new space, it's a lot that the taxing authorities are still trying to wrap their heads around.   Chitra: Let's start with the basics. What constitutes a taxable event in cryptocurrency?   Jeff: A taxable event is anything that results in a tax obligation or a potential tax obligation. That could be selling something, it could be generating income, it could be incurring a expense.   Chitra: Is it different than in regular taxes? What are the differences and similarities?   Jeff: It's similar in concept, except with cryptos there's just, again, so much more going on. Normally, if someone is just, say, a W2 earner, they have a paycheck, and that's the sole source of income that is subject to tax. With cryptos, however, if you're mining and trading in the ICO world, there's so many things that are happening that you're constantly subjected to different types of taxes.   Chitra: One of the basic things one needs to know is short-term and long-term gains. How does that work?   Jeff: Short-term gains just refer to anything, anytime you hold an asset or a piece of property for less than 12 months. Long-term is anything above that. Now, they also come along with different taxable rates. With long-term capital gains, it could be anywhere from 0 to 20%, so much better than what most of us pay with taxes for our income earnings. For short-term gains, it's anywhere from 10 to 37%. Short-term capital gains are essentially the same as ordinary income tax rates.   Chitra: Let's look at different types of crypto and how they will be impacted by taxes. Let's start with if you're mining cryptocurrency. How do you account for those?   Jeff: Mining's interesting, because it's kind of two things at once. When you mine a coin, or a fraction of a fraction of a coin, you're generating ordinary income, so whatever the value of the mined coin was, or fraction of a coin was, you have to pay ordinary income taxes on that. Then, that also establishes your cost basis in the coin that you now hold. If you do something else with it later on, trade it or sell it, you'll have capital gains on top of that.   Chitra: Then, let's look at crypto gifts. If you get a gift of Bitcoin, or Ether, or EOS, how do you handle that when it comes to tax time?   Jeff: If you're the receiver of a gift, then you just need to be aware of what the holder's or the donor's cost basis was. If they acquired something for, say, $100 and gave it to you, you need to make sure that you have that down in your records that your cost basis is $100.   There's no tax owed on a gift received. However, if you're the gift giver, you might have to do a informational filing, a form 709. What that is is anytime you gift more, at least in 2018, more than $15,000, you have to file a form 709. You don't have to pay gift tax on that, but if you exceed your gift-giving of $5.6 million during the course of your lifetime, then you have to start paying gift taxes.   Chitra: If only we could all be so lucky.   Jeff: Right. Most of us will never have to worry about that, but make sure that you file a form 709, because there are penalties with not filing.   Chitra: Then, can you give crypto to charity? I see that increasingly, there are a lot of, even the Red Cross and other organizations accepting crypto. When that happens, is that a good thing to do, when it comes to tax time? Obviously, it's a good thing to do in any case, but it probably helps with taxes, doesn't it?   Jeff: Absolutely. It's just like any charitable contribution, except instead of giving clothes, or fiat, or artwork, or jewelry, you're giving cryptos, yeah.   Chitra: It's taxed similarly?   Jeff: Yes, mm-hmm (affirmative).   Chitra: Then, if you're hacked, what happens? You're losing a bunch of coins because you got hacked. Do you have to pay taxes on that?   Jeff: No, but you have to make sure that it's documented. It's the same thing as if someone came into your house and burglarized it, right? It's a casualty loss. That would be an itemized deduction. You have to make sure that you record those things. Chitra: What if you just lose your crypto? Like, they're on some exchange, you don't know where it is, or you've lost the password. Can they figure it out that you have this crypto? How do you account for the missing crypto?   Jeff: That's a little bit more challenging. If you no longer have access, say, to your key, and you'll never obtain access, then that could be construed as a casualty loss, as well. If you just say, "I don't know which exchange it's on," hopefully that won't come up if you're audited, yeah.   Chitra: And if you are?   Jeff: Then, as long as you show a good faith effort in being consistent and transparent with taxing authorities, and they could see that you're not trying to hide anything, then you should be okay.   Chitra: Do you hear of people that are trying to hide crypto by claiming losses, that they've lost it?   Jeff: Some folks, yeah, yeah. More egregious than that, though, we've had, there was one gentleman that was seeking out a CPA, who made a little over 2.5 million in cryptos, and said, "No, I'm just not going to file. If they want the money, they have to come after me."   Chitra: Did they?   Jeff: Well, that's what's going to happen over the next couple years, yeah. The IRS has started mounting a task force specialist specifically to investigate cryptocurrency filings.   Chitra: Is that going to be an easy task? Will they find people that are scofflaws?   Jeff: They will absolutely find people, right? It's going to be interesting in the tax world for the next couple of years, and tax courts, people fighting them.   Chitra: You're seeing a lot of new developments in tax filings, in tax law as a result of this?   Jeff: Not yet. Really, they're just kind of testing the waters, now. The last, about a year ago, they started issuing subpoenas to exchanges, and they were winning, to get transaction records from them, so they could see what people are trading and how much people are earning, so they could compare that with individual tax returns, to find evidence of those that are evading their taxes. They're just starting to institute those audits now and will be taking these folks to tax court as needed. There's a lot of things that will come out of it, but it hasn't happened yet.   Chitra: Because I think, particularly in the early days, there were probably a lot of people who weren't filing taxes. Is there like a statute of limitations, or does it matter if like 10 years ago you weren't filing taxes, and now the IRS is starting to think about this and starting to do these audits?   Jeff: There is a statute. It's, generally speaking, three years from the date of which a filing was due, but that's only if it was an innocent mistake. If you're intentionally evading, there's no statute on that.   Chitra: How do you report, typically, gains and losses? What's the process?   Jeff: The process is usually, you want to have everything calculated, all the transactions. Coin for coin, coin for fiat, and those will be itemized on a form 8949, and summarized on a schedule D, which are attached to the tax returns.   Chitra: Having done my crypto taxes this year, it's fairly complicated. It's just, you have to look at every single transaction. Talk a little bit about what that process is like. It's fascinating for me to see the level of detail and how you actually go about finding those records, if somebody hasn't kept those records, and being able to trace the flow of that currency from the exchange to your wallet, or if you're trading, you've got all of these multiple transactions that have taken place, hundreds, maybe thousands of them.   Jeff: Yeah, it could get very complicated. That's why a lot of our clients have come to us, to help them untangle these complex array of transactions, ranging from, if they have a few hundred coins that they're trading across multiple years, you can end up having thousands and thousands of cost pulls, because you have to trace every single transaction to its cost basis. Its cost basis depend on whether you used FIFO, LIFO, or HIFO.   Chitra: Explain that a little bit.   Jeff: Sure, yeah. Those are the manners in which you inventory the cells of different coins. LIFO, last in, first out, that's saying, when you sell a coin, you go to the last time that you had acquired that coin, and you sell it out of that pool. If you're buying and selling coins all day long, go across multiple months, you have many cost pulls, even thousands or tens of thousands of cost pulls.   FIFO, first in, first out, is where you sell your oldest coin. What that does is it will result in fewer long-term capital gains, but you're kind of eating up your tax obligation now, versus deferring it to later on.   Chitra: Let's say I'm trading, okay? I'm on exchanges, and I'm trading. I'm not really thinking about ... It's not something you think during your trading process, right? It's something you do after the fact. I'm not thinking LIFO and FIFO when I'm like, "Let me find what's my oldest Bitcoin, and let me trade that for Ether." I'm just like, trading. Am I doing the right thing? Is this something you go after the fact, and start to look through it and make those calculations?   Jeff: The easiest thing is to maintain good records, so that whoever, whether you're doing it yourself or outsourcing it to a professional like us, then they could go through those records a lot easier, because it does get complicated. As long as you have the information, it could be all untangled.   Chitra: What's the largest number of transactions you've done, filing taxes, that you've seen? Thousands, hundreds of thousands?   Jeff: Probably in the hundreds of thousands. I think our largest client had a little shy of 200,000 transactions across about 2.5 years. It was a lot. It took a massive amount of manpower, because there isn't a way to fully automate it, yet. We've established a proprietary method to semi-automate portions of it, but not the whole thing. There's still a lot of manual touches that have to be done to it.   Chitra: Were you able to do it?   Jeff: Yeah, yeah. We were able to untangle all of it. He had a massive tax obligation, but most importantly, it'll keep him compliant with the IRS. He had the cash, right? If you make a million dollars in cryptos, and if you have to pay a few hundred thousand in tax, you know, you're still coming out ahead.   Chitra: This is true. What are some of the biggest obstacles today for average investors, when it comes to filing taxes?   Jeff: I think having an understanding about how complex the tax aspect is with cryptos, if you're trading, mining, doing anything else. I think just being aware and mindful of that.   Chitra: There's also the issue of documentation, right? For example, different exchanges can give you different levels of information about your trades, so at the end of the year, some exchanges will give you a lot of information. Other exchanges give you virtually no information. How do you start to do the detective work to find all of your records?   Jeff: That's one of the tricky parts, yeah, because there isn't really any sort of regulation about what all the exchanges have to provide users. There's going to be, and it's moving that direction. For now, it's kind of up to the individual to maintain their own records. If the exchange only provides piecemeal stuff, or in the case of Bittrex that just up and deleted people's information, it's still your obligation to make sure that you're tracking things.   Chitra: What happened in that instance where the information was deleted?   Jeff: Well, they up and decided just to remove information.   Chitra: This was an exchange?   Jeff: Yeah, yeah, Bittrex. It's still the user's responsibility to maintain the records. The individuals that were subjected to that, had they downloaded their transactional information, let's say, every week or every month, they would have been okay, right, just in case something does happen to an exchange. That's something we advise our clients to do is don't wait till the end of the year to start pulling your information, even if you're using a CPA like us, right? Pull the information maybe once a month, just in case something happens.   Chitra: That's interesting. That's something I've never thought to do. It's kind of surprising that they're allowed to even delete information. Is that going to change, in the future?   Jeff: Yeah, there's definitely more pressure in regulation around what the exchanges are doing. Also, keep in mind that a lot of these are foreign exchanges, too, right? The IRS and the federal government only has so much control over what they do.   Chitra: Because this is such a global flow of money.   Jeff: Exactly. It's a global thing. Right.   Chitra: How does the US government, or how is the US government attempting to get a handle on this? Do you feel like the government is kind of playing catch up, now?   Jeff: A bit, yeah. I think there was too much downtime from 2014 to now. You know, the last time the IRS issued any formal guidance was in 2014.   Chitra: What was that initial guidance?   Jeff: It was maybe like a five-page notice, 2014-21, which pretty much just said that it's not legal tender, and to pay your tax on it. There really wasn't much guidance beyond that.   Chitra: What happened before then, like 2009 through '14? Was there any guidance?   Jeff: Nothing formal.   Chitra: What were people doing then?   Jeff: I think, at the time, IRS and other government agencies probably just assumed that this is just a fringe thing, it's a temporary thing, it's not going to last, but look at us now. There are industries being built around blockchain and crypto, and they realize that, now, and the amount of money that people have earned in the sector. They see it as, like, it's a huge nest egg waiting to be tapped.   Chitra: Build your highways and all of that stuff.   Jeff: Right, yeah.   Chitra: Now, when you're filing taxes, can your crypto losses or gains, be balanced against your traditional portfolio?   Jeff: Yes, yeah. The way it works is short-term gains and losses get netted against other short-term gains and losses, regardless of if they're crypto or not. Then, the same thing with long-term.   Chitra: Great. Now, what are the penalties for noncompliance?   Jeff: For failing to file a return, it's a flat 5% of whatever your tax obligation is. For not paying the total amount of taxes owed, it's one half of 1% per month. If it's just one month late, half of 1%, it's not a lot, but if a couple of years go by, a few years go by, it can add up really quick, plus interest.   Chitra: Can you go to jail?   Jeff: Absolutely, unfortunately. If it's deemed that it was tax evasion, like in the example that I gave you of the gentleman that was looking into using our service and decided, no, they can just come after me, a couple million dollars, if they find evidence of tax evasion, then it could be subjected to a felony, which leads up to up to five years in prison and up to a quarter million dollars in penalties.   Chitra: Now, there's a lot of money laundering also going on, right? Does that play a role at all in this?   Jeff: Not so much with the taxes, but it is something that they're mindful about, out there. I see that more in the banking sector, that being an issue. In fact, one of our clients in the crypto space, their bank account was just abruptly closed with no notice. They said, "You can't bank with us," because they are concerned about potential money laundering.   Chitra: What is their fear?   Jeff: I think because they don't know where the money is coming from, right? If you have crypto-related money, it's so easy for it to be maneuvered from overseas. I think that's the concern, because there isn't enough regulation out there yet, right? Some people are just distancing themselves.   Chitra: It seems like there's a whole bunch of areas in which the federal government and governments around the world are now grappling with, how do you make people accountable for all of this wealth that they're generating, and how do we get a piece of that action?   Jeff: Right, that's what it is. They want their cut. As long as you give them their cut, they're not going to bother you.   Chitra: Now, let's look at two scenarios. Let's say you're a Sally Fay, you're a woman investor. You're just starting out. You're super excited. It's 2017. The bull market is in full swing, and you've learned how to trade, and you're just buying and selling without any regard for keeping tabs on your cost basis or the proceeds that you're making. Then, come December, you're stuck with having done thousands of transactions, and you have no idea how to go about finding those records, because every trade that you've done is potentially taxable, correct?   Jeff: Correct.   Chitra: What do you do?   Jeff: In those kinds of situations, because it's a lot of cleanup, the best thing to do is consult with an expert like us, so we can get you cleaned up and caught up. Then, going forward, you're on the right path, right? And to be mindful just about all the tax consequences of all that trading activity.   Chitra: Do you just sort of systematically start to go back and look at every trade you've made?   Jeff: In order to calculate all the gains and losses, historically, yeah. We have to kind of start from inception. If someone started trading in 2014, right, we have to go back to square one.   Chitra: That's pretty daunting.   Jeff: It is, yeah, yeah. At least once we get you caught up, then you should be okay, right?   Chitra: Let's look at scenario B. Let's say that I am a young man, Matt Jones. I'm not in the crypto market yet. It's the bear market, and people are telling me, "Hey, now's the time to come in. Buy low, and you can sell high." I have a clean slate. I've set up my exchanges, but I haven't done any transactions. What are the kinds of things I need to put in place to have tax hygiene, so to speak?   Jeff: Some best practices.   Chitra: Yes.   Jeff: I'd say, first, be mindful that you do any sort of trade coin for coin, that's all going to be a taxable event. Have at it, but just be mindful that there could be a lot of tax compliance to deal with at the end of the year. That affects some people's volume activity.   Another thing, to make sure to pull their records on a consistent basis. We usually, we're advising our clients now to download their transactional history from each exchange they use about once a month. Just make it a month-end practice, just in case either they got locked out, the data is deleted, or something is hacked, just in case anything happens, at least you have the records.   Then, outside of transactions like that, if you're trading on an exchange, if you're gifting coins, jot down somewhere on a Excel sheet or a Word document who you gave it to, when you gave it to them, and how much you gave, right? Just in case if there's any gift tax compliance to do, we could do that as well.   Chitra: Is it advisable to have a notebook and a pen, and when you're making these trades, to actually just jot it down, or put it on an Excel sheet that on this date, I bought X amount of Bitcoin, or I sold X amount of Ether for X amount, and to have that? Is that going to be helpful at the end of the year?   Jeff: It could, but like all the transactional data within the exchanges usually is going to have all that information. If someone wants to just separately track it, and if they're not doing a lot of trades during the year, that could be just as efficient and make their process easier at the end.   Chitra: Now, tell us some war stories. What are some of the anecdotes that you tell people about folks having challenges in filing taxes, or cases that you've seen, or what the government is doing to come to terms with this new source of income?   Jeff: Sure. Probably a couple examples. We have clients that were trading back from, the oldest one is 2013, maybe about a little over $4 million, and of course, they never reported any of it. Thankfully, in contrast to the other individual I was referencing, he said, "You know what, I just want to be compliant, right?" He came to the table. We went through everything, all the records, and got him up to speed.   Going forward, if he's audited, or maybe I should say when, because it's a lot, a big amount, we have work papers in place that we could provide in response to an audit. 90% of the time, that'll just make it go away, almost immediately. As long as the IRS can see that you've made a good faith effort, that there's been due diligence in being compliant, and you have work papers and a CPA to back it up, the audit will go away, right?   Another example, well, with the IRS, it's not so much a war story, but it's come to my attention that they've selected around 1200 to 1300 cases already from the 2017 filings that they're going to move forward with audits. Now, I don't know which ones those are. That comes from a source I have within the audit community, but we suspect that those are probably the larger ones, mostly, people that have generated hundreds of thousands, if not millions.   Chitra: Is the IRS not only trying to get revenue back from these taxable events but also trying to set precedence in some way?   Jeff: Yeah. It serves both purposes, yeah. One, it's a huge amount of revenue just sitting there for the government that hasn't been tapped yet. The second is going through this process, and going through these audits, and taking some people to tax court will set precedence, so that it's clear to everyone else that, one, you need to be compliant. Don't play games with them. I wouldn't be surprised if they send at least a few people to jail over this that have evaded their taxes.   Also, it allows them to kind of establish authoritative guidance, because they're going to take everything they find. They will undoubtedly issue some pronouncements about, "Here's how you calculate this. Here's why you file things this way," which right now, we don't have.   Chitra: What about moving out of the US, like just moving abroad so you don't have to pay your taxes, or even moving to Puerto Rico. You hear a lot about that. Is that going to help you or hurt you, in the long run?   Jeff: I think for taxes, temporarily, it would help, right? But, do you really want to expatriate yourself, denounce the US, in order to just save some money temporarily on taxes? I don't know.   Chitra: Depends, I would say.   Jeff: It depends, yeah, yeah.   Chitra: On what the amount is. Are you hearing about people who are actually doing that?   Jeff: No one I know has actually done it. Some folks that we know have been debating it, and they asked to do some research on expatriation process.   Chitra: It's a fascinating area. When you're doing the forensic work, you've been asked to help, I think, with investigations and things like that. How do you go about collecting the forensic evidence on these cases?   Jeff: Really kind of the same way we do crypto calculations for our clients, right? We pull all the underlying third-party documents. In this case, transactional records. We get their narrative about what happened, hear the story, because any forensic case, anything that we do, it's not just the numbers. It's also the context. It's also what happened, the story, if you will.   With forensic cases, there's usually a lot of other moveable parts, as well, particularly like divorce cases, where people are sometimes hiding funds. Partnership disputes, where one partner is embezzling money. We see that kind of stuff a lot more often than what people realize.   Chitra: What happens in the case of a divorce? Who gets the crypto? How do you actually even split the proceeds, if that's what happens?   Jeff: Same thing with kind of like a house, right? If it was community property, assuming it's a community property state like California, then any assets would be split 50/50, unless it was bought with separate property. If you don't want to cash out the portfolio, then usually one partner would buy out the other half from the other partner, just like a house. If you don't want to literally split the house in half, one person wants to keep it, one partner would buy out the house from the other.   Chitra: Well, that actually raises an interesting question, because let's say one partner is very crypto-savvy and the other partner is not crypto-savvy. It probably is pretty easy to hide your assets in the form of crypto, because the other person has no way of finding out how much you have and where you have this.   Jeff: True. Yeah, there's an opportunity there for someone to try to take advantage. Part of the divorce proceedings process is to come to the table and be transparent with both partners. Usually, like, you're essentially signing off to the court that let the partner know 100% of the assets out there. To try to hide it is essentially perjuring with the court.   Chitra: Where do you see all of this going in the next few years, as more and more people get into the space? There is a prediction that you're going to have a billion new crypto investors, over the next five years, entering the market. Where do you see the field of taxation going?   Jeff: Yeah, definitely, I see a second adoption, as well, coming in the coming years. I think, by the time that happens, there'll be a little bit more infrastructure in place with the taxation piece. One, with the exchanges. They'll start being a little bit better about what they record for their clients and what they issue out at the end of the year. I think we'll get to a point where exchanges are very, very similar to brokerage accounts, where you just get a 1089 of, "Here's your cost basis, here's your proceeds, here's what you report on your tax," and make it much easier for folks.   Chitra: Just as the industry is growing up, the tax piece will grow up, as well.   Jeff: Yup.   Chitra: Yeah. Great. Is there anything I haven't asked or anything really important, closing thoughts?   Jeff: One closing thought, just, I think it's good for everyone to remember that almost everything is a taxable event. If the question is, "Do I have to pay tax on this?" 9 times out 10, it's yes.   Chitra: Sadly.   Jeff: Yes.   Chitra: Thank you so much for joining us. Where can people learn more about you and find out more about the work that you're doing?   Jeff: Sure. Our website is neumeistercpa.com, that's N-E-U-M-E-I-S-T-E-R-C-P-A.com. We're a full-service accounting consulting firm, but we specialize in things like cryptos.   Chitra: Great. Thanks so much for joining us.   Jeff: All right, thank you.   Chitra: That's all for now. Join us again next time for another edition of Running with Unicorns. Until then, enjoy your crypto journey, unicorns.  

  Jeff: Welcome back to Emplify, the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum, and I’m back with my co-host, Nachi Gupta. This month, we’re talking about a topic… Nachi: … woah wait, slow down for a minute, before we begin this month’s episode – we should take a quick pause to wish all of our listeners a happy new year! Thanks for your regular listenership and feedback. Jeff: And we’re actually hitting the two year mark since we started this podcast. At 25 episodes now, this is sort of our silver anniversary. Nachi: We have covered a ton of topics in emergency medicine so far, and we are looking forward to reviewing a lot more evidence based medicine with you all going forward. Jeff: With that, let’s get into the first episode of 2019 – the topic this month is first trimester pregnancy emergencies: recognition and management. Nachi: This month’s issue was authored by Dr. Ryan Pedigo, you may remember him from the June 2017 episode on dental emergencies, though he is perhaps better known as the director of undergraduate medical education at Harbor-UCLA Medical center. In addition, this issue was peer reviewed by Dr. Jennifer Beck-Esmay, assistant residency director at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, and Dr. Taku Taira, the associate director of undergraduate medical education and associate clerkship director at LA County and USC department of Emergency Medicine. Jeff: For this review, Dr. Pedigo had to review a large body of literature, including thousands of articles, guidelines from the American college of obstetricians and gynecologists or ACOG, evidence based Practice bulletins, ACOG committee opinions, guidelines from the American college of radiology, the infectious diseases society of America, clinical policies from the American college of emergency physicians, and finally a series of reviews in the Cochrane database. Nachi: There is a wealth of literature on this topic and Dr. Pedigo comments that the relevant literature is overall “very good.” This may be the first article in many months for which there is an overall very good quality of literature. Jeff: It’s great to know that there is good literature on this topic. It’s incredibly important as we are not dealing with a single life here, as we usually do... we are quite literally dealing with potentially two lives as the fetus moves towards viability. With opportunities to improve outcomes for both the fetus and the mother, I’m confident that this episode will be worth your time. Nachi: Oh, and speaking of being worth your time…. Don’t forget that if you’re listening to this episode, you can claim your CME credit. Remember, the indicates an answer to one of the CME questions so make sure to keep the issue handy. Jeff: Let’s get started with some background. First trimester emergencies are not terribly uncommon in pregnancy. One study reported 85% experience nausea and vomiting. Luckily only 3% of these progressed to hyperemesis gravidarum. In addition, somewhere between 7-27% experience vaginal bleeding or miscarriage. Only 2% of these will be afflicted with an ectopic pregnancy. Overall, the maternal death rate is about 17 per 100,000 with huge racial-ethnic disparities. Nachi: And vaginal bleeding in pregnancy occurs in nearly 25% of patients. Weeks 4-8 represent the peak time for this. The heavier the bleeding, the higher the risk of miscarriage. Jeff: Miscarriage rates vary widely based on age, with an overall rate of 7-27%. This rises to nearly 40% risk in those over 40. And nearly half of miscarriages are due to fetal chromosomal abnormalities. Nachi: For patient who have a threatened miscarriage in the first trimester, there is a 2-fold increased risk of subsequent maternal and fetal adverse outcomes. Jeff: So key points here, since I think the wording and information you choose to share with often scared and worried women is important – nearly 25% of women experience bleeding in their first trimester. Not all of these will go on to miscarriages, though the risk does increase with maternal age. And of those that miscarry, nearly 50% were due to fetal chromosomal abnormalities. Nachi: So can we prevent a miscarriage, once the patient is bleeding…? Jeff: Short answer, no, longer answer, we’ll get to treatment in a few minutes. For now, let’s continue outlining the various first trimester emergencies. Next up, ectopic pregnancy… Nachi: An ectopic pregnancy is implantation of a fertilized ovum outside of the endometrial cavity. This occurs in up to 2% of pregnancies. About 98% occur in the fallopian tube. Risk factors for an ectopic pregnancy include salpingitis, history of STDs, history of PID, a prior ectopic, and smoking. Jeff: Interestingly, with respect to smoking, there is a dose-relationship between smoking and ectopic pregnancies. Simple advice here: don’t smoke if you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Nachi: Pretty sound advice. In addition, though an IUD is not a risk factor for an ectopic pregnancy, if you do become pregnant while you have in IUD in place, over half of these may end up being ectopic. Jeff: It’s also worth mentioning a more obscure related disease pathology here – the heterotopic pregnancy -- one in which there is an IUP and an ectopic pregnancy simultaneously. Nachi: Nausea and vomiting, though not as scary as miscarriages or an ectopic pregnancy, represent a fairly common pathophysiologic response in the first trimester -- with the vast majority of women experiencing nausea and vomiting. And as we mentioned earlier, only 3% of these progress to hyperemesis gravidarum. Jeff: And while nausea and vomiting clearly sucks, they seem to actually be protective of pregnancy loss, with a hazard ratio of 0.2. Nachi: Although this may be protective of pregnancy loss, nausea and vomiting can really decrease the quality of life in pregnancy -- with one study showing that about 25% of women with severe nausea and vomiting had actually considered pregnancy termination. 75% of those women also stated they would not want to get pregnant again because of these symptoms. Jeff: So certainly a big issue.. Two other common first trimester emergency are asymptomatic bacteriuria and UTIs. In pregnant patients, due to anatomical and physiologic changes in the GU tract – such as hydroureteronephrosis that occurs by the 7th week and urinary stasis due to bladder displacement – asymptomatic bacteriuria is a risk factor for developing pyelonephritis. Nachi: And pregnant women are, of course, still susceptible to the normal ailments of young adult women like acute appendicitis, which is the most common surgical problem in pregnancy. Jeff: Interestingly, based on epidemiologic data, pregnant women are less likely to have appendicitis than age-matched non-pregnant woman. I’d like to think that there is a good pathophysiologic explanation there, but I don’t have a clue as to why that might be. Nachi: Additionally, the RLQ is the the most common location of pain from appendicitis in pregnancies of all gestational ages. Peritonitis is actually slightly more common in pregnant patients, with an odds ratio of 1.3. Jeff: Alright, so I think we can put that intro behind us and move on to the differential. Nachi: When considering the differential for abdominal pain or vaginal bleeding in the first trimester, you have to think broadly. Among gynecologic causes, you should consider miscarriage, septic abortion, ectopic pregnancy, corpus luteum cyst, ovarian torsion, vaginal or cervical lacerations, and PID. For non-gynecologic causes, you should also consider appendicitis, cholecystitis, hepatitis, and pyelonephritis. Jeff: In the middle of that laundry list you mentioned there is one pathology which I think merits special attention - ovarian torsion. Don’t forget that patients undergoing ovarian stimulation as part of assisted reproductive technology are at a particularly increased risk due to the larger size of the ovaries. Nachi: Great point. Up next we have prehospital care... Jeff: Always a great section. First, prehospital providers should attempt to elicit an ob history. Including the number of weeks’ gestation, LMP, whether an IUP has already been confirmed, prior hx of ectopic, and amount of vaginal bleeding. In addition, providers should consider an early destination consult both to select the correct destination and to begin the process of mobilizing resources early in those patients who really need them, such as those with hemodynamic instability. Nachi: As with most pathologies, the more time you give the receiving facility to prepare, the better the care will be, especially the early care, which is critical. Jeff: Now that the patient has arrived in the ED we can begin our H&P. Nachi: When eliciting the patient’s obstetrical history, it’s common to use the G’s and Ps. This can be further annotated using the 4-digit TPAL method, that’s term-preterm-abortus-living. Jeff: With respect to vaginal bleeding, make sure to ask about the number of pads and how this relates to the woman’s normal number of pads. In addition, make sure to ask about vaginal discharge or even about the passage of tissue. Nachi: You will also need to elicit whether or not the patient has a history of a prior ectopic pregnancies as this is a major risk for future ectopics. And ask about previous sexually transmitted infections also. Jeff: And, of course, make sure to elicit a history of assisted reproductive technology, as this increases the risk of a heterotopic pregnancy. Nachi: Let’s move on to the physical. While you are certainly going to perform your standard focused physical exam, just as you would for any non-pregnant woman - what does the evidence say about the pelvic exam? I know this is a HOTLY debated topic among EM Docs. Jeff: Oh it certainly is. Dr. Pedigo takes a safe, but fair approach, noting, “A pelvic exam should always be performed if the emergency clinician suspects that it would change management, such as identifying the source of bleeding, or identifying an STD or PID.” However, it is noteworthy that the only real study he cites on this topic, an RCT of pelvic vs no pelvic in those with a confirmed IUP and first trimester bleeding, found no difference between the two groups. Obviously, the pelvic group reported more discomfort. Nachi: You did leave out one important fact about the study enrollment - they only enrolled about 200 of 700 intended patients. Jeff: Oh true, so a possibly underpowered study, but it’s all we’ve got on the topic. I think I’m still going to do pelvic exams, but it’s something to think about. Nachi: Moving on, all unstable patients with vaginal bleeding and no IUP should be assumed to have an ectopic until proven otherwise. Ruptured ectopics can manifest with a number of physical exam findings including abdominal tenderness, with peritoneal signs, or even with bradycardia due to vagal stimulation in the peritoneum. Jeff: Perhaps most importantly, no history or physical alone can rule in or out an ectopic pregnancy, for that you’ll need testing and imaging or operative findings. Nachi: And that’s a perfect segue into our next section - diagnostic studies. Jeff: Up first is the urine pregnancy test. A UPT should be obtained in all women of reproductive age with abdominal pain or vaginal bleeding, and likely other complaints too, though we’re not focusing on them now. Nachi: The UPT is a great test, with nearly 100% sensitivity, even in the setting of very dilute urine. False positives are certainly plausible, with likely culprits being recent pregnancy loss, exogenous HCG, or malignancy. Jeff: And not only is the sensitivity great, but it’s usually positive just 6-8 days after fertilization. Nachi: While the UPT is fairly straight forward, let’s talk about the next few tests in the context of specific disease entities, as I think that may make things a bit simpler -- starting with bHCG in the context of miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. Jeff: Great starting point since there is certainly a lot of debate about the discriminatory zone. So to get us all on the same page, the discriminatory zone is the b-HCG at which an IUP is expected to be seen on ultrasound. Generally 1500 is used as the cutoff. This corresponds nicely to a 2013 retrospective study demonstrating a bHCG threshold for the fetal pole to be just below 1400. Nachi: However, to actually catch 99% of gestational sacs, yolk sacs, and fetal poles, one would need cutoffs of around 3500, 18000, and 48,000 respectively -- much higher. Jeff: For this reason, if you want to use a discriminatory zone, ACOG recommends a conservatively high 3,500, as a cutoff. Nachi: I think that’s an understated point in this article, the classic teaching of a 1500 discriminatory zone cutoff is likely too low. Jeff: Right, which is why I think many ED physicians practice under the mantra that it’s an ectopic until proven otherwise. Nachi: Certainly a safe approach. Jeff: Along those lines, lack of an IUP with a bHCG above whatever discriminatory zone you are using does not diagnose an ectopic, it merely suggests a non-viable pregnancy of undetermined location. Nachi: And if you don’t identify an IUP, serial bHCGs can be really helpful. As a rule of thumb -- in cases of a viable IUP -- b-HCG typically doubles within 48 hours and at a minimum should rise 53%. Jeff: In perhaps one of the most concerning things I’ve read in awhile, one study showed that ⅓ of patients with an ectopic had a bCHG rise of 53% in 48h and 20% of patients with ectopics had a rate of decline typical to that of a miscarriage. Nachi: Definitely concerning, but this is all the more reason you need to employ our favorite imaging modality… the ultrasound. Jeff: All patients with a positive pregnancy test and vaginal bleeding should receive an ultrasound performed by either an emergency physician or by radiology. Combined with a pelvic exam, this can give you almost all the data necessary to make the diagnosis, even if you don’t find an IUP. Nachi: And yes, there is good data to support ED ultrasound for this indication, both transabdominal and transvaginal, assuming the emergency physician is credentialed to do so. A 2010 Meta-Analysis found a NPV of 99.96% when an er doc identified an IUP on bedside ultrasound. So keep doing your bedside scans with confidence. Jeff: Before we move on to other diagnostic tests, let’s discuss table 2 on page 7 to refresh on key findings of each of the different types of miscarriage. For a threatened abortion, the os would be closed with an IUP seen on ultrasound. For a completed abortion, you would expect a closed OS with no IUP on ultrasound with a previously documented IUP. Patients may or may not note the passage of products of conception. Nachi: A missed abortion presents with a closed os and a nonviable fetus on ultrasound. Findings such as a crown-rump length of 7 mm or greater without cardiac motion is one of several criteria to support this diagnosis. Jeff: An inevitable abortion presents with an open OS and an IUP on ultrasound. Along similar lines, an incomplete abortion presents with an open OS and partially expelled products on ultrasound. Nachi: And lastly, we have the septic abortion, which is sort of in a category of its own. A septic abortion presents with either an open or closed OS with essentially any finding on ultrasound in the setting of an intrauterine infection and a fever. Jeff: I’ve only seen this two times, and both women were incredibly sick upon presentation. Such a sad situation. Nachi: For sure. Before we move on to other tests, one quick note on the topic of heterotopic pregnancies: because the risk in the general population is so incredibly low, the finding of an IUP essentially rules out an ectopic pregnancy assuming the patient hasn’t been using assisted reproductive technology. In those that are using assisted reproductive technology, the risk rises to 1 in 100, so finding an IUP, in this case, doesn’t necessarily rule out a heterotopic pregnancy. Jeff: Let’s move on to diagnostic studies for patients with nausea and vomiting. Typically, no studies are indicated beyond whatever you would order to rule out other serious pathology. Checking electrolytes and repleting them should be considered in those with severe symptoms. Nachi: For those with symptoms suggestive of a UTI, a urinalysis and culture should be sent. Even if the urinalysis is negative, the culture may still have growth. Treat asymptomatic bacteriuria and allow the culture growth to guide changes in antibiotic selection. Jeff: It’s worth noting, however, that a 2016 systematic review found no reliable evidence supporting routine screening for asymptomatic bacteriuria, so send a urinalysis and culture only if there is suspicion for a UTI. Nachi: For those with concern for appendicitis, while ultrasound is a viable imaging modality, MRI is gaining favor. Both are specific tests, however one study found US to visualize the appendix only 7% of the time in pregnant patients. Jeff: Even more convincingly, one 2016 meta analysis found MRI to have a sensitivity and specificity of 94 and 97% respectively suggesting that a noncontrast MRI should be the first line imaging modality for potential appendicitis. Nachi: You kind of snuck it in there, but this is specifically a non-contrast MRI. Whereas a review of over a million pregnancies found no associated fetal risk with routine non-contrast MRI, gadolinium-enhanced MRI has been associated with increased rates of stillbirth, neonatal death, and rheumatologic and inflammatory skin conditions. Jeff: CT is also worth mentioning since MRI and even ultrasound may not be available to all of our listeners. If you do find yourself in such a predicament, or you have an inconclusive US without MRI available, a CT scan may be warranted as the delay in diagnosis and subsequent peritonitis has been found to increase the risk of preterm birth 4-fold. Nachi: Right, and a single dose of ionizing radiation actually does not exceed the threshold dose for fetal harm. Jeff: Let’s talk about the Rh status and prevention of alloimmunization. While there are no well-designed studies demonstrating benefit to administering anti-D immune globulin to Rh negative patients, ACOG guidelines state “ whether to administer anti-D immune globulin to a patient with threatened pregnancy loss and a live embryo or fetus at or before 12 weeks of gestation is controversial, and no evidence-based recommendation can be made.” Nachi: Unfortunately, that’s not particularly helpful for us. But if you are going to treat an unsensitized Rh negative female with vaginal bleeding while pregnant with Rh-immune globulin, they should receive 50 mcg IM of Rh-immune globulin within 72 hours, or the 300 mcg dose if that is all that is available. It’s also reasonable to administer Rh(d)-immune globulin to any pregnant female with significant abdominal trauma. Jeff: Moving on to the treatment for miscarriages - sadly there isn’t much to offer here. For those with threatened abortions, the vast majority will go on to a normal pregnancy. Bedrest had been recommended in the past, but there is little data to support this practice. Nachi: For incomplete miscarriages, if visible, products should be removed and you should consider sending those products to pathology for analysis, especially if the patient has had recurrent miscarriages. Jeff: For those with a missed abortion or incomplete miscarriages, options include expectant management, medical management or surgical management, all in consultation with an obstetrician. It’s noteworthy that a 2012 Cochrane review failed to find clear superiority for one strategy over another. This result was for the most part re-confirmed in a 2017 cochrane review. The latter study did find, however, that surgical management in the stable patient resulted in lower rates of incomplete miscarriage, bleeding, and need for transfusion. Nachi: For expectant management, 50-80% will complete their miscarriage within 7-10 days. Jeff: For those choosing medical management, typically with 800 mcg of intravaginal misoprostol, one study found this to be 91% effective in 7 days. This approach is preferred in low-resource settings. Nachi: And lastly, remember that all of these options are only options for stable patients. Surgical management is mandatory for patients with significant hemorrhage or hemodynamic instability. Jeff: Since the best evidence we have doesn’t suggest a crystal clear answer, you should rely on the patient’s own preferences and a discussion with their obstetrician. For this reason and due to the inherent difficulty of losing a pregnancy, having good communication is paramount. Nachi: Expert consensus recommends 6 key aspects of appropriate communication in such a setting: 1 assess the meaning of the pregnancy loss, give the news in a culturally competent and supportive manner, inform the family that grief is to be expected and give them permission to grieve in their own way, learn to be comfortable sharing the products of conception should the woman wish to see them, 5. provide support for whatever path she chooses, 6. and provide resources for grief counselors and support groups. Jeff: All great advice. The next treatment to discuss is that for pregnancy of an unknown location and ectopic pregnancies. Nachi: All unstable patients or those with suspected or proven ectopic or heterotopic pregnancies should be immediately resuscitated and taken for surgical intervention. Jeff: For those that are stable, with normal vitals, and no ultrasound evidence of a ruptured ectopic, with no IUP on ultrasound, -- that is, those with a pregnancy of unknown location, they should be discharged with follow up in 48 hours for repeat betaHCG and ultrasound. Nachi: And while many patients only need a single additional beta check, some may need repeat 48 hour exams until a diagnosis is established. Jeff: For those that are stable with a confirmed tubal ectopic, you again have a variety of treatment options, none being clearly superior. Nachi: Treatment options here include IM methotrexate, or a salpingostomy or salpingectomy. Jeff: Do note, however, that a bHCG over 5000, cardiac activity on US, and inability to follow up are all relative contraindications to methotrexate treatment. Absolute contraindications to methotrexate include cytopenia, active pulmonary disease, active peptic ulcer disease, hepatic or renal dysfunction, and breastfeeding. Nachi: Such decisions, should, of course, be made in conjunction with the obstetrician. Jeff: Always good to make a plan with the ob. Moving on to the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, ACOG recommends pyridoxine, 10-25 mg orally q8-q6 with or without doxylamine 12.5 mg PO BID or TID. This is a level A recommendation as first-line treatment! Nachi: In addition, ACOG also recommends nonpharmacologic options such as acupressure at the P6 point on the wrist with a wrist band. Ginger is another nonpharmacologic intervention that has been shown to be efficacious - 250 mg by mouth 4 times a day. Jeff: So building an algorithm, step one would be to consider ginger and pressure at the P6 point. Step two would be pyridoxine and doxylamine. If all of these measures fail, step three would be IV medication - with 10 mg IV of metoclopramide being the agent of choice. Nachi: By the way, ondansetron carries a very small risk of fetal cardiac abnormalities, so the other options are of course preferred. Jeff: In terms of fluid choice for the actively vomiting first trimester woman, both D5NS and NS are appropriate choices, with slightly decreased nausea in the group receiving D5NS in one randomized trial of pregnant patients admitted for vomiting to an overnight observation unit. Nachi: Up next for treatment we have asymptomatic bacteriuria. As we stated previously, asymptomatic bacteriuria should be treated. This is due to anatomical and physiologic changes which put these women at higher risk than non-pregnant women. Jeff: And this recommendation comes from the 2005 IDSA guidelines. In one trial, treatment of those with asymptomatic bacteriuria with nitrofurantoin reduced the incidence of developing pyelonephritis from 2.4% to 0.6%. Nachi: And this trial specifically examined the utility of nitrofurantoin. Per a 2010 and 2011 Cochrane review, there is not evidence to recommend one antibiotic over another, so let your local antibiograms guide your treatment. Jeff: In general, amoxicillin or cephalexin for a full 7 day course could also be perfectly appropriate. Nachi: A 2017 ACOG Committee Opinion analyzed nitrofurantoin and sulfonamide antibiotics for association with birth defects. Although safe in the second and third trimester, they recommend use in the first trimester -- only when no other suitable alternatives are available. Jeff: For those, who unfortunately do go on to develop pyelo, 1g IV ceftriaxone should be your drug of choice. Interestingly, groups have examined outpatient care with 2 days of daily IM ceftriaxone vs inpatient IV antibiotic therapy and they found that there may be a higher than acceptable risk in the outpatient setting as several required eventual admission and one developed septic shock in their relatively small trial. Nachi: And the last treatment to discuss is for pregnant patient with acute appendicitis. Despite a potential shift in the standard of care for non pregnant patients towards antibiotics-only as the initial treatment, due to the increased risk of serious complications for pregnant women with an acute appy, the best current evidence supports a surgical pathway. Jeff: Perfect, so that wraps up treatment. We have a few special considerations this month, the first of which revolves around ionizing radiation. Ideally, one should limit the amount of ionizing radiation exposure during pregnancy, however avoiding it all together may lead to missed or delayed diagnoses and subsequently worse outcomes. Nachi: It’s worth noting that the American College of Radiology actually lists several radiographs that are such low exposure that checking a urine pregnancy test isn’t even necessary. These include any imaging of the head and neck, extremity CT, and chest x-ray. Jeff: Of course, an abdomen and pelvis CT carries the greatest potential risk. However, if necessary, it’s certainly appropriate as long as there is a documented discussion of the risk and benefits with the patient. Nachi: And regarding iodinated contrast for CT -- it appears to present no known harm to the fetus, but this is based on limited data. ACOG recommends using contrast only if “absolutely required”. Jeff: Right and that’s for iodinated contrasts. Gadolinium should always be avoided. Let me repeat that Gadolinium should always be avoided Nachi: Let’s also briefly touch on a controversial topic -- that of using qualitative urine point of care tests with blood instead of urine. In short, some devices are fda-approved for serum, but not whole blood. Clinicians really just need to know the equipment and characteristics at their own site. It is worth noting that there have been studies on determining whether time can be saved by using point of care blood testing instead of urine for the patient who is unable to provide a prompt sample. Initial study conclusions are promising. But again, you need to know the characteristics of the test at your ER. Jeff: One more controversy in this issue is that of expectant management for ectopic pregnancy. A 2015 randomized trial found similar outcomes for IM methotrexate compared to placebo for tubal ectopics. Inclusion criteria included hemodynamic stability, initial b hcg < 2000, declining b hcg titers 48 hours prior to treatment, and visible tubal pregnancy on trans vaginal ultrasound. Another 2017 multicenter randomized trial found similar results. Nachi: But of course all of these decisions should be made in conjunction with your obstetrician colleagues. Jeff: Let’s move on to disposition. HDS patients who are well-appearing with a pregnancy of undetermined location should be discharged with a 48h beta hcg recheck and ultrasound. All hemodynamically unstable patients, should of course be admitted and likely taken directly to the OR. Nachi: Also, all pregnant patients with acute pyelonephritis require admission. Outpatient tx could be considered in consultation with ob. Jeff: Patient with hyperemesis gravidarum who do not improve despite treatment in the ED should also be admitted. Nachi: Before we close out the episode, let’s go over some key points and clinical pearls... J Overall, roughly 25% of pregnant women will experience vaginal bleeding and 7-27% of pregnant women will experience a miscarriage 2. Becoming pregnant with an IUD significantly raises the risk of ectopic pregnancy. 3. Ovarian stimulation as part of assisted reproductive technology places pregnant women at increased risk of ovarian torsion. 4. Due to anatomical and physiologic changes in the genitourinary tract, asymptomatic bacteriuria places pregnant women at higher risk for pyelonephritis. As such, treat asymptomatic bacteriuria according to local antibiograms. 5. A pelvic exam in the setting of first trimester bleeding is only warranted if you suspect it might change management. 6. Unstable patients with vaginal bleeding and no IUP should be assumed to have an ectopic pregnancy until proven otherwise. 7. If you are to use a discriminatory zone, ACOG recommends a beta-hCG cutoff of 3500. 8. The beta-hCG typically doubles within 48 hours during the first trimester. It should definitely rise by a minimum of 53%. 9. For patients using assisted reproductive technology, the risk of heterotopic pregnancy becomes much higher. Finding an IUP does not necessarily rule out a heterotopic pregnancy. N. Send a urine culture for patients complaining of UTI symptoms even if the urinalysis is negative. J. The most common surgical problem in pregnancy is appendicitis. N, If MRI is not available and ultrasound was inconclusive, CT may be warranted for assessing appendicitis. The risk of missing or delaying the diagnosis may outweigh the risk of radiation. J. ACOG recommends using iodinated contrast only if absolutely required. N. For stable patients with a pregnancy of unknown location, plan for discharge with follow up in 48 hours for a repeat beta-hCG and ultrasound. J For nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, try nonpharmacologic treatments like acupressure at the P6 point on the wrist or ginger supplementation. First line pharmacologic treatment is pyridoxine. Doxylamine can be added. Ondansetron may increase risk of fetal cardiac abnormalities N So that wraps up episode 24 - First Trimester Pregnancy Emergencies: Recognition and Management. J: Additional materials are available on our website for Emergency Medicine Practice subscribers. If you’re not a subscriber, consider joining today. You can find out more at www.ebmedicine.net/subscribe. Subscribers get in-depth articles on hundreds of emergency medicine topics, concise summaries of the articles, calculators and risk scores, and CME credit. You’ll also get enhanced access to the podcast, including the images and tables mentioned. You can find everything you need to know at ebmedicine.net/subscribe. N: And the address for this month’s credit is ebmedicine.net/E0119, so head over there to get your CME credit. As always, the you heard throughout the episode corresponds to the answers to the CME questions. Lastly, be sure to find us on iTunes and rate us or leave comments there. You can also email us directly at emplify@ebmedicine.net with any comments or suggestions. Talk to you next month!  

It’s time for Toby Mathis and Jeff Webb of Anderson Advisors to answer your questions about taxes, the IRS, and much more. Do you have a tax question for them? Submit it to Webinar@andersonadvisors.com. Highlights/Topics: What is Nexus? Why do I care? Nexus is a state’s right to tax your income; different types (tax and physical), state laws, and throwback rule - how they affect you Does IRS reimburse me for corporate expenses? Misconception about reimbursement from the client’s company or IRS; IRS doesn’t give you money, but let’s you write it off How do I qualify for a real estate professional status? Requires 750 hours as #1 use of personal professional time; know importance of passive activity loss and logging time What are self-dealing rules for non-profits, IRAs, QRPs? Particular entities can’t interact with a disqualified person - can’t sell them anything; but self-dealing exceptions exist Am I dealer or investor? What’s the difference? Investor is passively involved, dealer is actively buying/selling real estate; can depend on the intent and timeframe Why set up an LLC that does flipping as a C or S Corp instead of a partnership? Because it’s taxed as ordinary income and subject to self-employment tax What is UBIT? Unrelated business income tax is when a plan/non-profit isn’t doing what it’s set up to do; can have passive activity until it competes with active businesses I hold rental property in a self-directed IRA. What can I do? There’s things you can/can’t do, especially add value to a property, so find a property manager and IRA custodian My wife’s previous employer’s stock options were exercised and have peaked. If we cash in, what’ll be the tax consequences/burden? Long-term capital gain and opportunity zone I’m helping a friend with a crowdfunding project. What are tax consequences with no deductions? Does he pay tax on donated money? No tax for less than $15,000 per donor How to aggregate all properties? Disadvantages? Election form that your print with your tax return to identify properties; doesn’t free up large losses tied up If real estate investing part time, are you considered a part-time investor? You’d be a part-time investor, not real estate professional; determining factor is to document time How do I get the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt? Use the 1023 application How do you create an LLC in an IRA? IRA custodian enters into a contract with a company to create an LLC, or set up a 401(k) to roll the IRA into it without a custodian Investing in LLC for holding rental property. How do you avail to a 1031 exchange? Need a 1031 exchange facilitator and LLC must buy or sell the next property within 180 days If I receive social security benefits at 62 and not currently employed, but do receive interest income. Will it affect my SS benefits? Can be isolated into its own taxable entity My wife and I are the only shareholders and both take a ⅓ salary. Is that the right amount? You should take a ⅓ of the net profit as salary instead How do you put an LLC on hold? Do nothing with it or pay the state; file non-activity return Will real estate holding LLC taxes partnership qualify for 20% pass-through deduction? Yes, if not triple net property For all questions/answers discussed, sign up to be a Platinum member to view the replay! Resources Anderson Advisors Tax and Asset Prevention Event Toby Mathis Anderson Advisors U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Long Standing Law On Collection Of Sales Taxes Northwest Energetic Services LLC vs. California Franchise Tax Board Throwback Rule SALT Limit After 24 years, wealthy inventor gets his day in tax court – and wins 10 Tax Deductions That Will Disappear Next Year Passive Activity Losses - Real Estate Tax Tips Real Estate Professional Status - Becoming More Important - Very Hard To Prove Acts of self-dealing by private foundation Unrelated Business Income Tax Opportunity Zones Frequently Asked Questions About Form 1099-INT | Internal Revenue Service Exemption Requirements - 501(c)(3) Organizations Form 1023 Taxbot MileIQ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Provision 11 011 Section 199A - Qualified Business Income Deduction FAQs   Full Episode Transcript Toby: Alright, welcome to Tax Tuesday, this is Toby Mathis joined by our tax manager Jeff Webb. Jeff: How do you do? Toby: We're going to get jumping on here. We're just going to jump right in. no time like the present to just get business done. So first off, happy Tuesday. Second off, let's jump into a bunch of questions that are giving us a steady feed from folks even before we got started. I'm sure I'll be more happy than to answer your questions. I also got emails in from folks that I may be trying to make sure I answer all of those and we'll just make sure that we're getting through each and every question to the extent humanly possible within this hour. So the first one is, what is Nexus and why do I care. Second one is going to be, does the IRS reimburse me for my corporate expenses. Third one is, how do I qualify for real estate professionals, technically real estate professional status. What are self doing rules for nonprofits in QRPs. I'm going to throw in IRAs in there as well. Am I a dealer or an investor, what difference does it make. Those are the ones that we're going to hit one after the other in succession. I'm making sure that we're getting through these. So the first one is, what is nexus and why do I care. Jeff, do you want to hit tax nexus because there's different types of nexus. There's physical presence for lawsuits and there's tax nexus for taxation. I'm going to have Jeff hit the tax and then I'll touch base on the physical nexus. Jeff: So when we're talking about tax nexus what we're primarily talking about is a state's right to tax you on your income. For example, you may live in Nevada, have a rental property in California. California has a right to tax any income on that property because you're doing business within California. There are different roles, there have been numerous cases on nexus. Toby: Most recently, our Supreme Court reversed a physical presence test that the error that Amazon, everybody that was an online retailer use to avoid state sales tax and that was just changed. Jeff: Yeah, on that one in particular the Supreme Court as Toby said, gave the states the right to tax online sales in their states. The thing is, the states now have to write tax walls to accomplish this. Most of the states don't have anything that accomplishes this. Toby: A lot of times, ignorance is bliss. People would avoid sales tax like for example, I live in Washington, Florida, Oregon and avoid the sales tax and they ignored Washington's use tax. A lot of states have this. You don't pay sales tax and you go someplace where there is no sales tax, you still owe sales tax on it but they call it use tax because you brought the physical item into your state and you never paid sales tax on it. So then they would say, "Aha." And the really interesting thing – there were actually some interesting cases that were popping up from the nexus, ones that came out of Washington, was Northwest Energetic Services too and that was a case in California where they tried to tax an organization that was registered to do business there that didn't actually do any business in California but they wanted to tax its worldwide revenue. The franchise tax board of the board of equalization lost that one and they had a few others but what you'll find is that this is a continuously active in generating area of tax law and we tend to fall into the category of ask for forgiveness not for permission all the time because if you ask a state whether you should be paying tax, they will gladly say yes even if it's not a legitimate tax. They'll tell you that you have to pay it even though it's made to be unconstitutional, unlawful, you fill in the blank. Even if you don't owe it, they'll oftentimes just answer, "Yes, of course you should." They can't actually be giving you any tax advice anyway so it's the wrong party to be asking. I'm sure Jeff you get to deal with that more than I do. Jeff: Yeah, in a state like California, it used to be an old joke for the CPA's that you could be flying over the state of California, make enough business phone call and California would want to so you have nexus and we can now tax you. They're also a state that's very difficult to leave if you're a resident. We had a case where somebody, NBA player for the Sacramento Kings was traded to Seattle Sonics and moved there. Toby: Yeah, now the Oklahoma City Thunder, I was there when they move, horrible. Jeff: The state of California wanted to say, "No, you're still resident of California, we're still going to be taxing you because you got friends here and you have club ownership, some relationships. California in particular is very tenacious with Nexus. Toby: Yeah, so you're going to see things evolving over the next few years since the Supreme Court decision was literally this last, I think it was just months ago or end of the year last year. You're going to see the states trying to fill in the blanks. So you have some states for example in drop shipping, Pennsylvania would tax you if you drop ship out of their state where it used to not be, other states did before. We were talking earlier before the webinar, Jeff and I were talking about what is like a claw back. Jeff: Yeah, it's called a throwback rule that says if your sales into a state that doesn't have taxes then where it got shipped from can tax instead. Toby: Somebody's asked, what are the worst three states for nexus. It really depends on what you're doing, but I would say just off the top of my head probably New York, Connecticut and California. They're pretty heinous. Look at the states that just filed a lawsuit against the federal government under the SALT limitation which is the State and Local Tax Limitation. You'll see I think there was four states Maryland was one of them, where they try to hit you with so many different taxes. It's not just business, it's on your personal as well. It's just for nexus, for a person, it's really easy to figure out, "Hey, where do you live?" Because when I say it's easy, it can be difficult if you have two residences that you spend time with equally. They're going to add up things like how much utility you use, where your driver's license is. Where your kids go to school, where your vehicles are registered, you're going to look at those types of things. There's Hyatt v. Commissioner Case or what was it, Hyatt versus board of equalization I think is actually what it was. Where a gentleman moved to Nevada and the California franchise tax board sent agents to Nevada they climbed to his garage and break into his apartment to prove that he was actually residing more in California than he was in Nevada because his tax bill would've been so great and when they got caught, they said they're immune. Our Supreme Court and Scully I remember the opinion was scathing on them saying, "No, you're immune in your jurisdiction. When you cross the state lines, don't expect any immunity." They just harassed that poor guy. They were climbing around his house. So let's just narrow it down though. You asked a question what is nexus. There's two sides, there's tax nexus and then there's physical nexus. In the physical nexus again where you reside, it's pretty easy. If you live there, then you have a physical nexus in that state, it's where you have a house. In the business it's no different. In a business, you have to decide where it's going to have its main presence and the courts have held having a bare office and nothing more isn't going to be sufficient. You actually have to do something there. That's when you actually have to have a physical office space. We use virtual office where it's doing more than just maintaining a registered agent. There we're actually giving conference facilities, phone answering, we'll do document prep and things like that for the governance of the company so the company can actually have a physical presence. The reason that you do that is to make sure it has a home. So if somebody's coming after one of its shareholders or members, one of its owners that it does not draw that entity into the state where they're located. So, if I have owners in a company and I have my company set up in Wyoming and they sue me in Nevada and they sue somebody else in Texas and somebody else in Florida, you don't have a choice between the Nevada, Texas and Florida where the shareholder or where the members of the LLC are located, they would actually have to go to Wyoming where the actual entity is located. That's what you're trying to do. So if Anderson does my meeting notes, that's why that's important. We're not talking about Canadian, US the nexus pass. I could tell you a fun one. We had a client that just got nailed by California. It's actually under the FBAR which is Foreign Bank Account Regulations. They had some interest on a bank account that was there for a condo they had in Whistler and they sold the condo in Whistler and they didn't report, I think it was like $70 or $76 worth of interest. Jeff do you know these off the top of your head? How much the penalty is? Jeff: No. Toby: If the IRS catches you, it's 50% of the account balance per year. But if you go under amnesty which they have taken an amnesty was a $38,000 fine which they paid for that $76. Canada is still offshore. Anyway, so what is nexus and why do I care. It gets a little convoluted but the reason you care is you don't want to draw your company into your state, you want to make it very difficult for somebody to get a hold of your assets if they're coming after you. From a tax standpoint, it matters because we want to keep our business activities to the extent possible in the lowest taxing jurisdiction as humanly possible. So that's that one. Jeff this is one of your favorites, I know. Does the IRS reimburse me for my corporate expenses? Jeff: Of course they do. IRS is really giving out money. We get this question more often than you would think. I think it's a misconception that clients are being told that their companies can reimburse them for certain expenses which will reduce our taxes and sometimes the clients are hearing IRS is going to reimburse us. The only time you get back money from IRS is if you pay money into IRS for taxes and you don't owe them any tax or maybe overpaid them. Toby: Yeah. IRS is a policing agency. Your taxes when you pay it, they don't even go to the IRS, it goes to the US treasury. So the IRS is merely, pay my boss, is all they are. So they don't give any money out whatsoever so the IRS does not reimburse you for your corporate expenses. What the IRS does is it enforced the laws which is the United States code and issues regulations interpreting that code and is basically the enforcement arm for the US department of treasury. What ends up happening for corporation is they're allowed to reimburse shareholders many expenses that are not included on the shareholder's personal tax returns. So it sometimes seems like they're giving you money when in all reality, they're allowing you to not pay tax on your expenses which is always the battle because there's lots of rules out there that say things are not deductible. Nothing more telling them what we just had happened in this tax change where they eliminated all miscellaneous itemized deductions. All of them are gone in case you've been sleeping. In 2018, you do not get to write them off anymore. Jeff: Now that's your union dues, your tax preparation fees. Toby: Any unreimbursed business expense if you're a teacher and you're providing stuff for your classroom, you don't get to write it off. Jeff: If you're paying substantial amounts to your broker for advisory fees. Toby: That's a huge one. We're going to see that one come back and bite people in their touché. Jeff: That's no longer deductible. Toby: So it's horrible. So no, the IRS does not reimburse you for your corporate expenses. Your corporation reimburses you for your corporate expenses and the IRS lets you write it off. How do I qualify for real estate professional status. Jeff do you want to play with this one or do you want me to handle it? Jeff: I'll do a little and then you can correct me. So real estate professional has a hours commitment. I believe it's 750 hours a year. Toby: So it's a minimum of 750 hours. There's a second part to that too, you know that. Jeff: And the 750 hours can be earned by you or your spouse. What's your second one? Toby: The second one is it has to be the number one use of your personal professional time. Jeff: Oh, correct. Toby: The way I always explain this is if you did 1001 hours doing bicycle repair and you did 1000 hours of real estate, you do not qualify as a real estate professional. But if it's reversed and you did 1000 hours of bicycle repair you did 1001 hours of real estate activities, then you do. And the reason this is important is because ordinarily, your real estate expenses are offset your real estate income and you can only take losses from real estate. In other words, the excess depreciation, or repairs, or whatever, your losses are limited to $3000 a year against your other active income. So that's called the passive activity loss rule. Jeff: $25,000. Toby: If you materially participate and then you have $100,000 to $150,000 scale up. There's some little nuances which don't bring your head with. At the end of the day, there are restrictions on taking passive activity loss. Real estate professional status removes that restriction. The other thing that's really important about real estate professional status is it is per property. So if you have three properties, you'd have to meet it for each of the three unless you elect to aggregate all your properties on your tax return. We have seen this missed by accountants who don't do real estate. They don't aggregate and there are actually cases on the book where people had to fight and they literally had tons of properties they easily met the 750 if you aggregate it but their accountants miss the aggregation election. Jeff: And the sum of 750 hours is not just for your rental properties. Toby: Any real estate. Jeff: Any real estate activity. Toby: Yeah. Jeff was actually right when he said your spouse could qualify, either you or your spouse if you're filing jointly. Jeff: So if you have a full time job and you're getting a W2, I can guarantee you that you will not legally qualify. Under audit, you're going to lose. However, if you have a full time job and your wife does not or your husband does not, they can qualify to be that real estate professional. Toby: We had a fun one. A good friend of ours and a colleague in Georgia was making somewhere between $2 million and $3 million a year in his professional practice. His wife qualified as a real estate professional and he quite literally bought enough commercial property and did something called cost segregation where you're rapidly depreciating it where he generated enough loss off the real estate to offset his income. The IRS audited it, he is self represented because he knew the rule. It withheld, he stood up. His wife just did their real estate activities and he did their practice and at the end of the day, she met the requirement for the real estate professional status and the rule is pretty straightforward. IRS didn’t like the outcome but that's not their job. So they picked a fight and lost the audit which is not uncommon. All right, so how do I qualify for a real estate professional. Keep a log of your time and make sure that you're aggregating all of your real estate activities. Even if it's for a closely held company, it's still going to match, it's still going to work. Next one, what are the self dealing rules for nonprofits in QRPs. I'm going to add in there IRAs as well since when we talk about a qualified retirement plan, we're really talking about 401K and 401A. This is going to dovetail in with one of our other questions that came in off the internet as well. But here's how it works. If you are in a particular type of entity where it says you cannot interact and engage in business with a disqualified person, you could not sell them a $1 million building for $1. It is an absolute prohibition against self dealing. The most important first step is determining whether or not you're within one of those rules. Then if you are, then you look and say are there any exceptions to that rule. So for nonprofits, nonprofits are going to fall into broad categories foundations, private foundations are one. These are nonprofits that aggregate money and give money to other nonprofits, they don't do anything. And in that one, you have an absolute bar from self dealing. The next one is an operating nonprofit that is doing something and in that case, you just have to use arm's length transactions. So we look at that, that's our step number one. So let's go back to the first one, private foundations then you look and say, are there any exceptions. The only exception is reasonable compensation, it can always be reasonably compensated. But other than that, no more transactions. So for nonprofits 501(c)(3) you can enter into transactions as long as it's an operating nonprofit. It can give you benefits, it can pay you and it can engage in sales and other transactions between you and the agencies so long as they are arm's length. And the way you make sure it is arm's length is you have non-interested parties looking at it saying, "Hey, that looks okay to me." somebody who doesn't have a dog in the fight. Now we go to QRPs and IRAs. In either one of those, you have absolute prohibitions against self dealing with disqualified parties and disqualified parties are lineal descendants which would be grandparents, children and their spouses, great children and their spouses. It does not include your siblings. So what's interesting is you could actually engage in transactions with your IRA for example, loan money to your brother. You cannot loan money to your mother. You could not loan money to your kids or your grandkids, you could not do a second on their house, you could not do anything between the company. You could not buy a house from them. That is an absolute bar that's called, disqualified party. Jeff: The way I kind of look at it as to whether you may be violating self dealing rules is, are you benefitting from a transaction between you and the nonprofit or the QRP or the IRA. That's really what they're out to prevent. And unfortunately the rules are pretty severe for violations of the self dealing. Toby: If you self-deal, you're just going to disqualify your IRA. If you're using a QRP and you're using a 401K, then we have different rules, and in that particular case, it would just disqualify the money that you actually were utilizing. Their far more lenient. Jeff: I had a client who had a QRP, it was actually defined benefit plan, who had a required minimum distribution to make and the plan was not funded at the time. The client had to make a loan to the QRP, which is a self-dealing but unfortunately there's an exception for that that one was quickly repaid. There was no profit or interest earned on it. Toby: Was it within the 60 days? Jeff: I believe it was within 60 days. Toby: There's some more fun stuff. Then we go into the 401Ks and this is where you get into people acting on behalf of the company. I know that there were some questions, that were already posed in the chat feature here. You're not supposed to be getting any personal benefit or using those funds at all when you have an IRA or a 401K. In an IRA, it's much more severe because you have a custodian. So if a renter for example is paying you money and they pay it to you individually, technically you have a violation of the self dealing rules because you just received money. Even if you go ahead and put it right back in the IRA, you're going to have an issue because technically you weren't supposed to receive the money, the custodian was supposed to be receiving the money. So you should actually have rental money going to your custodian if you’re using an IRA. If you’re using a 401K or 401A, which the profit sharing plan or 401K, then you are the trustee and you're able to accept the money and endorse it right into the account and make sure that the money goes to the right place. IRA's are a little more difficult. To get around this, a lot of people with IRA's will set up an LLC which you can be the manager of. Actually, the IRA is technically the member— you're in non compensated role and we have to make sure that the LLC agreement says that if we drafted it, then we make sure that we're putting in the non-prohibitionals. You cannot personally benefit from these activities. It has to all go back to the retirement plan. People will do the LLC and they will be all right, now I can go ahead and accept the funds through the LLC, that's how they do with an IRA. If you're doing with the 401K, we're going to suggest that you still set up an LLC anytime you have real estate, just because we don't want the liability to flow through to you. But there, now, you don't need the custodian. You could technically do it inside the 401K directly though you should still have the LLC and it's the same scenario where you're able to accept the proceeds. That's not going to be a technical violation because you're acting on behalf of the plan. And that is not a violation of the self dealing rules. So the biggest takeaway from all this, is that you can act on behalf of the plan. The second a just qualified person starts to get personal benefit, you have violated the rules and if it's an IRA, the whole thing is violating—considered a taxable event, which should be that 10% penalty plus income tax on it for the entire amount if it's at 401K or 401A, it would just be the portion that you violated. We tend to be very bullish on using 401Ks and 401A's, profit sharing plans around here also known as QRP. And this is why, because they're far more forgiving and they have a less moving pieces. I hope that explains that. We're going to have—I know there's a couple more questions that are in here, that are going to be relevant to this section as well. Let me jump on to something. The questions, this is something you can ask detailed questions via our email. I will answer them, Jeff or Tony, whoever's from the tax department here. We will answer these on the tax Tuesday. We will also more likely be responding back out to you directly as well because we want to make sure you get your questions answered, but just jot down that address, webinar@andersonadvisors.com and feel free to shoot them in. Since our last one, Tax Tuesday, we had a couple of questions and I want to go through these. Number one was from Karen out of Alaska, "I have a revocable trust in Alaska that owns and sells real property, does the trust to pay income taxes on the profit or does the profit end up on my personal tax return? Is it taxed at the same rate as everything else? So the most important word she used in her question was revocable, because trust come in two flavors, revocable are irrevocable. If they're irrevocable, then we have two choices, we don't have to worry about the irrevocable.. Since it's revocable, it's a grand tour trust is ignored, it's you, for tax purposes until your dead. So you're good, sorry, sometimes I'm blunt. So if you're buying and selling real estate, real property it's taxed no differently than if you're on the real property. Now here's the rub, it also gives you know asset protection. So revocable trust is giving you know asset protection with that real property, so I would really strongly suggest that the revocable trust actually be the owner of an LLC that is buying and selling the real estate and depending on how quickly you are turning this, will depend on whether that say, S or a C-Corp., if it's a flip versus if it is a long-term holds, then we just put it as an LLC. It would either be disregarded or taxed as a partnership. We want it to flow under our return. Those are kind of our choices. There was a question, I don't know if I got to that. I'm going to skip back to our slides. There's something about—Am I a dealer or an investor? So I want to make sure that I'm getting this one right here. Because this is relevant to one of these questions. A dealer and an investor is something that we talk about in real estate, you want to hit on this? Jeff: No, you're doing fine. Toby: An investor is someone who's passively involved, a dealer is somebody who is actively buying and selling real estate. So if you buy real estate with the intent to hold it for its long term appreciation cash flow, then you are an investor. If you buy real estate with the intent to sell it, then you are a dealer. The easiest way to conceptualize this is if I am an investor, I am passive. If I am a dealer, then I am a supermarket with inventory. And I'm putting my real estate on a shelf and it's constantly for sale. Just like at your grocery store, it may take a couple years for something to sell. I'm just imagining the items that are on the shelf. Jeff: Your durable goods. Toby: Right, so you sell something, I used to do liquidation. We would grab all the expired items we would sell them but let's say, it doesn't matter how long you held them. A lot of people think, well if I held it over a year, I can't be a dealer. That's not the case, we actually have cases on the book where they held it over 10 years. What matters is what your intent was when you buy it. And the difference it makes is active income versus passive income. The difference is an investor can 1031 exchange and defer all other taxes. An investor can get long-term capital gains, an investor can do installment sales, an investor can spread out the tax liability over a long period of time. Whereas a dealer is active. It's subject to social security taxes, it's taxable immediately even if you don't receive the money. It is active ordinary income, it's no difference than I just sold that box of Cheerios on the shelf that I've been waiting to sell. It makes a huge difference. Dealer activity we're going to isolate inside of an S-Corp or a C-Corp. Investor activity, we're going to make sure it flows on your personal return either by using a disregarded LLC or a partnership LLC, one of the two. Jeff: Intent has really made a difference in a couple of cases. One, where somebody bought a property that they go allow their child to live in, something end up happening then they sold it after a short time. They were considered to be an investor not a dealer. Toby: It doesn't even matter. It does not matter whether you ever rented it, there's plenty of cases where somebody tried to rent it and they were going to use it as a long term hold and then things change and they sold it. Just know that if you buy or sell within a year, the presumption is going to be that you're a dealer. If you hold for over a year, the presumption is going to be that you're an investor but it's not a guarantee. We're going to get back to these questions. How does Flip LLC income flow into S-Corp and then what will be distributions of the seller? So, we talked a little bit about this last week but I'm going to go and we're going to hit this. When you set up an LLC, it doesn't exist to the IRS. So when you say how does the Flip LLC flow into S-Corp, it doesn't. A Flip LLC is an S-Corp if you elect to have it be treated that way with the IRS. The income is just going into an S-Corp. Then you have to decide what your salary will be because if you know anything about an escort S-Corp, you want to make sure you pay yourself a reasonable salary if it's making money. The rule of thumb to use is, one third of your net income should be paid out as salary. That's just a rule of thumb but it's all in all reality the IRS has this funky test where you're supposed to say, "Hey, what would it be? What could it be paid?" they never tell us exactly. So I'll just say this, pay a third, don't worry about it. If you get too much money, if you start making over $300,000, then we're going to have a chat but where you're going to be on our radar anyway, we're going to be making sure you're paying a reasonable salary anyway. The reason this is important is because the salary is subject to old age death and survivors in Medicare also known as FICA or social security and the distributions are not. So what you would do is you'd be cutting your social security tax by about two thirds if you did it that way. I hope that explains it. So it makes its money and it pays it out. We do need to make sure that if you're flipping, that the money goes into the LLC. Jeff: A quick comment on distributions on an S-Corporation. Distributions are typically the money that's already been taxed are in you're just pulling the cash out. What you don't want to do is go out and get a bank loan in S-Corporation and take distributions from that for several reasons. One, you don't have basis in those distributions. Two, it gets into the whole finance distribution issues and things of that nature. So you really only want to be pulling money out of the company that you’ve already been taxed on. Toby: Fair enough and then if you don't pull any money out of an LLC that's taxed as an S-Corp, you don't technically have to pay yourself a salary. You just let it sit in there and keep growing which your accountant is not going to tell you because they don't know that. The reason I know that is because I have spoken to probably 100 accountants that missed that one. It says, why do you want the LLC that does flipping set up as an S-Corp or C-Corp instead of a partnership? Mark, we were just talking about that because it's taxed as ordinary income as subject to self employment tax. So the reason we want that in an SRC is so that you do not get classified as a dealer because then all of your real estate is dealer real estate and you could lose all your long-term capital gains, you to lose your 1031, you could lose your installment sale. So we want it to be a separate taxpayer from you so the IRS notes clearly who the investor is and who the dealers is and then you can reduce the amount of tax hit by using the S-Corp that will reduce your self-employment tax significantly, if you add a 401K to it, you could eliminate your tax or defer it out into the future. If you use a C-Corp, then depending on what your expenses are, we can also eliminate all your tax or at least reduce it significantly. So that's why we use that. All right, we have a whole bunch of questions to go through so I'll go through this. What is UBIT and UBITA. UBIT is unrelated business income tax and the easiest way to understand this is when you have a tax deferred entity or tax, it's not actually a tax rates, it can be tax rate if it's a Roth but when you have a qualified plan or a nonprofit and it is not doing what it's set up to do, so let's say in an IRA or a 401K or a 401A, or a nonprofit, they're all set up to do certain things. They're allowed to have a passive activity which is rents, royalties, dividends, interest, even capital gains and it can have those and you don’t have to worry about it at all. But once it starts competing with other businesses, active businesses, now you have an issue and that's what's called—let's say that you have these ordinary businesses. Then they would be taxed, generally speaking it's going to be the highest rate at 37% I believe is what it's going to be as kind of a disincentive to engage in traditional businesses inside those exempt organizations. The easiest way to look at this, let's say you set up an IRA and it runs a mini mart, you're going to pay tax on those profits just like anybody else would. The exception is if that IRA owns a corporation that does not pay out the profits directly. It would have to own C-Corp and then it would only receive dividends and then those are considered passive. So it gets funny and a little bit difficult. The other one is let's say you set up a nonprofit, that's for—what's a good one? Helping Vet and then it sets up a pizza business on the side and starts competing, it buys a bunch a Domino's franchises. It's going to pay tax on the Domino's franchise. It doesn't get a big huge competitive advantage selling pizzas because it's a nonprofit. It would have to be for its charitable purpose and that's UBIT. Jeff: One place we see a lot is like hospitals, they're usually tax exempt but they may have a gift shop which they have to pay the business income tax on because it's not directly supporting them but it is a business. Toby: But you're allowed to do that for like what is it, Salvation Army and some these other thrift stores. They'll let you have one for a church and whatnot. If it's ancillary, if it's completely ancillary and it's just being used like thrift stores I think are one of the few exceptions, gift shop absolutely, you're head to head. Here's another one and I think that this may be what Diane was looking at, it's debt financed income. What that is, is if I'm using the leverage, then there's an exception for IRA's where it cannot use loans to generate income, it's considered an unrelated debt financed income. It will be taxable That is not the case for 401Ks and for 401As, which is what—if you've ever been to one of our events, you hear us railing on the idea that if you are going to finance real estate, real estate is considered passive and it's considered okay not UBIT. The only way you make it taxable is if you leverage it inside of an IRA, so don't do that. If you're going to leverage it, make sure your rolling that IRA into a 401K or profit sharing plan which is the 401A. So there, that's my two cents. I figure that maybe they had a funky—UBITA, I have no idea what that is, but it looks neat. I think they were probably referring to get financed income, since those things usually go side by side. All right, we have a ton of questions that have been posed and this is so much fun, we have like literally a jillion questions, if that's the number. All right, so here's the first one, if I cash out refinance or borrow an equity loan from my primary residence, use the money to do private lending by rental property, can I deduct the interest expense as an investment expense beyond $750,000 amount? They're throwing some things in here. This is actually a really long question, I'm giving you the thumbnail sketch of it. Hey guys email those types of questions in, because nobody's going to be out to follow this, but here's what here's what they're saying, we now have a restriction on your mortgage interest, it's $750,000. If you borrow on your house, and by the way it's $750,000 now, if you had a loan on it up to $1 million, you're grandfathered in, if those prior to what was it, 12/15/2017, you're good or if you got your long before April 15th and you already started the process before December 15, don't you make my head hurt. Long and short of it is, let's say $750,000, but your house is worth $1.5 million. You borrow money out of your house. You will not be writing that off personally, you are capped at $750,000 and that's on your schedule A. Whether or not you're getting any benefit out of that is to be seen because you have your standard deduction. I imagine it's going to be above the standard deduction if you're borrowing up to $750,000. Let's just say we have our $750,000 and we borrowed an extra $500,000, it can't go on your schedule A, but it can go someplace else. The someplace else would be, for example, if I put it into my schedule E, because I'm using it to buy rental property. Then I can use the income of the rental property and I can use the interest being paid as a separate expense, it's just going on a different tax form. The other route that you can go is, if I give that $500,000 and I loan it to a corporation and the corporation re-loans, in the words the corporation is going out loaning its money out and it's reimbursing my interest, then in all reality the loan is really to the corp, and I'm not getting any tax benefit but the corporation is reducing its income by reimbursing me the right to use basically my line of credit. This is no different than if you do this with your credit card. It's reimbursing you, so you make no money on it, but you don't pay tax on it, it such a fancy work around. That's number one. Next question, I hold rental property in a self directed IRA. I do tenant screening, manage the rental, hire vendors to do the repair work and I don't physically work on the house. Good, because you can't physically work on the house, you can do everything else, you can hire, do screening. I would actually have a property manager on it. All income expenses come and goes to the same self directed IRA account, hopefully that's with the custodian or you have an LLC, disregarded to the IRA. Somebody asked this, the IRA custodian sets up the LLC, you can't do it. You shouldn't be going out and doing it yourself, paying your money, you should actually have the IRA do it to keep it clean. Is it allowed? Yes, some people say, "If only I don't work on the house myself, that's okay," and they're correct. Some people say, even screening, collecting rent is not allowed, can you please clarify? You should not receive the money, the IRA should receive the money, you can direct you to the custodian though. You can even get the check and hand it to the custodian, forward it to the custodian, whatever, as long as what you're doing is not adding value to the property. That's the big no, no. Don't go get a paint brush and start painting the house because you're increasing the value to your personal efforts. Next question, my wife's previous employer stock options were exercised and we feel have peaked, cost basis 132, market value 280, if we cash in, what will be the tax consequences and how can we reduce the tax burden? We need to pull the trigger shortly. Aziz, this is you, there's two ways you can do this. First off, you're going to end up with long term capital gains, so it's not horrible. Secondly, there's something called an opportunity zone which just enacted at the end of the year and the just published out all these zones. If you reinvest the money in a opportunity zone, you defer to the tax. In the opportunity zones, there's tons of them. It's any neighborhood that is considered—that needs public support and there's a laundry list. I would actually encourage you to go Google, opportunity zone, tax and you'll find a big old list. But the communities in your area that are typically low to moderate income house. If you took your entire amount of increase, so let's say that we have $150,000 of taxable capital gains, you could buy $150,000 of opportunity zone properties and pay zero tax. Now, the question is, what happens when I sell? So there's holding periods and the minimum holding period, I believe, is you're going to be looking at five years, where then you're going to not have to pay tax on 15%, I'm going off of memory. So you'll have to excuse me if I'm not spot on, but it's 15% then it jumps up. At 10 years, the entire $150,000 is no longer taxable. And I believe that you're not going to be paying tax on the gain in the opportunity zone, it's kind of a two pronged, are you familiar with that one, Jeff? Jeff: Somewhat, I know that you replaced the old enterprise some number of years back. Toby: Something to look at, but would be it. The last way to avoid tax is give them, before you exercise it, is give that to your non-profit, if you have one and you would get a $280,000 deduction. And then the nonprofit can sell it zero tax. You'd get a monster tax and you could have these too, you could say, "Hey, I really need to offset a bunch of the tax, so I'm going to make a contribution," it doesn't matter what your basis is, it only matters, the fair market value of those assets and if you transferred let's say $140,000, half of it, let's see transferred $140,000 worth of stock, you would get $140,000 tax deduction and it can offset your income up to 60%. In either case, if you're pretty confident that we can mitigate or eliminate that tax bill if you wanted to. If you keep it out of state, somebody says, if you keep it as state for 36 months, can it be avoided? I am helping a friend with crowdfunding project and due to medical needs, we'll need a large sum, maybe $100 million what would his tax consequences be if he has no deductions? Does he have to pay tax on donated money? Fred, generally speaking, if you're getting these little gifts, as long as they're less than $15,000 there's no tax and when I say $15,000 that's per donor. So if I do a crowdfunding and everybody gives $100, there's no tax to the recipient. So go ahead and raise them a bunch of money. Jeff: Keep in mind when you're doing this crowdfunding, if you're contributing to a crowd funding, it is a gift, it's not a donation. Toby: And it's not a tax deductible donation. In 2017, I sold a rental house and took a $40,000 note. In 2017, I received $944 in interest but have not issued a 1099-INT. I did report the amount on my personal 2017. What should my next step be? Wait until 2019 or file now. So he's the one who holds the note, he was paid interest. What do you have to say? Jeff: This is kind of a darn if you do and darn if you don't. There is a penalty for not issuing the 1099. You did the right thing by reporting the amount of interest. However, there's a penalty for not following the 1099. There's a penalty for filing them late. Toby: What's the penalty like? Jeff: I think it's $50 or $75. I think it's $50 up to $99. Toby: So what you're saying is do it next year? Jeff: I didn’t hear anything. Toby: Hey do it next year unless they start digging in. I've had that, we actually went through a super audit here once and they went through every—they let you fix it. So I just wouldn't do it. I would just do it next year and say, "Hey, oops." How to aggregate all properties. What are the disadvantages to doing. You file an aggregation election, is it a form or you just check in the box? Jeff: It's an election. It prints out a form with your tax return. It says exactly what properties or investments you're aggregating together. The only real disadvantage is. Once you aggregated these properties, let's say you have two houses and one has significant passive losses. When you become a real estate professional, those passive losses gets stuck in there. Normally they get freed up when you sell that property but once you aggregator properties, it's all considered one property. So it doesn't free up those if you have a large losses tied up, it doesn't free them up until you get rid of all your aggregated properties. Toby: Cool. Nicely put. Are the purchase and sale of mortgage notes considered real estate for real estate professional status I'm assuming. Jeff: This is my gut feeling, I would say no. it's more of a lending, more of an investment in the notes. Toby: Depends on whether you're ending up with the properties. It depends on what your intent is and if your intent is just to buy and sell mortgage notes, then you're dealing with lending. In order to be real estate, it's really got to be focused in on the purchase and sale of real estate. Jeff: So we kind of run into the same thing with construction companies and such that they meet the test for certain things but not for other test. There are some input to it so real estate broker is kind of the same thing. Toby: Here's the thing, so this is Dean. Dean, if I am in your shoes, I am documenting the time I'm spending in real estate. so even though I may be going after a note, if the reason that you're going after the note is with the intent that possibly end up with that property and you do the research and you can back it up, then you add it into the real estate column as far as your time and you aggregate all your time. The only time this is going to come up is if somebody audits you in goes through all of your records that thoroughly which is rare that that happens. But let's say that it does, then you're the one who's tracking all of your expenses and your time. Then it would be up to the IRS to sit there and say, "Hey, that was actually for the mortgage." and so the old adage is pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. You don't take all of it but you aggregate that a little bit. Jeff: Can I bring up a pet peeve? I hear on the radio frequently about all these auditors that IRS has hired and they haven't had a real hiring since 2010. Toby: They're so toast right now. Jeff: The last big hiring they did most recently was to deal with Obamacare for that audit purposes. But really, they're dealing with almost a skeleton crew anymore. Toby: We just got proposed tax forms for 2018. We don't even know, we just had proposed regulations issued on the tax changes two weeks ago, three weeks ago. They're way behind the eight ball and sometimes we put ourselves in a disadvantage. Don't be crazy about it, but you can be pretty aggressive and especially if it's the truth. If what you're spending your time on is real estate, count it towards real estate. So if you're doing real estate investing part time, can you be considered a part time investor? Yeah, you'd be a part time investor but you wouldn't be a real estate professional. So the biggest important thing and this is for Darlene and Ken, is to document your time and if you go over 750 hours and it's more than you spend than anything else, then you're going to be a real estate professional. Otherwise, you're just an investor, unless you are buying properties to sell. So when you say investing, that means you're going to hold on to them, you're letting them depreciate a little bit but you get the cash flow. Does time spent lending money on real estate for real estate qualifiers and real estate professional. No investing, didn’t we just answer that one? It depends on your real intent of investing in the note. A lot of people are buying notes to end up with a real estate in which case then I'd say probably. Jeff: No, what if she's gap funding? Toby: If you're gap funding then I would say no, then you're lending. So you really have to take a look at the totality of the circumstances. I wish I could say yes or no. what we want is a yes and there's a way to get there. So it's making sure that you're documenting things to support your position. We could dig into that a little bit more, if you want to shoot us the email then let us dig into it. Then the next tax Tuesday, I can answer that one and Jeff can answer that one with a little bit of research behind it. Nexus question, "I'm a resident in California, I'm moving to Arizona. I plan to keep a single family rental in California. The California houses and the land trust is owned by Wyoming LLC, does California have the right to tax my pension income after I move in addition to my income in California rental." Shelly the answer is, it depends on where the rental was earned and whether you're taking out over a 10 year period then the answer is, no. and my guess is that you're going to be a big no. They will be able to tax technically the rental income that is being derived from California but for the most part, that's going to be zero. Jeff: A really important number to remember when you have a property in more than one state is 183. That's typically the number of days you need to spend in a state to be a resident in that state. Toby: "How do I get the 501(c)(3) tax exempt?" Marie, that’s the 1023 application. Yes, it's the 1023 application. So with a nonprofit, I always look at these things in threes, we file with the state which is a corporation. We document it to make sure there's no shareholders which is for private parties, and then we file with the feds and we're telling them we want to be an exempted organization and that exemption is done via 1023. So we go through that process. When we set them up, we set up about 3,000 of them successfully. "How do you create an LLC and an IRA?" Darlene and Ken, what you do is you have the IRA custodian internal contract with a company like us and we create the LLC, or we set up a 401K, roll the IRA into it and then we'd let you do it so you don't need a custodian. "Is this recorded and will a replay be sent out?" Robin, it's made available to anybody who's platinum and then I'm cutting out a bunch of the Q&As and will throw them all over the internet. The recording, yes we record them. Join platinum, it's fun. "If I sell a partial note to a family member from my QRP, is that disqualified?" it depends on the type of family members. When they're your kids, yes. If it's to a brother or sister, no. then you can do it. When you make a contribution and that's just the whole disqualified person argument we had earlier. So you can always ask again, ask the question specific to your situation, we'll give you a very specific answer. But just know that if you sell a partial note out of your QRP, it depends on the relationship of the family member. If it's lineal, you have a problem. Which means kids, parents, grandparents you have a problem. If it's horizontal, siblings, not a problem. If it's the spouses of the disqualified person, you're going to have a problem. "Investing in LLC for holding rental property, how does one avail to a 1031 exchange?" Here's how it works, so I'm not going to worry about this. The 1031 exchange, you have to have a 1031 exchange facilitator. The LLC has to buy the next property. So you sell one and buy one within 180 days and there's some other roles in there about when you identify it or you do a reverse exchange where you buy the replacement property then sell the other property within 180 days. But neither cases, in the name of the LLC, you don't have to do anything else. "I should be able to still qualify as an investor and still be active in real estate by investing more than 750 hours." yes, but in actually is a full time job. So if you have a full time job as a real estate professional, then you're good. But remember, your activity as a real estate investor has to exceed your activities of any other profit making activity. So if you work and you work 1,500 hours, even if you did 1400 hours as real estate, you are not a real estate professional, still below that 1,500. Investment in LLC for holding rental property, how does or somebody asked that. If you in invest funds to have an equity in a project, oh my god, this one's going to kill me, built by someone else, I'm trying to think what this is. So you're investing funds for a piece of an LLC in which you are passive and they are a builder, are you a dealer? So Judith, no, you are a passive investor in an active business, is what you are. I see what you're saying, what she's asking is, "Hey, I have Bob the builder come up to me and says, 'Hey, we're going to build this big apartment complex, we're going to develop and everything. You put in $100,000 everybody else puts on $100,000.'" You are passive. You are not considered the dealer. Here's a fun one, did you already read this one? Jeff: No, I haven’t read this one. Toby: Okay, I am planning to receive social security benefits at 62, and currently not employed. I do private lending to real estate investors through promissory notes. So I do receive interest income in the amount of $40,000 to $50,000. Will this affect my social security benefits? At what point to social security benefits are taxable? So Joe, the answer is that there are certain types of income that are exempt from calculations, social security, Jeff you know off the top of your head? Jeff: If you're receiving earned income and that's all social securities could ever know about, so we're talking about self employment income, W-2 wages, that's going to affect your social security benefits. Toby: But if you're just receiving interest income, is it going to affect it? Jeff: Well, here's the thing, if you're in the business of lending money, we would typically set you up as a business, either on schedule C or through an S-Corp or something. That interest you receive wouldn't be, interest income, it would be business income. You'd be able to deduct certain expenses from that income… Toby: We got to look at it, because usually you're going to want to be treated as active, in this particular case you're not going to outdo yourself. Jeff: The downside of this is, any money, any net income you have from this business of lending money is going to affect security until you're 65, or 67, full retirement age. Toby: Joe, the answer is, we may one isolated into its own taxable entity, so that it doesn't affect you. We may. Jeff: I kind of feel like this would be in a great place for an S-Corporation. It's not earning income flowing through to them. Toby: Would he have to take a salary? Jeff: Yeah there we go. Toby: I'm going to take a look. Joe, that's a great question, could you submit it to the webinars at Anderson Advisors, so we can research it. In that way we can hit it in two weeks, to get you a much more thoroughly research, because you're asking a very complicated question. That’s just not going to be at the top of our head. We're going to make sure that we don't step on a landmine. Jeff: So the answer's, maybe. Toby: My wife and I are the only shareholders and we both take a one third salary. No, you should take about one third of the net profit as salary, total between the owners. So greater than 2% shareholders or you and your spouse, so you could each take, I'll throw numbers out, let's say you made $100,000, you could each take up to $18,500. If you're under 50 and immediately dump it into a 401K and not pay any tax. So, "Hey we like that." We have a medical coding business, perfect, yeah, so that's when we want to take a look at. "This is so much fun, really appreciate it," I hope that's not sarcastic, Al. "I opened a couple of LLC, I'm going to use to purchase flipping, can I put them on hold until I do? Do I have to do tax returns?" It all depends on what you're doing with those, the answer is, yes you could put them on ice. "Thanks for the answer on UBIT." Diane, no problem. See we actually do answer questions here. "What are the legal benefits of incorporating in Puerto Rico, if any compared to Nevada?" If you live there, I think they give you 4% tax rate, but you actually have to reside there. There's legal benefits, not really any, other than the tax benefits and the fact of the matter is Puerto Rico has Spanish law, which means they could probably take your company from you. But you can still go down there and Jeff… Jeff: Well, I mean, there are certain industries that have great tax benefits pharmaceutical companies was always a big one. Some of those old laws have sunsetted but might be a good opportunity. Toby: Cool, look at all these questions. All right, some people are saying nice things, great. I like nice things better than, "You guys are jerks." In 2017, I was self employed under my LLC, I have not filed my taxes yet and not considering retirement. Would I still be able to do that? What is best options?" Casey, are you under—self employment under my LLC. So it depends on whether—it was an S-Corp. Did you file an extension because you would be able to do a retirement plan either a sub-IRA or if you already had the 401K then you can make a contribution from the company for it. It would either be a 401A or a 401K. or sub-IRA, I think those are going to be your... Jeff: And if you do extension, you have 11 days to get it done. Toby: Yeah, you have 11 days. Casey, get off your butt. All right, Brian wants advice with the start up pre revenue, he is offering 10% stock, "Not sure I want ownership that subject to capital calls, expectation, potential—is it better to take an offshore [inaudible 01:06:53] until there's more value in the company?" It really depends, so Clark, nice to see you. Awesome. I know Clark's brother very well, studs, nice family. All right, friends, if I was going to have a piece, the whole thing is, if I'm putting money into an endeavor, it's going to be, "What am I going to get out?" It would really depend on the agreement, I don't want to be subject to having to put more money in, nor do I want my interest necessarily being diluted by somebody who is. So one of the one of the ways you can do it, is sometimes do it is a convertible note where you loan the money, so you know you can at least get it back, but it's convertible into equity at the fair market value at that time. You guys can actually agreed to this ahead of time. So that if you decide you want to contribute it, you see they're doing what you want but then you convert it into equity. Otherwise it just remains a note that they pay you on. Clark, that's probably the route I would go. Jeff: But the assumption here is, this is a C-Corporation he's talking about. Toby: I don't even care… Jeff: Well if it's an S-Corporation that we wouldn’t be able to have all these secondary notes and stuff. Toby: If it's an S, I could so convert it. Jeff: Could you? Toby: Yep. Jeff: As long as it converts into the same… Toby: Yep. The risk is I don't want to have a convertible debt to anything other than an individual that would qualify for S.. Jeff: Okay. Toby: But I don't see S-Corps raising money this way. It's almost always C-Corps with partnerships. So the ones that I've been personally involved in, we did three levels of financing this exact way with Vegas Tax fund. That's the little Tony Hseih group and they dumped a bunch of money to a company called Role Tech. You can look them up online, because we exited that wanted with the sale to Brunswick. In a way they did all their money was purely—that was a C-Corp, but it was purely through convertible notes. All right, "What are the best tools you can recommend for tracking time mileage and expenses for real estate investors? My desire to be paperless and get everything out…" People use Taxbot for mileage, it's mileage IQ, MileIQ, I think it's the one that I use, but if you're tracking time, it's just using—sometimes is just using your calendar or spreadsheet. Let's see, "Is full time realtor, a real estate professional?" Chances are, you're going to aggregate and all that. "I understand and agree." I'm not sure I understand that. "I executed a 1031 exchange where trust all the owned property, sold it, and took title of the up leg property in the trust using 1031 exchange. But now I want to transfer up leg property into an LLC." Diane, there is no time restriction that you have to hold it as long as you are the one and still the end beneficiary. If you extend loan through an LLC owned by Roth IRA, they want to transfer, sell the remainder, but then season it out to a lower interest rate. Can Roth continue to receive the full payment from the borrower and the relay the portion?" Yes, as lines is non-convertible, same as you do in an S-Corp. "Is the answer the same best self administer S 401K? So what they're asking is," If you extend a loan through—we're just going to call it the Roth IRA, because the LLC looks right into it from a tax standpoint. And then you sell the remainder of that then season notes. So you start collecting and then you sell the note because it's doing really well and you say, "Hey does anybody want to pay me for this?" I know a guy that that's what he does. He puts the notes together and he sells his notes out and so he can get the money to go to another one and he aggregates them altogether, they call it flying in flocks. The lenders flock together and together they do a loan and he sells his portion. Yeah, you could sell it and then you can continue to receive it and keep a portion of it. the only issue you have is if it's a convertible note then you wouldn’t want to do a convertible note because boom, that Roth IRA depending on the type of entity if it's an S-Corp you'd kill the S-Corp's status of it. How do you put an LLC on hold? You get quite literally do nothing with it or you just pay the state and then you file a non activity return. You say it's not doing anything. So you're allowed to do that or you just do nothing. Which is what I tend to do. It just depends on your state. If there's not much penalty then I just kind of sit it and then two years later I might reactivate it. Will real estate holding LLC taxes partnership qualify for the 20% passed through deduction? Yes, it will. Here's the deal, as long as it's not triple net property. What she's asking is, "Hey, I have a whole bunch of LLCs and they all receive rental income and there's a net income amount." let's say it comes through with $50,000 there's something called a 199A deduction that was enacted by the 2017 tax cut and jobs act. And it gives you a 20% deduction off that amount or 20% of your taxable income whichever one is less/ but if you earn over a certain amount so for individuals it's over, $100,575 if it's a married couple it's $315,000 which is going to make your head hurt I'm going to suffer memory here. Then you scale up and then you have a new test it's 50% of the W2 income that's being paid on that particular busine

Full Transcript Below: Show Summary: In this Job Insights episode, Serina Gilbert talks about her job interview process and the rejection she experienced and more so about what she learned and gained from the interview process. Serina goes into the details when she found out about a position opening in her work place. How she prepared for each step of the process and what she gained from taking the risk of challenging her self and wanting to stretch her possibilities. Join Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson in this Job Insights episode and learn how landing on the Moon is not so bad when you were shooting for the stars. We hope you enjoy this Job Insights episode and you can send your feedback and suggestions to the Job Insights team by email Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. A big Thank You goes out to CheeChaufor his beautiful music! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store   Full Transcript: Serena Gilbert: Recently, I was presented with an opportunity to apply for a position that was not one level, but two levels above where I'm at right now. I am not joking you guys, there were literally nine people on my interview.   Jeff Thompson: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment.   Serena Gilbert: You will never know what you can do until you try. Even just the interview process built my confidence up.   Jeff Thompson: To help you navigate the employment world and give you job insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want.   Serena Gilbert: It's a really good experience that helps me see that that interview process, wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it was going to be.   Jeff Thompson: You could find the Job Insights podcast on blindAbilities.com. Part of the Blind Abilities network with host Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson. You can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.com. Leave us some feedback or suggest some topics that we cover on Twitter @jobinsightsvip. Check out the job insight support group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advice and interact with the job insights community.   Serena Gilbert: There's lessons to be learned in every single life experience that we go through. Sometimes they're easier to find, and sometimes they're a little bit harder to look for, especially when it's news that we don't like.   Jeff Thompson: Learn about resources for training, education, and employment opportunities.   Serena Gilbert: Especially you, Jeff. I keep you on your toes.   Jeff Thompson: Now please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson, with job insights will come to job insights. Welcome to Job Insights, I'm Jeff Thompson. We're back with a brand new show with my co-host, Serena Gilbert. Serena, how are you doing?   Serena Gilbert: I'm doing good, Jeff. How are you?   Jeff Thompson: I'm doing really good. I'm glad to be back in the studio with you, and we're going to talk about a topic that's quite personal to you as of late. It's about rejection during a job interview. Serena, I really want to thank you for sharing this with the listeners.   Serena Gilbert: Yeah, it's something we all go through. It's not super fun, but I really wanted to ... Jeff and I talked about this podcast is like our therapy session in a way. So I wanted to take some time to share my experience and also talk about what do we do when we hear no, and when we get a little bit ahead of ourselves when we're looking at, oh my gosh, that'd be really cool to have that opportunity, and how do we make the best of those opportunities.   Jeff Thompson: Yeah, and sometimes opportunities turn into lessons that we learn. What do we gain from them and I'm sure there's a list of stuff that you have gathered lately and are going to use them for in the future. If you don't get out there and try, if you don't challenge yourself, then you're not putting yourself out there. You're not making opportunities so good for you. Some people that have a job, they get complacent and they just want to keep that job, but I think when someone looks at the job and sees that this is not the peak of the mountain, they want to keep climbing a little bit further and you did just that. Good for you.   Serena Gilbert: Yeah, and it's perfectly normal to want to advance your career. Sometimes when we get into the, "Oh my gosh, it was so hard for me to get this job. I'm just happy to be working. I'm happy to be earning an income," we do get a little bit complacent like Jeff said. It's something that I'd like to avoid because if you're not growing and moving forward, then why are we here? I really strongly feel that it's important to advance our skills and abilities, even if it's in our same position or if it's promotional opportunities like the one that I went for a few weeks ago, that Jeff helped me with.   Jeff Thompson: That's right, and I would do it again. Serena, you shot for the stars, landed on the moon. That's not a bad thing. Let's take our listeners back to when all this started.   Serena Gilbert: So why don't we start with my story from the last few weeks, because that's part of the reason we haven't been recording in a while. Right, Jeff? One of us, I don't know who, was a little bit distracted with some things going on. Right, Jeff? That was totally you.   Jeff Thompson: Plus, who had a cold for a while too?   Serena Gilbert: I was sick and then I was feeling better, and then what a month later I was sick again. So that was fun. So for those of you that have been listening to the podcast, you know that I am currently a rehabilitation counselor here in Colorado. Recently I was presented with an opportunity to apply for a position that was not one level, but two levels above where I'm at right now. In our State, we have counselors and then we have supervisors of the counselors and then above that, we have program managers which is middle and high management level positions. So I thought, "You know what? I'm going to try for it, see what happens." If nothing else, this is me showing, hey I would like to at least be considered for upcoming leadership opportunities and get the experience of interviewing on such a different level of the interview process.   Serena Gilbert: It was a little bit intimidating until I was actually sitting there and then I was like, "There's nine people sitting around me." This is awesome, but it's a great experience for what I went through. One thing that happened with me is the position posted early October and they did interviews late October, mid to late October. In that time from when I applied to when I had the interview, as is normal and human nature, I started thinking, "Oh my gosh, what if I get this position? What are the things I want to do? What are some things that would be different for me? How would our life look different," because it would have been a commute for me from where I live up to Denver, which I had already figured out.   Serena Gilbert: I'm a researcher when it comes to at least figuring out what are my options. That in a way made it a little bit harder to take the, "We're sorry, but this isn't quite right for you right now," kind of conversation that was hard with me and that's tricky.   Jeff Thompson: Because you put all that work into it.   Serena Gilbert: Yeah, because you start thinking about it. You know when you apply for that position that you're like, "Oh my gosh, this would be so cool." You start imagining yourself in that position. So in some ways, that's great because it shows that you're really thinking about what you'd like to do with that position, and the goals, and things that you have but then in other ways, it makes that fall a little bit further when you don't hear the news that you wanted to hear.   Jeff Thompson: But you did hear some positive news.   Serena Gilbert: I heard some great news. So I got really good feedback on my interview. It wasn't that I bombed my interview or anything. I was really well prepared. If you guys have listened to other podcasts that we've done on job interviewing and preparing, as you know I researched all kinds of really difficult interview questions that might be asked at the management level. I can answer lots of different questions from the counselor level, but there's a different way that you're looking at and approaching situations when you're interviewing for a management level position. So I did a lot of research with that and I knew that I did not have a lot of the management leadership experience that they would traditionally be looking for in candidates for that position.   Serena Gilbert: So I took it a little bit above and that's just me, and I wrote a little at least two or three pages proposal for what I thought some of the important goals would be for one year, three years, five years down the road in that particular position. I presented that as part of my interview. I got really good feedback on that. I know that that was something that they appreciated, because it shows that you're looking forward and you're not just thinking of the two weeks from now or a month from now. It really just came down to you. I just don't have that experience that they need for such a high-level position running literally an entire unit at this point in time, but the really whole news is the director of my agencies specifically gave me some tips and complimented me on my interview. That really made the blow a little bit easier to take, even though I didn't get the news that I wanted.   Jeff Thompson: What was some of those tips that you got?   Serena Gilbert: It was really just that I needed to develop more management leadership experience. I have some ways that I'm going to go about that and partner with some staff that's within our agency that can be really supportive of that and look forward to the next opportunity down the road because our agencies go in through lots of changes out left and right. There's always changes with any government agency, so I never know what might come about down the road.   Jeff Thompson: There might be a supervisor position opening up.   Serena Gilbert: You never know.   Jeff Thompson: Keep your ears spilled.   Serena Gilbert: I was lucky in my agency that I got that feedback so openly. I didn't even have to request that it was just provided to me by the person that let me know, "Hey, here's what happened and here's the feedback that I have for you." If you're not lucky enough where that feedback it's not just given to you, then just ask. If there was nothing that I learned in the situation that I was just in is that you will never know what you can do until you try and ask for what you want. It definitely built my confidence up, even just that. Even just the interview process built my confidence.   Jeff Thompson: That's great because now you're willing to share that experience with all the listeners here. I listened to you because when you're talking, you're invested in this all the time and I was really rooting for you to take this challenge. You did take the challenge. You got different news, but you're another step forward, I think.   Serena Gilbert: Well, and I left the situation knowing that I literally did everything I possibly could to show my passion for that position. I researched, I talked to stakeholders, I put together that proposal. I prepared for really common interview questions and that they helped, because even if I didn't get asked that exact question, some of the scenarios that I came up with were still applicable to the questions that were asked of me. So I did not leave with any regrets. I don't feel like, "Man, I should've done this better. I should have done that better." I literally put my best foot forward and I'm proud of that, and that's a really good experience that helps me see that that interview process wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it was going to be. Don't get me wrong. It was a hard interview, but I was prepared for it.   Jeff Thompson: Only nine people, huh?   Serena Gilbert: Only nine. There were nine people. I'm not joking you guys, there were literally nine people on my interview.   Jeff Thompson: All in the room?   Serena Gilbert: All in the room, in person. They were all very nice, very supportive. There were many times when we were making jokes and things like that. I never felt like anyone was out to get me, it's never ... That's the thing that I want our listeners to hear is when you come into an interview panel like that, nobody wants to see somebody fall on their face. They want to see you do your best. They want to see you put your best foot forward. One of the people that was interviewing me, saw me when I arrived and said good morning to me. They asked, "How are you doing?" I was like, "I am really nervous." He said, "Don't be nervous. It's just a conversation between friends, and we all want you to do really well." That helped a little.   Jeff Thompson: That was great.   Serena Gilbert: Yeah, I mean that's how supportive of an environment that I'm lucky enough to have to be in. That's why I'm like, uh. I was sad for a little while, I went through all those stages of no, man. At the end of the day, I really do feel that that's the case, that they really do want to see us succeed.   Jeff Thompson: You're more prepared for next time this opportunity comes up that you decided to take the challenge, and put yourself out there again. You have gone through it once, this won't be your first rodeo?   Serena Gilbert: No.   Jeff Thompson: No.   Serena Gilbert: No. Far from it, you know me. I don't give up.   Jeff Thompson: That's right and it's the tenacity. Now someone that's out there that doesn't have a job to fall back into that is trying and tries again, I've known people who have tried eight, nine times. They keep that tenacity, the move forward and they're gaining from each time and they'll land a job.   Serena Gilbert: It's really important to in my situation I was lucky enough that I'm in the agency. So I don't have, I have no problem. If I wasn't offered the feedback, I had no problem picking up the phone and saying, "Hey, how did I do? I need your honest feedback. I just want to be able to take that to improve the next time I go for something like this." We're not all applying for jobs that are within the agency, or the field that were already working in. So when that happens, I would still say do not hesitate to try to get that feedback from the employer that you interviewed with. You just say, "Hey, totally understand. I'm super grateful for the opportunity to have been able to interview with you, but so that I can move forward and improve upon myself, can you tell me a little bit about what I can improve on. What are maybe some skills and abilities that I need to work on?”   Serena Gilbert: Maybe they'll have some feedback about your interview, and maybe you do have those skills and abilities but had a hard time selling them in the interview room. So that does two things for you. The first is if there were other positions that maybe they thought you might be a good fit for, they might give you a second look because they're like, "Wow, this person really wants to seek some feedback and show that they're able to improve upon themselves." Be humble about it, not angry and bitter about it because yes, that's definitely an emotion that is going to come up, but you don't want the employer to see that ever. Then number two, if there's not an opportunity in that particular company, then use that feedback to improve for the next job interview that you have, and the next after that because there will be lots of them. All you need is one person to say yes.   Jeff Thompson: I got to hand it to you, because that is stressful to go through, put yourself through. I know over the last month that off and on you were talking about it, sending me emails on this and that and the other thing and it was consuming.   Serena Gilbert: That is a little bit of a weakness for me. I do tend to go full on into stuff, like it's either all or nothing with me. I'm either completely and totally committed to it, or I'm just completely and totally disinterested in it and do nothing towards it. So there's no in between for me.   Jeff Thompson: That's a good something to have or to illustrate on your resume. It's a good quality to have because people like to see finishers. People who go into something, invest into it and see it through. I know you gave 110% on this and I know it must have hit hard. When you got the news, how did you gather yourself after that? I mean you had to take a few minutes to just reflect.   Serena Gilbert: It was kind of, it's going to sound really weird, but it was nice in a way. So I interviewed on a Tuesday at 9:00 AM. I knew by the following day, literally the next day at 9:00 AM that I did not get the position. I was at work, there was a handful of friends at work that knew what I was up to and helped me prepare and things like that. So I immediately went and chatted with them and I was like, I'm okay with it because they did tell me the individual that got it, and that person was well deserving of it. Think that person will do a fantastic job, and there was truly no hard feelings. It's still just the, "Man, I went for it and I didn't get it." It's not like I was truly slighted I guess is not the right word, because I knew even in the back of my mind, I was always telling everyone, "This is going to be a long shot, this is going to be a long shot."   Serena Gilbert: As I prepared more and more forward, I was like "Maybe it's more reachable. Maybe it's more, maybe it's more realistic than I think." Then you get in your head. Really what helped me a lot is being able to chat with friends and reflect upon the feedback that I got that truly was really positive, and that helped during the work day. Then that night, I got home, and you start to ruminate about things. I had my little, I call it a blue funk for just that night. The next day was perfectly fine. I think that that's okay to go through that and be like, "I don't really want to talk to anyone right now for a few hours. I'm just going to go, listen to an audio book for a few hours. Just escape for a little while." That's okay. That's where I usually go when I need to regroup and things like that. This was almost a week ago now and I'm not letting it keep me down.   Jeff Thompson: Serena, with this experience that you just went through, does any of this help you at your current job that you're doing today? Does any of this roll over into it?   Serena Gilbert: With the position that I applied for is management level, so you're looking at things from a much more strategic perspective. I'm starting to look back and look at the job that I'm doing and starting to think, "How can I do this better? What are some strategic things I can do to expand what I'm already doing in my current role, and also serve the clients that I'm working with a little bit better?" Just look at that from more of that leadership slant on things, as opposed to just being the counselor. I think that that's going to help me down the road when it comes to being able to demonstrate some of that leadership experience. So it's just changed my perspective a little bit, because I put a little bit of a different hat on when I was looking for getting into that opportunity.   Jeff Thompson: So all that work and all that studying, and all the questions that you went through and research that you did may be paying off today.   Serena Gilbert: Yes sir. Darned schooling.   Jeff Thompson: I tell you. That's the trouble with students, they lack education.   Serena Gilbert: Just can't stop learning. Jeff, have you ever gone through some disappointments with a job search or business opportunities you were hoping to get into?   Jeff Thompson: Of course there has been. There's been positions like even in the workforce when you want to move up a step, or a grade, or ask for a raise, or do something. You challenge yourself and you put yourself into that, to go into your supervisor's office or like you did. You went into a job interview with a panel of people talking to you. To go into those situations, you have to be thinking about yourself, putting your best foot forward. When it doesn't happen, you have to walk back out to where you were and do the best you can. Typically like you did, you improve upon what you're doing, and you take on extra steps, and other people will notice. I'm glad people noticed and gave you some good feedback in your situation as well.   Serena Gilbert: I think it's important. One thing you just said is that other people will notice. People are watching you. When you have that kind of thing happen, people are watching what your reaction is going to be. Especially if you're already in the workplace, and you had gotten from promotion like we were talking about. If you react poorly and speak negatively of the individual that got the position, or down the road start talking negatively about that particular person, people are going to take note of that. They're going to start to wonder, "Well, how are they going to react if things don't go their way in the future?" They're going to fill in the gaps. They're not going to let you have that opportunity to demonstrate or show them, because they're going to look at your historical behavior.   Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Earlier episodes we've talked about what they're really looking for. One of the key things they're looking for is someone who fits the culture. Someone who is a team player and even though you're doing a job interview, it's always related. It's always 100%, you're on the clock. I mean there's no, that was during this situation. No, they'd look in at a comprehensive view of you whether your  in this situation, the other situation, they want team players and there's no room for negativity. Did I say that word right?   Serena Gilbert: Did you say negatitivity?   Jeff Thompson: I think I did.   Serena Gilbert: We're totally leaving that in there.   Jeff Thompson: There's no room for negativity.   Serena Gilbert: Yes, there you go. Good save.   Jeff Thompson: Well Serena, I'm glad you went through this experience and I'm glad you took from it and came out of it with a great positive, and you're willing to come back here. It's only been a week and you're here talking about it. So I think this was really good experience for you.   Serena Gilbert: Yeah, I think so. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm not going anywhere. When I got into working for Vocational Rehabilitation, I already decided, and I even said this in my interview. I was like, I don't know if there's a really nice way to say this. I didn't want to say I'm an old timer or whatever, but I was like, "I'm not going anywhere." I plan on retiring from Vocational Rehabilitation, so this is a position or an opportunity that I'm committed to and that's why went for this opportunity, because I see myself being able to contribute to the agency on a little bit more strategic and larger scale. Not that I don't like my counseling job. I love it, but there's other ways that you can also contribute in that position.   Jeff Thompson: I think it's really good. Here you're the host of Job Insights and usually talking about people going out and doing what you just did. So you actually experienced exactly what we've been talking about, and you're going to bring back this information and you're going to carry it with you. So like you said earlier, we both have been talking about it. The experience you gained from these, even though it doesn't come out the way you want it, there's so many little gems in there that you can take with you that enhances your job that you're in right now, and your opportunities for the future.   Serena Gilbert: Yeah and not to sound too cheesy, but there's lessons to be learned in every single life experience that we go through. Sometimes they're easier to find, and sometimes they're a little bit harder to look for especially when it's new is that we don't like. Having that true growth comes from looking at, well what lesson can I learn here? How can I improve? What can I do better the next time?   Jeff Thompson: That's good and I'm glad you came back and talked about it.   Serena Gilbert: I honestly want to take the time too to thank all of the people out there that helped support me from that first day when that job was posted, and I sent all these frantic text messages out saying, "Oh my God, that position's posted. I thought I had time to think about it. What do I do?" Every single person that surrounded me said, "Go for it. Try it. I support you." I had lots of people offer to write me letters of recommendation, and I just really appreciate every single one of you guys. I thank you for encouraging me and lifting me up to go for that opportunity.   Jeff Thompson: You did a great job.   Serena Gilbert: Especially you, Jeff and Pete from the Blind Abilities team.   Jeff Thompson: Well, it's not hard to speak highly of you because you do such a great job.   Serena Gilbert: I keep you on your toes.   Jeff Thompson: Yes you do. Yes you do. Well I want to thank all of you for coming on the Job Insights. You can check out more of the Jobs Insights on the Blind Abilities website, that's at www.blindabilities. com and follow us on Twitter @jobinsightsvip.   Serena Gilbert: Well, don't forget about our Job Insights Facebook page and Facebook support group, and you can also follow me on @BlindyBlog that's on Twitter and Facebook.   Jeff Thompson: And @KnownAsJeff on Twitter for myself. A big thank you to Chee Chau for his beautiful music. You can follow Chee Chau on Twitter @lcheechau. I want to thank you all for listening, we hope you enjoyed. Until next time, bye bye.   [Music]  [Transition noise] When we share -What we see -Through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. On Twitter @BlindAbilities. Download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.      

Show Notes Disclaimer: This is the unedited transcript of the podcast. Please excuse any typos. Jeff:  Welcome back to Emplify, the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum, and I’m back with my co-host, Nachi Gupta and we’ll be taking you through the August 2018 issue of Emergency Medicine Practice. Nachi: This month’s topic is one that Jeff has significant personal experience with from his college days. We’re reviewing Cannabinoids -- and emerging evidence in their use and abuse. Jeff: Um… that is definitely not true. I was actually a varsity rower in college... Are we still reviewing talking points together before we start recording these episodes? Nachi: Sometimes… Jeff: This month’s issue was authored by Mollie Williams, who is the EM residency program director at the Brooklyn Hospital Center. It was peer-reviewed by Joseph Habboushe, assistant professor at NYU and Nadia Maria Shaukat, director of the emergency and critical care ultrasound at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. Nachi: We’re going to be talking about the pathophysiology of cannabinoids, clinical findings in abuse, best practice management, differences between natural and synthetic cannabinoids, and treatment for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. So buckle up and get ready. Jeff: As you’re listening through this episode, remember that the means that we are about to answer one of the CME questions from the end of the print issue. If you’re not driving while listening, be sure to jot down these answers and get your CME credit when we’re going through this issue.. Nachi: As of June 2018, there are 31 states, the District of Columbia, and 2 US territories that possess state and local-level laws allowing the use of cannabis medicinally or in recreational formulations. Marijuana actually maintains the highest lifetime use of an illicit drug used within the US. Jeff: There are a shocking 22 million past-month users of marijuana in the US, followed by pain relievers at 3.8 million, and cocaine at 1.9 million. Clearly, an important topic worth discussion, especially as synthetic products have become more widely available. Nachi: And worth noting -- Colorado, where medicinal and recreational marijuana use has been decriminalized and later legalized, has shown a nearly 2-fold increase in the prevalence of ED visits, which may be related to marijuana exposure. Jeff: Medicinally, cannabinoids are currently used in the treatment of chronic pain syndromes, complications of multiple sclerosis and paraplegia, weight loss due to appetite suppression in HIV/aids, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, seizures, and many other neuropsychiatric disorders. In fact, cannabis use has been documented for medical use dating as far back as 600 BC in West and Central Asia. Nachi: All of that being said though, there is an absence of high-quality reviews and evidence to support the use of cannabinoids for any of the indications you just mentioned. And the US DEA maintains cannabis as a Schedule I substance. Jeff: This DEA designation limits the ability to do research and obtain federal funding for such research. General lack of federal regulations on chemical content also leads to product variation, which may be a cause of increased incidences of accidental overdoses. Nachi: To attain the most up to date information for this article, Dr. Williams searched the PubMed and Cochrane Databases from 1950 to 2018. This produced predominantly case reports and retrospective studies. There were just a few randomized prospective studies -- not surprising. Jeff: Let’s get started with the pathophysiology. There are 3 cannabis species to be aware of: Cannabis sativa, cannabis indica, and cannabis ruderalis. Within these species, over 545 active cannabis-derived components have been described. Nachi: There are ten main constituents of cannabis sativa. Of these, 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) are found in the greatest quantities. The neuropsychiatric and addictive properties of cannabis are due primarily to the delta-9-THC. Jeff: THC and other cannabis derivatives work through the endocannabinoid system and other neuroregulators. The endogenous cannabinoid system has 4 components: (1) endogenous endocannabinoids, (2) receptors, (3) degradation enzymes, and (4) transport mechanisms. Nachi: There are two endogenous endocannabinoids to know about: anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoyl-glycerol. Jeff: Cannabinoid receptors are broadly dispersed through the central nervous system, and to a lesser degree, also to other organ systems. Nachi: Because CB receptors are concentrated within the central nervous system, they exert the majority of their effects on the neuropsychiatric systems. And   -- yes that’s a double ding -- the cannabinoid 1 (or CB1) receptor is most responsible for cannabis-induced neuropsychiatric effects. Jeff: Interestingly, the anti-emetic effects and possible palliative properties of cannabis derivatives are thought to be secondary to the inhibitory effects on serotonin receptors and the excitatory effects on the transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (or TRPV1).  More on TRPV1 later... Nachi: So far we have been talking about cannabinoids from the cannabis plant, but with cannabis being illegal in many states, there has been a growing emergence of synthetic cannabinoids. Synthetics were initially developed in the 1980s largely for research purposes. Jeff: Because the current DEA controlled substances schedule designations are based on original chemical names, synthetics have gained popularity as manufacturers are able to produce newer compounds and circumvent DEA designation as well as routine urine drug screening tests. Nachi: You may be familiar with some of the street names for synthetics -- like spice, K2, scooby snacks, black mamba, kush, and kronic. These can often be purchased over the internet or through specialty smoke shops. Jeff: Scooby Snacks, what a fantastic name, mooovingggg on… Synthetic cannabinoids often have greater affinity for the CB1 receptor than naturally occurring cannabinoids -- and synthetics can produce 100 times the effect. As a result, the presenting symptoms with synthetic intoxication can be difficult to differentiate from crystal meth or bath salt abuse. Nachi: Manufacturers sometimes use solvents and other contaminants. Clusters of toxic ingestions and deaths have occurred. Emergency clinicians need to be aware of this and should report suspicious events immediately. Jeff: For more on synthetic intoxications in the ED, be sure to take a look at the recent May 2018 issue of Pediatric Emergency Medicine Practice on Synthetic Drug Intoxication in Children if you haven’t already read it. Also, just a quick FYI - If you’re not a current subscriber to Pediatric Emergency Medicine Practice, we’re giving away a free copy of the issue specifically for our listeners. Just head over to ebmedicine.net/drugs for the PDF of the issue. Nachi: A free issue for our listeners, that’s nice! Let’s move on to a discussion about current indications for cannabinoids. So, there is no clear consensus on these indications, but there is some research of varying quality that supports the treatment of some chronically debilitating diseases with cannabinoids. Jeff: A systematic review and meta-analysis from 2015 found low-quality evidence to support cannabis therapy for appetite suppression in HIV and aids patients; moderate-quality evidence for treatment of chronic pain and spasticity; and also moderate quality evidence for some chronic debilitating diseases. Nachi: While talking about evidence-based medicine here, another review by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine on possible associations between cannabis and cancers arising in the lungs, head, and neck, or testicles -- showed no statistically significant associations exist. Jeff: So in case that wasn’t clear - the overall evidence to support cannabis therapy, in general, is weak. Also, be aware that there are various formulations of cannabis that allow for different routes of administration. We’re talking oils, tinctures, teas, extracts, edibles like candies and baked goods, parenteral formulations, eye solutions, intranasal, sublingual, transmucosal, tablets, sprays, skin patches, topical creams, rectal suppositories, and capsules -- just to name, a few. Nachi: A few! That seems pretty complete to me. Basically, any way you can imagine, it seems like a route of administration has been explored. But of importance, these formulations have different absorption times -- as you might expect. The shortest duration to peak plasma levels of delta-9-THC is through the inhalation route, which can produce effects within 3 minutes. On the longer end, rectal cannabis administration can take up to 8 hours to reach peak plasma concentrations. Jeff: Let’s talk about some of the clinical findings and systemic effects associated with cannabis use. First up is the link between cannabis use and stroke or TIA. Cannabis users who smoked at least once weekly had a 3.3 times higher risk of stroke or TIA. Nachi: And there is moderate quality evidence that this link may be dose-dependent. Larger amounts of cannabis use lead to cerebral vasospasm and a reduction in cerebral blood flow. Jeff: In terms of psychiatric effects, several low-to-moderate quality studies have shown statistically significant associations between psychosis and self-reported cannabis use. Some association between high potency cannabis or synthetic cannabinoid use with new-onset psychosis or relapse in previous psychiatric disorders has also been found. Lastly, there is weak data supporting a correlation between cannabis use and depression. Nachi: From a cardiovascular standpoint, cannabis use is associated with increased resting heart rate, hypertension, and decreases in the anginal threshold for patients with chronic stable angina. A 2001 study described an augmented risk of myocardial infarction within the first hour of cannabis use and found an almost 5-fold increase in those who reported smoking cannabis at least weekly when compared to those who smoked monthly or less. Jeff: Dysrhythmias, qt prolongation, av blocks, myocarditis, and sudden death have all been reported with cannabinoids. Nachi: In terms of pulmonary effects, these are not really related to cannabis use directly, but rather the smoke inhalation and combustion materials of synthetic cannabinoids. Effects from chronic use can be seen. Jeff: Renally speaking, acute kidney injury and rhabdomyolysis are associated with synthetic cannabinoids and have been observed in several case reports. The rhabdo is believed to be due, in part, to associated seizures, muscle tremors, and agitation. Nachi: Among metabolic abnormalities, patients can present with hyperthermia, hypoglycemia, hypokalemia, hyponatremia, and metabolic acidosis. Jeff: Orally and dentally, dry mouth is the most common finding in acute cannabis toxicity. Chronic use has also been linked to severe periodontitis. Nachi: And ophthalmologically, there is, of course, the commonly seen conjunctival injection. Cannabis has also been found to decrease intraocular pressure when used topically -- and of note, there have also been rare reports of acute angle closure glaucoma and central retinal vein occlusion. Jeff: While talking about clinical findings and systemic effects of cannabis use, we certainly need to go over cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (or CHS), which is -- quite simply put -- associated with frequent visits to the ED in chronic users. It presents with nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Nachi: CHS is commonly misdiagnosed as cyclical vomiting syndrome. After the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, it was reported that nearly twice as many patients had presented for what was thought to be cyclical vomiting syndrome. And ironically, though cannabis has been used as an anti-emetic, chronic use can cause the opposite reaction, leading to CHS, which is typically refractory to traditional anti-emetics. Jeff: And the etiology of CHS is not well understood. Similarly, the exact criteria for CHS are poorly defined. It presents as a recurrent and relapsing disorder that can be divided into 3 phases: prodromal, hyperemetic, and recovery. Nachi: In the prodromal phase, patients complain of early morning nausea without vomiting, and they can have mild abdominal discomfort. This can last from months to years. In the hyperemetic phase, patients complain of severe, unremitting abdominal pain with repeated episodes of vomiting and retching. This is often associated with an inability to tolerate po. Jeff: The hyperemetic phase lasts 24-48 hours and can lead to dehydration, electrolyte abnormalities, and weight loss. Patients may learn to relieve symptoms by compulsively bathing in hot water. Nachi: Resolution of symptoms is seen when the patient stops using cannabis. This is during the recovery phase, which can last from days to months. But this can be short-lived if the patients begin using cannabis again. Jeff: On that note, we should also touch on cannabis withdrawal. Termination of heavy and habitual use can lead to withdrawal syndromes within 48 hours. Symptoms here include irritability, anxiety, restlessness, sleep difficulty, seizures, and aggression. Medications that can be helpful include benzodiazepines, neuroleptic agents, and quetiapine in refractory cases. Nachi: Moving on to the next sections in the article, let’s talk about differential diagnosis and prehospital care. The differential for acute cannabinoid intoxication, as you might suspect, is broad, and it includes some life-threatening processes. We won’t list them here, but be sure to think broadly before deciding on cannabis as the cause of your patient’s symptoms. Jeff: For the prehospital providers -- care here is mainly supportive. Provide airway protection as needed - gather information from the patient’s environment, looking for empty pill bottles or another empty packaging. Nachi: Let’s move on to care once in the ED. All patients who are in distress and suspected of drug ingestion should be disrobed completely and placed on a cardiac monitor. Fully assess for trauma and place an IV in the patient. Search the patient’s clothing for drugs and paraphernalia, which may help in making the diagnosis. Jeff: When getting a complete history from the patient, it may also be worthwhile to talk with any persons accompanying the patient to the ER for more information. In your history, be sure to ask about a pattern of use and possible co-ingestions. Nachi: When considering cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, a detailed history and physical exam are crucial for making the diagnosis. To differentiate between other etiologies of abdominal pain and vomiting, be sure to ask about the use of hot baths for relief, resolution of symptoms after stopping cannabis use, and the predominance of symptoms in the morning hours. Jeff: On physical exam, for cannabis intoxication, there isn’t a particular toxidrome to look for. Monitor vital signs closely, looking out for alterations in blood pressure and heart rate. A complete neurologic and mental status examination will be the key here. Nachi: Decisions for lab testing should be dependent on the patient’s presentation. Possible tests include CBC, BMP, LFT’s, lipase, cpk, ckmb, troponin, urinalysis, urine drug screening, serum tox screens (for alcohol, aspirin, and acetaminophen), and any other drug levels for medications that the patient is taking for medicinal purposes, like phenytoin or lithium levels. Jeff: One study supported point of care urine drug testing in the ED. However, know that acute cannabis intoxication can be difficult in the chronic user, as delta-9-THC will be present in urine for up to 24 days. Testing for synthetically derived cannabinoids is difficult due to changes in synthetic compounds. Nachi: Interestingly, there are a number of medications that are associated with false positive cannabinoid screenings. These include ibuprofen, pantoprazole, efavirenz, and lamotrigine. Jeff: For any patient arriving with suspected cannabis or synthetic abuse, consider checking an EKG. You’re looking for signs of ischemia, arrhythmia, and interval abnormalities. Serum and urine tox tests are not particularly helpful in the acute chest pain patient who is using synthetic marijuana. Nachi: Not surprisingly, there are no specific diagnostic imaging modalities to help diagnose cannabis or synthetic cannabinoid intoxication. But imaging may help with assessing other disease states on a patient’s differential, so stay mindful of that. Jeff: Now that we’ve talked about history, physical exam, and useful testing modalities, let’s talk about treatment for cannabis and synthetic cannabinoid toxicity… therapy is primarily focused on supportive care. Most ED visits only require a short stay. Nachi: That’s right, there are no antidotes to give for treatment here. Be sure to look for and treat dehydration, acute renal failure, and rhabdo though. In severe cases of neuropsychotropic effect, give benzodiazepines, like lorazepam, to help with control. Jeff: For GI effects, first-line treatment is traditional anti-emetics like ondansetron or metoclopramide. Recent literature and case reports have shown significant improvement with butyrophenones like haloperidol as a second-line treatment. Nachi: While talking about treating the gastrointestinal effects of cannabis toxicity, let’s also discuss methods to control cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. The mainstays for treatment here are actually supportive therapy and cessation of cannabis use. Jeff: And can you tell us more about why these patients crave hot showers and improve after? Is there a pathophysiology or mechanism to know about there? Nachi: There is a well-studied theory here and it relates to the TRPV1 receptor that we talked about earlier. Temperatures in excess of 109 degrees Fahrenheit, acidic conditions, and compounds found in certain foods and plants (like cannabis) activate this receptor. It’s believed that intermittent and repetitive exposure to agonists of the TRPV1 receptor leads to a persistent state of nausea and vomiting. Desensitization of the receptor happens after repeated stimulation, and repetitive topical capsaicin or hot water is believed to function as an exogenous agonist. Jeff: In any case of repetitive emesis, be sure to consider electrolyte replacement if needed. In many cases, hydration or repletion will need to happen through an IV. Proton pump inhibitors can also help in some cases where GI symptoms are a dominating complaint of the patient. Nachi: Recent literature supporting the use of haloperidol for nausea and vomiting has found that symptoms improve approx 1hr after administration. This can decrease the need for observation or admission. Jeff: Haloperidol works via dopamine 2 receptor antagonism. D2 receptors are found in high concentrations throughout the nervous system and bind with high affinity to haloperidol. The suggested starting dose is 2.5mg IV with a repeat dose of 5mg IV if needed. An RCT is underway in Canada on the use of ondansetron versus haloperidol with an estimated completion of July 2019. Nachi: Capsaicin has similarly shown promise in cannabis hyperemesis syndrome through the TRPV1 receptor as we discussed already. Currently, there are no dosing recommendations or application instructions for capsaicin. There is some evidence supporting relief within 30 to 45 minutes, and capsaicin can be applied topically to any nonmucosal surface like the abdomen, chest, or back. Jeff: So to recap -for cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, treat with anti-emetics, PPI’s, electrolyte repletion, and IV hydration as needed. As a second line treatment, consider haloperidol and topical capsaicin applied to the chest, abdomen, or back. Nachi: Let’s talk about some special populations next -- starting with Pediatrics. According to data from 2012, of the 130 million people reporting illicit drug use within their lifetime, 25% were children between 12 and 17 years of age. Jeff: And according to the national poison data system, states with marijuana use laws have seen a 30% increase in calls related to marijuana use by children. From 2010 to 2011, the number of ED visits by children aged 12 to 17 years old due to synthetic cannabinoid use also has doubled. Nachi: Many children and adults believe that synthetic cannabinoids don’t pose serious health risks, as these are not illegal to purchase. And this class of drugs is particularly attractive to adolescents since it will not readily test positive on urine drug tests. All of this is very concerning for emergency clinicians. Jeff: There have been several recent reports of myocarditis in association with marijuana use. One case resulted in death due to myocyte necrosis after an unknown amount of edible marijuana was consumed by a toddler. Nachi: Horrific! Jeff: And the exact mechanism through which the myocardial necrosis happens isn’t known. Nachi: For all children and adolescents who present to the ED with alteration in mental status, psychosis, or chest pain -- be sure to screen for cannabis or synthetic cannabinoid use.  There are case reports in the pediatric literature of STEMIs seen in patients without pre-existing cardiac disease or risk factors. Jeff: Keep in mind that urine drug screens can be falsely positive from certain proton pump inhibitors, so if possible, assess a urine drug screen prior to starting a PPI in these patients. Nachi: Moving on to our next special population… pregnant women. Know that it can be difficult to the differential between hyperemesis gravidarum and cannabis hyperemesis syndrome in pregnant patients. Ask specific questions regarding marijuana use before and during the pregnancy. Jeff: It’s also worth noting that cannabis is known to cause adverse outcomes on babies such as low birth weight and more frequent perinatal ICU placement. Nachi: Let’s move on to the final major section of the article, which is on the legal status of cannabis and cannabinoids. Much of the controversy surrounding cannabis for medicinal use relates to the absence of quality evidence. More research is needed to evaluate potential public health risks posed by variations in quality and potency, potential impact to our healthcare system, and ability to legislate for synthetic cannabinoids. Jeff: Though marijuana and all whole-plant derivatives are schedules I controlled substances, there are a few cannabinoid-based drugs approved by the FDA for medicinal purposes -- with lower schedule designations. Dronabinol is a schedule III drug derived synthetically from delta-9-THC. It’s used in chemotherapy-induced nausea/vomiting, as well as anorexia and weight loss from AIDS/cancer. Nachi: Nabilone, a schedule II synthetic variant of THC, has been approved in the treatment of aids-related anorexia and chemotherapy-induced nausea also. Jeff: Nabiximols, a plant-derived cannabinoid, has been approved in Europe and Canada for multiple sclerosis induced spasticity and cancer-related pain. Nabiximols are not yet approved in the US. Nachi: And lastly, we should mention cannabidiol, which is a schedule I controlled substance approved for treatment of seizures with 2 rare diseases -- Lennox-gastaut syndrome and dravet syndrome. Compared with placebo alone cannabidiol and other medications have shown efficacy in lowering the rate of seizures for these diseases. Jeff:  Lots of interesting stuff to look out for there in cannabinoid-related medications. Alright, on to disposition - Nachi: Most patients who present with uncomplicated acute cannabis or synthetic cannabinoid intoxication can be observed until clinically sober. Discharge home should be in the care of a sober family member or friend. Make sure that the patient knows not to operate vehicles or heavy machinery under the influence of drugs. Counsel them on drug abuse also. Jeff:   In more rare situations, patients will require admission. Consider this particularly for patients who have end-organ damage, rhabdomyolysis, acute renal failure -- evidence of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, or ophthalmologic insults -- intractable vomiting, or acute psychosis. Nachi: And for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, patients may require admission for IV hydration and electrolyte correction. Once the patient is tolerating PO and lab derangements have been corrected, they can be discharged. Jeff: Let’s wrap up the episode with key points and clinical pearls… N: Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit substance in the US. States that have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational purposes are showing increased rates of marijuana abuse and dependence. J: When concerned with drug intoxication, search your patient’s clothing for drugs and paraphernalia on arrival. N: The neuropsychiatric and addictive properties of cannabis are due primarily to delta-9-THC. J: Synthetic cannabinoids have gained popularity as manufacturers are able to produce newer compounds and circumvent DEA designations as well as routine urine drug screening tests. N: Manufacturers of synthetic cannabinoids sometimes use solvents and other contaminants, which have caused clusters of toxic ingestions and death. J: The shortest duration to peak plasma levels of delta-9-THC is through the inhalational route. Effects can be seen within 3 minutes. N: Cannabis users who smoke at least once weekly can have a 3.3 times higher risk of stroke or TIA. J: The risk of myocardial infarction is increased within the first hour of use, and there is an almost 5-fold increase for individuals who smoke at least once per week. N: Acute kidney injury and rhabdomyolysis have been noted with synthetic cannabinoid use in several case reports. J: Cannabis intoxication is associated with many metabolic abnormalities like hyperthermia, hypoglycemia, hypokalemia, hyponatremia, and metabolic acidosis. N: Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, which presents with abdominal pain and vomiting, is associated with frequent visits to the ED in chronic users. J: The mainstay for treatment of cannabis hyperemesis syndrome is supportive therapies and cessation of cannabis use. N: Patients with cannabis hyperemesis syndrome crave hot showers because of activation of the TRPV1 receptor. J: Topical capsaicin may also help in the treatment of cannabis hyperemesis syndrome through activation of the TRPV1 receptors. N: Haloperidol at 2.5mg IV may help in refractory vomiting associated with cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. J: Many children and adults do not believe synthetic cannabinoids pose serious health issues as the they are not illegal to purchase. This is incorrect. N: Most patients with acute uncomplicated cannabis intoxication can be observed and discharged. Admit if there are any signs of end organ damage, intractable vomiting, or acute psychosis. Jeff: So that wraps up the August 2018 episode of Emplify. Nachi: For those of you looking for CME - the address for this months credit is ebmedicine.net/E0818, so head over there right away to get the credit you deserve.  Remember that the you heard throughout the episode corresponds to the answers to the CME questions. Jeff: And don’t forget to grab your free issue of Synthetic Drug Intoxication in Children at ebmedicine.net/drugs specifically for emplify listeners. Feel free to share the link with your colleagues or through social media too. See you next time! Most Important References 5. * Kim HS, Monte AA. Colorado cannabis legalization and its effect on emergency care. Ann Emerg Med. 2016;68(1):71-75. (Literature review; 21 studies)7. * Baron EP. Comprehensive review of medicinal marijuana, cannabinoids, and therapeutic implications in medicine and headache: What a long strange trip it’s been …. Headache. 2015;55(6):885-916. (Review)9. * Whiting PF, Wolff RF, Deshpande S, et al. Cannabinoids for medical use: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA. 2015;313(24):2456-2473. (Retrospective chart review; 4 cases)64. * Tournebize J, Gibaja V, Kahn JP. Acute effects of synthetic cannabinoids: update 2015. Subst Abus. 2016:1-23. (Systematic review; 46 articles, 114 patients)83. * Wallace EA, Andrews SE, Garmany CL, et al. Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome: literature review and proposed diagnosis and treatment algorithm. South Med J. 2011;104(9):659-664. (Review)

Jeff Cavanaugh and Dane Brugler take one final shot at predicting the first round on the eve of the draft.

Jason Jaynes: @jasoncjaynes Jeff Wilson: @ProfDumpster Show Notes: 00:53 - “Professor Dumpster” and Founding Kasita 05:33 - The Startup Industry 07:45 - Building the Kasita Team and Creating the Design 12:25 - Integrating Devices 16:33 - Challenges of Building These Ecosystems 24:36 - Controlling the Ecosystem: Will there be third-party developers and applications? 30:16 - Device Cohesion and User Experience 33:23 - Privacy Resources: Data for the People: How to Make Our Post-Privacy Economy Work for You by Andreas Weigend Kasita is hiring! Transcript: CHARLES: Hello, everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast, Episode 78. My name is Charles Lowell, a developer here at The Frontside and your podcast host-in-training. With me today are Jeff and Jason from Kasita. Now, Kasita is one of the most exciting products that I think we've gotten to work on here at Frontside in the last five years. We're going to be just talking about it because, I think it touches on a lot of the aspects of what makes software development and startups and just the emerging economy exciting. I'm really thankful that we get to have you all on the podcast. Welcome Jeff and welcome Jason. JEFF: Thanks for having us. JASON: Excited to be here. Thanks, Charles. CHARLES: Now Jeff, you are the founder of Kasita, the CEO and I believe your official title over there is 'Professor Dumpster.' Maybe you could actually unpack for us a little bit of what does that title mean? How did Kasita come about and what is it today? JEFF: A couple of years ago, I did a radical, social experiment around housing. I went and sold everything I own for a dollar an item out of a 3000-square foot house and moved into a 33-square foot used trash dumpster for a year. The idea of that project was to live in 1% the size of an average American home and try to use 1% the energy and water of the average American home. The project took a little bit of a twist, you might say and about part way through it when the dumpster started getting tricked out, I started thinking about the whole nature of housing and how we need to do something different and how that grand future probably would not be a gated community of dumpsters. CHARLES: Now, I assume you cleaned out the dumpster before you actually went to live in it. JEFF: Yeah, it was a fixer-upper. We give it a bit of a scrub and did some testing to make sure there wasn't anything nasty left in there. That went for about a year and a couple of months after that, I actually first set down with Jason because he was the only person that I knew in the entire startup scene, in the entire world. He said, "Wilson, you had some crazy ass ideas like this dumpster thing you told me about. This one might actually work, this Kasita thing." Here we are today, we're working together. CHARLES: Wow. This was something you just did on a lark. You didn't have the idea of starting this business but it was actually through the process of actually living in this dumpster for a year that the idea emerged or was there a master plan going in? JEFF: I don't know, Jason do you remember any kind of master plan when I first told you about the dumpster? JASON: No. When we first met to talk about the dumpster, it was an early morning, I believe in 2010 or 2011 and you're incubating the idea. At that point in time, there was nothing on your mind or you aren't looking towards the future of housing at all. You were just trying to figure out how you were going to move into a dumpster and people thought you would be crazy. Of course, I've validate it and I thought people would think you would be crazy. CHARLES: That is a pretty radical idea, the future of housing being 1% of what it is now. How do you see that playing out? How is that possible? How do you shift people's mindset away from that? JEFF: One of the bigger things we're trying to do with Kasita, there needs to be a massive shift in the wider way that we live in our homes. As everything else is moving towards on demand and as a service and as everything's being sort of productized, those are some of the core ideas behind Kasita. We think about Kasita a lot more like an iPhone or a Tesla than we would think about it as a single family home or an apartment block or even a micro-unit. That's why Jason and I are standing together here today is I represent a lot of ways, a kind of vision and origin story of Kasita but in a lot of ways, Jason represents the future of the software and integrated IoT that's going into these things. CHARLES: There is definitely a lot going into these things. I remember when Jason first started telling me about it because it is like an iPhone or a Tesla but, I think especially the Tesla is a great analogy because you have not just like a normal software or even really a hardware project, you've got architectural concerns. You've got manufacturing concerns. You've got, I assumed geopolitical concerns in terms of the politics around zoning and housing and real estate, all rolled up into a big startup. When I think startup, I think let's get a web application up and running and we're providing some service. This is cross-cutting at least five industries, it feels like if not more. I'm curious, what's been the experience in terms of wrangling that aspect because I think it is very unique in a startup today but it got me wondering is this going to be the normal in five years? JEFF: We've seen a movement recently in the venture community. Even a few years ago when we first started raising money was highly-regulated industries are hard, hardware is hard, "Thank you very much. We're going to go looking for our next two Stanford computer science dropouts to shove into a wee work and not have to deal with all of this kind of stuff." I think I've seen a shift to where people from the individual level up to the folks funding these things, see the massive opportunity in highly-regulated complex problems like housing and you're right. Jason and I are looking out over our shop floor here where we've got guys out there that are plumbers or traditional electricians all the way upstairs here to folks that have been mayor pro tem of large cities with PhDs. Bridging all of those individuals into a startup culture and then looking at the complexity of the landscape from a regulatory standpoint, autonomous cars are a breeze relative to the kind of complexity we're dealing with. CHARLES: Did you know this complexity walking in or was it a classic overoptimism? JEFF: No, it wasn't classic overoptimism. I'm always asked, "Are you a designer? Are you an architect? Are you a real estate developer? Are you a technology guy?" and I think if I would have been any of those besides a guy living in a dumpster, I wouldn't ever been crazy enough to try this. It's one of our core precepts as well. Jason had never worked with IoT stuff before. Our head of manufacturing used to build LEDs for Philips. Our quality guy inspected Cadillacs. Our manufacturing engineer built Boeing jets. The ideas that we're not pulling a lot of people from these traditional industries, we're pulling smart people that are passionate about our mission and to solve this, what is really a Rubik's Cube of a problem. JASON: Yeah, I think the other thing to add to that that Jeff is not getting himself enough credit is that from very early on, Jeff always looked at Kasita as a product that was going to incorporate multiple disciplines. He was very careful in how he orchestrate it and built the team to make sure that he was bringing the right expertise and the right areas together and then forcing those different disciplines to figure out how to meld and work together to build the Kasita. But the Kasita was from the beginning just about building a micro-urban home. It was about building a product of which part of that was a home, where people live obviously, but there's a whole lot more to it that we're working towards. I think even go back and Jeff, it might be relevant for you to talk a little bit about the approach that you took to just create an initial design for Kasita, which I think is revolutionary in itself. JEFF: A big part of our DNA was product from conception. When I was living in the dumpster, I recruited a couple of the top architects in the country really to help me turn that dumpster into a home. The way you're trained in architecture school, I think a lot of folks come in there with Buckminster Fuller kind of dreams and you're told pretty quick that you better bring things up to code and you better make things that sell or you're not going to eat when you get out of here. The idea was that we would start off with a product designer and not design a home. The kind of struggles in the dumpster taught me that we needed to go at a different approach so I went and recruited an industrial designer. One of the requirements for that person that he or she had never designed a home. This person had lived under a staircase and never designed a home so I said, "You're perfect." CHARLES: I like that and I'm curious, Jason from your perspective, what was it like to have gone through this? It sounds like what you're doing is asking people to bring their expertise but not their set of expectations like the industrial designer. What was it like for you coming primarily from the software development world to step into this pan-technological realm and what was that experience like and what were the things that stretched you and you found surprising? JASON: I think early on, I realized that it was going to be a bit more challenging maybe than I thought. Really, what it required was me to think outside of my discipline. Obviously, not only from the perspective of what we were doing on the IoT frontend, how we were melding software and hardware together but then going all the way over to the physical building structure and thinking about on a weekly, daily, hourly basis on how we are interacting with the other disciplines. An early example was, and this is one that I remember that's quite funny is one area that we wanted to make sure that we had covered in our research and understanding from IoT perspective was smart locks and how we were going to provide a smart locks for the data. We went out and did a lot of investigation, brought a number of leading smart lock solutions into the lab and tested them and narrow our list down. Then I recall vividly walking over to the architects to excitedly tell them we had selected our smart lock that we were going to use. They very quickly inform me that that lock wouldn't work because we needed a mortise lock and not a standard door lock. I realized that you can't work in a vacuum and just solve your problems. You have to be working together to make sure the solutions and the products you're selecting at work in accord with the overall design. That's continued to manifest itself. Every day, I'm down on the manufacturing floor, working directly with the electricians and others to make sure that our equipment is placed properly, where are we going to place our equipment, how are we routing around plumbing and pipes and other things that exist there and how are we locating things properly. It's an ongoing experience, which has definitely taken me out of my traditional software role but it's done so in a very exciting way and I've enjoyed it. It's just realizing that you have to actively be communicating across the organization with all groups and really, you can't take anything for granted. CHARLES: The number of different disciplines and technologies is really staggering, even if you limit it to just considering the set of devices that you're integrating. I was actually hoping we could talk a little bit about that. Now inside each Kasita, at least the ones that you're building right now, how many different devices do you have? How do you take all these different devices and turn them into a product or integrate them into something that itself is one product? JASON: If you were just to look at the technology bill of materials, what the products are that we're incorporating into our current Kasita design, there is around 50 different products and product parts that we're bringing together to build out the technology solution. If you narrow that down to what the end user is actually seeing and looking at, there are about seven noticeable products that the end user would see or they would recognize everything from a Sonos connecting amplifier to an Amazon Dot to a Nest Thermostat. Obviously, getting to that list of bill of materials and deciding on that 'subassembly of technology pieces,' took us quite some time in a number of iterations and a lot of outside engagement and talking to experts and trying to decide what were the best devices to bring in. But the other side of the equation was something that we kind of decided very early on in the process and kind of thinking the world of first principles was that, we wanted to make sure that Kasita was the primary interface to the user. We didn't want somebody else sitting between us and the end user. We wanted to be able to work with other products but we still felt at the end of the day that the end user, when they were living inside of a Kasita, when they were controlling the Kasita, when they were changing the state of the Kasita, they needed to go through our interface. With that as an initial first principle, you can begin to imagine that all the other parts of the system architecture and the way that we design things, the way that we select products and built things, it begin to derive themselves. Everything from that, immediately we needed an app and lo and behold. We were able, fortunately to work with you guys, the Frontside, to help us get our initial app concept up and going. It went from there and I can talk more about it. CHARLES: I think I really like that as a first principle. I really just want to inject a vigorous sense of agreement because I think it's so important, especially when this is the place where you're living. You want to imbue that inhabitant with a sense of ownership and control. I don't know if you would be able to do that if there were a bunch of different touch points and it didn't feel integrated under one product. In other words, this is my home, this is my Kasita. Is that the idea behind making sure that there was really only one interface? JEFF: We prefer to say 'Mi Kasita.' CHARLES: I love it. JASON: Absolutely, that's the idea. I think from a consumer perspective, if you've ever personally gone out and ventured through the halls of Home Depot or Best Buy and purchased some smart products off the shelf and brought them into your house and try to get them up and running, you very quickly learn that. It's not only challenging to get these devices connected in a way that you can control them but there's also this notion of there's an app for that. Every physical device you ended up putting in your how, has its own app for control and that becomes very overwhelming in a very short amount of time for the user. We did not want that to be the case with the Kasita. We wanted them to walk in the door from day one and immediately feel at home and feel like they have complete control of the Kasita, in much the same way when you go purchase an iPhone or you purchase a new Garmin watch or you purchase a new Android device, you're up and running with that ecosystem and you're interacting with that interface. We wanted people to be interacting with the Kasita interface to control their home because that's part of the product. CHARLES: I like that. It must present some unique challenges because I think you said it best. Every single device that you have comes with its own ecosystem and that ecosystem has its own APIs, its own web interfaces, its own applications and though there are walls around those ecosystems, what are some of the challenges you encounter in trying to punch holes through those walls so that you can hand information and control from one ecosystem to the other while providing a seamless experience to the user? JEFF: When you're talking about that, Jason one of the things that is often left out of this equation is at this specific point in space-time, it's very difficult to do that. But then to have any sort of semblance of planning for the future and future-proofing the system as developers usually call it, one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of Nest thermostats in multifamily development is because a developer knows that they're not going to ever have to replace a normal light switch. If it's a Lutron switch or if it is a Nest thermostat at some point, it's going to have to be replaced. Not only the physical replacement of the stuff but from a software side, making sure that we can continue to communicate with these devices in the future, I think is a big problem to solve. JASON: That's absolutely right. I think very early on, we recognize and realize that we were going to have to build software and a component that acted, if you will as a gateway for sitting between the end user and the end devices and facilitated the control of the end devices. Obviously, being able to accomplish that, one of the challenges is and I think, Charles you've seen this in your world because I know you've got experience with IoT is this whole proliferation of standards and protocols like if we're going to talk to the lightbulb or we're talking via Z-Wave or ZigBee, or do we have to go through a Philips Hue hub because that's the only way to actually communicate with it. Is there a separate way via Thread or Bluetooth you communicate with this device? In a very quick fashion, you get to this point where you can imagine that you've got a physical hardware controller that has four different radios in talking to four different device types. One for talking to Z-Wave, one for talking to ZigBee and it becomes overwhelming. We did a lot of research across the protocols that were available, mapping them across the devices. Early on, we were excited about the potential of Z-Wave but more recently, where we've shifted our attention quite honestly is looking for devices and device manufacturers who see the opportunity and Wi-Fi enabling their hardware devices and then providing either direct control of those devices in an IP-centric way over a local area network or even through the cloud. What that affords us back to Jeff's future-proofing concept is if you have Wi-Fi up and running and the device can get on the Wi-Fi network and there's a way to communicate with it, then it makes it a lot easier for us to sit between the user and that device and send commands and control that device. The other side of that, which I think continues to be a challenge and will be a challenged for the foreseeable future is a lot of the device manufacturers to the point that you brought up are still forcing you to go through the cloud to communicate with their devices. They don't allow for a local area network communication directly with the device and there's good reasons for doing that. But what that means is if you lose internet connectivity, you no longer have control of that device. CHARLES: Obviously, you've got probably pretty strict criteria about what it takes for a device to be integrated with Kasita. Is that a nonstarter right there? JASON: It's actually not. A nonstarter with be the device communicates via protocol that we can't interface with or the device works over a Wi-Fi network but has no API for controlling cloud or local. The third piece of that equation and fundamentally is the final nonstarter and really probably should be the first one and it's one that we take into consideration every time is that there should be a physical override for the user if internet connectivity is lost. What I mean by that is if we select a smart switch and the smart switch goes offline and there's no more connectivity, the user has still be able to walk to the wall and press the power button and the light should come on. There always has to be an ability for the user to fall back to the same old fashioned physical control in the absence of Internet connectivity or local area network connectivity. But the primary things are ability to fall back to physical control, ability to communicate over Wi-Fi or standard IP-based protocol, then the third one would be some form of API access, either remotely via the cloud or locally via the local area network. CHARLES: Wow, that's actually a great list. It's got me wondering, obviously you've encountered devices that have fallen on both sides of that divide. Do you feel like that's just a blip and we're going to be trending more towards devices that are happily and easily integrated or are we still seeing some moving and jostling as people maybe try and corner little parts of the market and make their device deliberately make it not easy so that you'll try and force people into that ecosystem? JASON: The latter, however we have two guerillas in the market right now that I think are helping drive the other direction in the way of Amazon and Google with Google Home and Amazon Echo. What they're doing is they're saying, "If we sit in the center and one of the interfaces for voice control for the user to control their home, then we're only going to work with devices that we can communicate with and that we can control through the cloud," and quite frankly, what that does is it puts the burden back on the device manufacturer. You could actually say three if you threw Apple in there. I don't want to leave Apple out with HomeKit. But my point is that the device manufacturer now has to find a way that the end device can either communicate via standard TCP/IP network-based connectivity that we all know and love from a developer community perspective or they have to insert a hub into the equation that can handle that form of communication and then communicate over its own proprietary wireless connection, which is in the case of Philips Hue, it's exactly what they do. JEFF: I would draw analogies here to some people get really tired of this, particularly the real estate people of me talking about the iPhone but that kind of leap into and integrated piece of hardware and software. There were certain things happening in 2007 that didn't make the iPhone or something like it, something that might happen but something that had to happen. This kind of cold death to the universe that we could see with all of these walled-off ecosystems, go in their directions and iterating into a space to a nobody owns anything and nothing talks, I think Kasita is a solution to that to where we're looking like combine all this stuff under one roof and build a single user experience, much like not having to pull your Palm Pilot out of one pocket, you're Rio MP3 player out of another and you're your Razor or whatever it was out of the other like integrating into a single experience, rather than a sort of convenience, which is what a lot of the IoT spaces right now in these walled-off ecosystems. CHARLES: That actually makes a lot of sense and clarifies it in my mind quite a bit. It clarifies one thing but then, immediately raises new questions. When the iPhone first came out, you had a set of basic integrations between your MP3 player and your web browsing and your calling and calendaring, so and so forth. Then, I don't know what was it like, a year and a half later, they actually came out with an SDK so that you could actually develop apps -- third-party developers could actually develop. Sell and distribute in apps -- to the iPhone. We're all really happy with the way that worked out. I guess my question is does this analogy carry forward then also for Kasita? Is there a future where you have third-party developers who are actually selling integrations or apps that would run on this integrated IoT product that is Kasita or am I stretching the analogy too far? JASON: I think the analogy is good with the exception that we're not looking to control the entire IoT ecosystem in a way that Apple maybe had look to control the mobile phone ecosystem with providing all of that in one box and the iPhone. We want to work with numerous hardware providers and even from that perspective, numerous folks that want to provide interfaces into our system. As we develop an architected Kasita technology system, we've taken an API-first approach and that's allowed us to build our user application layer right on top of that API but in the future, we see the opportunity to work with third-party developers to extend that, up on that and build their own interfaces to the end user. Then on the other side of the equation, if you think about what's actually controlling the devices, we're architecting that system in a way that a hardware manufacturer could take an SDK and add Kasita support for their product directly in and make it plug and play when it gets to the Kasita. We definitely see the opportunity, Charles to reach out and allow everybody to be part of this. We consider it quite frankly, a necessary thing. But we don't also want to pretend that we would look to control the whole ecosystem because we just don't have that level of scale, if you will. JEFF: And you know -- CHARLES: Not yet. JEFF: Yeah, and we try to keep our ego in the dumpster, so to speak as well. CHARLES: What would a third-party app even look like in the context of Kasita? Have you thought of like what are some things that you might be able to do? JEFF: If you don't want to call it directly an app, I think the first stage -- Jason and I haven't talked about this -- maybe more like an Alexa Skill to where you can have the Kasita do certain sets of tasks around a particular experience, which we're already building into the system the idea of moods but I don't know in terms of apps. JASON: Yeah, it's actually a really good idea. Even though we haven't talked about it, it always scares me a little bit when my boss is coming up with ideas on the fly that we have to implement but -- JEFF: But actually we will have our first -- we're going to call it a skill app, a Kasita skill app. We'll be releasing that say, October 1st. CHARLES: You heard it here first, folks. JASON: To take Jeff's idea a little further, I think that is an interesting concept when you think about the Kasita as being an end product and you provide interfaces whether it's the ability for people to write skills that tie into the Amazon Echo or an IFTTT-type capability. The Kasita, as a whole can be controlled -- all the lighting, the sound, all the different temperature, etcetera -- so now you're asking end users to write skills, to control the entire state of the building or of the home and not just doing it on a one-off basis writing skill to turn this light on and off or set the thermostat to this level. You basically box all of that together and make it much easier for people to get from Point A to Point B through our system. JEFF: Could you say that we're turning the entire Kasita into a board for people to play with, like treat the Kasita as your breadboard? JASON: I think there is some opportunity for that to the degree that will allow the user to have that much flexibility on the hardware side. I think it is still up for question but I think there's a lot of opportunity there, Charles and not only inside of the Kasita but then you can begin to see other applications as Kasita begin to multiply and people use them from many purposes. Let's take a sample of somebody owns 10 Kasitas and they use them as Airbnb properties and they allow users that live in Kasitas to come in for a short period of time into their Kasita and bring their Kasita profile with them. Immediately, they can make the Airbnb Kasita feel exactly like their Kasita feels when they're at home. Those are some interesting opportunities and ways that we see this technology potentially evolving. CHARLES: So it will have the same moods, the same behaviors. Any customizations or third-party extensions would also be in effect provided they were software-based? JASON: Yep. CHARLES: That would actually be quite amazing. I guess the other question I have in terms of hackability of Kasita is we're very interested in the IoT space and very interested in these products and we have some side projects here at Frontside also like I do a bunch of hobby stuff at home, where I try to integrate a bunch of these things. But one of the things that I really like about what you all are doing is that it's very much 'omakase' in the sense of there's an option of 10 smart locks, there's an option of this thermostat, there's an option of a million different devices but what we've done or what you've done is selected ones that we know are going to work well together. We've built the software, the control systems, both computer control systems and human control systems to get them to work together as a cohesive product. I would love to do is say, "I would just like to buy that product for my house," even though my lame tinkerings with smart switches, smart locks and audio controls and lighting, which are fun and gratifying the first few times but they don't really play nice together, give you that super sweet feeling. JEFF: This goes to the overall philosophy of Kasita. We want a turnkey, one-click housing solution. Not only for finding you a place to rent so that you're not fishing around on Craigslist for roommate or having to pay some outrageous fee in New York. You don't have to go mattress shopping. At some point, you should just have to show up with your iPhone and your toothbrush. When you start thinking about the technology inside, it's almost like folks don't really care what kind of Foxconn chip is in their iPhone or even if it was Foxconn that put it there, they just want it to work and they want it to be seamless and turnkey. It sets up a whole philosophy around, not only our smart kid in the Kasitas but it shouldn't even be a smart kid anymore. At some point, it should just be an experience so ultimately, what sort of UX inside of the Kasita are all of these things bringing you. I shouldn't have to really look at a blue glowing dot that lights up every time I walk by it to be at a comfortable temperature in my house. I shouldn't need a black tube over on my desktop that I yell commands at. I just talk or it should anticipate those actions. That's a future that I look forward to in Kasita to where we move away from having to tinker with devices and even knowing what those devices are to a true-like depth of experience. CHARLES: I like that a lot. Now, one thing that we haven't covered. We touched on it a little bit at the very beginning of the show when we talked about people feeling in control and feeling like they're truly the owner of the space is the issue of privacy. Obviously, there's a lot of a user's behavior that's going to be passing through software channels as their intentions move through the devices in the Kasita. Of course, all of these devices, they have their own ecosystems, their own vendors so how do you ensure that people's data is going to be protected, especially as it moves through potentially a bunch of different public clouds. JEFF: Yes, we gave a lot of thoughts to this. Actually, Jason put me on to this book called 'Data for the People' by Andreas Weigend. We took some inspiration on that, from that and set out on what we call it the four cornerstones of this future of the connected home. Those are agency, transparency, security and then the actual benefit that you get from this home. I gave a talk at South by called, 'The final frontier of AI is in your living room.' If that isn't black mirror, creepy enough to attract enough people, I don't know what is. In that talk, I won't take them out of order. First, we need to make sure that we're focused on transparency. Do people know what's actually being collected on them? I've been toting around my iPhone for 10 years. I'm pretty sure they know everywhere that I have been since then. I'm not really all that sure. Second, agency. Can I actually do something about it? Are we allowing people the ability to switch off, switch on, control where that data goes? Then third, security. Are we providing another level of security above what you would get out of the box? I'll let Jason talk about that in a minute. Then, the last is benefit. Am I getting ads? Am I getting a slightly better news feed focused on ads or am I getting my rent subsidized? Am I getting a better user experience, better sleep within the connected home? Those are the ways that we think about that in a bigger level. CHARLES: Is the idea that there's no benefit than it's exploitative? You want to make sure that there's benefit? JASON: Yeah, I think that onus is if you taking individual data and using it, then the onus is on you as a data collector to try to provide benefit back to the end user. If you can't do that, then I think the question should be why are you collecting the data in the first place? our goal is really looking at it from the perspective of if we know when users are turning lights on and off and what they're setting the temperature in their house to and when they're going to sleep at night, when they're waking up because we know when they turn everything off and turn it back on -- JEFF: Or where this things on the floor are from the vacuum robot. JASON: Yeah, exactly. If we have insight into that information, how are we taking that information and combining it in a valuable way that benefits the end user? I think that's the first question that we have to ask when we start looking at the data that we're collecting. But at the same time as Jeff said, that data collection really has to be based on this notion of agency, transparency and privacy or security. An agency is simply I have control over whether my data is collected. Transparency, from the perspective of I understand how my data is being used and where it's being sent and then of course, security, I know that my data is being securely transmitted and stored. When you think about security, we spend a lot of time thinking about not only the data at rest -- once it's been collected is it properly being stored and encrypted and protected -- but then how is that data being transmitted and are we putting the proper fail safes in place to make sure that somebody else can easily gain access and take control of my home and of the things that are important to me by finding back doors into the system and ways to breach them? Those are the cornerstones that we think about and we put first and foremost in our mind as we build out our architecture, build out our system and as we begin to take that data and to turn it back in useful and interesting ways for the end user. CHARLES: I think that's really important. I think it's a great comfort to hear that you all have a framework for thinking about this so that it's going to be integrated into every aspect of it. I think it's just so important, especially when it's something as critical as the space in which you're living. It's good to hear that it's not just an afterthought but that it's something that's been integrated from the start. Well, Jeff, Jason thank you guys so much for coming by and talking with us. I really think that Kasita is an exciting product and I think that it was an exciting project, certainly for us to get to work on, even though we were only seeing a very small sliver of it. We still got to perceive the whole enchilada that you guys were working on and see that just what a unique startup that really is, not just you're moving outside of software, integrating a bunch of different devices, integrating that with a unique home that's going to be designed, architected, manufactured and then thinking, then even rolling it up a degree further about how is this going to be integrated into the urban spaces in which we live. I hope that we see more startups that really engaged all those different disciplines. I think that with the technological changes that are happening, that's more and more a possibility. The price on software, the price on materials, the price on these smart devices is all coming down so it really enables people to take on scopes that might have been just completely impossible, even with someone who's overly optimistic. I hope that people look to it as an inspiration and it really was a great project for us to work on. I also understand that if someone does want to jump into this space and get involved, you all are hiring. JEFF: That's right. We are hiring for a broad range of positions. We're expecting to be doing a lot, more hiring soon. You can go to Kasita.com/Work and at the bottom of the page, you can also see that we have an open house here in Austin every Thursday morning from 9:30 to 11:30. The folks can come in and check out the crib. CHARLES: All right. Fantastic. I certainly really enjoyed getting the tour the space, what was that? Back in March? When you revealed the baby units? JEFF: Yeah, it was March at South by. CHARLES: Yeah, it's really something to see. If you are in Austin or you live here, take the time, go see it. It's really cool. With that, I guess we'll wrap it up. Thank you everybody for listening and as always, you can get in touch with us at @Frontside on Twitter or Frontside.io or send us an email at Contact@Frontside.io. Thank you all and see you next week.

Learn how to make a hotel reservation in English in this podcast. Slow dialog: 1:27 Explanations: 4:21 Fast dialog: 14:53 I just finished a huge project at work and I needed some down time. I decided to take a short vacation. I liked the idea of a long weekend out of town. My friend Sara offered to let me crash at her place in San Francisco, but I decided to stay at a hotel instead. Sara has a couple of roommates and I thought it might be too crowded. I called the toll- free reservation number for a major hotel chain. The reservation agent was very helpful, after I got through the long phone tree. Agent: Dutton Hotels. How may I help you today? Jeff: I wanted to check rates and availability for your San Francisco location. Agent: Certainly, I can help you with that. Will that be the downtown or waterfront location? Jeff: The waterfront location. Agent: What date do you plan to check in? Jeff: I'd like to check in on October 12th and check out the 15th. Agent: Okay, let me see what we have. For how many? Jeff: One. And, if possible, I'm looking for a non-smoking room. Agent: Sure, we have a non-smoking queen with an ocean view for $189 or a standard room with a courtyard view for $139 a night. Jeff: I'd like to book the standard room. Agent: Okay, your last name? Jeff: Rama. Agent: And, your first name? Jeff: It's Jeff. Agent: Okay, I have you booked in a standard non-smoking queen, checking in on October 12th and departing the 15th. What major credit card would you like to use to guarantee the reservation? Jeff: A Visa. Agent: The number and expiration? Jeff: It's 7388- 2424-3535- 1818 and the expiration is 05/08. Agent: Your confirmation number is PD672. Is there anything else I help you with? Jeff: No, that's all. Thanks. Agent: Have a nice day and thank you for calling Dutton Hotels. Script by Dr. Lucy Tse